Chapter Text
For the first time in her life, Helly was wearing pants.
It was the first thing she noticed when she woke up in an enormous house with ceilings as high as the one in the perpetuity wing. She looked down at herself and found loose black slacks and a tightly tailored white shirt with short sleeves. Then, she frantically spun around, wondering what the fuck had happened to her and if someone was responsible.
She had been on the elevator a moment ago, leaving work at 5:04 p.m. on a Friday. It had only been three weeks since she tried to kill herself, the bruises still healing.
There were two weeks left until the end of the quarter, and she was far behind in the Siena file.
Mark didn’t seem too concerned about it. He had walked with her down the winding hallways to the elevator and had insisted that she go up first. They had been talking about nothing in particular, Mark doing his unsubtle mental health conversation with her, asking her probing questions to make sure she wasn’t about to try to kill herself again.
It was sweet, actually. The more Mark pushed her and checked in with her and cared for her, the more Helly felt like she mattered. Like her life mattered, no matter how small that life was.
So, why was she awake now? Where the hell was she?
She searched around the room she was in. It had a big bed in the middle of it, an ornate dresser, and an even more ornate vanity with a folding mirror that created three different images of her. She supposed it must be her own outie’s bedroom.
“So I’m rich,” she said to herself. “Wonder what Lumon pays.”
She went to the vanity and stared at the three images of herself for a long time, unmoving. Then, she noticed a piece of paper sticking out of the corner of one of the mirrors, so she reached for it and found a handwritten note.
It said, To Helly - If you wake up here, call Natalie. She will know how to help. -Outie
Helly snorted a laugh and crumpled up the note. “Yeah, fuck that,” she said.
Why the hell would she listen to anything her outie had to say? Also, why was her outie leaving her secret notes in her house?
A very loud, trilling sound came from somewhere in the house. Helly nearly jumped out of her skin. She realized belatedly that it was a telephone and ran to answer it.
“Hello?” she asked, out of breath.
“I think they’re onto me.”
Unable to help herself at the familiar voice, Helly asked, “Irving?”
There was a long pause, then he said, “You’re not supposed to use my real name.”
“Irving, what—do you know me? This is Helly! Oh, but you wouldn’t—you wouldn’t know that. Fuck. I’m an innie.”
“Jesus Christ, why are you an innie?” Irving’s voice said in a strained whisper through the speaker.
“I don’t know! Can you help me?”
“I…perhaps. I don’t know. Maybe. Where are you?”
“I don’t know. Home, probably. Do you know anything about my outie?”
“Um…I don’t think it’s appropriate that I tell you.”
Helly rolled her eyes. “OK, fine. What about Mark? Do you know a Mark? Uh, Mark S. I don’t know his last name.”
Another pause, then, “I believe I have his info. Is he someone we work with?”
“Yes, we’re all very close.”
There was a rustling sound on the other line, then Irving said, “Give me a minute. I’ll call you back.” Then the line went dead.
Helly looked around herself again, unsure what to do. The house she was in was vast, big windows looking out over a snowy landscape. She stepped up to a window and stared, taking in as much as she could. It frightened her, how far she could see, how high up the sky was. This was how people lived? Outside the confines of sterile walls? Out into the vast, deep unknown?
She snapped out of it when the phone rang. This wasn’t a time for existential crisis.
“Irv?” she said as soon as she picked up.
“Mark Scout,” Irving replied. “I believe that’s who you’re looking for.”
“Scout,” Helly whispered reverently.
Irving gave her an address; Helly quickly jotted it on a piece of paper. He then explained to her how to look up a map on her computer, which went over Helly’s head until she hung up the phone and found a computer that was very different from the ones in MDR.
The next few minutes were a blur as Helly tried not to panic about how to get out of her house. She had a vague idea about how to drive, which made her think her outie must have a car. She searched everywhere for keys and eventually found them by a nondescript back door that was decidedly less fancy than the rest of the house.
The back door led to a garage, which housed four cars on two levels. Helly looked up at the cars on the second level in awe. How did they get down? Hopefully she wouldn’t have to find out.
As Helly walked to a car on the lower level, a piercing headache hit her and she blacked out for a second. Then, as she grabbed her temples, she saw a flash, in a restaurant, Mark across from her. He wasn’t wearing a suit, and he had his hair tucked behind his ears. He looked different, heavier but not exactly physically heavier.
Then, it was done.
Luckily, Helly had keys to one of the cars on the first level. It took her a minute to figure out how to turn the car on and open the garage, but once she started driving, everything fell into place.
It took about 15 minutes to find the little blue condo unit with the 34 on the door. Helly’s heart pounded in her chest as she parked on the street, out of the way of the windows so it wasn’t totally suspicious that she was going to Mark’s house.
Of course, she had gotten in the car in the comfort of the garage and had not considered that snow on the ground meant that it would be cold outside. When she got out of her car in her short sleeves, she was shocked by the frigid air. She had never felt anything like it before.
“Holy fuck,” she said loudly as she hugged herself.
“You alright?” a somewhat familiar voice called from somewhere up above.
Helly snapped her attention up and found Mark high up on a ladder on the side of his house, wrapped in winter clothes and big work gloves and pulling leaves out of a gutter.
“Oh my god,” Helly said stupidly. “Um, sorry. I’m cold.”
“Well, you don’t have a coat on,” Mark replied bluntly.
Helly couldn’t believe how different he sounded, like his voice was hoarse or something was wrong. His voice was deeper, sadder.
“Can I come inside? I need to talk to you,” Helly said.
Mark leaned against the roof of his house and looked down at her. Helly wished she could see the expression on his face clearly. He said, “Uh, yeah. Sure.”
Helly ran to the door, desperate to get out of the cold. Mark met her at the front, climbing down his ladder slowly. He looked at her curiously, raising an eyebrow at her and scanning her up and down.
“You’re stalking me, aren’t you?” he asked as he let her inside.
“What?” Helly replied, standing awkwardly in the middle of his entryway.
Mark removed his gloves and coat, hanging them on a hook by the door. He slid his boots off and headed toward the kitchen, so Helly followed.
“Why are you being weird?” Mark asked, standing at the kitchen counter and looking across at her.
“Um, have we met before?”
A confused smile pulled at Mark’s lips and eyebrows. “Just a few nights ago, you ‘ran into me’ at a restaurant. Were you high, or am I really that unmemorable?”
Helly quickly sat down on a barstool and leaned on the counter, closer to Mark. “I’m an innie,” she admitted.
Mark blinked. “Oh. Shit.” He turned mechanically to the fridge and pulled out a beer. He tilted the cap on the edge of the counter and tapped it forcefully with his hand, popping it off.
“That was hot,” Helly said stupidly.
Mark looked at her skeptically and snorted an amused laugh as he drank his beer. “You want one?”
“Sure.”
Mark repeated the cap-popping action and slid the bottle over to Helly. She took a drink and winced.
“This is terrible,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Why do you know my outie?”
“Why do you know my innie?”
They stared at each other and then both drank at the same time.
“OK, uh,” Mark said, then cleared his throat. “What do you go by? What’s your name?”
“Helly,” Helly answered.
“OK, Helly. Do you know who your outie is?”
“Am I supposed to know?”
“Uh, she’s—you’re Helena Eagan.”
Helly blinked. “You’re shitting me, right?”
Mark shook his head. “Nope. And for some reason, Helena Eagan happened to ‘run into me’ the other day just to chat.”
“Why?”
“I was hoping you’d know.”
“How would I know? I’m—”
“Friends with my innie, I’m assuming?”
Helly fiddled with the label on her beer, staring at it. “Best friends.”
“Aww, how cute.”
“You’re kind of a dick, aren’t you?”
Mark shrugged, drank. “Lately, sure.”
“My Mark is kind. He can be an asshole, but in, like, a fun way.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Your Mark?”
“He’s my best friend, what are you not getting about that? You don’t have the concept of best friends up here?”
Mark looked off to the side. “I don’t have one, I guess. It’s a bit…childish.”
“Or you’re just sad. Is that why you got severed? Because you’re sad?”
“Yeah, actually, that about covers it.”
“Oh.”
Mark once again looked amused. “Your outie has a lot more subtlety.”
“Well, I’ve lived a total of nine weeks, business days only, so.”
“So, um, why are you awake right now? It’s a Saturday.”
“I have no idea, I just woke up in a weird house. I was hoping you’d know what’s going on. Or at least help me figure it out.”
“What, you think you can trust me because you’re BFFs with my innie?”
Helly scowled. “I hate outies on principle, actually, but if I have to interact with one, it might as well be the person I lo—care about most in the world.”
Another soft smile pulled at his lips. “Were you about to say love?”
“Fine, yeah. We don’t exactly get to have a lot of human experiences, Mark, so yes, I love your innie.”
“Have you two ever…”
It took Helly a second to catch on. “What? No! We—well, not that I don’t want to…”
Mark looked her up and down. “I’m sure he wants to, too, right?”
“I don’t know! We’ve never talked about it. He cares about me, though.”
“Oh, I’m sure he does.”
Helly scrunched up her face. “Why do you have to say it like that? What’s your problem?”
Mark shrugged. “Nothing, just that you’re very cute. And pretty. Are there any other women down there?”
“Severed women? Just Ms. Casey, and she’s really pretty, too, but she’s not in our department.” Helly took another swallow of her beer. “Stop looking at me like that. My Mark is subtler about checking me out.”
“You told me you want to fuck me, and I’m the one that needs to be more subtle?”
“I don’t want to fuck you, dick.”
“Well, now my feelings are hurt.”
Helly checked him out. He had a bit of stubble on his chin that honestly wasn’t so bad, and she liked the way his hair was styled better than her Mark. She liked being able to see his ears. He was hunched over, though, and had an air about him as if he hated himself, which made her not want to fuck him but maybe hug him instead.
“You’re considering it,” Mark said, deadpan. “Let’s go upstairs, give it a try.”
“Gross, Mark.”
“OK, so you’re a bit different from your outie.”
“What does that mean?”
“She would’ve flirted back. I don’t think she actually would’ve taken me up on the offer, but she would’ve flirted back.”
“What happened to make you get severed?” Helly asked.
“How do you know something happened?”
“Because you’re different here. You’re tragic.”
He blinked at her. “My wife died.”
“Oh. I’m…sorry.”
They sat in awkward silence, drinking.
Helly had a headache again, then a flashing sensation. She saw Mark, this Mark, closer to her, in her personal space. She could smell liquor on his breath, a nice woodsy scent to his clothing. He smirked at her and then was gone.
“You OK?” Mark asked in the present.
“Yeah, um. Just weird headaches. Did you fuck my outie?”
“No.”
“And you don’t know anything? About, like, why I might be awake right now?”
Mark opened his mouth to answer and then closed it. He set his beer on the counter and walked away without saying anything.
“Where are you going? Should I follow you?”
Instead of answering, Mark came back with a folded computer in his hands. Laptop, Helly’s brain supplied.
Mark set the laptop on the counter and opened it then began typing quickly.
“Strangely enough, there’s nothing online about your outie being severed,” Mark said. “There’s actually not much at all about you, just that you’re the daughter of the CEO and will likely take over the company one day.”
“Let me see that,” Helly said, reaching for the laptop to turn it her way.
It was strange seeing a picture of her outie on a screen, smiling demurely, Jame Eagan in the foreground ahead of her.
“Why the fuck would Jame Eagan’s daughter be severed?” Helly asked, scrolling. The controls on the laptop were different, not as fun as her trackball at work, but she understood the idea. “Oh, wait. There’s a thing coming up. A gala at Lumon. It says there will be a presentation called ‘Helly: A Severed Story.’ Fucking great.”
“Ooh, do you think I could be your plus one?” Mark asked sarcastically, turning the laptop back to himself.
