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The house sits nestled at the end of the street. Slanted black roof, gray slats stacked and folded round the exterior. Small, rectangular windows peer out onto the road and the modest backyard, strips of green bordered by overgrown shrubbery. The front door is black, the garage door is white. A light fitting hangs with no bulb, wires knotted and tangled in tentacles.
Helly reaches up, enticed by the red and blue and green, the fuzzy golden edges like fireworks paused on a television. She knows she shouldn’t, but there’s so many things to touch, to feel - the crumbling asphalt kicked up by the car tires; the snow, perfect and white like frosting on a birthday cake.
Mark swats her hand away good-naturedly. Gives her a look. “I’d rather you didn’t get electrocuted right this second. The paperwork would be a pain in the ass.”
“Don’t lie, you love doing paperwork.” She teases, before following him inside, cardboard box tucked under her arm. “We should get a bulb for that. If I don’t get electrocuted beforehand I’ll probably slip and break my nose.”
“Add it to the list.”
“We have a list?”
“We do now.”
The hall is a mess of unpacked boxes littered carelessly like landmines, her eyes half on Mark’s back and half in a conscious effort not to trip over. Each is neatly labelled - books, kitchen appliances, towels - in Mark’s tight hand, a mix of belongings from his old place and hand-me-downs from Devon. Nothing is hers. She doesn’t own anything, not even the clothes she’s wearing. Not that she wants anything tainted by Eagan taste and sensibilities. Her first taste of freedom was tearing herself out of her Lumon body armor, blue turning red then black in Ricken’s fucking fire pit.
(The flames had mirrored a feeling in her gut. Hot, angry, consuming. The first of many fuck yous. )
She places the box of crockery on the kitchen counter, wincing as the plates scrape together inside. The kitchen, like the rest, isn’t anything particularly special. There are bland wooden cabinets lining the walls, a refrigerator, stove, a table and two chairs along the back wall. French doors open onto the yard, the late evening sun trickling in behind a thin layer of grime. Clean the windows, she thinks idly. Add it to the list.
“We should get some chairs and a table for out there,” Mark says, plugging in the microwave. “It’ll be nice, during the summer.”
If she squints she can see it, the two of them on the patio. A Sunday evening in July. Sweat on her back. Him making some lame joke about redheads and SPF. Her choosing to ignore it and smearing her shoulders and nose in aloe the next morning. I told you so.
“Do you know anything about gardening?” She sees him shake his head in the reflection. “I’ll learn about gardening. I want… sunflowers. And peonies. It’s so wild out there. I want to make it beautiful.”
His arm appears round her shoulders, looped across her chest. She holds onto his forearm. Eyes flutter closed as he presses a kiss to her head, chaste and soft.
“You already do,” he murmurs into her scalp. “You make everything beautiful.”
“Careful. You’ll give me an ego.”
“Yeah, well. I’ll live with that. Make the doorways wider for your massive head.”
“Aw,” she says, turning to face him. He’s smiling at her like she’s the most precious thing in the world - remembers enamored eyes peering over desk divides. Her chest feels giddy. It felt giddy then, too. “Thanks, honey.”
His hands clasp her face, closing the breath between them with a kiss. They’re soundtracked by the hum of the refrigerator. It’s a bit of a mundane ballad for their romcom moment, but there’s something delicious about it all the same. They’d once pined for mundane.
When they part she looks up at him, scrunching her nose. “Hey kid. What’s for dinner?”
He laughs, running a hand over his chin in bemused disbelief. She’s coy, tongue-in-cheek.
“No - literally. I’m starving. Have we even got anything?”
“No idea. I - uh - Devon maybe…” He quickly skims the boxes lining the floor for rations. “There’s some pasta in here. And walnuts.”
“Hmm, my favorite.” She opens the refrigerator. There’s milk and a block of cheese. Hardly the ingredients for a nutritious meal - not that she has any intention of cooking anyway.
“We’ll go to the store tomorrow. You want takeout? Chinese food?”
She’s not sure she’s had takeout before. Another life, she sees ritzy restaurants, chandeliers looming over pristine tablecloths and three different forks beside the dinner plates. Red wine in crystal, thick like blood. Feeling smaller than the meagre portions.
“Yeah,” she says. “Okay.”
-
They sit cross legged opposite each other on the living room floor, white cartons overflowing with noodles and fried rice propped between them in a makeshift picnic. The wooden chopsticks feel unfamiliar at first but she finds her rhythm, like it’s something she’s done before, scooping lo mein into her mouth.
“Holy shit,” she mutters between mouthfuls, “This stuff is amazing. ”
Mark scoffs.
“No, seriously.” Helly swallows. “It’s like - just salt. And oil. Why does it taste so fucking good?”
“Because salt and oil, unfortunately, taste fucking good.” He rustles around, producing a piece of orange chicken. “Here. I think you’ll like this.”
He reaches across, her mouth opening as he drops it on her tongue with his chopsticks. Her eyes widen, syrup and sugar and sweetness cutting through the grease. “Fuck - man. No wonder they only let us eat fucking raisins at Lumon. We’d never get any work done.”
She finds herself doing that now. Reminiscing. A bittersweet sort of nostalgia. Her memories exist on a pendulum, swinging from the best to the worst days of her life (lives). Mark must notice her travel back there - his hand curls round her wrist, pressing something in her palm.
“Fortune cookie.” He states. Her fingers unfurl, revealing metallic red packaging. “They’re one hundred percent accurate, by the way.”
She snorts. “Okay.” Thumbs the gold lettering. Gentle, to avoid crushing the casing inside. “You go first.”
“Alright…” He tears open the packet with his teeth before snapping the cookie in half. He clears his throat jokingly as he unfolds the small slip of paper, commanding her gaze like an orator before he reads it aloud. She rests her chin on her hands, her eyes mocking a rapt expression. “ Happiness often sneaks through a door you didn’t know you left open. Huh.”
(An elevator shaft. Clinical white. Arms grabbing greedily at bodies.)
“Jesus. I hope mine isn’t as lame.” She jokes. She mirrors his approach, placing a shard of cookie in her mouth before reading on. It tastes like a manila envelope. “Trust in your courage. What’s meant for you will find its way.”
(Hushed conversations in store cupboards. I’m nervous. Me too. )
“Interesting,” Mark chuckles. “If fate exists, I thought it might have given us enough by now. Let someone else have a turn.”
Her heartbeat stutters. Fate. Cosmic events. More Ricken’s territory she thinks, but she can’t argue, the impossibility of it all. The one in a billion chance they’d ever get to sit here, now, after everything.
She doesn’t let it show on her face. She chooses humor - safer, more comfortable. “What’s meant for me will find its way, Mark! Get over it.”
“I swear if meant for you turns out to be another man - “
“Oh yeah. That uHaul driver was giving me a sign, you know? Signals.” She nods, the hint of a smirk giving her away. “It’s not my fault I’m ridiculously easy to fall in love with.”
(Or at least - he makes it feel that way. There was a time where nobody loved her at all.)
“Yeah,” his smile is shy. He reaches across in a moment of tenderness, tucking an errant curl behind her ear, copper glinting in the overhead light. “And yet. You chose me.”
She presses a kiss to the palm of his hand. His skin makes her think of lifelines, fortune tellers, trajectories. Which path was the one that led them here when so many of them wouldn’t or couldn’t. She almost grins in spite of herself; Ricken would get off on that one for sure.
“You chose me,” she says quietly. “You chose me. ”
-
There are still nerves there, latent and excited like the tremors before an earthquake. His hands are cold as they reach under her t-shirt and she shudders, yearning for release. Mark is always gentle, but not because she’s fragile. It’s still so new, blossoming, learning what feels good and what feels better. He is decoding the right combination of touches and sounds and feelings that make her back arch and breaths heave, reminiscent of a linoleum floor and plastic sheeting.
The mattress beneath her back is new and a little hard, but at least it’s theirs. The camp bed on Devon’s floor was rickety and old and Helly knows from the way Devon and Ricken apprised them at breakfast that it wasn’t exactly quiet, either.
He helps her pull her shirt over her head and she returns the favor, laughing as his head is caught in the neckline.
“You look like you’ve been electrocuted,” she remarks, hand reaching out to comb through messy, dark hair.
“We need to fix that damn lightbulb.”
His hand feels for the side of her underwear. She lets him tug them off and throw them off the side of the bed, leaving her exposed and open - the way he looks at her sends heat jolting through her body, cheeks flushed the color of her hair. “My God, Helly. Helly .”
Kisses trail across her neck, her sternum, her breasts. She whimpers as she feels cool fingers slide up the inside of her thigh. And then - she loses herself.
-
Helly has never been to a grocery store before.
The only memories she has are of food just…being there, either in the refrigerator in the MDR kitchen or presented on a plate on a dining table. The fluorescent bar lighting beams down harshly and the aisles are tiled and clinical, hauntingly familiar. The white is broken down by brightly colored vegetables and fruits and the inane chatter happening around them.
(She’d had this fear of being recognized, of people double-taking as she passed by, that her freedom isn't really freedom after all. But no-one does. No-one even looks. She is just another face in another crowd and God it feels comforting to say that.)
“So…” Mark mutters, eyes scanning his hastily prepared list. “Fresh produce, first?”
Helly’s knuckles are white around the handle of the cart. She nods wordlessly.
“Hey,” Mark’s hand appears on her back like a reflex, instinct. She blinks. “Are you okay?”
The music is too loud, a janky, oppressive, pop song interweaved with beeping from cashier desks and wheels squeaking against the linoleum. Her coat is too hot against her neck, sweat prickling on her spine, her lips dry and chapped. Everything is so bright and noisy. Everything is so… much.
“You can wait outside, if you want.” Mark offers. “I know, things can feel a lot, after -”
“No,” she replies sharply. Mark doesn’t flinch or react. He just waits. She doesn’t know where he gets these hordes of patience from, with her. She’s not sure she’d apply the same grace in return. “No. If I’m going to be a normal person I need to do normal person things. What’s first on the list?”
Mark eyes her, but doesn’t push further. “Tomatoes.”
“Tomatoes,” she repeats. A list is fine. A list is good. A list implies a set number of tasks with a finite conclusion, things she can tick off and achieve. There is a world to explore and she intends to explore it. She can’t do that if she has a breakdown everywhere the lighting is a little funny. “Tomatoes. I can deal with tomatoes.”
“I don’t know,” Mark says. “They are quite terrifying.”
She nudges him teasingly with her elbow. It’s like that, is it?
-
(You can’t seriously want to eat melon right now.
Ah, call it exposure therapy, Mark. We’re going to have to eat it eventually.
No, we literally don’t. Melon doesn’t feature that prominently in reality, I can promise you.
And what if I’m actually really talented at melon-carving? I need to find my niche. You’re suppressing my niche.
Go find another niche. Have you considered water-colors? Woodwork? Trap shooting?
Seriously? You would be willing to put a gun in my hands?
…Yeah, fair point. What about a sketchbook? You used to like drawing, I saw you. I think they sell sketchbooks here.
Okay. Fine. And some pencils too, please. Good ones, not the shitty five-dollar ones. I need the right materials for my niche.
Anything for your niche, honey.)
-
Mark goes back to work the next morning. A last-minute, convenient opening in the history department at Ganz, coinciding with the end of the spring break and an opportunity to rebuild some bridges. She almost says fate, but she’s wondering if she’s given her too much credit lately. She sits with her back against the headboard, watches as he dashes from the bedroom, to the bathroom, back again. Anxiety radiates off him like heat. It’s hard for both of them for different reasons, this job. She can’t shake that it feels a little cruel, for him to go back there with her in his bed. After -
“You look handsome,” she says, catching his eyes in the mirror as he adjusts his tie. “I wasn’t sure if hot professor was my vibe, but I kind of dig it.”
Mark exhales a short laugh. The tension lifts slightly. “What are you going to do today?”
“Hm. Don’t know. I think Devon said she was going to take me to the mall.” She examines her cuticles. “Other than that? Maybe go for a run. Get existential. Masturbate. Possibly all at once.”
“Ambitious,” he comments, the edge of a smirk tugging at his lips. “Devon never mentioned you were going to the mall.”
“I need clothes. I can’t live in her old sweaters forever. She also mentioned a manicure - does she like that sort of thing?”
“Devon? She gets her hair cut twice a year, max. She’s never had a manicure in her life.” He sits on the edge of the bed, near where her feet are covered by the blanket. “She must be doing it for you.”
Helly swallows. Oh. For a moment, she doesn’t know what to do with the feeling that bubbles in her chest, overflowing like uncorked champagne. It’s a Scout thing, must be. To know instinctively without being asked.
(The memories are frayed. She remembers absent-mindedly picking at shades of taupe, beige, mauve, nude at her desk, a quiet act of rebellion, another fuck you to her outie. A need to see the real nail bed underneath in an attempt to not feel like her doll, playing dress-up. Then she’d blink, and they’d be pristine again.)
“I see,” Helly says, voice thick. “You know, she doesn’t have to do that - “
“I know she doesn’t have to, Helly. She wants to.” He runs his hand across the outline of her leg, squeezing gently. “She has an insatiable desire within her to look after people. I’m afraid you’re no exception - possibly to your detriment, we’ll have to wait and see.”
(She likes being looked after without an endless list of terms and conditions. She likes people wanting to be around her because she’s Helly, not because they’re contractually obliged to. She likes not being scrambled over in a desperate attempt to crawl to the top.)
Mark glances at his watch and grits his teeth. “Ah - fuck, I’ve got to go.”
“Good luck.” She smiles tightly. “It’ll be fine. Promise.”
He catches her lips in a quick kiss, sickeningly domestic. “I know, I know. And enjoy running. And masturbating. And everything else on your to-do list. I’ll be back by six.”
When she hears the door close downstairs, stillness settles over her. The bed feels too cold. She wonders about the husbands and wives and partners and children of the workers on the severed floor and whether they felt every single one of those eight hours where the person they loved didn’t exist anymore.
-
“Oh - God, you have got to be kidding.”
Helly throws Devon a quizzical look as she turns to look in the dressing room mirror. She’s picked out a pair of denim overalls, a little oversized but fitted in all the right places. They’re nothing like anything she’s worn before. She might love them. “What? What is it?”
Devon sits on a footstool behind her, wrapped in a scarf and coat. She shakes her head in disbelief. “How do you do it? Literally nothing looks bad on you. No wonder my brother couldn’t keep his eyes off you.”
Helly’s cheeks burn. She’d be flattered if the truth wasn’t so fucking sad. “Years of restricting food and enforced exercise, I’d imagine.”
“Ah, shit.” Devon’s face crumples, ashamed. “I’m sorry Helly, I didn’t mean -”
“Oh, no, no.” She flashes her a brief, apologetic smile, an olive branch. “No. It was a cheap shot. The memories are so blurred anyway, I can’t quite - I meant thank you.”
“I meant it too. You have to get those. I won’t forgive you if you don’t.”
She takes a final look at her reflection. One of the hardest things about being Helly was waking up in her clothes, the expensive silk pantyhose and stupid fucking high heels, making her feel clunky and ungainly like an awkward gazelle.
