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Kent is pretty sure Wednesday hasn’t realized they’re trying to recruit him as a part of her ‘Catch and Control’ program for her Hyde ex-boyfriend. He’s also pretty sure she doesn’t even know his name, but that’s neither here nor there. What’s here is a hyperactive Enid, her smile tinged with barely concealed panic and fear, and a far too calm Bianca cornering him in the quad.
“No,” Kent says, thinking to himself that this is the exact scenario Principal Weems had had in mind when she had put them all through that ‘Just Say No!’ seminar last year. It hadn’t been about underage drinking or underage sex or underage anything. It had been about Wednesday freaking Addams and her complete and total disregard for anything resembling a safe and sane idea.
Enid lets out a whine, sounding distinctly like his mom’s chihuahua. He debates telling her that before deciding against it. Enid definitely wouldn’t know that his mom’s chihuahua is the most vicious little creature he’s ever met, and would pick a fight over it. Besides, the faster he can run away from this conversation, the better. “Kent, please! She’s going to do it with or without us.”
Kent nods. “No, I know, and it’s definitely going to be without me.” He tries to step around the two of them and head somewhere where people don’t have the asinine idea of catching a Hyde.
Bianca steps neatly in front of him and raises a brow. “Didn’t think you were such a coward, Kent.”
“Just became one,” he fires back, his cheeks burning red with embarrassment and, he’ll admit it, utter fear. “Because I don’t know if you know this, but Tyler Galpin has killed at least six people. Six. I’m not trying to make it seven.”
“Like ten, actually, I think,” Enid chirps, only to shrink down slightly when he shoots her a glare. She picks at her nails, staring down at her polished Mary Janes. “He killed some people when he escaped. And, like, they found a body in sewers, I think.”
He throws his hands up and wonders why he ever agreed with Divina to come to this godforsaken school. “Again, I’m not trying to become a statistic people put on his Wikipedia page!”
Bianca rolls her eyes. “You’re not going to. Wednesday has a plan. Tell him, Enid.”
The werewolf in question perks up, wagging her metaphorical tail. “She does! She found this serum that can tie him to her. He’s vulnerable right now!”
Kent thinks about the articles that had come from the Willow Hill escape, how the Hyde had killed at least three officers - allegedly - and how Wednesday had been flung from a third-story window - definitely. None of that screamed vulnerable to Kent.
“He killed Ms. Tho-” Bianca pauses, her calm demeanor fracturing just a tad for a glimmer of grief and rage to slip through. The name hangs between the three of them for a moment, sending a chill down all of their backs even in the warm sunlight in the quad. In a school of literal monsters, she had somehow been the worst. “He killed Laurel Gates. Good riddance but that left him without a master. According to Wednesday, that means whatever grip on reality he has is slipping and slipping fast. He’s fair game for a new master which mea-”
Kent’s hand flies up like he’s holding a stop sign, and Bianca is so caught off by the abrupt motion that her mouth snaps shut with an audible click. Any other time, he’d dissolve into a puddle of apologies and quickly map out the nearest balcony to throw himself off of. Right now, though?
“You mean to tell me,” he starts slowly, feeling the first grip of hysteria begin to clog up his throat. “You want me to face a Hyde, a monster which has killed at least ten people already, mind you, so Wednesday Addams can literally, metaphorically, and emotionally chain her ex-boyfriend to her.”
The silence that follows makes the silence Laurel’s name had summoned feel warm and fuzzy in comparison.
“She’s not doing it for that,” Enid says after a beat, shaking her head rapidly. Usually, he deeply admires her ability to delude herself into believing the impossible. It had won her the Poe Cup but now he just wants to shake her into realism. “He wants to kill us. Me and her. He left a note or something in the hospital, I don’t know, she wasn’t super clear.”
He narrows his eyes. “A note? Did you see the note?”
Enid puffs herself up to a respectable 5’3”. With her rainbow hair catching the light and her dangly flower earrings, he’s fairly certain she could only intimidate a particularly jumpy kindergartener at best. “Yup. You and Enid die tonight. He even gave her dead flowers in case we didn’t catch the message, which, like, I feel is totally redundant but whatever.”
Kent wonders if there’s a gas leak somewhere, and his room is, against all odds, the only one it didn’t affect. “Tyler got her flowers. Flowers. If Ajax showed up at your door with flowers, what would you think?”
