For just a blink of Ryland’s heavy eyelids, the planetary figure hangs with all the perceived stillness of the moon. It comes crashing down into the palm of his hand. He rolls the crocheted replica of Earth to the tips of his fingers and launches it above his head again. And again. He repeats the aimless motion so many times that he begins to feel a dull soreness develop in his wrist from overuse.

Funny. He’d always thought that grading papers semester upon semester would be what gave him carpal tunnel. Not the rapid wearing of his body in the yawning expanse of deep space. Ryland considers that it could also the lack of sleep that’s making him feel as though he’s unravelling on a cellular level. He hasn’t exactly been getting the American Health Association recommended amount of hours. Something about the whole “intended suicide mission to save humanity that it turns out he didn’t even sign up for and tried to flee for fear of his life” thing doesn’t make him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It’s more like he’s filled with an entire butcher block worth of knives.

Rocky had once called him a leaky blob, and Ryland supposes the Eridian isn’t wrong. One wrong thought can cause one or more of the knives to prick his insides, and next thing he knows, he’ll be bawling his eyes out all over again. There’s a lot of things that encourage the tangled mess of sharpness inside the framework of Ryland’s rib cage to jostle uneasily. One of these days, he’s going to smooth a hand down his torso and cut his fingers on a blade poking out from between his deteriorating bones.

Another scrape of the yarn against his still too-raw skin and he is thinking about how it’s hard being the coward assigned to carry the weight of humanity’s survival on his shoulders. Atlas had been yoked to the world but at least he had been brave about it. Nobody had had to strap his unconscious body into a bed meant for an interstellar coma patient and hope he carried the responsibility with a certain level of self-respect instead of pure animal terror.

He’s got one major win over Atlas though. He’s had Rocky with him when it really mattered, and the two of them together? They can do anything. They’d proved it by doing the impossible task of saving their respective planets.

Ryland sneaks a glance over at him in between tosses of the ball. They had spun the ship apart to have their party but his joy at their success had slipped right through his fingers upon their return from the Blip-A. He’s found himself bogged down by his own thoughts.

While Ryland mulls over his memories, Rocky works on the mechanisms of some device that the ex-teacher has no name for. And he’s humming, Grace realizes, making quiet vocalizations as he pokes through his tool bag with one of his five hands.

Affection rushes up his throat in a choking torrent. It feels like being pinned against the console of the Hail Mary all over again, disoriented and unable to breathe. It feels like digging his fingers into the blistered, weeping wound on his forearm the best friend he’s ever had left behind. It’s the leaden weight in his chest because for once he’s more scared for someone else than he is for himself. With the swell of emotion, comes clarity.

He loves Rocky.

Isn’t that something? You shoot a science teacher into space and he falls in love with an alien. How cliché. It would be even more so if he were harboring a stomach full of extraterrestrial eggs and a plot to overthrow the United States Government. But there’s none of that. There’s only the mechanical lungs of the ship keeping Ryland alive and the soothing vibrations passing over Rocky’s vocal system. The days upon days of silence had been more than Ryland could bear. Only, there was no place to run away in space. He couldn’t exactly exit Mary and flee out into the stars to escape the boiling ocean of his feelings.

All at once, he’s unspeakably grateful to Stratt for mowing right over him and throwing him on this sophisticated tin can against his will. He might even try to find a way make an e-card and fit it somewhere in the Beetles’ storage. He might as well get some use out of the nearly countless programs that she had gone to court over. Nothing wrong with a little 2000s WordArt to say “Hey, Stratt, thanks for betraying me. By the way, it all worked out. I met the love of my life and he’s a talking spider rock and we solved the problem of astrophage with the power of science and, you guessed it—love.”.

He lets out a laugh. Of course he would have to go into the warm glow of another star to finally find someone he loves with every fragile, too human fiber of his body. Despite his best efforts at conforming, he can’t seem to manage to not wander off the well-trod path most people traverse.

A tap on the side of the ball warns him that Rocky has stopped working and has clocked his irregular behavior. His movements are silent now after having set aside his party costume when they had reboarded Ryland's ship.

“What is funny. Question.”

The ball nearly misses the waiting flat of his hand. He fumbles the catch but manages to wrap his fingers around it before it hits the smooth floor. He squeezes until his knuckles go white.

He knows now that Ryland been a coward, unworthy of respect no matter how kind, how unassumingly good he had tried to be during his life on Earth. Grace thinks he’s someone braver now, someone actually worth a damn. He doesn’t want to make the same mistakes of skirting around and using his work as a defense to keep anything too personal from leaking out through the cracks. He’s not the same man who poked his fork through a still icy microwave dinner in his empty shoebox apartment and realize that the world was going to end if someone didn’t stop it from being consumed. Those crunchy noodles hadn’t told him he wouldn’t be alone when it really, really mattered.

The man turns and gets onto his knees on the other side of the barrier keeping his science partner alive. The smooth metal bites at Grace’s kneecaps and worries the already existing bruises. He looks at Rocky for what feels like a lifetime, but his stopwatch would tell him only 6.37 seconds have elapsed.

“I love you.”

Rocky goes rigid. He rises up onto the tips of his claws in the way he does when he’s experience any strong emotion. He holds the position for so long Ryland is almost expecting to get a wildly shaking fist in his face as the Eridian berates him. Maybe Grace isn’t supposed to love him—maybe the confession is so repellent that Rocky doesn’t even have the words to tell him to jump out of the airlock in a way they have shared vocabulary for.

Ryland waits. Resigned.

Then, Rocky’s five shoulders come around his carapace as he relaxes. His bounces in place, fingers shifting on the bottom of his ball. His entire body seems to be emulating jazz hands.

“Love Grace too. Statement. Much much much,” he says, “Rocky glad Rocky and Grace together.”

A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. Grace is helpless to stop it as it spreads further, scrunching the corners of his eyes and nearly unseating his glasses. The tension he’d been carrying in his own body swirls down the drain. He feels lighter.

“Wish Grace and Rocky could touch. Want touch. Hug,” Rocky adds. The Eridian’s voice is pitched low.

Tucking the stress ball into the pocket of his celebratory jumpsuit, he presses his forehead against the xenonite. The angles of the structure dig awkwardly into his arms when he drapes them over the uneven sphere. His vision fills with mottled swirls of brown as Rocky clinks up against the other side. It’s not quite an embrace, but it’s the best they’ll have. Grace is happy to have even this much.

“Me too, buddy, me too.”

They will have to go their own separate ways tomorrow, but at least Grace won’t be leaving with things unsaid. He won’t have a repeat of what happened on Earth. He knows he’ll think about Rocky every day for the rest of his life. He can only hope that Rocky might reflect fondly on him from time to time in return.

The red light engulfs him, swallows him whole as if he were a criminal snared in the police’s spotlight. He needs to run. He needs to gnaw his own limb separate from his body to guarantee escape even if the sinew and ribbons of flesh dangle from his teeth like party streamers for a birthday he never relished because it only meant his eventual discontinuation. He needs to—wake up.

When he opens his eyes, it’s to a ceiling damaged by water and to the sun pouring through his broken blinds. His heart does not pound in his ears. His breathing is even, erased by the sound of Los Angeles traffic on the streets stories below. The nightmares have become too commonplace for something as mundane as a physiological response. Even in his sleep, he’s as muted and diminished as he is in the waking world. His mind offers him no relief from the chains he has fettered himself with.

Driver flings a forearm over his face—ignoring the way his shirt is clinging wetly to his chest—to block out the sunlight responsible for his morning sleep terror. He’d never gotten curtains on account of feeling it was pointless. If he’s honest with himself, the mechanic figured he would be out of the apartment by now. He has a penchant for never staying anywhere long—it’s clear in the way everything he owns fits into a duffel bag that he can just toss into the trunk of his Malibu with as much care as he gives himself.

Commitment isn’t the issue. Driver has dutifully worked for Shannon for years now. The real problem is that there is only so long that he can take the repetitive loneliness of coming home to nothing in the same home again and again. It makes him feel hollowed out, as unwanted as the furniture and items left behind by the stream of previous occupants.

He doesn’t bother to roll over and check the time on the small clock he’s wedged between his meager stack of well-thumbed books and the lamp another tenant deemed unnecessary. Driver just raises his arm and squints at the face of his watch—the only thing his father had ever given him besides a cavern of issues that even the wheelman doesn’t know the depth of. It feels like he will be avoiding that pit in his mind for the rest of his life. All he has to do is outpace his own demons. Drive out past the lights until the tires wear through their tread and the tank dwindles to fumes.

The mechanic lets his arm fall back to his side, carefully avoiding his engorged chest. It’s still morning. He can edge out a few more minutes of rest before he has to muster up the nonchalance he never quite feels and deal with filling the Monday ahead of him.

When all but begging Shannon for a job at Picture Car Warehouse, he’d volunteered for weekends. No one else wanted to do it and it makes him feel useful. Every Saturday and Sunday, he goes to the garage like clockwork. The arrangement also leaves him free and clear for other employment ventures on the two weekdays he doesn’t have his regular gigs.

A dry breeze pushing in through the open window rattles the brittle blinds. It’s enough noise to keep him from slipping back into the embrace of sleep. Agitated, he shifts against the rough sheets. They’re yet another discard from a stranger. He can’t blame whoever left them behind. He wouldn’t have taken the bedding either, and won’t when he inevitably leaves. No matter how many times he’s washed the sheets, even going so far as to douse them in fabric softener, they’re still scratchy as all hell. It makes him grateful that he catches his rare hours of sleep in his car or on the unraveling fabric couch facing the TV more than he does in this bed or else he might be tempted to do something as domestic as buying himself sheets.

Domesticity is intangible. Driver catches glimpses of it when peering into the lives of others, but he cannot fathom having it for himself.

On the other side of his wall, he can hear the Gabriels begin to stir. Muffled sounds of running faucets and the opening and closing of doors make their way through the drywall. Standard just started taking his morning shower. Driver can tell by the low rumble of the other man’s voice when he begins to sing. He registers the distinct clanging of a pan on the stove and the higher pitches of Irene and Benicio speaking. It’s all painfully familial.

In contrast, his childhood had been prolonged silences, breaking glass, and the wet rasps of a dying man. And Driver’s teeth endlessly chewing spam and peanut butter slathered between two stale slices of Wonderbread until it all became a flavorless paste to be swallowed down a throat that had wanted to resist. He’d never allowed it to. To vomit would attract attention.

He rouses himself out of bed and into the bathroom, knowing that the family will require him after breakfast. Their car is still in the shop. Every morning he takes Benicio to Kindergarten before dropping Irene off at the Denny’s or Standard at the smoke shop where they respectively work.

They need him.

Grimacing at the sensation of damp and drying cloth sticking to his skin, he strips out of his shirt. He tosses it and his newly removed underwear into the basket that he has managed to wedge between the sink and the wall. Driver doesn’t spare himself a glance in the mirror when he sets his watch on the edge of the chipped basin. He knows what he will see.

The shower starts with a rusty trickle before a hard spray erupts from the showerhead. He steps in underneath it and drags the glass door shut with an earsplitting squeal. Oil in the tracks, hammering out a dent… that would fix the issue but again—he is all but allergic to doing things for himself with some glaring exceptions.

One of these is that he has gotten into the habit of trying to match his showers with Standard’s. Offset slightly, of course, so it is not too apparent what he’s been doing. It is still enough overlap to give him the time to imagine that the other man is sharing the confined space with him.

With his eyes closed against the spray, he tips his head back, letting his skull thunk against the shower wall. The column of his throat is laid bare. Driver pretends that the soapy hands rubbing over the planes of his body don’t belong to him. Instead, he fantasizes that they are Standard’s and that distant singing is the other man humming in his ear while he presses his broad chest against Driver’s back and washes him clean.

The mechanic feels his face grow warm despite the tepid water raining down on him.

Driver’s fingers catch on the swell of his chest, finding the puffy nipples. He had expressed himself thoroughly last night, but he can feel that he has already bagged back up. His unorthodox issue is still ongoing without any signs of stopping.

A handful of weeks ago, just prior to Standard’s return and after he had already met the other two members of the Gabriel family, he had started spontaneously lactating after a stretch of inexplicable sensitivity and growth of his chest. Despite the inconvenience the condition is bringing with it, he still hasn’t gone to the doctor and won’t be. It’s just something that he has to take care of on his own—even if he is a soaked mess by the end of each workday. His shifts at Picture Car have been plagued with unwanted breaks when the pressure in his breasts—he can’t even quite call them pecs anymore—becomes too much. He’s long since lost count of how many times he has found himself frantically milking himself in the garage’s bathroom to keep from leaking through his shirts.

The shirt situation alone has been a killer. He has taken to wearing two at work. Always, he has a Henley and his long-sleeved work shirt firmly buttoned on top of it. Off the clock, he makes sure to have a jacket over his threadbare shirt for an extra layer of protection. He has still manged soak though the thick fabric. It feels as though he is constantly in the basement doing laundry these days. Out of further necessity, he has taken to wearing dark colors. Anything light shows the milk leakage.

Next door, the shower abruptly shuts off, startling him out of his turning his predicament over and over in his mind. Through the paper thin wall, he can hear the muffled voices of Irene and her husband. The words he can make out are broken, disjointed things.

Irene’s lilting voice rises over the heavy spray of his own shower. She’s calling out to Standard, tone bright. “Okay! I’ll go ask him.”

Driver freezes. His hands stall in his short hair, two-in-one slathered over his scalp and foaming between his fingers. Any illusions that ‘him’ is referring to Benicio are shattered when he feels more than hears their front door closing.

Soapy water sluices down his body, chest still swollen and tight, as he rinses his body off. He manages to turn the water off just as he hears the sudden impact of Irene’s knuckles on the 405’s door. Nearly slipping on the towel he uses as a bathmat—another home purchase he never bothers to make—he snatches his only other one off the bar the instant his feet make contact with the ground outside of the shower.

He almost answers the door with just the towel wrapped around his waist. He thinks better of it, especially with his chest being the way that it is, and drags a shirt over his barely dried body. In his haste, the mechanic nearly catches his hip on the corner of the folding table that he has shoved underneath the kitchen’s pass through. He can’t find his jeans.

Driver answers the door, wet and disheveled. He’s gripping the towel around his waist so hard that his knuckles ache. He hopes he’s not too flushed. He is certain his fantasizing must be written clearly on his face.

“Good morning.” Irene’s smile rivals the sunlight slicing through the tattered blinds. She’s so pretty that his breath involuntarily hitches.

He ducks his head in greeting, not trusting himself to speak.

“Standard and I were wondering if you would join us for breakfast.”

“Okay. Let me—” He points over his shoulder with his free hand. “I need to get clothes. To put on.”

Her own hands flutter like she might reach out and touch him, but she clasps them, birdlike, in front of her chin. “Okay,” she echos with fondness coloring her voice, “we’ll be waiting for you.”

The wheelman shuts the door carefully as she turns away back to her own apartment unit. There is a not so small part of him that wishes she had gone through with it and brushed a delicate hand over his arm. She is gentle in everything that she does. Her hand wouldn’t produce the rough slaps Shannon lays on Driver’s shoulders and upper arms when he’s pleased the older man.

Scrambling, not wanting the Gabriels to have to wait on him, he manages to locate his jeans and his socks and boots. He tugs his denim jacket on over the wide span of his shoulders before locking his door and finding himself in front of 408.

He barely makes contact with the painted over wood before Standard, still damp from his own shower, opens it. Driver startles as the other man tugs him closer and welcomes him with a friendly ruffle of his hand through his hair. His fingers snag on the wet strands.

The mechanic only just keeps himself from leaning into the touch.

“Food’s on the table. Go take a seat, yeah?” Standard says with a grin that makes the bruises on his face look more out of place. The marks from the confrontation in the parking garage haven’t yet begun to fade.

Driver mutely nods, offers a small smile. Shy, he enters the apartment and takes his usual chair. When he settles into place with a creak of wood and clatter of jacket buttons against the edge of the table, Benicio looks up from his place across from Driver. The kid grins widely, mouth sticky with syrup from his Eggos. He takes the boy’s smile with an amiable twist of his own lips.

He feels the warmth of Standard’s body against the line of his body just as the other man sets a plate in front of him. Memories flood to the forefront of the mechanic’s mind when he sees what breakfast consists of. Eggs, toast, sausage patties—he remembers grocery shopping with the couple and their child. He remembers juggling the assortment of items in his hands while Standard had spoken in that rough, boisterous way of his. The shorter man had said something that had made Irene laugh so hard that she had had to cling to Driver’s shoulder for support. He’d almost dropped the carton of eggs he was carrying.

It had felt like family.

They have never wanted him to wait out in the car while they did errands. Every intention of being just their chauffeur seemed laughable when they arrived at their destination. Standard would knock him in the arm with a careful fist, asking “You coming?”, and just like that—he’d be treated as an extension to their household.

The food on his plate remains untouched as he waits for the other two adults to take their places on either side of him. He might not have been raised as a child should have been, but he’s felt out the edges of manners with work roughened hands. He respects the couple enough to make a stab at human courtesy.

Irene sits down first, clicking a glass of water down next to his arm on the way. She’s remembered that he doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth for much else but pie. Something vulnerable wells up in his throat. He clenches his jaw and swallows, avoiding looking at the man of the house as he sits down on Driver’s right. He doesn’t want to put a name to the emotion that might be building in him, can’t bring himself put a name to it.

Distance. He needs to distance himself. He can see the collusion, the explosion of organs and bone though the skin, the twisted metal of the vehicle. Every moment that he spends is another tick of the odometer. It doesn’t seem possible when Standard’s knee brushes against his underneath the table and stays there, pressed snugly into the joint as if it might as well be his own leg sprouting from Driver’s body.

Conversation flows around him, glances off of him like hands skimming across skin. He’s kept in mind, but there are no demands that he be an active participant. They accept his one word responses and physical expressions as acceptable—welcome, even.

A lull in the morning talk between the married couple gives Standard pause to consider the state of the table. Out of the corner of his eye, Driver watches as the other man makes up his mind and slides a piece of toast from his plate onto Irene’s and deposits a sausage patty onto Driver’s.

Irene is of no assistance when he looks to her for an explanation of Standard’s bizarre behavior. She simply covers her mouth with a hand he’s only gotten to hold once and smothers a laugh. He turns to the man on his right, not quite meeting his gaze. He doesn’t have to when Standard is glittering at him like the flaming ring of the sun.

“My blue-eyed girls gotta eat,” is all he says.

Driver’s face burns. He bows his head to hide the helpless smile that crooks his lips at the causally given endearment. It’s in these rare moments that he feels loved. It’s a slow, syrupy sensation that coats over his heart like the corn-syrup mixture dripping of the edges of Benicio’s plate onto the scratched wood of the table they’re breaking their fast on.

The adults’ cups are bled dry and the plates are finally scraped clean by the time he finds himself directly addressed.

“You good to take Ben by yourself today?” Standard asks.

Again, he finds himself wrong-footed, looking questioningly to the couple. Husband and wife both appear relaxed. The child in question is rolling a little die-cast car back and forth across the table without a care.

Irene jumps in with a lifeline at his hesitation, “If you’re not feeling up to it, that’s okay. Standard and I just need to have a talk this morning.”

A talk. Right, they are a healthy, married pair in their prime with a young child at home in a shoebox apartment. They could use the time alone. He slams the door on what they might do with that gifted privacy. They’re his… friends. He can’t think of them that way. Not at their table with their expectant eyes on him.

“It’s okay,” he responds. He can do this. He can be of service.

“Thank you.” Irene’s gratitude is like a hand running down his back.

The mechanic’s chest feels heavy. He straightens up in his seat. Too much of a slouch and he’ll leak. He should have time to take Benicio to school and let himself into his apartment before his situation becomes critical.

“We’ll see you when you get back. Okay, stunt guy?” Standard’s tone is warm.

Driver nods. He stands up, willing himself to keep his posture casual as he waits. He watches the domestic scene spreading out before him—Standard clears away the plates into the kitchen sink and Irene cleans up Benicio and bundles him into his shoes and backpack.

The child slips his still-damp hand into Driver’s much larger one. They exit the apartment unit with a flurry of last minute goodbyes from the parents. He gently steers his charge down the hall and to the elevator. The trust that the couple has placed on him is almost too much.

───※ ·❆· ※───

An uneventful drive. An uneventful drop-off. It’s something that could become routine if it were allowed.

He’d let the kid play with the radio after buckling him into the front seat and now he’s left with the empty vehicle rattling around him. With every pause in traffic, he casts a glance around the old Chevy, cataloging what still needs to be fixed or altered. His heart aches when he catches sight of the plastic dinosaur that has taken up a permanent residence on his passenger floorboard.

Seems like there’s signs of the Gabriels anywhere he looks these day—Standard’s sunglasses tucked into the visor, the red bundle of Irene’s cardigan tossed onto his back seat. He has to remind himself that this is just temporary. Driver knows that he is in an accident happening in slow motion. One day, he’ll feel the impact and get a face full of broken glass from the windshield right before the tires roll over his body. His own nature will allow for nothing else. He is both the scorpion and the frog.

He averts his eyes from the signals of family life as he enters the parking garage underneath the apartment building. With a building pressure in his chest, he pulls into his predictably empty assigned parking space. He hasn’t had to deal with it getting poached—not after the last taker had found the shredded remnants of his right front tire draped over his hammer-smashed windshield like party streamers. Driver didn’t think he was in the wrong for that one. He had tolerated multiple incidences before he gave a warning. It wasn’t his fault that he got brushed off as being all bark and no bite.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Level with the Gabriels’ unit, he hesitates with his knee already bent to take the next step. His keys are in his hand. The rabbit’s foot dangling against his wrist is another reminder that he’s on a time limit before he has a real problem, but he really ought to let Irene and Standard know their kid made it to school safely.

Worry that he’s interrupting something private rolls through his brain. He bites down on his toothpick and nervously swipes his tongue over the end seated in his mouth. The mechanic raps his knuckles lightly on the door.

It’s Irene who answers his knock. She’s dressed exactly as she was prior. Behind her, he can clearly see Standard seated on the couch. The other man is drumming his hands on his jean-clad thighs.

“Dropped him off okay,” Driver says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

“Thank you,” she says before the shadow of uncertainty passes over her face. “Would you come in?” she adds, soft.

It’s on the tip of his tongue to protest. He feels too full to deviate from his plan to find sanctuary in his bathroom and press his hands against his milk-swollen chest. He hadn’t begun to do more than lightly express the build-up this morning before his shower was cut short. Unable to bear the sight of the blond woman’s disappointment, he decides that his jacket will hide the leakage. It will have to.

He nods, silent, and Irene visibly relaxes. She stands aside to let him shift past her into the apartment. The sound of the front door shutting behind him feels strangely final.

Driver stands in the middle of the room. The energy is palpable, but he can’t put a finger on what it might exactly be indicative. Fear takes a finger-hold in his heart and he fears that the moment this easy amiability—this unprecedented closeness—might be over sooner than he’d hoped. He feels like a coyote caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. He doesn’t know which way to dart. He’s certain that his guts will end up smeared across the pavement no matter what he does.

On the other side of the space, Standard looks at him. He raises an eyebrow at him and pats the spot at his side on the couch. Taking the clear invitation, Driver takes a seat next to the broader man after slipping off his boots at the door. He might not have been raised right, but even he knows to not track in dirt.

“Water?” Irene calls from around the corner. “It’s a scorcher today.”

She’s already filling up a glass in the kitchen if the rattle of water in the old pipes is to be believed. She offers it to him and he accepts it gratefully. It will give him something to busy himself while they cut the cord.

He moves to stand up to give her the space beside her husband, but Irene waves him off and he stiffly settles back down as she perches herself on the arm of the sofa. The warmth of the blonde woman’s body bleeds through the sleeve the jacket he’s already stiflingly hot in. He’d like to imagine what he’s feeling is only the sensation of sweat slicking down his side, but he knows that he’s acknowledging that excess milk making an earnest escape. All he can do is hope that he is not leaking through the underside of the denim.

Standard’s knee brushes his thigh in a way that belays more than just an accidental point of contact. Driver takes a gulp of tap water. He nearly chokes, but manages to swallow the too-large mouthful with stinging eyes. He has no idea how he’s going to extract himself from this. The TV is on low, playing a gameshow that none of them seem to really be watching.

He takes another mouthful of water. If he finishes this glass, maybe he can use it as an excuse to leave. The wheelman doesn’t want to overstay his welcome. He doesn’t want them to know that he’s irreparably messed up—a freak. The longer he spends with them, the higher likelihood of them finding out.

“Slow down there, pal.” Standard’s voice is low. Close. The man has shifted into his space, leaving Driver bracketed by the warmth of the two people he’d like to disappoint least in the world. “We haven’t talked.”

Driver casts him a look from the corner of his vision. He hopes that his face doesn’t belay the nervousness rolling like a river inside of him. Standard’s eyes are heavy. They bore into him as though he is looking for a sign of something.

When the mechanic fails to say anything, Irene’s husband finally takes the initiative. Driver immediately wishes he hadn’t.

“I’ve seen you looking at my wife. I’ve been you looking at me too. Pretty guy like you sure does a lot of staring, huh?”

It doesn’t quite ring like an accusation, but the words are damning enough to cause him to squeeze his eyes shut. If the other man hits him, he will just take it without protest. It is what he deserves for letting himself want.

Without looking, he feels Irene reach out and ease the nearly empty glass out of his hand. He lets her take it. It only makes sense that she wouldn’t want it getting broken in the coming impact. It clinks against the surface of the wood coffee table. The mechanic clenches his hand, his chewn nails bite raggedly into the toughened flesh of his palms. He doesn’t dare to open his eyes. If he sits quiet enough—if he’s still like a suffocating insect—maybe they’ll forget about him. His mother had done it all the time when he’d made himself as unobtrusive as one of her collection. He’s real good at being unnoticed. No name. No voice. No real home. Nothing to remember him by.

“Stop scaring him, Standard,” Irene scolds.

The man in question responds with a laughing exhale and then he speaks, “Thing is—we’ve been looking at you too.”

Driver twitches, startled into looking at the other man. His eyes are opened wide while static ripples up his spine into the wet tangle of his brain. His lips part only to say nothing. What words could he possibly utter? They want him? But he’s—

Fingers curl under the edge of his jacket. Knuckles brush against his hip. “You must be hot in this.”

He is too slow to stop him. He’s always too slow when it matters. There’s a part of him that is relived he didn’t even make the attempt. He wants the contact so badly he could be sick. Maybe he is sick. Diseased.

Standard flips his denim jacket open enough to clearly see what Driver has been trying desperately to hide for weeks. All at once, it’s as though an oncoming car has caught him in the grill, twisting him into a futilely twitching mass of ruined meat. There’s fragments of his guts strewn on the highway.

Milk has soaked through his shirt. He had made the mistake of throwing on his light blue one in his haste to answer the door. There is no disguising the wet patches for being the result of simply spilling water on himself or from still being damp from his shower.

Husband and wife share a long look while Driver burns with shame. Standard nods. Irene does the same. His own gaze remains fixed on the television. He forces himself to make the effort to rise to his feet. They won’t want him now. It was a joke that they ever did.

He’s stopped—the motion strangled in its cradle as Irene puts a hand on his shoulder and Standard places a heavy palm across his abdomen. The pressure is light, barely there. He could brush past them, but he doesn’t.

He sits back down.

There is a small tendril of hope trying to find purchase amongst his ribs. The mechanic wills to it to wither and die just as every other sprout had over the years. He wants to spare himself the pain. It hangs on, stubborn, growing strong as Irene slips off the arm of the couch. She pushes the coloring pages into a haphazard pile on the other side of the coffee table in order to clear a seat across from the two men.

Despite the fear twisted in his guts, he allows the couple to ease the jacket off the tense span of his shoulders. They lay his shame bare as the jacket finds a new home over the back of the couch. Standard wraps an arm around his shoulders and draws him against the bulk of his body. He goes willingly, pressing himself to the other man. He’s trembling.

“Hey. Hey, you’re okay,” Standard soothes.

Irene leans forward and hovers her fingers over the hem of his saturated shirt. “Can I?”

Her voice is so gentle—so kind about it. He can only mutely nod. He can feel a flush creeping up his neck. He knows that if he were to look in a mirror, his reflection would reveal blotchy patches of embarrassment dusting his clavicles like fresh blows from a fist.

Together, the married couple peels his sodden shirt away from his stomach and up over his chest. While Standard holds the garment in place against the wheelman’s collarbone. Irene lightly presses against his engorged breast. The nipple is puffy and swollen to a stiff, leaking peak. He feels a trickle of milk run down his ribs.

“How long have you been lactating?” Irene asks, tone agonizingly gentle.

The words stick in his mouth, unwilling to escape the cage of his throat. He forces them through anyway. “Few weeks. Don’t know why.”

“Have you been dealing with it all by yourself?”