She doesn’t have to wear heels again, if she doesn’t want to. She can wear anything she likes.
“Yeah. I think I’ll get them.” She looks herself in the eye. A glimpse of an old life looks back at her, deep in her pupils, waiting on the other side of a black hole. Hungry. Angry. Fuck. You. “Can we look at sneakers next?”
-
(Ah, green. A perfect choice, miss. They say green is the best color for red hair.
Do they?
Yes, yes, they do. They’re complimentary colors, you see. Your boyfriend will be dazzled. You have a boyfriend? Pretty girl like you.
Ha. Yes? Sure.
Ha? Do you? I sense complexities.
I mean - yeah, you could say that. Not sure if boyfriend is quite the right word.
Oh, I see! Is he an older man? A mature type?
I wouldn’t call him that either.
How interesting! Well, I shan’t pry. He is lucky to have found such a jewel, and now your nails will glisten like emeralds.)
-
“How was it?”
The air is hot and tastes like hibiscus. She analyses his expression from the opposite end of the tub, feet touching under the water. He seems tired, the day hanging on his bones, the way his eyelids flutter closed and he says very little. But he doesn’t seem unhappy.
“It was good, yeah. I’d almost forgotten. That it was all I wanted to do.” There’s a pang of jealousy in her gut. She’s always felt ambitious but with no authentic ambition. She wants a dream to cling on to. Her niche. “A lot of the faculty are still there, from before. They act different but they try not to. I guess it’s the best I can hope for.”
“Different how?”
“It’s like… I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. Like they’re looking at me and expecting to see someone else. Like they’re subconsciously trying to out me as some kind of impostor.” He blinks slowly. “They can’t tell whether to judge me or pity me.”
Helly softens. She nudges him playfully with her right foot, trying to get a smile out of him. “I can go down there, if you like. Tell them what’s what.”
He snorts. Eyes still closed. “Sure. Nothing could go wrong with that. In fact, having an angry redhead hauled out of the office by security would do wonders for my reputation as an academic.”
“C’mon, they’re surrounded by dusty old books and fucking students all day. I’d be doing them a favor, give them something to talk about that isn’t, like, Henry VIII.”
“Ganz doesn’t do a module on Tudor England.”
“Okay! Fine - something more American, then. Uh. Fuck.” She grimaces, teeth tugging at her lip. “‘Nam?”
He laughs in spite of it, running a hand through his damp hair. “You need to do more reading. Didn’t you go to an Ivy?”
“Probably.” She pauses, finger trailing through the bubbles on the surface. “Maybe I was downing cheap beer at frat parties more than I was studying.”
“You would do that, I think. Or at least - you would pretend that you didn’t care, but you’d have a dorm room covered in color-coded study schedules and dog-eared textbooks because the thought of not being top of your class would quietly kill you.” Helly scoffs a laugh, half-wishing it was real, not a faint could have been. “I don’t think Helena would have been allowed to be anything other than excellent.”
It’s still so hard to reach, so murky and muddy, her real past thick and black like tar. It could be shame, or trauma, her brain censoring the specifics, protecting her as she continues to reintegrate. The things she does have are abstracts rather than concrete, feelings and snippets, like she’s looking at a photo of someone before she knew them.
It could be the fact that she’s always had Helly in her but like everything, wasn’t allowed to be. The Mark she knows now isn’t so different to the one she knew then. Realizing severance doesn’t change that much was a brutal epiphany. But it was also kind.
“Yeah,” she eventually replies. It’s a weird feeling, to pity yourself. To judge yourself. “I hope she’s happy with my choices.”
“ Your choices. You made them together. You are still her. She is still you. You both chose to not live that life anymore. It takes time, to reconcile that. It’s been a lot longer for me and it’s still confusing to slot the pieces together.”
Her mind burns at the edges. The person she is turning into - she wouldn’t be it without Helly or Helena.
“Well, I’m glad I managed to slot getting existential into my schedule after all,” she murmurs. He laughs drily. She pulls herself into him by his knees, grabbing the shampoo off the ledge. “Can you wash my hair?”
“Sure.”
She slides under the water for a second, curls splaying wildly, a bloodsoaked Medusa. When she rises his hands are already reaching for her scalp, deft yet gentle. He eases out each tangle slowly, careful not to tug or break or challenge. She relaxes into his hold.
“I like your nails, by the way.” He utters softly. “They’re pretty. Like emeralds.”
“Thank you,” she says genuinely. The green glimmers even under the water, bleeding through. Like treasure lost at sea. “Green is good for red hair, apparently.”
“I can - I can remember you wearing yellow, once. I remember not knowing what the sun looked like, but I thought… you must have come close. I was fine not having the real thing if I could look at you.”
A sob threatens to burst from her throat, then. There was a simplicity to it, really, wasn’t there? The days when she was the sun. “Oh. Mark.”
“Jesus, that was soft. You’ve made me soft.”
“No. No. I don’t think so. You were always that way. Life wasn’t fair to you, that’s all. You weren’t heavy with that, down there. With me.”
“You made it so easy, though.” Fingers, feather light, brush a few stray soapy strands from the back of her neck. “I only exist like this because of you.”
Her hand reaches behind her to clutch his own, their fingertips wrinkled and pruny. Maybe fate should take the credit, after all. The carefully engineered moments that led Mark S and Helly R to the MDR floor, a fixed point, a definite center. Is it narcissistic to think the world exists just for them to meet?
Probably, but it’s starting to cancel out the latent Eagan self-loathing.
Mark reaches for the pitcher on the window sill. “I’m going to rinse now, okay? Let me know if it’s too hot.”
There’s a rush of heat as soap cascades down her back. She likes living a life where water isn’t used as a punishment.
-
The sketchbook does eventually become her outlet. The days are long and lonely when Mark is at work and she feels that whilst Devon indulges her it’s not healthy, lingering around her like a second shadow. She starts with clumsy, uninspiring still life - an abandoned cup of coffee on the kitchen table, Mark’s shirt draped over the back of the vanity chair, their toothbrushes on the side of the bathroom sink. Sometimes, she turns to self portraits, eyes dashing between the mirror and her blank page, perfecting the curve of her nose and the arch of her eyebrows. She can’t quite get it right, like she’s still figuring out what she looks like despite her own face staring straight back at her. Reconciling.
Others are more abstract. Snow-capped mountains and hills surrounding cavernous pits. Corridors that lead to nowhere. A swimming pool opening onto a chasm, like hell could be waiting at the bottom. Her father - if that’s the right word, she’s so far disassociated from it - but only from the back, walking further and further away from her. She barely even realizes she’s doing them before hours pass and her hands are smudged silver with graphite.
“Interesting,” Mark hums, tilting his head slightly, appraising her latest creation. It’s a man - possibly - and a goat, body parts cobbled together from both in a monstrous combination, horns and fur contrasted with skin and bone. “What is it, exactly?”
“The insane machinations of my deranged psyche,” she says, eyes hard and narrow. “Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with me?”
“It’s certainly…imaginative. I like what you did with the, uh, is that a penis - ”
“No. Don’t be nice. Don’t be rational. It’s fucking insane. I’m going insane.” She tears it violently from the spine, aiming for the trashcan but landing somewhere under the couch. His hand reaches out to hold her wrist and steady her own. “I think I need to be around people who aren’t you or Devon.”
Mark pulls into her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “It’s probably not such a bad idea. Devon said you spent the entirety of yesterday afternoon watching a fly buzzing against the kitchen window.”
“It was tragic, Mark. The futile perseverance of it all. Seeing the sky but not being able to touch it.”
“You could have opened the window.”
“Yeah, well,” she frowns, brows furrowed. “I was comfortable in the chair.”
Mark’s laugh is exasperated, but in the kind, affectionate way that suggests what on Earth am I supposed to do with you? It’s easy to fall into a hug with him, his chin atop her shoulder and her hands sprawled across the bottom of his back.
“I went on the computer today,” she says, voice muffled in the material of his shirt. “I looked it up. Ganz has a fine art program. You need to have a portfolio to be eligible but they have night classes, so I could - do you think that’s stupid?”
Mark eases out of her hold so they’re back to facing each other. She searches in his eyes for rebuttal, or a sneer; it’s what she’s used to, after all. Your frivolities tire me, Helena - a faint voice sounding like a record playing in another room . It doesn’t come, of course it doesn’t come. She could say she was trying fucking circus skills and he’d say he was proud of her.
“I don’t think it’s stupid.” Mark replies matter-of-factly, like that’s the only possible answer. “I think it’s perfect.”
“Yeah?” Her tongue pokes between her teeth in a cautious smile. “You don’t think they’ll incarcerate me for crimes against modern art?”
“God no. Those fucking arty types - they’d be all over fucked-up goat-man hybrids. There’s this one guy I’ve seen on the quad who has a tattoo of a gorilla stabbing a horse. The symbolism is obviously lost on me but you’d fit right in.”
“ Thanks,” Voice dripping in sarcasm, but there’s fondness in it. “Do you think there are any initiation rituals? Will I need a nose piercing?”
“No, but I wouldn’t deny you the nose piercing. You’d look stupidly hot.”
She imagines Helly delighting in another act of rebellion. Helena terrified of what her father would say. The irony of the Eagan stance on body modifications is that a nose stud would have her eternally shamed and damned for ruining the body Kier has blessed her with for the sake of aesthetic (with the exception of expensive pearls and diamonds hanging in her earlobes, of course, demonstrations of wealth rather than personal taste). In the same breath - the metal chip hammered into the back of her skull like a tent peg was glorified.
She’ll consider it, maybe. When the thought of tools and metal and needles going anywhere near her doesn’t fill her with dread, the jittery ghost of anxiety haunting her bones.
Helly pushes her sketchbook aside as Mark starts to set the table for dinner, a nightly ritual of lining up knives and forks against slightly chipped plates. She takes it as her cue to help him prepare, bundling tomatoes out of the refrigerator and onto the counter.
“I could put a word in for you. At Ganz.” Mark plucks some basil from the plant she’s potted on the window ledge above the sink. “I don’t know the art faculty that well but - “
“No.” Her tone is decided, finite. Nepotism with good intentions is still nepotism. This ambition is authentic, hers. “It’s sweet of you. Really. But I need to do this myself, Mark.”
His hand skims her waist as he passes her on the way to the stove, a muted, wordless sign of understanding. I will stand by you, always, he’s saying. But never in front of you.
-
She leaves the admissions office at Ganz with a completed enrolment form and - somehow - a job at the coffee shop in the engineering faculty. She’d examined the noticeboard in the foyer, eyes scanning bright postcards about textbooks for sale and calligraphy lessons and roommate requests, before settling on the vacancies section. Four days a week, flexible hours around studies. No experience needed. Making coffee and clearing tables. Not exactly mysterious and important, but it’s probably not going to be an ethical catastrophe or kill anyone.
(It’s a good job they don’t ask for a resume. It would be so heavily doctored to the point of obsolescence.)
“That’s awesome, Helly.” Mark’s smile is effervescent, eyes squinting against the sun. He’d waited for her on a bench outside in anticipation, armed with a coffee and a raspberry jelly donut as her reward. She takes both gleefully, sliding in next to him. “When do you start?”
The donut is tackled first, the sugar gritty and sticky between her fingers. “Classes start Monday evening. Work sometime next week, but they’ve asked me to come in for an orientation tomorrow.”
“Everything’s coming up Helly.” His stupid, dopey grin makes her snort with laughter, jelly oozing down her chin. “What? What is it?”
“Oh, God. Just you.” He hands her a napkin from his pocket to wipe her fingers, because of course he’s thought of that as well. “I thought you were like that at first because it was in your best interests for me to not fuck everything up. But it was genuine, wasn’t it? You wanted me to succeed for me .”
The work had felt intangible and meaningless in MDR, as it was designed to be - intimidating in its obscurity like prey dressed in warning colors, silencing questions before they were asked. But she liked feeling good at it. Mark’s unfiltered pride in her - she didn’t know it, not consciously, that it was a new feeling. It had burned so brilliantly in her chest.
“No, that’s not it.” She raises a bemused eyebrow as his lips curl in a dry, teasing smile. “I work in education. I get off on my students excelling.”
Helly scoffs. “Creep.”
“And you were my best student. My favorite.”
“Ew! Don’t say that. I was being earnest and you’re making it weird.”
“I earnestly thought you were my favorite.”
She rolls her eyes, bitter coffee washing away tart raspberry. “Don’t be getting any more favorites. I’m not being love rivals with a twenty-one year old in a fucking cardigan.”
“I hate cardigans.” He gently nudges her loafers with the toe of his shoe. “And I don’t know where you think I’d get the time to actively date another woman. There’s barely enough hours in the day for you. I couldn’t be bothered with the admin.”
“Well. Then it’s all good, isn’t it?”
“Plus - do you know what the demographic for World War I studies actually is? I have three girls max in each of my classes and none of them have tried to launch stationery at my face, so. I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.”
“Aw, romantic.” She grins up at him, scrunching her nose. When he kisses her it tastes like espresso and mid Spring, the snow melting and flowers blooming in the gaps. “But just so you know, I make their coffee now. Wouldn’t be too hard for me to slip something in.”
“Oh, so we’re going full psychopath now, are we?”
“I’m not talking homicide, Mark,” she flutters her eyelashes in a poor attempt to feign innocence. “Just something that will make them think twice next time.”
“ Sure, ” Mark stands, hands held out to pull her up with him. “C’mon. Let’s get you home, weirdo.”
-
What are you doing? Dinner’s getting cold. I made enchiladas.
I’m planting sunflowers.
What? Right this second?
No, I just like sifting through dirt for giggles.
Helly.
The book said the best time to plant them is mid-April, when the soil is warmer. If you do it too early the frost will kill them.
It will still be mid-April tomorrow, you know.
I know that. But if I do it now I’ll enjoy them sooner.
…No-one is going to take them away from you, Helly.
Jesus. I know that, okay? Just - let me do this. I want to do it now.
Okay, okay. That - it’s fine. I can see you’re… fuck, dinner will keep. Can I help you? I want to help you.
…Can you fill the watering can? The faucet out here is really stiff.
Yeah. ‘Course. Where did you even get the watering can from? And the trowel? I didn’t think we had any gardening stuff.
Ricken’s given up on his Zen garden. Wasn’t bringing him as much inner peace as he thought. The bamboo was radiating a threatening energy. He may or may not have been stabbed by a shinai sword in a past life - still figuring that one out.
Oh, sure. Makes sense.
Devon was considering stabbing him with a sword in this life, I think.
Ha. Well. We’ve all been there.
-
Some of her favorite moments of this new life are the muted, delicate hours at the end of a long day, when the silvery light of the moon bleeds under the curtains like overflowing bathwater and the world seems quieter, stiller. There’s no urgency to fill every second with noise and color. After that second passes, there’ll be another, and another, and another. It almost feels greedy, when they were so desperate for scraps before. Birds savoring breadcrumbs.
