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Wednesday always smells her before she sees her.
Wednesday looked up from her vegan-jerky bag to eye her roommate who stood flocked by half a dozen girls she personally didn’t care to know— had resisted on several occasions, truthfully— smack dab in the middle of the courtyard like some sort of sculpture, Enid the artist with a hotdog for a brush in her hand. A mosaic of sunset colours dotting her chin and cheeks in the form of…. mustard and ketchup.
Wednesday quirks her head to the side, one eye squinting as if it might help her understand the visual before her (or that she’ll give herself an accidental case of whiplash that might knock some better metaphors together).
Enid shouldn’t be so pretty. She was— both conventionally and otherwise, but not to such an extent it would render Wednesday completely useless in her own body.
Yet it had. Like a skin eating disease that takes its time in spreading, but once it reaches your vital organs you feel it blistering.
Over time, Enid had become just that. This otherworldly tale on long legs and I’m colourful sweaters. Blonde turned flaxen gold, eyes striking in tones of a blue jay’s feather that compliments alabaster skin peppered with little stars deigned freckles.
She was something haunting in Wednesday’s dreams, pallor features gentle in a world she favoured made of fire and bloodshed. A mawkish grin answering her mornings and nights for months on end like the burn of a leather strap to the back of the hand and the reprieve of a calamine lotion simultaneously.
Oh— how she haunted her.
Even in their falling out— she was all consuming. Because, of course, the administration did not accept the transfer request and that left them as two odd ends in one space split in half. Like they hadn’t changed each other. As if they weren’t cosmically connected, whether Enid wanted to believe, or whether Wednesday would accept it, or not.
Enid would be wide awake alongside the moon every night, dancing around to songs that sounded like a drill was taken to Wednesday’s skull. But for the life of her, the many threats she had uttered once had paled into inaudible sounds of discontent and then to absolutely… nothing.
Nothing— even when She Wolf was so stereotypical and stupidly playing at full blast, and Enid did her little finger wave dance. Over. And. Over.
(Which, if Wednesday had learned the string instrumental part on her cello, that was completely by coincidence of it eating at her braincells and nothing more).
And in the same vein that ghosts of werewolves danced and music flowed, oh, how Wednesday longed to loathe her.
Her stomach rolled like the over consumption of liquor at the memories of cherry-glossed lips mouthing sentences she couldn’t focus on— because Enid wasnt touching her anymore. A brush of her forearm against Wednesday’s shoulder, or a hug that didn’t quite encircle her. Something that had quickly grown to feel like something was liquid heat and burning her flesh that a cortisone could not soothe at the small show of affection. An addiction, perhaps, Wednesday had befallen. The only respite was more of the werewolf so clumsy she could hardly stand straight for five minutes without toppling over. A drug that no longer wanted to be in her blood.
What a hell of a drug that was.
She wanted to hate her. It would be far easier. They weren’t friends anymore, and hadn’t been since Enid had exploded at her and Wednesday had been left to cry on the floor with nothing but shattered dignity to keep her warm. But yet, looking up at the girl she consistently stole glances from, she felt that hollow pit in her chest fill pleasantly so.
It was as if everything clicked into place, just by seeing her. With memories and experience curdling her blood and flurrying out sensations that rapidly caused an overproduction of feel good sensors in the brain she had thought had been shocked to death in the chair at home.
And then Enid feels her gaze, and looks up with that smile in her eyes that has Wednesday breathing shakily and crushing the cup of coffee in her hand until the liquid is scalding her flesh. Eyes like a shark- bright, calculating, killing.
Oh, killing. Enid could kill her and she would say thank you. If she decided to crack the Raven’s ribs open and start a fire, she’d simply hope it warms Enid for as long as she wishes.
Her attention is the same sensation of tasting Lindor chocolate. The first taste is bitter- until it melts and lingers on your tongue heavy with something indescribable. But it’s comforting, and it warms you to the bone.
Wednesday looks away from those blazing eyes, and stomps the dirt of a bush near where she stands with the toe of her boot. Swallows at the familiar soft and decadent laugh that belongs to Enid because this is all too much. And she shouldn’t care for someone the way she does Enid. Not being as close as they once were shouldn’t affect her so badly. Yet it does. Terribly so.
She looks up when fingers tap a beat against her shoulder to face Xavier, who’s smiling with an eyebrow cocked down at her.
“You good?”
She shakes sensations that crawl cold over her skin, forcing the blank stare back onto flushing features “Perfect. Why?”
He doesn’t care for the overly forced bite as per usual, tossing his thumb lazily over his shoulder. “You’ve been staring at Enid for like, ever.”
