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"No!"
"Oh, come on, Willa!"
"Absolutely not! I am not taking care of that horrible creature."
"For the love of God!" Enid sighs heavily from her spot by the door. "It's just a baby!"
Dark eyes meet the ochre ones of the raccoon cub, his fluffy head poking out from Enid's arms and tilting it, a tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. Wednesday's nose scrunches in distaste. "It's a drooling beast with an awful stench. Quite like you."
Enid groans, the cub regarding Wednesday reproachfully now from the weight of her glare, whining into Enid's chest.
Enid is out on her usual recon after the full moon in the forest, systematically mapping the grounds, locating any kids stuck in between their wolf and human forms and making note of what, if anything, was destroyed as she ghosts along through the shadows to not bother the earth more than she and others had the night before. She knows, intellectually, that this particular group of new-wolves aren't the most intelligent in living alongside the wildlife preservation effort, had read it in the booklet she was given when she'd volunteered for the job. She doesn't expect to find anything stomach turning, aside some indigestible bones or signs of struggle. So when she stumbles across a side path and follows the recently stomped down path, she is unprepared for what she sees.
She is halfway through scouting the area, preparing to head back to the school when she hears it: a faint whimper and the rustle of shifting foliage. She looks down and freezes.
Enid has seen, and caused, no small amount of blood, death and destruction since her first transformation, despite her girlfriends adamant suggestion of vegetarianism. But something about this scene hits her harder than all of that combined. She can harden herself against the dregs left from cruelty done by humans to other humans, but this? This is something else.
She can tell the winning dogs from the losers easily, for lack of a better metaphor. The winning dogs are the ones that leave her pack mates wounded beyond their pride, tearing into the forest floor with a lightness to their feet to find themselves a feast in celebration of another month of survival. The losers are usually nothing but a stain left in the dirt.
But finding this raccoon cub- abandoned by its mother and without a pack to help it. Oh, it made her sick to her stomach. She breaths in through her mouth, trying to ignore the scent of gore that clings to her nose and puts a hand to her First Aid pouch.
She focuses on the memory of steady, even cadences of Wednesday's words that had walked her through plenty of panic attacks and soothed her to reality after reoccurring night terrors. She names three things she can see, touch, and hear before she drops to a knee.
One of the losing dogs, a brindled baby, is trying to crawl out from under its mangled fur. His right forepaw is lame, and he scrabbles for purchase on the ground, whining and crying as he tries and fails to get away from the stranger.
She pushes out calming pheromones, smiling encouragingly at the cub that seems to relax its tensed muscles and slows its movements. She offers a hand, palm out for the cub that sniffs up at her, curious and trusting as he crawls to awkwardly lay on her lap.
Enid doesn't think she's ever seen anything so heartbreaking. Big ochre eyes, pleading, with a tattered ear that has beaten a dried path down the side of his circular head. His right paw is wrenched out of joint, and a mix of things Enid can't quite decipher mottle his fur. His fluffy tail thumps softly once against her thigh in a pathetic attempt at a wag.
Enid holds out her hand and the cub doesn't hesitate before licking the offered fingers, whining and whimpering the whole time.
The story has something shifting in obsidian eyes, and the cub who's grown to be a lap dog in the course of a half hour chitters happily at her, reaching its good paw out to swat at Wednesday's braid.
She glowers at it, stepping back smoothly.
"I couldn't just leave him there. Look at this little face!"
The baby voice Enid uses makes Wednesday twitch uncomfortably, more so when the raccoon's tongue darts out to lick up the side of Enid's face happily. It's disgusting and unhygienic.
But then there's two sets of puppy-dog-stuck-in-a-rain-storm eyes on her, begging and bright and she exhales out of her mouth loudly. "Fine." Wednesday throws a hand up to stop the telltale beginning of Enid's squealing. "But you keep it on your side of the room, and you take care of it. It's your responsibility."
Enid nods fervently, bouncing on the spot with the ball of fluff that paws excitedly at her. "You won't even know he's here! Thank you thank you thank you!"
Carefully setting the little raccoon down, she bounds over to tug her girlfriend into a hug that Wednesday reluctantly accepts, her own arms twining around Enid's waist. A smile tugs at her lips, nestling her face into the crook of Enid's neck.
