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Chapter Text

“If you ever fall out of love with me,” he says so quietly she’s certain she’s not meant to hear it, “Make my death quick. Let me feed you. Save my heart for last and savor it.”

May.

Wednesday is nineteen on the cusp of twenty and she has never been more in love with Xavier Thorpe.

Her life is tied to him. He has sacrificed his humanity for her – not his art, thankfully. Since they came to New York in the autumn, he paints every day, alive. New York is bursting with inspiration. She is almost jealous of the hold the city has on her lover.

He comes to bed late at night smelling of heavy acyclic oils and fresh blood. She pretends to be asleep so that he will stand over her and watch her, sometimes until the sun comes up, obsessed with her sharp little angles, the soft pout of her mouth. If she slowly opens her eyes and fixes them on him, he cautiously strips down to his underwear and slips in beside her, his skin dry and warm.

During the day, she attends lectures on the psychology of serial killers, anatomy, and ancient cultures. In her forensic sciences class, a precursor for anyone with ambitions toward mortuary sciences, forensic anthropology, and medical examining, she smiles into her lap when her meals are mentioned by the professor or a particularly eager student. It is an unusually significant time for murder in the city. Some newspapers call her beloved The Burroughs Stalker, others refer to him as Original Sin, or the New York Cannibal. Her professors refuse to see a connection between any of the aliases, which puts her mind at ease. Xavier’s haunts and kills are scattered around the state to keep himself safe and to prevent her from being haunted by their ghosts. The best and most favorable theory is that it is not one killer but several, cutting out organs to sell to shady, underground surgery cells.

*

Their apartment is small and narrow, connected to a network of alleys that are convenient for coming and going during the darkest part of the night. Underneath the building there is a basement woven into a series of tunnels that only Gomez knows about. The building was once owned by an Addams during prohibition times, the tunnels used to smuggle and spirit away. The smell of fermentation mingled with blood is strong, clings desperately to Xavier’s clothes and hair.

When everything had been moved in – sparse furniture, practical, nothing to make them stand out – they’d stood together at the threshold. Wednesday had looked up at Xavier expectantly and his face had lit up when he understood what she wanted, lifting her in his arms and crossing over. He’d buried his face in the crook of her neck, breathing dark words of love, holding her aloft for a full minute before putting her down.

She hadn’t released her hold on him, arms hooked tightly around his neck. He picked her up again and carried her into the bedroom, where the mattress was still bare.

Until then, they had only hovered on the edge of fully giving in to each other. He’d savored the little low moans from her throat as his fingers and tongue swept over the mound of her cunt, not daring go further. Only her hands knew the length and girth of him. That afternoon in their apartment, she wasn’t the haughty heiress she was in front of her parents and she wasn’t the dark cannibal goddess he fed. She was just his, and it was wonderful.

Their life becomes easy and domestic, dates to art museums and the New York Symphony. They do not pay rent to the building and agree on a budget for other things. They sit at their weirdly shaped counter on two mismatched stools, her ankle hooked around his, a lawyer on speaker between them, discussing their trust funds and inheritances.

Wednesday has the manners of a well-bred girl, but not the spending habits. The Addams generally let their money fester; she is unquestionably richer than him even though his funds are more than sufficient for his lifetime three times over. He adds her name to the deed on the country house his mother left him in New Jersey and starts to daydream about spending summers there once they’ve finished school.

*

It pains her to hear him voice his fears. She’d suspected, before. He sometimes watches her with trepidation when he presents her with a meal, worried that it would not satisfy her. In the days where her hunger starts to gnaw at her, he treats her with reverence laced with fear, as if she would tear into him if given the chance. When she’d suggested moving to the city so that he could pursue his art, he’d hesitated until she showed him her acceptance letters from several prestigious universities. Worse than being her next meal, he seemed to dread being forgotten by her, having to live without her.