Wednesday rolls her eyes. It twitches when her left breast starts to ripple with pain— a heart attack or withdrawal affect, who knew. “You should learn what metaphors are and when they’re appropriate.” Sighs heavily- and Xavier oddly smells like the 5th hour into a long plane ride. Why? Who knows. Her brain is a fault line she lives haphazardly upon.
Kicks dirt up at him that he jumps above like a little girl skip-roping. “Explain your gay eyes before I lose it. I’ll scream.”
“No.”
“You’re gay for Enid. Admit it.”
“I am not.”
“You are. You wanna kiss her sooo bad-“
“-you wanna die soooo bad.”
He beams, and Wednesday can’t help but reciprocate the smile with one that barely makes a dent in her skin. “You’re stupid.”
He shrugs, wrapping an arm around her and squeezing. “Yeah. So, gay? For Enid?”
Wednesday doesn’t respond. Simply gazes at the blonde that’s now migrated to sit on a bench and biting into her hotdog with vigour. Her face is painted from the condiments, and there’s crumbs littering her clothing.
But? Wednesday still swoons. It’s like heaven has fallen before her. Watching Enid do anything— eat, sleep, walk, talk; it was all something otherworldly.
Wednesday didn’t play video games— but Enid’s latest obsession was Assassins Creed Valhalla. So, if Wednesday had made a subtle correlation to adoring someone so vividly it transcends earth into a heaven made of translucent bridges and stone- that wasn’t her fault.
“Wow, okay, you’re seriously as subtle as a fucking car crash babe.”
Wednesday grunts out a quiet swear, throwing her elbow into ribs and tossing the half bag of food at Xavier who grins impishly as he takes a slow bite of the snack with an exaggerated moan. Her nose scrunches in mild disgust.
“I deeply regret ever allowing you into my life.” She snarks, plucking her school bag off the floor and slinging it over her shoulder.
Xavier smiles, speaking around a mouthful of BBQ jerky. “You love me!”
Wednesday rolls her eyes in response, her boots stomping loudly against the pavement. She usually made a point to move with grace, her feet guileful and weight shifting just so. But Enid was looking up at her again, her attention for her alone and Wednesday feels that pleasurable thrill she always gets when it’s all for her and now else traipse along her spine.
But Enid doesn’t even smile when Wednesday chances a glance at her. Because why would she? When Wednesday hasn’t the courtesy to even deign her with anything beyond a platitude?
Wednesday swallows her daily pill of bitterness alongside a swig of remaining coffee as she internally acknowledges that she wasn’t worthy of Enid’s romantic, or any, feelings. So she’d ache within the friendzone for all eternity, if she could even clamour her way back onto that platform. She’d just have to deal with that.
She climbs the steps to the dorm two at a time, because it’s far easier to run than to mend broken relationships frayed and torn beyond recognition at her own hands. She wants to scream when the door closes behind her, doesn’t, tossing her things across the room like they’d personally offended her before plunking herself down onto the floor, her back leaning against the foot of her bed. It’s lumpy, sharp, and cold. The perfect place to rest.
She hums to herself contentedly, letting her hands settle in her lap and wiggling her toes within the confines of her boots that are a size too small and squeeze around her thick callouses from blisters she popped.
Her thoughts haven’t been coherent in a long while now. Like this heavy fog has settles over her imagination— even her conscious being, and obstructed the train of thoughts crossing. They crash— burn. She’s truly lucky if she managed to catch a stray before it’s completely gone.
So, as she often does, she allows her mind to wander. Wonder if Enid’s eyes had teared up when she, too, was forced to sit in the corner, holding her burning hands to her chest the first time she’d held hands with some dark haired boy who would have done anything for her, and had instead fisted the shards of his glasses in her bloodied fists whilst speaking in tongues until he ran away and never returned.
She wonders if she had glared at the principal in defiance, or had avoided his gaze in annoyed defeat. There was also a sizzle of wrath within the roots of her teeth. Did she allow herself to scream? To cry? To feel?
Wednesday swallows heavily, razor blades gouged into the soft pink flesh of her throat. Flutters her eyes open and relaxes tensed shoulders at the happy stitched face of a squishmallow staring at her, bereft of its eyes that the manufacturer was too lazy to stitch, and instead made them half moons with three thick lashes.
That probably, really, smells like Enid. A concoction of coconut and lavender. Moves with limbs that are leaded weight to grapple the purple and yellow stuffed animal to her chest, and she’s right. It’s a blanket of Enid.
She inhales stilted.
