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Peter Strahm decided to go home with Mark Hoffman on the first full moon of December. Maybe he remembers that detail because of the moon’s circular reflection in the water. They passed their block's fountain to get to Peter’s apartment, down for maintenance and liquid still as ice.
They were no more than strangers, really. Mark was from another department altogether. Peter was FBI. The Jigsaw murders weren’t officially even being federally investigated yet.
Although they had exchanged pleasantries before, a few words here and there, they never actually talked through anything that could be considered a full conversation until Mark found him smoking in the alley behind the police station. Barely a millimeter through his cigarette. Mark had a cigarette too, wedged between two large fingers Peter pointedly refused to stare at.
"Agent," Mark greeted.
"Detective," he greeted back.
They smoked in silence. Peter's lungs burned. He thought trying it would work; something new, to break up the monotony. But he wasn't a smoker, and neither was there a cure for apathy.
"I don't smoke," Mark admitted.
Irony, Peter mused.
"Neither do I."
They stomped out their cigarettes simultaneously and Mark huffed out a sound similar to amusement though Peter withheld a hunch that the man might have never laughed in his life.
Peter really took Mark's appearance in, then. Eyes scanned over the broad body like any investigator’s would, interest piqued by his outfit's color coding. All black, save for the cufflinks
"Just came from a funeral," Mark explained bluntly.
Peter nodded and pondered apologizing, but he didn't know whose funeral the man could attend, strangers that they were. He knew of officers who would go to the funerals of Jigsaw victims that never got saved. The cruel cases that ache in the mind of every decent cop in the precinct.
"Don't know why I'm out here," Peter said. Aimlessness wasn’t normally something he admitted to. Nor did he open up, not that this was that, but well, maybe he was looking for a smidge of solace.
"This job doesn't always give you what you need."
Peter scoffed.
"What I need?" He scoffed once more, without any weight to it the second time. "I need to get laid, I think that's what I actually need."
He didn't think anything of his own comment. It just came out of his mouth and spread through the air like a dandelion in the wind. Gone and forgotten. Something he might have said to Agent Perez over the water cooler, or even his Uncle if the guy ever actually picked up the phone.
Mark's voice grew closer and sounded like hot coals by his ear.
"How do you feel about fucking men?"
Peter coughed as if he'd taken a fresh hit from his cigarette, when in all actuality it lay squashed on the ground at the behest of his own footprint.
"What kind of question is that?" he spat.
"It's a question," came Mark's boilerplate deflection.
A silence swept over them. Mark didn't push. Peter didn't concede, not for a pregnant interim. Maybe Peter was still hung up on his urge to dispense with his apathy, maybe that was the only explanation for his consideration. Maybe he was horny; does it matter, anyway?
"Is this a don't ask don't tell scenario, Detective Hoffman?" Peter asked carefully, side eyeing him.
"This isn't the military, Strahm."
"Government is the government is the government."
"I never go around asking nor do I go around telling," Mark elaborated finally, and slipped his hands out of his pockets.
The tension transformed and grew teeth.
Adrenaline spiked through Peter but he surprisingly liked it. The edge he felt was blanketing finely over his senses. It was the anticipation of guilty pleasure however brief or disconnected.
"In that case, I'll tell you exactly how I feel about fucking men," Peter promised.
Mark rammed him into the wardrobe with calculated ferocity, forcing a moan out of Peter who forcibly cut it off before it could collapse into an embarrassing whimper.
He was being thoroughly had.
By a man he barely knew.
Only half their clothes were taken off, scattered to the floor like sparks of a wildfire fueling the passion in their wake.
Those long, firm fingers wrapped around the hair at the base of his neck and tugged so hard Peter was suddenly staring right at the humming ceiling fan.
He made a tight noise as Mark nibbled on his neck, exploring every cavity.
"I don't normally do this," Peter said airily. He sounded mesmerized; maybe he was.
"Yeah, me neither," Mark grumbled, then proceeded to fall to his knees and attack Peter's belt.
"Oh Christ."
Peter helped Mark fish his cock out of his trousers and could barely keep his knees from buckling when the detective licked his plump lips and swallowed him whole.
