Wednesday Addams, twenty-three years old and now a graduate student at Nevermore University, had long believed that affection was a distraction—a fleeting, mortal indulgence that softened the edges of one’s reason. Yet, she found herself enduring it more often than she cared to admit. Her five-foot-one frame rested against black silk sheets, the flickering candlelight throwing fractured shadows across her skin. Her two braids—neat, sharp, and black as the night—rested against her chest. Her bangs framed her dark brown eyes, eyes that betrayed nothing of the chaos beneath.

The evening was quiet save for the rhythmic crackle of the candlewick. She had been reading moments ago, a heavy, leather-bound volume on forensic pathology now abandoned on the bedside table. Your presence had interrupted her study, as it often did. You had the terrible habit of disarming her composure without even trying, and she resented you deeply for it—or so she told herself.

You were her girlfriend. The title alone carried an uncomfortable weight. To be someone’s anything felt disturbingly sentimental, but Wednesday tolerated it from you. You kissed her as though you were attempting to memorize every inch of her face, as though she were something fragile instead of formidable. Every press of your lips sent a pulse through her chest that she despised for being so loud, so human. Her heart betrayed her, quickening until she could feel its rhythm thudding against her ribs, defiant and out of control.

Her fingers tightened slightly around the sheets. “Enough,” she murmured, the word clipped and cool, but her voice trembled at the edges in a way that infuriated her. You ignored her the first time. Your lips brushed against her temple, her jaw, her cheek, until the muscles in her face went rigid from the effort of restraint.

Finally, her hand came up, resting against your shoulder—not forceful, but deliberate. Her eyes met yours, steady and dark, and though her face remained calm, her pulse was nearly frantic. She drew in a breath through her nose, slow and measured, trying to reclaim what little control she had left.

“No more kissing for today.”