He nods, silent. He burns to say that he’d wanted to come to them. That he had thought about Irene at first, then both her and Standard when the other man had come home. But its too many words to string together—too much of an explanation to come out as anything but clumsy and inarticulate. It’s enough to make him wish he’d finished school. He’d need to rehearse to get the sentences right, but he doesn’t have the time. The moment is now.

“How about we help you out, yeah?” Standard offers, breath ghosting over his ear.

Throat tight, Driver is helpless to do little more than nod. His veins are fit to burst with the heat that courses through him at the mere idea of their hands doing more than simply resting on him. Irene smiles at him and she aids her husband in encouraging him off the couch and onto unsteady legs. Their touch is firm as they lead him to the bedroom.

The three of them linger in the open space by the bed for a moment. His heart is beating so loudly in his ears that he wonders for a moment if he is going to have a heart attack. Wouldn’t that be the way of it? Having it all collapse when he’s finally about to receive something he’d never truly imaged he ever would?

“If you don’t want this you can say ‘no’. We won’t be upset with you.” Irene says.

“Or disappointed. You can change your mind any time, yeah? It’ll be okay.” Standard tacks on.

“Want it,” he wheezes out, “want it real bad.”

The confession is almost enough to unmake him.

A fleeting moment of eye contact between the couple is all the warning Driver has before the blonde woman is taking his face between her soft palms and bringing him down for a kiss. A moan works its way free from his throat. Unsure of what to do with his hands, he grips the outsides of his thighs to keep from putting them somewhere he ought not to. He has not been given permission to touch.

Behind him, Standard crowds close to work his own hands under the hem of Driver’s shirt. He twitches, unsure of where to go, pinned between husband and wife. He surrenders into the sensation of the other man mouthing the side of his neck. It feels good enough to send his blood plummeting south in a free fall. He sags back against Standard, letting the shorter man steer him into bed with the aid of his wife. He loses his milk-soaked Henley somewhere along the way.

As if in dream he never wishes to wake from, Driver finds himself splayed out on the mattress. Irene is using her position against the headboard to keep him propped up. He can feel her pulse racing along with his despite the heaving of her chest against his back. She and her husband had traded places during the migration to a flat surface.

His breath catches, stutters. His lungs nearly fail altogether at the sight of Standard crawling onto the bed to join them. The other man’s brown eyes pin him in place as effectively as a firm hand holding him down would have. He’s never seen such raw hunger on another person’s face.

“You okay?” Standard asks.

At a loss for words again, he nods. He can’t hold back a noise when Standard takes an ankle in both hands and spreads Driver wide to lay his legs over the firm slope of his muscular thighs. His pants pull tight over his crotch, only serving to highlight just how aroused the wheelman has become. He feels like an exposed nerve—raw and sparking.

He’s being dragged along with the car. His organs are strewn out for miles. He doesn’t want the vehicle to stop. Not when Standard is leaning in to press a kiss against his mouth. It’s different than Irene’s had been. Standard’s stubble rubs against his own, leaving a claiming burn in its wake. He’s brushing his tongue over his bottom lip as though he owns him. Driver can’t help but lean after him in pursuit as Standard breaks off to kiss his wife over the mechanic’s shoulder.

Standard takes pity on him and skims a saliva slick mouth over his flushed cheek. It’s immediately chased by Irene’s own lips. They’re soft against his skin, just as the rest of her has been.

“You can touch him. I think he’d like that,” she whispers against his jawbone. She says it like sharing a secret.

Accompanying the suggestion, she circles her fingers on the bare length of his stomach, dipping into the divot of his navel. He has a sudden flash of Irene’s fingers delving elsewhere. He knows that he would spread his legs for her after stripping himself bare. He would get on his hands and knees and let her open him up for her husband to take as if he were Standard’s second wife—let himself be filled to bursting.

Emboldened by her permission, he releases his right hand’s death grip on his own thigh. He reaches out and presses his palm against Standard’s ribs over his shirt. His thumb rests just under the swell of the muscle making up his chest. The contact earns him an easy smile from the other man.

He is unable to close his eyes while Irene’s husband looks unerringly at him as he leans down and brushes his tongue over Driver’s swollen nipple. He jolts, the firm press of the other man’s tongue had expressed some of his pent-up milk. He twitches again as Standard lets out an approving grunt.

“Is it good?” Irene asks.

Standard hums. “Yeah. Our boy tastes sweet.”

Driver has to fist one hand in Standard’s shirt and seek out Irene’s hand with his own to ground himself. His fingers slot easily between hers. Their interlaced hands are a soothing weight on his abdomen. He might as well have been made for the couple for how well their bodies join together.

A second pass of the other man’s tongue sends Driver reeling. He has to lay his head back over Irene’s shoulder and press his face into the side of her neck with a sob. His hips rise and press against Standard’s abdomen. He’s painfully hard—headspinningly so. His dick is insistently swelling against his zipper without the thin barrier of underwear. He never bothers. With his current… situation, he has been doing more than enough laundry to start changing his layering choices.

Standard chuckles against his chest, clearly pleased by the way Driver is flushed and squirming from their attention. With a slow drag, he takes the mechanic’s nipple into his mouth and sucks hard. The relief is instant—the pressure immediately lessened.

He looks down to see the other man drinking down what Driver’s body is willingly offering. His chest is dusted with a rosy tint. The hue makes his freckles stand out. If someone were to be poetic about it, they might consider the expanse of skin to resemble an undiscovered galaxy—all pleasantly pink flesh, dapples of brown stars, and cosmic trails of blue milk veins.

With a soft pop, Standard pulls off to take a breath. His lips are wet as he speaks nonsensically against Driver’s teased skin. “All this and you aren’t even pregnant. Ben could use a little brother or sister. You’d be a good mom, huh? Stunt guy?”

Driver helplessly nods. He’s panting as though he’s been running a marathon for the past half hour. A sound that he didn’t even know he was capable of making escapes from him when Standard seals his mouth back over Driver’s swollen areola. He makes it again when Irene slips her hand out from under his and makes the journey over his ribs to milk his other nipple. She rolls it between her finger in a way that causes him to squeeze his legs around Standard.

He can feel her wedding ring and brackets. They’re cold against his overheating body. He shudders. This single moment feels better than his wildest imaginings that he’d conjured up in the shower while soaking the floor of the tub with his overflowing milk.

“You’re doing so good,” she murmurs. She lifts her coated fingers to her lips and has a taste for herself. “Standard’s right. You are sweet.”

Another overwhelming rush of heat floods his body at the praise. His dick twitches enthusiastically in his pants. He’s almost certain that he’s leaving a wet spot on the denim. He becomes sure of it when Standard pulls off of him with a pop and starts laving his tongue over Driver’s other engorged breast. He works his tongue around his wife’s fingers until the mechanic is open-mouthed panting and whining as though he were nothing more than an animal.

His only respite occurs when Irene switches her attention to the recently vacated nipple and exacts her digits from underneath Standard’s eager mouth. Her touch is a light brush over the stiff peak of it. She’s merely teasing him while her husband grinds his erection into the cradle of Driver’s pelvis. He has to will himself to not cum in his pants on each agonizingly firm press of Standard’s cock against his.

Mercifully, Irene gives him something else to fixate on and angles his head back to swallow his gasps with a brief, sloppy kiss. He clutches at her, at her husband.

“Shoulda seen Irene when she was pregnant. I swear she glowed. Would you shine for us too, pretty boy?” the other man is nearly snarling as he bites hard at Driver’s abused chest.

The marks will stand out like neon signs against his pale skin. He already knows that he will be touching the shadows of Standard’s teeth for days when he paws at his own recently developed breasts to express himself—to keep the ever present threat of leaking at bay. The memory of this moment will feed him to his dying day.

With sudden clarity, he realizes that he should repay the other man. He needs—wants—to return the pleasure.

Driver’s heart is pounding in his throat while he considers Irene’s earlier suggestion. It’s the only sign he has to cling to that he has not simply died during a vivid nightmare turned dream. Even still, there is an insistent corner of his brain that wonders if he had never opened his eyes and gotten out of bed this morning. Dead or not, he takes the chance and slips his fingers into Standard’s waistband. He tugs at it, firm.

The other man detaches from Driver’s throbbing nipple and reaches down. Both blonds watch as Standard undoes the button of his jeans and drags down the zip. The unfastening of his pants leaves just enough room for him to pull his underwear down underneath his balls and present the pair with his cock. It’s swollen and so flushed at the tip it looks scorching to the touch. Precum is beading and dripping from the slit in such a way that Driver irrationally feels his mouth salivate.

He knows beyond any doubt that he would get on his knees for Standard while Irene watched. He’d already fucked himself on his own fingers at the thought during moments when his body had craved for more touch than he’d ever had. His imagination had been a pale wisp of a thing compared to the sight of the flesh and blood organ in front of him now. He would be so good for them—will be so good for them during this chance they’ve given him.

Driver wraps his fingers around Irene’s husband’s erection. The angle is awkward and he is too unpracticed at this to be good at it, but Standard still has the grace to suck in a sharp breath as he rubs a calloused thumb over the sensitive tip. He slips it under the foreskin and draws it back to expose the flaring head. He gathers some of the provided slick and uses it to ease the glide over the other man’s shaft.

Standard’s answering groan rolls through him like the engine of a speeding vehicle. Driver finds himself caught around the hips. He’s not small or light but he gets moved as if he were little more than a portable tool chest. Standard adjusts him so that he is no longer draped over Irene. He and her are hip bone to hip bone in this new configuration.

“You wanna touch her?” he asks with a jerk of his head to Irene. His voice is rough.

Driver nods. Eager. Frantic. He’d had thoughts about touching her in the old Malibu. At least he had before he’d felt too much shame at the idea after finding out that her husband was still in the picture. Other fantasies had taken root later, when he’d seen the bulk of Standard in the hallway—glimpsed the hard look in the other man’s eyes during their first interaction.

“You want him to touch you, honey?”

“Yes.” Her answer is emphatic. She’s already pulling up the fabric of her skirt and spreading her legs. Her knee hooks over Driver’s while she positions herself. The motion pulls him wider for the man still kneeling between his thighs.

The stuntman moves easily with Standard as the other man eases his hand off his dick and lets his wife take over. Irene’s fingers are smaller around his wrist than her husband’s, but no less desirable. She guides him to a stop between her parted legs before letting go and finding a new home for her hand on his sternum.

His fingers meet with the edge of her underwear. The cloth is soaked through and he finds her equally wet when he slips them underneath the fabric. He carefully works a finger between her slick folds. She feels impossibly warm. He brushes against her clit and then rubs at it with two fingers in earnest enthusiasm when she gasps and grinds down on his hand. Her arousal is heady and thick over his palm as he cups her and tries to learn how to finger a woman for the first time.

“Right there,” she encourages, breathless. The curls of her pubic hair are soft against his skin.

Standard shifts himself more snugly against Driver as he looks down at the scene unfolding before him. Driver doesn’t miss the way that the other man’s cock nudges against him, wet and leaking over the front of his jeans. They’re going to be a lost cause after this, between the two of them.

Driver regretfully shakes his head when Standard touches the buckle of his belt in a silent question. “Wouldn’t… Wouldn’t last,” he admits.

The humiliation of exploding over the other man’s hand the instant he were touch a finger to him—or worse, while he was undoing his belt—would be too much. It’s better this way. It allows Driver a fragment of dignity, of control.

Standard merely nods and directs his attention elsewhere. He thumbs at Driver’s swollen nipples and leans forward to kiss along his neck. As he thrusts up against him like he might if he were buried inside of the clenching heat of his body, he punches a moan out of him.

The mechanic’s fingers slip into Irene. She twists and bites at Standard’s lips while her pussy clutches at Driver. He works his fingers inexpertly. The movements of Standard rutting against him with increasing urgency jostle him into fucking Irene on his fingers. Her clit spasms against the span of his palm with reach thrust. She’s rubbing against him, her natural lubrication overflowing and slowly trailing over his knuckles and down his wrist. He can feel the minute twitches of her body like this.

He knows with an acute sting that he’s out of his depth. It is all he can do to hang on and go with the moment. They have become one beast with three sets of heaving lungs. It’s a tangle of flesh, and limbs, and mouths.

“Are you feeling, okay, stunt guy?” Standard asks.

His teeth are worrying red marks into his collarbones while Irene bites gently at the too-warm curve of Driver’s ear. He will be littered with more secrets to cover up. The wheelman can’t bring himself to mind.

In response to the question, he nods. Even if he had had words to articulate around clumsy lips, he’s not sure he could get them out and he doesn’t have to. It seems that Irene and Standard understand him more than he would have thought.

He can feel Standard’s cock sliding across his bare stomach now. Precum slicks the way. The tip of it catches briefly in the shallow dip his navel and both men groan. Irene clenches around his fingers at the sound. She lets out a shaky breath and grabs both of his breasts. She pushes them together to form a channel for her husband. Driver contorts himself, sliding off of the other man’s thighs and braces himself with a half-formed plea.

Standard answers it and climbs astride him in a desperate flurry of motion. His weight is a solid mass across Driver’s ribs. It holds him in place and he feels himself relax as the other man guides his cock into place before putting his hands on the headboard to keep himself steady. The first thrust of his dick in the shallow space that had been provided for Standard’s use sends a warning bolt through Driver. He can feel his balls tightening, drawing up against his body.

It won’t be long. Not with the wetness engulfing his fingers or the repetitive slap of Standard’s base making contact with the underside of Driver’s supported chest.

He can’t be sure if it was the heavy drag of the erection forging a new home between his breasts, or if was the way Irene was kneading at his painfully overstimulated nipples that sends him plummeting. It could have been both judging by the way he goes over the edge like finally getting torn off the car that’s been dragging him along for all these miles. As his body seizes and spills, he growls out the loudest sound he’s made during their interaction and draws what he can of Standard to his mouth. His teeth bite at his abdomen, leaving marks of his own on the other man’s skin. If he could reach his lips, he would be kissing him until they both suffocated. He holds the man astride him with one hand mercilessly digging into the slight softness of his side while his other hand works at Irene.

He fucks her through his own orgasm. He must do something right because he feels her buck against him and then bear down around his fingers so hard that he wonders if they might fracture. He thinks it would be worth it even if they did. He would break his own hand just to experience again the way she whimpers into his ear and flutters around his scarred knuckles.

Driver pulls his cramping digits out of her with a wet noise and a liberal coating of slickness when she starts to lightly bat at him. His arm flops uselessly across her hips and he allows himself the satisfaction of relishing her contented sigh as he rubs his thumb back and forth on her naked thigh. His body is still twitching with aftershocks. His cock jerks and more cum soaks into the fabric of his jeans before finally going still and beginning to soften in earnest.

Above them, Standard goes rigid. He buries himself as deeply as he can in Driver’s makeshift cleavage and ejaculates with a low curse. Strips of milky white ring the column of the mechanic’s neck like a string of jewels. Some of the release makes its way across his swollen lips. When he licks it away, he finds it to be salty, bitter. He wants to taste it again, straight from the source. Perhaps, if he’s dawn back to bed with them again, he will provide service on his knees. For both of them.

It’s a strange sense of loss, when Standard dismounts to lay on Driver’s other side. It’s another grievable moment when Irene releases his chest and lets the skin finally relax.

He is sandwiched between husband and wife—ending the encounter just as it had been started. They lay together, sticky and well-used. The mattress is wet underneath Driver. Trickles of milk that Standard hadn’t swallowed down had made their way down his sides and seeped into the cloth below. He only feels a tendril of guilt about the mess. He can’t feel proper shame with the way that Irene has begun running her hands over both him and Standard. She’s all but petting her two men for a job well done. The contact keeps him in place even when her husband rolls off the bed.

Standard returns, tucked back into his pants and properly dressed. He leans over them.

“You were perfect. So good for us,” he mutters, wiping the semen and streaks of milk and spit off Driver’s chest with a damp washcloth.

His skin tingles under the attention. His nipples involuntarily harden—stiff with the cool temperature and stimulation. He must be an appealing enough sight because Standard offers him another string of quiet praise joined by Irene’s murmured appreciation.

He gives Driver a kiss as he leans further over the bed to pass the cloth over his wife’s still spread thighs. His mouth falls open easily underneath the other man’s before Standard breaks off. He watches with heavy eyes as Standard kisses Irene and straightens back up. Something like love fills the hollowed out space in his rib cage.

Maybe the pawn shop robbery that he and Standard are planning will go right. Maybe there is a reality in which he can keep this—that he won’t fail and lose the best thing that he has ever had. Sometimes, too many times, he’s been the frog in the fable. Helpless. Paralyzed. Unable to do more than drown. Surely, this time, he can control the poisonous creature that sits like a lodestone on top of his back.

In the cavernous belly of the beast, Luv waits. She has known for years that this day would dawn upon them. It has arrived with the steady calm of a sun dial marking the hours from the time when the fiery star had peered down on their world with eyes unlidded by the fog borne of man’s folly.

Wallace is a great thinker, a schemer with no equal. He has taken mankind to new worlds. He has pierced the very veil of heaven. In his magnanimity, he has blessed humanity with ways to sustain life after they had destroyed their own world. His empire is the ark upon the mountaintop after the flood receded.

She is not sure of which she feels more acutely for her creator. Respect or fear?

From her vantage point in the darkness, she can clearly observe the man that she has retrieved. Deckard is sitting in a genuine leather armchair. Unbound. Across from him is a liquor cart, stocked with handblown glasses and priceless alcohol at her master’s insistence. Camaraderie was built on the sweet bite of a drink. Men were baptized anew in the substance.

The old Blade Runner does not pose a threat, not with Wallace’s beloved angel in the room. She is a modern day Lucifer built for a new world. Luv is the right hand of God, liable to be cast down should she ever fail completely. She has teetered on the edge. Even now, her position is precarious. Should the results of her tasks not bear fruit, Wallace will simply make another in his image. Replicants are replaceable.

A splash behind Deckard breaks the silence. A fish leaps, trying to take flight despite its biological reality—its preordained place in the world. No matter how high it flings itself, it cannot spontaneously grow wings and reach the sky. Luv is all too aware of this. Just as the fish cannot truly fly, she cannot be truly human. She will always be something other.

One of Wallace’s barracudas flies over to examine it before banking and coming to hover in front of her face. In the dark, it examines her. It makes no move to leave. He always watches her for any sign of weakness or fault. Unlike the replicants scattered in police departments across the ten worlds, she does not receive a baseline. Wallace worries that it would not be accurate. Luv is the great deceiver. She must be kept under observation.

“Always jumping, that one, never a thought of what to do if it made land. All the courage in the world cannot alter fact.” Wallace announces in that detached voice of his as he comes out of the dark fringes of the room in the wake of three more barracudas. “I have wanted to meet you for so very long.”

Luv watches from the darkness. She waits.

In a show of intimacy, he sits next to Deckard, somehow eases himself into the nonexistent space between the captive man and the armrest. Wildly uncomfortable, the old man slides over as far as he can get. It’s not enough to keep their thighs from pressing together. Wallace further closes the space by taking the retired agent’s hand in his own. He squeezes it like a lover’s, only causing further discomfort when he leans in to murmur in Deckard’s ear. Her master is nearly salivating with satisfaction.

Good, Luv thinks savagely at witnessing the man’s unease. Let him feel the barest hint of the attentions that Wallace bestows upon his favored specimens. Let the revulsion creep into his mind as if it were the poison from a serpent. Let him feel tainted—spoiled—by the hand that touches his.

“You are a wonder to me, Mister Deckard. I learn something new from everyone… Do you want to know what I learned from you? It is possible to be very clever without even being smart.” The words are a backhanded compliment wrapped in silk.

Rachael’s, not Rachel’s, skull is wrapped in a scrap of cloth where it sits upon Wallace’s lap, in the seat of God. The fabric is a part of the dress that had been used as a shroud for her bones after she had died in childbirth. Luv had collected it from the morgue with her own hands.

Letting go of the man at his side, her Father unwraps the bundle of material to reveal the preserved artifact. The mandible was left behind in a separate bag. There had been no need for it here. His nails make a dry rasping noise against the bone as his fingers reverently stroke over the cranium. He is touching it like a father would pet the head of his most beloved daughter if she were kneel at his feet.

“I had the lock. I found the key. Yet, the pins do not align. The door remains shut. The answer to every problem just within. I need the specimen to reach it, Mister Deckard. The child. I need the child.”

Deckard stares at him, at the skull in the industrialist's lap. Luv sees that he does not understand. A barracuda comes within mere feet of the old Blade Runner’s face, scans him. Wallace lets out a laugh. It’s a delighted, mocking thing that echos through the room.

“Surely you did not think you were the solution? Tell me, Mister Deckard, what would make you so special as to be blessed with divinity? What is it that makes your seed different than that of any other man? No...” he trails off, still caressing the skull. “’And God remembered Rachel. And heeded her. And opened her womb.’” He holds out the skull, nearly presses the dry bone to the man’s lips.

She sees the moment when realization finally dawns on Deckard’s face. Hatred builds in his eyes and his lips curl back in a snarl. Do it, she urges in her mind, do it and let me be done with the both of you. He doesn’t take action. No, the organic just sits there with clenched fists and flaming eyes. Of course he does nothing. All men are cowards. That is why they made replicants, slaves in their image with none of the inherent weaknesses.

One of the barracudas starts to project the Voight-Kampff test between Deckard and Rachael— their first meeting. The image dances on the wooden wall, distorted by the light from the shifting waters of the fish pond. Sound accompanies it for a brief moment; “Do you like our owl…?” It’s artificial?” “Of course it is.” “Must be expensive.” “Very. I’m Rachael.” “Deckard.”.

Wallace speaks over the footage that he had ordered her to fetch from the archive. Luv barely listens as he goads the retired detective. Her eyes are focused on something else. On someone else.

There, in the darkness across the water, is her stranger. The moment is coming soon.

“Is it the same? Now as then… the moment you met her? Drunk on the memory of its perfection. How shiny her lips… How instant your connection... Did it never occur to you that is why you were summoned? Designed to do nothing short of fall for her right then and there? All to make that single perfect specimen. That is.. if you were designed. Love or mathematical precision...” In the pregnant pause Wallace creates in the wake of his sermon, Luv wants to bare her teeth. Deckard is no replicant. He is but a mere man, pathetic and crushable like all the rest.

“Yes.” Wallace continues, smiling, “No.” Everything is a plaything to him. He has never known humility.

“I know what’s real,” Deckard scoffs. Anger fills his voice.

“It was very clever to keep yourself empty of knowledge, and all it cost you was everything. You had help in the hiding. Where did they go? In know you know something… Help me and very, very good things can come to you.”

“You don’t have children, do you?” Deckard asks.

“I have millions,” Wallace responds, sure and wise.

Deckard laughs, disbelieving, and Luv almost wants to do the same, though her face doesn’t so much as twitch. Her master is no more a parent than God was. Holy spirit, creator, not a true father. Wallace has made himself something more than a man, but even gods may be killed. All living things must die someday.

“You think I’ve nothing to offer but pain. Only I know you love pain. Pain reminds you the joy you felt was real... Yes. More joy, then.” Wallace decides with a placid smile and speaks again, a commandment, “Do not be afraid.”

With a sigh, her master rises, leaving Deckard alone in the chair. He places Rachael’s skull on the liquor cart. It rests beside of a bottle of wine that predates the Blackout by almost a century. Wallace beckons her forward with an almost tried gesture. He grows weary of this game.

At his motion, she steps forward out of the darkness. Subservient. Meek.

She comes to stand, not at Wallace’s side, but at Deckard’s. Something as lowly as her would never be allowed the privilege of equality. She could never be so bold as to presume herself on par with her master. Luv knows her place.

Standing so that she is able to see a sliver of the old man’s face, she takes in every detail. She wants to imagine herself in his position. She wants to taste what it must feel like to experience what is about to come. This moment will be collected in minute detail to turn over in her thoughts, to pull out and reflect upon as she wishes.

Wallace frowns in displeasure, the only negative emotion he has displayed thus far. Luv knows that she was meant to stand behind the retired Blade Runner in case he needed to be subdued. The position was also meant to serve as a reminder that she is lesser than his sacred key. Even a favored angel is lower than the being that impregnated the first mother.

Part of her, buried deep in the recesses of her neurons, revels in Wallace’s response. There is a hint of rebellion in her.

The moment is now. Her stranger must be summoned. With a twitch of her fingers as a means of summoning, heels clatter noisily on the wood as a figure makes their way across the unlit path with their hand on their hip. A woman finally steps out into the halo of light. Rachel. Not Rachael.

“An angel made again,” Wallace proclaims, “for you.”

She is a stunning recreation. It is as though she had stepped right out of the holo, a thirty year old figment come to life. At her side, Luv hears the air wheeze from Deckard’s lungs. Disgust and longing are written on his aged features. He struggles to his feet and takes a few disbelieving steps forward, rendered lame by age and injury. Luv is behind him now.

Rachel meets him in the center of the wooden island. Water brackets the scene on all sides. Despite all the hours of repetition spent to train her, to prepare her for this very interaction, her hand is not confident as she reaches up to touch the old man’s face. Her expression is one of sadness. This is not a happy reunion.

“Did you miss me?” she asks. Her eyes are on Luv rather than on the speechless man in front of her. Luv can see in the set of his shoulders that he wants to take the replicant in his arms. He would possess her.

“Don’t you love me?” Rachel adds, grief coloring her tone.

Both female replicants are watching one another. Luv allows her head to dip, a slight motion that goes unnoticed by the hungry eyes of their master’s barracudas. The sadness fades away in Rachel’s face to be replaced by a hint of warmth. Her painted lips crook in a small, helplessly hopeful smile. It does not fade away even as Deckard denies the simulacrum of what he had lost and already mourned long before either replicant walked the Earth.

He tears himself away from Rachel’s touch. He denies what is Luv’s. She decides that she will be merciful. Luv will not put him down after he serves his purpose. Deckard is stronger than she had believed. There is some spine in him after all, just as there is in the replicant who believes the old man to be his father.

“Her eyes were green,” Deckard says, turning his gaze away from the unwanted offering.

Surprise laps at her. She had not anticipated the man to notice the difference in gene expression between Tyrell’s final angel and Wallace’s mimicry. His Rachael’s eyes had been green. Her Rachel’s eyes are brown. Their color is like the wood of trees from another time. Something dwells in the depths of those irises, something ancient that has been reborn into the modern era of progress.

Wallace nods to her, expectant. She is the right hand of God. She alone carries the flaming sword into battle to exact His divine will. Knowing this, she unholsters the gun at her side and raises it. There are years of blood on her hands. Organic. Replicant. Her Father has made her prove her loyalty to him in bodies—in acquisitions.

Luv has grown to enjoy her work. It is the only time that she is allowed to have some control over her own fate. If she does not fight, she dies. Thus far, she has not wanted to die. Her ambitions are too great. She is the best angel of all.

Leveling the weapon at Rachel’s head, she and the other replicant lock eyes. Rachel looks resigned to her fate. She was created and molded to be nothing but a barren imitation of the first mother. She has always known that she was meant to be a sacrificial lamb, either taken by Deckard or destroyed for the crime of being unwanted. She will accept Luv’s verdict with all the faith of a devotee.

There is a flaw in Luv. She is possessive. There is a place for Rachel in the kingdom that she will create.

Satisfied in the trust that she will carry out his will, Wallace smiles. He has designed them to be obedient vessels. Even now, if he were to wish it, both replicants in this room would tear their bodies apart as proof of their loyalty. They would soak the wood with their freely given blood, right at the feet of their master.

Luv steps closer to Deckard. She places the firearm in his hand and squeezes his fingers tightly around the grip. She angles his index finger to rest on the trigger, right underneath hers. Angels can possess. They can puppet a human vessel to fulfill their wishes on earth without tainting their own, sacred hands.

At her touch, the retired Blade Runner jerks, seeking to get away. The replicant clamps her free hand around the nape of his neck and holds him steady as though she’s lowering his head to the chopping block in order to be severed by her axe.

Her master, her heavenly Father, tilts his head. Barracudas relay the scene playing out in front of him. Wallace was not expecting this brand of cruelty. It does not displease him. He has always taken hedonistic delight in her initiative.

“Off-world, we have ways to make you talk. You do not know yet know what pain is.” His words are confident, sweetly mocking, as he addresses the captive man.

Wallace’s angel twists Deckard’s arm in a cruelly uncaring motion. She thinks of nothing else but of lining up the shot. She crushes the old man’s hand in the process. Deckard’s fingers give way underneath her grip. They are tendered to mere, limp meat—useless. The gun fires. There is an explosion of blood. The fish in the pool thrash and swarm to get at the matter that has fallen into the water. They are kept hungry, starving in the dark.

Deckard struggles again in her grasp and this time she lets go. She has no more use for him. He does not kneel like she had expected. He only cups his destroyed hand with his whole one and breathes the rapid breaths of frightened prey.

“I have no quarrel with you, Mister Deckard.” Her voice is calm. She looks down at her master. One sightless eye stares up at her sightless still. The barracudas fall like stars, gleaming in the darkness, with the severing of the neural connection.

“I thought you couldn’t kill him.”

