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There were things Enid had come to expect when it came to Christmas with Wednesday. Complaints, of course, and sarcasm, and eyerolls galore, but also small smiles, and thoughtful presents, and evenings spent together celebrating in a way that suited them, and likely them alone.
While Enid was aware she became the sheer personification of childish joy for the entire season and would happily have spent the whole month of December bouncing off the walls in a tinsel covered, carol singing ball of festive excitement if left entirely unchecked, she knew Wednesday found the décor garish, and the music irritating, and the sheer abundance of lights and sounds and smells altogether entirely overstimulating.
The first year, the sheer void of their Christmas expectation had hit them like a sledgehammer, especially considering they were a good nine months into their relationship at that point and had spent the past six of those learning the art of living full time with someone who was their polar opposite even if they loved them with all their heart, but since then their differences had become compromises, and their compromises traditions, and between them they had crafted a Christmas that was truly theirs.
The tree would typically be real at Enid’s insistence, a Nordmann fir or something of the like living out the last few weeks of its felled existence in their lounge, but brightened with the warm white lights Wednesday’s senses could tolerate rather than the glaring rainbow cascade Enid would have preferred. They would decorate it together with a mix of colourful glass baubles and hand-painted wooden animals, the bulk-bought decorations interspaced with the more sentimental pieces collected over the years and the sugar cookies Enid would make year on year without fail. A string of glossy black beads would carefully wind its way up the branches in place of the usual tinsel, carefully arranged by Wednesday so as to catch the light of the glowing bulbs in just the right way despite the darkness of the beads.
On the top would sit a star, silver and glittery enough that Wednesday hadn’t been able to prevent a glare when Enid first brought it home, but now artfully wound with a silky black ribbon to create stripes of light and dark that twinkled in the lights.
They would listen to Christmas music as they decorated it because doing so made Enid smile in that full-dimpled way, then resume the hold on the songs until the 20th because it turned out Wednesday’s sanity was important to them both.
There would be sweaters, increasingly bold and bright and nauseatingly garish on Enid’s part as the month progressed, and tolerated with minimal glaring on Wednesday’s because they didn’t really harm her and wearing them made her girlfriend happy.
They would bake and decorate gingerbread men the Saturday before Christmas because Enid always had growing up and then eat them dipped in the hot cocoa Wednesday would always make from a list of ingredients Enid was still not allowed to know.
She would take a trip to the Rockefellers tree for skating and hot chocolates with Yoko and Divina in the run-up to the big day because she knew Wednesday loathed the tourist trap with a passion, but the two of them would always follow it up with a day out to the typically frozen lake on Wednesday’s parents’ estate because it turns out Wednesday enjoyed skating just as much as she did when she didn’t have to deal with the lights or noise or crowds.
Christmas eve would usually be spent just the two of them, an evening spent together on the sofa while they tried and failed to agree on a Christmas movie for longer than one would ever last before eventually setting on something soft and traditional that would fill Enid’s festive expectations and Wednesday’s dislike of anything even vaguely from this century. Occasionally, if the mood hit her right, and it usually did because she could see how Enid beamed every time, Wednesday would end the evening with a few of the more traditional carols played on her cello. They’d fill stockings after, small thoughtful gifts that would wait until morning.
Usually, they’d head back to Wednesday’s parents’ for lunch on the day itself, a roast of some sort, flamboyant and traditional in a way only the Addams family could pull off, before heading home for a facetime call with Enid’s family in the evening because things were now going better with them than they ever had before.
It would be a muddled affair, a mix of wants and needs and traditions, but one that somehow worked.
But while there were things Enid had come to expect from a Christmas with Wednesday, watching her girlfriend being taken out by the festive combination of a miniature Olaf built on the stairs and their very own Christmas tree was simply not one of them.
She supposed the tree rather firmly wedged in the doorway of the elevator downstairs also had a role to play, but it couldn’t be put entirely to blame for the fall, at least.
They’d been almost at the top of the third of the four flights up to their apartment when it had happened, Enid breathlessly chattering away up on the landing while Wednesday grunted responses from below, when suddenly something had shifted, and the tree had lunched, and Enid had only just been able to grab the banister time to save herself from joining the blurred whirlwind of pine needles and netting and Wednesday herself as they’d tumbled and banged and clattered the rest of their way down a good three quarters of the flight of stairs.
And so here Enid is, standing at the top of the final staircase to their apartment, wondering how things have gone so wrong, and so quickly at that.
“Shit, Wends!”