There was barely time to moan before Mark was pulling off, a string of spit connecting to his bottom lip. It made Peter throb and leak. The hard-ass detective shot a hot glance in his direction, and in a deadpan tone said, “Best thing I’ve tasted all week.”
He sucked Peter down again.
Peter’s cock twitched in Mark’s mouth as he grunted through a wave of fiery arousal. One hand flew to the man’s disarrayed hair, the other flew to the edge of the wardrobe. His fingers were plastered to the wood in a white-knuckled grip as he was blown within an inch of his life.
“Fuck that’s so good,” Peter groaned.
Mark hummed around him, then sucked harder. Peter groaned again, trying not to let himself just fuck the man’s face like an animal. Despite how welcomed he felt it would be.
It was over all too soon when Mark leaned off him with a pop.
Peter’s cock bobbed and smacked his chin.
Mark almost smiled, then moved his hands from Peter’s shivering thighs to his shaft, pumping him slowly as he gazed up at him with dark lust-infested eyes.
“You’re going to fuck me hard,” Mark commanded. “Got that?”
There was no fucking way Peter was denying him, not now.
“Uh huh.”
“Good.”
Mark forced Peter to let him prep himself.
Too horny to protest, Peter allowed it after his second half-hearted insistence. Turns out he shouldn’t have been worried about being seen as a poor bedmate. Mark wasn’t any less active and communicative in their intercourse preparing himself than he was sucking Peter’s cock.
“Hit my ass,” he growled, three fingers deep in himself.
They made a squelching noise with every tug.
Peter was leaning on the edge of the bed with one knee, stroking himself slowly as he watched Mark fuck himself on his fingers. Mark was in the doggy position, face pressed obscenely into the sheets with his ass propped up high like a whore’s, one arm stretched behind his back.
“What?” Peter’s hand stalled on his cock.
“Slap it.”
“You mean…spank you?”
“Whatever,” Mark grumbled, ripping his fingers out of his ass. His pink hole winked at Peter, something that made Peter’s brain freeze for so long that Mark had to reach farther back and scratch impatiently at his hip. “Move it.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve done it this way,” Peter explained, perhaps as a way to apologize for any impending inexperience. He’s not sure how much Mark gets fucked in the ass.
He wasn’t bad, but was he better than okay?
“Don’t care,” Mark muttered. “Hurry up.”
Peter snarled at Mark’s curt attitude as his confidence finally caught up with him. He spanked Mark’s right ass cheek so hard the man let out a shocked whimper, every muscle tensing.
“How about shutting up and taking what I give you?” Peter hissed as he pressed the tip of his cock to Mark’s twitching hole.
It slipped inside an inch because of how much lube and preparation had gotten involved. Peter immediately pulled out, not ready to stop teasing the other man.
“Fuck,” Mark muttered breathily, hips thrusting back.
Peter’s dick slid up his crease, catching on his hole again but not slipping inside. This went on for a while as he made Mark suffer. He sunk inside again, intentionally. Mark made an enraged noise when he pulled out again and kissed the rim with the tip, bordering on mocking.
“Put it in or I’ll shove you down and ride it until I make you come twice,” Mark hissed out, squirming backwards. He was powerless with Peter’s hands crushing his hips, however.
With a laugh, Peter sneered,
“Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
“Fuck you.”
Peter spanked him again and Mark moaned, ass hitching up even higher. “You’re kind of a whore,” he noted dryly. It wasn’t something he’d say to just anyone, but Mark seemed like the type of guy to like that.
“Please,” came the muffled plea. Mark had shoved his face into a pillow, and obviously didn’t want to be heard while at the same time he begged Peter to just plow him already.
Hell, Peter couldn’t argue with that.
He bottomed out entirely and just barely held onto the pleasurable cry that crawled up his throat in an instant. Held onto every curse scraping at his tongue, bartering to escape his mouth.
Mark wasn’t holding back.
He pushed himself up on his palms with a sharp noise and started fucking himself back and forth on the cock balls deep inside him. Peter wasn’t going to let him have the upper hand so he gripped him by his hip’s handles with a snarl and started fucking him like he was trying to dig a deeper hole inside him. Mark cried out, the exhalation hoarse and tapered with charged lust.
Their union was utterly pornographic.
Never in his life has Peter fucked someone who lived up to any expectation or preexisting notions of ideal sex. Mark was all of that, receptive, reciprocative, and fucking gorgeous.
