Chapter Text
It had been a dare. Her dark eyes, glaring at him over the salted rim, the slice of lime pinched between her forefinger and thumb.
“Oh, come on, Tyler. A bet’s a bet.” Her voice was low and teasing. The tiniest twitch of a mocking grin etched the corner of her mouth. “But you can absolutely go ahead and quit. I do love it when you lose , after all.”
He remembered the way the tips of his ear flared red-hot, a growl inside of him furious at her. Because she knew the exact words that would drill down into him, a hot needle hitting all the right nerves.
He clinked his shot glass with hers, grinning wickedly. “Over my cold, dead body am I losing this one.”
“Yes. That is the point,” Wednesday countered before dipping the contents into her mouth, swiftly down her throat. He followed suit, his eyes never leaving her face.
He should’ve known that when his whole body turned into flame when her tongue ran languidly across the rim’s line of salt that he was in danger.
Of course, he was always in danger when it came to matters of Wednesday Addams. She essentially was danger, after all.
But what he had said was practically prophetic. Although he was no psychic like she was, he had to admit he, Tyler Galpin, was a dead man. He had said till death do we part , after all.
And now it was now an already sizzling Las Vegas morning and he was laying, still as a church mouse, in a bed with Wednesday Addams’s pale, freckled body next to his own. Her pale, freckled, naked body.
He shouldn’t move. He shouldn’t even really breathe, all for various reasons.
Firstly, he had Wednesday Addams curled like a kitten next to him, her leg wreathed like a comma around his thigh and then disappearing under his shin; this was sight enough to steal his breath without any effort on his part.
Secondly, a merciless hangover was drumming across his entire body, a dull, electrical ache.
Thirdly, and most importantly, the previous night was coming back to him in a flash of images and sensations and snatches of dialogue.
That first drink, a shot of well tequila, at the reception. Then, a second and a third and an eighth. A thought: yep , she’s officially drunk me under the table. Wednesday hadn’t looked completely drunk, but he was no judge of character, and she looked annoyingly luminous in her black bridesmaid’s dress, the only one permitted not to be dressed like a damned peacock at Ajax and Enid’s wedding. But she must have been a bit tipsy because when she asked him to dance, he thought she had been joking. However, she had pulled him out with a droll roll of her eyes, and he remembered thinking even then that he was the lamb being brought out for slaughter.
It won’t be the first time you’ve danced with me , she had issued coyly at him, and his heart had risen and sunk at all the same moment, their collective past rushing through him like a gall of stormy air. But the dance this time was anything but two high school co-eds, her body pressed against his like their skin was opposing and attracting forces, unable to be apart. The grind of her hips. His hands on her ribcage. The way her onyx eyes flashed at him when his head dipped and he had admitted huskily, “Alright, alright, you win, Addams. You’ve drunk me officially under the table. Name your price; what’I owe you?”
Her hands had been around his neck, fingers laced back there. It had been a slow song, and he was holding so tight to the small of her back, he was sure he was bowing her spine. “You’ll really do anything I tell you to?”
“The Hyde part of me made the bet,” he’d said, raising an eyebrow. “Almost impossible for me to take it back, actually.”
Her eyes turned half-lidded, and she commanded, “Marry me, Tyler Galpin.”
She didn’t have to do that, really. Trick him like that. Marry Wednesday Addams? With her stubborn set of mouth, her lightning-rod eyes, the dry wit that drove him insane in so many ways? He would have done it in a second. It wouldn’t have been the first time he agreed to marriage with Wednesday Addams, after all.
Wednesday Addams, though, had wanted to trick him, he thought. She had warned him, that her determinedness would leave her single-minded to get what she wanted, that she might lie and trick her way into what she considered her selfish desires.
She had done well in her deceit, but maybe she thought he would have balked out of it at the last second, called her bluff. Yes, the Hyde version of him could -- with great effort and years of effort -- refuse commands, oaths, even promises now. But the alcohol, her dark eyes, and the memory of each time she had bested him in a spectacle of intelligence and stubbornness, in addition to the visceral impression her body had made on his own, was too much for him and the Hyde.
Last night, he had vowed to be with Wednesday Addams in sickness and health, until death do them part.
Now, in a Las Vegas hotel room with her tiny yet fierce body coiled against his own, his head pounding from alcohol and panic, both of his hearts hammering wildly, and his finger throbbing from the marital vow tattoo that he and Wednesday had gotten done at some ungodly AM hour.