They brush their teeth in silence, only punctured by the slow dripping of the tap and Mark spitting in the sink. Helly watches as he rummages around in the cupboard underneath, eyes on the way his back tenses under his shirt.
His knee clicks loudly as he returns to the basin with the floss. A gunshot would probably have had a similar effect on the room — the way Helly freezes solid, toothbrush rigid in her hand.
Mark knows her reaction before she even has a chance to process it. He catches her eyes in the mirror, finger pointing accusingly. “Don’t you dare laugh.”
Helly blinks back innocently. She spits out the toothpaste, wiping her face messily with the towel hanging off the door. “What? Who’s laughing? I’m certainly not laughing.”
Mark remains unconvinced, arms folded across his chest. Helly clenches her jaw, teeth biting at the inside of her cheek, trying to trap the smirk in her mouth. One half of her has always been so effortlessly proficient at wearing a mask, the other at ripping it off.
“You’ll get old one day,” Mark warns. “And I’ll laugh so hard when you do. I’ll be in hysterics when you start complaining about back pain.”
She imagines looking in the mirror and seeing strands of white tangled with scarlet. Lines under her eyes, in the corner of her mouth. A…slowness, to her body, less feline in her movements as she rises out of a chair. God. What a privilege that would be.
She doesn’t say that, though. Doesn’t want to spoil the lightness of the moment. “No. Not me. I’ll be young and spry forever.”
“Lumon perfect that life-extending elixir, then?”
“Probably.” She pictures pills in a tray and not knowing what they were for, not really. “Although if Jame Eagan did have access to the fountain of youth I doubt he’d waste it on me.”
Mark’s teasing expression falters, but she shakes her head. It’s not supposed to be a dead weight. Actually - it kind of feels like healing, whatever that means.
“Fuck him. I’d let you live forever.”
“Only if you did too.” She quips back. What a dramatically insufferable way to say I love you, she thinks. Shakespeare would have a field day. “I’d get bored, otherwise. Waiting at the door and you never walking back in.”
Mark’s hands reach out to cup her face, then, thumbs running across the soft lines of her jaw. The kiss is long, slow, deliciously languid - like they are vampires after all, dragging out their run-time. She edges in for another, tinged with spearmint. She can feel his smile in her mouth.
“Not too old to fuck a girl, are you?” she asks coyly, glint of mischief in her irises. Mark’s chest heaves with a laugh beneath her hands, the tide ebbing and flowing against her fingertips.
“Helly, if that time ever comes,” Foreheads touch, heat blooming between them like sunflowers. She feels high off the intimacy of it, the closeness. “Just kill me for real.”
-
(He tells her that night that her face belongs in a museum. Sculpted out of marble with the relics of Greek antiquity, perfect and pearlescent in their beauty. Or - perhaps - his Venus, red and wild and untameable, ripped from the Renaissance and planted in front of him.
I don’t want to be art. I don’t want to exist just to be gazed upon.
Draw me instead, then. I want to see what I look like through your eyes.
Be careful what you wish for. You’ve seen the horrors I’ve created.)
-
They settle into an easy routine of work and sleep and cramming everything else in-between like stacks of paperback novels. Mark will wait until she’s out of class to make dinner so they can eat together. She prepares two sandwiches for lunch the night before. Devon makes brunch on Sunday mornings and Helly plays dress-up with Eleanor, squeezing chubby one-year-old arms into fairy wings and succumbing to every adorably requested whim.
Eleanor’s world is still so small. Helly can see the size of it in her big, innocent eyes, the way nothing exists beyond the moment she’s currently in. Fat fingers reach out clumsily to tangle in her hair, desperate to understand it.
“I’m not so different from you,” Helly murmurs, hand trailing through the wispy, delicate strands of dark hair on Eleanor’s head. “Everything’s new to me, too. I felt really scared, at first. But I think you’re probably braver than me.”
Of course, Eleanor isn’t taking any notice, enraptured by the threads running through her palms like blood vessels.
“Although…” Eyes dash over perfect, unblemished skin, still so brand new. “It’s okay not to be brave, all the time. You can be soft too. A soft heart will protect you more than you realize.” She presses a single, gentle fingertip on Eleanor’s ribcage, tiny heart a fluttering bird underneath. “See? I can hear it singing. Wow. What a beautiful song, huh?”
Eleanor’s lips break into a toothy, pink grin, making Helly grin in ricochet. She struggles to form the word, but it comes eventually, her expression unknowingly looking for validation. Tentative, trying it on for size, tugging a little harder on Helly’s scalp. “ Red.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Good job. You’re so smart.” She gently unravels Eleanor’s fingers. She fights back but eventually folds, Helly pressing a kiss to tiny baby knuckles. “Your Uncle Mark is real smart too. He knows, like, loads of stuff. He taught me how to change a lightbulb the other day.”
“Red,” Eleanor repeats, clearly motivated by Helly’s warm tone and warmer eyes. Her hands reach out to hold Helly’s face, palms hot and a little clammy. “Red. Red. Red. ”
“You got it, dude.” Helly pokes out her tongue, relishes how Eleanor breaks down into high-pitched, contagious giggles. “Just don’t take this as your cue to go touching any naked flames, okay? I don’t think your mom would like that very much.”
Eleanor places a sloppy kiss on the bridge of Helly’s nose before toddling off, heavy, uneven footsteps guiding her to the wooden play kitchen in the corner of the room.
(Ricken is an ardent subscriber of the Montessori method, go figure. The stove and cabinet are made of messily-painted offcuts, sealed together with hot glue and positive vibes. And love. That’s the only thing Eleanor cares about anyway. She’d sit and giggle in a pile of trash if Devon and Ricken laid it down for her.)
Helly swears her heart swells three sizes, knees pulled up to her chin, watching Eleanor babble quietly to herself as she pretends to wash wooden fruit in a wooden sink. Children have always been pretty alien to her, even when she was one - if she ever was. A lump forms in her throat, hard and solid like a cherry pit. She sees it, sometimes. Her childhood. The little her brain won’t let her suppress. There are no wooden kitchens, bedtime stories, being carried from the car up the stairs. It’s just - hollow, a chasm waiting to be polluted with doctrine.
But she looks at Eleanor and doesn’t feel resentment. How could she? It’s comforting to know what she - Helena - went through wasn’t normal. That she was owed and deserved better.
The smell of pancakes and bacon curls from the kitchen and up through the hall, footsteps and muffled laughter following with it. Eventually Devon appears round the doorway, voice a little breathless from coming up the stairs.
“Everything okay up here?” She asks, looking between Helly and her daughter. A soft thank you, baby as Eleanor drops a bright yellow stone in her hand, impersonating a lemon.
“All good.” Helly smiles, pushing herself off the floor by her palms. “We learnt about red , didn’t we?”
Devon visibly winces, mouth taut in a silent apology. An affectionate hand runs across Eleanor’s head, a quiet gesture of a love that Helly will never feel. The cherry pit blossoms into a tree in her throat, branches winding and tearing through her ribs and heart and lungs in an ache she never knew was there. “The fascination with hair still holding up, huh?”
Helly is about to reply when Eleanor turns to her, tiny fist opening and revealing a stone painted bright crimson in her palm - a tomato. She stares at Helly expectantly, eyes wide and innocent like she doesn’t understand the weight of her offering, only that she should.
Helly’s eyes drift to Devon. She shrugs, smile warm with something - perhaps pride, in Eleanor’s gentle generosity. But… Helly doesn’t know much about sisterhood, but she wonders if this is it. The ache in her stomach abates, just enough for another feeling to sneak in through the backdoor. The feminine love she craves doesn’t have to be a mothers.
She takes Eleanor’s gift and squeezes it tightly, letting it ground her, an anchor tying her indefinitely to this moment. “Thank you.”
Eleanor is too young to understand the nuances of empathy but Helly swears she can see it in her eyes. You are one of us, too. It’s the same expression Devon wears, a need to love and protect buried in their genes. “Wow. What an offering. You should be honored. Although I think this means you’re contractually obliged to play a vital role in every imaginary game going forward.”
“I think I can live with that,” Helly replies. “I’m actually so good at pretending to do things.”
“Yeah? Me too.” Devon holds her hand out to Eleanor, encouraging her to take it. “Come on, hon. Food’s getting cold.”
Eleanor analyzes her options for a second, forehead wrinkling in deep, one-year-old concentration. She grumbles to herself before decidedly grabbing Helly’s middle and ring finger, refusing to let go.
Oh. She’d probably cry if she knew Mark wouldn’t make such a big deal about it.
“I see how it is,” Devon says, one eyebrow raised. “Auntie Helly the favorite now?”
Eleanor’s hand remains stubbornly fixed in place. Helly runs her thumb gently across her knuckles. The way she clings on - it’s reminiscent of the severed floor, in a lot of ways. Their world was small too. The white-knuckle grip on the few things that mattered was the only thing that made it liveable. Survivable.
The tomato sits reassuringly solid and cool in her back pocket. She survived. Now, she lives.
-
The bus being twenty-two minutes late on the wettest day of the year is pretty symbolic of the shift she’s just had. Finals rumble on the horizon, gray and all-consuming like the swollen clouds, coffee fueling 24-hour long study sessions in the engineering faculty as any patience and charm wears thin. There are few friendly smiles or mumbled thank yous as Helly spends hours on her feet, soles aching and fingers blistered as she makes the one-hundred-and-eighteenth espresso of the afternoon.
She absently picks at a scab from a forgotten burn on her right hand as the minutes tick by, rain dripping from her bangs onto the toes of her shoes. It would be easy to call Mark - he’d drop everything, jump into the car mid-conversation to come get her.
She doesn’t want to be that person. Her legs feel wobbly and her chest feels heavy, but she doesn’t want to be that person. It’s not fair on him, but it’s also a reliance thing. If she’s going to be a normal person, she needs to do normal person things.
The bus finally pulls up in a slurry of murky rainwater and asphalt. The windows are fogged in condensation, obscuring the bodies and faces inside. As the doors slide open she’s greeted by heat; the suffocating, muggy kind, so dense it’s almost visible, unmoving like stagnant water round her feet.
She wordlessly drops a couple of dollars in the tray and stumbles to a vacant seat, drunk on anxiety and nausea. If she doesn’t speak for the thirty or so minutes it takes to get back to Kier, maybe the bile rising in her throat will stay there.
A tinny rendition of a stuttering hip-hop song plays aloud and obtrusively from someone’s cell phone. A baby squirms and grizzles sat on her mother’s lap, before crumbling into loud, shrieking sobs. Rain hammers like bullets against the roof, sharp and incessant. A group of teenagers refuse to sit still - dashing up and out of their seats, the constant movement dizzying and unsettling, her eyes blurring in and out of focus.
The heat - the noise - the sweat on her palms, the thudding of her heart - her coat is too tight - she can hear blood in her ears - breathe breathe breathe -
(This is usually when she feels Mark’s hand on her back in an attempt to tether her back to reality. But the world refuses to swim back into clarity when she has no skin to frantically grasp onto, only the brittle plastic armrest of the chair she has melted into.)
The invisible hand round her neck squeezes tighter. Is this dying? Mouth tastes like metal - copper stings her throat - breathe breathe breathe - she can’t breathe, she can’t -
A dormant survival instinct kicks in before her mind has time to comprehend what her body is doing. She slams the bell and staggers off back into the rain, gasping oxygen hungrily like she’s a survivor of a biblical flood. Her shirt blooms with damp as she pulls off her coat and ducks into the doorway of a closed convenience store, hands gripped round the frame in a desperate attempt to steady herself.
And then - she throws up unceremoniously on the concrete.
-
Mark drops to his knees, seemingly unbothered or unnoticing of the rain soaking through his pants. The way he looks at her - eyes brimming with concern, fear, love - fuck. An involuntary sob bursts from her throat, ragged and raw, a hand flying to cover her mouth.
Mark’s arms instinctively melt around her, pulling her so tightly into his chest they could become one person, an imperceptible tangle of limbs and bones. “It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re okay. Helly. You’re okay.”
Her tears are swallowed by his shoulder. She considers drowning there, in his warmth and cologne, shaking hands clinging on to the lapels of his coat. It could be seconds, minutes, even hours; he lets her bleed until she runs dry as the rain continues to pour.
Gentle thumbs run underneath her eyes when she rises for breath, mascara running down the curve of his knuckle like spilt ink. Her eyes flutter closed as he presses their foreheads together, breathing in and out slowly, urging her to mirror him and find his rhythm.
“You’re safe, Helly,” he murmurs, voice barely audible. “I’m here, it’s okay.”
“I’m sorry,” she chokes on a shaky exhale. “I don’t know - it’s just a fucking bus, and I - “
He quietens her apology by shrugging off his coat and wrapping it around her shivering shoulders. As the adrenaline wears off, the cold sets in. There’s a hint of deja vu about it, fingers clutching at freezing skin and water pelting as their backdrop.
She’s touched toes with death more than once and she knows how that feels, how to fight back. This time… she would have laid on the ground and let the dirt swallow her whole if everything just stopped.
She imagines both Helly and Helena looking at her with pity and disgust. Helly’s fire. Helena’s composure. How did they result in this?
“It’s so pathetic,” she says, brushing away stray tears with the back of her hands. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”
“God — don’t apologize. It’s not pathetic. It’s not stupid.” His hand finds hers and squeezes it, fingers slippery and starting to wrinkle. “I’m so glad you called me. If you feel like this again, you call me. I don’t care if I’m in a lecture, or taking a shit — “
A reluctant laugh bubbles to the surface. Barely there, but there all the same. It’s enough for him to risk a smile back.
“Are you ready to go home?” He asks tentatively. Above them, the rain is starting to let up, cracks of sunlight straining to break through the clouds. “After everything we’ve been through, pneumonia would be a bit of a lackluster way to go.”
Her laugh is a little brighter this time and she nods, just once. She lets him pull the hood of his coat over her ears and pick up her own where it lays abandoned and sodden next to her.
“I know it feels really shitty right now, Helly. But you’ll be okay.”
“Yeah,” she says. The sun wins in the end, casting yellow across the concrete, cutting through the damp. She doesn’t have to be brave all the time. “Let’s go home.”
-
Look. Have you seen them?
Seen what?
Your sunflowers. They’re starting to sprout - look.
Oh - oh yeah, I see them. That one over there looks a little gnarly.
The rain will sort that out.
Won’t it drown them? The book said it was important not to over-water.
I don’t know. They’re probably more resilient than you think.
-
Mark picks up two cast-iron garden chairs and a matching table from a nearby thrift store, well-loved and tinged orange with rust but with an innate beauty that well-loved things often carry. The tabletop and the back of the chairs are bent in an ornate, swirling pattern, vines and blossoms interspersed with delicate songbirds. He’d hired a small truck just to get it here and it had taken the two of them several pit-stops to carry it from the trunk to the yard, like the years had added weight as well as age.
Helly figures he could have found a much cheaper and less unwieldy set from fucking Target, the kind made of flimsy, pristine white plastic that would easily drift away in the wind but otherwise do the job. Instead - he looks at things as if he’s seeing through her eyes, and it’s the most gut-wrenchingly thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for her.
