Work Text:
Mark’s laugh was obnoxious. Maybe that wasn’t the word. It was grating, like he didn’t actually believe anything he said was funny. But Mark kept making jokes, clearly a defense mechanism for being scared out of his mind. Mark was halfway through another crack about what a person could do with Dylan’s fingertraps when--
“Hey Mark?” Petey looked down on him from the other side of the desk divider.
Mark opened his mouth to retort, but nothing came. His eyes were wet. His breathing was shaky. Mark knew, and Mark knew that Petey knew.
“Yeah?” Mark’s voice cracked.
“What’s up with your hands?”
Dylan and Irving had been dead silent ever since Mark sat down. Only silently clicking at the keyboards every once in a while, but even that was just a pretense. They were both glancing at Petey, wide eyed.
Mark knew his presence made the rest of MDR uncomfortable. He always knew.
Mark almost tried that obnoxious laugh again, and he did, but tears were coming along with it. There he was, smiling like an idiot with the tears pooling at the end of his nose.
Every single one of Mark’s knuckles were bright red. A couple left drops of blood on the desk as he lifted his shaking hands, tucking them into his elbows. Suddenly, Mark’s face went very serious. He looked away from Petey.
Petey resisted the urge to sigh. Of course Mark would do this to himself on his first trip to the break room. The guy who spent his first day screaming for help at the stairwell door for ten minutes straight. He would’ve been annoyed at Mark for making the last ten days a living hell for him if it weren’t for the fact that he was wiping snot with his suit sleeve. Petey had never seen Mark cry before. He’d only known him for ten days though.
Petey opened his mouth but Mark cut him off.
“I need to go to the bathroom.” Mark stood, still bent over and wiping his nose, and then he shuffled off to the bathroom.
*thud*
“What’d they do to him?” Dylan leaned forward and whispered as soon as the bathroom door closed.
Petey finally let out the sigh he’d been holding. He smothered his face with his hands. “I don’t know,”
“He was in there for a while, man. They never did anything like that to me,” Dylan always talked like there was some sort of conspiracy behind everything.
“Five hours,” Irving said smartly.
“What?” Petey raised his eyebrows.
“He was in there for five hours. I counted,” Irving re-adjusted himself in his chair.
“Must’ve done something pretty screwed,” Dylan said.
“I’m gonna go-- I’m gonna go check on him. Just keep working.”
Dylan gave Irving a knowing look that Petey caught as he walked away. Of course, Dylan would do that. Dylan had done almost the exact same thing four quarters ago.
Irving went back to scrolling through data.
Petey took a breath outside the bathroom door. He could hear Mark grabbing an obscene amount of paper towels from the dispenser. He knocked a couple of times.
“Hey Mark?”
The sound of the paper towel dispenser ceased. No answer.
“Mark, I’m coming in. I need to make sure you’re doing okay.”
Still no answer.
“You know how pissed Graner’d be if he knew you were hurting yourself?”
“I’M FINE.”
Petey wasn't actually sure if Mark was hurting himself, but it was probable. It was likely. Fourth day, Petey had found Mark sitting on the toilet, trying to scratch marks into his stomach with an unfolded paper clip. Not messages, just marks. White lines. Anything to catch his outie’s attention. Petey’s throat tightened.
“Mark, I’m coming in!”
There was no protest as Petey walked through the door.
Mark was simply hunched over one of the sinks, clutching a few sopping wet paper towels. The rest were scattered along the counter. Mark’s clenched knuckles were bleeding. A few stripes of blood curved down the ceramic sides of the sink into the drain. Mark’s hands triggered the motion sensor on the faucet, and then they were gone.
Petey approached like one would walk up to a barking dog. His leather work shoes felt all too loud on the tile. Mark refused to look at him as he wrapped his hands in the rough towels, rubbing until the bleeding got worse. More red spots on the sink. Mark stopped. He stood up straight and rested his wrists on the sink’s edge, observing his work, exercising his fingers.
“Was that all you?”
Mark shook his head.
“So they just…”
“I don’t know,” Mark sighed, “I couldn’t keep them on the table.” Saying that made Mark’s nose twitch.
Petey’s mouth was slightly open as he stared at Mark. There wasn’t anything Petey could say to that, was there? Nothing Mark wouldn’t have the right to hate him for. It was his job to convince Mark he should be happy here, and they beat him up. They hit him with a ruler like he was in grade school. Who knows what else they did to him behind closed doors? Mark wasn’t going to fess up.
Petey turned his back to the mirror. He could just barely see Mark’s shoulder in his periphery. The stall doors were wide open. “I know this is hard. It’s hard for everyone when they start out, y’know?” Petey started, “But I think you should know that there is a life to be had here,” It was so pathetic. Seemed like something straight out of the manual. “You’re going to survive this. I mean, I did, and I turned out fine.”
Mark laughed in spite of himself.
“Look at you! You look like-- well I don’t know what you look like-- but you look like the toughest guy in the office. Your outie’s gonna think, ‘Wow. I must’ve gotten into a cage fight,’ and obviously you won.”
Mark’s face fell again at the mention of his outie. Denied curiosity is almost just as an effective form of torture. Petey learned that around his second month, and it was still there, scratching like a twitching insect leg at the base of his skull, but eventually his brain learned to tune it out. It was the equivalent of white noise down there on the severed floor. It was better not to mention it-- not to think about it-- until of course, they forced you to. Sitting in the wellness sessions. Unable to say a word for fear that the momentary absence of the itch will stop, only to be so much louder when it comes back again. Mark hadn’t had a wellness session yet. Not that Petey knew of, and that scared him. It was going to come sooner or later. Just give him another month.