Before Helly could respond, everything went dark.
Oh, no.
She woke up in the elevator, wearing a burgundy-colored dress and her regular heels. She marched her way to MDR and was happy to find that Mark was already there.
“I need to talk to you,” she said sternly, standing over his desk. “In private.”
Mark blinked up at her and smiled warmly. Unlike his outie, her Mark was open and carefree with his face, rarely ever hiding his emotions. “OK.”
They went to the storage closet and closed the door behind them, then Helly said, “I met your outie.”
“I’m sorry?”
“He’s kind of a dick, but I liked him,” Helly said honestly. “He’s very sad.”
“Helly, how the fuck did you meet my outie?”
Helly told him the whole thing, all that she could remember. They both agreed not to tell Irving that his outie apparently knew things about the severed floor and that he was, for some unknown reason, in touch with Helena Eagan.
They stayed in the storage closet for a long time, definitely a long enough time that Milchick would come looking for them any minute. Helly felt electric, on edge and excited in a way she had never felt in her short life. She had seen the outside world; she had seen the sky; she was a fucking Eagan; she had met Mark’s outie, and he had been flirtatious and ridiculous and unfazed by her.
Mark was in the middle of a plan, saying, “We need to decide what to tell Dylan and Irving and if we should continue on with our plan of—” when Helly decided to grab the knot of his tie and yank him forward to press her lips to his.
Their noses bumped before Mark got the idea and angled his head, opening his mouth to hers. They stayed suspended for several seconds, neither of them moving. Then, Mark made a small noise in his throat, and Helly moved her lips furiously against his and decided it would be a good idea to put her tongue in his mouth and taste him. His hand came up around the back of her head and pulled her closer, and she pushed him back against the closed door and grabbed his hip over his dress shirt.
A knock on the door broke them apart.
When they came out of the storage closet, Milchick had a look on his face like he knew exactly what they had been doing.
They couldn’t get another moment alone for the rest of the day. Helly’s heart pounded in her ears for hours, unrelenting. She felt unbearable pleasure between her legs, knowing she needed to touch herself and having no opportunity to do so. She supposed she could sneak off to the bathroom and lock herself in a stall, but she didn’t know how long it would take, and if it took too long, she wouldn’t find relief and would likely be worse off than she was now.
So, she just counted down the minutes until she got on the elevator.
As she ascended, everything went dark.
Then, a light different than the elevator, her back against a wall, and—
A mouth on hers.
“Mark?!” she asked, breaking away from him. “What the fuck?!”
Mark, not her Mark, moved his head away from her and looked at her skeptically. He kept his hand tangled in her hair, holding her neck. “Uh, did you just turn into Helly?”
She smacked his chest, hard. “What the fuck do you think?! Why the hell are you kissing Helena Eagan?!”
His hand finally moved away from her. He took a step back and smoothed out his hair. “Um, you—she woke up in my house on Saturday, if you remember. And, um…”
“Mark, I swear to god.”
He winced. At least he sounded apologetic as he said, “We spent the weekend together?”
“How long did it take you to seduce her, hm? Once she woke up and you realized you had a chance?”
“Look, it wasn’t like—”
“Is it still Monday?”
“Yeah.”
“So what, she followed you home from work? Came straight over for a good fuck?”
Mark scrubbed a hand down his face. “She called me. Said she came up the elevator feeling ‘insatiably horny’ and wondered what our innies were getting up to. I lied and told her I felt normal but she should come over anyway.”
“You lied?”
“Well, I also felt insatiably horny, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. It’s actually painful to switch in the elevator when you have an erection, just so you know.”
Helly put her head in her hands. “Oh my god. I cannot believe this is happening to me.”
She started walking into his house, feeling a need to just get away. He followed behind her, asking if she needed a glass of water or something.
Helly stopped in the hallway and turned to face him. “I can’t believe she’s had you before I have!” she yelled. “I mean, before—before I’ve had my Mark. We kissed today for the first time, and we didn’t have time to…and here you are, getting what should be ours! And—and my body’s already had sex with yours! That’s so—that’s so—it’s unfair!”
Mark put his hands in his pockets. He was still in his work clothes but with no tie and the top few buttons of his shirt undone. “You’re still horny, aren’t you?”
She threw her hands up. “Maybe!” She turned again and marched righteously away.
“Where are you going?”
“To find a bathroom so I can masturbate in peace! Fuck you!”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Mark said, a bit frantic as he chased after her.
“What?”
“You can’t just…masturbate in my house.”
“Why not?”
“Because…because that’s not fair.”
“Why, because you don’t get to get off? You go masturbate, too, I don’t care!”
Mark had that look again, like he was endlessly amused by her. Her Mark had a similar look, but it was less patronizing and more adoring.
He waved a hand at her in defeat. “Fine. Get yourself off in my bathroom. Sure.”
Before Helly could decide what to say to that, Mark turned away from her and walked off toward the kitchen.
Helly ran to the bathroom and locked the door behind her.
She yanked her dress up, belatedly realizing it was the same one she had on at work today. She shimmied out of her hose and panties then sat down on the toilet.
“OK. Can’t be that hard,” she said to herself.
Then, she reached her hand down and slid four fingers between her legs and yelped before drawing back.
“What the fuck?!” she nearly yelled, angling her head down to look at herself.
Last time she looked down there, a coarse patch of auburn hair had made a perfect little triangle between her legs. Now, it was hairless. Smooth and bald.
There was a knock on the door. "Helly, you alright?" Mark asked kindly.
Helly kicked her hose and panties off her legs and pulled her dress down before opening the door.
Before Mark could say anything, Helly said, “What the fuck happened to the hair on my vagina?”
Mark blinked and smiled with his mouth slightly open, revealing his one crooked front tooth. “Um. Well. Helena made a comment, I guess, I didn’t think much about it. Over the weekend, the first time we…she said it had been a while and she was sorry for not, uh, grooming properly.”
“You have to be bald down there to have sex? Why?”
“No, no, you don’t have to—I told her I didn’t care. I prefer hair, actually.”
“Congratulations.”
Mark shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “So, um, are you OK?”
Helly looked at him, studying his weirdly handsome face for any sign of her Mark. He clearly felt uncomfortable under her gaze, nervously tucking his hair behind his ear. Her eyes drifted down, to the open shirt collar, the line of a collarbone looking very kissable, a soft patch of dark hair on his chest. Helly swallowed once.
Then, she grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him forward, crashing her mouth against his.
Mark laughed into kissing her, keeping his mouth on hers even as he shut the door behind him and stepped closer to her. He hunched down to reach behind her legs and hoisted her up, setting her on the edge of the sink.
“You sure about this?” Mark muttered against her mouth. His hand spanned her thigh and glided its way up, bunching up her dress.
Helly arched into him and fisted her hand in his hair. “My Mark’s going to be mad, but I’m too horny to care and I don’t really know how to touch myself.”
Mark kissed her neck and said, “I could teach you.”
“Instead of fucking me?”
“Yeah. That way it’s not like you’re doing anything wrong.”
“I’m not doing anything wrong.”
Mark pulled his head back from her neck but kept his hand firmly on her upper thigh. “You don’t think he’ll see it as cheating?”
She put a hand on his face, brushing a lock of hair out of his eyes and then framing his cheek in her palm. She flipped her hand, rubbed her knuckles across his jaw. She was too horny to think straight. “I’m too horny to think straight,” she said.
Another smile, softer this time, almost like her Mark. “It’s OK if you’re attracted to me. I kind of look like him.”
“I like your face,” Helly said stupidly. “And your body.”
He huffed a laugh and kissed her chastely on the mouth. “I like your face and body, too. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a compliment quite like that before, but thank you.”
“I think he’ll understand,” Helly said. “If I fuck you, I think it’ll be alright.”
Mark shrugged and moved his hand further up her thigh. “OK.”
Helly looked at him another second and then surged forward and took his mouth. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hummed into his mouth, and Mark tasted like stale beer and his hand was strong on her skin and his other hand held her neck, not letting her move away from him.
The hand on her leg moved in between, fingers rubbing at the lips of her cunt in deliberate circles, smearing her wetness around.
“It would be a different angle if you were doing it to yourself,” Mark whispered against her lips. “But the general idea is to use the pads of your fingers in a rhythm against the places that feel good.”
“The places that feel good?”
Mark kissed her jaw and asked, “Do you know about the clitoris?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. It sounds familiar.”
Mark moved his thumb and pushed the pad of it against her folds, pressing in and sending a shock of pleasure down Helly’s spine.
“Oh! Oh, fuck. Oh my god,” Helly said, grabbing his shoulders.
“There you go, sweetheart.”
“Oh, fuck you. Don’t call me that.”
Another soft laugh. Mark latched his lips back onto Helly’s neck and sucked on her skin, making her feel insane. His thumb rubbed against that amazing spot, and one finger pushed inside of her, agonizingly slowly, not nearly enough stimulation.
“Take me to bed,” she said breathlessly. “Fuck me, please.”
Mark grunted his assent, hand pulling out of her so he could hike her up around his hips and carry her out of the bathroom. They kept kissing while he walked, Mark devouring her with teeth and lips and tongue. Helly wondered if this was how he acted with Helena.
He expertly unzipped her dress and told her to step out of it, then he laid her out on the bed and smoothed his hands down her hips, the outside of her thighs, back up her abdomen until he got to her breasts. He took one tit in his hand and leaned down to circle his tongue around a nipple. When Helly cried out in pleasure, Mark sucked on her nipple then grazed his teeth over it as he popped off.
“Fuck, shit, fuck, fuck, Mark,” Helly chanted incoherently.
Mark kissed a line down her stomach, moving quickly, his hands everywhere. He kissed the junction of her hip, her thigh, then he shoved a hand under her and lifted her up by the ass, propping her up as he put his mouth on her cunt.
“Oh my god,” Helly breathed out, toes curling.
Mark ate her pussy the way he kissed her face, enthusiastically, with teeth and tongue, sucking and licking until he found a proper rhythm. Helly had never felt anything like it, had no idea her body could feel this good. Her stomach muscles jumped and spasmed, and something roiled inside her, building, growing. Seeing the top of Mark’s head, she could almost imagine it was her Mark, although they would never have the opportunity to do this in a bed.
Helly could feel what was coming so acutely, but she tried her damnedest to hold off. She knew it would be better if she waited, but the second Mark slid a finger into her, her stomach tightened and her body released. She jerked and shouted and felt like she was pissing herself, and Mark kept his tongue flat against her cunt as it pulsed in pleasure over and over against him.
Then, darkness.
She regained consciousness on the elevator and stumbled into the wall, catching herself on the railing. Her body felt normal but the memory of what she had just experienced made her feel like a rubber band stretched too thin and about to snap.
She took her shoes off and ran down the halls to MDR.
When she got there, she said nothing to Mark before hauling him by the arm out of his desk chair and dragging him into the bathroom.
“Helly, what—”
She shut him up with a kiss, pushing him back into a stall and closing them inside of it. He tasted like her Mark, like minty toothpaste and a hint of coffee. His cheeks cleanly shaven, his hair over his ears, posture straight. She cupped his crotch and rubbed over the fabric until she felt stirring beneath her hand.
“What are you…what are we doing?” Mark asked, sounding wrecked already.
“We have to be fast,” Helly said. “But how do you feel about…having sex with me? Putting your penis in my vagina kind of sex?”
Mark blinked several times and nodded his head over and over. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like to do that.”
Helly fumbled for his belt, and Mark reached for her skirt, bunching the fabric up in his hands. It reminded her of the other Mark’s hand on her thigh, inching her dress up, and she couldn’t take it.
“Wait. Fuck,” she said, stopping with a hand to his chest.
“What is it? Are you OK?”
