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It has become routine now—spending time with him in the shed. How she is always on the doorstep at the stroke of nine, not even bothering to spin a flimsy excuse to be there with him. How he receives her wordlessly and without fanfare, because at this point he just knows.
Her cello has found a space among his disorganized stashes of pigments and painting implements. Between them they have established a new repertoire of songs for her to play: some of them her old favorites, some his cheeky suggestions. The music sheets she has abandoned have found new uses as sketching paper, or material for his occasional paper-mâché sculptures.
Ravens, often as not. Dark, terrible birds in the precise moment they pressed power into their wings to fly. Doom-bringers, she would often remark as she stared at his work, only for him to smile and shake his head. I just think they’re beautiful, he would simply say, fond.
He has left traces of himself on her, too. Subtle, but undeniable.
There is the speck of red paint on her otherwise carefully kept Mary Janes—something she can easily remove, but refuses to.
The deep burgundy hair ribbons he had once given her, claiming that they “fit her aesthetic.” She shot him an unimpressed look then, but nonetheless tried them on. He turned out to be right; woven into her usual braids, the ribbons referenced and complemented the deep red of her preferred rouge.
Wednesday has worn them every day since.
There is also the matter of her heart.
Nothing figurative— shut up, Thing! —simply the way its cadence changes when around him. She would know, having a musician’s keen sense for rhythm. It is especially pronounced when his skin brushes against hers: a thundering accelerando that mellows out only when their contact breaks.
She decides not to look too deeply into this particular development.
At any rate, the shed seems to be where all the incontrovertible proofs have settled—that many things have changed between them.
His, hers… in this space there are no such distinctions anymore. Whatever is here, it is theirs.
Possibly against better judgment, Xavier has let her into this room and into his life, and the realization sets something like guilt gnawing at her insides.
“You’ve changed, you know,” she tells him one evening, apropos of nothing. Xavier is hours-deep into another painting: a black wing against a murky sky. He only hums, and for a moment she thinks he is unwilling to converse. But then he speaks.
“Everyone does, Wednesday.” He punctuates this by touching his brush gingerly to the canvas, applying some white to the dramatic scene. “That’s just being human, I think.”
She watches him paint, the way those green eyes seem lit up from within by whatever has caught his fancy. He is not oblivious to her attention, though. Xavier lifts his gaze to meet hers and Wednesday fights the urge to look away.
“It’s only… I’ve been wondering whether it’s a worrisome change after all.”
Xavier’s expression softens. It annoys her; she knows it is in direct response to her show of vulnerability. Nowadays, this happens a lot with them—where she unwittingly surrenders an inch of her privacy, and he meets her with this tender sort of gratitude.
“Which changes in me have been worrying you?”
“Me.”
“You?”
“I’ve changed you.” She tries not to falter in the face of his incredulity. There is no need to gesture to the material proofs sitting in the shed; his eyes find them all the same. “I’m not… entirely sure that’s a good thing.”
Xavier’s eyes narrow, and something in his face shifts. But before she could comment on it, it flits away and he flashes her an impish grin.
“That’s really sweet, Wednesday.”
“... what?”
“You mean to say, you like me. You’ve liked me for a while, and for just the way I was.”
Wednesday finds she could not refute this convincingly, so she finally looks away. Xavier also seems unruffled by her line of questioning. He appears oddly pleased, even.
She lets the matter be. For now.
It takes her completely unawares when it happens. One moment she is marveling at a sketch of her that Xavier has slipped through her bedroom door, and the next throws her violently into the hazy realm of her visions.
Wednesday finds herself in a dark, unfamiliar room. It does not take her long to figure out whose it is—Xavier soon walks into view, looking reverently at something mounted on the wall. The affection in his face is unmistakable.
She follows his gaze to see her likeness staring back at her. The painting is done in a rough, decidedly impressionistic style, as if the artist meant to convey the grandeur of a starry sky while capturing the shadowy essence of a girl.
Several sketches and paintings also line the walls, she belatedly realizes. A headless rose held aloft by a pale, slender hand. A winter night’s sky foregrounded by a line of graves, impossibly clear and cutting in its beauty. Dusk, so aggressively red it seemed like the sky was burning—and its reflection in a raven’s withered gaze.
It escapes her how all these sepulchral scenes could be rendered so lovingly.
Unbidden, the thought arrives—Is this how he sees me…?
But a harsh voice cuts into her consciousness, shattering her wonder.