Never mind that he had a good fifty pounds on her in his human form. And never mind that he could transform into a hulking mass of gray sinew and razor-sharp claws. None of that mattered one bit.
Because he had never been so sure of something than he was now: when Wednesday Addams woke up, she would see to it that death did indeed part the two of them.
-
Seven years. Seven years since he had started attending that infernal school. He supposed it was for the best that he got carted and essentially imprisoned there. The alternative was rotting away in some high-security psychiatric hospital before he finally went truly beserk and murdered everyone there. And, hey, court orders had become a normal part of his life at that point, so what was one tracking bracelet and regular visits from his parole officer? And a court-ordered therapist? And a doctor that specialized in Outcast medicine? Being everyone’s little guinea pig felt far from foreign to him; he had those memories of Laurel poking and prodding him relentlessly tucked away, forever his to keep and sort out and hold like a terrible secret inside him.
Honestly? What was worse? The damn uniform. It was stiff and fit in all the wrong places. Did not a single person in that school have broad shoulders? He felt like he was busting out of it all the time. Perhaps it was that he was projecting, that not fitting in the uniform was just an extension of him not fitting in period.
There was also her , Wednesday Addams, haunting him like a gilded nightmare. She, surprisingly, was not scornful of him in particular. Or more scornful than she was of everyone else. He supposed the very public trial where the state attempted to try him as an adult and where Laurel Gates’s litany of abuses got put on full display helped get her up to speed on the level of manipulation he was under when he did what he had done. That understanding obviously didn’t translate into any sort of forgiveness, which he didn’t want or expect. He didn’t ever try to convince her that he pretty much never lied to her about anything except the one thing he was forced to lie about: he was the monster, through and through, and he couldn’t tell her no matter how much he had wanted to. Direct orders, from Master Laurel Gates herself: don’t tell a soul, lie thoroughly if anyone asks, trick and deceive anyone who’s suspicious, your father included, Tyler . He’d tried, little bread crumbs, workarounds: telling her that he believed her about the monster, the little smile he gave her when he said she was becoming obsessed with this monster in the woods thing , giving Laurel Gates’s coffee order wrong at the Rave’N, wondering if she might get suspicious. It hadn’t worked, not in the way he had hoped, but it was a dumb hope after all, thinking she would be able to crack through all that bullshit he was forced to pile on and maybe… help him? But the second she found out what he was, she had only gone to her default mode, all torture and cold fury.
Needless to say, Wednesday Addams kept her distance, eying him in a way that was actually flattering: like he was dangerous and she didn’t trust him, not one bit.
It was better when Ajax finally became his friend. Their friendship was complex and interesting… no, no it wasn’t. It was based purely on the fact that they both liked to get stoned at night and listen to Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden into the wee hours of the morning, the two of them stumbling out of bed to barely make it to their first class, smelling thoroughly like pot.
With Ajax came Enid. With Enid came a whole slew of other people. It was hard to not like her effervescent sparkling personality, never mind that she had thoroughly kicked his ass that one time (okay, a bullet through most of his major organs via his father hadn’t helped, to be fair).
With Enid came Wednesday.
At first, she continued her strategy of offering him only the smallest blithering remarks and keeping her distance. Eventually, as time progressed, she did something that could only be considered an olive branch by Wednesday Addams: she started arguing with him.
Tyler supposed in the time they had spent together before he was forced to attend Nevermore, she had seen that he wasn’t really afraid of her. Well, he was , because Wednesday Addams was, by definition, slightly terrifying. But he found that rather charming as opposed to off-putting.
What she hadn’t seen (and he felt slightly ridiculous and arrogant to think this but it was true) was that Tyler Galpin was smart. Like, objectively, they had done one of those silly IQ tests when he was a kid and they had been alarmed by how high his score was. They had convinced his dad to put him in Mensa classes, shuttle him into all and every advanced-level class. And frankly, all those classes were still boring, and it was probably what got him into trouble in the first place. Being bored and drinking with Lucas and Jonah and Carter was not a good combo. And then Xavier Thorpe opened his big fucking mouth; Tyler can still remember the words: “You’re all going to die in this podunk town just like your parents!” and it was just opening a fresh wound on how unjust it was that his brilliant mother had died in a psychiatric hospital in the middle of nowhere, Vermont. So, yeah, he had lost his shit on Xavier Thorpe. And he regretted none of that, even to this day. However, the next thing he knew, he had cemented himself into the “bad kid” camp with his Sheriff Donovan Galpin. It was kind of all downhill from there.
