Chapter Text
Time, Enid Addams had learned, did not move the way people insisted it did.
It did not arrive with ceremony or sharp edges. It did not announce itself with milestones or thunderous change. Instead, it settled in softly, accumulating in the corners of ordinary life. In mornings that began without alarms. In hands that reached for one another without thinking. In the way, a place slowly stopped feeling temporary.
Three years had passed like that.
The Boston apartment remained mostly the same. Tall windows that let in too much sun for Wednesday’s liking. Candles scattered everywhere, wax pooling in uneven halos on every available surface. The old desk by the window in the office Wednesday had claimed. But the people inside it had changed. Enid stood barefoot in the kitchen, sunlight warming the tiles beneath her feet, her phone glowing softly in her hand. Her hair had grown a bit longer now reaches a tad below the shoulders. It was still dyed as it always had been. An email sat open on the screen, reread for the third time despite the fact that it had not changed.
Fall Issue Final Approval Needed.
She smiled, slowly and a little disbelieving.
She had finished her bachelor’s degree the previous spring. Fashion Journalism, four long years of critique circles, trend forecasting, sleepless nights, and deadlines that never stopped chasing her. Somewhere between freshman icebreakers and senior portfolios, she had grown into herself.
The blog she had started halfway through college, meant at first to be nothing more than a creative outlet, had become something real. It had readers. A voice. People who returned, week after week, for her words. That alone still felt unreal.
The internship had turned into a job.
Not glamorous. Not famous. But steady. A small, independent fashion and beauty magazine that cared more about authenticity than algorithms. She wrote editorials, trend pieces, and essays about softness, self-expression, and finding joy after surviving things that tried to take it from you.
Her name in print no longer made her chest tighten with disbelief. It sat there comfortably now. Like it belonged.
And then there was TikTok.
She made a face at her phone.
She had resisted it for months. Then, finally caved to her excitement at the prospect. Outfit breakdowns. Behind-the-scenes moments. Cozy mornings. Chaotic laughter. It had gained traction slowly at first, then faster once people realized she was the same Enid Addams married to that Wednesday Addams.
The comments were relentless.
Wait, you are married to the author
No way this is the same, Wednesday Addams
This is the most aggressively domestic goth marriage I have ever seen
She had shown Wednesday exactly one comment thread before Wednesday stared at the screen for a long moment and said, calmly, "The internet is a failed social experiment," before returning to her manuscript.
As if summoned by thought alone, Wednesday spoke from the living room.
"You are smiling," she said. "Either you are being praised or someone has made a grievous error."
Enid laughed, setting her phone aside as she poured coffee into two mugs. "Little of both."
She carried one mug into the living room, placing it beside Wednesday’s elbow without comment. Wednesday accepted it immediately, fingers curling around the ceramic as if it had always been there.
"You received news," Wednesday said.
Enid blinked. "How do you always know?"
"You hum when you are pleased," Wednesday replied, not looking up from her pages.
"I do not hum."
"You were humming."
Enid grinned. "Okay, maybe I was."
She dropped onto the couch beside her wife, tucking her legs up beneath herself. Augustus lifted his head from the cushion with a displeased sound, then resettled when Enid scratched behind his ears. Across the room, their second cat, Octavian, watched with solemn intensity from the bookshelf. Sleek, grey, and perpetually judgmental, he had bonded with Augustus in a way that felt less like friendship and more like an alliance.
"Magazine approved my fall piece," Enid said. "No edits."
Wednesday’s pen paused. "As expected."
Enid nudged her shoulder. "You could sound proud."
"I am," Wednesday said. "I simply do not feel the need to announce the obvious."
That was new too, in its own way. Wednesday had always believed in her. But over the years, that belief had softened into something warmer, quieter, and deeply rooted.
Wednesday was twenty-two, now nearing twenty-three. She had published two more novels since the fiasco involving her visage. Each darker and more precise than the last. Critics adored and abhorred them. Readers devoured them. She pretended not to care and absolutely cared. She had done a few more tv interviews, book signings, and such. But she hated it, hated the attention. At the very least, however, she had become used to it a bit. It had become enough of a routine to settle into almost being tolerable.
The money was good. The schedule is flexible. The apartmentwas paid for without stress.
Life had settled. They had taken that second trip to Mexico last November. During Dia de los muertos. Enid adored every second of it.
Agnes drifted out of her room then, hair still damp from a shower, wearing one of Enid’s oversized sweaters. At nineteen, she was all sharp intelligence and quiet uncertainty, hovering on the edge of adulthood without quite knowing where to step.
"Morning," Agnes said.
"Afternoon," Enid replied, checking the clock. "You slept through breakfast again."
Agnes shrugged. "It was aggressive."
Wednesday raised her eyes briefly. "There are leftovers."
Agnes smiled, small and grateful, and disappeared into the kitchen.
She had lived with them full-time for a year now. After finishing her last two years at Nevermore, after Morticia stayed on as principal for one more year after her graduation, the manor had felt too empty. Too quiet. Agnes couldn't be in that huge palace alone, nor did she want to return to Jericho. She wanted her pack. SO she came to Boston and moved in full-time.
She worried, sometimes. About being in the way. About taking up space. She had voiced it once, late at night, sitting on the couch with her knees pulled to her chest.
"You are not a burden," Wednesday had said immediately.
"Ever," Enid had added, just as firmly.
They had meant it.
Morticia had stepped down at the end of the most recent school year, handing Nevermore over to a worthy successor before returning to the manor full-time with Gomez. Pugsley, after two years with Uncle Fester, had decided that a life of crime was not for him.
He now works as a professional stunt and test man, specializing in military vests and experimental weaponry.
He said it was fun.
Yoko and Divina had finally married the previous summer. The wedding had been dramatic, elegant, and exactly as unhinged as expected. Enid still had photos saved on her phone. Wednesday claimed she attended out of obligation. Enid had caught her smiling during the vows.
Everyone else had moved on. Graduate programs. New cities. New lives.
And here they were.
Late August. Boston is warm and heavy, sunlight slanting through the windows in lazy bands. Enid was twenty-three. The apartment breathed around them, full of life, of motion, of familiar sounds.
Too full, maybe.
The thought came without warning as Enid leaned back into the couch cushions and let her eyes wander. Shoes clustered by the door. Books stacked in precarious towers. Candles burning low. Augustus stretched across the armrest like he owned it. Octavian watching everything with quiet suspicion. Agnes was laughing softly in the kitchen. Wednesday beside her, solid and steady and constant.
Enid loved this place. She truly did.
But something in her shifted all the same.
The walls felt closer than they used to. Not suffocating. Just… finite. Like a space that had done its job well and was gently suggesting it might be time for the next one.
A house drifted into her thoughts. Not a fantasy. Not yet. Just the shape of an idea. More rooms. A door that opened onto something green. Space to grow into rather than around.
And then, just as suddenly, her mind wandered further.
Not deliberately. Not insistently.
Just for a heartbeat, she imagined small sounds where there were none now. Soft footsteps. Laughter pitched higher than Agnes’s. The quiet weight of something fragile and new cradled between her hands. A life made from her and Wednesday both. Pups. Babies. Children.
The thought startled her enough that she inhaled sharply and let it go at once.
She did not linger on it. Did not examine it too closely. But it left something warm behind, something steady and unexpected.
Perhaps she was closer to being ready for that than she thought.
Enid rested her head briefly against Wednesday’s shoulder, grounding herself in what was real and present. Wednesday did not look up, but her arm shifted instinctively, settling more securely around Enid’s back.
The future did not feel distant anymore.
It felt possible.