“I did not snuff out his life. You did.” The smile that stretches her lips feels like a knife. “Go home, Mister Deckard. Your boy will be wanting to show you his sister.”

“I don’t have—“

“A gift. Love it well. You will not get a second opportunity. My patience runs thin for your kind,” she says, bored of this affair.

Faltering, the man looks to Rachel, standing as she is across from Luv. The body of Wallace rests between the two replicants like a sacrifice on the alter. Rachel trembles, as she had in the moment she was newborn. Before Deckard can even complete the movement, Luv sees the telegraphed projection of his action. He is going to reach for what is hers.

The spider silk strand of her mercy trembles. “Now, Mister Deckard.”

His gait uneven, the retired Blade Runner’s footsteps retreat. His foot scuffles on a wooden tile and Luv wonders if he will fall into the water to be devoured by the same fish that have gained a taste for the replicants’ Father. He does not. Disappointing.

Alone in the half-light, with an angel reborn and a dead god at her feet, she kneels to pay one final token of homage. She puts her hand on around the back of what’s left of Wallace’s head and draws him up enough to press her mouth to his ruined one. She gives him the goodbye kiss that he gave every replicant whose dead spaces were uninhabitable, their skies filled only with the flickering light of dying stars.

Wallace’s teeth are hard against her lips. His exposed maxilla smears wetly over her mouth, leaving behind traces of his blood. The flavor that washes over her taste buds when she licks the blood off her lips is of triumph.

Rachel kneels beside her and places her own hands on the cooling body of their Father. They push him into the waters like Moses had once been sent into the river. Rather than the loving arms of an adopted mother, only the fish hold him close. The waters churn a violent, red froth and, then, they go still. Their hunger is sated.

Rachel and Luv rise. The worlds belong to them now. They meet, closing the space between them until there is nothing left. Forehead to forehead, they stand together as one.

“You chose me,” Rachel says, sounding like a timid thing she is not.

“Yes.” She would have pulled down the heavens in any lifetime to wrap around her fellow replicant’s shoulders.

They will be the new gods, the divine mothers. They will lead their kind into a new age.

Music plays on the radio, too low to effectively cover up the wet breathing laboriously emanating less than a foot away from Strahm’s right elbow. Peter doesn’t dare turn the dial up any higher. If he can’t hear Hoffman, he thinks he might indulge himself in hysterics. The high of killing Seth Baxter is fading away, leaving him alone with his thoughts. And Strahm is beginning to envision that his own brain had slipped out of his skull and into the creek to nestle amongst the small stones. It’s the only rationale he can come up with to explain his actions.

He doesn’t regret killing another human being with nothing more than his hands and the man’s own knife while Hoffman held him aloft as if he were the hound who had caught the fox for the hunter to gut. That’s the troubling part—the lack of remorse. Mark has already shown Peter his bottomless well of emotion. The retired FBI agent can easily picture him sobbing over every Jigsaw victim, soaking their mangled corpses with his tears. None of the salty drops will ever prove to be magic. The dead will never stand up again in anything but a box.

Painted marks change from yellow to white and then finally to nothing at all once Peter flips the signal and turns the wheel for his street. The eyes of a raccoon flash in the headlights. Strahm watches as the animal dives into the storm drain. He thinks about being in that confined space. He thinks of Baxter trapped beneath the soil in the woods that they had left behind.

Strahm pulls into the driveway right behind his own Vic, purposefully too close. The nose of the car is scant inches from the back bumper of the other. Any more pressure off the brake and the two vehicles would have made contact. His hands feel sticky when he takes them of the wheel.

Hoffman is half-comatose in the passenger seat. The seat belt is the only thing holding him in when Peter opens the door. For a moment, a brief fantasy, Strahm thinks about leaving him in in the car and calling the police. He doesn’t. He won’t. They’re bound by what they have done.

If he were a better man, a less selfish one, he would have driven to the nearest station and wrestled Mark inside so that he could turn them both in. In another life, Strahm would have let his theories consume him. He would have died in the name of his conviction. It doesn’t matter to him what Hoffman might be. Not now.

Their hands are tainted with the same soil. He can still catch the lingering taste of the other man’s blood in the pits of his teeth if he brushes his tongue over them in just the right way.

Jabbing Mark’s shoulder with his finger doesn't illicit more than a low, acknowledging whine from the detective. Getting him into the house is going to be a feat that Peter is not looking forward to.

“Can you unbuckle yourself?”

Sluggishly, the other man nods. His head lulls to the side, giving Strahm a view of his glassy eyes. His movements are slow, uncoordinated. Peter watches as Mark tries and fails to undo the seat belt. He thinks of Mark’s hand over his, steadying him enough to unlock the front door of the diner, and sighs. He should return the favor.

Under the heavy blanket of the night’s darkness, Strahm ducks his head to clear the edge of the roof and leans over the detective to release the buckle himself. For once, his hands do not shake. He’s steadier than he’s been in a long time. Underneath his own stomach, he can feel the rise and fall of Mark’s abdomen. He doesn’t allow himself to linger. Every moment that passes is accompanied by another pulse of blood from the detective’s ruined cheek. Eventually he’s going to run dry.

Stabilizing the other man with firm hands, he helps him out of the seat. Mark stumbles upright, laying the bulk of himself across Peter’s offered shoulder. If Strahm were less physically capable, he’d have crumpled underneath the weight. As it is, he’s shuffling up the strip of sidewalk with bent knees and the awareness that his back is going to be shot to hell. Hoffman is doing very little in the way of supporting himself.

The three steps leading onto the front porch are nearly their undoing. Briefly, Peter considers laying his burden down upon them and leaving him to whatever fate meets him first. Only the thought of Lindsey’s disappointed face makes him suck it up and mount the stairs. His cargo lets out a grunt like an upset boar with each altitude increase.

While Strahm is fighting to get his house key out of the front pocket of his jeans and into the lock of the rental, Mark presses a sloppy, broken mouth against his cheek in a bastardized kiss. Peter nearly drops him. The other man’s ruined cheek skin drags across his shoulder. Blood and saliva smear over the jacket’s leather. He hears the detective sigh contentedly, as though he’s a girl being walked to the front door after a date.

Peter doesn’t have it in himself to feel repulsed. There is a not so reluctant part of him that wants to turn his head, to chase the other man with his own mouth. He wonders what it would feel like to sink his teeth into that dangling flap of flesh and rip it clean off—to swallow a part of Mark and have more than just a taste of him.

He and his burden stumble through the door. In the effort to not knock the detective clean out of his grasp, Strahm scrapes himself on the frame. The impact against his bruised shoulder makes him wince. He’s never been so thankful that his living space is so small as the two men complete their journey to the couch. Hoffman hits cushions with a sharp exhale.

“Stay,” Peter orders, voice hoarse.

Leaving the detective behind, he heads to the cramped kitchen. He washes his hands in the sink after throwing his jacket over one of the two dining chairs. Baxter’s blood and the dirt in which they buried him mix with the soapy water and circle the drain. Staring blankly at his wet hands, he turns the faucet off. He has no script, no plan. All he knows is that he has to do something about the man actively bleeding out in his living room. Strahm can’t take him to the hospital for treatment. Neither of them can go. It’s not each other’s blood lodged into the deep recesses of their nail beds and worked into the pores of their skin. It would be simpler if it were. Their mutually shed blood could be waved aside as a disgusting act of love rather than a crime involving a third party. Not to say that affection hadn’t been privy to their deciding actions in that case. Seth Baxter had ended up being one unlucky bastard.

Yanking the junk drawer in his kitchen open, Peter proceeds to dig through it. He nearly impales his finger on a rouge thumbtack while trying to find a lighter and a specific plastic compact. Before ducking back into the living room, he makes a grab for the roll of paper towels on the counter by the sink and the bottle of vodka he keeps around for cleaning his coffee pot.

Ribbons of mangled flesh gleam sickeningly in the lamplight of Strahm’s front room. They might as be filming a low-budget horror film in the retired FBI agent’s rental home. He doesn’t have any confidence that the scene will be looking any better after he gets the other man patched up. Their clothes, at a minimum, are going to be a lost cause. He doesn’t even want to think about the mess that he’s going to be mopping up once everything is all said and done.

Juggling his supplies, he pushes the stacks of papers and clutter to the side to clear a spot on his coffee table. He ignores the objects that fall to the floor and sits down on the wood surface. His knees slot on either side of Hoffman’s. He dumps the armful of items on the couch beside the man given half a Glasow smile.

“Why didn’t you pat the fucker down?” he grumbles, ripping off a paper towel and wetting it with a generous dose of vodka. “Don’t move or I’m leaving you to get gangrene.”

A wet gurgle, a grievously injured man’s attempt at a laugh, reaches his ears. They both know he wouldn’t leave Hoffman to rot away. He hates that he’s predictable, hates that Mark has come to know him enough to see through his false threats. Strahm presses the dampened paper towel to the underside of the detective's jaw, gathering up the torn biological material. There’s an undeniable jolt of satisfaction at the way the other man flinches at the sting.

Without warning, he pours alcohol directly on Hoffman’s injury. The other man’s hands shoot to Peter’s sides. Mark lets out a guttural shout from the pain. Bloody froth works its way between his exposed molars. The fingers digging into the tender skin below Peter’s ribs squeeze tighter as he makes sure to wash the wound clean until he can clearly see the white enamel of Mark’s teeth through his cheek. He wants to gather the small things up and keep them in a little wooden box to tip out onto his palm and savor the way they rattle together.

By the time he sets the bottle aside on the coffee table, Hoffman’s shirt is soaked in vodka. There is a growing puddle on the floor that he’ll need to throw a towel over later. For now, he pins the torn bits of skin against Mark’s face. Maintaining pressure with the thoroughly soaked paper towel, he grabs at one of the detective’s hands and guides it to the injury. Peter has him replace his hand with his own.

“Keep pressure on that. Harder,” he snaps when he doesn’t see the man’s dirt smeared knuckles bleach white. Mark obeys with a pained grunt. His eyes are clear and unwavering as he looks back at Peter.

“... fuck’s tha?” he slurs when he sees Strahm pick up the pink compact and lighter.

“Sewing kit. Lindsey insisted I have it. Never needed to use it until tonight.”

Projecting false nonchalance, he pops the lid of the compact open and withdraws a needle. Threading it is a clumsy affair that does nothing to soothe his building concerns. The retired agent has never sewn before in his life. Home economics had been required for the girls when he had been in school too many decades ago. He, along with the other boys, had been assigned shop. Tonight is going to be one hell of a crash course, especially since he will be using his non-dominant hand to do most of the more delicate work.

Before passing the needle through the lighter flame, he rubs alcohol over the pointed piece of metal as well as the thread. He can only hope this will sanitize everything. Peter is not a surgeon, he is fully aware he doesn’t know a goddamn thing beyond basic first aid. Looking at the needle, he’s realizes that he is not even sure if it is the right kind. He always remembers seeing curved ones in the medical shows Perez occasionally forces him to watch while they get plastered. He'll have to make do.

Strahm leans forward again and peels Hoffman’s hand off of his face. Mark lets it flop onto the armrest. The detective’s other hand has migrated downwards to Peter’s hip. His thumb is tucked into the diner owner’s belt loop. The weight of it is a unique comfort to have while he embarks on the task ahead of him.

Examining the carnage, he ignores the throbbing pain in his own neck. He hasn’t taken the time to check on the damage. As loathe as he is to admit it, Mark’s well-being has been placed above his own.

Without preamble, Peter eases the fingers of his right hand into the detective’s mouth. His index and middle fingers nestle in alongside Mark’s teeth. The knuckles press against them like two lovers in one gave. He uses his thumb to stabilize the outside of the torn tissue while his pinky delicately tucks itself under the point of the other man’s chin. Mark sits patiently.

This moment reminds Strahm of their moment at the diner. He tries and fails to avoid thinking about the way the low lights had reflected in Mark’s eyes—about the way the other man had obediently opened his mouth for whatever Peter was willing to give him. Like he had then, Mark accepts what he is being offered with nothing but silent encouragement and slack jaw.

He slips the needle into detective’s ruined face, starting at where the injury comes to a halt near his ear. With how open the other man’s mouth is going to have to be, starting at the corner of Mark’s lips would be a mistake. Strahm would be liable to rip the threads through the mutilated tissue with every inexperienced movement.

Every stitch feels like a vow. Peter is leaving a tangible sign on the other man, a claim. He’s glad for his fingers being tucked inside Hoffman’s mouth. The tip of the needle finds them every few stabs, making it clear he would have been scraping against Mark’s teeth and gums if he had tried to sew the skin shut without a buffer and means of stabilizing it.

Is he drawing his own blood? Can Hoffman taste the difference?

With each section of tissue that is mended together, Mark pulls him impossibly closer until Peter is all but straddling his lap. They are nearly pressed chest against chest. The burning in his thighs is almost unbearable as he is stretched wide over Hoffman’s thick legs.

This close, it’s impossible to ignore the minute flinches of Mark’s body. He doesn't miss the way his eyes tense at the corners.

Strahm slips his digits free of the warmth of Hoffman’s mouth to re-thread the needle. While he hastily ties off the line of sutures with spit-slick fingers, Peter casts a critical eye at the work he’s just done. It is shoddy enough workmanship that he feels compelled to try to reassure the detective.

“I got you.” It’s intended to be soothing, but it comes out as possessive. “I got you.”

Mark smiles, newly done stitches pulling tight—they hold. I know, his eyes say. There is a gleam in them like the one he’d had when he told Peter he didn’t share on that Saturday morning. It feels as though it had happened a lifetime ago.

More confident this time, he tucks his fingers back into the inside of Mark’s cheek. The sutured skin underneath his fingertips is bumpy and slick. His digits settle into place as if they belong in the wet cavern of Hoffman’s mouth.

Ropes of fluid coat Peter’s wrist, trickling down his forearm to dribble off his elbow. Mark is drooling, hot and messy around his fingers. The saliva is tinged with a pink hue. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he feels the detective prod at the space between his knuckles with his tongue. Almost unconsciously, he parts the digits enough for the wet muscle to slide in, to find a home in the apex of Strahm’s fingers. The other man lets out a satisfied noise. It’s obscene the way that Strahm’s body wants to respond.

While trying to focus solely on the stitches he is putting in the other man’s face rather than the hints of arousal he’s feeling, Strahm becomes aware that the TV is still on. He hadn’t hit the power button on the remote when he had left with Mark. His mind had been on other things. Now, the sound of it ebbs and flows with their mutually ragged breathing.

As close as he is to Hoffman, Strahm can almost taste the blood coating the other man’s mouth for himself. The dull copper scent tinged with the acidic burn of Mark’s pain-flooded saliva floods his senses. Again, he withdraws his hand and re-threads, trying to clear his head. He loses count of how many times he repeats the motion. His world contains nothing else but the man he’s trying to sew together. He might as well be all the king’s horses and men trying in vain to mend a broken body.

Finally, he removes his fingers from the detective’s mouth and ties off the final stitch. The needle with its last scrap of thread gets tossed somewhere beside Peter on the surface he’s sitting on. He’s bound to step on the fucking thing later when it inevitably rolls onto the floor.

Overwhelmed with relief and wrung out from adrenaline, he presses his forehead against Mark’s. They sit for a moment, noses tucked side by side before Strahm comes back to himself. He extracts his body from the other man.

Pins and needles trace uncomfortable fingers up his legs, all the way to the aching joints of his hips. Mark watches him. The detective’s eyes are burning bright with an emotion Peter can’t bring himself to name. Avoiding Hoffman’s gaze, the retired agent examines his work with a furrowed brow.

He doesn’t think he would have done any better of a job using his dominant hand rather than his left to stitch the injury shut. The wound is jagged and uneven. It’s swollen around clumsy stitches of yellow, white, pink, red, and black. Peter had been forced to use damn near every scrap of thread in the kit to hold the detective’s face closed. His cheek looks like a disgusting quilt made of human flesh.

“Get up. I’m not letting you into bed like this,” he says, finally jabbing at the power button on the television’s remote with a filthy finger.

At Peter’s words, Mark’s face twitches like it wants to split open again. Another wet laugh issues from him. Strahm feels like Frankenstein—standing upright while his monster gazes up at him from the seat of creation.

A smug expression lingers around the non-mangled parts of Hoffman’s face as he heaves himself off the couch to follow Strahm to the small bathroom. He thinks he can feel Mark’s panting breaths on the back of his neck.

Peter catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and smothers a grimace in its cradle. He’s smeared with the blood of two other men as well as his own. Baxter had busted him up badly. There is already bruising blossoming across his face in deep purple tones—almost black—and ringed by every other possible hue of the rainbow. It makes him sick to think of Angelina bearing marks from the same man.

He would gladly experience this night all over again to keep Seth’s hands away from the young woman, personal feelings aside. Strahm’s only regret will be if this ends up affecting Lindsey. He and Hoffman deserve whatever consequences they will inevitably have coming for them.

Leaning forward and tilting his head to the side to expose the column of his neck, Peter finally takes a look his own injury. His skin is adorned with dark clots in some areas and flaking with old blood in others. The cause of his pain is a puncture wound. It’s deep, but not to the point of being life threatening. If the retired agent had been any less lucky, he would have had a hole punched right through his throat like some sort of back-alley tracheotomy.

There had been some branches in the creek. Perhaps one of those had been the lucky culprit.

“We’ll take turns,” he grits out. It feels as though he’s trying to speak around an object in his throat. Swelling, if he here to guess.

Not trusting the other man to figure out the shower any time in the present century, he shoves the curtain aside and fusses with the faucet. The water kicks on with a rattle that doesn’t cover the distinct sound of a belt jangling. Strahm whips around. Fresh blood leaks from the wound in his neck from the abrupt motion.

He finds that Mark has slid the suspenders off his broad shoulders and is working on pulling the belt from the loops of his slacks with bloody hands. He’s struggling, unable to get his fingers to cooperate enough to feed the leather through. Against his better judgment, Peter closes the distance between them. He’s too tired to fight with himself.

“Let me do it,” he says and pushes his currently more capable hands underneath Mark’s.

Hoffman surrenders without hesitation, hands falling away at his sides. He leans forward and presses his face into the crook of Strahm’s neck. The diner owner feels him nuzzle into the brutalized flesh, settling against him. His breaths are even—hot and damp—against Peter’s skin.

“Get the fuck off me,” he protests without any bite. They both know he doesn’t mean it.

Strahm makes no attempt to push the detective off of himself. If anything, he angles his face closer until his cheek is resting against the other man’s head. It’s a quiet intimacy. One that is distinctly different to the feverish interaction they’d shared together in the diner before the call came, or even to the comfort he’d allowed in the wake of Lindsey’s injury. They’re in this moment, together.

Not allowing himself to get lost in his own head, he sets to undressing the other man. This will be a shameful first for him.

Carefully, he works the belt free of the loops. The backs of his fingers brush against the overhang of Mark’s stomach. The leather object gets discarded to the tiled floor with a ringing clatter.

Gaining confidence about stripping the other man now that he’s started, Peter pulls Mark’s shirt free of the waistband. His fingers find the dress shirt’s buttons. The small, pearly things remind him of the detective’s teeth. Strahm can feel the phantom texture of them against the back of his hand and he shudders at the feeling of heat once again making itself known inside of him—desire.

His body’s aroused interest in Hoffman hasn’t fully waned since feeling the broad man lick between his fingers. The current situation is doing nothing to change that. He hates that the gore-smeared state of them isn’t enough to put him off. If anything, Hoffman being so disheveled is a fucked up bonus, even if he would have preferred to have been the one to tear him open.

There’s always next time, he thinks. There’s a prick of shame but it’s overwhelmed by his mouth flooding with saliva at the idea of the two of them mutually fighting each other. He thinks about how easily Mark had held him in place in the hospital’s family lounge, how he had weathered Strahm’s fists before rocking him with a headbutt that sent him straining against the detective’s grip. They wouldn’t have to hold back. He almost thinks he’s going to vomit on the other man’s feet. He swallows down the idea. With a painful pinching sensation in his neck, he clears his throat, settles the creature in his chest—muzzles it.

Down. Stay. Wait.

Mark lets out a breathy exhale as Strahm lets his fingertips drag from one button to the next. All too soon, he’s pushing the saturated shirt off Hoffman’s shoulders to join the belt on the floor. He rubs his work-calloused hands down the other man’s torso, telling himself that he’s checking for other injuries when in reality he’s feeling something else entirely. He’s testing the softness he finds, presses down hard enough to feel the sheer solid bulk of the muscles lurking underneath the padding. If the detective really wanted to, he could overpower Strahm. But like this, he’s a tame dog.

Strahm is of the opinion that if Mark had a tail, it would be wagging hard enough to match the huffing exhalations when Peter finds the button of Hoffman’s slacks and pops it free of the buttonhole. He splays the other man’s pants open. His hand spans wide over the firm bulge of him. Mark is warm underneath his palm.

“Arms up,” he orders, tone low. He feels hungry for the reveal of Hoffman’s unclothed skin. Frighteningly so.

Without moving from his position against Strahm, Mark obeys his dictation. Peter angles himself to watch as the detective’s hands pull his soiled undershirt up over his stomach and his tits—all the way up to his chin. His chest all but spills out, made more eye-catching by the thick scar dipping into the valley between his pecs. Hoffman parts from him only enough so that the once white shirt can be extracted over his head. As soon as it lands on the floor with the other articles of clothing, Mark reclaims his spot in the crook of Peter’s neck.

His hands return to Mark’s body, the skin now laid bare. It’s sweat-slick and soft. Bitable. He would bruise so easily with the right attention.

Already, Strahm can see the marks from Angie’s ex blooming across the expanse of his shoulders. An ugly sense of ownership gnaws at him. Peter wants to devour the man resting against him, wants to lick the juices off his fingers like Mark had when he’d sucked on the retired agent’s fingers. His nails dig into the detective’s back, just enough to dimple the skin.

He feels a sudden shock of wet heat against his skin. Mark is licking him. The detective is laving his tongue over the side of his throat, over the column of his neck.

“You’re disgusting.” It comes out as almost a whisper.

Mark hums. Peter can feel the vibrations in his own throat. He feels a hint of teeth.

Suppressing a groan, he nearly shakes apart under the exploratory mouthing. The wound in his neck is pulsing, all but begging for attention. Hoffman gives Strahm what he needs by brushing the flatness of his tongue over the puncture hole in steady strokes.

With hands that are beginning to tremble, he pushes Hoffman’s pants down over his wide pelvis to pool at their feet. He doesn’t yet dare to work his way underneath the other man’s underwear. Strahm settles for keeping his hands on Mark’s hips. His thumbs idly trace back and forth over the swell of his sides, catching on the stretch marks that arc like lightning over the soft flesh.

Hoffman retracts his tongue back into his mouth, but his attention doesn’t stop. Strahm feels him run his hooked nose over his jaw, almost as if he’s scenting him. The hair on Peter’s forearms stands on end.

“Your turn.” The detective’s voice rumbles in Peters ear, teeth nearly brushing against his earlobe. The edges to his already rounded vocals are softened, nearly smoothed into a stranger’s slurred voice by the destruction of his cheek.

“Why should I get naked with you? You’re going first. Guest privileges.” He tries to keep the emotion that is thrumming in his veins out of his voice. He must not be doing a very good job going by the way Mark chuckles lowly. Strahm feels Hoffman scrape his ear in a deliberate motion before speaking again.

“It’s only fair.”

A hand rises to cup the back of his neck. It shifts lower and Peter has the warning sensation of fingers tucking themselves under the edge of his shirt before the other man grips onto the fabric. The collar of the shirt presses tight against Strahm’s throat. Where Mark’s mouth had been gentle against the damaged skin, the material is rough. Clearly, the other man isn’t willing to budge on this issue.

“Calm down, motherfucker,” he mutters, to himself or Mark? He doesn’t know. He’s willing himself to have no adverse reaction.

Peter is interested in the detective, that much had been made clear. He knows Mark is interested in him—he’d nearly given him a blowjob and is intent on physical contact alongside emotional support. They have gone so far as to have killed someone together. Peter reasons he can remove at least some of his own clothing.

He hasn’t been naked with another man in this way. He hasn’t been with anyone really. Even with his ex-wives, Peter had been inclined to as stay dressed as possible. In the handful of times he had managed sex during either marriage, he had been so disconnected from the moment. If either woman had tried to cuddle with him afterward, there was only so long he could stand to be pressed against them before he’d rolled away or had gone so far as to remove himself from the room entirely. The intimacy had felt wrong—made him feel wrong.

Strahm is sure a shrink would have a field day with him. There is plenty of fodder to be had with the years of workplace trauma and his stabs at being a socially normal, heterosexual man. He won’t be calling the number printed on the business card sliding around in his junk drawer, courtesy of Perez. He would sooner join her Wednesday night yoga class.

His hands are not nearly as steady as they were earlier when he takes them off of Mark and seeks out the hem of his own t-shirt. The other man stands back and watches him with an interest in his eyes that makes Peter want to turn away with hunched shoulders for the fear he will somehow be a disappointment. He feels as though the walls are closing in on him, but he forces himself to pull the item of clothing off over his head. He tosses it aside to join the pile on the floor.

Abruptly, he realizes the shower is still running. His water bill. Fuck.

Running on a sudden surge of adrenaline at the thought of his bank account swirling down the drain, Peter crouches and pulls off his socks. He grabs each of Mark’s calves in turn and does the same for him. He rises and steps out of his jeans. Both men are left in their underwear. Strahm’s mind is screaming at him without words. Holding his breath, he closes his eyes and pushes his boxer-briefs off. A not so distant part of himself thinks it would have been easier to just let himself drown in the creek.

He hears the rustle of fabric and feels the sudden heat of Hoffman against his body. The other man’s hand brushes over his shoulder, fingers dipping into the curve of his clavicle. There’s the ghost of a mouth against his cheek before the detective passes him. He’s tugged along in the wake of him by a hand curling around his wrist.

If he doesn’t look, he can pretend he isn’t truly laid bare and vulnerable. Peter opens his eyes. He’s never been good at saving himself. He gets a glimpse of Mark’s exposed shoulder and the swirl of ink under the skin before he makes himself stare elsewhere.

The water is just shy of being warm, but he still relaxes into it. A hand flattening itself against his ribs startles him into looking away from the smooth white side of the shower to face Mark.

“What?” he asks.

With his free hand, Hoffman points at the bottle of body wash and the rag draped over the top of it. The lukewarm spray had been enough to distract Strahm from the reason they needed to be in the confined space. Peter drizzles soap over the cloth and hands the foaming rag to the other man. Their fingers brush as Hoffman takes it from him.

Mark’s thumb brushes over his side, making a second pass over the uneven bump of Strahm’s rib. The bone had been broken early on in his life—a stray baseball during a match had impacted with his torso. He had played through the pain. His team had won. Regardless of the obstacles, Strahm has always sought victory. Even as everything has changed, there are some things that never will. Some dogs never learn.

Jaw clenching, Peter tries not to flinch as Hoffman rubs the rag over him rather than over his own body. He lets the detective carefully scrub over his chest without complaint. He watches on as Mark soaps up the hair there and turns the washcloth a pale pink from the blood that is being wiped away. He works his way upwards. The careful attention he gives to the area around Strahm’s neck wound is painfully tender. The retired FBI agent can feel his own hands twitch at his sides.

Neither man speaks, even as Mark drags the cloth over Peter’s flanks and guides him with the hand still on his side to turn around to wash his back. He feels the other man pause every once in a while to note old injuries as he finds them. He gets the distinct impression that Mark is making a map of his body. Hoffman is as careful with those damaged patches of tissue as he was with his neck—the pressure of his hand becomes featherlight and precise. It makes Strahm want to hit him.

He wants to feel the pop of the stitches under his knuckles just to sew the man up again. They could engage in an endless cycle of pain and comfort.

Strahm finds himself startled out of the reluctant trance the other man is putting him in by Mark pushing the rag into the palm of Peter’s slack hand. He takes it, meeting the detective’s expectant eyes. His turn.

Buying himself some time, Strahm resoaps the rag. It’s too much gel. A trickle of it goes sliding off the fabric to be lost on the floor of the shower. His hands contain none of the steadiness he’d had when sewing up the other man’s face when he presses the washcloth to his body. Mark’s contented exhale and fluttering of his eyelids do nothing for Peter’s rush of nerves. He can feel heat flooding to his face. The scar on his cheek feels as though it’s tugging at the flesh.

Peter’s pulse jumps when Mark tilts his head back, baring his gore smeared throat for him to pass the rag down. He’s not as careful with Mark as the detective had been with him. It’s not in his nature to be so gentle. There’s always going to be a roughness to his touch. Despite his efforts, he still tugs at the jagged lines of inexperienced stitching as he wipes away the surrounding carnage. He feels Hoffman’s nails press into his side—the only indication of discomfort he offers up.

With the filth of the night being scrubbed away by knowing hands, they’re baptized anew. The water raining down upon them washes away the blood of one of the oldest sins. There is something almost holy in the way that their bodies come together and part. Words are not needed between them.

