Chapter Text
Enid’s hand shot out for her phone and met only cold mattress and a fistful of crumpled duvet. Groggy annoyance blinked her further awake. The apartment above Reaper & Sons usually started the day with some kind of obnoxious alarm—her playlist, creaking pipes, or the jazz music from that one funeral home employee. Today, though, the first sound came in narrow strokes.
Scratch. Pause. Scratch-scratch.
Enid rolled onto her stomach, squinted against the morning light, and spotted the source: Wednesday already up, already dressed, already seated at the antique writing desk by the window with curled shoulders, meaning she’d been there for hours.
A normal sight, yes, except for the fact Wednesday wore Enid’s hoodie—the lavender one with the cartoon wolf that read Howl You Doin’? in bubbly letters, a Christmas gift from her dad that Wednesday described as “an affront to the abused children who crafted it.” The sleeves hung past her wrists, bunching around her knuckles, and the oversized fabric swallowed her enough to make her seem smaller, younger, almost… fragile. Which was absurd; Wednesday Addams had never been fragile. The sleepshirt she usually wore—black silk, buttons to her throat, edges trimmed in a lace that belonged to some long-dead great-great aunt—peeked out beneath the hem.
It was alarming, not because Wednesday didn’t borrow Enid’s clothes.
Because she did.
Only when something was deeply, fundamentally wrong.
“I can feel you staring,” Wednesday said without looking. “Your gaze has a physical presence, akin to a golden retriever breathing down my neck.”
“Sorry.” Enid wasn’t sorry, and they both knew it. “You just make a very stare-able picture. Very brooding romantic lead. Very ‘woman contemplating the meaninglessness of existence while wearing incredibly cute borrowed clothing.’”
Wednesday’s writing paused. She turned her head enough for Enid to catch her profile—the sharp cut of cheekbone, the dark smudge beneath her eye, the downward curve at her lips. When she finally twisted, meeting Enid’s gaze, it came into full focus: the hollows looked deeper than they had last week, skin bruised with exhaustion, and there was a firmness around her mouth that made her look older than twenty-two.
“Did the dead wake you up, or is this another dawn torture ritual?”
Enid patted the empty half of the bed, fingers splaying across rumpled sheets where Wednesday should’ve been. The mattress had gone cold hours ago, which meant she had been up since—what, four? Earlier? The clock read 9:17 am, and Enid tried to recall when she last woke to find Wednesday beside her, sleeping, unguarded in a way that only happened during rest.
Wednesday set the pen down and flexed her fingers, working out a stiffness that Enid pretended not to notice. “I have a paper due for my seminar. Professor Chavez expects nothing less than intellectual devastation by tomorrow, and I prefer to work before the Kowalskis begin their daily dispute over garbage receptacles.”
“Okay, but counterpoint—” Enid gestured to the mug beside Wednesday, “—you’ve been up for hours and haven’t even touched your coffee. Which means either someone kidnapped my real girlfriend and replaced her with a doppelgänger, or—”
Her words cut off when Wednesday began to stand, because she suddenly braced the desk, knuckles blanching, eyes losing focus. For a horrible second, she looked like she might crumple and fold and simply shatter.
Enid was out of bed in an instant, hand reaching—
Until Wednesday straightened again. She realigned with the stubborn force Enid recognized from a hundred different moments: Wednesday in the infirmary after the Crackstone night, Wednesday at her typewriter in their dorm with a 104-degree fever she insisted was “merely warm,” Wednesday in the bathroom last week dry-heaving and still claiming she was fine, fine, completely fine. Her fingers smoothed back the hair that had fallen across her face, and when she finally met Enid’s eyes, her gaze flattened.
“The human body occasionally reminds me that it exists. A tedious inconvenience.”
Enid paused, heart threshing, hands hanging uselessly at her sides because she knew Wednesday wouldn’t allow the implication that she needed catching. “You sure? Because that looked—”
“I said I’m fine.” Wednesday’s jaw worked for a moment before she softened her expression. “I apologize. That was unnecessarily harsh, I simply require caffeine.”
