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sissytobitch10seconds · 2 years

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Annoying Yet Endearing

Fandom: Wednesday (2022) Summary: Xavier isn't acting like himself. His partners can all see it, but they choose not to say anything for a while. It drags on and on to the point where they can't turn a blind eye anymore. Warnings: Depression, mentions of bad parenting, mentions of suicide Word Count: 6,934 Ship(s): Wednesday Addams/Tyler Galpin/Xavier Thorpe/Ajax Petropolus/Enid Sinclair

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A/N: So I'm back on my bullshit with this poly ship. Make sure to head the tags as you continue on, this fic is pretty dark even if there's some good fluff at the end to make up for it. Thank you all for reading! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

The Summer break had felt like it went on forever for each of the members of the polycule. Tyler had been the only one, other than a few of the vampires, that had to stay behind at Nevermore; it wasn’t like he could return to town after it was revealed that he had caused the murders because of the subservient monster that lived inside of him. Enid loathed her entire family because she didn’t like the rough-and-tumble of her brothers and her mother was trying to pick her apart every chance she got. Xavier was left wandering the seemingly endless halls of his father’s mansion, alone with the small exception of the maids from noon to two every day. Ajax despised being home because neither of his parents were great about making sure that they controlled their snakes and he often spent weeks at a time stoned. Wednesday was miserable despite the fact that she liked her family because she was subjected to watching her parents be overly affectionate with each other.

Wednesday’s parents had offered to have all of her partners come and stay with her for the duration of the Summer and she had originally told them, flat out, that she wouldn’t let her parents anywhere near her partners until long after they were married. It was about halfway through July when she decided that she was going to die unless she saw one of them and she was rather keen on living long enough to find a publisher that would accept her manuscript after the last one.

Tyler was able to leave the school grounds and come and stay with her under the express instruction that he not go gallivanting around in the town near where Wednesday lived. It was part of the ruling of the Outcast Law System, which dealt with all things supernatural and different from the things that usual judges were used to handling, that Tyler not be around Normies any more than absolutely necessary until they did some more research on his specific hyde to keep him from killing more innocents.

The whole polycule thought that part of the ruling was rather annoying since they wanted to bring him into town and show how much better he fit in with them than how he fit in with all of the Normie kids.

The summer was long gone, now. They had all been brought back to Nevermore so that they could continue their education for another year. The classes and the rest of the student body was something that Wednesday could take or leave as she pleased, but she had to admit that she was glad she was finally back around all of her partners. She didn’t like them being out of her sight for too long lest someone try to kill them before she had the opportunity to.

“Where’s Xavier?” Enid asked. She tucked a strand of her quickly growing bleached blond hair behind her ear as she swiveled around while looking for their missing boyfriend.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t heard from him in quite some time,” Wednesday glanced down at the cellphone that he had gotten her during their impromptu winter break the year that they had discovered Tyler was a hyde. It was something that she had only kept in the beginning because she enjoyed the idea of having a stalker and that stalker having a way to contact her, but she found that it was pretty convenient for keeping in contact with other people. Never before then had she ever had someone that she wanted to keep in contact with as she lived with her parents and brother, and then when she went to Nevermore they could just scry her on her crystal ball. Being able to call and text was useful to keep tabs on Eugene and her partners now that she knew people she cared for all over the country.

Ajax’s brows furrowed together as he dug into his pocket and removed his phone. His screen had a single long crack down the middle of it and the edges of the case were chipping off from being dropped too many times that summer when his father inevitable stoned him every time he looked up from the device. “I thought that he just stopped messaging me and the group chat because I could never respond back. I didn’t really have a lot of time to think about it, though.”

The peppier of his two girlfriends reached out and squeezed his arm to give him some reassurance. “I’m sure everything is fine. I think that his dad might have come home, he mentioned something about that during one of our calls.” She then turned to Tyler, “Aren’t you rooming with him this year?”

“Yeah, I am. I can go check our room and see if he’s there. Meet you back in Ophelia Hall by four at the latest?” he offered.

Wednesday and Enid glanced at each other and then nodded. Enid was always a little bit worried that Tyler was going to have flashbacks when he came to their dormitory since it had been one of the places where Laurel Gates, posing as a herbology teacher at Nevermore, abused and manipulated him into doing things he had no choice in. Tyler never showed any signs of disliking it or being uncomfortable, though, so they tried to let it go.

