Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

October 31, 2014

The Nevermore High gymnasium smelled of burnt sugar, synthetic fog, and bad perfume. Orange lights pulsed in time with a bass-heavy pop song, casting the plastic skeletons strung from the rafters into epileptic fits. Pumpkins – both carved and fake – lined the walls, their grins too wide, their candles burning down to stubs.

Wednesday Addams stood at the threshold, unimpressed. The entire spectacle looked less like a Halloween celebration and more like a frantic attempt to disguise the fact that everyone here would be dead someday. She found the effort pitiful.

“Come on, Wens, at least try to look like you’re enjoying yourself,” Enid Sinclair squealed over the music, adjusting the red-and-blue pigtails that bobbed on either side of her head. Her sequined top glittered under the strobe lights, the word Daddy’s Lil Monster shining in white across her chest.

Wednesday turned her head slowly, unimpressed. “Harley Quinn. Fitting. You’ve finally embodied chaos in human form.”

Enid twirled, nearly whacking a Frankenstein with her oversized mallet prop. “And you’re my perfect Catwoman! Femme fatale! Slinky and mysterious! It’s all about the vibes, Wednesday.”

Wednesday cast her gaze down at herself: tight black bodysuit, ridiculous vinyl sheen, tail stitched to the back.

Catwoman, apparently.

The ears itched. The tail was undignified. And the thought of being coerced into group “aesthetic cohesion,” as Enid had put it, was enough to sour her mood further.

“I am humiliated,” Wednesday said flatly.

“You’re part of the group,” Enid insisted, already craning her neck to spot their other friends in the crowd. “Harley Quinn, Catwoman, Batman, Joker – oh, and Eugene promised he’d be Robin. It’s perfect!”

Wednesday’s lip curled. “Perfect is a strong word. You have a low bar.”

Across the gym, the fog machine coughed out another plume, shrouding a group of costumed classmates in murky haze. Fake cobwebs clung to basketball hoops. Someone had the misfortune of wearing a full Darth Vader armor and was already sweating through it.

Wednesday stood among them all, silent and sharp-edged, her black-painted nails digging into the strap of her bag. If this was Jericho’s idea of a holiday, she could not leave the town soon enough.

Still, against her will, her eyes scanned the crowd for someone she had not yet spotted.

“Speak of the devil,” Enid sang, spotting him across the gym.

Xavier Thorpe cut through the haze like he’d been staged for it: tall, broad-shouldered, a shock of green sprayed into his hair and a painted grin stretching across his face. His costume straddled the line between comic-book Joker and jester – purple coat, too much eyeliner, and a pair of playing cards tucked into his breast pocket. He was laughing at something Ajax – who’s in a Batman costume – had said, but when his eyes landed on Wednesday, the smile curved differently. Sharper. Aimed.

“Purr-fect,” he said when he reached her, dragging the word out just to annoy her. His gaze lingered, deliberately, on the ears and tail.

Wednesday crossed her arms, unimpressed. “I see you’ve embraced your natural clownish tendencies. Fitting.”

Xavier pressed a hand to his chest in mock offense. “Excuse me, this is performance art. There’s a difference.”

“There is not.”

He leaned closer, the paint on his lips smudged like he’d already been through half a dozen jokes too loud for his own good. “And you? Committing to the latex. Didn’t think you had it in you.”

Her glare sharpened. “I was coerced.”

“By Enid?”

“Who else would be capable of such crimes?” Wednesday’s tone was flat, but her eyes flicked toward Enid’s bouncing pigtails.

Xavier chuckled. “Well, for what it’s worth, you make a better Catwoman than I make a Joker.”

Wednesday arched a brow. “Low praise, considering you look like you lost a fight with a paint store.”

“Still worth saying.”

The music swelled, a thudding remix of something unrecognizable, and the crowd roared with it. For a moment, Wednesday felt the press of it all – the lights, the laughter, the absurdity – and hated it more acutely than ever. Xavier’s presence, though, seemed to cut through the noise, as if the two of them were watching the carnival from outside the tent.

“Your tail’s crooked,” he murmured suddenly, just loud enough for her to hear.

Her head snapped toward him. “If you touch it, I’ll remove your hand.”

Xavier grinned wider, holding both palms up in surrender. “Noted. Observation only. No touching.”

The smile he wore was painted, exaggerated, meant for the costume – but underneath it, something real glimmered. And Wednesday, to her irritation, found herself staring a fraction too long.

The gymnasium continued throbbing with noise, the kind that rattled through bones and made conversation an uphill battle. Couples tangled on the dance floor, masks slipping, fake blood smearing as they kissed. A table near the bleachers sagged under the weight of candy bowls already half-raided, a gaggle of underclassmen on a sugar high daring each other into increasingly stupid stunts. Someone was bobbing for apples in a tub that had once held basketballs, the water already murky from smeared face paint.

Wednesday watched it all like a coroner observing a particularly pitiful scene. She stood stiffly at the edge of the crowd, arms crossed, tail twitching with every bass drop.

Enid bounced up beside her, grabbing her hand. “Group photo time!”

Wednesday did not move. “No.”

“Yes,” Enid insisted, already pulling Ajax into frame with her free hand. “You, me, Batman, Joker, Robin – come on, it’s iconic. My Insta will thank us.”

Wednesday opened her mouth to deliver a scathing retort, but Xavier was already stepping into position at her side, grinning like he’d been waiting for this exact excuse. Enid snapped three shots with the flash on before dissolving into giggles and promptly vanishing into the mass of dancers with Ajax in tow.

Wednesday exhaled, relieved. Or she would have been, if Xavier hadn’t lingered.

“You hate this, don’t you?” he asked, voice pitched low enough to cut through the music.

She didn’t look at him. “Astute observation. Do you want a gold star?”

He chuckled, leaning against the wall beside her. “You could at least pretend to enjoy yourself. Maybe dance. It wouldn’t kill you.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

But then the DJ shifted tracks, trading generic bass for something sharper, darker. The opening guitar lick cut through the fog, and Wednesday’s spine went rigid before she could stop herself. It was a song she knew. A song she liked.

Xavier noticed. Of course he noticed. “You know this one,” he said, tilting his head toward the dance floor. “Don’t deny it.”

Wednesday’s gaze stayed fixed on the writhing crowd. “Knowing and participating are two entirely separate things.”

He extended a hand anyway, a lopsided grin painted across his lips. “Just one dance. I promise not to step on your tail.”

She turned to him at last, her expression carefully carved from stone. “If I wanted to suffer, I’d have stayed with the others.”

And yet, against her better judgment, Wednesday let him pull her onto the edge of the dance floor. It was less a dance than a standoff, her posture stiff, his grin infuriatingly easy as he moved in deliberate rhythm just close enough to make it obvious he was enjoying her discomfort. She refused to sway, refused to give the music her body, but she also didn’t let go of his hand.

That, Xavier counted as a victory.

Two songs later, the heat of the crowd was unbearable. Someone spilled cider down the back of her leg, Enid was shrieking happily in the middle of a conga line, and Wednesday had had enough. She tugged Xavier toward the doors without a word, and – smugly, silently – he followed.

The balcony outside the gym was lit by flickering jack-o’-lanterns perched on the railing, their carved faces leering into the night. A scatter of candles burned low in glass jars, their wax pooled and dripping. The muffled bass throbbed through the closed doors behind them, but out here the October air was sharp and cool, carrying the scent of damp leaves and smoke.

Wednesday leaned against the stone railing, tilting her face toward the night sky. Stars had been drowned by fog, the moon a faint blur above the treeline.

“Better,” she muttered.

Xavier leaned beside her, close enough to feel the brush of her shoulder if either of them shifted. “So you do know how to have fun. All I had to do was remove the music, the people, and the possibility of joy.”

Her lips twitched – almost a smile, almost. “Your persistence is exhausting.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking out over the shadowed courtyard. “I get that a lot.”

For a while, they stood in silence, broken only by the low thump of the music inside and the occasional flicker of candlelight. Wednesday’s gaze was fixed ahead, but her voice cut through the quiet. “Graduation is inevitable. Soon this… pit of adolescent mediocrity will be behind me.”

Xavier turned his head toward her. “And then what? World domination?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I intend to leave Jericho behind. There are bigger corpses to dissect out there.”

He huffed a laugh, though something in his chest tightened. “So that’s it. Just… gone?”

Wednesday’s eyes flicked to him then, dark and steady. “Would you prefer I stay here forever? Rotting in place?”

“No,” he said quickly, then softened. “I just thought… I don’t know. Maybe you’d miss something about it. About us.”

The word hung between them, heavier than the fog.

Us.

Wednesday didn’t flinch, but her pulse shifted under her skin. “Nostalgia is a weakness I have no intention of cultivating.”

Xavier looked away, jaw tight, disguising the sting with a crooked grin. “Right. Silly me.”

Silence again, though this time it hummed differently – sharper, charged. The candles crackled. Somewhere inside, someone shouted with laughter.

When she finally turned to look at him, he was already watching her. Their eyes locked, and for a long moment neither of them moved. The painted Joker grin had smudged across his face, but his real one – the faint curve at the corner of his mouth, the softness in his eyes – felt achingly genuine.

Wednesday’s fingers tightened on the stone railing. She should look away. She should cut the tension with something sharp, something cruel. Instead, she stayed.

The air between them stretched taut, a wire ready to snap.

Then, from inside, the gym doors burst open as a pair of students stumbled out, shrieking with laughter, breaking the spell. Xavier cleared his throat and stepped back, forcing levity into his tone. “Guess the balcony’s getting crowded.”

Wednesday pushed off the railing, mask of indifference sliding back into place. “Good. I was just leaving.”

But as she brushed past him, she knew her pulse would not slow until long after the night was over.

Wednesday barely had time to readjust her expression before Enid barreled through the doorway, pink-and-blue pigtails flying, Ajax trailing in her wake with glow sticks snuck into his Batman utility belt.

“There you are!” Enid squealed, grabbing Wednesday’s arm with no regard for personal space. “We’re starting a dance circle, you have to come – oh my gosh, you look so dramatic out here, the candlelight’s like, peak vampire-chic –”

“I was about to leave,” Wednesday said flatly.

“Nope.” Enid tightened her grip, already tugging her back toward the gym. “Not before I get at least one video of you pretending to enjoy yourself.”

Xavier chuckled under his breath, and Wednesday shot him a look sharp enough to cut glass. He held up his hands in surrender but followed anyway, trailing after them as Enid dragged her unwilling best friend back into the chaos.

Inside, the music had shifted again – louder, rowdier. A group of students had overturned the apple-bobbing tub, water and apples skidding across the floor. Someone had set off a bag of flour near the snack table, and white powder hung in the air like smoke from an amateur magic trick. The DJ was shouting something about a costume contest no one could hear over the bedlam.

Wednesday stood at the edge of it all once more, her arms crossed, her expression carved from disdain. Yet she could feel Xavier lingering at her shoulder, his presence like a shadow she couldn’t quite ignore.

“Looks like the pit of adolescent mediocrity is imploding,” he said lightly, nodding toward the disaster.

“Good,” she replied, voice cool. “Perhaps it will collapse on itself entirely.”

Their eyes met again – brief, sharp, and unspoken. Neither smiled. Neither looked away.

And then Enid shrieked something unintelligible and launched herself back into the dance circle, Ajax in tow, and the moment was gone.

Wednesday exhaled through her nose, shoulders stiff, heart louder than she would ever admit.

For all her insistence on control, for all her disdain of the evening, the truth lingered with unnerving clarity: somewhere between the cat ears, the candlelight, and Xavier’s ridiculous grin, something had shifted.

Their first undeniable spark, a fire neither of them would acknowledge. Not yet.

Chapter Text

October 29, 2019

New York was a sensory assault designed to erode the soul. The sidewalks vibrated with the constant thrum of traffic, the screech of brakes and horns layering over the hum of distant construction. People brushed past her in close quarters, their cologne a nauseating cocktail that left her gagging under polite restraint. Cafés smelled of sugar and butter she refused to touch. The bureaucracy of city life – forms, applications, meetings she didn’t need, emails she didn’t want – was a poison administered daily, and she had perfected the art of surviving it with a quiet, simmering contempt.

Her apartment, a modest studio on the Upper West Side - in onyx and charcoal of course - was cluttered only with essentials: a bed, a wardrobe, a desk stacked with forensic reports and notebooks filled with observations of human behavior, and a small bookshelf that held more curiosity than comfort.

After finishing college at NYU, she had thrown herself into forensic science, fascinated by the stories a body could tell and the truth it held beyond lies and pretense. Her work was meticulous, coldly logical, and occasionally thrilling. Sometimes, late at night, she could almost convince herself that her apartment smelled less of burnt espresso and more of certainty and control.

She had few friends. The ones she kept were practical, efficient, or indifferent to her macabre sense of humor. Romantic entanglements were anathema; she had learned that emotional entanglement in New York was like walking down a fire escape in heels: dangerous, unnecessary, and messy. The city didn’t accommodate subtlety, and neither did most of its inhabitants. She preferred the precision of chemical analysis to the chaos of small talk, the stark truth of fingerprints to the flimsy masks people wore.

Her phone buzzed as the cab inched through another clogged avenue.

Mother.

She answered, hearing the warm, insistent tone that had not dulled with time.

“Wednesday, darling. It’s been far too long. The marigolds are ready, the altars waiting. You must come home for Día de los Muertos this year. It wouldn’t be the same without you.”

“Yes, Mother,” Wednesday said, suppressing the urge to roll her eyes. “I suppose honoring the dead trumps enduring the living. I’ll make the pilgrimage.”

…

The flight was mercifully uneventful. Hours later, she stepped off the plane into the crisp air of Jericho, where the chaos of city life felt like a distant nightmare. The streets were quiet, the leaves littered the sidewalks in orange and gold, and even the faint smell of smoke from fireplaces was more comforting than offensive. She inhaled, savoring the predictability. Here, the world was slower, manageable.

At home, she was greeted by the soft padding of paws. Thing – a wiry, black-furred dog that moved with uncanny dexterity – wound around her legs, tail wagging furiously. Morticia appeared from the kitchen, her gown flowing, candlelight glinting on the dark countertops.

“Wednesday,” Morticia said, voice lilting with a smile, “it’s good to have you home.”

She inclined her head. “The honor is mutual, though my tolerance for domestic joy remains at historical lows.”

Her family guided her through the preparations: candles carefully placed, marigolds arranged around framed photos of ancestors, sugar skulls lined up like sentinels. She knelt, tracing the edges of the altar, noting each detail with her usual morbid appreciation.

For a moment, she allowed herself to remember the past five years: the endless city nights spent hunched over reports, decoding crime scenes, dodging irritating roommates, surviving a metropolitan landscape that seemed designed to chew her up and spit her out. She thought of college lectures that had bored her into a sharpened edge, of lab partners who mistook sarcasm for hostility, and of the occasional fleeting triumphs when the dead had revealed their secrets through her meticulous work. Each achievement felt hollow without someone to witness it, without someone who understood the darkness she carried and found it… tolerable.

Even in this quiet domesticity, there was comfort. The pull of tradition, of memory, of home, wrapped around her tighter than any coat she owned. And for the first time in years, as she adjusted a small, flickering candle, Wednesday felt something like anticipation – something dangerous, something she might almost call warmth.

…

October 31, 2019

Eugene’s house was a neon assault masquerading as a “cozy Halloween reunion.” Enid had outdone herself, stringing orange lights across the living room, dangling fake cobwebs from every possible surface, and scattering pumpkin candles so liberally it was a minor miracle none had caught fire yet. The furniture had been shoved against the walls, leaving a makeshift dance floor already crowded with costumed bodies. A Bluetooth speaker blared a chaotic mix of pop-punk and EDM bass. The scent of spiced cider mingled with the faintly burnt aroma of snacks.

Wednesday surveyed the scene with unimpressed scrutiny. The group was small but chaotic. Enid, practically vibrating with manic energy, had dressed as the Bride of Frankenstein, her sequined hair streaked with white, black stitches painted on her cheeks. Ajax, standing loyally beside her, was Frankenstein – green face paint, bolts painted at his neck, expression somewhere between proud and terrified. Eugene had begrudgingly dressed as a cowboy, ten-gallon hat askew, muttering something about “too old” and “not being paid enough for this.” Bianca had gone gothic-vampire, Davina as a zombie cheerleader, Kent a skeleton, Yoko a witch, and Agnes… Agnes had somehow fused a Dracula cape with a glittery tutu, a creation that defied all logic.

Wednesday herself was a Victorian haunted doll: pale, eyes lined dark, lips a sharp slash of crimson, lace cuffs and frills dusted with a faint layer of black powder to suggest age and decay. It was far more costume than she wanted to admit – but at least it was subtle enough that she didn’t have to participate in Enid’s circus of enthusiasm.

Beer pong was in full swing on a long dining table pushed against the wall. Someone had spilled the first cup already. Enid screamed with delight, slamming her hand onto the table as Ajax flinched.

“Welcome!” Enid shouted the moment she spotted Wednesday. “Finally! You have to join! Beer pong! Costumes! Chaos!”

“I prefer observation,” Wednesday said flatly, stepping carefully around a tipped-over cup of cider.

“You’re killing the vibe,” Enid pouted, tugging at Wednesday’s wrist. “Come on, be the haunted Victorian doll who throws balls at red Solo cups! It’ll be epic!”

“Epic is not the word I would choose. I’ll pass on the fun. Someone else can die of sugar poisoning for entertainment.”

Enid pouted but released her arm. “Fine, fine, be the brooding doll in the corner. But you have to meet him.”

Wednesday raised an eyebrow. “Meet whom?”

Enid grinned conspiratorially. “Xavier! He’s here. A little late because family stuff.”

And just like that, the doorbell rang. Wednesday, unimpressed, moved to answer it. She opened the door, almost reluctantly, and found Xavier standing there: Patrick Bateman perfectly realized, slick suit, tie slightly crooked, almost see-through raincoat, hair combed back, an expression somewhere between bemused and exhausted.

“Late,” Wednesday said, stepping aside.

“Fashionably,” he replied, stepping in, eyes sweeping the room with amused recognition. “Nothing’s changed, I see.”

The moment wasn’t tender, just acknowledgment: two predators sizing up their shared territory. Xavier followed her in, careful not to bump into the chaos of Enid tossing ping pong balls, Kent nearly toppling the table, and Eugene scowling while trying to referee.

