Chapter Text
There were three absolute truths in the universe that Wednesday Addams knew, and it just so happened that all of them pertained to her family.
One, they were kooky. The term had become damn near synonymous with her clan since before even her father’s father’s father could recall (she would know, she had asked him about it in a seance once and learned that day that ghosts could shrug.)
Two, they were depraved. Violent, debauched men and women with moral compasses that spun as if on a magnet. Capable of things so terrible, licentious or both to a degree that they were outcasts even among outcasts.
And three, they were cursed. Though this was the only truth that shook Wednesday with the existential dread that an absolute truth should.
Wednesday had seen the curse firsthand time and time again throughout her life. First in her mother and father; an utterly devoted pair crooning and swooning day in and out. Mornings filled with whispered sweet nothings across the breakfast table, and evenings filled with sounds behind closed doors that forced Wednesday to roughly cradle her pillow around her head to drown them out. They were desperate for each other. It was revolting, but admittedly presented as kooky, depraved and cursed as promised. Truths were absolute after all.
Frankly her parents’ behavior seemed curse enough in even Wednesday’s earliest thoughts, to be that involved with another person looked exhausting, but it wasn’t until she attended a family New Year’s Eve function in her tenth year that she first saw the gravity of the affliction that came with her namesake.
Her uncle Adolfo, distant, a far-off branch in the devil’s garden of the Addams’ family tree had shown up with more and more lesions on his skin every year since Wednesday had been old enough to remember him at all. The wounds seeped angrily, blood often splattering in a trail wherever the man walked, and they didn’t seem to dull or mend between visits. Wednesday had adored them.
Then on that one fateful turning of the new year Uncle Adolfo arrived clean. He exited his car with not a single cut, gash or even scab upon him. His skin was a pristine clean slate almost youthful in its unmarred or scarred state, and worst of all he had a beautiful woman on his arm.
This Wednesday would learn was the extent of the curse, as Adolfo and his newfound beloved demonstrated for a crowd of fawning and cooing relatives how a singular gory opening remained on his bicep only to be kissed shut like a mother would a child’s scraped knee. The skin stitched together instantaneously when rosy lips pecked it, and while Wednesday mourned its loss, she heard others cheer and congratulate her uncle on succumbing to his curse and finding his cure. Love, they said.
Love. Wednesday had nearly retched at the word.
Naïve and young Wednesday wrote Uncle Adolfo off as a fluke and continued on as she always had, looming curse shoved in the deepest corner of her mind. Then came the wedding of her great aunt Odile to some normie husband whose name a then fourteen-year-old Wednesday couldn’t be assed to remember. The ceremony was as dreadful and lovesick as she expected but she didn’t chalk any of it up to some curse. She instead spent the reception in a corner chatting passively with her cousin Demona, a quiet and quite insane girl who managed to get furlough from the asylum where she was forcibly detained to attend the event. Part way through cocktail hour Demona had winced and gripped her palm like someone had stabbed a knife through it. When Wednesday asked about it (albeit more curious than concerned) Demona waved her away dismissively.
“Oh this? Been happening since I turned eighteen.” She said and outstretched her hand so her cousin could see the source of the issue for herself.
A sickly purplish glow pulsed under the skin in the center of Demona’s palm with the rhythm of an erratic heartbeat. Framed by a web of blackened superficial veins, the odd welt had a wonderfully infected look to it. Wednesday then asked what it was but Demona had waved her away again.
“Nasty stinging thing” she sighed “Not so bad now, much worse when I’m around Colin.”
Colin, Wednesday remembered, was an orderly at the asylum. Demona had said as much three topics ago. All she had gleaned about the boy however was that he was apparently handsome and funny (“in a stupid way, the way handsome boys always are!”, Wednesday wasn’t sure what that meant) and handsome again (Demona had said that twice).
“I look at him and its like my whole hand is on fire!”
