Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mark wakes up the same way he always does—in a descending, fluorescent-lit box, staring at the blurred shape of his reflection in the elevator doors. There’s no real separation between the days, but he knows that yesterday, a Thursday, he got into the elevator going up, and today, a Friday, he wakes going down.

Today he brings with him the same giddiness he’d taken out the day before. There’s a light, airy feeling in his gut, like his internal organs aren’t entirely strapped down. As the elevator stills, his pulse picks up, heart fluttering in his chest and echoing dully in the back of his skull. Something lingers under the nervous tension in his body: something that feels suspiciously like…anticipation.

It’s the last day of the quarter, which must be why he feels this way. Yesterday they’d all completed their files and were treated to a delicious egg bar. The next files wouldn’t be ready for distribution until Monday, which meant they’d spend the day cleaning and reorganizing the office. It isn’t the most glamorous work, but he always finds himself looking forward to a day when he doesn’t have to stare at a computer screen.

Not to mention that he feels particularly well-rested today, not run down and tacky-mouthed like he sometimes does. On Fridays, he arrives last, so perhaps he can attribute his giddiness to the extra few minutes of sleep his outie got. Maybe his outie has exciting weekend plans that he’d already been looking forward to. He tries for a moment to imagine it, but his mind’s eye only provides him with an image of red hair, pale skin, and a soft smile.

The elevator doors slide open with a soft whoosh, splitting and then erasing his hazy reflection as he steps onto the severed floor. As he winds through the familiar hallways, the eagerness he’d felt when he woke up on the elevator doesn’t dissipate. If anything, it compounds. It churns in his stomach and tightens his throat.

He’s in a half-daze when he arrives at MDR, immediately startled when he sees all workstations empty. His stomach drops with the idea that perhaps everyone else got the day off—that he might not see her today. But luckily, he hears a murmur of voices and his attention is drawn to the far wall, where his colleagues stand in a loose half circle around the copy/print/scan machine. All of them are standing in awkward postures, heads tilted and bodies angled to look at something.

He finds that inexplicably, his eyes are drawn to Helly. Her hair falls down her back in relaxed ringlets; she wears a loose navy blouse and a brown skirt. Her shoulders are tight to her body, indicating that perhaps she’s got her arms crossed in front of her. Her hip juts out to one side. Even though she’s not facing him, he can imagine her eyebrows low and mouth drawn in concentration, just as she looked when he snuck glances at her over the partition between their desks. Just to check in on her progress, of course.

He swallows and rolls his shoulders as he approaches. “Hey, what’s going on?”

All three of them jump and turn toward his voice. There’s an automatic overlap of greetings and questions.

“Good morning, Mark—”

“Do you know what the hell this is?—”

“Hey, boss—"

They stop talking, eyeing each other like they’re trying to determine who will speak first without saying anything else aloud.

Finally, Dylan’s hand darts out to collect the sheet of paper from the print tray. When he holds it in its proper orientation for the first time, Irving and Helly both close in beside him. Mark takes a step forward and straightens his neck to read over Dylan’s shoulder.

The printed page is simple, just a heading and a list. There’s no explanation, no Lumon branding, and no instructions.

To-Do

• camgirl
• swinging
• free use
• truth or dare
• pet play
• cockwarming or cavity search?
• creampie
• age difference
• kidnapping
• friends with benefits
• mirrors
• snowballing
• elevators

“What is this?” Mark asks, reaching forward to take the sheet from Dylan’s hand.

“That’s what we’re asking you,” Dylan responds.

Irving clears his throat. “It’s clearly a list of tasks to accomplish today, given that we’ve finished this quarter’s refining assignments.”

“But none of these things make sense,” Helly cuts in. She steps closer to Mark and jabs her finger at the paper. “Like, what the hell is ‘pet play’? ‘Creampie’?” She’s so close to him that he can smell the clean, faintly floral scent that he’s grown to associate with her, and he forgets that he’s holding a mysterious list altogether.

Dylan jostles him with an elbow. “Oh…maybe—maybe that’s the point? I bet this is some kind of test.”

“Perhaps we could fill out a request for supervisory interaction?” Irving muses. “I’m sure Ms. Cobel knows what this is all about.”

Dylan shakes his head. “No way. That’d probably make us immediately fail the test, dude.” He snatches the paper back from Mark. “It’s a puzzle. And like, I’m obviously very good at puzzles, so I’ll figure it out.”

“I—I don’t know,” Mark stammers, trying to focus on the list and not on Helly beside him. “I guess…I mean, I guess, yeah, it could be a list of tasks. It’s now like we have anything to refine.”

“So, as a reward for finishing our work, we get assigned…more work?” Helly asks, lower lip pushed out.