He has no idea how deeply obsessed she is with him, that on days she stays in the apartment while he is meeting with gallery owners or organizations that give grants to artists or even when he is hunting, she curls up in the window seat clutching his sweaty running clothes, raggedly breathing them in. She collects hairs from his comb in the bathroom and keeps them in a glass jar under the bathroom sink. She scrolls endlessly through her phone at pictures she took of him and scrawls poems to the line of his jaw in a notebook she tucks under the mattress. She stretches herself out on the bed, completely naked, gripping the headboard as she listens to his voicemails over and over, sometimes falling asleep to the timbre of his voice telling her that he will be home soon.

Xavier’s hair has grown since they’d moved to Brooklyn. Wednesday likes it longer. It brushes his shoulders and catches the light when he leans over to smile, the way he is doing now. The young woman he is talking to blushes heavily and scrambles to pick up everything that she’d dropped. Wednesday snorts under her breath. Truthfully, even she would have a hard time resisting if this classically handsome, hipster art boy approached her. Xavier has become quite a skilled actor. She has seen his chameleonlike approach to hunting a few times by now and it is always thrilling to watch, to know that it isn’t really him.

From her vantage point she watches as he tucks his hair behind his ears in a bashful gesture, stooping over to tell the girl something before he walks off. He doesn’t turn around, but she watches him until he is out of sight. Wednesday waits a full ten minutes before heading to the elevator, riding it down to the parking garage basement.

When she sees him with the low budget rental sedan they’d procured for the day, she relaxes. He is himself again. His hair is tussled loosely, a bit of charcoal at his hairline where he’s scratched at his scalp, distracted. He is standing perfectly straight, using one of the pillars as leverage while he rubs at his sketchbook. He looks a bit feral and intimidating, the sort of person who would snap someone’s neck for making him angry.

“Take your clothes off and get into the back seat,” she says in lieu of greeting.

He grins and tucks the sketchbook in his back pocket, not bothering to cast a single sweeping glance around to make sure they have privacy.

“Insatiable,” he admonishes her, deftly tugging his shirt out of the front of his pants and toeing at his shoe in the same breath.

“Not so. You always satisfy me,” she counters, getting into the car first.

He throws his shirt onto the floor behind the passenger seat and covers her body with his own, determined to meet her expectation.

On mornings where he comes back from his run, the downstairs neighbor is sometimes lingering in the foyer of the hallway that connects their apartments. She is about his age, if not a year or two older. She wears her blonde hair in a chignon, mostly. He thinks she might have mentioned that she is a model.

He and Wednesday have agreed not to get too attached or connected to their neighbors; living in the city has the distinct advantage of remaining anonymous while being surrounded by throngs of people. He has a few acquaintances in his art program that he might consider friends, goes for coffee with after class as not to appear too asocial. His real friends are scattered around the country and even overseas, friends that know about Wednesday at least in the most undeniable sense.

“Hey, Xander,” the neighbor purrs. Xavier jerks his head noncommittally in greeting. He has never gotten used to being flirted with. Hunting, he has to play into it. There have been at least three girls, all carefully curated to Wednesday’s literal tastes. The neighbor is off his radar. She is a constant annoyance, trying to make small talk. She has inferred that he studies art by the paint stains on his everyday clothes and the occasional shipments of canvases to their lobby. Wednesday detests her.

“What do you run? 5k? 10? You’re in such good shape,” she simpers. “Maybe you could train me.” She reaches up to undo the loose updo her hair is in, fluffing it out.

“I’m not a personal trainer,” he shrugs, ducking into the apartment without even looking at her. Wednesday’s typewriter is running, the flat, punctuated rhythm piercing the thin walls. They’ve had complaints from the person who lives next door, but Wednesday placated him by bullying the super into replacing his old toilet.

“I’m home,” he calls out. The rhythm falters for a second and picks back up again.

The entrance of the apartment has a tiny, crowded kitchen and a tightly placed living room that Xavier uses as a studio, a drop cloth set up in one corner with an easel and materials disorganized on it, the only window in the apartment framing it as a backdrop. He has an actual studio space in his school’s building but only dedicates a couple of days a week there, usually after his hunts are resolved. To the left is their bedroom, barely big enough for the bed and a single dresser, the only bathroom connected to it. To the right is an even smaller room where Wednesday has her typewriter set up on a narrow desk, boxes of paper and bound copies of manuscripts lining the wall.