Her heart is in her throat as she follows the tumbling mess of her tree and her girlfriend down in a panic, sidestepping the littering of branches and sticks and snowman remnants. There are pebbles on the treads, a carrot still rolling down the steps. The tree has at some point flipped in the fall, the base now pointing up towards their floor and the pointed, netted top now snapped upon the floor. Beneath it all is Wednesday, somewhat sitting on the floor at the foot of the stairs with her back against the bottom step, her legs still stuck beneath the piney weight of the tree in what looks to be an undoubtedly awkward position. Her eyes are wide when Enid reaches her, blown like she can’t quite believe that’s just happened either.
“Are you okay?” Enid asks when she finally makes it around the tree, falling down to her knees with a thud and instantly reaching out to cup her cheek. It’s remarkably cold against her skin despite their recent exertion, icy against her palm, and though Wednesday nods in apparent confirmation, her breaths are coming short and sharp and carefully controlled. It takes Enid only a beat to notice that despite the forced stoicism of her expression, her face is suddenly as white as the remnants of the snowman now scattered into melting heaps upon the stairs.
***
Despite her usual uniquely supernatural sort of elegance and somewhat surprising strength given her size, it turns out Wednesday is truly awful at manoeuvring on crutches.
Her arms wobble, and her balance wavers, and each ungainly step she takes give Enid the distinct impression that she’s watching a newborn cold’s very first attempt at learning how to walk. It looks utterly exhausting, too, an exercise in perseverance if Enid is to judge, but the elevator is still broken, and Wednesday is nothing if not stubborn, which is how Enid finds herself shadowing her girlfriend as she hops her way up the third of the four flights of stairs up to their apartment.
“Nearly there,” Enid encourages as they round the corner of the penultimate landing, ignoring the withering glare that comes her way just as she’s ignored all the others that have come before. Her hand still ghosts the small of Wednesday’s back just beyond the dark fabric of her winter coat despite the complaints and threats and seething looks that have come her way because she’s very aware of the way her arms are buckling and her one functioning leg is shaking, and she simply doesn’t want to risk another too quick, too violent stairway decent tonight.
It's honestly the last thing either of them needs.
The ER had been utterly manic, the wait to be seen much too long, and Enid could tell Wednesday had been already at the end of her tether in terms of being poked and prodded and examined long before they’d even started the process of trying to realign the fracture in her tibia her festive assault had resulted in.
She’d been in an understandably fractious mood by the time they’d been able to leave, and nothing about that had changed on the journey home given the traffic and the carols on the radio and difficulty she’d had fitting in the back seat of the cab. The tree still jamming the elevator doors had come as the rather sour icing on the cake.
“I am not incapable of remembering which floor we live on, Enid,” she snaps breathlessly as they round the corner of the landing. Her voice comes tight and wheezy, ground out through gritted teeth and Enid chooses rather sensibly to hold her tongue.
She doesn’t mention the 7 foot tall, pine scented blockade that has thankfully vanished from the landing, either.
She stays quiet and close instead, guarding the decent as Wednesday slowly hops her way past the scattering of pine needles and a rouge stone still abandoned on the steps. Her arms shake; her breathing is laboured. Enid can tell from her expression she’s in pain despite she morphine she’d begrudgingly accepted at the hospital, though she doesn’t bring it up.
She near enough sags with relief when they make it to the final landing, though, and Wednesday does too. Her head hangs in exhaustion; her weight leans heavy on her crutches. Her breaths come in shaky sort of pants in the moment she allows herself to rest before she steels herself and resolutely starts the final stretch home along the corridor to their door.
It comes as a bit of a slap in the face to both of them to find it blocked by a netted trainwreck of pine leaning up against the architrave.
“Oh, how thoughtful,” Enid winces through gritted teeth while Wednesday makes a sound that sounds suspiciously like a growl.
“Remind me to track down whoever put that there so I gouge their eyes out using pine needles alone,” she grounds out in a tone so simultaneously furious and beaten that Enid can’t help but give her elbow a consoling sort of squeeze as she passes.
“Hopefully they live on this floor,” she says as she moves the damaged tree aside to get her key into the lock. “And whoever blocked the elevator too, I think.”
***
The tree ends up in their hallway, a sagging, pitiful sort of sight and Wednesday ends up on the couch.
Enid shadows her as she limps her way over, hand at the ready should her one leg buckle, and then helps slow her collapse onto the cushions into something marginally more controlled when she gets there. The cast on her leg is surprisingly heavy when she gently helps lift it up onto the sofa, made of old fashioned plaster and inconveniently extending from toes to thigh at least until Wednesday’s attended her fracture clinic appointment on Tuesday. She carefully eases a few loose scatter cushions under the bent knee of it, trying to support its weight on something other than Wednesday’s thigh and its plaster-covered heel while Wednesday sags back against the arm of the sofa, breathing heavily through her nose and very clearly trying not to look like someone altogether far too close to passing out from pain.