“That’s literally how jobs work,” Dylan says.

She ignores him and turns her attention to Mark. “You’ve never seen anything like this? At the end of other quarters?”

“No,” Mark replies. “We usually just…clean the office. We’ve never received a list of duties.”

Helly crinkles her nose. “Oh, wonderful, more mysterious and important work.”

Mark huffs a laugh.

“I bet we get some big fucking incentive for completing this,” Dylan says, clearly already invested in the idea.

Irving seems to consider this for a moment. “I suppose that…well, it could be that our supervisors have decided that we would benefit from a change of pace.” He strokes his chin.

Dylan rolls his eyes. “We gotta get started so we have enough time for whatever party or shit we win.” Still clutching the list, he takes off toward his desk.

Irving follows after him. “We may even need to seek assistance from other departments with some of these tasks,” he says, not subtle at all with his desire to see Burt.

Mark and Helly are left standing at the copier, and Mark once again feels the same nervous anticipation skittering under his skin.

“Do you really think it’s a list of stuff for us today?” Helly asks.

“I, uh, I don’t know what else it’d be.”

Helly just shakes her head. “Well, fuck them, then. I did the work I was hired to do; they can get some other department to take care of their weird list.”

With that, she turns and stalks across the room toward the kitchenette.

Dylan looks up from the list and watches her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m not participating,” she replies.

“Wait, no, you have to.”

She stops short in the entryway to the kitchenette, hands on her hips. “Says who?”

Dylan glances over his shoulder at Mark. “Says…department chief?”

Suddenly, all three of them are looking at him. Irving and Dylan give him matching pleading stares, while Helly looks at him with fiery defiance. As much as he wants to just give in and tell her she doesn’t need to participate, he knows that it’s important that he doesn’t treat her any differently than the others. And why would he? She’s no different. The way he feels about her is…no different.

He tilts his head, gaze darting from Helly to Dylan and Irving. With a deep inhale, he says, “It—it’s probably meant to be a team-building activity. So…I think the entire team should participate.”

Helly’s nostrils flare, and she sweeps her hair over her shoulder as she turns back to the kitchen.

“Helly, wait—”

She stops and shoots a glare over her shoulder. “Just let me have some coffee first,” she spits, though there’s a sparkle in her eye that makes Mark think she’s not quite as upset as she’s letting on.

“Well, hurry the fuck up.” Dylan holds up the list, shaking it slightly. “The first thing is camgirl, and you’re the only girl here.”

Chapter Text

When Helly returns from the kitchen, her slender fingers are looped around the handles of two ceramic mugs. In the past few weeks, it hasn’t been uncommon for her to prepare his coffee on days he arrived after her, but the routine of it suddenly makes him feel flushed. She slides the mug onto his desk before settling in her own chair, legs crossed.

Dylan has already lowered the dividers between all their desks so that they can better collaborate. He stares at Helly as she brings her mug to her lips and takes a long sip. When she puts it down, Dylan pipes up, “So, we ready now?”

Helly rolls her eyes. “Yeah, because one sip really does it for me.”

“Keep sipping while we talk then,” he replies. “You’ll have to do this first one.”

Irving, who has already rolled his chair into Dylan’s workspace, leans back. “Do you suppose that it matters the order we complete things on this list? I’ve just been thinking that O&D might have something to assist us with—”

“No way,” Dylan snaps. “This is team building. O&D? Not part of the team.”

Irving looks across to Mark. “But if they could provide something to assist in our completion of the list, it certainly makes sense to take advantage. Don’t you think, Mark?”

To his left, Mark hears Helly stifle a laugh.

Mark clears his throat. “We can involve other departments if we agree to do so…as a team, obviously.”

“Well, I don’t agree,” Dylan says. “Maybe they have their own list, and their list says, ‘Make sure MDR doesn’t finish their list.’ What about that?”

“Surely they’d tell us if that were the case,” Irving mumbles.

Dylan shoots Irving a look.

Mark still doesn’t know exactly what this list is, but he thinks that Dylan is probably closest to being correct. While Lumon is generally very specific about their instructions, it still feels probable that this list could be some sort of test from the upper administration. Mark just isn’t sure why they’re being tested, what they’re being tested on, or how they pass, but that, too, feels like a Lumon thing.

“We should just start from the top,” Mark says. “That makes the most logical sense.”

Dylan nods. “Camgirl, then. Like I was saying, we got the girl part.” He looks at Helly, who appears entirely disinterested as she takes another sip of coffee. “What about the cam?”

“Perhaps a…camera?” Irving offers.

“No shit,” Helly mumbles under her breath. Mark hides his laughter in his mug.

Dylan scoffs. “Yeah, but where do we get one?” 

