Work Text:
Enid came out of the shower wearing some shorts and one of Wednesday’s oversized t-shirts (which didn't look that oversized on her), and wrapping her hair in a turquoise towel. She had grown it longer since high school, and it already reached the height of her shoulders. Even so, she continued dyeing her tips pink and blue, they were a bit of her personal trademark. Now they were more pastel than when she was younger, though.
She walked barefoot to Wednesday's office, humming the last tune she was on loop with. Although they shared the rest of the rooms of their apartment, they had decided to have separate work spaces. On the one hand, because Enid usually had several videocall meetings a week, and the rest of the time played music to focus, while Wednesday needed complete silence to work. On the other hand, Wednesday had often brought photos (and even) evidence of crime scenes and let's say that they had all ended up with Enid at a more or less level of fainting.
For the sake of their relationship and their productivity, each had their working spaces. Enid had a reserved room behind the dining room and Wednesday a small study next to the bedroom.
Wednesday was leaning back slightly in her seat, sipping a cup of tea while still concentrating on reading. Her mug had an angry cartoon black car the message “Good morning, Mr. Grumpy Pants!” written on it and Wednesday detested, but it has been a “funny Christmas gift” from Enid and now she used it daily. Enid entered silently. Only the small sips that Wednesday took from her mug and the turning of the pages on the table could be heard.
If someone asked Enid what she liked most about living with her girlfriend she would say this. The tranquility and peace she could breathe, the slice-of-life mundane moments, the security that she transmitted. Enid, who lived in a constant chaos of noise and music, could spend the day in silence with Wednesday and enjoy every second of it. She just loved her girlfriend so much.
Wednesday had completed her double degree in Criminology and Forensic Medicine with honors, although she only used her title to sneak into investigations and morgues and gain access to police files and other records.
She actually spent most of her time writing. At this time she was resting after the release of her latest book, the fourth volume of the acclaimed best-seller Viper De La Muerte saga, which in less than a year was already in its third edition. Wednesday didn’t do tours or more press conferences than were strictly necessary, but the months before the book's launch, between last minute adjustments, visits to the printer, calls, meetings and so on, she ended up exhausted, and she always gave herself a few months of rest before starting her work routine again. The plot of the fifth book was inevitably already developing in her head, though.
However, she now had another task at hand. And that was correcting the draft of Enid's book.
If you had asked the Enid from ten years ago about her life now she wouldn't have believed it. Or rather she couldn't have believed it.
To begin with, that she is completely and madly in love with Wednesday Addams, and that she is equally in love with her. If upon entering Nevermore someone had told either of them everything that was going to happen right after, that they were going to be dating ten years later even if they started out as deluded, awkward girls in high school, they would have thought that person was crazy (and Wednesday probably would have issued a couple of death threats).
But there they were, and they were the same, although everything had changed so much.
Everything Enid thought was going to happen in her life when she was little, had turned upside down. And to think that never being able to wolf out and cutting ties with her pack would have led her to where she was now, being the happiest she thought she could ever be, is what would have shocked her little self the most.
Shortly after she turned seventeen and started dating Wednesday, her family sent her to a conversion camp and that was the last straw. It was what triggered Enid to look coldly and objectively at her family and her interactions in her childhood, and make her see what she really wanted: to get out of there, to grow, to heal.
From the first moment, the Addamses had been nothing but the support and family that she had always needed. The road had been long, with ups and downs. But Wednesday had been her biggest anchor and support, flooding her with love and soft words, helping her slowly gain self-confidence.
While Wednesday was very clear about what she wanted to do, Enid took a long time to decide. She knew she wanted to help people, and she wanted to interact and not be in an office, she wanted change and movement, and she wanted it to be something that meant something. And it was Wednesday who encouraged her to take all of that and tell her story.
So Enid had studied at the same university as her, close to home (the Addams Manor, that is), on the east coast, and sharing a room, of course. There were few outcast universities in the country, and many of her Nevermore classmates ended up there too. Since second year they shared a flat with Yoko and the mermaids, and they were the best years Enid could have asked for.
Enid came in with an excellent cover letter, a good record award, and a personal recommendation from Principal Weems. She enrolled in a double degree in Psychology and Social Services, with a minor in Pedagogy, in addition to joining all the clubs that the university had to offer, her social butterfly nature eager to know all the possibilities that this new world was capable of offering her.
She had then discovered an unexpected number of other werewolves who could not transform either, and who lived in the shadows after having been discriminated against and kicked out from their packs. She had also other marginalized people from other outcast species who, because they did not have the hegemonic powers of her species, were disowned from their respective communities. In the vast majority of cases, these offenses were used as a mere excuse to whitewash other reasons for hatred. It was those groups, those talks, and those friends that planted a powerful seed that would direct Enid's career irremediably.
