Work Text:
“This’ll get us drunk?”
“This’ll get you drunk. It’ll get me normal.”
“Why not you?” she asks plaintively. Always a keen sense of justice with her.
“I drink a lot more than you. Your tolerance goes up, the more you do it. And you’re a lot smaller than me, so it takes less.”
“Doesn’t seem fair. You sure you don’t want to just chug the whole thing?”
“You’re the one who wants to try it, right? I’ve tried plenty. I think it’s going to be a pretty bad drinking experience anyway. Not a good mouthfeel.”
“Mouthfeel? That’s a drinking thing?”
“Yeah. Means what it sounds like it means. It’ll be gross. We’ll just pretend it’s crème de menthe.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s an alcohol that’s gross. I dunno, some outies just like gross things.”
Mark Scout is doling Lumon-branded medical grade mouthwash out into blue coffee mugs in the darkened MDR kitchenette, Helly hovering behind him with her ever-present lantern, twisting one foot behind the other with nervous energy. This stuff is somewhere between 15% and 20% ethanol by volume from what he can tell based on the label and the smell. Something along the lines of three wine-sized pours should be enough to get her good and buzzed. There’s not a lot of her under the pink-stained button-up she borrowed off his innie and the green work pants she got from the goat people to soak it up.
He hands her her mug, extends his elbow. “Here.”
“Hm?”
“Link arms. Then we’ll drink at the same time.”
She threads her arm through his obligingly, carefully passing her mug over his bicep, follows suit when he brings his cup up to the general vicinity of his mouth, shuffling closer, lantern dangling loosely by her knee. She’s taking this whole process in like he’ll quiz her on it later, big eyes owlishly observant.
“Bottoms up.”
“Bottoms - okay,” she says.
He expects her to choke on it, but maybe she’s just used to unpleasantness because she tosses it back as easily as he does, grimacing, but quickly flipping back to anticipatory nerves. The smell of artificial wintergreen is thick in the air, making his eyes water. Really, he’s never been desperate enough to drink mouthwash before either, just downed a depressing amount of bad whiskey, so at least in that sense they’re on even footing.
He agreed to get her drunk because, sue him, he likes her. She should not be living in this freaky, eternally semi-dark basement. She should be off getting a graduate degree in a ridiculous humanity or leading whitewater rafting trips or something, preferably on the opposite side of the country from him and his possibly alive wife. Getting drunk with friends she made herself, developing better taste in men.
But he can’t fathom that will ever happen. Jame Eagan will be switching her off like a fucking Furby before she even so much as sees the sun. So as long as she and his innie have decided to embrace the mole person lifestyle and drag out the inevitable, and as long as he’s unwillingly along for the ride, he’s helping her, the only way he currently can. Who knew his drinking problem would one day pay off so spectacularly?
He pours them their second drink for the road, tucks the mouthwash bottle under his elbow.
“He’s cool with this?”
“Why, are you gonna tattle on me?” She bares her teeth. “And yeah, he says I should do what I want.”
Not exactly enthusiastic approval. But he can never tell exactly what his innie means when his words are translated through Helly. And he’s not sure whose opinion he cares about anymore.
“C’mon.” She wiggles the lantern. “Let’s go set up your MDE.”
When she’d asked initially whether they had Music Dance Experiences on the outside, his responding no had shocked her. If she was an outie, she said, she’d be having them all the time. Another confirmation that the outside world was not all it was cracked up to be, in her estimation. He let her believe it, because she would never get to see the outside world.
He’s becoming increasingly aware that a Music Dance Experience is just… dancing, to music, but he’s playing along. His life has become a disjointed series of dreamlike blips, spans of anywhere between three minutes and three hours cut sloppily together into a poorly lit surrealist film where the only real constant is Helly. Even as his stretches of consciousness have become a bit longer on average, tending more towards hours than minutes, his perception of time, space, and reality are slipping in a way that feels increasingly dangerous. Forget being the Mark Scout he was when Gemma disappeared, he’s wondering if he’s even really still the Mark Scout who drove his Volvo here for the last time on an unassuming Friday morning, hoping his stupid plan would come to fruition. So, yes, dancing sounds fun. Normal.
The plant room is empty when they get there. The population of the severed floor has dwindled a bit, per Helly, as innies have made up with their outies and gone home, though she keeps him relatively in the dark in regard to the operations down here. He’s not entirely sure his occasional presence is something all the innies know about. Maybe they’d want his head on a pike if they did. The remaining citizens of the severed floor are either sleeping, out on patrol checking the barricades, or down at the goat pasture doing laundry and washing up, so the room that seems to have become something of a lounge is all theirs.