Enid reels back like she’s been hit at the reminder of Ajax, eyes wide and pained as if he had just punted several puppies in front of her, and Kent feels a twinge of regret. She was his friend, after all, and he had made promises to both of them to not take sides in the break up.
But then he remembers Ajax blasting How Did It End? on repeat at two am last Thursday, which meant Kent couldn’t sleep because the walls in this place are criminally thin, which meant he had failed his Alchemy Through the Ages exam.
Was he always going to fail it?
Sure.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t Ajax’s, Enid’s, and Taylor Swift’s fault.
“I rest my case,” Kent says, sticking his nose straight up in the air and preparing to march off into the distance and into the company of people who weren’t interested in reuniting Wednesday with her pet monster.
Bianca’s hand, however, flies out and grabs his elbow, holding him in place. “Listen, I agree,” she says, blatantly ignoring the loud and betrayed gasp Enid immediately lets out. “But this is our only chance. We let Wednesday down the last time she tried to confront Tyler with us, and we can’t fail her again. You’re a Nightshade, Kent. That means something, alright?”
It meant that Yoko had once held his hair back when he had thrown up after two of her margaritas, and, another time, he had to hike back to his dorm naked because Xavier had thought it would be funny to hide his clothes after they all went skinny dipping.
But, he has to admit with a twinge of trepidation, it means something to his parents, and he’s pretty sure that if he turned down a call from fellow Nightshades, they’d physically teleport in front of him and disown him.
“Fine,” Kent hisses, squeezing his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to look at their smug and triumphant faces. “But if I die, I’m haunting both of you. And if I’m right, ghost or living me gets to say it too.”
“Relax,” Bianca says as Enid cheers. “If you die, we’ll probably be dead too.”
A chapel.
A stupid freaking decaying chapel.
Wednesday Addams has chosen to chain herself in unholy matrimony to her serial killer ex in a chapel.
Kent is going to be sick.
“This is stupid,” he says.
“We know,” Bianca replies, already sounding like she’s left this mortal plane and gone to one where she isn’t waiting in a chapel for Wednesday to get back together with her old flame.
“You’ve only said it, like, five times already, dude,” Ajax grouses, dragging his beanie down to cover his eyes in sheer exhaustion. Behind his ears, a few snakes pop out to look around, but, seemingly recognizing the danger they’re in, they slither right back under his hat.
Kent wishes he could do the same.
“And you’ll hear it again until we leave or we’re dead,” he huffs, clutching his sword tight against his chest.
Next to him, Bruno’s hand falls on his shoulder like thunder. “Bro, don’t even worry. Wednesday’s got this.” He laughs while he says it as if it’s all some great joke.
Kent shrugs his hand off, fighting the urge to hiss at the werewolf. Just because he promised Enid and Ajax that he wouldn’t pick between the two of them, he hadn’t promised to choose freaking Bruno of all people.
Besides, the Wednesday in question is standing in the doorway of the chapel, eyes locked onto something far in the distance. Kent keeps hoping she’ll turn around and say, ‘Hey, never mind, the only place Tyler Galpin should be is in a prison cell with ten-inch concrete walls and not in this ruined building with a bunch of defenseless teenagers,’ but he’s never really gotten what he wants even once in his life.
He imagines that Wednesday is used to getting everything she wants. When Enid had first announced her arrival at Nevermore on her blog, she had included an entire paragraph about how the Addams were richer than sin and one of the school’s biggest donors. The little he’s seen of her parents had left him with the impression that they’d shoot down the moon if she would only ask.
So if Wednesday wanted a reunion party with the monster under everyone’s bed, a reunion party with that very monster Wednesday got.
Kent briefly debates just leaving and going to the Remembrance ceremony. Divina had given him a weird look when he had said he didn’t want to go, and Yoko had pressed her (freezing cold) hand against his forehead to check for a fever.
Xavier had even texted him from whatever uppity school his dad had shipped him to to ask if he was alright.
‘Actually,’ Kent reasons to himself, ‘If I leave now, people won’t be suspicious about why we’re all not there.’
Just as he manages to work up the courage to voice this aloud, Wednesday spins on her heel to announce to them all: “It worked. He’s following her here now.”
“Places,” Bianca says with the calm cool only someone who has had to assign solos in choir could have, already moving to slide behind a pillar.