Enid accepted the excuse, because there was no other choice. She padded across the room and looped her arms around Wednesday’s waist, pressing her nose into the borrowed hoodie. The fabric smelled like her own detergent—the cheerful fruity blend that Wednesday complained about—but there was also Wednesday: ink and cold coffee and the formaldehyde-and-roses scent that became synonymous with home.
Beneath the fabric, Wednesday’s body felt cool in a way beyond morning chill, or drafty windows, or temperamental radiators.
“You’re freezing,” Enid murmured against her shoulder. “You’re, like, my wife-shaped ice pack. Is this why you stole my hoodie? Because you’re secretly a reptile and you’ve been lying to me this whole time?” The word wife slipped out, and Enid blazed red. “Wait—no. Girlfriend-shaped . No—partner-shaped? What are we again? I keep losing track.”
Wednesday stilled, neither leaning into the embrace nor pulling away, which felt like an answer on her own. “Specific labels are unnecessary constructs designed to simplify complex dynamics for the benefit of those too stupid to comprehend nuance,” she said, voice flat, though her posture unclenched by degrees. “You are Enid. I am Wednesday. The rest is semantics.”
“Mm, very romantic. I’m swooning.”
“You’re easily excited.”
Enid laughed and kissed the curve of her neck. Wednesday tolerated the embrace for a further five seconds, which was an eternity by her standards, before she disentangled carefully and stepped toward the door.
“I need to shower,” she murmured, reaching for the frame. “And dress. And perhaps consume sustenance, since you’ve made it clear my mortality is somehow your business.”
“Hey.” Enid caught Wednesday’s wrist before she could escape. “You’d tell me if something’s actually wrong, right? Like, seriously wrong?”
Wednesday turned, and her mask flickered, revealing a glimpse of private exhaustion, before she smoothed it over and offered a small smile. “Enid, if something were seriously wrong, you would be the first to know.” She wriggled away from the grip, dropping down to give Enid’s fingers a brief squeeze, before slipping out of the room.
Enid remained for a moment, fingers still curled where Wednesday’s hand had been, the imprint of cold skin lingering against her palm like an unanswered question. She watched the open doorway where Wednesday had vanished, listening to the distant creak of pipes and the faint rush of water from the bathroom as the shower kicked to life. But waiting here invited thinking, and thinking would veer into unhelpful directions, so she squared her shoulders and went into the hall. Breakfast first; panic later. That order kept her functional through enough crises to qualify as life philosophy.
The kitchen hardly deserved the name; the funeral home’s original developers apparently viewed “food preparation” as an optional luxury for people who didn’t have corpses downstairs. A narrow strip of counter hugged one wall, the fridge belonged in a museum, and the stove’s pilot light possessed cruel timing. Still, Enid had coaxed the space into something livable: pastel dish towels, a calendar with cartoon cats, mismatched mugs from thrift stores and occult fairs. A tiny snake-shaped succulent sat in the windowsill, its ceramic fangs painted by Thing during last month’s visit.
She flipped the faucet handle, and the pipes responded with their usual metallic protest before water stuttered out. Steam climbed from the sink, curling against chipped tiles as she cupped her hands beneath the stream, checked the temperature, then reached for the pan hanging from a crooked hook. Butter hit metal with a soft hiss, spreading into a glossy pool that smelled like weekends at her dad’s place and college finals fueled by grilled cheese at 2 am. The familiarity evened her breathing and loosened her shoulders another fraction.
Eggs followed, their yolks wobbling gently in the butter. She sprinkled salt, pepper, and a pinch of smoked paprika purely because Wednesday once admitted it made the dish “slightly less offensive.” Bread was shoved into the toaster as Enid snagged sprinkles from the shelf. Its label read UNICORN BLAST in neon letters, which the contents backed up: tiny stars, hearts, rods, all violently saturated. Tucked behind a box of obscure tea sat a smaller jar of black sugar crystals Enid tracked down online, marketed as “goth baking essentials.” She grabbed both, set them on the counter, and hummed along to the song threading from the automated speaker.
