Chapter Text
Time passed, and sleep continued to elude him. For a while, Mark listened to Helly rummaging around his belongings downstairs. She was restless, banging his cupboard doors in the kitchen, jumping back and forth between late night channels on the television. Eventually, there was silence. Though like before, this did not last for long.
Ironically, she didn’t even knock. She cracked the door open and a triangle of warm yellow light lit up his bedroom. Mark pretended to be asleep, unable to bear the thought of fighting her again. He reasoned that if he ignored her, refused to entertain her bullshit, then maybe she’d go away. That this hadn’t worked out for him so far was besides the point.
“Mark?”
He held his breath and kept his body still.
“Mark!” she called again, whispering loudly at him.
When he didn’t respond, Helly slipped into his bedroom. Her bare feet padded on the carpet as she crossed the room and Mark felt her warm presence close to his face as she knelt down right next to him. Even though his eyes were closed, his skin prickled under the intensity of her gaze. After what couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds, but felt like an absolute eternity, a sharp prod to his shoulder jolted his body and forced his eyes wide open.
Helly loomed above him and Marks’ breath hitched as he took her in. She was all-encompassing, filling his vision so that she was all there was in the world. Her hair was softly aflame, backlit by the light in the hall, and her green eyes pierced him in the darkness. Mark’s chest twisted with something he refused to recognise.
“Are you awake?” she asked.
“No.”
“Mark.”
“What?”
“I’m cold.”
“Congratulations.”
“I can’t sleep down there. It’s freezing.”
“Probably because some psychopath smashed my front window in. Looked like a real fucking brat.”
“You’re not being helpful.”
“I’m not trying to help.”
Helly huffed in annoyance and jumped back onto her feet. She scanned his bedroom, taking in the pile of dirty clothes in the corner, the handful of empty bottles that stood on his dresser, and above it all, a framed photo of Gemma, watching them silently from the wall.
Her eyes landed on his wardrobe and she marched over to it with purpose. She flinged its wooden doors wide open and started rifling through his clothes. Because of course she would. Mark sat up on his elbows, sheets pooling at his waist.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I told you, I’m cold,” she said nonchalantly, as if this was a totally normal thing for her to do. As if she always helped herself to his clothes, like she was his friend, his roommate, his wife.
Helly pulled out one of his sweatshirts and examined it intensely, though for what, Mark couldn’t tell. Then, without hesitation, she dumped it unceremoniously on the floor and reached for the next one in his draw.
Mark watched, bewildered and helpless, as she sifted through his belongings one by one and built a pile of discarded sweatshirts and jackets on the floor. It was when she pulled out his dark green ‘97 Ganz College hoodie that she paused. It used to be one of his favorites, well-worn and threadbare, though it fit slightly snugger now, his frame having filled out since college. Something about this one met Helly’s unknown criteria and she grinned with satisfaction. Pulling it over her head, it swallowed her. The hem fell to her mid-thighs and her hands vanished beneath its long sleeves.
“This is nice.”
“Great, you found one. Now get out.”
Helly turned back around to look at him. “I want to sleep in here,” she said. “It’s warm.”
“Fuck off. You can sleep in the basement if it’s too cold on the couch.”
“No way. I spent my entire life in a basement, I’m not going down there.”
“Go sleep in your own house then.”
She looked at him, as if she was contemplating it—and came to an entirely different conclusion. Helly brought her hands to the front of her jeans, unbuttoned them, and stripped. Mark’s mouth went dry as she revealed miles of bare skin to him, the low light from the hallway casting dark shadows over lean, defined muscles. Did Helena work out? And when did it get so hot in here?
Helly briefly dipped back out into the hall to flip the lightswitch off, plunging them into darkness. She came back, striding confidently towards the other side of his bed, and then, as if she owned the place, she pulled back the covers and crawled in next to him.
“What the fuck?”
Helly shuffled beneath his sheets and settled on her side facing him. She dragged the majority of the covers off of Mark and onto her, and he instinctively followed, his subconsciousness chasing her warmth and closing the space between them. But then her cold toes accidentally brushed against his calves and Mark’s entire body seized. Lying flat on his back, he stared at the ceiling, not trusting himself to look at her. With her warm body so close to his, he suddenly became painfully aware that he was wearing nothing but his boxers.