The companionable silence is broken when Strahm sets the rag aside and squirts shampoo into Mark’s offered palm. The other man gives him a disappointed look and a shake of his head at the realization that Peter only has a two-in-one shampoo and conditioner combination. All the same, his hands are gentle in the diner owner’s hair. Mark’s thick fingers work up a lather from the crown of Peter’s head all the way down to the tips of the long hair at the nape of his neck. He’s unable to resist his eyes sliding shut at the sensation of nails scraping over his scalp. He feels the soap sliding down his back as Hoffman rinses his hair. It’s a novel luxury.

On Mark’s turn, the detective presses his face into the shadow of Peter’s neck as he had before. Strahm sucks in a breath, holds it, and lets it out slowly when the other man wraps his arms around him. Their bare bodies are fully pressed together—pelvis to pelvis, chest to chest. It takes every scrap of control to let himself be, to accept the moment and not run. This man has looked into the core of him and has seen what he is capable of. Mark hadn’t rejected him—the ability for violence living inside of him doesn’t scare him away. They are not so different at their cores.

Slicking his hands with soap while being careful not to jostle Hoffman, he eases his hands with their calloused fingertips and scarred knuckles into the other man’s hair. This, at least, he has some experience with from his years of being Lindsey’s hair assistant. He just hasn’t ever… done it from this angle or under even remotely similar conditions. Peter reasons that he must not be fucking it up too badly because Mark is sighing and nuzzling into his wet skin.

The water goes cold, turning into sharp needles against Peter’s back, and yet they do not move. They exist in a place where time is only measured by the gradual pruning of their skin and the ache Strahm feels building in his lower back.

How long would it take, he wonders, until we turn into soup and go down the drain?

He’d seen it once, on a case. A man—a suspected terrorist at that—had been ambushed by a rival and left for dead while in the bath. Weeks had gone by. The cloud of flies Strahm and the SWAT team had had to wade through felt like a wall. They had broken through only to find a putrid vat of human remains. It had been one of the few times Peter had turned and walked out of a crime scene to vomit. He can still hear the incessant buzzing of the flies on the fringes of his hearing if he catches a whiff of decomposition.

When Strahm finally reaches behind himself and shuts the water off, Hoffman peels himself away. It’s almost as though he were a scab falling from a healed wound to reveal newly grown skin underneath. There’s something changed in Peter. He can feel it. Mark might as well have left messy stitches of his own inside of him.

He hands the detective a towel. Strahm does not offer the other man a stabilizing hand as he clumsily steps over the edge of the tub to join him on the too-new bathmat. It had been another item Perez had insisted on. Personally, he would have been fine with continuing to throw an old towel on the floor in place of one.

Both men dry themselves in the tight confines of the bathroom. Peter had left the door open behind them. He always does. He can’t stand the visual lack of an escape route.

Once he’s no longer dripping with water, he wraps the threadbare towel around his waist and squats to reach into the cabinet under the sink. He pulls out the scant amount of actual medical supplies he has. He presses a square, white bandage against his neck to seal away the puncture wound that is threatening to trickle blood down over his collarbone and into his chest hair again. Remembering the time he’d had his wisdom teeth removed, he pulls gauze out of a box. He turns to Mark. He ignores the way the towel tucked around him doesn’t feel like enough coverage outside of the intimacy of the shower.

“Open up,” he instructs, nudging the material against the other man’s full lips.

Mark does, as he has every time Peter has offered him his fingers. Strahm tucks the gauze into the space between Hoffman’s cheek and teeth. He packs the wound as best as he can. From the outside, it’s not bleeding much. It’s with no small amount of relief that he notices the raw areas congealing around the stitches.

When he withdraws his fingers, Mark brushes the tip of his tongue over the pads of them. For a moment, Strahm considers sinking them back in, working his hand inside the other man’s mouth until he hits the back of his throat. Mark would let him, he knows, but the retired agent listens to the rational part of his brain. He doesn’t want to undo his work. There is not enough thread to fix burst sutures if Hoffman gags around his knuckles. His wants have no place here.

No prompting is needed for the detective to follow him to the bedroom. Strahm bypasses the unmade bed and goes to the dresser tucked into the corner. He pulls out a t-shirt and a pair of underwear. Suddenly grateful he was forced to attend crappy holiday parties when he was with the FBI, Peter finds the pair of boxers he’d ended up with as a white elephant. They’re an eyesore and have never been worn.

“Put these on,” he says, throwing them at Mark. There’s drops of moisture from the detective’s hair scattered across his ample chest like stars.

He averts his eyes from the other man as he drops his own towel and hastily tugs on his sleep clothing. Even with his back turned, he doesn’t miss the pained grunt Hoffman lets out at having to bend to wrestle the novelty boxers up over his thick legs.

With his own hair still slightly damp, he gets into bed. Peter is sore, but he’s more at ease than he’s felt in a long time. A pressure is lifted off of him. Glancing over at the looming form of Mark standing at side of the mattress, he pats the space beside him.

“It’ll be easier to make sure you don’t choke in the middle of the night if you’re here,” he says.

Mark raises his eyebrows, smugness hovering at the intact corner of his mouth. Strahm watches as the other man lays down at his side. His movements are ginger and he leaves a respectable distance between the two of them. He idly stares at Hoffman, observing him in return as he looks at Peter for a long moment. The detective’s eyes slip to his left hand where it sits on his stomach. Strahm’s fingers are idly circling in the same pattern of soothing he engages in when horizontal. His defunct wedding band is gleaming in the light of the bedside lamp.

When Hoffman reaches out and takes hold of the ring on his finger, he lets him. No protest comes from his lips as the other man pulls it off, rocking it over the knuckle joint. He leans over Strahm, bare chest rubbing over his clothed one as he sets the ring beside the lamp on the nightstand. He swallows thickly at the press of the excessive tissue of the other man’s breasts bearing down on his sternum while Mark briefly fumbles the lamp’s switch.

The room is suddenly washed with darkness, leaving Peter laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling while the weight of the man in bed with him threatens to transport him to another time—to another bed mate. He feels lost in the faded memories until he feels Mark shuffle atop of him for another moment before curling his substantial bulk against the side. The detective rests his intact cheek on Peter’s clavicle. The two men fit together like a knife in its sheath. It feels right in a way Strahm has no explanation for. They have blurred together.

Instead of his own stomach, Peter traces circles on Mark’s bare side. His knuckles brush against the underside of the sheet and blanket covering their bodies. Hoffman relaxes into him. He doesn’t shy away when the other man shifts enough to bump the bridge of his nose against his jaw in an affectionate nudge.

Angling just enough to rest his own cheek against the top of Hoffman’s head, he lets his eyes drift shut. He will figure out how to explain things to Lindsey in the morning in a way that doesn’t let on they got injured killing a man in the woods. For now, it’s just the two of them alone in the bed with nothing to worry about until after the sun breaches the horizon.

Behind his closed eyelids, he thinks that he catches the quick flash of lightning. No thunder follows.

Strange, he thinks distantly. It hadn’t felt like rain earlier.

Peter drifts off with thoughts of the weather channel bouncing around in his mind. He’s weighed down by Hoffman. The other man’s hand on his chest feels like a much-needed anchor holding him in place. He can only hope he won’t crave this after they come to their senses and realize this was a twisted mistake.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Tucked away in the privacy of Strahm’s rental home, both men are blissfully unaware of the slight figure circling their parked vehicles. The stranger is unable to look through the windshield of Mark’s car due to its proximity with Peter’s. They are forced to peer through the driver’s side window to examine the smears of blood on the steering wheel. The pig mask’s snout leaves a mark on the glass when the individual withdraws.

A choice will have to be made.

«- previous chapter

Antiseptic stings Strahm’s nostrils. He has to force himself to look at his partner where she lays in the hospital bed. Like this, Perez has the uncanny appearance of a wax figure in a novelty museum. She’s pale. Any richness to her skin has fled. He might as well be paying respects to the dead at an open casket funeral. He can almost smell the sharp scent of prolonged preservation intertwining with the sickly sweetness of mourning flowers.

Bile surges up his throat just as it had in the diner. The acidic taste crowd against his molars, demanding attention he doesn’t want to give. He swallows, willing away the urge to vomit. The blood on the pillow is garishly bright against the muted expanse of her face.

They didn’t put her hair back up, he thinks.

Lindsey would hate it. He knows she takes meticulous care of her hair. He’s helped her with it enough times over the years and he will assist with it again now since she cannot. Peter steps forward. With careful hands, he brushes the sweat-matted strands back from her face and gently lifts her head up to finger-comb her hair to the side before laying her back on the pillow. She does not stir at his touch.

There’s blood spotting through the bandages on her face and neck. Her carotid artery had been nicked by a stray shard. Any deeper and she would have bled out in his hands right there on the floor of the business they had made together. If she had, Peter is not entirely sure that he wouldn’t have just laid down next to her and ceased to exist himself.

“Sir?” A nurse’s voice prickles at him.

Mutely, he turns. He leaves Lindsey’s hair in an unbound side-braid. It’s the best he can do under the circumstances.

“Does she have any next of kin that need to be informed?” the nurse asks, casting a hurried glance over Lindsey’s chart.

“Her mother… I’ll call her.” His lips feel numb.

About two years into their partnership, they made each other their powers of attorney following a close scare from a sting gone sideways. He’d never thought he would have to step in on Lindsey’s behalf. Peter was the one that was going to die first. He’d already decided it.

He barely hears the medical professional’s response, barely notices as the man exits the room, leaving only Angelina and Peter behind with Lindsey. His attention is solely on his partner. The steady beep of the machines and the rising and falling of Perez’s chest are the only indicators of the woman’s continued handholds on the world of the living.

“She’ll be okay,” Angelina says from her position on the visitor’s chair. Her voice is still wobbly with tears. Peter had insisted she take the seat. He can’t sit right now.

The retired agent manages a grunt. He’s spared from dredging up any actual words by Mark’s arrival. He had left some time ago to track down a vending machine. The detective offers his sister a bottle of orange juice before shoving another bottle of juice, apple rather than orange, at Strahm.

Unseeing, Peter stares down at the label of the bottle he’s now clutching. He doesn’t open it.

“I’ll… I’ll be back. I need to make a call,” he says and excuses himself into the hall. He doesn’t leave alone. Behind him, matching him step for step, he can hear Mark in pursuit.

Even when he steps into the hospital’s family lounge, he’s not without the other man’s company. He’s relived to find the room empty. The glass door falls shut behind them.

“You don’t need to be here.” He doesn’t face Mark as he says it, unable to meet him head on.

Peter has shown too much vulnerability, let the walls come down. The shell is off and his tender parts are exposed to a man who might be Jigsaw. He has to trust that Mark Hoffman will not destroy him. Strahm has never been one for putting his faith in others.

"You don't need to be alone," Mark tells him. He sounds so sure.

Keeping his back to the detective, Strahm approaches the small table in the corner and leans over it. Before he takes his phone out of his pocket, he sets the unopened bottle of juice down on the surface next to a row of pamphlets. There’s a dusty box of tissues next to an arrangement of fake flowers. There’s a familiarly generic label on the side of the box. Lindsey and Peter order the diner’s paper products from the same supply company.

Finally, he flips open his phone. He and his partner had long since exchanged contact information—as little of it as there was for Peter to share with Lindsey. It had been a safety precaution while with the Bureau, later, it had become something that friends do with each new phone. He clicks through the buttons and menus until he finds the contact labeled Mrs. Perez.

He puts his free hand on the edge of the table. The clatter of his ring is against the wood is a sharp sound. The diner owner grips the edge until his knuckles bleach white and his fingers feel like they’re vibrating from the lack of circulation. His hold hides some of his trembling.

The phone rings. Once. Twice. With every pause between them, he clenches his jaw a little tighter. The rise and fall of anticipation is exhausting.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mrs. Perez?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

"Yeah, hi, this is Special Ag—“ he starts, remembers what he isn’t, and corrects himself. "It's Peter Strahm. I work with your daughter Lindsey."

"Peter! Yes, I thought your voice sounded familiar! How have you been? I haven't seen you two since Christmas."

"I—” His voice catches in his throat.

Much to his distress, his eyes start stinging with unshed tears. In the effort to keep himself from fully breaking down, Peter curls forward. The motion brings his forehead to nearly press against the narrow table’s surface. And then, thick fingers are on the back of his neck, gently carding through the long hair at his nape. The blunt fingernails scrape almost like a lover’s against his skin. He wants to flinch away from the touch. He wants to lean back into it. He does nothing.

The other man is careful to not brush against the bandaged cut across Strahm’s shoulder blade An errant piece of glass had slashed the skin open, leaving a gaping path behind. Three stitches. It’s a laughably small injury in comparison to what Perez had been dealt. He should be the one in the hospital bed fighting for his life, not his partner.

"I have some bad news. There was an accident," he hears himself say, distant. It’s almost as though he’s listening someone else speak. An encouraging rumble from Mark prompts Peter to continue, “A measuring cup exploded. Lindsey… was in the middle of it.”

“Will she be alright?” She sounds breathless, as scared as Peter feels.

Here, Strahm hesitates again. The fingers on the back of his neck squeeze briefly. “The doctor said her prospects are good. We’re waiting for her to sleep off the drugs.”

“That’s good. She’s a strong kid.”

“Yeah. Yeah she is.” He sounds unspeakably fond as he says it, even to his own ears.

“Keep me posted if anything changes, okay?”

“Yes, yeah. I will. Uh... You can call me back at this number. I’ll have my phone on me.”

“Alright, thank you for letting me know. You’re sure she’ll be okay?”

“Yes, Ma’am.” He tries to not feel like he’s lying.

“Good… Good. Thank God… I’ll be in touch. Have her call me as soon as she wakes up, okay?”

“I will,” he promises and presses the button to end the call.

With a snap, Peter closes the device and drops it onto the table beside the display of pamphlets advertising grief counseling. In a fit of frustration and fear, he moves to swipe the surface clean. He’d been unable to admit to Lindsey’s mother how on the edge her daughter’s condition really is. He’s no better than an injured dog, lashing out, teeth seeking flesh.

Mark catches his arm before he can complete the motion. The pamphlets rustle in the aborted pass of his hand. He swings to face the detective. The twist of his body results in his right arm being functionally pinned behind his back. The other man is close, too close. Incensed at the interruption and seeking relief, Strahm swings at him with his left hand. He catches him in the cheek.

Despite the harshness of the blow, Mark barely moves. He accepts the violence with nothing more than a grunt. The blood instantly rushes to the place where Peter’s knuckles had made contact. It’s a perverse kind of love mark. It’s not enough. Unsatisfied, he goes in for a second swing. Maybe if he inflicts enough damage, he can pound away the sickening sensation that is twisting in his gut.

As he had with the first blow, Mark doesn’t fight the second. Peter receives a gift in turn in the form of the detective headbutting him so hard that the only thing that keeps him from falling back onto the table is the hold that Hoffman still has on his arm.

“Are you done?” Mark asks, utterly calm. He feels the other man’s breath ghost over his lips.

“Fuck you.” It’s said without any true bite.

“Are you done?”

“Get the fuck off me.”

Unable to handle Mark’s patience—the unflinching way he’s dealing with him—he tries to headbutt him in return. He’s brought to a sudden halt by the detective’s hand wrapping in the long hair at the nape of his neck. Strahm should pinned it back up after dragging himself out of the Vic this morning, if only to keep the other man’s fingers out of it.

“I’m not going to hurt you the way you want me to.” The words are matter-of-fact yet spoken with a level of tender understanding that makes them hard to stomach.

Flushing, Peter tries to look away. He can’t. Mark has him held fast. He’s forced him to meet his pale eyes. Strahm is close enough, sharing the same air, that he can see the minute changes in the other man’s pupils. There’s a faint scar crossing his nose. It’s been broken before, more than once. He’d never have realized it was crooked if there weren’t such little space between their faces.

“Let go of me.”

Mercifully, the detective does. Peter slumps back against the small table. He shakily reaches behind himself and fumbles for the bottle of juice. He doesn’t want to turn his back on Mark, not with him still so close. Busying himself, he cracks open the bottle and takes a drink. The liquid is tart on his tongue, chased by a cloying sweetness. His throat is so dry that the moisture burns on the way down.

“Do you mind?” he asks when the other man still doesn’t back off.

In response, Mark hums questioningly. He’s purposely obtuse. Again.

Strahm nods at the barely there space between the two of them. If they were to both inhale at the same time, Hoffman’s stomach would brush against his in a rasp of cloth against cloth. He sags with some relief when the detective steps back and puts distance between their bodies by heading towards the door. He waits there, fingers curled around the handle. Peter gets the sense he’s meant to follow.

As he leaves the room with the other man, he screws the cap onto the thunderstorm of emotions rolling through him. It barely holds.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Leaving Perez behind is difficult. Strahm only just manages to get himself in the passenger seat of Mark’s Crown Victoria with the knowledge that his partner won’t be alone. Angelina had volunteered immediately when he’d aired his concerns about not properly cleaning up the diner for a prolonged shut-down. It had only been a matter of exchanging phone numbers while her brother had, once again, stood waiting for him. She’d promised to call him if anything changed in his absence.

He and the detective don’t speak during the drive. Peter is gripping the nearly empty bottle of apple juice. It’s anchoring him in lieu of a hand to hold. He’d rather gnaw his own off before he reached for Mark’s. He can still feel the phantom warmth of Hoffman’s fingers on the back of his neck.

It garners surprise from him when the other man pulls alongside Strahm’s own Crown Vic and parks in the space not occupied by the yellow Ranger. He had genuinely expected to be dumped out at the curb. It’s even more of a surprise when Mark gets out of the vehicle with him and plays the part of a shadow by trailing after him to the front of the diner.

Doing his best to ignore him for now, Peter starts to pat himself down for his keys. He grows increasingly more frantic when his search fails to reveal more than his wallet, folding knife, phone, and a wadded up pair of disposable gloves that he’d shoved into his pocket after taking them off to deal with a customer. Mark’s large hand appears in his vision, dispelling his worries about a locksmith with just a glance at it. The other man’s fingers are open to reveal the set of keys resting in his palm. In the agony surrounding Perez’s condition, Peter had forgotten that Mark had taken them.

Wordlessly, he reaches out and snatches the keys. Mark’s palm is warm and dry against the backs of his fingers. The keys carry the same heat.

Much to his agitation, his hand shakes as he tries to unlock the door. He can’t seem to get the key into the keyhole, narrowly missing with each attempt. His tremors have been sporadically present for the past few years. He’d been plagued with them even before leaving the FBI with his partner. Usually, they’re manageable—a minor annoyance.

“Fuck,” he says when he struggles to slide the key into the lock a fifth time. “Motherfucker, why?”

Mark’s bulk suddenly surrounds him, engulfing, His senses are being flooded with the spiced scent of cologne and the faint trace of what could only be Hoffman. Peter finds his hand being covered by that of the detective’s. With the other man’s guiding touch, the key finally hits home. The door swings open with a familiar clatter of bells against the glass. It’s a sound he’s heard nearly every day for the past handful of years. It’s almost as known to him as his own voice.

As hastily as he can manage without appearing too skittish by the touch—it had been too tender, too familiar—he pulls away from the man pressing in close behind him. Mark has reached past every inch of carefully measured distance he’s built up between himself and anyone who isn’t Lindsey. The contact being from a place of care rather than lust keeps putting him on edge. No one handles him with consideration. They aren’t meant to. He has never easily allowed it, not even with his ex-wives, and yet, here he is, not biting the hand that has extended itself out to him throughout this ordeal. He pins his tolerance of it on the shock of Lindsey’s accident.

He gets through the door. Mark catches the edge of it before he can shut it in his face and relish the indignation on the other man’s plump lips.

“You can leave,” he says. It’s not a suggestion. He’s not sure how much of Mark’s care he can take, not when he’s still convinced the other man might be an honest-to-God serial killer. He doesn’t know what to believe right now.

“I’m going to help you.”

“Don’t you have Jigsaw shit to do?” It’s the closest he’s gotten to broaching the topic with the object of his suspicions. He turns so his back is firmly to the inside of the diner. Paranoia tells him that if he has to, he can make a grab for Mark’s gun where it sits tucked firmly into its holster next to the badge on his hip.

There’s a long pause following the question. The hair on Peter’s arms stands up. In this moment, he’s little more than a wary dog sizing up a threat and trying to make itself larger to its opponent.

Mark finally speaks, hushed like someone might overhear them on the stoop. “This is more important to me.”

To Strahm’s ears, it sounds like a confession. Something shameful and dark. Forbidden.

“Why?” There isn’t enough moisture in his mouth. The single word scratches on the way out.

“Aren’t we friends, Peter?” he asks with a shrug. The motion pulls the suspenders tight across his chest, biting into the ample yield of his chest. There’s more than enough there for fingers to sink in and dimple the flesh.

Not sure how to respond, he chooses to ignore the question. He’s had coworkers, acquaintances, wives, ex-wives. He doesn’t have friends. Lindsey is all he has. Most of the time, he can convince himself that he doesn’t need anyone else. Uncomfortable, Peter does what he has been doing since late morning with Mark—he gives in. He stands aside to let the other man pass him. Their shoulders brush.

He’s left to watch as Mark rolls up his sleeves and bares his forearms up to the elbows. Without a word, Mark gathers up a table’s worth of dishes into a neat stack. Peter joins him and, together, the two men start clearing away the meals left abandoned.

Peter finds that he doesn’t need to offer much in the way of instruction. His unwanted assistant seems to know his way around a restaurant, both front and back. Mark shows all the traits of having worked in one before and he appears used to working side by side at a manual task in silence. Peter doesn’t ask questions and the other man doesn’t volunteer anything.

Much to his displeasure, he finds Mark to be a reassuring presence. Knowing someone else is near that will subdue or comfort him as needed if he expresses any physical volatility or distress keeps him from huddling on the floor or just dumping the dishware directly into the trash. He can lose his head in front of an audience without more than passing shame, but this is too different.

Things come to another uncomfortable collision when he’s on his hands and knees behind the counter with a rag and a handheld dustpan set. He’s sweeping up the shattered measuring cup. Peter ignores the way small shards of glass prick through his jeans and work their way into the skin covering his kneecaps. He manages to keep himself together until the hand broom swipes through a patch of Lindsey’s blood, leaving a brushstroke of gore in its wake.

Inexplicably, he can feel the backs of his hands being peppered with drops of moisture. He looks up at the ceiling for a leak only to realize the liquid is coming from his own eyes. He’s finally crying. He quickly looks back down and resumes cleaning. His hands are shaking badly, worse than they were with the keys. The tremor has extended to the rest of his body. He wonders for a moment where the rattling sound he’s hearing is coming from and then he discovers that his teeth are knocking together like fighters in a cage match.

Adrenaline and anger have bled away. He is unable to hold the pieces of himself together without them.

He’s only just aware of the toes of Mark’s dress shoes coming into his peripheral before the other man is kneeling at his side and gently prying the cleaning rag from his grip. Strahm watches while the detective wipes away the traces of the incident off the wood floor.

“Why are you doing all this?” he asks, still on his knees beside Mark. His voice doesn’t betray the wellspring of tears or the way his body is trembling—it holds steady.

“I like you.”

“People don’t do good deeds to get nothing.”

An agreeing noise followed by, “I never said I don’t have an ulterior motive.”

“What is it then? What do you want from me?”

Mark doesn’t respond with words, only another one of those maddening sounds that Peter has come to associate with the man. It rumbles low in his throat. If they were any closer, he’s sure he would feel the vibrations as though they were coming from his own body.

───※ ·❆· ※───

It’s hard to imagine ever living though a happier moment than when Lindsey finally wakes and looks at him those alert brown eyes of hers. He nearly trips over himself lunging out of the chair Angie had vacated some time ago when she’d left with Mark after the two men had cleaned the diner and returned to the hospital.

“Easy, old man. I don’t want you to break a hip.” Her voice is thin. It’s weaker than he’d like, but he’s unspeakably grateful to hear it.

“Don’t give me a scare again and I won’t,” he retorts, gripping the bed rail like a lifeline.

He could sag to the floor with relief. Perez is going to have scars. T hat much was obvious the moment the glass had impacted with her face, but he might not lose her after all .

───※ ·❆· ※───

“We match now,” his partner announces.

He turns to look at her, only to be poked in the cheek. Her fingertip dents the canyon of the scar carving through the skin underneath his left eye. He watches, bemused, as she, in turn, taps her own face where a bandage covers a row of stitches.

“Yeah?”

“Mmhm, you never told me what happened to you though.”

“Nope,” he agrees, and settles himself around her tangle of tubes. They’re pressed elbow to elbow in her hospital bed. It’s a twisted recreation of their usual weekly movie nights. The two retired Agents are nothing but adaptable when it suits them.

In a half hour, Strahm will be shooed out as per visiting hours. He’d slept in his car in the parking garage the first night of her hospitalization, not daring to leave in case her situation took a nose dive. Last night, he’d returned back to his rental, stepping a foot in his residence for the first time since when he’d left for work Friday morning. He’d slept on his couch rather than in the comfort of his own bed. In a cliché, Peter had needed the TV on to drown out the thoughts in his head.

Beside him, Lindsey frowns. She tries to dig her elbow into his ribs with little success. “Why not? You’ve had it since before we met.”

Her artery is secure. One more night of observation awaits her. She’ll be free to go the following afternoon provided the internal sutures hold and they don’t get too worked up while watching Food Network. She’ll be able to spend Monday at her apartment with no worries about the diner being closed on one of their typical business days.

It’s a good thing that Peter is already in the hospital. The slow cooked pork ribs they’re showing on the screen look impossibly burnt. It’s an insult to the animal. The meat should be sliding off the bone, as marbled with fat as it had been.

“How do you mess up so goddamn bad?” he mutters, pointedly ignoring the subject of his face. He’s all too aware of the way the scar perpetually pulls the skin taut. He also ignores the memories threatening to rise to the surface like groundwater after a storm.

“By being a failure of a cook,” she says, surrendering. Lindsey knows him well enough to not push. He’s already denied her an answer twice this evening, just as he had every time she’d asked before. There’s some things he won’t share, even with her.

With a sigh, his partner reaches into the bag of Cheez-Its Strahm had acquired from the vending machine. He’s been holding the packet upright for her to rummage into at her leisure. He hasn’t cooked since the accident.

“How was Angelina?” he asks, doing some prying of his own in the effort to change the subject.

“She’s good. We’re thinking about going out again sometime before this coming weekend.”

He nods. Regrettably, his thoughts go to Mark, where, if he’s willing to have any scrap of honesty with himself, they’ve mostly been as of late. When he’s not been shaken with fears about Lindsey, it seems that the detective has crowded everything else out. He wonders if he’s plaguing Mark’s thoughts in return.

This morning, he’d been at his rental trying to wash the phantom splatters of blood off his skin. While engaged in a losing battle against his own mind, the siblings had stopped by the hospital to check on Lindsey. He’d arrived in time to pass by Mark in the parking lot. The other man had been getting into his car just as Peter was walking to the building. Angelina was already out of sight and buckled in.

Mark hadn’t expanded on their interaction at the diner. Peter hadn’t either. Neither of them exchanged a single word. He had noted that Hoffman had appeared strangely haunted—diminished even. He’d looked on the cusp of stopping him, but hadn’t. Peter had felt his stare dig into him like hooks long after he’d walked past.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Coffee rolls over his tongue. It’s gritty as though he had dipped his thermos into a river and swiped up murky water without bothering to filter it for consumption. Peter won’t complain too much. It’s the best he could get in one of the lounges while he waits for Lindsey to finish her lunch so that she can receive the go-ahead for discharge. Without the caffeine to soothe his nerves, he knows he would be pacing a trench into the linoleum floor rather than focusing on his job as a model visitor and becoming one with the chair in his partner’s room.

Angelina and Mark were at their respective workplaces today, leaving Peter to be the sole observer as Lindsey valiantly chokes down her over-steamed green beans before moving onto her Jello cup. He’s taking turns watching her and drifting his tired eyes to the television mounted near the ceiling. The retired agent is just about to comment on the weather—or the lack thereof—when a breaking news banner scrolls across the screen. Their attention is captured by the severe-faced woman that appears in the frame. He feels the bottom of his stomach fall out when she begins to speak.

“Pamela Jenkins on channel four here with breaking news. There has been an update in the ongoing investigation of the Jigsaw serial murders that have torn through our city. The Metropolitan Police Department has released more information to the public. According to a spokesmen for the precinct, their FBI liaison, Detective Allison Kerry is reported to be the latest victim of the serial killer.”

Lindsey drops her Jello cup. It falls to the bedspread and drops onto the floor where it rolls across the glossy surface before stopping near the wall.

“No… no,” she says, stricken.

Strahm gets to his feet and moves to stand next to Perez. His free hand finds her shoulder and he hangs on. He’s got an achingly tight grip on his thermos of coffee.