Wednesday leaned against the wall, keeping her distance. The party raged on: laughter, shouted dares, clattering cups, and the occasional dramatic shriek from someone nearly falling into cider. A fog machine hissed, adding mist to the swirling costumes, turning the room into a chaotic stage for the absurdity she despised.

Xavier lingered near her, presence felt more than announced, his smirk curving just enough to tease. “Still unimpressed?” he asked over the music.

“Merely noting the evolutionary decline of my peers,” she replied, deadpan.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” he said, voice low, leaning slightly closer. “Still spectacularly judgmental.”

“Better than a suit-wearing psychopath,” she retorted, eyes flicking to his Patrick Bateman persona.

Their banter cut through the chaos like a scalpel. Around them, Enid cheered as Ajax accidentally flipped a cup, Bianca and Davina were in a drinking competition, and the others laughed at their own incompetence – but for a moment, Wednesday and Xavier existed in a bubble, sardonic, teasing, and quietly, undeniably, connected.

…

The night air hit her as soon as she stepped onto the porch, a cool October breeze carrying the faint scent of fallen leaves and distant smoke. The party noise was muffled through the door, but even from here, she could hear Enid’s high-pitched laughter and the occasional clatter of a tipped-over cup.

Xavier was leaning against the railing, one shoulder pressed to the wood, cigarette dangling between his fingers. The glowing tip cast a faint orange light across his face, making his smirk seem almost casual, almost practiced. He looked… comfortably detached from the chaos inside.

Wednesday tilted her head, observing. “I see you’ve chosen to poison your lungs tonight,” she said, voice flat but carrying just enough edge to make him look up.

“Some habits die hard,” he replied, taking a long drag. Smoke curled lazily toward the night sky. “You coming out for moral support or just commentary?”

“Commentary,” she said. “Mostly to confirm that you’ve perfected the art of looking like a psychopath without actually being one.”

He grinned, smoke tracing the outline of his jaw. “Point taken. And you? Still reveling in Victorian morbidity?”

“Always.” She leaned against the railing, crossing her arms, and let the quiet of the night settle around them.

Xavier tilted the cigarette between his fingers again and took another drag. “You’re judging me.”

“I am,” she said, arching an eyebrow. “And it’s only polite to announce that before interfering.”

“Interfering?” He smirked, blowing out a thin plume of smoke. “If I’m interfering, I don’t mind.”

Wednesday reached forward, snatched the cigarette from his fingers, and – without a second thought – took a careful drag. The ember flared against her lips, and she exhaled slowly, watching him closely, eyes not leaving his.

Xavier blinked, momentarily thrown. “You… wait, what?!”

“I told you,” she said, smirk curling at the edges of her lips. “Interference.”

He laughed, low and incredulous. “You’re insane.”

“Clearly. And you,” she replied, handing the cigarette back, “are predictable.”

He accepted it with a mock bow. “Predictable? Me? Never.”

“Except when it comes to chaos and cigarettes,” she quipped.

“Touché,” he said, eyes gleaming. “Though, I suppose we’re both predictable in our own ways.”

The cigarette between them became a silent game – passing it back and forth with little flourishes, each gesture loaded with teasing weight. Wednesday tilted her head, eyes narrowing in mock suspicion. “Do you always use smoke breaks to ensnare the haunted dolls of your past?”

“Only the ones worth remembering,” he said smoothly, smirk tugging at his lips.

She rolled her eyes but couldn’t hide the faint twitch at the corner of her mouth. “Flattery? That’s new.”

“Not flattery,” he said, stepping a fraction closer. “Observation. Nostalgia, maybe.”

Wednesday flicked ashes over the railing, pretending not to notice the way his shoulder brushed hers. “Nostalgia is a weakness I can’t afford,” she said.

“Sure,” he replied, voice lower now, teasing sharpened by something almost real. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”

For a while, they just stood there, smoke curling, night quiet around them, two figures balanced between sarcasm and the almost-heat of familiarity. Each glance, each small movement, carried the weight of years apart, of things left unsaid, of tiny sparks neither willing to name.

“Remember our group costume senior year?” Xavier asked suddenly, voice low, teasing.

Wednesday smirked despite herself. “How could I forget? You as the Joker, me as a miserable Catwoman I hated.”

“You were spectacularly miserable,” he said with mock admiration. “I think that’s why it worked.”

“I don’t work well with enthusiasm,” she replied.

“Clearly.” He laughed, sharp and quiet, smoke drifting between them. “I suppose some things never change.”

The conversation lingered in that delicate space between jest and sincerity, and for a moment, they both seemed to notice it. The cool air brushed against Wednesday’s hair, and she found herself glancing at him more than she cared to admit.

“What are you doing this weekend, besides enduring Enid’s chaos?” she asked, a hint of curiosity threading through her sarcasm.

“I was hoping you’d join me,” he said lightly, leaning back against the railing. “We could do something… quiet. Coffee, a walk, maybe visit the cemetery. You know, normal people stuff.”

Her lips pressed together, caught off-guard by the invitation. “Normal people stuff? That’s a terrifying concept.”

“Exactly why it’s perfect,” he said, smirking. “Besides, you need a break from judging the living so harshly.”

She shot him a sideways glance, and he noticed her eyes soften for the briefest fraction of a second. She masked it quickly, but he had already seen.

Eventually, the cigarette burned down, and Wednesday stubbed it out with deliberate precision. “Your turn to lead us back inside, Joker,” she said, mock authority in her tone.

“Bateman, actually,” he corrected, though his grin was soft now, almost reluctant. “And don’t pretend you don’t like the thrill of being here.”

“Thrill is a generous term,” she said, stepping past him, but the warmth of the night lingered, stitched into the memory of shared smoke, teasing, and quiet proximity.

And as they returned inside to the chaos, she felt it – the subtle tug of familiarity, the undercurrent of something dangerous, something she hadn’t anticipated but couldn’t entirely resist.

…

November 1st, 2019

Wednesday’s phone buzzed just as she was pouring herself a cup of black coffee. The kitchen was quiet except for the faint hum of the refrigerator. The text was from Xavier:

Weathervane. Saturday morning. Come for the coffee. Or hangover therapy. Your choice.

She raised an eyebrow. Hangover therapy? That sounded suspiciously like a ploy to see her, yet a faint twinge of curiosity stirred.

Not convinced caffeine can fix stupidity.

Not stupidity. Merely the consequences of it.

She set the phone down, swirling her coffee. The pull was subtle but undeniable – five years apart, yet some rhythms of their conversations still slid perfectly into place.

…

By mid-morning, she found herself outside Weathervane. The small café smelled of roasted beans, cinnamon, and slightly burnt pastries. Xavier was already there, leaning casually against the railing, Patrick Bateman persona replaced with the relaxed dishevelment of someone who hadn’t had enough sleep.

“On time,” he said, smirk tugging at his lips. “I expected less punctuality from the haunted Victorian doll of Jericho.”

“I like to surprise people,” she replied, voice clipped, eyes scanning the menu before finally settling on a black coffee.

“You haven’t changed,” he said, stepping inside with her. “Judging everything and everyone, yet somehow landing where you’re supposed to be.”

She sipped her coffee, avoiding looking too pleased. “Experience, observation, and occasional luck. Not everything requires genius.”

They took a small table near the window, watching the morning crowd shuffle past. It was intimate without being forced, comfortable without being familiar.

“So,” Xavier said, leaning back, “what have you been up to for the last five years?”

Wednesday’s lips pressed together. “Studying and dissecting humanity, mostly. College, then forensic science in New York. The city chews up everything with a pulse, then spits it back with paperwork and boredom.”

He chuckled. “And yet you survived.”

“I thrive on misery,” she said, voice flat but eyes glinting. “Someone has to.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Do you ever… miss Jericho?” His tone was casual, but there was a careful weight to it.

“I… tolerate it,” she said after a beat. “It’s predictable, quiet, and allows me to feel slightly human. Unlike New York, which is designed to test the limits of patience and endurance simultaneously.”

He laughed softly. “Sounds familiar. I’ve been back for a while – teaching art and literature at Nevermore. Feels like a second chance at… normalcy, or whatever counts as normal here.”

Wednesday’s eyes softened imperceptibly. “You’ve always been drawn to chaos and trying to make sense of it.”

“Some things never change,” he said. “Though I’ll admit, I never thought I’d find myself back in the town we spent so much time complaining about.”

“Complaining is tradition,” she said. “I suppose it’s comforting to know some habits persist.”

After a few more sips of coffee, Xavier leaned back, eyes glinting with mischief. “I have an idea,” he said. “A change of scenery. How about a walk? The cemetery isn’t far. You can glare at tombstones and I can… provide commentary.”

Wednesday raised an eyebrow, lips twitching in reluctant amusement. “You’re suggesting a morbid stroll as post-coffee entertainment?”

“Exactly,” he said. “Plus, it’s tradition-adjacent. Halloween, all that jazz. You might even learn something.”

“I’ll consider it,” she said dryly, setting her cup down.

…

By noon, they were stepping through the wrought-iron gates of the Jericho cemetery, leaves crunching underfoot. The morning mist softened the gravestones, and the air carried the faint smell of damp earth and fading autumn blooms. Here, the chaos of the reunion and New York’s constant noise felt impossibly distant.

“Do you ever think about high school?” Xavier asked, voice low, echoing in the quiet spaces between the stones.

“All the time,” Wednesday said. “Mostly because I’ve been trying to forget how unbearable it felt. You were, as usual, a circus of misplaced charm and bad timing.”

“And you were spectacularly miserable,” he said, a teasing edge to his voice. “Which, of course, made you fascinating.”

Wednesday allowed herself a faint smirk. “Flattery? In two days? That’s rare from you.”

“Not flattery,” he said. “Observation I guess. Or maybe nostalgia. Also a little… longing.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Longing? Dangerous word.”

“Depends on how you wield it,” he countered softly, glancing at her. “Some things are worth the risk.”

The walk continued in silence for a moment. They passed familiar headstones, some adorned with marigolds from early preparations for Día de los Muertos. Wednesday adjusted the folds of her coat, eyes tracing the engraved names. “Some people leave marks,” she murmured. “And some… are just echoes.”

“Some echoes are worth following,” Xavier said quietly. His gaze found hers, steady and searching. “Even if it’s only for a weekend.”

She blinked, caught off guard by the unguarded vulnerability in his tone. “I’ll see you next year,” she said finally, voice clipped but carrying more weight than she intended.

He exhaled softly, almost imperceptibly disappointed but hiding it behind a teasing grin. “Fine. Next year, then.”

The rest of the walk was quieter, their conversation dipping into lighter banter, shared memories, and teasing critiques of their old friends’ costumes. Yet beneath it all, a current of nostalgia and subtle longing persisted – threads weaving between sarcasm and something more dangerous, something neither was ready to confront.

By the time they returned to the street outside the cemetery, the air was sharper, and Wednesday’s coat smelled faintly of damp leaves. She adjusted it, looking at Xavier. “Next year,” she repeated, letting the phrase hang like a promise she wasn’t ready to keep.

He watched her go, hands in his pockets, the corners of his mouth curling just slightly. “Next year,” he echoed softly, though neither of them knew if that was a certainty or a hope.

…

Wednesday’s cab pulled up in front of her small New York apartment just as dusk began to settle over the city. The streets were gray and noisy, a far cry from Jericho’s quiet, orderly streets she had left behind only hours ago. She leaned back into the seat, letting the leather press against her, and exhaled slowly.

The weekend had been… different. Coffee with Xavier, walking through the cemetery, teasing and laughter, memories mingling with the present. She replayed his smirk, the way he had leaned against the gravestones, the flicker of something unspoken behind his eyes. It had been years since they’d talked like that – not just exchanged words, but connected.

Her phone buzzed again, a simple message from him:

See you next year.

She stared at it for a moment, thumb hovering over the screen. Next year. A simple phrase, but loaded, a tether to the small window of time they had shared, and a reminder of what she had left behind. She typed nothing, just stared, letting the silence answer for her.

Xavier lingered in her mind as the cab wound through traffic, a shadow in the corners of her thoughts she hadn’t expected to occupy so fully. He had been the same and yet different – older, more measured, but still the same spark of irreverence and quiet challenge that had marked their high school years. She hadn’t realized how much she had missed it.

When she stepped out of the cab and onto the crowded sidewalk, the city’s noise felt suffocating. Her apartment was small, cold, orderly – the perfect reflection of her life: controlled, contained, predictable. And yet, for the first time in years, she longed for unpredictability, for chaos that carried laughter and memories and someone who understood her too well.

Chapter Text

October 30, 2020

Jericho was quieter than New York could ever hope to be. Wednesday tugged lightly on Thing’s leash, the small dog weaving between the piles of orange and brown leaves on the sidewalk. Marigolds from early Día de los Muertos altars lined the fences of familiar homes, their bright petals startling against the muted autumn palette. Wednesday didn’t miss the city – not its noise, its claustrophobic crowds, or the constant performance of modern life. Here, she could breathe.

Thing skittered ahead of her, pausing occasionally to poke at a jack-o’-lantern or swipe a candy wrapper from the gutter. Wednesday trailed behind, coat buttoned to her throat, surveying the neighborhood with the clinical detachment of someone returning to a half-forgotten experiment.

She rounded a corner too quickly, and nearly collided with a tall figure juggling two bulging grocery bags.

“Careful,” Xavier muttered, one eyebrow raised, as a can of tomato soup teetered dangerously before he caught it. “Unless you’re aiming to create a modern art piece involving my groceries and your dog.”

“I aim to preserve personal property,” Wednesday said flatly, though a flicker of amusement tugged at the edges of her mouth. She reached down to steady Thing, who yipped in mild indignation at the near collision.

He blinked, then smiled when recognition set in. “Wednesday. You’re back.”

“For the dead,” she replied.

He stood, brushing his hands on his jeans. “You always did have priorities.”

He set his bags down on the curb, his smirk betraying the faint relief of escape. “You’re walking that… thing? Still keeping a creature alive, despite everything?”

Thing wagged a small tail, looking pleased with the attention. “Alive, very much alive. And capable of judgment,” Wednesday said, eyes flicking to Xavier.

“Judgment? I wouldn’t survive five seconds under that gaze,” he muttered, picking up his groceries again.

Wednesday tilted her head. “You survive longer than most. Barely.”

A pause. Their eyes met, and for a heartbeat, the years apart fell away – six years of distance compressed into a familiar glance, the kind that remembered all the old rhythms.

“So,” Xavier said, stepping in stride beside her as Thing trotted ahead, “how’s the haunted Victorian doll of Jericho this year?”

“Marginally less haunted,” she replied dryly. “Mostly annoyed by piles of leaves and neighborhood enthusiasm for decoration. You?”

“Still juggling groceries and existential crises,” he said with a faint smirk. “Though the leaves are less threatening than they used to be. We’ve improved the town since high school.”

Wednesday allowed herself a small smile. “Progress, then. I’d almost call it civilization.”

“You’d almost be right,” he said, glancing at her with just enough warmth to make her chest tighten.

“Do you really require that many bags to survive a weekend?”

“Essentials,” he said with mock solemnity. “Cereal, coffee, canned soups, frozen pizzas, and enough candy to scare off neighborhood kids. It’s all about balance.”

Wednesday arched a brow. “A diet that screams early cardiac arrest. How fitting.”

Xavier smirked. “Nice to see you haven’t lost your bedside manner.” He adjusted one bag and gestured to the sidewalk. “Mind if I walk with you a bit? Safer with a witness if I drop all this.”

She pretended to consider it. “Fine. But if you collapse under the weight of your poor life choices, I’m not helping.”

They fell into step, Thing trotting happily between them. The silence was comfortable, punctuated only by the crunch of leaves beneath their shoes. Wednesday found herself glancing at him more than once – he looked slightly older, but not in a way that diminished him. There was still that same restless spark, the one that had always made him stand out from the mediocrity of Jericho.

“So,” Xavier said after a block, “what’s your grand plan for tomorrow? Don’t tell me you’re just going to sit in your room and glower at trick-or-treaters.”

“I had no particular intention,” she admitted. “Though glaring does sound efficient.”

He grinned. “In that case… how about something different? I was planning a horror movie marathon. Classic stuff. Grainy black-and-whites, jump scares, bad makeup, good kills. You in?”

Wednesday gave him a long, skeptical look. “You expect me to waste hours of my life watching actors pretend to die badly?”

“Yes,” he said easily. “Because you’ll enjoy criticizing every second of it. And because I have the good popcorn. The stovetop kind, not the microwave abomination.”

Thing yipped, as if casting his vote. Wednesday narrowed her eyes at both of them. “Manipulation, however clever, will not work on me.”

Xavier just shrugged. “Then come out of spite. Mock my taste. Call me predictable. It’ll be fun.”

They stopped at the corner where their paths diverged.

Xavier shifted the bags and gave her a crooked smile. “So? Tomorrow night?”

Wednesday hesitated, then inclined her head the barest fraction. “I’ll consider it.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” He started toward his house, turning back once. “Don’t be late. Horror waits for no one.”

She watched him go, Thing wagging at her feet, and felt the faintest tug of something – nostalgia, perhaps, or the curious comfort of being invited.

…

October 31, 2020

Wednesday arrived exactly on time. Any earlier would have suggested eagerness; any later, disrespect. She knocked once and heard Xavier’s voice call from inside, “Door’s open!”

Thing trotted in ahead of her, nails clicking against hardwood.

The apartment was bigger than her New York shoebox, though hardly extravagant. Tidy, with the occasional splash of chaos – brushes in a mason jar, a canvas leaning half-finished against the wall, a smear of ochre on the handle of a cabinet. A dark green couch sat in the center, paired with mismatched but sturdy chairs. Plants lined the windowsill, thriving despite the dim light.

She surveyed it with a detached expression. “Impressive. You appear to have achieved what most artists never do – basic hygiene.”

Xavier looked up from the kitchen, where he was fussing over a pot on the stove. “I try to keep the place livable. You know, in case I ever have guests.”

“Judging by the single chair and lonely atmosphere, that happens rarely.”

He smirked, undeterred. “Tonight, at least, I’ve doubled my average.”

The stove popped. He dumped the contents into a bowl – a mound of freshly made popcorn, steam curling into the air. The smell was rich, buttery, undeniably better than the chemical tang of microwave packets. He carried it to the coffee table with a flourish.