“It’s warm in here,” was all she said. As if that was a perfectly reasonable justification for her actions.
“Get out of my bed, Helly.”
“No.”
“Oh my god,” he groaned. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”
Helly paused before replying, and she shifted her tone into something more serious.
“Down there, Mark didn’t give up on us,” she said quietly. “He fought for me, every single day. For my happiness, for my freedom. For my life, quite literally. He saved me, so many times. So, I’m not going to give up on him. I would do anything for my Mark. Even if I have to squat in your house forever.”
Mark twisted with discomfort as Helly opened up to him. When the federal investigators had given him the opportunity to watch the tapes from the Severed Floor, he’d declined. He didn’t want to know. Learning about the specifics of what his innie had got up to, especially after he’d abandoned Gemma on the stairwell, well, it felt like he would have been betraying his wife again. So, without knowing what had really happened down there, it had been very easy to write off whatever his innie had had with Helly as meaningless, puppy love. Which made it all the more difficult to listen to her now. To hear her describe the depth of hers and his innie’s relationship with a tenderness that left no room for doubt—what they’d had, had meant something. It was real.
“You’re wasting your time,” he said softly, trying to reason with her. “I’m not him, and I never will be. So it’s not going to work out for the two of you, I’m sorry.”
“That’s bullshit. We’re more alike than you think. You know they hooked up, right?”
Mark whipped his head around to look at her at last. “What?”
“Your innie and my outie,” she explained. “Our other halves, they had sex. So maybe it’s not just the innies. Helena had the hots for him, maybe you have the hots for me too.”
Mark turned to stare back at the ceiling, at a loss for words with this revelation. He could barely process the news of finding out that Helena Eagan, of all people, had slept with his innie, someone he for the longest time never viewed to even be fully human in the first place. And then there was the claim that he reciprocated said attraction. Well, he was only human, he reasoned. And he wasn’t blind. Of course she was… nice to look at. Mark’s cheeks and ears burned such a deep shade of red as he contemplated this, that even the darkness of the night couldn’t conceal it, and Helly caught on immediately.
“Holy shit, you do,” she smirked, amused at his obvious embarrassment at being found out.
“Is that an accusation or a confession?” Mark deflected.
Helly shrugged. “Both, I guess. I’m in love with your innie. You shouldn’t be surprised that I would be turned on by someone who looks exactly like him.”
Warmth pooled in Mark’s waist and he desperately tried to think of anything else in the universe, other than Helly, in his bed, confessing that yes—he turned her on.
“Well, you shouldn’t do that,” he said tightly. “You’re just making it harder for yourself to move on.”
“What, like you’ve moved on?” she scoffed. “Please, you’re pathetic. How are you going to sit there and do nothing? Mark risked his life to save your wife, the least you could do is give him a chance at living. Where even is Miss Casey anyway?”
“Her name is Gemma.”
“Okay fine, Gemma, Hannah, I don’t care. Where is she? Mark almost died rescuing her and what, she doesn’t even live here?”
Mark’s nostrils flared. The fragile truce they’d found fractured with Helly’s blatant disregard for his wife’s name, and then collapsed once she turned a spotlight onto his broken marriage. It touched a wound he’d let fester for close to a year and something inside of him broke.
“Maybe you shouldn’t speak on things you know nothing about,” he snapped.
“I know enough,” she fired back at him. “I know Mark and I would kill for the life you and Miss Casey have. Show some fucking gratitude.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re beyond insufferable.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a mean, nasty, miserable old man and I cannot understand how my Mark came from you.”
“Shut up.”
“I mean it! My Mark is sweet and kind and courageous and he wouldn’t spend his nights wallowing in self-pity like this.”
“Shut the fuck up, Helly. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Do you have any idea how lucky you are? You get to live on the outside, breathe fresh air, feel the sun on your skin, see places like Europe, and you don’t appreciate any of it and it’s not fair!”