She is bent over as her hands fly over the keys, one of her braids unravelling over the shoulder of her favorite black chunky sweater.

“What overused line did Jessica attempt to reel you in with today?” she asks crisply. He’s pretty sure the neighbor’s name is Jennifer, but that’s a moot point.

“I love that you’re jealous.”

The typing falters more noticeably. “I am nothing of the sort. I was merely inquiring out of curiosity.”

Two strides into the room, he bends down and swivels the chair around, drawing a tightly restrained gasp. Breaking past her guard is a risk as much as loving her is, but he enjoys showing her that it’s worth it. She scowls at him.

“She’s lucky she lives across the hall from us,” he says evenly, “Otherwise I’d drag her down to the basement and feed her to you, piece by piece.” He may have fantasized about it already. “I would never look at anyone else except to measure them for your appetite. I’m yours.” She grabs at him and seals the last word against her lips. He smiles into it, settling his palms onto her bare thighs, spreading her legs open. The old chair creaks as he leans into it.

“Your very breath is mine,” she swears, kissing him until his lungs burn to prove it.

“This is my shirt,” he observes when he can breathe again. It’s so big on her it spills into her lap.

“Yes.”

“Are you wearing anything underneath?”

“…no,” she breathes shakily, taking his hand and guiding it up her leg under the thin, splitting hem. The stress of the day melts off of him as he starts to stoke her, her arousal slick and seeping into his skin. Her legs are trembling as she whispers his favorite terms of endearment into his neck. “Before we met, I’d watch you run past my window,” she says, pulling at his jacket and slipping her hands under his shirt to trace the lines of muscle there. “I craved you.”

A pinprick of pride flares in his abdomen. He used to run for catharsis, to keep himself from self-destructive behavior. Running in the city is different from running out in the woods and on suburban trails. He is much happier now, mainly running to maintain his endurance for hunting. The familiar, appreciative press of her fingers into his core makes his knees weak. “You wanted to eat me,” he grins, softly cupping her breast and running the pad of his thumb over her nipple.

“You’re too pretty to eat,” she scoffs, deftly tugging the fly of his pants open and slowly pulling the zipper down. When she looks up at him, her eyes are dark and intense. “I’m done writing for today.”

July.

Ahead of their third anniversary, they visit a museum of Xavier’s choosing. Wednesday has a limited scope for art, but she enjoys these dates, her hand loosely twined with his as he guides her through exhibits, rambling excitedly. She is enchanted by the sharpness of his face when he smiles so widely, pointing out details and nuances of color and shape only the trained eye appreciates. It is disgustingly embarrassing how happy she feels. Before Xavier, she had barely allowed herself to think about what this would be like. It seemed impossible that anyone would ever accept her, that she would have a life she didn’t even dare wish for.

“There’s an exhibit on the top floor, but it’s really colorful,” he warns. “We can skip it.” But she can tell he is excited, so she tightens her fingers, laced in his. The first piece they see when the crowd parts is so huge, so vivid with color it makes her eyes water. When she looks at Xavier, he is suffering the same, but for a different reason. “This is called ‘The Eye is Not Satisfied With Seeing’,” he whispers. His eyes are deep and wet. Anyone else would think he was about to cry, but she can smell his anger; it is bitter and spiked with adrenaline. He tells her the artist’s name and verbally paints the pain behind the intensely lurid chartreuse.

In late August, Xavier becomes engrossed in a series of paintings he is submitting for an exhibit curated from the best up and coming art students on the recommendation of his professors. He will be featured at The Park Avenue Armory and have the opportunity to run through a gauntlet of influential people in the art world. Wednesday is proud of him. He struggles for weeks with his anchor piece, comes home much later than normal. Wednesday can tell that he is stretching himself to mental and physical limits. She brews a tea with her mother’s directions and tips it into his mouth before bed, rubs his chest until he falls asleep.