Wednesday dragged both of her other partners away from the prying eyes of the people around them. She didn’t like being affectionate in public because she didn’t care for constantly being compared to her overly close parents. She knew that eventually they would stop doing that, when she was old enough to be distanced from her family and become her own person, but for now she was stuck in their shadow.

Tyler carried through the hall while ignoring the way that the other students turned and stared at him. He had gotten used to that since he transferred over the asylum so that he could attend school and adjust back to being a person, even if he was a person with a monster inside of him. A lot of the students at Nevermore still knew him from reputation alone since his partners were so aggressively protective of him and didn’t want to let anyone get close to him. The only people that knew him well enough to understand the difference between him and his monster were the vampires that he had spent the summer with.

He paused when he got to the outside of his dorm room. He raised his hand up and knocked twice to let the other man know that he was coming in before he fully entered. “Hey Xav? You in here?”

The other teenager was, in fact, not there.

His things were spread out over his half of the room but they looked a lot different than they had the year before. His desk had a neat stack of books along the wall, held up by two matching figurine in the shape of mange-ridden cats. Tyler knew that they had been Xavier’s godmother’s last gift to him before she died. The wall was still devoid of art from where it had all been taken down for the summer break. The wardrobe was just open enough to reveal the line of pressed clothing and hoodies that made up Xavier’s choice of clothing. It would no doubt all be rumpled and disorderly by the end of the week, but it was always clean and pristine when he moved in. The little half bath that they shared had Xavier’s toothbrush in his holder, the one on the left, and a couple of other items that signified he had finished moving in.

Tyler could specifically point out all of the items that Xavier had brought with him to make their room more hospitable but at the same time it felt like the space was still devoid of the other boy. His boyfriend wasn’t there physically, as he hadn’t called back to Tyler, but it also felt like he wasn’t there in the metaphorical sense.

The hyde pursed his lips and then turned on his heel and quickly left his dorm room. He walked back through the crowded halls, dodging around the families that were all dropping their children off for the school year and having a rather hard time letting go. Days like today were hard for him overall, so he was glad that he had a mission to keep himself busy. Oftentimes, when he was surrounded by this much love and parental affection, he wished that hydes had been better understood sooner so that his mother could be the one bringing him to school. He was glad that his father no longer had a single interest in if he was alive and what he was doing.

He walked across the grounds until he got to the semi-secluded shed in the corner of the property where his boyfriend usually sequestered himself when he was in a mood. At first, when he had begun to attend Nevermore and had gotten the run down of all the social cliques from Enid, he had thought that the whole ‘tortured artist’ schtick had been just that. After all, he had talked with Xavier several times before and had seen a very different image to that.

The Xavier that he had originally met, outside of the time that he had been crying and begging them not to hurt him anymore after they finished destroying his mural, was mean and snappish. He was quick to anger and eager to say something biting to Tyler every time the two of them were remotely close proximity to each other.

After a while, though, Tyler had come to know the person that Xavier actually was. He had taken time to talk with him and get to know what was going through the other boy’s mind. While the mean spirited person that Tyler had the joy of interacting with during the year that they weren’t going to the same high school was still there, he was a very shallow version of Xavier. The aforementioned seer had a lot of trauma from being left alone often as a child and losing someone very close to him very young. He suffered from nightmares that made it difficult to sleep and was plagued by visions that would possess him until he had finished an entire painting without even realizing that he had picked up the brush.

Xavier also suffered a fair bit from barely-treated newly diagnosed depression and hid it away from his partners as much as he could. None of his friends nor his ex-girlfriend Bianca were aware that he suffered with it, often finding it too hard to do anything other than sleep after he finished with his schoolwork for the day. Art was one of the only things that brought him joy, which is why he spent so much time drawing and painting instead of dealing with his feelings.

The art shed was a place where he could create as he wished without being disturbed by anyone other than his partners. Every other member of the school either thought that the building was used to store equipment or knew that it wasn’t somewhere they were welcome to go exploring. Tyler knew that he and their girlfriends were exempt from that though, as Xavier often welcomed their presence as long as they didn’t bother him too much once he finally got in the zone.

