Archive of Our Own ^beta

Since Helly R. appeared on that table four weeks and two days ago, she has caused nothing but hell for Mark on the severed floor.

From throwing a speaker at his head to trying to get a note out to threatening to cut her fingers off, Mark is tired of her.

He went to the break room for her that first time because he wants to be a good boss and no innie deserves the break room so early on in their existence, but by the second or third major infraction Mark couldn’t keep taking the blame for her. Graner might be dumb, but he’s not that dumb.

Helly despises Mark. She sees him as the company man, the status quo, and she defies him every single day. After her trip to the break room, though, she at least started doing her job. She wouldn’t let Mark train her, so Dylan had to do it instead.

This week, Helly is giving Mark the silent treatment. Last week, it was starting fights with him every day and shouting at him in the kitchen area until Milchick intervened.

Mark has tried his hardest, but he has now decided that he, too, despises Helly.

He wishes every day that she had never arrived on the severed floor, that Petey had never left. It is completely miserable to have to be around a person you hate every literal moment of your life.

So when Mark’s the one to find Helly hanging in the elevator, he instinctively goes to help her, and as he holds her limp body up and calls for help, he thinks how nice it would’ve been to just let her die.

And then he feels like a piece of shit for thinking that, and then he feels even worse when she’s out of the office for three days and it’s the most blissful three days of work he’s had since Petey disappeared.

When Helly returns to work, she is just as cold and unforgiving to Mark, if not even more so. She looks at him with open disdain, obviously angry that he saved her life.

“I didn’t have to save you, you know,” Mark spits at her from his desk.

“Oh bully for you, Mark,” Helly fires back. “I wish you hadn’t so I wouldn’t have to see your stupid, ugly face again.”

It hurts because Mark thinks she might actually mean it. He doesn’t really have any control over his own appearance, and he wishes his outie would at least get a haircut. It might help him like his own face a little more. As it is, he generally avoids looking in mirrors.

Helly, on the other hand, is beautiful from head to toe. Another thing Mark can’t fucking stand about her. It gives her an advantage to lord over him, that she’s undeniably gorgeous and he’s stuck with an ugly, middle-aged appearance.

“I thought about just letting you die. It would certainly make my life easier,” Mark says.

Irving and Dylan both chastise him from their desks while Helly laughs.

“You just can’t stand that I’ve gotten under your skin,” she says, leaning menacingly over their shared divider. “I’ve made you hate your life. You want to kill yourself as badly as I want to kill myself, hm?”

Mark glares at her. “No. I’m fine.”

“Stoic and steadfast as always, boss,” she mocks. “Imagine, some lucky lady out there in the real world gets to be with your outie, who must be as boring and brainwashed as you. Poor girl.”

“Wow, you think I’m lucky enough to have a wife? How flattering,” Mark deadpans. “You, of course, are too miserable for anybody to love you.”

Dylan and Irving chastise him again.

“Ah, just think about it. The sweet peace and quiet of being alone. Never having to hear your annoying voice in my life. The dream.”

In an effort to try to think of something Helly would really hate her outie doing, Mark says, “Or maybe we’re married to each other and you have to put up with me out there, too.”

Helly’s eyebrows shoot up into her bangs. “Oh, that’d be a hoot.”

Mark leaves work 10 minutes late on a Friday after being stuck in the break room for seven and a half hours for getting in a very loud fight with Helly that resulted in a broken stapler and a serious jam in the copy machine. 

He goes up the elevator and then when he wakes up again, he’s in bed.

He jolts his head up, squinting in the early morning light and trying to get an idea of his surroundings. The room is bright, the bed comfortable. There are pictures hanging on one wall, but they’re blurry to Mark. There’s a bookcase, too, with more picture frames, all blurry.

Someone shifts beside him, and Mark jumps again, looking over. A shock of red hair, a small body turned away from him under the covers. She has on a gray t-shirt that looks a little too big for her frame.

Mark closes his eyes and prays to Kier, then he opens them and leans over tentatively. Sure enough, the face he finds is Helly’s. He lets out a frustrated sigh and falls back against the bed, his head hitting a pillow.

Helly shuffles and turns, making a soft little noise as she wakes up. She scoots into Mark’s side and curls around him, leg and arm hooking over him and face pressing to his neck. 

It tickles, and Mark clenches, his head and shoulder moving to meet each other so Helly’s mouth can’t get to the skin of his neck.

She huffs an amused laugh and mutters, “Not in the mood, baby?”

“Um,” Mark says, and it’s then he realizes he has an erection.

Helly’s mouth moves to his chest, which is bare. Mark is wearing nothing but boxers, and he suspects that Helly’s t-shirt might actually be his. 

“Last night was fun,” she says, “but you need to let me return the favor.”

An unfamiliar type of chill runs through Mark’s body, warming him from the inside out. Helly’s hand moves across his bare skin, down the center of his abdomen and then toward his shorts. She teases at the waistband, and Mark’s dick twitches in interest.

“Um, bathroom,” Mark says, then he hops out of bed and presses a hand to his crotch as he goes to the bathroom that’s in their room. He’s glad it’s there so he doesn’t have to go hunting for one in the unfamiliar house.

“Hey, what gives?” Helly asks from the bed. “We’ve got 10 minutes at best, so get your ass back in here.”

Mark looks at himself in the mirror and finds that he’s a little bit blurry. He looks around on the counter and sees a pair of glasses, so he puts them on and everything comes into focus. He pees, but his erection is persistent. Despite his hatred for the woman in bed in the next room, the vision in his head is of her wearing nothing but his outie’s t-shirt and a pair of panties, and it is unfortunately enticing.

As Mark tries to decide what to do, the door to the bedroom bursts open and a child’s voice says, “Hi, Mommy!” followed by Helly laughing.

“Hi, sweetie,” Helly says.

Mark peeks out of the bathroom door and sees a little girl cuddling with Helly in bed, both of them laughing as Helly peppers her face in kisses.

The little girl is gangly, all limbs and elbows, and she has her dark brown hair pulled up into a bun on top of her head. She has darker skin than both Mark and Helly, and her facial features are somewhat familiar. Mark can see himself in the shape of her nose and cheeks, but the rest of her is someone else. She is not white, Mark realizes. A concept he’s not really thought much about before, but somehow he understands context. This child is his but not Helly’s. Her mother must be of a different race.

As Mark is mentally working through all of this, the girl runs into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her cheek to his stomach. 

Mark instinctively wraps his arms around her and says, “Hey…sweetheart.”

“Good morning, Daddy,” she replies, looking up at him while still clinging to him. “Why are you wearing your glasses?”

“Um,” he says.

“We just got up, CJ,” Helly says. “Give us a few minutes to get ready.”

“Can I make eggs?” the girl, CJ, asks.

“As long as you promise not to burn the house down.”

CJ gives Helly a very serious salute and then runs out of the room.

Helly gets up from the bed with a smile and a stretch, and Mark realizes he’s staring at her a second too late. She smiles lewdly at him and walks over, wrapping her arms around his hips and kissing the bolt of his jaw.

“You look good in your glasses,” she says.

“Oh, um, thanks.”

She furrows her brow at him. “You don’t want to have sex with me, don’t want to wear your contacts. What’s going on with you today?”

Contacts, right. That’s why Mark’s eyes feel different. As soon as he hears the word, he understands. Every day of his life, his outie puts little things in his eyeballs to be able to see. Well, he’s not going to do that today. He doesn’t want to fuck up and gouge his eyes out, so he’ll just wear glasses. 

He shakes his head at Helly. “Nothing, I’m OK.” Without thinking about it, his arms have wrapped around Helly in imitation of her arms around him. 

Helly looks skeptical, but she smiles at him and then leans up to kiss him. Mark makes a surprised noise but kisses her back, another chill taking over his body at the touch of her lips. 

He figures it’s just because he’s never been touched like this in his life, never been cherished. It’s not Helly specifically, he thinks. He would feel this way about any beautiful woman showering him with attention.

She pinches Mark’s butt before releasing him, then she heads into the bathroom and pulls down her panties to sit on the toilet. Mark turns away, embarrassed, and tries to find something to do while Helly pees. He goes to the closet and finds clothes that look like they belong to him, so he pulls on a long-sleeved beige shirt and a pair of sweat pants and then waits to hear the toilet flush before going back toward the bathroom.

“I’m going to go help CJ,” Helly says as she leaves the bathroom, except instead of “CJ” she shortens it to one syllable, like “seedge.” 

