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The parking lot is almost empty, just a few rows of cars left. The wind is picking up. Big gusts that send her hair flying across her face, leaves her fingertips pale, and aching.
When she slips into the backseat, he looks at her through the rearview mirror, startled. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Just drive.”
His indignation is apparent, but he reverses out at her tone, throws the car into drive and peels out of the Lumon compound. He messes with the heater, and looks back at her again. She eventually leans forward, pointing towards the edge of the road, far past the surveillance points.
“Pull over there.”
The car rolls over the edge of the thick forest, tires crunching over gravel and snow. It’s rapidly sinking past dusk, murky gray skies dwindling into thick darkness.
The back car door creaks open, and she holds up a hand, shielding her face from the icy blast of wind. She yanks open the passenger door, and climbs inside, slamming the door shut behind her. Helena smooths down her coat, drawing out the moment before she has to look at him.
Mark’s got a hand wrapped around the steering wheel. Rumpled suit, tie tugged loose from the firm knot. He’s got a five-o-clock shadow and an even more haggard look to him than usual. “You look like shit.” She says.
He ignores her words entirely. “Why the fuck are you in my car.”
Helena sighs. Turns back to the road, where headlights flicker through the distant tree line. There’s huge gusts of wind now, almost shaking the car with the force of it. It scatters tree branches across the road, snow and gravel piling up along the edges.
Her heels scuff against the car mat. “I need you to give me your phone.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m asking you to give me your phone.”
He gives her a long look. “Fuck off.”
“I need to dispose of it before Lumon intervenes.”
“Dispose of it?” Mark repeats. He slings his arm over the steering wheel, looks at her with complete disbelief. “You actually expect me to believe that?”
“You think I’m lying?”
“I think it’s convenient.”
“I don’t give a shit what you think, Mark.” She says. “I can’t risk it.”
He takes a breath, as if to speak.
There’s a pinging noise, and then a dim light from the backseat. Her head moves, immediately spotting his crumpled coat, and she reaches back for it.
Mark’s hand wraps around her wrist, halting her movement. “What do you think my wife would say, if I went home without my phone?”
“Oh, you still haven’t told Gemma about us?”
His jaw clenches, speaks low, and serious, completely enveloping her wrist. “I should kick you out of the car.”
She tugs her wrist out of his grasp, and wraps her hand tight, around his wrist. “She’ll find out if you don’t hand it over.”
Their faces are inches apart. He’s breathing deep, dark eyes looking back at her. Pure disdain.
“You know what the worst part is?” He asks, darting his eyes between hers.
“What?” She seethes, through a hard breath. “What -”
“That you really thought I’d be stupid enough to hand over the only leverage I have.”
Her jaw clenches tight. “You’re stupid enough to use an unencrypted phone instead of a fucking burner. I’m making sure neither of us get caught.”
“Didn’t seem to be an issue outside Zufu.”
“Funny.” She bites. “We seem to have very different recollections of that night.”
Desperation. Clawing at each other. Bitter relief, and acidic misery, that he remembers parts of her. That he’s stitching himself together for someone else.
They glare at one another, tense. Sharp as a knife.
“You know what the real worst part is, Mark?”
“What.”
“If I started begging right now, you’d-“
He rips his arm out of her grasp. “Go fuck yourself.”
“If that’s what it takes to get your phone-“
He cuts her off. “Stop fucking talking.”
“We agreed to end this, what the fuck is your problem?”
“My problem?”
“Yeah, your problem. It’s like you want to be caught. Usually when people have affairs, they make an effort to hide it.”
“That’s fucking rich coming from you.” He laughs, cruel. She already knows what he’s going to say before he says it, and still can’t brace herself to hear it. “You got yourself banned from the severed floor because you can’t hide who you are.”
She shoves at his shoulder, hard. Pushes herself back into her seat, increasing the distance between them. “Start the fucking car before I call up your wife.”
Mark starts the car. Turns to check the road. “Spoiled fuckin’ brat.” He mutters.
“Excuse me?”
One hand on the wheel, the other clutching the gearstick. He shifts the car into drive, and skirts out onto the road.