The thought of getting to spend some of that type of time with his boyfriend made his heart flutter in his chest. Tyler was a sucker for quality time, so parallel play was one of his favorite ways to be close to his partners and show them that he loved them.

He pressed open the door with one hand and felt all of the joy drain out of him at once. He knew that Xavier had packed up some of his larger projects to take back with him over the summer so that he could actually finish them, but he also distinctly remembered the shed still being full of finished paintings and other miscellaneous art supplies.

Now, the walls were completely bare save for the hooks where paintings and drying canvases should be. The shelves were coated in a thin layer of dust but there weren’t even rings for where the bottles of paint should be. The floor was swept clean of any shavings from charcoal or pencils, spick and span like the inside of the dorm rooms. The only sign that this shed had been used for something other than storage or sat empty for years was the singular easel propped up against the wall in the corner.

“What the fuck?” Tyler whispered to himself. He took a step in to make sure that what he was seeing wasn’t an elaborate illusion. The shed was just as empty inside as it had been when he was standing outside, which was confusing and worrying.

Tyler was well aware that the principal they had gotten after Weems’ untimely death at the hands of his late Master allowed Xavier to continue to use the shed, so the only reason that the shed was empty was a worrying one. It could have been because Xavier had gotten somewhere else to do his art, somewhere they was warmer and more protected, but the more likely solution was that it had been cleared out by someone. Tyler was desperately hoping that it was another student and not one of the teachers so Xavier wouldn’t be in trouble.

He didn’t have much time to dwell on it or wait around to see if the perpetrator of the crime were to come back as his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and flicked it open to see that it was a text from Enid, saying that Xavier had come to their dorm room. Apparently there had been a series of miscommunications and the other boy had been wandering around the quad and the Nightshade’s secret library while trying to look for them.

The Hyde quickly turned around and jogged back across they grounds so that he was back at the buildings. He slipped into the quad and then started down the long hallways that led to the dormroom portion of the school. As soon as he was up in Ophelia Hall, all of the worries he had about the lack of art supplies in both the shed and their shared dorm room had slipped from his mind. Those thoughts were instead replaced with eager daydreams about what kind of things the five of them would get up to now that they were all back together.

---

Ajax was spread over Tyler’s bed so wide that for a moment, he was worried that the frame was going to collapse. Then he remembered that he had been issued the steel frame just in case something happened and the Hyde tried to destroy the room, which wasn’t totally out of the question even if it got less likely by the day.

The gorgon was wearing one of Xavier’s huge Nevermore sweaters. On Xavier it hugged his tall, lithe frame in the best way possible, bringing attention to the way that his back muscles rippled when he reached down to do something. On Ajax it hung over his hands at least three inches past the cuff and fell to at least his mid thigh. Tyler enjoyed the fact that even a few inches could make such a huge difference in how Ajax looked in their clothes.

He was going on and on about something that had happened over the summer with a childhood friend of his, apparently someone that had been visiting his family in the States from Greece, but Tyler could barely understand him since he kept slipping back into Greek.

The door popped open and Xavier walked through, which made Tyler’s heart drop. He adored his boyfriend with every fiber of his being, with his entire soul, but something had been off for a while now and the Hyde had been yet to figure out what that was. He had just noticed enough of a change in the other teenager’s body language and their day-to-day interactions to know that he should be concerned.

He was trying to give it time and not bring it up because he knew that Xavier struggled with his depression the most after he had see his father, but it was getting hard. He was so worried and he just wanted to be able to check in and do what he could to try and make his boyfriend any bit happier that he could. Tyler knew that was limited, but there was always the chance that he could do something and he desperately wanted to know what that was this time around.

“Hey Xav,” Tyler greeted with his excited puppy-dog smile. Apparently Enid loved it when he looked like that, she said that if he could physically have cartoon hearts for eyes then he would.

“Hey,” the seer whispered. He leaned down and pressed a chaste kiss to the corner of Tyler’s mouth.

Ajax reached his hand out towards the other teenager and let out a little whiny noise. “Xavier! I’ve been waiting for you for forever, what gives, man?”

That was something that they were working on, trying to get Ajax to stop calling their boyfriend by terms that dude-bro macho men called each other on the regular. It was something that Ajax did to everyone though, so they didn’t feel the need to bring it up in a formal setting and instead were just encouraging the other nicknames he used while ignoring those specific ones.

