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ohwhatagloomyshow · 3 months ago

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buzz cut season

I wrote gemma x helena hate sex and i'm insecure about it so y'all are my guinea pig audience rather than ao3.

a loose companion to alas, I cannot swim where helly pushes mark out of the emergency exit in the finale instead of running away with him. the tonal difference between the works, though, is night and day. lol.

explicit, 4,665 words.

characters: Mark Scout, Gemma Scout, Devon Scout-Hale, Ricken Hale, Harmony Cobel, Helly R.

relationships: Mark Scout/Gemma Scout, Gemma Scout/Helena Eagan, implied Mark S./Helly R., implied Mark Scout/Helena Eagan

The first thing she does exclusively for herself is buy a pair of clippers with Ricken’s credit card and give herself a buzz cut.

She doesn’t give any of them a warning, though she’s not sure why not. Maybe she’s too used to keeping secrets. Maybe she’s forgotten how to talk to people.

She does it at night, outside, even though it’s freezing. They’re heading out towards Salt’s Neck, the five of them, stopping for the night in a rundown motel off the side of the road that looks the other way when they pay in cash. It’s the world’s shittiest camping trip, four adults and a two month old baby crammed into the same space, traveling - inexplicably - with an older white woman who gives her the creeps. The motel and the gas station next door are the only things for miles on a wide, empty plain. She hopes her strands of hair can be used by birds for their nest, although they passed their last tree four hours ago, when they stopped for gas and she swiped Ricken’s wallet, slipping away as the four adults argued about the logistics of dinner. She kept the clippers in her pocket, felt them grow warm as she clutched them the entire drive.

She fucks up and doesn’t cut her hair before she attacks it with the clippers, has to sneak into the car for the emergency Swiss army knife the Scout siblings always keep in their dashboards. When it’s in her hand she thinks of herself as the store-brand version of Mulan, no reflecting pool in sight, the dull five-inch blade a kid-friendly version of slashing off a symbol of her femininity with a huge sword. Her cousin’s daughter - her niece, for all intents and purposes - had turned four the year that movie had come out, and they had made a girl’s day of seeing it together. Jenna had been obsessed with swords for months after that, she remembers. It would’ve been cool if Mark had rescued her with a sword, she thinks as she saws through a lock.

She’s sure the buzz is uneven but doesn’t give a fuck, is confident no one will look at her long enough to notice. She likes the feel of it under her palms. She’s never felt a buzz cut before. It’s bizarre how light her head feels now, how harsh the wind is on her scalp. When she returns the Swiss army knife she looks at herself in the passenger-side mirror and grins. It’s uneven as all hell - it looks terrible - she barely recognizes her own reflection and it’s the best thing she’s seen since Mark’s face, covered in blood.

Devon stirs when she re-enters their shared room but Mark still sleeps like a log, which is an incredible feat given Ricken’s chainsaw snores, although Eleanor doesn’t seem to mind them either. As much as she dislikes Cobel - distrusted her from the moment they first made eye contact - maybe she can argue for gender-segregated sleeping next time. Not that she wants to be away from Mark, really. It’s just fucking unfair that that silver-haired bitch gets her own room.

He still doesn’t stir when she wriggles her way over to him, molding her cold body around the curve of his spine. He smells different now in a way she can’t quite pinpoint. Maybe two years of smelling the same recycled air has fucked up her nose.

She thinks about Jenna, about Kiran - how angry she’d been at Kiran for giving her daughter a similar name to her own. How flustered Kiran had been by her 15-year-old jealous and furious cousin, not understanding that Gemma just wanted to be recognized as an individual, an adult. By the time Jenna had a personality, Gemma had been halfway through her bachelor’s program, finally almost-confident, thrilled to be a sort-of-aunt when her life was just getting started.

But then Kiran had moved her family to Boston for a job, and her other cousins started their families or careers and moved on to greener pastures, and her parents contemplated a move back to Lhasa to take care of her maternal grandparents. She made their choice easier by going to UW-Madison and they scolded her from halfway across the world for such a useless doctorate until she got that poverty-wages tenure-track position at Ganz and they’d flipped to bragging about her to all their neighbors.

