Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Enid is a solar flare of color inside the Addams monochrome mansion. Dressed in an atomic orange set of overalls and bile yellow athletic shoes, she is a sore thing to view, but there is one small aspect to her wardrobe that almost blends her in. She is wearing Wednesday’s sweater beneath the overalls and worrying the grey and black striped sleeve cuffs between her long fingers. One lip is snared between her pearly teeth and Wednesday struggles to decide where her focus should rely: on the canines that seem a little longer and sharper than they use to be or the fact that Enid is wearing her sweater.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you all. Um…again. Sort of.”

Tall, elegant Morticia who Wednesday is both very much alike and the exact opposite of, clasps her hands together beneath her chin and heaves a dreamy sigh, “Oh it’s so wonderful to have you here, dear. We were thrilled when Wednesday informed us of your decision to stay.”

Her father is the living shadow Morticia Addams casts. He dwells near her ever and always and when she speaks, a glow comes from within the flat color of his eyes that speak of endless awe. He tips his head backward to smile up at her the way a priest basks in the glory of his Goddess. Wednesday loathes that she can commiserate with what he is feeling now. In a moment he turns from his wife to beam at Enid, ambling forward with arms outstretched until Enid takes his hand by reflex and gets a little wide eyed when he begins shaking it profusely in a blatant display of glad tidings, “Yes, yes we are so thrilled! Oh Miss Sinclair, it will be such a delight to have you fill these haunted hollows with your particular, Ah…”

When he trails off, his head tilts in the direction of his wife who happily supplies for him, “Neons.”

Much like the blinking of an aged florescent, her father goes from something dull to a blinding sickly yellow and he nods with his massive almost-wicked smile, “Neons, yes! I cannot wait to see the bright reds of whatever you may drag in here after a full moon and the other colors that infect us by your dastardly, atomic presence.” By way of explanation, he gestures to the overalls and the sport shoes with the expensive swoosh on the side.

Oddly, Wednesday watches her wolf grow small at the mention of a full moon. Her shoulders come up to her ears while her eyes take on the feral glint of an animal cornered, the kind that should never be cornered. She swallows hard enough that they all hear it bounce off the walls and she flicks her gaze between all of them lined up before her.

“O-oh, sir, you don’t need to worry about that! I’ve been practicing with my parents all summer or, I guess, for about a month now but! But I work really hard and I don’t always understand things right away but I did my best this time ‘cause it was important so I know I can be—anyway, I swear you’re all safe.”  

Grandmother, who stands a glooming monolith of harried aesthetic and layers of dusty, stained clothes beside Wednesday, twists her mouth up and whispers in a clear befuddlement, “Safe?”

Enid still hears it and the feral look gets a little more intense, her hands curl into fists by her hips and when Wednesday spots the lengthening of her claws, she swings her arms behind her back and takes a minuscule step back. Only for a second does she look to Wednesday in a silent plea but Wednesday does not understand either. What exactly does Enid think she is protecting them from?

“Y-yes. When it’s time, I’ll just lock myself in a room with my, ah, favorite sweater and then it’s all good. I might be a little loud, I’m sorry for that but I won’t ruin anything or hurt anyone or…accidentally kill someone’s dog. Well…maybe some furniture but my dad is a carpenter so he can, o-or maybe I can, fix whatever might get broke?”

Instantly and to Wednesday’s immense relief, her father cuts the side of his hand through the air as if to physically swat Enid’s words from existence and gives her a stern (the gentle kind of stern, the kind he does when he is passionate about something he cares deeply for) look, “Nonsense! You are a welcome guest of the Addams, my dear, and it would be an insult that we give to you if we,” Wednesday agrees with the crinkle his nose forms, a thing of utter disgust, “locked you away while your primal beast howls for the outside! That is not our way!”

Grandmother nods solemnly and presses her hands into the folds of her many skirts likely to search for a sweet, “That is not our way.”

Gomez gentles and lifts a hand to set on Enid’s shoulder when her watery eyes lift to meet his, offering that paternal kind of smile that Wednesday received so often as a young girl when the world became overbearing and confusing, “We welcomed you and that means all of you, claws and fangs and fur to boot. In fact, we have been buzzing with excitement since our little Viper informed us of your lycanthropy! It has been an age since a werewolf has claimed this place and stalked it with savage snarl and upon wondrous hind legs.”

Morticia taps her fingertips against the ridge of her palm in a whisper of a clap, the agreeable kind of clap, “Yes, dear, it’s going to be thrilling experience for us all. None of this talk about locking or trapping, I beg. You should be and will be given total access to the property. It is our wish as a family that, while you stay here, you treat this place as if it were your own home. Please, do not smother your delightful nature for our sake.”

“Besides! The ursine population has become outrageous, they’ve been scaring off my favorite pack of coyotes. If you felt the urge to thin the heard, I’d be grateful.”  

Enid’s glossy lips (they are the same shade of bubblegum ice cream Wednesday emptied back onto the street after sampling it as a child and, despite herself, the idea of tasting the flavor again but on Enid’s lips is a tempting one) part then close exactly three times before she squeaks out, “Oh.”

“Enid,” Wednesday finally inserts herself in her dry monotone, attracting everyone’s varied levels of interest, “are you overwhelmed?”

Again Enid’s eyes widen and flick across the family like she is waiting to be scolded, “What? No! I’m fine.”

“If you are, we can begin your tour of the home just us alone.”

“N-no, I’m— I am so good, Willa. Why don’t we—“

“Enid,” Wednesday begins again, sharp enough to cut through whatever her friend was saying, “my family understands a great deal. You do not need to upset yourself by pretending you are not overwhelmed.”

Again Gomez smiles but now it is a little cheeky and that means he is apologetic, “I get very passionate. Why don’t you and Wednesday search for a room to your desire? We can finish our meeting when you feel recharged.”  

The hands finally remerge from behind her back—sans the lengthy claws—to fiddle with the sleeves of Wednesday’s sweater (that she is wearing) once again. Again, Enid lowers her chin to chest in the perfect semblance of a scolded child and her lip is gnawed on by her impressive canines. She seems to have words but does not know how to use them and Wednesday’s heart lurches for the kinship she feels in that. She wonders how often as a child Enid was forced to endure unpleasant situations for the sake of propriety. As someone who often can feel far too much—as opposed to the popular misunderstanding that her apathetic mask is because she is cold and heartless and emotionless—and then subsequently become overstimulated by it, she cannot fathom how she would have survived into her current age if her parents expected her to preform past her limits, to ignore the way her body flags from the way her unusual mind works. She is dimly aware that she and Enid do not possess the very same characteristics in that regard but they are similar enough that being subdued and forced to endure cannot have felt good and the reflex to swallow discomfort for congeniality is another thing her parents have done to hurt Enid.

(This is so unforgivable Wednesday thinks she might grow fangs set in a mandible strong enough to rip the human throat clean from its neck. Should they be allowed to speak, to press more shame and discomfort into Enid’s sinewy frame the temple of Wednesday’s worship and the place shame does not belong, well then. Neons will be made, swatches of bright glowing red and pink and white.)

“Very well,” Wednesday steps around her Grandmother who shows Enid her crooked gap toothed smile and past Pugsley who looks perfectly content with the situation, “we shall conjoin with you at supper.”

Pugsley lifts a hand to Enid who waves back but her shoulders are still hitched up, “Nice to meet you. Let’s play pirates, later, if you want.”

Enid summons a smile that is genuine but dim and she nods, “That sounds fun. Can’t wait!”

“Your hair is pretty.”

Now Enid blinks and her mouth flaps a couple of times, “Oh. Thank you. Yours too!”

“Pugsley. You’re embarrassing yourself. Go away.”

The pale fullness of his mouth splits for a funny little sound that is a laugh and he smiles a bit like Gomez, “Okay! Uncle Fester said he was gonna let me feed him cherry bombs.”

“What?” Enid swallows loudly again, eyes flicking between the siblings to check for the lie or the joke, “What?”

The others begin drifting off like a dark cloud but the lengthy form of her mother hesitates a moment in the archway that will lead her away, tilting her head back to smile sweetly at the pair of them. When she speaks it is soft enough they should not be able to hear it but they do, “Darling, thank you for trusting us with your stay. We won’t let you down.”

Wednesday hears: It is painful for me to see that you have been bashed over the head with expectations made by a heavy handed mother for so long, you cave beneath the weight of them even when she is not here because you keep them there by instinct. I am heartbroken to see such a wild spirit cowed. While you are here, you will be loved in the Addams way. We will not fail you. Not like them.

Enid cannot hear anything but the actual words spoken because she does not know them nor has she yet grasped the depth of an Addams spirit. (Not yet but she will.) So she just nods jerkily and offers a shaky smile and when she speaks it is a little choked, “Thank you Misses Addams. I appreciate the offer to stay. I won’t let you down either.”

Wednesday thins her lips in displeasure because how could Enid say such a thing? She could not fail them if she tried. It is not her job to please them while she is here, while the sins of her parents who are not the worst but far from the best still stain her, still have cut the strings at the back of her ankles to hobble her.  

Wednesday’s mother smiles tightly and says, “Of course.” But really says: You could not fail us if you tried, sweet one. Give us time and we will heal that hurt in you. We know how to love and we know you need love. Welcome home.

The moment they are alone in the hall, Enid crumbles and sets her face into her hands. Alarmingly, sounds of heavy breathing that usually mean tears rise up along with the emotional display.

Wednesday parts her lips to say something, literally anything, but Enid beats her to the punch, “Oh god that was so embarrassing. I’m so sorry Willa.”

“What.”

Enid lifts her head and Wednesday flinches back from the shinning slick of tears on her cheeks, “Your family is literally the nicest people I’ve ever met.”

“Yes,” She begins because that is objectively a fact and one mostly overlooked or misunderstood but a fact all the same however it confuses Wednesday further when that fact follows the apology, “I do not understand why you’re crying. I would assume they offended you but you just implicated otherwise. Unless I’ve misunderstood. Have they offended you? I’ll rectify it immediately.”

“I didn’t—usually I’m so good at this!”

Wednesday is lost. There is a tight line to Enid’s brow—that means discomfort—there are tears still glittering on her cheeks, catching candlelight—that means misery, that means Wednesday will turn sharp soon—and her mouth is a wobbling line, emulating a frustrated wave being shoved around by the greater ocean behind it—that probably means more misery or maybe that she is trapping words in the cave of her mouth. None of it, she recognizes, is a good thing or something Enid should be housing while she is in this home, while she stands three feet from Wednesday herself. The plan of inviting her here was to lift her spirit, to break the chains that had been weighing her down all summer, but it would seem Wednesday has failed her within the first half hour.

Wednesday lifts her chin and stares at the corner of Enid’s eye, at the pretty collection of pastel blue pigment applied there and the sheen of glitter overtop it, “Enid, I do not understand what is happening and I apologize for that. I am not asking you to explain while you’re clearly still raw but I wish to assist. Would you like to be returned somewhere you feel more safe?” You will not go back to that place Enid, I do not care if they love you in their way, it is not enough and it is choking the life from you, I will keep you safe in this way, “Perhaps you would like to be returned to Yoko’s?”

It is as if she is trying to confuse Wednesday because suddenly, Enid laughs. It is choked by the water in her eyes and a tightness that must be in her chest but it is a sound of joy. She sniffles and shakes her head vehemently, “I’m not upset, Wednesday.”

She blinks and feels her face pinch, “I would disagree based on the sight alone.”

“I…I’m not used to—I just didn’t expect that. It surprised me and I got a little flustered ‘cause I had this whole plan of how I was gonna introduce myself and charm them and make them love me—“

“I assure you, no charm or plan is needed for such an endeavor to occur.”

“—I’ll admit I was expecting them to be different. I only met them that one time and they were kind of—I dunno! But then your dad immediately blindsided me and your mom is so sweet and they really don’t care if I go all…feral or whatever?”

“You are a werewolf, Enid.”

“You know what I mean!”

“Only barely,” She watches placidly as Enid wraps her arms around herself for self imposed comfort and tightens her jaw, “I told you in my letter that it is the inherent disposition of an Addams to adore wild things. It is practically against our religion—not a genuine one of course, we are proud heathens—to cage a beast, especially one who is an apex predator such as yourself. My father and Uncle have set lawn chairs on the roof balcony alongside a telescope so they can watch you hunt in the forest. I informed them, of course, that they need your expressed and verbal consent before they do such a thing and if they do not acquire it, there will be hell to pay.”

Stars cloud the murky blue of Enid’s irises when her head lifts, pink mouth parted in wonder, “Really?”

Ah, at last, she understands. “Hm,” Wednesday runs her eyes along Enid’s frame that is haunched from hugging herself so she is almost at a height with Wednesday herself, “you assumed you would not be welcome here despite my invitation.”

A low keening sound comes from somewhere deep in Enid’s chest, “I accidentally killed a dog, Willa.”

“Yes. I suppose it would be humiliating to only have racked up such an immeasurable and puny kill. Rest assured, no one will judge you for that here. There are plenty of creatures out there that will be a significant improvement upon your first.”

Another whine and Enid takes a step closer, one hand twitching outward like it intends to reach and take but Enid drags it back to fiddle with the sleeves, “That’s not what I’m saying. I…I’m dangerous, Wednesday. I know I won’t hurt you or other wolves but…my parents were—you should have seen my mom’s face when I woke up and she told me we had to go apologize to Miss Rodger. They think it’s because my wolf was…inside, for so long or maybe because of the way it came out but I’m—“

“Marvelous.”

Enid reels a bit from the interruption and then softens as the word sinks in, “Are you listening?”

“Are you? Have you been listening, Enid? Have you been hearing me but not retaining? This is not easy for me, forgive me if it comes out poorly,” Oh, this will be a first step and it is hard to take but she wants this so badly, so with her jaw twitching side to side (Enid can see, Enid can know how Wednesday ticks and twitches and needs to move her body sometimes, just a little, for comfort) she reaches between them to hook her pinky around Enid’s and does not quite meet her eye when she says, “You are welcome here. Meaning: we will protect you if you don’t feel safe even from your own self. No one is afraid of you, not here. If your parents recoiled from your beautiful savagery then it because they made you scared first. You are a werewolf Enid, you should not be told you are frightening and prodded into fitting inside a box that makes you socially acceptable, makes you tame. You cannot force a wild thing to stop being wild. It makes them angry, they lash out, they defend themselves and their nature because it is being threatened. You are dangerous because it is as you should be. We celebrate you here. You’ll see, once you feel safe and you aren’t made to fear what you can be, maybe then you won’t get so…emotional.”

No, it did not come out right. She is unhappy with that explanation but it was the best she could manage vocally. She wanted Enid to hear: They are disastrous disappointments for a werewolf brood, they are disgusting for taking you, a beast, into the city and then whipping you for being something that belongs in a murky forest, far from civilization. You are not a dog, you are a wolf. I hate them, Enid. I wish you had been handled gentler and shown love and comfort for what you are. They blamed you for being a late bloomer but it is their fault. I love you, I love you in this skin and I will in your other too. You are not dangerous, not like that. You are the precise edge of a blade and would that I could caress you, would that you taste the blood and in it know my profound yearning for you, that you could at least understand all the things about me I cannot put to words because it is too much.

“Willa,” Her head jerks upward to meet Enid’s eyes and, damn it, she is crying again, “you’re—is that why you invited me?”

“Amongst other reasons,” Unblinking and unapologetic, she flatly says, “I hate your family.”

Another watery laugh and this time Enid smiles with it, her eyes concealed behind a sheen of tears but it makes them brighter and that knocks the breath from Wednesday’s lungs, “My brothers are nice. My dad is…okay. I wish he would…do literally anything, sometimes.”

“Passivity in the face of constant condemnation is worst than committing the crime itself.”

Enid wipes the tears from her face using the sleeve of Wednesday’s sweater and it is embarrassing but she feels a small sting of jealousy that a part of her was allowed to comfort Enid that way but the whole of her was not. Enid jovially begins swinging their arms between them using the tether of their hooked pinkies.

“Do you, like, eat dictionaries to absorb words?”

“No. I read them. Like a normal person.”

“Right,” Enid grins at her, gives a little tug to their tether as a prompt to follow as she starts walking down the hall, “wanna show me around now?”

Stubbornly, she digs her heels in until their arms pull taut between them and the grip she has on Enid by a single finger alone starts to strain, “Wait.”

“What’s up? I’m good now, really. Thanks for noticing and, ah, yanno. Comforting me.”

“I’m not entirely certain that’s what I did but that is not why I stopped you.”

Enid cocks her head to the side in a way that is very canine in nature, “What then?”

Curse her for remembering, may anything above or below that is watching strike her down because that awful ooze is rising in tide within her and it is warming the tips of her ears and the back of her neck.

“Previously, you made a request of me.”

“Huh?”

“Enid, do not be difficult.”

“I’m not! You gotta remind me, I forget stuff!”

How could she forget this? Wednesday works her jaw side to side and feels her fingers start to twitch too. Enid’s eyes dip to their conjoining to catalogue the movement and, unceremoniously, takes it upon herself to comfort Wednesday by taking her hand between both of her hot palms and giving it a squeeze. There is a lightening strike within her surely as she is the rod to Enid’s touch that is the burning ozone and blinding light before it hits. She flicks her eyes down to their hands only momentarily to appreciate the vision (what has she become, how wretched a thing she is) then lifts it back to Enid’s scrunched face.

“A hug, Sinclair.”

“Oh! We don’t have to do that right now, Willa! This has been a lot.”

“For you.”

“You did a whole emotional speech.”

She clenches her jaw so hard the teeth make a terrible squeaking noise, “It was far from it.”

“It made me emotional.”

“That was not my intention.”

“Not the bad kind.”

“All emotions are bad, Enid.”

“If you say so,” Enid beams at her and Wednesday wonders if, when she dies and is buried in the yard beyond these walls, will they write Wednesday Addams on her headstone or if they will write Icarus because she is a creature who flew to close to this sun and melted, met the sea, downed beneath the dark waves of her endless love, “can I save my hug and cash it in later when I really need it?”

Here is another chance for another step to be made, can she be brave or will she be the thing she has always accused Pugsley of being? She meets Enid’s eyes, furrows her brow line to a serious thing and thins her mouth into a purse, “You may hug me as you desire.”

Enid’s mouth parts so Wednesday heaves a sigh through her nose and reiterates, “Meaning: if you feel the urge, you may hug me whenever you like. Just…give me a small warning first so I can be prepared.”

There is wonder in every line and plane of Enid’s darling face, it fills the color in her eyes and opens her mouth in a long waiting part but no words come out. She just stares and Wednesday stares back. Until it becomes unsettling.

“Shall we?” She gestures down the hall.

“Yeah.” Enid watches her even as they begin walking again, Wednesday sees it from the corner of her eye and wonders why Enid is so surprised. She is aware that emotional empathy or emotions in general are one of the things in her cons list as a person but still, this is Enid. Has the girl not grasped that Wednesday has and will always hold her separate from others? That she and she alone will be gifted an undying kind of devotion no other living thing will receive from her, that kindness in this form is not her nature but it is something she can do for Enid. No, perhaps not. Does that make her a bad friend?

(She wonders how Enid’s face might look if Wednesday took her hand in her own, if she braided their fingers together and managed the ability to say you’re beautiful or it makes my heart sing to have you here. I don’t have pretty names for you yet but you are my person and having you at my side completes me. I missed you too.)

Enid peruses the many rooms available to her the home has to provide in a stupor, still befuddled that they had not chosen one for her and that it is Addams policy a guest be afforded their autonomy to pick what they feel suits them. Wednesday had not persuaded her by giving her information on anything they passed and had not said a word when she stepped into a dimly lit room with an arched dome ceiling painted wholly black, a personal library in it, a roll top desk, a workstation in a corner, and a bed that is concealed under a canopy of fabric.

“Whoa, this one is amazing. Can I stay in here?”

“Of course.”

Enid moves into the middle of the room to stand on Wednesday’s favorite rug, looking at the reading area nestled inside the heart of the square shaped bookshelves and over at the round bay window on the far wall.

“This isn’t someone’s room, is it? It’s really…clean. Not that your house is dirty! Just, like, someone lives in here.”

“It’s my room.” Honestly, with how much Enid wrote to her of her smell and her personal attachment to it, she does not know how Enid did not immediately recognize that this was Wednesday’s unholy dwelling. Perhaps werewolf senses can be overwhelmed the same way regular ones can when overstimulated though that had been a while back, so she does not know.

Enid had whips around in fright, her arms coming up to hug herself again, “What!? Wednesday! You were gonna give me your room?”

“Past tense?”

“What?”

“I am giving you my room. Guests can choose whichever one speaks to them.”

“But it’s yours Willa! Where will you sleep?”

Wednesday furrows her brow an increment, “Elsewhere.”

“No!”

“No?”

“I mean,” Enid began fiddling with the sleeves again and Wednesday realizes that fiddling is Enid’s version of Wednesday’s twitching, “I’m not kicking you out. I don’t want to. Can we share? Would your parents be okay with that?”

“Why would they not?”

Remarkably, Enid had gone all red. Her pretty ears and her cheeks had soaked up a neon color that was stark when it was framed by the bleached blond of her hair. Wednesday found herself taking a step towards it in wonder, becoming an explorer who has just stumbled upon a lost artifact of ancient wonder and untold beauty.

“Well…we’re two girls. And…”

“Yes?”

“And I’m….I don’t know about you but…would you be comfortable sharing? With me? After…what I said?”

Wednesday thinks she understands but when she blurts, “I thought I had made my point about your wolf. You are not a threat to me. In fact, I’ll admit there is a very ardent excitement in me to see your lupine form when I am not half dead and you are not fighting for your life, as impressive as that was.” That seems to be the wrong guess because Enid sputters. She jerks her head away so she can hide her red face in her hands and begins tottering towards Wednesday’s favorite reading chair in a clear bid to put distance between them.