Humming also helped. It stuffed the corners of her head with something other than medical forms and half-heard phrases from Wednesday’s last clinic visit. Enzymes. Monitoring. Follow-up. That appointment technically counted as “routine”, according to the doctor, which should have comforted her.
And yet.
She flipped the eggs, easing them onto slices of toast that had popped up perfectly golden. The plate looked vaguely respectable, and for any ordinary human, that might have been enough. Wednesday, however, approached food with suspicion, so Enid reached for the black sprinkles and coaxed them into an uneven ring around each yolk. A few rainbow stars slipped in among the dark crystals and were left out of spite.
“Breakfast art,” she muttered, more to the plate than to herself. “You’ll win her over through the power of aesthetics, or at least guilt.”
Water shut off down the hall, pulling Enid’s head up; she grabbed a dish towel, wiped a streak of butter from the counter, and resisted the urge to rehearse gentle badgering for the clinic reminder.
Soon enough, footsteps approached and Wednesday appeared in the doorway. Damp braids hung over her shoulders, not yet as tight as she usually wore, stray strands clinging to her neck. At least she had followed her routine: black skirt, black button-down, collar fastened all the way, socks rolled even above her ankles. But she had pulled the lavender hoodie back on over everything, sleeves swallowing her hands again. A new mug sat cupped between her palms, steam coiling upward… but whatever lived in the ceramic hadn’t touched her cheeks.
“Morning, shower goblin,” Enid chirped, leaning against the counter to hide how her stomach tightened. “I made eggs with extra butter, minimal carnage.”
“The grease in the air suggests otherwise.” Wednesday moved further into the kitchen and took up her usual spot at the narrow counter, back to the wall. “I’m fairly certain the fire alarm just drafted its will.”
“Drama queen.” Enid slid the plate in front of her. “Ta-da! Protein, carbs, and artisanal void sprinkles. The Addams ancestors will haunt me forever if I let you live on convenience store coffee and spite.”
Wednesday glanced down at the plate, the corners of her mouth twitching; not in amusement. “Why is my egg ringed with glitter?”
“They’re black sprinkles,” Enid gasped, clutching her invisible pearls. “Very gothic. They’re technically sugar, so they count as food.”
Wednesday set her coffee down, fingers still hooked through the handle, and studied the egg. “You realize most sprinkles contain gelatin that likely required the suffering of thousands of horses.”
“Yeah, and you told me that after I bought them, so now we’re emotionally committed. Also, you loved last year’s skull cupcakes.”
“I tolerated them because you stuck birthday candles in each eye socket and sang an off-key rendition of ‘Ave Maria.’ There was a certain artistry in the desecration.” Wednesday picked up the fork, turned it in her hand, and jabbed experimentally at the toast edge. “I’m not hungry.”
Enid crossed her arms, letting the dish towel dangle from one hand, and tilted her head. “You’ve been up since, what, dawn? Earlier? You need fuel. Even goblins require calories.”
“My body will manage until noon. Food before that hour feels philosophically unsound.”
“You say that, but then by eleven you’re gnawing on whatever vaguely edible thing you find in the law school vending machine.” Enid nodded toward the eggs. “Minimum two bites. I’ll even accept one, but it has to be a real bite.”
Wednesday’s gaze lifted to hers with an unreadable stare that, at Nevermore, meant keep away or risk losing fingers. But over time, Enid learned to look for tiny tells: lashes pressed together for a fraction longer, throat working, fingers stiff on whatever she held.
“Your need to monitor my nutritional intake borders on fetishistic.”
“I prefer the term ‘loving concern,’ thanks.” Enid bumped her shoulder gently against Wednesday’s. “Come on. One proper bite, or I’m calling your mother and telling her you rejected my cooking. You’ll be disowned by dinner.”