Her eyes flutter open at the low sound of snarling, glaring at the raccoon that seems to glare right back at her.
it's as if Enid doesn't even see the potential trouble something like this could cause, whereas Wednesday could spot it from Prague. All bright lights and sirens, handcuffs and broken dreams. Or more likely, a case of rabies that Wednesday would benefit from in the name of science. Ugh. She angles her neck, sticking her tongue out towards the raccoon, who arches its small upper body up on its back paws and mimics her expression.
It would obey the original rules of the room if it knew what was good for it
-
The raccoon, as per its natural cheeky and brazen nature, did not stay on Enid's side of the room.
Slowly, like a sly and ill-mannered creature living within your walls that weasels its way into the marrow of a home and diseases it, it began displacing Wednesday's things.
Nothing of importance, really. A couple of her favoured shirts being slung up on the shower wall, or balled up and fashioned into a wonky middle finger on the floor. (The torn threads from its long nails were insufferable.)
More severely, some of her writing had been typed over. Illegible scrawl on the pages that were blotchy and usually seeping onto the hardwood of her desk.
But Enid always found some acutely fitting excuse for his actions. "Oh, Wends! Don't be silly- Ricky doesn't have opposable thumbs. How could he possibly know how to manipulate your typewriter?"
Which- sure. Fine. The insufferable little critter was sneaky, she had to give him that. But that's as far as her praises went- because a few days later when she'd finished an exhilarating mile run in gym class and almost delightfully passed away and had slugged her way back to the dorms, was when she found the contents of her desk completely tipped over and a mess of papers, ink spillage and miscellaneous items strewn this way and that.
The real carnage was the empty potion bottles she'd painstakingly brewed and brought from home. They were littered around the room – all sorts of colours, shapes, and sizes. It was like someone had raided an apothecary at random, grabbing whatever they could and leaving the empty shells littered across the tables and floors. Some of them weren't fully empty, the lukewarm, half-used remains festering within.
The sound that leaves her is loud, angry, and not unlike that of a feral beast. The motion she makes is spasmodic, wild, an incensed flail of frustration that has her lifting both arms and even a leg into the air all at once.
Enid thinks she looks not unlike that of a small child having a tantrum.
As much as Enid sincerely- and, very very quickly (embarrassingly so)- had fallen for Wednesday and was learning many things about herself and how to let go of her petty insecurities (which mainly came from her werewolf possessive streak), dealing with Wednesday's incessant need to hoard tested her limits of applicable Buddhism.
But, you could scream and try to kick a river, but that didn't do shit and you just looked stupid. So she just loved her anyway.
Wednesday kneels down to grab the body of one of the dark green bottles, the neck in the other palm and growling lowly. "My sanctum sanctorum. It's been disturbed."
Enid snorts in response, skipping over to the mini fridge they'd set up a few weeks earlier and grabs at the Tupperware of green grapes (the superior kind, obviously) and plops herself down in her desk chair.
Enid sneaks a glance at Wednesday's profile. It's familiar, lovely, even half in shadow from her hair, the curve of her nose, the set of her jaw, the slope of her neck, long and lean. But the hardness in her eyes is new. There is an upset here that Enid hates.
"Look at this!" Wednesday says, and it's almost a whine as she holds up the broken bottle.
From what Enid can see, the glass is sun-bleached and ridden with brown rings from whatever liquid had been inside, the exterior of the bottle dusty and neck accumulating crusty goo. She's a little nauseated to ask what it was for.
"Is that the one you usually use?" Enid pops a grape into her mouth and knits her brows together, shaking her head as she chews.
"No! But it's the principle of the thing!" Comes the outraged reply.
Enid scours the room with a keen eye, spotting their furry friend hidden among a sea of squishmallows and blankets. Her nose twitches as she walks closer, kneeling slowly to not scare the cub. "I think he's in pain, Wends."
Wednesday who's been clattering around among the rubble stills, puffing air out of her cheeks, which was Wednesday for acquiescence. She hums lowly.
"I'm sure it was an accident."
"He did it on purpose!" Wednesday argues, straightening like a figure in a pop-up book. Enid scoffs, walking back over to the fridge to find Ricky a snack.
Even as she argues, Wednesday is quick at making something thick and opaque with a mortal and pestle.
"And now he's laying on my clothes!" With agonising slowness, the blonde pivots until she's completed a one hundred and eighty degree turn and stares at Wednesday, her mouth open in a perfectly scandalized expression.