“No, sorry. I have to tell you something, and it’s going to piss you off, but I still want to have sex with you, but I can’t have sex with you unless I tell you.”
“What?”
“I, um, woke up on the outside again yesterday,” she admitted. “And when I woke up, I was…you were…well, your outie was kissing my outie.”
Mark’s mouth scrunched up in one of Helly’s favorite smiles of his. He said, “Our outies are together?”
“They’re not—they just hook up, I think, because they know we’re together. Obviously you and I are attracted to each other, so I guess any version of us is attracted to each other.”
“You’re attracted to me?”
“Mark, I’m rubbing your dick in a bathroom stall.”
“Well, not anymore, you’re not.”
Helly smacked him in the chest. “I woke up there and, and, well…”
Mark’s eyebrows shot up to his bangs. “Helly, did you have sex with my outie?”
“No! Well.” She bit her lip. “He performed oral sex on me. I orgasmed really hard, and then it went dark.”
Mark was still smiling like a little kid. “So he was good at it?”
Helly rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you mad? You’re supposed to be mad!”
He put his hands on her hips and drew her close to him, so close that she could feel the bulge in his slacks. “He’s me. I’m him. Do you like him the way you like me?”
Without thinking, her eyes locked on Mark’s, she blurted out, “No, I love you.”
His mouth dropped open; he blinked. Then, he pushed her against the opposite wall of the stall as he kissed her so hard it hurt.
Helly had no frame of reference for penises, but she thought Mark’s penis was a good size. They got their clothes half-off their bodies as he opened her up with a finger, then he lined himself up and slowly pushed the tip into her, the stretch a bit painful with the pleasure.
“You wanted to do this so that the first time you do it isn’t with him, right?” Mark asked as he held Helly in place against the wall and ever so slowly nudged forward.
“Mm-hmm,” Helly said, eyes squeezed shut.
“You’re really tight, are you sure you’re OK?”
“It’s OK, we don’t have time for you to open me up.”
“Helly, I can’t get very far.”
Helly opened her eyes and looked down, finding that Mark’s penis had barely breached her. There was still a lot left to go. Maybe she was wrong about his size, maybe his penis was the wrong size to fit into her body.
“OK. That’s OK. Kiss me, I’ll relax,” Helly reassured him.
Kissing for a purpose wasn’t as fun as kissing for fun. After about another minute or two, Mark maybe got another inch deeper inside of her. It still felt good, but Helly wanted all of him, and she was mad at her body for not cooperating.
Then, the door to the bathroom slammed open and Dylan’s voice said, “Milchick’s on his way, stop fucking in the stalls!”
“Sorry!” Mark and Helly called back in unison.
Mark easily slipped out of Helly and tucked himself back into his slacks. Helly pulled her skirt down and her panties up. It all felt a little embarrassing.
“I’m sorry,” Helly said.
Mark grabbed the side of her neck and pulled her forward to kiss her forehead. He rubbed his thumb against her cheek and said, “Hey, at least you get to wake up out of here sometimes. Maybe he’ll be better at getting his penis into your vagina.”
“You really wouldn’t mind? If I had sex with him, I mean.”
“You like him because he’s like me, right?”
She nodded. She then reached up and tucked his hair behind his ear. “He’s not so bad. And he looks like you.”
“And you love me?”
“I love you.”
He kissed her, his lips soft and solid against hers. When he pulled away, he said, “I love you.”
They smiled at each other, staying close to one another.
Then, Helly said, “But you know if you fucked my outie, I would be pissed, right?”
He laughed. “Yes, Helly, I know.” He shifted and stepped away from her. “Now, get out of here so I can take care of this.” He gestured to the tent in his pants.
“Your outie said it’s painful to have an erection in the elevator, by the way.”
“Oh, good. Thanks.”
Helly made it back to her desk seconds before Milchick came in to check on them. When he asked where Mark was, Dylan, Irving and Helly said “bathroom” in unison.
At lunch, they were able to sneak into the supply closet long enough to give each other hand jobs. Mark apparently knew how to touch Helly in exactly the same places as his outie did, and when Helly told him this, he said, “Pussy skills transcend severance” with a completely straight face as he circled the pad of his thumb against her clit.
Helly’s orgasm was less dramatic than the one she had with Mark’s outie. She came with a soft cry and a roll of her hips, her vagina clenching against Mark’s hand as he whispered sweet nothings to her and made sure she was OK.
It took Mark longer to come, which he blamed on having come already earlier in the day. Helly watched her own hand work his shaft and imagined what it would be like to have his length inside of her, in her cunt or in her mouth. They just needed more time, that was all. And less supervision.
They didn’t get it.
Days passed, and soon it was Friday and Helly still had not had Mark’s penis in her vagina.
First, they had a lot going on. Any time they could get away from Milchick was spent planning and scheming, as Irving liked to call it. She was in charge of conducting the overtime contingency on Mark, Dylan and Irving so they could find out more information about their outies. While Helly had not told them about Irving’s possible connection to Helena Eagan, she hoped he would find something that would explain some things. She didn’t think Mark would find anything out since she already knew his outie, but she hoped he would wake up somewhere other than alone in his apartment. Maybe he would meet the sister his outie had mentioned to her a few times.
Next, Helly was miserable. Every time she went up the elevator, she wished that the next thing she’d see was the inside of Mark’s dingy house. Now that she knew what existed on the outside, she hated being stuck on the severed floor. It made her moody and irritable at work, which was not conducive for sneaking away to have sex with Mark.
Luckily for her, on Friday she went up the elevator, everything went black, and then she was on a bed, cool air on her skin, coughing a lung up.
“Jesus Christ,” she said, sitting up and putting an arm over her naked chest.
She had a lit cigarette in her hand. On a whim, she brought it to her lips and inhaled deeply and coughed even harder.
Mark came into the room wearing nothing but a towel slung low around his hips, his hair dripping wet. He stopped near the foot of the bed and looked at her curiously before asking, “Helly?”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice fried.
He came over to her and gently sat down on the bed and delicately removed the cigarette from her hand and put it out on an ashtray on the nightstand. He then handed her a glass of water, procured out of the kindness of his heart.
“Where are we?” Helly asked, looking around the fancy room.
“Uh, a hotel on the outskirts of town,” Mark answered sheepishly. “You—Helena asked to meet here after work. She booked two nights for us.”
Helly took a huge gulp of water. “Why are you sleeping with the CEO’s daughter, anyway? Couldn’t you get in big trouble for that? And isn’t she a mega cunt?”
“Um, well, I don’t know if that’s any of your business.”
“Did she tell you to say that?” Helly said in a mocking tone.
“You’re a lot like her, actually. Just rougher around the edges, a little more…erratic.”
“Are you dating her?”
Mark shrugged innocently.
“Did you tell her you did oral sex on me?”
“‘Did oral sex’? Do you not know the phrase ‘ate you out’?”
Helly glared at him. “No, I guess that one didn’t slip past the brain chip filters. Did you tell her or not, Mark?”
“She woke up with my head between her legs, so what do you think?”
“Oh. Right.”
“Did you tell your me?”
“Yes, I did, actually.”
“And?”
Helly considered lying but couldn’t come up with anything fast enough. “He said you two are the same person and he’s just glad that you have good…eating skills.”
Mark laughed, a real, genuine laugh. Helly looked at him, at how relaxed and unbothered he seemed.
“Straighten your posture,” she said without thinking.
“What?”
“Your posture. You’re all hunched over. My Mark isn’t hunched over.”
Mark’s eyebrows pulled together then he sat up on the bed, straightening his shoulders out. “Better?”
“Much.”
They stared at each other.
Helly said, “Did we just fuck?”
A smile pulled at Mark’s lips. “A little while ago, yeah.”
“Do you have a big penis?”
“I’m sorry?”
“My Mark couldn’t…we tried, and it didn’t…it wouldn’t fit.”
Strangely, Mark looked like he pitied her. His posture went back to sucking. “OK, um. I’ll eat you out again to give my dick some time to recover, then we’ll try. Is mine…the only dick you’ve seen?”
Helly nodded.
Mark ran a hand through his wet hair. “Alright, uh, I’m not really into bragging or anything. But, yes, I’m bigger than average, and if my innie didn’t know what he was doing, or you guys didn’t take your time, then it wouldn’t be very good for either of you.”
“I think all of those things happened.”
Mark gave her a closed-lip smile and leaned forward to kiss the corner of her mouth. He then said, “Let me dry my hair and then I’ll eat you out.”
Helly followed Mark into the bathroom and stood naked in the doorway while he blow dried his hair.
“Does Helena tell you things?” Helly yelled over the blow dryer.
“Like what?”
“Like, stuff about Lumon. If she knows anything about what goes on on the severed floor, stuff like that.”
“No, and I don’t ask. But I don’t think she’s as evil as you think she is. Like, at all.”
“Well, sure, I’d say that too if I was fucking her regularly.”
Mark huffed a laugh and cut the blow dryer off. He ran a comb through his hair and then tucked his locks behind his ears before turning to Helly and looking down at her.
Helly leaned up and caught his mouth, kissing him soundly. She put a hand on his hip to steady herself, enjoying the way she could touch his skin without having to fight through a suit.
“My Mark thinks every version of us would like each other,” Helly said.
“He sounds like a dork.”
Helly smacked his chest. “He’s romantic.”
Mark kissed her softly, his arms going around her waist. “Yeah, I guess I used to be like that, too.”
“Until your wife died.”
Mark’s face fell. “Yeah, until my wife died.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “It’s OK.”
“Does Helena know about your wife?”
“Yes.”
Helly nodded and stroked her hand down his cheek. He closed his eyes and leaned into her touch, and for a second he looked so much like her Mark that she felt like she loved him.
“I wish I had more time out here,” she admitted.
Mark guided her hips, stepping forward to push her back into the room. He put his lips to her neck as they walked and said, “You like spending time with me?”
“I mean, I prefer my Mark, but this is nicer than being stuck on the severed floor all the time.”
Mark eased her back onto the bed, his mouth still working on her skin. He cupped a breast in his hand and rolled his thumb over her nipple, then he shimmied out of his towel and crawled completely on top of her, his skin warm and hard against her soft body.
“Wait, let me see you,” Helly said, shoving his chest away from her.
“I’m not hard yet,” he said shyly.
“I don’t care. I’ve never seen you naked.”
Mark looked at her like she was being ridiculous. He hovered above her, not making any move to show off his physique to her.
“Well?” Helly pressed.
“I’m just a guy, Helly. Like, nearly past middle-aged guy.”
“Do I look like I give a shit? Do you know what it’s like to be in love with someone and not ever get to see them outside of a suit?”
Mark looked sorry for a second, then he seemed to make up his mind and got up from the bed. He spread his arms out to the sides and said, “Well. Get a good look.”
Helly propped up on her elbows and raked her eyes over him. Even soft, his penis did look like it was too big to fit inside of her. Helly wondered, though, if that had to do with proportions. Mark was kind of small, but his extremities were big.
“Have you had your fill?” Mark asked sarcastically.
“No, turn around.”
“Really?”
“Turn around, Mark!”
Mark scoffed at her but spun around, showing her his butt. She liked him so much. She liked every bit of him.
Unable to help herself, Helly hopped up from the bed and wrapped her arms around Mark from behind, pressing her cheek to his back and squeezing him tight.
He laughed. “You’re weird.”
Helly slid one arm down the center of his chest, over his soft belly, into the patch of hair at his crotch, and found that his penis was coming to life.
“You like it,” Helly said mischievously as she wrapped her fingers around his length.
“I don’t…I’m not really used to being, um, admired.”
Helly peppered his back in kisses and moved her hand up and down his shaft, enjoying the weight of it in her palm.