She sits with her legs across his lap, the early evening sun casting an orange glow across her bare skin. Mark is lost in thought, pen cap between his teeth and papers strewn across her calves. Her pencil finds it easy to draw him like this - studious, unassuming, brow slightly furrowed. It’s a look she’s seen so many times before, peering over a desk divide just to catch a glimpse of his face. He’d looked at the numbers the same way.
For a while, the only sound is the scratch of pencil against paper and the odd, derisive snort at a wildly inaccurate claim with no evidence to back it up. Her glass of white ripples on the table as Mark’s shoulder shifts position against it, whilst his zero percent beer remains undrunk, glistening with condensation.
He cranes his neck slightly, trying to discreetly look at what she’s drawing. She deftly snatches it away before he gets the chance, eyebrow raised in bemusement.
“What?” he asks, put-out and pouting. “Why can’t I see?”
“You will see,” Helly insists, moving so her sketchbook is firmly out of his eyeline. “Just not today.”
Mark sighs, understanding the futility of the battle. Helly’s resolve is her greatest weapon, after all. His gaze turns back to reams of A4 paper covered in squarely-typed Times New Roman. “When will I see, then?”
Helly grins to herself. Light and shadow dance across his cheekbones in new, fascinating ways as the sun sets in the sky, providing endless angles to observe him from. It’s all too easy for him to call her Venus when the Renaissance is basically canonized through the male gaze - she yearns to know what the women saw, the men left uncaptured by them.
“There’s an exhibition in a few weeks. To celebrate the end of the program, I guess?” He turns, Helly’s eyes searching his for a response. “You’ll come?”
His smile is soft and radiant like candlelight. His hand reaches out to squeeze her knee, ink-stained fingers caressing the skin there. “I’ll be there. Need to make sure you captured my good side, anyway.”
Helly scoffs, reaching out for the wine. She enjoys the sharp, botanical taste in her mouth more than the thick, cloying red she remembers. Countries and places and continents are still so messy and undefined to her - a byproduct of a hasty reintegration - but she read New Zealand on the bottle and felt she knew it, somehow. Hills absorbed by lush, green grass. Ribbons of cloud curling round mountains that claw deep into the sky. The feeling of standing on the edge of the world when she’s only known the hard, dense woodland of Kier and the harder, denser white of the severed floor.
“How far away is New Zealand?”
Mark blinks, clearly thrown by the change in subject. “Uh - not sure? Maybe about ten thousand miles? Why’d you ask?”
Ten thousand miles. Her brain can’t compute what that distance means, it feels so impossibly large and intangible. Sometimes the distance between their bed and the front door feels so much. “No reason. Just thinking.”
Mark gathers up the rest of his papers and piles them next to his chair, cell phone a makeshift paperweight on top. Helly doesn’t exactly complain when his hands begin rubbing gentle, concentric circles down her ankles and across her feet.
“We could go to New Zealand, one day.” Mark says. “We could go anywhere. Paris. Rome. Rio. New York. Fucking - Delaware. ”
Helly exhales a short laugh. “What even happens in Delaware?”
“No idea,” Mark shrugs. “But we could find out.”
Delaware had felt so exotic, once. She’d stared at the ceiling of MDR, white and unmoving like the underside of a glacier, wondering if she found something sharp enough it would shatter and splinter through to the other side. If she squinted hard she was so sure she could see stars burning through the gaps - in reality it was probably the blue light from the computer screens fucking up her retinas.
“I don’t care where we go.” She hums, returning to her drawing to mask the weight of what she’s about to say. “As long as I’m with you.”
-
“You look beautiful, by the way.”
Helly’s arms bristle with goosebumps, partly due to the cool, summer evening breeze burning through the lingering heat of the afternoon and partly because of the way he’s looking at her. His hair is more styled than usual, a lick of gel parting it more to one side, face clean shaven and smooth. There’s a glint of something in his eye as his hand loiters a little too long around her ass before sliding more modestly to her hip.
She’s wearing a green velvet mini dress, hair hanging loose in gentle waves atop her shoulders. Dark red lipstick contrasts with the paleness of her skin but she likes the harsh vibrancy of it, the way it’s the first thing Mark’s eyes are drawn to when he looks at her face. It’s another fuck you, perhaps; fingers running across reds, plums, pinks at the drugstore rather than the sallow nudes and peaches painted on when she was supposed to be seen and not heard.
“As do you,” she jabs back. Mark grins at his shoes like a teenager. “It’s a shame we have to waste how hot we look on Ricken’s weird friends.”
Mark laughs loudly before reaching out to press the doorbell. She’s yet to attend one of Ricken’s early book launches - a privilege only bestowed on very few, apparently - but if the vapid, pseudo-philosophical prose of the previous editions is anything to go by, Helly’s in for a treat. She can fake-deep with the best of them. Mark quietly warning her to tone it down from across the room.
She glances over her shoulder, brows creasing quizzically at the lack of footfall. Ricken’s collective is select, but noisy; they gather in swarms and as far as she can tell, there aren’t any additional cars on the road or murmurs bleeding through from open windows.
“Are we early?” she leans in. “Devon definitely said eight - “
The door suddenly springs open, revealing Devon and Ricken, both wearing cardboard party hats tied with elastic. Before Helly has a chance to register what’s happening, there’s -
“Surprise!” Devon yells out whilst Ricken pulls on a party popper with vigor, streamers and glitter bursting in a kaleidoscope of color on the doorstep. Helly blinks back, heart surging from her chest to her throat.
“Happy birthday, darling Helly,” Ricken declares, reaching out to awkwardly tap her shoulders and withdrawing just as quickly. He steps back into the shadow of the hall, hands beckoning her inside. “Your celebration awaits.”
Helly glances over at Mark, mouth gaping open and closed like a door on a loose hinge. He merely shrugs his shoulders, wry and knowing smile on his face. So you were fucking in on this, were you? His hand settles easily in hers, walking her over the threshold.
Devon and Ricken’s home has been decked out in brightly-colored helium balloons that bustle together on the ceiling, tangled with foil banners and clumsily-made paper chains. Ricken argues with the Alexa about whether Girlfriend in a Coma is appropriate party music, eventually relenting on an ABBA compilation as a compromise. Devon snaps a party hat around Helly’s chin, a faint ow from Mark as she snaps the elastic a little harder than necessary for him.
“Apologies, the guest list is a little… petite, ” Ricken generously puts it. Devon rolls her eyes, handing Helly a glass of wine. “But the best parties are the ones where you’re surrounded by the few people you truly love, rather than a room full of strangers.”
Helly’s chest feels hot, like something is overspilling inside her. She doesn’t know what to do with it. The excess. As it thrums under the floorboards and permeates the walls, she’s smothered with it, drowning in it. There are people here who love her because they can and they will and they want to. No default by lineage, a reluctant alliance borne out of blood and legacy. Just…they want to love her. They want to love her.
“It’s not too much is it, sweetie?” Devon asks, mouth curled in an anxious half-smile. She squeezes Helly’s empty hand. “I wasn’t sure a surprise would be a good idea, I know - “
Helly quietens her protests with a quick shake of her head. She could cry, but she won’t, not today. She’s cried on her birthday before.
“Thank you,” she says. “For everything, seriously. I can’t - you’ve done so much for me. You didn’t have to.”
Helly sees Mark when she smiles back. “No thanks necessary. You’re easy to care about.”
-
The evening passes in an easy, warm haze of alcohol and laughter and ridiculous card games Ricken has found on the internet, including a Cards Against Humanity knock-off where enlightening adjectives are used to complete inspirational quotes that nourish the human spirit. Ricken is delighted at Helly’s commitment to the positivity crusade, laying down incandescent and indomitable and indefatigable in a genuine attempt to win, her competitiveness overshadowing her incredulity.
(“You’re going to end up co-writing his next book at this rate,” Mark grumbles, contemplating on whether to propose magnanimous .
Helly’s eyes glint mischievously. “That’s what I’m counting on.”)
She doesn’t expect gifts but Devon pointedly tells her don’t you dare protest as she’s dragged by the hand to the kitchen table, confronted by boxes and mounds of different sizes neatly wrapped in brown paper. She starts with a ream of drawings from Eleanor, messy red scribbles (“that’s you, apparently”) and crinkled edges, crayon waxy against her fingertips. Two sweaters, some make-up and colored pencils that rattle together in a large silver tin. A set of two brass candlesticks shaped like fish jumping out of water. A photo-frame covered in shells and sea-glass, waiting to be filled with something meaningful. An editor’s copy of Ricken’s next book, which he insists is highly confidential, but to credit him if she wants to post a couple of key quotations on her Instagram story.
She - she doesn’t say it, whilst feeling the weight of the book in her hands, because it’s so fucking miserable, but these are the first gifts she’s received in thirty-one years that don’t have any sort of ulterior motive or purpose. She’s never been given anything just because.
Sentiment is a weakness, Helena. She seems to remember. Possessions only serve to interfere with your devotion.
“These are from me,” Mark says, gesturing towards the remaining few boxes. “Had to keep them here because I couldn’t trust you not to go snooping around.”
She narrows her eyes in faux irritation because he’s obviously right. If a mysterious box appeared in the bottom of the closet she wouldn’t think twice before rifling through it. His eyes refuse to give away any clues as she delicately rips away the tape, careful to not shred the paper. Fingertips run across sharp corners, the box white and solid.
“They’re noise-cancelling,” he interrupts, keen to explain before she’s had time to properly look. Earphones, brand new. “Because I thought - when you’re on the bus. They’re good at blocking everything out.”
“I’ve got some of those,” Ricken edges in. “I like listening to ambient synth-pop when I’m writing. It’s good for when you’re in the zone.”
“Yeah, convenient you always seem to be in the zone when Eleanor’s crying,” Devon mutters under her breath.
Helly just doesn’t know where to begin. She could probably write an epic on how many ways he’s said I love you without saying it at all, in the way he’s said her name and made her tea and waited for her, when it would have been easier to leave her behind. He bought her earphones so she could wear them on the bus.
She tilts her head to look at him, her smile more telling than anything she could have written down anyway. “Thank you.”
The other box is a new record player, because she’s used and abused his to near destruction, the needle jumping disjointedly between tracks in an attempt to play something, anything. He’d picked out a few albums for her based on her favorites from his collection and recommendations from colleagues - Stranger in the Alps, folklore, Back to Black, Kind of Blue, Blonde on Blonde - to help her find what she likes, what she doesn’t.
“I love it,” she says honestly, ardently. “I love everything. Fuck. Thank you.”
Devon disappears out of the room for a minute and returns with a chocolate fudge cake ablaze with thirty-one flickering candles, frosting oozing and pooling messily down the sides in the heat. She places it in the center of the table as they start singing, and Helly realizes that it’s the first time she’s had this, too.
She can’t help her eyes from filling this time, laughing as she brushes away hot, wet tears that run through her mascara. Fuck. She feels Mark appear behind her, arm reaching gently across her chest, chin resting on top of her head.
“Make a wish, Helly,” Ricken says, pointing at the ceiling. “You don’t know who might be listening.”
She inhales shakily, feels Mark’s fingers entangle with her own. Lets her eyes flutter closed, the dark swimming with amber and red as the candles continue to burn.
And then - black.
-
“ A wolf exists to howl at the moon, and the moon exists to shine on the wolf. But what if there were two wolves, and two moons? How will the wolves know which ghostly light to bathe in ?”
Mark throws her a skeptical look as he unbuttons his shirt. Her smirk is quietly bemused, lying on her back with her head hanging off the end of the bed, hair brushing the top of the carpet. Ricken’s manuscript sits lazily in her right hand.
“ The answer is, of course, both ,” she continues, turning the page. “ There are two sides to all of us. But those we love will only see them as one. And who are we to judge them for it? ”
Mark snorts a laugh. She rolls onto her front so she can see him properly, watch him step out of his pants and into his pajama shorts. “Is this supposed to be some sort of meta commentary on the severance procedure?”
“Sure, but I think it’s more specific than that…” She thumbs back to the dedications page. “See?”
A blank page, other than a few lonely, black words in Arial size 12 italic. For H + M. Love transcends.
“Shit,” Mark responds, genuinely taken aback. “His book is about us? ”
“Well, it’s doused in enough questionable metaphors to not be explicit. I don’t think we have grounds to sue when it goes to print.”
“Yeah, but if anyone does any research into his background they could put two and two together pretty fucking quickly.” He pulls his t-shirt over his head. “What’s the working title?”
Helly turns over the front page and lets out a short, involuntary laugh. “ Love in the Time of Severance.”
“Fucking hell, ” Mark drops onto the mattress next to her, trying to read over her head. “We’re going to have to tell him to change that. Forget us, wouldn’t Lumon sue?”
“With everything going on at the moment, I think a small-town writer with a rose-tinted view of the procedure probably won’t be their priority.” She runs her eyes over a few more paragraphs, accosted by lines and lines of flowery, incoherent prose. “He makes us sound like fucking Romeo and Juliet. ”
“I hope you mean in a star-crossed, romanticized way and not in a grim, double-suicide way.”
Helly shrugs, shifting onto her back, book pressed to her chest. “I don’t know. I’ve not read the ending yet.”
“If he’s killed us off, I’ll kill him.” Mark says, completely deadpan. “He doesn’t get to decide the end of our story.”
Our story. The words sit there for a moment as she considers what that could mean for them, the whole catastrophe of their shared future together unfolding like a treasure map.
“Hey,” he says, after a while. “I’ve still got one last present for you.”
Helly scrambles up so she’s sitting down opposite him, grin shy and a little abashed. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s just small so I could just about trust myself to hide it from you.” He vanishes into the closet, returning with a small, square box nestled in the pockets in one of his jackets. He presses it into her palms. “Here. Happy birthday, beautiful Helly.”
Her breath hitches in her throat as she clicks open the latch, eyes wide and expectant. Inside, sat delicately on a small, black velvet cushion are two gold studs, shaped like two sunflowers in full bloom.
“Oh, Mark,” her voice is little more than a rasp, thick with gratitude. “They’re so beautiful.”
“I saw them in the window of the vintage store in Ganz and I thought of you.” His hand curls softly round her jaw, fingers running through the hair at the nape of her neck. “Brighter than sunflowers.”
She places the earrings gently on the bed, edging closer to kiss the dopey, soft smile off his face. He mirrors her lazy, relaxed rhythm, devoid of urgency; her legs tangle round his waist to pull him closer, just wanting him near, not desperately. Their noses brush together - intimate, but not charged. There’s a time and a place for frenzy and chaos and this is not it. She just wants to be thirty-one and…exist, in the same moment as the love of her life.
“I love you,” she says plainly, the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ve only ever said that to you. And I won’t say it to anyone else.”
He can’t say that back and she’d never begrudge him for it - it’s not about that. It’s about how he watches her lips when she’s speaking, the firmness of his hand on her back, keeping her steady. I’ve said it before. But you are the last. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
-
(The air conditioning on the bus is broken. Mark lets her slide into her seat first before reaching above her head, yanking open the window latch with effort. A reassuringly cool breeze brushes her bangs away from her face. The plastic covering on the seats is sticky against her bare legs.
