Chapter Text
The rain had been falling for five consecutive hours. It hadn’t yet reached biblical proportions, but Wednesday was taking notes. He’d already calculated the ideal places around campus to construct an ark, should it come to that—just in case the gods decided to wash the sins of Nevermore clean. Again.
(Last "cleansing" was admittedly just Crackstone setting fire to the quad, but you know, semantics.)
He wouldn’t blame the gods. Teenagers were repulsive.
Across the room, Elliot Sinclair was performing what appeared to be a ritual sacrifice to the gods of eyeliner. He sat on his bed—cross-legged, back hunched, tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth as he meticulously tried to draw a wing sharp enough to kill someone with. The effort was admirable. The result was… devastatingly pretty.
Unfortunately.
Wednesday watched him from the opposite side of the dorm, pretending to write in his journal while in reality conducting a psychological autopsy. Elliot, in his soft lilac hoodie and glitter-glazed nails, was not unlike a particularly well-dressed ghost—lingering at the edge of his own reflection, never quite touching it. His blond hair (currently tipped in candyfloss pink and baby blue) was pulled back with a clip shaped like a strawberry. It was all very tragic.
“I’m going for ethereal nymph with unresolved trauma,” Elliot said, inspecting himself in a compact mirror that had a sparkly heart-shaped frame. “But I think I overshot and landed somewhere between ‘queer banshee’ and ‘dragged through Sephora backwards.”
Wednesday didn’t look up. “You look like the love child of a unicorn and a dissociating fashion blogger. It’s unsettling.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You shouldn’t.”
Elliot snorted and flopped back onto the bed like a melodramatic cat. “Why do I even try?” he groaned, throwing an arm over his face. “I should just give up, buy a flannel, and get really into grilling meat. Maybe grow a beard and tell people to call me ‘Big El.’”
“You’d cry if your beard hair clashed with your nail polish,” Wednesday said, dry as embalming powder.
“Fair.” A pause. “But can you imagine me as a lumberjack? Chopping trees. Talking about torque. Spitting into the dirt like I own it.”
“Only if I’ve recently sustained a traumatic brain injury.”
It was all nonsense, of course. The usual banter. But tonight, there was a tension in the air—like the silence between thunderclaps, something just about to fall. Elliot was too still. His hands, usually expressive, were folded tightly against his chest. The question, when it came, was quiet. Casual in tone. Anything but casual in meaning.
“Do you… ever think of me as the woman in this relationship?”
The room fell very, very quiet. Wednesday closed his journal with clinical precision.
“No,” he said.
Elliot inhaled sharply, as if sucker punched in the gut by his boyfriend's single word, then gave a small, awkward laugh. “Yeah. Thought so. I mean… I know I’m not—I’m not that. I'm not-I'm not a...woman, of course. Of course....not a woman' he trailed off, voice high-pitched and trembling slightly.
“You’re correct,” Wednesday said, rising to his feet. “You’re not ‘that.’ You’re this—which is something entirely different and significantly more complicated.”
Elliot blinked. “...What the hell are you on about, Weds?”
“It means,” Wednesday began, pacing toward him with the deliberate menace of a Victorian widow at a séance, “that I’ve been studying you like a pathology textbook, and the conclusion is clear. You are deeply uncomfortable in your skin, subtly repulsed by your reflection, and perform masculinity with the enthusiasm of someone being forced to recite Shakespeare at gunpoint.”
“Wow,” Elliot muttered. “I feel very seen and extremely called out. Didn't have to strip me down like a chicken to its bones.”
Wednesday ignored him. “You avoid pronouns like they’re landmines. You flinch when someone calls you ‘man’ unless it’s sarcastic. You wear perfume and then scrub it off before class. You hide lip gloss behind your asthma inhaler. And for the record, you talk in your sleep. Usually about dresses. Sometimes about having boobs. Once about becoming a mermaid and never having to wear pants again.”
Elliot groaned and rolled onto his side. “God, kill me.”
“A tempting offer,” Wednesday said. “But unfortunately I’ve grown attached.”
Elliot turned his face into the pillow, and his voice came out muffled. “It’s not like I’m really anything. I’m not a girl. Not enough to be one. Not brave enough to say it. And anyway, if I did say anything, who do you think would accept me?”