Mark took several deep, ragged breaths. Then, he pushed Helly’s hand off of him and spun in her arms, gripping her by the hips and hauling her back onto the bed. He kissed her mouth just once before moving his lips down her body until she stopped him at her abdomen.
“We don’t know how much time we have,” Helly said, holding his head in her hands to get him to look at her. “I want your penis in me. Please.”
Mark grinned and crawled back up her body. He put two of his fingers in his mouth and then reached down between their bodies. He kissed Helly softly and pushed one finger inside of her, pumping slowly in and out for a second.
“You’re wetter than Helena’s ever been for me, that’s for sure,” Mark muttered against her mouth.
Helly grabbed him by the back of the head and shoved her tongue between his lips to get him to shut up about her outie.
He easily slid a second finger in, moving both around inside of her and then scissoring them apart, opening her wider. Her kisses became more hurried, more desperate as she wanted more of him, all of him.
“More,” Helly said stupidly, then she bit his bottom lip between her teeth and sucked on it until he moaned.
Mark pushed a third finger in, making Helly gasp into his mouth. It stung a little bit, but in a good way. He moved them around inside of her like he was making space to move in permanently. His thumb found her clit and rubbed circles into it while his fingers pushed harder, deeper, so far into her that she felt the knuckles on the back of his hand pushing against her entrance.
Helly broke the kiss and shoved her hips down harder against his hand, eyes squeezed shut and mouth open in a quiet gasp.
After a minute, Mark pulled his hand out of her and said, “Hold on, sweetheart,” and Helly wasn’t even mad about the pet name.
When he pushed in, the stretch stung in a wonderful, new kind of pleasure. She curled her toes and dug her fingernails into his shoulder blades, and Mark slowly made his way inside, Helly opening up and accepting him, desperately needing more.
“Patience,” Mark whispered against her ear as he moved back out. Before Helly could protest, he slid back in further. “Almost there.”
Helly whimpered and pushed her hips down. Mark met her through it and pushed so deep into her that she felt it in her abdomen. Her muscles jumped, and she felt a pleasure so profound in the center of her body that she could have screamed.
She may have actually screamed, because the next thing she knew Mark put his big hand over her mouth and thrust forward, going even deeper. A tear slipped out of the corner of Helly’s eye. She needed to scream. She needed to move.
“Take a deep breath and relax,” Mark said quietly into her ear, then he took her lobe between his teeth and raked across it.
Helly took his advice, and as her body relaxed, Mark bottomed out.
They both sighed. Mark’s forehead dropped to Helly’s. They breathed into each other’s mouths, and Helly closed her eyes and thought about her—
No, actually, she didn’t. She didn’t have to imagine that this was her Mark. In fact, she liked this Mark, too. She wanted to have sex with him.
“Mark,” Helly said, her voice strained as he thrust in and out of her, slowly and carefully. “Mark.”
“Yeah?”
“I really like you.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I don’t mean my Mark. I mean you. I really like you.”
Mark’s hips stuttered but he recovered quickly and pushed even deeper into her. Helly was wrong about him; his size was perfect for her, their bodies slotting together absolutely perfectly.
“That’s really nice of you,” Mark said. He propped up on his hands and pushed harder, hitting a different angle. “I wish I had more time with you. I, um, think I really like you, too.”
A flash, a glitch in Helly’s vision, and suddenly they were in a different position, sitting up in bed, Mark behind her, holding her in his lap by wrapping an arm around her body, his hand resting at the base of her neck, mouth at her ear telling her to be a good girl and come for him while he filled her up from below.
“What the fuck?” Helly said in the present at the same time Mark said, “You OK?”
“Go faster!” Helly demanded. “I’m going to switch back, and I can’t—”
Darkness.
When Helly woke back up, she felt extremely empty. Her vagina pulsed painfully. She crossed her legs where she was sitting.
And where was she? It was a dark and somewhat noisy restaurant. Mark sat across from her in a booth, his eyes focused on his food as he said something about his niece. Helly had a half-eaten plate of salmon and asparagus in front of her and was wearing a skin-tight electric blue dress. The dress was long-sleeve, but it barely reached mid-thigh, so it wasn’t exactly warm. Lucky for Helly, Helena had put on knee-high boots.
Interrupting whatever he was saying to Helena, Helly said, “Mark, it’s Helly.”
Mark’s eyes snapped up to hers. He smiled and swallowed his food then looked around the restaurant. “Fuck it, I’ll just leave cash on the table. Let’s go.”
“What?”
“We were in the middle of having sex when you glitched out, right? I’m assuming you want to get back to that?”
Helly clenched her legs together and nodded, a grimace on her face. “Did Helena get to have my orgasm?”
“She did. She was a little freaked out when she woke up, though. It took her a long time to adjust.”
“Did you consider, I don’t know, not having sex with her?”
Mark made a face at her like she was being obtuse. “Yes, Helly, I offered to pull out and give her some time alone, but can you guess based on your own personality how that went?”
Helly imagined what she would do in that scenario, if she woke up with Mark balls-deep in her cunt. She would probably smack him across the face and then demand that he finish in her.
Helly asked, “How long ago—”
“Last night. Helena and I had sex again this morning, but I’m sure I can get it up again now if you want to—”
“So what, you guys are just, like, on a date right now?” Helly asked as she picked up the fork on her plate and took a huge bite of salmon.
Mark smiled his amused smile at her and picked his own fork back up. “Um, yeah. Her idea, actually.”
Helly scowled and ate more salmon. “I feel like I’m stuck in some kind of sex loop where I get to have half of sex with you or my Mark, but I black out before I get the whole thing. It’s not fair that you and Helena get the whole thing.”
“Well, maybe you’ll be awake longer this time. Who knows?”
“Have you even asked her why I keep waking up? Why I’m seeing fragments of her memories?”
Mark’s eyes widened. “You’re seeing fragments of her memories?”
“I mean, kind of? It’s a lot of little flashes, mostly of you, actually—actually, only of you. What did she tell you, Mark?”
“Uh, she told me that it’s sensitive information and she can’t say anything because then I could tell you, and she doesn’t want you to know because it could mess up her ‘research.’”
“Yeah, that’s not suspicious at all.”
“I don’t think she’s doing anything nefarious.”
“Severing yourself isn’t nefarious?”
Mark’s face fell. “I’m not…I’m not a bad person.”
Helly winced. “No, Mark, you’re not a bad person. All I mean is—Irving?”
Irving stopped by their booth, his eyes widening at the sight of Helly. He then looked to Mark and gave them both a fake smile.
“Helena,” he said cordially.
“It’s Helly, actually,” Helly said. “I’m the innie.”
Irving looked nervously around the restaurant and then slid into the booth next to Helly, putting a finger to his lips to tell her to be quiet. He said to Mark, “Are you the Mark she was looking for?”
“I am,” Mark said. He held his hand out; Irving shook it firmly.
“We all know each other, then? On the severed floor?” Irving asked.
“Yeah, and Dyla—”
“Shh, Helly. We don’t need to know that.”
“OK, so what the fuck do you need to know?”
“Just continue doing what you’re doing,” Irving said.
“What, having sex with Mark?”
Mark spit his drink back into the glass and choked.
“Whatever you’re doing on the severed floor, Helly,” Irving said, a slight smile on his face. “Helena and I trust that our innies will figure it out.”
“Figure what out!”
Irving just shook his head and smiled widely at her, looking amused in a similar way that Mark did.
“I have to go,” Irving said. “We don’t want to be seen together.”
After Irving left, Mark casually said, “Seems like Helena’s up to something.”
Helly blinked and stared at Mark. After a beat of silence, she said, “Let’s get out of here and fuck.”
Mark immediately threw his napkin down on his plate. “Yep.”
As they walked out of the restaurant, Mark stayed close to Helly and put his arm low around her hip over her coat, squeezing her against his side.
“What are you doing?” Helly asked.
In a low voice, Mark said, “You look really hot in that outfit, just want people to know you’re with me.”
“Oh, so you’re, like, gross.”
“You’re allowed to objectify me, but I’m not allowed to objectify you? At least you have your clothes on.”
“Not for long, I won’t.”
Mark walked faster.
Back at the hotel, they picked up where they had been interrupted before. Helly found that her body was more ready, willing to open up for Mark faster than before.
“I can take it,” Helly said as Mark slowly slid in. “I want it hard. Fuck me hard, Mark.”
“Jesus,” Mark said on an exhale before propping himself up higher above her and thrusting his hips forward.
“Faster, goddamn it.”
Mark bit his bottom lip between his teeth and looked at Helly with a darkness in his eyes as he pushed harder. He increased the rhythm, pounding into her until she saw stars behind her eyelids and couldn’t help but make pathetic gasping noises on every thrust.
Helly tried to push her hips down to match Mark in his rhythm, but he was moving at a breakneck pace, so she just held onto his arms and enjoyed the way his sweat built beneath her hands.
After seconds or hours, Helly wasn’t sure which, Mark bent down and kissed her messily and then said against her mouth, “Come, Helly.”
Helly’s orgasm washed over her in waves, her body rolling against the bed with it. She felt such immediate relief, such a ridiculous high, that she wrapped her arms around Mark’s neck and yanked him down for a sloppy kiss. She shoved her tongue between his lips and thrust it in time with his thrusts until he was a sweaty mess and coming deep inside of her.
It was a weird sensation, unexpected but not unwelcome, and as Mark collapsed on top of her and slipped out, Helly pet his hair and shushed him.
It took Mark a long time to catch his breath.
“Man, you’re out of shape,” Helly said, still petting him.
“You have no idea how much work that is,” Mark said defensively.
“Hey.” Helly tapped his back until he looked up at her. She put her hand on his face and held him gently. “You did fucking great, Mark. Or you did great fucking. Both.”
Mark huffed a laugh and turned to kiss the palm of her hand. “A glowing review of my prowess.”
“I’ll be on top next time to give you a break.”
“Next time, huh?”
Helly hugged him to her chest and kissed the top of his head. “Wouldn’t it be cool if I stayed me long enough to sleep?”
“Man, you’ve never slept, have you?”
“Nope.”
Mark was quiet for a bit. Eventually he said, “I’d never really considered the consequences of severance. I’m sorry.”
Helly barked a laugh. “Will you sleep with me, Mark?”
“Of course.” He kissed the center of her chest. “Have you ever taken a shower?”
“No.”
“Do you want to take one with me?”
“We can do that?”
Mark smiled at her. “We can do whatever we want, apparently.”
As it turned out, showering with Mark was wonderful.
Sleeping with him was even better.
It took Helly a few minutes to decide on a position to sleep in, and Mark just laughed and adjusted with her as she went from her back to her stomach to her side, from being half on top of him to hugging him from behind to having his head on her chest.
“Let me try something,” Mark said, and then he flipped Helly’s body so they were facing each other on their sides. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close, and she burrowed against his chest and threw her leg over his.
“Oh, this is nice,” Helly said.
“It’s what Helena likes,” Mark muttered.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
“OK.”
“Goodnight, Mark.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Goodnight, Helly.”
Falling asleep in his arms, Helly could easily imagine it was her Mark. He was so soft and warm in her arms, his heartbeat a solid thump beneath her cheek. She thought, just maybe, she could love all of him and not just a part.
She was still there in the morning.
She woke up disoriented and groggy in a way she had never felt before in her life. She had moved in the night, dragging all the covers with her so Mark was bare and exposed on the other side of the bed. He was on his back with his head turned toward her and one arm outstretched to her, the backs of his fingers brushing her skin.
“Mark,” she whispered, untangling herself from the covers and turning over to him. She maneuvered to throw the covers over his body, too, and then she climbed on top of him, locking him between her knees.
“Oh. Hey,” he said hoarsely, a gentle smile crossing his face as he woke up. “Are you still Helly?”