Being smart was annoying, Tyler had decided. So, he was going to be annoying right back.
He started beating her in grades. That was the first blow. As his GPA steadily increased and he was making pace at swiping her Valedictorian status, he could see her nails sharpening, her glares becoming more pointed at him.
Finally, one day, he rounded a corner, found himself in a small, dark hallway with only her in it.
Yelping, he caught his breath, willing the Hyde inside his chest not to extend a slender claw out in reaction. “I see you still have that hobby of scaring the hell out of people,” he grumbled down at her, glaring.
Wednesday Addams didn’t even blink when she glared back. “How are you doing it?” She asked, voice clipped. She took a step forward in what he assumed was an intimidation tactic.
He had just arched an eyebrow at her. “How am I doing what ? Manage to continually get the shit scared out of me by all five-foot-nothing of you?”
She sniffed. “My height is mere camouflage; my enemies greatly underestimate me because of it.”
He offered her a small, crooked grin. “Funny. Never fooled me. I always assumed you were a formidable foe.”
This must have taken her off her guard because she now did blink before seeming to reassemble herself and continue onward, “How are you cheating ?”
It was his turn to be taken off guard. Cheating? What the hell was she talking about? He didn’t have anything close to a girlfriend, so she wasn’t referencing that type of cheating.
But then it hit him: he had finally cracked her. She thought he was taking extreme measures to secure the perfect grades he’d managed to rack up for every class, completely fucking up the curve.
She thought he was cheating academically .
“Maybe I use my affable, empty-headed facade as a camouflage,” he parried down to her, unable to hide the smugness in his tone. “My enemies greatly underestimate me because of it.”
Oh, she looked furious. He hated that he found this adorable rather than scary because he had no doubt she had numerous knives on her and would be happy to puncture his liver before his Hyde would know heads or tails what was happening. Note: Wednesday Addams was scary. Wednesday Addams was vengeful. The problem was that he thought Wednesday Addams was sexy as hell, and he couldn’t stop thinking that, even though he knew she hated him at best, could care less about him at worst.
“Affable?” She countered finally, eyes narrowing. “Hardly.”
“Fine. Not affable,” he conceded and then offered up a suggestion that he hoped would infuriate her even more, “Handsome work better?”
He had expected her to pinch her lips together and then threaten to remove his eyes from their sockets, but instead, her eyes narrowed considerably more and she said, “Is that how you’re doing it? You’ve used your good looks to lure someone into giving you all the answers?”
Okay, so he had been joking, so she temporarily stunned him with that one. He only stared at her dumbly.
Seeing his bemusement, she said bitterly, “You can only use that trick on me once.” She whirled, turning on her heels in a flurry of dark skirt and braid. Not looking back at him, she stalked away, saying, “I’m going to track down and find every person you’ve put under your spell and make sure that if they value their pinky fingers, they don’t give you the answers anymore.”
But before she was gone, he managed to break himself out of the thick layer of surprise he had found himself under and offered, “O potrebbe essere che sono più intelligente di quanto pensavi.”
He’d been learning Italian just to piss her off. Or maybe impress her. He hadn’t figured that out yet. Either way, he thought it would be funny to whip it out at some point because of their run-in with an Italian instructional manual in a past that felt many lifetimes ago.
The spiteful study paid off, because his statement of Or it could be that I’m smarter than you thought definitely got her attention. She halted, only several feet away from him. Then, finally, she said, “Your pronunciation is horrid.” Finally, she looked over her shoulder, not at his face, but definitely in his general direction. And, he’d be damned if he was wrong, but there was something in her gaze that spoke to intrigue, of a budding interest. “And you learned Italian?”
“Of course,” he said swiftly. “It’s the native tongue of Machiavelli, after all.”
Here, she huffed but she did gaze up at him, reevaluating. He felt very much like a bug squirming under a dissection pin, like she would like nothing more than to rip him apart and see what really made him tick. But, finally she said, “Ti sto tenendo d’occhio, Tyler Galpin.”
And she did, did in fact keep her eyes on him. He wasn’t under any illusions: she was watching him like a predator might study their prey, looking for a single, weak spot. A newly developed limp. Signs of tiredness. An injury. And then, at exactly the right moment, she would pounce, nails and teeth on his jugular, his blood steaming in her throat.