And off Helly went, ranting on and on about how he is so blessed, by the simple virtue of status as an outie, about all the hardships she and the other innies had endured, and how he has no idea what it is like to truly suffer.
He’d told her to go away and she’d broken into his home. He’d told her to sleep downstairs and she’d crawled into his bed. He’d told her to stop talking, and here she was, giving the monologue of a lifetime. Mark couldn’t take it for one second longer. The pressure that had been building, slowly suffocating him all evening (or let’s face it, all year), finally gave way, and something within him snapped.
Mark surged towards Helly and pressed his mouth against hers, swallowing her words. Just to shut her up, he told himself. No other reason. Not because of how she looked, wrapped up in his sheets, wearing his old Ganz hoodie, like this was where she belonged. Not because tonight was the first time since Gemma had left him, hell, since before Gemma had even “died”, that he’d felt well and truly alive. No. This was just to keep her quiet.
But as Mark traced her lips with his tongue and Helly instinctively opened up to him, the taste of her came with an earth-shattering revelation that maybe he wasn’t just kissing her to stop her from talking. Maybe his lips were on hers because she was literally all he ever thought, dreamed about, every single second of every goddamn day, and he was sick and tired of lying to himself, of pretending that he doesn’t crave her with every fiber of his being.
It was a hard kiss. Punishing. One that took and took and took. Helly grabbed Mark’s face and licked into his mouth, deepening the kiss. He rolled to lie down on top of her, cradling the crown of her head in his hand and tangling her hair between his fingers. His other hand slipped underneath his Ganz hoodie and her white tank top, caressing the plane of her stomach and coming to rest on the curve of her waist. Despite her earlier complaints of the cold, she was searing hot beneath his fingertips. Mark squeezed her skin so hard he was sure to leave bruises and Helly sighed with relief at his touch.
The dam was broken and nothing could stop them now. The two of them were on a path to one final, inescapable destination and there was no point in trying to resist the forces that were carrying them there. Mark sank into Helly’s comforting embrace, and understood that it wasn’t because their bodies already knew each other that explained why the shape and taste of her was so, so familiar. It was because she had always been his. And he had always been hers. It was only now that Mark finally allowed himself the grace of accepting what had always been there that he realised this.
His rough stubble scratched her delicate skin as he dragged his face over hers, placing wet, open-mouthed kisses across her cheek, along her jaw, and down onto her neck. She whimpered when he reached a particular spot just below her ear, so he sucked, and then quickly nipped her with his sharp teeth. Helly quivered with pleasure at the contrasting sensations and pressed his head harder into her neck.
She then lifted her arms so he could pull his hoodie and her tank top off of her in one smooth motion, leaving her in just a pair of simple black underwear. Mark groaned at the sight of her and let his rough hands roam across her body, wanting to touch her everywhere—up over and between her thighs, a firm squeeze to her ass, around across the side of her ribs and then up underneath her chest.
Her breasts heaved, and they were perfect. Mark took both of them into the palms of his hands and it was as if she was made just for him. He couldn’t help but fall into her. He trailed kisses down her sternum, scraped the little mole she had on the underside of her breast with his teeth, and then latched onto a hard nipple and licked at the sensitive bud. The sounds that escaped Helly were unholy as she whimpered and she whined and she begged.
“Mark.”
Her hips rose to meet his in soft, gentle rolls, and Mark thrust down, pushing her body into the mattress and rocking their hips together. He reluctantly moved away from her breast and slowly moved back up her body, leaving his marks on her and taking his time nipping and biting and scratching at her skin. Making it back to her neck, he took her earlobe into his mouth.
“Open your legs,” he ordered, his voice rumbling low in her ear.
“Fuck, please,” she begged, falling open for him. Mark leaned back, towering over her body that was spread and wanting for him. Settled comfortably between her thighs, he ran his hands up and down the insides of her legs, and then pushed them open even further, wider than she thought was even possible.
“Please? You want that?”
“Yes. Oh my god, yes.”
Mark fell forward and pushed his hard cock against her aching pussy in slow, steady grinds. Helly clenched her legs around his waist and arched her back towards him. Her underwear was completely soaked through and Mark could feel her wetness through his boxers.