The plants here are starting to get spindly from the lack of meaningful light, extending yellowing tendrils snakelike toward the couple of ultraviolet bulbs on stripped-down floor lamps some enterprising plant lover has set up to try and keep them alive. Outside of those, the room is lit by an electric camping lantern that matches Helly’s, complete with a theatrically flickering old-fashioned filament bulb, that sits on a low table at the center of the lounge area carved out between the plants. The actual furnishings are limited to loose chair and settee cushions in typical office-upholstery blues or faux-leather black that have been repurposed into seating. It’s an odd contrast, the moody purple UV and the fiery orange of the lantern, makes the place feel more like a dive bar than a greenhouse. A homey, slightly mildewy smell like nearly-dry laundry permeates the room, almost pleasantly musty and natural compared to the dusty sterility of the rest of this place.
Helly trots immediately over to the wheeled cart holding the record player, tucked underneath a rapidly balding ficus, and rolls it out. She flops down on the floor beside it, hunching shrimplike over the collection of records located on its bottom shelf. It takes him longer to ease himself down beside her, piling two slightly sticky cushions on top of each other. Sleeping on the conference room floor has been doing a real number on his back. That, plus whatever non-sleeping activities his innie’s been doing on the conference room floor.
Helly slides a creased half-sheet of yellow paper over to him. The peeling lamination reminds him of Ganz. This list of song options is… really something.
“What did you pick for your MDE?”
“Defiant jazz.”
Of course.
“Is that the best one?”
“Now that I’ve heard them all, no. But it’s top… five.”
“What’s your number one?”
“It’s your MDE. I don’t want to influence your decision.”
Thoughtful Grunge or maybe Tearful Emo is the closest to what he’d listen to on the outside, but they aren’t particularly good dance music, and somehow he doubts Lumon is letting them listen to Radiohead or American Football down here.
“Are there any, y’know, artists, song names?”
“Uh, there’s an A side and B side for each one. But they’re just called what they’re called.” She hands him Effusive Ska, tucked into a crisp yellow and black sleeve identical to the others in the stack. There’s no text anywhere else on the disc aside from the Lumon logo, no year, no credits, not even sticky residue from a price tag. Helly tosses back the rest of her second cup of mouthwash while he deliberates, spluttering only subtly.
“Hard to choose. These are all the options?”
“That’s all there was when it was just our department. But now -“ she presents another stack of records, distinguishable from the initial ones only by the baby blue stripe on their sleeves - “we have the C&M practice records, too. So if you want, there’s The Ballad of Ambrose and Gunnel, Baird’s Lament, Baird’s Second Lament, A Paternal Rejoinder From Pip to The Peevish, The Nimble Crook of Kier Keeps Fruitful His Fold, A Lament for Baird -“
“I think I’ve decided. Maximized rhythms.”
“Ok.” Her mouth is set, carefully neutral. Maybe it’s in her top five.
Helly stands, brushes a few curled brown ficus leaves off the record player, gingerly lifts the clear plastic lid. A hefty crack along its top is held together with blue Lumon-branded duct tape. She pauses, hands by her shoulders, wiggles her fingers experimentally. “Hey, I think it’s working.”
“You’re feeling it in your fingers?” Her jazz hands are making him a little nervous about any non-ethanol ingredients there might be in this mouthwash.
“No, in my brain. But then my brain is affecting my fingers. Like I know I’m wiggling them but I’m like, behind a little bit.” She grins. “Can I have another?”
“Sure.” Maybe a less generous pour this time. He’s trying to get her buzzed, not have his innie wake up holding her hair while she barfs.
He fixes her a third drink, about half the size of the first one, on the lip of the cart, while she carefully sets the record on the turntable.
“Ok! Mark Scout,” she intones, maybe enacting one of their weird innie rituals, “by, uh, being here, you have earned for you and your fellow… me a five minute music dance experience.”
“Oh, it’s only five minutes?”
“I’m in charge now so maybe we’ll go long.” She looks drops the needle.
A maximized rhythm, it turns out, is a kind of trancey house track. One composed by a guy with a single keyboard and a drum machine, but it’s got a certain lo-fi charm. Something’s not quite right with the stereo, and the sound comes out a bit tinny and distant, like a soundtrack from an old movie. Still, he’s surprised how it immediately sets something at ease inside him.