“Oh my god,” She squeaks, peeks through the fan of her fingers at Wednesday standing still, unblinking, unfazed in the doorway and hides behind them again, “that is so not what I meant, Wednesday!”  

Ah, blushing is usually a sign of embarrassment that is derived from the romantic emotions so—“This is about Ajax.”

That is also the wrong answer because Enid makes a sound that is similar to an animal being killed and throws herself into the chair. It is forced across the wood floor by a number of inches—Enid’s strength is impressive—and the squeak the legs make causes a flinch from Enid. She does not speak.

“He may visit if you desire,” Wednesday is an Addams and Addams do not love selfishly, she knows she can be abhorrent and that she is decidedly not for everyone so she can recognize that she could potentially not be for Enid in the now or the future and she accepts that presently and for all futures but that does not make it stop the hurt or the green licking flames of jealousy, “I am not sure if you gathered but my family, my parents specifically, they are…avid supporters of love, let’s say. In the same vein that we consider it blasphemy to cage a beast, we consider it even crueler to cage love. If we did that—oh it might kill an Addams, actually. That would be an interesting experiment. Back to Ajax, experience has to be won. My parents recognize this. They will not mind.”

“Oh my god.”

“Just….allow me some insight if you bring him here. He is a weak boy and blunter than a spoon, nothing like you. I’ll need to prepare the house and my family. Else wise he might not survive.”

Finally Enid jerks her head up and oh, she is scarlet. The skin around her majestic scars is pale white so the red that boarders it is twice as pronounced. Wednesday finds herself enamored by the pooling of blood under her skin, blood that once flowed freely from that same spot for Wednesday, to protect her. Enid gave flesh for her.

“I’m not talking about him either! I broke up with him before school let out!”

Wednesday Addams blinks.

“Pardon?” Oh that is news. What wonderful, gracious news to hear. Her heart hums pleasantly, contented that Enid is not weighed down a romantic partner but also it stutters in its song because that means Enid is alone. Enid should never be alone. On the list of things she considers blasphemous, it goes:

1. Enid being alone
2. Caging Enid’s wolf

“I told you that! In th-the texts!”

“I did not read all of them. Just the ones where you seemed upset.”

“Well,” Enid lifts her feet onto the chair so she can hug her legs to her chest and sets her chin on her knees, “there you go.”

Wednesday takes a number of measured steps towards the nook carved into the personal library but does not cross the threshold, stands outside of it looking in. Enid is staring dejectedly down at the side table that once sat by the chair but is further away now, covered in a silk doily and containing a stack of books that have hundreds of markers poking from the pages where Wednesday has made annotations she may want to return to. Part of Wednesday preens to see Enid here, in her safest most sacred place, the spot not even Pugsley or Thing or Uncle Fester are allowed entry to. The splash of atomic orange and bile yellow give it life, give it a lone beam of sunshine to feed the wilting things and give the shadows a way to be darker, healthier.

She wants to fix this. She does not know how.

“My parents will not care if you share my room with me.”

The frothing waves in Enid’s eyes churn in a storm when they look to her, “Fine. They don’t care. Do you?”

“What a preposterous question,” My very soul is shared with you, my reason for breathing and my torturous continued existence is hinged upon sharing it with you, “of course I care.”

Enid glares at her which is so stunning Wednesday nearly swoons, “Then why offer?”

“Enid. I care. They do not mind but I care if you stay.”

The glare withers on the vine and Wednesday mourns it’s loss but the death is sweetened by the shy smile that blooms from the confusion, “Oh. I’m…dumb.”

Instantly a snapping, snarling rage fills her and Wednesday takes a single step into the room, her teeth showing from the fierceness of her frown, “You are not.”

Again, Enid stares at her in that same kind of wonder she was blessed with previously. She swallows loudly, “I can be. Sometimes.”

“Hm. To that, I’ll acquiesce.”

Enid sets her chin back on her knees and watches Wednesday, watches her breath and not blink and just stand there. “I told you I’ve been grouchy lately.”

“So you did.”

“Wanna sit with me?”

Yes, always, “If you’d like.”

The chair is Wednesday’s favorite for two reasons: the first being that it is a classic Victorian piece with a wide seat and a high winged back that is large enough she, by herself, can sit sideways in it and still be comfortable. The second is, of course, because one of her great great aunts choked to death on plum while sitting in it. There is room aplenty for Wednesday to settle beside Enid on the chair, lodging herself against one of the winged arms with her shoulders squared up and her hands twisted together in her lap. The heat of Enid pressed against her is nostalgic, it reminds her of blood sacrifices given during a blood moon and the feeling of a fuzzy pink coat brushing her cheek while her body was wobbling from the system shock and a revival lent to her by the ghost of an ancestor. They are quiet and still for only a few moments before Enid’s knee starts bouncing and she starts looking around the room for enrichment.

“Willa?”

“Where did this wretched nickname spawn, by the way?”

The corner of Enid’s mouth pulls to the side in a rather enticing display of mischief, “My heart?”

A gift from Enid’s heart? Is that a truth or something that was created by mischief, “Fine then.”

Enid clearly did not expect that response because her eyes widen and she blinks profusely, “Okay?”

“Get on with it, Sinclair.”

“Oh, right—can I have my hug now?”

“You may.” The heat is better than any fire, any pyre that Wednesday could be made into for the sake of this wonderful girl, it fills her better than the ooze—the love—because it is caporal. Enid envelops as surely as the maw her father taught her about and the bite does not sting.

(You’ll feel divine for even being considered.)

It crawls across her skin like the toppling of an ant hill, like millipedes dumped from a jar overtop her head. Every little prick of touch reminds her that any moment it can become poisonous but will never become so, because Wednesday is not afraid of it anymore. She welcomes it gladly because it is Enid. Strong arms wrap around her thin waist and tug to pull them more flush, unhappy to remain passive or still which is so utterly Enid that Wednesday lets her eyes slip shut in a show of comfort.

(I trust you, don’t you see? I can close my eyes when I’m with you) 

She succumbs to it so gladly. Her head gets heavy without the constant strength she uses to keep herself rigid, placid, apathetic. It tilts and falls against the delicate wings of Enid’s collarbone and is kept there by an encouragement from Enid’s hand that curls around her ear. Somehow, she is moved enough that she is hugged against the span of Enid’s ribs and encouraged by Enid’s hand to press her head under the sharp jut of her chin, fingers splayed across her ear and the hinge of her jaw. This hug does not smell of comforts like blood and perfume and sweat and the starch in their uniforms, but it is heavier. It is the divine end that was promised to her the moment her blood was conceptualized. Wednesday’s blanket that Grandmother made her—the one of a thick quilt with chainmail inside it—does not even compare to comforting weight of Enid surrounding her, crushing her to her breast and pressing against her skin. An odd noise tickles the back of her throat, one she does not know or has ever made. One that feels like it was ripped from the very insides of her and laid bare between the two of them here. It is not loud, but it does make Enid jump and slacken her grip, “Oh, sorry Willa, I forgot—want me to, I’m gonna let go, you gotta move a little bit—“

“Don’t.” Her hand flashes up to grasp Enid’s bicep, fingers curling around it with the grip strength of a cellist and digging into the meat of the muscle. If Enid really wanted, she could fight the way Wednesday draws her arm back to its previous resting place. Could fight the way Wednesday presses the arch of her palm against her bicep in a silent command to give me more, Enid. But her love is a gentle heart and has always been far kinder than Wednesday has ever deserved. Not needing to be told, Enid tightens her grip, and that noise comes out of Wednesday again. It sounds….happy, perhaps.

(This thing can save her; she is sure of it now. There will never be a more sublime end than the death she will suffer in Enid’s arms. This Wednesday will pass away to the beyond but what remains behind will be a new woman. That horrible change she has dreaded all her life is not so bad after all because it is barely a difference, but just there. Oh, what an empty tomb Wednesday had been before. What is the point of a grave if not to hold a body, if not to keep something pretty and preserved, safe inside? She was a useless coffin, an empty hole in the ground, but she is full now. Enid was always meant to rest within her, to grasp the lid and seal it shut, and it was Wednesday who would never, ever let another inside. Now, she is swallowed, now she is consumed, and now the mouth is her. She hungers. There will be days that pass, weeks into months into years, and in every one of them Wednesday will crack open her jaw and consume every morsel of affection Enid gives but it will never be enough. Let the grave take her, preserve Enid a creature who cannot grasp the monster of an Addams love, because she will never be free of it now. Wednesday wants everything.)

“Are you…okay?” Enid’s breath brushes the skin of scalp exposed through the part of her hair. Wednesday squeezes her eyes tighter shut—counts to three inside the cave of her mouth and feels her body relax again—to tamper the urge to shiver, to splinter apart and torment Enid with the burned image of Wednesday dying in her arms.

“Yes. Thank you for asking.”

Enid’s fingers scape against the small of her back when she adjusts (how long have they been sitting here? How has Enid been able to sit this still without combusting?) and hooks her arm around her hip, tilting her head in such that her cheek presses against Wednesday’s forehead.

“You shit.”

Her brows furrow but she does not move from her newly discovered haven, “What have I done?”

“You like hugs.”

“I absolutely do not.”

“Oh really? Sure doesn’t seem that way.”

(This moron is really her salvation? Her beloved end? The thing Wednesday will chew up and never have enough to fill her hungry belly with? How lucky for her but she will have to work with her on her deduction skills, her ability to notice what is in front of her.)

“You are the exception, Enid.”

Another long, length of silence proceeds. Enid does not speak but she does adjust again, just enough that they can sink a little lower into the chair, settle into a position that will make it comfortable to sit here for longer.

Then, “Good.”

There is something afoot. Wednesday had been in a love haze when Enid has first come to stay with them and the week that proceeded the settling of her new self—gifted by that hug—had dulled her sense but thoughts clear and she realizes: something is afoot. Enid is acting strange. Her eyes grow a little hungry when she watches Wednesday now and she always seems to be watching her, flicking to her any time she moves or speaks. It is the all-consuming gaze of a predator cataloguing every breath and step of their prey, learning their posture and consonance so they can gauge for the very best time to strike. It is positively thrilling. If this is what love is, then Wednesday begins to wish she had found it sooner.

The coiled snake, the wolf in the tall grass with eyes so big and fangs so deadly, never strikes. Just watches. For days at a time, steeping Wednesday in a want for the apex, practically begging Enid to just sink her teeth in but she refrains, is constantly swept away by the Addams, and turns back into a delightful spite, noisy and bright and beaming once they have her.

So Wednesday begins watching too.

The hunt is fun, it leaves Wednesday delirious with the insipid amounts of content that fill her. Each time Wednesday notes the shift between Enid and the wolf, she boils from the heat of a not-so-distant fire. The issue is, Wednesday does not know what Enid wants, what she is hunting for, why she is waiting to strike, what she wants to bite into. So it becomes a new mystery to solve.

There is a knock on the door that Wednesday, sat at her writing desk, does not respond to. This is her writing time and everyone well knows that Wednesday does not like to be interrupted during tasks but especially this one. So she surmises—since her family is excellent about respecting boundaries and her needs for them to remain respected—that the knock is not for her.

Something whizzes by her cheek when she tilts her head slightly to the left to avoid the object thrown at her, “Enid.”

From where she is sprawled across Wedneday’s bed (because they had tried to have a second bed in the room for Enid but in the middle of the night, Enid had moved off it and come to sleep at the foot of Wedneday’s and it seemed pointless not to share after that, not if Wednesday would wake to the sound Enid made after she kicked her in the face) with her legs kicked up on the wall, crossed at the ankles, and head hanging off the edge, she calls, “Someone is knocking. I wasn’t sure you heard.”

“I am constantly aware of my surroundings, at any given moment, be it awake or asleep,” She frowns at the page in her typewriter that now will have to be retyped for the slight typo caused when Wednesday accidentally hit a key, “the knock is for you.”

“What? Why—”

“That is correct!” Gomez’s excited pomp filters through the wood of the door, “May I enter? Or may you exit?”

Wednesday’s fingers hesitate over the keys again, the shinning black of her nail polish refracting the candlelight coming off the magnitude Enid had lit to ‘give it less of a haunted vibe’, “Father, you had better not be here to issue challenge.”

“Quite the opposite! Pugsley has requested a trip to town, and I wished to extend an offer.”

There is a loud thud that Wednesday does not need to turn around to know is the girl falling off the bed instead of getting off in a graceful, normal way that is chased by her thundering footsteps and the door being pulled open.

“You want me to come?”

“I would, yes! It occurred to me that I have fumbled and made a grave error that needs immediate correction. To be honest, my dear, you have been more kind to us than we have deserved after how cold our welcome was.”

Wednesday’s lips almost tick up into a smile because she can hear Enid floundering, “W-what? No! You were wonderful, you’ve all been so kind to me! I love it here!”

There is a pat, pat, pat that Wednesday knows is her father beating on his chest with the flat of his palm, “Oh it makes my heart scream a banshee wail to hear you say so,” everyone in this family is ridiculous, there was no need for such theatrics (though Wednesday’s screams a banshees wail too, each day that she gazes at Enid thriving in this dark place, her dark place), “but be that your truth, the fact remains: you were not given a gift!”

“A…gift?”

“Ceremonial,” Wednesday supplies in a flat tone without taking her eyes off her work, “ancient custom.”

“But…I thought the gift was letting me stay here?”

Perhaps Father is correct, they have deeply wronged her if that was all they had given her to make her know they are grateful for her choosing them, for staying here.

“Oh my dear, no, no, no. Your staying here is our gift. We have been delighted by your bright spot—Grandmother has been complaining about losing sight in her left eye for days, how remarkable!”

Father says: We have not been many people’s first choice, even amongst what should be our peers, the ones you call Outcasts. But what happens when even the Outcasts cast you out? Well then, your body builds a love that will become so strong it can create a new pantheon, it can rope in stars and pull down the moon for you to wear on a necklace. An Addams is not mournful for our difference—why could we need the acceptance of our peers, their subpar welcoming and praise, if we have a love like this between us? You are welcomed into it, you saw it and you chose it and now it’s yours, now you’re ours. One of us.

“O-oh…thank you sir, that’s so…nice.”

Her head jerks sidewards at the sound, watching her wolf from the corner of her eye because that had sounded like—

“Oh no, I apologize! I did not mean to cause tears—are you a hugger?”

“Oh my god, yes!? Are you? I figured—non like, judge-y, I swear!—that everyone in this family was anti-hug?”

“Au contraire! Burn it down!”

“The saying is bring it in.”

“Not in this house!”

There is a blur of movement in her peripheral view that finally convinces her to turn away from her work and peer completely over her shoulder. Enid is a bright spot—wearing a cornflower blue dress today, bright white-to-pink leggings beneath and tall boots—when tucked against her father’s chest and squeezed in his thick arms. She is a few inches taller than him in the boots, but he is beaming, entirely content to have provided her some semblance of comfort after being the cause of an emotional response. Their eyes meet over the top of Enid’s head (because she has bent hers down to tuck against his chest, a smile pulled up that Wednesday can see and her eyes tightly shut), his hand patting a comforting rhythm between her shoulder blades, and in his eyes, he says: You were right to bring her here, she needs us. Because she can see in his smile a little fracture, something that comes from the fact that he cannot conceptualize any parent mistreating their child and with it comes his Addams blood roaring to repair the deficit.

Wednesday gives a small, curt nod that says: she is ours now, if they hurt her again, I will drag them bloody into the night, I will sunder the fucking world for her.

Gomez Addams mouth parts slightly in surprise, his eyes widening in recognition and Wednesday turns back around to resume working. The sound of rustling fabric is the alert that the hug has ended followed closely by Enid’s excited squeal.

“I’d love to go to town with you, but I don’t need a present Mr. Addams. I promise, my gift has been being here too.”

“Well,” Ah, fascinating, even her flowery father with his poet’s tongue does not know what to do in the face of Enid’s sweet sunshine, “you are an outlier, aren’t you?”

“Addams have the weirdest way of complimenting me.” There is a smile in her voice and pure joy. Good, she thinks, that is precisely how you should feel.

“I agree with my Father.” Wednesday reaches to twist at the release mechanism and rips the page free to peruse it, a slight furrow of consideration dimpling her forehead. She knows he hears what she does not say and that is a damning confirmation for him. She knows he hears: I love her, is she not deserving of everything I am able to give? Don’t you love her too? Father, you had better love her because I will burry myself with her in the backyard. I am her grave, she is in me now.

His answering laugh is one of pure delight, “Oh we must celebrate! Enid, loba, do you like milkshakes?”

There is a swirl of excitement as Enid gets ready to leave, chatting with Gomez who remains in the hallway leaned against the doorframe. Most of it is inane—it sounds like she is describing what Legos are because that was Pugsley’s request and reason for going into town—and Wednesday easily tunes it out while she works through a paragraph that has been plaguing her for the past thirty minutes. Another handful of random keys are pressed when, suddenly, Enid’s hands curl around her shoulders and a kiss is being placed against the top of her head.

Slowly, she turns to fix Enid with a blank stare.

“See you when we get back!”

A pucker appears in the skin on her nose from how it scrunches up slightly.

There, for just a moment Wednesday sees the predator slip into Enid’s smile and into her eyes when they flick down to Wednesday’s pursed lips. The beast is gone when she looks back up.

“If you keep writing past your usual hour and we aren’t back by then, make sure you take a break and eat something. Thing will tell me if you didn’t, and I’ll be pissed at you.”

“Oh my.” Gomez mutters to himself and Wednesday feels her cheek twitch. She spins back around to glare at her typewriter while she begins burning from the crown of her head downward.

“Go away. You’re annoying me.”

After they return, Enid is rosy in the cheeks and laden with shopping bags. She shows Wednesday the plethora of things Gomez bought her while they were shopping and drags Wednesday from her cave to join her family in the sitting room. She sits stiffly in an armchair nearest to the fireplace, holding a novel in her lap that is left unread because she is watching Enid again. Enid who is sprawled across the rug with Pugsley, both of them huddled around a sheaf of paper depicting the instructions on how to build the massive Lego haunted house that sits in four separate bags in front of them. Pugsley has that face again that is scrunched up and when he turns it on Enid, her wolf splinters apart with kind laughter and lifts a hand to set on top of his head, rifling the hair until tuffs of black poke between her fanned out fingers.

Her lips thin into an unhappy line. She wishes to be sat with them, for Enid to have her hand in Wednesday’s hair, but she is too enraptured by the sight of Enid and Pugsley bonding. Her soft brother—an Addams through and through no matter how weak he is—deserves to sample some of her sunlight too. She can share, just with him, only this once.

From the corner of her eye, she catches her mother’s attention on her and inclines her head just enough to meet her gaze, a silent way of her acknowledging the interest and promoting her mother to get on with it.

Morticia has her usual dreamy smile lifting at her painted lips and a sparkle in her eye. She speaks to Wednesday in French, “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Wednesday stiffens. She lifts her shoulders to her ears and almost glares at her mother, answers back in Italian, “It was none of your business.”

Gomez snaps his head towards his wife, eyes wild and full of a frenzied passion that makes Wednesday roll her eyes, “No. Not in front of Enid, have some decorum.”

Without looking up from tearing into the plastic bags and delighting in the chaos of hundreds of colorful little pieces flying everywhere, Enid snappily replies in an overly cheery tone, “I think it’s beautiful. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a love like theirs, and that’s coming from a werewolf. It’s absolutely everything. Now I know exactly what I want in a mate.”

Have you not seen me, my love? Do you not feel me, hear me, what more do you need? Taste me then, take my blood, chew on my bones, lick the marrow out and you’ll find it there, all screaming your name, “Et tu?”

“Quit complaining,” She shoots out an arm without taking her attention off the instructions, fingers wiggling with her palm held up in offering, “and come help, we need your big brain.”  

Wednesday notes the deeply pleased look on her mother’s face when she stands from the chair with nary a complaint or waspish retort. She gives her daughter a slight nod of approval and a soft rebuttal in French, “She is perfect for you. Congratulations.”

“Cara mia…”

Wednesday swiftly turns her back on them, top lip pulled to beneath her nose in utter disgust. Ignoring the sound of her father’s kisses trailing up mother’s arm, Wednesday sets her palm in Enid’s and stares down at her sitting on the floor. Enid jumps and jerks her head up, eyes wide in shock, as if she had not realized what she offered and certainly had not expected the offer to be taken. Quickly but not quick enough Wednesday does not notice, her eyes move to her parents then back to Wednesday.

When she feels some of the pressure start the slacken, she acts quickly to twine their fingers together and grips Enid’s hand hard so it cannot escape her. She furrows her brow at Enid and hopes she hears, ‘you offered, you can’t take it back now, it’s not fair to me.’ She continues staring blankly down at her wide-eyed friend, “I would rather chew off my own fingers than play with a child’s toy. Especially with you and Pugsley.”

Enid’s mouth opens and closes enough times it leaves a window open for Pugsley’s cheery voice to spear through the bubble between them, “This one is for adults, Wednesday!”

“Well, between the two of you, you almost make a full adult.”

“Look,” He thrusts the sheaf of paper upward, reaching around it to tap on a particular set of images, “this one has a pully system that we have to put together!”

Interest sparks in her gut, body tipping forward enough her braids swing in a short arc that brush them against Enid’s cheek. She tilts her head while she reads, “Those little plastic bricks form three dimensional objects that can create torque?”

He sees that she is in his snare—a hunter that has caught its prey, mouth to throat seeking blood, the Addams way—and finishes closing the trap’s teeth around her by lifting slightly-yellow-clear things, “It comes with ghosts.”

“Very well,” She settles on her knees between the two of them, surveying the scene and spots a few of what she thinks are the bits that create a pully, “I’ll bet with a little creativity we can turn that crank into a guillotine.”

“Willa!” Enid scoots a little closer, enough that their shoulders press together, and scowls at the same pieces she had been looking at, “Nothing dangerous! But…could you…actually do that though? With Legos?”