Mark’s emotionless façade (and that’s what it was, wasn’t it, a façade) began to slide off him like water off a duck’s back. It seemed so simple to unlock this part of him, Peter nearly fumbled.
Mark’s face, half-turned against the pillow, twisted with need.
“Fuck, fuck!” Mark’s groaning elongated on every verbal as an inspired Peter started to punch into him rather than thrust in a rhythm. “Holy fuck, harder.”
"Any harder and I'll make you bleed," Peter ground out, fucking him sharply.
"Promises, promises."
Peter spanked Mark so hard, a red mark instantly formed. He spanked over that too. Mark let out an appreciative noise and clenched his ass around Peter’s sensitive cock.
“Shit, that’s good,” Peter murmured on his spine.
Mark bared his teeth in an almost-grin, absolutely feral, then buried his face in fabric again as Peter kept going, spanking him successively. In staccatoed bursts.
“Back,” Mark said as Peter’s orgasm began to build.
“Huh?”
“Back, now.” Mark turned his head so his saliva-glistening mouth wasn’t buried and drooling in the pillow, so Peter could hear him better in his incoherence. “On my back.”
Two minutes ago, Peter would have protested.
Instead, he pulled out and flipped Mark over without any chivalry. Mark hitched up a leg on his shoulder for him and Peter fell onto his own palms after he slipped back inside. Fucked him as hard as he could from the new angle. Mark’s head craned back as he arched closer to Peter.
This meant Peter wasn’t going to last long.
Mark was a beautiful man, feminine and masculine in different ways. Broad shouldered yet sensitive in stature. Eyes glazed with sex, sculpted muscles tight with dawning orgasm.
It was the first time he’d ever seen the man vulnerable.
They both got louder when the lube started to dry. Mark didn’t mind, from the sound of it. It made it rougher, better as skin dragged against skin in primal intimacy.
“Should I touch you?” Peter gritted out, grinding his cock back and forth. He felt his climax coming, and suddenly regretted fucking him hard and not dragging this night out.
The image of them making love instead of fucking startled him, however.
“Don’t,” Mark responded softly. “I’ll come.”
On cue, Mark’s body clenched tighter, and he gasped more with each thrust.
“Fuck.” Peter buried his face in Mark’s neck and gasped when he felt nails inside the skin on his back, scraping bloody lines down his spine. “Oh fuck.”
No condoms, Peter thought. No nothing.
Fuck.
“Don’t you dare pull out,” Mark growled through a hiccupping intake of breath. “Come on, come on, there yeah.” Peter must have found a really good angle because it had Mark’s voice pitching so high he feared he’d hurt the man. “Jesus, don’t stop motherfucker. Don’t fucking stop.”
Peter shook his head, speechless.
He wasn’t going to stop.
Orgasm crashed over him and turned every individual limb to jelly. He collapsed atop Detective Hoffman and the sensitive touch of his stomach on Mark’s gyrating dick was apparently enough to make the other man shoot off. Mark’s nails sunk into his skin further and Peter hissed through the last vestiges of euphoria, pain muddling the pleasure. Somehow, that didn’t bother him.
He never knew he was into hard sex like this.
He wondered if Mark was, or knew.
Their hips twitched into each other, chasing aftershocks. Mark’s ass eventually nudged away from his cock and they separated dirtily, pale release oozing out from between them.
Peter forgot how messy gay sex could get.
“Nice effort, Agent,” Mark breathed.
He sounded so fucked out that the backhanded compliment didn’t even register. Irritated, Peter huffed and reached for tissues from the bedside counter. Perfunctory, he cleaned between Mark’s legs and ignored the demeaning glare he earned in response to helping him out.
“So you like getting hit,” Peter pointed out for lack of anything better to say.
“Who doesn’t?”
“Lots of people, actually.”
“Okay.”
Peter gauged him, scanning over his heaving and hickey-splotched body. He prayed he didn’t sound too hopeful when he inquired, “Anything else you like?”
Mark smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
The expression on his face was empty, drained of something integral. Life maybe, but that could be marked down to how tired they suddenly both were.
Peter itched at his back.
“I gotta go disinfect these,” he murmured. “You gonna stay?”