In a court of law, he couldn’t have gone on the stand and said that he minded one bit being under Wednesday Addams’s constant gaze.
Sue him: he found the constant threat of violence from Wednesday Addams hot as hell.
That Hyde version of him though? Found Wednesday’s murderous gaze even more enticing than the human part of him. That was, of course, a problem. Because churning in the back of his mind all the time were thoughts not of violence but of a desire so strong that it might have been better if he just wanted to rip out her throat and be done with it.
The Hyde side of him was, frankly, filthy. And it was also persistent. It hounded him day and night, slamming images into his brain of the way he’d love nothing more than to twirl up her braids into his fist and pull , pull so hard that her body would arch perfectly into his mouth, all parts of her body. He wanted to hear her scream and not from pain, but a breathy, agonized groan of his name. He wanted to feel her tremble against him as he watched her come undone over and over and over again.
Simply put, Wednesday Addams was making him a horny mess, and it was infuriating.
“Unless you’ve developed a new psychic ability, you can’t actually carve up my face simply by glaring at it,” he finally snapped one day. They had both found themselves stuck in the microfilm section of the library, which was tucked far back in the recesses of the building, just the two of them in every direction in eyesight. It was small and cramped, and the two Microfiche readers were jammed right next to each other. She was intensely looking up something to do with Goody Addams, so it felt entirely extracurricular. She didn’t even need to be here, and here she was, spending her Friday evening hunched over a newspaper article from… 1721? Christ, she was ridiculous.
He wished he didn’t find that entirely endearing.
He, however, was still trying to beat her thoroughly on the neck-and-neck race to being top of the class, if for literally no other reason than it would make her furious with him. So, he was pouring over records of Outcast trials and incarcerations from the last sixty years that involved wrongful convictions based on lack of biological knowledge of the Outcast’s DNA.
At some point, an odd conviction had crawled into his bloodstream, this singular purpose: he was still going to get justice for his mother. Maybe he had thought at one point he would’ve gotten it through Laurel Gates, destroying the very institution that he was now entrenched in. But now he saw that violence and blood and fire only got you so far. If he wanted to get justice instead of taking revenge, he’d have to use this pesky intelligence and be crafty, conniving, and work with the system. If he could change the rules surrounding how Outcasts like him were treated, maybe it would be like a balm on the wound that was Francoise Sylvanne Galpin’s ghost. He’d change the future and maybe it would reverberate all the way to the past, where his mother was scorned and belittled and drug through far more hell than she ever deserved.
For his mother, this all felt worth it. He, Tyler Galpin? Really didn’t deserve a second chance, he was sure. But he was getting the one that his mother should have received, and he’d be damned if he didn’t at least try to do something with it.
So, here he was, on a Friday night, while Ajax and Enid and Bianca (and Xavier, but fuck that guy) were all partying down at the lake. He had an essay due in Advanced Outcast Law, which he was actually paying attention to since it was feeding this new, thrumming purpose he’d assigned for himself. It didn’t hurt that Wednesday Addams was also taking this class; he was currently beating her by a half percentage point.
And that was probably why she was glaring at him; he was finding that the Hyde wanted to split him apart if he didn’t do or say something to her.
At his biting remark, however, she merely snapped, “You can quit the charade. I know you’re not here to actually study.” She crossed her arms firmly across her chest. “You’re trying to throw me off your trail.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Wednesday, can you just let it go?” He finally growled, and when he glowered at her, he realized something very, very bad had happened. Because her eyes got wide, wider than usual. Inside him, he could feel the Hyde practically purr, ready to be let loose. Yes, yes, yes, let me have her, you should have her. Tell her pretty little mouth a lesson about doubting you . She won’t regret it, not when you have her groaning because of our tongue.
He was sure if he were to look in a mirror, his eyes would be yellowed, pupils flush with veins.
The medicine had been helping. It was something of an inverse of what Laurel had given him, formulated from some cutting-edge lab that made it just for him. He had no idea how the school afforded it, but they had insisted that it was a part of his tuition, the tuition that was being paid by some random, anonymous donor. How he was going to pay for it after graduation was still a big we’ll cross that fucking bridge once we get there issue.
But it was working. Meditation was kind of working, too. If he was honest, getting stoned – albeit maybe not the healthiest option – helped sometimes as well.
But right now, being goaded and eyed by Wednesday Addams was putting him on an edge that he felt dangerously close to tipping over.
