Chapter Text
True to his word, Xavier cut Wednesday out of his life, at least outwardly. Inwardly, alone in his shed or in his room, he still sketched and painted her. The first bold girl that tried to make a move on him was rejected soundly. (“Aren’t you broken up?” she’d snapped, annoyed and miffed at being turned down. “I’m still hers,” he’d retorted without looking up from his sketchbook.) Wednesday hadn’t spoken to him after, but he got the sense that she was conflicted about it by the way she glared at him the next time they ran into each other. She should have told him not to hold his breath – that it was useless to wait. Hope was rooted deep in his chest; it needed almost nothing to thrive.
He could tell she was shaken by it. When she wasn’t glowering at people, she had a dazed look on her face. She figured out how to block his number on the phone she barely used and became even more of a loner, barely spending time with Enid.
“She’s in a lot of pain,” the werewolf girl insisted. He wanted to believe it was true, but he also knew that Wednesday delighted in pain, that it was her comfort. She wouldn’t break. He probably would, but he wanted more time to let his anger fester and fill his lungs.
He spent a lot of his time in the graveyard with Morgana Addams’ headstone. Wednesday did, too; he sometimes caught her shadow floating past.
The ground was usually disturbed, the candles in the chapel burning lower. One afternoon, she left her pocketknife behind. Xavier opened it, kissed the blade and traced her name pressed into the handle before leaving it right where he’d found it. He left his hoodie behind in mid-May when it was starting to get warm and wasn’t surprised when it disappeared.
It made him feel like telling her he loved her was the right thing to do in the heat of the moment.
It wasn’t hard to get his dad to agree to let him stay at Nevermore over the summer to work on the pieces he would be submitting to the host of art schools that were interested in him. His grades were exceptional despite the breakup and he scored in the top percentile on his final exams.
Immune to heartbreak, Wednesday topped the class, points ahead of everyone else with only a tight margin between her and Bianca in science. In statistics, he was right behind her.
The Nightshades threw their second annual end of year party and he allowed himself to get irresponsibly wasted. Kent and Ajax dragged him back up to his room and dumped him on his bed. After they left, he kicked his shoes off and tried to sleep, a sick sense of dread pooling in his stomach. He hadn’t wanted to believe until then that things with Wednesday could really be over.
He remembered calling his dad and leaving a very pathetic voicemail about how she’d been his first crush. Vincent never called back about it or offered any words of comfort. He didn’t even reprimand him about getting drunk.
He spent the next few days in his shed as the rest of the school packed up and made plans for their summer. Ajax was going on a road trip with Enid. Bianca and her pod were planning on spending a few months in tropical waters. He chose not to share his plans, wanting the kind of solitude he wouldn’t get from being in one of his dad’s massive houses.
Vespertine coolly informed him that it would be a waste of funds and resources to lodge him in his dorm for the summer. “You’ll be staying in the staff dorms on campus.” The room wasn’t too different from his, albeit smaller and on the ground floor. Half of the staff would still be around, so he wouldn’t be totally unsupervised.
On the last day before the campus closed to students, Xavier threw together what clothes and toiletries he thought he’d need in a duffel and went down to the foyer of the hall to see Ajax off. His friend was waiting by the door with lumpy backpack strapped to his back, prattling away into his cell phone. Xavier recognized the gentle, wheedling tone he used with his parents; they were wary of Enid. Though they were certainly more supportive than her mom, the last Parents’ Day dinner had been awkward. At the time, Xavier and Wednesday had still been together and had offered – Wednesday reluctantly – to sit with them and offer moral support. Wednesday’s forced hospitality mean that Xavier had done a lot of emotional heavy lifting himself. The aftermath had led to one of their colder fights.
“Have a good trip, man,” Xavier pulled him into a one-armed hug.
“Check it out,” Ajax pulled something from his pocket, a laminated itinerary a few feet long. It was extremely detailed. “Wednesday helped make it. She said that if anything happens to Enid on this trip, she’s going to have my head as a bust for her dad’s cigar room.”
He must have had a pained look on his face because the gorgon immediately folded the schedule and stuffed it back in his jacket pocket. “Where are you going for the summer?” He clocked the duffel. “Packing light.”
A blur of color slammed into Ajax’s side.