Helly’s immediately grinning, closing her eyes, spinning herself out into the ring of cushions. The style of dance she’s developed for herself utilizes a lot of shoulders and knees, involves a lot of rotating. She wouldn’t look out of place in the mosh pits of shows he used to go to in like, 2002, especially with the outfit - artfully bloodstained shirt, cool skater pants she’s occasionally having to pull back up to her waist, floppy curly hair. It’s stupid, he’s forty-six, in a basement with one singular other person who is completely unburdened by social norms, and he’s still doing the same thing he did at shows in 2002, awkwardly holding his drink and nodding his head a little, swinging his free arm in a vague approximation of dance.
She suddenly swings and points at him from across the circle. For a second he thinks he’s in trouble for laughing at her.
“You,” she says over the breakbeat, “you dance exactly like him.”
“No I don’t,” he says automatically.
“Yes you do. The way your hands are swinging -“ she imitates him. Well, it looks stupid the way she does it.
“Maybe everybody dances like this. You wouldn’t know.”
“I’ve seen at least… thirty-two people dance by now. It’s just you. Both of you.”
“Well.” She’s stumped him there. “Tell him to get his own dance.”
“I thought outies would dance different. You don’t - y’know - tango? Or polka? Or… quadrille?”
“I don’t even know what a quadrille is. The rest of those I think you need two people.”
She throws her hands up. “I’m a person.”
“And I also don’t know how to do them.”
She gives him one of her sort of amused and pitying looks, the ones that mean what the fuck have you being doing out there, then? The repetitive keyboard riff in the song breaks, switches into a dreamy, mellow melody over the same thrumming beat. Some droning electronic instrument that sounds sort of familiar is laced into the bassline. Whatever Kier-adherent weirdo was hired to make these tracks really gave it their all.
Helly must like this part, because she drops her head and raises her hands, resumes bopping around. Between all the light sources she’s casting three shadows; two pale and greyish violet on either side of her, one big and dark on the rear wall, wobbling and swaying at the edges like it’s thrown by fire. Sorry if I’m distracting you.
It just kind of glances over the top of his brain in her voice, like a snowflake instantly disappearing onto his skin, leaving behind a tiny pinprick of cold. His whole body feels a little cold, actually, or seems to remember feeling cold, a fresh, sharp, icy breeze over his face. Why does it look so messed up?
He closes his eyes, takes an awful sip of mouthwash, squints one eye open back at Helly. There’s a glassy layer of hoarfrost over the plants behind her now, and she’s shin-deep in snow, still barefoot, still swaying to the outro of the song with her hands over head. Little drifts of white go flying when she moves her feet. His brain is playing tricks on him, he reminds himself. If there was a room with snow at Lumon, Helly would have told him. She’s good about keeping him grounded. He hasn’t told her that he needs her to help him understand what’s real, but she seems to know without him saying so. Maybe she can see it in his eyes, or maybe his innie is losing it, too.
The song’s over. The needle disengages with a staticky click. Helly’s back at the record player in a flash, and the room settles back into its recognizable state. She’s a little pink in the cheeks from the alcohol, smiling the way that makes her front teeth stick in her bottom lip. She’s changed into a yellow dress. He closes his eyes again, takes a breath, opens them again. No she hasn’t.
“The B side of this one is really, really good.” She turns her attention to flipping the disc, and adds casually, not looking at him, “we’re having an MDE. In the plant room.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” he says, and then, as the rush of gratitude comes a little too late, “I think I remember how to foxtrot. I could show you.”
Her eyes light up. “Okay. Yeah. Is it hard?”
“No, they teach it in fourth grade gym class. Or at least, that’s where I learned it.”
“Yeah. Show me. Hold on.” She drops the needle on Side B with a crackle.
This song’s different, has kind of a swing to it, a buzzy, deep guitar sample over a beat with heavy kick drums.
He takes a few steps from the record player and she trails after him, fiddling with the thumb of one hand using the other, stands expectantly in front of him.
“So we just parallel each other. When I take one step forward with my right foot, you - right, exactly.”
She picks it up faster than he did in fourth grade. Slow, slow, quick-quick. Starting with the other foot, slow, slow, quick-quick. There’s more rules after that about turning and figures he doesn’t remember anything about, but just meandering around the general vicinity of the record player as the beat picks up, practicing a bastardized version of the step, and not crashing her into a palm tree seems good enough. Ms. Flanagan would be proud, probably.
She’s practically beaming, clearly pleased with herself at how quick she’s able to follow his lead. It’s one of those things he can’t dwell on, though, or it makes his heart hurt. That he’s what passes as a meaningful life experience.
“And outies just do this all day in fourth grade?”
“Yep, didn’t learn a thing. ”
“And you just have your hands dangle like this?”