Xavier dumped his books down onto his bed and then leaned over. He brushed his hand over the said of Ajax’s face, the other teenager’s stubble scraping a bit painfully against his palm. He leaned in and gave him a swift kiss before he said, “You need to shave.”

“I know,” Ajax whined. He didn’t seem to notice that the question had gone unanswered because he was too pleased to have gotten at least a little bit of what he wanted.

Tyler, on the other hand, had noticed and logged it into the ever-growing list of weird symptoms that Xavier was exhibiting in his mind. He turned and watched as their boyfriend bent over and collected some clothes out of his chest of drawers, right next to the slim wardrobe where he kept his hoodies and the pressed parts of his uniforms. He then grabbed his towel and bathroom supplies, saying, “I’m going to go take a quick shower. Feel free to hang out with the girls without me. I’ve got a lot of homework tonight.”

Ajax let out a whine. Tyler knew that his boyfriend wasn’t able to pick up on a lot of social cues because of the way that being turned to stone effected his brain’s ability to fire neurons down pathways (it had taken him quite a lot of time to figure out that’s what Enid meant as opposed to smoking pot, though their gorgon partner was rather partial to that as well) but this felt a bit egregious. “You’ve never had this homework before and I’ve gone to school with you for two years!”

“I just wanted to try and get as many of my credits out of the way possible. Spent too much time focusing on electives last year,” Xavier explained with a half-shrug.

Every bit of what was happening was upsetting and distressing, which made the monster inside of him let out discontent noises in his mind. Tyler felt his mouth dip down into a frown before he realized what it was doing. “Right,” he nodded. “Well if you get done early then feel free to come and hang with us too. We enjoy your company.”

Instead of saying something about how mushy Tyler was or even making that sarcastic little ‘awe’ noise that he only shared with the Hyde, Xavier just gave his roommate a nod and then slipped from the room.

That wasn’t the response that Tyler thought he was going to get from saying that and he was beginning to get increasingly worried. Xavier’s behavior wasn’t normal and it was getting to the point that he was worried the other teenager had been possessed or body-swapped. He remembered all of the times in the past couple of days that he had tried to ask to see Xavier’s current project, something the other teenager was usually happy to show and talk about, only to be redirected to something else. The times that he tried to bring up the art shed, which was falling into disrepair again and also completely lacking in art supplies, he had been ignored entirely. When he tried to engage in romantic activities without the rest of their polycule being present he was told that Xavier had homework.

Tyler decided then and there that he had had enough. He turned towards Ajax after slamming his textbook so hard that the gorgon jumped. He felt a little bad for that but he had other things to worry about at the moment so he held off on apologizing for the time being. He asked, “Have you noticed Xav acting weird or off?”

“I mean, yeah,” Ajax nodded. “That was why I asked him what was wrong.”

The Hyde pursed his lips. He got up and tugged on a pair of shoes before he grabbed Ajax’s hand and dragged him from the dormroom. It took one pair of stairs and a hallway containing two identical, creepy statues before they were standing in front of their girlfriends’ dorm room. The new supervisor for Ophelia Hall understood how futile it was to try and keep teenagers of the opposite sex out of the dorm rooms and so just gave a stern warning that she didn’t want any pregnancy or STIs that she had to deal with helping them treat. They also had a pretty stern sound limit past ten at night.

Tyler knocked on the door. The monster inside of him was still growling in the back of his mind, pacing uncomfortably close to the surface like at any point he was going to get discontent and jump out. Tyler didn't want to shift right now because he had to explain with his words what was going on and he was wearing his favorite sweater.

“Hey!” Enid beamed when she opened the door and saw that it was two of her partners. “Come on in,” she moved to the side and allowed them to enter the dorm.

“I wasn’t expecting the two of you over today. You should know that you’re eating into my writing time,” Wednesday said as she turned around, straight-backed and stiff, so that she was facing them. They had convinced her that she only needed to have two or three hours of dedicated writing time four out of the seven days of the week so that they could all see her and spend time with her without her being preoccupied by the latest installment in her novel.

“I don’t know why we’re here either,” Ajax held his hands up defensively.