She rummages around in her backpack for her cell and new earphones, placing one in her ear and handing the other one to Mark. He smirks, obliging.)
I feel like I’m back at highschool sitting next to my crush on the school bus.
Aw, I’m your crush? That’s cute.
I’m pretty sure my first crush was a redhead. Maybe I do have a type.
Well, we’re inherently more interesting than people with any other hair color. It’s a result of a genetic mutation, or something.
Oh yeah. Your dad probably loves that kind of thing.
Sure. What’s one more unnatural thing to add to the pile, am I right?
Ha. What should we listen to, then? Figured out any favorites?
Hmm… Oh my God, Amy Winehouse is brilliant. Her sound - I just felt like she knew me, you know? Like she made music just for me to hear, like, twenty years later. I looked up some of her performances on YouTube. It’s just so fucking sad, what happened to her.
Yeah. Her dad was a bit of a cunt, by all accounts.
I’m starting to think that might be a prerequisite that comes with being a dad.
Ha. Touche.
… You Know I’m No Good is my favorite. Let’s listen to that one.
Of course it is.
-
As the summer drags on she’s taken to having her lunch break in the park, sitting on the grass or a bench when it’s still a little dewy. Occasionally Mark will come find her but otherwise she enjoys the thirty minutes of quiet contemplation and solitude, the sun beaming on her back and birdsong in her ears. There’s a hit of serotonin every time a dog trots by or a butterfly settles on her arm, wings unfolding like a palette of watercolors.
She’s picking through her salad when a presence settles on the bench next to her. She barely glances up but is forced to a double take, because fuck -
It’s Irving. It’s Irving. Tall, wiry, stiff - like she remembers, but in a black band tee and slim-leg jeans rather than a crisp suit and neatly-ironed shirt. There’s a dog at his feet, tall and regal and ramrod straight, just like he is. Fucking hell. Helly pretends her salad is the most interesting thing in the world, desperately trying to avoid any sort of acknowledgement.
The last time she saw Irving he tried to drown her. Or save her. Possibly both at the same time. She has no idea how much he knows or should know or needs to know. If he’s reintegrated or completely oblivious, dismissed from Lumon one day and resigned to never going back, that just being it.
If he does recognize her, he doesn’t make it obvious. Part of her yearns to turn to him, to pick up where they left off - kind of - longing for that connection that no-one other than Mark, out here, truly understands. They were family, once. And not just out of circumstance. He cared for her so deeply that he died for it.
It’s not her right to command closure, even if she could ask for it. But his presence next to her still feels so familiar, so right. People tried to argue that what they felt on the severed floor wasn’t real but the ache in her chest is visceral, shards of glass twisting and abrasive. How can that not be real?
She doesn’t say anything.
After a second, the dog’s attention turns to her. At first, he just watches, before carefully edging over. A long, soft snout nudges the toes of her shoe, before rubbing his head against her leg. Helly freezes - dogs can sense anxiety, can’t they? Pleading eyes beg up at her, like he doesn’t understand her fears, yearning to allay them.
“Apologies.” Irving’s voice is warm and gravelly, just like she remembers, molten like honey. “Don’t be afraid. He’s a gentle giant.”
Helly blinks, still avoiding looking up at him. If she does, she might spill over, say things she can’t pour back in. Instead - her hand tentatively reaches out, stroking beneath the dog's ears, along his neck, fur like velvet between her fingers.
“He likes you,” Irving says. “He can sense kindred spirits, I think. You must be a good person. A kind person.”
Helly swallows. Focuses hard on the dog. The way his eyes flicker closed when her fingers run over the right spot, the heavy breathing, his tail thumping lazily against the ground. If she concentrates she won’t look up. She won’t cry. It’s safer for him. She’s corrupted him enough, the version of her that betrayed him and the version that didn’t.
I’m not a kind person. I was cruel to you. You deserved better. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
“Alas. Time for us to go.” A beat, as he stands up, the dog following suit. Helly focuses on his shoes instead; black, well-kept leather loafers, the soles crusted slightly with mud from their walk.
He stands there a little too long. “I’m glad you got out of that place.”
Fuck. Fuck.
Helly’s head snaps up but it’s too late - he’s already gone, strides ahead down the trail that leads back into the suburbs, dog obediently keeping pace beside him. She watches for a long time until the firm, solid shape of him becomes unrecognizable amongst others.
There’s a distinct shift in the atmosphere that feels like closure, forgiveness. A calm settling after a storm.
-
The peace of Saturday morning is disrupted by three short, sharp, regimented knocks on their front door. The rigidity of it sets Helly’s stomach on edge, because people with good news don’t knock like that. They don’t turn up unannounced. From the stairs, she can see a dark, undefined shape in the frosted glass of the window, dangerously and menacingly still.
“ Can you get that? ” Mark shouts from the bathroom upstairs. “ I’m in the middle of taking a shit. ”
“Nice,” she shouts back, but there’s a noticeable tremble in her tone that edges over the teasing. She lingers a little longer, silently hoping that the shape will give up and move on. It doesn’t.
She steadies her hands as she reaches for the key hanging on the hook by the door. Slides it into the lock.
The man smiling back at her is a stranger, but she can recognize a Lumon goon a mile off. The shiny, practised expression and stiff posture, clothes a little too well-fitted and clean. A glorified plastic doll mass-produced in a masochistic hell factory.
He holds an oversized bouquet of perfect white lilies in his hands, petals curled and splaying like origami leaves.
“Salutations, Miss Eagan - “
“Scout,” she hastily corrects, before realizing what she’s just said. Fuck - she’s in survival mode, she’ll unpack that later. The man doesn’t react. “Who the fuck are you? I was told - you’re not supposed to be here.”
The man blinks, smile unfazed. “My name is Mr Harmon. I am here on behalf of Lumon Industries to deliver some grave news that I am sure will shock and sadden you. Perhaps you would like to take a seat, for your ease and comfort?”
Helly’s hand remains secure round the doorframe, feet planted firmly in the mat. The silence is awkward, sprawling. Discomforting.
“With my deepest and most profound condolences, Ms… Scout, ” Mr Harmon eventually replaces his smile with a look of manufactured sympathy. “I must sadly announce the untimely passing of your father, former CEO of Lumon Industries, Jame Eagan.”
Helly abruptly feels her life split in two distinct halves.
There’s everything before this moment. Thirty-or-so years chained to a bloodline she was radicalized and nurtured to believe in, until she was radicalized out of it. She was always a pawn, a marketing gimmick, before she was ever Jame Eagan’s daughter. Something pretty and young and new to appeal to the masses - pliant and moldable to fit the gaze of those looking to Lumon for answers. They hadn’t considered what would happen once they stripped back the deference and the doctrine and the obligation. That by severing quiet, compliant little Helena they’d unleash a sleeper cell agent dormant in her psyche, intent on destroying the prophecy she was literally born to fulfil.
And there’s now.
Ironically, the cleanest severance of them all.
There’s no shame or guilt when she hopes for a long, painful, lonely death. Eaten inside out by a cancer, screaming and begging for the torture to ease into a brittle, insignificant denouement. Decisions made for him rather than by him. Surrounded by people who revered him rather than loved him; observing his failing body in the same, charmed way they look up at his statue in the Perpetuity Wing. Jame Eagan was just a mouthpiece for Kier’s ideas, as useful dead as he was alive, and she would’ve been next.
Her blood runs cold at what could’ve been. She would’ve been next.
Mr Harmon’s veneer falters, just for a moment. A hairpin fracture in the poised corporate grace. “He said your name, at the end. Hel-”
“And he can fucking rot there.” She snarls, heart thumping relentlessly against her ribs. An unaffected smile freezes on Mr Harmon’s face, the slip corrected. “Don’t come here again.”
The door rattles in the frame as she slams it closed, waiting until the shadowy silhouette in the frosted glass turns away and vanishes. Hands pressed to the frame, she exhales - head light and fuzzy at the edges.
She startles when she feels hands on her shoulders. Softens, when she knows they’re not about to hurt her.
“Hey,” Mark says quietly. She shifts in his hold, turning to face him. His eyes are soft and still gritty with sleep, just emerging from their Saturday morning lie-in. “What is it? Who was that?”
“It was - it was someone from Lumon.” Mark visibly tenses with anxiety, muscles coiling, like he’s seconds from running. Helly half-smiles, pressing her hands against his chest to settle him. “No. It’s not anything… They told me that Jame Eagan is dead.”
“Oh.” Mark’s jaw tightens. He tilts his head, trying to piece together her reaction. “Did they say how?”
“I didn’t ask.” I didn’t want to know. I was scared it was going to be kind. “Probably fossilized in his fucking bed one day. He was as good as a corpse when he was alive.”
He chuckles at that, low and bemused. She appreciates that he knows better than to attempt consolation; there is no love lost here. “Are you okay?”
Helly has idly mused on her reaction before in the same, casual way she decides what to wear in the morning or the kind of milk she wants in her coffee. Jame Eagan was an old, feeble man who was always going to die eventually, hanging onto life out of spite and misery and a misguided idea of tribute. Once the Lumon empire began to crumble there was nothing left for him to live or fight for. He sure as hell didn’t want to live for her.
There is relief there, certainly. There’s a weightlessness to it all, like the spectre haunting her bones has lifted, like hatred and venom and revenge are no longer pinning her down by her wrists.
But - she thinks, looking into eyes that would do anything for her - if it wasn’t for him, I would never have you. The biggest, greatest, most significant fuck you to her so-called legacy: the chain isn’t breaking. It’s already broken.
She doesn’t say this. She doesn’t have to.
Instead - “I’m good.”
It’s enough. It’s enough. Mark doesn’t probe further. “Let’s go out for coffee. The sun’s out.”
The sun’s out. Her father is dead. There’s coffee and pastries and Saturday morning. Her life before has never felt so distant as the memories become clearer and more visceral, a car veering away from the site of the wreck.
-
A video of the funeral plays a couple of weeks later on the local evening news. Having the nerve to die in the summer means there is no inherent grandeur from the snow on the pines, the complement of black against white as mourners march down to the Eagan family crypt. There’s not even any cameras on the ground - everything is in aerial view, a drone flying between the trees as it captures the snippets of the coffin and Lumon devotees swarming behind like ants. An occasion that would have had people lining the streets of Kier and an entire town in mourning once is now barely even noticed.
It’s everything he never would have wanted.
“Fuck. This is dystopian.” Helly breathes, knees tucked into her chest on the couch. “I’m watching my dad’s burial live on TV between segments on childhood obesity and rising gas prices.”
Mark reaches out for the control but she stops him from changing the channel. She needs to see this. Call it closure, or whatever.
“You want to know what I wished for on my birthday?”
Mark’s brows furrow, puzzled.
She snorts a derisive laugh, eyes glued to the screen. “You’re looking at it.”
“ Jesus, Helly. I - I don’t even know what to say to that.”
She shakes her head. He’s misunderstanding. “It wasn’t him dying, although I wasn’t exactly going to complain if he did. I didn’t want him to have the satisfaction of me caring about whether he lived or died. It was… this. A pathetic and pitiful death. I wanted him to feel small.”
The coffin disappears into the Eagan estate and the video cuts with it, fading back to the studio. That’s it. There’s no somber pre-filmed eulogy or practised condolences from the news anchors. No verbose announcement of the next Lumon CEO whilst the prior one is still warm in the ground. In another life - it’s her, held hostage by her lineage, probably not the first choice but the only real one.
“Not with a bang but a whimper.” Mark says into the quiet. Helly glances at him. “Eliot.”
Huh . She crawls from her position at the end of the couch to rest her head in his lap, watching the television without taking it in. His fingers tease through her hair, waves tangling between them.
“What happens now, then? Won’t there be a power vacuum over there?” he asks. “They definitely won’t come after you?”
“No. I don’t think so.” The only kind thing Jame Eagan ever did was let her go, but it wasn’t a completely selfless act. “Reintegration… they still don’t want to acknowledge it, after everything. If they remove me from the equation they don’t have to.”
“They’ve U-turned before. They could do it again.”
“It’s not just…” She pauses, swallowing thickly. “It’s not just that. The minute my chip was flooded I stopped being an Eagan, Mark. It’s more than just a name, it’s about purity, and dynasty, and birthright. He’d rather watch the company fall than let someone… tainted, take it from him. The Eagan name dies with him. I stopped meaning anything to him long before that.”
She feels a kiss on the top of her head, chaste and warm. “You’re not tainted. You’re not tainted.”
“No - I am, Mark. And thank fuck for that.”
It saved her life. In multiple ways.
The TV fades out to a muffled lull, sleep threatening to drag her under as her breathing steadies and calms.
“The guy from Lumon. Who came here,” she murmurs, just about separating reality from a dream. “He called me Miss Eagan… I corrected him.”
“...Corrected him to what?”
His legs are warm. The room is warm. She can feel her eyes closing, a winless battle to try and stop them. “Scout. Is that okay? If it isn’t I’ve already said it, so. Not much I can do about that. I hope it’s okay.”
The last thing she hears is his laugh, better than any of the songs sat in her newly-curated Spotify queue. “Yeah. That’s okay.”
-
The one at the back is still wilting. I’ve tried watering it. It’s like it can’t be bothered to live.
I don’t think sunflowers can be suicidal.
Clearly they can, Mark. Look at it. If it just put some fucking effort in, you know?
Is that any way to speak to your children? No wonder it wants to die.
It’s called tough love. Or reverse psychology. It’s for its own good.
Hmm. Heard that one before. Don’t think it works all that well in practice.
Yeah, well. I’m running out of options.
Five out of six ain’t bad. Maybe you should cut your losses.
No! I’m not giving up on him yet. I must revive my son. As his father, I expect you to be equally invested in his wellbeing.
I can’t believe you would think otherwise. Look - I did some research.
You did some research?
Yeah. I did some research. And -
What kind of research?
If you stopped interrupting for one goddamn second I’d tell you.
Yeah. Sorry. Okay. What is it?
Good. Thank you. Anyway. We’ve still got some of Ricken’s bamboo in the shed and some cable ties. If you make a stake out of those and tie it to the stem, it should in theory force the head to look upwards instead of downwards. They need sun and water to thrive. I think the plants at the front must be taking most of it.
Do you reckon that will work?
I mean, it’s worth a try, isn’t it?
Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
Okay. We might as well do it now. I’ll go and cut down the canes - I’ll be five minutes.
(...I’m sorry I said you couldn’t be bothered to live. I didn’t mean that. I love you. Please, please don’t die on me.)
-
“You’re quiet.”
Mark drives with one hand on the steering wheel, the other draped loosely in his lap, his eyes flickering between the road and where her head rests against the passenger side window. She jolts against the glass every time the tires hit a dent in the asphalt but refuses to shift position.
“Am I?”
“You know you are.”
Helly shrugs. Blinks slowly. A sharp soreness in her throat. “Sorry.”
