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Enid sighs heavily, her gaze drawn down to the laptop in her hands, hot and mean. It’s almost as if it’s pulsing something vitriol and violent into the palms of her hands, though she knows nothing would show should she look. The gashes feel real all the same, gripping tighter to the source of her pain.
“Enid, if you keep making noises I fear I’ll have no choice but to de-vocalize you.”
The threat falls on death ears. Enid is staring at the screen, her eyes starting to burn from the bright display. The words quickly begin to blur, but they hurt all the same. The laptop burns something fierce on her lap, the fan reacting to the heat undoubtedly unfurling from her rapid mood switch taxing on the poor computer. Striking, taking, taking…
“Enid!” Wednesday now stands toe-to-toe with the blonde, glowering fiercely with her hand held out and beckoning. “Give it.”
Enid doesn’t even flinch at the sudden appearance of the goth, nor does she care for the repercussions of whatever the other girl may have in store for her. She quietly murmurs a no, eyes tracking from top to bottom the god forsaken profile picture she’d enlarged. Trying to place it. Trying to put a single bullet to the face of a dozen turrets. Perhaps a freshman, or a Frenchman. There’s no telling with the broad spectrum of readers she has that flock to her blog but still she tries. Because maybe if it’s someone she vaguely knows she can prove herself to be good. Or send a sweet message, or take their words into consideration and press herself into a pretty enough print. Something, something, anything…
“Give it.” Wednesday cuts in, voice taking an edgy tone. Enid lifts her head, and she realizes quickly Wednesday’s marble features are as blurry as the words on the screen.
Tears.
Wednesday looks horrified at the similar realization, taking three paces back with a sharp intake of breath. She looks… wounded, maybe. Not as disgusted as Enid had gotten familiarized with in the earlier months of her stress-induced breakdowns or heat-cycle hormones, but something nearly tender.
Enid drops her head, feeling sorrow burrow deeper into her chest- no, beyond that; deeper, deeper… bone deep…
“…Enid?” Comes the quiet call, but she doesn’t meet Wednesday’s calculating gaze. The screens turned off by now and her reflection shows her tauntingly. Hauntingly.
Her eyes are swollen from holding the tears like sanctuary, her lips a constant quiver else a horribly unattractive downturn. She looks at how flat her hair lays; the vivid colours that need a desperate touching up and the brown peeking through her blonde roots she swore no one would ever know to be true despite the fact her wolf form is a great brown beast.
But it’s just Wednesday. Wednesday who had seen and worshiped the brown fur with streaks of colour. And she can’t bring herself to care; not in front of Wednesday, not when a fraction of her is on the screen and a fragment of herself is lost to the ether. Not when her hands are shaking so horribly that the click of her nails sink into the edges of the laptop, a burst of smoke and embers lighting up their dreadfully still room until there’s only a flicker of blood lining Enid’s nail beds- there and gone in an instant.
How horrible it is to not even bleed like a real person would who needs to release the darkness festering inside. Instead, she has to watch the blood coagulate in the split second before the wound fully shuts and she’s left with smooth flesh and blood that’s been heated into vapour. Left to the darkness doubling down in punishment for her rebellion. Thick and horrible in her chest, head and veins.
Maybe if she’s lucky the wolf in her will get tired of the shadows and start clawing at her from the inside out. At least then could she dilute her mind and focus on something tangible, something that wouldn’t keep slipping out of reach like a sibling holding a toy over your head…
“Enid.” Wednesday says firmly. Her cold fingers come to lift a strong chin when Enid refuses once more to acknowledge her and Enid in turn is assaulted by a strangely warm look reflected back at her, thawing the fight in her.
“What is the matter?” Wednesday asks, her voice strong but dropped several octaves. Enid would smile at the thoughtfulness if she could. Perhaps even laugh at the absurdity of the girl she’d seen moments from death, moments from committing murder so soft. Calling her name like a prayer on the tongue of a pagan. Instead, she shakes her head, pulling away from the touch with a reluctance that scorches her very bones with a sunburn she feels in the very marrow.
“I’m fine, Wends.” She amends quickly, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes. “Hey! Tell me about your chapter! You’ve been working at it for weeks!” She says, trying for energetic. She even gives a bounce to the bed, forcing the brightest grin that would fool anyone. But something must be missing. Everything must be, she realizes bitterly when Wednesday doesn’t even blink at the change in tone.