"What. A. Monster." Then she's turning back and opening the Tupperware of vegetables. "Come here, Ricky! I have some baby carrots!"
The familiar chitter that comes from the newest roommate doesn't come, even when she shakes the container. Concerned, Enid twists her torso to look for her furry friend who's...
Being tended to by Wednesday, with a softness she doesn't think Wednesday's even aware of. The concoction she'd been creating is being lathered onto the injured paw that Ricky watches intently, before it's being carefully wrapped in bandage.
Wednesday had stolen a chalk-full of healing supplies for the little cub when he'd first arrived (because she was not on bath duty), so he was almost back to full health aside it's wounded paw. But he can stand on it, and actively tests it out by shifting its weight and scampering around the room with a slight limp.
Wednesday is smiling softly down at the raccoon, who mewls affectionally in thanks as it circles back to bump its olive nose against Wednesday's thigh. With bated breath, Enid watches as Ricky nestles into Wednesday...
And she returns the tenderness with gentle pats?
Oh god. Freaky Friday had finally come for Nevermore.
-
The weirdness continued. That same night, Ricky, who had been commonly sleeping in the dog bed that Enid had bought when she'd decided to nurse him back to health (the second she laid eyes on the adorable baby, really) had migrated to their bed. He had taken a look at the sleeping goth, and collapsed onto its back between the both of them, crossing its short forearms the best he could.
Enid got that sweeping feeling of adoration like a parent who sees their spouse and child mimicking each other. Or maybe like a school teacher that gets to witness one of their students with their role model.
A pale eyelid cracks open, narrowing at the blonde who's leaning all her weight against her forearm, propping herself up and towering over Wednesday.
Her gaze must carry some weight, because finally Chloe looks up, meets her eyes.
"What do you want, stalker?"
"Nothing. You're just pretty."
Wednesday sneers, unfolding her arms to rub the heel of her palms against her eyes. "Why don't you just shoot me."
"You've been so sweet with him. You're an Angel ." Enid coos, petting Ricky's head absentmindedly.
Wednesday scoffs. "One of the biblical ones. You know, with the sword and the twelve faces." She stretches out onto her side. "I didn't have much choice. And he's a raccoon. Stop being weird with it."
Enid stills. "A... raccoon? He's a child."
Wednesday tilts her head to look at her girlfriend, blinking wildly. "..what?"
Enid sits up, affronted, switching the bedside table light on and whirling back with a pout. Ricky stirs, whining from the disruption to his sleep. Enid stands, jogging over to the fridge to grab something worth Ricky's awakening. She flips the kettle on, popping an Earl Grey teabag into a mug shaped like a coffin.
Enid sits them both on the bed- Ricky like a fat cat with his short legs in front of him and a bell pepper in his hands, and Wednesday beside him, with a herbal tea in hers.
"Tell your son you love him."
Wednesday groans. "He's not my son."
"Tell him you love him- yes he is- tell him."
Wednesday glances sidelong at Ricky, who side eyes her in turn. "Love you."
Ricky chitters in response, biting into his bell pepper and spraying the juice everywhere.
His little paw comes up to hit at his face uselessly to try and clean it.
Wednesday cringed. She was laughing, she was smiling, but none of it was warm. The sun glowed down on her face, a soft orange hue that lit up her skin and made her look angelic. But the jagged laughter tearing out of her ripped through the illusion of happiness.
"Our son gets his eating habits from me."Enid spoke soft and sure
Enid's accompanying laughter was a tinkling thing, and Wednesday lets out a singular ha once more, the fragmented titter breaking on her tongue. "Not our son."
Enid pulls her phone out of her back pocket, tapping at the screen in rapid succession and then grinning in a sly way that was absolutely not trustworthy.
"Listen to this; raccoons are very curious, and enjoy inspecting and examining everything. They are also known for high intelligence, and are sometimes compared to monkeys for this reason. They can be known to be very aggressive, and grouchy when provoked, snapping and snarling, and ready to take on even the biggest predators." Enid tucks her phone to her chest above her heart, wiping at non existent tears. "He's just like you."
Wednesday idly ponders a carbon monoxide leak. .
-
But then Ricky. got sick. Something Enid says is common in wolves- Baylisascaris procyonis, or raccoon roundworm. Something Wednesday surprisingly found herself more disturbed by then interested, especially when it was causing her stomach to feel something strange like moths fluttering their wings.