“They may potentially make them in—”

“Dude, if you suggest going to O&D one more time, I’m going to—”

“There’s a camera right there,” Helly interrupts, pointing at the black orb above the clock. She plunks down her coffee mug, pushes back her chair, and stands from her desk. She stands under the clock, staring at the camera with her hands on her hips. She looks back toward them, her eyes finding Mark’s specifically. “So, what do I do with it?”

Mark shrugs and glances toward Dylan.

“You gotta be on it, obviously,” Dylan says.

“What do you mean, on it?” she asks.

“Like it’s gotta be able to see you.”

“Can’t it see me now?”

“Well, we don’t know where it’s pointed.”

Irving purses his lips. “How can we make sure it sees—”

“I got it,” Helly says as she jerks her shoulders. She grabs the back of her desk chair and rolls it under the black orb, and just as Mark realizes what she’s trying to do, she slips out of her heels and plants one foot in the seat.

“Hold on,” he says, rushing to stand. He’s at her side in an instant, holding tight to the chair to keep it steady. “Alright, now go.”

Helly gives him a light smile and a nod. She shifts her weight onto her leg and pushes up, steadying herself with her hand on Mark’s shoulder. He can feel the warmth of her grip even through layers of fabric, but he tries not to think about that as he looks up at her.

She taps the black casing with a tentative finger. Nothing happens. She looks down at him. “What do I do?”

“Uh...I don’t know. Talk to it?”

“Tell it you’re a girl,” Dylan says.

Helly blows out an exhale and pushes herself onto the balls of her feet until her face is as close to the camera as she can get. She clears her throat.

“Um. Hello? This is…Helly R. And…I’m a girl?”

Dylan barks a laugh. “Was that a question?”

She swings around to glare at him, but when she does so, she loses her balance and wobbles on the seat. Without thinking, Mark reaches to catch her. And suddenly he’s frozen, his knee wedged in the back of the chair to steady it, his hands on her hips. She throws both of her hands out to brace herself on his shoulders, and Mark finds her face just inches from his, her wide, startled eyes boring into his own. 

“You—you okay?” he manages.

She blows out an exhale; he can feel the warmth of it against his face.

“Yeah,” she says, her voice small. The near accident must have really startled her.

“I got you,” he says.

Her gaze lingers on his. It feels almost like her grip on his shoulders tightens. “Mm, thanks.”

“Very quick reaction there, Mark,” Irving says, materializing at Mark’s side with his hand held up to Helly. “Come on, my girl, let’s get you back to solid ground.”

The spell is broken. Helly blinks and straightens. As she releases his shoulders, Mark’s hands fall away from her waist.

“Hold on a sec,” she says, looking back to the camera orb. She takes a deep breath and says in a firm, almost mechanical voice. “I’m Helly R., and I am a girl.”

“I think that’ll do it,” Dylan says from his desk.

To-Do

• camgirl
• swinging
• free use
• truth or dare
• pet play
• cockwarming or cavity search?
• creampie
• age difference
• kidnapping
• friends with benefits
• mirrors
• snowballing
• elevators

Chapter Text

Dylan has become the de facto keeper of the list, and he takes this position extremely seriously. He leans back in his chair, twirling a pen between his fingers and holding the paper out in front of his face.

Mark is honestly happy that Dylan’s taken the lead. He’s still feeling as weird as he had been this morning, maybe even worse. He’s not sure he’d even been able to focus on the list without Dylan keeping them on task.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickle, and he gets the feeling that someone is looking at him. He cuts his eyes quickly to Helly, but she’s just staring at her fingernails, safely back at her workstation after she’d nearly fallen from her chair while completing the first task. But there’s a suspicious flush creeping up her neck. Maybe she is feeling unwell, too.

“Swinging,” Dylan says. He flicks his gaze up and around the pinwheel.

No one says anything.

“Oh, c’mon.” Dylan sighs. “I can’t do all of these myself.”

“You didn’t do the first one,” Helly says. She picks at the side of her thumb. “I did.”

Dylan rolls his shoulders. “Sure, but I told you what to do.”

Helly looks at him incredulously. “You did not: I’m the one who thought of that camera” – she points again to the black orb above the clock – “and I’m the one who climbed up there.”

“Well, I told you to tell it you were a girl.”

Helly blows an exasperated raspberry in his direction.

Dylan points a finger at Mark as if he’s got a genius idea. “We could each take Helly by one arm and then swing her between us.”

Helly gapes. “Why me?”

Dylan gives her a flat, unimpressed stare. “You and Mark wanna swing me instead?”

Helly’s lip lifts in a sneer, but before she can bite back, Mark interrupts, “There must be an option that doesn’t require dislocating anyone’s shoulders. Let’s think through it…what comes to mind when you think of swinging?” He leans forward at his desk.