“Maternal-based threats are a new level of evil, even for my standards.” Still, Wednesday cut into the egg, capturing yolk and toast and a few rebellious sprinkles. She lifted it to her mouth and chewed, jaw working slowly.
Enid watched her, pretending to rinse a pan through water that had cooled from steaming to merely warm. The playlist cycled to another song, this one more synth-heavy, and she tapped her fingers against the sink in time with the beat, eyes on the window rather than on Wednesday’s profile. Staring too hard sometimes made Wednesday dig in her heels; watching from peripheral vision felt safer.
Wednesday swallowed once, then again, and the line between her brows deepened. Color drained slightly from her lips, leaving them a cooler shade, and she pulled in a slow breath as she lowered the fork.
“That was… acceptable.”
Enid dried her hands on the towel and turned, leaning back against the sink. “You ate one bite and already graded it? I’m wounded. My culinary efforts suffer.”
“The egg is not at fault.” Wednesday lifted her mug this time and held it near her mouth like a prop. “My stomach is currently on trial for criminal negligence. It will calm eventually.”
Enid sighed. “You know your doctor wants you to eat actual food, right? Food that didn’t come wrapped in foil or re-heated.”
“The doctor wants many things,” Wednesday replied. “He’s greedy. Thus, I indulge them when it suits me.”
“You say that like he’s some sort of demon you’re bargaining with.” Enid reached for the sugar jar, more for something to do, and twisted the lid off. “You have a whole sheet of ‘recommendations,’ remember? The one I highlighted in five colors?”
“The neon notes about hydration still invade my dreams.”
“It’s called caring,” Enid sing-songed, and then her focus snagged on the movement of Wednesday’s arm.
Wednesday reached for the water glass by the wall, fingers sliding out from inside the oversized sleeve. The fabric rode up enough to reveal skin usually hidden: the underside of her forearm was interrupted by shadowy blooms. Bruises spread there in irregular patches, some deep violet, others fading at the edges into sickly yellow-green halos.
“What happened?” Enid asked, fingers reaching out and hovering above one of the darker patches.
Wednesday flinched slightly and angled her arm away, tugging the sleeve down. “I collided with a table at the library. The undergraduates infest the reading room with their bags and limbs. One tripped over his own existential dread and sent a chair flying. I was but an innocent bystander.”
Enid’s fingertips met the fabric instead of skin. “That many bruises from one table?”
“It was a very enthusiastic table,” Wednesday replied. Her eyes did not quite meet Enid’s. “I bruised easily as a child.”
It was a lie, and they both knew it.
Even at Nevermore, Wednesday was always physically resilient to both injury and death. She even healed quicker than Enid’s lycanthropic physiology for reasons that baffled doctors and remained one of the great Addams family mysteries. For Wednesday to now retain bruises when, in junior year, she had been thrown through a window with lacerations that healed within a week, was beyond alarming.
“Well, the nurse said something about blood tests,” Enid reminded her. “Platelets. Clotting factors. She said they wanted to keep an eye on things.”
“She also said their lab equipment required recalibration,” Wednesday countered. “Which I took as an admission of incompetence. I prefer not to make life decisions based on someone who punctured my vein twice before finding the target.”
Enid exhaled through her nose, turned back to the pan purely to keep from blurting every anxious thought crowding her skull, and ran the sponge in slow circles over the metal. “You’re going to the follow-up today, right? The one they’ve been calling about. Eleven o’clock, Queens Medical.”
The pause behind her lasted a beat too long. “I have class. My attendance contributes to a portion of my grade. The law school’s obsession with participation borders on cult-like.”
“You also have a body,” Enid replied, abandoning the pretense of indifferent dishwashing. “And a doctor who keeps asking to look at it. I’m pretty sure one of those things outranks a seminar.”
Wednesday’s expression cooled. “They want a few more vials of blood and another ultrasound. Their machines already know more about my internal organs than my family does. A delay of one week will not lead to immediate combustion.”
“That’s not really the goal we’re aiming for here,” Enid pointed out. “’Immediate combustion’ is not a threshold we should test.”