She presses her forehead against Mark’s back, which does get a response from him - a flinch away. Because they’ve both been sleeping alone for two years, and it’s harder to readjust to sharing a bed than sleeping alone.

It’s hard to sleep. When she does, there’s flashing red lights, absolute silence, icy wind on her face. Needles and blood and broken glass and a barefoot woman shoving her husband through a doorway.

Mark is angry about her haircut but she gets a cold approving nod from Cobel, which she fucking hates. Devon is so gentle, so careful, when she goes back over her scalp with the clippers. They don’t talk, but Devon does squeeze her shoulder, every so often.

She always gets first pick of where she sits in the Scout-Hale SUV and she always sits beside Eleanor. It upsets Mark but he tries not to show it. He is always trying not to show it. Eleanor is soft and warm and sometimes she smells like heaven and sometimes she smells like shit but mostly she smells alive. Gemma can’t get enough of it.

They had fucked, desperately, in Ricken and Devon’s basement an hour after their rescue. Mark had showered and then she had showered but his neck tasted like copper when she sucked on it. He had grabbed her by her loose wet hair and she had cried out and he had bent her over the couch and it had been agony and ecstasy. He thrusted as deep as he had ever gotten, as deep as he could possibly get, and it hadn’t been enough. They both finished unsatisfied.

My baby.

By hour ten of the buzz cut, she realizes he won’t be able to pull her hair like that again for a long, long time.

Mark had guided her up that concrete stairwell like he knew exactly where they were going, but she learned later it had been his first time actually using those stairs. He’d seen them a few times on his very first day, but never again after that.

She’s grateful for whatever sweaty exercises they’d had her do once a week because she feels strong running up the stairs, her breath lighter than Mark’s, heartbeat fairly steady for all the added adrenaline in her system. Mark sounds like he’s going to collapse the second they see the parking lot but he keeps going, pointing her in the direction of an SUV she’s never seen before.

But she’s seen Devon before.

The sight of her sister-in-law nearly makes her drop to her knees; it’s only Mark’s hand in hers that forces her upright. Fuck, Mark’s hand in hers. He did it. He fucking did it. He fucking killed a man for her. He’s right here, and they’re alive, and Devon’s openly weeping in the driver’s seat while a breathtaking woman with almost unnaturally smooth, straight silver hair yells at her from the passenger seat.

It takes a couple tries for her to open the backseat door and the stranger is yelling at Devon to fucking drive, Goddamn it! And Mark is shoving her inside while he climbs in behind her the moment Devon hits the gas. When the door closes behind him he’s on her again, hands locking her face in place while he smothers her in kisses. She laughs and she cries and they hold tight, so tight, to each other. Devon yells at them to put their fucking seatbelts on as she hits 70 in a 35 but they never do.

The beautiful, angry stranger is Harmony Cobel, she’s told in Devon and Ricken’s Goddamn incredible wood-and-glass home. They let Gemma hold Eleanor while Mark holds her and she hasn’t felt this much love in her heart since the last pregnancy four years ago. Mark is still coated in a stranger’s blood, but Cobel is absolutely gleeful when she explains the large dead man in the elevator was Drummond, one of Helena Eagan’s personal protectors and top Lumon goon.

“The fuck was Helena Eagan’s guy doing on the severed floor?” She’s only paying attention because she’s resting against Mark’s chest, feels the vibrations when he speaks. She’s so distracted by being out, being free, holding her actual niece. Life is a miracle.

“You don’t know, do you?” Cobel always speaks in a murmur, her words just slow and soft enough to force you to listen, focus on every letter in every word she says. When Gemma looks up, the look in Cobel’s eyes has shifted. It makes her heartbeat kick; she settles back against Mark, holds Eleanor just a little bit tighter.

“Know what?”