She’s used to sitting in silence with him, the kind where they’re happy to just exist in each other’s orbit without the need to fill the gaps with conversation. It’s not that kind of quiet. It feels charged, oppressive; rain clouds gathering and turning black, signalling a storm like a bad omen.
“Is it because of what Richard said?” Helly’s expression doesn’t change. “He didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Okay,” Her laugh is short, bitter. She can see Mark roll his eyes in her periphery. “Sure.”
Any sort of socialization with Mark’s work colleagues wasn’t going to be… straightforward, particularly with those who were still around to bridge the gap between before Lumon and after Lumon. He’d said they looked at him like an impostor, when he started back there - for those who knew Gemma, she’s the usurper. And, you know, she gets it. They were known as a unit, as Gemma-and-Mark, beautiful and brilliant and intelligent and the epicenter of every room, other people merely rotating around them. She was never looking to compete with a ghost but she’s not a shitty, off-brand replacement, either. She’s just Helly. And that feeling - of being observed, decoded, stripped down by people she’s never met, hoping to find someone else underneath - is unsettling. But she can deal with being looked at and analyzed. She’s been there before.
What’s worse is when it goes from an unspoken thing, a subconscious look up and down before shifting into awkward small talk, to a targeted decision to make her aware she’s not the person they want her to be.
“Look. I get it. It’s not fucking easy for me either. But we knew it might happen and we went anyway, because we need to face the barriers before we push them down.” He tries a smile but she continues to resist, too tied-up in her resentment to fold. “Richard doesn’t know me that well, Helly. He probably just didn’t realize.”
“It wasn’t just him, though,” she snaps, boiling over. “They all looked at me like that. Like I killed her myself.”
She’s pushing too hard. The way his jaw clenches, his hand curling from loose to taut, pulling at the fabric of his pants. His other hand is as good as a fist round the steering wheel, tendons rigid and pronounced under the skin. For the first time Helly sees a cliff face actively trying not to erode; the patience wearing thin, the foundations beginning to crumble.
“Oh come on. You can’t. That’s not okay.” He says, voice steady and low, fighting his urge to shout at her. Helly almost wishes he would. His composure makes her squirm involuntarily in her seat. “I’m not going to apologize for having a life before you. That shared history doesn’t just go away and I don’t want it to - it’s a part of me. She’s a part of me.”
Helly tastes metal in her mouth. Realizes she’s been biting the inside of her cheek.
“I know you’re going through your own shit. Everything that happened to you - piecing that together - I’m trying really fucking hard to understand that. But you don’t have a monopoly on trauma, Helly. I’ve had horrible, devastating things happen to me too. I love you so fucking much but losing her was horrible and devastating and you’re sat there talking about it like a petulant fucking kid.”
She grips onto the handle on the inside of the door, a wave of nausea wracking through her skeleton like a convulsion. This wasn’t - it wasn’t - “You never said - “
“You never ask!” he hurls back, the sea getting closer, swallowing his fragile edges. “I can’t be vulnerable around you because I’m terrified if I’m not the strong one you’ll fucking shatter. That time you called me - fuck me, Helly. I didn’t sleep that night because I needed to watch you breathe. So don’t you dare be flippant about that. About Gemma. About the people who knew her. It’s not fair. It’s not my fault that I had people who loved me and you didn’t.”
Oh. There it is.
He adds it on to the end of his tirade like a footnote but the impact is agonizing, crushing straight through her ribcage and into her lungs. It’s a cheap blow, and a cruel one. If they’re using real love stories as weapons she may as well lay face down on the battlefield and wait for the sword in her back. The silence in the car has never been louder.
“Shit,” Mark hisses, eyes frantic and desperate to look at her. She can’t bear to even glance in his direction. “Shit. Fuck. Helly. No, I didn’t - “
“No,” she cuts in, voice trembling. She squeezes her eyes shut, hard, but they fill anyway; the trees and the houses and the sprawling, winding roads outside blurring into indistinguishable gray. “No. You’re right. You’re right.”
He is right. She’s being bratty. She’s being childish. She’s being blind and ignorant and bitter. He’s well within his rights to use how inherently unlovable she is as ammunition because she’s been such a selfish lover, so caught up in her own head that she never even asked. He can’t be vulnerable around her and it kills her, kills her, kills her that she’s turned into a burden.
“Helly - oh, fuck. Please don’t cry. I’m sorry.” His breath hitches in his throat, the fire fading and sputtering. “I don’t mean it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.”
“You’re right,” she repeats, tears hot and silent, running furiously and pooling in the neck of her dress. She can’t wipe them away fast enough. “People love you. They love her. I - I’m sorry that I’m not -”
“Don’t - it’s not about that. I love you. God, Helly. Every fucking iteration of you, in and out of that place. Even when love wasn’t supposed to exist I loved you.” He steals a glance at her, eyes big and wet. “ Please. I don’t want you to be her, I never wanted that. And - shit. I’m so sorry I said that. But I needed to tell you. Maybe not like that - “
Helly sits with her fists pressed against her eye sockets. All this time they’ve spent - all these months, when they were supposed to be healing together, a relationship, a partnership, their reward after everything, and he wasn’t healing at all. He was being her crutch, slowly splintering apart whilst desperately trying to hold her up. She feels stronger, but at what cost? Taking advantage of the little he has left? He can’t be vulnerable around her and she’s supposed to be his lifeline, soul, the part that makes him whole.
It’s the most devastating, heartbreaking, brutal thing she’s ever heard.
“Maybe I should…” She blinks, shaking her head. “Stop the car. I think I - I’ll walk, it’s fine, we both - “
Mark’s laugh is scratchy. No trace of humor in it. He sounds like he’s about to cry. “Don’t be insane. It’s pitch black out there. I’m not… I don’t want you to go, Helly.”
Outside the window she can eke out the silhouette of the mountains, daunting and looming between the dotted pines, Kier still a faint, yellow spot in the distance. The moon casts the ground in an eerie, silver glow, reflecting in the glass so she’s forced to see her eyes staring back at her. Red. Swollen. Hazel. Helly. Helena.
Scout.
He had given her his name so freely when she asked, like there was no doubt in his mind it belonged to her now too. She wants to be worthy of that. She wants him to spill his soul to her and not feel like she’s too fragile to handle it.
“Look. I’ll stay in the spare tonight,” he suggests, exhaling deeply in an attempt to dispel the tension. “We can talk about it properly in the morning, okay? Just…please. Don’t go.”
She nods once. His hand reaches across to find hers in the dark, as a hesitant, trembling peace offering. She can almost hear his relief as she tangles their fingers, an unspoken apology. I won’t go. I will do better. I’m sorry.
-
The spare room is just down the hall but Mark has never felt so far away, like the layers of plaster and carpet and skirting boards are as good as a continent, the other side of the world. Ten thousand miles felt impossible but it can’t be bigger than this, how can it be? How could anybody survive it?
Helly lays there and stares at Mark’s side of the bed for minutes, hours; it’s hard to tell as time seems to bend and fold without meaning, no longer feeling linear. Fingers cling at the sheet, cool to the touch and neat from when they’d made it that morning. She wants to feel him flinch as her cold feet touch the back of his calves. She wants to arch her back into his torso, his arm curling round her middle, holding her close in an act of protest. You won’t take her from me, not ever. She wants to feel him breathing against her neck, warm and close and present and hers.
The clock on his nightstand blinks 03:56 into the black. She rolls onto her back, chest heaving at the thought of the hours still to pass. Awkwardly trailing down the stairs when it’s late enough to be acceptable, trying to figure out from his facial expression or the way he’s sitting at the kitchen table what the vibe is. If he’s just made a coffee for himself or if there’s a cup for her, too.
Fuck. She can’t do this. She can’t wait that long. She has to try.
Helly peels off the bed sheets and lets her feet sink into the carpet. The moonlight slithering underneath the curtains is enough to not warrant switching on the hallway light, but she feels along the wall anyway, stopping when her hand feels the metal of the door handle. Her heart thuds furiously, breathing quickly in-and-out of her nose - a closed door still makes her feel uneasy, like she’ll step through it and be somewhere else entirely, a different person entirely.
“Mark?” she says, voice feeling too loud in the dark. “Mark - are you awake?”
She can just about make out a mess of dark hair spilling across the pillow, his back arched and facing the door. He doesn’t move to follow her voice, or really shift at all. He simply reaches out behind him and pulls down the sheet, a wordless invitation to join him.
Helly’s heart swoops, a flock of swallows flying out to sea.
There’s a coming home to it, legs clambering into cotton warmed by his body heat, the gentle dip in the newly dented mattress. This bed hasn’t been slept in until now, kept dressed for visitors they’ve never had but want to have, eventually. A breath sits in her throat until he lets her melt into him, folding around his spine, knees held between his thighs. Arm reaching out, palm splayed across his chest. Heartbeat firm and solid and thudding beneath it.
“I’m so sorry,” Helly whispers into his back, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that you feel like you can’t talk to me. I’m so sorry I never asked. I’m going to do better, Mark. You deserve better.”
The mattress creaks against new springs as he turns to face her. Even in the dark she can see the red rim drawing out his eyelids, spent and exhausted. There’s an apology on his lips that he shouldn’t have to say. Instinctively, she presses his forehead to her shoulder, kisses where his hair parts.
“I don’t want you to apologize for telling me how you feel,” she says, “I don’t want that to be us. We’ve done the whole repression thing. It doesn’t solve anything.”
He kisses her shoulder before re-commanding her gaze, expression soft yet solemn. “It doesn’t change the fact I shouldn’t have said that to you. That was horrible, Helly. I shouldn’t have tried to use that against you.”
“I deserved it. I was being an asshole.”
“You’re an asshole a lot. I don’t usually resort to really personal digs to let you know that.” She laughs, so suddenly it almost startles her. “I wanted - in the moment, I wanted to say whatever was meanest. You deserve better than that.”
“You weren’t wrong, though,” she half-smiles, more wistful than sad. “You had people who loved you. I didn’t. It’s…it’s just a fact, cruel or not.”
“And that’s on them, Helly, not on you. You were brought up in a house of zealots. They were too busy jerking off over a man who’s been dead for almost a century to form any meaningful relationships. That’s not fucking normal.” He reaches out to brush her cheek, thumb gently running over her skin. “And I don’t think it’s fully true, either. I worked at Lumon for two years before you turned up and…it wasn’t just me, who felt more whole, because of you.”
She remembers Irving, in the park. The side of him who died to protect her. I’m so sorry, Helly. How quickly everything felt easier when she let them in, let them care about her. How she spent weeks fighting to leave until abruptly she was fighting to stay. There was love at the center of that. It was only ever about love, in the end.
“I’m stronger than you think,” she says, hands closing round his wrist. “You can talk to me about her, if you want to. I know I’ll never fully understand but I want to try.”
“Thank you,” he leans in, noses brushing. “And I won’t drag you to any more faculty mixers if you’d rather not deal with that.”
“Fuck that. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll just take more advantage of the free wine next time.”
“Oh yeah, brilliant idea. I’ll haul your drunk ass out over my shoulder after offending everyone I work with and flashing your tits to the janitor.”
She gasps in mock outrage. “If I get my breasts out for anyone it will be the dean, thank you very much.”
“Yeah, well, he’s recently divorced. That would probably get me a promotion, so go ahead.”
She kicks him playfully under the covers but he catches her feet between his thighs, forcing her closer to him with a breathless giggle. They kiss, just once; muted and subtle and glorious, the spare bed a no man’s land. He’s waving a white flag and she’s calling a truce.
She pouts when he withdraws, eager to go further. He laughs. Presses his lips to her forehead.
“As much as I’d love to right now, it’s…” He cranes over her head to glance at the clock. “Four thirty. Don’t you have to work at nine?”
“Oh, fuck my life.” Real-life sneaks into their sanctuary as surely as the moonlight starts to fade outside, the black swallowed by light blue and orange. “Do you think we could - “
“No, we couldn’t bring severance back so you don’t have to make macchiatos for postgrads.”
“You try working hospitality on three hours sleep, Mark. You too would be begging for the sweet release of backstreet brain surgery.”
“Mm-hm.”
“You’re not even listening.”
“Yeah, because I’m trying to sleep. And you should too, unless you want three hours to go down to two.”
She huffs dramatically, turning so her back is pressed against his chest. His laugh vibrates through her bones. “Sleep tight, asshole.”
“You too, love of my life.”
-
I was thinking. Maybe we should go away somewhere, if you want.
Like, on vacation?
Yeah. I’ve got PTO to take, you must have some too.
Won’t that be expensive? I don’t have access to the Eagan fortune, remember. Actually - who does get that? If it’s fucking -
Attorneys, probably, given how things are going over there at the moment. Also, changing the subject?
Sorry - go on.
Thank you. Anyway. It doesn’t have to be expensive. You know, there’s actually quite a lot to do in Delaware.
Sure. Like what?
There’s an Air Mobility Command Museum -
Say no more. My bags are already packed.
Shut up. The museum is just one example, which actually sounds pretty fucking interesting, by the way. But there’s also state parks. And beaches. We could stay at a hotel on the water, fall asleep to the sound of the sea. And eat a ludicrous amount of crab. They do proper seafood over there. Not just the shitty two-dollar sweet-and-sour shrimp you get from Zufu.
…I don’t think I’ve ever seen a beach before. Not in real life.
Do you want to see one? Because I can book it.
Hmm. And it’s not just a ruse to get me into a bikini?
I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t part of it, obviously.
Ha. Okay, then. Let’s fall asleep to the sound of the sea.
-
Devon and Ricken are out of town for a night - dinner and drinks to celebrate his mercifully as-yet-untitled sixth book going through the last round of edits. It seems only fair, after everything they’ve done, to offer to look after Eleanor whilst they’re away. Mark mentions something about neglecting his uncle duties as of late and Devon gives him a knowing look, muttering something about practice for when the time is right.
Eleanor refuses to go to sleep unless Helly slides in next to her, nestling under the woven sheets of the racecar bed with an enthusiasm that’s way too potent considering it’s past Ricken and Devon’s perfectly curated bedtime hour.
(“The sooner we balance her circadian rhythms the better,” Ricken had nodded earnestly, “Disrupting them… I dread to think of the consequences it would wreak.”)
“Nice try, bud,” Helly says, trying to still Eleanor’s wriggling legs by tucking the sheet in tighter. With a high-pitched giggle, she throws them off again, tugging gently on Helly’s arm. “This is an Eleanor-sized bed. Grown-ups can’t fit in Eleanor-sized beds.”
“‘Elly,” Eleanor pleads, and God, how does anyone say no to those big, doe eyes? Helly bites the inside of her cheek - do one-year-olds know how to guilt trip, because this one fucking can. And it’s working. “Bed.”
“Oh man,” Helly sighs, shaking her head. A big grin creeps up Eleanor’s face, like she knows she’s winning. “ Fine. But don’t tell your mom and dad, okay? I don’t want to be responsible for your cicada-whatevers.”