A faint quirk tugged at Wednesday’s mouth. “If I erupt into flames, at least the cremation arrangements will be easier.”
“Weds.” The nickname emerged stripped of humor. “You promised after the last appointment. You promised you’d go when they asked.”
Wednesday looked down at her hands, at the tiny smear of yolk clinging to the edge of the fork, at the faint tremor in her fingers before she tightened them into stillness. “I will attend, yes. Just not today. I need to finish my paper, and I have a meeting with my study group about the mock trial. Medical professionals enjoy believing they control everyone’s schedule; a delusion I refuse to encourage.”
Enid bit back three different replies that sounded like begging. Instead, she returned to the stove, turned off the burner, and set the clean pan on the back hob to dry. Every movement took on exaggerated normalcy: rinse, stack, wipe, put away. Ordinary, domestic, reasonable. Meanwhile, a part of her brain replayed the tiny tremor in Wednesday’s hand, the way her skin had looked mottled beneath that hoodie, the subtle guard around her stomach when she shifted.
Wednesday’s mug clinked softly against the counter. “If you continue staring at me like that, I may start to believe you’ve died and are currently haunting my breakfast.”
“I’m working on a new haunting style,” Enid replied. “Step one: guilt. Step two: more guilt. Step three: passive-aggressive rainbow sticky notes on your textbooks.”
“You already do step three.”
“Yeah, but I can upgrade the passive-aggressive part: Enid Sinclair, ghost of medical compliance. Boo. Now get your blood drawn.”
A laugh almost escaped Wednesday, real enough that Enid’s chest eased. “Your ghost would leave chartreuse Post-its on my own eventual gravestone.”
“With tiny hearts drawn around your name.” Enid inhaled. “Okay, we’ll compromise. You email the clinic before lunch and tell them you’re rescheduling. Today. If not, I’ll settle for tomorrow. Or Monday.”
Wednesday’s gaze drifted to the phone lying on the small shelf by the doorway, screen dark, case plain black except for a tiny sticker Enid had forced onto the corner—a paw print with glitter edges. She set the fork across the untouched half of her egg, then slid the plate enough to mark the subject as closed for now. “We’ll discuss it after my class. If I survive Chavez’s interrogation on due process, perhaps I’ll reward myself with another round of phlebotomy.”
“Blood draw, not punishment,” Enid muttered, though a part of her shelved the small concession—after class—the way she stored client feedback and invoice dates. Something to return to, something to press on later.
She rinsed the mug Wednesday had already abandoned, thumb circling the rim while hot water steamed over her knuckles. The motion kept her anchored, gave her fidgety thoughts somewhere to sit other than in the center of her chest. Across the kitchen, Wednesday gathered her belongings.
“Your seminar’s at eleven, right?” Enid asked, grabbing the dish rack with one elbow and nudging it away from the sink. “Subway’ll be a nightmare if you leave any later.”
Wednesday slid a case file into her bag, then an overstuffed notebook bristling with color-coded tabs that, unfairly, she hadn’t let Enid label. “Chavez believes tardiness indicates moral rot. Arriving early, however, suggests desperation. I aim for the middle ground.”
“That’s your whole brand.” Enid turned off the tap and shook water from her fingers. “Moral rot, but at least make it punctual.” She then tossed the dish towel onto the counter and wiped her hands on her pants. “Ready to descend from our haunted roost?”
“I resent the term ‘roost,’” Wednesday grumbled. “It suggests guano.”
“You say that like you weren’t the one who made friends with the funeral home pigeons.” Enid snagged her keys from the hook shaped like a tiny raven and looped her crossbody bag over her shoulder. “Come on. If you’re late, you’ll blame me forever. I’d like to keep that list of grievances capped at seventy-three items.”
“They’re categorized now.” Wednesday moved toward the hallway. “We passed seventy-three months ago.”