Pugsley wiggles around, fast fist pushing into his overall pockets and comes up with something silvery and glinting in the light, “I have a razor blade!”

“Oh my god. Why do you have a loose razor in your pocket!?”

Wednesday leans forward to dig through the pieces with her fingertips, her other hand still clasped tightly in Enid’s, “I agree. Pathetic Pugsley, at your age you should have learned to conceal a scalpel or barbers knife, at the very least.”

Enid’s hand does not leave hers except for when they need both to press little blocks into place, but it always begins seeking hers again the moment it is free, pushing across the rug and wood floor to tangle with Wednesday’s. After their toy is completed, Enid draws Pugsley against her ribs on the left and Wednesday against the right, her chin atop Wednesday’s head and one arm around her brother’s shoulders so she can take a selfie with their creation in the background. She shows it to Wednesday who sees her own dark eyes not looking into the lens but looking at where Enid had been in the glass face while they were assembling. She looks horribly sick with love, burdened to the very bone, heavy enough with it that it has begun shifting the muscles—she is smiling, not with the teeth, but there is a notable curve to her maroon mouth—and filling the deep wells in her eye sockets with the refracting sunlight seeping between the cracks in Enid’s teeth. She wonders if Enid can see what she sees.

Wednesday comes awake with her fingers curled around the hilt of the dagger sewn into the inseam of her pillow. Still groggy from being unconscious only seconds before but instantly alert. The lower edge of the blade bites into the skin of her index and ring finger, dogging in just enough past the tissue for her to feel hot blood bead up. In her haze of between-conscious-and-not she had slid her hand too high on the hilt and this one contained no cross guard to prevent this very thing. Blearily, she tries to adjust to the dark and reels back when she realizes there is a face hovering inches from hers. The waning gibbous has sneaked lengthy arms of silver through the window to touch it, lighting up the eyes and refracting yellow light back on her. An elbow is dug into her belly—that is what woke her, must have been—and one of Enid’s legs is half hanging off the bed while the other is wedged against her hip. They both stare at each other with a knife between them.

“Enid?” Her voice sounds husky in her own ears from sleep, “What are you doing?”

“I had to pee,” Her shinning eyes—predator’s eyes—lower to the blade held near her throat, “Do you seriously sleep with a knife under your pillow?”

“Naturally,” Her head flops back down as the spike of adrenaline leaves her in a rush, arm splaying across the mattress beside her and the knife hung between her bleeding fingers, “you startled me.”

“I—you’re the one with a knife! You little weirdo—that scared me! How the heck do you wake up that fast and have a knife pointed right where I was?”

Tiredly, her eyelids start to droop shut and the peace of Enid’s presence begins to lull her back to a state of immense comfort, “Practice.”

“Weirdo. Gimmi that,” Fingers press against her hand to pry her grip away from the knife and she hears it clang from where Enid throws it on the floor, some distance away from them, “no more knives in bed.”

“Self-protection is vital for women our age and, while I do not feel unsafe here, there are plenty of reasons that attend our school I keep a knife for.”

“You have a werewolf in your bed,” Enid emits a jaw popping yawn and sinks back into the bed against Wednesday’s side, brushing her cool toes against her calf and her spine against the outside of Wednesday’s arm, “What do you need a knife for? I’m way better than that.”

“Hm,” Her chest flutters with the wings of a bird in its death throes, “maybe I need it to keep you safe.”

Enid lets out a sleepy snort and kicks backward, gently, with her foot against Wednesday’s leg, “Thought we didn’t insult each other anymore.”

“I am infinitely more dangerous than you are, beast.”

“Are not,” Enid adjusts a little, tugging the corner of the blanket up to hug beneath her chin and lets out another long yawn, “I guess between the both of us though, anyone who tries to break into our dorm this year is gonna be real sorry.”

Wednesday preens over that because to her it sounds like I have your back and I’ll keep you safe, but I know you won’t need me. We are a pack, just us two, and ours is the most vicious. Let any who try to come between us suffer and die. She tilts her head on the pillow they are sharing to hazily stare at the back of Enid’s head, tousled from sleep and lit up like wisps of starlight in the silver moonbeams cast over her from above. It is dark—the time of scavengers, a time when a cunning fox like Wednesday would thrive for a hunt, when she should be seizing her moment and setting her teeth into something—so part of her comes alive in that moment, waking for the taste that her hungry love thirsts for. Enid is breathtaking in the moonlight even with her back to her, even with her heat pressed so close but not quite close either.

Slow enough that she can allow for enough time to change her mind, she lifts her arm from the corpse pose she sleeps in to test an urge. She gingerly touches the backs of her fingers against the nape of Enid’s neck. The skin is smoother than even she could imagine but just as hot, feeling like a thin scrap of leather stretched over a jar full of coals. Touching it feels almost as sweet as it had to seal her thumbprint in hot wax, it nearly takes the flesh from her bones. Her index finger unfurls to push up into the fine hairs at the back of her neck, dragging the blunt edge of a nail against the scalp in an exploration, before curling back into the fist with its brethren.

(She is a monsoon, a gale force of love that will destroy absolutely anything in her path. She rages for Enid, for this lone touch that has been the bane of her existence—before. Before Wednesday Addams died in the arms of a girl, sat in a chair just the two of them, and was reborn in her arms too. Love is all she is now, love and rage and all the darker emotions of a nasty scavenger. Now it is her holy prayer to have just one more hug, to take every little thing Enid is willing to give her, to soak in the warmth that threatens to burn her alive and push herself to the very edge of her ability to handle more, just little more.)

Her hand drops away to curl back in, ready to let that anomaly be the first text in her holy reportage. To let that wrap like silk around her bones so that it can be stored safe, remembered, and felt for an eternity. This memory can be her burial shroud.

Enid makes one of those animalistic keening noises that is exceptionally loud in the dark middle of the night, “Why did you stop?”

She whispers the words and they, each one, crawl across her skin, feel like the touch of fingertips scratching into the divots of her spine to mine for the nerves beneath.

“I should have asked for permission.”

Enid does not turn around but she scoots backward a bit, pressing the whole length of her against Wednesday’s right side and tilts her head forward on the pillow to expose more of the back of her neck, “I appreciate the thought but that felt nice. Keep going.”

This time she turns her hand around and curls her fingers around the back of Enid’s neck until her palm presses flat to it. A low grumble comes from her bed partner and Wednesday is delighted to learn that she can feel it as a tickle against her skin when she touches her like this. Her thumb swipes across the skin to feel upward behind the red ear. The skin is softer here because its thinner and Wednesday enjoys that she can feel Enid’s muscle shift beneath, can feel the curve of bone, the swell of a vein pressed up against the surface of the skin. It would be so easy to dig beneath, past the skull, into the soft grey matter of her brain. She is violently aware of this and how Enid must be too but allows Wednesday to continue probing. 

(Enid trusts her. She has tilted forward in a kind of supplication only Wednesday should be expected to preform, exposed an artery and an easy place to cut knowing Wednesday would cover it in protection, put her own meat between the air and her weak spot. Exposing the neck like this is how wolves die, how they are grasped and shaken until the neck snaps, but Enid gave it to her freely.)

She holds fire in her hand, feels it and knows it to be softer than silk, knows it flexes and shifts with needy lungs and a rapid heartbeat. It burns, it makes her palm sting, but the ache is so good that she cannot give it away, will not even if she keeps her hand here until her flesh welds to Enid’s and they both melt there, leaving nothing but bones stacked together in such a heap, whoever finds them will not be able to tell them apart. Bravely, a few fingertips creep up into Enid’s hair, twitching enough that some of it begins to wrap around them. A soft feeling overtakes her when her eyes finally notice that the darkness she is leaving on Enid is the blood from the knife wound, smearing against her pale goodness and defiling it with Wednesday’s overbearing, all-consuming love. That some of it has wetted the ends of her soft hair. Even in the dark, Wednesday marvels at the contrast of her immaculate black polish set against the bleach blond of Enid’s hair, seen like small black dots buried in starlight. When she applies the barest amount of pressure, her fingers splayed out like they are sitting on the neck of her cello reaching for frets far apart, Enid shivers and leans back into her hand. Fascinating.

“Enid?”

“Mm?”

“I am your friend, am I not?”

A breath leaves Enid that sounds like a hybrid between a scoff and a sigh, “Sure. I mean—yes, you are. My best friend. Who I love, very much. Yes.”

“And Yoko is your friend, correct?”

 Wednesday’s lashes flutter over wide open eyes when she feels Enid’s confused rumble against her palm, ring finger stretched over the pulse in the side of her neck, “Yes?”

“When you spent that week with her…did you allow her this?”

Long quiet proceeds, fills the space between them and the tickling on her skin makes her think this would be where someone might normally feel tension for abrasively approaching something they ought not, but Wednesday is patient, calm, placid. Her thumb swipes up to flick against the backside of one of Enid’s earrings.  

Finally, Enid asks in a soft almost whisper, “Ask me that in a different way, I don’t understand.”

“Did you share a bed with her?”

Oddly, some muscles tense under her hand, “No.”

“Given the chance though, would you?”

“No.”

Interesting, “Hm. Good.”

Enid turns her head just enough that Wednesday can see one eye peering at her, yellow and backlit by the moon, “Why?”

Wednesday just stares at her with her fox eyes, untouched by the moon the way a wolf’s is but curious, sharp, always watching to learn and once she has figured out what she sees, she will dart in and sink her teeth in. A frown tugs on Enid’s lovely mouth, makes her roll over and scoot closer, “You don’t get to ask me those questions and refuse to answer mine.”

“I absolutely can. I didn’t make you answer.”

“Wednesday Addams,” Enid curls long fingers around her bicep, hot even through the long sleeve of Wednesday’s nightgown, watching her with the eyes of a hungry wolf, “tell me why.”

I’m possessive, I’m a green eyed monster, the thought of you sleeping this close to someone with the back of your precious neck exposed to anyone but me makes my insides boil, because I love you and I do not know what you think of me, because an Addams loves selflessly but I am a wretch and if she has felt your heat I’ll flay every bit of skin that has known yours from her body, “You’re very nosy. Has anyone else told you to mind your own business?”

When moonlight catches the wet on her teeth, exposed in a massive grin, Wednesday swallows down the leaves and petals of love bloodying her throat, “I am the gossip queen of Nevermore. Its hard to get the dish without sticking my nose places. Besides, this doesn’t count. This is just between us.”

“Hm,” How easy it is to sway her now if Enid simply says us, “off the record?”

Enid presses her smile against the pillow very close to Wednesday’s ear, “I don’t think anyone would believe me if I told them what a smart ass you are sometimes. Then again…”

“Hm?”

“Nothing.”

“Pot and kettle, my—” Wednesday snaps her mouth shut so quick the teeth click, takes a moment to press the words my love, my heart, my everything, my reason for breath, my darling against the roof of her mouth with her tongue and tries again, “wolf.”

Luminous yellow eyes watch her, bright in the shadow of night and focused when the rest of her face is partially obscured. They are the beast in the weeds, the hunter that Wednesday has been watching and waiting for, they hold a stare that sends chills through the long length of her family history.

(Oh, she belongs there, her wicked thing. What a fool she was to ever try and fight fate and how patient, kind fate was to hold Enid to the side until Wednesday had come to her senses, allowed herself to be tainted by the kiss of another first so she could know what she did not want, and allowed Enid into her heart. What a treasure it will be for Wednesday to lead Enid down the annals of her history, pointing out every aunt, cousin, uncle, and grandmother until they come to the blank place that was left for them. How she aches to see Enid’s name nestled within the roots of a tree that accepts her, that will love her, that will cherish her and keep her for the next set of Addams to marvel at once their curse takes root.)

Enid begins worrying her lower lip between her teeth again—two moons set in her face, two glowing lanterns drawing Wednesday to her as a moth beseeching their luminous yellow light—while she watches Wednesday. Lush lips part, expose shinning canines, close to chew until the skin is raw, then, “That was almost sweet, calling me…your wolf.”

“I can manage it, sometimes. Do not come to expect it though.”

The torchlights shift, moving through the dark, until they settle just below Wednesday’s nose, “Can I tell you a secret?”

“You can trust me with anything, Enid.”

“Your family is probably the weirdest people I’ve ever met in my entire life, and I love them so much. I don’t think I ever want to leave here. I don’t know how you do it, every year, for school. I…judged you, when we first met, and your parents too. I thought you were—“

“Freaks.” She supplies it in a dry, warm tone, offers the words not as a stinging insect but as kindling for a fire.

“Sorry but yeah, I did. Everyone does, huh? But…now I feel like maybe I’m the freak. Your family is…wonderful. Like, Disney movie level perfect.”

Wednesday reels back as if she has been struck, “What a terrible thing to say. Take it back, immediately.”

“You know what I mean. Mine, they’re…okay? I thought things weren’t that bad but after staying here for a while—I know why and how and who you get your sweetheart genes from. I’ve never been so welcome before or felt so comfortable except for, maybe, when I was alone at school before you came but I didn’t really like that either,” A long wind blows through Enid, comes out as a tired sigh, “Do you think they’d care if I moved in?” She says it in a warm, lilting tone that conveys merriment but Wednesday swallows it bitterly, takes it very seriously the way she takes most things.

“No.”

When Enid rolls her eyes in the dark, catching, and refracting moonlight, she can track where the glow goes, “Be real.”

“It’s your home too, now. We’ve accepted you as one of ours, once we get our teeth in, we lock our jaw and don’t let go,” Wednesday pokes at the hinge of Enid’s jaw with the tip of her finger, tracking the glow up until it disappears behind Enid’s eyelids, “I figured you would know something about that.”

“Are you sure you’re human?”

“That’s comes down entirely to a debate on semantics and who you ask.”

“So there isn’t a chance you’re all secretly werewolves? Because the way you guys talk about family and love sometimes trips me out. I didn’t think humans were…like that. Could get it.”

“There is no type of love that can compare to that of an Addams. There are scientific journals and manuscripts in the family library that have been left by those who have studied it, extensively. I did not bother with it all much, as a child, but I did enjoy the one written by a late 16^th century doctor who went mad trying to understand it. He put an ice pick through his eye—isn’t that fascinating?”

Enid makes a soft gagging noise, “How is that anything but gross?”

“Because even after he lobotomized himself, he still felt the rushing, raging waters of the all-powerful, no-one-can-escape-it Addams love. It did not matter how much of him was left; the love remained.”

“So,” Enid shifts a little closer until her nose is pressed against the round cap of Wednesday’s shoulder, “not human then.”

“Semantics.”

A loud yawn splits the air, “Bet I could give you a run for your money. Wolves mate for life, you know. It takes a special kind of love to fall for one person and only love them forever. Maybe even as intense as an Addams, maybe?”

“As do we. I assure you; this isn’t a competition you can win. Have you seen my parents?”

“I’ll die if I don’t find someone. Wolves can’t live alone, not forever.”

“I’ll die without my someone, I’ll die the moment she does because my soul will not be able to bare a single second without her.”

“Well, my wolf will know before I—“

“Enid. Go to sleep, we can debate about who loves harder and supernaturally strong tomorrow, over breakfast.”

“That means you don’t have a good comeback,” Enid’s hand on her bicep curls inward to hug their arms together, pressing it against her chest as if it is a teddy, and rests her temple on Wednesday’s shoulder, “I win.”

“That is not even remotely close to the truth nor how debates work.”

Chapter Text

Her feet pause in the hall outside one of many sitting rooms nestled into the manor because she can hear voices inside, one of whom is sourced from the very person she had left her room to find. Before settling down for her writing hour Enid had informed her she was going to the kitchen for cooking lessons with Grandmother but, after the hour and then some passed, Enid had not returned and Wednesday had felt that distance as an acute loss. From the sounds she can hear in the hallway, it would seem her mother had plucked the young wolf up and held her captive within.

Enid’s ringing laugh tickles her ear that is mingled with the smokey, gentle one belonging to Morticia Addams, “Ew, no.”

“Well, I only mean to be of assistance, dear,” There is a soft pause that Wednesday uses to press herself against the wall just outside the doorway, “So…full moon tonight. How are you feeling?”

Wednesday tilts onto the ball of her left foot to peer around the corner into the room, ready to start war with her mother if she has bothered Enid in any way. The two of them are huddled near one another on a maroon-colored settee, Morticia with her back to Enid because the younger girl is on her knees behind her, braiding her long black hair. There is a new sheen on her nails that indicate they have been freshly painted to match same glossy coat on her Mother’s. There are a handful of bottles strewn across the coffee table coupled with a bowl full of hair accessories that Wednesday purses her lips at. How mundane, they are doing each other’s nails and hair.

“Um…a little? Last month didn’t go…so well.”

“Is that so? I’m sorry to hear that,” Morticia lifts a small glass of sherry to her lips for a taste (it will do very little, Addams are immune to poison and alcohol is nothing but) while her head remains very still, moving only when Enid gives a little tug to pull another lash of hair into the tight pleat forming, “this time will be different, I’m sure of it.”

Wednesday watches the deep steadying breath Enid takes and the way a little smile forms when she blows it out, nods to herself in agreement but it does look like she is attempting to convince herself of the same thing, “I hope so. I don’t want to fuck anythi—” She freezes, eyes going comically wide and her mouth coming open in shock. Morticia takes another sip of her sherry, red lips forming a small smirk against the rim of the glass.

“You were saying, dear?”

“I-I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s quite alright. I haven’t the faintest notion of silencing you,” When Enid remains frozen, the matriarch of the Addams family reaches behind her hip to pat Enid’s knee, “A little cursing never hurt anyone. We love curses in this family.”

“You mean the other kind though.”

“You’re catching on quick.”

The comfort Wednesday sees wash over Enid settles the knot that had formed quickly in her. Her fingers begin working again, weaving long strips of sable hair into a thick crown forming around Morticia’s head, “I was pretty nervous last time. Willa thinks that’s why I—well, it got kind of gross and embarrassing. I just really, really can’t handle doing something like that again while I’m here.”

Her mother makes a curious sound, long nail tapping against the crystal glass containing her sherry, “What happened, if you don’t mind sharing?”

Enid shoulders hike up to her ears that begin shifting to that darling shade of pink, “I…killed my neighbor’s dog.”

“Oh my, I can see how that might be discomforting.”

“It always barked at me, I guess I thought it was challenging me, I dunno. I only half remember it. I wasn’t in the best headspace,” Something crosses the blue ocean in Enid’s eyes, something made of an intense emotion because for a moment they become stormy and Enid’s mouth turns down, “I wasn’t….really feeling safe, at the time. I was anxious and worried my parents would be disappointed when they finally saw me in wolf form for the first time and I couldn’t find Wednesday—I mean, um…what I mean is—”

“Did you know that my darling Gomez’s great uncle was mated to a werewolf?”

Interestingly, splashes of red begin blooming in the apples of Enid’s cheeks, “O-oh, so you…? I mean, we aren’t—she and I—I am very respectful of your daughter, ma’am!”

“I have no doubt.”

“And I love her very, very much b-but I’d never do anything to make her uncomfortable so I…” The threads of hair come together quickly when Enid goes quiet, her brow stiches in concentration or in something else that is troubling her in the depths of her own mind. Vibrant green rose stems still containing large horned thorns on them are taken gingerly by Enid—after they are handed over by a relaxed Morticia—and added into the weave, forming a literal crown within the braid. The blooms that had been snipped off lay in a scattered mess of red across the table. She decides then to make her entrance, wooden heels in her shoes making sharp clicks against the floor and comes to stand near the settee.

“Hey Willa, what are you doin’ down here?”

Wednesday tips up her chin and folds her hands primly behind her back, “It is my house,” She moves her keen gaze to Morticia who salutes her entrance with a raising of her sherry glass, “Is my mother bothering you?”

Enid makes a happy sound, something at the back of her teeth that are showing in a big smile, and tilts her head, “What does it look like?”

“We’re having a girl talk,” Morticia elegantly displays the mess splayed across the table and covered in enough rose petals it looks as if a murder has been committed, “care to join?”

Wednesday’s nose twists up, “No.”

Enid ties off the crown braid by sliding in a comb that Wednesday personally knows is older than the house and worth three times as much. Once completed with her task, she leans back with a massive smile aimed directly at Wednesday (an arrow to the heart, it pierces deep into the meat and she sings for it) and pats the cushion beside her, “C’mon, I can braid your hair next.”

Her jaw twitches, eyes sliding to the left to peruse the flower petals again instead of looking into the frothy blue of Enid’s eagerness, “I am concerned for your powers of observation.”

There is a brush of touch against her elbow that makes her head snap back up, looking down into her mother’s kind eyes. She gives Wednesday a wink and pats her elbow once, as an encouragement, before she stands to smooth down the length of her dress.

“Thank you Enid, it is marvelous.”

“You haven’t even seen it!” Enid starts patting across the table, knocking things over and sending a rain of petals down to the floor, before she emerges victorious with her cellphone in hand. Morticia makes a noise of interest, leaning in just as Enid holds the phone up with the glass face pointed outward so she can see herself with the camera.

“Oh, I didn’t need to see it to know but my, this is exceptional. Thank you,” Morticia leans forward a bit more to kiss Enid on the cheek, smiling afterwards because she needs to reach out to swipe away the crimson color of her lipstick that stained, “I think I’ll go and show Gomez.”

“Totes!,” Enid perks up, a deep breath making her chest expand, and once Morticia is almost entirely out of the room, she whispers, “Thank you for spending time with me.”

“Anytime.” Morticia hums and is gone in a swirl of dark satin and thorny rose stems. Enid sinks back into the settee, sliding down until her back is on the cushion her knees had been and her neck is propped at an odd angle.

“Your mom is so nice. It’s so awesome here. Is this what its like to come from a family that actually loves you for, like, you?”

Wednesday firms her jaw, takes another two steps forward until her knees bump the cushion right by Enid’s hip, “What were you two talking about?”