The car shudders with the increase in speed, moving through the harsher wind, the slight snowfall. The radio can’t pick up a signal, and crackles between the edges of some old choir song.
A security vehicle passes them, blinding headlights pouring through the windshield. They both reach for the passenger visor at the same time, flicking it down to shelter her face.
He’s driving as fast as he realistically can on an icy, windy road at night, but it still isn’t fucking fast enough. She wraps her hand around the door’s armrest, clutching tight.
“I don’t understand why you won’t just work with me here.” She seethes.
“We both know you could’ve taken it from my locker.” He says, keeping his eyes on the road.
She holds her tongue. It wasn’t in his locker.
He speaks again, when she doesn’t fall for the bait. “I’m not gonna just hand it over if you want it this bad.”
“Why?
“What do you mean, why?” He messes with the blasting heater, trying to clear up some of the humidity from the windshield. “You’re not my wife, Helena. I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
“You are such a fucking child.”
“Course I am.” He mutters. His hand flexes against the gearstick, slows down when the snow starts falling even more. “Why the fuck are you in my car?” It’s a rhetorical question, but she answers anyway.
“Because you’re stupid.”
“You’re stupid.” He instantly says.
“Clearly.” She grits out, furious at herself for letting this conversation even happen. That they’re always clawing at each other, because the alternative is so much worse, apparently. She claws at him because she knows he’ll always turn back with venom in his words. Better his fury than his indifference.
She’s bitter, and she’s angry. Pissed that she’s never fucking felt like this. Like a fire ignites beneath her skin when they’re near each other, devastating an already burnt forest, down to the brittle bones. They understand one another in a way that shouldn’t be possible, and use it to cut deep. Where the other Mark had been an unfamiliar, undeserved sweetness, this one is that familiar, acidic burn behind her eyes, stuck in her teeth.
She’s pissed that he’ll keep her at arms length when it suits him, and go crawling back to his wife each night, lying about the smoking, and drinking, and brief flashes of his other life.
Pissed that she gets it, too. That he’s too fucked up, and afraid of leaving the hell he’s created.
Mark glances at her, then back to the road. “Thought you had a much higher opinion of yourself.”
She scoffs. “You are the most egotistical person I have ever met in my life.”
“Oh, sure.” He scoffs back. Another security vehicle passes, marking out roads that need to be cleared of snow before the morning. “I know I’m a piece of shit.” Mark says, heavily sarcastic.
He says it just to piss her off, and it works. “That’s what you like about me.”
“I don’t like anything about you.” She mutters.
“Oh, please.” He says, his hand tightening around the wheel. The leather creaks beneath his grip. “Everything you like about him, he got from me.”
She says it just to piss him off, and it works. “You’re nothing like him.”
Mark’s mouth pulls down into a sneer, sharp profile lit by passing white headlights. It almost resembles a cruel smile, his eyes staring out at the road. “It’s too bad you’ll never see him again.”
“Pull over.” She snaps. Wrestles off her seatbelt.
“What, are you gonna walk back to Lumon, princess?”
“I’ll call my fucking driver.” She says, and the second he haphazardly slows the car down on the clear side of the empty road, she wrestles the door open.
Storms away from the slamming door, and into the biting wind. It snakes its way beneath her clothes, under her skin. Her hair whips around her face.
Over the blistering wind, she can hear the slam of his car door, the crunch of boots. “HEY.” She doesn’t turn around, squares her shoulders and takes a tight, furious breath, head lowered, hands curled into fists.
“ HEY .” Mark shouts again, louder, getting closer. “I’m not fucking leaving you out here.”
Helena turns around.
The car’s headlights are still on. Glowing amber yellow along the sleet, and snow. Brake lights glow bright red from the back of the car, wind ruffling through him, drenched in the light of all of it.
She doesn’t move.
For a second, it almost looks like him. It’s almost the same. He takes a step, and then another. They’re feet apart.
Mark’s looking straight at her. The wind howls around them. An icy, blindingly painful sting against her face, her fingertips, her eyes. She looks up at him and sees his ghost. Sees the outline of her face in the reflection of his eyes.