Never mind that he hadn’t had privacy for certain activities in six days since Ajax, now his roommate, had been leaving a beanie on the door pretty much every night until midnight, indicating that he and Enid needed the room for themselves. All this pent-up energy was not helping in this very tense moment, and he felt the scales crossing a point that would possibly be the end of him.
Her head tipped at him. “Could you do it now?” She asked, her voice almost breathless. “Could you transform and slice me clean down the middle?”
His voice sounded not quite human when he said, “Don’t ask me that, Wednesday.”
“So, yes?” She gave him a once-over, and goddammit, she didn’t look scared. She looked… turned on. “Then, do it. Go on, I dare you.”
He had his hands around her throat and waist so quickly, that he was sure even she, the dangerous Wednesday Addams, didn’t see it coming. Lifting her so easily it seemed like she weighed less than nothing, he slammed her body against the microfiche machine. Her breath left her in a whoosh, but her dark eyes didn’t leave his own. They were stormy with something that only sent him snarling even more.
What she said next almost leveled him. “ Finally ,” she gasped like she was relieved. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for your violence?”
He squeezed both her neck and waist tighter and instead of yelping in pain, begging him to stop, she had to ruin every part of his entire life: she groaned, an entirely lusty sort of sound, one that sent an electric trill straight to his cock.
“You’ve wanted to do this all year, haven’t you?” She breathed at him, her voice raspy from where he squeezed her throat. “Wanted to tear me up? Finish what you started?”
His breaths were heaving. “Yes. Oh god, yes ,” he breathed at her. He let go of her throat and waist, grabbed her knees, and pulled her along the desk, slotting his body in between her thighs. She gasped from the sudden release of her neck but also from the jolt of feeling his now fully erect length of him against her. Then, with a tone that rattled in his lungs, half-Hyde, he said, “I’ve wanted all kinds of violence from you, cockroach.”
Her eyes didn’t lose their fiery steeliness, even at his use of a nickname that he’d only used for her privately, in his own thoughts, especially those when he had the shower to himself, and her pale, freckled skin was easy to recall. “Go on, pull my hair,” she quipped imperiously. “I’ve seen you eying my braids all year.”
So he did and not gently, forcing her body to arch beautifully, perfectly, just like he’d always fantasized. Again, that groan from her lips, and then she had the audacity to roll herself against him, her ankles locking behind his thighs.
His mouth found her neck and he bit her, not bothering with the pretense of a prior kiss. She practically screamed, but not in a gargled sort of way that indicated pain. No, damn her, because she yelped his name, a pleading sort of thing, begging him for more.
Her hands were in his hair now, gripped with a fury that was only stoking this raging fire flowing through his entire body. Her blood was in his mouth and when she demanded bossily to kiss her, he did, her blood hot on his tongue when he licked it onto her own.
Her hips were cruel in their intention. She was a cruel girl, this Wednesday Addams, and god he loved that about her. Her determinedness was transparent, her brilliance crystal clear. She was loyal to her friends, to her family, loving them so acutely it was blade-sharp. But when she wanted to be fierce, which was often, she was the fiercest force of nature. He’d always seen that about her, from the first moment he had met her in that other life when he was just a Normie barista and she was a gothic version of Nancy Drew. But he ruined everything, he didn’t deserve even a sliver of her dark, little heart, even if he would have gone through the seven circles of hell for the chance to deserve it. But he didn’t, and he had accepted that a long time ago.
So, when her hands were undoing his belt, unsheathing him, her fingers cool against the head of his cock and she moved her lightly-curled fist, he hissed against her mouth, “You better stop me now, Wednesday, because both sides of me are about to lose all semblance of control if we keep going.”
“Good,” she hummed up at him, spreading her legs wider so that her core rolled leisurely, mirroring the way her hand was moving. “You’ve been such a good kid , Tyler Galpin, all year. ButAnd I know better. I’ve seen you, the real you, and it’s far more enticing than what they’ve tried to mold you into here at Nevermore.”
Her words slithered down into him, the Hyde lapping them up like he was dying of thirst. Because, yes , how did she know? The part of him that wanted desperately to feel just a little blood and grizzle in between his teeth? Wanted to slash through something? And there was a gentleness to him, he felt that part as well, but couldn’t there be both? The Tyler Galpin who wanted to kiss Wednesday Addams until she was breathless and the Tyler Galpin who wanted her blood on his tongue? Why was she letting him do both? How did she know exactly everything he had wanted? It didn’t seem fair, her knowing, and him knowing he could never really have her.