Helly scrambles over the frame of the bed with the grace of a newborn fawn, skittish and inelegant - she’s never really got the nimbleness thing down. Eleanor squeals with delight, completely unbothered by it. She graciously shifts along so Helly can just about squeeze onto the mattress, feet hanging over the edge.
Eleanor feels so tiny, curled into an excitable, giggling ball against her hip. When she looks up, her eyes are filled with an innocent sort of adoration, the kind you only lose as you get older. When you start to expect more of people than a soft voice and a kind face.
Helly wonders if she ever looked at her own mother like that.
“Okay. So you got me in the bed,” Helly says sternly, one eyebrow raised. The tone clearly doesn’t register with Eleanor, who continues to grin mindlessly back. “Now you have to sleep. It’s only fair, Eleanor. I did what you wanted, so you do what I want. That’s how it works.”
Eleanor nuzzles her head into her side like a kitten, fists closing round the fabric of Helly’s t-shirt, tethering her closer. “You stay?”
“Yeah,” Helly says, like the answer would be anything else. Her heart has already melted right through the floorboards. “Yeah, I’ll stay.”
The excitement quickly peters out into steady, even breaths, eyes flickering under delicate eyelids and slightly parted lips. Eleanor’s grip eventually loosens, her hand hovering over Helly’s ribs as Helly’s chest rises and falls. Helly just can’t stop looking at her - the peaceful, implicit trust she has to fall asleep right there, knowing she’ll wake up in the exact same place to people who love her. How lucky she’ll always be, to take that for granted.
A fan of yellow light spills underneath Eleanor’s bedroom door and shortly after Mark’s face cautiously appears round the frame, optimistic that bedtime has gone successfully. Helly smirks, pressing a finger to her lips, indicating for him to be quiet. He glances between Helly and Eleanor sleeping soundly next to her, visibly sighing with relief, hand pressed to his heart.
“Thank God for that,” he whispers, padding across the carpet. He considers crossing his legs on his floor but thinks better of it, sinking to his knees at the opposite edge of the bed. “There’s only so many times you can read The Very Hungry Caterpillar before you start hearing colors.”
Helly snorts a quiet laugh, free hand gently running through Eleanor’s hair. “Every rendition was more beautiful than the last. Really - your commitment to channelling the caterpillar’s turmoil was admirable.”
“Thank you. Might pack in the teaching and narrate audiobooks for a living.”
“Definitely worth considering.” She pictures Eleanor’s giddy face and clapping hands as Mark reads each line more exaggerated than the last, the way she fits so easily in the crook of his arm. “Her laugh is just magical, isn’t it?”
Mark folds his arm across the frame of the bed, resting his chin. His smile is wistful, faraway. “Maybe I’m biased. But I think a lot of things about her are pretty magical.”
“Devon and Ricken did a good job. It’s a relief to know that not all parents are monumental fuck-ups.”
“Oh, they definitely are fuck-ups,” Mark corrects - not in a mean, biting way, but an affectionate observation. “We all are. But we try to do better. And want to do better.”
A beat, tinctured by Eleanor’s light, delicate breathing.
“Do you think we’d do a good job?” he asks, eyes focused on her. Helly’s brows furrow in confusion. “I mean - if we had a kid. Do you think we’d do a good job?”
Oh. She feels her heart stutter, then restart, blindsided by the weight of his question. Because it’s the biggest question there is, the biggest decision two people can make. She’s been so focused on breaking from her family she’s never even considered the possibility of forming another.
Instead, she deflects. The cherry tree in her oesophagus is blooming again, her throat thick with blossoms. “...Do you?”
“Helly,” he says, hand reaching across Eleanor to close round her knee. “I’m asking you. ”
When she looks across at him the answer is so, so easy. She knew it when she was lost and confused and angry, watching pieces of her identity rush downstream in a current of her own design, the way he stood between the rocks and helped her cobble them back together. The calm and the patience knotted with humor and obstinacy; giving up alcohol because he’s trying and wanting to do better than the man who came before him. The soft, easy love he has for Eleanor, tiny fists wrapped round index fingers and bedtime stories with different voices for each character.
He would do such a good job. Not perfect, because mistakes are inevitable, but he’d handle them with grace and good nature and understanding. Most of the time.
But her?
She pictures what remains of her Eagan blood corrupting the roots of the Scout family tree like wood rot. Dark. Evil. Suffocating. Could she subject a kid to that history? Should she?
Mark knows what she’s thinking without having to say it. He can read her so easily, now, a language developed through the way her eyes glass over and her eyebrows knot together. He’s asking because he already knows what her answer will be and he wants to prove her wrong.
“For the record, I’m not saying - if it’s not something you want to do, now or ever - that’s fine. I just…” he pauses, a familiar, determined expression flashing over his features. “I don’t want the reason why to be because of them. You can have any other reason, or no real reason at all. But not that. ”
Helly looks at him. Eleanor shifts closer into her side.
“You’re just fusing the chain back together if you let them continue to dictate the decisions you make,” he continues. “And I know it’s hard, when your parents don’t give you an example to follow. But you figure it out, don’t you? That’s what we did. When we woke up on the table. We figured it out.”
Her fingertips run over his knuckles, his hand turning and intertwining with her own. A unit.
“I never pictured this as a choice I’d be able to make,” she says quietly. “Jame Eagan made it pretty clear I - Helena - would be expected to produce an heir at some point, with someone he approved of. Considering he was an absolute weirdo it probably would have been my first cousin or something. But it wouldn’t have been my choice, Mark. And as soon as the kid was born the cycle would just begin again.”
“There’s no cycle, now,” Mark emphasizes, clinging tighter to her palm, as if the words will sink in better that way. “And if our kid wanted to inherit my shitty collection of paperbacks they can go ahead, but legacy isn’t a thing I’m particularly worried about. I just want to be happy with the time we have. And if you wanted to - and that was your choice - I would want that. With you.”
A poignant, thoughtful sort of quiet settles over them as she considers the enormity of what he’s just said and what that could mean for their future. It doesn’t feel as intangible as it once did, as untenable. She’s spent over thirty years filling suitcase upon suitcase with love that’s been misplaced or misdirected or thanklessly returned, rejected by the sender. She’s got so much of it to give, and they’d figure it out, wouldn’t they? What to do with it.
Eleanor suddenly lets out a sleepy yelp, lost in a dream, hands grabbing needily at thin air. Helly laughs first and quickly smothers it with her hand, locking eyes across the bed. Mark grins, shaking his head.
“I would want that too. With you.” she says, as the laughs subside. Mark’s eyes flash with something - hope, maybe. “One day. I’ve still got shit I want to work through, like, mentally. Before I consider inflicting that on somebody else.”
“Wow. That’s healthy. And mature.” He gestures towards Eleanor, smirking. “Did she tell you that?”
Helly nods knowingly. “Yeah, she did actually. I told you, she’s smart.”
“Sure. Well, I respect her input. It’s probably more coherent than what Ricken has got to say on the subject.”
Helly snorts, before tilting her head and stretching out her arms, urging him to help her out of the bed without waking Eleanor. His hands feel strong round her forearms as she carefully shifts her knees, pausing for a second as Eleanor wriggles then settles.
“Dinner should be ready,” he murmurs, hand in the small of her back as he guides her back to the door. The light from the hall pools on Eleanor, basking in her a gold, angelic glow like the cherubs from her class on the Renaissance, all chubby and expressive. “Devon mentioned that they’re trying whole foods at the minute so I made chilli. There were like, thirty cans of kidney beans in their pantry.”
The smell of paprika lingers invitingly in the air and she likes how he looks, hair a little unkempt and the beginnings of stubble grazing his cheekbones. She grabs a fistful of his shirt and pulls him in, her mouth swallowing his startled oh before it crumbles and falls away on his tongue.
“Jesus. Maybe I should make chilli more often.”
“Hmm,” she breathes, her face flushed and burning. She taps his cheek affectionately. “We’ll see what it tastes like, first.”
-
What do you think they would be like? If we had one.
Easy. She -
She? You think we’d have a girl?
Yeah. For the purpose of this exercise, anyway. A girl that takes exactly after you. Bright red hair. Stubborn. Funny. Fiery. A fierce sense of justice. Kind - so kind, you know? She’d be, like, a vigilante at recess, sticking up for the quieter kids. We’d have the violence is never the answer talk but be secretly pleased she threw a juice carton off the mean kid’s head.
Honey, we know he deserved it. But more subtlety next time, okay?
Ha. Yeah. And it would be the perfect segue into telling her how mommy and daddy met.
Hmm. Maybe not the best example of violence is never the answer.
You see the scar above daddy’s eyebrow? This was where mommy -
Oh, fuck no. Don’t tell her that. I mean, it was a natural reaction given the situation. But I don’t want her thinking that’s normal.
Okay, okay. Fair enough. What about you, then? What do you think she’ll be like?
(Like you. Mostly you, I hope. She’d be sensitive and patient and gentle, the kind of kid who would sacrifice winning to make sure no-one was left behind. Loyal and protective over the people she cares about. She’d be a little too sensible at first, maybe, but I can train that out of her. We’d teach her how to play chess and we’d be determined to not let her win as a life lesson but she’d beat us, anyway. When she grows up she’ll half-complete crosswords to give the person she loves the satisfaction of finishing it, even though she knows all the answers. I know you do that, by the way. I’ve known for ages. Although you are genuinely shit at Wordle. )
…She’ll probably get your stupidly big head. Seriously, what’s up with that? It’s like the moon.
Ah - very clever. Making cheap jibes about my appearance. So witty. You’re the funniest person I know.
I know. Think how blessed you’ll be if there’s two of us, one day.
I can barely wait.
-
A kid in a neatly ironed, crisp white shirt and black bow tie offers her a champagne flute at the door, glasses chattering together on a tray in trembling hands. She takes it graciously whilst Mark shakes his head kindly, hand pressed in the curve of her waist.
“This is a bit fancier than I was expecting,” she says close to his ear, weaving through throngs of people huddled round large display boards covered in art in all its forms. Messy, undefinable surrealism, seeking meaning in the way colors make you feel rather than how they present themselves. Portraits, some precise and photo-real, others distorted and raw. Landscapes and architecture, bricks carved in paint and mosaic tiles. “Thought they’d reserve this kind of budget for the actual fine art program.”
They stop for a few seconds to gaze up at quite a gratuitously graphic nude, like a screen-grab from a particularly racy sex tape, all skin and hair and… throbbing caught in acrylic. Helly dreads to think of the angle the reference photos were taken from. And the atmosphere in the room afterwards.
“Fuck me,” she mutters under her breath, “Shouldn’t that come with a content warning? The kid on the door can’t be old enough to see that.”
“He’s probably seen worse online.” Mark offers, nudging her with his shoulder. She shoves him back harder. “I guess Ganz’s policy on zero censorship and free speech extends to obscene art.”
Helly shrugs, her mouth curling into a mischievous grin. “How hilarious would it have been if something like that had turned up in the O&D archive? Irving would have spontaneously combust.”
Even in the chatter Mark’s laugh is loud, echoing in the high-ceilinged room. A couple of people look over - Helly bites her lip, happy with her own joke and the way red creeps up Mark’s neck. She’s also kind of relieved that Irving’s name can be spoken like this between them, with humor and fondness and nostalgia. There had been some shame, before. About the way things ended. And guilt, that their world had kept turning in there without him.
“He would have recited something from the handbook about Kier’s stance on…” He looks across at her. “What weird term would they have for porn in there?”
“I don’t know. Like - iconography for the purposes of self-pleasure?” He nods in agreement in the corner of her eye, her gaze still enraptured by veins flexing through near-translucent skin. “You know, I think I prefer this over the freaky oil paintings. Remember those? What the fuck was that about.”
“You tell me. He was your grandfather. Kind of.”
“He wasn’t down there. He was just some ugly old guy who was always watching us.” She can still almost see two deep-set, narrow eyes glaring at her from across the office, infinitely more unsettling than the cameras that blinked above their heads. “Anyway. I’m starting to know this guy’s dick better than yours, so…”
Mark narrows his eyes, mildly offended, but urges her to lead the way. She slips her hand into his and pulls him through the gathering crowds, nodding a polite hello to people she recognizes from class until she reaches a board at the center back.
It’s clear from the pieces she’s picked that her niche has become people (not goats). Not necessarily portraits, although there are some there, scratchy, realistic pencil portrayals of an old man she saw in the line for coffee and Devon sitting at her kitchen table. Others are more conceptual; close-ups of hands and fists, collarbones spattered with freckles, an ear wearing a sunflower stud smudged with gold. There had been something so grounding and affirming about capturing the human condition when she’s spent years not feeling fully human. Of really looking at people and the tiny, almost missable things that make them whole - a soft-edged birthmark where chin meets neck, rogue hairs that bend and dip into eyelines.
Of course, the pieces that take center stage are of her favorite muse. Pen between teeth, eyes glassy with concentration, the late evening sun casting his hair in amber like smoldering ashes on a campfire. Staring in a mirror, hazy and heavy with sleep, toothbrush hanging lazily out the corner of his mouth. Caught on the edge of a laugh, lips splitting into a carefree, unbroken smile.
And a small white placard at the bottom, boasting bold, black text - Helly S.
“Sorry, I borrowed your surname again,” she teases, trying to deflect her anxiety with humor. Her movements are a little too antsy, shifting weight from one foot to the other as her eyes flit between him and her work. “Ta-da. What do you think?”
His expression is unreadable at first, like his mind is trying to catch-up with what he’s seeing, mentally connecting art with subject. Then - there’s an unmistakable redness that blooms across his cheekbones, his mouth hanging open slightly and his eyes blinking rapidly. Like he’s proud, that she’s taken the talent she has and actually ran with it, rather than letting it hide away and wither in the dark of her life before.
And privileged, that she could have chosen anything at all, but chose him. Always him.
“Is this how you see me?” he asks softly. He steals his eyes away to gaze at her, grounding himself back in her reality. Helly nods, smiling faintly. “Jesus, Helly. I - God, I’m so proud of you.”
Something burns in Helly’s chest. It’s not a new, unnameable feeling anymore, but it still feels sacred, precious. She hides her grin behind her glass.
Mark’s hand settles naturally at the dent of her waist, lips pressed to the exposed skin of her temple. “You even made me beautiful. How did you manage that?”
“You are beautiful,” she shoots back a little too quickly. He has the decency to look abashed, but she can tell he’s revelling in the way pink tinges her cheeks. She’ll have to humble him immediately. “Huge moon face and all.”
“There it is,” he chuckles, but his fingers only cling tighter. A pause. “I know I can’t draw or have any creative ability, really, but - even if I did, I’m not sure I’d be able to capture how you look to me. You have the kind of face that people would have gone to war for, once.”
She raises an eyebrow, but the persistent flush of her face gives away how she really feels about that. “No creative ability? You know, you could have just called me pretty. ”
“ Pretty would have been doing you an injustice. Give my vocabulary some credit.” Her breath hitches with a smirk as his hand brushes across her ass, squeezing gently, before moving back just as quickly. “But we can test the limits of it later.”