“Mark! I need… I need…”
“Hmm? What do you need?”
“Fuck…I need to come…please, let me come…”
“Oh, you’ll come, honey. But you’ll come for me.”
He felt an overwhelming desire to prove himself, to make her forget why she’d even come to his house in the first place and banish Mark S from her mind. Possessive tendencies he didn’t even know he had rose to the surface and took control of his body. Mark Scout was determined to make Helly R his.
He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her panties and gently tugged. Helly lifted her hips to help him pull them down her long legs and he discarded the ruined fabric on his bedroom floor. Mark’s brain malfunctioned as he took her in at last. Fractured reintegration flashbacks and broken dreams of red tents and blue conference rooms did not do her justice. To truly see her, vividly, with perfect clarity, it didn’t feel real. Helly, in his bed, naked and wet, just for him. Mark tentatively reached out to her. He dragged his hand through the fluids that coated her inner thighs and gently cupped her pussy.
“Fuck, you’re drenched,” he sighed. “Have you been wet this entire time?” he asked, slowly stroking her outer folds, avoiding her where she needed him the most.
“Maybe,” she exhaled. Her head lolled to the side and into his pillow as she let Mark’s soft touches alleviate some of the pressure that was aching in her core. Mark didn’t accept this. He wanted to see her face when she came undone. So, he brought his other hand up to hold her jaw and pulled her face out of the pillow.
“Answer me, Helly,” he instructed.
“Yeah…”
“Yes what?” His grip tightened.
“Yes, I’ve been wet the whole time…”
“Harassing me gets you off, huh?”
“Mm-hmm…”
Mark dragged her wetness up her pussy and finally brought his thumb to her clit. Helly gasped and her thighs twitched as he massaged her in languid, measured circles. When his thumb slipped and caught the sensitive underside of her clit, her entire body spasmed.
“Please. Please Mark, please fuck me, I need it, fuck, do it now, just fuck me right now, please,” Helly babbled, unravelling beneath his fingers.
“Slow down, Helly,” he said calmly. “Let me take care of you. I gotta open you up first.”
“You don’t have to,” she whined. “It’s not as if we haven’t done this before.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. You haven’t done this with me.”
Mark punctuated his last word by sinking two fingers inside of her at once, stretching her wide open. Helly’s head rolled back and she cried out loud at the intrusion. He moved his fingers in and out of her at a steady pace, curling them towards her belly button. She let out a strangled moan when Mark found that tender spot inside of her and he honed in with determined strokes, letting her soak his hand.
Mark held his breath as he watched the woman who had haunted him for so long come undone in front of him. Her body was putty in his hands, pliant and docile, all for him. He could feel it build within her, the way the muscles in her abdomen tightened, how her pussy increasingly fluttered around his fingers, and then she fell into her orgasm. Waves of ecstasy shook Helly’s body and the sounds that fell from her lips were obscene. Mark was capitvated—it was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. He worked her through it, wanting to make her feel good for as long as he possibly could. Helly weakly pushed his hand away from her sensitive pussy once she couldn’t take it anymore.
He scrambled to tear off his boxers while Helly recovered beneath him, boneless and breathless. Mark’s hands were shaking, dripping with her release as he pulled his cock free. It was an angry red color, shining with precome that flowed from the tip, and Mark genuinely couldn’t remember the last time in his life he’d been so hard. Squeezing his shaft to relieve some of the pressure, he dragged his heavy length between Helly’s folds, and she gasped with pleasure as the head of his cock rubbed against her swollen clit. After coating himself with her wetness, he positioned himself so his tip sat at the outer rim of her pussy, nudged between her folds. He was on the precipice of opening her up, ready to finally sink into her, when it occurred to him.
“Fuck,” he said, his voice rough and broken. “I don’t have any condoms.”
“What?”
“No protection. Are you on anything?”
“How the fuck should I know?”
Mark groaned and buried his face in her neck in frustration, humping the outside of her pussy with his cock to try and ease some of the unbearable pressure.