The theme of the arc he is submitting is fear. He is very careful not to give himself away completely, but one thing leaves him haggard enough that he is stoic and silent for days until he finally confesses to her what he is torn over. “I haven’t really talked to my dad since we decided to come out here,” he says in the darkness of their bedroom. “Growing up, he had high expectations for me. He’s never said it, but I know he’s disappointed in how I create my illusions. He can just pull his out of thin air.” She has to bite her tongue to stop herself lashing out in his defense. “My professors know about my talent. They haven’t asked if I’m going to animate the exhibits, but I’ve tried it, and it adds so much more.”

“You’ll be outed as his son, more than having his name,” Wednesday adds after a long silence, understanding.

“The question is, do I risk my artistic integrity?” He presses his face to the nape of her neck and tries to sleep.

On the evening of the gallery opening, she feels him take a determined breath as they step out of the Uber, the answer clear in the forefront of his mind. It is a relief to see him being welcomed and celebrated by peers without a shift in his persona; he is as much himself here as he is with her, though she images the others see something of a fierce, artistic stubbornness where she sees the darkness that tinges his spirit. He introduces her to people with a definite sort of tone that doesn’t invite them to speak to her, a practiced thing he probably learned from his father. She wears her hair in a coiled braid updo, a dress that her mother would have selected for an event like this. Tonight is for Xavier and she plays the part of aloof socialite girlfriend well. They take a turn around the gallery, in and out of repurposed rooms framed in sturdy and elegant prewar dark wood molding.

The program naturally moves them through each artist’s vision. Xavier’s series closes the guided portion of the night and as the crowd gathers around the anchor piece, Wednesday lets her hand fall from his arm and steps away, watching every pair of eyes focus on him. She recognizes the rapturous attention and thinks back to the night she first saw him, three years hence. The professor that recommended him gives a brief introduction and then Xavier talks about fear. Behind him, the wendigo in the forest slowly creeps into stronger perspective. Xavier doesn’t falter even when the crowd starts to gasp and shrink back.

The creature isn’t meant to inspire fear in the traditional way. It is emaciated and walks with a wounded gait. When it is fully in view, it is obvious that the fear is meant to be reflected in its experience of starvation, its loneliness. That a monster could be humanized in such a way is brilliant and unsettling.

“Is he Vincent Thorpe’s son?” someone gasps.

Xavier pretends he doesn’t hear, but doesn’t deny anything and politely accepts congratulations from several people. Wednesday waits patiently, watching the wendigo sulk back into the far corner of the canvas, feeling suddenly sick. She hands her drink back to one of the attendants and pushes past, reaching out to touch the small of Xavier’s back. The suit is tailored perfectly to his frame. She traces the seams distractedly.

“Let’s go home,” he says to her once the crowd starts to disperse, patrons wandering back to their favorite pieces of the night. Almost half of them stay with the wendigo. None of the student pieces are for sale, but there have been offers.

The air outside is cold and biting. Wednesday pulls her fur collared coat close around her. She feels weak. It’s strange. Since they have left early, Xavier has to hail a taxi. It reeks of cigarettes and the driver groans and wheezes as he pulls out onto the road. Wednesday tucks herself into Xavier’s chest and tries to keep from screaming in pain.

“I’m hungry,” she hears herself murmur as the familiar glow of the streetlamps of their neighborhood leaks into the cab. A wave of dizziness has overtaken her.

“Wednesday?” His voice sounds distorted. “Fuck.” He reaches around to steady her. “I was going to bring you something to eat soon… I… you’re bleeding.”

“It’s not my blood,” she says. She’s going to die and burn for eternity. The pain pierces through every part of her body. He’d been brutal. It makes her happy, even as terror starts to overtake her.

