#this felt too niche for ao3 but I'm hoping some fellow fem Strahm enjoyers will appreciate it

[fiascobaby]

Hoffstrahm toxic yuri on your dashboard? It's more likely than you think!

Lil 1.5k fic heavily inspired by @dixxiemaegraphics impeccable fem Hoffstrahm art 🩷

At this point, Strahm was fairly certain she was going to have a heart attack--and she would be charging all the ensuing medical bills to Detective Hoffman. It would be Hoffman's fault, after all (never mind the pack-and-a-half a day habit, and the endless redeyes from the café on the corner [which just last week had kindly but firmly stopped issuing Strahm frequent buyer cards because she filled them up too quickly]). No, it would be Hoffman's fault for every irritating clerical error when mis-handling paperwork--or sometimes evidence. Hoffman's fault for the parade of police stupidity that made Strahm sometimes feel she was living an absurdist stage play in which she existed only to suffer mightily without reason or end. Hoffman's fault for her blatant and obscene flaunting of regulation dress code. Every day, and seemingly more catastrophic each time.

Her latest crime against decency was currently bulging directly in Strahm's line of sight--her frankly enormous ass wedged into a pencil skirt that had fit precariously a month ago, and now was not so much holding on for dear life as begging to be released into the death it so surely deserved. Beneath the nearly sheer stretch of the fabric, Strahm glimpsed the outline of a lace-trimmed thong. Unsightly. Horrifying. The ballpoint pen clutched in her iron grip exploded under pressure, spilling ink all over her hand, the desk, the report she'd barely been paying attention to.

Later, as she scoured black stain from her hand in the single-occupancy washroom, she considered the notion that perhaps Hoffman enjoyed putting herself on display like that. She wouldn't put it past the detective--with her full lips and even fuller tits, her obstinate attitude, her habit of dressing without any appeal to common sense--to be some sort of crass exhibitionist. The thought that Hoffman wanted to be looked at, that she invited (even welcomed) the passing stares from their colleagues, sent a sick-hot feeling stabbing through Strahm's chest.

Proximity to Hoffman really was terrible for her health.

*

Ten minutes before walking into an interrogation together was perhaps not the ideal time to bring up a colleague's poor sartorial decisions, but Strahm had never been particularly keen on etiquette.

"What do you mean it 'doesn't fit'?" Hoffman's dumb doe eyes blinked slowly down to her shirt, then back up (and up a little more) to meet Strahm's unwavering glare. She tugged at the hem of the offending garment, straining the buttons across her chest that were barely holding it together as it was, revealing an exorbitant stretch of the silky black bra beneath. "Fits fine."

"It does not," Strahm ground out through her teeth, "fit. You look sloppy and unprofessional."

"And you look like you just spent the night doing speedballs and followed it up with a cocaine breakfast, but you don't see me pointing it out." Hoffman glowered and pursed her lips (and Strahm noted that their hue was just a shade too pink to look natural, like the flavored lip balm that had been in vogue when she was in college--a comparison which suddenly called to mind soft flesh-on-flesh and the tang of strawberry saliva).

Strahm took a deep breath, steadying herself against the impending headache gathering at her temples. "You could try sizing up."

"And you could try decaf," Hoffman spat back. "Where the fuck do you get off telling me how to dress?"

"Actually, there's a handbook that tells you how to dress." Strahm allowed herself the pleasure of a sneer. "Or maybe that section was too difficult to read."

"You're such a fucking bitch."

"And you're about to sully the credibility of this entire department. I know by now your math is terrible, so I'll do the calculation for you: that one is worse."

Hoffman stared at her for a long moment, and in the passage of breaths and thundering heartbeats Strahm expected a fight, expected Hoffman to push back, call her a prude or a cunt, or worse. Instead, Hoffman shrugged her broad, solid shoulders and smirked.

"Whatever. Get Perez in here, then. She dresses like a fucking nun."

Strahm very resolutely did not watch Hoffman walk away.

*

All the unease that had been simmering just beneath the level of Strahm’s conscious awareness emerged in sharp, disruptive clarity the day Hoffman popped a shirt button at work. Anyone who was paying any amount of attention to Hoffman’s wardrobe should have seen it coming (and Strahm certainly was and did) but it appeared to take Hoffman herself by surprise when, reaching across her desk to snag a third donut during their morning debriefing, the long-suffering button struggling to hold back the ample mass of her cleavage finally surrendered to the mandates of physics. There was a brief snapping sound–the release of disgruntled fabric–followed by a gentle clatter as the button landed atop a stack of file folders in someone’s inbox. Strahm looked over just in time to see Hoffman frowning down at her own breasts overspilling the starched-white confines of her shirt (likewise almost squeezing free from the cherry red bra now on full display).