Enid grabbed her phone, thrust it into her back pocket, and hurried after her, flicking off the kitchen light as she went. The hallway outside their apartment wrapped around the stairwell in a narrow rectangle, wallpaper patterned with faded funeral lilies that were probably tasteful sometime around 1953. Light from a single high window puddled on the landing, catching on dust motes lazily through the air.
Staircases in old buildings always made Enid think of Nevermore—of the spiraling towers, of running late to class because she stayed up with Yoko chugging energy drinks during mid-terms, of Wednesday’s footsteps always at her side.
Today, she walked a step behind Wednesday, fingers skimming the scarred plaster instead. Her gaze fixed on the line of Wednesday’s shoulders beneath the hoodie—pulled higher than usual.
“You sure you don’t want me to come with?” Enid asked as they started down. “To campus, I mean. I can drop you off, make sure you’re delivered to Chavez in one piece.”
“A public escort would undercut my carefully cultivated reputation as someone who knows where she’s going,” Wednesday replied. “Besides, you have work.”
“Well, Eddie said the morning’s just one delivery. I could—”
Wednesday’s foot hit the next step a little too far forward. Her body jerked, balance throwing itself sideways. Air rushed from her lungs in a short, sharp sound that was neither gasp nor cry, but involuntary between her teeth. She folded forward at the waist, shoulder blades hunching.
Enid’s hands moved before thoughts could catch up. One palm landed between Wednesday’s shoulder blades, fingers spread wide, feeling the rigid line of muscle beneath the hoodie. The other hovered near her hip, ready to grab, to anchor, to haul her back if gravity tried for something dramatic.
Breath snagged in Enid’s throat. “Whoa, hey—hey. Easy. I’ve got you.”
Wednesday remained bent for another three seconds—Enid counted each one—before she straightened. Her face, when she finally turned it toward Enid, carried a pallor that turned her usual pale complexion into something closer to paper, and her lips pressed into a thin line.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, the words clipped. “The stairs are uneven. A safety hazard that I intend to report to the Reapers at the earliest opportunity.”
“The stairs have been the same for eighty years,” Enid pointed out, her hand still resting on Wednesday’s back. “You’ve walked them every day for eleven months.”
“And today they chose violence.” Wednesday straightened further, pulling away from Enid’s touch with a subtle shift. “Perhaps they’ve grown resentful of my presence. Inanimate objects have been known to develop grudges; Uncle Fester once had a ongoing feud with a grandfather clock that lasted seventeen years.”
The deflection was familiar enough that Enid almost allowed Wednesday to sweep the moment away with a story, but the memory of breakfast surfaced—the untouched eggs, the tremor in Wednesday’s fingers, the bruises spreading beneath her sleeve—and Enid found herself digging into her bag instead of responding. Her fingers closed around the granola bar she carried out of habit, a slightly squashed rectangle in a cheerful yellow wrapper that promised “sunshine in every bite!” and violated Wednesday’s aesthetic principles. She pressed it into her hand without asking.
“Eat.”
Wednesday looked down at the bar, then up at Enid, and her expression flickered—a small war between pride and pragmatism that played out in the tightening of her jaw and the brief hesitation before she spoke. “You carry emergency snacks like a paranoid squirrel preparing for apocalypse.”
“I carry emergency snacks because my girlfriend forgets that humans require fuel to function, and also because I’m an excellent partner who deserves appreciation and possibly a medal.”
“The Nobel Committee doesn’t have a category for ‘competent snack distribution.’”
“They should. I’d win.”
Wednesday peeled the wrapper back with her teeth and took a bite without meeting Enid’s eyes. She chewed slowly, methodically, and swallowed with visible effort, throat working harder than the dry oats and honey warranted. But she ate—three bites, then four—and some of the color crept back into her cheeks.
They finished descending in silence, Wednesday still gripping the granola bar, Enid trailing close enough to intervene if the steps decided to resume their apparent vendetta. By the time they reached the ground floor, Wednesday had eaten half the bar and tucked the rest into her coat pocket with a muttered comment about “strategic reserves.” Enid accepted the small victory, holding the back door open so they could slip out into the September morning.
