Chapter Text
To set the scene here as it is removed from a larger chapter.. Xavier and Wednesday, after forming a relationship through text messages and a visit to Xavier’s apartment in New York City, are spending the Winter Solstice together at the Addams’ Family Mansion. This is the morning after the family’s seance and a ball held in celebration of the pagan holiday. Xavier is due that day to return to New York.
That morning Xavier was to return to New York. His father would soon be back in town and he desperately needed a couple of days to clean up the wreck of their apartment. As he attempted to stretch his tired, groaning, muscles, the grip around him only wound tighter, holding more firmly. The python and its prey. Wednesday clearly had no intention of letting him loose. He snorted, inordinately pleased, and relaxed back into his pillow, the firm mattress underneath him, and stared up at the elegant artwork of the ceiling above. The shimmering gold leaf caught like fire on the early morning light filtering through the drapes making the map look like a living thing.
He drifted in and out of a light slumber, never quite sure if he were asleep or just that relaxed, peaceful, mind wandering. But Xavier knew it was time to get up, to extricate himself from Wednesday’s hold. As he shifted, wriggling, he plucked her arm from his chest. She quickly reasserted herself more firmly on top of him, and, never opening her eyes, mumbled a firm, “No”. He sighed and smiled.
Five more minutes.
Eventually she was forced to release him as nature demanded, dragging herself from the bed, and stalking off to the bathroom. He took the moment to climb out of the flesh warmed sheets, the loss of their heat a physical manifestation of pain for him as he shivered, bare toes on dark hardwoods. But then he remembered the gifts, the ones still stashed away in his backpack and went to retrieve them. He grinned pulling the prettily wrapped boxes out and set them on the stark black cotton of Wednesday’s unmade bed. Then tugged his dark gray henley over his head to stave off the general chill of the room.
When she returned, Wednesday’s face immediately soured into a baleful glower, noting him standing, semi-clothed. But it took only the matter of a second or two for her to clock the small pile of packages waiting.
“What are those?” She gestured vaguely with one hand.
“Your Christmas presents,” he told her, shrugging, grinning.
“You did not mention presents,” she replied, eyes widening.
He shrugged again, nonplussed.
Wednesday approached cautiously, inching forward, as if they might bite her. “I did not get you anything.” She flushed lightly, pale cheeks a delicate pink as he rushed to assuage her guilt.
Xavier moved, coming around behind her, nudging her on. “You’ve given me plenty,” he breathed into her loose hair, rubbing his face amongst the deep herbal smelling strands as he moved them aside, exposing her neck and placing a lingering kiss there. “More than I could have dreamed of when we left Nevermore.” He smirked though she could not see it, “And honestly, a couple of those are as much for me as they are for you.”
She turned in his arms, staring deeply into his eyes, with that unfathomable gaze, the one where you had no idea what she was thinking, how she was feeling, how she would react, and tipped her face up, her mouth. He kissed her.
When she pulled back, Wednesday lunged for the wrapped packages on her mattress with a kind of excitement Xavier did not expect from her, wrenching the silver and black boxes from the ribbon that held them together. She tore into the paper with gusto, going for the smallest, topmost, package first. Within she found a square, flat, black velvet box and glanced over her narrow shoulder at him. He merely grinned. Turning back, she lifted the lid. Xavier leaned across her body, watching over her shoulder, and felt her sharp intake of breath against his chest.
Moving her hand slowly, almost reverently, or as though she feared the contents striking her, Wednesday touched the smooth black orbs nestled within with only her fingertips. She looked at him once more, or tried to with his close proximity, so he nodded in encouragement, pulse thrumming with a mixture of excitement and anxiety that had him teetering on the edge of arousal. Removing the necklace, a strand of perfectly formed black pearls, she let them slip and twist through her fingers like water. She gasped breathlessly, a strange mixture of awed and horrified, “Xavier, where did you get this?”
He smirked mischievously, “It was my godmothers. I remember you commenting on how perfect it was.”
Wednesday spun on him as he leaned casually back a few inches to watch her face. “She was cremated with it.” Her tone was wondrous.
His cheeks were pulling taunt from how widely he was smiling, truly the jester, the fool. If only for her, her love and admiration. “I took it off of her when I was in the coffin. I wanted to give it to you, so that you would like me,” he rolled his eyes at his own childish thought. Nothing could make Wednesday Addams like you and she certainly could not be bought. Though the way she was staring at him, from his eyes to his mouth, to the necklace clutched in her pale grasp, had him swallowing and wondering if that assertion was fully accurate.
“You stole this from your godmother’s corpse,” she stated, it was not a question. “At her funeral,” she added and he bobbed his head as a confirmation. “For me?”
“I wanted to give it to you then, that day. But once you saved me from being flame-broiled, my father whisked me away, furious at the embarrassment,” he scoffed, running his tongue along his upper teeth, attempting to ignore the pit of rage, like a den of snakes, writhing in his stomach. “And I never saw you again. Not until your first day at Nevermore and it felt more than a little presumptuous to give it to you then, even if I had had it with me at school. But now,” he breathed, reaching out to take the pearls from her. She let him. “Now,” he sighed, a small shudder going through his frame, “I can’t wait to see it around your throat where it can rest against the bruises from my fingers.”
She inhaled sharply and turned back around to let him place it against her sternum, clasping it at the base of her neck. It was a heavy strand; far heavier than one would have assumed. It had sat like something forbidden and magical that day, as they exited the crematorium, in his dress pant’s pocket, nestled firmly and safely against his thigh. Xavier only wished that he had been able to place it at her throat, at her feet, sooner. But perhaps that morning was exactly the right time.
The shimmering black orbs settled against her alabaster skin in the most exquisite way.
Wednesday reached up with one hand and touched it where it rested against her protruding clavicle as he let his lips graze her ear from behind. “I want you to wear it always, so you can feel the weight of me hanging on your neck, your throat, all the time.” She quivered against him, nodding, before spinning in his arms to receive a forceful kiss.
Xavier’s hands slid up the back of her; from thighs to ass, trailing along the knobs of her spine, her ribs, lifting his black t-shirt slowly. One of her legs wrapped around him, her hands in his hair, but he sighed and pulled back a couple of inches. With eyes closed he panted against her mouth, trying to reign in his breathing, his body. “You have more presents,” he told her almost regretfully.