Chapter Text
Wednesday could go back and recount how she ended up here in the first place but in the next breath realized it hardly mattered how this had come about. Only that she was now in a rather precarious position exacerbated by the fact that her roommate had gone for a sleepover with Yoko and would not be back this evening and had taken Thing with her for mani/pedi’s. A mundane and mindless pursuit but one she allowed for his loyalty to her.
The boy…no…the beast in front of her staring at her still form with intensity that bordered on madness. It had to be the Hyde aspect of Tyler now who stood in her room now. He’d entered near silently but Wednesday’s senses were honed from her years of being an Addams. She felt the shift in the air before she saw him in the shadows. He’d only been so bold once before while he thought she was sleeping and despite her brief worry for Enid sleeping peacefully only a few feet away he didn’t move from where he’d stood until it was nearly daylight. The presence wasn’t malicious. At least not murderously malicious and so she let it go. He had to know that she knew about his nighttime hobby of stalking her but neither would admit to it or else their game might end.
Wednesday told herself it was only scientific inquiry that kept her silent about his presence in her life. Thing thankfully had said nothing about it but knew that it was only a matter of time before their game would end one way or another. He was being careless with his stolen freedom and she would chide him if not for the silent truce and so she waited for him to move first. Perhaps this would be the end of their little dance. She kept a blade under her sleeve at her forearm for just this occasion. One never knew when they might need to defend themselves against a bloodthirsty monster…or family.
Unblinking and unwavering as they continued their silent stand off until he shifted slightly and she tensed but he didn’t move further. It was deafening until his single deep inhale broke into the air between them and he let it out slowly before his gaze narrowed and locked onto her face, “Why haven’t you stopped this?”
She inhaled sharply at his question and her gaze flinched off of his frame for a second before it snapped back, “Intellectual curiosity.”
He gave a short sharp laugh but it held no joy, “I have a lot to thank science for I guess. Don’t I?”
“What are you doing here?” Wednesday nearly gave ground when he strode three steps toward her now within leaping distance if he really wanted to grab her. But she didn’t spook easily and stayed impassive, unyielding, cold and calm while she watched his eyes snap and flicker with bitter rage and the madness that she knew had to be closing in on him rapidly.
“You don’t ask. I ask. Me,” He trembled and she watched his muscles jump under his skin the way hers would during electroshock therapy. Nerves firing while that flash of something else lay just under the surface and it took some time but the jolting stopped eventually and he took several measured, even breaths even though most of them halted softly in or out until he could look at her again. “You should run. Scream. But you haven’t.”
“The only reason you’re here is because Enid isn’t. Alerting anyone here would be a poor decision I would imagine as then you’d lose what little control you still have of the Hyde and a bloodbath would likely begin as you tried to escape back to where you’ve been hiding this whole time. Normally I would enjoy a bit of bloodshed but one shouldn’t …what is the saying….shit where they eat?”
A flash of something else lurked under his gaze, something softer, and he smiled but it wasn’t quite right, “Practicality? Is that it?”
“If that’s what you wish to refer to my decision as, then I won’t stop you.”
That seemed to irritate him and he clenched his fist as he swayed back and forth, “Why do you always do that?”
“Do what?”
“You know!” He snarled, but not so loudly that anyone might hear. He didn’t need to. Not when he’d stepped up into her space. She tilted her chin up to stare at him but only just as he panted. She could feel the heat from his body even though he was still a body’s width away from her. The tension in his body easily spotted from his shoulders, to his forearms, down his chest, mercifully covered, and even his feet with his toes curled and dug into the wood below. But her gaze never really left his eyes. Those would be the thing that would give the first hint that she was in real danger. If he’d wanted to he could have transformed any number of nights the past couple of weeks and rampaged through the school, into their room and slaughtered them both in this very hall. But he hadn’t. And it didn’t make sense to her. He’d only used her and to be fair she’d done her fair share of using him as well. Quid Pro Quo as it were but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t sought him out time and time again over Xavier who trailed her like a puppy. He’d looked like one too. Big sad eyes, and an annoying habit of bothering her when she didn’t ask but he was gone now and her life hadn’t changed at all. She’d let her guard down once and it had been the second most devastating loss of her life. Her pride had barely recovered from the mortification of being totally vulnerable and having it backfire so spectacularly. He didn’t get to be upset at her for this. He didn’t get to come in here as the wounded party, Laurell Gates or no. She didn’t need his apology but she wanted it. Wanted him to come in here and grovel at her feet and beg for forgiveness for making her look like a fool. For wounding her far more deeply than his claws ever could have. She’d lost and he’d won if only for a while. She thought briefly of the crypt. The movie. The kiss. How much of that had been Gates and how much had been him?