Ricky didn't want to do anything but sleep, and if he was doing anything else it was throwing up- hence the discovery of the disease. More distressingly, he wouldn't even try and destroy Wednesday's property anymore. There wasn't a fought to be had in day and Wednesday, who was actively worrying a hole into the floor with her pacing like a terrified mother, was feeling the loss.
God, what had she done to cause this? Enid is too good for her, to her, but she'd slowly learned to accept the love Enid promised she deserved. Sometimes Wednesday still wakes in the middle of the night and expects all of it to be some kind of dream, only to look across the bed to see Enid sound asleep at her side. Good things didn't happen to Wednesday Addams, or if they did, they didn't last when she found a way to destroy them. But she and Enid had been together for almost a year now with no sign of impending doom to be seen. And now Ricky? Getting a dog together was like having a child, wasn't it? So what the fuck was adopting a raccoon like?
And Ricky- as awful as his name was- didn't deserve to suffer because of some cosmic universal fuck you to the oldest Addams for all her failures in life.
But Enid was the one currently freaking out, her nails digging crescent shapes into Wednesday's back.
"Enid," Wednesday pulls back from the hug that's probably crushing her all-too-good girlfriend, just far enough for her mint-scented breath to ghost over Enid's lips as she speaks. Enid has that slightly wild look in her eyes, and her claws keep clicking out as they usually did when she was about to panic. "Stop thinking. Our baby will be fine or, he won't and I'll kill the Gods that allowed it. We'll deal with it."
Enid tries and fails to bite back the small grin that crosses her face. "Our baby?" She echoes.
Wednesday smiles back, a faint quirk at the corner of her mouth. "Mostly yours," she amends with a kiss to Enid's forehead. She lounges against the doorway, head braced up in her palm as she watches Enid pack up a small bag. "But yes, ours." A strange expression that Enid can't read hinged at the hips and busying around the room? passes over her face.
Enid had taken Ricky to be evaluated by the pack doctor, and it left Wednesday to have her turn to spiral, now, because they both knew she would break the pack doctors arms if she couldn't fix the cub, and Enid could get their faster in wolf form with Ricky strapped to her back then if they took a car.
It was a simple illness they both knew- something someone as skilled as Adrian Sinclair could fix. But then what? Ricky was a wild animal, and it would be the logical decision to let him back into the forest to live among the other animals.
But Ricky couldn't be released. He wouldn't survive out there alone. He didn't have anyone. He only knew Wednesday and Enid- his family, and what would happen if the next full moon, he doesn't get so lucky?
No. Nope. Wednesday shakes her head, trying to school the grimace on her face back to its nonchalance when she hears the key in the door. Ricky wouldn't be going anywhere.
Enid speeds through the door, out of breath and covered in dirt and other indistinguishable things- Ricky left at her home in San Francisco for treatment.
"Wends?"
Wednesday breathes shakily. She's sitting on the edge of the bed in her gym strip she hadn't even bothered to argue about wearing, nor had immediately submerged herself in a disinfectant bath afterward either.
"The day I form a complete and complex arsenal of human emotion is the day I—" Wednesday pauses, frowning. "Actually, I don't know what I'd do. When I try to imagine it, I just see blinding white and hear a distant sound like waves calling me home. That can't be a good sign, can it?"
She might feel like she's seconds from breaking apart into a thousand stressed out sleep deprived futilely pining pieces, but damned if she feels this as regularly as everyone else. It was a disturbed thing.
Wednesday starts to head for the bathroom, intent on a long cold shower to try and relieve the soreness that is settling into her shoulders from gym class, despite the fact Enid had been the one to literally run a days trip on her feet.
Enid catches her wrist and hands Wednesday her phone. Bemused, Wednesday looks from Enid to the glittery pink phone with a raised eyebrow.
"There's a message you need to hear," Enid says, shrugging.
Wednesday again looks from Enid to the phone and back again, trying to read something in the taller girls expression. Unfortunately, Enid can be quite adept passive looks when she doesn't want Wednesday to know something, and her face reveals nothing. That Enid, overly excitable and emotionally-volatile Enid, waited until they were completely alone tells Wednesday that the message is personal, which means it probably has something to do with Ricky. That she waited until they got home could either be very good news, or very bad.