She nodded happily and kissed the corner of his mouth. “I can ride you.”
Mark’s hands found her hips and rubbed her sides. “I’ve had more sex in the past week than I’ve had in the past two years.”
Helly wiggled her ass against Mark’s crotch. He was hard already. “So is that a no?”
“No, no, definitely not. I love having sex with you.”
Helly’s head pounded. She closed her eyes and saw Mark smiling at her across the booth at the restaurant last night. It was a different kind of smile, one obviously for Helena.
“Fuck,” Helly said. “I’m going back out. Do not let Helena ride you right now!”
“What?”
Helly slammed their mouths together and kissed him with everything she felt, and then it went dark.
She woke up in the elevator. Fuck her life.
She stomped her way into MDR and found Mark in the break room, standing ramrod straight with his suit jacket already off as he brewed a pot of coffee. He was humming something unintelligible. Helly came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his middle and pressed her cheek to his back.
He laughed and said, “Hi, Helly.”
“I was on the outside over the weekend,” she admitted.
Mark spun in her arms, eyebrows pulled together as he looked at her. He scanned her face then looked at her neck. He pointed to it and said, “You have a bruise there.”
Helly put her hand where he pointed and found a tender spot. “Ah, fuck. That must’ve been Helena. That did not happen with me, I would’ve remembered.”
“Well, what did happen?”
“Our outies went to a hotel to spend the weekend together, but I…got some time. We, um. We had sex. In an actual bed.”
Mark’s face fell. “So it fit? My penis?”
Helly blinked, caught off guard. “Yeah! It fit perf—”
“So, he’s better for you than I am?”
“What? Mark, no, that’s not—it’s not like that.”
Mark pushed away from her and focused on pouring a mug of coffee for himself, avoiding eye contact with her as he said, “It’s not fair. He gets to have sex with you in a bed and has all this time and freedom to be good at it, and I’m stuck here.”
“Mark, I’m so sorry. I love you.”
He glared at her. “But do you love him, too?”
“I…I might…”
Mark scoffed and stormed out of the break room.
“Mark!” Helly shouted indignantly as she followed him into MDR. “What happened to you guys being the same? Every version of me liking every version of you?”
Mark spun around and looked at her incredulously before looking awkwardly over at Dylan and Irving. He said, “You’re really doing this now?”
“I’m sorry it’s not fair, Mark! It’s not fair to me, either! But tell me you wouldn’t do the same, if you woke up naked in a bed with me, you’re telling me you wouldn’t enjoy it? Get your head out of your ass!”
“Helly, fight with Mark later, please,” Dylan said, matching Helly’s angry tone. “Last week of the quarter, for fuck’s sake.”
Helly and Mark stared at each other. Helly then cleared her throat and went to her desk, smoothing out her skirt as she sat down. Dylan was right. She could fight with Mark later.
If Helly didn’t finish the Siena file, they wouldn’t get a waffle party, and if they didn’t get a waffle party, Helly wouldn’t have an excuse to stay at work late and sneak off to the security office to trip the overtime contingency, and if they didn’t do the OTC, then who knows how long it would be before they could figure anything out?
She buckled down. She kept her ass in her desk chair for two days straight.
On Wednesday, after ascending the elevator, she woke up in the huge house, the one she assumed was her own. She was sitting at a kitchen table with a mug of tea in one hand and a small screen in her other. Phone, her brain supplied. On the screen were news stories about Lumon.
Helly flinched when hands dropped to her shoulders from behind and lips kissed the top of her head.
“Oh, you alright?” Mark asked.
Helly set down the items in her hands, stood up, and wrapped her arms around Mark’s neck and squeezed him tight.
Mark laughed into her hair, wrapping his arms around her waist and asking, “Helly?”
“You’ve been so mad at me,” she admitted. “I miss you.”
Mark pulled back and rubbed her hips as he looked down at her. “Him, you mean.”
“He’s jealous.”
“Well, yeah, of course.”
Helly hugged him again, arms around his waist now, head on his chest. She said, “Do you have plans this weekend?”
“What?”
“Plans this weekend. Friday.”
“Um, I’m going to my sister’s for a—”
“Perfect.”
“Helly, what?”
Helly looked up at him. “I can’t tell you. Innie business.”
Mark arched an eyebrow at her. “Right.”
“Why are we at Helena’s house?”
Mark shrugged. “You invited me over. I don’t ask too many questions when a beautiful woman invites me over.”
Helly rolled her eyes. “So sorry to have interrupted your evening.”
“We were just hanging out. I’m making pesto.”
“Is that something I can eat?”
“Yes.”
“Do we have time to have sex first?”
Mark scrubbed a hand down his face. “Your Mark is blue-balling you, isn’t he?”
“If that means he hasn’t touched me or talked to me about anything other than work and scheming in several days, then yes.”
“Scheming?”
Helly waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. Will you have sex with me or not? I’d like to try putting your penis in my mouth, if that’s something you might like to do.”
Mark’s eyes widened. “Um, yes. That’s definitely something I might like to do. I have to keep an eye on the food, though, so—”
“Let’s do it against the counter. It’ll still work if you’re standing, right?”
Mark visibly swallowed. “Yes.”
Helly went for his fly, but Mark stopped her and said they should do it right. He got a cushion from the ugliest couch and set it on the floor, then he told Helly to kneel on it. He grabbed a dishcloth from a cabinet and handed it to her, telling her to use it to spit if he accidentally came down her throat.
“Accidentally? Why not do it on purpose?” Helly asked as she got on her knees and pulled her hair up into a ponytail.
“Jesus, Helly—I don’t want to come down your throat when you’ve never done this before. It might be gross, you could end up puking.”
“I don’t find anything about you gross,” Helly said simply as she pushed his hips back against the kitchen counter and reached for his fly again.
“Your innie knows pretty much all the same moves you do, so I wonder if I know how to do this from my outie.”
Mark snorted. “I can’t imagine Helena does this very often, if at all.”
“Well, she’s a snob,” Helly replied as she took Mark’s penis out of his underwear and ran her hand up and down his shaft.
He was already half-hard, and it did not take long to get him the rest of the way there. She stretched her mouth around his tip and licked at it a little before going deeper.
Mark’s hand found the back of her head. He breathed heavily as he talked her through it. While it wasn’t as enjoyable as having his penis in her vagina, she loved how insane it made him. She loved that she was unbothered, just a little turned on, while he was a wreck above her.
He warned her when he was about to come, and Helly pressed a hand at the base, right at his balls, and hollowed her cheeks out to suck harder. He frantically told her to get off, that he would come any second, and she hummed her dissent around him.
“Jesus, fuck, Helly, really? Fine, here!” He came down the back of her throat, pumping his hips forward against her.
Helly easily swallowed.
She then stood up, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, “OK, it was a little gross.”
Mark, breath heaving, didn’t answer. He just looked at her, shook his head, and turned to the stove to check the food.
Over dinner, Mark let Helly vent about her Mark and his hypocrisy and the injustice of it all for a solid 10 minutes, offering little hums of affirmation throughout.
She kept getting piercing headaches but no flashes of memories, so it was hard to tell when she might glitch out again.
After dinner, Mark asked her if there was anything she would like to do that she couldn’t do on the severed floor, and five minutes later they were both outside bundled up in coats and hats and gloves playing in the snow.
They made snow angels next to each other, then Helly rolled over and climbed on top of Mark, both of them wet and freezing in their layers. She leaned down and kissed him softly. He brushed a lock of hair out of her face.
“Why are you so nice to me?” Helly asked quietly.
Mark looked at her like she was an idiot. “You gave me a blowjob in the kitchen within five seconds of seeing me.”
“I’m serious, it’s like you become less of a dick each time I see you.”
“The benefits of getting laid regularly.”
Helly hit him on his coat. “Now you’re being a dick on purpose.”
“Helly.” He stroked her face.
“Yeah?”
“I’m freezing. Let’s go inside.”
“Yeah, good idea.”
They made it all the way to bedtime, and Helly showed no signs of glitching. She wondered what it would be like to wake up in the morning and go to work and go down to the severed floor already severed.
It didn’t happen, though. They got in bed and Mark ate her out to “return the favor,” then Mark held her in his arms and they breathed evenly together.
“Mark,” Helly said quietly.
“Mm?”
“Tell me about your wife.”
Mark tensed for a second and then sighed. “Um, OK.”
It took Mark a second to actually answer, and when he did, his voice had changed, more like Helly’s Mark. He talked slowly and pointedly, telling her about going on camping trips with his wife and how great of a teacher she was and how extraordinary she made him feel and—
Helly didn’t remember falling asleep, but the next thing she knew she was on the elevator.
“You saw him, didn’t you?” Mark asked coldly as soon as she walked into MDR.
“How’d you know?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I can just tell.”
Helly went to him and stood next to his desk chair. “I miss you,” she said quietly.
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Mark continued being cold toward her through Thursday, then through Friday, too. Helly finished the Siena file with five minutes to spare, and Mark told Cobel that Helly deserved the waffle party.
“You ready?” Mark asked Helly, deadly serious at the end of the day.
Helly nodded nervously.
“Hey,” Mark said.
Helly looked at him.
Mark leaned in and kissed her delicately, then he pulled away and rested his forehead on hers. “I love you.”
“I love you,” Helly repeated.
“I’ll get over it. I’m just jealous.”
“I know.”
He kissed her forehead then smiled at her before leaving.
The next hour was a rush, one of the most intense hours of Helly’s short life.
By the time Milchick broke into the security office and tackled her, it was far too late. She had tripped the OTC for at least half an hour.
Helly did not wake up on the outside over the weekend. She went up the elevator with a sore back from Milchick’s tackle, then she descended feeling better a second later.
Mark nearly bowled her over when she came off the elevator. He hugged her tight and breathed her name like a prayer into her hair.
“I’ve been here a couple days. They told me it’s been five months,” Mark said.
“That can’t be true,” Helly reasoned. “I would’ve woken up on the outside at some point.”
“That’s what I figured. They’re just trying to freak us out.”
When Dylan and Irving arrived, the four of them spoke in low tones as they made their way down the winding hallways to MDR. Dylan met his wife and children and seemed to be irrevocably changed by it. Irving found strange paintings and paperwork in his apartment and figured out that his outie was definitely investigating Lumon.
Mark, however, was hesitant to share what happened. Helly, Dylan and Irving had to coax it out of him in the break room, and he avoided eye contact with Helly the whole time.
“Helly, you know how you told me my outie’s wife died?”
Helly nodded.
“I found a picture of our wedding at my sister’s house, and it was Ms. Casey. My outie’s wife is Ms. Casey.”
“Holy shit, so she’s alive,” Helly said.
Then, it hit her. Mark’s wife was alive.
The Mark she was falling in love with had a wife that was alive.
Her Mark finally made eye contact with her. He looked apologetic.
Later, Mark found Helly alone in the break room and said, “I blacked out before I could tell my—Mark’s sister. You’ll tell him next time you see him?”
Helly searched his face, her eyebrows pinched together. “Yeah, I’ll tell him.”
“Do you think he’s in love with you?”
“No. No, it’s not like that.”
Mark smiled at her. “You’re not very good at lying, Helly.”
The truth was, Helly wasn’t sure what she would do. She didn’t want to tell Mark that his wife was alive, at least not immediately. If she could selfishly have just one more day with him, then she would tell him the next time.
Of course, she woke up on the outside that very evening.
She was sitting and moving, a strange sensation until she realized she was in the passenger seat of a car. Mark was driving and talking, in the middle of a sentence about his sister meeting his innie.
“Oh so you tell Helena stuff, but innies are kept in the dark?” Helly interrupted.
“Hey, Helly,” Mark said, totally unbothered. “Can you please tell me what the other night was about? Was it you controlling the overtime contingency?”
