Chapter Text
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The temperature at Nevermore was always devastatingly icy, ensuring that all the students inside needed to sleep with thousands of blankets to protect themselves from waking up with frozen hair. Of course, that wasn't the case for the Addams family, who enjoyed the glacier of the place during the school's silent early morning hours.
Pugsley didn't have much of an idea where his sister would be that night; either she was resting her eyes, or she was on some mysterious and dangerous trail with Thing out there risking her life, but of course he was completely used to the box of surprises that came from her. Very unique surprises.
However, sleep was elusive that night. He tossed and turned until he heard his roommate complaining about absolute silence, which was ironic, since he still remembered Ottinger unintentionally telling him that sometimes he could only sleep with the buzzing of bees ever since he was little. Peculiar.
Respecting his roommate's silence, Addams stood still at the window, behind the curtain so that the moonlight wouldn't reach the room. Although the horizon didn't move, it was a passage to anyone's mental world, whether quiet or noisy. Pugs blinked slowly and vaguely, feeling the pleasant breeze pierce his skin like a strong breath from an angel in heaven, capable of making him stop in any memory when he closed his eyes. Soon, the memories surfaced one by one.
Pugsley still remembered his first year in Nevermore, nervous and eager for new friendships beyond Tropeço and his father.
He still remembered when he ran into his roommate at school; that friend of Wednesday's, which was funny to hear.
He still remembered wondering last year, “Why isn’t he nice to me? Wednesday said he was acceptable among everyone in Never Again. Why did Eugene act like the others?”
He still remembered his old undead friend; Slurp. He never stopped calling Slurp his friend; he certainly wasn't Isaac, they were two different people. He preferred to believe that. He remembered how Eugene had secretly helped him with the zombie, even though it put them both at risk.
He remembered the last day of school, when for the first time, Ottinger was kind to him, and it wasn't about the insects to eat on the trip, it was about the genuine smile of having realized that he had been wasting a great friendly relationship for almost the entire year.
And no less important, he surely still remembered in visual detail when they returned to the school for the Excluded. That's when their friendship grew stronger and stronger. A shared snack here and there, knowledge exchanged here and there, playful touches and bumps here and there...
When the curtain slipped in front of his eyes for a moment, it was like a hand forcibly pulling him straight into the present, tearing him away from his strongest and most recent memories. Addams blinked several times, rubbing his dry eyes, dry from not closing them for so long, and then he heard something, something that didn't come from the view outside the window.
Gasping for breath.
This was the sound, a frantic repetition of terrified sighs coming from the room. Pugsley turned instantly, seeing how dark it was inside, just an undefined silhouette, but it was Eugene, his torso raised on the bed, panting as if he had returned from a flight without ever leaving the place.
"Eugene?" he approached and turned on the boy's bedside lamp, revealing what was happening "Are you okay?"
Ottinger hugged his legs under the bee-patterned blanket, squeezing them tightly for protection. His glasses were still on the shelf; he didn't dare use them, only staring at his covered knees, trembling sharply and beginning to breathe heavily.
"Hey, dude..."
He saw a single tear roll down the boy's face. His hand touched the tips of Ottinger's messy curls, who immediately hid his face between his legs and stepped back, grumbling loudly and frightened.
"What happened? Why are you like this?!"
The moment he almost touched the boy's knee through the blanket, he remembered that touching him while he was upset was also a bad idea, and accidentally electrocuting Eugene wasn't a good option either.
The boy's crying only intensified, without any fear or hesitation to hide it. It even seemed like sleep paralysis or sleepwalking, as he appeared disconnected, yet at the same time, desperate and trapped in his own body.
"Hey!" he called to Eugene, but Eugene covered his face, which turned red. "HEY!!!"
Without further ado, he pressed his fingertips into his colleague's arm, releasing the energy that could somehow bring him back. After the shock revived him, Ottinger's eyes widened, and he fell back until his back hit the headboard, still breathing heavily, but this time without crying, only from delight and incomprehension.
Eugene immediately grabbed the glasses from beside him, taking his time before putting them on correctly, making them stand out even more because of the lenses.
"P-Pugsley."
"Are you okay? What the hell was going on?"
Ottinger looked around, seeing almost everything dark, except for his colleague's worried face, who only then touched his shoulder, an anchor in case he zoned out again and drifted back into a daydream.
When he distinguished where he was, who he was with, and what time it was, his mind allowed him to relax a little, extremely little. His eyes didn't close again, his hands didn't stop trembling, and his face was still pale with terror.
"It's nothing" he denied, trying to blink naturally, feeling his eyelashes getting wet "It's nothing ..."