“As promised. The good stuff.”

She took one kernel, examined it critically, then ate it. “Acceptable.”

The television flickered to life, black-and-white grain filling the screen. The opening credits of a film older than either of them rolled across the room.

They settled on opposite ends of the couch. Thing curled up on the rug, clearly invested in the proceedings.

For the first half hour, the only sounds were the shrieks of actors and the crunch of popcorn. But Xavier had never been good at keeping quiet.

“You know, this is peak cinema,” he said as a shrill woman ran through a foggy graveyard.

“It is peak incompetence,” Wednesday corrected. “The blood is too thin, the wounds placed inconsistently. If you’re going to portray decapitation, at least study anatomy.”

“That’s the fun,” he countered, grinning. “The camp. The mess.”

She tilted her head, considering him. “You’re romanticizing mediocrity.”

“And you’re allergic to joy.”

For the briefest moment, the corners of her mouth threatened treason. She smoothed it into neutrality, but he caught it anyway, and his grin widened.

Another film played. They drifted closer, not deliberately, just the natural erosion of space when two people forget to enforce boundaries. His knee brushed hers once when he reached for the bowl. She didn’t move away.

Between films, he muted the screen. The apartment sank into a quiet glow: candlelight flickering from the kitchen counter, the streetlamps casting muted halos through the curtains.

“So,” Xavier said, voice softer now, “still hating New York?”

“Every minute,” Wednesday replied. “It reeks of desperation. The constant honking, the smells of stale pretzels and garbage, the endless human chatter – like rats congratulating themselves for finding crumbs. I work. I sleep. I avoid unnecessary human interaction.”

“Sounds… cozy,” he said, though his smile was tinged with sympathy.

“It’s efficient.” She folded her arms. “And you? Have you resigned yourself to small-town mediocrity?”

“I teach. I paint. I read. Sometimes I even sleep.” He leaned back, eyes on the ceiling. “It’s not glamorous, but… it feels right. Like I’m actually building something instead of running.”

Wednesday studied him. The lines of his face had sharpened over the years, but the restlessness was still there – only now tempered by something steadier. “You’ve grown boring.”

“Or grounded.”

“Synonyms.”

He laughed, and for a moment, she hated how warm the sound felt in her chest.

They let the next film play without commentary. Outside, the wind rattled leaves against the window, autumn’s ghost pressing close. Inside, the silence between them wasn’t empty – it was layered, filled with the weight of what had been left unsaid for years.

When the credits rolled, Xavier reached for the remote but didn’t turn on the next film. Instead, he shifted slightly toward her.

“You know,” he said quietly, “I thought about this last year. Us, like this. I didn’t think it would actually happen again.”

Wednesday didn’t flinch under his gaze. “You imagined watching bad movies with me in your apartment?”

“Yeah.” He exhaled, smiling faintly. “And somehow, reality’s even better.”

The words lodged somewhere sharp inside her. She looked away, toward the flickering screen. “You overestimate sentiment.”

“Or you underestimate it.”

Silence again, thick as smoke. She didn’t move away when his hand brushed the space near hers on the couch, fingers close enough to feel the heat. Neither of them closed the distance.

At last, she stood, breaking the spell. “It’s late.”

Xavier followed her to the door, leaning against the frame as she put on her coat. “Thanks for coming, Wednesday.”

She paused, hand on the knob, but didn’t look back. “The popcorn was tolerable. The films were not.”

“Then I’ll have to do better next year.”

There it was again – that certainty, as though her return was inevitable. She hated that he might be right.

Thing gave a bark of farewell as she stepped into the night, the door clicking shut behind her.

…

November 1, 2020

The morning after, Jericho was hushed in that particular way only small towns could be. The wind had stripped most trees bare, marigolds leaned heavy over graves, and the streets smelled faintly of woodsmoke.

At Weathervane, Wednesday sat by the window with a black coffee, ignoring the cheerful pumpkin centerpiece on the table. She didn’t wait long. Xavier arrived, a little rumpled from the night before, balancing two mugs and a plate.

“Pumpkin pie,” he announced, sliding it toward her. “Breakfast of champions.”

Wednesday arched an eyebrow. “You’re aware that pie for breakfast is the hallmark of degeneracy?”

He grinned, unbothered, taking a bite himself. “Then call me degenerate.”

She sipped her coffee, watching him over the rim. For all the noise he used to make about wanting to escape Jericho, he looked more at ease now than she’d ever seen him. Grounded, as he’d put it. Comfortable in his own skin. She tried not to linger on the thought.

Their conversation wove between sarcasm and sincerity, much like the year before. Work. Students. Paint. The endless din of New York. He asked questions without pressing too hard; she answered more than she intended, though she dressed her truths in barbed wire.

Eventually, Xavier leaned back, stretching. “So. Cemetery?”

Wednesday nodded once, finishing her coffee.

…

The cemetery was alive in its own way. Families crowded around decorated altars, candles flickered even in daylight, and trails of marigolds led like breadcrumbs across the grass.

Wednesday moved slowly, her coat trailing at her calves, eyes sharp on the gravestones. Xavier carried a small handful of asters he must have picked himself, the purple blooms vivid against his dark coat.

“You brought offerings,” she remarked.

“Not the official kind, but…” He shrugged. “It felt wrong to come empty-handed.”

“The dead appreciate gestures,” she said. “Even futile ones.”

They wandered among the graves, sometimes reading names aloud, sometimes silent. At one stone, Xavier crouched and placed his asters, fingers brushing dirt from the inscription. He didn’t explain. Wednesday didn’t ask.

When they reached the bench under an old oak, they sat. The branches rattled above them, skeletal and whispering.

“I used to hate this place,” Xavier said after a while, eyes still on the graves. “When I was a kid, it just felt… heavy. Like endings were the only story here.”

“And now?”

“Now…” He paused, considering. “Now it feels honest. Like, at least here, people don’t pretend forever is guaranteed.”

Wednesday turned, studying him. “That’s unexpectedly lucid for you.”

He smirked faintly. “Don’t get used to it.”

Silence stretched. Comfortable. Thing hopped up onto the bench between them, his head resting on Wednesday’s knee.

Finally, Xavier tilted his head toward her. “Do you ever… feel like New York eats at you? Like it takes more than it gives?”

She didn’t answer at first. But his gaze held steady, patient, unjudging.

“At times,” she admitted. “The city thrives on noise. Distraction. Pretending. I find it… tedious.”

He gave a soft laugh. “You sound like me at eighteen.”

“An insult I refuse to accept.”

He grinned at that, but his eyes stayed serious. “Still. It’s good to hear you say it. Makes me feel like I’m not the only one who notices.”

They let the quiet return after that. The marigolds glowed like fire in the pale November light, the candles trembling. Wednesday folded her hands in her lap, expression unreadable. Xavier leaned back against the bench, watching her out of the corner of his eye as though committing the moment to memory.

After a long stretch of silence, he cleared his throat. “I’ve been working on a new studio. It’s nothing much – just an old space near the edge of town. But… you should see it before you go.”

Wednesday’s gaze flicked to him, unreadable. “You want to show me your mess of canvases and questionable paint choices?”

He smiled faintly. “Something like that.”

She let the pause stretch, long enough to make him shift in his seat, before answering with deliberate calm. “Very well. Tomorrow.”

Xavier nodded, trying to hide the relief in his shoulders. “Tomorrow, then.”

Thing yawned loudly between them, as if punctuating the agreement.

...

November 2, 2020

Xavier’s studio smelled faintly of oil paint and cedar, the scent grounding in a way Wednesday hadn’t expected. The space was larger than his apartment, airy despite the low ceilings, with walls painted deep green that matched the shelves of thriving plants. Canvases leaned against every available surface, some half-finished, others daringly abstract. A single wooden table held brushes and jars of pigment, neatly organized, betraying the slightest obsessive streak beneath his otherwise casual demeanor.

“Welcome to the lair of chaos disguised as art,” Xavier said, stepping aside to let her in.

“Surprisingly tidy,” Wednesday observed, setting Thing down on the floor. The dog immediately explored, sniffing at the corners. “I expected something more… catastrophic.”

“Catastrophic is overrated,” Xavier replied, smiling faintly. “Besides, you’re here. That tends to keep me on my best behavior.”

She gave him a flat look, but the corner of her mouth betrayed a twitch of amusement.

They wandered slowly through the space, Wednesday noting the colors, the textures, the way the light from the skylight pooled in golden patches across the floor. Every now and then, Xavier would stop at a canvas and explain what he was trying to capture – emotion, memory, frustration, or something that could only exist in pigment.

“You’ve done well,” she said quietly at one point, her eyes on a large painting of a twisted oak. “Better than I expected.”

Xavier shrugged, brushing a hand over his face. “I try. Some days it feels like throwing paint at the wall and hoping it sticks.”

Wednesday’s lips quirked. “Some days, that’s all life really is.”

He turned to look at her fully, eyes softening. “Do you ever… think about settling down? I mean… not just a place, but a life that’s yours, grounded somewhere?”

She stiffened slightly, caught off guard. “Settle down? I don’t know. My life is in constant motion. Stability feels like a cage.”

He stepped closer, hands in his pockets, voice quieter. “It doesn’t have to be a cage. Could be… the opposite. Something steady you can lean on.”

Her gaze dropped to the floor. “Steady is overrated. Safe is boring. And –” she hesitated, voice softer than usual, “I’m not… easy to care for. Or to live with.”

“You’re terrifying,” he admitted, a small, rueful laugh escaping. “But I like terrifying.”

Wednesday raised an eyebrow. “You’re bold. I’ll give you that.”

“Not bold enough,” he said, stepping even closer. “I want you to stay. Longer than a weekend. I know it’s absurd, but –”

“Xavier –” she cut him off, her voice firm but not harsh. “I can’t. You know I can’t. One weekend is the limit.”

He swallowed, trying to hide the sting in his chest behind a faint smirk. “Right. One weekend. Tradition intact. I’ll live.”

Wednesday’s lips twitched at the corner. “See you next year.”

Xavier exhaled slowly, letting the words settle. “Next year,” he echoed, voice tight.

The two of them drifted through the studio in a quieter rhythm after that. Wednesday allowed herself to notice the details she had ignored before: the subtle imperfections in the paint, the way Xavier moved around his space with a careful ease, the way sunlight hit the dark green walls just so.

“You ever doubt yourself?” she asked after a pause, nodding toward a particularly abstract piece.

“Every day,” he admitted. “I worry my work is meaningless. That I’m failing. That I’m not… enough.”

She studied him, surprised at the honesty. “I get it. Not the work part so much – though that too – but… the not enough part. I’ve carried that around for years.”

He tilted his head, watching her. “You? You’ve always seemed untouchable. Perfectly morbid and untethered.”

“Appearances are lies,” she said quietly, almost to herself. “I’m messy inside. Unsure. I keep moving so I don’t have to… settle with people – or feelings.”

Xavier’s gaze softened. “Maybe settling doesn’t have to mean giving up. Maybe it just means being brave enough to stay.”

Wednesday didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she let the silence linger, listening to the faint rustle of leaves outside and the faint scratch of brushes drying.

Finally, she touched the corner of a canvas he’d left on an easel. “You paint like you fight,” she said. “Every stroke like a defiance against something.”

“Maybe that’s all we can do,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Defy. But sometimes… we want to defy together.”

Her lips quirked, a ghost of a smile. She shook her head, gathering her coat. “Tomorrow isn’t a permanent arrangement, Xavier. One weekend is enough.”

He followed her to the door, expression unreadable but tension coiled in his shoulders. “I’ll take it,” he said finally. “Even if it kills me a little.”

Wednesday nodded once. “See you next year.”

Thing barked softly as she stepped out, and Xavier leaned against the doorframe, watching her walk into the crisp November air. The studio still smelled faintly of cedar and paint, but it also carried the weight of words said and unspoken, a quiet ache threading through the space between them.

Chapter Text

October 30, 2021

Jericho smelled faintly of woodsmoke and damp leaves when Wednesday stepped off the bus. She had caught the earliest flight she could out of New York, determined to cross the Hudson before the city’s noise consumed her. Her black carry-on bag was slung over one shoulder, her coat buttoned up to the throat.

New York had gnawed at her more viciously than usual this year. Deadlines, bureaucracy, strangers who thought their trivial dramas were important. The air tasted of exhaust and desperation. Jericho, by contrast, was muted, smaller, and perhaps duller – but it didn’t press down on her lungs the same way.

Her first thought wasn’t her family, nor the upcoming ritual of marigolds and altars.

It was caffeine.

The Weathervane’s bell jingled overhead when she pushed the door open. Inside, the café smelled of pumpkin spice and cheap coffee grounds. Too cheerful, too seasonal, too loud. She almost turned on her heel – until a familiar laugh caught her attention.

At a corner booth sat Xavier. His hair was longer than last year, tucked behind one ear, and he wore a dark flannel over a white T-shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. His hand rested lightly on the table, close enough that his companion could brush it with her fingers.

The companion – a woman with long chestnut hair and a soft, disarming smile – was mid-laugh, her eyes crinkling at the corners. She looked like she belonged here, woven into Jericho as effortlessly as autumn leaves into the gutter.

“Wednesday.”

Xavier’s voice broke across the café like a dropped plate. His expression shifted from startled to warm in a heartbeat. He pushed up from the booth, nearly knocking his knee into the table, and crossed the room toward her.

“You’re here.” He sounded almost breathless.

“Obviously,” Wednesday replied. She adjusted her grip on the strap of her bag. “Where else would I haunt this weekend?”

Behind him, the woman rose gracefully to her feet, curiosity flickering across her face. Xavier gestured awkwardly. “Elvira, this is Wednesday. Wednesday… Elvira.”

Elvira extended her hand with practiced ease. “It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard – well, Xavier’s mentioned you a few times.”

Wednesday ignored the hand, her gaze instead flicking to the way Elvira leaned just slightly toward Xavier.

Too comfortable. Too settled.

“Fascinating,” she deadpanned. “I didn’t realize I was a recurring topic of domestic bliss.”

Elvira laughed softly, unbothered by the jab. “Something like that.” She slipped her hand back, unoffended, and Wednesday found that irritating.

“Coffee?” Xavier asked quickly, as though he could smooth over the tension with caffeine.

“I was under the impression this establishment provided that function,” Wednesday said, but she allowed him to lead her to the counter anyway. She ordered her usual black coffee.

No sugar. No cream. No joy.

When they returned to the booth, Elvira slid back into her seat, her smile never faltering. Xavier sat beside her, but his body angled toward Wednesday, betraying the tug-of-war in his attention.

“So, how long are you in town?” Elvira asked brightly.

“A few days,” Wednesday replied. She traced the rim of her cup with one finger, her gaze cool. “Long enough to honor the dead. Short enough to avoid suffocating on small-town cheer.”

Xavier winced faintly at the edge in her tone, but Elvira only smiled again, as though Wednesday’s barbs were charming quirks instead of sharpened knives.

“That’s… poetic,” Elvira said.

“Morbid,” Xavier corrected with a smirk, though his eyes searched Wednesday’s face. “Which is exactly on brand.”

Wednesday ignored both of them, sipping her coffee in silence. She catalogued every detail like evidence at a crime scene: the way Xavier’s thumb brushed absently along the seam of Elvira’s sleeve, the way she tilted her head toward him as though they’d done this a hundred times before. Too easy. Too ordinary.

And somehow, that was the most offensive thing of all.

…

Wednesday had nearly finished her coffee when Elvira leaned forward, elbows resting casually on the table. Her smile carried that brand of unstudied warmth that most people seemed to find endearing and Wednesday found vaguely suspicious.

“We’re actually having a little Halloween get-together tomorrow night. At Xavier’s,” Elvira said. “Nothing wild, just some food, a few drinks, maybe a Tim Burton marathon. You should come.”

Wednesday blinked slowly, as if processing a statement in a foreign language. “A voluntary congregation of tipsy adults in costume, trapped indoors with forced small talk and mediocre cinema.”

“Exactly.” Elvira’s smile only brightened. “It’ll be fun.”

Xavier cleared his throat. His eyes flicked briefly toward Wednesday, then away again, like he wasn’t sure whether to intervene or retreat.

“Elvira –” he started, but she cut him off with a gentle squeeze of his hand.

“Ajax is coming too,” Elvira continued, unfazed. “And he’s bringing Enid. From what I’ve heard, Enid will be over the moon if you show up.”

Wednesday set her cup down with deliberate precision, her face unreadable. “So the festivities will include Enid Sinclair, alcohol poisoning, and corpse-themed animation.” She tilted her head just slightly, dark eyes narrowing. “What a trifecta.”

“Exactly!” Elvira said again, clearly missing – or ignoring – the sarcasm.

Xavier’s jaw tightened. He leaned back in his seat, running a hand through his hair. “You don’t have to come, Wednesday. It’s just –” His voice faltered, caught between obligation and something softer. “It’s just a casual night.”

Wednesday studied him for a beat too long. He wouldn’t meet her gaze. Curious.

She looked back to Elvira, who sat beaming like this was a perfectly normal exchange and not some twisted theater piece. “I can’t imagine why anyone would think I’m the life of a party,” Wednesday said at last, tone dry enough to desiccate the air around them.

“Because you’re you,” Elvira replied simply, as though that explained everything.

Wednesday’s lip twitched – almost a smirk, almost irritation. She reached for her bag and rose from her chair, “Very well. If the evening ends in bloodshed, at least no one will say I didn’t make an effort.”

Elvira laughed, unshaken. “That’s the spirit.”

As Wednesday moved toward the door, Xavier stood automatically. His expression was unreadable – some strange blend of relief, tension, and the ghost of a smile. “We’ll see you tomorrow night, then.”

Wednesday’s eyes lingered on him for just a fraction too long before she replied. “So it seems.”

The bell over the door chimed as she stepped out into the cold Jericho air.

The streets were lined with sagging marigolds and jack-o’-lanterns beginning to rot around the edges. She breathed in the crisp bite of autumn, slower than usual. She had not come home to sit cross-legged on someone’s floor and drink cheap wine with ghosts of her adolescence. And yet, here she was, already rearranging the evening in her mind.

Jericho had a way of pulling her back in, no matter how determined she was to keep her distance.

And Xavier Thorpe, apparently, had a way of complicating that even further.