Wednesday met Colin not two months later at a baby shower. Watching in disgust as he made goo-goo eyes at Demona while fitting her with a straight jacket when they were leaving. Wednesday scowled as she spied her hand entering the sleeve of the coat. Unmarked. Like there had never been anything there at all.
Love. The vile word swam through the air again after that, elder Addamses wistful as they said it over and over. Wednesday had learned her lesson and learned it well.
Any Addams that didn’t submit in a timely matter, who didn’t throw themselves willingly into love’s wake would be dragged. Under pain of torture, humiliation and frankly a lot of inconvenience, the curse would rear its head until a match was made.
Cousin Inertia and her long fat tongue that lolled out of her mouth like a Saint Bernard whenever she opened it. Suddenly rendered articulate with a voice sweet as a bell by way of meeting a shaggy-haired line-cook who drove a vespa.
Cousin Colombus who could clear a room with how rancid he smelled at any given moment no matter how he bathed. Now practically a bipedal rose bed with an overly talkative and insipidly upbeat barista at his side.
Cousin Gideon plagued by a series of protruding spines jutting viciously down his back. Only to greet Wednesday on her fifteenth birthday clinging to Isaiah who apparently was something called an “Influencer” and had offered Gideon a suggestive wink while he lamented the disappearance of his boyfriend’s “handlebars”. Even Wednesday understood that innuendo.
As time passed, more and more of her relatives followed suite. Growing a quirk or deformity and ridding themselves of it with the addition of an insufferable tag-along. No one escaped, no one it seemed, except Wednesday herself.
Now eighteen and in her final year at Nevermore Wednesday was herself as she’d ever been. Kooky and depraved, but with no extra parts or peculiarities that hadn’t been there before. Nothing that indicated that she was cursed.
In fact, the curse was so absent that she’d all but tucked her knowledge of it in a far corner of her mind. Assuming it had blessedly skipped a generation. Pugsley was certainly no more vile than usual as he awkwardly fumbled through his teens, and Wednesday’s one and only disastrous dip into romance didn’t instantly cure some flaw she had always had, (those were few anyway in her often-correct opinion).
The only time she really gave any of it much thought these days was when her mother would get that insipid knowing smile after Wednesday would say or do something that she thought was innocuous but apparently wasn’t. A real cat and canary expression that Wednesday would attempt to glare off to no avail. Morticia never said anything, but she didn’t need to and when pressed she was always either intentionally vague or downright wistful about something only she seemed to know.
Wednesday wasn’t dumb, far from it. She knew the twinkle in her mother’s eye was because she seemed to think that Wednesday was indeed as cursed as she or soon would be. A bitter betrayal that her own flesh and blood’s truest wish was that she would lose herself to love or suffer the consequences.
But when at Nevermore, Wednesday’s interactions with her mother were limited and by extension so were any musings about the curse. She was free to glumly go about her final year of schooling, finish her novel and not think about love to her little black heart’s discontent.
Today was no different. Rainfall lightly trickling against the large split window of her dorm harmonizing wonderfully with the clack of her typewriter. She was “in the zone” as Enid had once put it. A flow state of writing that was as productive as it was fragile. She had pumped out not one but three whole chapters in just half an hour of writing and each page was some of the most morbid, gut-wrenching content ever put in words. An opus in the making if there ever was one.
So deep was her focus in fact that she hardly registered the door to her room opening slowly as Enid wrapped in nothing but a fluffy pink bath towel attempted to creep silently in. Thirty minutes ago she had bemoaned to Wednesday how sweaty she was after fencing practice and announced that she was paying a visit to the dorms communal shower. Seeing an opportunity for some alone time in which to write Wednesday simply made a request for Enid to be quiet on her return. Enid took long showers but not so long that it would eat up the entire hour. Maybe forty-five minutes if she had a particularly long day.
Phone gripped in the same hand that held her towel closed, and her soiled uniform balled up under her arm Enid tiptoed her way across the dorm, stepping around floorboards she knew to be particularly creaky. She really didn’t want to disrupt Wednesday’s focus, partly because she was asked, but mostly because she wasn’t in the mood to be told yet again all the creative ways her roommate could murder her using only her plushies (three times is enough.)