“Oh, that’s for fourth grade reasons, so nobody has to touch sweaty palms. But - “
He doesn’t have to show her that. As soon as his hand is on her waist, hers goes to his shoulder, and their hands meet, and she leans a little bit into him.
“We remember how to do the hands, me and him,” she says, close now, smelling wintergreeny. “Isn’t that weird?”
He does run her into something then - the record player. It rattles precariously on the wheely cart, her half-finished mouthwash mug clunking dully to the floor, but the music keeps going.
“Oh shit, we almost got it cancelled again,” she says, gives him that look like she’s waiting for him to remember an inside joke.
The cart is overturned in front of him for a moment, the floor lush green carpet, records and for some reason party horns and maracas scattered at their feet. Then, in front of his eyes, it rights itself, vinyls unspilling themselves and filing orderly back onto the shelves, turntable flipping off the floor back onto the top of the cart, Lumon duct tape appearing out of nowhere to neatly seal up the freshly-made crack in the acrylic lid. Then it’s sitting there, a little dusty and sticky with ficus resin, just like it was before. He reaches out a hand to touch the handle of the cart. Cool metal. That’s real, then.
When he looks back to Helly, she’s in the yellow dress again. Pretty, his brain supplies, like it’s the first time he’s noticed. Not helpful. He knows she’s not actually wearing this dress, a modest, tailored kind of garment that really doesn’t seem like her style outside of the sunshiney color. It contrasts funnily with her perennially dirty feet and unbrushed hair. He pinches the corner of the material where his hand is still hovering at her waist to prove it to himself. That does it - it feels like his shirt, and she flutters back into her regular clothes.
“What’s going on?” she asks flatly, one eyebrow up. He drops the handful of her shirt he’s holding like a complete freak. There’s an ache behind his right eye suddenly, throbbing in time with the bass.
“Gonna sit down I think.”
His ass finds cushions, somehow. He closes his eyes.
“What are you thinking about, Mark?” Her voice is close to him. She must be sitting, too.
“Nothing. You should dance, isn’t this your favorite song?”
“Yeah,” she says, a surprised laugh. “But I didn’t tell you that, right?”
“You did. You said it was really good.”
“I say that about all of them. I just like music.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“You remember me, don’t you? That’s why you picked it?” She’s practically in his lap. Not slurring, but talking fast, blurry. He’s not sure what’s his perception, and what’s her.
“I - no, Helly, I’m not him. Please, my head hurts.”
“I think you remember. More stuff than you’re telling me.” Her hands are sudden and cold on either side of his face. She must have poor circulation. She seems the type. He should warm them up. Wait, no he shouldn’t.
He just shakes his head, not very convincingly. There’s no good way to explain it.
“You’re lying to me. He’s lying to me. It’s not fair.”
He understands exactly why innie-him is lying to her, for once. He can’t let himself remember, or he has this sense he’ll… unbecome himself. Die, sort of. And then who will keep looking for Gemma? Who will remember Helly’s alive, make sure she isn’t forgotten down here? He can’t risk it, neither of him, for neither of them. He can’t remember which one of them is his job to care about, right now.
Her eyes are tired and wet around the edges when he looks back at her. He needs her to stop looking that way. He needs her to stop asking questions.
She inhales sharply when his hands come up around her face. Blinks, lets him move his palm over her jawline, rougher than he means to. She’s right, it’s not fair.
Helly falls into him when he pulls her mouth to his, all of her against his chest right away, craning to follow his hands. Just clings to him there for a second as he kisses her, hands twisting into his t-shirt, catching up. Whatever streak of sick courage made him think this was a good idea falters with pressure of her nails against his shoulders and he realizes what the fuck he’s doing, breaks away. Her eyes are dark, stunned, her mouth just barely ajar.
“Hey,” he croaks. “I’m so sorry –”
One small, cool hand digs into the hair at the nape of his neck and she’s on him, surging up toward his mouth with determination. His mind whites out. The ache behind his eye dulls out into nothing. Even as hard as she’s kissing him, she’s unbearably soft. All he can think about is dragging this out, having more of her.
He’s trying to gather her up closer to him at the same time she’s trying to clamber onto his lap, arms and knees going everywhere. They work it out eventually, and then she’s more or less straddling him, her legs splayed and folded at odd angles around him, tilting her head to deepen the kiss. A tiny shiver runs through her when his tongue glances over her lower lip, but she opens her mouth for him like trusting him is second nature. He’s overwhelmed by it suddenly, how her tongue moves hesitant but silky against his, how the small of her back fits neatly into his hand, he has no right to this, he shouldn’t even be here – but when he drops his hands to the linoleum for a moment she leans into him with a quiet, lonely hum, and it’s all the prompting he needs to pull her snug against him by the waist with one hand and bury his other deep in her hair.