“That was a rigmarole,” she wheezes after a beat, expression still tight and skin utterly colourless, and Enid can’t help but agree.
“I’ll get you some peas,” she offers gently, giving the fingers of Wednesday’s rubbed-raw hand a careful squeeze before heading for the door.
***
Through the five years of their relationship, and the two of friendship that had come before that, Enid had previously only seen Wednesday struck down by sickness twice. The first time had been during their junior year of college, when a particularly nasty round of freshers’ flu had finally battered its way through her usually ironclad defences and rather thoroughly taken her down just as it had the rest of them. The second time had been two years later, when she’d tried to battle through the chest infection brough on by a rather spectacular near drowning in the Addams family lake during an underwater wrestling match with Pugsley, and very nearly ended up admitted to the hospital with pneumonia for her troubles.
Both times she’d been near impossible, utterly furious about the failings of her body and determined to make that everyone else’s problem just as much as it was hers, so Enid had been fully prepared to suffer the same acid tongue and fractious wrath this time around, but as it turns out, an injured Wednesday isn’t an entirely awful patient in quite the same way that a sick Wednesday is.
Enid later learns it’s because she’d thought it would help, that she’d been trying to heal so as not to derail their Christmas plans further, and her heart had ached like a broken melody inside.
She rests on the sofa with her casted leg elevated, though, accepts the food and ice and medications Enid brings her without much more than an eyeroll, and begrudgingly allows her to assist with getting both on and off the sofa because after the effort of the stairs her arms have taken on the consistency of overcooked spaghetti and the weight of the cast is throwing her balance so much she’s no more stable than an overtired toddler on a trampoline.
She doesn’t complain, and she doesn’t protest, but Enid knows her almost better than the palm of her own hand by this point and is very aware she’s putting on a brave face and that it’s entirely for her benefit.
Her heart hurts every time she catches her wincing, aches every time she pales when she stands. Her face is pasty and pinched from pain, and the bags that grow beneath her eyes tell the truth of how little sleep she’s been able to get even though Enid knows Wednesday herself never will.
It doesn’t help that it’s kind of her fault, too, and not because she blames herself for letting go of the tree when it fell and took poor Wednesday with it because she knows if she hadn’t, she’d have just been dragged down too and that hardly would have helped.
They’re meant to be heading to San Francisco for Christmas, though. Flying out on the 23rd and returning on the 28th, and so with the apartment empty over the festive period itself, Wednesday had pointed out they didn’t really need a tree. But Enid had insisted, because of course she had, and now one sits in the corner of their hallway, branches broken and bent inside the netting, and Wednesday lays on the couch, casted leg on a stack of pillows and eyes tight with the pain she still fastidiously denies.
***
The week that follows hits them like a whirlwind, and not the usually festive kind.
Instead, there’s Wednesday’s fracture clinic appointment on Monday, and the news that the cast hasn’t held her tibia aligned in quite the way it should have and through no fault of her own. Surgery follows on the Tuesday, abrupt and unexpected, and then there’s a post-operative infection to deal with which in turn brings more appointments and x-rays and cast changes and sleepless nights, and by the time things have started to settle and Wednesday seems physically somewhat comfortable again, the 23rd has rolled around.
The date hits like a snowball taken directly to the face.
Enid should be on a plane home about to see her family having spent the past week packing and buying presents and partaking in all her usual festivities. She should have made gingerbread men by now with Wednesday, decorated them together up the table and eaten them dipped in hot cocoa she always tried to get the recipe for but secretly loved that Wednesday was the only one who could make it and did so just for her. She should have spent an evening skating beneath the Rockefeller’s tree with Yoko and Divina, and a whole afternoon playing on the lake with Wednesday, carving twin tracks into the ice as they flew together over its surface, just the two of them and the trees.
Instead, she’s still in the kitchen, making tea for herself and coffee for the one person she loves more than any other on the planet and trying not to think about how in the chaos and worry and exhaustion of it all, Christmas has very nearly come and gone without either of them really noticing.
There’s snow on the streets, festivities in the air. Carollers are calling door to door, singing to the crowds gathered in the real Christmas far below, and shoppers hurry through it all trying to get in a few last purchases before the city stills to a close for another year. Lights twinkle softly in the windows of the buildings opposite, bright and warm and ready for the holidays Enid adores more than any other and had only been able to forget was coming because there was something much more important on her mind.