Enid gathered enough people to create a support group for these outcasts, raised funds to help those who were vulnerable due to having been expelled from their packs or coven, and wrote articles, reports and papers to raise awareness about their situation. This caught the attention of the academy, which proposed that she continue her project with the support of the university, and thus Enid managed to create a sustainable network and raise awareness by giving talks at outcast institutes and creating support groups for adults who had already been, or were still through that rought path.
After having completed her thesis on her journey and research, she had gained enough support, fame and confidence to take it to a more personal level.
And that's what her book was about. How her greatest fear had become her best weapon, of everything she had learned in those last decade, of her history.
That is precisely why she wanted the first person to review it to be the person who knew her best, who had been there from the beginning and who had helped her every step of the way. Her girlfriend, who coincidentally was also a renowned best-seller writer.
Wednesday had printed the manuscript of the book, as she always did with her own, to read it calmly and note down the necessary corrections. Enid looked at the papers spread out on her desk and saw a pile of red marks all across the pages. Crosses, arrows, circles, question marks everywhere.
That couldn't be good.
She slowly approached the desk, and placed a kiss on her girlfriend’s dark crown, lightly inhaling the familiar scent of lavender before parting her lips.
Wednesday hummed making her presence known, as she had been so focused that she hadn't even heard her girlfriend enter the office. She brushed a strand of hair from her face and took off the dark reading glasses she had been wearing from a few years ago for work, and turned in her chair to accept a soft kiss on her cheek.
Shortly after starting college, she had discarded her trademark symmetrical braids, opting instead for a single braid that usually fell over one of her shoulders. She had also grown her longer bangs in recent years, the curtain of her youth giving way to two strands that framed her face. And she would never admit it out loud, but since she let her hair down more often and let her scalp breathe, her chronic migraines had reduced considerably.
“So, how is it going, babe?”, Enid asked softly but slightly nervously, biting her lower lip with a fang.
“I'm almost done”, Wednesday replied, “If you want, I can show you the notes I have been writing down”.
“Okay”, the blonde nodded, “give me a moment to hang the towel and I'll bring a chair”.
When she returned Wednesday put the thick stack of pages between them so Enid could look at her notes.
“Most annotations are suggestions or stylistic corrections to help understand some sentences and facilitate reading”, Wednesday said. “The only substantial correction that I have noted is the change in the order of these chapters”, she added, pointing to each of the respective numbers in the index. “I consider that your readers, as people outside your story, will better understand the situation and chronology if you explain this chapter first before this one”.
Enid nodded. She completely trusted Wednesday's judgment and knew that all of her corrections would be relevant. Besides, she didn't need to review what she had written to know that her girlfriend was right in the order of the chapters.
She turned the pages as she observed the red lines, the asterisks with notes in the margins in immaculate handwriting, the commas added to further pause her ramblings, the arrows, underlines and strikeouts.
Every red mark she saw increased her concern. Every page was basically full of red, maybe she shouldn't have agreed to do this? She was a good speaker, but maybe she didn't have what it took to be a writer. And Wednesday was a very good one, perhaps she had disappointed her? Seeing everything she had to cross out just in her first reading.
“Did you dislike my corrections?”, Wednesday asked with concern, seeing Enid's frown and the nervous nibbling of her lower lip. “I have tried to be as honest and extensive as possible, I don't know what your editor has done for previous drafts”.
“The editor hasn't seen anything yet”, Enid murmured with a sigh, leaving the stack of papers on the table. “This is my first draft”.
“This is the first one?”, her girlfriend asked in disbelief, her eyes widening slightly.
“Is it that bad?”, Enid whined.
“Bad? Of course not”, Wednesday huffed with a scowl.
“Then why are you angry?”, the taller girl insisted.
“Because, querida, after ten years together I just discovered that you are an incredible writer and I had no idea”, the brunette responded, leaning in her chair to take both of her hands.
Enid opened and closed her mouth several times before being able to say anything.
“What? Really?”, she managed to ask.
"Enid, it's... it's you", Wednesday said, her voice soft and her eyes bright, giving her hands a squeeze. “I read it and I hear you as if you were telling it to me. It's enjoyable, funny in the parts it needs to be, emotional without ever being melodramatic. It's your story told in your words, and I have lived it with you, and you've told it to me over and over again, but it seemed like I was getting to know it with new eyes”. She separated one of her clasped hands to tap the pages on the table with her finger. “If this is the first time you write it, I must congratulate you, because you have a talent that few have”.