The driver pulls up to their building and Xavier shoves a wad of bills at him – thrice over what the fare is – and gets her out. The blood oozing from the pores in her scalp splatters the concrete stoop. “Shit, shit,” Xavier hisses, bending down to pick her up. The blood starts to stain his dress shirt, glistening against the raw black silk. It’s late enough that the lobby and foyer of the building is empty. He carries her past their door and toward the staircase. She feels too weak to panic, knowing where they are going.

Under the staircase is a maintenance closet. Within, next to the fuse box, is a door almost too narrow for anyone to pass through, let alone two people together. It’s a tight squeeze and then a gradual slope to a hallway that leads under the alley behind the building, down into the tunnels and eventually a room. Wednesday feels consciousness slip from her and when she next comes to, it’s in snatches. Bright fluorescent light, Xavier pulling her coat off and using it to prop her up on a lab table, the sound of water as he briskly scrubs his hands and up to his elbows. Everything goes blissfully dark and she is aware of the smell of blood all over her, leaking from her eyes, from her ears and everywhere else.

A sharp stinging smell snaps her consciousness back almost fully. Xavier’s hair is pulled back tightly, and his face is pale but set, grim and determined. “Stay with me,” he urges her, waving smelling salts under her nose.

She reaches out to grasp his face between her hands, trying to summon a last bit of strength, pushing up her throat. “The night I met you…”

“Wednesday,” he sighs. His chest is bare, and he is holding a sharp scalpel to his skin. She surges forward to stop him, but her whole body feels like lead and dull with pain. He opens himself up carefully, measured; an eternity later, gently directs her head, holding her steady as she bites into the dark red kidney, fresh and throbbing. Real tears wash out the tainted blood and run down her face. It tastes so good. Her teeth struggle to grip at first but once they break through, she can’t restrain herself from greedily grabbing at it and taking bigger bites.

Xavier’s hands shake and he eases himself back onto the gurney he’d rolled up beside her, grasps for the oxygen tank strapped to the side. In her delirious feeding, she almost forgets everything and cries out in mingled pleasure and panic to help him.

Xavier can barely look at Wednesday after he comes back to the apartment from the hospital. He only speaks when spoken to. He doesn’t paint.

It is frustrating, and Wednesday feels hollow.

She’s never fed off of someone without leaving them for dead. She has no context for knowing if her body feels tight and strong — alive — because of that or because of how willing the offering had been. Willing at that moment, at least.

On the third night, she wakes up at two in the morning and finds that he has moved away from her, leaving an inch of space between them in the bed. The room is cold. She pulls a sweatshirt over her night dress and a pair of thick socks, then laces up her boots before shaking him. “Xavier. I need you to wake up and come with me.”

He raises lethargically and puts on his shoes, doesn’t bother to throw anything over his sleeping clothes. His hair is plastered to one side of his face, obscuring it. She drags him out onto the street, holding his hand first and then gripping at his arms and hugging him to her as they wait to cross the street, telling herself that he is actually solid and there with her.

The bodega on the corner is lit up by every color of neon, peeling vape and condom ads in the window.

“Yo, damn. Is he okay?” the shop owner stutters, startled. Tucked into the corner over the register, she sees Xavier’s unsteady stance in the security camera. The shopkeeper gapes at him.

“Ibuprofen,” she demands, taking out her wallet and throwing a random card at the register.

*

In the morning, she waits for him to wake up. She knows he emailed his professors claiming a medical emergency and has been allowed to miss classes and obligations for a few more days. She contacted her own academic advisor and made the same excuses.

She sits at the slightly askew, Formica bar that faces the only window in their apartment with a cup of black coffee in front of her. When Xavier emerges, he looks first at her and then at the easel set up with the concept of his next piece starting to take shape.

“You’ve been withdrawn from me,” she accuses.

“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“When will we talk about it if not now?” It is just past five in the morning. They are both too tense to go back to sleep. She takes the cup, gone cold now, and sets it deliberately in the sink.

“It’s stupid.”