The smouldering laptop on her thighs was a reminder for even the dimmest bulbs.
“I don’t care about my book.” Wednesday was smart. Methodical in her observation and subsequent dissection. The wolf knows this, yet she is still astounded when Wednesday drops down beside her on the colourful comforter she swore was poison. “I care about you. What’s the matter, cara mia?”
Enid blinks wildly at the declaration, but swallows the question of absurdity on her tongue.
“I don’t speak Spanish..” Enid murmurs, though her cheeks flush all the same. It quickly dies as she looks to the laptop, bent from where it lay between her thigh and the bed from all the jostling. She goes cold at the implication of what lives when she will eventually turn the screen on- assaulting and cruel. She swallows thickly.
“Really Wednesday, it’s noth-“
“-tell me nothing again and I swear to you, Enid, I will burn down a convent. Truth. Now.”
Enid hesitates.
“If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll look myself-“ Wednesday says, grabbing at the computer faster then Enid can react. She gapes wildly, hesitating before grappling for it back.
Wednesday is faster- God, how is she faster? - as she easily types in Enid’s password and pulls up the latest page even through the foreboding black that creeps the screens edges.
Enid wants to run- to burst through their meticulously made window to fall to her death though her wolf healing would negate such an effort. Perhaps it would draw Wednesday’s attention from-
“What the hells is this?” Wednesday grounds out, her face severe as she attempts to scroll. She accidentally exits, takes a screenshot, and eventually finds her way back to the page though it’s horribly zoomed out. Her eyes widen comically so, eyebrows hidden beneath her bangs.
Enid wonders if this very moment is worse then whenever it was Wednesday found out her laptop password was literally their names mushed together in a cutesy almagamation Yoko frequently used to refer to them.
“What… is this?” She asks. It’s more a demand, but Enid sulks all the same as if called upon in a full class after neglecting the syllabus.
Her fingers twist in the fabric of her sweater for something to do, trying not to focus on Wednesday’s cool thigh pressed next to hers or the fact Wednesday was willfully on her bed or- when did Wednesday have freckles?
She swallows a giddy noise. “Just a hate comment. It’s not anything-“
“-not anything? Enid, this… this thing called you ugly!” Her voice, usually so stoic is thick with pure loathing. Protective, the wolf in her nudges. Enid gasps at the sound, uncertain and desperate to hear it again.
“This.. who is this? I will flay him alive. No!” She stands with starting speed, the laptop going airborne before Enid can grasp it, her roomate stalking the room with quick movements. “No.. no I will roast him on a briquette! I will have his head on a pike, and oh- my mother will relish in the trophy of his bones for her collection! Truly, Enid, it is magnificent- why are you crying?”
Enid swallows the sob in her throat, going ramrod straight beneath the torrent of near obsidian eyes facing her. It’s not levelled at her, but calls her attention all the same. “Were my threats not satisfactory? Perhaps something grander..”
“No, no Wends they’re all very…” Enid scratches at her face. Wet and salty. She grimaces at the thought of using her new face mask to try and slow the process of aging already. “…Thoughtful.. really, you’re sweet.”
Wednesday doesn’t deflect the compliment, coming to a stop in front of Enid. “Then why do you cry?”
“I..” Enid laughs, despite herself. “I don’t know? I mean- people cry all the time randomly, but… it hurts, getting attacked for your looks you’ve been trying forever to get good, yknow?”
Wednesday blinks down at her roommate. “You frequently feel inadequate?”
“Yeah, I mean…” Enid grabs a teddy from her bed, putting it on her lap for comfort. “Dont you?”
Wednesday’s jaw works- a subtle but real reminder that she’s not just carved from a statue. Enid isn’t quite sure what the fleeting moment means; fear? Shame? Worry?
“I do not.” Ah, uncertainty. “Not in a way about my looks. I aim to look pristine- but it’s as second nature to me as picking up an axe so I suppose I’ve never worried for how anyone else would react…” she offers a quirk to her lips. “So less they would like to meet my axe.”
Enid chuckles, squeezing the octopus (if she had to guess) “Well I’m not as naturally beautiful as you, and so I do care. I care a lot, I guess.”