…

October 31, 2021

Wednesday stood on Xavier’s doorstep with a dark bottle dangling from her hand and a bouquet of roses in the other. The roses were almost black in the dim porchlight, their velvet petals heavy with dew, freshly cut from Morticia’s garden.

When Xavier opened the door, his brows arched upward in surprise. His gaze flicked from the wine-dark bottle to the flowers before returning to her face. “You brought… hostess gifts?”

Wednesday’s expression remained impassive. “My parents raised me to never arrive empty-handed. It’s barbaric otherwise.”

She pressed the roses into Elvira’s hands, who had appeared beside him, radiant in a soft cardigan and jeans, her hair swept up with effortless ease. “How beautiful,” Elvira gasped, clearly touched. “Roses in October? These are gorgeous, Wednesday, thank you.”

“It’s from Mother’s garden. Her roses bloom all year long.”

Xavier was still staring, suspicion and something else swimming in his eyes. Wednesday extended the bottle toward him. “A concoction my family drinks on Halloween. If you keel over after the first sip, at least your party will have some excitement.”

Xavier pulled the cork with practiced ease, sniffing it warily before pouring a finger into a glass. He sipped. His eyes widened slightly. “This is… actually good. Berries, maybe. And something strong.”

“A family secret,” Wednesday said coolly, stepping past them into the apartment.

Inside, the space smelled faintly of familiar cedar and clove. It still looked the same as how it was the previous year. The furniture was dark green and polished wood, minimal but lived-in, accented with a scattering of Xavier’s canvases and a jungle of thriving plants in the corners. Cozy, annoyingly so.

Before she could make further observations, Enid collided with her in a squealing hug. “Wednesday!” she cried, squeezing hard enough. “I missed you so much! You’re never home anymore!”

Wednesday endured the embrace stiffly. “I live in New York, Enid. It’s hardly the Andromeda galaxy.”

“It might as well be,” Enid said with a pout, before beaming again. “Ugh, you look so good! Mia Wallace? Iconic.”

Wednesday adjusted the cuffs of her crisp white shirt, her braids falling over her shoulders. “I’m armed with a syringe of adrenaline in case the party grows dull.”

Ajax shuffled over, scratching his neck awkwardly but smiling warmly. “Good to see you, Wednesday. It’s been a while.”

“Not long enough,” she deadpanned.

The table was groaning under themed food: pigs-in-a-blanket shaped like severed fingers with almond nails, chips cut like ghosts beside a bowl of salsa red enough to be suspicious, cupcakes frosted orange with little fondant pumpkins. Enid had clearly gone feral with Pinterest.

They gathered around, balancing plates and drinks, laughter bubbling in the air. Enid and Ajax, dressed as the Other Mother and Other Father from Coraline, were loudly debating whether buttons for eyes were “creepy” or “cute.”

“You’re literally defending child abduction,” Ajax muttered.

“It’s called commitment to aesthetic!” Enid shot back, twirling in her apron with buttons sewn onto oversized glasses.

Xavier and Elvira had opted for Sheldon Cooper and Amy Fowler from The Big Bang Theory – complete with a Flash tee under his jacket and her hair pulled back with an oversized cardigan and glasses perched on her nose.

Wednesday raised an eyebrow, her voice carrying across the room. “Of all the couples in fiction, you chose these two?”

Elvira laughed, adjusting her glasses. “We were going for irony.”

“Irony implies intelligence in the audience,” Wednesday replied smoothly. “You’re giving Jericho far too much credit.”

Laughter rippled around the room, though Xavier shot her a warning glance. She ignored it.

As the projector hummed to life, the first movie flickered on: Beetlejuice. Enid squealed at every scene while Ajax pretended not to be invested. Wednesday observed quietly from the corner of the couch. She catalogued the ridiculousness: Elvira leaning comfortably against Xavier, Enid feeding Ajax a severed-finger hotdog, the clink of glasses as the group toasted nothing in particular.

Next came Corpse Bride, and Enid got misty-eyed, declaring Victor and Emily “the most underrated ship ever.” Wednesday muttered, “They’re literally bonded by death and bad decisions,” but her voice was lost under Enid’s sniffles.

By the time Edward Scissorhands played, the room had softened with half-empty bottles and frosting-stained napkins. Elvira rested her head on Xavier’s shoulder, his arm draped around her with absent familiarity. The sight snagged at something low in Wednesday’s chest, sharp and sour.

She told herself it didn’t matter. That she didn’t care. That she had only come because Enid would have sulked otherwise.

Still, her eyes lingered too long.

Across the room, Xavier glanced up at her as though he could feel her stare. For one suspended second, their gazes locked – something unspoken sparking there, hot and undeniable, before Elvira shifted and the spell broke.

Wednesday smoothed her shirt, her face unreadable. She reached for her glass and took a long, deliberate sip.

“Domestic bliss,” she murmured under her breath, just loud enough for herself.

And then she forced her attention back to the glowing screen, where Edward’s blades gleamed under pale moonlight.

…

The laughter inside blurred into muffled static as Wednesday slid open the balcony door. Cool night air rushed against her skin, scented faintly of smoke from nearby bonfires and the faint sweetness of rotting leaves. She struck a match with surgical precision, lit the cigarette between her fingers, and exhaled slowly.

She did not smoke often. Only when the clamor inside her became too loud, when restraint demanded an outlet. Tonight, surrounded by false domesticity and the sight of Xavier’s arm draped casually around another woman, restraint had nearly strangled her.

The balcony creaked as someone joined her. She didn’t turn.

“You hate cigarettes,” Xavier said quietly.

Wednesday inhaled, the ember flaring briefly, then tilted her head toward him. “I hate hypocrisy more. At least this vice is honest about killing you.”

He huffed a laugh, though it carried no humor. “Still dramatic as ever.”

“Consistency is one of my finer qualities.” She flicked ash neatly into the tray on the railing, finally glancing at him. His costume jacket hung open, the Flash logo faint under the moonlight. He looked older than the boy she remembered and yet too much the same, as if Jericho had frozen him while she had moved on and back again.

“You disappeared for a while,” he said.

“I was in New York. Working. Breathing car exhaust. Contemplating homicide on the subway.” Her tone was flat, but her eyes were sharper. “Not everyone can stay in Jericho painting dead leaves.”

Something flickered across his face – hurt, then quickly smothered. “I like Jericho,” he said. “It’s home.”

“Home is a graveyard,” Wednesday countered. “Familiar, but crowded with ghosts.”

“Maybe that’s why I stay,” he said, voice lower now. “Some ghosts are worth keeping.”

The words lodged under her skin, an irritant she refused to acknowledge.

She looked away, taking another drag. “And some people replace ghosts with warmer bodies. Convenient, isn’t it?”

The silence stretched taut.

Xavier’s hands slid into his pockets, his shoulders stiff. “Elvira’s good to me.”

Wednesday let smoke curl from her lips like venom. “Of course she is. She seems… effortless. Like wallpaper. Easy to overlook until it surrounds you.”

He flinched, but stepped closer anyway. The distance between them shrank, the night air buzzing with something sharp and dangerous. “Why does it sound like you care?”

Wednesday’s eyes snapped to his, black and unflinching. “Because I don’t.”

The lie was brittle, and they both heard it crack.

The silence between them pressed like a weight. Finally, he spoke again, softer this time, the words tumbling out before he could stop them.

“I thought about you, you know. All year. Wondering where you were, if you were okay. If you ever thought about…” He trailed off, his throat working. “About me.”

The admission cracked something in the air. Wednesday froze, cigarette burning low between her fingers. For the first time in years, her carefully constructed mask wavered.

She wanted to say yes. Wanted to admit that she carried him like a splinter under her skin, impossible to ignore. Instead, she said nothing, because the truth was dangerous and Wednesday Addams did not do dangerous in matters of the heart.

For a heartbeat, neither moved. Then Xavier’s hand lifted, hesitating, before his fingers brushed against hers where they rested on the railing. Barely a touch – enough to ignite, not enough to claim.

Wednesday’s breath caught, though her face betrayed nothing. The nearness of him was unbearable: the warmth radiating from his skin, the memory of every almost they had never allowed themselves.

The world shrank to that single point of contact, the rest dissolving into fog.

And then –

“Xavier?” Elvira’s voice called from inside, light and cheerful. “The next movie’s starting!”

The balcony shattered back into reality. Wednesday snatched her hand back as though burned, her mask slamming into place with ruthless precision.

“Don’t keep her waiting,” she said, her tone cool enough to frost glass.

Xavier’s jaw tightened, his mouth opening as if to argue – but no words came. Only a fractured silence, heavy with everything unsaid.

He turned, retreating toward the door, but glanced back once. His eyes held a question, or perhaps a plea.

Wednesday crushed the cigarette into the tray, grinding the ember to ash. “Go,” she said simply.

He obeyed.

Alone again, she leaned against the railing, staring into the darkness. The smoke dissipated into the night, leaving nothing but the hollow ache of what might have been.

Wednesday only whispered, so quiet the wind nearly stole it away:

“See you next year.”

…

The movies had ended, the laughter dulled into yawns, and the last of the cupcakes had collapsed under their frosting. One by one, the gathering unraveled. Ajax corralled a sleepy Enid, who clung to Wednesday with glittering eyes and another suffocating hug.

“You have to let me visit you in New York!” Enid insisted, squeezing until Wednesday’s bones creaked. “We can go see Broadway, eat at those spooky-themed restaurants, and I’ll make you wear pink just once –”

“Over my cadaver,” Wednesday replied flatly, but her hand lingered a fraction of a second longer on Enid’s arm before letting go.

Elvira offered a kind, genuine, “Thanks for coming, Wednesday. It meant a lot.”

Wednesday gave a curt nod. “Consider it my annual community service.”

When she turned toward the door, Xavier was already there, waiting. “I’ll walk you out.”

He fell into step beside her, the two of them descending the narrow stairwell in silence. The walls smelled faintly of paint thinner, the creak of the steps echoing in the stillness.

At the bottom, she adjusted the strap of her bag, ready to vanish into the cool Jericho night.

“You didn’t have to come tonight,” he said finally, voice quiet.

Wednesday arched a brow. “And yet, I did.”

His mouth curved faintly, though it looked more pained than amused. “I’m glad you did.”

She studied him in the dim light of the entryway, the weariness in his posture, the honesty pressed into those four simple words. It made something twist in her chest, something she refused to name.

Her reply was a whisper of steel: “See you next year, Xavier.”

For a heartbeat, he looked as though he wanted to argue, to ask her for more than twelve haunted hours each autumn. But the words never came. He only nodded, slow and reluctant, his eyes following her as she pushed open the door and stepped into the dark.

The cold air closed around her, sharp and biting. Wednesday didn’t look back.

From the stairwell above, Xavier did. His hand gripped the railing until his knuckles turned white, watching her braid-silhouetted figure retreat down the empty street.

It was easier when she was just mine for one weekend a year, he thought, and the truth of it cut deeper than he’d ever admit.

Chapter Text

October 30, 2022

The park was the same as it always had been – deceptively peaceful, as though Jericho had been frozen in amber while the rest of the world corroded. Leaves carpeted the grass in a mess of orange and brown, the wind picking them up in fits and starts. The fountain in the center dribbled water too weakly to mask the quiet.

Wednesday stood at the edge of the open lawn, gloved hand snapping forward with clinical precision as she tossed a rubber ball. Thing skittered across the grass after it, fast and determined, paws scraping faintly against stone when he bounced off the fountain base. He caught it, triumphant, and scrambled back to her.

“Efficient,” Wednesday remarked, plucking the ball from his grasp. “Your form has improved.”

Thing wiggled his tail in a pantomime of pride.

She was about to throw it again when movement caught her eye – the swing of a shop door, the shift of someone stepping onto the sidewalk bordering the park. She glanced up.

Xavier.

Her breath caught, though she told herself it didn’t.

He was carrying a bouquet – an absurdly bright thing wrapped in crinkling paper, blooms of red roses, pink carnations, pale tulips, lilies, and sprigs of baby’s breath. The sort of arrangement one purchased from the shop across the street where the bell above the door never stopped jingling. Too many flowers shoved together, cheerful and celebratory, not a single dark stem among them.

He looked older, a little broader through the shoulders, hair slightly too long and brushing the collar of his jacket. His expression, though, was the same: thoughtful, distant, and far too easy to read if you cared enough to look.

He spotted her almost instantly, as if drawn by instinct. Their eyes locked across the space of the park, and for one suspended moment it was as though no years had passed at all.

Then he smiled – small, cautious, a flicker of warmth.

“Wednesday,” he greeted, a half-smile twitching like muscle memory.

“Xavier,” she replied coolly, gaze sliding to the bouquet. “How touching. Did someone die tragically, or is this for some trivial human ritual of courtship?”

His laugh was soft, almost tired. “They’re for Elvira.”

The name tasted wrong in her mouth even before she repeated it. “Elvira.”          

He looked at the flowers as though they might excuse him. “She likes lilies.”

Wednesday’s eyes lingered on the bouquet, their riot of color loud against the muted October backdrop. “Of course she does.”

The silence stretched. Leaves rustled. Thing tapped impatiently against her boot, waiting for her to throw the ball again.

“Roses for passion, lilies for purity, tulips for deep love, carnations for admiration,” Wednesday listed off clinically. “That bouquet is screaming of someone trying very hard to prove a point.”

He didn’t flinch. “Maybe I am.”

She tilted her head, studying him. The Xavier she remembered would have smirked, deflected with something clever. This one only looked steady. Grounded. Perhaps too grounded.

Wednesday bent, flicked the ball across the grass with more force than necessary. Her voice stayed calm, though. “I hope she appreciates the gesture. Not everyone enjoys funeral blooms on a cheerful day.”

“She’s not you, Wednesday.”

That, more than the bouquet, was what made something twist in her chest.

She straightened, adjusted her gloves. “No. Clearly not.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The weight of eight years and all their rituals pressed down between them, fragile and suffocating.

Finally, Xavier cleared his throat, as though stepping back into neutral ground. “Are you… staying through the holiday?”

“The dead insist upon it.”

“Then…” His hand tightened on the bouquet. “Maybe coffee tomorrow? Weathervane. Late morning.”

It should have been him asking. It should always have been him. But Wednesday heard herself say it first, cold and deliberate:

“Coffee. Weathervane. Tomorrow.”

His lips twitched upward, just slightly. “I’ll see you then.”

She didn’t watch him leave. But she didn’t throw the ball again until he was gone.

…

October 31, 2022

The bell above the Weathervane door gave its shrill ring as Wednesday stepped inside. The café hadn’t changed – the same chipped tables, the same chalkboard menu written in inconsistent loops, the same cloying smell of pumpkin spice syrup drowning in burnt coffee.

Her lip curled. New York’s cafés were hardly better, but at least they tried to disguise their mediocrity.

Xavier was already there. He sat at their usual corner table, slouched slightly, a steaming mug in front of him. No sketchbook, no restless scribbles of ink – just him, his hands curled around ceramic as though bracing himself.

She approached, deliberate as always. “You’re early.”

He gave a faint shrug. “You’re late.”

“I had to wrestle Thing out of Mother’s pumpkin display. A pointless domestic struggle.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, but the warmth didn’t quite reach his eyes.

She sat across from him. A waitress appeared, asking if she wanted anything. Wednesday’s gaze slid to Xavier’s mug. “Black. Large. Whatever sludge passes for coffee here.”

When the waitress retreated, silence stretched across the table. She studied him openly, because she could.

“You seem…” She tilted her head. “Diminished.”

He raised his eyebrows, though his expression remained careful. “Good to see you too, Wednesday.”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

“It never is.”

The waitress returned with her coffee. Wednesday wrapped her fingers around it, though she had no intention of drinking it just yet. The heat grounded her, kept her from fidgeting.

She tried again. “You’re quieter this year.”

“Maybe I ran out of things to say.”

“You? Impossible.”

He huffed a small laugh, but it was hollow. “I guess people change.”

“Change is overrated,” she replied. “Decay is inevitable. Evolution is optional.”

He leaned back in his chair, studying her in turn. “And yet, you left Jericho. You built a life in New York. You changed.”

“I adapted,” she corrected. “There’s a difference.”

His eyes flicked away, toward the window where trick-or-treaters scurried past in paper-thin costumes. “Adaptation doesn’t always mean survival.”

The weight of his words hung heavy. She sipped her coffee, bitter and burnt, because anything was better than admitting how the silence pressed at her ribs.

“Tell me,” she said finally, “how is domestic bliss? Have you taught Elvira to tolerate your brooding silences, or does she find them charming?”

His jaw tightened. “She doesn’t mind.”

Wednesday smiled, sharp and humorless. “A saint, then.”

“Don’t,” he said quietly.

“Don’t what? Speak plainly? You should know by now it’s my only register.”

Xavier exhaled slowly, the kind of breath that carried years of unspoken words. “I asked you here for coffee, not combat.”

“Sometimes they’re the same thing.”

For a moment, something softened in his expression – a flicker of the boy who once danced awkwardly with her at a Halloween party, who once looked at her as if she were the only person who saw him.

But then he shook it off, retreating into the cool distance she’d noticed the day before.

When they finished their coffees – or rather, when his was drained and hers remained nearly untouched – he stood. “Do you want to take a walk? Cemetery’s quiet this time of day.”

“Poetic,” she murmured, sliding to her feet. “Lead the way.”

He didn’t smile.

…

The air smelled faintly of smoke and floral arrangements, the kind of scent that clung to the throat. The cemetery was busy with families, candles flickering at headstones, photos tucked into flower vases. It was the sort of tableau Wednesday might have admired, if her chest wasn’t already too tight.

Xavier walked beside her, hands shoved in his pockets. He looked older this year. More tired. The lines around his mouth didn’t come from smiling.

They hadn’t spoken since leaving Weathervane. It was almost a relief when he finally broke the silence.

“Do you think there’s a difference between mourning and moving on?”

Wednesday’s eyes flicked toward him, her voice clinical. “Of course. Mourning is active. Moving on is surrender.”

“So you don’t believe in it.”

“In surrender? No.”

He laughed under his breath, bitter. “Maybe I do.”

Something in his tone made her stop listening to the crunch of gravel, stop cataloguing the withered bouquets on headstones. She turned her head, studied his profile. He was serious.

And then the words came, casual as if he’d been rehearsing them in front of a mirror until they lost their weight.

“I’m thinking of proposing.”

Wednesday’s feet froze.