“A swing set,” says Dylan.

“What’s a swing set?” Helly asks.

“It’s—it’s like for kids. Like a swing? I don’t know.” He looks at Mark. “You know what it is, right?”

Mark has a clear picture in his head, though he’s never actually seen one before. Hell, he’s never even seen a child before. Still, the concept is there: a frame with a metal crossbar, chains dangling down to flat plastic seats. Even two years in, he never quite understands what things he has a frame of reference for and what things he doesn’t.

“Yeah, I know what it is,” he says.

Dylan spins his chair toward Irving. “Irv, you know what a swing set is?”

Irving nods. “I do. Perhaps since Helly is still new, she doesn’t have all the same concepts as we do.”

Helly just shrugs. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t sound like we’re going to find one here.”

“Perhaps O&D would be able to manufacture—”

Dylan throws up his hand in frustration. “No. More. O&D.” He and Irv lock gazes, eyes narrowed and jaws tense.

Mark quickly steps in again, “Does anyone else have any other associations with the word?” He looks at Helly, but she just shakes her head.

“Dancing,” Irving says, sitting up a bit straighter. His head tilts like he’s vaguely confused about why this has come to his mind. “Swing dancing, that’s…that’s a thing.”

Mark finds that he’s familiar with this as well, though more as a vague concept. He can’t call to mind what it would look like, only that it’s a thing that exists. “Do you know how to do it?”

Irv presses his lips together thoughtfully. “I suppose I could give it a try. It’s a partnered dance, as I recall.” He looks around the pinwheel, as if hoping someone will volunteer.

Helly jerks her head toward Dylan. “Since Dylan’s already doing all the tasks, I’m sure he’d be more than happy to participate.”

Dylan raises his hands in front of himself. “Wait a minute. I don’t know anything about dancing.”

“Maybe you do,” Irving says, standing and rolling his chair back. “Your muscle memory might take over.”

“Please. I’m sure if we were lifting weights, all my outie’s training would kick in, but dancing?” He shakes his head. “Nah. Helly, you do it.”

Helly crosses her arms over her chest and drops her chin, looking at Dylan through her eyelashes. The stern, frustrated expression on her face makes Mark’s chest tighten. How is it possible that he feels this way when she smiles and feels this way when she scowls? Still, he can’t take his eyes off her. 

“I’m not doing everything. I don’t even want to do this stupid list at all!” She shakes her head, tossing her hair off her shoulder. Her gaze flicks to Mark’s, but he quickly turns away.

“Get Mark to do it, then,” Dylan says.

Mark has no real issue with dancing with Irving, though he’s certainly never been a very proficient dancer himself. At this point, he’s ready to do whatever it takes just to get through this list so that they can stop arguing.

But Helly cuts in, “No way. We all saw him at the MDE.” She waves her hand toward Mark dismissively. “Nothing is swinging there.”

“Hey—” Mark begins, but he sees a sly, fond smile tugging at her lips. She’s just fucking with him. He just shakes his head, trying to ignore the way his body flushes under her gaze.

Irving must agree with Helly’s assessment of Mark’s dance skills because he’s already standing next to Dylan’s chair, his arm outstretched, palm up. Dylan does a double-take, then looks up at Irving with his brows furrowed.

Before he can protest again, Irving says, “I suppose if none of you are interested, I could go ask someone in—”

Dylan slams his palms down on his desk and jerks himself to a standing position. “Ugh, fine. Let’s just get it over with.” He ignores Irving’s hand and stomps away from the pinwheel of desks.

Mark and Helly watch, standing to get a better view of the dance proceedings. Though Dylan has given in to peer pressure, he’s still clearly not a willing participant. He repeatedly pulls his hands out of Irving’s grip and refuses to move his feet in the way Irving instructs.

“Hey,” Helly says quietly, leaning on the divider that separates their stations. Irving and Dylan’s frustrated conversation fades into the background as Mark turns toward her. “I didn’t mean it.”

His stomach feels hollow. “Mean what?”

“What I said about your dancing.”

“Oh.” He shakes his head. “It’s fine. Don’t—don’t worry about it. I know I don’t have much rhythm.”

Helly doesn’t respond, just pulls her lower lip into her mouth and turns her attention back to the attempt at swing dancing taking place in front of them.

After a great deal of persistence and patience on Irving’s part, he and Dylan start to make progress, though it largely consists of Irving holding Dylan’s hands and moving in complicated steps around him. Dylan even looks like he’s starting to enjoy himself, a lopsided half-smile on his face as he moves his feet and laughs.

Mark splits his time between watching the other two men and watching Helly, who taps her fingers on the partition between their desks in time to Irving’s improvised song. She watches them with unrestrained glee. Whether she realizes it or not, she’s begun to move her feet along with theirs.