“It doesn’t matter, right?” she breathed, rolling her hips up to meet his. They slowly grinded against one another as they spoke, desperate to give in. “Didn’t all you outies get tested afterwards anyway?”
Mark pulled back to look at her. She was referring to all the mandatory STD tests severed workers had to take after the innie rebellion; a safety precaution, the federal investigators had told them.
“I mean…yeah.”
“Helena left me our medical files. There was nothing on them about that, I would have remembered. So, I’m fine. And unless you have something to tell me… I assume yours and Ms Casey’s were fine too?”
“Yeah, yeah, they were. But that wasn’t really my concern…what if I get you pregnant?”
Helly rolled her eyes. “I’m not worried about that.”
“You’re okay risking it?”
“You couldn’t even get your own wife pregnant, I think I’ll be okay.”
All of Mark’s concerns fell away at this provocation and he surged forward, pushing his cock into her pussy all at once and bottoming out on the first thrust. There was no build up, no further foreplay, and Helly sobbed with relief at the sensation of finally being filled. Mark gave her one moment to adjust to the size of him and then started fucking into her at an unforgiving, furious pace.
All Helly could do was lie there and take it as Mark’s cock dragged deliciously along the inside of her walls. She was soaked all the way through, her body glistening with sweat, wet bangs stuck to her forehead,
“I’m gonna knock you up.”
“I’d like to see you fucking try.”
Mark pressed his hand over Helly’s face, silencing her. “Shh, shh, shh. You don’t get to speak now.” His palm covered her entire mouth, suppressing her moans, as he fucked her into the mattress without abandon. “That’s it…” he groaned. “My good girl, doing as she’s told.” The words fell out of his mouth, and Helly’s eyes rolled with pleasure at his praise.
Mark noticed.
He dragged his hand down onto her neck. Without placing any pressure, he held her there tenderly as he continued to pound into her.
“Did he take you like this?” he asked, lips brushing her ear.
“N-n-n-no…” she stuttered as he fucked the answer out of her.
“This is what you needed. Not him. Me.”
At this possessive declaration over her, Helly clamped down on his cock and came for the second time that evening. Mark tried to hold on for as long as he could and fuck her through it, but he couldn’t help himself. When he felt a gush of hot fluid coat his cock, he fell off the cliff with her. His vision went white and he pulsed inside of her with what must have been the strongest orgasm of his entire life. The tension that had been building since he’d first captured her lips with his, since she’d crawled into his bed, since she’d knocked on his door, or hell, since they’d left the Severed Floor, finally, finally released.
Mark collapsed on top of Helly. Stripped of all coherent thought, he inadvertently crushed her with the weight of his body, but with the way Helly wrapped her arms around him, she didn’t seem to mind. Their chests rose and fell as they caught their breaths. Pressed together, it was as if they were two halves remembering how to be one whole.
As they lay there, two thoughts came to Mark in quick succession. The first: he could have quite happily stayed tucked inside of Helly, forever. And the second: the realization that this first thought didn’t scare him, not at all. There was no wave of unexplainable guilt, or pressure to bury this feeling deep down, not anymore. He kind of wanted her skin on his always, actually.
It was only when Mark felt Helly shift with discomfort that he came back to his senses and reluctantly slipped his spent cock out of her. A hot slide of their mixed come followed and ran down her inner thighs. Mark pressed an affectionate kiss to the underside of her jaw and rolled onto his back, bringing her with him in his arms. He used their new position to take stock of the aftermath, and his eyes widened as he took in the bruises, scratch marks, beard burns and hickeys that littered her body.
“Fuck. Sorry,” he said, breaking the silence. “That was kind of rough. Are you okay?”
Helly looked up at him from where her head was positioned on his chest. She smiled. Then let out a snigger. And then she was laughing, properly laughing, and Mark couldn’t help it, he started laughing too.
“Didn’t know you had it in you,” she giggled.
Her smile was blinding, her joy infectious, and Mark couldn’t help himself, he kissed her again. He slipped his tongue past her lips and they learned the shape of each other’s mouths. This was no preamble for anything else, it was just kissing for the sake of kissing. They lazily made out for a while, but Mark grudgingly pulled away once he felt his come leak from her and cool on his thigh.