“Go on, Tyler.” Her voice was a strangled whisper. “Go ahead and lose control alrea…” His tongue was against her before she finished the sentence, which dissolved into a fucking hells as soon as he pressed it against her. At first, his mouth was over the strip of her underwear, but it was easy enough to have the Hyde produce a slim blade of talon, slicing cleanly through the strap over her hip bone. There was a knick of her skin, and when he covered his mouth to capture the blood, Wednesday issued another gut-punch of a groan.
Hiking her knees onto his shoulders, he pressed his mouth against her fully, licking a stripe upwards before sucking hard on the bud of her clit. Her thighs clenched tightly against his ears as he laved against her, and since his Hyde was losing its fucking mind, he did what Wednesday told him: he let himself lose control, let the Hyde have his tongue, long and slick and a little rough, let it press up against her, taking all of her cunt in one easy lick. And Wednesday lost it, almost howling, her knees pressing so tightly to his skull that he honestly thought she might crack a temporal bone.
Sliding the whole of her calves easily into the clenched palm of his hand, he folded her so that her knees were almost pressed against her shoulders. He leaned over and said lowly into her face, grinning wickedly, “You’re going to get us caught before I get a chance to get you off, Wednesday.”
“Hurry up, then,” she said, her face a mess of bliss and stubbornness and some other emotion he couldn’t interpret. “I’ve been wanting you inside me for a long time now. Make it either one of your talons or this ,” she rolled herself against him again, and he could feel the wetness from her core even through his uniform pants. His smile dissolved quickly, his mouth suddenly feeling very dry, his and the Hyde’s heart almost stopping before thudding away.
She was the one who guided him towards her entrance, and a part of him was still in a state of shock. This was happening. This was actually happening . He was pretty sure that he wasn’t going to wake up in a mess of sweat in his dorm bed, cursing himself for being a horny mess over the one woman who was never going to even trust him again, let alone let him touch her.
He pushed very slowly but resolutely into her. It had been brought to his attention throughout the years of locker room talk that he wasn’t exactly lacking in size in certain anatomical areas, and Wednesday felt so small against him, even though he hadn’t ever really thought of her as anything but larger than life.
He was only halfway sheathed when the Hyde side of his sensed something, the stretch of her body, the slight metallic smell of a different kind of blood. It halted him, and he stared down into her face, “You’ve… you’ve never done this before, have you, Wednesday?”
God, her face, it could have ruined him then and there, all swollen lips, wisps of her braids loose and falling in her eyes, pupils blown. She looked up at him, asked in a clipped tone, “Does it matter to you, Tyler?”
He was speechless for just a second before gripping her chin, a little roughly, but he said earnestly, “I don’t deserve this.”
Wednesday’s eyes searched his face rapidly, like she was reading a script running through his face.
“You always deserve the thing that wants you,” was all that she said, before slowly she arched her back, taking him almost to the hilt with her movement. He knew then, could feel the stretch and smell breaking of tissue, could hear her breathy gasp, he knew that he had gotten the unearned marker on Wednesday Addams - he was the first person she was doing this with, that she’d given him this moment to change her body forever more, and it was too much, he felt all his hearts burst in this moment.
Pressing his forehead flush against hers, he thrust once, slowly, sliding a thumb into her mouth to let her keen over. He increased his pace, saying, “Am I hurting you?”
“Yes,” she hissed around his thumb, “and I love it .” With her knees, she shoved against his chest, giving her space for a second to extend her legs so that her knees were now around his neck, her ankles interlocked behind his neck. And, oh gods , it allowed him to fuck down into her deeper. Wednesday must have felt it so deeply that she almost screamed; instead, she bit down on his thumb, which was pillowed against her tongue. His skin broke, blood flooding on her tongue, lightly coating her bottom lip.
He laced his fingers into her hair firmly, pulled down, his cheek now pressed against her own. “You can’t fool me, cockroach,” he breathed, “you don’t just feel pain.”
“Fine,” she admitted, almost a pout, but then she essentially mewled, “The pain makes it feel even more delicious, though.”
Her heaving chest was up against his own. He swore he could feel her pounding heart, and the Hyde could hear it, a beautiful whooshwhooshwhooshwhoosh that echoed steadily in his ears.