“Were you eavesdropping, Willa?”

“Yes.”

A grin splits Enid’s face, one laden with all the light of the sun and Wednesday almost has to blink for the burn it sets in her retinas, “Then I’m not gonna tell you.”

“Why not?”

“It’s rude to eavesdrop.”

Wednesday stares at her quietly, holding her jaw tight and her arms tighter at her side, in the unnerving way that usually either breaks a person into looking away or stumble over their own tongues and submit to her will. To her dismay (and immerse pride) Enid just grins up at her while one of her fingers twirls a loose strand of her hair. Another few seconds pass before Wednesday relaxes unhappily and takes a seat beside Enid sprawled across the settee, knees tight together and hands folded in her lap.

“You sounded…sad. I was concerned, that’s why I listened in.”

“Nah,” Enid tilts herself sideways so her temple falls against Wednesday’s arm, “I haven’t been sad since I came here.”

“Hm.” Is all she says but her heart pumps hot blood through her that scratches her veins, buzzing with pride. Good, it sings, you belong here my beloved, my cherished beast. Your happiness is the only thing that matters.

“Wednesday?”

“Yes?”

Fingers press across the cushion between them, brushing against the outside of her thigh to play with the end of her belt poking from the loop, “Can I hold your hand?”

“You don’t need to ask.” She untangles them so that one can be offered with the palm up, perfect  supplication set upon her knee and fingers curled halfway like a spider dead upon its back. The cool glide of the rings on Enid’s fingers are a nice contrast for how warm her skin is, how it is molten metal poured over her that burns down to the bone and makes the liquid boil beneath. Their palms slip together in an easy tango, two pieces that remember how to fit together as if it has happened a hundred times before.

Wednesday draws in a fortifying breath, eyes watching their tangled fingers closely.

“I don’t?” Enid’s whisper is done in awe, done in part in the tone of someone who thinks they are being told a joke and are waiting for their cue to laugh.

“No.”

From the corner of her eye she sees Enid shimmy back up the cushion and, with her free hand, holds up two fingers. The first is wiggled, “So I get to hug you whenever I want,” the second finger is wiggled, “and I get to hold your hand?”

“You can count to two. That is impressive.”

“Oh ha ha. Why the sudden change of heart?”

Wednesday swallows back her nerves, stiffens a bit and then takes comfort in Enid’s fingers playing with her own, “Are you complaining?”

“Oh my god, you’re so annoying,” She jumps—actually jumps as if she is some spineless, wall-eyed commoner—from the surprise that fills her when Enid reaches between them, grasps the lower end of one braid, and gives it a semi-gentle tug, “let’s try an exercise, it’ll go like this: I ask a question, you actually answer it.”

“Did you just pull my hair? Do you want to lose your fingers, Enid?”

“I’m not scared of you.”

“Hm,” Wednesday tilts her head fractionally to the side as she considers this, “fantastic. Your ability to ignore your danger sense has already improved during your stay here. Perhaps, once we return to Nevermore, you will be able to get up at night without being frightened of your own shadow.”

“Hey! That only happened once and it was because—“

“What’s the phrase? ‘Scaredy Cat’?”

“Shut up! That is, like, so insulting!”

“That was the idea.”

Her eyes are drawn to the radium green on one of Enid’s nails pressed against her knuckle, twitching in a side to side that is, probably, a caress. The bright speck of color set against her pale dusk, the singular allowance of color to touch her. Another exception, for Enid. The movement, however slight, wakes the watch on Enid’s wrist allowing for Wednesday to spot the time.  

“Enid. You are still partaking in those talks with your Nevermore friends, are you not?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“You’re three minutes past time.”

Enid jerks away, arm lifted to assuage the truth for herself, and lets out a long whine when she sees, “Oh no! I gotta go.”

“I shall keep my dastard presence from the room for your sake.”

“What? I don’t care if you’re there, my friends like you Wednesday.”

“I find that very hard to believe. Considering I certainly do not like them.”

“Whatever you say,” Enid sweeps off the settee and begins marching from the room, pauses to spin back around, and races back to throw her arms around Wednesday’s shoulders, “You can come up if you want but no pressure. We mostly talk about—“

“Boys and other such irksome twaddle that youths our age somehow stomach for extended periods of time?”

“No,” Enid draws back, her sunlit joy mere inches from Wednesday’s face, heating the skin and making her swallow back nerves, “not always, anyway. Sometimes we talk about girls.”

“How exhilarating. In that case, I’m in.”

“Really!?”

“No.”

Enid pouts which draws her lips into a rather attractive shape that Wednesday watches keenly, stomach twisted with a terrible kind of want.

“Rude,” The lips twitch then Enid sways closer to press them against her cheek in a solar explosion of heat she nearly flinches from, startled but welcoming its magma touch, “fine, be boring. I’ll give everyone your love.”

“Don’t you dare.”

“I’ll doubley make sure Bianca knows you’ve been missing her. You two would be the cutest besties. You really have a lot in common, you know.”

Wednesday scoffs—it is a soft slide of air between her teeth, one barely auditable—and brushes past Enid when she stands, annoyed by the fact that some of the heat has remained in her cheek.

“I thought I was your best friend. How easy it is for you to pass me off. I should be insulted. And to Barclay of all people. When will the betrayal cease?”

For a moment, under her watchful attentions, she sees a bit of the wolf slide into Enid’s features. Only for a moment do her lids lower over her eyes, does her upper lip peel back slightly over her teeth, does her hands curl into clenched fists. Her voice is a little sharp, stinging, when she says in a false cheer, “I’m not—you’re mine, Wednesday.”

A single one of her dark brows raise which chases the predator off, brings back the sunbeams and glitter, “My bestie, I mean! Obvs. Okay I really gotta go.” Enid sweeps down to press another kiss against her cheek then draws away with her eyes averted to the tips of her shoes, that pretty red contouring her cheeks.

Wednesday cocks her head curiously while Enid flees the room.

“Wednesday! Come!” Grandmother’s whiskey-bourbon voice, a smoky and aged thing, calls from the nook in the kitchen. She had been passing through in her bid to pass a bit of time before returning to her room so as to avoid interrupting Enid’s private time. Despite what she had said, Wednesday knows the time would be better spent alone without her interruption and she can be gracious of space. Respecting boundaries is something she excels at even if she does not always choose to.

She spins on her heels to approach the nook—wise enough not to enter a witch’s lair without permission—standing just at the threshold where the black marble flooring changes to a molded, rotting old wood. Shadows move within, obscured by heaps of pots, crates that shake and hiss, and one mighty black cauldron.

“Yes?”

“Full moon tonight.” Grandmother’s voice screeches in a hiss, it is claws on a chalkboard and the bit of bone you knock with your teeth when you had not expected it to be there. It is one of Wednesday’s creature comforts.

“I’m wildly aware.”

“Oh, snappy, snappy. Always teeth with you,” Grandmother appears around the edge of the cauldron with wide flute of a burbling liquid spewing a bile yellow foam overtop, “it’s devastating.”

Pride tickles her chest, “Thank you.”

“Here,” The potion is thrust into Wednesday’s hands, grandmother even curls her fingers around it one by one so she cannot drop it, “for your eyesore.”

“Enid?”  

A wooden spoon that has stains run so deep into the groove of the wood it looks like brown and black marble is thrust under her nose from seemingly the void of space, gripped tightly in the gnarled old hand of her Grandmother. It pokes the end of her nose roughly. She stares blankly.

“It’s a full moon tonight!”

Ah, this party trick where Grandmother speaks in a circle that Wednesday cannot chase because she is stuck in the middle of it, trying to find the tail from the head. From experience she has learned that if she waits it out, the answer usually comes.

The spoon is used to tap the outside of the glass, knocking loose some of the foam onto her hand which, interestingly, feels like the brush of svelte rather than the cool brush of something wet.

“Tell her to drink it all. Not one drop!”

“Grandmother…she is sensitive.”  

“Sensitive? Oh, aren’t we all! A raw nerve, a bleeding vein—it’s a full moon tonight, Precious Poison! Exciting, yes so thrilling. Hasn’t been a wolf to rip at Addams soil since…”

“Great Aunt Leronia. But Grandmother, Enid is not like us. If there is something in this that might—"

The spoon gently raps her on the forehead, “Questions! Always questions, always seeking—don’t you trust the night, my Little Deathstalker? Have I not always known how to care for what belongs in the dark?” As if to prove her point, Grandmother draws a collection of insects from her pocket each coated in a dark liquid that large brown crystals are adhered to. They are passed into Wednesday’s cupped palm who takes them with the faintest curl to her lips.

“Molasses and brown sugar-coated Longhorns. My favorite.”

“Not too sweet.”

“Yes,” She passes one over her lips, setting her teeth into the candy shell and driving it down through the carapace in a decisive crunch, “thank you.”

“Good, so you know. Now go, I am busy.”

Wednesday teeters there on her feet, holding her sweets in one hand and the flute of burbling concoction in the other. Grandmother squints at her with beady eyes, the spoon poking up from her folded arms.

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Enid isn’t the night.”

“Oh! So now the cub tries to school the lion? Fine we’ll have a lesson. How are shadows made?”

“When an opaque object or material is placed in the path of rays of light.”

“What is the bright spot to you?”

A shudder runs through Wednesday’s very soul for being asked such a trite and obvious answer, “My everything.”

“You cast a fine shade of black. She has made you a richer ink since her stay here. She has lengthened the shadows collecting in this house. She is your one love.”

Wednesday’s throat bobs from a hard swallow tasting of molasses and the faint traces of a poison in the Longhorn, “Yes. She is mine in the most respectful sense.”

“Then she is ours too.”

“I don’t speak for your hearts.”

“Always the teeth. She is one of us, we are the night, she is our light whether we like it or not. We thrive now because of her, and she will grow strong, rich, healthy,” Grandmother taps the rim of the glass with her spoon again, “because night is a hunting ground for the wolf.”

“Hm,” Wednesday’s jaw shifts side to side, brows dipping low over her black eyes that stare down at the potion, “you are certain?”

“Questions, questions, questions. Sometimes, the gift is ignorance. It means you learn organically.”

“Very well. Thank you, Grandmother, I’ll deliver it shortly.”

“No! While it is hot. Go, go! Shoo, I am busy.”

Wednesday does bother to argue that Grandmother called her there. She dips her head in a farewell and sharply strides through the manor to deliver the potion. Which is why, for the second time that day, Wednesday finds herself standing in the hall outside an open door eavesdropping on one of Enid’s conversations.

“—can’t believe you’re in the den.”

Enid’s laughter is the gentle flapping of butterfly wings, “Shut up Yoko. If you’re mean to Wednesday, I’ll throw your favorite sunglasses in the lake.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I so will.”

“I wasn’t even being mean! I was just asking a simple question. Geeze, so sensitive. Your poor little weirdo can defend herself.”

Bianca’s voice sounds fuzzy through the computer, cutting out in places, but still manages to sound snappy and containing a false sense of boredom, “Has anyone tried to crucify you yet?”

“No! I mean—okay, kinda but that’s a compliment coming from them!”

There is a round of mingled laughter coming from the collective on call with Enid that makes Wednesday’s heckles rise. She creeps closer to the door to peer around, hoping for a view of the malice so she can remember it when retribution comes for them beginning of the school year. Enid is sprawled across Wednesday’s bed, feet hooked through the lattice on the metal headboard, and with her laptop sitting on her chest, screen tilted down towards her face. Just in the corner that is not obscured by Enid’s lovely blond head, she can make out Divina smiling softly, chin set on her fist, and a quark to her brow that seems playful. Hm, perhaps it had been congenial then.

“Seriously, it is awesome here. Yoko, you should come with me next time. I bet you’d love their crypts. This house seriously is crazy? Everytime I think I have figured out how big it is, I find a trap door or something and I’m like—dude, okay, I opened a door in the family library the other day and fell through the floor. Into a like fucking train car or something? It only had four seats in it and when I tried to look through the windows, I couldn’t see anything. Which apparently was like, some kind of protection curse ‘cause I almost went into a no-no room. I’m good now but, wild.”

Yoko does sound delighted, “For real?”

“Willa’s room has four different secret entrances. I’ve only found three though, one by accident when I was playing hide and go seek with Pugsley. They call it Where Did the Corpse Go? Which is so weird, I love it.”

Bianca scoffs and Wednesday can just see in her minds eye the way it pulls at her face, makes her lip tick up in that particular way, “You’re brainwashed.”

Divina coos, “No, she’s in l—”

“Shut up!” Enid squeaks and jerks upright so quick her shoelace catches on the bedframe and pulls the entire shoe from her foot, dropping to the floor. She has that apple color in his face again, lip drawn between her sharp teeth. Her back slumps against the wall the bed rests against, making the frame holding the black satin canopy curtains shake and almost send them tumbling down from where Wednesday keeps them tied up during the day.

Divina presses on, voice summer sweet and trolling along like the slow drip of a brook over rocks, “I still can’t believe they let you guys sleep in the same bed. My parents would slaughter me.”

“Oh,” Enid shyly tucks a chunk of hair behind her red ear, smile coy and pure when she directs it at the computer screen, “it’s not like that.”

Bianca cuts in, “And you’re skipping the craziest part! Wednesday Addams lets you sleep in her bed. With her. Without killing you.”

A playful noise comes from somewhere in Enid’s chest that makes her tip over in the bed again, this time landing on her side with her head on their shared pillow and computer on the bed in front of her, “She wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Are we thinking of the same person?”

“Maybe you just don’t know her. I do and I know that she,” A dreamy sort of sigh is pushed through Enid’s nose, “she’s the best. I love her so much.”

“Gross.” Bianca snickers.

“I got told to shut up.” Divina adds and Wednesday can just see the way her shimmering eyes roll.

“In her defense,” Yoko rises to the occasion making Enid’s smile turn a little more playful instead of wistful, “Addams is a little kooky but she is a total catch.”

Divina makes a noise and Yoko amends, “If you’re into that sort of thing.”

“A huge upgrade from Ajax,” Bianca surprises Wednesday by agreeing, “but I guess anyone would be. Seriously Enid, what did you see in him?”

“He was cute! And sweet. And, sure, he kind of…spaced out, sometimes, but he was a really nice guy! And he was a good kisser. His snakes tickled my fingers when his beanie would slip off a little.”

Having had her fill of this insipid teenage girl talk, Wednesday makes her entrance quietly and approaches the bed in three quick strides. Predictably, Enid jumps from being surprised and Wednesday has to hook out a foot to catch the laptop when she accidentally pushes it off the bed. The beetles go in the woolen pouch of her oversized sweater, hand a little sticky, so she can bend to pick it up and twists it around by the grip she has. Three faces greet her in various states of merriment and surprise.

“Hello,” She greets in a flat tone and sets the laptop back on the bed in front of a wide-eyed Enid before they can say anything back to her, “I apologize for interrupting, Enid.”

“Wha—I already said you could,” She swallows loud, eyes flicking from the sticky thumb print smudging the corner of the screen now, down to Wednesday’s foot, then back up to her face, “How did you do that?”

“I spent a month wherein my Uncle Fester hid within the secret maze inside the walls and would jump out as a would-be assailant to harden my reflexes”

“Of course,” Enid pats the space on the bed beside her, “wanna hang?”

Wednesday stares at her blankly, “If I am forced to sit through kissing stories and how charming Ajax was, then yes.”

Her eyes cut to the laptop with the quickness of a wild cat sensing movement in the grass at the sound of Yoko’s loud laughter and the canned sound of her voice, “Oh my god, is Wednesday funny? Why am I just now learning this? Did you guys know she was funny?”

Bianca smarmily says, “Funny looking, maybe.”

“Oh very good, Barclay. Did you get that one off the back of a cereal box?”

There is more laughter that draws Wednesday’s brows together in confusion. Enid is chewing on her lip while she watches her, trying to contain the width of the smile she can see growing, and the sight of her is so intoxicating Wednesday sways in the spot. This yearning seeded into the depths of her, it floods her systems the same way shock from blood loss had felt, stinging and quick and taking the breath from her. Her jaw wobbles side to side, dark eyes watching the flutter of Enid’s long lashes and the way lengths of hair fall across her face when she tilts her head sweetly towards Wednesday.

“What? No chastisement for being rude to your friends?”

Wednesday takes a step back—her chest feels as if she has experienced the hard swing of a baseball bat directly at it—when Enid flutters those same lashes up at her and her smile takes on an edge that is new to her, one that is seeped in heat, “I’d never yell at you, you’re too cute.”

Hell consume her now, open up the hungry maw and swallow her vile blackness whole. Enid is flirting with her.

She tilts her head down so her chin touches her chest, can only stare at Enid through the curtain of her bangs, and says stiffly, “Here. This is for you.”

That does the trick of breaking whatever spell Enid was trying to cast on her. Her pretty face pinches up and she jerks away hard enough her head knocks into the wall behind her.

“Oh ew! What is that!?”

“How should I know.”

“I am not drinking that! Get it away from me!”

“It’s from Grandmother,” Then, because Enid’s face softens a bit but still looks troubled, she adds a bit more gently, “she insisted it would be good for you.”

Enid leans forward to sniff it and surprises them both when her face slackens and she almost looks interested, “Why have I never seen it before then?”

“How many witches do you have in your family?”

“None! Why—oh. Got me there,” Enid takes it from her in both her hands, staring down at the bile yellow foam that is still being pushed over the top by the burbling black syrup below, “if it kills me, I’ll never forgive you.”

Do you not know? Can you not see? You are the fire, my love, and I am rotted wood. Set me aflame, watch as I throw myself at you knowing what you can do to a thing like me. I would burn for an age and another again before I let you fall victim to any harm. In a flash she plucks the drink back from Enid to take a very small sip, washing down the taste of her sweet that had been cloying pleasantly to her tongue. The potion is thick in her mouth likely because it is not meant for a body like hers and prickles at the gums and the teeth, feeling more like a syrup riddled with hundreds of needles and tasting faintly citrus. She pushes it around her mouth to taste for hints of familiar comforts—arsenic, strychnine, hemlock or her personal favorite, Lily-of-the-valley—and realizes it is becoming sour in her mouth, numbing her tongue. Not poisonous but not for her, not for anyone who is anything but a werewolf.

“It is not poisonous; you should enjoy it.”

Enid stares up at her with her mouth half hung open, “W-what if it had been?”

Wednesday makes a face that lets Enid know she did not enjoy the small sample she partook in, “It would have tasted better.”

Laughter from the laptop almost makes Wednesday jump because, for a rare moment, she had let her guard down and forgotten entirely that they have an audience. She glares down at the wretched thing and purses her lips when Yoko’s low timber filters through the speakers again, “Okay, goal for new school year: me and Addams are becoming besties.”

“Fuck off,” Enid sniffs, cutting a glare to the screen, “she’s mine.”

“You can share.”

“That won’t be necessary. I am Enid’s and Enid’s alone. Anything more and I’ll have to hurl myself off a bridge.”

There is something that slips into Enid’s face—that snarling, snapping beast that is hungry for something raw, ready to take what it deems belongs to it. It is alluring, it calls to Wednesday so profoundly she takes another step forward, feels her knees press against the edge of the mattress and still thinks it is not enough. Storming waves take on a darker hue, an angry sea at night during a full storm, all in Enid’s intense gaze staring up at her. Across the bed Enid slides her palm over the duvet and Wednesday is called to it surely as a fish to water, as a dagger to a beating heart. Their fingertips touch, beginning to curl around one another, but then Enid jumps and pulls away. The beast vanishes.

“Enid, use your wiles to convince her to be friends with us.”

“No way! I’m not making her do anything she doesn’t wanna do! Convince her yourself. Oh, this is actually really good,” Enid wipes her mouth on her sleeve—the sleeve of another of Wednesday’s sweaters that has been robbed from her wardrobe—and stares at it in confusion, “Willa, tell Grandma I said thank you.”

“Of course. I’ll let you be now.”

“Mm—oh, send Pugsley in! I wanted to introduce him to the girls.”

A line forms in Wednesday’s forehead from how hard she twists her face up, “Why?”

“Because he is cute and I adore him and I want to. Also, I was gonna tell them the cannon ball story and it would cooler if he was here when I did.”

“Disgusting. Very well.” She hesitates, considering if it would be appropriate then decides that Enid had done the same thing only earlier that day so surely it is welcomed. Bracing her hand on the bed by Enid’s knee, she leans across the bed (knocks the computer aside so the watchful eye containing three of their peers cannot be a part of this moment) to reach Enid who is watching her with rapidly widening eyes. Eyes that flicker down to Wednesday’s mouth then back up.

“I have some chores I need to attend to and then there is cello practice in the music room so I may not see you until later tonight,” Slowly, giving ample opportunity for Enid to pull away, she presses her cool lips against Enid’s blazing cheek high on the arch near the bottom of her left eye, “Please summon me for any need you may have.”  

When she tries to pull away, Enid’s hand flashes out to grip one of her braids and gives it a tug to pull her back into place, “Wait.”

“Yes?”

“I, ah….you have glitter on your mouth now. Is it okay if I touch you?”

“Yes.”

“Hold still.” Her hand looks like it is unsure when it lifts to touch Wednesday’s face, palm cradling her jaw in a cruel and welcomed inferno, so her thumb can press into the divot in her lower lip. A slight pressure is applied when it is rubbed left then right and repeated on her top lip to kindly smear away the glitter that had been transferred. Their eyes meet.

“There you go,” The hand rattles against her jaw, the pad of her thumb still resting in the clef of her lower lip, “Don’t want you breaking out into hives. Even if it is a good look on you. The glitter, not hives.”

“You’re very considerate but I knew what I was doing.”

Enid’s eyelids flutter and a small breath leaves through the part in her lips, “Oh. Okay.”

“Enid, are you coming back or? Are you two making out…? You have to hang up if you are, dear fucking god. I don’t want to hear that.”