“I think they’re doing it!” Mark says. He, too, has begun to sway to the tune that Irving hums.

“They are!” Helly responds, voice filled with awe. As Irving pulls Dylan closer to him and then pushes him away in a spin, her mouth falls open in a wide grin. She spins in a tight circle where she stands, almost like she’s trying it out. From the huff of laughter she breathes when she stops, it seems like she enjoyed it—and he finds that he’s eager to find a way to hear that laugh again.

He watches Irv and wonders if there’s any chance he could do what Irv is doing. Maybe he could ask Helly to dance. Maybe he could swing and spin her and pull her close to him. Would she even say yes, if he asked? The thought makes his heart pound, and he glances at her as she watches the others in wide-eyed delight. He thinks she would.

But just as he’s worked up the nerve to ask, Irv’s humming is interrupted with a pained oomph and a loud exhale of breath. He drops Dylan’s hands and picks up one foot comically.

“Oh shit, sorry!” Dylan says, rushing to grab the other man’s arm. “Are you okay?”

Irv gives his injured foot a flex. “It’s quite all right, Dylan. In fact, I’m very impressed by your steps. I’d have expected you to step on me some time ago.”

Dylan shrugs. “Hey, maybe my outie does take dance lessons.”

Irving laughs and settles his foot back to the ground. “I think that ought to do it, though, don’t you?”

Dylan looks vaguely disappointed but nods and strides back to his desk. He smooths out the list, grabs his pen, and draws a line through the second item on their to-do list.

To-Do

• camgirl
• swinging
• free use
• truth or dare
• pet play
• cockwarming or cavity search?
• creampie
• age difference
• kidnapping
• friends with benefits
• mirrors
• snowballing
• elevators

Chapter Text

It takes the four of them a few minutes to settle down after their impromptu music dance experience. Beside him, Mark can hear Helly humming softly, an attempt at mimicking whatever song Irv had chosen as appropriate for the swing dance. She’s stooped over a pad of paper, steadily doodling something while she bobs her head along to the song. When she glances up and catches his eye, she immediately drops her pen and falls silent.

Mark forces his attention back to Dylan. “So, what’s next on the list?”

Dylan trails his finger down the sheet of paper. “Free use,” he replies. He looks up at Mark. “Got any ideas?”

Mark has had exactly zero ideas so far. Besides holding Helly’s chair while she climbed up to look at the camera, he’s contributed nothing, and suddenly, he finds himself very aware of that.

“A glass of water might be a good idea,” Irv says, exhaling as he pushes himself up from the desk. Suddenly, his eyes widen and he looks up one finger. "Using water is free! Suppose that would work?”

Dylan’s eyebrows sit low as he considers. “Seems too easy. Water doesn’t, like, belong to anyone, so…you know, we can’t just announce it as free to use. It might not count.”

Irving nods like Dylan’s explanation makes sense and shuffles off toward the kitchen.

Helly snorts. “We don’t even know what counts.” She tosses her hair back. “You’re just making this up as we go along. We probably don’t even need to be doing this.”

“Then what do you want to do, Helly?” Dylan asks. “You want to clean the office and organize the storage closet? Because that’s what we’d be doing if we hadn’t gotten this assignment. This is more interesting than that, isn’t it?”

Helly shrugs one shoulder. “Having the day off because we already finished our work sounds interesting.”

Dylan rolls his eyes. “Hate to break it to you, but this is a day off.”

Helly’s jaw tightens, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Besides, like Mark said, it’s team building.”

Irving comes back from the kitchen with two glasses of water in hand, dropping one off at Dylan’s desk. The partnered dance seemed to have done something to ease the tension in their relationship, at least. Maybe if Mark had worked up the nerve to ask Helly to dance just a moment sooner, she’d be less annoyed about this whole list project as well.

“I’ve got an idea,” Irving says, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. “Dylan, you said that the water may not count because it doesn’t belong to anyone. Because we can’t just announce it to be free use if it’s already free?”

Dylan takes a sip from his glass. “Yeah?”

“So, then, we need to find a way to share something that belongs to us.”

“Nothing belongs to us,” Helly says, no emotion in her voice.

Mark’s chest feels tight. Helly had been so different during the swing dance, like for a moment she’d forgotten where she was or who she was. Now it’s as if the reality of their situation has set in again. He wishes there were something on the list that could make her feel happy again.

“Ah, but there is something assigned to us,” Irving says, moving around the parameter of their workstations until he’s standing right behind Mark, who cranes his head to look at the other man. “Our workstations.”

Dylan barks a laugh. “You think—you think we could just sit at any desk? Like…not our desk?”