Xavier kept walking, two paces ahead, before realizing she’d stopped. He turned back.

“It’s been a year,” he continued, as though explaining to himself. “She’s good. Kind. Simple.”

Wednesday’s voice cut through the chill air. “You don’t do simple.”

For the briefest flicker, his eyes softened, as though he’d been waiting for her to say it. But then he shook his head.

“Maybe I need to.”

Silence stretched. A crow shrieked in the distance. Wednesday’s jaw tightened.

“You mistake resignation for peace,” she said.

“And you mistake distance for strength,” he shot back. “You act like keeping everyone at arm’s length makes you untouchable. It just makes you lonely.”

Her lip curled. “Loneliness is preferable to mediocrity.”

“You think Elvira’s mediocrity?” His voice sharpened.

“I think she’s… ordinary.” Wednesday’s tone dripped disdain. “Perfectly palatable. Perfectly unthreatening. The human equivalent of plain toast.”

His laugh was humorless, rough. “And what does that make you? Poison? Something too sharp to touch?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.

He stepped closer, frustration burning through his restraint. “You keep coming back. Every year. Do you even know why? Or do you just enjoy reminding me what I can’t have?”

Her throat worked before her voice emerged, low, ragged:

“You were always the thing I couldn’t bury.”

Xavier’s breath hitched, his fists clenching in his pockets. He gave a harsh laugh. “Then why do you keep digging?”

The words hit like shrapnel, sinking deep.

She turned away, taking a few steps down the path, but stopped again, her hands balled tight at her sides. “You think you’ll be happy with her? You think you can silence what’s inside you with lilies and handholding?”

“Maybe I don’t need to be happy,” he said quietly. “Maybe I just need to stop hurting.”

Wednesday spun back, eyes flashing. “So you’ll choose anesthesia over honesty?”

“At least anesthesia numbs the wound. You just keep carving it open.”

The silence that followed was unbearable. He stared at her as if waiting for her to break, to finally say what he had always wanted to hear. She stared back, unblinking, every muscle in her body locked in place.

The ground between them was heavy with all the words unsaid – stay, don’t marry her, it’s you, it’s always been you.

But Wednesday swallowed them down, burying them alongside the marigolds and candles.

Her voice, when it came, was flat, cold. “Congratulations. I hope you enjoy your surrender.”

She turned and walked away, her coat snapping in the wind.

Xavier didn’t follow.

…

The Addams house was quiet in that way old houses were – wood groaning, floorboards sighing, wind threading through cracks like a breath of the dead. Wednesday should have felt comforted by it. The dead didn’t judge, didn’t demand, didn’t leave.

But her body felt restless, her mind even worse. She sat at her desk in the guest room, candle burning low beside her, fountain pen motionless over a blank page. She had wanted to write, to dissect her own unease into words she could control. But every thought ended with the same name.

Xavier.

Her fingers clenched tighter around the pen until it bled ink onto the paper. The stain spread outward like a bruise.

It should not matter. He should not matter. He was a boy with paint under his nails and too much hope in his chest, a boy too foolish to stop reaching for things that burned him. She had told herself that years ago, when she left Jericho behind without looking back.

But he had looked back. Always.

She remembered his face in the cemetery – the way his mouth tightened around the word proposing, the way his eyes had begged her to say something, anything, that would stop him.

And she had said nothing.

Because to admit what he meant was to admit weakness. To admit need. And if she allowed herself that… she would unravel.

Her reflection in the window glass stared back at her, hollow-eyed and defiant. She whispered to it like a curse: “I do not miss him.”

But her hand shook when she blew out the candle, plunging herself into darkness.

…

Elvira stirred beside him, her breathing slow, steady, content. She had fallen asleep during the third act of Hocus Pocus, and now her arm draped across his chest, anchoring him to the bed.

He stared at the ceiling, wide awake. The marigolds she had arranged earlier still perfumed the room, sweet and cloying, and it made his chest ache.

He thought about Wednesday’s words, each syllable sharp enough to scar.

You don’t do simple.

You mistake resignation for peace.

She was wrong. She had to be wrong. Because if she was right – if he was settling, if he was silencing himself – then what was left of him?

Elvira murmured in her sleep, and guilt coiled tight in his stomach. She was good. Kind. Everything Wednesday had said. And he did love her, in the way one loved a warm blanket on a cold night. She deserved better than the ghost of another woman lying between them.

But no matter how tightly he shut his eyes, all he could see was Wednesday’s braid glinting in the candlelight, her voice breaking as she told him he was the thing she couldn’t bury.

He pressed the heel of his hand against his chest, as though he could smother the ache there. It didn’t work.

When dawn crept pale and gray through the curtains, Xavier was still awake, hollowed out, Elvira’s hand resting over a heart that no longer felt like it belonged to him.

…

Across town, Wednesday lay in her narrow bed, eyes open, unblinking, refusing sleep. Across another, Xavier did the same.

Both of them haunted. Both of them stubborn. Both of them drowning in words unsaid.

And neither of them said, See you next year.

Chapter Text

October 31, 2023

Wednesday had sworn she wouldn’t come back this year. She’d sworn it in blood, in silence, in the way she’d folded Xavier’s absence into her chest like a bruise that refused to fade. Last year had been brutal enough – his talk of proposals, the cemetery argument, the way he had looked at her like she was both his salvation and his ruin. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t give Jericho, or him, another chance to unravel her.

But Enid Sinclair was an unrelenting force of chaos wrapped in pink and glitter. And Wednesday had long since learned that even the most determined barricades crumbled under the weight of Enid’s enthusiasm.

Her phone had lit up for days with messages that ranged from threatening to affectionate:

if u don’t come to my halloween party i will actually die 💀💀💀

do you want my death on ur conscience???

ajax and i just moved in together we’re HOSTING our first thing as adults!!! you HAVE to come

there will be booze. like. so much booze.

i’ll drag u back with glitter if i have to

*Followed by 30 heart emojis

Against her better judgment, Wednesday found herself on the train, halfway to Jericho, the October landscape blurring past in shades of rust and gray. The sky was heavy with clouds, the kind that pressed low to the earth as though ready to bury the town beneath them. She sat stiff in her seat, the Bride of Chucky tulle veil folded neatly in her bag – Enid’s idea, naturally. Wednesday had initially refused, but Enid had threatened to send a delegation to New York to “force-feed her tequila until she gave in.”

By the time she arrived in Jericho and followed the thumping music and laughter spilling from Enid and Ajax’s new townhouse, she was already regretting her decision. The porch was strung with orange lights; fake cobwebs clung to every railing. Inside, chaos reigned: people in mismatched costumes, cheap beer, too-loud music, the kind of cheerfully reckless atmosphere Wednesday despised.

She stepped through the doorway, adjusting the veil so it didn’t strangle her, and was immediately assaulted by the scent of cider, sweat, and plastic fangs.

And then she froze.

Because standing in the middle of the living room, drink in hand, surrounded by laughter, was Xavier Thorpe.

Dressed as Chucky.

The silence that dropped over the room was short-lived, but to Wednesday, it felt like an eternity. Enid was the first to break it with a squeal that could shatter glass.

“Oh. My. God. You guys are soulmates.” She clapped her hands so hard the bangles on her wrists chimed. “Bride of Chucky and Chucky? Are you kidding me? This is cosmic. This is fate. This is the UNIVERSE telling you something!”

Ajax, arm slung lazily around Enid’s shoulders, grinned. “Yeah, did you two coordinate ahead of time? Like text each other in secret? Because wow, subtle.”

Eugene, already halfway into a beer, leaned against the kitchen counter and smirked. “We’ve all seen this rom-com before. Next thing you know, someone’s going to propose.”

The laughter rose, warm and merciless, as if the joke wasn’t wedged like a knife into her ribs. Wednesday’s glare could have ended empires.

“It seems,” she said flatly, “that my taste in costumes has been tragically compromised.”

Xavier met her eyes across the room. For a moment – one stretched too long, one that ached with something she couldn’t name – he looked almost sheepish. His hair was actually a little shorter and the weight of another year pressed into the set of his jaw. But the small, crooked half-smile was the same.

“Guess we’re stuck with it,” he said.

And somehow, that was worse than any cutting remark he could have made.

…

The night unraveled in fits and starts. Enid had outdone herself. The house was a kaleidoscope of noise and color, of shouted toasts and tipsy laughter.

Wednesday tried to keep to the edges, her veil a shield against too much interaction, but avoiding Xavier was impossible. Every time she turned, he seemed to be there: reaching past her for a drink, brushing by her to drop empty cups in the trash, standing just close enough that she could hear his laugh above the din.

They exchanged awkward pleasantries – clipped sentences, polite nods – as though both of them were too aware of the audience their friends made. The sharp hostility of last year was absent, but what replaced it was worse: hesitation, restraint, the tension of a bowstring drawn too tight.

At one point, she caught him watching her from across the room, his expression unreadable. When their eyes met, he didn’t look away. Neither did she. The moment stretched – too long, too dangerous – until Enid shrieked something about a drinking game and dragged them both into the kitchen.

“You two,” Enid said, pointing a brightly painted nail at them as if she were officiating their wedding, “are not allowed to sit in corners tonight. You’re playing.”

“I don’t play games,” Wednesday said.

“Neither do I,” Xavier echoed.

Their friends laughed again, as though even their refusals had synchronized.

And so the night went on, full of forced laughter, stilted words, and an undercurrent that felt like static electricity crawling over Wednesday’s skin.

She told herself she hated it – hated the way the costume felt like a cruel joke, hated the way everyone teased, hated the way Xavier’s nearness still pulled at her like gravity.

But deep down, in the quiet place she never admitted to, she hated most of all how easy it would be to imagine this was normal. That they were just two people in stupid costumes, dragged to a party by mutual friends, orbiting each other not out of history and heartbreak, but out of choice.

And that was a fantasy she could not afford.

…

The drinking game turned into a spectacle that Wednesday endured more than participated in. A ring of red Solo cups, a ping-pong ball bouncing wildly, half-shouted rules nobody seemed to remember. Enid cheered like it was the Olympics every time Ajax scored. Eugene missed the table entirely and collapsed into laughter, cider spilling down his shirt.

When the ball rolled toward her feet, Wednesday bent slowly, picked it up, and dropped it back on the table with surgical precision.

“You’re supposed to throw it, Wens,” Ajax teased.

“I don’t gamble with my dignity,” she replied, earning a round of howls from the group.

Xavier chuckled too, low and warm, and the sound scraped against her ribs. He hadn’t looked away from her all night, not really. And every time she felt his gaze, Wednesday told herself she was imagining it.

Enid, already five, six drinks in and glowing with delight, leaned against her shoulder. “You know, you could actually relax and have fun for once,” she whispered conspiratorially.

“I am having fun,” Wednesday deadpanned.

“Right,” Enid said with a grin. “That’s why you look like you’re planning someone’s funeral.”

“I am. Yours, specifically.”

Enid only giggled and darted back to Ajax’s side.

…

Later, with Haunted Mansion blaring on the TV and the lights dimmed, the group sprawled across couches and beanbags. Enid and Ajax curled into each other, Eugene dozing, Yoko making sarcastic commentary from the armchair.

Wednesday sat stiffly at one end of the sofa, her veil removed but her braids intact. At the other end, Xavier lounged with casual ease, his legs stretched out, his plastic knife prop discarded on the floor. Between them, a gulf of silence no one else seemed to notice.

Every so often, their knees almost brushed. Neither of them moved.

When Dark Shadows started, Xavier shifted just slightly toward her, his voice low. “You always liked this one.”

She didn’t glance at him. “Because it’s a tragedy. People mistake it for romance.”

“Maybe it’s both,” he said softly.

Her chest tightened. She forced herself to look back at the screen, at Johnny Depp’s haunted eyes, refusing to let Xavier’s words linger.

…

The party thinned out a bit before three in the morning. Eugene stumbled home, Bianca and Yoko called a cab, Enid and Ajax were still tangled together in their corner. The mess of cups and crumbs could wait for morning.

Wednesday stood, smoothing the creases from her dress, already preparing her sharp farewell. She hated lingering. Lingering meant exposure.

“Leaving already?” Enid pouted, hair mussed, lipstick smudged.

“It’s almost three AM. The veil between the living and the dead is thin. Some of us have better things to do than nurse hangovers.”

Enid only hugged her, too tightly, perfume and cider clinging to her clothes. “I’m so glad you came. Don’t make me beg next year, okay?”

“We’ll see.”

When Wednesday stepped into the hall, Xavier followed. Not immediately, not noticeably – but his footsteps caught hers as though tethered. They descended the stairwell together, the noise of the party fading behind them.

At the front door, the silence pressed too heavy.

“You didn’t have to escort me,” she said without looking at him.

“I know.” His voice was steady, quiet. “But I wanted to.”

Wednesday paused, hand on the doorknob. She finally turned, and there he was: the same boy she’d once known, but older now, shadowed by years she hadn’t shared with him. His eyes searched hers as if he was trying to find something buried there.

For a second – one unbearable, dangerous second – it felt like last year had never happened. No fights, no proposals, no words too sharp to take back. Just them.

Xavier cleared his throat. “Listen… are you doing anything tomorrow?”

She tilted her head, wary. “That depends on what tomorrow requires of me.”

“I was thinking…” He hesitated, then offered the smallest, most tentative smile. “A walk. The cemetery.”

The words were simple, but they landed heavy between them, weighted with memory. Their ritual, resurrected after a year of silence and bruised edges.

Wednesday considered him for a long moment, long enough to make his expression falter. Then she gave the smallest nod.

“Fine. One walk.”

Something eased in his face – relief, gratitude, or something else she refused to name.

“Goodnight, Wednesday.”

She stepped into the cool October air, veil tucked under her arm, heart beating far too fast.

Behind her, Xavier stood at the doorway, watching her go, torn between hope and the ache of knowing tomorrow could break them all over again.

…

November 1, 2023

The air was sharp, colder than the day before. The cemetery looked the same as it always had: wrought-iron gates, crooked rows of gravestones, the sweet, cloying scent of flower arrangements clinging to the earth. Families lingered around fresh offerings – candles flickering in the wind, photographs weighted by stones, plates of food left for the departed.

Wednesday walked a step ahead, hands folded neatly behind her back, eyes scanning the tombstones as though cataloging them. Xavier matched her pace, his steps quieter, less certain.

“So,” he said finally, his breath visible in the cold. “How are you doing?”

It was a meaningless question, banal, but it hung between them with the weight of everything unsaid.

“I’m surviving,” she replied. “As usual, New York hasn’t devoured me yet, though it tries.”

He smiled faintly. “You always did like a fight.”

She shot him a sideways glance. “And you? Still teaching high schoolers how to draw bats in charcoal?”

“Sometimes skulls,” he said with mock gravity. “Occasionally haunted forests. I’m expanding their repertoire.”

“Truly revolutionary.”

Their sarcasm should have been easy, a familiar rhythm. But underneath, a silence pressed heavy, dragging at the edges of their words.

They walked a few steps further before Xavier asked, softer now: “Do you ever think about… staying?”

She didn’t look at him. “In Jericho? I prefer not to dwell on imprisonment.”

His jaw tightened. “It’s not a prison.”

“For you, maybe not.”

The bitterness slipped out sharper than she intended. His expression flickered, but he didn’t answer right away. The crunch of leaves underfoot filled the gap, punctuated by the distant murmur of other families.

Finally, he stopped walking. She turned back, the distance between them a gulf.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said quietly.

Her brows furrowed. “Do what?”

His gaze didn’t waver. “Propose. To Elvira.”

The name hit like a stone dropped into water – silent, but the ripples spread. Wednesday’s heart lurched once, then stilled into an iron calm.

He shook his head. “I tried. I held the ring. I rehearsed the words. But I just couldn’t.”

“Why not?” she asked, voice flat.

“Because.” He ran a hand through his hair, frustrated. “Because it isn’t fair to her. Because it wouldn’t have been honest.”

“You’re saying you don’t love her.”

“I’m saying…” His voice broke, just slightly, before he caught it.

“I’m saying it’s always been you, Wednesday. Even when I didn’t want it to be.”

The words dropped between them, raw and dangerous.

Wednesday’s pulse stuttered, but she forced her face into stone. “That’s not fair.”

“Why not?” His voice was rising now, quiet but sharp. “Why isn’t it fair?”

“Because I don’t know what to do with that.”

Silence. Long, aching silence. A crow cawed somewhere overhead.

He took a step closer, desperation bleeding through his restraint. “Then tell me why you keep coming back. Every year. If you don’t want this… if you don’t want me… why do you keep showing up?”

She didn’t answer.

The wind moved through the cemetery like breath through a hollow chest, rustling the trees. Her jaw was tight, her eyes unreadable, but her silence was louder than anything she could’ve said.

Xavier’s voice dropped, quieter now. “You keep showing up like it’s a ritual. Like I’m a season you visit and then leave behind.”

She flinched, barely.

“I used to think it meant something,” he continued. “That maybe you were trying. That maybe you just needed time.”

He looked at her then – really looked. And she hated how much grief lived in his eyes.

“But it’s been years, Wednesday. Years of almost. Years of silence. Years of me waiting for you to say something that isn’t ‘see you next year.’”

She turned away sharply, staring at the rows of gravestones, refusing to let him see the fissures opening inside her. “You chose her. You said it yourself. She’s good. Kind. Simple. Maybe you need that.”

He shook his head, almost laughing – bitter, hollow. “You don’t do simple, and neither do I. I thought maybe I could. That if I pretended hard enough, I’d stop waiting for you. But I can’t.”

The air was cold, but her skin burned.

“You think this is love?” she asked, voice like a blade. “Waiting for someone who keeps leaving you behind? That isn’t love, Xavier. That’s masochism.”

“Then why are you here?” he shot back.

The words echoed in the quiet graveyard, and for a long, unbearable moment, she had no answer.

Finally, she said, very quietly: “Because I don’t know how not to be.”

He closed his eyes, as if the admission hurt more than silence ever could.

For a moment, he almost reached for her. Almost bridged the space between them. But his hands curled into fists instead, and when he opened his eyes, they were wet.

“This will ruin you,” she said instead, cold and precise, even as her insides burned.

He gave a broken laugh, bitter and hollow. “It already has.”

And then, without warning, he turned. Walked away. Not fast, not dramatic – just deliberate, each step pulling him further until his figure blurred between the gravestones.

