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“Nothing like a walk through town to remind me how irritating the sun is,” Wednesday remarked crankily, frowning at the sun blankly. Tyler snorted. He knew for an absolute fact that Wednesday must be wearing tons of sunscreen. He also knew that she secretly took pride in her corpse-like complexion, and knew the sun would make her go tan.
“It’s called summer,” Tyler laughed. Wednesday switched her glare from the sun to her boyfriend. “It should be autumn,” she mumbled. Tyler rolled his eyes playfully. “So, where do you have to meet your nevermore friends?” he questioned. Wednesday sighed. “I am supposed to meet Enid for a pathetic high school meetup at the weathervane in ten minutes and 24 seconds.”
Wednesday was not excited for this. She had only begrudgingly agreed to “window shopping” with Enid and her friends because she owed Enid for covering for her being out past curfew with Tyler. Wednesday had to hand it to her; it was respectable that Enid would only do things for a price. Wednesday would be okay with this price if it were not for spending her precious time participating in such mundane activities.
“That’s good. I have to go for my shift,” Tyler started. “That means we can walk together!” he grinned. Wednesday frowned up at him, questioning his sanity, and the sun’s UV rays. She rolled her eyes dramatically, feeling her insides softening for his pathetic grin. The mushy feeling he activated in her was not a sensation Wednesday particularly enjoyed.
“I suppose,” she answered indifferently, concealing her slight pleasure at the idea. They continued to walk for a bit, Tyler shoving his hands in his jacket pockets, knowing Wednesday would raise all hell if he even tried to hold her hand, speaking from experience. He walked by her side, taking shorter steps so she could keep up with her short legs. The only physical genes she had inherited from her father were her height, which was not ideal.
Wednesday squinted at the sun, worried about her freckles multiplying as they do in the sun. Tyler looked down at her and seemed to notice. “Whoa, your freckles are exploding,” he remarked. The bridge of her delicate nose was coated with light freckles. Tyler noticed that she had a cluster of freckles on her cheek that was shaped like a heart, but he knew better than to point it out.
Wednesday stared up at him menacingly. “No need to rub salt on the wound. There are simpler ways to commit suicide than to challenge me,” she threatened. Tyler raised an eyebrow, impressed and terrified by her threat. “No, like in a cute way. It looks adorable,” he complimented, quickly realising that Wednesday is not one to take that as a compliment. She scoffed. “Don’t use any of those two words to describe me again, or I cannot guarantee your health or safety,” she said blankly, pretending to be looking at a nearby store window, when in reality, she was moving her face so he couldn’t see her blush.
“Want my hat to avoid the sun?” he offered. Wednesday finished, blushing and considered his offer. Tyler’s hat was a grey baseball cap with a red logo on it. Wednesday desperately wanted to avoid the sun, but she would rather keep her dignity intact. “No,” she choked. Tyler smiled at her quizzingly. “Too bad,” he snickered, taking his hands out of his pockets to take off his cap and plop it onto her head as they walked, securing it at the back for her. Wednesday didn’t protest.
Wednesday suddenly got the sickening urge to be affectionate. Her chest got warm, and her fingertips were prickling. The sensation was a noxious, sweet poison. A sickeningly warm feeling that Wednesday had spent a lifetime excising from her system. It was affection, and her gut twisted with a visceral, unfamiliar dread. She normally ignored this urge, but she decided to let this one slip.
She quickly gripped his arm as he was about to put it back in his pocket. Tyler snapped his head down to her, smiling like an idiot. His expression, caught between awe and bewilderment, was frozen in place. He looked like a deer caught in the headlights, but rather than fear, his face held a slack-jawed, euphoric wonder. It was quite pathetic, really. Wednesday continued to walk, and Tyler couldn’t find her facial expression, as her face was covered by his baseball cap.
Her grip was as firm and unyielding as a death curse. It was the type of casual contact she would normally reserve for the application of leeches or the handling of an electric eel.
As they continued to walk past more small stores and the park, Wednesday conversed with him about some poisonous human carcinogen she had discovered in her conditioner, and Tyler listened intently. Wednesday rarely ever talked about anything that openly, so Tyler would seize the opportunity and take what he could get. The only thing distracting him was Wednesday’s dainty fingers wrapped around his lower arm with a death grip. She did it so casually, too, like this wasn’t monumental for Tyler.
And the strangest thing happened, Wednesday started properly talking and getting lost in conversation. The last time she'd felt such a vivid cocktail of emotion was while discussing the gruesome properties of various toxins with her pet scorpion. To her dismay, the feeling was not entirely unpleasant
Was Wednesday actually having a good time?! Impossible, but apparently not.
She was smiling. She was smiling widely under the baseball cap. A twitch at the corner of her mouth, so slight it could be mistaken for a grimace, was her body's betraying signal. A nascent warmth bloomed in her chest, a feeling so foreign she feared she might be coming down with a rare and fatal illness. She was laughing almost. Wednesday was feeling a mixture of happiness and aggravation at herself. She was glad Tyler couldn’t see her face right now, as the smile, that foul, wretched thing, was an act of treason she would never admit to. No waterboarding, no amount of torture, could have extracted that confession.
She barely, just slightly (or that’s what she told herself) let out a microscopic laugh. The sensation felt like a ton of gravel being crushed in her throat. She swore right then and there she would never do it again. She glanced up at Tyler, completely forgetting to take her smile off. Tyler smiled back, confused by her smile.
Wednesday continued to stare at him, her slight smile still plastered on her face. Tyler leaned in for a kiss, to which Wednesday declined by sticking her head down. “Not in public,” she directed. Tyler smirked. “Yet you have no problem with smiling, wearing my hat, and holding my arm? Interesting,” he remarked.
Wednesday froze in shock, noticing she had a tight grip on Tyler that had caused his arm to go slightly red. She blushed wildly and pulled back, embarrassed to death. What wave of grotesque and saccharine affection had washed over her?!
The mere prospect of even holding hands in public was enough to make her want to spoon out her own eyeballs, but the fact that she initiated it was mortifying. She was just like her mother now.
"Mmmm," she uttered, the sound a low, almost imperceptible murmur of defeat. All the meticulous architecture of her personality—her aversion to affection, her disdain for sentimentality—came crashing down. This was a violation of the highest order, a dereliction of her very nature, and she was doing it willingly. Her fingers, the same fingers that had meticulously planned the decapitation of her brother's dolls, wrapped around his arm once more. The casual intimacy of the gesture was a monumental act for her, a seismic shift in her internal landscape.
Tyler, still beaming, looked down at her, his expression blissfully unaware of the profound shift taking place. The baseball cap kept him in the dark, and for that, she was profoundly, nauseatingly grateful. With a deliberate, almost clinical movement, she closed the distance. For the first time in her life, Wednesday Addams was willingly participating in her own personal, pathetic—and apparently, not entirely unpleasant public affection. Disgusting.