It’s weird. It aches, like putting pressure on a scabbed-over wound, but not digging in hard enough to re-open closed cuts. She feels a pulling at the stitching that has held her together, and finds that she is healing enough not to bleed. Healed enough to mend the broken bridge, now.
She looks at Thing who’d been avoiding speaking to her after siding with Enid. He flips her off. “Oh? Come on, Thing. Help me with an apology.”
He flips her off again, scampering out the half kaleidoscope window that’s cracked open and she sighs.
So he wouldn’t held her figure out how to fix things, she’d just have to do it on her own. Somehow..
Wednesday spent a couple of sleepless nights and restless days mentally working at this question like working firm sculpting clay within her fingers. Constantly reworking this stiff, pliable material until it hopefully became something vaguely aesthetic. This question felt very much like the result of the constant turning and stretching and squeezing and figuring out. Dirty, sticky and a mess. Gray shit stuck underneath her fingernails for days on end.
-
The answer was given to her, maybe by an overly generous God or a beseeched demon, in the form of forcing them together bloodied and bruised.
Wednesday always smells her before she sees her. The familiarity of the coconut and lavender soothes her, no matter her mood: when her nerves are frayed and raw, it lets her be still. When she is already feeling good somehow, those nights when things seem possible and hope is in reach, it makes the evenings better.
So she doesn’t fear for her life when there are claws dipping into the meat of her neck, doesn’t cry when her back hits the bulk of the tree with a crack that makes her spine feel displaced, and doesn’t beg for mercy when Tyler’s gaping maw is inches from her head.
She fights back to the best of her ability, though, because she won’t wait for someone to save her. She pulls away, gets as far as she can while against the tree and the Hyde. The air has been sucked out of her chest. She can’t breathe; before she realizes, her hands are scrabbling on the claws around her, and then she is falling out of the mid air and landing hard on a rock, moving with a quiet whimper to plant her feet on the ground, and scrambling to stand in the open field.
She watches with wide eyes creased with horror as Enid— sweet, patient, bubbly Enid— claws chunks of fur and skin from the Hyde.
Enid is enchanting with blood dripping from her claws and fangs. Poised in a body that she’s using for the first time, weaving out of the Hyde’s grip and clamping her large jaws around stick-like limbs.
Wednesday blinks when Enid’s large ochre eyes meet hers, the werewolf whimpering when she’s knocked off balance by the other beast.
Wednesday can vaguely hear the growls that tumble through the forest that must translate to fuck, shit, under her breath, that transform into the exact expression when she later finds Enid amongst the throngs of students— soaked in blood half hers and mostly not— tugging her into her grip.
Wednesday exhales heavily, hands flexing lamely by her side. “Enid…” she whispers under her breath. Enid whines in response, her body heaving as dry sobs make their way out. Wednesday doesn’t flinch at the loud noises right by her ear, and brings her hands up to wrap around her.
But then Enid has to spin away, flinching from the touch, one hand over her chest, head tilted towards the sky.
She breathes, holding the air in her lungs, then blows it out, repeats until she’s calm and back to herself.
Her claws don’t pop out though, the whole time. She had just fought earlier, true, still coming down from that, tired after the long day, but her claws have always made their presence known at the first blush of danger. But not alone with Wednesday.
She’s not afraid, and that’s something hefty and emotional.
The Hyde was a horrible thing. And now, Enid had a hailstorm of cuts across her face and body visibly staunched with dried blood beneath her coat, and they were Wednesday’s fault.
“Come with me.” Wednesday mumurs, offering her hand to Enid that eyes it with wet eyes, curled into herself like a stricken dog, and she’s so obviously afraid of everything.
But still, her claws don’t reveal themselves and there’s barely notes of coconut and lavender that follow the wind.
She swallows down the pitiful whine her body wishes to unleash at the other girls obvious suffering, and drops to her knees. Bows her head, like a wolf would do its alpha.
“Please?”
And it’s a simple enough plea. Enid shifts, her hand that’s raw and red ghosting across Wednesday’s cheek. “Okay.” She breathes, nodding. “Lead the way.”
-
Somehow, unfairly, even in the dim light and with the streaks of rust coloured tracks beating a haphazard path down her face and neck, Wednesday thinks Enid is beautiful. She is not even the slightest bit monstrous.
That thought should disappoint her. Wednesday had once hoped that when she had wolfed out, she’d be so horrifically disfigured that Wednesday herself would start vomiting uncontrollably. But alas, she has an unconditional beauty in spades, alongside her strength and sheer loyalty.
A loyalty to Wednesday, who tends to her wounds with a gentle touch on her side of the room. Doesn’t blink when that’s where Enid gravitated towards once they’d entered the dorm, even if her bedding was caked in mud, blood and something vaguely slimy of the Hyde’s she’d love to take a sample of for observational purposes.