“OK,” Mark says, then he stands there alone in the middle of the room and wonders what the fuck he’s supposed to do with himself. 

He goes back into the bathroom and combs his messy hair over and brushes his teeth. He then notices a ring in a dish on the counter, a simple gold band that he picks up and inspects. He slides it onto the ring finger of his right hand first and finds that it doesn’t feel right, so he puts it on his left hand and finds that it’s perfect.

When he joins Helly and CJ in the kitchen, they’re dancing to some female singer on a radio and plating scrambled eggs and toast. Helly is still wearing his shirt but also has on a pair of blue pajama shorts that hug her hips nicely. Mark stares at her and sees that she has a ring on her left hand, too, a simple gold band with a large square diamond in the middle.

Helly hands him a mug of black coffee, and Mark sits at the counter cluelessly and wonders if this is what his outie’s weekends are always like. 

“Daddy, are you going to wear your glasses to Aunt Devon and Uncle Ricken’s?” CJ asks.

“What?” Mark replies.

“Baby, did you drink too much wine last night? What’s up with you?” Helly asks, sounding more amused than concerned.

“Nothing!” Mark says too quickly. “I…I don’t know. My eyes kind of hurt, so I’m wearing glasses today. When are we, um, going to Devon and, uh, Ricken’s again?”

Helly answers that Mark needs to call his doctor to get a refill on his ADHD medication because she’s tired of him being so spacey for the past week, and Mark has no idea what she’s talking about because he’s registering that he just said the name Ricken, which is the first name of the author of the only non-Lumon-approved book he’s ever read in his life. Maybe it’s a coincidence. Maybe it’s a common name.

The three of them eat breakfast together, Mark mostly staying quiet as he listens to Helly and CJ chatter. He finds out CJ is in the second grade and she plays basketball. She has a game tomorrow that she’s excited about. Today, though, they are going to Devon and Ricken’s house for Eleanor’s first birthday, and Mark gleans that Eleanor is his niece. 

CJ tries to run to the living room when she’s done with breakfast, but Helly sternly says, “Cristina Joy, I know you did not just run off without cleaning your dishes.”

CJ sighs loudly and stomps back over to the kitchen. She quickly cleans her plate and cup and then goes back to the living room and turns on the TV.

Cristina Joy. It’s a nice name. Mark looks at the little girl sitting on the couch and wonders how it’s possible to split your brain into forgetting your own kid. CJ looks like him, moves like him, and he can feel, somewhere deep inside of him, that he loves her very much.

Helly’s hand slides over top of his. She squeezes his fingers. “She’ll be distracted for a little bit. C’mon.”

Mark follows Helly’s lead, helping her clean up breakfast and then going upstairs with her back to their bedroom. With his glasses on, he now realizes all the pictures in the room are of him and Helly and CJ. While Helly gets in the shower, Mark looks at the pictures.

He finds CJ at various ages, all the way back to baby pictures. There are pictures of him and Helly both looking younger, one he really likes because his hair is shorter and combed back and Helly is under his arm with her hair curly and wild. They both have sunglasses on, standing in front of a vast landscape behind them, serious expressions on their faces.

There’s one of him and Helly and CJ as a small child, but none of the three of them when CJ was a baby. Buried on the bookshelf Mark finds another picture, one of a woman with long, dark hair smiling at the camera and standing in a garden. She’s beautiful. She looks just like CJ.

“Baby, you coming or not?” Helly calls from the shower.

“What?” Mark yells back.

“Get in here, dummy!”

Surprised at how much she sounds like the Helly he hates, Mark goes to the bathroom and finds Helly standing in the shower with the glass door open, her nakedness bare and wet before him. He drops his eyes automatically before realizing that this is his wife and averting his gaze is probably not an appropriate response.

“Quit being shy. Get in here,” she says.

Mark stares at her. She looks impossibly soft, her skin milky white under the spray. Her upper half is tiny and thin, her lower half meatier and grabbable. She turns away from him and he sees the expanse of her hips and butt and has the sudden urge to bite a cheek.

Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s taking his clothes off and stepping into the shower with her. He’s not some animal that can’t control his impulses, surely, and he’s never thought about Helly like this before. Except recognizing that she’s gorgeous, he’s never considered Helly in that way before. Before now, that is.

This is not the woman he hates, surely.

He’s hesitant at first, coming up behind her in the shower and pressing a gentle hand to her hip. She is even softer than she looks, and so he digs his fingers into her flesh and watches as it gives beneath his touch. He steps closer and accidentally rubs his erection against the crease of her ass, but before he can apologize and back up, she moans and pushes back against him.

“I don’t think we have time for that, baby,” she says in a low, seductive tone. She then spins and grins up at him, blinking water off her eyelashes. 

She reaches down between them and takes Mark’s erection in her hand, and Mark closes his eyes and sinks into her touch. 

“God, that feels good,” Mark says stupidly, putting a hand against the tiles to balance himself.

“Oh boy, it’s definitely been too long if a shower handy is doing it for you,” Helly teases.

Mark thinks about Helly at work just the other day, at the way she hurled a stapler at his head and cursed his name, and suddenly he’s coming all over her hand. 

“Fucking hell, Mark,” Helly says, laughing. “If I’d known you were that pent up, I would’ve handled it for you last night.”

“Sorry,” Mark says sheepishly, suddenly feeling so relaxed that he wants to fall into her arms. Instead, he leans forward and kisses her, slowly and with unearned confidence. “You’re just really hot.”

There is a part of Mark, a small, mean part of him, that wants to bask in this circumstance. He is married to Helly, this beautiful fireball of a woman, and she adores him and dotes on him and god does Mark want to go back to work on Monday and rub it in her mean face. 

Helly washes off his body, lewdly staring at every inch of him as the soap lathers over his skin. When she washes his hair, it feels so good he groans and tips his head toward her, making her laugh. He copies her when she’s done, taking a washcloth over her skin and enjoying every curve he finds. Somehow Mark ends up leaning back against the tiles, hunched down a bit so they’re the same height, Helly between his legs and his hands on her waist while they kiss languidly. 

“CJ’s been watching TV for too long,” Helly says between their mouths. “She’s going to get suspicious and come looking for us.”

“OK,” Mark says before kissing her again.

Helly pushes away from him and smiles. “Go on, get out.”

“What, I don’t get to wash your hair?”

“Have I ever let you do that in the five years we’ve been together?”

Mark blinks. “Oh. I guess not.”

Five years is how long Mark has been alive. Well, five years and a few months. Helly has only been at Lumon for a few weeks, though.

It’s strange, looking into his and Helly’s closet and realizing he has a preference for his clothes. He’s not sure what’s appropriate for a one-year-old’s birthday party, but he picks out a pair of khakis and a dark green sweater and finds himself way more comfortable than in his usual suits.

There’s a knock on the door followed by CJ running in, jumping on the bed and asking when they’re leaving.

“Uh,” Mark says, watching his daughter swing her legs behind herself from where she’s lying down on her stomach. 

“Ten minutes,” Helly answers from the bathroom. “Are you dressed, honey?”

“Yes, Mom,” CJ answers, rolling her eyes.

“Hey, be nice to your mother,” Mark says instinctively.

CJ glares at him. 

Helly comes out of the bathroom wearing a robe. She has on makeup and her hair pulled up in a ponytail. She looks Mark up and down and says, “My favorite sweater. You look good.”

“Gross,” CJ says. 

Mark blushes at the compliment, totally thrown off guard by Helly’s kindness and obvious attraction to him. It is in stark contrast to the scathing vitriol she lobs at him over their desks at work.

As the three of them walk outside together, Mark sees a car in the driveway and sees Helly walking toward the passenger side and he says, “Uh, can you drive? Just, um, because…”

Helly raises an eyebrow at him and holds her hand out toward him. “Because you want to drink at your niece’s first birthday party?”

Mark shrugs. Good enough. Better than explaining that he has no idea where this Devon and Ricken live.

“Keys?” Helly asks, her hand still held out toward him.

“Oh. I guess I left them inside.”

Helly shakes her head and goes inside to retrieve the keys, muttering about his ADHD medication again.

“Can I play a game on your phone?” CJ asks Mark in the car.

“My phone?” Mark asks.

Helly gets in the car then, and CJ says, “Mommy, Dad forgot his phone, too.”

“I know,” Helly says, then hands a rectangular phone over to Mark.