The kettle whistles on the stove, shrill and startling, and Enid pours the water into their mugs. By the time she carries the drinks through to the lounge, every ounce of melancholy has been neatly polished from her face.
***
“We should go see the tree.”
Enid looks up in confusion, turning to frown first at her girlfriend who has surprisingly quietly made her way into the lounge, and then at the sweet-scented pine twinkling much too innocently in the corner of the room. Its branches are adorned with their decorations as per usual, their star positioned somewhere near the top. It’s kind of ironic that in the avalanche of their missed Christmas traditions, only the tree that scuppered it all has managed to survive.
To some extent, at least.
Beneath the shine of Enid’s baubles and Wednesday’s wooden animals, its branches are bent and broken, a whole patch on the left snapped off entirely. Though in place, the star is held up through hopes and prayers and a chopstick Sellotaped to the back of it because what was left of the topmost branch had no structural integrity whatsoever.
She’d put it up the day after its heinous assault on the stairs after Wednesday herself had pointed out she’d been frowning at it all morning and prompted her into making a decision.
The truth was she hadn’t known what to do with it at the time, whether to bring it in and decorate it as best she could given all the blood and sweat and tears it took for them to get it there, or quietly remove it from the flat to save Wednesday another reminder of its pine-scented stairway assault.
Looking back, she should have carried it back out and flung it down the stairwell from the very top of the building for all the suffering it had ultimately put Wednesday though, but at the time they hadn’t been aware of all the trouble that was yet to come.
Now they have, she’s pretty sure both arson and defenestration have been on Wednesday’s mind for days and rather understandably so.
“Not that tree, Enid,” she sighs witheringly, following her gaze and glaring seemingly out of habit rather than because it has anything to do with the current conversation. “I’ve seen enough of that conceited pine to last me until the sun expands and kills us all.”
“And when does that happen, just for reference.”
“Approximately 5 billion years.”
“Okay, that’s… probably not something we need to worry about.” Amusement pulls at the very corner of Wednesday’s bitten lips. “What tree are you talking about then, if not this lovely specimen.”
Dark eyes roll, but Wednesday doesn’t comment further.
“The Rockefeller’s one,” she says instead, and her tone makes it sounds like the answer should have been completely and utterly obvious when honestly, it’s the last thing Enid would have expected her to say. It’s almost on par with her proclaiming she wants to go carolling in a light-up, singing sweater and a pair of fluffy antlers, or join the Rockettes on stage for a part of their Christmas spectacular at Radio City Music Hall, because while Enid loves her time spent beneath that tree, to Wednesday the lights and sounds and crowds constitute to nothing other than the tenth circle of hell. “You like to see it annually, do you not?”
“I… do.”
“And you’ve yet to be able to this year, and now Yoko is back home, and Divina is off in Europe, so we should go.”
It sounds so simple when she puts it like that.
Enid wants it to be, too.
She blinks at her. Once. Twice. Taking in the determined set of her mouth and the clarity in her eyes. She’s standing tall as she ever gets and straighter than she has in weeks. Her hair is washed and brushed and braided; her clothing no longer consists of whatever is soft and stretchy and comfortable through necessity alone. The mix of pain and opioids that had clouded the ebony of her eyes has finally faded, leaving only a certainty that Wednesday alone can pull off behind. She looks okay, and she sounds firm, like this is something she wants to do and knows she can.
And Enid very nearly says yes.
“You are sweet, you know,” she says instead, softly, honestly, rising to ger feet and wishing she could pull her girlfriend into a hug without risking them both toppling to the floor. Wednesday rather characteristically rolls her eyes at both her words and her sentiment. A huff escapes through her nose.
“Like poisoned liquorish,” she grumbles darkly, sounding unwaveringly determined even though Enid knows they’re both aware that despite her black exterior, she’s anything but inside, even if she’d rather be boiled alive in vat of glittery-doped lava than admit to it.
Her offer alone is testament to that.
“No, seriously, Wends, it’s really thoughtful of you to suggest that. And I really, really appreciate it,” she insists, firmly, and then takes a breath, “but I don’t think it’s actually a good idea.”
Dark eyes narrow. Wednesday’s brows come together beneath the black veil of her fringe.
“I can cope.”
Enid shakes her head, short and sharp enough that she hopes Wednesday understands she isn’t disagreeing.
“I’m not saying you can’t; you’re the strongest person I know. But you shouldn’t have to. I don’t want to spend what little is left of our Christmas with you ‘coping’.”
“I’ve disrupted your Christmas enough already this year.”
Everything grinds to a halt.