Wednesday nods thoughtfully, emboldened Enid continues as she fiddles with the ears? Antlers? “I’ve never been good enough. I wasn’t a good enough wolf until I transformed, and I wasn’t a boy so I was pretty much destined to be a failure and oh- when I came out as bi? I failed as a mistake for a kid anyway. I wouldn’t bear pure-bred wolves with a suitor of my parents’ pick, and I wouldn’t ever amount to the same statute my brothers do even if I’m faster or stronger or bigger.
I’ll always be a failed wolf, a failed daughter, a failed… person because I’m not pretty like Yoko or talented as Bianca or as gifted as Ajax. I’m just me. And that’s never enough. And then fuck- I find a group online who care about what I have to say but it’s all meaningless because I look… like this.”
Wednesday stoops, grasping Enid’s hands before the last word has left her lips. The wolf gasps at the feeling- cold meeting warm. It’s too soothing, as her body calms to the touch. It’s like an eclipse, or a hurricane. Watching as the natural disaster passes by within safety and comfort.
She inhales shakily for the moment it exists, but Wednesday’s imploring eyes are all too much- all too seeing that her breath catches and she releases a hitch of a sob, easy to pass off. But Wednesday squeezes her hands, and briefs her the rarest of smiles she’s seen half a times- a fraction of what she’s given others.
The fragment of her heart seizes.
“You, cara mia… oh, how to describe perfection?” Wednesday truly looks perplexed, glancing to the floor with a furrowed brow Enid incessantly wants to smooth. But the goth looks up, her eyes wide and face bright before she can. “You are… how I relish being in your company, Enid. You are a flame to the candle on my desk, forever stoking, forever burning. Impassioning my words that flow endlessly when I must describe anything of beauty… for though I have struggled to ever ascertain its prevalence in my writing, glancing at you is enough to assuage such an insignificant thought. You are glory. You have a mitus touch, Enid.”
Wednesday lifts their hands, poking at the skin gently beneath Enid’s finger until a claw extends. She grins, beguiling in its worship. “How lucky I am, cara mia, to know you. To be honoured enough to be presented in front of you. How lucky I am to live at the same time as you.”
“You don’t meant that. You hate colour.”
Wednesday frowns, her eyes downcast though her hands squeeze tightly to Enid’s her fingers light and probing the sensitive flesh along faintly painted bubblegum claws. Assurance. Provenance. Promise .
“I used to. I still do, so long as it is anyone not Enid. My pallet is monochrome wolf, I suppose.” Her frown furthers. “I’m not afraid… to admit you make me… feel.”
Enid swallows again, again, again, until she is sure she can work something more than a garbled gasp or cry. “Feel.. what?”
Wednesday stops her wandering hands, her face pinched in such an unusual way that Enid thinks to call for an ambulance. But she can’t. Not when Wednesday is holding her hands so tightly, so strong and anchoring it would moor a boat or kill a regular person.
So she waits, with a heartbeat in her temples and hammering up and down her ribs.
“I would pull my teeth and arrange them into a crescent if you ever needed a smile. I would tear the flame from my desk- from my chest to set you alight again. I would sink for you, give you my bones to provide you a float should you ever ask.”
Cheekily, Enid intones playfully, “That’s a long way to say you have a crush.”
The denial doesn’t come. Enid thinks she may just asphyxiate from the heated look the goth shoots at her for the barest of moments, before it smooths into something tender again.
“I would do anything for you. That is not a crush. Not in the Addams family. And you deserve no less than an Addams.”
“I… how long?”
“Longer than you’ve known me I would assume. The first time I met you, I knew.”
“You looked disgusted.”
“That is the highest regard in my family.”
“You should have told me..” Enid murmurs, heart pounding loud enough for Wednesday to hear who simply looks at her with the calm, all consuming look of someone impassively in love.
She squeezes Wednesday’s hands back for the first time, not fearing her nails as she did with Ajax, nor fearing her inhumane strength or her heart.
“I don’t regret it. For I have never been so moved to speak- I am a writer. Not a speaker. But for you? I can be both. So long as you remain you.”
“What if I’m not.. enough for you… if I’m ugly-“
Wednesday holds firm, bringing their white-knuckle gripped hands to her lips in a lavish gesture. Her kiss moves from Enid’s healed fingers to the soft pulse of her wrist, higher, higher, higher still…
“To remain you is far more than enough, Enid.”
Wednesday, striking, giving, giving…