Mark grunted. Peter assumed that was a ‘yes.’
Mark Hoffman laid sideways, the back of his head resting on one of Peter’s furry pecs. Peter laid vertical with his head propped up on two pillows. He glanced at the bag he'd thrown on the bedside table earlier before he had reached out for the buttons of Mark's shirt.
"Wanna share a smoke?" he asked, despite the fact neither of them smoke.
"Yeah, why not," Mark responded, despite the fact neither of them smoke.
It took Peter a minute or two to light the damn cancer stick but he sucked in a drawn out puff from it when he did, handing it instantly to Mark who mirrored him. He expected to get it handed back to him but Mark said, "Here," and took another huff of it, keeping the smoke in his mouth.
He leaned up and Peter instinctively went, lips parting as he got kissed.
Mark reached a hand up to hold Peter's jaw, holding him still as he transferred the smoke into his mouth in a disturbingly intimate gesture. When Mark pulled back, a gray transparent trail between their lips danced and dissipated.
Peter couldn't hold the penny-tasting fire in his mouth much longer, and exhaled it all in one stuttering breath.
Without any inflection to warn Peter that it was coming, Mark kissed him again.
The smoke transfer had been normal, especially cinematically speaking. Peter assumed this lip-lock wasn't normal for a one-night-stand. It wasn't disagreeable, though. Mark kind of tasted like meat, but the seasoned part of meat that tasted like too much and never enough for a savory palette. His soft kissing contrasted that, however, as he parted Peter's lips gently with his tongue and made out with him like a schoolgirl testing the waters with her crush. And those lips of his were sinful. It felt wrong to press up against them with his own, they were too perfect. Peter kissed back, but not for long.
Their lips made a slick sound as they separated.
Mark panted heavily.
Peter's eyes fluttered open again.
"We can go again if you want," Peter suggested casually. He wasn't very young, but getting hard wasn't an issue when he hadn't gotten off with someone else like this for nearly a decade now.
Flat out, Mark stared at him.
Creepily, without one blink.
"I have to go," Mark claimed. An off-putting and abrupt urgency drenched his tone.
"Right." Peter sat up so he could lean against the headboard. It wasn’t unexpected, after all. "You know your way out of the complex, no?"
"Mhm."
“See you.”
“Yeah.” He sat up, turned to meet Peter's eyes. "Thank you, Peter."
Peter swallowed, unsure what to say.
Mark gathered his things. Shucked on his tight pants and didn’t say anything as Peter watched with an obvious gleam of interest. Mark buttoned his shirt, covering his plush upper chest.
Peter sighed and watched him leave without a goodbye.
Curiously, he smoked the rest of the cigarette that had touched Mark’s unique lips and pondered why the gut-wrenching ache in his chest felt so much like regret.
Peter occasionally returned to the back alley behind the station. Mark never found him there again. Peter wondered if it was because he was bad at sex or because Mark just didn’t think of repeating things like that. He probably got laid and never again considered that night.
He knew he should do the same.
After the seventh visit, Peter didn’t return to the alley.
If he targeted more ire towards the detective after that than was called for, that was nobody’s business but his own.
Never could Peter have expected he would be illegally investigating Mark for the Jigsaw murders. Once upon a time, he would have claimed the man didn’t have it in him.
Now, he’s not so sure.
He looks into every piece of evidence, peeks beyond the veil, drudges up the oldest of Mark’s potential motivations. The articles about his sister, about the abusive ex she was murdered by.
Peter becomes reasonably sure Mark is a Jigsaw.
But before he’s sure, he reads an article about Angelina’s funeral. Early December, it’s dated, and Peter is curious why the information ticks a box of recognition in his mind. Until he recalls the moon, and the fountain, and how the clothes took not long after that to peel away from them.
He searches through it to be positive.
Mark initiated sex with Peter a day after his sister’s funeral. Mindless, painful, once-in-a-lifetime sex that would perhaps block out the pain he was already feeling from such a traumatic loss.
Peter ignores the sympathy building inside him.
He cannot allow it to fester.
If he does, who knows where he’ll end up.
Mark lingers in his mind as he continues the cat and mouse game. He swears he’ll find him and bring him to justice. And when Peter succeeds, he won’t think for another second about that night.