“What? Wednesday, no. If anything, I’m the one that’s ruined your Christmas; the tree was my idea!” she insists firmly. “That isn’t really the point, though. Do you know what I like best about Christmas?”
Head cocked, Wednesday frowns. Enid can’t decide if she’s trying to work or where this is going, or if she’s just considering her guess. She shifts on her crutches, practised on them now.
“The abundance of lights draped over every surface of the city,” she tries, brow furrowed.
“Nope. Though they are pretty.”
“The abhorrently joyous music?”
“Try again.”
“The tooth-rotting quantity of sugar and cinnamon in that pre-packaged diabetes you call food?”
Enid laughs at that one.
“Nope. And they’re all great. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy all of those things, just like I enjoy all the little traditions that have become just ours over the years. But what I like most is being able to spend time doing those things with the people I love. And them being able to enjoy them, too.”
Her words are pointed, her hand tender as it squeezes Wednesday’s forearm in place of the hand she’d rather take. For a second, Wednesday just stands there, clearly processing her way through Enid’s riddle of feelings and sentiment, the cogs whirring beneath her braids, and then through she’s still frowning, her brows furrowed and her lips pursed, she finally nods.
It’s a single bob of her head, begrudging at best, but agreement and understanding at least. Enid’s proud of how much she’s grown from that fastidiously stubborn freshman she met seven years ago now, a girl who would once have got an idea in her head and gone down with that ship however fast it was sinking and however much anyone else tried to pull her out.
She licks her lips.
“It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow.”
Enid tips her head at the change in her tone. Softer, somehow, a little more human than before.
“It is,” Enid agrees.
“We could still go look at the lights. Not Rockefellers, but somewhere… quieter, perhaps. And I would like to go shopping.”
“Oh, presents,” Enid winces. “I… you don’t need to bother, you’ve had other things to deal with, and I know you think they’re a slave to capitalism anyway and-”
“No, not for presents.”
A beat passes, confusion rife. She feels it ripple over her expression, watches Wednesday see it playing on her face and seem to enjoy its presence.
“Then what for?”
Wednesday tips her head.
“It’s a secret,” she says, seriously, pointedly, and very suddenly Enid understands. A weary but very honest sort of smile pulls at the corner of her lips even as she tries to fight it down.
“Right,” she nods, trying not to beam. “I’ll check I’ve got all my ingredients, too.”
***
Notes of ginger play amongst the pine. Cinnamon dances in the air.
Enid drains the last of her cocoa from her mug, feeling its sweet and strangely tangy warmth settle like home inside her stomach. Wednesday’s is already finished, the mug upon the coffee table, her head on Enid shoulder.
Across the room, the warm white bulbs twinkle on the tree, still all too innocently for all the trouble it has caused, but familiar and pretty and theirs all the same. Her baubles cast rainbows on the walls; Wednesday’s tiny animals lazily spin back and forth on their delicate silver strings. Beneath the tree, a small collection of boxes sit in stockings, ready and primed for a morning destined to be slow and sleepy and just for them. Enid’s parents will be calling after lunch, Wednesday’s bringing Pugsley and the remainders of their roast over in the evening.
It’ll be a different sort of Christmas to the norm, softer, more relaxed given the stress and worry and exhaustion of the past ten days, but still Christmas all the same.
Enid’s mug clunks softly as she sets it on the coffee table, letting it rest between Wednesday’s already empty twin and the crumb-coated plate sitting on the wood. On the other side, Wednesday’s cast rests on a pillow, the black fibreglass covering her foot now hidden by a fluffy reindeer sock at Enid’s insistence. The antlers stick up towards the ceiling. A red bulb flashes for its nose. It had taken her a few good minutes after she’d put it there to realise that given the still-fixed angle of her knee, Wednesday would have likely struggled to remove it by herself. It had taken even longer for her to realise she hadn’t seen her even try.
“Are you comfy?” she checks as she rests back, giving the waist her arm is wrapped around a squeeze, and Wednesday hums in confirmation against her side, sounding tired after their expedition but unwaveringly content. There’s a blanket covering the both of them, the three legs intertwined beneath still tired from their walk.
The lights they’d seen had been pretty, the snow gentle overhead. It had just been starting to settle as they headed back, a white dusting taking over the speckled grey of the sidewalk cold beneath their shoes.
It hadn’t been the Rockefellers by any stretch of the imagination, and there hadn’t been ice skating and carols and hot cocoa steaming in tiny mugs shaped like pairs of rubber boots. And Twelve days ago, Enid would have been disappointed by that, but now she just pulls Wednesday a little tighter against her side and leans her head against the dark braid tickling her chin.
Because this, she has come to see, is what Christmas is really all about.