Archive of Our Own ^beta

There he stands, right above that coffin like a god looking down to his humble chapel.  Mark’s practically drooling, licking his lips as he salivates in his final, complete victory.   In mere moments, Peter Strahm will be crushed to dust, his bones ground to ash and his flesh succumbed to our world’s decomposing ways.  The man that had once stood so tall and proud like it was a privilege to be in his presence, reduced to nothing that will ever be remembered.

Except by Mark, he supposes.  Mark will remember, no matter if he wants to or not.  He knows that Peter Strahm will forever be seared on the back of his eyelids, burned into his memory.

Strahm has pressed play on the tape, Mark’s voice echoing throughout the chamber.  He never could get used to it: the sound of his voice on record.  It always sounds strange to him, the playback a poor facsimile of a real human.

Strahm stops the tape, then, before Hoffman’s speech could finish.  Mark feels his gut sink as he, almost unconsciously, steps into the room, announcing himself with a small cough as the door slams shut.

“Hoffman,” Strahm says softly, still turned away.

“You knew it was me?” Mark asks, despite knowing the answer (and how could he not?  The way Stram would look at him, with sad puppy-dog eyes and heartbreak lips, and that sheepish look of a kid caught with a hand in the cookie jar, like he knows he’s not supposed to do it but the reward outweighs the risks– Mark being the reward, and the risks, well…)

“Of course, I did.”

“And you still did… everything?” 

Strahm turns to face him then, head hung shamefully in a little wisp of a nod.

“Then get in the coffin,” Mark says, feeling the black roil of shame at the way his voice breaks, the way hot tears prick at the corners of his eyes.  “ Please.”

“Why would I?” Strahm questioned, eyes wide and inquisitive like an owl.  “It’s a fucking trap, undoubtedly.”

“Then don’t,” Mark says softly, hating himself for the way the words bite back, resisting their speech like wild horses bucking against the reins and finally breaking through.

Strahm rolls his eyes, scoffing in a way that could possibly be described as fond , and Mark can almost imagine for a moment that they’re normal.   But the illusion is fragile and it is shattered in his hands by Strahm’s cool gaze and the dark pits of his eyes, coming apart in fragments of glass and torn bits of life.

Still not breaking eye contact, Strahm takes a step closer, moving towards Mark like he is the shark and Mark is the blood, seeping into the water from some poor injured diver.  He keeps walking, almost as a man possessed, until the two of them are practically nose-to-nose.  When he speaks, it’s soft, barely a whisper, and Mark can feel Strahm’s breath on his cheek.

“I won’t,” he says, and it’s almost romantic, until he swings a clenched fist and slams it into Mark’s jaw, knocking the man off balance.

Pain explodes, firing through Mark’s nerves, and he bathes in it.  Blood sprays into his mouth, its sharp iron bite making Mark practically hard.  

“You’re a damn bastard,” Mark snarls, but he’s laughing as he throws the next punch.

They fight, blood spraying up through bruises and black eyes, and Mark thinks this dance is painfully similar to sex, in the way which they are a tangle of limbs, a Frankenstein’s monster of all their worst parts sewn together.  Strahm tops.  Mark declines to comment whether this is the usual.

Strahm shoves him closer to the coffin, its wide, gaping maw both inviting and foreboding all at once.  “Go on,” Mark hisses, licking his lips, goading him.  “Push me in.  Put me in the trap.  Kill me.”

“I’d be glad to,” Strahm spits, and kisses him.

It’s a scraping of teeth and blood, limbs and iron explosions over taste buds.  Less of a kiss and more of a bite, almost cannibalistic in a way.  Ready to consume, swallow hole.  Mark forgets himself for a moment, sinking into the cruel embrace of Peter’s kiss.  And it’s just enough , the smallest, tiniest, little sliver of enough, to tip Mark into the coffin and slam the lid shut over his bloodied face.

Strahm stands over him, triumphant and proud.  Not for the first time, Mark forgets they are enemies and feels only sadness, for the man’s illusion is just ready to be shattered.  He forgets he was the one who set all this up, that it was his cruel plan.  He only wants Strahm to survive.

Usually, he delights in the other man’s pain, salivates it and slurps it up on the tip of his tongue.  But this time, it’s different.  Because this time, it’s the end.

No more nights spent up, agonizing over their little cat-and-mouse dance, no more kisses slammed against a wall, no more broken bones and black eyes.  No more pretending they could ever hate each other.   Mark will miss it.

No matter.  Mark is used to missing things.  (What would Angie think, if she could see him now?  He hopes, with selfish abandon, she would forgive him.) (He knows she won’t.)

Regardless, what’s done is done.  Mark will walk away free, and Strahm won’t walk at all, not even on stumbling broken legs like a newborn calf.

Mark contemplates all this from behind the safe glass barrier of the coffin while Strahm looks frantically around for a way out he’ll never find.  Mark cannot change this inevitable fact as the walls start moving– but he supposes he can afford Peter the small mercy of an explanation.  Strahm is staring him down now, pausing in his search to glare violent daggers at Mark, a poor production of hate.  Mark says nothing, schooling his expression like so many years in the force had taught him to.  He simply raised one meaty finger (meat– it was a strange thing, we are all meat, he supposes, though he shudders at the idea of consuming a human at a fancy restaurant the way he would do a steak, or a nice chicken, regardless) and pointed toward the tape Strahm had left lying on the floor, still mid-speech.