Wednesday blinked slowly. "I have, already, cara mia. You don’t need to say it,” he continued, voice slivered with the faintest softness. “I see it anyway.”
There was a pause. A beat. Then: “Yeah? What do you see?” Elliot's tone was almost defensive.
Wednesday sat on the edge of the bed, very still. “I see a boy who hates being a boy, but thinks he has to be one. I see someone trying to paint femininity over a canvas he was told to burn. And I see someone who doesn’t know how to ask for softness without being punished for it. I see a girl struggling to break free of a man's body.”
Elliot’s shoulders trembled. Just once. But he didn’t speak.
“I see someone becoming. Not pretending.”
That broke something.
Elliot sat up slowly, eyes glassy and rimmed with mascara he hadn’t gotten to waterproof yet. He looked exhausted. Not in the way people look after exams or bad sleep—but in the way people look when they’ve been holding something in for far too long.
“I don’t even know where I’d start,” he whispered. “I don’t have a new name. Or… or a label. Or any idea what I’m doing.”
“Start here,” Wednesday said. “With the fact that I know. And I’m still here. And I will maim anyone who misgenders you, whether you’ve declared a label or not. If you ever decide to transition, do not, ever, fret for wealth.”
Elliot gave a tearful, unhinged little laugh. “You’re completely insane. My handsome hero, but completely insane”
“I’m in love, and I am no hero” Wednesday said flatly. “It’s far worse.”
He laid back beside Elliot and stared at the ceiling like it had answers. It didn’t. It was just cracked plaster and moths, with light from the multicolored half of the window dancing over it. Beautiful, but temporary. Like most things in life.
“I am becoming like my father,” Wednesday muttered. “He wrote sonnets for my mother. Sang in public. Once bought her a bouquet of human teeth. Love has turned him into a fool.”
Elliot turned toward him, smiling through the mess of his makeup. “And you’re worried you’ll start carrying flowers and calling me "l'amour de ma vie?’”
“I’m worried I’ll do worse,” Wednesday whispered, eyes narrowing. “I’m worried I’ll start caring about your feelings.”
“You already do.” Wednesday closed his eyes and exhaled. “Disgusting.”
Elliot laughed, quietly. Then he whispered, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For seeing me.”
Wednesday reached for his hand under the blanket. “I always have.”
They lay in silence for a moment, the kind of silence that feels purposeful. Not awkward, not accidental. Like a held breath before confession.
“I don’t see you as the ‘woman’ in the relationship, to answer your original question” Wednesday said finally, his voice barely above a murmur. “Because that implies you’re filling a role. Playing a part society assigned you.”
Elliot blinked, surprised by the quiet intensity of it.
“I don’t want you to be the woman in something,” Wednesday continued. “I see you as a woman who was forced to be a man. Like someone shoved into the wrong costume before they ever had a say, and now you’re expected to play along like it doesn’t chafe. I can't say I can relate in this regard, but I do know what it feels like to be forced into a box not meant to hold you. And I know how it feels.”
Elliot’s throat bobbed as he swallowed, eyes shiny again. “You wear this version of yourself like armor,” Wednesday went on. “But I’ve seen what’s underneath. In the way you breathe easier when you’re soft. In the way you look in mirrors like you’re searching for someone who isn’t there. In the way your voice lifts when you’re happy, and you clamp it down like it’s a betrayal.”
He turned his head, looking at Elliot full-on now. “That feeling you have, the one that makes your skin feel like a badly tailored suit… it has a name.”
Elliot held still.
“It’s dysphoria,” Wednesday said, softly. “And it lies. Constantly. It tells you you’re broken, or confused, or faking. But all it really means is that you know who you are—you just weren’t allowed to be them.”
Elliot made a small sound—half a gasp, half a sob—and Wednesday, not knowing what else to do, squeezed his hand.
“Everything about you makes sense to me,” he said, calmly. “Even the parts that don’t make sense to you yet. I fell in love with you for your soul, not your body, not your pronouns. And that'll never change.”
Elliot turned his face into the crook of Wednesday’s neck, mascara smudging on his collarbone. He didn’t cry, not really. Just… exhaled.
Like someone who’d been holding their breath for years.
And Wednesday, for once, didn’t have a sarcastic remark prepared.
He only held on.