Outside, the city had already shaken off its early drowsiness and settled into the controlled chaos of a Thursday workday. Delivery trucks idled along the curb, their drivers hauling crates and arguing into phones, while pedestrians wove between them. Above, the Reaper & Sons sign swayed gently in a breeze that carried the first edge of autumn coolness, its painted scythe catching the overcast light. Wednesday stepped onto the sidewalk first and started toward the subway entrance two blocks east. Enid fell into step beside her, matching her pace out of habit, and that was when she noticed the difference.
Because Wednesday walked slowly.
Enid watched her from the corner of her eye, pretending to check her phone while memorizing every detail. How Wednesday’s shoulders crept toward her ears when they passed a particularly loud truck. How her jaw clenched when someone jostled her on the sidewalk, apologizing over their shoulder without really seeing her. How her fingers, when she adjusted her bag, trembled faintly against the leather.
The aborted forkful of food, the bruises, the almost-fall on the stairs.
Each piece, taken alone, meant nothing—a quirk, an off day, a story with an easy explanation that Wednesday delivered with her usual deadpan certainty. Bruises from a table. Nausea from skipping dinner. Fatigue from late nights spent writing papers. Reasonable answers for reasonable questions, delivered with enough conviction that Enid almost believed them.
But together, the pieces formed something else. An outline that Enid could see taking shape in her peripheral vision. She had drawn enough connect-the-dots as a kid to recognize the moment when scattered points became a recognizable image, and some part of her—the one that spent six years learning to read Wednesdays—understood that she didn’t want to find out what would form.
She jogged a few steps to catch up, closing the gap that had opened between them while she was lost in thought, and slipped her hand into Wednesday's. The fingers that curled around hers felt cool, almost cold, despite the warmth of the morning and the coat buttoned to Wednesday's throat. Enid squeezed gently, and after a moment, Wednesday squeezed back—once, quick, like a reflex—before letting their hands fall apart again.
“You’re hovering,” Wednesday observed.
“I’m literally walking beside you. That’s what people do when they go somewhere together.”
“You’re hovering while walking beside me. The two concepts aren’t mutually exclusive.” Wednesday glanced at her, expression softening. “I ate your squirrel rations. I’m ambulatory. My vital signs, while not thrilling, remain sufficient for continued existence. You can stop mentally drafting my obituary.”
Enid laughed. “I’d never draft your obituary. That’s your job. You’ve probably already written three versions and ranked them.”
“Four, actually. The one involving a lightning strike remains my personal favorite, though the accuracy of the weather forecast poses logistical challenges.”
“Always planning ahead.”
“Someone has to.”
They reached the subway entrance, a set of stairs descending into the earth between a coffee cart and a newsstand hawking tabloids and lottery tickets. Wednesday paused at the top, adjusting her bag strap, and Enid lingered beside .
“I’ll see you tonight,” Enid said, though it emerged more like a question than a statement.
Wednesday nodded, already turning toward the stairs. “I should be home by six. Seven at the latest, depending on whether my study group descends into their usual debates about constitutional interpretation. Jonah has opinions that require systematic dismantling.”
“Bring snacks. And water. And maybe a protein bar, since you liked the granola one so much.”
“I tolerated the granola one under duress.” But Wednesday’s hand drifted to her pocket, where the half-eaten bar waited, and the corner of her mouth ticked upward. “I’ll text you between classes.”
“You better." Enid stepped forward and pressed a quick kiss to Wednesday’s cheek, tasting the faint salt of skin and the lingering chemical sweetness of her expensive shampoo. “Love you.”
Wednesday held still, absorbing the contact with a faint surprise that never quite faded, even after all this time. “I love you too,” she murmured. “Even when you force-feed me granola.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Enid watched Wednesday descend into the subway, her dark coat disappearing among the crowd of commuters flowing down the stairs. For a long moment, Enid stayed where she was, fingers curled around her phone, watching the space where Wednesday had been until the last glimpse of her vanished into the tunnel below.