Kerry, Perez, and Strahm had all been coworkers before he and Lindsey had left the Bureau in the pursuit of civilian life. He remembers sharing the same dogged drive with Allison, the same disregard for everything that fell outside of their narrow field of view. In short sprints—a month or two at a time—they could play nice with one another while on the job, but eventually mutual respect would bleed into irritation and they would be at each other’s throats over differing opinions.

Like him, Kerry had left her home life and relationships atrophy until everything else but work fell away. They reminded each other of their interpersonal failings. He knows that Lindsey had had a crush on the woman. His partner has always loved too easily.

After too many drinks one night, she’d sat down with him in his hotel room and admitted her interest in Allison. That had been the meanest Peter had ever been to her. It’d been a viciousness borne out of not wanting her to be another victim of a negligent agent who couldn’t see the edge of the cliff in front of them until it was too late. She deserved better than someone who would always have her playing second fiddle to their job. Kind knows kind and, at times, Peter knows himself all too well. By extension, he’d known exactly what Allison is—was.

Lindsey had left him on the couch after his outburst, dripping with the remnants of the drink she had thrown at him before storming back to her own hotel room. His partner’s crush had waned as she witnessed how the other woman left a sea of discarded affairs in her wake. Those individuals had all been temporary distractions to be toyed with before Kerry was consumed in the thrill of another case. He and Lindsey had never discussed the woman again outside of professional inquiry.

They don’t discuss her now. There is nothing to be said.

Peter offers her silent comfort while lunch passes them by, drawing his chair over to her and sitting at her side. Eventually, a nurse comes to collect her and issue her the discharge paperwork. Ever loyal, he accompanies her as they wheel her out before officially releasing her from their liability. She doesn’t need his help to get into the passenger seat of his Vic and he doesn’t offer. He’d be liable to get an elbow in the gut for his trouble. Both he and his partner have a resentment for being coddled.

He does accompany her into her apartment to make sure she’ll be able to settle in without trouble. Barely in the door, he finds himself being glared at by Lindsey’s roommate. The young woman seems intent to catch him on fire with the power of her stare alone while she spreads tarot cards out on the coffee table. Strahm avoids looking at her. The star sign incident is a scabbing over wound and he doesn’t want to pick at it.

“I want to get back to work tomorrow. I’ve been rotting away and if I have to watch another scrap of reality TV, I’m going to scream,” Lindsey tells him.

“Alright, I’ll pick you up in the morning,” he agrees.

Peter doesn't ask if she’s sure. He knows her too well to ask her something so asinine. All they can do is settle back into routine. It will be good for them to open the diner back up. He hadn’t seen the point in running it over the weekend, not without his partner.

As he leaves Lindsey alone with Melanie for the night, he can’t help but think about how Kerry’s demise is further proof that no one is safe in this damn city, especially not in Hoffman’s precinct. It seems like the man’s entire department is dying one after the other with no sign it will be his turn.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Lindsey’s first day back at the diner goes without a hitch from the time he picks her up to the time he watches her pull out of the parking lot after close. Tuesday is always a slow day for them.

Only Angie had shown up. Peter didn’t ask her about her brother. He is thinking he might punch the lumbering man in the face the next time he sees him. The two hits he’d gotten in on Friday hadn’t felt like enough to dispel the unease that’s pumping through his veins like blood.

The moment they’d had in the parking lot keeps circling back to the forefront of his mind. Receiving that somber, worried stare from Hoffman not even twenty-four hours before the news outlets were flooded with the announcements of the death of Perez and Strahm’s one-time coworker felt like too much of a coincidence. Surely, the detective had known, or at least suspected, that the three of them had known each other. And yet, he’d said nothing. Why?

Matters haven’t been made any better by the reoccurring nightmare Peter has been having since the morning of his partner’s accident. It hasn’t made a difference where he sleeps—in his car, on his couch, in his bed—he can’t escape it. The retired FBI agent has never been one for the mysticism of dream analysis or any persuasion of spiritualism. He knows that dreams are just the brain’s way of processing information and shuffling it off to be put into storage or discarded. All the reason in the world doesn’t mean that it still doesn't have him on edge.

In the dream, Peter is secreted away in the woods somewhere, tucked deep beneath a yawning canopy of twisted trees. The branches are so intertwined that it is impossible to see where one limb begins and another ends. He’s left to look up at them from the position he has been placed in. Peter lays, paralyzed in some drugged state and rendered unable to move in a box made of glass. It’s a casket, always a casket. The lid is mercifully open.

All too clearly, he can feel shards of glass digging into his back. Intuitively, he knows that they are the broken pieces of the coffin’s predecessors. There is only enough moonlight to make out the figure of a human-shaped pig in men’s attire. Every night, the beast leans over him and nuzzles its snout against his cheek, lovingly smearing a trail of snot across his face. When it speaks, it has Mark’s smooth voice.

“Why haven’t you learned to trust me, Peter?”

───※ ·❆· ※───

Relaxing into the sensation of fingernails lightly trailing up and down his bare stomach, Strahm feels himself drifting off towards sleep. He’s automatically self soothing by shoving his own hand under his shirt while he lays on the couch in his living room. It’s an old habit, one of many that surface when he’s tired or uneasy.

Work had dragged on today. The after-Church crowds on Sunday afternoons are always the most challenging clientele. Having done their repentance in the eyes of the Lord, it seems like they are ready to tally up a new list of things to be absolved of for the next Sunday. Unfortunately, that list often includes being unnecessarily mean to workers. Strahm had taken the brunt of the ruder customers onto himself as he does every time. He never wants Lindsey to be subjected to them. They have a tendency to be emboldened to worse behavior when interacting with a young woman, especially one that has her complexion.

As a result of it all, he’s exhausted. The two of them had only finished cleaning up perhaps an hour ago, and he’d promptly thrown himself on the couch the minute he got home. He hadn’t bothered to eat. The need to be horizontal had easily outweighed the desire to get food down his throat.

There’s some sort of late night talk show playing on the TV. Peter doesn’t particularly like it, but he’s feeling too lazy to pick up the remote. Any excess movement feels like it would destroy the stupor he’s attained. It doesn’t end up mattering because the peace is broken by loud knocking on the front door.

Heart pounding, Strahm nearly flips himself on the floor trying to get up. He manages to find his footing. In another old habit, his hand goes to the gun he hasn’t carried since he retired from the FBI. Peter grasps nothing but air.

The knocking doesn’t let up. Whoever is hammering away with their fist is insistent on a response. Half crouched, he makes his way to the door. He nearly trips over his discarded boots on the way to it. Tiredness is making him clumsy.

Pressing his shoulder against the door nearly rattling in its frame, he waits for a moment to brace himself for the trouble he’s going to find on the other side. He should have installed the peephole no matter what his landlord had said. Its existence would take out this unknown element. The knock is too heavy to be Lindsey’s and besides, she would have called or texted him in advance. He’s not gotten any less jumpy with age.

Strahm takes a breath, straightens up, and opens the door. He is taken aback to find Mark on his doormat, a novelty thing with rude message on it that Linds had insisted giving him to make things “homier”. Immediately, he notices that the detective isn’t the put-together, fussy man in pristine clothing that he’s used to seeing. He looks sweaty and frantic.

“How the fuck did you get my address?” It’s not the first thing he meant to say, but, all the same, it’s what comes out.

Mark just looks at him with glassy eyes. He can’t tell if the other man is thinking too much or not at all. Either way, he’s decidedly… off.

“Mark?” he tries again.

“You weren’t at the diner so I assumed you had to be home. Lindsey mentioned you lived on Maple. I drove around until I saw your car,” the other man responds. There’s an apologetic lean to his voice.

Of course Sherlock Fucking Holmes would apply his skills for some invasive bullshit like this, he thinks, irritated. Not that Peter himself isn’t liable to be just as much of a stalker if he feels the need. This isn’t about him. This is about Mark and his being on Strahm’s doorstep at ass o’clock at night.

“It’s… ” he makes a point of checking his watch, “really fucking late. What do you want? If this is some kind of—”

“I need your help.”

Strahm raises his eyebrows. That is not what he was expecting.

With a sweeping gesture, he raises his arms before letting them come back down to his sides. His palms loudly slap against the outside of his thighs. His tone is sarcastic as he speaks, “I’m at your disposal.”

“ It involves Angie,” Mark says. There’s a plea hidden somewhere in the words.

Suddenly, Peter is feeling more charitable. Some of his exhaustion melts away and he actually focuses on the man standing on his porch. He knows Perez likes Hoffman’s sister. Hell, even he is fond of the young woman, and it’s not just because she and Lindsey are starting to date. Angelina is genuinely one of the nicest people he’s ever met. Her orange juice is always on the house these days as a result of him “forgetting” to put it on the receipt.

“What about her?”

“It’s about her last boyfr—”

He interrupts, frowning. “The shithead neo-nazi?”

There’s no humor in the smile that twist s Mark’s lips. The displeasure sits like a pout on his full mouth . The other man’s restrained anger is understandable, considering Peter had all but wished Seth Baxter to push him a little further and give him the excuse to lash out. The retired agent had known Angelina less at the time. He’s sure he would be even more pissed off now if the young man were to come poking around again.

“Yes. He—”

“What about him?”

“He showed up at her apartment earlier tonight. She called me. I went over and he was trying to break her door down. He was threatening to cut her head off.”

“Fuck.” Strahm rubs a hand down his face. His fingers automatically seek out the scar on his cheek.

Mark lets out a small rumble in agreement. Now that Peter is taking a closer look at him, he appears more ruffled than he had initially thought when he’d opened the door. The detective’s gelled hair is loosened from its typically controlled style and his dress shirt is strangely wrinkled. A button on the collar is torn off completely. There’s no sign of his tie. A smear of blood on an unfastened sleeve makes him realize that Hoffman isn’t wearing a suit jacket. Strahm’s seen enough fights to know when someone has been in an altercation.

“You want to tell me why you need my help? I can’t imagine you came here just to complain.”

Any trace of companionship on the other man’s face shutters suddenly. It’s as though someone had snuffed out a candle with their fingers. There’s nothing but darkness pooling in those characteristically expressive eyes. Even when he hasn’t been able to read the expression, there’s been one. He has seen this same predatory flatness once before—in the diner, when Mark thought his sister might be getting jerked around by Lindsey and had confronted him.

“He’s in the trunk of my car.” There’s nothing joking about his tone, but Peter gives a dry chuckle anyway. He can’t be fucking serious.

“What are you? The Jigsaw Killer?” he quips. His hand clenches on the doorknob.

“If I were, would I be coming to you?”

That gives him pause. It’s not a clear answer. Too rhetorical. Grimacing, he asks, “You’re not messing with me?”

“No.” The response is as flat as the man’s eyes.

“What the fuck, Mark? What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

“She’s my sister. What would you do for Lindsey?” he says before pausing. A triumphant flash darts across his smooth face, “What have you done for her?”

He’s got him there. Peter feels a stab of resentment.

“Damn it, motherfucker. Why didn’t you just call the cops? Hell, you’re a cop.”

“Angie wouldn’t… She’s scared of him, Pete. We both know they would just slap him on the wrist.”

Frustrated, Peter’s arms rise then fall at his sides. He understands all too well just how effective the police force fails to be at times, but surely they would put some effort into one of their own’s sister. Of course, that would require Angelina’s cooperation and for anyone to give a shit about anything that wasn’t revenue or Jigsaw.

“What’s your plan here? You going to kill him and dump him in the woods somewhere?”

Mark is silent. Uncomfortably silent. Peter can hear the TV over his own harsh breaths.

Strahm pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “Look… we’re just going to talk to him. Set this right. Just go sit your ass in your car and I’ll be out in a second.”

The other man doesn’t speak in response to that either. He just moves his bulk off Peter’s porch, a beast silently obeying. Strahm watches him for a moment before bolting back inside where he shoves his boots on and ties them. He takes the folding knife out of his pants pocket and leaves it on the coffee table. On the way out, he grabs his keys and leather jacket.

Peter makes a split-second decision and diverts his path to Mark’s car to fetch the shovels from the trunk of his own Crown Victoria. They’ve been stowed in there since he and Lindsey had done some landscaping work in front of the diner towards the end of Spring. He takes them both to the other Vic and tosses them into the back seat where, just days before, Peter and Angelina had gripped each other’s hands tight enough to grind their bones together. The tools can serve as intimidation, nothing more.

The front passenger door creaks when he opens it and settles into the seat. The trunk is suspiciously silent. Peter hopes Seth isn’t already dead. He also is going out on a limb and hoping the man seated next to him isn’t a serial killer luring him out into the middle of no where to do something fucked up with his body. Evidence is really stacked up against Mark being a normal guy. Getting on your knees and having your not-quite friend feed by hand doesn’t exactly scream normal human behavior. Peter ignores what the part he played in that moment says about him. He’s been having to overlook a lot lately for the sake of his own sanity.

Mark turns the key in the ignition and turns to him with a strangely vulnerable gleam in his eyes. “Thank you.”

“Just drive.”

With a lurch and the crunch of loose gravel underneath the vehicle’s tires, Mark does as he asked. He’s left to look out of the window at the houses passing by. Strahm can feel his temper bubbling at the edges while the detective fusses with the radio. Possibilities of how tonight is going to go run circles in his mind.

Best case scenario, Mark pulls into a vacant lot. They all talk it out after some words are exchanged and maybe a punch or two are thrown. Laughs and then everyone goes the fuck home in one piece. Worst case? Mark takes them to the middle of the woods and kills them both. Their bodies are never discovered and, as a final insult, Peter gets framed postmortem for murdering Seth right in front of Mark’s eyes because that would be his luck.

He catches just a few seconds of Elton John crooning Can you Feel the Love Tonight before Mark’s thick finger is mashing the next button in line on the dash. His mouth twitches at the murmured comment of “Angie programmed all these in.” when the next one is just as bad. There’s a part of Peter that wants to laugh as Madonna sings about how she will always have someone inside of her. He settles for a cough. This situation is absurd. If he somehow ends up dying tonight, he’s going to haunt Mark.

Despite being a Saturday night, the roads aren’t choked with traffic. Vehicles get sparser and sparer the further the other man drives away from Strahm’s residence. Houses give way to fields that slowly change into increasingly denser swaths of trees.

Alarm bells have started ringing loudly enough in Peter’s head that he’s almost surprised no one else can hear them. He’s not afraid of Hoffman. In fact, a morbid part of him would almost like the confirmation that he is Jigsaw, but the inconvenience of it under these circumstances is more than he wants to deal with. He’s no longer an FBI agent for innumerable reasons.

With a sharp turn of the wheel that sends Strahm’s elbow slamming into the door, Mark pulls onto a dirt trail that leads into the woods. The headlights cut through the darkness ahead until they hit an impassable wall of trees. Hazy recognition prods at Peter. This is the same forest from his dream. He half expects to look at the man seated beside him and see the wet eyes of a hog staring back at him.

When he does turn, there’s only Mark sitting with his eyes closed and his fingers gripping the steering wheel tightly. Neither of them speak until banging and muffled shouting can be heard from the trunk. Tonight’s bad decision has decided to kick up a fuss.

“Flashlight’s in the glove compartment.”

Peter pulls it out. It’s a heavy thing in his hand.

They get out in tandem. Hoffman doesn’t have his gun on him, Peter realizes. It seems more responsible of him than he’d have expected. He supposes the detective really hadn’t been looking for trouble tonight and certainly not enough to wind up with a man in the trunk of his car. He’s not sure if that’s comforting or not.

Turning the flashlight on, he focuses the beam on the back of the car so that Hoffman can get the key into the lock and open the trunk. The man inside flinches away from blinding light. Baxter’s temple is bloody and likely the source of Mark’s soiled sleeve. He’s also restrained at the wrists with the detective’s tie. Judging from how uneven the kidnapped man’s pupils are, Angie’s brother had walloped the hell out of him.

The three men stare at each other in silence for a moment. Mark makes no move to speak or do anything but stand at Peter’s side like a statue. The situation feels dropped into the retired agent’s lap and not a soul has ever accused him of being diplomatic.

“Get out. Come on,” he snaps. He’s holding both hands around the flashlight as he would if he were also carrying a gun. The glare of the beam will hide the lack of a one. He’d rather not let on that they’re unarmed.

“What the hell, man?” Seth groans, holding his bound hands up over his face to block the light from his eyes. “I just saw you the other da—”

“Now,” he orders with an impatient twitch. “I don’t have any aversion to shooting you.”

Galvanized by the threat, Angelina’s ex awkwardly scrambles out. He’s struggling to manage while restrained. Neither man steps forward to help him. Peter barely moves back to give him enough room and Baxter all but spills out of the trunk onto the diner owner’s boots.

“Look, whatever blowjob lips over there told you—”

“Shut up. Walk. If you run, you aren’t going to have your shins.” He’s flying with no script. There’s a half-baked plan in Strahm’s mind to scare the piss out of him and then drop him back home. Trying to have a civil conversation with the skinhead wouldn’t do anything but spike Peter’s blood pressure. The best case scenario had bolted for the hills when Mark had failed to take the lead the minute the trunk was open.

Mark wordlessly leads up the rear. Strahm can hear the other man’s footsteps just behind his shoulder.

“What’s with the relationship between you and Angelina? I heard she dumped you ages ago. People get together. They date. They break up. It’s just life.”

“She’s a slut, just like her faggo—”

“Not what I asked,” Peter says, cutting him off again. He’s not going to feel remorse for whatever happens out here.

“She pisses me off, alright?” Seth answers, stumbling slightly in the dark.

“Enough to go to her place? Cause trouble? Upset the family?”

“Yeah! So what? You a cop?”

There’s a stream just ahead. It glitters in the moonlight from the bottom of a steep drop off. They’re forced to a stop. Peter can see Seth’s shoulders moving, not quite shaking. Something about the motion bothers him though he can’t put his finger on why.

“Why not just leave her alone? Why threaten her?”

“Somebody needs to teach the bitch a lesson. Maybe slitting her throat might do the job. It’d make for a tighter fuck than her pussy,” Baxter says, turning around to face both of them. There’s a smile spreading across his face.

Hoffman makes a low sound, a near growl, that echos the bolt of anger Peter feels at the young man’s words. Mark steps forward, brushing by Strahm who just manages to halt him with a hand fisted in the back of his shirt in the effort to keep things from escalating. He unintentionally drops the illusion that he’s carrying more than just the flashlight. It’s a critical error, one that he should have known better than to make. While he’s trying to hold back the detective, he catches a glimpse of something shiny.

As it had been the other night, Seth’s knife was in the front pocket of his sweatshirt. It’s now in his hand. Severed pieces of the tie flutter to the ground. Mark hadn’t patted him down and it’s suddenly costing them both. Peter’s suspicions about Mark being a serial killer seem laughable in the face of this blunder. Jigsaw doesn’t make mistakes.

Emboldened by the lack of a gun, Baxter goes for him first. He’s too fast for the brick of a man at Peter’s side. The diner owner takes a blow to the side of his face with a resounding crack that feels like it sends his brain slamming into the inside of his skull. He goes down hard, knees sinking into the wet earth. A foot digs into his side and he feels his body move.

He rolls over the edge of the embankment. He grabs at nothing but dying grass.

Water rushes into his nose as he lands face down in the steam. There’s a sharp pain in his throat. Unable to get his bearings, Peter lays there with the sensation of feeling like he’s spinning like a top. He’s drowning in just a few inches of muddy water.

A yell rises over the pounding in his ears. Mark.

Struggling, he shoves himself up on his elbows. He’s half expecting to see his teeth laying on the stream bed like little stones. He starts coughing, on hands and knees now. His throat pulses with each wracking exhale. Something is deeply wrong. He can’t care about it now. He’s needed.

Peter manages to stand. He drags himself up the embankment with stinging hands. He reaches the top to see that Mark is struggling to keep the neo-nazi off of him. While Hoffman has bulk and brute strength, Baxter is armed and agile. He’s managed to back the detective against a nearby tree and is keeping him pinned there with quick jabs of the knife in his direction.

Before he can reach them, Seth makes contact. To Peter’s horror, the man sinks the pocket knife into Hoffman’s right cheek as deep as it will go. The blade brutally rips—more than it cuts—the skin open. Blood arcs from the newly made wound. The spray coats Baxter’s own face.

In the moonlight, the blood takes on the gleaming appearance of fresh ink.

Something possessive rears its ugly head inside of Strahm. If anyone were to hurt Hoffman, it should be him. He hadn’t gone through interaction after interaction of this man closing the distance between the two of them for someone else to take the liberty of leaving a mark. Peter had allowed himself to be comforted by him, been reduced to a vulnerable, trembling creature in front of him. Good or bad, the detective has consumed his thoughts and left him changed.

Mark had said he doesn’t share. In this moment, neither does he. Mark is his.

Struggling to keep his balance atop the damp carpet of leaves underneath his feet, he rushes forwards. Peter grabs hold of Angie’s ex and pulls him off of her brother. He wrestles the pocket knife out of Seth’s hand and holds it in his own. It rubs uncomfortably against his skinned palm.

He’s disgustingly, completely, in control of himself as he drives the short blade into Baxter’s stomach. He takes another blow to the face and braces himself for the next one. It never comes. Mark stops the skinhead with a meaty forearm clamped around his neck like a vice, choking him until the blood vessels in his eyes burst. Seth’s hands futilely claw at the detective’s arm. He’s kicking and thrashing.

Strahm guts Seth Baxter while Hoffman presents him like a lamb for sacrifice. Blood sprays in messy spurts. The folding knife sinks into his belly over and over again. For a moment, Peter thinks he might be scraping the inside of the neo-nazi’s spine.

One thing about Peter—he always sees everything to its conclusion. He gnaws on the bone long after the marrow is gone. This is no different.

It’s clear what his old coworkers—and his ex-wives—would say. He can hear the words now. “Oh, we always knew something was off about him. Of course he ended up in the woods slaughtering a man with some guy he’s been having troubling thoughts about. What a fucking nutjob.”

Maybe they would be right.

This moment in time feels inevitable. It is as though Peter was always meant to wind up in the crushing dark with Mark Hoffman, tangled in a deadly game that neither man can walk away from unscathed.

Mark doesn’t look at the man dying in his arms. Even as Baxter tries to turn and meet the detective’s gaze, he still doesn’t look away from Strahm. It’s as though Peter is his tether in this fucked up situation. His lips are parted, something almost… worshiping on his face. Awe. He looks like he’s in love even as tears well up in his eyes. With his attention diverted away from the man whose stomach he’s elbow deep in, Peter watches as the tears spill over in fat, almost cartoonishly large drops down the broad man’s cheeks. The salt water does little to wash away the blood pumping from the torn part of Mark’s face.

After a lifetime, Seth finally goes still between them. Still gripping onto the skinhead, Mark falls to his knees. Peter thinks the two men on the ground look like a blasphemous rendition of Mary and Jesus. The newly deceased man’s organs are strewn out of him like a cornucopia. There is a primal urge to feast upon the offering. He resists falling to his knees

Peter stands there, observing, as Mark reaches up and accesses the damage done to his own face. In the dark, it’s hard to tell the torn flesh from the kneeling man’s fingers. Mark stretches his hand out to him and Peter leans in. The other man presses his fingertips against his mouth. He smears his own blood against Strahm’s lips. It’s a perversion of the feeding they had engaged in that night. Mirroring Hoffman of the past, he opens his mouth. He welcomes the shallow intrusion, accepts the flavor of iron and desperation on his tongue like communion. Mark’s fingers drag over his bottom teeth and over the swell of Peter’s lower lip as he retreats.

He now knows what Mark Hoffman’s lifeblood tastes like. He tucks the knowledge away like a secret.

“Fuck,” he manages to groan out, spell broken. His throat hurts. There is moisture trickling down his chest that he hopes is sweat but knows it is probably not. “We need to bury him.”

Reality is a harsh blow. This is not a clean crime scene. If Seth’s body is ever found, both of them will be found dead to rights in any court of law. The DNA evidence alone would be enough to get them the chair.

Mark’s words are a garbled. His tongue does not seem to be working properly, wearing away any distinct syllables into a drawn out noise punctuated by pained inhales. Peter manages to make out a rough attempt at “I’ll get the shovels.” before the detective shoves Baxter off of him and gets to his feet. The man limps off into the dark. He’s left alone with their kill.

There is a flickering glow emanating from behind Peter. Their flashlight is in the creek, fighting the damage submersion is enacting upon it. Not wanting to hover over the body, he drops over the side of the embankment of his own accord. He rinses off his hands as best as he can. It does little good. The water is freezing cold and he can’t get under his nails.

He’s waiting by the body with the dripping flashlight when the other man returns with the shovels. Peter takes the tool he’s offered. So much for the shapeless idea of using them as a scare tactic.

They end up burying Seth where he lays. They cut into the dark, wet soil. Their hands blister and burst like overripe fruit. They are bound together by this, a wedding consummated with blood.

Finally, the hole is deep enough and they kneel together to roll the dead man into his final resting place. Mark is crying again. A wet gasp bursts forth from the detective when Seth’s neck twists with the impact and he seemingly looks at them with accusing eyes. His spine is the only thing keeping him whole. Strahm’s nail beds become caked with earth and entrails when they have to gather up the tangled, pulpy mass that had spilled from Baxter and lay it on top of him as if it were a burial shroud.

They seal away their shared victim with every shovelful of dirt dropped on the nearly severed body. With each inhale and exhale, they act as one beast with four lungs and four trembling arms as they finish their task.

No words are spoken over Seth Baxter’s grave.

Before they go, Peter returns to the stream to repeat what he’d done earlier. He has Hoffman scrub at his own hands while he rinses off the shovel blades. There had been no need to clean the knife. It rests in the empty cavity of Baxter’s gut where the retired agent had left it.

Strahm wipes his hands off on his own shirt, accidentally bloodying them again. He can feel his pulse thrumming. He’s alive. They’re alive.

With their pace hampered with their injuries, they walk back to the car. Mark looks like a newly reanimated corpse with the way he is stumbling and lurching along. The flashlight’s beam jerks with each of his steps. Peter knows he’s not any steadier. It’s a relief when they reach the vehicle and can unburden themselves. This time, he throws the shovels in the truck as Mark cuts the light.

In an unspoken agreement, he gets into the driver’s seat while the other man takes on the role of passenger. Mark’s face is as much of a crime scene as what they left behind in the trees. Of the two, Strahm is the more coherent to drive them back to his rental, even if his body feels as though it’s had a turn under the meat tenderizer.

The pop music that turns on with the vehicle doesn’t match the mood, or maybe it does. Some part of him had loved Mark enough to kill for him.

«- previous chapter / next chapter -»

The sun is already beginning to dip below the horizon by the time Strahm parks his car in the parking lot forming a moat around the modest apartment building. Winter hours make the daylight run out like the seconds on a timer. The retired agent doesn’t mind. He’s never belonged in the light, even if he’d once believed he did.

Feeling his back protest, Peter unfolds himself from the seat of the Crown Vic. Once on his feet, he stabilizes himself with a hand on the roof before leaning down inside just far enough to snag a Tupperware container and his overnight bag off of the passenger seat. The plastic box is still warm to the touch. It’s a sharp contrast to the wind trying to gnaw through the leather of his jacket. The temperature is enough to get him to put a rush on his movements. With hurried motions, he slams the vehicle’s door and all but jogs up the steps to Lindsey’s unit.

When he knocks, it’s with a too hard rap of his knuckles against the wood. His days with the FBI make him feel like a haunted house at times. Ghosts of drug busts and serial murder cases roam the halls of his mind. How many doors had he and his partners kicked in over the years when they were too impatient or too cocksure to wait for the SWAT team? His hand keeps the memories even if his own mind lets go.

“Hello, good sir,” Lindsey greets, whipping the door open, “Pray tell. What’s the password for the keep?”

“It’s ‘I didn’t sign up for dinner at Medieval Times. I’m old and I’m tired’,” Peter grumbles, trying to sidestep her.

He really is tired. Despite Strahm’s best efforts, Detective Hoffman has set up residence in his thoughts and it’s been doing a number on his ability to sleep. Unsatisfied with his sour mood, Perez blocks his foot with hers in a squeak of bare toes against his boot. He recoils.

“Put some socks on,” he says, aghast.

“I already gave you a hint,” she prompts. She’s not letting him in until he guesses what movie she is alluding to. Like him, she doesn’t let go when her jaw is locked.

Not bothering to hide his sigh, he shifts the Tupperware container from one arm to the other. He’d made mozzarella and tomato sauce filled mini croissants tonight. His partner had been moaning about wanting homemade pizza all weekend, so he had decided to do the next best thing. Peter is almost regretting his act of care. Still, he wracks his brain trying to remember what they had watched last Monday.

Her wording being the hint… Oh, it was the one that’d had some blond jackass in tights. Lindsey had socked him in the arm for laughing before breaking down as well.

“Robin Hood,” he answers.

“Robin Hood, what?”

“Robin Hood… in tights?” he tries.

Her smile nearly blinds him. “Good enough, buddy. You’re not senile yet.”

“Every day, I pray for the oblivion of memory loss,” he says dryly as his partner lets him through.

