Author's note: Some dialogue has been taken from the musical but it is at a minimum. Thank you for reading and reviewing this story. Please continue to read, review and favourite.
Having allowed their guests to recover from their shock, and the rest of the family having departed, they found themselves perusing awkward conversation in the large formal parlour of their home. The cocktails became more appealing as the moments of strained conversation ticked by. They spoke of typical things of course; business, the weather, the recent scandal surrounding a Capitol Hill favourite. He was willing the dinner gong and dreading it in equal measure. Whoever had thought it'd be a clever idea to invite them for an hour before dinner was truly hell-bent on seeing him suffer.
Gomez had two drinks and was reaching for a third when he considered just how woeful his ability to hold discussion with middle-America was. It didn't come from snobbery or aloofness but from the fact that they simply weren't his type of people. There was a world of difference between their universe and his. They may have occupied the same place in space and time but that was where their similarities ended. And the Beinekes so obviously felt the same.
"Do you have a little girl's room?"
"We used to," he straightened up his jacket and smiled at his wife, "But we let them all go."
He laughed and she smirked but it didn't appear that their guests found his humour at all appealing. Despite himself, he sobered up quickly when the joke died a merciless death at the hands of his inane guest.
There was another awkward pause, where Mrs Beineke adjusted her skirt and her husband looked wilfully appalled, and then Morticia stood.
"Alice, I will show you."
Gomez stood then too, grateful for his wife's easy intervention.
"And a tour of my den for you," he motioned to Mr Beineke, who smiled awkwardly at the prospect but got to his feet nonetheless.
From his youth he had been fascinated by methods of persuasion. Not just the crude and practical methods either but the subtleties of the acts of coercion and persuasion themselves. He had come to the conclusion that he rather liked them because he himself was anything but subtle. An open book, it was oft commented by those who knew him that you got exactly what you found when it came to Gomez Addams. Tonight though he had to remind himself, as they wound down into the subterranean depths of his home, that this was not the case. He was complicit in a lie tonight.
At the thought of this, as if making an excuse, he turned to his companion. He was desperate to illustrate that his wife was his upmost concern but he knew it was also a desperate plea for some conversation.
"Isn't it nice our wives are getting along?"
"Mhmm," the other man answered but he appeared to be distracted by his picturesque surroundings.
Gomez led him to a bolted and barred door, just past the vault, where he would escape to play with his trains or have a moment to read or admire his latest collector's piece. Inside, in fact, was his latest acquisition. A Russian sapphire knife, with an intricately carved bone handle, had arrived the day before in the hands of his most trusted dealer and was now resting on a plush little cushion atop the desk. He'd only had a moment to admire it the day before and hadn't yet had the time to properly study it.
He presented it to Mal fondly, "What do you think?"
"You seem to have a proclivity for weapons," the man said dryly, taking the knife nonetheless, "It is pretty impressive."
"I have a proclivity for all things dangerous," he smiled, lifting the decanter and the box on his desk, "That's why I married Morticia. Brandy? Cigar?"
"A cigar please."
He liked the man a little more after that. He took two out, trimmed them, and bent to light them in the fire. The comforting fug of cigar smoke filled the room then, and despite his perfidy and panic, he felt himself loosen a little. He stood by the fire and watched as Mal returned the knife to the cushion.
"So your wife lets you collect these things?"
Mal sat down on a straight-backed bench, used for garrotting people in 16th century England. Gomez admired the English; they had persuasion down to a fine art come the reign of Elizabeth the first.
"My wife encourages me to collect these things," he answered, "That chair you're sitting on was a gift from her."
The man ran his fingers along the narrow edges, "Insane."
"I know," Gomez smiled, "We like spoiling each other."
"You seem real sure of yourself, Addams," Mal suddenly said, studying the cigar between his fingers.
Gomez could have been forgiven for being just slightly offended at the accusatory tone. However he was never reactionary in this respect. Instead he merely smiled as the dinner gong rang through the house.
"No, if there's anyone that's sure of themselves tonight it's certainly not me."
-0-
"It's a little more cosy in here," Morticia motioned to the little parlour just off the conservatory.