She feels her tense muscles ease; the way he says it is soft and ashamed. She had been prepared for rejection, for repulsion. She hasn’t been able to sleep, thinking of how she must have looked to him. Inhuman. This bashful, sentimental side of him she knows. Xavier has never had so much love to give anyone and he sometimes judges himself too harshly for it, strives for perfection where it isn’t needed. She wants all he has to give, especially when it is literally raw and fresh. “Tell me.”

“I was saving myself for you,” he explains after a long moment. The dawn creeps up the side of the building, teasing the back of her heel. Her heart feels swollen. “I had it planned,” he rushes to explain. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that.”

She pulls him to her by the thin front of his shirt, tucks her face near his shoulder and breathes in. “Zhizn moya,” she scolds him, relieved. “You’ve been giving yourself to me since the moment we met.” Under his shirt, the row of stitches is bumpy and dry. The memory of his taste is ripe on her tongue.

“There was never any saving me,” he agrees. There is something bitter in his voice, but it’s drowned out by tenderness.

“The night I met you,” she says again, taking a deep breath. “I fell in love with you instantly. I wasn’t born like this; it came on gradually. I always thought it was an aspect of me that I would have to hide, but there you were.” The thought of him standing in the field adorned in Tyler Galpin’s blood still thrills her. “I never let myself wish that anyone would throw a blind over their soul to be mine.”

He crowds her against the counter and kisses her hard, winding her braids around his wrist. “My soul isn’t pure or ignorant,” he confesses. “I’m not hiding, either.” She braces herself against the edge of counter, overcome. Her heart stutters, pumping a torrent of warmth through her.

“You wicked thing,” she whispers. “How are you so perfect?”

He smiles his disgustingly endearing smile and lets himself be led to the drop cloth spread out under his easel, dusty and flecked with dry paint. She undresses herself first, then him, never taking her eyes off of his. He hasn’t touched her in days, and she is almost hungrier for it than she has ever been for flesh. For anything.

They sink down to the floor together and she settles into his lap, losing herself in the worship of his mouth. Xavier breathes softly and bites hard at her lip, sucks and abuses her tongue mercilessly. “I love you,” he intones, kissing her deeper and deeper. His cock is hard against her stomach; she reaches for it, stroking hard and slow. “I’ll be damned with you.” It is the sweetest vow anyone has ever spoken.

He pushes her back to pin her shoulders to the floor, spreading her open; she is already wet with anticipation. She lightly traces the stitches, the even, minute breaks of skin texture triggering the first wave of her orgasm. “I love you so,” she pants, arching her back into his touch. Her arousal crests and he pulls her up into his embrace again, shifting up on his heels to drive into her. She feels herself tighten around him almost instantly, vicelike, and moans unashamedly, clawing at his shoulders through the aftershock to savor every last bit of her orgasm.

“You tasted so good,” she murmurs into his shoulder when it starts to wane. “I want more of you.”

“There are other organs I could live without,” he says, caressing her back.

Her vision, hot and delirious from lust, snap into focus. “Xavier,” she warns, tightening her grip on his bicep.

“Will you consider it?” he says under her ear. The air around them is eerily still.

“I will not treat you recklessly,” she promises. “For now, I will devour you this way.” She rocks her hips to take him in further, carding her fingers through his hair. Their breaths become heavy and mingled. Xavier groans and spills into her.

The stitches are irritated after, but not broken. Wednesday rubs ointment into them and kisses his chest over his heart. She doesn’t put her clothes back on, choosing instead to stretch out on the drop cloth. He only puts his pants back on before straightening the canvas on the easel, mixing a few colors on his palette. He had been working on something already, but he paints over it, lovingly filling even the corners with her skin and the folds of the cloth, paint streaking her ribs. He paints her eyes as liquid pools of onyx and smirks down at her to see that she has fallen asleep.

*

As her birthday approaches, he finds his prey again.

