Work Text:
Enid swallows, because she really didn’t forget anything in the dorm. She wasn’t as meticulous as some would be, during an impromptu my-roommate-is-driving-me-to-the-brink-of-insanity moving out party, but she hadn’t thought she’d really taken… absolutely everything.
Plucks up a hair-tie, holding it up like it’s a trophy or an old relic from a great aunt that had brought it with her from the homeland.
Wednesday is unblinking, watching her with a lour look.
And the silence- god, it’s deafening. And she can’t even use her heightened sense to hone in on the sound of sneakers in the gym a few floors down, or catch a break in conversation that billows into laughter.
Because this dorm— this god forsaken dorm, was her own personal brand of prison. Nothing entered or left it fully intact. It’s as if the walls were forged from the hands of Greek Gods, to keep whatever enchanted object that was housed in this specific room ions ago safe from prying ears and hands.
But, no. She’s just sinking quickly into sullen territory that is the aura Wednesday permits at any given moment.
And she has to speak— because the silence is becoming painful. She stands, hands clasped behind her back and the hair tie drops— as if she even fucking cared for it in the first place. Wednesday doesn’t pay mind to it, the glower fully intended for Enid alone.
“Was I an annoying distraction?” She says, something soft lilting her words as she closes the drawer.
The muscle in Wednesday’s temple flexes as her teeth grit.
“You definitely had some annoying habits”
She bristles, “Such as?”
“You giggle when you text which is a 24/7 addiction.”
Enid rounds the drawer, coming to a standstill directly across from Wednesday, who hasn’t moved. She remains unblinking, Kubrick staring her way into Enid as if it could possibly haunt her forever. And maybe it does, because she thinks of Wednesday a terrifying amount. More often than not, if she had to understate it.
“Well, at least it’s not a migraine inducing typewriter hammering into my head.”
Wednesday does’t miss a beat.
“When you’re not grinding your canines, you growl in your sleep.” She rapidly fires.
“As opposed to late night cello solos.”
“You over commit to clubs and activities then complaint about them non stop.”
Enid sucks in her lips, biting at the inside of her cheek as she steps up to the line that had been drawn with duct tape not long ago. The kaleidoscope of colour does nothing to calm her rapidly rising temper that would only amount to growling that would completely prove Wednesday’s point, and she couldn’t add to her already inflated ego.
“I’d take that over your obsession with all things creepy and dead.”
Wednesday follows, her feet marching forth and never straying as she too comes to stop at the divider. The sun reflecting rays of grey soothes her growing frustration.
“You could gas a small village with the amount of perfume you spritz…” Her eyebrow raises haughtily. “And that’s just off the top of my head.”
“Guess I’m the lucky one with a new bestie,”She spits the words, as if they’re venomous on her own tongue. Wednesday doesn’t flinch, as she continues. “That doesn’t try to find ways to endanger literally everybody she comes into contact with.”
Wednesday exhales sharply through her nose, and to anyone else she looks perfectly stoic and put together as always. But it’s the most subtle novelties, her jaw shifting, lips pursing, eyebrows flickering along with the skin near her ear as though she’s straining to hear every last sound Enid makes.
And Enid notices. And she isn’t sure why she holds such a power to make thee Wednesday Addams genuinely upset. And it’s a stumping realization, so she finishes lamely.
“In fact, Yoko and I are so in sync she’s begging me to be her new roomie. Permanently.”
Something shifts. Perhaps it was the polar axis, or lay lines. Because Wednesday is frowning.
It’s important to note, here, that Wednesday does not frown. She has many negative perpetuations of feeling, but she doesn’t frown. At most, it’s the slightest downturn of the corners of her lips that flattens back to something indiscernible within a split second.
But she’s frowning- and Enid can’t help but laugh. It’s inappropriate, and childish, to be laughing at her friends obvious pain. But they truly were night and day, lit up by their halves of the window that perfectly encompassed them to a fault. And Wednesday is groaning, stomping her foot— and actually, this entire situation is childish beyond belief.
She’s keeling over, hands braced on her knees as she sucks in gulps of air. When she straightens out, wiping at her eyes and stumbling from the ache in her abdomen, she finds Wednesday watching her with a tilt of the head, her eyebrow still raised in that defying way- but she’s trying, and failing to bite back a smile as her lips flicker.
She breaths in deep- her version of a gasp. Then her eyes widen. Then she grins toothily. Then she frowns. Then she was back to completely stoic.