Irving nods, brows wiggling. “I think yes. I think we could, perhaps, freely use any desk.” He taps the back of Mark’s chair lightly. “How about it, Mark?”

“You wanna sit at my desk?”

“I want to have the ability to sit at any desk. Freely. And I’d think the department chief would need to make such a decree.”

Mark laughs, catching on to what Irv is suggesting. “Yeah, of course.” He stands, pushing his chair away from his desk. “As department chief, I hereby, uh, decree that anyone in MDR can freely use any workstation they wish.”

Irving grins, Dylan nods thoughtfully, and Helly scowls.

“Let’s try it out then,” Irving says. “Shall we?”

Mark doesn’t sit back down at his desk. Instead, he steps away, leaving his chair vacant. Irving sits down at his spot, looks at Helly over the divider, and tilts his head as he looks around the room.

“I admit, this is…a different experience.”

Dylan stands up and takes Irving’s regular spot. “Wow,” he says. He stares across the pinwheel at Helly. “No, you’re right. I don’t know that I’ve ever even seen Helly’s face from the front.”

Helly just glares at him.

“C’mon, Helly,” Dylan goads. “Try it out.”

“A change of perspective might do you good,” Irving says.

With a sigh, Helly pushes back her chair and stands. She looks for a moment at Mark, who is still standing awkwardly between his—now Irv’s—and Helly’s workstations. Then, in a flash of movement, she leans forward and rips off the top sheet from the pad of paper she’d been drawing on. Mark swears he can see her blush, but she turns away and moves to sit at Dylan’s desk.

Mark takes her spot, and as soon as he sits down, he becomes painfully aware of the fact that his body is in the same space her body once occupied. He can feel her residual warmth on the chair; he’s enveloped in her fresh, flowery scent. He isn’t sure why it makes his heart race. He isn’t sure why it makes the crotch of his pants tight.

Oh shit.

For a moment, the four of them just sit in silence, staring around the room. 

“I don’t like it,” Helly says finally. “If we’re allowed to freely use any desk, then I should be free to go back to mine.”

“Oh, praise Kier,” Irving nearly shouts. “I’m so glad you said something.”

“Me too,” Dylan says. “I really, really hate this.”

The other three stand quickly and begin to shuffle back around the pinwheel. But Mark just wheels Helly’s chair closer to her desk, shoving his legs in the space under it. He can’t possibly stand yet.

“I, uh—you know we all only moved over one space. Maybe—maybe you should try another spot.”

“I think we got the idea,” Helly says, her voice coming from just over his shoulder.

“If all these desks are free to use, I think I’ll keep using this one.” He inhales deeply through his nose, but all he can smell is her. He’s not sure staying here is going to do anything for him.

“Mark.” Helly’s voice has a slight whine to it, and for whatever reason, that just makes his situation worse.

Dylan looks at him over the divider. “Dude, are you okay? You’re looking like…I don’t know, a little sick?”

Mark swallows. “Uh, yeah. I think I—I’m not feeling—you know, I’ll be okay. I’m just a little warm, maybe.” He leans forward and tugs off his suit jacket, draping it across his lap. He keeps it there as he stands and quickly turns away from his colleagues. “I’ll just—just take a quick bathroom break.”

“Mark?” Helly calls after him.

But he’s already making a break for it, still holding his jacket in front of him until he’s able to slip into the bathroom. He flips the lock, and it’s lucky he does, because he hears someone else try the knob right afterward.

“Mark?” Of course it’s Helly.

“Hey, um, I’m...I'm fine, I'm okay. I just need a second.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Go, uh, cross that one off the list, okay?”

He hears her sigh softly, another sound that does nothing to ease his predicament. “Okay. Just...if you need anything…you’ll let me—or, us—know?”

He drags his hand down his face. “Yeah, I will. I'll—yeah, I'll let you know.”

To-Do

• camgirl
• swinging
• free use
• truth or dare
• pet play
• cockwarming or cavity search?
• creampie
• age difference
• kidnapping
• friends with benefits
• mirrors
• snowballing
• elevators

Chapter Text

Mark leans his back against the locked bathroom door and inhales deeply through his nose and out through his mouth until his body goes back to its normal state. All parts of his body, that is. He’s deeply embarrassed, but there’s no denying it: He has a crush. On Helly.

With stunning clarity, everything falls into place: the way his pulse picks up when she looks at him, the way his throat constricts when he tries to say something nice to her, the way his chest gets tight when he sees her smile. He’s not experienced it before—hell, until right now, he hadn’t even had the language for it. But as soon as the word crush pops into his mind, he knows that’s it.

And he has no control over it, just like every other thing in his life. So, it doesn’t matter whether Helly likes him like that (and he’s pretty certain she does not); he’s still stuck feeling this way.