“Damn,” Hoffman said, in that low, lazy tone that made Strahm want to crack drywall with her face. “Not again.”

Strahm was only aware of a faint, persistent ringing in her head as she watched Hoffman excuse herself from the meeting (only a casual, “‘Scuse me, boys” issued to pardon the glaring offense that was still bursting forth for all to see while she hauled herself up from her chair). She was sure she must have listened to the final droning recap of the latest update to the department’s approach to the Jigsaw case–must have listened to Perez’s report from the FBI side of the investigation–but it all occurred from within a bubble of static. Static and the oppressive afterimage of Hoffman’s tits bouncing in her mind’s eye.

She hardly registered anything until she was already down the hall, the meeting long over, making her way to the single-occupancy washroom that had become something of a shameful safe haven of late. She shoulder-checked the door so hard it slammed against the opposite wall, leaving a tiny crack in the pale blue paint. The other person in the washroom, standing at the mirror, lifted their gaze to assess the intrusion, and for a moment Strahm felt her limbs lock up with horror. There shouldn't have been another person in the washroom. It was Strahm's unholy luck that person was Detective Hoffman, shirt still gaping broadly.

“Christ, you don't even lock the door?” Strahm muttered, feeling her chest beginning to sweat. She turned to leave, but thick fingers took firm hold of her forearm, jerked her back around. The door swung shut behind her (trapped, she thought, from the part of her that was trained to survive). Hoffman was looking at her like a cat watching the dismembered movement of an insect it isn't sure it wants to eat yet, and it set off quiet sparks down the length of Strahm's spine. Sparks of rage, she would have liked to think. She knew better.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Strahm growled, twisting her arm in Hoffman's grasp.

Hoffman squeezed tighter in response. “Could ask you the same thing, Special Agent. You wanna take a picture or something?”

“What?” Strahm reared back in indignation, but was easily held in place. Hoffman, she supposed, was as dense as she appeared, all fat and muscle and sheer overpowering bulk. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Seen you ogling me,” Hoffman said slowly, a minatory edge in her voice that made Strahm’s legs go suddenly and unattractively trembly.

Strahm kept her voice as level as she could, trained her face into an expression of seasoned neutrality (a mask she was all too happy to shed in interrogation rooms and phone calls with her ex-husband, but whose stability she needed now), “Hard not to when you apparently don’t own a single article of clothing that fits.”

It was the wrong play, and she recognized it instantly when Hoffman’s lips (plump and soft and so fucking distracting to Strahm’s fraying senses) curled up in a triumphant smirk and she moved in closer to Strahm, still holding her arm in a vice. “Why’re you looking?”

At this point, Strahm knew that she was physically out-maneuvered, as she felt the press of Hoffman’s plush stomach against the flat plane of her own abs, Hoffman’s partially undressed tits crowding into her (décolletage heaving with what Strahm snidely thought must have been exertion). Her only recourse was to reason–or what passed for it when she could hardly think in complete sentences.

“Come on. You know exactly what you’re doing, with those skirts that barely fit and–and that shirt…”

Hoffman popped her lips. “Sounds a lot like blaming the victim, Agent Strahm.” She batted her eyelashes. “Are you sexually harassing me right now?”

“You’re physically harassing me,” Strahm exclaimed weakly, shaking her arm, which had started going numb in Hoffman’s grasp. “All I’m telling you to do is buy a new shirt.”

“You could loan me one,” Hoffman mused. The fingers of her free hand caressed the top button of Strahm’s blouse where it held her collar tight against the hollow of her throat, tugged at it lightly, almost teasingly.

Crawling discomfort–pins-and-needles in her arm, heat in her cheeks and sliding down into her stomach (and lower still)--made Strahm automatically twitch away from Hoffman’s touch. Hoffman chuckled.

“Wouldn’t fit me, anyway. Scrawny little thing like you?” Fingertips trailing, now, down the row of buttons, stopping at the horizon where Strahm’s shirt met the waistband of her skirt, pressing into her sharp hipbone. Hoffman’s voice was a breath, heavy and thick in the air between them, “God, you’re so…”

The door to the washroom opened once more–or, at least, it attempted to before it was blocked by the presence of Strahm’s shoulder.

“Hey, what the hell?” the officer on the other side of the door muttered.

“Just a second,” Hoffman called out easily. She released her hold on Strahm and stepped back, expression inscrutable. “After you, Special Agent.”

And Strahm, suddenly more aware of the heat and movement of her own blood than she’d ever been in her life, shame-facedly scurried out the door.