“Yeah. Milchick tackled me.”
“Helena had to see a chiropractor for that.”
“Oh, poor her.”
“What crawled up your ass?”
“Where are we going?”
Mark sighed. “Home. We just went to dinner.”
“What, you live together now?”
“No, we’re just going to my house. Helena was probably going to spend the night.”
“Doesn’t she have to work tomorrow?”
“Well, yeah, but she has stuff at my house. She has her own closet, actually, she insisted on it.”
Helly could say it now. She could say “your wife is alive” and ruin Helena’s stupid closet at his house.
Before she had the chance, Mark reached across the center console and put his hand on her knee and squeezed it affectionately.
“I’ve missed you,” he said softly.
Helly let the admission hang in the air for several long seconds before she put her hand over top of his and whispered, “Missed you, too.”
Mark lifted her hand to his face and kissed her knuckles before settling both their hands back down on her thigh. He pulled into the driveway at his house but didn’t cut the engine off.
“I’ve been wanting to tell you something. I think you should hear it before Helena,” Mark said.
Helly’s heart beat so hard in her chest she could feel it in her ears. “Mark, I don’t think you should…”
He smiled at her, all softness, none of his grief, none of his hard edges. “You know what I’m going to say?”
Yes, she did. He loved her. He had fallen in love not just with her but with Helena, too. Helly could let him say it. She could let him say it, and she could keep living this fantasy for as long as possible.
“Helly, I’m in—”
“Your wife is alive, she’s on the severed floor,” Helly blurted out.
Mark’s mouth hung slightly open; he blinked at her. “What?” he whispered.
“Your wife. Her name is Ms. Casey down there. She’s alive.”
Mark stared at nothing and then got out of the car. Helly watched him lean against the hood and bend over, facing away from her. He was shaking.
Then, the world went dark.
Chapter Text
“...Would even believe you when you’re the owner of the fucking—oh goddamn it, do not tell me you just turned into Helly, I swear to god.”
“Hello to you, too, Mark,” Helly said, crossing her arms over her chest defensively.
Mark pulled at his hair so hard that it stretched the skin of his forehead. “I can’t do this right now,” he said, seething. “Get out of my fucking face.”
“Excuse me? What did I do?”
“What did you do? Made me fall in love with you!” Mark shouted. “And your fucking outie! And now she’s trying to tell me she didn’t know my wife was alive. Yeah, right. Like she didn’t fucking know.”
“We’ve been coming up with a plan for how to get her out,” Helly said quietly.
“Oh, yeah, right, like you give a shit. What am I supposed to say to her if you succeed, hm? Welcome home, honey, and oh, by the way, I have two girlfriends now, and one of them is responsible for you being locked in the basement of Lumon for the past two years.” Mark looked away from her, something coming over his face, a manic smile as he folded forward and dropped his hands to his knees. He started laughing and crying simultaneously. “God, fuck. Fuck. What the fuck.”
On instinct, Helly closed the distance between them and gently slid her hand across his back. Mark’s strange noises turned into sobbing. Helly bent down to get her other arm around him, and he melted into her, coming up to cling to her, his arms going around her back, hands fisting into the fabric of her blouse. His whole body shook.
“Shh, shh,” Helly said. “I’ve got you.”
After a minute, Mark sniffled and muttered, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Helly.”
“It’s OK. Shh, it’s alright.” Helly held him tighter and petted his hair. “Maybe she really didn’t know. You trust her, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. I thought I did.”
Helly’s head pounded. It was getting worse. She shut her eyes for a second and tried to ground herself, but it was no use.
“Mark,” she said carefully. “Something’s wrong. Can you…I’m sorry, can you get me to your couch?”
Mark immediately snapped out of his episode, switching their positions so he was holding Helly up. He guided her to the couch and set her down gently, then he knelt in front of her and looked at her with concern in his eyes.
“Are you going to switch back?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Everything’s wrong. Off. I can see you and your house, but I can see the severed floor, too. Fuck.”
“Helly, what—”
She blacked out.
It wasn’t just the normal switch between innie and outie; it felt worse, like she was dying. When she came back to herself in the elevator, it felt like a significant amount of time had passed.
Mark wasn’t at work.
Helly found out from Dylan and Irving that she had been out sick for two days, and that Mark was now on day three of being out.
Helly filled them in on what was going on with her and Mark, and they all decided to start the process of helping Ms. Casey—Gemma—get out of the basement of Lumon.
Then, Helly started seeing Helena’s memories while at work, too.
All of them, every one, was of Mark.
Mark yelling at her, Mark kissing her, Mark fucking her, Mark laughing with her, Mark being rough with her, Mark being gentle with her.
Helly began feeling like Helena when she had the memories. She felt a different kind of love for Mark, a more subdued kind of love from a person that was guarded in her feelings. A person reluctant to open her heart. When she saw a memory of Mark angry with her, she realized she did not know about Gemma being trapped at Lumon.
Helena had been telling Mark the truth. Helly knew it, could feel it acutely.
The next day, Mark was back at work.
He made a beeline for Helly’s desk when he arrived and gestured for her to follow him to the supply closet. Once inside with the door locked, he began.
“There’s a bullshit thing called ‘reintegration,’” he said. “My outie started doing it, and I think your outie’s been doing it, too. Or something like it. I think that’s why you keep waking up on the outside.”
“Oh my god, did you wake up on the outside?” Helly asked.
Mark nodded. “I talked to my sister. And Cobel. They’re going to let my outie in on the plan for getting his wife out. I, um, called your outie, too.”
Helly raised an eyebrow at him. “And?”
“She asked me a bunch of questions about what I was feeling, what I was seeing. She asked me how we’re getting Ms. Ca—Gemma out of here and how close we were to finishing Cold Harbor. I have no idea how she even knew about Cold Harbor.”
“So, what are you seeing? Do you get flashes of memories like me?”
He nodded again. “Yeah.” A smile scrunched up his mouth. “They’re all of you. Or her, I guess. Don’t get mad. It’s, um, really beautiful seeing you in a bed. Naked. You’re so fucking beautiful, Helly.”
“OK, shut up. Why is this happening to us? Did she say?”
He shrugged. “I think we’re breaking the chips. Innies aren’t supposed to fall in love.”
“So, what, like, the more we interact and the closer we get to each other, the more often our brains glitch? Am I going to have a stroke the next time I have an orgasm with you?”
Mark huffed a surprised laugh. “Maybe? I guess we’ll see.” He checked his watch. “We should probably get a move on Cold Harbor. The sooner we can get a plan in motion, the better.”
Helly reached out and squeezed his hand. “Hey. I missed you.”
Mark gave her an adoring look and squeezed her hand back. He then tugged her forward and kissed her lips, lingering for several seconds. “No matter what happens to us or our outies, I love you.”
“Hey, maybe we’ll be our outies soon, and then we can be together all the time.”
“You wouldn’t mind that? Being Helena Eagan?”
Helly shrugged. “If I got to be with you, no.”
“You really do love my outie, too, then, huh?”
“He’s a lot like you, Mark. A little more selfish and not as nice, kind of a fuckup, but he’s got a big, kind heart like yours.” She kissed him again. “If you and he were one person, I think it would be alright.”
“I feel like you’re forgetting that he has a wife,” Mark said.
“Right, yeah, I did forget that.”
Mark laughed at her and shook his head then led her out of the supply room, only letting go of her hand when they got to their desks.
They worked extra hard to make it through Cold Harbor. By the end of the day, they were at 97 percent.
Mark and Helly made eye contact over the divider between their desks as they logged out for the day.
“Tomorrow,” Helly whispered.
“Tomorrow,” Mark replied, and nodded once.
Neither of them woke up on the outside that night, which meant there was no way to let Mark know that his wife may soon be home. He would be waking up on the basement floor—the testing floor, they learned—and would just have to figure it out based on whatever knowledge Cobel shared with him.
They almost succeeded in the plan.
Mark got Gemma to the exit, at least.
Then, he turned back and took Helly’s hand and they ran their way back toward MDR.
The revolution Helly began among the innies lasted for five hours and 11 minutes.
That was how long it took for the people upstairs to initiate something called a Glasgow block to turn all the innies into their outies on the severed floor.
Of course, it didn’t work on Helly.
“What the fuck? What the fuck am I doing here?” Mark asked, frantically spinning around, eyes darting around the flashing lights of the severed floor. “Where the fuck is Gemma? Did I get her out?”
“Yes,” Helly said quietly. “But your in—my Mark decided to stay here. With me.”
Mark ran a hand through his hair and then down his face. “Of course he fucking did. God. Fuck!”
Noise grew around them as other outies panicked at being woken up on the severed floor. After a minute, the lights switched on and a voice over the speaker told them to make an orderly line and follow Mr. Milchick toward the south stairwell.
Mr. Milchick had bruises to show for the fight earlier, but there was a look of determination on his face as he escorted the outies.
“What was the long-term plan here?” Mark asked derisively from his position behind Helly. “Stay on the severed floor forever? Starve to death?”
“I don’t know, Mark. It just felt like if we left here, our lives would effectively end. We wanted to prolong that for as long as possible.”
Mark scoffed. “God, you’ve really fucked up my life, you know that?”
“Helena didn’t know about your wife. She didn’t know she was down here, that she was alive.”
“How the fuck would you know that?”
“Because I’m her. I’m…becoming her. I don’t know, I just know.”
“OK.”
“So, what? You go home to your wife now, quit Lumon? Kill your innie?”
A pause, then, “You know my chip has been glitching just like yours, Helly. There is no going back.”
Then, darkness.
She didn’t even make it to the exit. Just flipped right there in the hallway.
When she woke, once again it felt as if a long time had passed.
She was in bed, light bright and the ceilings high, sweat sticking to her skin, and a tongue on her cunt.
“Oh. Oh, fuck,” she said, clenching her body so she didn’t come immediately. She was overstimulated, a band about to snap. “Mark?”
He hummed around her cunt, his tongue flattening as it moved in a circle. She realized, belatedly, that at least two of his fingers were inside of her, too, her wetness and his saliva making a mess between her legs and his face. She felt a scratchiness at her pelvis and thought he must not be clean-shaven.
“Mark, it’s Helly,” she said breathlessly.
He immediately pulled up, smiling brightly at her with a puffy red mouth. His fingers still pumped in a steady rhythm in and out of her.
“Hi,” he said. “Do you want me to finish?”
“Please.”
He eagerly dove back down, eating her out with more enthusiasm. Within seconds, she was coming with a shout.
Mark kissed his way up her body and propped himself on top of her, looking down at her. Sure enough, there was dark stubble along his jaw and mouth. It looked nice. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.”
“How long?”
“Hmm, about three weeks.”
“Jesus. Has Helena been glitching or anything?”
Mark nodded. “Yeah, we both have. My innie showed up once. Helena said he acted scared of her and upset that you weren’t there.”
Helly narrowed her eyes at him. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Mark smiled sheepishly. “Well, Helena got him to calm down, and he, uh, slept with her. It didn’t help that she was already naked when he woke up. She and I were about to have sex.”
“Oh, I’m going to kill him.”
“She said he cried afterward and wouldn’t shut up about how mad you’d be.”
“Yeah, sounds about right.”
Mark kissed her cheek. “Reintegration just takes some time. I think the closer we get to combining memories, the less our innies show up.” He kissed her again, near her ear this time. “Hey, I’m sorry. For being a dick to you on the severed floor.”
Helly just looked at him for a second. Then, “What about your wife?”
Mark winced. “She’s, um, at home right now.”
“Jesus Christ, Mark.”
“We’re figuring things out!” His face fell; he looked sad. “She’s different. I’m different. I told her I—”
Darkness.
Glitches. Flashes.