Cobel just looks at him, looks at the two of them. Gemma almost wants to ask if she’s ok, can they get her something to drink, before she catches on that this is an intimidation tactic. She realizes, a half-second before Cobel speaks again, that Mark isn’t taking this - whatever it is - nearly as seriously as he should be.

“Helena Eagan is Helly.”

She’s nearly thrown onto the floor from how quickly he stands up; Ricken leans over from his easy chair to steady her and his daughter. She hands Eleanor over to his anxious arms as she stands, takes a place next to Devon, who has just emerged from the kitchen.

“Are you fucking with me right now?” Mark towers over Cobel, his pointer finger in her face. She can just make out his expression from this angle, and she’s concerned to find fear in the shape of his mouth. She hasn’t seen her husband in two years but she still knows all his tells; she had to memorize them when it became apparent that avoidance was written into his DNA. There’s guilt in his eyes, too. “Because if you’re fucking with me -.”

Cobel lifts her hands in a gesture of goodwill. “If I had the security footage I would show you. And there is security footage.” A look passes between them that she doesn’t have enough context to unravel, but Mark has gone deathly pale. He looks sickly under all that dried blood.

“I’m going to take a shower.” He doesn’t look at any of them when he says it, just turns on his heel and heads for the basement. Devon grips her elbow, urging her to stay in place. She’s not even sure if she was planning on following him yet.

“Who’s Helena Eagan?” she asks Devon in a low voice but Devon just shakes her head once, sharply.

They left Kier early that next morning, loading up the Scout-Hale car with as much as it could carry. Mark and Gemma had spent the night crammed into Eleanor’s future twin bed because it was the only guest bed that had sheets. They had made love properly then, pretending they were teens in her parents’ house trying not to get caught. It had been surprisingly romantic, all things considered, healing something that had been broken inside her for so long. This time she had come hard and fast with his mouth around her, again when he entered her slowly, gently. His own orgasm had been muted, though his eyes were glazed when he looked at her, stroked the hair from her forehead.

She didn’t ask, and he didn’t offer, what his conversation with Cobel had meant.

Cobel took the lead, taking all the backroads until they were safe to take the highway. From there it had been one long, monotonous drive, the mile markers increasing so slowly she thought it might drive her insane.

When she had finally come to in that fluorescent nightmare prison, everything had hurt and she felt foggy. People in face masks and white coats told her not to worry, she had been in a car accident, and her family had been notified. She would be kept under observation for 24 hours, and then she would be able to go home. She had fallen immediately back to sleep.

The second time she woke up, she was much more lucid. The people in the face masks and white coats came back and thanked her for her participation in Lumon’s revolutionary new surgery.

“What?” she had asked, certain there had been a mistake - perhaps they meant a patient in the next room, she was Gemma Scout, and her husband would be on his way to bring her back home in just a minute.

The man with the bright blue eyes lowered his face mask. “No, Gemma,” he chided softly. The look in his eyes made her stomach twist. “Don’t you remember? You signed the waiver.”

“Waiver for what?” Fear hadn’t begun to set in yet, despite her discomfort with this man’s focused gaze.

“When you underwent our fertility treatments.” Fake pity in his eyes, a hungry tilt to his smile. “Didn’t you read your intake paperwork?”

When they grab ready-made sandwiches from the next gas station, Ricken is the one who makes conversation like nothing is amiss. Cobel has sped on ahead, will wait for them in the next town, so it’s just the Scout-Hales breaking bread again like it’s a normal Sunday.

She’s wearing one of Devon’s extra winter hats and Mark’s pajamas, shivering by the frozen picnic table. They’re all so tired of sitting in that fucking car that freezing their asses off is the better option.

When she first entered Ricken and Devon’s home, the hostility between her husband and their brother-in-law had been immediately apparent, but she hadn’t been able to puzzle out what had happened.

By dinner that night, she had realized: she had happened.

To be fair to Mark, Ricken is different now, and their relationship had never been terrifically deep before. But it hurts her more than she wants to admit that she was the glue holding them all together. Devon’s done an admirable job in her absence, but she’s picking up on the distance between her and Ricken, too.