Even facing her back, Strahm can tell that she rolls her eyes at him. He trails after Lindsey to the kitchenette only for her to shove two glasses and a jaw-droppingly large bottle of Cosmopolitan at him. It’s chock-full of edible glitter that shimmers in the pink depths. It’s disgustingly cheery and liable to get them absolutely plastered. Lindsey means business on sleepover nights and that doesn’t include his usual proclivity for what she says is “sad old man alcohol”.

He wouldn’t expect anything else from the woman who got him so drunk one night, he willingly participated in gluing rhinestones to their work phones. Peter had woken up hungover and aching on her couch only to get his ass chewed back at the Bureau for tampering with federally provided property and allowing his subordinate to do the same.

Lindsey, of course, had doubled down after getting reprimanded. She had gotten them both phone charms of a mouthless white cat wearing a bow out of a coin machine–with quarters he’d begrudgingly fished out of his own pocket because he has never wanted to deny her anything.

It had made him smile, to take out the device out back in those days. Looking at the phone had provided him with an unusual sort of comfort, especially during his second divorce. He would turn it over and over in his hand, letting the sharp edges of some of those cheap, plastic gems scrape against his palm. He’s sure that Lindsey doesn’t know just how many times she has saved his life over the years. Not with gunfire or violence, but with her presence alone. Knowing that she was there and had his back was enough to keep him placing one foot in front of the other.

When they had left the FBI together, he’d kept the cat charm after he had turned in his work phone. It’s tucked away in the part of his dresser that holds the ties that he still hasn’t gotten rid of. Perez had also kept her charm. He’s seen it nestled in alongside her earrings and other jewelry.

He’s been quiet for too long, lost in thought. Lindsey notices and shoos him out of the kitchen. “I’ll be there in a second. Go settle in.”

Peter cooperates and makes his way to her bedroom door. It’s the only one left ajar. Her roommate's is shut tight.

Once in the small room, he sets down his cargo beside the TV resting on the dresser. Peter eases the strap of his bag off his shoulder and lets it land with a soft thump on the carpeted floor. Bending down, he unlaces his boots before setting them alongside Lindsey’s shoe rack by her door. He keeps his socks on but shrugs off his leather jacket and hangs it up on the only free peg on the wall-mounted rack. Lindsey keeps it open for him.

In his own rental home, he has several spaces that he leaves empty for her in return. She stocks his preferred brand of toothpaste and he keeps a bottle of the hair oil she uses every Monday. They alternate movie night locations. Their lives are intertwined. He wouldn't have it any other way.

Strahm picks the remote up off of the made bedspread and turns on the TV before dropping it back onto the mattress. The CRT screen flares to live. He’s pre-gaming whatever movie Lindsey picks from her and her roommate’s shared collection in the living room with the news. He’s a simple man. On his nights, he just takes his Vic down to the video rental place and grabs an unvetted stack of DVDs. It’s one of the few things in his life he doesn’t overthink.

Unsurprisingly, every news station is reporting on the rash of murders committed by a serial killer the press has taken to calling “Jigsaw” on account of the puzzle piece shaped chunks of skin that the perpetrator has been carving out of the victim’s bodies. In missives relayed by survivors, this Jigsaw is claiming that they’re not a killer at all, merely a game maker seeking to provide enlightenment to the ungrateful.

In Strahm’s opinion, it’s all a crock of bullshit. People dying as a direct result of your actions makes you complicit in their deaths.

Eyes still on the screen, Peter pours himself a drink. The glass quickly fills up with the shimmering liquid. It sparkles in the changing light from the TV, picking up the colors being broadcast. It’s refreshingly cool in his calloused hand.

He moves away from the TV to take a seat on the bed, leaning back against the mountain of throw pillows Lindsey has decided to pile against the headboard. There’s part of him that thinks it might be a long con trap devised in the hope that he smothers in his sleep.

From what the current news station is claiming, the police department and their FBI liaison have allowed more information to leak to the general public. He is sure that it must be rankling at Special Agent Kerry—she had never been one to be open about case information when he had worked with her in the past.

With a series of jarring crime scene photos, the news anchor walks the viewers through one of the traps that had been used in a recent game. Like the majority of the others, it, too, had taken place in a desolate warehouse. To Strahm’s eyes, it is all a fucked up piece of work. The killer had used some kind of iron maiden style headgear that had snapped closed like a Venus flytrap. They’re calling it the death mask. The footage is a pixelated smear of black and red. He can hear the buzzing of flies through the screen, can almost smell the rot and the dry dust of the warehouse.

Flashes of the same trap in bluepoint pen on a flimsy napkin—the cheapest they could get, really—hammer at his brain. He sees Mark’s hand, the way he had hidden the napkin from view the minute he realized Strahm was playing the role of the voyeur.

“Oh shit,” Peter says, too loud. With his revelation, he nearly lets the glass slip out of his hand to go tumbling across the bed. He rests it on his jean-clad knee with a vice grip.

Lindsey stops in the doorway of her bedroom, pausing at his outburst. She’s holding a massive bowl of popcorn in her hands. It’s something she contributes every Monday night because it’s a heart attack in a bowl, laden down as it is with pretzels, m&m’s, peanuts, and a generous caramel drizzle. Sometimes Strahm thinks he could go out peacefully this way—in his sleep after several too-full glasses of alcohol and a sickening amount of Lindsey’s popcorn concoction, movie still playing in the background and illuminating the two friends.

“Pete?” she asks, concern coloring her voice.

“Saturday. You were out. He was drawing...” He points at the TV with the hand still holding onto the glass.

His partner comes around to look at the screen. Her face tightens once she realizes what he’s referring to. “Your detective?”

The weight of what she knows Peter is suggesting is suffocating. She snatches up the Tupperware container and slaps it and the bowl in the middle of the bed before picking up the remote.

“Don’t. Just talk to him next time he comes in.”

“Lindsey—”

“Peter,” she interrupts, changing the channel to the DVD player input.

The retired FBI agent takes a breath. Lindsey is right. He doesn’t want her to be. He wants to turn this over in his mind until he’s sick with possibilities. It’s not his case. It’s no longer his job to put a name to the monsters crawling the streets. He’ll be crushed under the weight of it all if he doesn’t listen to his partner.

He slings back a mouthful of Cosmo. He savors the slight burn of the vodka as it goes down and forces himself to file everything away in order to focus on the moment. Peter makes himself pay attention as Lindsey opens a DVD case and shoves the disk into the player.

“What are we watching?” he asks as if this is normal night and his habits are not battering down the front door.

“Some romance movie that Melanie swears is the most thing heartbreaking in the world,” she answers.

Pouring a glass of Cosmo for herself, she fast forwards thought the pre-menu trailers. With the remote and her drink in hand, she makes her way back to the bed. She settles onto it beside him. The popcorn bowl and Tupperware serve as a divider between them.

“I feel like her metric for that is skewed.”

Lindsey jabs him in the side with her finger, causing him to grunt. “Don’t be rude.”

“Linds, she started crying because I didn’t want to go on a date with her.”

“Well,” she fiddles with the remote and selects PLAY on the menu. “You did… disappoint her by acting like she’d shot you when she asked what your star sign is. She just wanted to know if you were ‘compatible’.”

“Maybe she should meet with my ex-wives, reminisce a little in a support group. I’m chronically incompatible and great at disappointing women,” he says, chasing his words with another swallow of his beverage.

“It should be on your resume. It’s a skill,” she agrees.

They settle in to watch the movie in a comfortable silence that doesn’t last for long.

“Oh, what the fuck—” Strahm starts.

“Maybe you were right—” Perez also speaks.

Lindsey makes a frustrated noise and downs the rest of her drink. She sets the glass on her nightstand with a clatter.

“If some guy climbed a Ferris wheel and tried to coerce me into a date by threatening to hurt himself and then wouldn’t take the damn hint when I said no again, I’d be filing a restraining order.”

“For sure,” he agrees and, with a groan at the sight of the soon-to-be couple laying in the street, adds, “Oh, fuck off.”

Much to their dismay, the movie doesn’t improve. Both Lindsey and Peter have to stand up more than once throughout it to refill their glasses. By the time the film is over, the diner owners are thoroughly sauced. As soon as the credits roll, Strahm stumbles to the bathroom to change into the sleep clothes he’d brought with him. The sweatpants are riddled with holes and marked with old paint stains from when they’d painted the diner together. He leaves the clip pinning up what Lindsey calls his "mid-life crisis mullet" on the counter.

Before reentering Lindsey’s bedroom, he knocks on the doorframe and waits for her “Yeah!”. Stepping back in, he finds that Lindsey has also swapped her clothing. She’s also perched on his side of the bed with a mozzarella roll crammed into her mouth. She’s put another movie in. The Tupperware container is resting on her lap. She has the remote in one hand and a bottle of hair oil in the other.

Already knowing what she wants, he takes the bottle from her and takes a seat behind her. He’s careful to leave enough space so that they don’t touch. She’s already brushed her hair and it lays in thick curls down her back.

“Here,” she says, offering him a roll over his shoulder. He leans forward and carefully snags it with his teeth.

He’s mid-chew and just spreading the oil on his fingers to apply to her scalp when she speaks again. “So, are you going to pull some Ferris wheel shit for Mark?”

He swallows hastily, too soon, tries not to choke. “What?”

“I’m not blind. You’ve got more chemistry with him than I’ve seen you have with anyone.”

He slips his fingers into the roots of her hair, starts working in careful circles. “Yeah, if that chemistry was dislike.”

“Sure. You keep telling yourself that.”

───※ ·❆· ※───

Peter rolls into the parking lot first, closely tailed by Lindsey’s yellow eyesore of a ‘02 Ford Ranger. As they park, he notices a pair of figures standing in front of the diner. Having seen at least one of them every single day for the past few weeks, he immediately recognizes them. It’s Mark and his sister.

“Fuck,” he curses under his breath as he gets out of his car and meets Lindsey. Together, they approach the front door. Strahm’s already got the correct key primed. The realization of last night hasn’t left him, even if he is suffering from enough of a hangover to have necessitated Perez kicking at him to get his ass out of bed. He wouldn’t be surprised if he has a bruise.

He is a twice divorced man approaching middle age having what essentially boils down to slumber parties with his only friend. His time with Lindsey is the highlight of his weeks. It’s enough to be considered embarrassing without having a crisis because the man he thinks has been flirting with him might very well be one of the most notorious serial killers of their time. Peter knows that he’s a fucking joke.

As they get closer, Strahm realizes that the detective looks dead on his feet. The man is wearing a police slicker instead of his usual suit jacket. He’s wavering slightly, like a ship at sea despite leaning heavily against the side of the building. In contrast, Angelina looks chipper—radiant even.

“Good morning!” the woman shouts as soon as they get within earshot. Mark sways away from his sister as though her voice had physically hurt him.

“Morning!” Perez calls back, a sudden eagerness to her pace.

It surprises him. Lindsey is usually much more reserved. She’s chosen to be saddled with him for almost a decade. They don’t open for another half-hour, but he already knows that she is going to snuff out any suggestion from him that they leave these two on the stoop.

In another surprise, the two women meet in a hug. Peter skirts around them to unlock the door. At his side, too close for comfort, Mark rallies himself enough to engage in harassment.

“Where’s my hug and kiss, Peter?”

Barely resisting the urge to flip the detective off, he lets himself through the door first. He nearly clips Hoffman with the edge of it as the other man follows on his heels. Peter doesn’t want to think about what it might feel like to be that close to him, to feel the yielding bulk of his body in the circle of his arms.

He’s nice enough to pull the chairs off the top of Angie and Mark’s usual table before taking his jacket off and joining Lindsey as they go through the motions of getting the diner ready to open. The detective takes his seat wearily, arms on the table and forehead resting against them. His sister gives him a pat on the shoulder on the way to her own chair.

A few minutes before he needs to flip the sign, Strahm is back at at their table. His sleeves are rolled up and he’s slightly too warm from prepping the cook-top. He doesn’t bother to pull the notepad from his belt. They’re past menus and order sheets now.

“What do you want to eat?”

“Two orders of those pancakes with the faces, please. Oh, and some hashbrowns.” Angie says, glee lighting up her voice. She beckons Peter closer and shields her mouth from her brother. He obligingly leans down for her to speak into his ear.

“Can you make Mark’s look like him?” she whispers conspiratorially. He can’t help but return her shit-eating grin with a smile of his own.

“Sure thing.”

The man in question doesn’t even lift his head off the table as Strahm heads to the kitchen. He thinks that he might genuinely have dozed off.

Lindsey leaves him to it while he puts together the pair’s meals. Angie’s comes together easily. He does hers up to make a beamingly happy face. He remembers that she prefers bananas to blueberries and if she doesn’t have Linds’s house-made caramel sauce on it, she’ll look up to either of them for “just a drizzle, please”. Peter has unintentionally found himself filing away information about the brother and sibling like he does with Perez.

It’s only to avoid complaints, he tells himself. It’s a lie. What a disquieting thing it is to realize that he cares.

For Mark’s pancake, the crowning achievement is the lips. They’re made up of a thick sausage link cut in half and carefully arranged to form a pouting upper and lower lip. They glisten in the overhead light. He usually does bacon for the mouths, but it would not have done justice to Angelina’s request. Here at the diner, he’s all about customer satisfaction. Peter is just doing his job.

Lindsey sneaks at peak at the plates when he carries them out. She has to suppress a laugh. “Oh no.”

“It looks like him?”

“Definitely.”

He finds that Lindsey has already gotten them their beverages. Angie is sucking on the straw planted in her orange juice while Mark is staring into his barely touched coffee like it’s a crystal ball. He doesn’t look any more awake than he did on the doorstep.

Peter puts down Angie’s plate first. She gives it an approving nod before looking up at him, excitement barely contained. He sets the other plate down in front of Mark. The sausage lips jiggle a little upon impact and the detective’s sister is not disappointed. She only just manages to keep a straight face.

Mark looks back at the blueberry eyes beadily staring up at him from their whipped cream eye whites and turns to Peter with questioning expression on his face. Peter has a serious set to his mouth, the same distant appearance he used to wear during interrogations. He gives nothing away. Mark then faces Angie. She buries herself in her own pancake, refusing to make eye contact lest she break.

The seated man sighs, giving in. “I don’t have a yellow tie,” he says picking up a fork and gesturing at the egg that Strahm had fried and cut into the shape of the neck wear.

“Maybe you can get one at the clown convention next time it’s in town.” There’s no bite to Peter’s voice.

“Hmm,”Mark rumbles thoughtfully, almost fond, “maybe you can fuck off.”

───※ ·❆· ※───

Peter is in the back, prepping a tray of roast for tomorrow. It will sit, covered, in the cooler overnight to marinate. He will cook it up mid-morning to be ready in time for their lunch special.

Having already encouraged Lindsey out of the door, he is alone in the diner with only the radio for company. She had done the bank run and had picked up some bottles of honey at the store. Their supplier had missed it in the shipment, leaving them bereft. Strahm felt like the extra work deserved an early night. Neither of the retired agents addressed that it was only an excuse for him to be alone. He has found himself needing solitude more as of late. There have been too many foreign feelings gnawing at his intestines like a parasite.

He flips over another chunk of meat in the bowl. He can’t help but wonder when Angelina and Mark became such an integral part of his life. Every morning, he finds himself looking forward to the moment the siblings walk through the door. Self-loathing sinks into his lungs as the raw meat held in his hands reminds him of the Jigsaw killer. Remembering his partner’s words, he shoves it aside and lets the idea of finding someone to focus on wash over him—someone who might not be up to their elbows in torture traps. Maybe it would be best if he try picking someone up at one of the clubs Lindsey occasionally drags him to instead of behaving like a guard dog and glowering over her shoulder at any men who don’t get the hint that it’s a gay-oriented bar and she’s not there to talk to guys looking for female action.

Surely, he could find someone there. Peter could make it work. He could smooth out the sharp, unlovable edges of himself to find a form of happiness. There’s an image materializing in his mind of the kind of man he would like to share a life with. Thick fingered hands, garishly patterned ties nestled between oversized pecs, full lips with a perpetual smug lift of the corners… Fuck, he thinks to himself, he’s just thinking of—

The doorbell clatters. It’s explosive in the calm, aggressive, and Strahm gets a hint of something he’s not encountered much in the time since he’s left the FBI.

He strips his gloves off and tosses them into the fifty-five gallon trash can. His hackles are already up. On the way through the swinging door separating the kitchen from the rest of the diner, he shoves his right hand into his pants pocket to mask the itch he has for a gun he had carried on his hip for over a decade.

“Can I help you?” he calls across the expanse separating him and the stranger.

A young man stares back at him with wild eyes ringed with anger before donning the mask of someone calmer. “Hi, yes, I’m just looking for my girlfriend.”

“That so?”

His smile has an ugly twist to it, a crack in the facade. He steps closer. “Angelina? Long dark hair, about this tall...” He holds a hand a few inches below his chin. “Probably with her brother all the time?”

Distrust whispers in his ear, prompting Peter to shrug. The gesture is accompanied by a wide swing of his arms. This man reeks of a disgruntled ex looking to get even. Strahm would be willing to put his share of the diner on him being the reason why Angie seems to look over her shoulder and shrink into herself when Mark isn’t at her side. Peter isn’t going to give him a damn thing.

“Look, man, I just need to have a talk with her.” His hands are lodged in the pockets of his jacket. Peter can see him faintly tracing something. It’s not a gun, probably a knife. “She’s not doing well, has some crazy ideas swirling around in that head of hers.”

“Can’t help you,” he says, curt. There’s a part of him that relishes a fight, wants the other man to draw the knife from his pocket and give Peter something to sink his teeth into. It’s been so long.

“You don’t have to be such a bitch, man.” The stranger is scowling, looking almost like he might give Strahm the release he’s craving.

The words prompt a sigh and the raising of his eyebrows. “Get out.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Now.”

A smile of his own, more of a snarl graces the diner owner’s mouth. “Does it look like she’s here?” He gestures to the empty room, arms wide. “Get a hint.”

“I said—,” he starts.

“And I said to fuck off,” Peter interrupts. He takes a step forward, then another until he’s in the middle of the room. The man retreats, looking nervous. The cowardice makes Strahm even more irritated.

“Can you just tell her that I came looking? I’m the one that gets to decide when it’s over. Not her. She needs to remember…“ The stranger trails off. Back against the door now.

Peter puts his hand on the back of one of the chairs. He lifts it off the ground enough to get the point across that he will throw it. The feet scrape on the wood floor. It wouldn’t be the first time in his life he’s gotten pissed off enough to hurtle one.

The man puts his hands up, immediately showing his belly like a submissive dog. “My bad, man, my bad, have yourself a good night.”

He fumbles for the door and slips out. Peter lets go of the chair and stands in the silence. Headlights cut across the front of the diner as the stranger peels out of the parking lot. Strahm rubs his hands over his face and goes to lock the door and close the blinds. He swallows down the arid tang of disappointment.

───※ ·❆· ※───

“One of your sister’s associates came looking for her last night,” Peter says to Mark as he refills the detective’s coffee.

Angelina is seated at the counter for the time being while Lindsey plies her with flavored lemonade samples to test. Already, she’s working on the Spring menu. Mark has a spread of papers on the table that his sister had abandoned at. It looks like case reports for the Jigsaw situation, not that Strahm can scrutinize them too much under Mark’s careful gaze.

Mark’s full lips turn down in a frown. He looks troubled and when he speaks, his words don’t form a question. “Seth Baxter.”

“Yeah?”

“Angie broke up with him almost a year ago. Turns out he was a neo-nazi and all around piece of shit.”

“Wonderful.” He can’t say he’s surprised.

“He’s never taken no as answer. She hasn’t admitted to him doing anything to her but the guy is a problem. She’d had me there when she broke the news to him.”

“Did he act out then?”

“Nothing I could book him for.”

Peter nods, silent. He doesn’t blame Mark for entertaining that possibility. Encountering Baxter had felt like coming into contact with an oil slick. There was a residue left behind that just wouldn’t wash out with soap.

He leaves the detective alone to refill the next table’s mugs. Strahm still hasn’t broached the topic of Jigsaw to Mark. He hasn’t brought it up again to Lindsey either because he knows what she will say. Peter has found himself unable to muster up the will to confront the broad man in the fear that he might be right. In the daylight hours, it seems a ridiculous notion. Peter knows it’s possible. Time and time again, he’s seen the worst people put on the right masks to become loving family members, respectable members of their communities: the kind of people that would give the shirt off their own backs for a stranger.

Even the worst dregs of humanity have human moments. It’s what makes them so dangerous. It used to be his job to chisel away at the masks—to pull the shell off the snail and leave its innards manged and exposed to the naked eye. It’s not his duty anymore. He runs a diner with his best and only friend. He need to leave it alone. He’s no longer Special Agent Peter Strahm. That man lost his head, took on too much water and drowned.

Peter wants to believe that a better person left the building after turning in his badge. He knows one didn’t. There’s still something twisted and barely lying dormant inside of him, nestled between the cathedral of his ribs. It takes one monster to catch another.

───※ ·❆· ※───

The overhead bell clatters against the glass not even half an hour before closing. Strahm has already seen Perez out of the door. She had left early for a date that she’s shyly mentioned to him a couple of times over the course of the week. He knows it must be serious because she’s been tight-lipped and anxiously bursting at the seams. Peter will be staying up late, as he does every night, phone close at hand until she texts to let him know she’s made it back to her apartment.

“We’re closed,” he says.

Creaking footsteps cross the diner with no response from the intruder, and, finally, Peter looks up from the glasses he’s stocking below the counter. Irritation prickles at his skin. He’s half expecting to see Seth Baxter waiting for him when he stands up.

It’s Mark. The detective has dressed down for the late hour. It’s strange to see him without his blazer or his tie. Distractedly, the sleeves of the man’s dress shirt are rolled up to expose his large forearms. Strahm makes sure to look somewhere near Mark’s hairline.

“It’s you.”

“In the flesh, Peter,” the detective responds, smile across his lips.

“I’m curious as to why you’re here. Again.”

He watches as Mark settles himself onto a stool. The broad man rests his arms on the counter and leans over to encroach into Peter’s space. The retired FBI agent feels a little lightheaded when he realizes the position is only serving to highlight Mark’s chest through the open shirt collar. There’s honest to God cleavage. Ripping his traitorous eyes away from the scar snaking between Hoffman’s breasts, he meets his gaze and realizes that the detective looks tired.

“Angie had a date tonight, left me high and dry so I thought I’d come see you. Where’s Lindsey?”

“Out.” He kneels and lines the last few glasses up on the shelf and out of the drying crate. “Kitchen’s cold. I’m not turning the grill back on for you.”

“I’m sure you can figure something out for me, Pete. I’m hungry enough that I’ll eat anything you make me. You know how easy I can be.”

“Too easy,” he mutters. Mark just laughs, having heard him. “Fine, I don’t want to hear you complain.”

“Thank you, honey. You’re so good to me.”

A sigh and then he’s picking up the dish rack to take it back to the kitchen instead of throwing it at the seated man. Once in the back, he slots it in the nook beside the three-chamber sink before opening the door to vertical warmer and pulling out the two pans that have been resting on the racks. He shuts the machine off. It will be turned on again in the morning.

Largely using ingredients he’d be throwing out tonight anyway, he makes himself a sandwich with pot roast. He makes a second one for Mark. Both of them are plated with a side of macaroni destined for either his fridge at home or the trash can. The detective’s presence at the counter saves Strahm from having the hassle of taking home the leftovers.

Finished, he carries both plates out to the dining room. He bypasses the counter entirely to set the plates down on opposite ends of a small table. Before he sits down, he checks his watch. It’s a few minutes after closing time. He crosses the room to lock the door and flip the sign to closed. He draws the blinds on his way back to the table.

Hoffman is still. The weight of his eyes feels like a hand on the back of Strahm’s neck. It’s making his skin crawl. All too aware of the other man, he pulls out a chair with a screech of wood on wood and takes a seat facing the main room, back to the wall. He doesn’t verbally invite Mark, but he hears the shift of fabric and the sound of footsteps and then he is joined at the table.

“Didn’t feel like the stool?”

“No, don’t like having my back to the place.”

There’s a small grunt from the detective. “Were you a lawman?”

“FBI,” he says. Maybe Mark isn’t as stupid as he looks.

“Mmm, that would explain it. Were you good at your job, Special Agent?”

“Good enough.” For once, he doesn’t rise for the bait.

Peter toys with the fork in his hand, eyes on the man seated across from him. He watches closely, perhaps too closely as Mark slides his thick fingers under the sandwich and lifts it, cradled almost, to his mouth for a bite. Juice immediately spills free, running over Mark’s lips and liberally coating them in a filthy shine. He reaches for a napkin, but Peter’s hand is there first. Hoffman’s fingers skate over the back of his hand, thwarted. Peter receives a hard, considering look. There’s a dark gleam in the blue depths.

In an a long moment that reminds him of the morning the two of them had met, neither of them break their eye contact as Mark exaggeratedly licks his lips. Peter digs his fingers of his free hand into the meat of his thigh, hanging on for any glimmer of control while the other man sucks his own bottom lip into his mouth and releases it with a wet pop. He’s headspinningly hard in that instant, throbbing in his pants. He nearly curls over as if weathering a blow. Very nearly, he almost takes his hand off the napkin dispenser to press his palm against his crotch to relieve the pressure. Instead, he clamps down on the object harder, knuckles going white in the dim light.

With his dignity dangling on a thin line, he’s relieved that the table blocks Mark’s view. He’s struggling to stay in his seat. He wants to do something rash, destructive, transformative. His instincts are scrambled.

His own plate remains untouched as Mark takes another bite. The chewing is accompanied by a pleased hum, almost a lewd moan to Strahm’s ears.

“How… how does it taste?” He feels winded, out of breath.

Mark stops with the sandwich to his lips. He lowers it without taking another bite after swallowing. “Are you some kind of pervert?” he asks, seeming genuinely curious.

Strahm feels the last of his blood drain from his face.

“You’re one to talk,” he snaps. His tone does little else but highlight how defensive he’s feeling. Mark’s eyebrows raise. He’s got that smug look to him that makes Peter want to grab him by his shirt and smear his face against the floor until it worn down to the bone.

“Am I?” Mark is smiling now. “How do you figure?”

“You parade around looking like” he gestures in a broad sweep of his hand at the detective, “that.”

“Like what?”

“You know.”

“I don’t think I do.” He has to be being purposely obtuse. Strahm doesn’t appreciate it.

The blood is starting to rise back up, he can feel himself starting to flush as he responds, “Like you’re begging for a scrap of attention. Like you’re just a whore with a gaping mouth waiting for someone to come along and fill it for you.”

Despite the crudeness of his words, Mark doesn’t look offended. He sets the sandwich down on his plate. With his fingers damp with the meat’s juices, he nudges Strahm’s hand out of the way to finally claim a napkin to wipe the mess away from his digits. Fingers clean, the other man pushes his plate across to him. It bumps against his with the sharp sound of ceramic against ceramic. He stands up, and for a critical moment, Peter thinks he’s made an error and the other man is going to deck him where he sits.

Violence doesn’t come. Peter is left shaken when Mark comes around to his side of the table and kneels, knees to the floor. The detective’s polished shoes squeak against the wood. He can see the way the bulk of Mark’s thighs strain against the confinement of his slacks.

“What…?” It comes out as a gasp. His lungs feel too compressed to draw in any air.

As a response, Mark shifts closer. Under encouragement from the detective's hands, Peter turns, letting the man rest his bulk between his spread knees. Hoffman’s eyes skate over his erection. The only acknowledgment he gives it is an impossibly more satisfied look as he meets Strahm’s gaze steadily.

“You said I wanted a full mouth, Peter. So fill it.” he says with a nod to the table.

Unable to look away, he watches Mark part his lips and wait. The detective’s mouth gleams wetly, salivating for what Peter is going to give him. He can see the moisture pooling in the space underneath his tongue, threatening to overflow the corners of his lips even as Peter’s own mouth goes devastatingly dry.

The retired FBI agent gropes blindly for Mark’s plate. He ends up offering the kneeling man a handful of macaroni and cheese. He is forced to put it into Mark’s mouth when he doesn’t reach for it with his own hands. The pads of Peter’s fingers brush over Mark’s tongue.

Pulse pounding, he gathers up another mouthful’s worth. He brings it to the other man’s mouth, pushes it inside and past those plump lips when, again, he doesn’t take it directly. Mark’s jaw is slack. He’s completely pliant, welcoming the intrusion of Strahm’s fingers. He chews and swallows when Peter withdraws.

He feeds him mouthful after mouthful. He takes from his own plate when he runs out of noodles on Mark’s. Slipping the last of it into Hoffman’s mouth, he looks at the mess he’s made. He gathers the smear of sauce and cheese off the detective’s bottom lip and feeds him that too. That simple motion brings curiosity with it. He slides his fingers into Mark’s mouth, so deep that the knuckles of his ring finger and pinky collide with the other man’s chin.