Tyler opened his mouth to speak but the only thing that came out was a feral growl. Enid winced and moved so that she was sitting on her bed. She knew that this was one thing she wasn’t good at, since the actual Hyde itself inside of Tyler still associated her and her wolf form with the night that it lost their master. She was also working through the trauma from that night with the new therapist that Jericho got.

Wednesday rose from her chair and crossed over to him. Once she was finally there, she placed her hands on either side of his face and looked directly into his eyes. “You need to use your words. As appealing as it is to hear you growling like an animal, I don’t have the patience to try and decipher it at the moment.”

He took a couple of deep breaths to try and stifle down the feral feeling that had been building in his chest. Hydes were inherently traumatized and fragile creatures, which had the added bonus of them getting increasingly protective over who or what they viewed as theirs. Once Tyler had finished reassuring the monster inside of him that he was handling the situation, he explained, “I think something is wrong with Xavier. His art shed is completely empty, I haven’t seen any doodles in the margins of his notes. I’m not even sure that he’s drawing anymore, which is really weird for him. And outside of cuddling so that we can go to sleep, he hasn’t wanted to do anything romantic with me like he did last year.”

Wednesday pursed her lips as she pulled away from the other man. He half expected her to return to her typewriter and continue to ignore them for the duration of the evening until her writing time was over. Instead, she pulled away from him and turned to look at her partners once more. “I’ve noticed a change in his behavior as well. He spends a lot more time actually shooting when we’re at archery club and he also appears to get more upset when he can’t hit the target every time. It got to the point where I stopped shooting because I didn’t like the way that he was behaving, it worried me.”

“Wednesday being worried means that this is a big deal,” Enid sighed as she rubbed her hand over her cheek to try and calm herself down.

Tyler walked over so that he was standing beside his peppier girlfriend. He wrapped his long arms around her so that she turned and buried her face into his chest. They were both very touchy people, which had been a difficulty in the beginning of their relationship when they were still trying to get over the fight that they had during Laurel Gates’ time as Tyler’s master. It had been almost a year since then, though, so they were a lot more comfortable touching each other and comforting one another.

The room fell quiet for a moment as they all thought about the information that they had been given. “What do you think we should do?” Ajax asked, looking between all of his partners.

“We’re going to have to confront him,” Wednesday said pragmatically.

“I also think that’s a good idea, but we also need to be very delicate about the way that we handle that. We can’t kidnap him and torture any information out of him,” Enid shot a pointed look to their girlfriend.

The aforementioned dark-haired teenager just folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the post to her bed. “I don’t understand why not.”

“He’s been removing all the things that bring him joy, you don’t see why that’s kind of a red flag?” Enid asked, raising a brow at the other girl.

Wednesday let out a huff but conceded to the point, allowing the conversation to continue. Tyler moved them around so that they were sitting on the huge half-black half-pink rug that covered more than half of the floor in the girls’ dorms. He was the first one to speak once they had made themselves comfortable as well, “Something I’ve noticed him doing is avoiding the conversation whenever it shows up. I’ll ask him about his art and then he just ignores the question entirely. I think we need to tell him that we have to have a serious talk and then make him tell us what’s wrong. It’s going to get hard and he’s probably going to get really mad but this is the only way that we can get through to him to make sure that he’s really okay.”

“Xavier is always upset when we push him into things that will help him in the long run. He snaps out of it and thanks us eventually,” Wednesday said with a little sniff. She was the one that enjoyed pushing their boyfriend’s buttons the most out of all of them, so she had the most experience to talk from.

They continued to talk about the kinds of concerns that they had for their boyfriend before they had finally finished devising their plan. They were taking a risk when it came to the situation that they were in, no matter how they came at it. If they left it alone, then there was always the possibility that they would lose their boyfriend to whatever it was that was eating him. If they did what they were planning to do then there was always the chance that Xavier would break up with them. It felt like the only way that they could really riddle out what was happening, which put them in an uncomfortable tight spot.

---

Three days after their meeting with each other, they finally found the perfect time to execute their plan. Xavier and Wednesday had archery together every monday and friday, and they were the only ones that participated in that particular club. Since they would already be partially secluded from the rest of the school so that stray arrows couldn’t hurt anyone, it was the perfect time for them to go and question their partner in a way that he couldn't avoid like he had done with all of the others.