For a second, she let go of his thumb, gasped up at him, “Why haven’t you killed me yet? I know you’ve thought of it, how easy it would be to still my heart, to slice me open.”
A growl formed in his throat, and he drew back from her, grabbed her throat, his thumb pressing against her chin so that her fevered gaze was locked on his own. “Since I’ve been free, since the Hyde has only been mine to control, I’ve only wanted your blood to run hot, Wednesday Addams.” Tyler increased his pace and she yelped, loudly at that. As much as all he wanted was to hear her untethered noises, he realized they were still discoverable, even here in the abandoned recesses of Nevermore’s libraries, so he pressed his palm over her mouth, muffling the long note that left her throat as he arched into her. “I only ever wanted you so vividly and insanely alive, now that I’m my own. It’s all I thought I could ever want, after all I’ve done.”
The light behind her eyes was a strange sort of dark fire as he reached behind her to press needily against the small of her back, arching her like a comma against his body, the perfect punctuation mark for the way he felt about her: crazy and safe and dangerous and comfortable and on edge and forever and ever onward.
His climax was growing, heaving towards him like an inevitable wave, and suddenly it dawned on him: this was the exact type of situation that his father and every adult figure would be panicking about. Never mind that he knew that they were both technically adults now: he had come to her eighteenth birthday party and been thrilled to just be in the background as Enid tortured her with a celebration that at least was monochromatic and featured a seance. But right now he was inside her, skin to skin, and he knew every implication of what that meant.
“Wednesday,” he breathed into her face and removed his hand encompassing her mouth. Immediately, she groaned, long and long and perfect, and he almost lost it right then and there. “I’m going to come. Where? Where do you want me?”
Her legs clenched hard against him. “Stay here ,” she commanded, and his eyes widened, looking down at her in wonder.
Was she saying what he thought she was saying? “Wednesday? I… we… can’t…”
“Think of the children we could make, Tyler,” she rasped up at him, almost leveling him with her words. “They would be so wonderfully dangerous.”
He felt a tremble roll through him, all the way through his human body, down into the heart of his Hyde, a type of primal rumble that threatened to take his knees out from underneath him.
“You’d like that?” He asked, gripping her hair to angle her face perfectly to look into his feverish gaze, his pace returning to something wild, frenzied. “Give you a baby that’s part monster?”
“ Yes ,” she moaned, drawing long and long on the “s”, a pleading confirmation. And if his whole entire soul wasn’t already a tangle of everything Wednesday Addams in the moment, she added, “They’d be perfect, all our deadly, little children.” Imperiously, she growled at him, “You should give me one now, Tyler.” Then, softer, a supplication, “ Please .”
It was something that he hadn’t dared cross his mind. None of this had ever crossed his mind. Tyler Galpin was firmly a monster, this he knew, and no one would want him knowing that one wrong word or one strange look, and his Hyde might tear swiftly through his DNA, unzipper him, and then roar through flesh and blood. His hunger for danger was always there, a constant hum that had become background noise at this point. Tyler Galpin wasn’t supposed to want. Tyler Galpin wasn’t supposed to desire.
Tyler Galpin wasn’t supposed to be the one who was desired. And especially the dark side of him, which was supposed to only be tucked away, ignored at best. That part of him was supposed to be a disgrace, people were supposed to be disgusted by it.
But not Wednesday Addams, not with her dark eyes that were on him almost like she revered him, the desire so clear on her face that it shattered him. She was the only one who’d ever looked at him like this. And now she was saying words that he never thought anyone would say to him, that they wanted more with him, a tie that was raveled up in his DNA, his cursed DNA. A curse that she wanted, a curse she desired.
Her legs trembled as she came, his name on her tongue, walls crashing around him. He followed her almost instantly, unraveling, gripping her chin to bring her into a rough kiss, her blood still ringing metallic in both of their mouths.
Neither of them moved for a long second, even after he broke their kiss and leaned his forehead against her own. Inside him, the Hyde was the most satiated he’d ever felt, purring away like the maniacal creature it was. That he was, he kept forgetting, that he was the creature, the creature was him. The fact that Wednesday had wanted the fullness of him was too much, it burned him like the hottest flame.
Finally, she said, bossily, “Your hair’s a mess.”
He huffed a small breath of laughter, finally daring to look her in the eyes. “Your’s isn’t any better, cockroach.”
“No need for flattery,” she said, lips pursed, and when he pulled out of her gently, he swore she whined, annoyed with him.