He has developed a style of hunting that is patient as it is brutal when it comes time for the payoff. He looks for people online or in the society papers, names dropped or mentioned when he and Wednesday deign to insert themselves into the upper echelon of New York Society, usually when her parents come visit the city. He follows their lives, learns their patterns, and decides if their meat is worth it before making a casual introduction. Tourists are also worth pursuing. Leading up to a New York trip, he finds a wealth of people tagging themselves on social media, showing off their new luggage, reposting reels of places they plan to visit.

Most importantly, he doesn’t develop a pattern in the actual murders, leaves no signature. He makes his hunting grounds the filthiest parts of the city. If he is close enough to drop below the street and follow the tunnels back to the basement, he dismembers and eliminates everything that isn’t fit for Wednesday to eat.

This victim has met Xavier twice, but he’s so self-centered he doesn’t remember either meeting.

Wednesday is waiting for him.  

He backs the car up into the alley and kills the lights. The old factory building’s lights burn dimly orange. Wednesday’s hair is braided in a simple circular crown at the back of her head, whisps catching the light. He pulls on a pair of thick rubber gloves and sharpens his knife before snapping the trunk open.

She stands in the middle of the alley, her hands behind her back. Her face is shining with pleasure. When he told her that her birthday meal would be fresh, she couldn’t contain her excitement. “My family got me into the habit of eating flesh cooked to keep up appearances, not because they’re ashamed of me, but because it would be easier.” She’d also told him about the cotillions she’d been encouraged to attend, the suitors. “Young men and women from prominent families,” she’d explained. “They all pale to you. Not one of them could have made me feel as loved.”

Right on time, the man’s eyes slide blearily open and fix on her, widening in shock.

Xavier doesn’t wait for him to scream, slicing at his throat in a neat, fluid motion. The spray of blood makes her smile. He slices into the lower torso next and starts to carve the liver out in thin fillets, handing them to her. She savors each morsel, holds out her hands for more. When it’s gone, he gives her a kidney and then the heart. It’s a feast.

“Thank you,” she gasps when she’s had enough. “Thank you,” she chants it again and again as she kisses him, tasting of blood. She pins him to the back of the car, eyes intense, and drops to her knees.

“Fuck, Wednesday,” he hisses in praise, shedding the gloves to weave his fingers into the plaits at the back of her head.

“I’m still hungry,” she smirks, flicking her tongue over the head of his cock. She digs her blunt nails into the back of his thighs so that he’ll thrust deep into her throat, swallowing his hot, milky bitterness. When he looks down at her, her eyes flutter open and she sighs contentedly, perfect mouth a mess of blood and cum. “Marry me, Xavier,” she pleads.

Chapter Text

Genevieve is having the worst morning. She woke up with a headache, the first time in ages she’d had a hangover. The water pressure in her building is weak; even though she managed to wash her hair, it took forever and she’s sure it didn’t rinse out all the way, making the nape of her neck feel sticky. Too gross.

The worst part was the call from her manager about the Cartier campaign.

“They’re dropping you,” he’d said curtly before subtly reminding her that her last beauty shot needed more retouches than usual.

She comes back to her apartment after an appointment with a dermatologist that she had to pay for out of pocket to see her neighbor from across the hall carrying a cardboard moving box out to the lobby, where there is another pile already waiting.

“Are you and your boyfriend moving out?” Genevieve asks, mentally tallying this to her bad day. It would have been only a matter of time before Xander gave in to her advances.

“Xavier isn’t my boyfriend,” the girl sniffs, flicking her eyes skyward.

Despite her irritation, Genevieve can’t hide her smile. She knew it. This girl – Wendy? – has no charm. Her skin is flawless, unfortunately, but she always looks so dour and wears her hair in pigtails or milkmaid braids. Of course he dumped her.

“We were married last weekend,” the girl clarifies, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear and flashing what is undoubtedly the exact pear-shaped 3.9 carat Cartier diamond engagement ring Gen would have been wearing for the Times Square billboard. “He’s my husband now.” She shifts the box to her hip and hands her a crisp white card with scrolled, jet-black lettering. Mr. and Mrs. Thorpe-Addams. An address in Manhattan. “Would you mind forwarding any mail?”