Almost as soon as it hits his hand, it starts to ring. The screen says Devon with a picture of a curly-haired woman.

“Hello?” Mark answers.

“Hello, m’lady,” Devon, presumably, greets. “You on your way?”

“Yeah. Leaving now.”

“What’s wrong with you? Your voice sounds weird.”

Mark turns to look at Helly and then faces front again. “My voice?”

Helly then turns to look at him and then faces front. She whispers, “Your voice has been kind of weird today.”

“You sound different. Confused,” Devon says. 

“I’m fine,” Mark replies, tempted to change his voice in some way if only he knew what his outie sounded like.

After they hang up, Mark looks down at his phone and is overwhelmed by everything on it. He clicks around a bit and gets even more overwhelmed. 

“Oh, while you’re on there, can you check your patient portal and see if your meds are back in stock?” Helly asks. 

“Uh, sure,” Mark says, totally unsure.

He finds a place to type in information and puts in “adhd,” which yields a lot of results about attention problems, hyperactivity, inability to focus. Come to think of it, he has been feeling a lot of these things at work lately, his productivity slipping.

He doesn’t figure out what a patient portal is or how to check on his medication, but Helly changes the subject anyway and then they’re pulling up to a beautiful house in the woods.

Mark figures Devon must be his sister, and she’s married to the Ricken Hale. Mark has to maintain his cool, though, because he doesn’t want to blow his cover. He stays quiet while everybody chats and hangs out, and when Devon hands him a beer, he just holds it close to his body and doesn’t drink it.

“Mark, come here and help me with the cake,” Devon says as everyone else congregates in the living room to open presents with Eleanor.

With just the two of them in the kitchen, Devon says quietly, “Alright, spill. Is it Helly, is she pregnant?”

“Wh—what?” Mark stutters.

“You’re being super weird. I’m just trying to figure out why.”

Mark blinks and considers Devon for a second. “You and I, we’re close?”

Devon huffs a laugh. “See what I mean? Very weird, buddy.”

“Devon, I’m an innie—Mark’s innie. Mark S.”

She looks him up and down, searching. “OK, that makes so much more sense. How the fuck are you your innie?”

Mark shrugs. “I don’t know. I just woke up out here this morning in a bed with fucking Helly.”

“Oh, you know her down there?”

Mark rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I fucking know her.”

“Well, that sounds juicy. You two don’t get along at work?”

Ricken’s voice carries through from the living room, asking Devon if the cake will be ready soon. Devon quickly picks it up and gestures with her head for Mark to follow.

Another 45 minutes pass before Devon and Mark are able to talk alone again. It’s Eleanor’s nap time, and Devon not-so-subtly asks Mark to help her put her down.

“Helly hates me,” Mark whispers as Devon rocks Eleanor in a rocking chair. “She started a month ago and has been nothing but trouble, making my life hell.”

Devon snorts a laugh. “Yeah, you didn’t get along when you first met out here, either.”

“She tried to kill herself. Why would she keep coming back to work?”

“She, um, doesn’t really have a choice.”

“Did I not have a choice?”

“No, you did,” Devon says, looking at him sadly. “He…your outie got severed because your—his wife died. Gemma.”

“Is that CJ’s mom?” Mark asks.

“Yes. She died when Cris was a toddler; she doesn’t remember her. You, um…well, he fell apart. You—he and Cris lived here for a while after he lost his job, and severance was the only way he could cope.” Devon pats Eleanor’s back and slowly gets up to put her in her crib. 

“Why are there three beds in this room?” 

Devon waves him off. “Ricken’s idea. You can ask him.”

“Oh! Ricken! He’s the author of my favorite book.”

“You’re joking. How the fuck did his book end up with an innie?”

Mark shrugs. “I don’t know, but it’s been—god, it’s been life-changing for me and a couple other people.”

Devon grins at him. “Oh, your outie is going to hate this.”

“What? Why—”

Everything goes black. The next thing Mark knows, he’s back on the elevator.

“Look who decided to show up to work today,” Dylan greets when Mark gets to MDR.

“Did I miss a day?” Mark asks as he turns on his console.

“Yeah, it’s Tuesday,” Dylan replies.

Helly comes in wearing a tight light blue dress that Mark recognizes from where it was hanging in their closet at home. He blushes and ducks his chin to hide a smile.

Helly groans loudly and says, “Fucking shit, I thought we got rid of you for good.”

Mark ignores her.

“Why are you smiling like an idiot?” Helly presses.

“Why are you bothering me?”

“Children, please,” Irving says with some snark.

Mark makes eye contact with Dylan between their dividers and gestures his head toward the kitchen. Dylan frowns at him, his brow furrowing, until Mark gets up and carries a mug into the kitchen.

“What is it?” Dylan asks, following Mark.

“I woke up on the outside over the weekend,” Mark says in a low tone.

“You did what?”

Mark puts a finger to his lips. “Shh!”

“What the fuck, man?” Dylan whisper-shouts, closing the distance between them so they’re both standing against the counter, huddled by the coffee pot.

Dropping his voice, Mark says, “Dylan. I was married. To Helly.”

Dylan’s mouth drops open, then he bends over and tries unsuccessfully to hold back a laugh.

Mark smacks him in the shoulder. “Dude! I’m serious! She touched my penis.”

“No, she did not.”

Mark steps even closer to him, getting right up in his personal space. “I am telling you, she touched it in the shower and I had an orgasm. Why would I make that up?”

“You’re sure it was Helly? She doesn’t have some benevolent twin?”

“Dylan, what are we supposed to do about this? Why the fuck did I wake up on the outside?”

Irving comes in then and asks them what they’re up to, so they catch him up.

Surprisingly, Irving smiles jovially at Mark. “I think your volatile relationship with Helly is because of the tension between you two. Maybe this new information will ease some of that tension and you two will become friends.”

“Or the next time she’s mean to you, you rub it in her face that you’ve seen her naked,” Dylan adds.

“I don’t think you should do that, Mark,” Irving says.

Helly comes in next and asks them if they’re talking shit about her, and Mark practically runs back to his desk to avoid her.

To think, he woke up next to this woman, got ready with her, probably drove into work with her, and now she hates his fucking guts and wants to make his life hell. 

They make it all the way to lunchtime without fighting, mostly because Mark keeps the divider up between his and Helly’s desks and pretends like she’s not there. 

“You’re being annoyingly quiet today,” Helly says when they pass each other in the kitchen at lunch. 

Mark glares at her. They stand in front of the fridge together, mere inches between them. 

“Move. I need to get to the fridge,” Mark says in a monotone as he reaches past Helly toward the fridge door. 

Helly holds her ground for a second, letting Mark press into her personal space until he can smell the fresh laundry detergent on her, the same smell of their sheets and his own clothes, too.

There’s a hitch in her breath, then she stomps away from him and out of the kitchen area.

In the early afternoon, Mr. Milchick comes into MDR and asks Helly to follow him, his expression deadly serious. 

Mark watches her go, concerned for her. She hasn’t done anything today to earn a trip to the break room.

An hour passes, then another. Mark, Dylan and Irving talk quietly at their workstation about what could have happened to Helly until Mr. Milchick comes back in, and they all immediately stop. Mark gets to his feet, straightening his shoulders out and looking unblinkingly at Milchick.

“Mr. Milchick, is Helly OK?” Mark asks.

Milchick flashes him a perfect smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “She’s alright, Mark. Her outie simply needed to take the rest of the day off, so I expect you all have picked up the slack in her absence and will continue to do so until end of day.”

Milchick turns on his heel to leave, and Mark jogs to follow him. In the hallway outside of MDR, Milchick turns again to face Mark, another fake smile on his face.

“I know my outie is married to Helly’s outie,” Mark says, heart pounding in his chest at the admission. “If something is wrong with her or…or with our daughter, I’d like to know. I’d like to be able to leave, too.”

The smile falters. Milchick blinks. “I won’t presume to guess how you know that information, but I’m confident you haven’t shared it with Helly R.?” 

“Helly S., I think you mean.”

Milchick scans his face, then blinks again. “You may also leave early, Mark. Get your things and I’ll escort you to the elevator.”

Surprised to have won the argument that easily, Mark presses, “How will my outie get home if Helly took the car? Or how will he know what’s wrong?”

Another smile, with a raise of the eyebrows this time. “That’s not for innies to concern themselves with, Mark.”