She just wanted to go home. She has only ever just wanted to go home. She couldn’t have predicted an atomic bomb had exploded in her absence.

They’re all exhausted and hungry and cranky when they finally pull into the city limits of Salt’s Neck. Cobel again bosses them around, driving them to a rundown “safe house” owned by an old coworker of hers, where they can lay low for the next two days, figure out their next steps.

Gemma does not plan on staying for two days.

Devon, Ricken, and Mark all drop into sleep twenty minutes after settling in, but her legs itch, and she grabs Devon’s keys from her purse without a plan, just a feeling.

Cobel stands in the yard between the door and the car, nearly giving Gemma a heart attack. What makes the scene almost uncanny is the lit cigarette between Cobel’s fingers. For whatever reason, she never pictured her as a smoker.

Cobel offers her one when she steps closer, and she takes it, accepts Cobel’s offer to light it for her. She steps away when she exhales; she doesn’t like hovering over people and with distance she can pretend she’s a little shorter, Cobel a little taller.

“Who are you?” she finally asks, throat burning after a hard pull, after two years without a cigarette. She’s immediately lightheaded.

“I was Mark’s next door neighbor,” Cobel offers in that not-quite-marble mouth of hers.

“Don’t fucking lie to me.” There’s no heat to it, but she grips Devon’s keys just a little tighter in her pocket.

“I was also Mark’s boss.” She flicks her cigarette butt away but doesn’t move to leave.

“On the severed floor?”

A long fucking pause.

“On the severed floor.”

She wonders if she could move quickly enough to put out her cigarette in Cobel’s eye. She probably could. She considers it seriously.

“And Helena Eagan?” Another pull that’s too hard, and she coughs through the pain.

“Lumon’s future CEO.” Her silver curtain of hair barely budges in the wind, while Gemma left her borrowed hat inside and feels chilled to the bone.

“Helly?”

“Come now, Gemma. You’re smarter than that.” If she wasn’t enjoying the taste, the feel of this cigarette, now she would put it out in this bitch’s eye.

Because she is smarter than that. She just wanted to hear it, for whatever ungodly reason.

Cobel is still standing in the snow-covered yard, lit by the setting sun, when Gemma drives down the road.

The sun is just rising when she pulls into the Lumon parking lot; it’s amazing how much quicker the drive is without a baby or stopping to eat. She does wish she had grabbed for a pack of cigarettes when she’d stopped for gas, though.

Helena Eagan arrives at 6:15AM on the dot. Her driver pulls away the moment she slams the door shut.

She only has a few moments to make this work, so she sprints from the car, hoping any weight she lost from missing dinner and breakfast might make her just that much faster.

Helena hears her footsteps as she reaches the steps. Pauses, turns around.

She nearly has the dull Swiss army knife at Helena’s throat when their eyes meet. Helena takes a half step back out of surprise, and recognition.

“Gemma Scout.” Her voice is deeper than she was expecting. Refined. “I like the new hair.”

Gemma grips Helena’s pea coat at the neck, pressing the blade ever so gently against her jaw. At this, Helena does shudder out a sigh, a spark of real fear in her eyes.

“I want to talk to Helly.”

Helena laughs seemingly against her will, as the movement brings her jaw against the blade. It draws blood, which impresses Gemma. Just because a knife can be dull on hair doesn’t mean it can’t slice a bitch to shreds, she supposed.

“If you come down to the severed floor with me, you’ll just become your innie,” Helena argues, a slight shake in her voice as Gemma’s threat fully begins to sink in. It’s a delicious sound.

“You have a master key to this building, don’t you? You have to, as daddy’s little girl, right?” It’s more words than she’s strung together in a long time.

Helena’s emerald eyes harden at that; she’s hit a nerve. Something to exploit.

“Take me to the stairwell.”

She keeps the knife at Helena’s back on the walk down to the complex’s far left side. The only sound is Helena’s block heels on concrete.