Mark moves forwards. His skin is warmer than hers, palms now cupping her neck, pulling her closer. They stagger backwards through the snow. He kisses her like he’s starved for it, and she fucking hates him. Hates that every time this happens, it stitches parts of her together, and tears others down the center.
“Get back in the fucking car, Helena.” He mutters, then kisses her again, his nose pressing into her cold cheek. She breaks the kiss to glare at him, but he just grips on to her hips and twists her around, manhandling her. She yanks the back car door open, and hates herself for loving the look on his face.
She scoots back and kicks off her boots, while he stands outside, watching with his hand gripping the handle. “Get in the fucking car, Mark.” She mocks, and shoulders off her coat.
He does. The door slams shut behind him, leaving the car in a haze of charged quiet, tense, and sharp, and difficult to parse the way he’s watching her, motionless.
The wind howls outside.
“This is the last time.” He says, and she nods, cataloging his face. “Last time.”
It’s a tight space, but they’ve done this enough times now to fit together. She maneuvers into his lap, and Mark holds her there tight, drags her in for a kiss that almost makes her forget about anything else.
His hands flex on the curve of her waist, large, and heavy, and almost possessive, when they have no right to be.
He never says it, but she wonders if he’s thinking of Helly, instead. The person he’s really addicted to, seeing phantoms of, half-burnt through his failed reintegration. The legal contract drawn up to split his life in half, seeing glimpses through the glass. Helena thinks she’s fucked on both, the brittle, outer shell of him, and the gooey innards, cracked open and stuck in her throat. She wants his cruelty as much as his kindness. His attention, even if it’s a knife’s edge.
Mark’s hands drag her down against his lap where he’s half hard. She repeats the motion, and bites down on his lip, mid-kiss. He hisses in pain, and tangles a hand in her hair. It’s not tight enough. Never tight enough.
She drags her hands along his collar, his neck, feels the softness of his skin, the lines with age. He scrapes his stubbled jaw against her cheek, then nips at the skin of her throat. Slips his hands up beneath her shirt, dragging up her body. He cups her breasts through her bra and squeezes, then drags back down again, skimming down her sides.
She wants, and wants, and it makes her dizzy, single-minded, held in his hands like she’s his, and he’s hers, and they aren’t chasing echoes of something, going through the withdrawals. “Shit.” He breathes, and drags her hips over his lap again. He grinds up, and they both gasp. “Can you get this off?” He asks, shoving up at her skirt.
She lifts herself up, and Mark reaches around, tugging down the zipper in a motion smooth enough to make her stomach flood with even more bitter jealousy. She twists herself off his lap, shucks off her bottom layers while Mark tugs his tie, loosening the knot even further. He undoes his belt, and the car rocks with a bigger gust of wind, loud and howling beyond the foggy, half-lit glass. Her body shivers in the cold air, the once full-blast heater now seeping away into the windy night. He guides her back into his lap, bare thighs above his dark suit pants.
Before she can readjust herself, Mark steadies a tight hand on her hip, and slips his other between her legs.
She feels her breath tighten, along with the slick drag of his fingers through her slit. Her hand smacks against the window, a handprint smearing that he’ll wipe away the moment she leaves, like she was never here at all.
“Fuck.” He grits out, tracing around her clit with sharp, quick movements. She grinds down against his hand, the sounds slick in the car, and then he rocks a finger into her. They’re bigger than hers, stretch her wider, make her fight down tight gasps. Mark watches her with dark eyes, rough, ragged breath leaving him.
She stills her hips, gripping on tight at his shoulder. He gets the hint, and drags his fingers back out, with a slick noise. She raises up enough for him to unzip his pants and free himself, hard, and flushed, pre-cum beading at the tip.
She rocks against his cock a few times, listening to the tight breaths he tries to swallow down.
Neither of them reach for a condom. They never do.
She sinks down onto him, taking him slowly, unsteadily, then all at once. The dark curls at the base of his cock are already slick with her arousal, and she grinds her hips, starting a quick, harsh rhythm.
Mark’s eyes fall shut, hissing out a low curse. She watches his face, the crease of his eyebrows, the downturn of his mouth, where his sharp canines must be biting his inner cheek. She wants to bite there, too. Wants to sink her teeth into his skin and take part of him with her.