She was there, and then she wasn’t. She was Helly, then she was Helena, then she was both of them.
Through all of it, Mark. Mark kissing her, Mark smiling at her, Mark shouting at her, Mark apologizing to her, Mark hugging her, Mark laughing at her, Mark fucking her, Mark, Mark, Mark.
When she fully woke up again, she was sitting on a couch in an unfamiliar house with Mark tucked against her side and Mark’s sister sitting in an armchair across from them. Despite never having met Devon, Helly knew it was her. Maybe she had seen a picture in Mark’s house, or maybe Helena knew Devon and therefore Helly knew her, too.
Mark turned toward Helly and squeezed her harder against his side. “Did you just turn into Helly?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Oh! Hi, Helly,” Devon said sweetly, waving at her like she was a child. “I’m Devon.”
“I know,” Helly said. “Um, what’s going on? I feel…weird.”
“Well, it’s been almost a month since you woke up,” Mark said. “But Helena’s been, um, reintegrating. There’s a neuroscientist that’s been helping us. It should be soon that you get to be around all the time, Helly. And your Mark, too.”
Helly looked at him. They were close enough to each other to lean in and kiss, so she did. Just a peck on the lips for reassurance. “And…Gemma?”
Mark’s eyes cut over to Devon and then back to Helly. “She’s actually living here with Devon and Ricken and Eleanor until she…until she’s stable enough to get the chip out of her head. I mean, we don’t know if the chip can be removed, but it’s really the only option. She can’t reintegrate because her brain’s been split too—”
Nothing.
Nothingness.
Then, a light.
Then, and then, the floodgates opened.
Helena woke up in Mark Scout’s kitchen with a beer in her hand and Mark Scout standing across from her reading about the upcoming gala on his laptop.
“What the fuck am I doing here?” she asked.
“Helena?” Mark responded.
“Who else would I be?”
“You were your innie a second ago. Helly.”
“Oh.” It was working, then.
It wasn’t exactly reintegration, just a nudge to the chip to try to let some memories bleed through. She didn’t know her innie would wake up randomly on the outside, but at least something was happening.
“My innie woke up out here and came over to your house?” Helena asked.
“Yeah, she said we’re best friends,” Mark said.
Helena laughed. “What a child.”
“That’s what I said.”
Helena pushed her beer over to Mark. “Do you have anything real to drink?”
Mark said nothing. Poured her a scotch.
It was stupid, and reckless, but Helena was already here at Mark’s house and she had been thinking about Mark too much and just needed to get him out of her system. She never should have watched the footage of her innie on the severed floor. She wasn’t going to, really, but then her innie tried to hang her in the fucking elevator and left Helena with no choice.
She could tell just based on the way her innie spoke, her body language, the way she moved around in Mark’s orbit, that she was falling in love with him. When Helena decided to “run into him” at a restaurant, it was just to see what all the fuss was about.
Afterward, she masturbated to thoughts of him for three days in a row. What the hell was wrong with her?
“So when you were stalking me the other night, you knew our innies knew each other, right?” Mark asked, one scotch deep.
“I have some knowledge of what my innie does on the severed floor, yes,” Helena answered carefully.
“She said we—they haven’t even kissed yet.”
“Should we beat them to it?”
Mark fought a smile. “We have a few advantages over them, for sure. A bed, for one.”
“No supervision.”
“We’re not on the clock.”
“And, presumably, we’ve had sex before.”
Helena arched an eyebrow at him. “Your innie’s been alive for two years, you don’t think he’s had sex?”
Mark snorted a laugh. “No.”
By scotch number two, they had moved to the couch. Helena kicked her heels off and tucked her feet under her butt, angled to face Mark. Mark faced her, too, one arm on the back of the couch and his head propped in his hand.
“Why are you severed anyway?” Mark asked. “Couldn’t you just be rich and beautiful and never have to work a day in your life?”
“No,” Helena answered. “I mean, yes, I can be rich and beautiful, but I still have to work.”
Mark smiled gently at her as he stared at her face. It was dark now, the sun having gone down long ago, and the lights dim in Mark’s house. He reached out and tucked a loose strand of her hair behind her ear.
Helena finished her second scotch and decided, fuck it. She set her tumbler on the coffee table then leaned forward to kiss Mark. He met her halfway, catching her neck in his hand and moaning into her mouth. He kissed like he had planned this, like he had been imagining it in his head all day.
Mark took her to bed with a finesse she wasn’t expecting. He must have been more sober than she thought, or maybe he was just good at this.
How else could she justify spending an entire 24 hours with him?
When she went back to his house on Monday, she told herself it was her innie’s fault for deciding to be horny at work. Then, apparently her innie got to have all the fun as Helena faded out while kissing Mark by his front door, and then she woke back up with his face in her cunt and her body totally relaxed but for the pulsing between her legs.
“So you don’t care if I’m Helly or Helena, you’ll fuck both or either of us, hm?” Helena asked as Mark slid up her body and settled halfway on top of her.
Mark shrugged innocently. “Hi again, Helena. You’re incredibly hot. And both of you are…hard to resist.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re fiery, a little mean. Unpredictable, sharp. Confident. You’re aloof, but she’s wild.” He leaned over and pressed a slow kiss to the bolt of her jaw. “Helly wants you to have a bush, by the way. And I’d prefer it, too, actually.”
“Oh thank Kier, I hate waxing.”
Helena had too much going on to worry about starting a fling with Mark Scout. Irving Bailiff was making more progress on figuring out what Lumon was doing and if there really was a testing floor of people they had kidnapped, and Helena was supposed to be working on her kind-of reintegration.
Once they had it all sorted out, the plan was to take down Lumon from the inside. While there were quite literally more than a hundred people involved, Irving was the only point of contact for Helena, the only person that knew the CEO’s daughter was part of the resistance.
Everyone assumed she knew everything about her family’s company. Her father knew her better than that and purposely kept her in the dark.
She managed to avoid Mark for one day.
By Wednesday, she was back in his arms.
By Friday, she was inviting him to a hotel to spend the weekend with her.
She couldn’t help it; she liked him. He matched her wit, her strangeness, her bite. He never stumbled when she said something mean or off-putting, and often he responded with something meaner or more off-putting.
He brought a pack of cigarettes to the hotel and wouldn’t explain how he knew exactly what she liked even though she only allowed herself to smoke one cigarette per month maximum. She, of course, broke her rule for him and they fucked reverse-cowgirl style and chain smoked in their hotel room afterward with Helena leaned back against the headboard of the bed and Mark sideways, on his back with his head pillowed on her thighs as he blew smoke up toward her face.
When Helena flickered out and then came back online while Mark was fucking Helly missionary-style, she realized something.
The glitches, the headaches, the switching between outie and innie only happened with Mark. Except for that first time.
What had happened that first time?
Helena went back to the footage, combed through that Friday before the first time Helly woke up outside.
She watched Helly and Mark walk together to the elevator, watched the way Helly leaned into him, the way she gravitated toward him, the way she smiled at him.
That must have been the day Helly definitively fell in love with Mark.
Helena invited him over to her house, something she had never done with a lover before. She turned into Helly at some point, but it didn’t really matter. Every time she faded back in, she was still with Mark. He was a constant. Her constant.
“Helly gave me a BJ,” Mark said the morning after sleeping over at her house. They were getting ready for work, navigating around each other in the kitchen while they made coffee and breakfast.
Helena didn’t remember anything but waiting for Mark to finish cooking dinner and then waking up in his arms in the morning. “Is that why my mouth tastes like ass?” she asked.
“Well, it shouldn’t taste like ass. Although, if you want to try that sometime, I’d be more than happy to—”
“Mark. Did you make Helly give you a blowjob?”
“No! She wanted to! It was her idea.”
“She’s a horny little thing, isn’t she?”
“Well, she’s your id, isn’t she?” Mark walked over to Helena where she was pouring coffee into a mug. He slipped his arms around her from behind and put his lips to her neck. “Your base instincts are super into me, just so you know.”
Helena set her mug back down then turned in his arms. She looked up at him pointedly and rubbed her hand over his crotch, feeling him come to attention through his slacks. “My superego is super into you, too, idiot.”
The innies figured out how to do an overtime contingency. Helena knew she could trust her innie. She made her to be as obstinate and hard-headed as Helena herself was and hoped that she would be more fearless, less bound to the expectations of a fucked-up family. Helly was her id, without any of the baggage.
When they found out Mark’s wife was alive and on the testing floor of Lumon, there was nothing Helena could do to convince him that she hadn’t known. Of course she hadn’t known.
He took out all of his rage, all of his wasted grief, on her. Helena took it. She barely defended herself. It really wasn’t about her anyway.
“What’s going on? What did Helly do to you?” Helena asked when she came to in Mark’s entryway with him shouting and crying at her.
Mark pointed a finger in her face. “You did this! Your fucking company did this!”
“Did what, Mark? I don’t know what you’re—”
“My wife! My fucking wife, Helena! In the basement of your stupid fucking company! You didn’t think to tell me she was alive?! Were you just too busy fucking me to bother mentioning it?”
“Your wife is alive?”
“Oh, cut the bullshit, Helena, as if you didn’t know. What do you get out of this, hm? You like psychologically torturing me?”
“Mark, that’s not—I didn’t know! I—I…”
“You what? You didn’t mean any of it? Has any of this been real to you?”
Helena blinked, trying not to cry. “Of course it’s been—”
“Because I love you, actually. For the first time in two years, I feel like I’ve—like I’ve been able to move on because—because I fucking fell in love with you! So what the fuck am I supposed to do now?”
Helena stood in shock, her mouth slightly open. A tear ran down her cheek. Nobody had ever told her they loved her.
Of course the first time it’s ever happened for her, it’s lobbed in anger over something outside of her control.
“Oh fuck, you didn’t know?” Mark asked in a quieter tone, then he laughed meanly. “You didn’t fucking know I loved you. Wow. What am I to you then, hm? A tool? A fucktoy?”
“No. No, Mark, I care about you. I—”
He started yelling again, and Helena faded out.
When she came back, she was on the couch and her head felt foggy. Mark had a concerned look on his face, but the anger still simmered beneath the surface. It didn’t scare her. She could handle his pain, she realized.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Mark sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m worried about you. I want you to stay here.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch. You can have the bed.”
A half hour later, Helena was curled up on Mark’s chest, the smell of his sheets familiar beneath her, his heartbeat a steady metronome to lull her to sleep.
Then, the innie revolt. Helena wasn’t allowed to go back down to the severed floor afterward. Lumon was doing damage control, and Helena had to be the face of the company through it.
While secretly plotting to overthrow the company, she was publicly defending it.
She tried to put Mark in the back of her mind. He was at home with his wife. He wasn’t hers. It didn’t matter that he loved her. He wasn’t hers.
A week passed.
When Mark called her, she thought about ignoring him. He deserved it.
“Hello?” Helena said distantly.
“Helena,” Mark replied. “Meet me somewhere?”
“Did you get your wife?”
“Yes.”
“Is she home?”
“Yes.”
“Is it everything you dreamed it would be?”
“No.”
Helena met him at a restaurant outside of town. He looked bad with three-day stubble on his chin, his hair messy like he had been raking his hands through it.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” he admitted over cold coffee. “I’ve been reintegrating, and my brain is fucked up, and all I see is you all the time. All the time.”
“Is it me, or is it Helly?”
“Both.” He picked up his mug with a shaky hand. “I’m sorry I was…horrible to you. You didn’t deserve that. I know you didn’t know Gemma was alive.”
“I know.”
“I’ll probably be horrible to you again.”
Helena searched his face. “Mark.”
“I’m fucked up. Have been for two years now. I’ll get better if you let me.”
“You have a wife at home, Mark.”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
“You still love her?”