Strahm picks it up with apprehension, pressing play again with a slow, careful finger.  Mark’s own voice fills the chamber, muffled through the coffin.  He winces at the recording’s cruel intonation.

Mark watches Strahm’s face slowly sink.  The fear of his realization is nearly palpable.  Peter Strahm is going to die.

The walls could not have picked a more perfect time to begin moving, closing in at a snail’s pace, all the more threatening for it.  Strahm was panicking, running about the room, pacing up and down, raving mad.  He gets all up in Hoffman’s face, shouting, screaming, spitting.  Crying, even. 

(It’s the first time Mark ever sees Strahm cry.  He thinks he could learn to love it.)

Tears hit the glass, sliding down in front of Mark’s face, mirroring the streaks of blood left from their fight (their fuck).  Mark slams his eyes shut tight, covers his ears as the coffin begins to sink.  He cannot allow himself to access his emotions.  He cannot look.  He cannot watch as Strahm dies, and yet, he cannot tear his eyes away.

Strahm doesn’t stop crying.  It’s honestly pathetic.  Mark finds it hard to breathe.  He thinks about love.  He wonders if this is it.  He thinks about Hell.  He wonders if this is it.

The walls close on Strahm with a deafening squelch.   Mark’s head snaps up, almost hitting the top of the glass.  Blood drip, drip, drops down onto the coffin.  Strahm’s blood.  He is dying.  In a moment, his guts will fall, splattering Mark, covering him in all the flesh of his departed love ( love?!  Yeah fuckin’ right).   

The coffin is about to sink fully.  Soon, Strahm will be out of sight, nothing but a faded tattoo on his memory.  Mark’s ears are roaring.  A scream echoes in his mind.  He had no idea if the noise is real or not, his or Strahm’s.

And then… it stops.

The walls stop moving.  The coffin stops sinking.  The screaming screeches to an unceremonious halt.

Strahm falls from the rafters, down, down, down.  Face-first onto the coffin.

“Shit,” Mark hisses.  The mechanism broke.  His trap failed.

And Strahm was alive.

Mark’s arms snapped into place, hefting open the lid of the coffin, wincing at how Strahm’s body slid off with an unpleasant squelching sound.  He scrambles out, for the first time noticing the shards of glass that had dug into his back.  They sting with sharp, haphazard injury, sticking out of the flesh in all manner of unsavory angles.  In a foolish experiment, he gingerly pulls one out, wincing as it comes into his hand slick with blood.  He feels as though he is on fire, hot flames licking their cruel tongues up and down his back.

Now that the pain has registered, he cannot go back to his blissful unawareness.  Still, though, he tries, ignoring the stab of pain that shoots through his nerve endings as he moves to gather Strahm’s body up off the floor– because the room still has a floor , of course, an unprecedented fact.

Strahm is curled in Mark’s arms, a wheezing, dying mess, wilting like a dried-out flower.  His flesh is soft, caved in.  Mark sticks his fingers in, feeling it bend and flex like dough.  Strahm gurgles, like he’s trying to say something, only he can’t.

“Shh,” Mark whispers, trailing a soft hand along what he thinks used to be Strahm’s face.  “It’s okay, you don’t have to speak.  Don’t speak, actually, even if you want to.  I thought I already heard your dumbass voice for the last time.”

“ F-fuck you,” Strahm ekes out, the words barely perceptable.

Mark huffs a laugh.  “ That you can say.”

Strahm lets out a wet cough.  Mark sighs, finger soft on the other man’s pulse, sniffling.  His tears are a well that’s run dry; he can’t cry even if he wants to.  (He wants to.)  

Peter’s pulse beats to a slow, gradual stop, ceasing movement, ceasing breath.  Mark finally brings up the courage to look at the body, broken and frail on the floor.  It barely looks human.  Limbs all twisted up, his arm had even fallen off.  His face was smashed to a pulp, one eye out of its socket and the other just barely hanging on.  Teeth scattered over the ground where they fell from his screaming mouth.  Nose broken and painted bloody.  Yellow fat from his gut spilled all over.

If Mark had been any other man, he would vomit.  As it is, he can barely contain his insides, resisting the urge to add to the viscera of Strahm’s gory demise.  The shards of glass are forgotten.

He puts a single hand where he thinks Strahm’s heard used to be.  A breath sucks through his lungs.  The air in the room is tinged with the irony taste of blood.  It lingers on his tongue even into the night, when he is home and safe in the shower, unsure if the droplets of water cascading down his body are of water or tears.  

He lingers there, eyes closed.  He imagines that in front of him is a Strahm who had just listened to him.  A Strahm who is alive and alight, bringing his hands up toward Mark for what can be a punch or a hug (and aren’t they just the same thing?).

It’s both, and neither.  It’s pain and pleasure.  It’s Peter Strahm oozing into his arms, slipping through his fingertips like a slick watery slime.  It’s Peter Strahm’s dead body (body?) lying on top of him in a cold embrace.  It’s the harsh sound of crushing bones, flesh put through a meat grinder.  

It is everything in the whole world, all-consuming and beautiful; it is nothing but empty air devoid of all space and presence, not even the god of fools left to look down on them. 

And, oh, Mark Hoffman is a damn fool.