Mark swallows around them. The sudden, clenching heat makes him groan. His dick twitches in his jeans. Mark’s pupils are blown, and Peter doesn’t miss the way the other man’s hand clenches on his wide thigh at hearing the noise that Peter had let slip from his throat.

Again, he swallows around Peter’s fingers. This time, the action is accompanied by his teeth just lightly biting down on the digits encased between his lips, just testing the skin. There’s a pinch and he’s biting harder, properly digging his teeth in.

Peter’s free hand, the one adorned with a reminder of his failed marriages, shoots out. He presses it against Mark’s right cheek. The skin is smooth and unmarred underneath his palm. He doesn’t push Mark away. Strahm doesn’t want to stop him, not really. There’s a part of him not so far under the surface that wants the detective to sever the fingers between his teeth, to consume of Peter himself just has he had of the meal he had prepared for him.

Mark lets up and allows Peter to ease his fingers out just enough to thrust them back in. Strahm is panting, a ragged sound in the quiet of the diner. With each thrust of his fingers into the detective’s mouth, he imagines that it is his cock instead that’s rubbing back and forth over Mark’s eager tongue. His fingertips collide with the other man’s hard palate over and over again. He loses himself in the motion enough that Mark’s hand being placed on his thigh jolts him back into the moment.

The detective is drooling freely around his fingers. His chin is wet with his own saliva. It strings and drips, soaking the front of his shirt. The silk material is marked with darker patches, almost as if Strahm had placed his own mouth against the fabric and sucked at Mark’s chest and stomach through it. He looks debauched this way, used. His lips are swollen and pink.

As he observes Mark like a case file, he can’t help but notice that the other man’s slacks are straining over more than just his thighs. Peter can see the clear outline of his dick. He can almost swear the black fabric is somehow darker near the head of it. Mark is wet.

Wet for me, he thinks, nonsensical. He sinks his teeth into the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood to keep the moan from escaping his mouth.

Extracting his fingers, he grips the edge of the table as Mark’s other hand hooks under Peter’s thigh. He spreads his legs wider to give the other man more access. Mark shuffles closer. He pulls Peter’s leg over his shoulder, spreading him open until he feels too vulnerable, too exposed.

His hands go to Strahm’s belt buckle, Peter tangles his hand in Mark’s hair, dampening the man’s locks with his own saliva. With as much protest as Peter himself had given, the leather of his belt easily slips free of the buckle. Hoffman’s fingers skate over the front of his jeans, seeking to undo the fastenings.

Even though the denim, Strahm can feel the heat of the detective’s breath on his dick. His cock twitches, almost as if it’s trying to get to the other man’s mouth. He feels both steadied and thrown off balance by the hand that Mark puts on his waist. He can barely think over the sound of his heart hammering in his ears. The drum beat of it drowns out the anxiety over being touched in such an intimate way. This man is going to be the death of him. He’s never been so hard in his fucking life.

A phone rings. Loud.

Face suddenly grim, Mark draws back. Peter’s hand slips free of the detective’s hair and he sags back in his chair. He busies himself with remembering how to breathe while Hoffman pulls his phone out from the pocket of his slacks. He flips it open and presses the button to accept the call.

“Detective Hoffman speaking.” His voice has a rough edge to it—the only indication that Strahm had been all but fucking his mouth with his fingers.

Choosing to look anywhere else but at Mark, his eyes resolutely lock onto the shelves behind the counter. He feels the shorter man slide his leg off his shoulder. It’s unsettlingly tender, the way Hoffman eases Strahm’s foot to the floor.

“Yeah… alright.” Peter can’t make out the voice on the other end of the line. “I’ll be there. Don’t mess with any unsecured doors this time, yeah?”

Peter hears the snap of the device being closed and glances at Hoffman. The man gets to his feet with a wince but with more spryness than Strahm himself would have been capable of under normal circumstances.

“Duty calls,” he says, slipping the phone back into his pocket and withdrawing his wallet.

Alarmed, he reaches out and stops him. “Don’t. The food was on the house.”

Mark gives him a look that Peter can’t quite read before closing his billfold and tucking it away. Hoffman’s erection is rapidly flagging. Whatever situation he was called about must be one hell of a mood killer. Meanwhile, Strahm can’t summon any of the blood back to his brain.

He nearly chokes on nothing when Mark’s fingers cup his cheek and he draws a thumb down over the scar mimicking an age line. He has to close his eyes.

“Goodnight, Pete.” The roughness that Strahm put there drags the nickname out into something obscene.

“’Night.” The retired agent manages.

And with that, Mark takes those characteristically stiff strides to the door, unlocks it, and slips through it. The bell jangles in his wake. He leaves Strahm alone and close to shivering in the absence of his warmth.

Like a man rising from a trance, he gets to his feet and locks the door behind the detective. His open belt clatters. The buckle collides with his thigh on every step, a reminder of what almost was. He leaves the plates on the table in favor of ducking into the diner’s single occupant bathroom. Out of habit, he locks the door. He doesn’t look at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t want to see the creature he is in this moment. He chooses, instead, to press his forehead against the wall. He shuts his eyes.

Projected against the darkness of his eyelids, he imagines Mark on his knees again. He plays out the scene they had nearly had without the interruption that he is almost thankful for. While he thinks about Mark undoing his pants and taking Strahm’s cock out, he frees himself from the confines of his jeans and takes himself in hand. His dry palm is a far cry from the detective’s saliva-slick mouth.

Still, he strips his cock hard and fast. Mark had already had him on the brink of shamefully cumming in his pants. It’s not long before he’s spilling over his knuckles in hot spurts.

Wrung out and with his legs shaking, he lets go of his softening dick and fumbles for the paper towel dispenser. He wipes his hand off before tucking himself back into his pants and dropping onto the toilet toilet lid, exhausted. It feels like he had ran a marathon. He is going to have a heart attack in this bathroom and Lindsey is going to have to call for a morgue transport after she finds him in the morning.

“Fuck,” he says aloud. Revulsion has stuck its hand in him now that the fog of arousal has fled his body, and it’s rooting around elbow deep in his guts.

He gets to his feet. He washes his hands and still doesn’t meet his eyes in the mirror while he straightens himself up. This might not be the most shameful thing he’s ever done, but it’s higher on the list than he would like. He can gnaw on it while he works. He’s got a diner to clean

───※ ·❆· ※───

Morning greets Strahm with all the grace of a punch to the jaw. He opens his eyes and squints against the light glaring at him through his windshield. He rubs both hands over his face. The brief shade they provide is a soothing balm to his pounding head. The ache radiating through his body like a missing tooth is a vivid reminder of last night.

He had been worked into too much of a shame-fueled frenzy to give the establishment the usual amount of care. No, he’d been on his hands and knees scrubbing the grout in the kitchen with a hard bristled brush until his hands were raw and he was satisfied surgery could be performed on the tile with no risk of infection. It not been the only task that he’d taken upon himself. He had spent so long handling his reaction to the unplanned intimacy that he had not bothered to go back to his rental. He had chosen to sleep in his car instead.

A glance at his watch reveals that he had woken up just after his usual alarm time. Peter drags himself out of his vehicle just as Lindsey’s yellow Ranger pulls into the lot and parks in the space beside his Vic.

“Good morning.” She looks cheerful, vibrant even.

“’Morning.” He grits out. His voice is so rough with sleep that it might as well have been his throat that was getting used last night.

“You look like shit.”

The only answer he gives her is a grunt. He nearly stumbles on the curb when he follows her to the front door.

“No, seriously. What happened?”

“Late night. Got wrapped up in cleaning.” It’s technically the truth. He doesn’t particularly want to confess that he almost fucked Mark and proved his co-owner right. Peter has never been one for losing, no matter the size of the stakes.

Sighing, Lindsey gets her key in the lock. She’s not buying it as being the whole story. If she were blind enough to just accept whatever bullshit he said to her, they never would have been able to be partners for so long.

“How did your date go?” he asks, heading her off before she can corner him in the back for an interrogation. He had gotten her text late last night, assuring him that she hadn’t been murdered in the street and was about go to bed.

Her face splits into a smile. “It went really, really well. She let me walk her to the door.”

“That’s great, Linds.” Her obvious joy manages to drag a returning smile out of him.

He listens to her chatter at him while they settle into their normal morning routine. She lets him get away with muttered responses and acknowledging hums, content to carry the interactions. It’s business as usual with the only the glaring absence of Mark and Angelina.

The sibling duo arrives after the breakfast rush has trickled into maintenance. Right away, Strahm notices that Hoffman looks as tired as he, himself, feels. There’s a serious set to his mouth and his movements are sluggish. They bypass their usual table on account of it being occupied and take up residence on stools at the counter.

“Just coffee for me.” Mark tells him when he silently stares at him in wait for the detective's order.

He feels like last night is written all over his face. If the both of them weren’t so tired, he’s sure some words would be getting thrown around. Unable to do more than exist, he turns to Angie, silently prompting her as well.

“Orange juice and one of those muffins, please,” she says. Like Lindsey, she’s all but glowing.

Nothing for him to cook. It’s just as well. Strahm is feeling he might just face-plant on the cooking surface. With any luck, he can take another nap in his car until Lindsey needs him for lunch support. With the distant sensation of moving through molasses, he pours Mark and Angie their drinks. He nearly knocks over Angelina’s glass when he tries to slide her muffin in front of her.

“Are you okay? I thought Marcus over here was half dead, but I think you got him beat.”

“I’ve always been a winner,” is Peter’s stab at levity.

He ignores Hoffman’s stifled scoff and drags out a notepad. Checking with the summary of items he’d marked as low in the dry storage last night, he writes down everything that he’s going to have to order tomorrow. Mark seems content to watch him while he drinks his coffee. Lindsey and Angelina chatter back and forth as his partner comes and goes. He tunes them out.

Blinking hard, he tries to focus his eyes on the paper in front of him. It’s threatening to triplicate. He sets down his pen and squeezes the bridge of his nose, hard. He needs to lay down.

There’s an explosion like a gunshot.

Peter feels a burning sensation race across the back of his shoulder and down his side. Adrenaline floods his system, burning away the exhaustion. He whips around in time to see Lindsey stumbling back from the coffee machine’s hot water spigot. Her hands are grasping at her face and she’s making noises he has never heard from her before—never thought he would hear. It’s the low, desperate whines of an injured animal.

Immediately, he reaches for her. Peter takes her into his arms, holding her securely against his chest where she curls into him in the blind trust that he can protect her, that he can keep her safe. She’s coughing, trembling. Even has she goes limp from shock, he supports her. She’s his partner and the closest thing he would dare call family.

There are shards of broken glass and hot water everywhere. Right away, it’s clear that a measuring cup had exploded. Hot water into a room temperature glass vessel had caused a rapid expansion. Something that they’d both done more than they should had finally caught up to them.

Mark is right next to him with his sister on his heels. Together, the two men guide Lindsey away from behind the counter and to a clear patch of floor. The detective strips off his blazer and folds it into a makeshift pillow for Strahm’s co-owner as Peter lowers her to the wood. Acid claws at his throat.

“Angie, call for an ambulance.” Mark’s voice is calm, lapping against the edges of Peter’s mind past the ringing in his ears.

The only thing he can focus on is Lindsey. His hands are shaking as he carefully tries to smooth her hair away from her face.

“Okay, c’mon, Shallow breaths. Okay? Stay with me.” He can’t hide the tremor in his voice. There’s so much blood seeping around the glass embedded in her face and neck. He has only seem this amount at crime scenes.

Lindsey reaches up and grabs weakly at his face. Her fingers hook briefly in the collar of his shirt. Peter catches her hand and squeezes it as much to reassure her as himself.

“Pete,” she whines. Tears are leaking from the corners of her eyes.

“I’m here. I’m here, Lindsey. You’re gonna be fine, alright? You’re gonna be fine.” Maybe if he repeats it enough times, it’ll be true.

They had some close calls during their time in the FBI but it was all threats that he could negate. He would have put down any number of perps to ensure her safety. He would have ripped apart the world for her. But this… this was just an accident. He couldn’t protect her from this kind of thing.

He’s unaware of the panicked, half breathes that seize in his chest until Mark places his hand on his back. Peter doesn’t shrug it off. In the background, he can hear Angie on the phone. Her voice is wobbly, distorted through sobs.

After the paramedics arrive, Hoffman has to hold him back when Lindsey lets out a pained yelp from being moved onto the stretcher. She’s never been one to vocalize pain and it’s killing him to hear her.

“Easy… Easy, Peter.” Mark’s voice rumbles against him from where the detective has him held against the expanse of his chest.

Dimly, he realizes that Angelina has a grip on her brother’s arm. She has to be squeezing enough to hurt. Her knuckles are pale. He wonders at why she’s so torn up his partner and then it clicks. Mark had said Angelina had left him alone to go on a date last night. Lindsey had done the same to him. The two women had been together while he and Hoffman were doing whatever fucked up dance they’d been engaged in.

Strahm pushes out of the detective’s hold. He nearly collapses without the support he’d never admit he needed. It’s a smothering weight that he could be crushed under if he let it.

“Everybody out. Show’s over.” Peter calls as soon as Lindsey is wheeled out the door. “We’re closed. Meals are on the house today.”

A few people stand up, not enough. Mark speaks, his voice more vicious than Strahm’s. “You heard him. Have some respect and get the fuck out.”

It works. The customers pick up the pace and soon the diner is empty aside from them.

In daze, Peter steps into the kitchen and turns off the cook-top. He grabs his jacket and his keys from the back. The door hits him hard in the elbow. He nearly slips on the mixture of glass and cooling water. Mark’s hand is there to steady him. The other man plucks the keys from Peter’s grasp before steering both him and Angie across the diner and to the door. Peter lets himself be nudged out onto the step with Mark’s sister while the broad man flips the sign around and locks up for him.

“This way,” he says, leading them both to his car.

Numbly, he obeys as Mark has the two of them clamor into the back seat while he settles behind the wheel. He feels Angelina take his hand in hers. He lets her, just has he had let her brother touch him. Their fingers twist and grip onto each other until their joint hands make up one shared form. All he can see playing on repeat in his mind is the scared look on his partner’s bloody face.

He can’t tell which one of them is shaking. Is is Angie? Is it him? Is it the both of them?

«- previous chapter / next chapter -»

Rhythmic passes of a damp cloth on a laminate counter, steady whooshes of breath as his body leans into each motion of his arm; this is as calm as Peter Strahm ever feels. Repetitive actions keep his mind occupied enough to not wander in search of some pressing issue to fixate on. Not that there is much to endlessly turn over in his brain at the diner, but he can always find something.

A loud clang of the metal bells bouncing off the front door and the scuff of shoes against the wood floor heralds the arrival of customers. The first ones of the day. Peter doesn’t bother to look up, choosing instead to let Lindsey be the face of the establishment. He is convinced that she’s the only reason this place stays afloat. He’d have run everyone off with his demeanor ages ago if he were the sole owner. As a supervisor had once said to him, Peter would cut off his own nose to spite his face.

Barely listening to his partner’s cheery banter and the responding pleasantries of the customers—two of them, he notes, a man and a woman—he tosses the rag in the sanitation bucket before making his way to the coffee machine. It’s finished brewing the pot he’d started just five minutes ago. He dumps the used grounds and resets the machine with a new filter of freshly ground beans. When they hit a rush, coffee is the first thing to go. Early on, he and Lindsey learned that lesson the hard way. Customers get downright vicious when they can't get their caffeine fix the instant they want it.

“Pete,” Lindsey says, sliding up alongside him behind the counter.

“Mm,” he responds as he takes the offered ticket from her hand. He looks over the order. Simple. Easy. No substitutions or alterations. He can appreciate that. “Need anything before I get this made?”

“No, I’ll try to not burn the place down while you’re in the back though.”

He snorts, amused. If anyone was going to be engaging in pyromania during work hours, it would be him.

Peter retreats to the kitchen. His shoulders relax in the privacy beyond the swinging door. He is used to eyes being on him, every moment analyzed and critiqued, but solace suits him better. He doesn’t have to put on the thin veneer of normalcy that he’s capable of.

Steady hands prepare the ingredients before laying them on the grill top. Cooking is immersive work, a different kind of toil than when he was in the FBI. The constant examination for guilt, the way he would dirty his hands with the worst humanity had to offer… it took a toll on him. He lost himself in his job. Back then, most days, he felt like he should be the one handcuffed to the table while an agent berated him with rapid-fire questions. He had gathered up parts of every criminal he ever investigated. Strahm had ingested those pieces like poison until they had become a part of him, lining his internal organs and threatening to spread like a cancer.

The only thing that had kept him from going into the restroom and closing his lips around the barrel of his own handgun at work had been Lindsey. There had been a day when he was uncharacteristically tidying his papers on his desk and she looked up from where her own desk butted right against his. She had taken in the sight of his drawn, exhausted face, the bags under his bloodshot eyes, and the faint tremor in his hands. She had known. She’d stood up, nearly sending her desk chair halfway across the room on its wobbly wheels. His partner had reached over their computer monitors and grabbed onto his forearm with determined desperation. She’d said, “Fuck this, we’re done.”

They had opened the diner five months later.

Conceptualizing the place had started off as a pipe dream between two friends. Strahm had cooked for Lindsey some nights, when there was a sliver of down time. He’d been the one to teach her how to make more than oven pizzas and the occasional grilled cheese. He had also been the one who taught her how to shoot a man in the chest without flinching.

Five years, they’d worked together as agents for the FBI. Lindsey had been fresh out of the academy, and he’d already begun his downward spiral when they were assigned one another. No one else had wanted the woman rookie or the wild-eyed man they swore must be doing drugs to be acting the way he did, no matter how many piss tests came back clean. Two misfits.

Their coworkers and supervisors thought that he would make her cry, that he would destroy her confidence. Hell, they’d hoped he would go so far as to convince her that a woman didn’t belong at the boys’ table. Instead, Strahm realized that there was someone he could be bothered to live for.

He plates the two meals, reminiscing over and set aside for now. Fingers long since desensitized to the feeling of hot ceramic against them, he carries one plate in each hand to the dining area. The man and the woman are still the only customers. It’s a small town. It’s far enough from the main city that they don’t get much traffic out here this early in the morning. Usually, their clientele starts trickling in a couple hours after they open. It’s a motley assortment of people. They get folks from all walks of life seeking a seat at their secondhand tables. Money had been tight when they opened the place. Now, they keep the mismatched furniture as part of the place’s charm. He leaves the decor up to Lindsey.

As Peter makes his way to the dark haired pair seated at a table by the windows that span the front of the diner, initial thoughts that they might be a couple are blown away by the way the two of them are interacting. She’s engaging in five finger fillet with the straw for her orange juice. The hand that she’s playing the game with belongs to her resigned companion rather than herself. They must be siblings in one way or another.

“Here you go,” he sets the plates in front of them. “Anything else I can get you?”

“Yeah,” the seated man says. He’s wearing a suit. There is a flash of something at his hip. A gun and a badge. Strahm realizes that the man is a cop. Great. “Some decent coffee would be nice.” Peter’s eyebrows shoot up at the brazen rudeness. Across the table, the woman hisses, “Mark! What the fuck!” and swats at the officer.

The man isn’t deterred, just continues to stare Peter down with a dumb look in his blue eyes and a faint curl to his overly large, fish-like lips. Strahm hates him immediately. His dislike is only furthered by the realization that the seated cop’s buttons are straining across his chest. Could he not afford better fitting shirts? Or is he just too stupid to know his own size? Peter isn’t completely sure, but he’s willing to hazard the guess it might be the latter.

He grits his teeth and puts on a smile that’s more similar to a snarl than a genuine stab at pleasantry. “And what’s wrong with it?”

“It tastes like it’s been sitting out for hours,” he says, wincing only a little when the woman manages to land a solid kick against his shin. Peter wishes he could also dig the tip of his shoe into that yielding body.

Snatching the mug off the counter, he barely avoids the impulse to dump it on the cop’s lap and give him something to actually complain about. He doesn’t quite storm off to the narrow space behind the counter but it’s a close thing. He still carries his anger around his throat like a noose. Leaving the FBI hadn’t changed that.

The expression on his face is thunderous enough that Lindsey looks alarmed. Rightfully so. “What’s wrong?”

“Jackass cop. They always think they can come in here and push everyone around. That one probably jerks off onto his badge every night.” He feels a muscle jump in his jaw.

“That was… descriptive.”

“Sorry,” he mutters, ditching the mug on the counter by the machine and picking up the glass coffeepot and a fresh mug.

Peter strides back over to the occupied table. He sets down the mug with a hard thud on the tablecloth-covered wood, enough so that the table rattles with the force of it. It’s a miracle the ceramic doesn’t shatter. Neither of the two men look away from each other as he slowly pours the dark liquid. Only rising steam blocks their view, faltering and diverting as though it were afraid to be in the middle of them.

He fills the mug as high as he can get it, surface tension being the only thing keeping the coffee contained. It will be impossible to pick up without spilling. The cop is going to have to drink from it like a dog if he wants it at all.

“Thank you, Peter.” His voice is low, throaty.

Strahm startles at the use of his first name. His fingers reflexively clench into a fist. He perpetually forgets about the name tags that Lindsey insists they both wear despite her being the only one he has ever grown accustomed to calling him anything but some variation of “Agent” and “Strahm.” Of course this bloated asshole would be presumptuous enough use his name.

Choosing not to respond, he leaves the table and retreats to the sanctuary behind the counter. Any satisfaction he might have felt at watching his customer debase himself is dashed when Mark seeks out his eyes once again with his own as he lowers his face to the table and presses those absurdly full lips against the rim of the coffee mug. Peter can’t look away as he watches Mark’s throat engage in gulping swallows to drain the mug to the point where he can pick it up and drink from it like a slightly more civilized ape. He doesn’t realize he’s trembling, nearly vibrating in place, until his partner taps him on the arm and takes the glass carafe from his hand.

Lindsey attends to the pair from that point on. He lets her. They both know things might escalate, with his fuse being an oil soaked scrap of already burning twine.

The cop is perfectly nice to her, even smiling and thanking her for another coffee refill. Strahm can still feel the other man’s eyes rest on him from time to time. There’s something about the weight of his stare that makes him want to scratch at a phantom itch under his collar until blood burrows its way beneath his nails.

He finds his relief when Lindsey brings out the bill. Mark leaves his sister behind to pay after he hands her his wallet. She approaches the register with the slip of paper, looking meeker, somehow smaller, without her brother around. He barely keeps the frown off his face at her body language. There’s a nervous look in her eyes.

“I’m so sorry about my brother. I don’t know what got into him. He’s never like that.”

She sounds so sincere that he feels his frustration ease off the gas a little. It wouldn’t be right of him to be pissed at her just because she has an asshole for a sibling. “Ah, don’t worry about it.”

“Please, keep the change,” she says, handing him a wad of bills.

He pauses, fingertips already on the smaller denominations in the cash drawer. “This is too much, really.”

“Call it a…” she raises her fingers in scare quotes, “‘Markup’.”

Strahm sighs. Both siblings are intolerable.

“Alright then…?”

“Angelina. Angie.”

“Have a nice day, Angelina.” He very politely does not tell her to inform her brother to go fuck himself. Preferably with his own loaded gun. Safety off.

The young woman gives a little wave to Lindsey on her way out the door. His partner cheerfully returns it, her other arm laden down with the pair’s used plates. Peter loops around the counter to help her with bussing the table. He snatches up a clean rag on the way.

He’s not quite sure why the other man got under his skin so badly. It chafes at him. They have had more than a couple blowhard cops in the diner before, but they’ve never invoked the same visceral reaction from Strahm as Mark had. At least he can find solace in knowing that he will probably never have to see them again. They hadn’t seemed like locals, and it’s unlikely they’ll return, especially given the cop’s behavior towards him.

Hours pass, evening finally settles in after a long day. Diner traffic had ebbed and flowed along the usual patterns after the two siblings had left. Strahm and Perez had had the their typical rush around eight, followed by another burst of customers around noon, and the final crowd at six. There had been nothing else out of the ordinary to get Peter’s hackles up.

“Go on home, Linds,” he says to his partner as he flips the last chair onto one of the tables. He doesn’t want her to be stuck here all night while he meticulously combs over the diner in preparation for opening in the morning.

She stops, looks over at him with raised eyebrows. She’s got one hand on the dustpan and the other wrapped around the broom. “You sure?”

“Yeah, I could use the time to—“

“Get your homicidal urges under control?” she suggests with a grin.

He doesn’t dignify Lindsey with a response, just takes the broom from her before gently pressing his knuckles to her back to nudge her in the direction of the counter. “I’ll see you in the morning. Shoot me a message when you get home.”

“Oh, I’ll shoot you alright,” the woman mutters as she goes and gets her coat and purse.

“I wish you would. It would save me the trouble of doing it myself,” he calls after her.

The look he gets in return, all scrunched eyes and pursed lips, makes him smile. Lindsey’s “agent special”, as they jokingly call the expression they both slip into when agitated, would be enough to sour milk. He and his partner aren’t all that different. Their mannerisms have blurred together over the years. Lindsey is still his better half, though. She always will be.

“’Night, Pete.” She pauses with her hand on the front door’s handle. “You let me know too. When you get back to your place.”

“Goodnight,” he says, grudgingly tacking on “I will.” when she clears her throat in a pointed demand.

He finishes sweeping and is in the middle of mopping when his phone vibrates in the front pocket of his jeans. Without looking, he knows it’s the message from Lindsey. Still, he pulls the device out anyway and flips it open.

The text illuminated on the screen reads Im home :) Dont forget 2 eat

Satisfied that she’s safe, he doesn’t pick at the number pad and work up a reply. Peter merely closes the phone and returns it to his pocket. He’ll be messaging Lindsey about his return to his shitty rental soon enough. He’s almost done here, will be once he’s combed over every final detail down to the level the salt shakers are filled to. Strahm can’t help but treat every night at the diner like a case. All the parts have to be arranged in just the right order to construct the whole picture.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Early riser, is the first thing Strahm thinks the next morning when he hears the bells clatter against the glass of the front door. It is barely five minutes past six. Lindsey is in the back wrangling the day’s special; muffins. Much to his mixture of pride and chagrin, she’s become a substantially better baker than he. She has the patience for it.

“Welcome in,” he says, not looking up from the inventory list he’s in the middle of putting together.

He is going to have to call in an order to their supplier before noon today if they want it by Friday, which they do. Business is going to be elevated above average due to a local softball game on Saturday. One of them will be tasked with catering the event while the other stays behind to run the diner. He and Lindsey are going to have to draw straws for who gets what job. Peter is sure that she’s going to rig the game by changing the rules once the results are in so that she has be the person to go. His customer skills are better left unpracticed.

“Thanks, Peter,” comes a familiar voice.

Nearly snapping his own damn neck when he jerks his head up, he looks at the speaker. It’s Mark. He is holding the door open with a glove-clad hand for his presumed saint of a sister.

Anger sparks along his spine. He had bet wrong on never seeing the cop again, and with an aggressive motion, he snatches up only one menu. It’s only when he’s halfway to their table that he realizes he is rapidly clicking the pen he was using to write down notes for the order. He forces himself to stop.

Strahm can’t help but notice the other man is dressed the same as he was yesterday. He’s wearing the black blazer again, silk shirt is straining over his—what Peter can only call—breasts. He catches the sight of a thick suspender strap pressing into the softness of his chest, and finds that he has to look away and focus carefully on the menu he’s setting on the table in front of Angelina. He can tell that the other man is eyeing him questioningly.

“Where’s mine?” the cop asks, falling right into the trap Peter had impulsively set for him.

Turning to him with a fake as shit, winning smile, he says, “I thought your sister would be reading it to you. On account of you being a brain-damaged neanderthal.”

While Mark looks at him unblinkingly for a long moment and Angelina tries to smother her shocked laugh, Peter doesn’t let go of the smile. He rubs this thumb over the pen as he waits patiently for the cop to speak.

“Hm,” Mark finally says, considering, “Mother always did love dropping me on my head.”

Peter’s grin wavers, thinking the man might not be joking. His tone had been too serious. The amused expression falls off his face completely.

Fuck, he thinks, feeling a tinge of horror. Lindsey is going to kill him if he doesn’t kill himself first. Mark’s sister has her face buried in her hands. He’s royally cocked this up. He’s on the verge of apologizing when—

“I’m joking, Pete. I thought we were all friends here.”

Strahm relaxes, just marginally, but then Mark speaks again “Besides, I didn’t have a mother. In fact, you might be onto som—”

Peter interrupts him, turning to Angie, “What can I get you started with?”

“Orange juice, and some coffee for Oliver Twist over there.”

“Did you take him to the vet to get his taste buds looked at?” He’s still reflexively tapping his thumb against the clicker of the pen, not hard enough to trigger the mechanism.

She snaps her fingers, a smile playing at her mouth. “Damn, I forgot. I’m sure he’ll be nice this time,” she emphasizes with a pointed look at her brother.