Ajax immediately scrambles to duck behind some pews and Kent is pretty sure he would have stayed there frozen if not for Bruno yanking him to a hidden alcove to wait.
They thankfully (regrettably?) don’t have to wait long until Enid careens into the chapel, panting and desperate, and slides into place to grab the sword she had stashed earlier, waiting in the very center of the aisle.
‘The maid of honor’, Kent thinks with only the slightest hint of delirium.
Enid really only has half a second to try and catch a breath before a dark cloak comes flapping in, and wow.
Kent distinctly remembers Tyler Galpin being… less creepy.
He, like everyone else with a predilection to finding men attractive, had thought the barista at the Weathervane was cute enough to deal with Xavier’s whining about him whenever anyone went to the cafe. He really hadn’t gone as often as he had just for the watered-down chai and the burnt scones. Even after Tyler had been arrested, when his mugshot had come out with him laced up in a straitjacket and his hair a riot of curls around his face, Kent had, humiliatingly enough, whispered to Yoko, ‘I know he tried to destroy the entire school, but he can, like, get it.’
Yoko, with the level of confidence only a lesbian could have when commenting on the appeal of men, had agreed.
Wednesday was right, Kent realizes for not the first time in his life. Tyler is slipping and slipping badly.
Enid raises her sword up to point at Tyler, hand only slightly trembling, but Tyler only gives her a completely disinterested pass over.
“Where’s Wednesday?” He asks, eyes scanning behind Enid as if Wednesday is about to pop out behind her (And she isn’t - she’s going to pop out behind him), and Kent realizes with a dawning sense of horror that he was wrong.
This wasn’t just Wednesday looking to chain her ex boyfriend to her. This was also her ex looking to catch her first, to claim her before she could claim him.
This is a reunion of two exes, a crashing together of two people who both want to win with ultimately the same goal in mind. This is what happens when two people are absolutely insane and deranged and want to make it literally everyone else’s problem.
Kent, for a wild, mad second, wants to pop up to scream at Bianca and Enid that he was wrong but he was right, goddamnit, he was right! and only his survival instinct keeps him at bay.
Except Bianca walks out anyway, saying some quip that Kent can’t even hear with his heart pounding in his ears, and Ajax and Bruno follow her lead. He only walks out too because it seems too embarrassing to hang back and wait. They all stand in line next to Enid, holding their swords up at Tyler like they’re in a production of Monty Python or some other show featuring a bunch of idiots with blades.
Accordingly, Tyler looks supremely unimpressed.
“Swords are cute,” he mumbles, sounding like each word is agony. “But they’re no match for a Hyde.”
I know, Kent wants to tell him, but he kinda wants to live more.
Tyler says something about the full moon, reminding Kent that it wasn’t for another week, and they really are standing up to an unholy beast with only spare sabers from the fencing club’s stash when only one of them was even actually on the damn team to begin with. They’d have more luck just giving him Wednesday than what they’re doing now.
Enid, however, has never let a little thing like facts stop her, and she starts to mock Tyler, Ajax and Bianca following her lead until even Bruno chimes in and Kent feels like he has to say something.
“Your coffee wasn’t even that good,” he says, trying to keep his voice quiet under the blend of everyone else shouting, but, with his supremely good luck, he says it in the one lull of noise where he’s the only talking. In the very next breath, Tyler blurs at the edges and then explodes.
Kent blinks, and the queasy-looking teen boy has turned into a massive, hulking beast, a vicious snarl set on its squashed face as it looms over all of them, drool dripping from its monstrous teeth.
The sword becomes a paperweight in his hand, and he tenses his legs, ready to spring into action to run away as fast as he can when he sees a flash of metal, a syringe poised to strike, and he pauses for half a second to watch.
But instead of watching Wednesday plunge that thing into the Hyde’s hide, it swings its arm out, catching her straight in the stomach and sending her flying across the chapel.
Kent doesn’t scream, at least. He makes a very undignified squeak and, when Ajax shouts at the thing to call for its attention so he can stone it, he takes the opportunity to bolt back into his hidden alcove.
Luckily, Ajax and Bruno join him soon enough.
Unluckily, it’s because the Hyde had swung his massive arms again and knocked the two of them into each other, sending them crashing straight into Kent’s hiding spot and into Kent himself.