“Are you ready? I don’t want to miss the bus!” Enid pestered her boyfriend, laughing. The backpack on her bag was nearly twice as big.
“Go ahead,” Xavier said, lightly punching his shoulder. “I’m just headed to the staff dorm.”
Enid’s mouth fell open and she stuttered something unintelligible. “Wait what.”
“I’m staying on campus for the summer, working on a mural for the school and the series I’m submitting for college admissions.”
“Oh.” She nodded enthusiastically. “Great.” She tugged frantically at Ajax’s arm, biting her lip. “Have a great summer.” Ajax shrugged and let himself be pulled along, calling over his shoulder that he’d send pictures.
Xavier went to the staff dorm and reported to Coach Vlad, got the key to his room for the summer, and dumped his stuff before heading to his shed for the rest of the day.
The mural was easier to work on and more pressing. Vespertine wanted it done and ready to reveal at the beginning of the next school year in September. The scale was much bigger than anything he’d worked on before. He’s done a few mockups and test canvases to show the school board. Most of them had been around for ages – members of Vespertine’s own coven – and were not easy to please. Eventually they settled on a design and approved a budget for materials. All that was left before the actual priming of the wall was testing the paint and color palettes. The wall was along the main administration office building, south-facing. The windows opposite were huge. Xavier would have to swatch his different paint selections and watch the wall, checking in at different points of the day to see how the light hit.
He also had to take measurements to make sure his scale was accurate and practice using the airbrush tool he’d managed to add to the budget. That afternoon and into the evening, he stacked canvases, visualizing. By the time he got back to the dorm, it was late and past dinner. Coach Vlad reminded him that no one would be obligated to be at his beck and call for anything.
Xavier had a hard time falling asleep. The bed was a bit wider than his and lower to the ground. The mattress was at least as firm as his.
He dreamt that he was walking through a graveyard with Wednesday, one he didn’t know.
The water in the bathroom was tepid and slightly brown, but Xavier didn’t care enough to complain about it. As far as he could tell, no one had been tasked with supervising him. His dad’s assistant had sent him an email calendar reminding him of all his therapy appointments and advising him to take the bus or cab into town. His allowance had a 10% spike for the summer, too.
He dressed and headed over to the staff canteen for breakfast. Besides coach, two of his teachers from the past year were there and a few groundskeepers. He grabbed a plate and distractedly piled it with toast and eggs. His dreams had left him feeling oddly calm and settled.
“You don’t have a curfew, but we will have to notify a guardian if we don’t see you at least once a day,” one of the teachers reminded him pouring herself a large cup of coffee and topping it off with a dallop of something from a flask. “You, too, Addams.” She tipped her mug upward in the direction of Xavier’s shoulder.
Xavier turned around and met Wednesday’s eyes.
He ditched his breakfast and headed down the hallway back to his room. Behind him, he heard Wednesday’s barely audible, tight pace. He sighed and waited. When she got to him, her face was pinched in anger.
“What are you doing here?”
They hadn’t been this close since that day in March when he’d told her he loved her. He had to take a step back, overwhelmed by the urge to kiss her.
“I’m staying on campus for the summer, working on a mural for the school and the series I’m submitting for college admissions.”
She looked down at their feet, pointed at each other. “I see.”
“I’m not going to ask what you’re doing here,” he said, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “I’ll stay out of your way.” He stepped past her to unlock his door.
Wednesday stared at him. “That’s your room?”
“What’s it matter?”
She bit her lip and glanced hastily across the hall. “Never mind,” she said.
He couldn’t help being curious why she was there. After a tense morning of not getting anything done, he considered texting Enid, remembering how she’d reacted when she found out he was staying for the summer. He could guess what her response would be. After the breakup, she’d tried a few times to get them to talk to each other.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to.
He just knew Wednesday better than that.
If she wanted to talk to him, she would initiate the conversation. He risked losing her forever if he didn’t wait her out.
A few days later, he got his answer, overhearing the groundskeepers talking as they pruned the trees along the south lawn. He was planning on spending the day in front of the mural wall, tracking the light and deciding which colors were best.
“Are you doing an internship, too?” one of them called out to him. “The Addams girl got an assignment at the morgue in town.”
He told them about the mural and went to his room to change into work clothes to start outlining. The compressor was heavy, but coach let him use a dolly from the maintenance closet to cart it back and forth. It wasn’t that expensive, but it wasn’t technically his, so he had to be responsible for it.