The urgent energy of the first kiss ebbs away, drifting into something slower and more patient. It’s warm, nostalgic almost, listening to records and making out on the floor with a girl who’s only ever kissed him. A weird girl with a mysterious agenda he may or may not have Stockholm syndrome for, but… still. There’s some of that first-love sweetness in the way she touches him, the slightest nervous tremor in her wrists. It’s been so long since someone touched him like this, he might be shaking a little, too.
He brushes against bare skin in a spot where her shirt is starting to ride up. She makes a soft noise against his mouth, arches into him. If she wants more, he wants more. He slips his hands under her loose button-up, lays them at her waist. So much of her fits under the span of his hand when he spreads his fingers, from the spot just above her hipbone where her too-large trousers gap to the base of her shoulder blade. Sometime in the last couple weeks she’s ditched Helena’s bra, and it’s all just her under here, warm and immediate. She shivers, whines quietly into the corner of his mouth when he ghosts his thumbs down the sides of her ribs.
“Sensitive,” he mumbles into her jawline.
She pulls back with a shudder, looks at him suspiciously with red-rimmed eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just means it feels good to touch you.”
Her expression softens, then goes hazy when he moves his hands to her breasts under her shirt, two front teeth and one canine pressing into her kiss-swollen lower lip. God, she’s so soft and small here, fitting right into the curve of his palms. Without any conscious thought he’s running his fingertips on the velvety skin under her nipples and she practically jumps, grabs a fistful of his shirt to keep her balance. Suddenly things are moving fast, and he’s sliding rapidly toward a door he knows he can’t close once he’s opened it.
He tries to do the math for about three seconds. She’s a little tipsy and has only been conscious for a few months. He’s kind of her hostage and actively hallucinating. It's a wash, maybe?
“You want this, Helly?”
She nods, slow.
“Need you to say it, okay?”
She falls forward, buries her face in the unruly stubble that extends down his neck. “I want it,” she says, letting her wet mouth glance against his throat, and grinds her hips properly against him. It sends his hands flying to her belt loops to pull her back into him harder. Why, he almost wants to follow up, but he could ask the same thing of himself and he’d have no idea where to even begin.
She leans back a little to counterbalance the pressure he’s putting on her hips, sets one hand on his thigh, one hand on his t-shirt, kneading the fabric. There’s a kind of animal intensity in the way she looks at him and doesn’t stop, even as she rolls her hips slowly into him again, even as he starts unbuttoning her shirt. It’s unnerving, kind of hot, very her.
“You want this,” she says as his knuckles brush against her stomach. Not a question.
“Yeah.”
“Knew it.”
“Yeah?”
“You look at me the same way he does. ‘Cause you remember me.”
No more of that. He swings an arm tight around her waist and heaves himself sort of forward, sort of sideways. It’s not as hard as he thought it would be, the waffle-based rations are not exactly doing her muscle mass any favors. She yelps, locks her ankles behind his back as he flips her forward, getting her back more or less lined up with a cushion before unceremoniously plunking her back down. She’s lovely spilled out underneath him like this, flushed and bright all the way down her chest, giggling a little under her quickening breath. Each inhale shifts her dewy skin where it runs over bone, like water flowing over rocks. Fair enough, he wants to tell his innie. Pretty.
She brushes her hair out of her eyes, then reaches under his t-shirt, rubs her palm in a few slow, affectionate circles over the dusting of hair around his bellybutton. It makes his chest hurt a little. She tugs meaningfully at the hem with the other hand and he takes the hint, peels it off over his head.
As he’s drinking her in, she’s doing the same thing, cataloging him with curiosity and unabashed hunger, evidently exhilarated by being thrown around a little. When their eyes click back together she’s suddenly all red, hair silkier and straighter, a sliver of shadow in her smile lines, asking him, what happened? You okay?
“Yeah,” he responds.
“Yeah what?” Ultraviolet and orange again, something a little nervous in the corners of her smile. The hum of the record needle picking up nothing replaces the sound of wind against canvas. Shit. She tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. “You chug that mouthwash while I wasn’t looking?”
He laughs it off. “No. How are your fingers feeling?”
She wiggles them. “‘Bout the same. Not gonna puke.”
“Okay, good. Hey, what happens if I switch?”
She looks him square in the eye. “It’ll be okay.”
That could mean… anything, really. But he’s always known this about her, that she means what she says, that he can trust her word. And if that’s true, all he has to do is decide what he wants to do with this time. If they’re doing this, he knows exactly what he wants. What he’s been thinking about doing since the day they met in the conference room, if he’s honest with himself.