“This again, Xavier.” Vincent Thorpe’s voice is laced with cold disappointment. His words lodge in her gut, burning like acid. “The whole day wasted again on this inconsequential hobby. You have greatness in your blood, son. Why couldn’t you find a better use for your talents?”
“This is what I want, Dad.” Xavier’s jaw tightens, but he answers evenly. He keeps his gaze fixed on her portrait. “You can’t move me on this matter.”
“Cooped up in your den all day, plagued with useless fancies? With your life passing you by?”
“Yes,” he replies, defiantly. As if there is some truth out there only he can see, and he knows it will sustain him.
“Well, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Suit yourself.”
This dismissal is spat out with the utmost disdain. It stabs at her, and she decides it is not the kind of discomfort she enjoys.
Wednesday cannot bring herself to watch more. For the first time since she started having them, she wills herself out of a vision.
“Something’s bothering you.”
There it is again. Wednesday resents how she does not really resent his newfound ability to read her. She sets her magical arts assignment aside in favor of glaring at the side of Xavier’s head.
“Why don’t we talk about it?” he prompts, unperturbed by the intensity of her staring. This, too, is maddening. Since when has he become totally impervious to her thorns?
“Well?”
“It’s not something I fully understand.”
“Maybe we’ll understand better together.”
“Doubtful.”
Wednesday is stalling, and she knows it. She also knows there is no way out of her conundrum but to lay it out in the open.
She thinks of her latest vision, and attempts to corral her ideas into cohesion. There is no sure way to tell whether it was a glimpse into the past, or of the future. But somehow she feels Xavier has already lived it.
She remembers the hurt that permeated the scene—whether his or hers, she cannot be sure now. She chooses her words carefully.
“Don’t you ever fear that life is passing you by?”
There is a sharp inhale, suspicion taking root in his mind. When he gives her his answer, it sounds tentative.
“Can’t say I ever have.”
“I’ve read it’s a common dilemma for creative types.” The words now spill from her mouth unrelenting, and she watches his suspicion bloom into realization as she goes on. “Life becomes merely fodder for art, and all is laid waste for the pursuit of something that may, in the end, be unreachable.”
“I don’t think I’m shooting for something unreachable, Wednesday.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“Somehow, I am.”
She does not know how she manages to ask her next question with some semblance of calm.
“Why are you squandering your life painting all these grim pictures?”
Of me, goes unsaid. She knows they both hear it regardless.
He walks over and plants himself solidly in front of her, all too eager to prove her wrong. Wednesday is overcome by the thought that she wants him to change her mind.
“They aren’t all that grim, I think. It’s just a different kind of beauty.” He is clumsy, stumbling on the words that have evidently been running through his mind for a while. Xavier’s eyes bear down on her, willing her to catch his drift. “And I’m not at all wasting my life. Painting is just a different kind of looking at things, after all, and that way I can hold them closer, somehow…”
Wednesday has heard enough. She raises herself on her tiptoes and bridges the gap between them, capturing the end of his sentence with her lips.
They pull away breathlessly after a long moment. Little by little, the details about their kiss steal into her mind. His lips had felt so tantalizingly soft, and when they had drawn closer to each other in the heat of it, his fingers had cradled the base of her head with excruciating tenderness. Now that he has moved his hands away, she craves his touch.
Xavier continues to look at her, green eyes burning.
The knowledge arrives then, and Wednesday thinks herself a fool for not seeing all the clues and realizing it earlier.
“You love me.”
She does not phrase it as a question. Wednesday continues to stare, daring him to contradict her.
“You do.”
“I do.” He cradles her face now, and the way he looks at her sets her skin ablaze.
“Why?”
“There doesn’t need to be a reason.” He huffs in fond exasperation. “And you should know that by now. Because you love me too.”
Their time together in the shed flashes through her mind’s eye. Seen through the filter of her realizations, they could not but be incriminating.
Wednesday breaks eye contact, leaning her forehead against his chest.
All this time, she had been thinking of love in terms of how her parents are with each other—all cloying affection and saccharine words. Her distaste for love had stemmed from that understanding; she thought she wanted no part of it for herself.
She really should have known.
Love is a wild creature, beholden to no laws. And as Xavier kisses the top of her head, she counts herself lucky that it has greeted her with favor despite her fervent disbelief.
She raises her eyes to meet his adoring gaze, so familiar to her now. Wednesday lets herself smile.
“So it seems.” It surprises her that this admission comes naturally, the easiest thing in the world. Warmth suffuses her whole being, and she welcomes it.
“Kiss me again?”
Xavier laughs and pulls her close.
He does not need to be told twice.