Daddy’s little girl does, in fact, have the master key. Gemma lets her take one brief, steadying breath before she presses the knife against her back, encouragement to get it the fuck together.

It all happens very fast: Gemma nearly lets the door slam shut when Helena steps inside. She shoves the knife closed against her thigh and keeps it hidden in her palm while she watches Helena’s entire posture change, weight shifting forward, shoulders gently slouching. When she turns around there’s actually emotion in her expression: surprise, nervousness, some resentment, but most of all curiosity.

“Gemma Scout?” Helly asks.

The barefoot woman from her dreams.

She chokes on unexpected tears as she nods. “Why did you push Mark out?”

From the widening of Helly’s eyes and the shifting of her posture, it’s clear that this is the last thing she expected to hear.

“Because you love him,” is all Helly can think to offer.

“You love him, too.” The blood drains from Helly’s face, so she continues. “He loves you.”

Tenderness floats across her face for just a moment before confusion settles in between her brows. “Mark Scout? I’ve never met -“ she catches herself then.

“Helly hasn’t,” Gemma admits, “but Helena has.” It’s a shot in the dark but that look on Mark’s face in Devon’s living room won’t leave her head.

Helly has the decency to look embarrassed, ashamed. “I’m sorry, Gemma,” and her voice is soft, sincere. “He didn’t know - we didn’t know -“

Gemma silences her with a gesture. “I know, Helly. I didn’t want to come here to, I don’t know, torture you.” She hiccups through a laugh. Why the fuck did she come here? “I guess I just wanted to tell you thanks. Truly. Thank you. For giving me my husband back.”

Helly’s eyes begin to shimmer with unshed tears. “Is he happy? Out there?”

Gemma gives a sincere laugh this time. “Sweetheart, I don’t think anyone is happy out here.”

Helly doesn’t know how to respond to that. Gemma gestures for her to step back through the door. “He’s with family. He’s being taken care of. I promise you.” There’s still hesitation written on Helly’s body. She closes her eyes and sighs. “I know what falling in love with Mark is like. I know what being loved by Mark is like. It’s the easiest and the hardest thing in the world.”

Her eyes are still closed when Helena steps back through the doorway, and they only open as she gropes for Helena’s wrist, grabs it blindly, and pulls her away from the door, pushing her into the wall. They’re not so different in height, enough so that when Gemma brings her forearm against Helena’s neck, she chokes.

Their noses are inches apart. Helena’s gasps are the best fucking sound in the world.

“You fucked my husband, daddy’s girl,” she says, voice as low as it will go. “You killed me and then you fucked him, right? Or did he fuck you?”

Helena blinks as her face reddens.

“Would you fuck me like he fucked you, princess? Seems only fair. Fucking us both over and then fucking us.” She lets up on Helena’s neck and her gasp is desperate. “You ruined our lives,” she says, vision blurry, before finally, finally letting Helena Eagan go.

She coughs as she leans against the wall, catching her breath. Gemma just watches her, waits.

“We knew there were cracks,” Helena says finally, voice hoarse. Her hand rubs her throat as she speaks. “We were watching. Fertility treatment is always hard -“

“Don’t you DARE fucking talk to me about that FUCKING treatment!” She screams - screams, holding her head, knees buckling.

Helena waits for her to finish. And it takes a while to shove every single molecule of oxygen out of her body, through her throat.

By the time she’s done tears have leaked from her eyes and the fresh, cold air she sucks in is a balm to her throat. When Helena asks, “Do you still want me to fuck you like he fucked me?” she replies, “Yes,” and Helena unlocks the emergency exit again.

She tells Helly that she and Helena plan to talk in her office. She hates walking back through the severance barrier.

They’re in an elevator now, going up. This is what Mark did, every day, for two years, she realizes when Helena leads her through an empty locker room. She wonders which one he used. Because he couldn’t let me go. But if Mark had been able to let her go, she’d still be in that basement. The love she feels for him in this moment hurts.