Tyler and Ajax were waiting outside of Ophelia Hall for Enid to finish up whatever it was that she was doing inside of her dorm. As soon as she had departed, the trio quickly headed across the campus until they were standing just off of the archery range.

Wednesday had been telling the truth when she said that she had stopped shooting because of how upset Xavier had gotten when she hit the mark and he was unable to. She was sitting on one of the big haybales that they used for targets and marking where the archers were supposed to stand. She looked as mysterious and graceful as ever, a shadowy figure just to the left of where their lanky yet handsome boyfriend was trying his best to hit the center of the target every time.

It took about ten minutes for him to get frustrated and throw his bow down to the haybale next to him, the one that Wednesday wasn’t sitting on. He sat heavily on it and ran one of his skilled hands down the side of his face. Tyler hated to see him look so distressed and upset. He wanted nothing more than to be able to figure out what was wrong and help him with it.

“I think it’s time to go,” Enid informed both of her boys from where she was standing between them. She had a serious, concerned look dotted over her features. It didn’t look right on her, Tyler realized. That was another reason that the whole situation upset him as much as it did. He didn’t like it when any of his partners were upset and Xavier’s behavior changing so much made the rest of them antsy and sad as well.

She walked away from them after forcing her normal chipper smile onto her face. If one looked closely, they would have been able to see the dullness in the gray and the way that the crows’ feet in the corner of her eyes pulled with worry.

Once she was over by the haybales, she leaned down and kissed Wednesday chastely before she plopped herself down directly onto Xavier’s lap. She threw her arms around his neck and then planted a kiss onto his cheek. “There’s my big, strong archer,” she praised.

“Mm,” he grunted as he tilted his head slightly away from her attacking force. That in and of itself wasn’t abnormal since Enid purposefully wore too much lipstick or gloss whenever she was going to do something like that with them, which resulted in them walking around with a stain on their cheek for the next day or so. It was odd when looked through the lens of everything else that had happened in the last couple of weeks since getting back from their break.

Ajax and Tyler walked over as well, sitting down in between the haybales so that they completed the little line of partners. “So Xavier, we actually have something that we need to talk to you about,” Tyler said after a beat of silence when he realized that no one else was going to do it.

“I have some work that I should be getting to,” he cleared his throat as he awkwardly tried to dislodge Enid.

The werewolf used her superior strength to keep him exactly where he was, refusing to let him leave. It was something that she usually didn’t do when she was awake, but that was part of the plan that they had discussed. Xavier let out a little whimper but then didn’t try to fight her anymore. “Good boy,” she praised as she pressed a kiss to his temple.

“What did you guys need to talk to me about?” he asked, swallowing so hard that his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.

The four other partners shared a look and then Wednesday spoke, “You haven’t been acting like yourself. I originally befriended you because I admired the way that you held true to your principles and didn’t let what others wanted from you sway you. It’s one of the first things that I noticed about you, so of course I noticed when you started acting differently. You have yet to tell us that something is wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong,” Xavier tried to protest.

A flare of protectiveness from the monster that was sleeping inside of Tyler’s chest erupted out of him. “Bullshit! You haven’t been doing any of the things that you actually like to do, you have been closer to losing your temper, and you’re constantly making excuses not to be around us. Don’t try to tell us that something isn’t wrong, we’re your partners and we know you.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, he immediately regretted them. He didn’t want to blow up at his boyfriend, which had been his entire reason for bringing around all of his other partners. The Hyde was so feral and unhinged, even after all he had done to assure the monster that they were safe. Oftentimes, even when the situation was as unserious as this one, sometimes he wasn’t able to control himself and all of his feelings exploded out of him all at once.

Xavier hung his head and was silent for a really long time.

Enid was the first to notice that something was wrong. Not only did she had enhanced senses because of the wolf part of her genetics, but she was quite literally sitting on his lap. She noticed the growing wet patch on her shoulder from his tears and the minute shaking of his shoulders. “Xav?” she asked as she ran her hand through his long hair. “Baby, are you okay?”

“I’m so sorry that I was being so shitty to you guys,” he sobbed. His voice sounded hoarse, like he had been muffling sobs the entire time since Tyler had finished his miniature rant.