He hates that the first thing he remembers about her is her coming apart with him inside her, before they even met, before she even liked him, before he earned it. He can fix that.
“Okay. Then I’m gonna eat you out.”
“Why?”
Fucking why. You’re going to die down here and the one thing I can give you is good head.
“Does he not?“
“Obviously he does. But you’re not the same as him, right?”
He doesn’t dignify that with an answer, drops his mouth to the underside of her breast and sucks, uses more teeth than strictly necessary. She jolts, gasps, hands rushing to tangle in his hair. He drops some of his weight on her, drawing out a satisfying breathy hmph, holding her still and giving her something to squirm against as he works his way down her body.
By the time he’s made it to the buttons on her work trousers, a trail of wet, pink blotches showing his exact path are glowing against her pale skin, and she’s breathing hard and loud.
The pants are made out a sturdy canvas material with buttons all the way down the fly that are a bit of a task to undo, but he doesn’t mind taking his time here. He didn’t realize how much he wanted to see her up close like this. Green-blue veins crisscross her hipbones, intersecting with a starry smattering of dark freckles, like she’s carved out of some opalescent mineral. He’s following one cornflower blue vein toward her center, taking in the small, lush patch of darker auburn, before he realizes anything’s missing.
“I only have one pair. I’m washing them,” she mumbles, pitched up. “And now I’m gonna have to wash these.”
She really is. Once her pants are off he can see her gleaming in the ultraviolet before he’s even between her legs. She goes a little shy, muffling a squeak when he tugs her a couple inches forward off her cushion and figures out his angle, then just watching him with big, glossy eyes through the space between her thighs as he settles in with her legs over his shoulders. There’s an odd sense of responsibility burning in the back of his head, mixing with desire to become something sort of unfairly protective. He’s the second person she’s ever done this with (well, maybe one-and-a-half?), and certainly probably the last. He has to make this good. The air here is thick with her, the sweet, faintly oceanic musk he wasn’t expecting under the big black overcoat and long underwear, not at all like the perfume that floats around her in the mornings at MDR, something more like an animal, more like the beach after a storm, even though he’s never seen a storm.
She reaches for his wrist, squeezes. “Mark?”
“Helly.” Her voice centers him, brings him back into the present, but somehow, the other scene is still playing in his mind at the same time. He’s between both their legs. Both their hair glowing ember-colored, both of them up on one elbow, reaching for him. But he can tell which one is his by the purple light, the faint shadow of a palm frond falling over her face. Yes, this is where he’s supposed to be. “Think you can hold still for me?”
She wets her lips. “Probably not.”
Well then. He locks one forearm over her hips firmly - he’s not letting her break his nose today - and licks into her in one long stripe, no teasing. Her reaction is everything he wanted: a long, shuddering sigh, a barely contained buck in her hips, elbow collapsing instantly. He goes in again right away, smearing his tongue past her wet entrance all the way up to where her clit is nestled. Her face disappears, head tipping back over the edge of the cushion, the stretch carving a shallow, pretty line from her sternum to her bellybutton.
From there, it’s easy to read her, how even the softest contact with her clit makes her twitch against his grip, how he can drag frantic, throaty little moans out of her by barely teasing her entrance with his tongue. He goes slow, keeps his touch light, sensing it won’t take much. It feels so good to be in control, to be the one getting these sounds out of her, making her writhe.
Slipping his finger inside her is as much for him as it is for her. Feeling for himself how he’s affecting her all the way to her core, sending rippling waves of tension through her. He presses up, but gently, doesn’t want this to be over any faster than it has to be, just lets her body flex around him.
She’s quieter suddenly, breath coming in short bursts. He squeezes around her hip a little harder to make sure his mouth stays snug against her no matter how much she shakes. She’s reaching down for him suddenly, he thinks trying to grab at his hair, but instead she’s fumbling at the forearm he has bridging her pelvis, searching for his hand. Her fingers knit themselves into the spaces between his, against the bare skin of her hip.
Or maybe it was the other way around, him reaching for her hand where it was curled into the bedding of the air mattress, right where the cool air he’d brought in from outside mixed with the output of the glowing heater. Needing to feel even closer to her. Understanding that what he was doing to her was working, that the shake in her legs meant she was on the edge of something neither of them had experienced. Her looking up at him strangely, a complicated face he’d never seen her make before, right before she squeezed his hand back and then came apart.