It would be clear to anyone else, like Thing who watches the entire situation unfolding from where he rests on the shelf in a little nest Uncle Fester had fashioned for him, that Wednesday had realized something. Felt something that Enid wasn’t privy to.
His first action when he has a clear bill of health, will be to learn how to sign Wenclair and Sapphic. Settles back down for a nap he was so rudely roused from.
But Enid wonders if Wednesday might be experiencing a manic episode— except, her whiplash from the amount of emotions she just witnessed managed in the span of a few seconds was jarring, as she blinks a few times to gather her bearings.
“Um… so, guess I should be going?” Enid asks. Because she doesn’t want to— she feels as rooted to the spot as she always is beneath raven eyes.
And she’ll go, if Wednesday asks her to. And she’ll stay, if she asks. And she hopes she asks, desperately and needing to hear anything asked come from lips worried into a diluted crimson shade.
But Wednesday doesn’t ask. She’s just staring. “You notice a lot of things about me.”
Enid folds her arms across herself, shrugging. “You notice even more about me. Watching me sleep?”
“Listening to me type?”
“Listening to my cello arrangements?”
“Smelling my perfume? Willingly hear me complain? Knowing that I’m giggling from texting?”
Wednesday just her jaw. Blinks, as she turns her head to look at the black portion of the window. “Those are all things unwillingly filed into my head- and nose. Your perfume permeates the entirety of the dorm.”
Enid sighs. Not in exasperation, or fondness. But something in the middle. In that tiny gap that separates them, and she thinks about crossing it. Just setting up camp on Wednesday’s side like a fiery soldier in the throes of battle. But her enemy is 5 foot 3, and has been known to bob her head along to Seventeen when she plays it. It’s not an ardent display of enjoyment of the very good music taste Enid possesses, but it’s something.
Something that makes her soft, and human and actually a teenager, as much as she likes to play the role of war-braved heathen.
She sniffs, shuffling her feet a millimetre into no man’s land. “You know, Yoko kicked me out for the night because some other Fangs’ who don’t like werewolf’s are coming over, so I was thinking-“
Wednesdays head snaps, her eyes flashing dangerously. “What Fangs? They are clearly imbeciles and need a lesson on inclusivity and diversity.”
Enid gnaws at her lip, smiling. Meets that fiery gaze that’s so protective at anyone possibly disliking Enid. Completely fictitious people, part of a hang out that she’d constructed in her head.
“So I was thinking,” steps closer, until Wednesday is actually stumbling backwards- all her grace and poise fleeing her in an instant. Enid relishes in it. “I could sleep in here tonight.”
Wednesday‘s eyes flutter in quick succession. Ping ponging around as if looking for any plausible excuse not to have this happen. Settles on one- or lack thereof. “You have no bed.”
Enid nods. “I don’t. But I can sleep on the floor. No biggie.”
Wednesday scoffs, moving to her bed with a slight wobble to her knees that she curses at in a dialect Enid can’t understand, but finds it infurtiatingly adorable all the same.
“No biggie, she says..” Wednesday mocks, placing her shams and a few wayward throws in a line sectioning the bed in perfect halves. Enid leans against the window, watching and waiting.
Wednesday twirls around, but she can’t maintain eye contact for longer than a second before she finds something else mundane to busy herself with- like reorganizing her ink pots as if they hadn’t been perfectly situated before.
Enid is amused, when she speaks. “So? Am I sleeping in the tub, then…?”
Wednesday scoffs, stilling her movements at the desk. Her palms are flat against the wood, the muscles of her back rippling from the strain and she speaks. “No.” She stares straight ahead at the wall, as if it’s easier to get the words out. “You will share my bed with me. But you must remain on your side at all times.”
Enid feels a flurry of butterflies in her stomach, excitedly flapping their wings and she slips happily over to the designated right side- because she knows Wednesday favours the left. Plunks herself down, and grimaces for a moment when the mattress doesn’t bounce. Right, Wednesday liked to sleep on the closest possible thing to a stone.
“Soo what colour nails are we thinking to paint tonight?!”
Wednesday snaps her neck to look at her, the lour look making its reappearance. But Enid notes, with the pattering of her heart against her ribs, that Wednesday is blushing.
“Okay, no nail painting. Got it.” Wednesday relaxes. “Slasher movie?”
And then Wednesday lights up like a little kid, as she rapidly fires off recommendations and, Enid knows she hadn’t packed up everything with her. Because she forgot the only thing she’d burn the world down for. The only person her heart could ever belong to, as insufferable as she could be.