“Oh my god, shut up!” Wednesday is always watching, always very aware of her surroundings and especially tuned into Enid’s every micro expression and body language. So she sees her start to pull away from her and reacts before that can fully happen. She snatches Enid’s wrist to keep there—just for a moment longer—and presses a kiss against the pad of the thumb still sitting on her bottom lip.
“Oh my god.”

Swiftly she pulls away and exits the room without looking back. Mostly because she does not want Enid to see that some of her heat has affected her, has made her a little feral and if she did not leave she may have allowed herself to become a hungry mouth and taken her fair share.

The family makes themselves scarce as the day burns into night per Enid’s half spoken request. She had started to become more antsy, barely able to sit still at dinner to the point she had needed to excuse herself to pace around the mansion, until she had been found in Wednesday’s room pacing a circle. She had, barely, been able to confess that she was anxious and that she did not want anyone to see her change so Wednesday had become a sleuth in the shadow to spread the word. Father had shown Enid the boathouse by the lake where Wednesday had walked her to and left her to her own vices--again, per her request—so she could be alone when the progress began. Hours had passed since then and Wednesday had been worrying the time away in her reading chair beneath the Afghan, trying to consume the book in her hands but finding herself unable to. In the distant night, a howl sounds beautifully and it settles over her skin like a wash of hot water. From the roof, she can hear her Father and Pugsley attempt to mimic the howl to call back and each time, somewhere, Enid resounds to let them know they were heard and accepted.

She smiles from the sound, a small uptick of her lips just for herself.

The pages turn slower than she would normally read because she finds herself having to stop and go back to what she had already gone over, having read it but not retained it. Her attention keeps shifting to the lengths of moonlight spearing through the window and the trail they make as the moon rises higher into the sky and the hour grows late. She feels her heart grow heavy with a longing to be with her love but the Addams blood reminds her to be respectful, to obey the needs of her one, so she sits very still and waits. Part of her is dimly aware that Enid might not return until morning after she has slipped back into her human body and that, if that is the case, Wednesday will stay up all night waiting for her.

Near midnight, there is a loud snuffing in the hallway that is coupled with the unmistakable sound of something being dragged and large footfalls. The book slips from Wednesday’s fingers into her lap from the excitement, head lifting to watch the door that she had intentionally left cracked in case this would happen.

“Enid?”

The door is bullied open by the hind of a great, starlit beast that jerks its way inside because there is something clenched within its jaws. The black fur of the bear is shinny from gore matted in it—gore that is also matted in Enid’s blond fur, striped up over her head and dripping from the corners of her maw—and, behind it like a macabre wedding train, is a long trail of dark crimson. Curious, Wednesday waits for Enid to drag it across her floor and her good rug (shame, she’ll have to get a new one now) to leave it at Wednesday’s feet, near the edge of her favorite reading chair. The wolf shakes her head after it is released, sending droplets off blood everywhere, then looks to Wednesday.

“Is this for me or are you offering to share?”

A low rumbling sounds from the wolf, one that is akin to the boom of thunder a young Wednesday use to marvel at when it rocked the world. A wet nose nudges against her knee—leaves a stain in the grey trousers—that nearly knocks her off the chair. Enid nips at her fingertips hanging off the arm of the chair and begins whining, turning her head to knock against her chest over and over.

“It is a significant improvement from a domesticated canine.”

A sharp growl makes the teeth in Wednesday’s mouth rattle in their sockets.

“Fine. I am…impressed. You did well,” She pushes a hand through the shaggy main around her neck and up to scratch behind one long ear, “you’re an excellent hunter. Father will be pleased too.”

Another rumble comes from deep in Enid, making the bones in her arm vibrate in a pleasant almost sting. Her head lifts so she can nuzzle at Wednesday’s cheek, smearing blood across it to her ear and up to her eyebrow all while making soft noises. A hot tongue rolls out to clean up the mess made and Wednesday jerks away from it, brows knit over her narrowed eyes. It tickles and that sensation makes her want to rip her own skin off.

“Don’t do that.”

Enid rumbles low, makes a sound that is almost a keening yip, and head butts Wednesday as an apology. Her chest feels tight with love so she reaches an arm up to hook around the neck of the wolf and turns to press her face into it, smelling the woods, fresh tilled earth, and death. One massive paw lifts to climb upward, settling on her thigh which is a good way for Wednesday to see that is is larger across than her thigh is.

“No, you can’t climb up here. You’ll crush me and, as appealing as that is, it will also crush my chair and I cannot abide by that,” When Enid snaps her teeth near Wednesday’s head and growls, she grips a fistful of the hair at the scuff of her neck and pulls hard, “Down girl.”

Another sweet whine comes from the massive beast, her head tilting to press into Wednesday better, then she pulls away when she seems to remember her kill. She flops onto the floor beside the bear, snapping at it around the back of the neck and holding it in her jaws while her luminous yellow eyes hold Wednesday’s. She sets her elbow on the arm of her chair and rests her head against her fist, legs tucked beneath her on the chair and heart full of so much love she can taste it on her tongue. Her fist slips against her cheek up to her temple from the lubrication of something wet and, when she pulls away to inspect the transfer, marvels at the glean of red sparkling against her skin, refracting the yellow and silver lighting. She nearly chokes on the beating of her own frantic heart rising with love into her throat.

A small, closed mouth smile lightens her harsher features,”Go on, beast.”

(The Addams in her roars for the blood offering, recognizes that when a gift is given in bone and muscle fresh from the mouth, it is a deep thing. It says I love you but it says it more profoundly than the words can manage and Wednesday aches for it, yearns to give her own offering back but all she has is a heart pumping in her own chest. Would that Enid find it worthy, she would cut it out and press it between the wolf’s teeth, die in love to watch her chew it and swallow it down. Because a word is not enough, three even will not do, not for a creature who feels in such depth as herself. Enid needs to taste it, needs to feel it, deserves to have every inch of her.)

The snap-crunch of bone under immense pressure tilts her lips up into an even larger smile, one threatening to expose her own teeth. It relaxes her to have Enid here—elongated and feral, claws scratching grooves into the hardwood floor, the snap of her jaws when she tears away pieces of meat and throws it into the air to catch, blood everywhere—nearest to her after all the concern of what would happen during the beauty of a full moon. Her beloved beast, in true form, oh but I love you.

Enid tosses her head, large ears flopping side to side, and cracks her wide maw in a yawn that displays her impressive teeth, a series of razors and needles that she desires to know. Wednesday leans forward in her chair.

“Enid,” The beast lifts her head towards her giving that as her only inclination that she is listening and understanding, the fir along her muzzle matted dark red to almost black now, and large eyes gleaming, “you’re breathtaking.”

The ears pin back, head lowering to lay between her outstretched front paws. The smile withers.

“Don’t you believe me? Or…is that not what you wanted to hear?”

A huff and a snap of her teeth at the air near the edge of the chair.

“You’re very difficult for me to read, normally, so this is near impossible,” Wednesday slips off the chair onto the floor and is overwhelmed by the suffocating heat of Enid immediately crawling across the floor so she can lay her head in Wednesday’s lap, the massive thing big enough across she can set her hand center between Enid’s ears and have six more hands worth of space left, “I just look at you and find myself impressed. That bear is nearly the same size are you. You beautiful thing. I knew you would be exceptional once you were set free.”

Enid rumbles, her ears perking back up, and her head lifts so Wednesday takes the opportunity to grip the fur around her neck and pull on it to press a kiss to bloody muzzle just above the nose. A paw lifts to her shoulder—probably something of the human in her seeking one of her beloved hugs—but it bounces off, one of her claws snagging against the material of her sweater and ripping a big hole in it. The ears pin back again when Wednesday lets loose a soft, husky laugh that rumbles in its own way, rarely used so it has to remember its own sound. It feels so good. It trickles from her ribs like a spill of hot liquid, splashing against her insides and meeting that awful ooze of love that sweetens her sour tongue. She presses her face into Enid’s fur, hugging her arms up and around the strong lupine shoulders.  

“Enid, I needed you to understand, and I hope you do now,” Her eye trains in on the nice way her sable hair is a splash of something stark against the star color of Enid’s blood crusted fur, “you’re perfect. If you never come back, I’ll understand. If you have been happy here but come to realize how overbearing our love can be, if you cannot stomach us anymore once you are breathing fresher air again and surrounded by…normal…people and decide this was not for you after all, I’ll understand. But remember this, after you are gone. Remember that you can be loved even by things like us and that you can be totally accepted without the chains, without the social demands—I hate your family, Enid.”

The wolf blows out a breath that she feels under her hands, feels in her bones.

“You’re dangerous but not the way they made you feel. They were teaching you to be two things, to be Enid and a werewolf that should be well mannered, have the perfect temperament,” She pulls away to lean back against the chair, her hands folded in her lap and face placid, watching her wolf that is very intently listening to her, “you are not those things. You do not need to be. You’re loved like this and you’re loved as your vomit inducing neon self. Just remember that.”

Luminous yellow eyes well loved by the moon watch her with a head lowered down, mouth caked red and long teeth poking over the black gums. She looks every bit a wild thing that wants to pounce, to sink those lovely teeth into Wednesday’s heart.

Eat your fill, take everything, its all yours. Eat, drink deep, grow strong and live long from the strength my love will give you.

“Enid, you,” The words burn her throat, she swallows against them and it feels very much like nails going down, tastes like I will love you until the day I die, “are very important to me. Please know that.”

It will have to do.

Wednesday wakes early that morning, before the sun has fully started warming the horizon. She utilizes the time to drag what is left of the carcass and scrub the blood from the floors before Enid can see it. Grandmother had been willing to let her use some elements of the kitchen to scrape the skull clean, boil it, and preserve it. The old woman had watched with an edge to her gaze, commenting each time Wednesday made a knife stroke to strip fur away, cut off tissue, that her bright spot is an excellent addition to the family. That she will make a marvelous Addams, that she should feel immense pride for having a love willing to give her something this precious.

(An Addams cherishes all gifts given, especially when done in love, but nothing is as meaningful as bone. It promises longevity, it says Life only means something if, at the end of it, you will be the one who held my bones all along. To an Addams, this might have been a courting gift of such immense proportions that the recipient would assume a marriage was proposed. Flesh can rot, fat will melt, and muscle will wither but bone will remain. Bone will remember, bone will be laid with bone.)

When Enid wakes, groggy and grouchy, she glares at the skull sat by Wednesday’s elbow on her writing desk. She does not turn around when the sound of bedsheets rustling fills the room nor when Enid makes a gagging noise, “Willa, that’s disgusting. Why did you keep that?”

Her eyes flick to the skull that still smells of bleach and has deep grooves poking holes through the top from Enid’s massive teeth. She reaches out to press her thumb through one of the holes and marvels at it, thinks about the gift, and wishes that her own bones could house such treasures. Wishes with all her being that Enid would sink her teeth in so deep, they punch into her ossein so that when she is buried and the next handful of generations dig her up, they will see them and know. She was loved by such a beast, she carried the mark of her love so deeply that it can never be washed away. That even if the name Wednesday Addams is forgotten and all deeds are swept clean from history, they will know this one thing because it is here for anyone to see.

“It was a gift.”

“Oh gross. It still smells, like, fresh. That is so rank.” A loud gagging fills the room.

“If you must do that, do so in the hall. The sound is very distracting and I’m trying to work.”

From the corner of her eye, she sees Enid rise from the bed—face still striped with gore and hair so filthy with the crust of her kill that most of the blue and pink has vanished—to wobble towards the door. She turns in her chair, one arm braced against the back of it, “Enid.”

The girl makes an unhappy noise, squints at her from the light that is filling the room, “What.”

“I have prepared you a bath. I surmised you’d wake soon so it is still hot, and I used some of those deceitful color bombs you so adore. Knowing your penchant for fainting at the sight of blood, I suggest avoiding the mirror until you are done.”

A long keening sound comes out of her, and she reaches up to take a fistful of her hair that crunches a bit when she grips it and flakes of dried blood are knocked loose. Her eyes squeeze shut, and her lips pull into that wide frown of hers that she gets when she is feeling squeamish.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe you let me sleep like this.”

“I had no say,” She turns back to her typewriter with her fingers poised on the keys but just stares at it, back ramrod straight and stomach swirling with truths unspoken, “I fell asleep on the floor beside you while you licked yourself clean, mostly. In your wolf form, you startled me awake by grabbing onto my coat at the back and drug me into bed with you. When I attempted to get up and change or to coax you into the bath, you snapped your teeth and growled at me, so I submitted. By the time you had turned back, it was far too late, and I was up tending to chores.”

By design, with Enid at her back, she cannot see what emotion crosses her face from the declaration. Her heart rams against the prison bars of her ribs, screams I submit to you and you alone, I am yours, I love you, my savage beast.

“You let me drag you around?”

“I did not overly mind because it was an impressive display of gall and strength but I did not want you to develop a habit. So I attempted to kick you in the head. You snarled at me and it was honestly so fierce, I was stunned momentarily. By the time I came back to my senses, you had drawn me into bed and sprawled yourself overtop me.”

The sound of Enid’s footsteps do not retreat to the hall to seek the bathroom across from them that has the bath drawn and waiting for her but instead come closer.

“I’m going to hug you, this is your warning.”

Hands curl around her shoulders from behind, sliding palms across her collarbones, until Enid is wrapped around her from behind. She lowers her head to press her nose right against Wednesday’s carotid, tucking her face against the side of her neck and by some primal instinct, Wednesday tilts herself to rest against Enid.

“Thank you for taking care of me.”

“I did no such thing. You were entirely self sufficient.”

“And for being understanding,” Enid squeezes her a little tighter, buries herself into Wednesday, and the sensation is so nice she lifts her hands to curl around one of Enid’s forearms underneath her chin, “most girls would have absolutely freaked about what happened last night. It was so not sexy and chic.”

“I have no basis for what ‘most girls’ think of anything.”

Enid drags her nose up to behind Wenesday’s ear as her head lifts and her voice is hushed for it being so close and rife with insecurity, “I hope I didn’t freak anyone out.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Even Pugsley would consider what you did a delight and he is the weakest link.”

“Be nice to your brother.”

“I’ll set myself on fire before I do that.”

Enid’s laugh is an explosion of goodness when it is done against her ear, right in that weak spot that could be utilized to make a simple cut that would kill, and it fills her with more vile ooze. Her head drops back down into the crook of Wednesday’s neck.

“Can you throw that thing away, seriously. It has teeth marks in it.”

“My previous statement applies to this as well.”

Enid makes a sound of disbelief or perhaps annoyance, “It’s a skull. From a cute bear that I killed, oh god. I can’t, Willa. That is not staying in here.”

She reaches to touch it again, traces the edge of one of the marks with her fingertip, “I’m keeping it until the day I die.”

“I’ll buy you a bracelet or a straight razor or new type writer ink if you throw it away.”

“This is meaningful to me.” Bone is a very precious gift.

“Ugh, okay fine, I hear you. This is one of those weird Addams things,” Enid shudders against Wednesday, “I need to brush my teeth. I can still taste it. Vom.”

“Coincidently, the best way to achieve that would be to get off me.”

“Not yet,” Enid burrows further into her, pressing her nose down into the neckline of her hoodie and Wednesday both feels and hears her breath in deep, “I’m not ready to let go.”

Despite the deep reservoir of her immaculate self discipline, her traitorous heart flutters, “Unless some miracle occurs, I don’t suspect I’ll drop dead between now and you taking a bath.”

A growl—not as deep or powerful as it had been last night, she knows the difference intimately now—resounds low in Enid’s throat that makes the back of her neck prickle, “Don’t make jokes about that. It’s not funny, at all.”

“If you say so.”

“Wednesday.” Her name is spoken in a tone far more serious than any she has heard Enid use except perhaps when they had their fight and Enid had stormed off to room with Yoko.

Her brows dip, “Why are you upset with me? Everyone dies, Enid. It is an irrefutable fact.”

“I know that, dummy! It doesn’t mean I like hearing about it,” And suddenly Wednesday realizes they are not just discussing her joke, “you’re so reckless! I mean, where is your sense of self preservation?”

“Self preservation is for spineless imbeciles afraid of—“

Enid pulls away in a jarring motion, thrusting a finger towards her and glaring down at her, “Don’t!”

Wednesday stares at her blankly, flatly notes, “You still harbor resentment about what occurred.”

“No!” She nearly shouts then begins worrying her lip between her teeth, “I mean, I didn’t think I did. Sorry, you just kind of…triggered that I guess, when you—I was really upset. I still am. Full moon last night, getting to spend it with you, I’m a little emotional right now, okay? Sometimes I still look at you and remember the feeling of everyone looking at me when I asked where you were and no one answered so I thought…and then you did. You almost bled to death and you just kept going like it was nothing, moved on with your life like it was a scraped knee. It didn’t matter to you.”

No, it did not because everyone dies and, if a person only has one life to live, then the death needs to matter and she was frustrated that it might have happened that way but at least she would have died trying. That is better than most could say. She had not considered that anyone would care enough to carry it as a loadstone inside them, weighing them down. Apparently she was wrong.

“Do I owe you an apology?”

Enid folds her arms across her chest and rolls her lips in between her teeth, “No. I’m fine.”

She stares at Enid, jaw twitching side to side, “You’re furious with me.”

“I am not!”

“Enid.”

“Just…I just need you to know that if you ever try any self sacrificing, hero bullshit like that again, I’ll kick you. Or something. I dunno! I won’t be happy, then you’ll owe me an apology. Probably after I do something. Because you’re important to me Wednesday,” The blue of Enid’s eyes gets intensely warm, become a blazing blue flame that burns twice as hot as any other, “so you need to take care of yourself. I want you around.”

Is that a confirmation of reciprocation? Does Enid live for her the way Wednesday lives for Enid? She firms her jaw and turns her back on the blonde, “I’ll consider it. And do not call anything I’ve done heroic again. It’s insulting. My motives were purely selfish.”

“You’re so frustrating and full of shit,” Enid sweeps down to press a hard kiss against the side of her head, “I love you.”

Her chest might concave, might fold in on itself and swallow the rest of Wednesday with it. She sways a bit in her chair, teetering towards Enid then pulling away again, and she says nothing. For the count of three then she blows out a breath and says flatly, “You have juxtaposing takes right now.”

“Sorry, that came out of nowhere.”

“Obviously not from nowhere. I do apologize, if it makes you feel better to hear it.”

“I’m not upset!”

“Enid, you are within your rights to be angry. I know myself well enough to know I can be single minded sometimes and that often creates a bulldozing effect. I did not consider you…cared enough…about me, that it would have left a lasting trauma.”

Stubbornly, Enid pinches her lips together in a fierce pout and tosses her head, “You didn’t! I’m totally fine!”

“Alright.”

“And I’m not mad.”

“No, definitely not.”

“Shut up!”

“Your bath is getting cold.”

“Oh my god I forgot! Thank you for—I’ll go, right now.”

“Sounds like it’s the least I could do.”

“I said I’m not mad!”

“And my ringing eardrums believe you.”

“I didn’t yell! Oh—fuck off,” She turns to leave, makes it three steps, then turns back around to stare intensely into Wednesday’s very soul, “This year, buddy system is in full effect. I don’t care if you’re on the case of ‘who stole Eugene’s chicky strips’, you don’t go anywhere without me. Or I’ll bite you.”

Wednesday thinks of bones. She thinks about the smell of bleach and the boil that rolled against the bear skull and the puncture marks made by teeth. Wednesday thinks of her own bones and their yearning to be melded with Enid’s, of their immense desire to know the piercing of her teeth, to be dressed in marks of her love. She thinks to say: Do you promise?

Instead she tartly says, “What is a chicky strip?”

There is a very little frown of confusion that pulls at her lips Enid does not see because she runs from the room in a huff.

When Enid comes back from her bath, she is wearing her usual easy smile and she bombards Wednesday with apologies for the tiff and with affectionate words and another cloying hug. Explains again, “Spending the full moon with you got me so in my feels. I’m just like supes protective and I just got a little spicy.” She sits at Wednesday’s feet, after shoving Wednesday into her writing chair, with a brush extended and chatters about anything that comes to mind while Wednesday obediently brushes her hair. Her fingers weave the shorter blond locks into a tight French braids, instinctively, and when she finishes Enid tips her head backwards to beam at her.

“Do I look cute?”

Wednesday blinks at her, “Always.”

The smile wipes away to form an O shape and red quickly colors her face.

Once again, Enid begins stalking her. This time her game is more clever, a little easier to hide because she is getting better at obfuscating her killer instinct but Wednesday is honed into every little thing Enid says or does. She notices. She uses her fox eyes and cat’s grace to shadow the hunter, keeping a vigilance that does not allow the wolf to strike. Wednesday will not allow it until she understands why and she cannot figure it out. To no avail because Enid never flinches, never licks her sharp teeth and black gums, never so much as threatens to go in for the kill. It confuses her. At first it had been fun to be hunted but now, as the summer draws closer to the end, she does not understand why Enid has not taken what is so rightfully hers. She decides it can only be one of two things:

1. Enid does not want her
2. Enid does not realize Wednesday is in love with her

The second seems absurd to her considering she has been nothing but blatant about her own heart. Perhaps she has not outright said it—she can’t be blamed, the only thing harder than I love you to say is I’m sorry—but Wednesday loves in action, not words. Actively, she has given Enid every permission she has never given to another person. How could that not be enough? There are only a few small things left (the kiss, it should have been her) but if Enid asks it of her, she can have it, she is welcome to all of Wednesday to the last drop. Until her heartbeat stops.

So she concludes it must be the first. Though she remains unconvinced each time she catches Enid watching her in hunger with the zealotry of a starved beast frothing at the mouth for one little nip. Thus, she decides to run a test by appearing to give up on her hunt and expose her neck to the beast.

“Enid. Could we watch a film,” She thrusts out an arm to point at the folded up laptop sat neatly beside her typewriter on the desk, “on that?”

The phone in Enid’s hands slips down to plop on her chest, “Deadass?”