Frustrated, Mark scoffs and shakes his head as he goes back into MDR to get his suit jacket.

As he goes up the elevator, in the final seconds before switching to his outie, he wonders how the hell he’s not in trouble for knowing things he’s definitely not supposed to know.

Helly is staring at herself in the mirror, but it’s not exactly her. 

She has on a white t-shirt that’s too big in the sleeves, one side falling off her shoulder, and there is no makeup on her face. Her hair is pulled up into a messy ponytail, a few stray wavy locks hanging by her chin. She has a toothbrush in her right hand.

Just moments ago, she had been going up the elevator away from the severed floor, which is usually followed by a brief moment of darkness then the sensation of switching from ascending to descending, which always makes her stomach flip.

Not this time, though. This time, she was ascending the elevator, black, then standing still. In a bathroom. In front of a mirror.

Helly looks around the bathroom for anything that might help her figure out what’s going on. Unfortunately, it looks like a regular bathroom. There are definitely more things in it than the bathroom at work, but of course there are. Vaguely, Helly has a concept of what a home bathroom is like, and this seems to be about it. The most interesting thing, then, is that she isn’t wearing pants. She has on a pair of dark red panties that hug her hips beneath the too-big t-shirt. Only slightly too big. Not big enough to cover the panties, even when Helly yanks the hem of the shirt down over her hips.

She’s just about to leave the confines of the bathroom and explore more of the space when the door opens and Mark of all people comes in and pinches her butt and then raises the toilet seat and pulls the end of his dick out of the hole in his boxers and whistles while he pees. He’s shirtless, his hair messier than it is at work, and he’s wearing chunky black glasses on his face. 

Helly points the toothbrush at him like it’s a knife. “What the fuck!” she yells. “What the fuck? What the fuck is this? Why the fuck are you here? Why the fuck are you peeing in front of me! ”

Mark turns his head, frowning at her as he tucks himself away and flushes the toilet. He then nudges her toothbrush aside like it’s nothing and washes his hands while he says, “Well, Helly, hate to break it to you, but you’re my wife. Isn’t that a hoot.”

Helly stares at him, her hand lowering, toothbrush hanging limply at her side. Then, she turns on her heel and sprints out into the unknown.

She makes it all the way outside in the freezing cold with no pants, socks or shoes on before Mark grabs her from behind in the driveway and hauls her back into the house while she kicks her legs out and claws at his arms around her waist.

“You’re going to get the fucking cops called on me, Helly, Jesus Christ,” Mark argues while he pushes back against a wall inside the house, trying to gain leverage to pin her down.

Helly continues thrashing and yelling and cursing at him until suddenly a child appears at the bottom of the stairs and looks at them, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

Helly stops fighting, her breath heaving. 

Mark sets her on the floor and says, “CJ, call your Aunt Devon, please. Tell her Mommy’s her innie.”

“That’s not my kid,” Helly says as the child runs up the stairs.

“I’m adopted!” the kid yells.

“No, you’re not, smartass!” Mark calls back.

“I can’t have a kid. No. I can’t have a kid with…” Helly spins around and looks Mark up and down. She lets out a frustrated ululation and chucks the toothbrush at him. It lamely hits him in the chest then falls to the floor.

“Really?” Mark asks, unamused as he picks up the toothbrush. “Are you going to be a good girl and let me explain?”

Something hot and strangely pleasant sinks through the center of Helly’s chest at the words good girl coming out of Mark S.’s mouth. “Oh, fuck you,” she says. She pulls at her t-shirt. “Can I get some fucking pants?”

“OK, that’s a start,” Mark says, smirking at her. He pushes his glasses up his nose and heads toward the stairs. “Make yourself comfortable. It’s your house, after all.”

Helly looks around warily, searching for any sign that this is some kind of trap. She wouldn’t put it past Lumon to find interesting new ways to psychologically torture innies.

Mark returns, wearing a navy blue shirt but still only boxers on his bottom half and carrying a pair of lavender-colored sweat shorts that he tosses to Helly. They barely cover the tops of her thighs, but they’re comfortable and cute. 

“Why are you wearing glasses?” Helly asks as she curls into a ball on the couch, staying as far away from Mark as possible. 

He sits in an armchair perpendicular to her and says, “I wear contacts most of the time. It’s, uh, seven in the morning, though, so I just woke up a few minutes ago and haven’t put them in yet.”

Helly pinches the white fabric of her t-shirt. “Is this your shirt I’m wearing?” 

“Yeah, you like taking them off of me and then sleeping in them.”

“No, I don’t.”

His soft, easy smile is infuriating. She wants to smack it off his stupid face. 

“OK, you don’t,” he says patiently. “She does.”

“How did you know I was Helly—that I was the innie version?”

“Well, um, about a week ago I went to bed with my wife and then the next second I was at my niece’s birthday party the following day, and my sister acted like she had seen a ghost.”

“Mark was out here? My Mark?”

He raises an eyebrow at her. “Your Mark? I thought you hated him.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“Well, he can’t exactly talk to me, can he? He talked to my sister. She told me and Helly a bunch of stuff.”

Helly scoffs at him. “OK, no need to be so pedantic. How the fuck are we married, anyway? This is, like, my worst nightmare.”

Mark opens his mouth to answer, but then the front door opens and a woman who looks a little bit like Mark comes in carrying a baby on her hip.

“Ah, Devon, just in time,” Mark says facetiously. “Helly was just telling me how being married to me is her worst nightmare.”

“Aw, how sweet, it’s like when you first met,” Devon says in the same sarcastic tone as Mark.

“Aren’t you, like, 20 years older than me?” Helly asks, crossing her arms over her chest. She realizes belatedly that she does not have a bra on, and she is suddenly grateful for Mark’s loose-fitting shirt.

Devon laughs loudly. 

“Just a decade, sweetheart,” Mark says.

The little girl, CJ, bounces downstairs and throws herself in Mark’s lap. Mark barely reacts, keeping his eyes on Helly as he wraps his arms around the girl’s waist. Both Mark and CJ stare at Helly with the same kind of brown-eyed intensity. 

“She’s yours but not mine, isn’t she?” Helly asks.

“She’s ours,” Mark says definitively. He pats CJ to get her to move off his lap, then he stands and takes her hand, saying, “C’mon, sweetie, let’s let fake Mommy talk to Aunt Devon.”

Helly wants to argue, to yell that it’s not fair to leave her here with a person she doesn’t know, but she also doesn’t want Mark thinking she likes having him around, so she lets him and the little girl leave. CJ turns toward her as they head for the stairs and waves sweetly at her. In a daze, Helly waves back.

Devon takes a seat on the other end of the couch and sets her baby on the cushion between them. She hands the baby a toy and then asks, “Do you know why you and Mark are waking up out here?”

“Why the fuck would I know that?”

Devon balks at Helly. “OK, let me start again. I’m Devon, Mark’s sister. This is my baby, Eleanor. When Mark’s innie woke up out here, it was, um, jarring. Mark—that Mark that just went upstairs and I decided to make a plan in case it happened again, or in case you woke up out here. Part of that plan was for me to talk to you because we figured you would not be willing to talk to Mark.”

“Correct.”

“You weren’t supposed to meet Cris—CJ, my niece. But she’s seven, so there’s only so much we could do.”

“She’s not mine,” Helly asserts again.

“Well, in all the ways that matter, she is,” Devon says. “But no, she’s not biologically yours. Mark was married before you.”

If Helly is the only “mommy” in the child’s life, then she can only conclude that Mark’s first wife must have died. She asks baldly, “Did she die?”

“Yes.” Devon looks down at her baby. “A car accident.”

Since the beginning of her existence about 200 or so hours ago, Helly has always wondered what would cause a person to become severed. She has never experienced loss. She has no idea what kind of pain it may cause. And that, she figures, is the point. 

“I don’t know anything,” Helly says quietly. “I don’t know why we’re waking up out here.”

“That’s OK.” Devon plays with her baby, then she continues, “Mark’s innie was awake out here for several hours. What do you want to do if you stay out here?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you hate my brother, and you’re stuck in a house with him. If you want, you can come back to my place and stay with me and my husband until you turn back into Helly—your outie.”

Helly’s eyebrows knit together. She fidgets and clasps her hands together, only now noticing that there is a ring on her left hand. She looks down at it and finds that she likes it. “Whose idea was that?”

“Mark’s. He didn’t want you to be saddled with a kid you don’t know and a man you hate in your only time outside of the Lumon basement.”