She made it to the center of the room, stopped and peered at the back of Wednesday’s head. She hadn’t looked up once, and the tell-tale clicking of her typewriter meant she hadn’t stopped writing. Good. Maybe Enid could make it to her dresser, grab some fresh clothes (clothes she’d stupidly forgotten in her eagerness to get to the showers) and sneak out again to get changed with Wednesday being none the wiser. Foolproof plan, no one had to get interrupted during her oh so precious writing time and no one had to endure an evening of her roommate describing where she would shove Mr. Fluffbottom. Wednesday may be her bestie but damn the girl had no chill.
Satisfied that Wednesday hadn’t noticed her Enid continued her advance, but as she neared her bed she struggled to find her footing among the mess that was her personal space. She hopped over a stack of magazines she had been meaning to read and had to stumble as quietly as she could around the spilled contents of her makeup bag from her early morning rush. The remains of a scrap-booking project from a week ago was her next obstacle, as she narrowly avoided stepping in a drying puddle of glue only to nearly trip over the half-drunk bottle of ice wine that Yoko had snuck in for a girl’s night. Wednesday often complained about the state of Enid’s side of the room but never had Enid agreed with her so thoroughly. It was like a minefield! A messy, messy minefield. Taking care not to kick her alarm clock she’d while half asleep flung to the floor, Enid finally reached her dresser. She shot Wednesday another glance, still typing away unbothered. If she wasn’t sure it would be far too loud, Enid would have sighed in relief. Now all she had to do was grab any shirt and shorts (no time to be picky!) and sneak back out. Simple as th-
Her phone screamed.
Or sang really, Black Pink, Pink Venom. Ten out of ten track if Enid was being honest, but it was loud. She scrambled with her phone, cartoonishly flinging it into the air once, twice in an attempt to catch it and shut it off. When she finally got a grip and slammed the mute button down, she realized in horror that the typing sound had stopped. Her stomach sank like a stone; whoever was calling had killed her. RIP Enid. Bracing herself for the worst, she turned slowly, being sure to plaster the best apologetic smile on her face, served with some top tier puppy dog eyes. Those always did the trick, even with Wednesday.
“Wednesday I’m so sor-” Enid began but stopped when she saw the other girl’s expression. What she had expected was one of Wednesday’s patented nasty glares but instead she was met with eyes as wide as moons and a mouth parted ever so slightly in such blatant shock it was almost funny. Worst of all Wednesday wasn’t even looking at Enid, well not in the eye, her gaze sat unblinkingly somewhere below her neckline.
“Wednesday?”
Wednesday couldn’t breathe. Not only had she been shocked out of hyper-focus by the nails on a chalkboard that Enid called K-Pop, but when she had turned around fully intent on revisiting the subject of how much polyester and cotton stuffing someone could be force-fed before their stomach explodes, she was struck-dumb.
Enid stood on the other side of the room, a look so sheepish on her face it bordered on pathetic, offending phone clutched at her side. Pink towel pooling around her feet. Naked as the day she was born.
Wednesday’s head began to pound.
Though somewhere in the back of her mind, the sensible side of her was banging up against the wall demanding she look away, something in her couldn’t. Sure, as roommates she had caught glimpses of a seminude Enid from time to time, it was unavoidable. But it was never like this, it was never this much all at once. Her eyes started wandering of their own accord across the porcelain expanse of skin in front of her. Mentally cataloging every detail, like she was a specimen for study. A horribly gorgeous specimen.
Pretty pink nipples, hard, likely due to the cold of the room sat proudly atop an ample chest. More than a handful. Uncovered like this, Wednesday couldn’t help but notice that Enid was more endowed than any of her frilly clothes ever bothered to show off.