"Nothing?" he asked. "You were literally...freaking out."
"Pugsley, forget it. Really, I'm fine."
He adjusted the pillowcase, which was also covered in embroidered bees, a gift from one of his mothers. It was nice to smell his scent while he slept; most of the time it calmed him. That wasn't the case that night.
"Is this the same nightmare again?"
The question wasn't a doubt, it was simply a search for confirmation.
Eugene clutched the pillow, refusing to turn to his friend.
"What nightmare?"
"Wednesday told me."
The lenses of his glasses muffled the sound, a sign that tears were about to well up, not because of the revelation, but simply because of the acceptance that he wasn't okay. But even so, Ottinger insisted, out of pride, on appearing mature.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Pugsley watched Eugene's throat tighten, saw the skin of his lips being ripped off, and the ultimate flight of gazes.
"You're still terrified that you'll never wake up again, aren't you?"
Eugene's hands stopped adjusting the pillow, he stopped looking downcast and stared at a fixed point in the doorway. Addams began scratching the back of his neck and biting his lip, nervous about the stark silence that made every creak of the wooden bed echo.
"If you want to know...yes, I had a nightmare again."
Pugs cleared his throat, partially embarrassed. "And...was it because of Hyde's attack?"
Attentive to everyone's every bodily movement, like an Addams would be, he felt his hand slowly tighten on the yellow pillowcase. Without even being able to blink, in a short, abrupt moment he had come face to face with Eugene ripping off his sweater abruptly, almost making his glasses fall to the floor with the forcefulness of his removal, consumed by complete fury, revealing his body and something that Pugsley had never seen before.
"AS LONG AS I HAVE THESE MARKS, I WILL NEVER STOP DREAMING ABOUT IT!"
He blated, pointing to the scars all over his chest. Enormous claws that had turned the patched skin white and reddish, like stripes.
Ottinger took a deep breath, his gasping breath showing his lack of firm breath.
"Every time I look in the mirror and see these hideous scars, I feel the same sensation!" He clenched his teeth, began to squeeze his own skin, but left his secret exposed. "No matter what I try to do...this memory will be stamped on me until I die. And I will never get rid of this agony!"
"Eugene..."
"They're awful, I know." he denied immediately, but he no longer intended to hide them.
"You've never shown me this before."
"Why should I?" he shrugged, adjusting the frame on his face. "So you can feel disgusted like I do?"
Pugsley lowered his gaze to the fatal claw marks there. Even growing up playing with bombs, running from Wednesday trying to rip off his fingers, or waking up buried in a grave, he had never seen scars like those. They were so deep that it would be truly difficult to forget the cause of their presence: some areas with raised hypertrophic scars, others with widened and striped scars, and others with stitch marks, like Thing's. It was literally an indelible mark.
"They're awsome..."
The boy with glasses stopped covering his face, felt a chill run down his back and arms, but it wasn't from the cold because he was naked, it was a sudden jolt.
"What?"
He saw his colleague gradually smiling as he gazed at his chest; for a second, he remembered that he was an Addams, but, even so, he couldn't understand how anyone could possibly like that.
"Can I touch it?"
He grinned broadly, displaying pure, positive, and eager curiosity. Ottinger stammered, clearly lacking a dictionary in his language.
"H-Ham..."
"They look fantastic to me..." his eyes never left the shocking scars. He began to approach. "It's like Frankenstein, or when I stitched my dead dog's body back together to try and resurrect him after he was nearly swallowed whole by one of my carnivorous plants."
"Ah... Thanks, I guess..."
When he decided to remain still, leaning against the headboard, he saw Pugs move closer to him, but the body heat didn't come with him, only a wave of some kind of energy, and it wasn't Addams' electricity.
Eugene's icy fingers sent shivers down his spine as he watched his friend, pale as paper, fail to crack a smile, curious as he ran his fingers over the different textures of the scarred claws. He pressed the hypertrophic scars like little cushions, slid the tip of his nail along the widened stripes, and traced the stitches as if he were playing connect-the-dots.
Ottinger felt each touch differently; he never thought that area would feel so...good? He didn't know how to define it, but a feeling of lightness, of care, and a certain protectiveness washed over him. For a few seconds, even if it was just for an instant, he forgot the bad meaning of those scars being there.
Suddenly, the fingers were no longer on the marks; Addams' entire hand was on Eugene's chest.
"Why don't you think of these scars as actually marks of your survival?" then, another whole hand on the other chest "I don't think they're horrible at all."
The boy began to feel his heart beating frantically, becoming increasingly intense.
"I-I..."