“That’s…incredibly thoughtful of him.”

Devon smiles at her, and it looks too much like Mark’s fond smile from earlier. “He’s very kind. His innie was kind, too, when he was here. He tried to pretend like everything was normal because he didn’t want to cause any problems, and he wasn’t sure he could trust you, so he just went along with being married to you and having a kid until I noticed that something was wrong with him and he told me.”

“He never told me about it,” Helly whispers, twisting the wedding ring around her finger.

“Do you guys ever talk? Seems like you have a, um, rather volatile relationship.”

“Whatever. He should’ve told me.” Helly thinks about how different he’s been acting at work lately, either just ignoring her or being polite toward her. “How could he know we’re married and not fucking say anything?”

“Well, if his innie is anything like him, I imagine he could pretty easily do that. Mark is very good at bottling things up.”

Helly has nothing to say to that. Her mind races. She stares at the baby.

Eventually, Devon says, “So, what’ll it be? Do you want to come with me or stay here?”

“Those are really my only options? I don’t have any family outside of you guys?”

Devon winces. “Not any that you talk to.”

“Great.”

Helly thinks about it for a minute. She despises Mark, but she’s used to being around him all the time. She feels comfortable with him. 

“I’ll stay here,” Helly says.

Devon looks surprised. “Oh. Alright then.” She clears her throat. “You know that means living in a house with a child that sees you as her mom.”

“Yes, Devon, I’m aware. I’m not an asshole.”

“I remember when you and Mark first met. You were definitely an asshole.”

Mark comes downstairs again, wearing pants now and no glasses. His hair is different than his innie, soft strands in his face, the rest of it tucked behind his ears. It looks good.

“All good?” Mark asks. “I started packing a bag of your stuff so you can—”

“She’s going to stay here,” Devon interrupts. “With you and Cris.”

Mark’s eyes widen, then a smile lights up his whole face. “OK. Great.” He looks around awkwardly and continues, “Uh, I can set up the couch tonight so you can sleep in our room, you know, if you’re here that long.”

Helly blinks and nods.

“Uh,” Mark continues, fidgeting with obvious excitement. “Coffee? I’m going to make coffee.”

Devon stays for breakfast, and the three of them talk while Eleanor plays with her food in a high chair and CJ watches TV in the living room.

Mark and Devon ask Helly a lot of questions about what Lumon is like and what she does on the severed floor, and she can tell they’re disappointed that she doesn’t know more information. They ask why she hates Mark so much, and she tells them about all the problems they’ve had and Devon and Mark think it’s hilarious. She doesn’t mention her suicide attempt, and they don’t ask.

After breakfast, Mark calls to CJ to tell her to get ready for her basketball game, then he turns to Helly and says, “You can stay here if you want, but the games are really fun.”

Helly decides it will be OK to go to a child’s basketball game.

She’s never seen more people in her life. The gym is loud and crowded, the sounds of shoes squeaking and parents yelling and the buzzer making Helly feel scared. She walks behind Mark, trying to hide herself. Mark notices and turns toward her.

“Hey, it’s alright,” he says sweetly, offering her his hand.

On impulse, Helly takes it. She clasps her palm in his and grounds herself in his warmth. He leads her to the bleachers, to the back row away from the loudest fans. He lets go of her hand once they sit.

“CJ’s game is up next,” Mark says, sitting close enough to Helly that their thighs touch. He points to the corner of the gym. “See, her team is lining up.”

Sure enough, CJ stands on the sidelines with a bunch of other kids and a coach, her yellow uniform crisp and clean. She has on bright pink sneakers, which makes Helly smile.

“Don’t tell her I said this, but she’s not very good at basketball,” Mark mutters, leaning close to Helly. “She got my athletic ability, which is nothing.”

Helly snorts a laugh.

“Helly—you try to train with her at home, but you end up frustrated and she gives up after, like, 15 minutes.”

“I play basketball?”

Mark bumps her shoulder. “Yeah, and you’re actually good. You played in high school.”

“Do I do anything else?”

“You’re a really good swimmer. We’ve been saving up money to put a pool in the backyard for you.”

“In the backyard? People do that?” Helly asks skeptically.

Mark laughs. “You, um, grew up around a lot of wealth, but that’s the only high maintenance thing you want now.”

The buzzer sounds, ending the current game. People clap and get up from the bleachers, but Mark and Helly stay put to wait for CJ’s team to go onto the court. 

“This is a bit difficult for me, Helly,” Mark says in a low tone.

“What is?” Helly asks.

He gets closer to her, speaking in her ear. “Sitting next to you and not touching you. I’m sorry.”

Helly turns and blinks at him. “In what way would you touch me—her?”

A smile pulls at Mark’s lips. He looks down at her lap and then slides his left hand down her thigh, his hand big and strong and warm against the fabric of her shorts. He moves toward her bare skin around her knee, his wedding ring cold against her.

Helly shivers and leans closer to him, breathing heavily. “I don’t hate you,” she says quietly. “You’re not the Mark I have to listen to every day.”

Mark looks ahead at the court and purses his lips. “I don’t think you hate him, either.”

Helly says nothing.

CJ is, in fact, not good at basketball. That doesn’t stop Helly from jumping to her feet and shouting at the players, calling them by their numbers to give them specific instructions. She doesn’t know how she knows anything about basketball, but she does.

Mark sits next to her, occasionally clapping and cheering, but mostly laughing at her whenever she gets up to yell. Every time she sits back down, he rubs her back and soothes her, reminding her it’s a children’s rec league. 

“Your innie is way more uptight,” Helly says to Mark during halftime. “He’s my boss, technically, and he just rides my ass all the time. I wish you could tell him to cut it out.”

“You and I didn’t get along when we first met, either,” Mark says like it’s a secret. 

“How’d we meet?” Helly says quietly.

Mark turns more toward her, angling himself away from the rest of the crowd. “Uh, we met at a work event. Before Lumon, I was a professor at Ganz. A college.”

Helly raises her eyebrows at him, impressed.

“You came to campus to recruit students for research at Lumon, and I…strongly opposed you.”

Helly’s heart sinks. “I worked for Lumon already? As a non-severed employee?”

Mark winces at her. “Helly, you were Helena Eagan. Jame Eagan is your father.”

The color drains from Helly’s face. She turns, staring straight ahead at the basketball court. The buzzer sounds, and the kids run back out to start the second half.

Mark reaches his hand out to her but aborts the movement at the last second. He sighs and says, “You broke all ties with your family when you and I got married. Your last name is now Scout.”

“So then why the fuck am I severed now?”

“Well, um.” Mark runs a hand through his hair, messing it up. “I can’t tell you that here, in public.”

“Great, of course not.” Helly scoffs and crosses her arms over her chest, turning away from Mark to put her attention back on the game.

CJ does not score any points, and her team loses by a dozen. She seems unbothered afterward, though, and chatters on happily in the car about her friends on the team and getting ice cream after lunch. 

They go to a cheap restaurant and CJ asks Helly a bunch of questions about her life and if she remembers anything about her outie.

“No, I can’t say that I remember anything,” Helly says awkwardly.

“What about your favorite color?” CJ asks.

“Oh. Teal, I suppose.”

CJ’s face lights up similarly to the way Helly has seen Mark’s light up today. “That’s Mommy’s favorite, too! Mine’s pink, and my second favorite is purple. What about your favorite food?”

“They, um, don’t give us a lot of options at work, but the snack I love the most is peanuts.”

CJ and Mark share a look, then CJ says, “That’s Mommy’s favorite, too. That’s so cool. Is Daddy your favorite down there, too?”

Mark chokes on a laugh.

Helly smiles; CJ smiles back. Helly realizes, then, that CJ is old enough to know exactly what she’s asking. Helly says, “No, sweetie, I hate his guts down there. He’s very annoying at work.”

CJ nods sagely. “He can be very annoying up here, too.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Mark says defensively. 

“But I like him up here,” Helly adds, turning to smile at Mark. “He’s not so bad as a husband.”

Mark smiles shyly back at her and then moves toward her before leaning back and ducking his chin, hiding a blush. Helly thinks he was about to kiss her, that he forgot for a second that she was not actually his wife. If he had gone in for the kiss, Helly’s not sure she would’ve remembered that she’s not his wife, either. She may well have kissed him back.