The scenes overlap comfortably with one another for a moment, as warm as her hand over his, then he’s back in ultraviolet and she’s hurtling toward her peak, tensed and seeping into his palm. One more soft circle of his tongue around her does it. She says his name, once, then it’s all physical, working its way through her spine, her abs, her thighs in waves. He eases his mouth off of her when she starts shying away from his touch.
She’s not quite back on earth yet, laying with her face half-tucked inside one arm. He scootches himself halfway onto her cushion so she’s somewhat under the shelter of his body, smoothes her bangs out of the way so he can put a wet, scratchy kiss on her temple. If she’s allowed to hold his hand he’s probably allowed to do that.
“Mark,” she manages.
“Mhm?”
“I have to tell you something.”
“Okay.”
She peers over her elbow, still flushed and pink-lipped but looking serious now. “It’s bad.”
“...Okay.”
“I think to me, you’re the same as him.”
It takes him a second to parse the pronouns. “I’m not, Helly.”
“Not like that. Like, when I look at you - I feel the same way about you that I feel about him.” Her mouth is set, chin trembling a little. Nobody’s ever looked this scared while telling him they love him before.
“Oh.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Well. Hey.” There’s a strange churning in his chest. Some of that responsible feeling again. “You’re in a very confusing situation.”
“It’s weird of me though. Like, you’re not in love with me.”
Right, yes, definitely not. But also. “My life’s, I dunno, different from yours. I think love means something different for me than it does you two.”
“What does it mean?”
“The feeling is only like, half of it.” He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. God, things just don’t stop getting weirder. “It’s about how the practical parts of your life and this other person’s life would fit together, if you want the same things. How you want to spend your time, where you want to live, if you want the same kind of family. If you can even provide those things for each other.”
“Well, the feeling is the whole thing for me. ‘Cause I don’t get any of that.”
“Right, of course. I’m not saying it’s not still important, but it’s different.”
“Is that the only reason you don’t feel how he does about me? Because I can’t provide things for you?”
“No, I mean, I can’t provide things for you. I don’t even reliably know when I’m gonna be conscious, Helly.”
Her brows furrow in the middle. “And that means what you feel doesn’t matter?”
He can’t think of exactly what to say. They sit in silence for a moment.
She fiddles with the skin over his clavicle, watching her fingers roll over the bone instead of looking at his face. “Well, if the feeling was the only thing that mattered, what would you feel about me?”
She flickers in front of him again, this version of her and the red version of her, waiting for the answer. He gets it, suddenly, what his mind is trying to tell him; they’re different, and not, the same way he and his innie are.
“Um,” he says. Suddenly it’s like he’s missed a step, expecting to land on solid ground, instead plummeting into the complete unknown. “I don’t know.”
The growing panic is audible, or she can see it in his eyes. Either way, she reaches to cradle his face in her hands, brings him down to her level, touches her lips softly just above one of his eyebrows. “That’s okay. You’re okay.”
Maybe it is okay, if she’s holding him this gently. The curve of her neck smells clean, lightly grassy. He glances his mouth over her throat, then has to do it again when the scrape of his stubble makes her shiver and hum. Then she’s pressing her lips back against his and he’s melting back into it, like kissing is something they can’t not do when they’re this close. She drags her tongue over what’s left of the mess she made on his mouth, braver this time. His hand is deep in her hair somehow when he pulls back, and she leans catlike into his touch when his thumb starts moving against her scalp of its own accord. She’s starting to shift again underneath him, softly rocking her hips against his.
Whatever small part of him was wondering if he just needed to get it out of his system dies quietly.
“We don’t have to do more,” he tells her.
“I want to. If you want to.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want you to -”
“I just wanna know.” The black in her eyes is swallowing up the green. He could fall into them, keep going down forever. Past the severed floor, past the testing floor. She touches her nose to the side of his. “Please, Mark.”
He’s not sure what exactly it is she wants to know, but with the way she’s looking at him, asking him, he’d give her anything he had.
They’re kissing again, slow, and then she’s pushing against one of his hips, soft but insistent. Trying to get him to switch places, he realizes. He slides his arm under the curve of her back and takes her with him when he rolls, since she liked it so much last time. That almost deposits both of them on the floor, but she giggles into his collarbone, so, worth it. She clings to him while he shifts himself back into the center of the cushion, then sits up, arms still somehow halfway in her sleeves, and starts working at his fly.
He’d gone a little soft due to the whole identity crisis thing. That’s quickly resolving itself with the pressure of her hands against his crotch, warmth pooling at the base of his spine.
“Sure this is how you want it?”
“Yeah.” She smiles a little uncertainly at him. “Is this a weird way to do it?”
“No, I like it this way, too. Very normal.”