Wednesday stood frozen among the marigolds, the silence rushing back in, suffocating. She didn’t call after him. She didn’t move.

Her fingers curled into fists behind her back, nails biting crescents into her palms. Her chest rose and fell too quickly, her pulse frantic in her throat.

For once, she was the one left behind.

And she hated that she didn’t know how to follow.

…

Wednesday walked until her legs ached, until the cold November air had scraped her lungs raw.

She told herself she was just walking off the conversation. The ache of his words, the sting of his absence. She traced street after street, aimless, rigid, her coat pulled tight around her as if she could keep herself from coming apart. Jericho was quiet now, the Halloween chaos faded into scattered candy wrappers and the occasional flicker of string lights left on overnight.

But no matter how many turns she made, how far she forced her feet, she couldn’t outpace the hollow that Xavier had left in her chest. His voice haunted her with every step.

It’s always been you.

Her hands trembled inside her pockets. She flexed her fingers, trying to will them steady, but the truth was – she had no idea what to do with herself anymore.

So she kept moving. One block, then another. Past the bookstore. Past the park where she’d seen him with flowers. Past rows of dark houses that all blurred together.

Until she stopped, breathless, at the foot of a building she hadn’t consciously chosen.

Xavier’s apartment.

She stared up at the windows, some lit faintly from lamps, others dark. Her pulse thundered. For a long, excruciating moment she just stood there, debating whether to turn and vanish into the night, pretending this hadn’t happened.

But her body betrayed her. She climbed the stairs, her boots loud against the metal, every step a countdown she couldn’t stop. By the time she reached the third floor landing, her chest felt too tight to breathe.

Her hand hovered over his doorbell. She hated herself for shaking. Then she pressed it, sharp and final.

There was shuffling inside. Then the door cracked open.

Xavier stood there in sweatpants and a worn gray T-shirt, hair messy like he’d been running his hands through it all evening. His face registered confusion first, then shock.

“Wednesday?” His voice was rough, unguarded. “What –”

She didn’t let him finish.

She stepped forward, seized the collar of his shirt in both fists, and kissed him.

Fierce, desperate, without prelude.

Her lips crashed against his like she’d been holding back for years and couldn’t anymore.

Like she was drowning and he was the last breath she’d ever get.

For a heartbeat, he froze. Completely still, as if his mind couldn’t catch up with what was happening.

And then – he kissed her back.

The hesitation burned away in a rush of heat. His hands came up, first tentative, then gripping her waist like he couldn’t bear to let her go. He stumbled back to let her inside, the door slamming shut behind them, their mouths still fused like neither could survive the air between.

Her braid slipped loose as he buried a hand in her hair. She tugged at his shirt, pulling him closer, anchoring herself in the one thing she couldn’t deny anymore.

Every year, every look, every almost – they all crashed down in that moment, inevitable, unstoppable.

They broke only for breath, foreheads pressed together, both trembling.

“What are you doing?” he whispered, voice wrecked.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, rawer than she’d ever allowed herself to be. “I just –” Her words broke, sharp and ragged. “Don’t make me stop.”

He looked at her then, like she was both salvation and ruin. And instead of answering, he kissed her again, slower this time, deeper, as if memorizing every inch.

For a second, he broke the kiss, his lips hovering against her jaw, his breath uneven. His forehead pressed to hers, eyes squeezed shut like if he looked at her he’d break apart.

“I dream about this,” he whispered, voice rough as gravel. “You.”

Wednesday tugged at the hem of his shirt with impatient fingers, and when he lifted it over his head, she caught herself staring.

A raven sprawled across his chest, wings inked in sweeping black, its body nestled among delicate strokes of gladiolus. The bird’s gaze was sharp, alive, too familiar to be coincidence. Wednesday’s breath caught – not because she was surprised, but because it felt inevitable. Of course he would mark himself with her shadow.

Her fingers moved of their own accord, tracing the edge of its wing down to the curve of his ribs. Xavier’s muscles tightened under her touch.

“You…” Her voice faltered, the word breaking before she could cage it in sarcasm.

“I got it the summer after you left,” he said, barely louder than the thud of her heartbeat in her ears. “Couldn’t seem to get you out of my skin any other way.”

Wednesday didn’t answer. Instead, she leaned closer, lips ghosting where her fingers had traced.

His breath hitched at her touch, and she let herself smirk, just slightly. “You dream about this,” she murmured, echoing his earlier confession, “but I think you left out the part where you begged.”

He laughed, short and ragged, before catching her mouth again. When her dress slipped from her shoulders and pooled at her feet, he stepped back just enough to take her in, eyes dark and unguarded.

“God, Wednesday,” he whispered, voice frayed. “I’ve wanted this longer than I should admit.”

Her reply was wordless – a hand fisted in his hair, pulling him down to her.

More of him unfolded. On his left side, ink stretched in clean lines: a dagger, its blade etched sharp, running just beneath his ribs. Her hand hovered there, brushing the hilt. She wondered if it hurt when he had it done – if he’d chosen that place for the sting, or if he’d chosen it because it was closest to his heart.

They collided again, her mouth claimed his, and stumbled together toward his bedroom, leaving a trail of discarded clothes in their wake.

The bedroom was dim, lit only by the streetlamp outside casting fractured light across the sheets. It felt like a dream – too quiet, too fragile, too close to breaking.

When they finally sank onto the sheets, the world outside ceased to exist. Xavier’s hands roamed with a reverence that made Wednesday’s chest tighten, as if he were tracing not just her body, but the years of waiting, of denial, of everything they had never said. Every line of her form was mapped with careful, lingering touches, his fingers memorizing curves and hollows like a sculptor committing a masterpiece to memory.

He pressed soft kisses along her collarbone, the nape of her neck, the gentle slope of her shoulder, each one leaving a heat that lingered long after his lips moved on. Wednesday’s breath caught, a shiver wracking her from toes to spine.

Her fingers threaded through his hair, not guiding, just holding. Just needing.

He moved lower, reverent and deliberate, lips brushing the inside of her thigh like a promise. She gasped, hips shifting, breath catching in her throat.

He didn’t rush. Didn’t ask. Didn’t speak.

His mouth found her like he’d been waiting years to do it right – slow, steady, devastating. Her body arched, breath stuttering, one hand gripping the sheets, the other still tangled in his hair.

She tried not to make a sound. But she failed.

Xavier held her like she was sacred. Touched her like she was something fleeting. Loved her like he didn’t care if it ruined him.

Wednesday had never felt herself unravel like this before. Usually, she was steel and shadow, sarcasm and distance. But under his hands, under his lips, the walls cracked, and she let herself melt into him, into the ache of longing that had never abated. Every sigh, every tremble, was both confession and surrender.

And when she came – breathless, undone, whispering his name like it hurt – he didn’t stop. He kissed her through it, held her through it, let her fall apart in the quiet.

She pulled him up to her, kissed him hard, desperate, tasting herself on his lips. Her hands found his face, his chest, his hips – grounding herself in the reality of him.

When she moved to straddle him, it wasn’t bold. It was cautious. Testing the edges of something sacred.

Her hands pressed against his chest, fingers brushing over the raven again before trailing lower, catching the curve of his lotus tattoo on his upper thigh. She traced it lightly, letting her fingertips linger on the delicate petals inked into his skin. The lotus, she realized, had always been hidden – private, vulnerable, beautiful – and now it was hers to claim.

Xavier’s breath hitched at the touch, his eyes darkening with need and reverence.

Their bodies aligned slowly, like they were learning each other all over again.

She sank down onto him with a breathless sound – not a moan, not a cry, but something raw and involuntary, like grief escaping through her throat.

He stilled beneath her, eyes locked on hers, as if movement might shatter the moment. Her hands braced against his chest, grounding herself in the reality of him.

Warm, solid, hers.

They moved slowly at first. Like they were testing the waters. Like they were afraid of what it meant to finally feel.

Her breath hitched with every shift, every slide, every whispered name. His hands gripped her hips, then her waist, then her face. As if he couldn’t decide which part of her he needed most.

Then something shifted.

A gasp. A look. A rhythm.

And suddenly, the years caught up with them – the missed chances, the aching silences, the weight of every October spent pretending they didn’t want this.

She moved faster. He met her halfway.

Her breath hitched with every thrust, every desperate attempt to close the years-long distance between them. His forehead pressed against hers, their gasps tangled together, their rhythm frantic, unsteady, and utterly consuming.

She whispered his name like a prayer. He said hers like a confession.

When the crescendo finally broke, it left them trembling, clinging to each other in the silence that followed. Their breaths were ragged, their skin slick, their bodies still pressed so tightly together it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

For once, there was no sarcasm, no armor, no distance. Only raw, unfiltered truth in the way they held each other, the way their hearts thundered in the same rhythm.

…

They didn’t stop at once.

Not after the first time.

Or the second.

They reached for each other like they might drown if they didn’t, pulling, clawing, clinging, their movements fueled by something darker than desire: desperation, grief, years of what-ifs and almosts turned into fire under their skin.

It was messy. Urgent. Endless. They pushed each other past the brink again and again, as though they were both terrified that if they stopped – if they allowed rest – one of them would vanish into the night, and this fragile, devastating reality would dissolve back into longing.

Every time she gasped his name, it broke something open in him. Every time he whispered hers against her throat, her chest, her lips, she let him. She let him have her entirely.

Hours blurred. The night outside slipped deeper into silence, but inside, they were anything but. A rhythm of need, of bodies colliding and pulling apart and colliding again. Their words came in fragments: “don’t stop,” “stay here,” “always you,” things neither of them had ever dared say in daylight.

It wasn’t until exhaustion finally claimed them, tangled together in sheets that smelled of sweat and paint and something new – something theirs – that they stilled. Her hair was damp against his chest, his arm locked around her like he couldn’t bear to loosen it even in sleep.

Sleep claimed them in fragments, broken and shallow, but together.

…

November 2, 2023

The dawn crept through the blinds in pale slivers, brushing across the disheveled sheets. Xavier stirred briefly. For a long moment, he didn’t realize why his chest felt heavy, warm, anchored. Then he looked down.

Wednesday was curled against him, her breath slow against the hollow of his collarbone, her braid undone so her hair spread like dark silk across his chest. One of her arms draped over his stomach, as if – even unconscious – she hadn’t wanted to let him go.

For a second, he forgot how to breathe.

He’d pictured this a thousand times, in idle moments and sleepless nights – what it might feel like to hold her without her pulling away, to wake up with her body tucked against his like it was the most natural thing in the world. He thought it would feel triumphant. Instead, it felt like standing at the edge of something he couldn’t keep.

He pressed his lips to the top of her head, light as a ghost, careful not to wake her. It wasn’t possession, not even really affection. It was reverence.

He wanted to stay like this forever. And he knew he wouldn’t.

When she finally stirred, not too long after, she blinked up at him slowly without moving away. No flinch, no denial. Just that cool, sharp look that was entirely hers, softened at the edges by the rare vulnerability of morning.

“You’re staring,” she murmured, voice low.

“You’re letting me,” he answered.

She didn’t reply, but the faintest curl at her lips betrayed her.

Her gaze softened – barely. The closest thing to tenderness he’d ever seen in her. For a fleeting moment, he thought maybe this time would be different.

The hours that followed weren’t dramatic. They didn’t need to be. He made coffee; she sat perched on his counter, hair messy, his shirt swallowing her frame. She didn’t gush, didn’t confess – but she stayed. She let him hand her a mug and brush his fingers against hers. She let him sit close enough that their knees touched. She let him laugh at something dry she muttered about his tragic plant collection.

It was, in its own way, more intimate than the night before.

And maybe that was why it hurt more when, by noon, she stood. Already dressed again in black, polished, her armor restored, but her eyes lingered on him in a way that made his chest ache.

“Wednesday –”

“Don’t,” she cut in, voice firm, but not cruel. “You know what this was.”

He swallowed hard, searching her face for something, anything. “I know what I want it to be.”

A pause. For a flicker of a moment, he thought she might bend. But then she adjusted the strap of her bag, straightened her shoulders.

“I’ll be yours for the weekend,” she said, and it was softer than any knife, sharper than any wound.

And then she walked out.

Xavier stood at the window, watching her small figure disappear into the Jericho streets below, the taste of her still on his tongue, her shadow still in his sheets.

It was easier when she was just a ghost he got once a year. Now she was flesh, and warmth, and laughter in the morning light – only to vanish, leaving him with a bed that would never feel full again.

…

The hallway felt colder than it should have.

Wednesday closed the door quietly behind her, the sound of it clicking into place far too final for something so small. She didn’t let herself linger, didn’t let herself glance back at the apartment where Xavier stood – probably still watching, still waiting for her to falter. If she turned around, she wouldn’t leave. And leaving was the only thing she knew how to do.

Her footsteps on the stairs echoed like a metronome, too steady, too deliberate. She held her spine straight, her chin high, the picture of resolve. On the inside, every step felt like pulling a stitch loose from her own skin.

She’d woken in his arms. For the first time in years, she hadn’t dreamed of silence or graves but of warmth – his heartbeat steady under her cheek, his hand resting at her waist as if she belonged there. The temptation to stay had been unbearable. A weaker person might have given in.

But weakness was dangerous. Weakness meant permanence, and permanence meant she would have to admit that she wanted him.

She hated how much she wanted him.

Chapter Text

October 30, 2024

The train hissed as it slowed into Jericho’s small station, its brakes screaming against the rails. Wednesday sat stiffly in her seat, gloved hands folded neatly in her lap, watching the familiar blur of autumn swallow the windows. Crimson leaves clung to their branches like stubborn ghosts, while the ones already fallen were swept along by the wind in a restless shuffle.

She had sworn – last October, when she boarded this same train north – that she would never return. She had sworn she would bury the ritual with Xavier, bury the pull of this place, bury everything.

And yet here she was. Again.

Hope was a dangerous thing.

It trickled beneath her ribs despite her best attempts to snuff it out. It was hope that had pulled her back after another year of silence.

Hope, and guilt.

Because the memory of last time lingered in sharp detail, far sharper than she wanted. Not only the way his mouth had found hers in a fever of years-long restraint, not only the feel of his body pressed desperately against hers. No. The morning was what haunted her.

She hadn’t meant to stay. She should have dressed in silence, left while he was still tangled in dreams. But she had woken to find herself curled in the shelter of his body, his arm heavy around her waist, his breath steady at the crown of her head. She should have moved then. She didn’t.

Instead, she let herself lie there, memorizing the rhythm of his heartbeat. She let herself accept the cup of coffee he brewed for her without asking how she took it. She let herself watch him lean against the kitchen counter, hair messy from the previous night, looking at her like…

Like she was something he had finally earned. Something he could finally keep.

And then she left.

That was the cruelest part, wasn’t it?

Not that she gave herself to him for one night, but that she let him believe it could be more – if only for a few stolen hours of morning light.

The train jolted to a stop. Wednesday rose, her boots clicking against the worn floor as she stepped into the chill October air. Jericho hadn’t changed: the same streets lined with marigolds for Día de los Muertos, the same pumpkins sagging on stoops, the same crisp bite of autumn in the air. The same, and yet not.

Because something in her was different.

She walked the familiar streets, her long coat whispering around her ankles, and for the first time she felt it – the possibility of staying. Of admitting the thing she had buried for too long. She could almost picture it: the Weathervane in the morning, sketchbooks scattered on his counter, the quiet rhythm of something that wasn’t just once a year.

But the thought twisted into guilt as quickly as it bloomed. What if he hated her for leaving again? What if the softness of that morning was already ash in his mouth?

Her footsteps slowed as she passed the florist on the corner, the same one she’d seen him emerge from years ago with a bouquet for someone else. The window display had shifted for the season – orange chrysanthemums, marigolds, gerbera, tall stalks of gladiolus – and Wednesday’s eyes lingered on them longer than she wanted.

A trickle of unease crept through her, unplaceable, as though something was missing from the landscape she had come to know in these yearly pilgrimages. Empty in the way that silence can weigh heavier than sound. She shook it off. Xavier was probably busy. His work, some family obligation – there were always reasons he wasn’t immediately present.

She shook it off. The wind whipped across her face as she turned the corner toward her family’s street. Familiar houses lined the block: modest porches draped in fake cobwebs, bowls of candy already perched by the doors. The Addams house stood as it always had – an unshakable silhouette against the fall sky, iron gates yawning open as though welcoming her home. Thing barked once from the yard, bounding toward her on too-long legs, the strange mongrel of a dog that had somehow become her mother’s beloved companion.

Wednesday crouched to scratch him absently behind the ears, her gaze skimming over the marigolds Morticia had already planted by the gate. Home. Safe. Predictable.

Tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow, she would see him. Tomorrow, she would know if the hope still had any ground to stand on – or if it was only guilt, keeping her tethered to this place.

…

The Weathervane smelled the same: scorched espresso beans, cinnamon sugar from muffins too sweet for Wednesday’s taste, and a faint undercurrent of pine that had probably seeped into the walls since the place opened. The bell over the door jingled as she pushed it open, and for one sliver of a moment, her chest betrayed her. She half-expected him – sketchbook under one arm, shoulders hunched like he hadn’t slept enough – to be sitting at their usual table in the back.

Instead, it was Enid waving at her with both hands like an air traffic controller, already half out of her seat before Wednesday had cleared the threshold.

“Wens!” Enid squealed, loud enough to turn a few heads. “You came! You actually came!”

Wednesday crossed the café with her usual measured gait, sliding into the chair across from her former roommate. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

Enid’s grin threatened to split her face. “Don’t sound so excited about it. It’s been… what? A year? No, almost a year and a day. And you didn’t even tell me you were coming! Rude.”

“I prefer to keep my movements obscure. Easier to evade capture.”

Enid rolled her eyes but didn’t press, leaning forward on her elbows, chin propped in her hands. She looked different, Wednesday thought. Softer, maybe, or perhaps just steadier. Her hair was shorter, a sweep of pastel streaks curling around her face, and there was a diamond-shaped ring glinting on her finger. Ajax’s doing, undoubtedly.

“So.” Enid’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Halloween in Jericho again. What changed your mind this year? Last October you swore you were done.”

“I changed my mind,” Wednesday said evenly. “Something about the holiday felt… incomplete.”

“That’s such a weirdly poetic way to say you missed us,” Enid teased.

“I said nothing of the sort.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Wednesday’s lips twitched – barely, but enough for Enid to notice and beam like she’d just won an argument with Death himself.