They get ice cream after lunch, and Helly picks a waffle cone with a scoop of pistachio, and CJ exclaims that’s Mommy’s favorite, too. Mark adds that it’s always been insane to him that his wife’s favorite food items are all nut-related despite her allergy to almonds. 

On their way home, they drop CJ off at a neighbor’s house so she can play with her friend. Alone with Mark, Helly suddenly feels awkward, the car too quiet.

Mark seems to have the same idea, because he turns the radio on and flips through the stations until he finds something he likes. Helly finds that she likes it, too, and wonders if it’s another of her favorites.

“So, how did we…” Helly starts as Mark pulls into the driveway at home.

Mark unclicks his seatbelt and turns to look at her. “Go from hating each other to being married?”

Helly nods. 

Mark sighs. “Come on, I’ll make us coffee.”

Inside, Helly sits in the living room and watches Mark move around the kitchen. He’s different than how he is at work, his shoulders rounded forward, the expression on his face more relaxed. Helly thinks about the times Mark S. has made a pot of coffee in the afternoons and how Irving and Dylan make fun of him for it, wondering if he’s making his outie stay up all night every night. Because she hates him, Helly never takes Mark up on the offer of afternoon coffee despite the fact that she craves it on a daily basis and sometimes ends up with a headache before leaving work. 

Now, it clicks into place. She and Mark must do this often. They must both be irrevocably addicted to caffeine at all hours of the day. 

“Hey, that day recently that my innie had to leave work early, what happened?” Helly asks as Mark comes into the living room with two mugs. 

He hands one to Helly: perfect amount of sugar and no cream, just the way she likes it.

“Oh, that was CJ. She got sick at school, food poisoning. I ended up leaving work early, too, which surprised both of us,” Mark says. “Usually Lumon will only send one person home because otherwise it’s suspicious.”

“I didn’t know Mark left early that day.”

“Yeah, we figured he insisted on it when you left. Seems like something I’d do, knowing I’m married to you and we have a kid. I’d want to know everything’s OK.”

“So he—it didn’t bother him? Being married to me out here? Having a kid?”

Mark shrugs. “According to Helly, no.” An amused expression passes over his face and then is gone. He clears his throat. “She said he was a natural with CJ.”

“She’s an easy kid.”

“Do you feel anything for her? I mean, can you tell that she’s someone you love?”

Helly considers it for a second and decides, “Yeah. Yeah, I think I can. She feels like a part of me.”

“Good. I’m glad severance can’t, um, take that. You know?”

Helly thinks he’s going to ask, and her heart hammers in her chest at the thought. Do you feel that you love me, too?

But he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “So you want to know how we got together?”

“Yes.”

Mark tucks one foot under his butt and smiles widely. “I accosted you after a speech you gave at Ganz. You were recruiting students to be part of research studies for Lumon, and I thought you were evil. You brushed me off and treated me like I was a bug you could crush under your heel, and god.” A dark expression crosses over his face. He looks her up and down. “That really did it for me.”

Helly raises an eyebrow at him. “Seriously?”

“I still thought you were evil, though, so I worked against you at every turn. Every time you came to do your research, I was there trying to convince students not to participate. You couldn’t stand me.”

“This is off to a great start.”

“Oh, it went on for months. You tried to get me fired. You came to mine and Gemma’s house to tell me off one night. I thought you were going to murder me.” Mark shakes his head and laughs fondly at the memory. “Then, well, Gemma…”

“Died?” Helly asks plainly.

“Yes. She died.” Mark drinks his coffee. “I showed up to work drunk, about a month after her death. You came to my office to be nice for once, to offer condolences, and I—um, I kissed you. You kissed me back. We didn’t say anything to each other, but you smacked me in the face and then left. I got fired later that day, you know, for being drunk at work.”

“Holy shit, Mark.”

“CJ was so little, I had to get my shit together. My grief was all-consuming, though, and I couldn’t really function. I got severed to be able to keep living, to be a dad that could provide for his kid, but also to punish myself. I thought severance was evil and I did it anyway.”

“That still doesn’t explain how we ended up married.”

“Um, it’s stupid,” Mark says. “We ran into each other in a coffee shop one weekend. I’m still not convinced you didn’t stalk me there, even though you deny it to this day. We started talking, and um, you admitted that you’d been attracted to me even when we hated each other, and I admitted the same. We agreed that we treated each other terribly because we just wanted to fuck each other and hadn’t done so yet. We only talked for, like, 30 minutes before I called Devon to see if I could drop CJ off at her house for the night, then you came over and we fucked out all of our problems a dozen or so times.”

“A dozen? Really.”

Mark points around the room. “I can point out all the places, if you really don’t believe me.”

Helly swallows hard. 

Mark catches her and smirks at her.

He is, annoyingly, good-looking. She hates his stupid face at work probably because she doesn’t hate it at all. When she calls him ugly, it’s to try to suppress the image of her riding his perfect big nose.

“So, it didn’t bother you guys that I tried to kill myself?” Helly asks in an attempt to change the subject. 

“Right, um, yeah. Yeah, it bothered us, Helly. We knew you were miserable down there, but we hoped you weren’t that miserable.”

“You still sent me back down there, though.”

Mark sets his mug on the coffee table and moves closer to Helly, inches away from her on the couch. “Unfortunately, we don’t really have a choice. Your father is in bad health, and he’s decided to spend the last few months he has fighting a legal battle with you.”

Helly scoffs. “Why would he do that?”

“Because he has no other heir. He hopes he can convince you or scare you into coming back home to Lumon and taking over, but he underestimated your hardheadedness. You cut a deal with the Board that they have to leave you alone if you agreed to be severed.”

“Why would they agree to that?”

“Because it’s good for their brand if an Eagan is willing to be severed, never mind that you haven’t been an Eagan in years. They get to make promotional material out of you, and in return you get to live a normal life.”

“She gets to live a normal life,” Helly spits. “I live in hell.”

Mark furrows his eyebrows. “I’m sorry, Helly. Ever since you tried to kill yourself, we’ve been trying to find a loophole to get out of this.”

“And what about your innie? You don’t care that he’s suffering?”

“According to Devon, he said he doesn’t really mind it. Well, he said it’s been hell since you arrived, but I figured that will resolve itself in time.”

“Oh, you’re sure about that, aren’t you?”

A smile pulls at Mark’s lips. “Yeah, I’m pretty confident about it.”

Helly rolls her eyes and gets up, taking her mug to the kitchen so she can get away from Mark’s flirting. She has to think of this Mark as a different person, because otherwise she has to reckon with the fact that she likes Mark. 

CJ comes back from her playdate and asks Helly to play games with her while Mark makes dinner. Helly loses several times at a game where she has to fit different-sized shapes into a puzzle as fast as possible. After losing about 10 times in a row, CJ takes pity on her and teaches her some tricks to it, and Helly thinks this must be the most patient and kindest child on earth.

They eat dinner together at the kitchen table, and Mark smiles fondly at Helly like he’s glad she’s gotten along with his kid all day, and it makes Helly’s heart hurt. 

She will go back to the Lumon basement any second now, and she will not have this anymore. She will not have home-cooked meals and an obviously loving husband and a sweet child. 

CJ asks Helly to read a book with her to put her to bed, and Mark half-heartedly chastises the little girl about it.

To Helly, he says, “She can read books by herself. She’s taking advantage of the fact that you don’t know her bedtime routine.”

“I don’t mind,” Helly says.

“I know you don’t, but don’t let her convince you to stay in there until she falls asleep, because then you’ll be in there all night.”

Helly smiles up at him. “I wouldn’t mind that, either.”

“Yeah, except then me and my Helly will have to deal with her begging us to be in there with her for the next month.”

It seems like a small punishment to Helly, but she figures messing up their child’s routine is not a good idea.

So, when CJ asks Helly to stay until she falls asleep, Helly tells her she can’t and then she hugs her goodnight, and CJ comes up on her knees in bed to wrap her arms around Helly’s neck and hold her tight, and Helly thinks it might actually be the first real hug she’s ever experienced in her life. She very nearly cries.

She finds Mark in the living room aiming the remote at the TV and scrolling through movies or TV shows or something. He turns to her when she comes in and says, “You alright?”

“What? Yeah,” Helly says, then she realizes her eyes are probably swimming, so she wipes them. 

“Do you want to watch something? It’s what Helly and I usually do after CJ goes to bed.”

Helly sits on the other side of the couch as him and says, “Yeah, sure.”