An internship at the morgue seemed like exactly the sort of thing that would happen to Wednesday. He smirked to himself, imagining the blood vessel the sheriff must have burst when he heard. He imagined how Wednesday would have gloated about it.
At dinner, she sat very stoically at the other end of the long table and didn’t look at him once. He decided to follow her lead and ignore her, too, texting Bianca instead. Ajax had sent pictures as promised, but Xavier couldn’t bring himself to text him yet. He knew that it wasn’t anyone’s fault that it had been a secret to everyone that they were each going to be staying on campus for the summer.
He went to therapy at the end of the first week there. His new therapist wasn’t as malleable as Kinbott had been in regards to the press, but it didn’t matter. No one was paying attention to him. There wasn’t anything new to talk about except his plans for college. Life on his own. It was daunting. The session ended before he could mention Wednesday.
After dinner, he paced his room, sat down to sketch, got up to pace. He could tell it was going to be the sort of night plagued by nightmares. It would be hard to sleep. He brushed his teeth and took two of the prescription pills for night anxiety before turning out the light close to midnight.
In the morning, the first thing he noticed was that the door was open.
Not wide.
A sliver of light broke the early morning darkness. He got up uneasily and closed it. As he picked his way around the bed to get to the bathroom, he nearly tripped. The narrow chair that had been tucked into the desk under the window was turned completely upside-down in the middle of the floor. He looked over his shoulder at the door again, unsure that he’d actually closed it. On the desk, a few loose sketches he’d had spread out had been stuffed into his sketchbook.
He went into the bathroom and washed his face with the cold, greyish water and took his morning antipsychotic. As soon as the sun came up, he laced his running shoes and took to his favorite path, turning the music up as high as he could tolerate. He skipped breakfast and went straight to the shed. For his college submissions, he was putting together a series of five pieces with a theme. Midyear, he’d been pretty sure what the theme would be, but now he wasn’t so sure. Everything he thought of brought him back to Wednesday.
Before bed, he heard the steady drumming of her typewriter coming from the room directly across the hall.
so… Weds is here, too he texted Ajax.
On Sunday morning, every one of the drawers in his dresser was open. The door was closed, but unlocked.
ghost? Ajax suggested, with the emoji.
“Is this building haunted?” he asked at breakfast Tuesday. The only response he got was a few skeptical murmurs, but at the end of the table, Wednesday’s gaze flickered in his direction. “Twice in the past week I’ve woken up with some of the furniture moved around.”
“If it persists, we can move you to another room,” coach assured him, but he didn’t seem concerned.
On his way out to the wall to work on the mural, he saw Wednesday waiting at the curb. She was dressed as somberly as usual. “Xavier,” she called flatly as he approached.
“You’re taking a cab today?” As much as he tried to avoid watching her, he’d seen her walking toward the bus stop the last few weekdays after breakfast.
“The poltergeist,” she prompted, ignoring his question. “Has it harmed you in any way?”
He studied her face and was surprised and hopeful to see genuine concern there. “No.”
“Not yet,” she amended, her voice hard.
Feeling bold, he leaned down and whispered, “Come scare it away, then.”
She inhaled sharply and glared at him. The taxi pulled up and he gallantly opened the door for her and watched until it was out of sight. She didn’t show up at dinner, and the sound of her typewriter keys faltered all night. The rhythm took him back to last year when they were still together, sitting next to her while she typed, a lap easel propped up on his thighs. He fell asleep easily, without any medication.
The water from the sink was clearer the next morning, and everything was in its place.
Wednesday didn’t speak to him for three whole days.
On Friday morning he woke up to the chair upside-down in front of his door. The dresser had been pushed over so that the drawers were pressed against the floor. It was too wide and cumbersome to lift, so he pulled on the same outfit from yesterday that had been discarded on the floor. It was flecked with paint and worn soft under the arms and the inseam. Bitterly, he remembered that it was an outfit that Wednesday liked; the shirt was worn thin and snagged where she’d grasped at him, a hole in the pants pocket where she’d dug her hands in deep. There were permanent stains at the hem that looked like blood splatter. He’d thought about burning them more than once.
When she opened the door, he was startled to see her there.
“It’s haunting my room, too,” she said tersely, without preamble.