“How old are you again?” Petey asked, his voice quiet and low.
Mark’s face screwed up, “Milchick said I was forty-three--”
“Maybe, but you also only have ten days of experience under your belt, and you’re scared. I was scared too.”
Mark took a breath.
“You’re gonna get good at this. Trust me. It’s just another job,” Petey tried for a slight smile.
Mark nodded while sniffing, like he wanted to believe that.
“Can I help you clean up?”
“I-- I--” Mark stumbled over his words, “--Sure.”
Mark started hurriedly grabbing the paper towels. All dejection in his body replaced with pumping anxiety. His hands were still bleeding, leaving red spots, making everything worse as they shakily scrambled to get rid of the evidence--
“Hey, hold it,” Petey grabbed Mark’s hand, “ Have you washed your hands yet?”
“No,” Mark’s voice was small.
“Let’s start with that.”
Petey turned on the faucet and put his hand over the button on the soap dispenser.
After a moment of waiting, Mark screwed his face up even further. “This isn’t normal. None of this real. None of this normal,” he ran his free hand through his hair.
“Mark--”
“Stop--”
“Mark.”
“STOP!” Mark screamed, wrenching his hand out of Petey’s, “STOP SAYING THINGS!” and both Mark and Petey knew that the rest of MDR had just heard. They looked to the door. Mark was back to crying silently. Frozen. The faucet was still running.
Petey’s mouth was slightly open again. In his one year on the severed floor, that might have been one of the loudest things he’d ever heard, other than his own voice in that first month… and Mark screaming ten days ago. Mark was staring at him. Begging him to tell him that this place wasn’t real.
But Petey didn’t say anything, he just grabbed Mark’s hand, prying it from the grip on his shoulder, and ran it under the faucet. He watched the blood run until the skin was still red but clear. He got some soap and lathered it over Mark’s knuckles. Mark was tough enough not to flinch at that. And he took Mark’s other hand.
Mark’s face went blank, like it had hit an error window, unable to process anymore of the state it was in.
“I’m sorry, Mark.”
Mark’s hand went limp. Petey’s first instinct was to fill the silence.
“We should talk about this over lunch sometime. I’m sure there’s some great places to eat around here,” absolute nonsense, but it was the first thing that came to Petey’s mind. He wondered if that was something his outie would say in a moment like this, “You know, I’ve always wanted to try Thai food.”
Mark raised his eyebrows, like he was about to laugh, and then let the instinct go. What he was left with was a confused grimace… Mark had the funniest facial expressions. Even when he was happy, he had a habit of looking pained, like his body didn’t know how to translate the emotions out of sheer inexperience. When he was sad, it looked like his face was fighting it, and he’d just end up looking like he’d swallowed something awful.
Petey patted Mark on the back, “Let’s say we get back out there. Find some scary numbers,” He tried for another smile. Half-hearted and unintentionally wimpy.
“I just need a second,” Mark’s voice was quiet. He was staring at the floor.
Petey nodded.
“I need a second,” Mark said it again with surety, like he didn’t think Petey had heard it the first time. His gaze moved up to the wall.
Petey leaned against the counter, folding his arms, trying not to look at Mark too directly. Mark was processing something big. Petey didn’t know what exactly. Maybe it was just the past ten days flooding through Mark’s brain again. That’d be enough to paralyze anyone. Or maybe Mark was taking solace in the moment of stillness. Petey closed his eyes. He never really got to close his eyes on the severed floor. Listen to the air conditioning. The faint sounds of the pipes in the walls. His outie must do this. Must take it for granted. Mark would never get to know this feeling regularly. Mark would never again know the feeling of letting his brain rest. This was such a small mercy. If Petey were him, he would stay rooted to that spot for the rest of his life. Not that there was much of a difference between him and Mark now. If there ever was a difference in the first place.
“I need a second,” Mark repeated.
Petey nodded. Again.
But in the back of Petey’s head was a growing buzzing. A warning that they needed to get out of the bathroom and do it fast. They needed to get back to work. The numbers were waiting. Dylan and Irving would have questions. If their productivity was down for the day, then Cobel would notice. Milchick would notice. Maybe Milchick had walked into MDR right now, and was about to find them standing around in the bathroom with Mark’s bloody knuckles. Bloody knuckles that Milchick probably gave him, and then Mark would get sent back to the break room to get hurt even more. No, Mark wouldn’t get sent back to the break room just for an extended bathroom break, but regardless… Mark’s mind was fragile enough already.
“We should get back out there,” and Petey hated saying that.
Mark nodded and looked down at his hands, trying to find an inconspicuous position to hold them so the red wasn’t quite as obvious. He settled for simply leaving them at his sides.
Mark marched back into MDR like a soldier about to jump out of a plane.
Petey always had an appreciation for the green carpet in MDR, and he watched Mark’s shoes tread across it to his desk. When they sat, Petey was sure to keep their desk divider down, just in case. It was almost calming, being able to watch Mark’s serious face instead of completely tunneling his vision into a dark number grid, only occasionally seeing his own reflection. He could settle into this as a routine.
Dylan and Irvng were, gratefully, quiet when Mark and Petey returned. Mark had a sense of new found composure-- doubtless due to him resolving to hatch another escape plan-- that was the cycle every newbie found themselves in for the first month. How many tries it would take before they would give up was the variable. It was enough to drive Petey insane. Knowing that he would have to watch Mark spiral down and break, under his supervision, for the next month. He didn’t know whether his terror was for himself for having to witness it or for Mark. It was probably a bit of both.