Chapter Text
The precinct was alive with noise that day, phones ringing, papers slapping against desks, uniformed officers rushing past with that rehearsed urgency of people pretending to have everything under control. In the midst of it, Detective Mark Hoffman sat slouched in his chair, half-listening as yet another detective droned on about case files piling up in the corner. He didn’t bother to lift his eyes when the captain walked in with someone new trailing behind him.
“Detective Carter. Transferred from the south division,” the captain introduced.
The new arrival was young compared to most in the department, his presence almost soft in contrast to the hardened detectives scattered around. A new face that didn’t yet carry the wear and cynicism stamped into most men in the room. His smile was polite, almost disarmingly so. To Hoffman, it just felt out of place. Another rookie still trying to prove he belonged.
Hoffman barely looked up at first. Slouched at his desk, he thumbed through reports on the Jigsaw case, his blue eyes hollowed by fatigue and something heavier. But when the Captain gestured toward him, Hoffman finally lifted his gaze.
The captain handed Carter a stack of files and added almost offhandedly, “Detective Carter, you’ll be working under Detective Hoffman on the Jigsaw case. Your are to follow his orders and assist whenever needed.”
Hoffman grunted in acknowledgment, offering a glance rather than a handshake. Carter, however, smiled and extended his hand anyway.
“I look forward to working with you, Detective.”
Hoffman accepted the gesture, his grip firm, eyes measuring. He didn’t like honors. He didn’t like fresh faces shoved into his territory; much less at this particular investigation.
"We’ll see if you can keep up.”
At first, Carter seemed exactly what he appeared to be: diligent, the kind of detective who over-prepared for every meeting and meticulously organized case files. He asked questions. Sometimes too many. Mostly simple ones that made Hoffman roll his eyes, sometimes sharp ones that that had no right in being so specific. All the same, Hoffman brushed him off with his usual curt replies.
But, occasionally, during long hours poring over crime scene photos and twisted bits of metal, Carter would show flashes of something else. His eyes lingered on traps, not with horror, but something harder to point out.
At crime scenes, Carter’s face carried the right mask of horror at the grotesque setups left behind, but there were times in which Hoffman would've sworn to have caught a flicker of something behind his eyes. Whether merely curiosity or something else, it was not certain.
It was subtle, most wouldn’t notice. But Hoffman did. Even if he didn't fully comprehend what it meant.
Some other days, Hoffman would catch Carter staring, not at the evidence, but at him. There was no malice in it, only something close to calculation, as if he was trying to solve him as carefully as he connected the strings of the case.
Hoffman crossed all this as mere curiosity. A young ambitious mind trying to grasp the world around him; a world Hoffman understood far better than he cared to admit.
Hoffman ignored it. But late at night, when the precinct fell quiet, curiosity resonated idly in the back of his head.
Carter, in turn, wasn’t blind to Hoffman’s cracks either. The rumors. Some of the whispers of Hoffman’s methods: sometimes justice served but not always by the book. He seemed to be the kind of man who could do the 'right thing' the wrong way, and live with it.
It gnawed at his head; curiosity getting the best of him as he became determined to discover what was buried underneath the surface.