They’re a tangle of limbs and hair and clothes until Enid’s cry of “Oh my God!” cuts through the panic and Ajax plants his hand solidly in Kent’s face to launch himself up and Bruno elbows him in the gut as he tries to follow and by the time Kent can catch his breath to even fucking see, everyone’s gone quiet.
Because Wednesday is standing in front of the Hyde, staring up at it with the most tender expression Kent has ever seen on her.
Which isn’t very tender to be fair, but she isn’t scowling at her would-be murderer like she would be at literally everyone else.
He can’t hear what she’s saying, not from this distance, but there’s a stillness in the air, everyone holding their breath to wait and see what would happen.
Then, in a mirror from just thirty seconds ago, she raises her hand to swing the syringe down.
And this time, the monster lets her.
The needle lands right in the crook of the Hyde’s neck, and Wednesday’s other hand flies up to grab its massive face (As if she needs the leverage Kent scoffs mentally) as she pushes in. She presses deep, molding her entire body to the shape of the Hyde’s and one of its arms (The same that had sent her flying, he thinks hysterically) reaches up to curl around her back and pull her in even closer.
“Are they… hugging?” Bruno asks from next to him, having seemingly frozen in place next to Kent instead of running over to Enid like Ajax had.
Kent blinks, but the image stays the same. He opens his mouth to confirm to Bruno, but then the Hyde roars, curls inwards, lifting Wednesday up off her feet and tucking her beneath it. There are screams all around, and even Kent takes a panicked step forward, fully convinced they’re about to see the beast take off into the woods with Wednesday in its grasp, but instead…
Instead, the Hyde collapses, its hulking body curled around the girl in its arms until it shrinks down and down and down until it’s a naked Tyler Galpin clinging to Wednesday Addams.
There’s a beat of silence.
“Fuck yea!” Bruno shouts, both arms held straight above him like he had just watched Wednesday score a game-winning touchdown instead of claiming a murderous monster for her own.
“Wednesday!” Enid shouts as she scrambles to her feet, knocking poor Ajax off balance, and moves to bolt over to the girl in question.
Only for Tyler to growl.
It sounds completely inhuman, and, for a split second, Kent is convinced that he’s going to see the Hyde where the boy is again and they’re all really going to die this time. But he doesn’t. Tyler stays perfectly human even as he sits up, completely unashamed of his nudity, as he drags Wednesday into his lap, arms looped around her waist as he presses her against him and glares at the rest of them.
Kent wonders if now is a good time to say I told you so.
“Don’t,” Wednesday calls, her eyes locked onto someone as she twists in Tyler’s hold to look at them, and when Kent follows her gaze, he sees Bianca already has her phone out, fingers frozen over the screen. “I’m in control.”
The siren grimaces. “Yeah, and we’re going to call the police, right? So he can go back to Willow Hill?”
Tyler’s grip tightens, his eyes flashing, but Wednesday doesn’t even blink. “I have him now. Why would we give him up?”
There’s a tension in the air now and Kent moans out loud, his hands flying up to press at his eyes.
No, actually, he was right. He was freaking right.
“But,” Enid splutters. “Willow Hill!”
“He already escaped once. What’s to stop him from doing it again?”
“He escaped because you let him out!” Enid cries, flapping her hands around in the air as if she can physically wave away the problem of Tyler Galpin.
Kent really wishes she could because that little fun detail launches this entire operation into stunning clarity.
“It’d be easy this time,” Tyler calls out, blatantly ignoring them all to nuzzle into Wednesday’s neck. His voice already sounds steadier, more like the charming barista that Kent remembers than the wraith that had just been in his place. “Their chains can’t hold me anymore. I’m stronger now - stronger than when even Laurel had me. You’re something of a healing balm, cockroach.”
Kent can’t quite hold back his wail.
Enid stomps her foot, looking ready to yank out her own hair. Gone is the trembling girl that had shook under the Hyde’s gaze. Now she seems ready to tackle the both of them in a brawl. “Wednesday, do not make me have to listen to Kent tell me he’s right over this!”
“Why am I getting dragged into this?” He whimpers, wishing he could vanish into the ground. He didn’t want to be right! It's not his fault he's Cassandra reincarnate!
“Willow Hill cannot hold him,” Wednesday says without missing a beat. “There’s still another beast on the loose and other missing inmates. Someone is pulling the strings and I intend to find out who. A hyde in our armory is our best weapon.”