From the other side of the door, he can hear the indecipherable voices of the others, and he knows that if he stays in the bathroom any longer, Helly or someone else will come knocking on the door again. He’s both too ashamed to face his colleagues and too mortified to stay in here any longer. With one last deep breath, he shrugs his jacket back on, clears his throat, brushes imaginary lint from his slacks, and steps back out into the main room of MDR.

“Well, at least this one actually makes sense,” Dylan is saying, his head down as he studies the list.

Helly stands behind him. “Makes sense, as in we know what ‘truth or dare’ means,” Helly replies, “but doesn’t make sense because why the fuck would they be asking us to play that?”

“It’s team building,” Dylan says, looking up at her. When he does so, he catches sight of Mark slinking back in. “Isn’t that right, Mark?”

Helly also turns her attention to him, her expression softening. “Hey, are you okay?”

Mark shrugs. “Yeah, I’m—I’m fine.”

“You should sit down,” Helly instructs. She skirts the perimeter of their workstations to pull out his desk chair. “Let me get you some water.” 

He sits down at his desk. “You don’t have to—”

But she’s already off, walking in determined strides toward the kitchenette.

Dylan rolls his eyes. “You two” — he waves his hand at Mark and then in the direction in which Helly had disappeared — “are starting to get obnoxious.”

“Obnoxious how?”

Irving chuckles. “Mark, come on now. It’s becoming quite clear that the two of you have developed certain…affections toward each other.”

Mark’s mouth goes dry. Irv has just implied not only that they’d caught on to Mark’s crush, but that Helly reciprocates it. Why would Irv think that? Had Helly said something to him? He suddenly feels the pressing urge to know more. 

“Toward…each other?” he asks.

Irv smiles in response but tips his head surreptitiously to Helly, who has emerged from the kitchen, glass of water in hand.

She drops it off at Mark’s desk, and he nods and takes a grateful sip. When she notices that everyone’s gone silent, her eyes narrow. “What happened?”

Dylan replies, “We were just talking about you and Mark—”

Mark chokes on the water, sputtering droplets all over his desktop. Helly starts to pound him on the back with entirely too much force. “I’m fine! I’m fine!” he manages to croak out. He ducks away from her outstretched hand.

“You’re sure?”

He forces a smile and takes another sip of water to soothe both her worries and his burning throat. “Yes, absolutely. Absolutely fine.”

Helly doesn’t look entirely convinced, but she shuffles back to her desk. As she sits down, she looks over the divider at Dylan.  “What about me and Mark?”

Irving pipes up. “About how you and Mark will have the best dares in a rousing game of Truth or Dare, of course!” He looks around the pinwheel. “Shall we begin?”

Dylan rolls his eyes again but thankfully decides to drop his earlier comment. “Fine. If you’re so ready to play,  you can start us off.”

“Alright,” Irv says with a sly smile. “Mark, truth or dare?”

Mark has never played truth or dare, but the concept is fully formed in his mind. He knows that the easier thing is to choose truth, and he also knows that since Irving had saved him earlier, the other man would likely not ask him any invasive questions. But he also knows that the more courageous thing would be to choose dare, right off the cuff. And for reasons that had only recently become clear to him, he feels the need to go for the more impressive choice.

He rolls his shoulders. “Dare.”

Irving’s smile suddenly drops, and it becomes clear that he has no idea what he’s going to dare Mark to do. He looks around the room helplessly before looking back at Mark. His eyes light up as his gaze falls on the glass of water in Mark’s hand. “Uh…I dare you to finish the rest of that glass of water.”

Mark nods and starts to follow the prompt, but Dylan slaps his hand on the desk. “No way! You gotta do a better dare than that for it to count.”

Mark pauses with the glass to his lips. “Well, what counts then?”

“Again with the ‘counting,’” Helly grumbles.

Dylan’s mouth twists into a smirk. “I dare you to go buy a pack of peanuts and eat the whole thing.”

Irving clamps his hand over his mouth.

Mark’s heart falls into his stomach.

“Why is that a dare?” asks Helly.

“Because,” Dylan says matter-of-factly, “Mark hates peanuts.”

Mark launches himself out of his seat and sets off toward the kitchen before he has to see Helly’s face. The truth is, he does hate peanuts. But…Helly loves them, and whenever they take a break together, one of them buys a pack and they split it. When she’d first held out her cupped palm in offering, he’d accepted simply because he’d been so thrilled by the idea of sharing something with her. So, the next time they’d found themselves together in the kitchenette, he’d bought another pack, held the peanuts between them, and tried not to think so much about the brush of the tips of her fingers as she took from his hand. It has become something of a ritual since then.