He rocks up beneath her, meeting her grinding hips and dragging her closer.
His mouth falls to her collarbones, and she digs a warning nail into his shoulder. No evidence. Though for her, it’s never really mattered. She’s always been his.
Mark, however, can’t leave scathed. He can blame it on their innies all he wants, but he’s a terrible fucking liar.
His mouth is hot on her throat, nipping with teeth and kissing rough, messy. Her brain feels unravelled, messy strands tangled and knotted and stuck together. It’s him, and it isn’t. It’s her, and it isn’t. Helly and innie Mark move in the reflection of the smeared, fogged-up glass.
He’s buried deep in her cunt, low groans when she rides him faster, the car rocking with the movement. Taking him further, hot, panting breaths and a messy, desperate kiss.
She pulls back for a breath, eyes opening to his flushed face, his head tilted back. His eyes are still closed, jaw working as she grinds down. They both hear the distant hum of another engine at the same time.
Headlights glow in the far distance, racing closer through smeared, damp glass, and Helena tucks her head down against his, like it might hide her.
He pulls her closer, cups a hand to the back of her head and keeps her there until it races past, red brake lights glowing through the glass, the hum of the engine drifting away into the night.
Her breath shudders out, and then Mark smooths his hand down the back of her hair, almost soothingly. It makes her throat tighten, and she closes her eyes against his warm skin.
The air feels humid, the car smells like sex, but the same angry, contentious energy doesn’t quite return. It’s something heavier, something Helena can’t make herself look away from. He makes a low, punched out sound as she tightens around him, and rocks his hips up, into her.
She’s close, her lips parted, breathing the air pushed from his lungs, their sweat-damp faces pressed together, soft noises pouring from her mouth. She swallows down the words that try to leave, hanging on to him tight. Mark’s hand splays beneath her blouse, a thumb running a small arch over her skin as she moves.
His mouth presses to the corner of hers, and then she tilts her head, catching him in a slower, heavier kiss. Her orgasm tears through her, a crash against her senses, eyes screwing shut and breath shooting out, pulsing hot, and tight, around him.
His mouth falls open against hers, a harsh breath drawn low from his throat, and then he comes, buried deep in her cunt.
She’s resting against his chest. It’s shitty, and uncomfortable, and sweaty in his beat up Volvo, and she never wants to move.
“We can’t do this again.” Mark murmurs, but his voice isn’t cruel. It’s just distant. Like he’s really telling himself.
“I know.” She says. She does.
Mark’s green coat is bunched up in the foot-well, half buried beneath her own. He lifts an arm from her side and roves his hand into a pocket without jostling her too much, then hands over his phone.
“The password is-”
Mark only huffs in some annoyed kind of surprise, watching her unlock it without issue. For a half-second, her thumb hovers on the home screen. It’s an old photo of him and his wife at their wedding, surrounded by lush green leaves and blooming flowers above their hidden faces, tipped towards sunlight. She swallows, then does what she came to do.
All their conversations. Every photo, every message. All the blackmail they had on one another, it disappears with the virus she’d sent. He hadn’t opened it. Hadn’t taken the bait.
She digs her phone out of her own coat pocket, barely straying far from the warm hands he has wrapped around her body. He watches silently as she repeats the process on her own phone, keeping the screen where he can see it.
She looks out at the dark window. The howling wind and the snowy night. They’re strangers, they’re equals. “It’s over.”
He breaks the snowy, wind-stricken silence later, the minutes passing and crumbling like a cliff to the dark sea. His mouth is almost pressed to the side of her head, speaking low, sounding lost. “You think they’ll feel it?”
He doesn’t need to clarify. Helena knows what he means. The only time they’ll ever see one another again is the severed floor, with no memory of all the ways they’ve fucked this up. Lying to everyone. Themselves, each other. Last time was the last. The first was also the only. Mark hasn’t wiped her faint handprint from the window, but soon, he will.
Her phone falls away from her grasp, and she closes her eyes. Tries to memorize the feeling of his body against hers. They’re both terrible liars.