Enid, as she usually does when she can tell her girlfriend is spiralling, doesn't give her time to get upset, raising the phone to her ear for her to listen.
Wednesday tuts reprovingly, snaking it out from her grip and holding it against her ear with her nails.
You have one saved message sent today at 4:56 p.m.
"Hey, Ms. Addams, my name's Adrian, and I'm the animal-behaviourist with the Sinclair pack."
Wednesday grips the pink phone firmly, not caring that the colour irritates her flesh.
Wednesday likes her immediately by the sound of her voice. It's low and sultry, but impossibly perky and cheerful at the same time- just like Enid. She can hear her smiling even through the phone and it puts her immediately at ease. No one could sound that happy when delivering bad news. Unless, of course, they were an Addams.
"I worked with Ricky today and you'll be super happy to know that he is definitely eligible for rehabilitation. He's got a lot of work ahead of him, but I think he's gonna be just fine. If you and Enid want to set up a meeting or talk about classes you can reach me at 555-5309."
Oh. So, they could sound chipper then.
The voicemail ends, and Wednesday leans back against the wall to keep her knees from giving out completely from a discomforting mixture of relief and devastation. She returns the phone to its main screen, the corner of her lip twitching at the wallpaper of the two of them and very deliberately sets it on Enid's desk before looking over at her girlfriend. Enid is smiling at her, soft and knowing.
"Good news, huh?" Enid says.
Wednesday hums noncommittally. Her eyebrows are pinched and turned downward, though. Because she's so overwhelmingly thankful that Ricky would be okay. That she- because Enid was perfect, so yeah, that she- hadn't messed up.
But.... her eyes are drawn to the dog bed that's positioned at the end of the bed, a teddy bear tucked within Wednesday's sweater that Ricky had taken as a blanket. And now her eyes are welling with emotion- and it's too much.
"Wends..?" Enid tries, putting a hand on her waist and tugging at the belt loop. Wednesday blinks twice to clear the haze from her mind, meeting her girlfriend's gaze. "What's the matter?"
She wants to say nothing. Play the stubborn role that she usually plays, but something is pushing at the back of her eyes and the last time she felt that, she had hugged Enid after the Hyde.
The words fall out of Wednesday's mouth like loose teeth, painful as they move past her lips, but she lets them go, lets them roll across the short distance between their faces. "We are keeping him."
Enid's lips rise and fall, blinking and shaking her head to try and make sense of the words as if they're coming out in Tagalog. "Wait- what?"
Firmer this time, and with her jaw tilted up in that stubborn way that gets her what she wants, Wednesday insists. "We're keeping him."
And Enid just sort of stares for a minute. Squinting, before she breaks into a grin. "I knew you loved our son."
Wednesday groans. "So we're doing this?"
Sensations like champagne filling her chest, like heat lightning all over her skin, like the urge to squeeze herself into a tight ball to keep from screaming, or crying, or laughing, or she didn't know what.
She pauses to take a deep breath, looks up in an attempt to stop the tears rapidly pooling in her eyes.
"We're doing this."
Enid smiles wide and giddy as a kid on Christmas morning and has to bite her tongue to keep from laughing. She tugs Wednesday off the wall and ignores her shaking hands and aching shoulders as she grabs Wednesday by the collar and yanks her into a kiss. It's hard and desperately happy as she tries to convey all the good things bubbling up in her stomach through the contact. Wednesday returns the kiss in kind, grabbing the back of Enid's neck and smiling against her lips. She feels a flutter at the gentleness of Wednesday’s lips against hers, the firm, reassuring grip of her arms around her.
Wednesday pulls back, resting their foreheads together, her words a ghost against Enid's lips. "You're such an emotional dork."
Enid shrugs. "Says you. I wasn't completely sure you'd go for it had I asked outright," She confesses as she pulls fully back to grab her phone. "Adopting Ricky."
Her voice is hoarse and breathless still from her run home.
Wednesday comes up to press a kiss to Enid's forehead, settling in against Enid's back. She drapes an arm over the taller girl's waist to hold her close and buries her nose in the soft hair of Enid's nape.
"He's important to you," She murmurs. "That's reason enough."
"Oh shut up-" Enid snorts, tugging Wednesday's arm around her closet. "You would totally sell me in his place."
"I'd sell you for the insurance of an all vegetarian household."
"Raccoons aren't vegetarian." Enid asserts.
"My son is."