“Sounds fun,” she purrs, “And I can show you the drawings that didn’t quite…make the cut.”
His jaw swings open, knocked speechless, as if there’s anything she could say to him now that would shock him. They’ve gone way too far for that. She bites her lip between her teeth and knots their fingers together, dragging him over to small-talk with a woman who has made a sculpture of a horse out of stuffed pantyhose.
-
“You know,” Mark starts, swallowing the rest of his fry before continuing. Helly’s chin lolls lazily in her right hand, only half-listening. “If you want to stop committing casual identity fraud you could just… take my name.”
Helly’s forehead creases. She reaches out, grabbing another fry from the cardboard container in his lap. “What do you mean?”
“I mean - make it official, I guess. Do the paperwork.”
He picks at another fry, blissfully unaware of the crisis she’s about to have about this. He doesn’t even look up.
Is he asking - ?
“Mark,” she says, exasperated, tilting her head to try and get their eyes to meet. “Do the paperwork? ”
“Yeah. It’s actually pretty straightforward. You only need a couple of witnesses, doesn’t have to be a big thing. Then you can change your passport, SSN card - “
“Fuck you,” she cuts him off with a breathless, infuriated laugh. He jolts, finally looking at her, confusion flitting across his features. “Seriously? This is how you’re asking me?”
He still doesn’t look like he’s getting it. “I just want to make things easier for you. If that’s what you want.”
“If that’s what I…” she shakes her head, trailing off. Across the quad, two drunk art students stumble down the stairs of the hall, barely round the corner before they start ungracefully pulling at each other’s clothes. She runs her hands across her face. “I’ll give you one more chance, because I love you, but when you actually ask me to marry you you’re doing better than that.”
Mark freezes mid-bite, realization hitting him like a wayward freight train. She’s never seen so much fear in his eyes. “Oh. Fuck.”
“Yeah. Fuck. ” She steals the last fry whilst he’s mid-spiral, smirk on her lips. “Honestly. It doesn’t have to be a grand gesture but I’d expect more than simplifying fucking paperwork.”
“Shit. Yeah. That’s not what I - fuck. I swear I used to be smoother than this.”
“Innie Mark would have gone all out. Flowers, one knee, a fucking… string quartet. Everything.”
“And you would have pretended to hate it but would have loved every second.”
“Ha. Probably.” There’s something desperately romantic about the way they would do anything for each other in every reality. “So get your fucking act together. And maybe I’ll say yes next time.”
He laughs, wiping his greasy hands on his suit trousers. He notices a shiver run through her body and like a reflex his jacket is off, tucked firmly around her shoulders. The stone steps feel cold and damp through her dress.
“ Please don’t mention this to Devon. She’ll never let me live it down.” He straightens his back, clearing his throat. “ What kind of asshole proposes to his girlfriend by accident. ”
She grins. “I’ve already drafted a WhatsApp message updating her.”
“Well, un draft it. Unless you don’t want a ride home.”
“You’re in no position to be issuing me threats,” she teases. “Anyway. You wouldn’t leave me behind. You’d be desolate, without me.”
His hands feel cold when he grasps her chin, summer beginning to die away and fall unfurling in its place. She’s deliberately goading him, like she has all evening - cat-and-mouse with a cat that always wins and a mouse on a suicide mission. Crumbling to her will is a win to him, in its own way, his tongue chasing the taste of champagne in her mouth.
“I’d be the emptiest,” he eventually breathes, drunk on nothing but her.
She knows it’s supposed to be lighthearted, the way they flirt - but she thinks of him alone in that apartment, drowning in loss, grief wrapping his hands around his throat and squeezing his pressure points until there’s barely anything left of him to punish.
She strokes his cheek, before dipping in for a slower, more meaningful kiss, heavy with everything that she will never let happen. “Good thing I’m not going anywhere, then.”
-
Hi Helly, it’s Amanda from the art and design faculty at Ganz College? Just giving you a quick call because you’ve had interest in a couple of your pieces from the exhibition - I mentioned that they’re not typically for sale but I’d leave it to you to make that decision. I have the man’s name here…a Mr Bailey - no, sorry, Bailiff. I know you’re out of town next week and your sister is picking up your portfolio on Monday so let me know if you’d like me to keep any behind and I’ll get in touch with him. Give me a call when you’re free. Thanks!
-
“I had this exact fantasy in MDR. Not long after we had sex the second - or maybe first? Depending on how you look at it - “
Helly is a bit distracted, sprawled across the coffee table as his fingers coax her open, pleasure already pooling in her gut. Just the way he swiped the piles of magazines and coffee-stained papers and a stray cellphone charger onto the floor in one dorky yet dramatic motion had her knees trembling - it’s not going to be difficult to get her wet.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” His motions are slow, teasing, leaving her reeling for more. She captures his mouth in a messy, greedy kiss, but he still insists on talking. “Yeah. I was fucking you on the table in the kitchenette. I couldn’t get the image of your hair against the white countertop out of my head.”
She laughs breathlessly, falling back as her hair spills off the edge of the table, thick and red like a nosebleed. “And why didn’t you?”
“Too public. It would have traumatized Dylan for life.” Mark starts unfastening his belt - she whines petulantly, staggering on the precipice but not quite reaching it, not yet. He’s making her wait for it. “Also your bare ass being on display where we ate was probably a bit unsanitary.”
“Doesn’t bother you normally,” she quips, kissing the affronted look off his face. “Now please just — get inside of me. Please. ”
“So impatient,” he growls, but he loves it, loves how desperate she is. He pretends not to struggle as he figures out which angle to approach the table from before straddling her, the hardwood creaking unnervingly beneath their weight.
As he teases into her opening she feels the world fall away, fragmenting and splitting like fabric. Her back arches in one, unholy gasp, his fingers closing round hers and pinning her down against the tabletop, keeping her steady as the foundations shift under her.
This - this is art, in the same way the drawings falling out her battered sketchbook are, the way clay is massaged and molded into something new and brilliant. Her fingertips brand crescent-moon tattoos across his shoulder blades. He cries out her name over and over and over again - both a mantra and a prayer, like he’s mocking some higher power, bragging that heaven is useless to him if this is what he has now, here.
Her memories flicker from red to blue, caught between selves, just for a second. The exhilarating claustrophobia of a tent contrasted with the quiet, intimate softness of a second first time.
And him. Above her, but never crowding her. His lips carving hopeless, feverish declarations into her bones.
I -- her sternum -- love -- her throat -- you -- her mouth.
She reaches orgasm with the momentum of a natural disaster, trembling and quiescent until it isn’t - a tidal wave swallowing her whole. He follows her not long after, spilling inside of her with a low, guttural groan. A heady, warm sort of stillness settles as her reality swims back into earth-shattering clarity; his body heavy and protective around her as their breathing slows, falls out of sync.
He dips in for one more quick, breathy kiss, her mouth dry as she basks in what is left of the haze. Slowly, he unravels from her. He murmurs a brief apology when her body tenses, suddenly empty from the loss of him.
For a moment she just lays there, completely and utterly exposed, back stiff and focused on the ceiling. Mark’s hand reaches out and she hauls herself up into a sitting position whilst he drops back onto the couch, chest heaving.
“Well,” she says, planting her palms on the coffee table and shaking it for emphasis. “Sturdier than I thought.”
“Are you talking about the table or my joints?” he jibes. She snorts a laugh, throwing him his t-shirt from behind her. He finds her underwear caught on a wayward cushion, holding them just out of her reach.
“Both,” she bites. His grin is wicked, wolfish. “Good to know I can rely on you.”
“Don’t get used to it. I’m not sure either will live through that twice.”
“I’ll just get another for like, twenty dollars from Goodwill.” She mirrors his grin, snatching her underwear in one, deft movement that he’s too love-drunk to expect. “And as for the table…you can get those from any thrift store, can’t you?”
-
The call comes a couple of days later whilst she’s packing for their upcoming trip. They’re sharing a suitcase because it's cheaper that way but there’s something beautifully domestic about their clothes mingling together, camisoles tucked between t-shirts and socks next to boxer shorts. She ticks off each item on a neatly written checklist whilst Mark awkwardly hovers, trying to help but just getting in the way.
“It’s Ganz College,” she says, looking at the screen and recognizing the number. Her heart thuds. “Do you think they’ve reviewed my application already?”
She’d submitted it a few days before the exhibition - a bit late for the fall semester but the postgraduate programs start in the spring too, and she’s had her eye on a temp job in the admin office she can hopefully fill in the mean-time. If this is good news, it’s the start of something slotting together. Everything’s coming up Helly.
Mark moves to sit on the edge of the bed. “You won’t know if you don’t answer it.”
Trembling fingers swipe her screen and she brings it to her ear. “Hello?”
“ Hi Helly, it’s Amanda from Ganz, ” a chirpy voice replies. Surely the voice wouldn’t be chirpy if it was bad news? “How are you?”
“Good thanks,” Mark makes pointed eye contact with her, trying to gauge the tone of the call. She shrugs in response. “And you?”
“Really good, thank you. Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase - I’m sure you’re dying to know the outcome of your recent application for the fine art program.”
Helly would argue that this isn’t exactly cutting to the chase. “Well, ha. You could say that.”
“I’m sure you could, I’m sure you could! Well it’s good news, I’m pleased to say. The faculty has offered you a place commencing in the new year with the spring intake.”
Helly exhales a breath heavy with relief, a ridiculous grin taking over her entire face. Mark offers her a tentative, wordless thumbs up and she gives him one back. He punches the air in a dweeby way that’s so painfully reminiscent of the Mark she knew on the severed floor.
“Really?”
“ Really - congratulations! The faculty loved your portfolio and thought you showed real potential. I’ll send over a formal offer letter via email and some other details, make sure you read through everything before making a final decision. If you have any questions, give me a call.”
“Thanks. I will do. Thank you.”
“No problem hon. Have a good evening.”
She’s barely hung up when Mark snatches her by the waist and pulls her onto the bed, massive shit-eating grin on his face.
“You’re going to change the world,” he tells her. She rolls her eyes but she feels flattered, really.
“It’s just art,” she says, cheeks burning. “It’s hardly a revolutionary medical procedure.”
“ Fuck revolutionary medical procedures. Art can change the world.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. What would the world be without… Monet. Matisse. Khalo. Cassatt. People will forget Jame Eagan but they will never forget the Mona Lisa.”
She hopes that’s true. She’s noticed, in the press releases churned out by the Lumon PR department, that she’s not mentioned once. They’re scrubbing her out of their history because she’s an embarrassment, a defiler. She was never really made for that world.
Maybe she doesn’t deserve it. Part of her played a part in that, under duress or not. But is that fair on the part of her that lit the flame?
Maybe not. But she sees a path, now, much clearer now than it ever was before.
-
“Sometimes I feel guilty I’m older than you.”
She’s lying on her chest, arms folded across his torso, chin resting on the back of her hands. He’s looking straight up at the ceiling, one hand tracing her bare spine.
“Do you think I give a shit about that?” she murmurs, one eyebrow raised defiantly. “Stop acting like you’re on your deathbed. You’re not even fifty.”
“And you’re barely thirty. You’re closer in age to my students than me.”
“Thirty-one. And who gives a fuck? You certainly didn’t when we worked together.”
“Yeah, but time and age was a bit meaningless in there. We had no real concept of it because we walked out each day not really knowing if we’d come back.”
She shuffles up a bit, trying to make eye contact with him. “What’s brought this on? Why are you being so morbid?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing. I just - what if you end up looking after me? You shouldn’t have to do that. It’s not fair.”
“Fuck’s sake, Mark. I. Don’t. Care. ”
“You might start caring if you have to wipe my ass.”
She snorts an incredulous laugh. “I can’t promise it wouldn’t be a humbling experience for both of us, but I promise I’d get really good at wiping your ass. And barely even complain about it.”
She feels him laugh, then, a light ripple that vibrates through his chest. She presses a kiss over the top of his heart.
“‘Til death do us part, old man,” she says, rolling from on top of him to next to him. “You’re stuck with me now.”
She’s lying in a bed they picked together next to the love of her life. A dog barks outside and she can hear the faucet dripping in the bathroom, the one Mark had sworn to her he’d fixed two days ago. There’s nothing particularly grand about it, but - this is the life she fought for. This is the life she won.
-
Devon S to Helly: Mandatory sunflower update [sunflower emoji] [sunflower emoji]
Devon S to Helly: Attached [image.1534]
Devon S to Helly: All six alive and well. You could say blooming.
Devon S to Helly: Hope you both enjoy your trip. Love you.
Devon S to Helly: I also picked up your portfolio - the lady at the desk mentioned the man who wanted your pictures is very grateful for them.
-
The Air BnB Mark picks is in a small coastal town that consists mainly of beach huts and a few restaurants exclusively selling seafood. It’s small but beautifully quaint, all wooden slats painted baby blue and a veranda on stilts that extends out onto the sand. There’s a gate at the bottom that opens onto their own private view of the beach and she runs out onto it when she’s barely out the rental car, the sand and the salt and the sea having its own magnetic pull. Her shoes lay abandoned on the stairs.
The sea - something that had felt unfathomable, once, more of an idea than an actual thing. Unsure what might lay at the bottom of it. Well. As it stretches out for miles and miles and miles in front of her, none of the questions she had then are answered. It still feels unfathomable. But she can hear it, the gentle whoosh as it drags effortlessly in and out, her heart moving from her chest to in front of her. It’s the most human she’s ever felt.
Mark throws the suitcase on the living room floor and they mutually decide to leave the unpacking until later in search of food. They eat massive plates of lobster drenched in butter and herbs and crack open mussels in hard, black shells, yellow jewels oozing with oil and salt. He buys her a bottle of champagne, an expensive one, because she’s going to change the world and she deserves to know what champagne and seafood tastes like together if she’s going to do that. The ice cream place next-door gives her an extra scoop of strawberry for free because Mark insists on telling the guy on the counter she’s just got into college (how brilliantly, brilliantly humiliating). He’s in such a good mood he’s almost glowing with it.
Whilst he unpacks she pulls on a sweater over her t-shirt and sits on the sand, absorbing what little there is left of the sunlight. The sky seems bigger here - there’s a point on the horizon where it blends with the sea, unsure where one ends and the other begins. She knows that feeling. It fits more comfortably now, a second skin.
She gathers some driftwood abandoned at the cliff edge and recalls the time Ricken taught her how to make a fire. Smiles to herself as sparks develop, the wood charring and smouldering into black.
“Here,” Mark appears beside her, throwing her an unopened packet of marshmallows. She sputters a laugh. “Yeah. I know. No weird stories about masturbating twin brothers this time, either.”
“Shame. I quite liked that one.”
“I don’t remember the story that well. I liked the way you laughed more.”
She doesn’t tell him off for being ridiculous or sappy. Instead she moves closer to his side, nestles her head on his shoulder. Watches as the last of the day drains away, red coating the surface like oil on water.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hm?”
She looks up at him, and the soft, shy smile on his face tells her everything she needs to know.
“I’ve got a question I wanted to ask you.”