Enid looks at Wednesday in askance, then turns the Bluetooth radio on and to low and hums along to whatever playlist she had preset, and Wednesday lets herself unfocus from where she uses a warm towel to dislodge the dried stuff on her face, hearing the melody but not the words. It doesn’t sting at her this time, the noise doesn’t assault her senses; she is not on high alert now. Just like Enid isn’t. She’s calm and happy despite it all— despite Wednesday doing nothing to fix it.
But in the same vein, as she handles some wound care cream from the first aid kit, she peers from the corner of her eyes to watch as Enid peels open a bandaid for a superficial cut on her finger, a look of concentration written across her face and her lips moving as she mouths the words to yet another song. She didn’t fix their broken bridge with the litany of words in her arsenal, but she’s fixing her wounds up. This could be forgiveness too.
“I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.” Wednesday hums, like it’s an admission of what she had for lunch that day.
Enid who blinks, tone full of askance as she shakes her head wildly like it will somehow make this all coherent to her, knows this is absolutely not the right or normal thing to say. “What?”
Wednesday knows she had been born a force to be reckoned with. All three of the Addams’ siblings were, but Wednesday was intensely powerful, almost superhumanly gifted in the way she moved, and the way the air parted around her in deference, bending to her intentions.
But now, as she dips her head and tugs up her knees to her chest, she feels completely and utterly useless. Stripped of her armour with a soul laid bare for Enid.
“I don’t think I’ll survive it,” she finally admits. Her hands are shielding her heart.
Enid shuffles half a step closer and Wednesday doesn’t flinch. Enid brings her hands up gently to cup pale cheeks, and softly, quietly, places a kiss on her bang-swept forehead. Wednesday feels the heat radiate down her cheeks, into a scarlet blush on her neck. She feels out of phase, when Enid giggles and presses another kiss to her cheek, stupidly asking. “So you’re not mad at me?”
Enid rolls her eyes, leaning back on her hands. “You almost died today— I think that constitutes my forgiveness.”
“As did you. Congratulations on wolfing out, by the way. Should I get you a celebratory chew toy?”
Enid’s eyebrows raise in amusement, her head lolling to rest on her shoulder with that insufferable smirk Wednesday has craved to kiss off. “Should I go back to letting you figure out how to apologize?”
Her smirk turns to a full blown grin at the drop of Wednesday’s jaw. “How did you-“
“Thing told me.”
A few more ways to discern Enid in a crowd; her unfettering loyalty, her tenacity, her stubborn streak, Thing metaphorically kissing her ass.
“I will kill him.” Wednesday grouses, finishing up the wound care she’d let fallen before sorting the things back into their rightful places.
“I’ll kill you right back!”
Wednesday glances up briefly, swallowing her own smirk back at the glare fixed her way. “You wouldn’t. Perhaps, couldn’t, given you only wolfed out to protect me.”
Enid scoffs, haughty and self righteous. “Yeah, well, Yoko says you’re gay for me.”
Yoko and Thing would do well in hell together. Wednesday shrugs one shoulder, “I could argue you are too as, once again, you wolfed out for me.”
Enid’s light flush burns a bright red and she covers her face with her hands, groaning out a quiet stooop, I didn’t know what else to do, and Wednesday manages to stifle a grin back before Enid catches her her.
And her mind clears for the first time in days. Not during her potential last moments alive, or as she tended to the many cuts and scrapes covering Enid. No; because Enid was happy.
Someone’s happiness had never mattered to her.
Their love was the library at Alexandria in the way it was beautiful and the center of the world before burning, wholly and completely. They were the old world, in the way nothing was ever the same again.
But humanity had persevered, despite the loss of their center of knowledge; mankind had fallen into dark times and the height of cruelty, but it made way for a new birth, a renaissance, and Wednesday was ready to emerge, molded and chipped into shape from the rough marble she been hewn from.
Every new moment with Enid etched a foreign smile deeper into her face. Her body would never forget the blasts, the fire and brimstone that had rained down, but she could still come back. She was a monster, after all, something inhuman. Not in the way a Fang, Gorgon or Werewolf was. But she was darker, twistier, evil, yet with a potential no one — not ever she herself — understood yet. That only Enid could see. Encouraged.
Enid is moving to grab nail polish to repaint her marred claws— and when she sits down again Wednesday surprises them by thrusting her own hands out. Both set of eyes wide. An offering.
Her lifetime lay out before her, long, winding, languorous, but Wednesday wants to see it. So long as Enid is there.