Wednesday stares at her, “What.”

“Are you being serious?”

“Generally, yes.”

For a moment, Enid looks feral from how excited she seems, “Give me a minute.”

In a flurry Enid flies around the room to collect every creature comfort that exists between the two of them: a mountain of squishmellows (because the vile monstrosities have a name), Wednesday’s chainmail blanket, the fan (Enid always needs white noise going and that is the least offensive to Wednesday’s senses), and a handful of the colorful plastic toys Enid requires to fiddle with if she is expected to sit still for very long. Wednesday stands on her new good rug (that looks exactly like her old good rug) while she waits for Enid to finish piling things against the headboard and fidgeting. When she finally settles into the corner of the bed closed to the wall, laptop open and balanced on her knees, she gives Wednesday a look that is nothing like a wolf on the prowl but instead more like a lamb waiting for slaughter. She despises it.

“Okay, all ready,” She pats the bed beside her, “what do you wanna watch? Willa?”

Wednesday stands at the edge of the mattress watching intently, intensely quiet, as is her defunct state and pointedly does not sit in the place offered to her. This is the nudge.

“Too much? You change your mind?”

“No.”

Enid sets the laptop aside and begins to come to her but she holds up a hand and shakes her head.

“What’s up?”

“Typically, when—“ Oh no, she had forgotten about the nerves, the tongue tripping that happens when her throat swells and her belly turns over on itself from her trying to explain her wants and needs, her feelings, “—classically, if two—“ She stops, takes in a fortifying breath, then tries again, “—I wish to be held. By you.”

Enid’s eyes widen and her mouth opens, closes, repeatedly until finally she sputters out, “Are you joking? Are you messing with me?”

Wednesday feels her forehead crinkle and her lips push down fractionally, “Why would I joke about this?”

“O-okay,” Wednesday watches her lips move, thinks she mouths silently is this real life, “do you—like laying down or um, do you wanna…sit in my lap?”

“You have far more experience with this sort of thing. I leave it to you.”

“Barely,” She casts a wide glance around the mattress before scooting further back into her mountain of plushies and spreading her knees, pats the mattress between them, “c’mere.”

The bed dips beneath her knees and, feeling a bit lost in this particular circumstance even though she was sure she was the mastermind here, reaches to Enid for guidance. The hands that answer her call are scorching—she is certain that if she looked later, she would find handprints burned into her—gripping around her arms to pull her into place, adjusting kindly and not to gently until she is drawn back to rest against Enid’s front. The knees alongside her hips are wildfire, she feels her nerves catching flame like dry kindling. Enid’s palms scrape around her hips to hug her round the middle, putting enough pressure that it does not sting her skin like nettles. Their cheeks brush and it reminds her of their first hug, of the smell of blood and how now she cannot recall that without thinking of the dreary academic setting of her personal library and soft fur, large teeth, and the gift of bone.

“Like this?”

A breath is drawn in and blown out slowly through her nose. She relaxes backward against Enid’s chest, head swimming in the cloud of her perfume, and nods. She startles when Enid suddenly squeals and squeezes her tightly.

“Enid, control yourself.”

“We’re cuddling. Oh my god, where’s my phone? I need to take a selfie!”

Wednesday stares blankly at the wall as she is jostled around, shifted by Enid’s legs on either side of her and then drawn back against her chest once the phone is found. She sees herself glowering in the camera beside Enid’s beaming, blushing face. The pair of them are a juxtaposition in themselves, stark and dark, the living embodiment of color in the sixties and a maudlin Victorian doll. Enid is fiddling with effects, the red of her tongue poking from the corner of her bubblegum pink mouth and the lights are shinning off the phosphorus white eyeshadow dusting her lids. Heaps of atomic orange glitter are piled atop it, fanned out from the eye crease to her temples and Wednesday finds it a sterling thing beside her pale dusky skin and the sable length of her hair.

Her darling Enid, her only love.

“Enid, I need clarification.”

She watches Enid’s face pinch in the camera, her thumbs hovering over the screen, “Right now? About what?”

“You continue to express your affections for me.”

Now, Merlot seeps into the pale complexion of her face and it, oddly, only brightens the phosphorous and atomic colors. She smiles—it is coy, perhaps, it shy and definitely sweeter than molasses and brown sugar-coated beetles—and tilts her temple to rest against Wednesday’s.

“Yeah. You’re my favorite person in the whole world. I love you.”

“Mm,” She gives a decisive nod, “That is where I need clarity. How do you love me?”

“Oh um,” She chews on her lip, skews some of the pink that comes off on her teeth and Wednesday discovers she wants to taste it quite badly, “all over.”

Her brows dip over dark eyes, her bangs shifting from the way she turns her head back to see Enid’s real face, “That is flowery.”

She gives a timid, certainly coy smile and a shrug and says with too much charm, “I’ve spent the last month and a half in a house full of romantics. I’m learning as I go.”

An annoyed sigh slips out. Of course, she should have expected this could be a side effect of Enid’s stay here. They will have to work that out of her during school.

“Are you platonically in love with me or romantically in love with me, Enid. Please be specific. I don’t need flowers.”

The whites of Enid’s eyes seem to get bigger or brighter somehow, possibly because of how wide they grow. She opens and closes her mouth multiple times so Wednesday takes pity. Wednesday will only ever take pity on Enid, spare Enid, cherish Enid.

“I am deeply and profoundly in love with you.” She says it cool and flat, in her usual soft tone that conveys very little emotion but her chest thrums from a deep echo somewhere in her soul. The many doors in the long, long halls of Addams history rattle in the frames, they shutter and shake because Wednesday has just opened her own and made herself know to the rest: she has become just like them and will be entombed with the other romantics of her line. She has tried her entire life to defy fate but it was never a fight she could win and now that she knows her love—her Enid, her perfect neon bright spot, her sun condensed, the goodness in this world—she is glad to have lost.

(An Addams knows when to accept defeat. They are a proud line of warriors, scoundrels, creepy-crawly nightmares, shadows, and wraiths, haints and boogie men. They are the first flower to bloom from scorched earth, they are the prose in a poem that draws tears to the eye, they are the beating heart, and they are the blood, damnation, and hellfire that protects it. An Addams is built for much, each a different thing and each usually boasting their own unique gift but each one of them, at some point, must yield to love. The sword must be laid low, the axe must swing, blood must flow, and bone must be given: love is expensive, love is rare, love is powerful but weak and needs a savage thing, a wrath, a haint, a warrior to protect it. One loss can sometimes mean a lifetime of victories.)

Enid’s breath catches so sharply it rings in Wednesday’s ears.

She presses on, “I am not sorry. It could not be helped, and I will not apologize for falling in love with you. It is my birthright.”

The phone slips to the blanket that is pulled around both their legs, camera now catching the dark timber of the ceiling and the winged arches above.

“I have concealed it from you because an Addams does not love selfishly. I was not sure you felt the same and I would not have told you if it would make you feel pressured. My love is not to be trifled with; it is…immeasurable. You will be the only person I love until the moment I die and, I swear Enid, whatever is beyond I will love you there too.”

One trembling hand lifts to cradle Wednesday’s jaw, the fingers splayed against her cheek painted an array of vile colors—atomic orange, radium green, bile yellow, vicious pink—that are a blur at the corner of her vision.

“You told me I could hug you whenever I want.”

“Yes.”

“And hold your hand.”

“Of course.”

“Because you love me? Like girlfriends or like girlfriends?”

She pinches her lips into an upturned scowl, “What?”

“Willa, do you wanna be my girlfriend?”

She scoffs through her nose and almost rolls her eyes, “That is so trivial, Enid.”

“Oh, sorry, I forgot you’re like a billion years old. Do you wanna go steady?”

“I am a bottomless pit, Enid. I can never be filled; I will never have enough of you. I am hungry for you, constantly, daily. I have been starving from the moment I wrote my first letter to you, and I am almost bones now. I will only take what you are willing to give but, you should know, before you think you want this, that I will eat you alive. I need everything, I need all of you. Forever.”

Enid grasps her jaw in one hand, cradles it against her palm and splays her fingers over her cheek with just enough pressure to dimple the skin, and draws her upward into a kiss.

(The wolf strikes, sinks her teeth into the tender meat Wednesday gladly exposed and while the blood rushes, she is free. Her name is engraved on the walls of Enid’s heart, her soul sings a mournful cry that is now a duet, and her ancestors roar with pride.)

This kiss is nothing like her first. There is no system shock that comes with a spine cracking, neck snapping vision nor the wobbly aftereffects that usually overstimulate her. There is no stubble or faint whiff of cologne and no stench of betrayal, no deceit. This kiss blisters her lips, it sends tongues of flames licking down her throat, it turns the teeth seated in her gums to ash and melts away the esophagus. Enid is a greenhouse; she is open windows that suck in light, and she is vibrant life, she is oversaturated colors, and she is fresh earth. There is an inferno inside her, and it rises on the crescendo of emotion—it rises like a sun—it nearly sucks the cold from Wednesday’s bones.

(Oh, to be a wretched thing of the dark, a colorless shadow only to be suffocated by the sun. To die in a solar eclipse. To be a made pyre for love, to burn at the command of Enid’s tongue and tooth and touch. She rushes with love, is overcome with it in such torrents that she can only fall deeper into the abyss inside her. If this is the forbidden fruit, she has sampled the pomegranate and now she can never return. Her thing of light, trapped in the dark, to love her. Wednesday will burn for her, so she does not have to suffer in shadows, so she sees her devotion. Burn me my life, turn to me to a pyre in your name, I am yours, I love you.)

When she pulls away, Wednesday feels the sheen of gloss on her lips and knows there is bubble gum pink smeared over her mouth. This time, it does not make her sick. Her chest heaves from a deep, shaky breath that Enid mirrors only hers is done with a dopy smile and a glassy sheen in her eyes.

“You’re a sweetheart and a romantic.”

“Hardly. I’ll saw off my own foot before I—”

“Turn into your parents?”

“Precisely.”

“Romantically. Your clarification you wanted, it’s romantically. I’m also, really, super in love with you.”

“You had better mean that.”

“I’m a werewolf, Willa. We only get one too, remember? And you’re it.”

It occurs to Wednesday only then that, in the entire time that Enid had been staying with them and for how often she is on her phone, tablet, laptop—so many vices—that not once had she spoken with her family. Her brows furrow into a sharp v shape.

“I am the mate you chose.”

Enid sucks her bottom lip between her teeth and worries it side to side, “Welllll…more like, you chose me? It snuck up on me.”

Wednesday sits up straighter as the pieces begin to slot together (she so adores solving a mystery), all the clues that Enid had unintentionally given her over the past two months finally making sense.

“I’m why you broke up with Ajax.”

“I didn’t know it at the time but yeah. When I finally wolfed out, it was for you. I needed to protect you—”

(“I can’t be safe unless I know you’re safe.”)

“—and when I was fighting him—I’m only really half there when I’m in wolf mode. It’s me but a more…crazy? Version of me. I remember things in like clips, it feels like snapshots of what happened. When I was fighting him, I was full feral,” She lifts her hands to extend her claws and gives a playful mockery of a roar, “but I stopped for you. In the middle of a dangerous fight where I should have been fully in the kill screen. But I heard your voice, and it sank in, came through. I knew in that part of me that you were mine and I was yours. Outside of the wolf, it…took a little longer. To realize.”

Wednesday ponders this, swallows it down and feels it sink happy into the pit. Enid chose her, Enid will love her as fiercely as Wednesday does, she will not become one of the sad Addams who were rejected or whose love could only hold interest for a short time before moving on.

“The sweaters. Your obsession with my scent.”

“I was going crazy without you. Newly bonded pairs shouldn’t be separated, ever. It makes us go like for real feral. I was getting sick, I couldn’t sleep, I was seeing everyone and everything as an enemy because—in my dumb primal brain—they were all obstacles between me and you.”

Wednesday tilts her head in consideration, “The dates your mother set you up on were an attempt to curb this sickness or…?”

Enid looks meek, timid, sadly lost to the memory of the beginning of her summer, “Little bit of both, I think. I didn’t know at first, I had mate sickness because I didn’t realize that you were mine. So she didn’t know and I think she was trying to fix it by getting me paired to the first available werewolf she could find. That met her standards of course.”

“And then?”

“And then you finally wrote me back. You sent me your sweater and your second favorite blanket, and it clicked. I didn’t tell you for pretty much all the same reasons you didn’t tell me,” She shrugs, her eyes big and remarkable doe like for a predator, “I was willing to take anything you’d give me. As long as I got to be in your life.”

Breathing in—Wednesday hates Enid’s mother—and breathing out—that she had likely recognized what Enid was suffering and still tried to pair her with someone else was vile, abhorrent—she nods.

“Your mother does not accept me.”

“We’re…still working on it.”

“I hate her.”

Enid’s toothy grin returns, “I know.”

“That won’t change.”

“I know.”

“Will you accept me?”

Now Enid looks a little confused, she tilts her head in that canine way and her forehead gets crinkled, “What do you mean?”

“I despise the term girlfriend, it cannot encompass the depth of my love for you. I will wear this title—if you insist, if it is the only one available at the moment—but I wish for our bond to be…united. The depth of my love will only grow, I will never be satisfied, and I will crave you with my every waking breath, I will swarm you with more love than you know what to do with. If you let me in, I will nest in your walls, and you will have to burn the house down to get me out. Your family may never come around, I will be a social blackspot for you, I will be an embarrassment and a vexation. I will follow you wherever you go, I’ll hang on your every breath. I may destroy you.”

The wolf slips into Enid’s whole body; her eyes turn sharp and hungry, her teeth show through the parting of her lips, and they look deliciously sharp, her face grows smooth and her body tenses with the coiling of muscles ready to pounce. She sways forward and Wednesday feels herself rush to meet her, breath turned to mustard gas in her lungs and throat parched, desperate for another taste of cleansing fire.

Enid cradles her jaw in both hands, eyes boring into her, “You really think I don’t feel the exact same way? You think you’re bad, just fuckin’ wait. You’re a bottomless pit? I’m a blackhole. You’re starving? I’ve been fasting my entire life. Anything you think you can give or want or need, I need double, I want triple. I told you, dummy. Addams love ain’t got nothin’ on me.”

She feels giddy, she thinks this must be what it is like to be drunk. She curls her fingers into the hideous neon colored sweater Enid has on, takes two fistfuls of it and pulls her closer, close enough their noses bump.

“Then take it. Claim it. It’s yours.”

Enid’s canines are delectably sharp when she smiles, “Pinky promise? Cross your heart.”

Wednesday kisses her. Wednesday shows Addams worship with tongue and teeth, with gentle hands and a bleeding heart. She burns and it is her salvation.

“Enid?”

“Mmm? No talking, more kissing. This is so awesome, c’mere—”

“Enid. Your speech was sickeningly flowery. I’m a blackhole? Atrocious, never speak to me like that again.”

“Cara mia—”

Wednesday jerks away and feels through her pillow for the concealed knife and Enid spills over with laughter that is rays of sunshine and soft flower petals and good earth.  

Chapter Text

Dear Diary,

   The Counselor at school suggested this. Said it would help me work through my feelings after all the shit that went down. I kind of think it’s dumb but I…am a little messed up still. I’m doing this on my iPad tho because I’ll lose the stupid notebook I know I will and it’s already gonna be hard just doing this so! I’m making it easy I don’t care Mr Whatever Your Name Was. Sorry, I know your name, I just forgot. You were nice! This diary idea is dumb tho, no offense. Okay. Okay how do I feel? Um..Well, I can hear my Mom in my head, she’s saying Enid you were too skinny as a wolf, your brother was three times that size when he first turned and you know we start small! Have you been eating? You need more red meat honey! Honestly, it’s so sad blah blah. I don’t care Mom! You wanna know why? Cause I did it!!! Without you or dad or your stupid awful conversion camps, I did it all on my own and I used it for good. So I’m happy and if you can’t be happy for me too well then, I dunno! That’s your problem.

…okay I guess I feel a little better. I am sad school is gonna shut down but it’s prolly a good idea. We are leaving tomorrow and then early summer. Yay… Normally I’d be psyched but I’m not this time. I just don’t feel right. Anyway this is getting stupid I’m done for now. Do I say bye? That’s how they do it in movies. Okay, goodbye Diary.

Enid rubs the tightness in her chest with her balled up fist and frowns down at her iPad. There are drops of glittering tears atop the glass face that warp the typed letters and she sighs. The crying had not even been intentional, she did not even feel that upset but apparently, even thinking about what her mom will say once she finally sees the wolfing out sits unpleasant in her belly. Across their room, Wednesday is finishing packing the sparse few items she possesses under the watch of Thing and, at the sound of her sigh, they both freeze. Thing visually lifts and begins tapping his fingers against the tabletop, are you okay? Wednesday just tilts her head slightly to the side, just enough to expose the round top of an ear and waits that way, patiently unmoving but actively showing she is listening should Enid wish to talk. She does not want to talk, does not even know the words that are making her chest feel like each one of her brothers are sitting on it. Something does not feel right but, she decides, it is the end of another school year, and she loves her family but she is anxious to go home to them, anxious for the cutting remarks and the constant disapproval that is only sharpened by the rejection sensitivity. That is all it is.

Wednesday turns back after exactly three minutes of standing perfectly still to finish her task, snapping at Thing to stop lazing around. It only occurs to Enid after she is piled into the back of the dodge caravan that Wednesday had stopped in the middle of a task for her and waited until she was certain Enid did not want to offload herself verbally before she returned to it.

Dear Diary,

   I’m home. It’s nice! Except…I’m not supposed to lie in a diary, so it sucks too. I don’t feel good. My jaw hurts like it’s locked up and I keep cramping up from how tight my muscles are, and I have headaches like every day. I feel like I’m overstimulated but there isn’t a reason for it. I’m nauseous from being anxious, my teeth are starting to hurt from how I’ve been grinding them. Every time I try to go to bed, I immediately feel threatened, like there is someone here putting me in danger and I feel like I need to find something that it is my job to keep it safe but I can’t find it. It’s fucking frustrating. I’m not suppose to cuss Mom says it’s not lady like but she can’t read this so fuck fuck shit and ass. Yoko thinks I have PTSD which? Valid. Mom is gonna take me to see Dr. Bert, our family doc a werewolf specialist so. We’ll see. This is gonna suck. I know it’s not a big deal I have to remind myself that they care and this is normal but I know she’s gonna be snippy and say side comments and my stomach hurts already thinking about it. And if this has anything to do with me being a late bloomer or affects my wolf—Ugh. It’s fine. It’s fine! This is normal stuff, I’m just a big baby. Whatever. Goodbye Diary, thanks for listening. Wish me luck.

The gown only goes down to her knees, it smells like antiseptic and cheap linen, and the ties at the back of her neck have a few hairs caught in it. She is incredibly overwhelmed. The lights are starting to sting, and her skin feels like it is crawling, she does not feel safe. Her claws are out which the nurse assisting Dr. Brent keeps an eye on but offers her platitudes about how normal it is, how she is safe, but Enid cannot hear it right then. They do not understand the ball of nerves buzzing inside her chest, that it screams like a cicada and covers the majority of sound she can intake. Her leg bounces. Her hands fidget, twist up the gown by her hips then her stomach plummets when a little more of her knees are exposed, the tension pulls on those hairs tied into the straps. The leather of the examination table is fake, it is sticky against her bare skin and makes a horrible noise when she adjusts. She does not want to be here, she does not want to be touched anymore, she just wants—something. Her safe thing. Where is it?

Dr. Brent pulls away with a smile that digs into her like shards of glass, “Okay Enid, you did great. You can go change and I’ll meet you with your parents in a moment.”

Her head lowers, chin tucking against her chest while her shoulders rise to protect the sides of her neck. She says nothing when she leaves, sticking close to the side of the wall and skirting around the nurse. She feels like she might hyperventilate or cry or maybe both and the fact that she cannot figure out why only makes it worst.

In the office, Esther lays a hand over hers that fidget in her lap and for a moment she thinks it is to comfort her but then the fingers press into her fist, dig against her palm to feel for something and secure the clicking sensory toy she had been using to take it away. She watches Esther slip it into her jacket pocket with an annoyed sigh and feels herself exist outside her own body, sees part of her slip away to avoid the intense buzzing inside her, the maelstrom of feeling that she knows will infuriate her for no good reason if she does not separate from it.

“Sorry.” She says as if she has a reason to be apologetic for needing and for being but knowing it—she—can be annoying and she has a desire to please. Esther says nothing, just glances down with a furrow to her brow when Enid’s legs both start to bounce and her shoes squeak against the floor. She can hear her mother’s voice in her head saying Enid, try to sit still or Enid, did you take your medicine today? It makes her shoulders hunch a bit and she stops her legs from bouncing by balling her hands into fists in her lap and squeezing them to the beat of one of her favorite songs.

Dr. Brent enters and saves her without meaning to. He settles into his plush chair with a congenial smile and starts in a stilted tone, “Well, the good news is all the blood work came back and you look very healthy for a young, budding werewolf, Enid.”

She sets her teeth into the meat of her cheek, wisely does not speak because she knows this is her mother’s court. She is only here as the key witness, here to be seen and examined but not heard.

Esther leans forward in her chair with a grip so tight on her purse a few of her nails poke through the imitation leather, “Then what is wrong with her?”

Ouch.

The doctor continues unaffected by that comment likely because he has not suffered that tone all his life the way Enid has, because he does not mentally hear Enid, what is wrong with you? Why can’t you be normal? Too sensitive, Enid, calm yourself down.

“Enid appears to be suffering from stress cardiomyopathy. Broken heart syndrome, if you use the human phrasing or, for us, it is the sickness that comes with being separated from a mate or being rejected by one.”

The room gets quiet. Enid feels tears building on her lashes, feels her bottom lip quivering, feels too much. Suddenly, things get loud in her head and her chest grows horribly tight, her heart aches and aches and she reaches to press her hand against the breastbone, hoping to massage some of the pain out.