They fell into easy chatter after that. Enid updated her about life with Ajax (“He still leaves the toothpaste cap off, but I’ve accepted it as his fatal flaw”), the new bakery that opened across from the florist, and how Eugene had finally started selling honey commercially (“He named it BEEyond Belief.”).

Then, mid-story, Enid said it. Casual. Offhand. Completely unaware of the detonation she was about to cause.

“Oh – and you just missed Xavier! He’s out of town this weekend, helping his dad with some art installation thing in Massachusetts, I think?”

Wednesday’s hand froze on her cup.

“Apparently it’s some fancy father-son project,” Enid went on. “Left yesterday.”

She took a sip of her latte, then noticed the shift – the subtle but unmistakable stillness that descended across the table. “Wens?”

Wednesday’s voice, when it came, was even but brittle. “He’s not in Jericho?”

“No…?” Enid tilted her head. “Wait, are you okay? You look like someone told you Christmas was cancelled.”

“I don’t celebrate Christmas.”

“Don’t deflect.” Enid set her drink down. “What’s going on with you two? Because last time you both were in the same room, the air was like… emotionally flammable.”

Wednesday said nothing. The ache that began in her ribs spread outward, slow and heavy. She’d crossed state lines, half-preparing herself for the battlefield of facing him again – and instead she was staring at the empty space where he wasn’t.

“That’s one word for it.”

“Then what? Come on, you can’t do this to me. You’ve been holding out for years, and I know there’s something, and if you don’t tell me I’ll die of curiosity right here in the Weathervane.”

Wednesday glared, sharp enough to make lesser mortals combust. Enid didn’t even blink.

Finally, she said, “He almost proposed to someone else.”

The words came out like glass.

Enid froze mid-sip. “What? To Elvira?”

“Last year,” Wednesday nodded and continued, her voice flat though her stomach coiled. “He told me he was considering it. I told him he doesn’t do simple. He disagreed. We argued. It was…” She searched for the word, found only knives. “Ugly.”

“Oh, Wens…” Enid reached across the table, resting her hand on Wednesday’s. She didn’t pull away.

“And then,” Wednesday went on, because now that the dam had cracked there was no holding it, “he asked why I kept coming back if I didn’t want him. I told him he was the thing I couldn’t bury.”

Enid’s eyes were wide, shining. “That’s… kind of poetic? Wow. And then what?”

“He left.”

Enid let out a breath she’d clearly been holding. “And?”

Wednesday’s throat worked. “And I went to his apartment.”

Enid’s gasp was audible. “You did not.”

Wednesday’s silence was answer enough.

“You did!” Enid clapped her hands over her mouth, squealing into her palms before lowering them again. “Wens, you… oh my god, you –” She stopped, sobered by the look on Wednesday’s face. “Wait. What happened?”

Wednesday stared into her latte, watching the foam collapse in slow spirals. “We… resolved it. Physically.”

“Physically,” Enid repeated, like she couldn’t quite believe it. “As in… you… oh my god.” She flailed a little in her chair before collecting herself, suddenly softer. “And then?”

“I stayed until around noon.” The admission was quieter, as though speaking it too loud might undo it. “We had coffee. It was… domestic. Almost.”

Enid’s lips parted. “That sounds… kind of perfect.”

“It wasn’t.” Wednesday’s tone cut the word clean. “Because I left. Again.”

The ache of it sat heavy in her chest, heavier than it had on the train, heavier than in the cold streets outside. Saying it aloud to Enid – the leaving, the betrayal of her own hope – made it real in a way it hadn’t been before.

Enid’s hand squeezed hers. “Why?”

“Because staying would have been worse.”

“For you, or for him?”

Wednesday’s eyes lifted, dark and endless. “Both.”

Enid didn’t flinch. “Do you love him?”

The question was too simple. Too direct. Wednesday hated it and yet she didn’t look away.

“Yes.”

The word was a blade and a balm in the same breath.

Enid’s eyes filled, though she smiled through it. “Then why aren’t you with him?”

Wednesday pulled her hand back, folding it in her lap, her armor snapping back into place. “Because love has never been enough. Not for me.”

The bell above the door jingled again. A couple wandered in, laughing, shaking the cold from their coats. The Weathervane hummed with its ordinary life, none of them knowing that a girl dressed in black had just confessed to the only person who could ever wring it out of her.

Enid exhaled shakily. “Okay. Okay, listen to me. I don’t care how much you think you’ve ruined it. If there’s even a chance – and Wens, there is a chance – you’ve got to stop running. He deserves that. You deserve that.”

Wednesday didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

Because all she could hear, echoing in the quiet between Enid’s words, was Xavier’s voice: It’s always been you, Wednesday. Even when I didn’t want it to be.

She had no idea what to do with that.

And when she finally left the café, a couple of hours later, the late afternoon air felt colder than it should have.

...

October 31, 2024

The cemetery was quieter than usual.

Even the wind seemed hesitant to move through the trees, afraid of disturbing the silence that hung over the graves. The flower arrangements were beginning to wilt, their petals curling in on themselves.

Wednesday walked the gravel path alone, her boots crunching softly against the ground. Every step felt heavier than it should have. This had been their ritual – the coffee at Weathervane, the walk through the graves, the annual dance of restraint and yearning. But now there was no him beside her, no cigarette smoke curling into the cold air, no sketchbook balanced on his knee as he pretended to draw the scenery instead of her.

It was just her.

And the ghosts.

She traced the route by muscle memory – the corner where he used to pause, the bench where he’d teased her for pretending not to enjoy the autumn light, the tree where he’d once left a tiny charcoal sketch of her profile on a napkin. It had been four years ago, but she still remembered the way he’d handed it over, embarrassed, like it was something indecent.

Wednesday sat down on that same bench now. The air smelled faintly of damp earth and dying flowers.

She closed her eyes. For a moment, she imagined the scrape of his lighter, the warmth of his shoulder brushing hers, the sound of his voice saying her name like it was both a curse and a prayer.

But when she opened them, there was only a single red rose leaning against the base of the tree.

It was fresh.

Too fresh to have been left by chance. Beneath it, something white caught the corner of her eye. A folded piece of paper, edges slightly creased, weighed down by a small, smooth stone.

Her instincts told her to ignore it. But her curiosity – that insufferable, inexorable part of her that always wanted to dissect – made her reach for it.

The note wasn’t sealed, but it was unmistakably his handwriting: the slanted letters, the ink smudges, the faint press of the pen from when he’d hesitated over certain words.

She unfolded it carefully.

Wednesday,

If you’re reading this, then I’m not there. I don’t know if you came looking for me, or if you just wandered here because you always do. Either way, I guess I wanted you to find something.

You once said that love was just a chemical imbalance, an inconvenient trick of biology. I laughed then, because it sounded like something only you could say – cold, logical, beautifully cruel. But I’ve been living with that imbalance for years now, and it doesn’t feel like a trick. It feels like gravity.

Every year, you come back. And every year, I tell myself I won’t wait. That I’ll move on, or forward, or anywhere that doesn’t keep circling back to you. But then you walk in, and the world folds back to the shape of you, and I’m right back where I started… seventeen again, watching you roll your eyes and pretend you don’t care if I’m looking.

When you left last year, it didn’t surprise me. I think part of me always knew you would. But what I didn’t expect was how quiet it felt afterward. Like you’d taken the sound out of the air.

I tried to fill it. I almost did. But nothing sticks. Not art. Not sleep. Not anyone else.

You have ruined me in the most patient way imaginable.

And yet if this is all I ever get, I’ll still take it. The pieces. The yearly ghosts. The versions of you that belong to October and no other month.

You said once that you don’t know how to stay. Maybe that’s true. Maybe staying would make you someone you don’t recognize. But I’ve realized something, you do stay. In places. In people. In me.

Every brushstroke I paint carries your name somewhere in the lines. Every sketch starts with your silhouette, even when I pretend it’s not. Every time I see the first leaf fall, I think about how you always pause before crushing one under your boot, like you’re deciding if it deserves mercy.

So, if you came back this year… thank you. For proving that the ritual isn’t just mine.

And if you didn’t, that’s okay too. Because I’ll still be here, in some way. In this bench, in this stupid tree, in whatever part of you still looks for me even when you swear you won’t.

You once told me that ghosts aren’t frightening, they’re just persistent. Maybe that’s what I am now. Something that lingers, waiting for the next October.

Take the rose. It’s the same kind you left for me the year I turned twenty-five. You said it was from your mother’s garden, but I knew better. You picked it yourself.

If I’m lucky, maybe you’ll pick one next year too.

– Xavier

P.S. You can stop pretending you don’t like the way I draw you. You’re terrible at lying, even to yourself.

Wednesday stared at the letter until the words began to blur.

Thing crept closer, resting its paw gently against her foot, as if even it understood the gravity of what she was holding.

Her throat tightened. She hated how the ache in her chest wasn’t sharp – it was slow, spreading like ink through water.

He wasn’t here. But somehow, he was everywhere.

She folded the note back along its creases and pressed it to her chest for just a moment – something she’d never allow anyone to see – then tucked it inside her coat.

The rose, she took last. Its stem had tiny thorns, and when one pricked her finger, she didn’t flinch. The blood was proof she could still feel something.

As she stood to leave, the wind finally picked up. A single marigold petal drifted down and landed beside the bench, as if the world itself wanted to keep the ritual alive.

Wednesday looked at it, her face unreadable. But her voice, when she finally spoke, was a whisper no one but the dead could hear.

“I’ll see you next year.”

Chapter Text

October 30, 2025

New York in late October was the kind of cold that cut clean – not sharp enough to wound, but precise enough to make her feel alive. Wednesday liked that about it. The city didn’t coddle. It demanded presence. It didn’t care about sentiment, which made it the perfect place to hide from her own.

She had told herself, not this year.

No trains. No suitcases. No polite lies to Enid about “work commitments.”

No returning to Jericho just to stand in the same graveyard and feel the same ache clawing up her ribs.

The ritual was over. She would stay put.

That was what she told herself when she woke up that morning to the thin light slipping between her apartment blinds.

Her apartment was an orderly chaos of dark furniture, scattered books, and a single, dying plant that she had been trying to keep alive. The kettle hissed on the stove, and the faint hum of the radiator filled the quiet. She made her coffee black and bitter and drank it by the window, watching the streets below fill with the rhythm of the city – dog walkers, coffee carts, children dragging their parents toward school.

Her reflection stared back at her in the glass: still pale, still unbothered, still pretending.

She had done well this year. Did some lectures in Columbia. A few freelance publications. A small exhibit on gothic literature she’d helped curate for a museum uptown. The kind of accomplishments people would call impressive, though she found them exhausting in their normalcy.

But beneath the surface – beneath the crisp shirts, the essays, the polished sarcasm – something hollow pulsed.

Every October, it began again.

The ache.

The ghosts weren’t the kind buried in the ground, but the ones she’d left in Jericho.

She’d tried to bury him. She really had.

But memory had a way of lingering – of replaying moments like film reels she never asked to see. Xavier’s hand on hers as he passed her a cigarette. The way his voice softened only when he said her name. The feel of his breath against the back of her neck when they were tangled on each other two Halloween ago, the warmth of him pressed into her spine.
She had stayed that morning, made coffee, watched him smile at her in the weak light – and still, she’d left.

She didn’t even know why. Maybe because staying felt too much like surrender.

Wednesday crossed to her desk, where unfinished drafts sat in neat, accusing stacks. One was an essay titled “The Anatomy of Absence.”

She hadn’t touched it in months.

Her phone hadn’t stopped buzzing. Enid had texted again – thirty messages, all hearts, all exclamation points.

pls come home this year 🥺 i’ll haunt u if u don’t

ajax even said he’ll make u ur own coffin-shaped brownie

it’s not the same without u

Wednesday stared at the screen, thumb hovering over the keyboard.

She typed:

I’m busy.

Deleted it. Typed again:

I’m not coming this year.

And sent it before she could change her mind.

The reply came within seconds:

okay fine :(

but promise me you’ll at least do something for halloween???

u can’t just sit in the dark and brood again

Wednesday almost smiled. Almost.

“I can,” she murmured to the empty room. “And I will.”

By afternoon, the city was louder. Car horns. Music leaking from open shops. The faint scent of roasted chestnuts and rain. She walked to work anyway – not because she had to, but because movement kept the ache from settling too deep. The museum was quiet when she arrived, the marble floors echoing under her boots. She lost herself in the silence, in the comfort of cataloging artifacts older than her pain.

Still, her mind wandered.

Would he be there this year?

Would he still go to the cemetery, even if she wasn’t coming back?

The thought came uninvited, unwanted, and yet she couldn’t silence it. She imagined him standing among the gravestones, the autumn light falling over his hair, sketchbook in hand. Waiting, maybe. Or not.

She didn’t know which was worse.

That night, she stood on her balcony, New York spread out beneath her like a constellation of concrete and longing. Somewhere below, a saxophone played a mournful tune that carried into the chill air.

She closed her eyes and told herself, one last time, that she had made the right choice.
She wasn’t going back.

She couldn’t.

But even as she said it, she felt it – that tiny, traitorous part of her that still looked for him in the crowd, that still counted the days until Halloween, that still dreamed in the color of his eyes.

The ritual was broken, yes.

But the haunting – that, she realized, would never end.

…

October 31, 2025

For the first time in years, the air in Jericho felt like it was holding its breath.

Xavier stood in front of the Weathervane, hands tucked into his jacket pockets, watching the autumn light drift through the glass. Every corner of this town still looked the same – the same crooked streetlamps, the same leaves turning gold and brittle underfoot – but this year, everything felt off.

He’d come here two days early, half out of habit, half out of something he didn’t dare name. The ritual was simple by now: she arrived, he found her, they danced around the ghosts of what they were. It was never easy, but it was something.

And even though she always left, she also always came back.

That had been the unspoken truth he built his Octobers around.

But this year, Jericho was quiet. Too quiet.

He’d checked the cemetery the night before. Walked the same path they used to take, under the old birch tree where they’d once watched the fog roll in like a living thing. The bench was empty. No black boots. No Wednesday.

He told himself she was just late. Maybe her flight got delayed. Maybe she was visiting her family first. He told himself all of that, and even he didn’t believe it.

His phone buzzed, snapping him from his thoughts.

Enid.

He almost didn’t answer – he knew that tone of hers when she texted too many emojis in one message. But he did.

“Hey,” he said, voice low. “What’s up?”

There was a pause at the other end. That pause that always meant Enid was about to say something he didn’t want to hear.

“So, uh… you’ve seen Wednesday yet?” she asked, too lightly.

His grip on the phone tightened. “Not yet. I figured she’d show up later tonight or tomorrow. Why?”

“Because she’s not coming, Xavier.”

He leaned back against the nearest lamppost, jaw tightening. “What do you mean she’s not coming?”

“She told me this morning,” Enid said softly. “Said she was staying in New York. That she didn’t want to…” she hesitated, “do this again.”

Do this.

The way Enid said it, heavy with meaning, made his stomach twist.

The ritual. The almosts. The years of her leaving in front of him.

“She didn’t even tell me,” he muttered.

“I think she thought it would hurt less that way,” Enid said. “But Xavier… she’s hurting too. I can tell. You should…”

“I should what?”

“You should go to her.”

The silence that followed was long enough for him to hear the sound of his own heartbeat.
“Enid,” he said finally, “that’s not how this works. She doesn’t want –”

“Maybe she does. Maybe she’s just scared. You both are.” Her voice softened, losing its usual brightness. “You’ve been waiting for her every Halloween for years, Xavier. Maybe this time, she’s waiting for you.”

He didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

His throat felt raw.

Enid sighed. “Look, I’m not saying show up with flowers and a ring –”

“Good,” he muttered.

“– but maybe just show up. Be there. Don’t make her think you stopped trying.”

The line went quiet, save for the faint hum of static. When she finally hung up, the silence pressed down heavy.

He stayed where he was for a long time, staring out at Jericho’s small streets – the muraled walls, the closed shops, the soft gray sky that promised rain.

He’d spent years telling himself that if Wednesday wanted him, she’d stay. That he shouldn’t have to chase her. That love shouldn’t be a test of endurance.

But maybe that was cowardice in disguise.

He looked down at his hands – paint-stained, calloused, restless. They used to hold her like they were afraid to forget the shape of her. He still remembered it. Every inch.

By the time the sun dipped behind the trees, his decision was made.

At home, he threw clothes into a duffel – a jacket, a sketchbook, the small packet of drawings he’d meant to give her this year. He didn’t bother to fold them. He didn’t even check if he packed socks.

When he zipped the bag shut, something in his chest shifted – not relief, not certainty, just movement. For the first time in months, he wasn’t standing still.

He grabbed his keys, one last glance around the apartment, and whispered into the empty air,
“Don’t run this time.”

Then he left for the station. The night air bit at his face as he stepped outside, but for once, it didn’t hurt as much as staying.

He was going to her.

…

November 1, 2025

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was never quiet, not truly. Even on weekday mornings, it hummed with footsteps, whispers, the low rustle of programs and the soft clicking of camera shutters. But for Wednesday, there were pockets of stillness – corners that felt preserved from the noise of the living.

She knew them all.

She knew which staircases tourists ignored, which halls emptied by late afternoon light, which galleries had benches tucked beneath marble figures who’d been staring into eternity for centuries. The Met was the only place in New York that made her feel both alive and comfortably dead.

She’d always thought that was why she came here.

But lately, she wasn’t so sure.

Her heels clicked softly against the marble floor as she walked past the European paintings wing, past the faint smell of polished wood and rain-damp coats. She hadn’t planned to come here today. She was supposed to be in Jericho, visiting the cemetery, pretending the ache in her chest was nostalgia instead of longing.

Instead, she was here. Alone, but not lonely.

At least, that’s what she told herself.

“Yes,” she muttered to herself looking down, “I am aware this borders on pathetic. But at least it’s dignified pathetic.”

Her favorite gallery was one of the smaller ones: marble statues, pale and cold, with a skylight that diffused the autumn sun into a kind of ghostly glow. It was quiet enough to hear one’s thoughts, and often empty enough to forget they existed at all.

When she stepped through the archway, she saw him.

Xavier.

For a heartbeat, Wednesday thought she’d conjured him out of longing.

It wouldn’t have been the first time.

She stood there longer than she should have, frozen in that fragile disbelief that exists between dream and waking.

Then he looked up.