They pulled themselves together, not in complete silence, since Wednesday asked him where her underwear went, and when he said, “Um, it’s more like… just a scrap of fabric now,” she issued him an exasperated expression.
“You’ll owe me for that,” she replied promptly, something devious in her tone that sent a bolt of electricity rolling through him. She switched off the microfiche machine she had been using, gathering up her things.
“Um, you’re leaving?” He asked, hating how pathetic his voice sounded. He wasn’t sure what was the correct protocol when you had sex with the girl you’d been pining over for several years now and one that you’d possibly impregnated under her very sexy insistence. “We could, um, go get dinner together. Or something?” Christ, was he a twelve-year-old asking a girl to slow dance or a nineteen-year-old serial killer who had just fucked someone until they had practically screamed?
Wednesday, however, didn’t seem deterred, simply raising an eyebrow. “You should stay,” she commanded, not inviting room for debate. “You’ll need the extra study time if you plan on beating me in that Valedictorian title.”
“Oh, you mean the one I currently have?” He said before realizing that maybe being combative wasn’t the best strategy with someone post-coital. But Wednesday merely looked pleasantly flushed at the tête-à-tête, so he just issued her a smug grin and countered, “It’s you who has to worry about me, Wednesday.”
She bristled but in an adorable sort of way. Then, huffing in his direction, she said, “Enjoy this small period of time where you’re the victor. It will make your downfall all the sweeter for me to witness.”
The grin on his face was irrepressible, and he wanted so desperately to kiss her, but he didn’t know… could he? Could he kiss her? Even after all they had just done, it felt like maybe they had crossed back over a line, one where to reach out and touch her would be asking far too much.
Finally, she really did leave, leaving him sitting in the darkened library, trying fruitlessly to pay attention to the microfiche in front of him. But, how could he, after what had just happened? He ground the heels of his hand into his eye sockets, trying to refocus himself. He really did want the damn title now – now that he knew it would get under her skin. Sighing, he went back to the microfilm, jotting his notes down the best he could.
In the weeks that followed, from an outsider’s perspective, things seemed normal between the two of them, both of them only offering combative jabs at each other. What others wouldn’t have seen was that sometimes, as he was walking down an empty hallway, she’d always find him, somehow , pulling his uniform lapels down into her for a bruising kiss. It was never more than that, really, just his mouth against hers, although she would get a good knick in with her teeth every once in a while, drawing his blood onto her tongue. Once, she marked him so intensely on his neck that he frowned at her and said, “Even Ajax is going to ask about that one. What am I going to tell him?”
She shrugged, looking unaffected as always. “Tell him the truth.”
He blinked but didn’t have time to respond before her body was arched up into his own, mouth sliding over his own.
He did tell Ajax, who had just laughed and said, “Whatever, dude. Wednesday! Ha! When you’re ready to tell me the truth, just let me know.”
Tyler left it at that, because it felt good to keep it a little secret, especially since he didn’t know when she might finally decide she had thoroughly changed her mind.
He only asked her once, a few weeks later after that one time in the library, saying, “Is… are you… we kind of played fast and loose there, Wednesday. I’m sure you didn’t mean what you said, so if we need to take care of anything…"
Wednesday frowned at him. She was caged in by his body in a small alcove on the quiet side of Nevermore. They were alone, out of sight and earshot, but her voice still felt loud when she said matter-of-factly, “I’m not pregnant, Tyler.” He winced, looking around hastily and she simply grabbed his chin so that his eyes were back on her. Her next words made him practically feral, “But better luck next time?”
His hands had been wild on her after that, but there wasn’t a next time. Not then, at least, those last couple of weeks at Nevermore. Instead, it was a bluster of her lips on his but nothing more, Also finals and college acceptance letters (His father’s voice, half-shocked, half-watery when he had broken the news: “A full ride to Yale? Well, hell, son… I guess yes, of course, yes , you should go.”), and making arrangements to finally leave this hellhole town.
On a warmish day in June, Tyler Galpin - the boy who had once tried to burn Nevermore to the ground - gave his speech as his class’s Valedictorian. Wednesday’s eyes burned at him, a proud sort of fury from her seat as Salutatorian.
He had thought that maybe then, finally, he had found a trajectory for his life, here with this small group of people who were willing to let him exist, just the way he was. With her and her coal-dark gaze.
But then, things changed, like they always do.