“What?” Her father actually speaks, soft and gravely, horribly gentle but never when she needs it to be. His giant mitt reaches for her hand and she lets him take it, lets him feel how she’s shaking and hopes the strength of his hand can jumpstart the ingrained ability to breathe. In a rare display of unselfish compassion—a love without an ulterior motive—Esther clasps a hand over her mouth and reaches to squeeze Enid’s wrist with the other.

“That…that can’t be. Enid isn’t—honey, did you…?”

She finds her voice sharp in her own ears, feels it like claws against her back, “No! I mean, I had a boyfriend…sorta…but we weren’t ever serious! I mean, don’t I get a choice!?”

Dr. Brent gives her a sad smile when she turns wet eyes upon him, “In some cases of an extreme—”

She stops listening near immediately. Her mind simply grows too loud for her to finish processing anything he says and, halfway through, her mother pulls back so her father does too out of reflex, and she feels horribly alone.

She thinks of Wednesday and Thing and their drafty room at school and the smell of hundreds of sheafs of ink-soaked pages sitting in a glossy black box and the sounds Wednesday makes when she is doing homework. She aches for that simplicity, aches so bad her chest blooms with pain.

Dear Diary,

                I’m not sure what’s wrong with me. I mean like in the whole like Enid as a person thing, not like…the mate sickness. I thought, after we got back and it has been a few days, I thought maybe it was Ajax cause it cant have been anyone else. He’s the only person I’ve done anything with. But…I mean, I liked him! He was nice and his nose was so pretty and he was sweet but…I didn’t want to be with him anymore. He wasn’t my one, I didn’t choose him! It can’t be him but I don’t know who else. I don’t know. Mom is…she’s being weird. She acts like I betrayed her like I meant for this happen and I chose someone random just to spite her. As if! Like I want to fucking die from my heart slowly breaking. Like I want to feel like shit all the time, like I’m fighting for my life. I miss getting a full night of sleep. Seriously! I’m buying concealer by the bucket to hide these bags. Ugh. I keep trying to text Wednesday and she never answers. Its hard to be mad at her though. She really is the sweetest little werido. I miss her so much. I feel like she’d know what to do. I bet if I said ‘Hey Wednesday, I’m dying! Apparently, I met my mate and I have no idea who it is but if I don’t find them soon, the walls of her my heart are going to cave in it. Hey Wednesday, is it weird that part of me would rather die than live without them when I have no idea who they are?’ I bet you’d do that thing where you just look at me and then you’d leave and a couple hours later you’d come back dragging them in a bag behind you. Hey Wednesday, please help. I’m dying. I don’t want to die alone. Okay diary, I’m crying again. I don’t know what to do. Only a month, three weeks and two days left of summer then I can go back to school. How depressing.

Everything is wrong. Her senses are sharper than the claws digging into the earth, but the air is foul, her family pawing at the ground a few feet from her smell wrong, and there is something so loud it is making her head hurt. Her jaw aches and her heart just does not feel strong enough to support this form under the weight of all the wrongness. Her bones do not even feel right. There is something missing from the air, the earth, the depths of her very soul. It is gone and she needs it.

They do not understand. They do not care. There is a hole cut out from the middle of her in the shape of her and she is missing so all the blood and life and soul of Enid is falling through the vacancy because she is supposed to be there to hold it in. It is not right, and she aches. The heart is beating but so slow—a heart cannot beat without blood; it cannot feed a body that withers without the partner it was built to love, to need with savage want, to feed with a feral grace and everlasting patience. Where is she?

Enid backs away from her pack, bares her teeth and begins growling in warning when one of them steps forward. No, no, no they are not her. Nothing will sate the beast but her. Where is she?

A heart is a weak thing. Just a bit of thin skin and vessels all to strengthen the body: what a story it must be that paper mache and some string is the main source of strength for a mighty creature such as she, the living beating vessel for the endurance of mortality and that this pathetic thing is all she has to give. It is not strong enough, she can feel it growing weaker with every beat that it spends alone, can feel the blood becoming sluggish in a body that is born sleek and wicked, all black-gum mouth and razors in every finger and toe. She is the perfect threat, a killing machine, and she is nothing without her.

A long, low whine comes from her born of pain, of the misery to be alone, of the time and space between them. The air is foul here. It smells of rainfall on tarmac, of the overripe squash in her mother’s garden behind the house and of the racoons that live beneath the foundation of the Sinclair home, of her family but nothing even remotely close to her.  She presses her muzzle into the dirt to rub at the earth, dig up something that will smell of home—the home she has made inside that girl’s chest, the wolf’s den, a hollowed-out cave dark and dank—to appease the pain.

A dog begins barking and her ears pin back, head thrumming from the awful noise. One of the largest in the pack steps at her—the wolf-mother, the pink-lipped long-tooth leader who has nipped at her tail all her life and bit into her neck when she tried to run—with her teeth bared and growls so low and so deep the stones turn upon the ground. The others bow their heads to show subordinance but not she, not the wicked thing with a barely beating heart who is tasting blood and who is frothing for the shadows cast by trees, who yearns to find that cave, who needs her mate.

The dog is barking. The wolf-mother issues threat.

She is the black-mouthed dog, the wrath of a love unwanted and she does not feel safe. They are cornering her, trying to cow her into submission and she will not go. They are not the ones who are owed her loyalty, they will never see her belly. She will kill them all to get home to her. Her grave-eyed hollow one, her perfect blackness, her always beating heart, the bloody barer of her endless devotion.

W—

The dog is barking.

Wen—

The dog has slipped beneath the fence. The wolf-mother howls.

Wednesd—

The dog stops barking.

Dear Diary,

                I’m on thin ice. I really fucked up. I can’t believe that really happened. I don’t know what came over me, I just felt cornered and then it came up from behind and everyone knows you can’t come up behind a werewolf when they are like that! Mom is so pissed. The neighbor is upset but they are wolves too so they kind of get it. They felt bad after Mom had to tell them I have….my heart is breaking. It doesn’t happen very often inside a pack but when it does, wolves get all weird and sad in the eyes and ugh. I can’t believe I’m one of those horror stories. Am I gonna make it back to school? I don’t even know if I want to at this point. God, worst summer ever. Yoko offered to let me come stay with her a bit to get away from everything and…I told her I’d think about it. I haven’t told her what’s going on yet and she’s gonna go all crazy and we’re gonna have a Town Hall meeting with the Girls and I’m just not ready yet. Things are so tense and it’s not helping my anxiety like at all. My oldest brother dropped his fork at dinner and because I’m in full fight or flight all the time now, I jumped and snarled at him and Mom looked at me like she was ready to fight me to protect him. When did I become the monster in my own house? I miss Wednesday, I miss school, I miss Thing. I miss the cello. My body feels like it has fire ants inside it, like I’m itching on my brain. I’m gonna go crazy. Diary, can you make Wednesday call me or text me? I need her help. This is so stupid. Alright bye.

He is ugly. His hair is sticking up in all directions and there is a leaf still stuck on a bitty twig nestled into the forelocks of his brown hair. It is not brushed, and it looks greasy. He smells bad. There is a black tie loosely knotted and hanging from the buttoned-down lapels of a thick flannel shirt that is likely meant to be appealing but just looks lazy.

She is uncomfortable. Her mother had told her she was being brought to have lunch with one of the pack members parents and son but the moment they arrived, all the parents including Esther had left them with best wishes and (not at all) covert thumbs up. When he gives her a nervous side of the mouth smile and tries to grab her hand, she realizes she has been set up.

“Sorry!” He jumps back when she snarls at him and rips her hand away to clutch at her chest.

“Don’t touch me!” No, no, no his hand is too big, the fingers are long but not rough, callused but not in the right places, it is too masculine. This is why Ajax felt wrong. Where is she?

He jerks backs so hard his chair slides across the floor and they both wither under the sudden and intense attention of the other consumers at this restaurant.

A waitress hurries over and says in that tone that says you’re causing a scene, “Is there anything I can help with?”

The boy—whatever his stupid name is, it burns in her mouth, it is not hers wherever and whoever she is—is nearly as red as his plaid shirt. He gulps and says shakily, “My date and I—”

She screeches, “Excuse me!? I am not your date!”

“My Dad and y-y-your Mom—”

“Oh my god, I cannot believe her! This—she didn’t tell me!”

The waitress cuts an uncomfortable look between them, “Should I get the check?”

“Yes!” They both say at the same time. Enid curls up her mouth into a sad pout, wraps her arms around her ribs, and whines.

“Hey, I’m sorry. It’s okay, you’re—”

“Take me home,” She wiggles her jaw side-to-side to fight off the tears making her nose burn, “right now.”

Immediately he starts nodding and patting his pockets for his keys, “Yes ma’am.”

On the way home he stops when she tells him to and he buys her ice cream. He listens when she starts bawling and he apologizes profusely when she tells him about her weak little lonely heart. Everyone in a pack knows: you do not trifle with a wolf and their mate. He is a nice guy, she decides, but he is not her and he needs a shower so when he offers her a hug she says no, thank you and have a good night.

They will never speak again and that is fine because her heart is breaking, and her mother betrayed her. She may never forgive her.

“Enid,” Her mother pushes her teacup across the table when she jumps and Murray shifts his eyes away, “you’re back early. How did it go?”

Rage sits on the tip of her tongue; it boils and festers against the roof of her mouth and for once she does not try to flatten it into something easier to swallow for the sake of others. Enid has always cared so much, always beaten and shaped herself like a pliable piece of copper for other people, always shifting and changing into the shape they like or need or want. Now she realizes, pennies are copper and just like a penny she will always be worthless if she keeps her shape this way, cast aside and never seen for the value she possesses. Wednesday would never allow herself to be moved by others, never allow herself to be bent, broken, and reshaped just for comfort, for the sake of ease. Enid wants that for herself.

She seethes.

“How could you?”

“Honey—”

“Don’t you dare. How could you do that to me!? Without fucking telling me!? Thank god he wasn’t some creep!”

Murray hunches up—he does not like the cussing either, but he will never say so—and Esther rises from her chair in a rush. They stare daggers at one another.

“Enid, you’re sick.”

“So, your idea to fix it is to throw some stupid boy at me!? Mom, my mate,” Enid feels a tremor run through her soul—a wind through an empty house that comes with the sound of creaking, rotting floorboards but there is no one walking here—and she has to set a hand on the table to stabilize herself, to keep herself standing because her heart aches and she nearly falls down from the way it knocks the breath from her, “my…her. I don’t want anyone that isn’t her. And what you did, that was fucking bullshit.”

Esther does not seem to know what to do in the face of her righteous zeal so she lifts her shoulders higher, sets her jaw as the matriarch of this family, and brings down the holy fist, “Enid Sinclair, you will mind your manners this instant. Look—I know things have been difficult lately but that is no excuse to forget who you are and whose house you are in.”

“How could I ever forget what I am in your house! You have never let me! Poor pathetic Enid, worthless worthless Enid. The disappointment of the family, the weak one. Couldn’t wolf out when she was supposed to and now she has a mate that she didn’t even mean to choose, who knows where! I know what I am, Mom, I’ve always known! You’ve never given me an option to forget.”

“I have only ever tried to help you, Enid! I’m doing what is best for you, whether you see that or not.”

“By setting me up on a date with someone you know I’ll never love!? You know what happens when you try to put a mated werewolf together with someone else—I could have killed him!”

Esther’s jaw warbles—a sign of weakness, the beast inside her howls, now strike—and she blows out a sharp breath between her clenched teeth, “What do you want me to say Enid?”

No, not that tone, you won’t trick me by going soft and pretending to show me your belly. I know the teeth are coming. She clenches her fists by her hips, “You’re sorry? Would it kill you?”

Sharp as a knife, Esther lifts a hand to poke an accusing finger at her. She does not speak. She does not need to, usually. This is where Enid would crumble and conform, let the heat of her mother’s ire melt the copper in her spine and send her into a weak little puddle on the floor. This time she scoffs and shakes her head, feels a little angry that even with her brave face tears are collecting on her lashes and rolling over.

“You’re unbelievable.”

“Enid, please sweetheart,” Esther reaches for nothing because Enid will not lift a hand between the great, yawning chasm between them formed by the little digs Esther has taken at her throughout the years, “I am scared. I’m doing the best I can.”

An ugly noise rattles her chest, lifts from her as a hymn of the lonely and prayer to the brokenhearted, “You’re scared!? What about me!? I’m the one dying! I’m the one who can’t sleep, who can barely breathe because it fucking stinks in here, nothing smells right. I’m the one who can’t relax. I’m scared and all you can do is try to push me into the arms of someone who—who isn’t her. Could you be more cruel? Why can’t you j-just care? Just fucking love me for once! The way I need, not the way you think I need or on your terms.”

“The doctor said sometimes it can have a placebo effect!”
“I don’t want a fake, I want the real thing!” The paper walls of her withering heart tremble. Where is she?

Esther raises her chin and strikes with hose concealed teeth Enid knew were coming, “Then go to her Enid. Go ahead! No one is stopping you!”

Her chest rattles, she swallows against a wave of ba…dump….ba……dump and the endless ache that comes each time it skips a beat. Where is she?

Her shoulders are too heavy, “I…that’s not fair.”

“That’s what I thought,” The wolf-mother closes in on the black-mouthed beast who is now a coward, a copper-spine woolen lamb at the slaughter, “you’re so embarrassing, Enid. Why couldn’t you just—”

No, no, no don’t say it.

“—be like other girls your age! You finally wolfed out and gave us something to be proud of and now this. Are you trying to make a laughingstock of us?”

Enid snarls, a hand pressed to her aching chest and thinks of dark somber eyes and aches, “Yeah, because I want this.”

“Well, if the shoe fits!”

Rage mounts, hits the apex, and spills over, “I hate you.”

Ester’s mouth opens and closes—the black-mouthed beast scored a hit, struck a vein, and tasted blood—then her eyes turn to a steel, and she throws an arm towards the door, “Then leave.”

For once, Murray lifts his head and tries, “Esther, dear.”

Is she that easy to cast away? “Just like that?”

Esther says nothing so Enid goes to her room, packs the essentials, and leaves.

Dear Diary,

                I’m staying with Yoko. She lives with her uncle in this massive old chapel and it’s really cool here. Like, literally. It’s the middle of summer and I have to keep a jacket on. I can see my breath! It’s kinda cool. It feels so good to hang with her again, especially with everything going on and my fight with Mom. She has called and texted about a million times to apologize and ask me to come home and to tell me I was wrong and that I owe her an apology too. I haven’t cooled down yet. I’m not sure if I’m gonna, I’ve never been that mad. I think maybe….part of me feels like her setting me up with that guy was her way of rejecting Her. I can’t handle that right now. So for now, she’s getting ghosted and I’m not sorry about it. I’m literally counting down the days until summer is over and school starts again. I miss everyone and I miss being free and I miss Wednesday. I miss the cello. I miss her. I need another one of her hugs so bad right now. I’m so tired of being alone. Okay Diary, I’ve been a real fuckin’ bummer lately. I promise I’m gonna try to cheer shit up for the next entry. Just you wait!

Yoko hugs her, tells her she can stay as long as she wants and needs and does not argue when Enid says, “I should probably go home. I don’t want this fight to last forever.”

The Town Hall (girl’s weekly chat over Discord) goes into effect and Yoko says first, joking, “We got to make sure you’re still kicking, kid.”

Then, when they are sitting in her car on the curb of Enid’s dark house, she holds Enid’s hand in a quiet show of support and whispers, “Living without love is like living with knives pointed at you in every direction. We’ll find her, Sunshine.”

Where is she?

“Thanks Yoko. I miss you already.”

“Sap. Get out.”

“You miss me too!”

“Duh but I’m cool enough I don’t have to say it, you just know.”  

Dear Diary,

                I came back home. I’m not feeling any better and everyone is walking around me on eggshells. I hate it here. I promised a better, funner sexy entry but I’m not in the mood. I miss her. Where is she? Bye.

Wednesday will not answer her texts or her calls, and she cannot stomach anymore quiet or space between them. Enid is a creature that grows comfortable in the space she fills and now her space is not filled with Wednesday’s radiating chill, her pleasant smell, and her occasional amusing repartees. So, Enid resorts to a final straw. She cracks open her piggy bank that she has been stowing her allowance in since she was seven years old and draws out just enough cash to buy the essentials for this quest. Dad takes her to the post office and shows her how the flag on the mailbox works, laughs a little when she goggles at it and exuberantly shouts, “That’s what that is for!?”

She writes Wednesday a letter. When she seals it with a little heart sticker on the back, she kisses it and feels a peace spread through her chest.

Five days later, Wednesday sends a letter and a blanket and a sweater. When Enid opens it, her chest floods with so much warmth she immediately feels the threadbare paper and strings her heart is made of start to repair itself. It staggers her. She hugs it against her chest in the rain on the sidewalk, right in front of the lumbering man who does not talk and just stands by the old Buick Town Car. The smell fills her nose, soaks into her lungs, seeps into her bones.

There you are.

She hugs it against her chest, presses her nose down into the fabric, and sways in the rain clouded in the smell of Wednesday Addams who she loves beyond reason and rhyme. She presses the ribbed collar across her lips to feel the texture, smears her lipstick against it and smells the stale sweetness of Wednesday. She can feel the hole where her heart has been failing, has been inching its way out to dive into the pool of Enid puddling below, start to fill up.

I’ve been looking for you. Now that I got you, heaven and hell can’t keep us apart. I’m coming, wait for me, I’m on my way.

She speaks through the fabric of the sweater pressed to her face, “I’ll be right back. Don’t go.”

Lurch, the tower of meat and black fabric, groans long and low. Inside the car, Thing waves at her from the dashboard and Enid realizes home was never this place but she is going to it very soon.

Dear Diary,

         Remember when I started my second entry like this? I’m home. I actually feel like it now. Okay, wanna talk feelings Diary? I have some massive ones, like, OMG. I wolfed out because I was trying to get to her, to save her. All I’ve been thinking about, between worrying and not sleeping, is her. The Addams are literally the nicest people I’ve ever met and after the summer I’ve had, I embarrassed myself. They welcomed me so quickly and they were so accommodating, and I just got a little bit in my feelings. Seriously, they are so considerate sometimes it makes me wanna cry. Sometimes I feel like they might have some kind of sixth sense for telling when I’m down or when they say or do stuff that reminds me of my own Trauma™️ because they somehow move around it or confront it in a way that makes me feel better. So weird. So nice. I love it here. How many times have I said that? Expect to hear it a lot because god, I love it here. Am I selfish and a terrible daughter if I say I don’t miss my family? Maybe my dad, a little. My brothers, kinda. It’s nice being around Pugsley, it feels familiar except I’m usually the baby so its extra fun getting to be a Big for once. Spending time with Willa is so, so good. I feel better already. We sat in her chair hugging for like half an hour and it fixed me. Like seriously, I fell asleep because I finally started relaxing and when I woke up, she was still there. She just looked at me when I tried to apologize and told me to go lay down and she brought me tea OMG. I’m so in love with her it makes my teeth hurt. And she let me hug her, for like, half an hour before I fell asleep. She did that for me. I’m so lucky, I didn’t deserve that. She is so pretty and I love her so much. Okay Diary, I hear Mrs. Addams calling for me, I gotta go. Hey, Diary? Thanks for being here for me, through all this. It’s been hard and I didn’t have anyone. Now I have more people than I know what to do with. I feel jittery and overstimulated, almost. It’s crazy. This is a fever dream. I’m so happy.

“Enid! Come look,” Pugsley waves at her from the end of hallway she knows curves at the end and leads up to his bedroom, “I got a new crossbow!”

Oh god. She rocks forward and backward on her toes with a big smile and waves back at him, feels the paper walls of her heart add another layer to the mache, growing stronger every minute she spends in this house.

“One sec, I wanna go check on Willa,” Now it sings, it wobbles and warbles inside her chest and she presses a hand against her sternum to make sure it stays inside, “do you know where she went?”

“Ah…what time is it?”

She lifts her arm to tap on her watch, “Three.”

“Well, if it’s past lunch and after the time she disappears, then she probably is in the greenhouse.”

I want to know her schedule like I know how to breath. I want to memorize it and chart it so I can help it flow, so I can always find her when my funny little heart tilts sideways and tries to fall out. I miss you. I saw you an hour ago.

“Cool! Thanks, I’ll be back,” She stands up a little taller and adjusts the usual high fluty tone of her voice into the same kind of stern tone adults use with her, “Pugsley, please be careful.”

His sweet face screws up, “Why would I do that?”

The greenhouse is Morticia’s sanctum that Enid was given explicit permission to invade the moment she set foot on Addams soil. The greenhouse is the haven for quiet neutrality in the whole of the home which is a rare gift so she should have expected Wednesday might wander here from time to time. Today rain strikes the glass panels of the roof and slough down in sheets, creating a pretty shadow effect that dapples the hundred of thriving plants confined in this space. It smells of sticky sap, bramble vines and the wide fronds of ferns, the high floral scents of roses and nightshade and the low earthy smells of things she cannot name but knows would put her into a cedar box if she even brushed against them. The scent now reminds her of air kisses and long black tipped fingers brushing hair behind her ears, telling her, “It’s alright, dear.” when she fiddles with her favorite clicking toy and then jerking to halt when she realizes it is very loud in the greenhouse. It reminds her of the simplicity of gentleness and how much of a balm it has been not just for the recent hurt but the years of it stacked up inside her, sticking to places in her she did not even know had become clogged and rife with hurt. It also reminds her, now, of the way Wednesday will sit by her and quietly watch behind the fringe of her bangs while Enid lovingly scrubs the dirt away that has collected beneath her nails and how her jaw shifts beneath her freckled skin when she lifts the same hand up and kisses the knuckles as a prize for letting her. To her diary, she tells: It is less of a prize and more of reward. She’s so sweet and kind and I sometimes can’t stay inside my own body when I’m around her. I can’t stop from saying I LOVE YOU and she always lets me. That has to mean something right? God, I hope it means something.