She shouldn’t be surprised by the size of Lumon - she stared at the building all morning, waiting for Helena - but being inside it is a different monster. Helena leads her without issue up two flights of stairs, down a winding hallway, up another elevator.

One wall of her office is a window and it gives Gemma a feeling of vertigo to be so high up. This could be anyone’s office - there’s nothing personal here, just a huge L-shaped desk, three wide monitors, a few papers spread about. It’s a little dire, if this is where Helena spends most of her time when she isn’t Helly. There isn’t even a couch, although there’s plenty of room for one.

She turns to find Helena sitting primly on the floor, a little awkward in the restraint of her pencil skirt. She gestures for her to sit.

Of course they fucked on the floor, she thinks, but sits cross-legged in front of Helena anyway.

Helena makes the first move, because of course Mark had made the first move. She had made the first move once, eight years ago -

Helena’s lipstick is smooth on her mouth, and her tongue is warm. When Helena lifts her sweater over her head she feels hard acrylic nails against her back. She thinks about Mark’s blunt hands, always careful about the size of his nails.

Her bra is unlatched before she thinks to do the same to Helena - does she want to see Helena, or just be fucked?

When she’s lowered onto her back, she tries to stop thinking.

Helena’s hand at her crotch is hesitant, awkward, trying her best to circle her clit the same way Mark does, but it’s instantly clear she’s never touched a woman before, has to find her way around a stranger’s anatomy like a groping teenager. But the pressure she applies is good, and Gemma isn’t ashamed to moan into her mouth.

Helena is so slow and tender that it hurts. Her lips are gentle against her neck, only the barest suggestion of teeth. When she pulls Gemma’s pants down, she uses her whole hand to help get her off. This is lovemaking at its purest form and it makes her so angry when Helena finally enters her.

“Tell me what he did,” she asks in a voice that isn’t quite her own. Helena meets her eyes, deadly serious, as she speaks.

“He did this, Gemma. This is what he did.”

“He didn’t eat you out?” Her breath hitches when Helena’s tempo increases.

“Do you want me to eat you out?” She’s still serious but there’s sadness in her eyes, and Gemma thinks, one thing I still have with Mark.

“Did you suck him off?”

Helena’s eyes narrow, and she thinks, Two things I still have with Mark.

“Did he pull your -“ but she can’t finish the sentence because Helena is pressing her thumb into her clit.

“If he did, there’s not much left for me to pull.” There’s a bite of humor in her tone that makes Gemma moan again, tighten around Helena’s fingers.

“I think you should eat me out, princess.” The flush on Helena’s face is delicious - she hates this. She’s probably wet herself. Gemma wants to find out but not now. Now can only be about her, and getting Helena off would not be about her.

“He didn’t talk dirty to me, either,” Helena says and she adjusts herself between Gemma’s legs.

“Did you want him to?”

The aggression with which Helena puts her mouth on her cunt is answer enough; she groans at it, tightens her thighs around Helena’s face. She can’t help herself then, reaching down to tangle her fingers in that beautiful red hair. No wonder Mark has always liked her long hair. There’s power in it, she realizes as she scratches Helena’s scalp. You can make anyone do anything with a fistful of their hair.

“Baby,” she whispers as Helena devours her. “Baby, my baby.” Goosebumps break out across her back and she shivers. Helena is nothing like Mark, is everything like Mark.

She comes fast and hard on Helena’s mouth, a whine clawing its way out of her throat. Helena’s face is slick when she sits up and Gemma has half a thought to lick herself off of her cheeks and chin, but Helena says, “Are we done here?” and the thought vanishes.

Helena wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist and leaves Gemma in her office to dress herself alone.

#severance #gemmahelena #gemma x helena #helena x gemma #gemma scout #helena eagan #this is so WILDLY different from what i usually write #but i think writing hate sex healed something within me #i think also the first lesbian sex scene i've written??? ever???? which is bonkers to consider #is it obvious i have recently picked smoking back up or have rapidly developed an interest in sexy hair pulling. sorry.

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