“But you had already read my stuff before”, Enid stammered, realizing that tears were falling down her cheeks.
“Your thesis uses a different register and resources, and cannot be judged in the same way”, Wednesday replied. “You know it was an extraordinary job, but you couldn't appeal to the humorous or emotional factor as you do in the book. It is the first time I have read something of yours that is not an academic work”.
“Well, you read my blog back on Nevermore”, the blonde pointed out with a chuckle.
Wednesday couldn’t help but grimace.
“Don't worry, I know you hated it!”, Enid let out a full laugh.
“Although it was not of my… interest and that weighs heavily on my opinion about it”, Wednesday replied slowly, trying not to use harsh words, “there were many… questionable paragraphs”.
“I was sixteen!”, the taller girl protested.
“And look how much you have grown”, the Addams girl responded with a small smirk.
“Yeah, little Enid would be proud, don't you think?”, Enid let out a watery chuckle.
“Of course”, Wednesday responded seriously, leaning back in her chair. “I am, at least. And you?”
“Yeah, actually”, she sighed, wiping her eyes with the heels of her hand.
Wednesday looked at her full of awe, and took one of her hands to gently kiss her knuckles. Enid loved it when she did that.
“By the way, querida”, she said, “I hope you don't mind, but I left your cell phone back in your office. You left it here before the shower and it kept chiming and I needed to concentrate”.
Enid chuckled and squeezed her hand, knowing her girlfriend need for a quiet workspace.
“It’s probably Yoko”, Enid hummed on her way to her office, “t's her anniversary with Divina soon and I think she was going to buy her a gift tomorrow, she'll want to ask me for feedback”.
She grabbed her phone from her desk and looked at her notifications. She had a lot of texts (although she had finished university, she was still involved in quite a few groups), but she left them for later and looked for the chat that interested her. Indeed, Yoko had sent her several photos of her ideas to ask for her opinion. She responded quickly with an audio of what she thought about each thing, and reviewed the rest of her notifications.
She had a new email that she was quick to look at immediately afterwards.
With an excited squeal, she sat up and turned on her laptop, downloading the attached file. She had been waiting for that moment for so long that she had almost forgotten it.
She had hired a friend of hers from college who was a designer and illustrator to design the cover. Since the book process was going to be slow, they could take that assignment apart from their work. They knew Enid well, and following the ideas the woman had, they had perfectly captured how she imagined the book cover. They had worked with her trademark pinks and blues perfectly, a centered illustration combining with the title, simple but effective, without overloading the design too much, and at the top her name as author. It was simple, but attractive, and so cute.
She loved it. It was perfect.
Without waiting a minute, she grabbed her laptop and ran to the other office, to show it to Wednesday.
“Babe, look at this!”, she said excitedly.
“What is it?”, Wednesday asked calmly, taking back her glasses to get a better look.
“It’s the cover, for the book! I just received it”, Enid chirped, leaving the laptop on the table and crouching next to the chair.
Enid watched as Wednesday's eyes moved over each element on the screen. She didn't say anything.
Maybe she didn't like it? The covers of the Viper saga were very dark and sober, practically only the title and her name (in bright black letters in low relief for the special editions) and a small illustration under them (a skull, a knife, a vial of poison, and a rose respectively for each of the first four volumes). Perhaps Wednesday thought it was too naïve, or colorful, or unserious, to be a proper published book.
Then Enid saw where Wednesday's eyes were really focusing, on top of the page.
“Enid Addams”, Wednesday murmured. “You signed as Enid Addams”.
Oh, right.
She had forgotten about that.
“Wednesday, I-”, she started, but cut herself.
Could Wednesday be mad about it? They hadn’t really talked about… well, that, and maybe she was overstepping, and Wednesday was just frozen, oh god Enid just say something-
“Well, with all the trouble you had for the publication of the fourth book, and I was giving the talks when I had to ask for the cover design, we didn’t really have time to talk and well, ask you about it, for the book I mean”, she started to ramble, her hands moving all over, inevitably gesticulating. “I mean - I wanted to talk about it properly, but we’ve been all over the place, and when I thought about taking that decision about the cover I thought that you wouldn’t mind and that we could talk about it at another time. But then with everything that's been going on I forgot, honestly”, she groaned, mentally facepalming herself. “Because the thing is that I thought well, one thing is my academic papers and that kinda stuff, to sign them as 'Sinclair', but- but I didn't want this to have... her name, you know? It just doesn't work for me to use that last name anymore, it hasn't felt good to me for years and well, the publisher said that this was going to take a long time, and-and there’s still time for changes! Or no changes, well, I mean it's not rushing or anything and it doesn't have to mean anything-
“Querida, what are you-?”, Wednesday tried to say between her girlfriend's nervous rambles.