“No, no, babe, we just wanted to know what was wrong,” Ajax quickly said. “The whole point of us having this polycule is so that when one person is upset or can’t be around for whatever reason the other isn’t super alone. We just don’t want you to be alone or hurt when there’s something that we could do to help.”

“Are you going to tell us what’s wrong?” Wednesday asked as she raised a brow at her boyfriend. She really did care about him, but it was also clear that she was the only one unaffected by emotion enough to stay on task.

Xavier leaned back from Enid just enough to wipe at the undersides of his eyes with the bottom of his hoodie sleeve. “Before we left for break, do you remember how I was complaining about having to spend the entire summer alone?” Once he got nods and affirmations from his partners, he continued, “Well I wasn’t. My dad apparently decided that this was the year he was actually going to come home and pretend to be the doting father. I barely got to spend any time at the house because of how much he was dragging me around to show me off to the paparazzi. He also found out what I had been doing in school and about you guys because of the group chat. That made him really angry because he was worried it was going to make him look bad. He wanted me to delete your contacts from my phone but I just deleted the text history and every text I got so he didn’t know I still had them.”

He was crying again, huge drops of saltwater rushing down his face in too-well traced paths. His cheeks and nose had turned a splotchy red and his eyes were swollen. Every so often he had to stop talking so that he could take in an unsteady breath and resist the urge to sob.

“He was mad about a lot of the things that I was doing. Apparently he was expecting me to do something like he did, or for us to become a kind of father-son duo so we could continue to make stupid TV appearances and have faked visions. People almost never want to hear their actual futures, they want to hear good things that are going to happen to them,” Xavier explained with a small shake of his head. “I want to be an art teacher or something like that. I don’t want to have to follow in his footsteps. But he wasn’t having it, so I have actually been really busy. I’ve been trying to take all of the classes that he wants me to.”

“Why?” Wednesday asked, blinking owlishly at him. It was something that the entire group had struggled with when it came to her. Wednesday’s parents were very supportive of her and never told her no when it came to the newest hobby or career path that she wanted to pursue. Their parents had all tried to force them into a box that wasn’t quite right for them, so they related to what Xavier was going through.

“I’m scared that he’s going to get mad at me and do something. He could pull me out of school or he could beat me or he could leave me with nothing but the clothes on my back,” Xavier shrugged. “I… I’ve always been trying to get him to pay attention to me since he’s been busy my entire life. I guess that his reaction to finding out things he didn’t like about me was so bad that my brain decided I had to get positive affection from him somehow.”

“It doesn’t matter what the reason is, baby. You don’t have to please him,” Enid shook her head. “My mom has my whole life planned out for me and it certainly does not include the four of you. I don’t want to follow it and I’m not going to, even if that means that one day she may decide she wants nothing to do with me.”

“My dad had plans for me too, but then I turned out to be a monster like my mother so now he won’t even look at me when he gets called up here to help out the principal. Parents are shitty and they have shitty expectations that no one is ever going to be able to reach,” Tyler explained.

Enid brushed her thumb over Xavier’s cheek to get rid of the newest tear. She kissed that spot immediately afterwards and then pressed their foreheads together sweetly. “It’s one of the hardest things in the world to accept that our parents don’t want what we want and that we’re going to have to let them go. But you’re not alone. You’ve got us.”

“Yeah!” Ajax nodded. “And you shouldn’t stop doing art just because your dad doesn’t like it. He’s never been around you enough to see how happy it makes you and how good you are at it. So you should keep doing it so that you can keep being happy.”

Xavier let out a little wet laugh. He moved just enough so that he could kiss Ajax. “You’re right.”

Wednesday got up from the haybale that she had been planted on. She motioned for Enid to remove herself from their boyfriend’s lap and then replaced the other girl. She yanked Xavier down the couple of inches that he had over her so that their lips could meet in a passionate kiss. “No more trying to be someone that you’re not for someone that doesn’t care about you, understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he smirked as he caught her lips again.

Tyler had recently gone through similar parental trauma, so he knew that it was going to be a long walk that they had to go on with their boyfriend, but the other three were just as dedicated to doing it as he was. They were going to make sure that Xavier was kind to himself and took up the hobbies that he enjoyed no matter what it took.

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