Their eyes met.

The world narrowed – just air, light.

And him.

Xavier blinked once, twice, as if making sure she was real. Then his mouth curved, not into a smile exactly, but something softer, sadder, the kind of expression one wore when seeing a ghost they’d been praying for.

“Of course you’d find me here,” he said, voice low, familiar as the sound of rain.

Wednesday’s fingers twitched against the strap of her bag. “You make it sound like I was looking.”

He closed his sketchbook and set it aside. “Were you?”

She hesitated. “I don’t make a habit of seeking out disappointment.”

“Then I’m flattered to be your exception.”

The air between them was fragile – taut and trembling, like a thread strung too tightly. She could feel every unspoken word from the past year in it, every letter she never sent, every night she tried not to remember the weight of his hand against her skin.

“What are you doing here?” she asked finally.

“I could ask you the same,” he said. “But you’ll just say something bleak and evasive.”

“Bleakness is honesty dressed appropriately,” she replied, crossing her arms.

He huffed a quiet laugh. “Still quoting yourself, I see.”

They stood there in silence. People passed in and out of the gallery, their footsteps echoing against the marble, but neither of them moved.

“I thought you’d be in Jericho,” she said after a while.

“I was,” he said. “Until Enid told me you weren’t coming.”

Her chest tightened. “So you came here.”

He nodded. “You spent all those years showing up for me. I figured it was time I did the same.”

The words settled between them like dust, slow and heavy.

She turned away first, looking toward a statue of Persephone poised in white stone, her hand frozen mid-reach toward the world above. “You shouldn’t have,” Wednesday murmured.

“I know.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Then why?”

Xavier stood, the sketchbook still in one hand. His movements were unhurried, careful. “Because I didn’t want to spend another year wondering what would happen if I stopped waiting.”

Her throat went dry.

He took a step closer. “You didn’t come back,” he said, voice quieter now. “I thought maybe that meant you were done.”

“I thought maybe I was,” she admitted.

“But you’re not.”

“No,” she whispered. “I’m not.”

Silence stretched again. Outside, thunder murmured somewhere far off, distant enough to sound like memory.

Xavier reached into his jacket, pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I was going to give you this,” he said. “In Jericho.”

Wednesday took it, fingers brushing his. The paper was soft, worn at the edges, as if he’d carried it around for too long. She unfolded it slowly – a sketch. Her. Sitting on the cemetery bench, legs crossed, face tilted toward the wind. Every line was deliberate, tender, alive.

He’d drawn her the way people remember things they don’t know how to forget.

Her voice was barely audible. “You never stopped drawing me.”

“Couldn’t.”

She wanted to be cruel, to slice the air with sarcasm until it stopped hurting. But the exhaustion in his face – his eyes shadowed, jaw tense with restraint – made cruelty feel small.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said.

He smiled faintly. “You said that already.”

“And yet you’re still here.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I’m still here.”

The words were simple. But in them, she heard everything he hadn’t said – every year he’d waited, every night he’d hoped she’d stay, every time he’d watched her leave and let her.

She looked back down at the sketch, her chest tight. “You’re a fool.”

“I know.”

When she finally looked up, he was closer – close enough that she could see the fine paint stains still clinging to his fingers, the faint freckle under his left eye, the pulse beating steady in his throat.

“Wednesday,” he said, her name breaking slightly in the middle. “I don’t know what we are anymore.”

“Neither do I.”

“I just know I don’t want to spend another year pretending I don’t…” He stopped himself, swallowed hard. “pretending this isn’t real.”

The ache in her chest sharpened. “You don’t get to say that,” she whispered. “Not after –”

“After you left?” he interrupted, but there was no anger, only hurt. “You always leave, Wednesday.”

“I know,” she said. “And yet you always let me.”

That silenced him.

The space between them felt electric, unbearable. Her heartbeat was loud enough to drown out everything else – the chatter of tourists, the rustle of programs, even the quiet hum of the museum lights.

Finally, Xavier exhaled, slow and unsteady. “Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Can I kiss you, Wednesday?”

Her eyes met his. Dark, searching, afraid. She didn’t answer.

She just leaned in.

And when his lips met hers, the world went still.

No marble, no skylight, no noise – only the two of them, suspended in a moment that felt like it had been waiting years to happen.

The kiss wasn’t desperate, not at first. It was hesitant, reverent, the kind of kiss you give someone you’ve spent years imagining and never stopped missing. But it deepened – inevitably, painfully – as if both of them were trying to make up for every “see you next year” that had ever passed between them.

When they finally broke apart, neither spoke.

Her hand lingered against his chest, feeling the rapid beat beneath her palm. His forehead rested against hers, both of them breathing the same uneven air.

Outside, thunder rolled closer.

And for the first time in years, neither of them moved away.

Chapter Text

October 30, 2026

The morning sunlight poured through the tall, narrow windows of their apartment, striking the dark wood floors and the scattered plants in shafts of gold. Wednesday sat cross-legged on the edge of the sofa, notebook in hand, eyes flicking over the pages but mostly watching Xavier.

He moved around the kitchen with casual ease, carefully arranging his brushes in a tin, his sleeves rolled up, revealing the faint lines of new a tattoo she had memorized months ago: The tattoo was small, etched in delicate black lines – a moth with paper-thin wings, its body framed by slender leaves that curled like they’d been caught mid-fall. A few stars dotted the space around it, subtle and shimmering, like someone had stitched constellations into his skin. She had always known him by these little marks, and yet seeing them now, in a domestic setting, made her chest tighten in a way she wasn’t entirely prepared for.

“Do you ever stop obsessing over light?” she asked, voice sharp and teasing, tilting her head just enough for him to look at her.

Xavier smirked without looking up. “Light is everything. You’re just jealous of its power.”

“Hopeless,” she muttered, though the edge of her lips twitched upward despite herself.

“Persistent,” he corrected softly. “Like I said, it always leads to you.”

She scoffed with a playful undertone. “Dramatic statements again?”

“Some things are worth the drama.” His glance flicked toward her, brief but electric, the kind that made her stomach coil.

They moved through the apartment with quiet familiarity. Xavier prepared coffee, the smell of roasted beans mingling with faint traces of turpentine from his work in the studio corner. Wednesday watched him, noting the careful way he handled the brushes and the exacting manner in which he sorted his paints. It was both him and not him – domestic, patient, grounded – yet with that edge of chaos she had always loved.

“Are you always this meticulous?” she asked, arching a brow as he set a tiny cup of espresso in front of her.

“Only when I don’t want the world to fall apart,” he said, voice soft but teasing. “You know, typical Monday-level anxiety.”

She rolled her eyes but allowed herself a small grin. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Thank you. I try,” he replied, leaning against the counter with one shoulder, arms crossed, watching her with an expression that said he could stay like that for hours. And maybe he would.

They shared a quiet breakfast together: coffee, half a croissant, and the kind of morning conversation that didn’t need words. A hand brushed against another by accident, and it lingered a moment longer than necessary. Wednesday felt warmth coil through her chest. This was home – not just the apartment, not just New York, but this fragile, tender space they had carved for themselves over months of careful negotiation.

“You ever think about staying in one place for longer than a week?” she asked suddenly, breaking the easy silence.

He looked thoughtful. “With you? Already doing it.”

Wednesday’s smirk faltered for just a heartbeat. “I meant, permanently,” she added, voice softer, almost hesitant.

Xavier didn’t answer right away, and she pretended to study her notebook, though her heart was hammering.

“You really think we could make this work?” she asked, more seriously than intended.

He came over, resting his hand lightly on hers. “We’re doing it every day, Wednesday. It already is working. Just… trust it.”

Her lips pressed together. “You make it sound too simple.”

“Everything good is complicated,” he replied, voice low, warm, deliberate. “But this,” he gestured to their small apartment, their hands intertwined, “this is worth every complication.”

And for a few long moments, there was only them: the morning light, the faint scent of coffee and paint, the quiet domestic rhythm that was theirs alone.

…

October 31, 2026

The streets of Manhattan were alive with the chaos of Halloween: children in costumes scurried past, street performers shouted over the honking taxis, and the scent of roasted chestnuts mingled with the cool autumn air. Wednesday walked beside Xavier, bundled in her dark coat, scarf wound tightly around her neck. Her hand brushed against his occasionally, a small, deliberate contact. The city roared around them, but inside this bubble, it felt like just the two of them.

They moved toward The Met, navigating past throngs of tourists and the occasional costumed adult. Wednesday’s eyes scanned the familiar stone facade, the high ceilings and soft light filtering through the skylights always offering her a sense of calm. It had been her retreat for years, a place to center herself amid the chaos of the city, but today it felt different. Today, Xavier was beside her, his presence grounding and exhilarating all at once.

Inside, the gallery was hushed, the muted echo of footsteps on the marble floor, the occasional click of a camera shutter. Wednesday led them to her favorite quiet corner, the spot where she often sat and simply watched the sunlight shift across the stone sculptures.

Xavier walked beside her in that patient, easy way of his. He carried himself differently now – less restless, more certain – though she could still see the artist in his fingers, twitching with the quiet need to capture something fleeting. A year in New York had grounded him, reshaped him. He’d taken to the rhythm of the city like a canvas too vast to ever finish, but one he couldn’t stop returning to.

Wednesday pretended not to notice the way he watched her as they walked. She’d grown used to it. The silent study of her, the eyes that traced the line of her collar, the curve of her mouth, like he was memorizing the shapes of words she hadn’t yet spoken.

“You’re staring,” she murmured, not looking at him.

He didn’t deny it. “You’d think you’d be used to that by now.”

“I thought we agreed on no worshipping before noon.”

He smiled, that quiet, private one that had once infuriated her. “It’s ten fifty-eight.”

“Blasphemy,” she muttered, but the corner of her mouth betrayed her.

They walked until the crowd thinned into near silence. Their steps took them to that particular corner Wednesday likes. A marble bench by a window overlooking Central Park, dappled light falling across the stone. It had become theirs over time. The place where they always ended up, as if drawn by a shared compass neither could explain.

Wednesday sat first. Xavier lingered on his feet a moment, glancing toward a nearby sculpture – a Greek figure, half-shattered but still defiant, as if the artist had caught him mid-resurrection. He smiled faintly before joining her.

Outside, the trees burned in their autumn colors. The world beyond the glass was all orange and rust, soft and dying in the way that made it beautiful.

For a while, they said nothing.

Then Xavier spoke, his voice quiet. “I used to hate this time of year.”

Wednesday turned to him. “Because of the dead leaves?”

He shook his head. “Because it always meant endings. School years, summers, the last of the warmth. I thought it was just nature’s way of saying nothing lasts.”

Her gaze lingered on him. “And now?”

He looked at her, and she saw it then – the calm steadiness that had taken root in him, that she’d helped plant without ever meaning to. “Now I think endings are just… pauses,” he said. “Waiting to become something else.”

Something in her chest tightened. “That’s unbearably sentimental.”

“You like it.”

“I tolerate it.”

His laugh echoed softly in the vaulted hall. Then silence again, thicker this time – the kind that carried weight, not absence.

Wednesday turned her head toward the window. “I almost didn’t come last year,” she admitted. “Not because I didn’t want to. But because I thought… if I did, it would mean I’d finally run out of excuses.”

“Excuses for what?”

“For pretending this wasn’t inevitable.”

He blinked, slow. “This?”

“You and I.” Her tone was level, but her hands were folded too tightly in her lap. “Every year, I told myself I could leave it behind. That it was something I could outgrow. But I never did.” She exhaled, long and low. “Even when it hurt.”

He leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees. “You think it didn’t hurt for me?”

“I know it did.” Her voice softened. “That’s the problem.”

For a moment, neither moved. The world seemed to narrow – to the sunlight on stone, to the faint echo of footsteps far away, to the quiet between two people who had run out of years to hide behind.

Then Xavier reached into his coat pocket.

The movement was so simple, so natural, that it took Wednesday a full breath to realize what he’d done. When he turned his hand over, a small velvet box rested in his palm – black, of course, though the way it caught the light gave it an almost silvery sheen.

Her pulse stumbled.

He didn’t open it right away. Instead, he looked at her with something deep and steady in his eyes – a kind of reverence she would have once called foolish. But not now.

“I’ve had this for months,” he said quietly. “I was going to wait until next year. Until I could find the perfect moment. But then I remembered. There’s never been a perfect moment with us. Just the ones that nearly destroy me, and the ones that make everything worth it.”

Her throat tightened, but she didn’t speak.

Xavier opened the box.

Inside lay a ring unlike any she’d ever seen – gothic and intricate, a black diamond cradled in silver filigree that wound like vines. It gleamed faintly, dark as her favorite ink.

Her breath caught.

He smiled, soft and nervous all at once. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“Doubtful.”

“You’re thinking you’re not the marrying type.”

Her lips twitched. “You’ve read me too well.”

“I know,” he said, leaning closer, voice rough now. “You’re not Morticia. I’m not Gomez. We don’t need vows or ceremony or anyone’s blessing. But I also know that everything in my life – every brushstroke, every scar, every October – has led here. To you.”

Her fingers trembled, just slightly, in her lap. “You’re aware that statistically, most marriages end in ruin.”

He laughed, soft and shaking. “Then ruin with me.”

The silence stretched, fragile as glass.

Wednesday looked at the ring again – then at him. At the man who’d waited, who’d learned her sharp edges and never tried to sand them down. The one who had seen her in her truest, darkest light and called it beautiful.

She exhaled. “I’m not built for forever.”

“Neither am I,” he said. “But I want to try anyway.”

Something inside her broke open – quiet and clean. She didn’t realize she was smiling until she saw the relief flood his face.

“Fine,” she said softly. “But only because you asked nicely.”

He huffed a laugh that cracked somewhere halfway to a sob. “So… that’s a yes?”

“It’s an acceptance of terms.”

He shook his head, still grinning, still a little dazed, as he slid the ring onto her finger. It fit perfectly – of course it did. His hands lingered there a beat too long, thumb brushing the back of her hand, like he was trying to memorize the proof of it.

She studied the ring, how it gleamed like something forged from shadow and promise. Then she lifted her gaze to him.

“I would expect nothing less,” he said quietly.

Wednesday leaned forward until their foreheads touched, the space between them small and trembling and alive. For a moment, neither spoke. The museum faded, the world outside with it – all that remained was this, and them, and the inevitability they had finally stopped running from.

Outside, autumn burned its last colors across the park.

Inside, under the soft light of centuries, two souls who had spent years circling each other finally, quietly, chose to stay.

…

They stayed in that quiet corner of The Met longer than they meant to.

The world had shifted – imperceptibly, but irrevocably – and neither of them seemed eager to move too quickly in case it shattered. The ring on Wednesday’s finger caught the light as she turned her hand slightly, examining it like an artifact she’d unearthed rather than something meant for her.

“It suits you,” Xavier murmured beside her, voice roughened by emotion he hadn’t quite recovered from.

“It’s gaudy,” she said, though her tone was light. “Morbidly beautiful. Completely impractical.”

“Like you,” he said, smiling faintly.

She cast him a look sharp enough to wound, but the corners of her mouth betrayed her. “Flattery is unbecoming.”

“Still effective.”

Wednesday’s reply died on her tongue when he leaned over and pressed a slow kiss to her temple, a gesture so uncharacteristically tender she almost forgot how to breathe for a moment.

She cleared her throat, composing herself. “We’re in a museum.”

“I’m aware.”

“Public displays of affection are abhorrent.”

He tilted his head. “You didn’t seem to mind five minutes ago when –”

She turned her glare on him before he could finish. “Finish that sentence and I’ll make sure you’re banned from every gallery in the tri-state area.”

He laughed – quietly, warmly. “God, I missed this.”

That silenced her again, though for different reasons. Because he said it like he still couldn’t believe it – that after years of loss and distance and aching almosts, this was real. That they’d made it here.

After a while, Wednesday rose from the bench. “Come on,” she said.

Xavier blinked. “Where?”

“Home. You still owe me coffee.”

He stood, slipping his hand into hers without asking. It was so natural now – the weight of his fingers against hers, the way they fit as though the universe had quietly decided to make amends.

They left The Met hand in hand, stepping into the pale gold light of late afternoon. Central Park stretched out before them, scattered with leaves and children in costumes and the hum of the city – alive, loud, indifferent. Wednesday hated it less when she was with him.

The walk was companionable, quiet. He carried their coats. She sipped coffee from a paper cup, frowning when the lid rattled slightly out of alignment. He watched her the way he always did – the fascination of an artist who would never quite tire of his favorite subject.

“I suppose I should tell Enid,” she said finally, still watching the path ahead.

“That we’re engaged?”

“That I’ve allowed someone to domesticate me.”

He smiled. “I’ll let you break the news. I don’t think I’m emotionally prepared for her reaction.”

“She’ll probably knit matching sweaters.”

“She’ll definitely knit matching sweaters.”

Wednesday sighed. “We’re moving again.”

He laughed, and the sound echoed between the bare trees. “Where this time?”

“Somewhere less reachable.”

“Good luck. I’d follow you anywhere.”

She looked at him then – really looked – and there it was again, that unbearable stillness between them. The kind that wasn’t silence, but recognition.

“Careful,” she said softly. “You sound like a man in love.”

“I am.”

It wasn’t dramatic, or whispered like a secret. It was simple. Factual. The kind of truth that didn’t require ceremony.

Wednesday’s steps slowed. The sunlight hit her hair just right, and for a moment Xavier thought, absurdly, that he could spend lifetimes chasing that particular shade of dark.

“You’re insufferable,” she murmured.

“You love me anyway.”

“Unfortunately,” she said, but her lips curved all the same.

They crossed the street together, the city unfolding around them – horns, voices, the blur of movement that had once made her feel alienated, but now just felt like living. He reached for her again, and she didn’t pull away.

When they reached their building, she paused by the door and turned to look up at him. “For the record,” she said, tone low, deliberate. “I still don’t believe in forever.”

He brushed a hand along her jaw, thumb resting just below her chin. “Then we’ll just make every day convincing.”

Her gaze held his for a long, trembling second – and then she nodded, once.

The door opened, the city hummed, and somewhere inside, a future was waiting.

Quiet, sharp, impossible, and entirely theirs.

And as they stepped into the dim warmth of home, the light from the street caught her ring one last time – a gleam of black fire, small and fierce, reflecting the only truth either of them had ever needed:

It would always lead back to each other.