Today, she can find the trace smell of something stale and sweet, nostalgic, and homely that she follows until she rounds the walk path to discover Wednesday settled on her knees. For once, the soft skin of her wrists and forearms are exposed because her sleeves—always long sleeves, even in the middle of summer—are rolled up and she is wielding a small shovel and sheers. Dirt and slivers of bark mulch are streaked across the dusky hue of her skin, settled in dark and deep into the grooves her skin makes in the fold of her elbow. The way the rain patterned gloomy lighting shades the sharp contours of Wednesday’s cheeks highlight the splash of pale freckles Enid adores and makes the dark of her black appear darker.

Quietly, Enid sneaks up on the tips of her toes and, just as she is splaying her hands out in a claw pattern and pulling back her lips to expose her fangs, Wednesday tilts her head up and says softly, “Hello Enid.”

The dark depths of those darling eyes framed by long lashes and the curtain of silken black hair makes Enid’s heart trip over a couple beats in her chest. Some of the blood it forgets to pump rises to settle in her cheeks and warm the back of her neck. Slowly she lowers her hands to fold them behind her back and begins rocking on her feet, toes to heel, and smiles shyly down on Wednesday.

“How did you hear me?”

Wednesday stares listlessly, “Your jumpsuit is neon yellow and has big white and pink daisies on it.”

It does not make sense; it is another one of those things where Wednesday states it like an obvious fact anyone should know but in actuality no one can understand if they try. It is effortlessly charming. Enid grins and moves to sit on her knees next to her mate on the matt rolled across the concrete.

“What are you doing?”

Wednesday’s shoulder brushes against hers, the knees only an inch apart, and Enid feels her like the cool wind coming from a rushing river, smells her like the first clean breath that comes after escaping a panic attack. By some deep seeded need she sways closer, seeks the long cool fingers of Wednesday Addams and draws them into her lap, fiddles with the tips and the ring around her thumb and wipes away some of the dirt. Graciously, Wednesday does not pull away from her to further the surprise that has been blooming in Enid since her arrival here and continues to do so each time Wednesday does not pull away from her.

“I am creating a substrate for my new batch of spores.”

Enid purses her lips in confusion, looks down at the box of dark mulch that she can now see has small bones mixed in with it, thin and needle like so likely reptilian and has something dark red mixed in to make it moist. She reaches out to press a single finger through the stuff and draws it away with a shriek and a shiver, immediately hating the texture of what she knows is raw meat and the smell that rises from disturbing it.

“What?”

Wednesday uses her small gardening shovel to gesture at a large water buffalo skull hung in a shaded corner of the green house where a few of the glass walls have been painted black. Each crack and divot including the eye sockets and brain cavity have been packed with the same dark mulch and from it, thin stalked pink-white capped mushrooms have sprouted in abundance. There are larger, clearly older ones on another skull hanging beside it—this one seems to be an ibex, damn her for knowing because her earliest lessons with the wolf-mother were about prey and their bones, little or big—that are yellow and have big flat caps and thick brown stalks. Then she gestures at the skull of a bighorn sheep set off to the other side of Wednesday that has some of the mulch packed into it but is clearly not yet finished.

Enid swallows back the urge to gag from the smell and focuses on the feeling of Wednesday’s cool fingers against her own, “Is that suppose to be like a flowerpot? Where did you even get those?”

“They are the remnants of gifts left behind by my forebearers. I’m giving them a better purpose to serve than some absurd declaration. These just sit on shelves in Father’s office anyway.”

“Forebearers? Oh my god, Willa, you’re so cute. No one talks like that,” Her heart pounds against the prison of her own flesh, it howls and keens and demands to be separated from her so that it can nestle itself into Wednesday’s palms maybe to be used as mushroom food, maybe to be used for anything Wednesday wants because it is hers, “so you grow mushrooms?”

Wednesday gives her a very shallow nod as an affirmative, dark eyes dropping down to their clasped hands rested in Enid’s lap, and says almost as if on autopilot, “Hebeloma aminophilm, Ghoul Fungus in layman terms. It is one of the rare few that are found to grow from and around the remains of animals.”

“Oh, gross,” She untangles their hands so she can loop her arm through Wednesday’s and beams at her when those darling eyes turn to her, “thanks for sharing.”

A small knot forms in the slanted arches of her black brows, “You asked.”

Love burrows into her, it digs needle sharp teeth into her soul and bites down until she bleeds nothing but the heady, pink stuff. It fills her belly and her throat, and she can hardly keep it all inside so she sways forward to kiss Wednesday’s cheek and stays in her space so she can lay her head on the other girl’s shoulder.

“That doesn’t mean you had to tell me.”

“I suppose that is true,” Then again, as if it does not make Enid’s head spin, she speaks words that are soft but packed with an underlying meaning that makes Enid yearn, “but you asked.”

Wednesday, I love you so much, please understand that when you say things like that, make it clear you’re giving me special treatment, it sends me into the stars, and I love it there because its dark and gorgeous and cold just like you.

“You know how to make a girl feel special. Wooing me with talk about corpse eating mushrooms,” Her nose scrunches up and she reaches her long arms around Wednesday in a hug, but it is partway to push the mulch box a little further away, “do you eat them? Oo! Will you cook for me with your gross, yucky mushrooms?”

“No. They aren’t for eating,” Wednesday’s subtly begins shifting her jaw side-to-side, her somber gaze lifting to the fungus garden blooming from the skull of a dead animal, “they are pretty.”

Enid gives her the benefit of the doubt and takes a moment to inspect the ugly yellow-pink-white mushrooms sprouting out of the mulch and admits, only to herself, that the aesthetic is very Wednesday so that does give it some appeal. She hums and sets her chin on the cap of Wednesday’s shoulder, “You’re prettier.”

A single brow inches fractionally up Wednesday’s forehead, “Did you mean that?”

“One-hundo.”

Wednesday makes the cutest sound of indignation and tilts her head away, firmly keeps a grip on Enid’s hand but says tartly, “That was embarrassing for you.”  

Her heart swells—a hundred new layers of paper mache get added to the lining of her furiously beating heart—and she thrums with love, cannot keep it. “I love you.”

Wednesday flicks her eyes back to Enid and there, for once, she can just see that all the windows and doors that are usually kept shut with lock and chain and mortar are cracked ajar. Through them she sees a hungry kind of want that paralyzes her, makes her feel happy to be the lamb to Wednesday’s slaughter because for a moment that little peak gives her hope.

Dear Diary,

                Okay tonight is the big night. I’m excited but I’m also nervy. This is only my third time and she is here but so is her family who I love and I do not wanna embarrass myself in front of them. I have honestly no basis for what is gonna happen tonight, I wasn’t really taught what happens when a wolf with mate sickness is by their mate but not really fully accepted yet. God, I wish I could just grow spine and tell her that I’m crazy for her. I’d go ‘Wednesday, I think you’re the smartest and weirdest and most gorgeous girl I’ve ever met and I’m sorry I couldn’t do it the right way but my everything chose you and wants you to choose me back and I love you so much. Please date me maybe? Please marry me, please let me be with you for the rest of our lives? I’ll be so good to you, just give me a shot.’ And like the Addams are weird but I don’t know if they are ‘I fell in love with you because the most real part of me, on a deep level, saw you to the very bottom of who you are, felt we were perfect for each other, and laid a claim on you’ weird. Wednesday has been so accommodating about my love language being touch but I feel like this would be the thing she finally guts me for. Maybe. She is so hard to get a read on sometimes and I think she likes it that way. Which is, obvs, adorable. Okay, I’m gonna get ready. Wish me luck Diary, its gonna go so smooth this time. Right?

The black-mouthed beast could not be more pleased. This place smells perfect. The woods that extend for miles are deep, ground that runs in waves that dip low into gorges her claws are good for traversing then climb high enough she can run to the top and howl at the moon. There are howls for her from a pack that is new to her but known in the depths of her, the same part that claims a mate is the same part that has dogged teeth into these folk and claimed them as hers. They call to her and she answers her family. Silly soft things that cannot hunt, cannot run, but are not weak, will always defend her in their own ways so she abandons her running to hunt for them. When she begins piling game in the foyer, the silky silhouette of the spider-queen seeps from the shadow cast from the black-mouthed dog.

“Oh marvelous,” She says with a cloying sweetness the wolf-mother never gave her and bends to touch the air by Enid’s flicking ear, “you are too kind, Enid.”

She chuffs and does not let even the spider-queen nor her king touch her. She is not for them. They are her pack, and she rubs against their legs when she slips back into the night, but they cannot touch her.

Wednesday.

Her mate is a splinter of the moon lit silver in the corner of their cave but built of the gloom of night, a void that consumes light and Enid brings herself to the feet of such a marvel. She offers herself feebly to the mighty girl and shows her worth, hopes it is enough. The black-mouthed beast whines for her mate, begs for her to dig tooth and talon into the meat of her and tenderly repair her aching heart with the tender attentiveness she knows her mate harbors. When her subdued gloom, her sleek shadow, her dark cave, and her home bares the naked edge of a blade, Enid curls around her and watches her take her fill. A wolf should provide for their mate, should be able to share and Enid is pleased that her offer has been accepted.

“Stupendous,” The husk of her glowering love’s voice is deeper set in the night and a brush of love against Enid’s sensitive ears, “this is phenomenal, Enid. I’ll be able to feed a new crop of Hebeloma aminophilm with the soft meats and the connective tissues. You’re perfect.”

The black-mouthed dog that she is rumbles with pride for pleasing Wednesday, for giving the little black-winged scavenger something that will fatten her, strengthen her, prove her worth as a mate. She noses between the wingspan of her black-bird and huffs hard enough some of the hairs that are free from her braids wave in the wind.

Somber eyes the color of tepid waters, the color of dried pools of blood turn upon her and in them is an open door displaying a hungry maw behind it. The mouth looks hungry.

“Yes?”

Is it enough? Will you choose me now? Am I yours? Give me command, call to your black-mouthed dog and let me be your answer to a violent word, the swaying of your passions. Am I yours?

“Enid,” A hand reaches to burry into the length of her fur, pressing down to scrape nails against the skin and she rumbles happily for the feel of claw, “truly, you are miraculous. I…cherish you, beyond words.”

Claim me black-winged thing, claim me you deep hole, you wicked grace and wonderous bite. Speak my name and say it right and our souls will align. I have been waiting for so long my useless, frail heart has nearly beat itself to death without your word.  

Long fingers scratch at the underside of her maw then holds her there, keep a beast at bay by the will of her touch and the black-mouthed beast rests happily in the palm of this girl’s hand. She gives a wuff that blows back the fringe of Wednesday’s bangs and brings a tiny smile to her face. The fingers curl in slightly to dig nails in. She preens, is filled with pride for the challenge.

“What do you want to hear, you empty headed beast? Words aren’t enough. Make sense.”

Tell me, is it enough? I am dying to know. Am I your chosen? Speak.

“You know,” Wednesday keeps her hold firm and drags the beast closer, tilts her head so that her cheek rests against her muzzle and her temple lays between Enid’s powerful eyes, “bone is a meaningful gift in my family. This would hold severe connotations if you knew what you were doing.”

The wolf knows what her place is. She knows the weight of this, what she does for her mate. The little sharp-tongued grave-eyed girl cannot understand the depth of her gift, what she begs for and what she promises. A low growl emanates from her that her mate hums along with.

“If you knew what you asked of me…I would say yes, Enid. If a yes was enough.”

Her head cocks enough to the side that Wednesday is displaced but her hand remains curled into her fur. She does not seem unhappy for the interruption. Her eyes trail across the width of her strong frame, down to her wicked feet and the razors imbedded in them, then back to her broad head. Slowly, her girl untangles the fingers to brush the fur up along her muzzle to between her eyes, just with the fingertips.

“Are you staking a claim, beast?”

Yes, her clever shadow-thing, her perfect one, she has sunk her teeth into the meat of it. She rumbles, snaps her teeth at the air in front of her mate’s nose and crawls closer to nudge at the side of her head with her own. Wednesday beams at her. Big shinning teeth that press pockets into the corners of her cheeks and there is something wicked about it—feral grace and wild beauty, her one—that makes the black-mouthed dog feel powerful, feel prideful. She chose right.

“I accept. Not that there is a need for such theatrics, but you did bring me this nice bear and you are asking so nicely.”

Finally. The heart preens and roars against her sore ribs, it swells so much it presses against the walls of her lungs and threatens to consume them. All the cracks and tearing that has been building since they separated fill in, repair themselves, and Enid’s spirit aligns with Wednesday’s. The bond is sealed.

She snaps her teeth out and rumbles happily when her black-winged scavenger with fox eyes and a mean mouth kicks at her and threatens her while that smile cracks the plaster of her pretty face.

Dear Diary,

                This is everything, on God. I am on cloud nine or whatever. Diary, get ready for the juiciest goss you have ever and will ever hear…Wednesday and I are dating!!! Scream!!!! I almost passed out when she told me she loved me, she said it so casual like what?? Said “I’m not going to apologize for loving you” like bitch that was so romantic? And then we kissed and my soul left my body. She feels the same way I do. Like, literally the same way. I couldn’t be more lucky, this barely feels like real life. Granny Sinclair always said that a werewolf will only choose someone who is perfect for them. I always thought she meant I got to choose, not that some weirdo dog brain part of me would just see and know but she was right. Willa is my perfect soulmate. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with her. I get to say that here because you’re my Diary and you get me, you know it’s not too soon for someone my age to say that because I’m a werewolf and she’s an Addams and we have bigger souls than we do bodies. It rains, the color pink is the best, and Wednesday is my future. Facts bitch. Four days till school and I’m excited but also kind of sad to leave. I’ve gotten use to the smell of this old house and the people in it and I’m sad to leave it. Wednesday has been stiff but I think that’s because she doesn’t like the change, I can tell she is excited too. In her own way. Morticia and Gomez said they’d send me letters and make sure to say hi on family day and they promised I am always welcome here. So, that softened the sting a bit. I’ll miss Pugsley! And Grandma and Uncle Fester who never really showed up that much but when he did, he was fun too. Okay Diary, last one of the summer. I’ll see you at school and, maybe if I’m lucky, I won’t need you by next summer.

They settle back into their room within half a day. Most of the unpacking that needs done is Enid’s many assorted items and, after Wednesday and Thing have finished her side, they come to help her. Enid bites her lip each time they brush against each other, each time she catches Wednesday watching her with a hungry look, each time they get distracted because Enid needs to kiss her. Wednesday does not complain, does not stop her or even glare, but clings to her and melts with her. She remembers, I am a bottomless pit, Enid and I am starving for you like the sparks lifting from the heat of a fire and will never forget them.

“Focus Enid.” Wednesday pulls away from her with a serious set to her brow and wipes the lipstick from her mouth with the back of her hand.

Enid blooms with a dreamy sigh and sinks into her bed, staring up at Wednesday the way a starving artist looks upon a true masterpiece.

“Sorry, you’re really pretty.”

Wednesday blinks at her, “How are you going to make it?”

Enid furrows her brows and heaves a loud dramatic sigh, “I dunno. That reminds me…Willa, is it okay if I…I mean, am I allowed to do that?”

Some fire lights behind Wednesday’s fathomless eyes that makes the black of them seem darker, “You are the only one allowed.”

Oh god. Her heart howls, it rattles and rams against her ribs and she clutches her sweater with wide eyes. For a moment she is sure it will splinter bone and escape from Enid to crawl into Wednesday’s hands. From behind Wednesday, she can see Thing on Wednesday’s writing desk wave a couple fingers at her and sign, whipped.

“I meant,” She sucks her lip between her teeth and shrugs, bashfully, “out there. What’s the rules?”

A slight tilt to Wednesday’s head makes her braids shift across the stark fabric of her uniform, “If I said you were only allowed to touch me within the confines of our room, would you be amendable?”

“Duh!” It would make the kisses granted to her and the closeness of their bodies when they are orbiting around each other all the more sweeter because Enid would have to wait for it, learn to savor it for when she has it and long for it during the day. It would kill her, make the paper mache of her heart tremble without her mate, but she can abide by any of Wednesday’s whims as long as it is Wednesday who asks it of her. Wednesday steps closer, wedges herself between Enid’s spread knees and stares down at her in such a way it makes Enid shiver. She lifts upon her copper spine, lifts to Wednesday as a flower does to the overarching sun, the way a wolf rises for the moon. Soft hands slide around her cheeks once she is within reach and Wednesday leans down to kiss her, very gently.

“We would starve.”

A full body shiver wracks her, makes her tremble enfolded in Wednesday’s clutches. Her heart warbles too, warns her that Wednesday is right, and that the wrath of her love will be swift and not kind if she tries to smother it.

“I can be good. We can make it work if you’re uncomfortable. We aren’t a lot I think but I haven’t had to see us, so.” She grins, absolutely lovesick and feels honored to be so.

“No. I don’t want to make it work,” Wednesday swipes the pad of her thumb beneath Enid’s eye and something feral slips into her dark eyed gaze, something that flashes just before she snaps her teeth a hairs breath away from the tip of Enid’s nose and a deep part of her is pleases by the display, considers it a delightful challenge that is also a flirtation, “I prefer you at your worst.”

She thrums from a very soft rumble low in her belly, one that makes her teeth rattle. She tilts her head against the cool palm holding her cheek and turns just enough to kiss the inside of Wednesday’s wrist. Their eyes meet.

“Are you sure?”

“I do not care about the thoughts and concerns of our peers.”

She snickers, “I know. We’re gonna work on that this year.”

“I wish you luck on that. Have you heard of Newton’s Laws? You’ll find those applicable to my will when it comes to socializing. Should that fail to inspire you, remember I will kill anyone who poses so much as an eyeroll towards you. Trying to intermingle me with those vapid, dull-eyed idiots would be very poor for their health.”

The wolf is very pleased to hear that, even more so by the preverbal teeth Wednesday is showing. She chews on her lip to stifle what she knows will be a massive, doting smile. She draws in a deep breath, tastes love and the smell of that damn skull hidden in Wednesday’s suitcase and Wednesday’s stale sweetness, and blows the breath out. She stands and Wednesday does not step back so they remain flush. Wednesday sets her hands on Enid’s collarbones and stares up at her with those dark pools, almost daring her to fall in and drown.

“Okay. I’m glad but I wanted to check.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Let me know if it ever gets too much.”

I will crave you with my every waking breath, she had said, and it sits burned into Enid so she just smiles when Wednesday glowers at her, smiles when she snaps testily, “It will never be enough but, again, I appreciate the concern. Now, finish unpacking. I want you to go bother your friends so I can finish my side in peace.”

“Okay,” Wednesday starts to pull away and the love swells, her heart grows to such a size it begins climbing up her throat, so she catches her hand and gives a slight tug, “wait.”

Wednesday looks at her sweetly, her face is blank but her mouth is soft and her head tilts so her ear is turned closer towards her silently conveying I am yours, I am listening, “Yes?”

“I love you.”

“Hm,” Wednesday glances down at their tether, curls her fingers beneath Enid’s to lift her hand to her mouth and presses a cool kiss against her knuckles, “And I you. Now, genuinely, complete your task, Enid. Would you like me to set a timer so the pressure can incentivize you?”

She wrinkles her nose up, “No. Gimmi a treat afterward instead.”

Wednesday’s face remains impassive but there is a slight dimpling to the skin between her brows, “If you suggest something trite like a kiss, I refuse. That is wretched and horribly cliché. You can do better.”

“I was going to say you get rid of that nasty skull.”

“You insult me,” Wednesday rips her hand away and narrows her eyes slightly, “Unpack or I’ll kill you, how is that?”

“A classic. Feels like home.”

“You pathetic thing. I’m leaving.” She turns swiftly on her heels and flies towards their door, reaching for one of Enid’s scarves hanging off the hook and she gives chase with a laugh.

“Wait, not without me!”

“No, you little monster, finish your chores,” Wednesday jumps when Enid tackles her from behind and slaps her palm against the door to stabilize both of them before they hit the floor, “Enid!”

“Your fault for telling me you loved me back. Told you, werewolf love is way more intense than Addams love.”

“Incorrect. Yours is more clingy, insufferably needy. Mine is respectful,” She swallows just loud enough Enid can hear it because her ear is pressed between Wednesday’s shoulder blades, “I was leaving to get you coffee and send Yoko to assist you.”

“Are you coming back with her?”

“Naturally. This is my dark portal.”

Enid huffs a laugh out and squeezes Wednesday once before letting her go, “Weirdo. Okay, see you in a bit. Thank you.”

“Of course.”

“Be safe.”

Wednesday curls the cream and bubblegum pink scarf around her neck, winces when it brushes her cheek but keeps it on, “The world will be less safe for having me in it.”

“That’s true. Don’t kill anyone.”

“Hope they don’t give me a reason to,” Her hand curls around the doorknob but she hesitates, turns back to Enid, “is there anything else you’d like?”

“No.”

She still does not immediately leave. A small frown tugs at her lips, her eyes flick to Thing who seems smug for a hand, then she huffs, “Will you accompany me, please?”

She squeals, “Oh my god, yes! Let me get ready!”

She leaves holding Wednesday’s hand, wearing Wednesday’s soft leather jacket, and feeling like a perfect version of herself. Soft, weak pathetic Enid, the family disappointment might not have been good enough to be a member of the Sinclair pack, but she has found her place within the unholy halls of the Addams mansion and found her home within the tarpit of Wednesday Addams heart. How could she have gotten so lucky?

“You will be finishing your task when we return, however.”

“Can you just do it for me? Please?”

“No.”

“Pretty please?”

There is a soft silence, then, “I will assist.”

Dear Diary,

                It was all worth it. Everything that got me here, all the heartache and the shit, it was worth it.