“Come on,” he said, sitting up and lifting her with him. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
He led Helly to the bathroom, his hands not once leaving her waist, and they took it in turns to pee in front of one another. It felt so silly, to exchange shy smiles in this moment of vulnerability and intimacy, considering all the fucking and fighting they’d done that night.
Afterwards, Helly sat on the side of his bath as Mark dragged a warm, wet cloth over her body, taking his time cleaning the sweat from her skin. She grimaced as he brushed the apex of her thighs, washing away his come that had dried there, and he soothed her with a stroke to her hair and a kiss to her forehead.
Once they were done, they fell back into bed, still stark naked. Helly crawled on top of Mark, snuggling into his chest and winding her arms and legs around him until there wasn’t a square inch of space between them.
“Has anyone ever told you, you’re really fucking clingy?”
“M’not,” she murmured into his skin. “Don’t want to sleep in the wet patch, s’all.”
“Whatever you say, hon.”
And with that, they drifted off to sleep.
--
Sunlight streamed in through the gap between the curtains, washing the room in a soft, golden light. Mark, surrounded by a familiar scent, slowly floated into consciousness, cloaked in a profound feeling of peace. A comforting weight lay atop his chest and he naturally tightened his arms around the source. He can’t have slept for more than a few hours, and yet it was the most well rested he’d felt in years.
His eyes flickered open and all he could see was her. She’d nestled her face into his, small nose scrunched up against his cheek, their breaths mingling together in the quiet of the morning. Her body blanketed him like a second skin, legs tangled together and her curves molding perfectly into the contours of his own. He had one hand wrapped securely around her waist while the other rested gently over hers, which she’d placed protectively over his own beating heart.
Mark drank in the sight of her, still fast asleep beside him. The desperation, anger, and ecstasy that had lit up her face the night before had melted away, replaced by a state of utter tranquility. In the calmness of the morning, with Helly tucked peacefully under his arms, Mark found the serenity to process the events that had occurred. Not just her breaking into his house last night, but everything else he’d been going through too—his depression, the aftermath of severance, and his broken marriage, that perhaps hadn’t been right for a long time in the first place.
He couldn’t believe he’d ever been so angry at her. Angry at Helly, at Helena, blaming them (blaming her?) for Gemma walking out on him. It wasn’t her fault, not at all. Helly turning up last night had been a reckoning. She’d woken him up and forced him to face the truth head on. That he’d faded away from his marriage a long, long time ago, and it was his guilt and sense of duty that had been the only driving forces on his end that had kept it going for as long as it did. And the sorrow and loneliness that had followed, well, he’d thought he’d been mourning Gemma. But it was clear to him now—he’d been grieving the wrong woman all along.
Mark stared at Helly in awe as he made sense of this. In that second, everything he had been repressing and denying since stepping off the Severed Floor rushed into focus all at once, now crystal clear to him in the daylight.
He loved her.
He’s been in love with her since before he even met her and wow, wasn’t there something beautiful about that? She hadn’t cautiously burrowed her way into his life, his chest, his heart. No. She’d stormed in, waged a war and staked a claim over something that had perhaps always belonged to her in the first place. And maybe she hadn’t broken into his house last night. Maybe she was just coming home.
Mark tilted his head so he could capture her lips with his, pressing soft pecks to them and gently kissing her awake. She really was so beautiful.
“Hey, Helly,” he murmured against her lips. Her eyebrows furrowed at this disturbance and she shifted downwards slightly, nuzzling her head into his neck to chase a few extra minutes of sleep. Mark didn’t let that stop him, and let lots of little kisses fall onto her head instead.
There was nothing sexual behind it. It was pure, unadulterated affection. After over a year of denying his feelings, now that he had not only acknowledged, but embraced them, it was like a switch had been flipped and Mark felt a need deep in his bones to keep her close and show her how much she was loved.
“Helly,” he said again.
“What?” she mumbled, stretching out slowly, a flower blooming in the spring. Her limbs extended and contracted, and she collapsed back into him. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes as she reluctantly yielded to the land of the living. “You couldn’t let me have five more minutes?” she grumbled.