“Our?” Bianca laughs and, when Kent looks over at her, her phone is tucked away in her pocket and she, again, looks remarkably calm for the disaster movie unfolding in front of her. “Are you sharing him with us?”
Predictably, Tyler growls.
Unpredictably, Wednesday curls her lip in contempt and presses Tyler closer to her neck, pushing down on his messy curls to hold him there. Her other arm floats up to curl around his back, hand splayed wide over his shoulder blades.
“No.”
The word hangs in the air like a death sentence, and Kent wonders if this is what shock feels like. He really wouldn’t know - he used the first aid class as his nap period.
“Well,” Ajax says after a beat. “Ok.”
“Ok?” Enid asks, edging on the fall into hysteria. “Ok?!”
Ajax rubs the back of his head, the motion knocking his beanie slightly askew so those same little snakes from earlier peek their heads out. This time, they actively squeal at the sight of Tyler and shoot back under faster than they had come out.
Kent, again, wishes he could too.
The gorgon waves his arm at the scene in front of them. “Listen, I’m not getting in the middle of this. We said we were going to take care of the Hyde problem. This, technically, counts, I think, so we’re going to call it a win and all go to bed and try and forget this happened.”
“I’m so down for that,” Bruno sighs, brushing his letterman jacket off, the motion knocking his elbows into Kent’s. “This is the worst wedding I’ve ever been to, by the way.”
“Wedding?!” Enid squawks, her hand waving growing frenzied to the point that Ajax shoots out to grab them, holding them tight with his own. It’s a real testament to this absolutely absurd night that Bruno doesn’t even let out a peep of protest.
“Agreed,” Bianca says, dropping her head down in a brief show of defeat, before straightening up, all traces of her moment of weakness wiped clean. She had looked more phased when she had lost the Poe Cup than now when faced with Wednesday locking herself into an eternal bond with a monster. God, Kent kinda hates and loves her all at once. He imagines the freshly reunited couple on the floor can relate to that certain feeling. “Congrats on the new Hyde, Wednesday. Have fun. Don’t do anything illegal.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“Nothing illegal that can trace back to us,” Bianca amends.
Tyler scoffs, resting his cheek on Wednesday’s shoulder to scowl up at all of them. “None of you even realized she was the one who broke me out of Willow Hill. Who the hell would be able to catch her?”
“I wasn’t breaking you out,” Wednesday interjects, pulling away from him ever so slightly to finally give him that familiar scowl. “You were the unfortunate byproduct of other plans.”
Tyler laughs, mean and mocking, but his eyes are far too heated for having an audience right in front of them. He’s also still naked, Kent realizes with horror, and only Wednesday’s thick skirts work to provide him even a shred of modesty. “Unfortunate byproduct? This feels like an awful lot of work for an accident. Could have just written me a letter instead.”
“And let it get lost in your hoards of fanmail? I wouldn’t waste the postage,” Wednesday deadpans, sounding awfully uppity for someone who is still perched on Tyler’s, again, very naked lap.
“Ok, we’re leaving,” Ajax announces, tugging a gaping Enid towards the door, Bianca already vanishing out of it. “Have fun. Be safe. Please, I’m begging, leave me out of this.”
Kent robotically turns to follow, feeling deranged and delusional and vindicated all at once. Now, with the adrenaline slowly yet surely fading from his body, the ‘I told you so’ itches in the back of the throat, and, when he makes eye contact with Enid, he finally grins. Her face drops even more than should be possible, and she lets out an audible whine, loud enough to be heard over Wednesday and Tyler’s increasingly heated bickering.
Before he can finally let loose the words he’s been holding back all day, Wednesday calls his name.
Kent freezes.
He wasn’t even sure she knew his name.
He turns to face her, heart in his stupid freaking throat.
She’s not smiling or anything pedestrian like that, but Tyler is, and he looks absolutely gleeful, like a little kid getting a present or a serial killer about to watch someone get vivisected. He has half a second to wonder if they have some insane psychic bond or something now, which would be just great when Wednesday cocks her head like a hunting dog that’s just found her quarry, dark eyes boring into his.
“Tyler will need a place to rest,” she says, and his blood pressure drops. “You don’t have a roommate or an overbearing dorm head to deal with. He’ll stay with you for now.”
Bruno, Kent decides, really isn’t that bad. He’s at least kind enough to catch Kent when he passes out cold.