He pushed his body back, even though he was already leaning against the headboard, pressing himself closer to the spot and truly cornering himself. Pugsley, on the other hand, followed the same direction, not the opposite; he knelt on the bed, thus feeling more control over the path of his hands across Eugene's goosebumped skin, but it was no longer the scars that interested him, it was something bigger, much bigger.
"Pugs...let's go to sleep..."
He tried to warn them, feeling his glasses slipping, but nothing worked. The cold air was swallowed by the heat, which began to grow in his body with the icy, electric touch, feeling a strong tingling sensation, like touching an old TV that deposited static electricity, but instead, he was Addams' TV.
The moment he began to feel the heat causing him to sweat and starting to descend further and further as Pugsley's hands also moved down, Ottinger shook his head and began to make abrupt movements, pushing him away with the blankets.
"No, no, no, Addams! That's enough!"
In an automatic act of self-defense, he grabbed the boy's wrists, receiving a fervent shock in a second that illuminated them both for an instant. Eugene gasped in fright, recoiling in terror.
Pugsley, unintentionally clenching his fists and also stared at his classmate, seeing that innocent and frightened expression, realizing that Eugene was afraid to touch him again.
"Sorry..."
"Look, I-I don't know what's gotten into you, but I can't... I mean, I don't want to . You and I are roommates and friends , nothing more. Besides, I..."
Ottinger rambled on and on like a broken record. All Addams did was start to smile as he watched him explain himself with such desperation, such a desperate search for denial, but denial of whom, after all?
"...I think it's best if we switch partners. I'll talk to the principal tomorrow about changing rooms. Maybe no one will want to stay with me, but I don't care. I can sleep in the shed with my bees if I have to, they're better than anyone making fun of me in this school. But it's better for both of us. This isn't going to work; you're too confused, and I..."
The words were swallowed, literally. His chattering mouth was sealed by Addams's, who lunged forward without a purpose, devastatingly closing his eyes and grabbing Ottinger's face.
Pugs felt the touch of the device behind the boy's frozen lips; it almost brought a laugh to his face, which he held back to be just a smile during the stolen kiss. Eugene stared at him completely terrified, frozen in place, showing no sign of movement, not even a muscle or his eyelids wide open.
With no long-term reciprocal reaction, Pugsley risked taking a step forward, not back. His hands moved from Eugene's icy face to his neck, feeling the collarbone protruding from the other's continued stiffness. When he heard him make an almost inaudible sound signaling a return to reality, Addams didn't want that to happen, so he attacked him more intensely, using his tongue in Ottinger's mouth, exploring for any response, any at all.
Hearing another groan, the boy threw his entire body on top of Eugene, knocking him onto the mattress with no escape. But it wasn't a possessive or obligatory act; it was extreme insistence in trying to get what he wanted: the permission of the boy with the crooked glasses.
Holding one of Eugene's wrists and stroking his waist, he felt him arch his back at the touch. Even if it was accidental, it was the perfect gunpowder for the ticking time bomb in Pugsley's chest. Ottinger's free hand landed on the nape of Addams' neck. It was there that his eyes finally closed. The insistent boy's tongue was so calm, yet so desperate—a delightful mix.
The curly-haired boy soon yielded to the french kiss, beginning to writhe upwards with his hand tightening around his waist.
Their lips suddenly parted, partially awakening a side of Eugene, only his reasoning lacking at the moment. Before he could say anything, he felt that cracked tongue reach his neck, along with teeth beginning to passively nibble at his skin.
All that came out of his mouth were sighs, sometimes of denial, other times of approval, depending on where and how Addams continued to kiss him. His head tilted to the side, wanting more hickeys on the skin that hadn't been touched yet, while his glasses began to bend due to the position, but although it wasn't, it seemed like an almost impossible mission to remove them. In fact, everything seemed impossible; Eugene only had eyes and body for Pugs.
"Caro Mio..."
"Someone...someone can come in here..." he gasped, drawing his legs closer together. "Addams..."
When his mouth released from the curve of Eugene's neck, Pugsley Duckling saw all the marks he had left there, hundreds of tiny purple marks on what had once been smooth, unmarked skin; now Eugene had more scars, but scars of love.
Lifting his head, he saw Ottinger's completely relaxed eyes, blinking slowly like him and puffing out his chest to catch his breath, even though Pugsley Duckling had done much more.
Seeing Eugene's curls standing on end from the electrified kiss, he laughed so sweetly he didn't seem like an Addams Family. Then he brushed a single curl away, covering the boy's eye as he tried to process the dark world around him.
"How scared you are, little bee boy."
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