Mark held her face in both of his hands and touched her forehead with his.
“I’ll call Reghabi,” he said, with a soft smile on his face.
“Okay…? And I’ll probably hit up Dylan and Irv at some point. So what?” she said, not knowing who Reghabi was and therefore the significance of his statement.
Mark laughed. “Sweetheart, I’m trying to tell you that I’ll reintegrate. We’ll bring Mark S back.”
That woke her up. Helly’s eyes widened and her lips parted as his words sank in. “Really?” she whispered, hardly daring to believe it.
“Yes, really,” he assured her.
“Oh my god!” Helly squealed with excitement and rolled so she now sat fully on top of him, her legs bracketing his hips and her arms wrapped tightly around his neck. “I told you! I fucking told you! I wasn’t going to leave here without Mark S!”
Mark laughed beneath her, basking in her euphoria. Helly pulled back so she could look at him and they lay there for a long moment, staring at each other with matching grins on their faces as his news sank in. Then, Mark broke the spell.
“But there’s one condition.” He took a lock of her hair and twisted it round one finger, a subtle attempt to calm his nerves as he worked up the courage to tell her what this was. “You have to reintegrate too.”
“Okay,” Helly immediately agreed.
“Okay? Just like that?”
“Yeah, if that’s what it takes. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Mark.”
Mark looked at her and thought how there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her, too.
“You… you think Helena would go for it?” He was almost too scared to ask. Mark recalled Helly’s comments from the night before and regretted not pushing further at the time. To find out what really happened to Helena.
“I think so,” she said. “I think it will be different if it's both of us. And if we also have both of you.”
“What do you mean?” Mark didn’t understand what she was saying.
“Well, that’s the whole reason why I’m here in the first place,” Helly said uneasily, now unable to look him in the eye. “Helena switched us. She left me a letter, saying she didn’t know how to stop feeling sad. And that she didn’t want to deal with it anymore.”
Mark’s heart fractured at Helly’s words. To think, whilst he’d been sitting in his own house, drinking himself into oblivion for months on end, trying to forget—he thought he’d been alone in that collapse. But this entire time, Helena had been across town, suffering too. He couldn’t even imagine what she’d gone through, to be pushed to the point of suicide. Because that’s what this was. To go to sleep and never wake up, you couldn’t call it anything else. Mark pictured Helena writing that letter to Helly—did her hands shake? Did tears fall down her face? Or was she stoic, steadfast in her decision? Either way, the images gutted him.
“So, yeah, I think she would want to reintegrate,” Helly continued, pulling Mark back into the present. “If she’s got me, and both of you, I don’t think she’d feel so lonely. She’ll want to live.”
“God, I hope so,” was all Mark could say. “I really fucking hope so.”
They watched each other quietly, the silence heavy but not uncomfortable. Everything was out in the open now. There was nothing left to hide, from each other or themselves. Mark saw his future in Helly’s eyes, one in which they didn’t have to split themselves in half just to survive, and it felt good.
Getting there though, it wasn’t going to be easy for either of them. To stitch two lives, one psyche, together into one messy whole, it might be one of the hardest things either of them will ever do. But they’d do it together. And it didn’t seem so scary, knowing that she would be right by his side for all of it.
“Hey,” Helly said, giving Mark a small smile and a gentle nudge in an attempt to lift the mood. “You just have to promise to not be an asshole to us after you reintegrate. You think that’s doable?”
Her jest ripped a laugh from Mark’s lungs. “I don’t know,” he smirked. “You think you’ll be less fucking stubborn?”
“Hmm… I’m not sure,” Helly teased.
“You want to go and find out?” Mark asked, rubbing small circles into her waist with his thumbs. “I can call Reghabi right now.”
“Maybe later,” Helly said. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. “Let’s stay here, just for a little longer.”
It was quite the development. The woman who had quite literally torn his house down the night before in her campaign to save Mark S, was now content to delay his rescue and stay in bed with him, Mark Scout. To draw out their lazy morning together before they tackled reintegration, head on. But that was fine. There was no rush.
They had all the time in the world.