Emotions were weakness and yet they wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t yield to her ironclad control, slipped through the cracks as more and more people began to invade her inner circle. This was why she was alone. To avoid the way her chest ached. The way she wanted to look away from him, the way she wanted to bite her nails into his flesh and tear the blood debt of her pride that was owed to her from him. It was madness. But he’d been right in Willow Hill. When he’d been chained and collared. She had come to see him. Not just for her own investigation but to master her feelings when it came to him and she’d at least made it seem like she had from the outside. Inside, however, the storm still raged on. Even now her skin tingled, her lips burned, and her heart picked up speed at his proximity. One could not simply turn their feelings off, especially when attraction was involved as Wednesday now knew. How Enid could stand it she’d never know.
“You’ve come here for a reason. Invaded my space, watched me go about my monotonous routine without interfering and yet I’m still alive and intact.”
“Maybe you don’t know everything, Wednesday. You didn’t before.”
“I wasn’t counting on a split personality from someone who was, by all accounts I could find, perfectly normal. It didn’t occur to me to suspect you but that was the intention, was it not? To play the part perfectly as your Master commanded.”
A noise came out of his throat, half a whine, half a snarl, “I couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t even try to resist. I wanted to though. When I realized what she was going to do I tried—but I wasn’t strong enough. Not then. I didn’t mean to hurt you like I did, Wednesday. That was the last thing I wanted. At first when you came into the Weathervane and scared the crap out of me I had no idea who you were. Just some strange girl in for a coffee who knew how to read Italian and fix my busted espresso machine. It wasn’t until you told me your name and then I got my command that it changed.”
Wednesday felt a shock roll through her. It was subtle. So subtle that if she wasn’t looking him in the eyes she wouldn’t have seen it. This was Tyler. Tyler spoke. Not the Hyde. This was the boy peeking through, “You never pursued me. Not like Xavier so how could you know it would work?”
“I didn’t have to. I didn’t know I was actually going to like you as much as I did. But you kept coming to me. After the first time I offered your ride. You kept coming back. All the way to town you walked to the Weathervane for your Quad and I watched and waited. She told me to make myself ‘available’ to you and so I did. You could have gotten your coffee here. I’ve seen the machines but you chose not to. You wanted to see me too. I used that. Or he did. It’s all really fuzzy sometimes.”
Wednesday wanted to let her guard down. Wanted to let the tension in her shoulders ease incrementally. Wanted to forget the blade she was fully prepared to draw if he made any aggressive moves toward her but couldn’t. He could shift at any point and maybe the Hyde let him out to try to do just that. It was the boy and the monster. The boy who knew her better than she wanted, and the monster who craved her now. That’s what it was. A craving. Desperate desire and need and she was above such base urges. “So what? It wasn’t all a lie? Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that we weren’t just using each other to further our own goals. I told you back in the crypt you were making a mistake. I didn’t realize at the time I was as well.”
There it was. That imperceptible shift, the way his eyes hardened, the line of his jaw tightened, that glimmering madness she could see now as clear as a cloudy day. “No. All of this isn’t just some transaction you can close out when it’s done. I won’t let you do that.:”
“Won’t let me?” Her eyebrow arched at his audacity.
“He wants to stroke you softly and treat you like a porcelain treasure. I want to see you shatter.”
“Then break me. If you can.” He leaned into her now, so close they were sharing the same breath back and forth but for every single respiration, he took three, and the shaking of his hands should have warned her to be more cautious. The way his eyes grew larger inhuman, the glint of clawed hands just beginning to transform, and his trembling body were warning signs. But she wasn’t one to run from danger. She dug her nails into it and held on because anything else would beggar weakness and weakness was not something she would allow within herself. Not for him. Not for anyone.
And so when his transformation seemed imminent her hand tensed at the spring ready to drive her blade into whatever body part was easiest. Most likely his torso. A larger target and if he were sufficiently wounded he would cease as easily as any other mortal creature.
But all of her anticipation, all of her preparation, the machinations of what this creature may attempt, she’d not thought about this outcome. Not when he snaked his hand out to wrap around her torso and pulled her into his lean frame. Effectively trapping her hand just shy of the trigger while his other hand grasped the back of her head and he pressed his lips to hers fervently. No. Wednesday Addams hadn’t foreseen this outcome and yet it was inevitable as the heat death of the universe.