Something about the world “normal” in relation to any of this makes him laugh in spite of himself, and she gets the joke, gives him a bright grin as she gets his zipper down. He can’t resist raising his hips to pull his pants off with her still perched on his thighs, sending her hands scrabbling against his chest to keep her balance.
“Motherfucker,” she mumbles.
It’s been… he actually has no idea how long since he’s touched himself. Even his own hand feels warmer, better than he remembers. It’s definitely better with Helly over him, watching him with almost solemn focus. After a few strokes she stops him with her hand on his wrist, holds him carefully in place while she arranges herself over him.
For some reason he was expecting to be the experienced one in this situation, but the reality that she’s essentially been fucking him this entire time while he’s been dormant in his own body is becoming more apparent. It’s sort of frightening, sort of hot, a lot more of the latter at the moment.
He lets his hands fall to her waist, tries his best to stay still, let her take him at her own pace. Even just the first press of her against him is searing, silky, perfect, makes his fingers dig into the flesh around her middle involuntarily. She eases herself back up a little with a shaky sigh, then sinks deeper, leaning forward onto her hands. Her thighs are still shiny with her wetness and his spit where she’s split around him, glinting in the purple light when she moves.
She works herself open around him while he runs his hands over her, touches her everywhere he’s been wanting to - the seam along her thighs where her muscles knit together, the soft plane of her stomach, the smooth curve of her neck. She moans low and pretty when her hips finally meet his.
“Feels so fucking good, Helly.”
She’s looking at him the same way she did when he flooded his chip: curious, vulnerable, affectionate. He understands why this was what crossed the barrier. There’s something here that isn’t just the slick, electric pressure of her body moving around him as she carefully raises and lowers her hips, isn’t just that she’s sharp and funny and beautiful. Or, it is all those things, but magnified by something indescribable and slightly terrifying. Something that feels like it comes from a previous life. But it wasn’t a previous life, it was his life, the part of it he gave away. Her eyelashes flutter when his hips twitch up into her on her downstroke, driving deeper. He gave her away. Everything in him screams to not make the same mistake twice.
She’s starting to lose coordination, a tremble building in her thighs. He snags her around the waist, pulls her flush against him. She’s panting, a deep blush staining her cheeks, looking very pleased with herself. He tests her with a slow stroke up of his hips. Her hands curl against his chest to brace herself.
“Good?”
“Yeah. Go,” she breathes.
The angle’s not quite right; he adjusts his legs a little, presses his palm firmly against her lower back to encourage her to arch. She gives a small, shocked squeak the next time he thrusts, and he knows he’s where he’s supposed to be.
“Mark –”
“Hold on tight, okay?”
Really, he’s the one holding her tight as he picks up his pace and she starts to go boneless and pliant, melting into him with her face buried in the curve of his neck. He lets himself get lost in her, the smell of her hair, the weight of her small body pressing fully against him, the hot crush of her around his cock. Pretends, for now, that he deserves it.
There’s a distinct shake in her thighs now where they’re squeezed around his hips. He can feel tension building behind her abs where she’s laying against him.
“Touch yourself,” he says into her hair, sounding wrecked.
She makes a broken sound against his shoulder. Fucking digs her front teeth into his collarbone, he supposes as retribution for telling her what to do. But then her cool hand is slipping between them, rubbing little circles, and she’s shuddering around him, unmistakably close. He wraps his arms around her even harder, like someone might take her away, nips the inside of his cheek to give her more time.
It’s not long after that that she breaks with a muffled sob against his shoulder, waves of tension sweeping through her, making her pulse hard around him. He can’t fuck her through it for long, buries his face in her hair and comes hard inside her, like she’s his.
He stays like that longer than he should, breathing her in, holding her while her aftershocks subside.
She lifts her head before he’s really ready to move, her forearms digging into his ribs a little as she props herself up above him, runs her fingers through his overgrown hair.
“Pretty good,” she says.
“Pretty good,” he agrees.
It’s just the two of them. Has been since he’s been inside her. No red Helly, no snow or tent, just the plant room and the low hum of the busted stereo and him and her. He has no idea what that means.
“I didn’t do that to make you love me, by the way,” she tells him.
“Me neither.”
She grins, then just looks thoughtful, seems to lose herself in his crow’s feet.
“You’re mostly the same, but a little different.”
“What was different?”
“Less noise. But like, more talking. And harder. But still mostly the same.”
Her expression’s odd now, not quite so pleased. But he has an idea for how he can help her, something more effective than getting her drunk and fucking her in a greenhouse.
“Helly, was there a day when you wore a yellow dress?”