Mark then gives Helly a list of movies that are apparently her favorites, but she knows nothing about them, so she lets him decide which one she might like best. It irks Helly that this man knows her so intimately, that he has access to knowledge of her that she does not know herself.

Within 15 minutes of the movie, though, Helly is in love, and she thinks maybe it isn’t so bad for someone to know her so well. She talks to Mark about the movie throughout, and Mark obviously finds joy in telling her that his wife is exactly the same, and that she will be thrilled to know she got to watch her favorite movie for the first time again.

And Helly moves closer to him, and his arm goes up around the back of the couch, and his legs are propped on the coffee table, and Helly fits perfectly into his side with her head resting on his chest, and it feels like she belongs here. 

When the movie ends, neither of them say anything. Mark moves his arm tighter around Helly and rubs her triceps slowly. He turns his head and breathes in her hair, and she puts a hand on his chest and feels his heartbeat. 

“This is usually when we go to bed,” Mark says in a low tone.

“OK,” Helly replies.

Neither of them move.

Several more minutes pass. Helly closes her eyes and turns her face more firmly against Mark’s chest. 

“I need to make up the couch to sleep down here,” Mark says. “I’m sorry, Helly.”

Helly snaps out of it then, moving away from Mark and standing up from the couch to stretch. She feels disoriented, like she’s taken on the life of someone else, which, actually, is exactly what she’s done.

“CJ hugged me earlier,” Helly admits. “And it made me realize I don’t think I’ve ever been hugged before.”

Mark blinks and searches her face, looking irreparably sad. Then, he steps forward and folds her into his arms. 

Mark is warmth and comfort and happiness. His big hands splay across her back and his arms squeeze her tight enough to pull the air from her lungs. He presses his face to her shoulder and lifts her off her feet for a moment, and Helly hangs on for dear life.

“Thank you,” Helly whispers in his ear.

Mark releases her with a casual kiss to her temple. He smiles at her lovingly, and Helly thinks she’s seen him smile more today than she’s ever seen him smile on the severed floor.

He makes up the couch with sheets, a blanket and pillows, and then they go upstairs together to get ready for bed. After brushing their teeth, Mark tells Helly that she usually sleeps on the right side of the bed, then he offers another hug before going downstairs to the couch.

Helly accepts the hug, of course. This time, Mark wraps his arms low around her back and she copies him, and they hold each other gently for a moment until Mark kisses the top of her head and tells her goodnight. He puts a note on the nightstand, “Just in case you turn back into my wife.”

After he leaves, Helly reads the note.

H, you were your innie today. I’m sleeping on the couch to protect her innocence. Wake me up and haul me upstairs and have your way with me if you get the chance. -M

Helly smiles at the note and clutches it in her hand for a second before returning it to its spot on the nightstand. She then lies in bed and stares into the darkness for a long time.

She’s never slept before. She has no idea what it feels like to fall asleep, but she knows what it’s like to be sleepy, and she definitely doesn’t feel sleepy. She feels wired, on edge, like she needs to make the most of her time out here. If she goes to sleep, the next time she wakes up will likely be in the Lumon elevator.

She tosses and turns for about five minutes before stomping her way downstairs and finding Mark still awake on the couch, his weird boxy phone in his hand, the screen lighting up his face. He’s shirtless.

“Hey,” he says, smiling at her. “You switched back already? Thank god, I don’t know if my back can handle this couch.”

Helly considers lying. She could pretend to be his wife, she thinks. As she weighs her options, though, Mark’s face falls.

“Oh, you didn’t switch, did you?” he asks. “What’s up?”

“I’m…I’m sorry,” Helly says, fidgeting. “I can’t sleep. I don’t really want to sleep.”

Mark’s eyebrows raise to his bangs. “OK. Um, what do you want to do?”

“Will you come upstairs with me? You said your back can’t handle the couch.”

Mark nods vigorously and throws the blanket off himself, getting up. “Yeah. Of course, yeah.” Belatedly, he grabs his shirt from the coffee table and throws it on as he follows Helly up the stairs.

In bed, they awkwardly face each other, both of them on their sides with their hands tucked under their cheeks.

“Can I tell you something?” Mark whispers.

Helly nods.

“Helly told me…she said when my innie was here, he pretended to be me, and she, um, gave him a handjob in the shower.”

Helly blinks. “What?”

“Wait, do you know what a handjob is? It’s, like—”

“I know what a handjob is, Mark. He let her do it?”

“Yes. She said he seemed to, um, enjoy it.”

Helly takes this information in, tries to process it, comes up blank. 

“What are you thinking?” Mark whispers, delicate and soft.

Slowly, Helly says, “I’m thinking…I'm thinking about kissing you.”

It’s amazing the way Mark’s face changes when she pleases him. “You’re allowed to do that, you know.”

“I’ve never kissed anybody.”

“You’re really good at it, trust me.”

Helly reaches out tentatively and pets Mark’s hair, brushing it out of his face. She then scoots forward against the pillow a little, and that’s enough of a sign for Mark, apparently, because he meets her in the middle and presses his lips to hers.

Helly whines and holds his face as she tastes him. After a few seconds, Mark pulls away and gently asks her if she’s alright.

Helly nods and keeps kissing him. 

Mark kisses her back like he’s an expert in this, like he’s done this a thousand times because he has. He holds the side of her face and cards his fingers through her hair and rolls her body on top of his and slips his tongue between her lips.

Then, he pulls away just enough to ask, “Are you sure?”

Helly kisses him in response.

Mark’s shirt comes back off in Helly’s hands. Mark is more hesitant about removing her shirt, asking her permission before he takes it off, and she loves him for it. They kiss for a long time, like this is something they do quite often, and Helly finds that her body knows, that her muscle memory is solid. She has kissed this man before, most days of her life for the past several years, and her body knows.

“Do you want to have sex?” Mark asks breathlessly, his hand carding through her hair in desperation.

“Yeah,” Helly says.

“OK. Yeah. We have to be fast, in case CJ wakes up.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Often enough.”

Mark reaches for Helly’s pajama shorts and shoves them down with her panties, then he circles a finger around her entrance and kisses her hard. 

Helly whimpers pathetically when Mark pushes his finger inside of her. It feels so good and so natural, like it was always meant to be there. 

He flips them over so he’s on top of Helly, his finger hitting a different angle. He adds a second and kisses a line down her neck to her collarbone and then her breast. Helly arches into his touch and fists a hand into his hair. 

Eventually, Mark shimmies out of his shorts and grabs a bottle of something out of the nightstand and coats his dick in it before lining himself up with her, explaining, “It’s lube so we can go faster. Under normal circumstances, we would’ve fucked when CJ was at her playdate today so we could’ve taken our time. I don’t want you to think our sex life is always rushed.”

“Mark, I don’t care. I just want you to fuck me.”

Mark grins down at her and mumbles, “That’s my girl,” before pushing into her.

Once again, it feels like Helly is meant to be doing this. He feels so good, just the right amount of stretch, her body opening to him and welcoming him in with comfort and ease. When he bottoms out, she thinks she could have an orgasm right then.

“You OK?” Mark asks, not moving.

“Mm-hmm,” Helly responds, digging her fingernails into his back. “Please move.”

Mark presses a kiss to the bolt of her jaw and then snaps his hips forward, forcing a cry out of Helly. He then puts a hand over her mouth and shushes her, smile on his face.

Helly bites his hand playfully, and Mark removes it so he can kiss her. He moves faster, harder, pushing into her so aggressively that she feels it in her stomach. She reaches a hand down to the hair between her legs and finds a spot for her fingers to press that feels so good she wants to cry.

“That’s it, baby,” Mark says sweetly. “That’s exactly what you usually do.”

Helly knows what’s coming, even though she has never personally experienced an orgasm before. She can feel her body cresting over the edge, and Mark knows it, too. He jerks his hips faster, kisses her harder, and when she comes she has to stifle a cry, biting her lip. It feels so good she wants to scream.

Mark follows soon after her, his focus intense now that his own pleasure is the only thing on the line. He kisses Helly sloppily, his body sweaty as he works harder, pounding into her until he finally releases. It feels like he gets impossibly bigger before he orgasms, then his body twitches as he collapses against her.

“Fuck,” he says, breathing heavily against her chest. “I’ve been wanting to do that all day.”

“Yeah, I could tell,” Helly says.

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Is it weird? That I’m not her?”

“You are her. I love every you.”

