Work Text:
Two weeks after his wife comes home, Mark Scout goes to a bar alone.
Helena follows him in a Lumon-issue vehicle, black and sleek. She’s dressed right this time, in a tight black dress just a hair shorter than what she wears to work, the hem just above the knee rather than just below.
She only waits a few minutes, just long enough for him to have ordered his first drink but not long enough to finish it, before she pursues him inside.
She sits down next to him at the bar.
He looks up. “You again.”
“Me again,” Helena agrees. She orders red wine and sips it, letting it soak into her mouth.
Mark has an old fashioned. (He really is a whiskey guy, she thinks.) He sighs heavily and twirls his wedding ring.
“Trouble at home?” Helena hazards, trying not to sound too interested, too excited.
Mark shrugs and takes another sip. “She thinks—” He swallows hard. “The other me. He didn’t choose her. And she thinks it means something for us, like I don’t love her with—you know—all of me.”
“Do you?” Helena asks.
He looks at her with something like anger. “Of course.”
“Just asking.” She sips her wine again.
After a long silence, Mark says, “She doesn’t like when I drink.”
Helena nods. “Is that why you’re here?”
Mark exhales and nods too, not looking at her. “I thought my drinking was because she was gone. But now she’s back, and...” He sighs. “I guess not every habit is easy to break.” He glances at her. Under her skin, she burns. He pulls a single cigarette from his shirt pocket.
“You smoke?” Helena asks, almost surprised.
“Not usually,” he admits. “I’m gonna go—” He gestures to the front door, the parking lot outside. “I’ll be back.”
“I’ll join you,” Helena says swiftly, and follows him out the door.
Mark leans against the wall of the building as he lights his cigarette with a shitty green convenience-store lighter. Helena, not accustomed to leaning against anything, stands beside him, facing his side, watching the bright flame flare in and out of existence. She’s not sure what to do with her arms.
They don’t speak for the first few minutes. Smoke wafts over toward Helena. She’s going to have to wash her hair.
“Aren’t you cold?” he asks. She doesn’t have anything over her dress.
She’s not; her skin is burning. “A little,” she says, tilting her head at him. “But you don’t have to—”
He hands her the cigarette. “Hold this?”
She takes it, and he takes off his coat and drapes it over her shoulders. Gallant, she thinks. All too chivalrous for a man with a wife at home.
He takes the cigarette back and smokes the rest of it. Helena dips her head and inhales the scent of him from the coat, whiskey and sweat and a low, musky smell.
He crushes the butt under his foot and leaves it. Mark S. would have found a trash can, Helena thinks.
She turns so they’re fully facing each other, and then she leans in and kisses him hard, pressing him against the stucco.
He tastes like cigarettes; she licks into his mouth and the ashy flavor coats her tongue. She thinks she should suck his dick just to get rid of the taste.
He makes a strangled noise and pulls back. “Helena, I—”
“Shh,” she says. She makes eye contact with him. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
“Right,” Mark says uneasily. “I really don’t...”
“Don’t you want to know what it’s like?” Helena asks, and she knows they’re both thinking of their other selves, the selves that are in love.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Just let me...” Helena leans in again. The taste is just as pungent as before, and she moves her mouth quickly to his jaw, his neck, slight press of teeth, not enough to leave a mark because she’s pretty sure that would spook him, make him push her away.
“I don’t—” he starts to say, and then, “Fuck,” as she presses her teeth into the soft flesh of his earlobe.
She slides her hands up under his shirt, drags her nails lightly down his chest. He groans softly and reaches for her, his hands firm on her hips, pulling her against him. She grinds against him, gasping in his ear. “Mark...” she whispers.
One of his hands slides under her shirt and then her bra, fingertips swiping across her hardening nipple, and she arches into him, groaning. She can feel him against her inner thigh going from partially to fully hard, and she strokes him through his pants; he twitches and gasps.
She unzips his pants and frees his cock over the waistband of his boxers, and he shudders as she sinks to her knees.
“Be quiet,” she murmurs. They’re out of the way of the lights from the bar entrance, fully in shadow, but if he’s too loud they’re fucked.
Mark nods rapidly. Something in his eyes looks anguished, but as she opens her mouth and leans in, he tangles a hand in her hair and tugs her closer.
She takes him into her mouth and it’s salty, organic with a hint of sweat. Better than cigarette smoke, at least. She wraps her hand gently around the base of him, swirling her tongue around the head, and he sighs, his grip in her hair tightening til it’s almost painful. Her head bobs around him, setting the pace, and slowly his hips began to thrust against her, pushing his cock toward the back of her throat til she starts to drool, saliva dripping down her chin. There’s a throbbing ache between her thighs.
His rhythm grows erratic as he gets closer, and she works to accommodate the jerking of his hips, almost gags as he goes too deep but recovers quickly. She swirls her tongue again, the head of his cock slick from saliva and precum, and as she tightens her grip on the base he shudders and comes, spurting hot against her throat and the back of her tongue. She chokes a little as she swallows, his cum sticking in her throat like glue.
She clears her throat and stands, brushing herself off. Her knees ache from kneeling on the asphalt, but not as badly as her cunt, which is begging to be touched, licked, fucked. She pictures fucking him here against the wall, her skirt hiked up over her hips, but she’s screwed that up for herself now, hasn’t she, she thinks, watching him stuff his limp dick back into his underwear. His shoulders are bowed like he’s ashamed, and she doesn’t think she’ll even be able to get him to use his fingers at this rate.
“Mark,” she starts to say.
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says, stumbling. “This is—I’m sorry.” He doesn’t even go back inside to pay his bill; he hurries to his car and peels out of the parking lot.
Helena wonders if the cigarette smoke will mask the smell of sex on him when he goes home to his wife.
Helena pays for both their drinks. Then she gets herself off in the parked car, fingers slick and urgent, left foot braced next to the brake pedal, right knee against the gear shift.