He hadn’t known that Dylan and Irving had even noticed this, and of course, they had. That’s exactly why Dylan has given him this dare in the first place. After all, there’s a little else to notice down here, besides each other. 

When he comes back from purchasing the pack of peanuts, Helly doesn’t look in his direction. Instead, she’s back to staring at her fingernails.

Mark pours half the pack into his cupped hand and throws the peanuts back. Then, he repeats the process until the pack is gone. He looks at Dylan, jaw tense. “Oh, and for the record, I like peanuts. You must’ve been thinking about Petey.”

Dylan gives him the biggest shit-eating grin. “You know what? Maybe I was. My bad.” He taps his fingers on the desktop. “Anyway, your turn.”

Mark wipes his hands together to get rid of any residual peanut crumbs. “Right back at you then, Dylan. Truth or dare?”

“Dare. I’m not a pussy.”

Mark considers, then a wicked thought crosses his mind—a joke amongst the three of them and Petey. “I dare you to make a copy of your buttocks,” he says, “and then fold it and put it into the Compliance Handbook.”

Dylan tilts his head back and laughs. He stands quickly. “Oh, easy. I always said I’d do that. You shoulda saved that one for Irv.”

Helly spins her chair so that she’s got her back to the copier. “I don’t wanna see this.”

The tips of Irv’s ears are pink as he, too, turns away. 

Without prelude, Dylan unfastens his pants and lets them fall around his ankles. He flips open the lid of the copier and boosts himself up. It groans and cracks, clearly not designed to bear the weight of an adult human. Dylan shimmies to pull down the back of his boxes and proudly jabs his finger into the start button. The machine kicks on and spits out a new page.

Mark averts his eyes as Dylan hops off and redresses, but there’s no point, really, because Dylan strides past their workstations with the copied image held out toward them.

He grabs one of the handbooks from the shelf and lets it fall open. “Refiners for centuries are going to be complying with this ass,” he says as he folds the paper with the image on the outside and shoves it between the pages.

“What does that even mean?” Helly asks, looking disgusted.

Dylan ignores the question as he saunters back toward the pinwheel. “Well then…” He looks first at Irv, then at Helly. “Alright, newbie. Truth or dare?”

She looks up at him, eyes a little wide, like maybe she’s actually worried about what she’ll be asked to do. “I’m not putting my ass on the copier,” she says.

“Then you’d better choose wisely.”

She shakes her head. “Fine. Truth then,” she mutters.

Dylan sits back at his desk and leans forward, fingers laced as he stares over his monitor at Helly. She looks back at him, unblinking. His gaze flicks quickly to Mark, and in that moment, Mark knows exactly what is about to happen. He tries to shake his head, but Dylan’s already looking back at Helly.

“Helly, Helly, Helly,” Dylan says slowly. “Tell the truth: do you find our department chief over there” — he jerks his chin toward Mark — “to be an attractive fellow?”

Mark immediately sinks down in his chair. He might even let out a groan, but he’s not sure since he can barely hear anything over the steady, pulsing rush of his own heartbeat in his ears.

“Now, Dylan,” Irving says, “I don’t think that’s a very appropriate question.”

Dylan just presses his lips together and holds up his hands. “Hey, she’s the one who picked truth.”

Helly straightens. “Are…are you asking me if I…”

“Think Mark’s hot, is what I’m asking,” Dylan says.

The room falls silent. Mark dares to glance up at Helly, but he can only see her in profile. There’s a pink flush up the side of her neck; she’s clearly uncomfortable, and even though he finds that he really, really wants to know her answer…he can’t stand that it’s making her feel this way.

He clears his throat. “I think that’s enough of the game.” He tries his best to keep his tone light, almost like he’s making a joke. “The last thing we need is an HR violation on our hands.” He forces a laugh, but it comes out like a choked bark.

Helly’s shoulders slump forward as she releases the breath she’d been holding.

Dylan, however, pushes back. “They can’t be giving our HR violations when they’re the ones telling us to play Truth or Dare.” He turns his attention back to Helly. “So, c’mon, what do you think, Helly? He’s a nice-looking guy, yeah?”

Helly tenses again.

“Dylan, knock it off,” Mark says, firmly this time. “We played. Cross it off the list, and let’s just get on with the next one.”

Dylan opens his mouth to protest, but Helly stands suddenly and takes off not toward the bathroom but toward the exit.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Mark chastises, scrambling after her. From the sound of chairs clattering behind him, he knows that Dylan and Irving are right on his heels.

To-Do

• camgirl
• swinging
• free use
• truth or dare
• pet play
• cockwarming or cavity search?
• creampie
• age difference
• kidnapping
• friends with benefits
• mirrors
• snowballing
• elevators