Helly holds him in her arms, tries to take that in. She thinks about work, about how much she enjoys goading Mark, bothering him, bringing out the worst in him. Maybe she doesn’t actually hate him. Maybe she never actually hated him.

Helly wakes up with a start. It’s dark outside, which is weird. Her last memory is of waking up in the morning and going to the bathroom, and now she’s inexplicably back in bed. She gets up to go to the bathroom and feels semen seep down the inside of her thigh. She scoffs loudly and turns a lamp on, waking Mark up.

“You fucked her?” Helly asks, hands going to her hips.

Mark grumbles and props himself on an elbow to look at her, squinting in the light. “In my defense, she looks like you.”

Helly pulls at the t-shirt she’s wearing. “She put on your fucking shirt afterward? Did you tell her I do that?”

“Baby, for fuck’s sake. Can we agree we’re even now? I’m trying to sleep.”

Helly rips Mark’s t-shirt off herself and throws it at his head. “You’re the fucking worst, Mark.”

Mark is waiting for coffee to brew in the kitchen, blissfully alone in MDR one morning, when Helly stomps in and grabs his arm to spin him around to face her.

“You had sex with my outie and didn’t fucking tell me,” she says through gritted teeth, finger pointed in his face.

“How…do you know that?” Mark asks, dumbfounded.

“Because I woke up out there, too, Mark!” Helly yells, emphasizing his name. “And guess what? I had sex with your outie, too! So, there! We’re even.”

Mark fights a smile. “You had sex with my outie?”

“What? No. Fuck you.”

Helly turns in a huff, but Mark reaches out and catches her by the wrist.

She looks down at where they’re joined and then up at his face, her mouth slightly open in shock.

“Helly,” he says, and he hates that it sounds like a plea.

Helly jerks her hand away and leaves the kitchen.

At their desks, Mark pulls down the divider and stares Helly down, saying, “Helly,” every several seconds in hope that she stops ignoring him.

Eventually, with her eyes still on her screen, Helly says, “Shut the fuck up, Mark.”

“Helly, come on. I know you don’t hate me.”

She whips her head toward him. “You’re not him.”

“I am him!” Mark whisper-shouts.

“No. You’re not.”

“You can’t honestly still act like you hate me when you—for fuck’s sake, Helly, you had sex with my outie!”

Both Dylan and Irving pull their dividers down at the same time and look at Helly and Mark appraisingly. 

“What do you want from me, Mark?” Helly asks in a deadpan.

“I want…” Mark starts, unsure. “I want you to admit you don’t hate me. That—that we could have what they have out there.”

“No.”

“Helly, why are you torturing him?” Dylan asks. “You’re just torturing yourself, too.”

“Mind your fucking business, Dylan,” Helly says.

It goes on like this.

Helly is cold and distant and just a bit sad over the next several days, and Mark wants to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Instead, though, he decides to be patient. To give her time. He thinks she will come around, and if they can’t be together like their outies, they could at least be friends.

Toward the end of the week, Milchick collects Mark and Helly and guides them to Cobel’s office.

“It has come to our attention that there’s been an unfortunate incident,” Cobel states coldly as soon as Helly and Mark sit down across from her. “Your chips were activated outside the severed floor using something called the overtime contingency. It’s a feature we rarely use, and it seems your chips were both activated due to unknown circumstances. We appreciate your discretion in this matter, as Mr. Milchick tells me it has not affected either one of your work. Rest assured, we will find out what has happened and will rectify it immediately. Thank you.”

Mark and Helly look at each other then thank Cobel and leave. 

On the walk back to MDR, Mark says, “They did it on purpose, right?”

“Most definitely,” Helly replies.

“But why?”

Helly stops in the hall and turns to look up at him. “Maybe they’re sick of us not getting along down here and needed to show us a reason to stop fighting.”

Mark searches her face, lingers too long on her mouth. “That does seem like something they’d do.”

Helly looks away from him. “I won’t give them the satisfaction, though. I refuse to be happy down here. They can rot in hell.”

“So, you think you’d be happy with me?” Mark goads, falling into step beside her.

“No.”

Mark bumps her shoulder lightly. “Admit it.”

Helly fights a smile. “I will not.”

The ride up the elevator at the end of a monotonous day folds into nothing, then Helly is in a dark room, a comfortable bed, a familiar arm wrapped around her middle.

She startles and turns in Mark’s hold. He then startles as well and blinks himself awake.

“Helly?” he asks.

“Not…not your wife,” Helly admits. “I’m—I’m my innie again.”

Mark grimaces. “Me, too.”

Helly quickly scoots away from him. “What the fuck? Why is Lumon doing this to us?”

“I don’t know.” Mark rolls away from her and sighs. “I’m really sleepy.”

Helly realizes that she is, too. She copies him, facing away from him, but she can feel the physical distance between them and it hurts.

“Mark,” she says after several long seconds.

“Hmm?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think I ever hated you.”

Mark snorts a laugh. “You can feel it, can’t you? That our outies love each other?”

Helly flips back over. Mark copies her. They face each other in the dark, scooting closer.

“Yeah,” Helly says. “It’s overwhelming.”

Mark reaches out and pushes a strand of hair behind Helly’s ear. She closes her eyes and indulges in his touch. 

“I’m going to kiss you,” Mark says.

Helly nods.

It’s different than kissing Mark’s outie. He is more tentative, less sure. They both kiss like they are learning each other, like they have never done this before. It feels right, though, like they were always meant to be doing this.

While they explore each other’s mouths, Helly thinks how nice it is to do this in a bed, and how the next time they wake up will likely be on the severed floor where they will not be able to do this. She imagines what it would be like to be with Mark down there, sneaking kisses and stolen moments in storage closets and bathrooms, annoying Dylan and Irving with their antics, going to the break room or losing pay for having sex on the clock. They will not have the time and space to truly be together, but Helly doesn’t care. She just wants him.

She rolls on top of him, slotting her body perfectly against his, and he groans into her mouth and kisses her harder. After a minute or two, they both shimmy out of their underwear and rut against each other, chasing friction.

“Your outie put his fingers inside of me,” Helly says between their mouths. “Before his penis, he used fingers.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Mark says as he reaches a hand down between Helly’s legs.

It feels a little different, a little clumsier than Mark’s outie, but still good. They don’t say anything to each other, just breathing into each other’s mouths and kissing sloppily while Mark opens her up. 

Then, as Mark lines himself up beneath her, he says, “You’re so beautiful, Helly. God, it used to piss me off.”

“It pissed me off, too,” Helly replies, smiling as she holds herself up above Mark. “I’m sorry I called you ugly. I was just mad that you’re cute.”

Helly sinks down onto Mark’s cock and holds still for a second, adjusting to the feeling. Mark’s hands cling to her hips, fingertips digging into the flesh of her ass.

“I think it’s hot when you’re mean to me,” Mark admits, his voice strained.

Helly reaches down and grabs his jaw between her thumb and index finger. “Shut up.”

Mark groans and bucks his hips up into her.

Helly moves faster, lifting up and pushing down in a steady rhythm, enjoying the stretch. She thinks she could do this all night, that is until there’s a knock on the door followed by CJ’s voice filtering in.

Helly immediately falls on top of Mark. They both frantically pull the covers over their nakedness and control their breathing. Mark is still halfway inside Helly, and it’s a bit awkward, a bit painful.

“I had a nightmare,” CJ says. “Can I stay in here with you guys?”

Mark and Helly look at each other. It’s Mark who says, “Um, sure, sweetie. Hold on just one second.”

This, apparently, is muscle memory, too. Helly and Mark untangle themselves and get clothes on under the covers before CJ crawls into bed on Helly’s side. Helly’s cunt throbs with half-earned pleasure, but she ignores it in favor of comforting her daughter.

Mark sits up in bed and turns the lamp on for a moment, not explaining himself when Helly asks. Then, after a minute, he turns the lamp back off and settles in behind Helly. It seems like instinct when he wraps an arm around her and presses against her back. Helly can feel his erection against her ass as she falls asleep.

“Look at this,” Mark says to Helly as he joins her in the bathroom in the morning.

Helly takes the note out of his hand and reads it out loud.

“‘Dear Mark and Helly, we woke up in the middle of the night and tried to have sex before CJ came in after having a nightmare. Hopefully we didn’t traumatize her. Sorry, your innies.’” Helly hands the note back over to Mark and says, “Huh. Guess they don’t hate each other anymore.”

Mark winks at her. “Yeah. Guess not.”