Lower, the flat of her stomach was something Wednesday had seen before, a cute innie belly button framed by gentle definition ever since wolfing out, but packaged with the rest of Enid on full display, there was something dizzyingly lewd even in such an innocent part of her anatomy. Especially since the V of her hips offered an easy-to-follow ley line directly between her legs.
Short curly brown hair trimmed neatly but not fully shaved covered her roommate’s most personal area. Somehow, Wednesday always assumed it would be blonde as well, the frivolity of dyeing it seemed like something Enid would find amusing. Her eyes lingered longer than she would’ve liked as she grappled with the fact that she had had assumptions at all about Enid’s pubic hair. When suddenly she was snapped out of her spiraling thoughts and voyeuristic leering when Enid repeated her name.
“Wednesday?”
Wednesday glued her eyes to Enid’s instantly. Shame flooded her system as she realized what she had just done. Ogled Enid like a hormonal teenage boy. Looked her over like she was some centerfold in a trashy magazine. Why? They were friends, this was wrong, she should look away, she should say something.
Her skull ached.
After a beat Wednesday finally regained the power to speak “You dropped your towel.” She croaked.
Enid looked puzzled for a just a moment before she looked down and let out a squeal so shrill one would think Wednesday had finally made good on her threats to stab her. Now beet red, Enid scrambled to cover herself all while blurting out a series of manic apologies mixed in with plenty of “Oh my god” s and “I’m gonna die”s.
Wednesday watched the chaos mutely, her headache only getting worse as Enid ripped through her dresser to find some fresh clothes still repeating how sorry she was over and over. Frankly Wednesday thought she should be the one apologizing but stopped herself when she realized that Enid seemed to have no idea that she had just starred in Wednesday’s own personal peepshow. An apology would be an admission to that. Never supply your own guilty verdict. Uncle Fester taught her that.
After some frantic searching Enid finally produced a mismatched set of sweatpants and a tank top from the dresser, holding them aloft triumphantly. She spared Wednesday another mortified look and with one final “I’m so sorry!” she sprinted out of the room.
Wednesday made the fatal mistake of watching her go, because as Enid rounded out the door, her towel snagged momentarily on the handle yanking the fabric aside. Just enough for Wednesday to get a full view of her ass for the several seconds she struggled with it. It was a lovely round shape, firm but with enough plumpness to remind Wednesday of a cushiony pillow. She had to force her eyes away.
The door slammed shut.
When the silence of the room stretched on a bit too awkwardly Wednesday allowed herself to indulge in a deep frustrated sigh. This wouldn’t do at all, she had stared at her best friend like a perverted old man eyeing schoolgirls with one hand out of view. It was a complete violation, and worse she hadn’t a clue where it came from.
Of course, she always knew Enid was attractive, but that was obvious to anyone with eyes. Wednesday had never thought too hard about it, it was just yet another truth she was aware of. But seeing her like that, something inside Wednesday’s brain had stuttered. And with the addition of her backside, well Wednesday now had a full picture of Enid burned into her retinas, and it clung like a tick. She tried to shake the image away, but it kept coming back more and more vivid.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to will herself to think of something ,anything else. For Enid.
Smallpox.
Roadkill.
Enid’s perky breasts, likely so soft to squeeze.
Wednesday cupped her forehead as another surge of pain rippled through her cranium. She had to keep trying.
The Spanish Inquisition.
Harlequin ichthyosis.
Enid’s ass, like a perfect peach, perfect to sink your teeth into.
The pain crested so severe Wednesday saw spots, but she only snarled, smacked herself and searched her mind for the least Enid-esq things she could think of.
Manchu Detachment 731
That thing Xavier does with his mouth when he thinks he’s flirting.
Enid’s eyes, so blue and so pretty, she’s pretty all over isn’t she?
It was far too late when she even considered that this wasn’t your average run of the mill migraine. With a sickening crack and heralded by thick streams of blood gliding down her scalp Wednesday only had time to blink in surprise before something exploded out of her head.
Truths were absolute after all.