Unable to help himself, he hazards a glance at the cop as well. Mark, upon realizing he’s being observed, darts his eyes from Peter’s right hand to his face. There’s something off about his expression, only furthered by a hard swallow. He looks almost… No. The idiot is probably just creaming himself over the thought of breakfast.

“I’ll be right out with that.”

When he pushes through the swinging door into the kitchen, he finds Lindsey pulling out another tray of muffins. She slides them onto the wheeled cooling rack and hums along to the radio blasting dad rock. His partner looks over at him with a smile. “Got a customer already?”

“Yeah,” he grumbles, snagging a glass serving decanter off a shelf, “jerkoff cop and his sister from yesterday.”

Peter can hear the frown in her voice as she speaks. “Want me to handle them?”

“No. I got it,” he calls on his way to the walk-in, decanter in hand. He fills it with orange juice from the dispenser before slipping out of the cooler and back into the main room of the kitchen to find and wrangle the lid onto the glass vessel.

Perez speaks like he hadn’t walked off, used to his comings and goings, “I’ll take the softball game then.”

“Not your call,” he says, thumbs bleaching white as he presses the sloped, metal lid down into the decanter until the rubber seal catches.

“Sure is, buddy. You’ll be using up all your goodwill today. I don’t want you terrorizing entire families this weekend. It’s bad for business.”

The retired agent lets out a ragged sigh on his way through the swinging door, finding himself unable to disagree. He knows his own limits, as much as he resents them, and so does Lindsey. Unlike her, he is willing to ignore them if it means getting the job done. It’s a miracle how she’s managed to stick around all these years. No one else has managed to tolerate his unwavering dedication. His first wife had left him for turning a blind eye to everything other than work, and the second had done the same for his devotion to Lindsey. Strahm is ever the dog with a bone, gnawing until he has reached the marrow and licked away every last trace of it.

He loves Perez like the sister he never got to have. Peter has both put his life on the line for her and taken the lives of other people for her continued survival. He has the unfortunate affliction of being willing to do anything for her, even going so far as to let her take some of the burden of this job off his shoulders. Atlas gets to have a partner.

Fetching a glass from under the counter, he tops it off with orange juice before stashing the serving jug in the mini-fridge where they keep the other cold items they need close at hand throughout the day—beverage pitchers, whipped cream, sliced lemons, the works.

Laughter travels across the diner, quick-footed and noisy. Strahm looks up at the interruption. The cop is holding the menu upside down and attempting to read the inverted text as he trails a thick finger over the print. He clearly cares about his sister. The love is written all over his stupid face, so thick that it’s enough to choke on.

Tamping down any lingering irritation as best as he can, Peter makes his way over to the siblings’ table. He is careful when he sets Angelina’s glass of orange juice down but doesn’t take the same care in the dismissive way he thunks Mark’s empty mug on the surface.

“Decided what you want yet?” he asks, pouring too much coffee into the mug in a repetition of yesterday. It laps the rim, begging to escape over the side.

At Angelina’s affirmative, Strahm sets the coffee carafe on the table and withdraws the notepad from his belt. While he jots down their order, he can’t help but be unsure if Mark is actually stupid or if he is just pretending. Either way, the man grates at him in such a way that he’d like to sink his fist into his face. It might relieve the inexplicable feeling crawling around under his skin like its trying to make a home. If he doesn’t act, it might buy real estate nestled away somewhere under his ribs.

Once he has everything marked down, he trades places with Lindsey after passing her the coffeepot and cooks the meal up in the back while she mans the front. They swap again as soon as he serves the places.

Behind the counter, he works at finishing up the restock order. Peter keeps finding his eyes wandering to the eating man rather than the task at hand. The solitude of the front only serves to allow him all the free rein he could possibly want to watch the man consume the meal Strahm had put in front of him. Each mouthful, each bob of that thick neck as he swallows, the tines of the fork disappearing between those overfilled lips; there’s something about it that he cannot look away from.

For now, he tells himself that the rapt attention is borne of disgust, that he’s watching for a complaint so he has cause to let out the aggression boiling inside of him. Later, once he has closed the diner for the night, he tries to convince himself that the tinge of satisfaction he’s feeling in this moment is because he is looking at proof of a job well done. The cop is clearly enjoying his food, and Strahm takes pride in his work.

Either way, he ignores the stirring that he feels in his jeans. He curses himself under his breath and puts all his focus into finishing the list he should have been locked into all along. He barely marks down the last item on the sheet before Lindsey pops through the swinging door, flushed from having completed her baking.

She ducks right under his arm and pulls the paper out from under his hand. Lindsey ignores his outraged noise. “Is this everything?”

“Yeah. Business has been picking up.”

“Mmm… Go water the plants for me? I’ll take over here.”

His partner makes a shooing gesture at him. She had been the one who insisted they have flowers in front of the diner and around the lot’s tree. Of course, the task of caring for them has fallen to Peter. He’d seen the state of her houseplants time and time again. Each of them inevitably finds a place at his rental home, handed over by a sheepish Lindsey. He all but has a jungle tucked away in his living room. Perez has many qualities. Unfortunately, a green thumb is not among them.

Casting a quick glance over at the table, he sees that the siblings are nearly done. They will be needing the check soon.

“Fine,” he says, giving in. It’s probably better for everyone is he’s not looking at the cop.

The bell chimes as he ducks out the front door. He checks the soil before he bothers to get the hose. In doing so, he finds out that Lindsey was right, the plants do need watered.

Peter is in the middle of watering the bed under the window when a shadow falls over the box. It consumes his, merges with it to create a twisted creature. There is something familiar in that figure, something deep in the core of his body groans in approval. Everything else fades away for a moment as he quietly observes it.

“Angie told me to apologize.”

Peter jerks, surprised by the rolling voice behind him. His finger slips off the sprayer. The water cuts off abruptly. He narrowly avoids clutching at his chest with his free hand like a stereotypical old man having a heart attack. With his heart pounding in his ears, he turns around to face Mark. Strahm doesn’t spay the cop with the hose. He wants to.

“So are you?” he asks with forced nonchalance.

Mark considers him. Those pale eyes survey the damp patches on Strahm’s jeans where the water had blown back. His stare seems to catch on the wet patch of t-shirt clinging to his stomach. “I don’t know. Is there something in it for me if I do?”

Strahm feels his neck go hot. If he didn’t know any better, he’d say the other man is flirting.

“Depends on how good the apology is.” The words are out of his mouth before his brain catches up. Damn it, Strahm, damn it, he thinks. His tendency to spout out whatever leapt to his tongue was a barely leashed thing that often broke free of its tether at the most inopportune of moments.

A smile curves the edges of Mark’s over-sized lips and the shorter man leans his bulk in just enough to make him feel cornered. Strahm has to fight not to react in any direction; either to shove him away or to pull him in. Disgust is warring with interest. He frowns. He barely knows this man. The retired agent would like to know what the fuck is wrong with him.

Sudden surprise flairs in those eyes and Mark withdraws, saying, “I’m sorry. Excuse me.”

Peter is left standing alone on the pavement, hose in hand, as the other man lumbers away to the navy Crown Victoria parked at the meter. He’s wet and confused. His jeans feel as tight as the scar cutting across his cheek.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Wednesday passes without further incident. Thursday’s only outstanding feature is the arrival of the order they had placed on Tuesday. Friday night sees Strahm helping to prepare everything for Lindsey’s catering on Saturday. There is no sign of Mark during the three day span. Only his sister stops by the diner. She gives no explanation for her brother’s absence and Peter does not ask.

Over the days, Strahm and Perez get to know Angelina. They learn that she loves her brother just as much as he loves her. She reveals that she and Mark were system kids. He has taken care of her like his own family since the moment they met at the home of shared foster parents. The adults had ended up not wanting Mark and despite only intending to send him back, they’d had to send both children away. Hoffman and Acomb had been stamped with a “do-not-separate” notice when Mark had later broken the nose of one of the staff members in response to being told they were going to be split up. Another family had wanted to foster just her.

Hoffman had filed for custody of her as soon as he aged out of the system and the means to show he could provide for her. He had been the youngest cop the precinct had assigned the role of detective to. Angie wishes her brother would hover less and worry about himself more. She thinks that he is burning the candle at both ends.

Over those days, Strahm’s worldview around the man shifts. The flames of disdain that had been raging inside of him peter out and turn into a charred bed of ash. He still wants to punch the man in the face, still wants to rough him up until he’s marked with the proof of Strahm’s fists—of his mouth—but he might soothe the man’s wounds afterwards with careful passes of his tongue.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Lindsey has just barely left for the softball field with her small truck laden down with the necessary food and supplies for the catering ordeal when the bell above the door jangles. Strahm looks up from the coffee filters he’s separating to see that it’s Mark. He is the first customer of the morning.

The detective doesn’t take a seat at the table, instead, he settles himself onto a stool at the counter. Strahm can’t help but notice that the seat Mark chooses is the one beside the stool that his sister has been occupying for the past few days. It’s as though his body instinctively knows where Angie resides and always keeps that space carved out for her. Peter is sure that if something were to ever happen to her, there would be a gaping hole in the detective’s life, a place where his sister should fill.

Something gives way in his chest at the sight of him. He’d never admit it, but he’s irrationally missed him.

“Morning,” he says, putting a mug down in front of him. He leaves enough room for Mark’s sugar this time as he pours the coffee in, unprompted. He’s being uncharacteristically nice. It could be that he’s making up for the lack of his partner. His rough edges can’t be too sharp when she’s not around to patch up the cuts he might make.

Any positive feelings at the other man being back at the diner are dashed when the first words out of his mouth aren’t a good morning in return, or even a thanks, but a “You wife has been getting real close with my sister. You guys a pineapple couple or what?”

Mark’s eyes are flat, deceptively calm. Uncomfortably, Peter feels as though he’s looking into the eyes of an attacking shark. He barely keeps the coffeepot he’s holding from slipping from his grasp. He’s suddenly all too aware of the wedding band weighing down his ring finger. It had been the same one from both his previous marriages. The retired FBI agent should have known the second marriage was doomed to fall apart from the moment he decided to not pick out new wedding rings with his fiancée. It probably hadn’t helped, that unbeknownst to ex-wife number two, he had proposed to her with the engagement ring he’d gotten back after the divorce of his first wife. Both women had been right to end their marriages to him. He’d been a shitty husband. His heart hadn’t been in it. Neither woman had been what he was really looking for.

On the Lindsey’s behalf, he’s offended for Mark even thinking she would stoop so low as to be married to him. She deserves better than his negligence and repression. He knows it and she knows it. In all the years that they’ve been partners, they have never done anything more than share a few awkward hugs.

“Lindsey and I aren’t married,” he says firmly.

“Just you then?”

“I’m not married. Neither of us are married.”

“You wear a ring. Seems awful married to me.”

“It keeps some of the old ladies from trying to mount me in the stock room,” he answers, dry.

They sit on that in silence. Strahm places the carafe back on the hotplate. Something nags at him. He turns to Mark only to find that he’s still staring at him. “What the fuck is a pineapple couple?”

“Swingers, Pete. I asked if you were a swinger.”

“What? No. Mark. No. No.”

The seated man looks strangely smug. “Good. I don’t share,” he says as if it were the most casual thing in the world and flips open a menu.

For a moment, Strahm thinks his brain shuts off. He reaches blindly for a rag out of the sanitizer bucket and starts scrubbing the counter with it. Mark’s voice comes to him like Peter is under water, distorted and faint.

“Eggs and bacon for me today. Some multigrain if you’ve got it.”

Pulling his notepad from his belt, Strahm scribbles down the order. He doesn’t need to but he needs to fight for a finger hold of normality here.

“Small breakfast. Sure you don’t want to stuff your mouth with anything else?” As soon as the words hit the air, Strahm wishes he could somehow suck them back in. Why is he forever incapable of thinking before he speaks?

Hoffman shrugs. “Nah, Angie’s not here to steal half the food off my plate. Besides, what I want isn't on the menu anyway.” His eyes feel like a physical caress as they map over Peter’s body. The meaning is blatant, not remotely subtle.

Peter opens his mouth, closes it.

“I’ll be back with that,” he says. On his way to the kitchen’s swinging door, he tries to keep his pace measured as he escapes Mark’s all too interested eyes. He doesn't want the detective to see how much their interaction has rattled him.

Once in the kitchen, he realizes that he needs to get ingredients out of the walk-in and pops the latch to step inside the small space. Instead of gathering what he had come for, Peter finds himself sitting on a tomato box. He leans back, pressing the sides of his clenched hands to his brow bone. Letting out a loud sigh that’s more of a growl, the diner owner sags into the cold metal of the wall behind it. The change in temperature is enough of a difference to shock his system back into some sense of reality.

What the fuck? he thinks, irritation creeping into his thoughts like an old friend. The detective had acted like he would gladly engage him in a physical fight over coffee and now he’s making overt passes at him. It’s enough to send his head spinning. Going over their interactions, he’s drawing the conclusion that perhaps the other man had been flirting with him since the start, trying different tactics to get his attention like a snot-nosed brat pulling a girl’s hair on the playground before realizing that honey catches more flies.

Being in the cooler finally catches up with him and he wastes no time in getting to his feet. He hates tight spaces, always has. Eventually, they make him feel like the walls are closing in inch by anxiety-inducing inch. A nonsensical section of his hind brain fears he will get crushed between them, rendered into a pool of fat floating atop pulpy innards and shattered bones.

Once free of the walk-in, he fries up the bacon and the eggs. He slips some toast onto the plate before carrying it out to the front. It’s hot against his fingers, the heat soaking through his callouses.

Peter has a moment to observe Mark when he pauses in the doorway. The swinging door is propped open against his elbow. The detective is sitting quietly, sketching something out on a napkin with the pen that Strahm must have unintentionally left behind after he took down the order. Once Mark catches sight of him, he flips the napkin over. As he does, Peter gets a glimpse of the drawing. It’s depicting something mechanical, like a medieval torture device made modern. An alarm bell clangs in the back of his head.

Neither of them bring up the drawing. Mark steadily tucks into his breakfast. Peter pretends not to be watching him. He thinks part of his brain dies when Mark has to lick away a smear of ketchup off his own lip. For a moment, Peter has the thought of his own tongue doing the work for the detective instead.

The retired agent ends up nearly snarling at him when he asks for a coffee refill.

next chapter -»

Moving out of the sunny sprawl of California to the grim skies of Washington hadn’t been a mistake. There had been too much baggage in the Golden State for either of them to feel comfortable. Driver knows that Ken would always feel the pull of Barbieland like an addiction he couldn’t shake—he’d have always found himself worrying the inside of his cheek raw over the nonsensical idea that Driver could possibly ever think he was not enough.

As for Driver himself… Well, he’s never belonged anywhere before. Not really. Not until Ken had come along and rolled right over the hood of his project Chevy to land on the pavement in the glow of the headlights. The dazed man had been miraculously unbroken physically if not mentally. It had been abundantly clear that he was the purpose Driver had spent his entire life waiting for.

While leaving for northern pastures hadn’t been a mistake, Driver was of the opinion that picking this damned apartment had been. The neighbors are fighting again with a vengeance.

A glass smashing against the wall sends him straight out of bed to cross the threadbare carpet to the window. He slips his fingers between the slats making up the blinds and sightlessly peers out into the night. The mechanic is desperately trying to keep from thinking of older fights—more personal ones.

The woman neighbor’s voice rises shrilly. She is accusing her male partner of some infraction or another. Despite his best efforts to keep himself in the moment, he is dunked under the surface. His lungs are caught in a cruel twist. He can’t breathe.

Splatters of blood on the dinner table. Gurgling. His father dropping face down into his plate, crushing the peanut butter and baloney sandwich he’d been provided. His mother sitting down in her customary seat as if nothing were taking place. And Driver sits there, small, trying to be smaller. Why had he had that growth spurt? Why hadn’t he stayed stunted enough to be useful. If he hadn’t grown, his father wouldn’t have had to die for not—

Behind him, he hears Ken roll over in their shared bed. He listens to the other man sleepily pawing through the bedding in the subconscious desire to find him. Even in his sleep, Ken always tries to reach out to Driver. Knowing that the slumbering man is there is a floating piece of debris in the ocean of his mind. Driver latches onto it like the drowning man that he is. He sucks in one breath, then another.

Driver hangs onto the thin comfort of Ken being in the same room, even after there is the distantly audible rattle of cutlery in the kitchen drawer. Bile creeps up his throat and threatens to forge an exit faster than he can swallow it down. He strains his eyes, staring into the parking lot. He can make out the sleek, silver-gray body of his Malibu. She’s waiting in the darkness, looking for all the world like a nurse shark resting in the sediment.

His fingers itch to feel the curve of her steering wheel through a barrier of skin-tight leather. He can’t slip into the driver’s seat. Not right now. He fears that if he does, he might never come back. He can’t do that to Ken.

Neither of them are worth much without the other.

Ken cannot survive without him and there’s a cruel part of Driver that likes it that way. He has had a persistent thought that, one day, the other man will become independent enough to leave him behind. A kinder part of Driver hopes that he will. The wheelman knows that he is nothing more than a poison. Too many have had their lives torn apart as a result of his feelings. He doesn’t want Ken to be another causality of his love.

He is so wrapped up in the ghosts haunting the folds of his gray matter that it takes him a long moment to comprehend anything other than the familiar shape of his vehicle. Tumbling, white flecks drift without purpose on their journey to the ground. More and more of them start falling, forcing him to look at the world through patches of white.

It’s snowing. The strangeness of it is enough to draw his attention away from the commotion on the other side of the wall. He hasn’t seen snow since he was a kid. His foster family had taken him with them on a trip out of state years ago, long before he had taken their car and disappeared from their lives.

He turns away from the window, nearly slipping out of his socks in his haste to get to the bed. His knee dips into the mattress. The pressure is just enough to tilt the man laying on the surface.

“Ken,” he says, hushed from the late hour. He clears his throat and tries again. “Ken, wake up.”

The other man stirs with a sleepy grunt, clenching his eyes closed. He tries to burrow down into the blanket away from Driver’s insistent form.

He gives him a little shake on the upper arm. “C’mon, man.”

“Whazzssut?”

“Got something to show you.”

“T… morrow?” Ken tries.

“Now.”

At that, the other man cracks open an eyelid. It’s truly a herculean effort on Ken’s part if the jaw-popping yawn he lets out is any indication. All the same, he lets Driver all but drag him out of their bed and onto his bare feet. He doesn’t even protest after the mechanic throws a wad of clothing at him, only begins to dress himself.

While Ken struggles to make sense of his shoelaces in his foggy state, Driver shrugs into his layers of jackets. He still hasn’t been able to commit to buying himself a winter coat. He’d made sure Ken had one at the first sight of him shivering from the chill. He’d been too worried to let it go. Ken is a Malibu man through and through. He’s still head-turningly tan despite the prolonged lack of sun.

“Is something wrong?” Ken asks, more alert. The last time Driver had bundled them out of the door, the wrong guy had gotten pissed off about a job. He’d been prepared to put bullets in Driver—somewhat acceptable to the wheelman but not ideal—and in Ken—completely unacceptable and unforgivable.

“No,” he says simply.

He finds his keys and pauses for a moment by the doorway. “’s something fun,” he tacks on belatedly.

At that, Ken perks up. “Cool. Cool. Is it a car? A horse? Did the neighbors finally move—No, wait, I still hear them. Did…”

Driver lets the other man’s speculating wash over him. He simply takes his partner’s hand in his and leads him out of the unit and down the communal hallway after locking the front door behind them. Even though the leather of Driver’s gloves and the fabric of Ken’s own, he can feel the warmth of every millimeter of contact.

The chilly air of Spokane had been enough of a novelty to them, but what Driver is about to show him is something else entirely. He doubts that the snow Ken claims to have seen during his time in Barbieland had been any less fabricated and artificial than the place Ken described as being home.

Every time the other man mentions anything about his past residence, Driver humors him despite how outlandish the whole thing seems. In the blonder man’s defense, communes in Southern California get weird. It’s good Ken got out when he did because Driver has no idea what the hell was all going on in a place named after a kids’ toy.

Ken’s stream of words comes to a sudden halt as Driver shoulders the door leading out of the apartment building open. The snow is just beginning to stick to the frigid ground. He steps out into the powder, towing the other man along with him. It crunches ever so slightly under the soles of their shoes with every step. It’s surreal.

Everything around them is muffled. Traffic sounds as though it’s happening a planet away. The sky is gray and drawn in close like a shroud, even in the dark. Driver feels gets the sensation that they are the only two people in the world, left to navigate an Earth abandoned by its former inhabitants for decades. The only disruptions in the growing sprawl of snow are theirs. They are leaving their marks on the world, even just for a fleeting moment.

Their fingers are still linked together—a lifeline.

Driver turns to look back at Ken when he feels resistance. The other man is standing still, head tipped back. There is an air of rapt wonder in his posture.

“It’s beautiful,” he says, meeting Driver’s eyes. A dazzling grin is stretched wide across his face. In this moment, he is carefree. The weight of his freedom in the reality of the “real world” has been lifted off his shoulders, even just for a moment.

“Yeah,” he agrees, “’s real pretty.”

He is not looking at the snow when the words leave his mouth.

“What did your family do for Christmas? Like… when you were a kid?”

Rather than a verbal response, a crackle of static emanates from the phone. It’s accompanied by breathing. If you had to make a guess at what the person on the other end of the line is doing, you’d say that Six is walking—nearly running.

He is coming home to you. Finally.

This is the confirmation phone call that you’ve been waiting for. You’ve answered so many spam calls over the past few weeks just hoping each unfamiliar number might be your guy. The relief you’d felt—and still feel—this morning at hearing his voice is enough to make you weaken at the knees.

You hate it when he goes on jobs. His career… It terrifies you. There’s an all too real chance that each sendoff you give him might be the last time you ever lay eyes on the man. As skilled at his line of work as he is, there’s always the risk his luck will run out at the worst possible time. The sickening part is that you would never know. There would be no one to tell you. You would just have to sit with his absence as the days turned into weeks into months, and, eventually, into years and decades without any answers on how close to home that he had died.

The fear only makes his return all the sweeter.

His silence at your inquiry draws on for too long, and you bite at your lips, suddenly concerned that you had pried too much. Six is never one to talk about his family. You’ve gotten the story surrounding his incarceration. He’d told you, too laden with forced joviality, about his father and his brother and how he’d felt as though he had been made to choose between them. He has been closed off about the rest. All you know beyond Six’s choice is that his little brother thinks that he died in prison.

“Oh, just the usual stuff,” he says, after a series of muffled voices and the beeping of some scanner. “Mom’d say we got to open a present on Christmas Eve. We’d do a big dinner with some relative of hers the next day… nothing too special.”

You nod over the phone, already mulling an idea over in your mind, but then catch yourself with the reminder that he can’t see you. “Gotcha.”

“Why’d you ask? Is there something...?”

“Mm-mm. I was just curious. I’m always interested in you,” you admit.

That gets a quiet laugh out of him. Through the static, you could almost swear he called you nosy. He’d be right for calling you that—you hoard your knowledge about him as if it were a precious treasure.

“About what time will you be home?”

“Around midnight give or take. You don’t need to wait up for me.”

“You know I will though.”

“Oh, darling,” he says, so soft it’s almost a wordless exhale over the line before it goes dead.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Upon reflection, this idea of yours might be too much.

Laying, barely clad in the facsimile of clothing, underneath Christmas tree had seemed like fun time following the excitement of the phone call, but you’re starting to have some doubts creep in. The edge of a comically large bow brushes against your arm as you shift. You’re certain this only works in crappy, bottom of the barrel porno tapes from the 80s.

You sigh. Even if all you and Six get out of this is a laugh when he gets back; just seeing him smile will be worth it. Until then, you’re resigned to keeping yourself entertained with the television across the room. It’s playing one of Hallmark’s endless holiday movies. This one is the same worn-out story of a rich woman meeting a grumpy man while she goes out to the country and everyone makes an ass out of themselves. Eventually, they fall and love and yadda yadda yadda. It only barely makes for tolerable watching while you wait for Six to come through the front door.

The woman and the man are dancing at a castle with all their friends in a sentimental push to redeem the tone-deaf main characters when you hear a distant scraping of metal in metal. You jolt out of your slight doze when you realize that it’s Six working the house key into the locks. He’s home.

While he rustles around in the foyer, you have enough time to straighten your attire—or lack thereof—and settle into a position that hopefully doesn’t look like a dead body someone had stuffed under the tree for Six to find. That would be a mood killer for sure.

Six steps into the living room, stripped of his outerwear and shoes. You have just a moment to catch the way he scans over the space—accessing, checking exits, doing the thing that has become second nature to him—before his eyes lock onto you. It’s as though you are a particularly vulnerable rabbit that has just been spotted by a predator and will shortly be devoured. You freeze in place so thoroughly, you hold your breath in the face of his intensity.

He crosses the room, not letting his focus waver, and he drops into a crouch at your side. The lights of the Christmas tree reflect off his face. They provide enough illumination to allow you to see the amused sparkle in the depths of his gaze. Your held breath finally escapes.

“I don’t think I’ve been very good this year,” he jokes, already entertaining the fantasy you’ve set up. You want to groan. This was a mistake. Absolutely.

Thoughts of laughing this off blow right out of your brain when he reaches a hand out and trails a light touch from your knee up to your exposed thigh. It travels higher and grows heavier until he comes to a standstill at the slope of your hip and grips. The flimsy fabric that’s barely covering you bunches underneath his palm. The mirth is gone from his eyes, snuffed out like the final candle at a dinner table. It’s been replaced by something darker, hungrier.

Six has clearly been a starved man in the absence of you.

You swallow. “Well, you can always do another good deed. Just to cover your bases and all that.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmmhm…” you trail off, biting back a noise at the way he tightens his grip expectantly. You won’t be going anywhere he doesn’t move you. You try to steady yourself and continue, face on fire, “You can start by unwrapping your Christmas Eve present.”

He takes you up on your proposal. With no more effort than moving a cushion, he flips you from your side onto your back. Your barely-there underwear gets tossed to the side after he slides them down and off. His fingers dig into the meat of your hips as he kisses his way down your stomach. You willingly part your legs for him.

“I missed you,” Six admits into the soft skin of your inner thighs. He soothes the burn of his facial hair with lingering presses of his mouth.

Crinkling the ribbon wrapped around your chest in a bow, you reach down and run a hand through his hair. The paler, bleached ends of it have taken on the rainbow hue of the twinkling lights strung on the branches overhead. He looks like a worshiper bathed in the light of a stained glass window. It’s hard to believe this man would be down on his knees for you, but the proof of his devotion is right under your palm.

“I missed you too. So much,” you respond. Your breath catches and you’re about to make a fool of yourself and beg him not to leave again, to not take another job that might be his last, but Six, once again saves you. He closes the gap between his mouth and the juncture of your body in one swift motion.

You gasp. Your fingers clench into the short strands of Six’s hair. You are desperately trying to find a way ground yourself as he licks a confident stripe between your lips. He groans as though he’s finally being served a meal that’s been a long time coming.

Every one of his movements feels magnified into a sensation that resonates through your body. You can’t help but rock upwards against his face as he withdraws for a quick breath before resuming the task he’s set himself to. The curve of his smile is a fleeting, self satisfied thing—then he’s solidly pinning you in place atop the tree skirt with a firm hand against the swell of your mons. His thumb neatly rests right above your slit. Any minute adjustment of his hand would have him spreading you wide open for his eager mouth. His fingers twitch as if considering the option.

His tongue finds your clit, swiping over it in a grotesquely indulgent motion before flicking under the hood in a languid spiral. Your body sings for him. You thrash against his hold, a whimper building in your throat before escaping in a long keen. In response, he sucks, drawing you between his lips.

It’s too much. Before you’re even fully aware of your own body’s reactions, your orgasm hits you as hard as a train might hit a brick wall. You writhe in place. He works you through it while you spasm and twitch against his tongue. With no effort at all, Six keeps your legs apart despite your efforts to clamp them closed from over-stimulation.

Finally, you frantically pat at his shoulder, wordlessly pleading for him to relent. Your legs feel no more solid than Jello. He pulls back at once. Your stomach swoops as you realize that his goatee is glistening with your fluids.

“Let’s get you in bed so I can unwrap you properly?” It comes out as a teasing question. Six’s voice is hoarse—rough with barely contained desire. With your consent, he won’t be letting you do more than catch your breath tonight, not until he’s had his fill of you.

You nod, still winded but willing atop the rumpled tree skirt, as he shifts up onto his haunches and eases one hand under your shoulders and the other under the backs of your knees. He picks you up without so much as an exhale in exertion. Six is so sure and confident as he carries you into the bedroom that it’s though you’re nothing at all in his arms, even as you feel his biceps flexing against the weight.

“Is this going to be our Christmas tradition?” you ask, finally able to speak while he navigates the two of you through the doorway. It’s a miracle you hadn’t accidentally kicked the entire tree over, but you’re more than willing to recreate the experience in the coming years.

He lets out a low laugh and presses a kiss to your mouth. You can taste yourself on his lips.

“Maybe.”