“This is a disaster. I had everything prepared!”, Enid whined to herself covering her face with her hands.
Well, not everything, but she had at least kind of a speech, and the ring and-
The ring.
Enid got up all of a sudden and stormed out of the room.
Wednesday got up from the chair and left her glasses with a trembling hand on the desk, looking at the door where her girlfriend had just run out in fright.
That made her think about her discarded manuscripts for the next volume of Viper, the one she had planned with precisely a ring on the cover. She had been foreshading that plot since the end of the third book, and all her notes for the fifth and final volume of the saga were attempts at speeches in which Viper asks Evelyn for her hand in marriage. Evelyn Callahan was Enid's alter ego, inevitable created after Wednesday first year in Nevermore, co-protagonist from the second volume, romantic interest in the third, Viper's girlfriend from the fourth, and soon to be wife by the end of the story. Hopefully, if she could develop the story right.
Over the past few months, it had become increasingly clear to her that her writer's block wasn't due to her alter ego's blockage, but rather her own fear of that next step. The words just didn't come out right. Not written, not spoken. Not for Viper, not for her. They weren't enough, not for Evelyn, not for Enid.
She remembered these last few months, how between press conferences and car trips to meetings with the publisher she had written in her well-worn notebook ideas for dialogues and monologues in which Viper declared her unconditional love for Evelyn, how she had made her improve and realize so many things in their adventures during the plot, how much she adored her, and how she wasn’t able to imagine a world without her... all so that at the end of each of those scribbled fragments she realized that she was actually projecting everything she wanted to say to Enid to ask her to marry her.
Wednesday had wanted to be her wife since they had finished high school, but it seemed wise to wait a few more years to take that step (along with once Enid telling her explicitly that she wanted to 'be a little older and wait for it'). She thought that maybe finishing their degrees was a good time, but Enid had been so busy lately, and when she was at the end of her thesis she had too much to worry about, it just wasn't the time, not yet.
But now she wondered if maybe, if Enid maybe… Enid thought it was time?
Before she could formulate a coherent speech, Enid entered again, almost falling to the ground to kneel in front of her, with wide eyes and on the verge of tears.
In her hand there was indeed a ring. A black metal ring with a delicate small pink stone.
“It's not what I wanted and I don't know if it's what you expected, but I've been thinking about this for a long, long time”, Enid stumbled nervously and cleared her throat, “and when I finished the thesis I thought it was time, or later, when you finished your book tour, but I never knew when it was the right time, y’know? Or-or what to say or how to say it. I guess I should just say it, it's just that-”, she shook her head and sighed, “Wednesday-”
“Yes”.
Wednesday covered her mouth, surprised at her impatient eagerness.
“You didn't let me finish”, Enid tried to stay serious, but she let out a chuckle.
“Apologies, querida”, she murmured, with a slightly embarrassed blush. “Please, continue”.
Enid took a deep breath and tried again, this time with a soft smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes.
“Wednesday Friday Addams, would you marry me?”, she asked.
Wednesday immediately knelt down, still looking into her favorite blue eyes, grabbed her face with both hands and brought her closer to give her a firm, passionate kiss.
“If you had asked me a thousand times, I would have said yes a thousand times”, she told her, brushing her lips and stroking a strand of blonde hair from her face. “In fact…”
Wednesday turned, still on her knees, and dug under her stack of papers in her first drawer, pulling out a small black box.
“Oh my god, no way ”, Enid gasped at the sight of it.
"Did you perhaps ask Thing for advice on which ring to choose?", the brunette asked.
"Of course I did! You too? He picked us matching rings, the rascal", she laughed.
“I've been wanting to ask you for a while too, but you once told me you'd let me know when it was time…”, she said, opening the box.
“Oh my god Wednesday, I told you that when we were seventeen ”, Enid laughed with watery eyes, staring at the beautiful ring, soft pink metal, with a small black stone, matching hers. "And yes, it is time", she said softly. "I've been wanting to ask you for months anyway".
"It seems that we were both in the same situation, querida", Wednesday hummed with a smirk.
“You’re a dork”, Enid chuckled.
“Don’t talk like that to your future wife”, the shorter girl replied as she put the ringer on the blonde’s finger.
Enid did the same as silent tears ran down her cheeks. Her fiancee (fiancee!) kiss her soft and chastely once more, while cleaning her cheeks with her thumbs.
“Now I can show you my draft for the fifth book, I think you will find it interesting”, Wednesday suggested with a smirk.
“You have it already?”, Enid gasped. “What is it about?”
“Let's say that Viper has a very important question to ask Evelyn”.