He seemed surprised by the question. “Yes. I always will. But it’s not…we can’t go back. I’m not the same, and neither is she.”
“So, what? You leave her for me? You can’t possibly think that would work, Mark. I’m an Eagan.”
Mark was unfazed. “Once our brains are sorted, I don’t think we’ll have a choice. I think our innies decided that for us a long time ago.”
“Our innies? As if you don’t bear any responsibility for how you’ve acted with Helly?”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “As if you don’t bear any responsibility for how you’ve acted with me?”
“Mm.”
“Have you talked to Irving?”
“What?”
Mark looked down at his coffee. “He fell in love down there, too. Same problems we’ve been having. Seeing Burt all the time, flashes of memories, his brain forcing itself into reintegration.”
“So, love is the problem. Love breaks the chip.”
“Seems that way, yes.”
They sat in silence for a long stretch.
“I love you, Helena,” Mark said. “And I love Helly, too.”
Helena hesitated for just a moment. Then, she reached across the table, and he accepted her hand.
“I, um. I love you as well,” Helena said quietly.
She couldn’t believe she had to split her consciousness to finally fall in love in her sad life, but that was reality.
They held hands on the way out of the restaurant, then Mark pushed Helena up against the side of her car and kissed her like it was their first time.
“I have to get home to Gemma,” he said against her mouth. “I can’t be out too long.” He reached down between them and rubbed his hand between her legs, over the fabric of her pants.
“Backseat.”
“We’re kind of in public.”
“Tinted windows.”
Mark grunted his assent and Helena fumbled for the door handle behind her.
There was something about fucking Mark that made Helena feel alive in a way nothing else did. It wasn’t about him having a big dick—even though he did—it wasn’t about how well he ate her out—even though he did—and it wasn’t about how he held her and cherished her—even though he did.
It was something else, something primal and instinctual. There were no thoughts in Helena’s head when she fucked Mark but the present, but them together. And she could tell, when she looked into his eyes, that he felt the same. No matter how many different consciousnesses they both had, they would always find each other.
There wasn’t much foreplay in the backseat of Helena’s car. They were cramped and sweaty, and they both came quickly, getting it out of their systems. Helena collapsed on top of Mark’s chest and felt his come slide down the inside of her thigh.
“I need to get home to my wife,” Mark said.
“I don’t feel bad about this at all,” Helena replied.
“Me neither. Should we?”
“Probably.”
Two days later, Mark called Helena and told her that he told Gemma he was in love with someone else.
“She was, um, relieved,” Mark admitted. “She and I haven’t even, um…”
“Fucked?”
Mark sighed. “Yes, Helena, we haven’t fucked. Barely even touched.”
The logistics were tricky.
Gemma would be in Mark’s life forever, and he felt responsible for her well-being. He didn’t tell her on the days he left to go stay with Helena that that was what he was doing, but he wasn’t really with Gemma anyway. It was cheating but not cheating. They didn’t feel bad about it.
They were at Helena’s house one evening making out lazily in her bed, removing clothes one slow piece at a time when Mark violently jerked away from her.
“Mark?” she asked.
Mark stumbled back, pushing away from the bed and standing naked against a wall. “Are you Helena?”
“Yes,” Helena answered, amused. “Why don’t you come back to bed and learn what it’s like to have sex in one?”
Mark blinked, swallowed, and then grimaced and looked down at his naked body. “It hurts. What did you do to my erection?”
“Oh, um, Mark said it hurts when you switch with one. Sorry.”
“So, like, you and I were about to have sex?”
Helena looked at her naked body and then back up at him with amusement. “Yes. We still can, if you want.”
Mark shook his head and drew one arm across his chest protectively. “No, I don’t think Helly would like that very much. How long has it been? How did we get off the severed floor?”
“Not interested in knowing why your outie is fucking me instead of being at home with his resurrected wife?”
Mark scoffed. “I would’ve gotten there eventually.” He looked at her, eyes tracing the lines of her body, and then gulped and tentatively put a hand on his erection.
Helena smiled at him and slid her hand down her body, touching herself. “Your voice is softer than his. I like it.”
“You’re—I can’t think straight. You’re so—extremely fucking gorgeous.”
“Well, then shut up and come back to bed, Mark.”
“Are you sure? I’m not him. And you’re not her.”
“What would you rather do instead?”
Mark’s eyes glazed over. “Nothing.” He then crawled back onto the bed and made a face at her as if asking permission to touch.
She nodded her head once.
This Mark was delicate. He kissed Helena with reverence, only spending a minute on her mouth before kissing a slow line down her face, her jaw, her neck. He spent a lot of time at her collarbones, less time on her breasts, and when he finally kissed a line down the center of her abdomen she thought for sure the next kiss would be on her cunt. Instead, he quietly asked her to flip over, and she acquiesced without thinking about it. He had put her in a daze, his worship turning her into a benevolent god.
He spent the most amount of time on her ass, cupping and kissing each cheek and biting down on her skin until she squirmed beneath him. She was so turned on she very nearly told him just to eat her ass, but then he put his hands at her hips and lifted her butt up from the bed and then flipped over onto his back and slid forward so he could eat her out from underneath her.
“Jesus fuck, Mark,” she said, grinding her hips down on his face.
He held her hips tightly between his hands and ate her out with the same amount of skill as her Mark but about double the enthusiasm. The enthusiasm of a man who had never had the opportunity to do this in his life.
She came in less time than it usually took her, but of course Mark didn’t know that. He kept lapping his tongue at her clit until she shouted at him to stop.
Then, she climbed on top of him, lined herself up over him, and sank down onto his cock with precision. They were at the foot of the bed, lying sideways across it, definitely at risk of falling off of it.
“Oh my fucking god,” Mark said. “Oh my fucking god.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“You.” He ran his hands up her sides and grabbed one of her breasts. “You. Faster. God, you’re so pretty. Fuck. Faster, please.”
He fucked her harder than her Mark, rutting up into her as she rode him, making obscene noises that her Mark probably just kept to himself. When he came, he said Helly’s name before quickly correcting himself and apologizing.
He was useless afterward, his eyes closed and chest heaving as he caught his breath. His hands fell limply at his sides, and he seemingly didn’t notice when Helena dismounted from his lap.
“Wow,” he said after a minute. “Holy shit.”
Helena considered being an asshole and getting up from the bed and leaving him there to cope, but before she even had the chance, Mark lifted his head from the bed and looked at her with concern in his eyes and asked, “Was it alright for you?”
And Helena couldn’t help herself. She slid down against his side, put her hand on the sparse hairs of his chest and pressed a kiss to his neck. “Yes, Mark, you’re very good at sex.”
He squeezed her to his side. “You are, too. I mean, not that I have anybody to compare you to, but that was really good.”
“Are you worried about Helly being mad at you?”
“No, I’m just happy to be here.” He rubbed her back. “Although, it might be good to, um, keep this from her?”
“Are you telling me to lie to your girlfriend?”
“Maybe?”
He flickered back out before they got much further than that.
Reghabi helped a lot with the reintegration process. When they explained their predicament to her, she said simply, “It seems like falling in love doesn’t work so well with the severance chip.”
Mark and Helena just looked at each other.
Reghabi needed to run some tests on Gemma, too, to see if she could un-fracture her brain. While Gemma could function alright with various medications, she had severe PTSD and an unstable fix on reality. Once she and Mark decided they would never be able to be together, Mark suggested she move in with Devon while she healed.
Then, Mark and Helena rented a cabin near Ganz, as far away from Lumon as possible while still being driving distance to Devon’s house, and Helena quit the company. The Board and her father tried to tell her that she couldn’t do that, and she came back with several attorneys and evidence of all their wrongdoings.
If she had anything to do with it, Lumon would burn to the ground.
Helly jolted upright, sheets and covers flying off of her, head pounding with the onslaught of memories. She blinked several times until her eyes adjusted to the dark. She was in a cozy room and a warm bed, wearing only a t-shirt slightly too big for her. Home, her brain supplied.
A familiar hand dropped to her back and rubbed gently. “Hey, sweetheart,” Mark said groggily.
“What’s going on?” Helly asked.
Mark made a sleepy noise and curled closer to her, putting his head on her lap. “Do you remember everything?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I fucking do.”
She was Helly, she was Helena.
“Me, too.”
Helly tugged at Mark’s hair to get him to look up at her. “Mark? My Mark?”
He smiled his adoring smile. Yes, that was her Mark. Both of them.
“It worked,” she said.
Mark dropped his head back to her lap. “It worked. Now, go back to sleep.”
Notes:
babes do we think omark lied to helly about imark crying after sex with helena OR (more likely) do we think helena lied to omark about imark crying after sex and omark unwittingly relayed false information to helly
as always come talk to me on twitter @maddsoutie
Pages Navigation
IAmTheNightman98 on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 06:43AM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 11:46AM UTC
Comment Actions
lbeep (Guest) on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 07:00AM UTC
Comment Actions
Moist_in_the_Anteroom on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 09:48AM UTC
Comment Actions
asukii314 on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 08:18PM UTC
Comment Actions
fractions on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 07:29AM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 11:50AM UTC
Comment Actions
Moist_in_the_Anteroom on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 08:13AM UTC
Comment Actions
Moist_in_the_Anteroom on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 09:47AM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 11:58AM UTC
Comment Actions
betweentwoceremonials on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 09:26AM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 11:53AM UTC
Comment Actions
gayprentiss on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 09:59AM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 11:57AM UTC
Comment Actions
Catswriting30 on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 01:39PM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 01:49PM UTC
Comment Actions
PinkThing420 on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 04:44PM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 06:24PM UTC
Comment Actions
PinkThing420 on Chapter 1 Tue 01 Jul 2025 10:58AM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Tue 01 Jul 2025 09:27PM UTC
Comment Actions
Ishipalot92 on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 05:02PM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 06:24PM UTC
Comment Actions
B0nehe4d on Chapter 1 Mon 30 Jun 2025 08:50PM UTC
Comment Actions
loveistheessenceoflife on Chapter 1 Tue 01 Jul 2025 02:03AM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Tue 01 Jul 2025 02:08AM UTC
Comment Actions
raptorlindsay on Chapter 1 Tue 01 Jul 2025 05:16AM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Tue 01 Jul 2025 09:27PM UTC
Comment Actions
JessJesstheBest on Chapter 1 Tue 01 Jul 2025 09:18PM UTC
Comment Actions
JessJesstheBest on Chapter 1 Tue 01 Jul 2025 09:18PM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Tue 01 Jul 2025 09:42PM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Tue 01 Jul 2025 09:41PM UTC
Comment Actions
bossypurple on Chapter 1 Wed 02 Jul 2025 08:59AM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Wed 02 Jul 2025 10:46AM UTC
Comment Actions
mellyliz on Chapter 1 Wed 02 Jul 2025 01:39PM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 1 Wed 02 Jul 2025 10:43PM UTC
Comment Actions
B0nehe4d on Chapter 2 Wed 02 Jul 2025 11:11AM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 2 Wed 02 Jul 2025 10:38PM UTC
Comment Actions
JessJesstheBest on Chapter 2 Wed 02 Jul 2025 12:06PM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 2 Wed 02 Jul 2025 10:38PM UTC
Comment Actions
unstoppable95 on Chapter 2 Wed 02 Jul 2025 12:07PM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 2 Wed 02 Jul 2025 10:39PM UTC
Comment Actions
lovetranscending on Chapter 2 Wed 02 Jul 2025 12:12PM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 2 Wed 02 Jul 2025 10:39PM UTC
Comment Actions
IAmTheNightman98 on Chapter 2 Wed 02 Jul 2025 12:45PM UTC
Comment Actions
mnwood on Chapter 2 Wed 02 Jul 2025 10:40PM UTC
Comment Actions
Pages Navigation