Decorated originally as a boudoir in which the women from the midnight feasts and raucous parties could touch-up their makeup, it now functioned as a sanctuary in those moments of utter havoc in the Addams household. While not regular, when they did come they were nigh-on exhausting and so Morticia would escape here. It was decorated in scarlets and blacks and it had quickly become her favourite room when she became mistress of the Addams estate. Scanning the shelves of photograph albums – of which there were five bookcases in all – she chose the album from the year of Wednesday's birth.
"Let me show you this."
She sat down beside Alice on the chaise, and pushed the dusty cover open.
She had quite forgotten that some of their unofficial wedding photographs were in here too and it was a pleasant surprise when she opened the page and saw a younger version of herself, bedecked in bridal wear, staring back at her with massive eyes. At her side her husband was not looking at the camera but at her, his coal hair slicked back, his tails impeccable, and his love absolute. Her nerves and his adoration, her seriousness and his excitement, had all been frozen in this one image. She remembered his hand on her back in a reassuring whisper, in a promise of fidelity.
"You're both beautiful," Alice almost whispered, her fingers ghosting over the image, "You look so happy."
"We are," Morticia nodded, smiling genuinely as she ran her fingers over the image.
From under the photograph a yellowing piece of paper slid, slipping off of the book and into her lap.
She recalled the night before their wedding, when she had spoken to him of her nerves and, with an enigmatic smile, he had taken his fountain pen from his pocket and written on the napkin that had been sitting in front of him. She could recall precisely every note of music that danced around the restaurant as she watched him write.
"What are you doing?" She had asked, both amused by his oddness and curious about it too.
"Writing our vows."
She had laughed then and grazed her fingers over his, "We already have our vows."
"Those are the same words every man in this world says to his wife," his eyes were serious and dark, "I will never love you just as another man loves his wife; I will worship you as no man has worshiped a woman before. Surely to speak such common vows is a trifle contrived when they can't possibly convey how much you mean to me."
She had been speechless then as he continued to write, his inky pen scratching over the surface of the paper.
In the present she slid the paper back in but not before Alice could catch her. It was too intimate by far to ever share with someone. This was the dichotomy of their relationship; their affection was public, their all-consuming love was private. She didn't want Alice to know about her fear or her wonder. She didn't want this woman to know how truly consumed she was by the man to whom she was bound.
"What's that?"
"Oh," Morticia stopped, "Just some promises Gomez and I made to each other. We used the traditional vows; love, honour, obey," at this she cocked her eye brow and Alice blushed, "But my husband felt the need to commit to more."
"How romantic! Might I?"
Morticia hesitated, then unfolded the crinkled napkin. She wouldn't tell Alice about his words, or his eyes that night – because to her that was inherently private – but what harm was there in letting her see the love that went between them? No one could truly understand the words on that napkin, after all.
Taking it in her hands reverently, Alice read aloud;
"I promise fully to commit everything I am to you, everything I ever do or say is yours. I promise to make your happiness my priority, your contentment my goal. My soul yours, my life your property. Honesty, with you, will be my priority and passion. My love will come from that."
Alice looked at the paper, then with a little laugh, turned to her.
"You're always honest with each other?"
Morticia hadn't expected this to be the question and for a moment she was a little taken aback. She smiled nonetheless and considered the woman's query, then answered as honestly as she could.
"Yes," she nodded, "Always."
Then, despite her better breeding she found herself asking;
"Isn't that the case-"
She didn't get the chance to finish before Alice snorted in derision.
"My goodness, no," she laughed, "There's no marriage in the world where you're totally honest. Otherwise everyone would be single."
Morticia didn't resent her implication. She didn't need to resent something she had never experienced. She had never once doubted her husband's fidelity to her in all matters big and small and never once had she kept anything from him or lied to him about anything. Instead she simply smiled.
"You strike me as a clever woman," Alice said, not unkindly, "And you really think that?"
"Yes," Morticia answered, "I do. Secrets are dangerous and we never keep them, well, not from each other anyway."
Alice's smile faltered a little.
"Well it does not work like that in the Bieneke household," she shrugged and her tone was a tad defensive, "All hell would break loose if I started telling the truth."
She turned an angry face on Mortica but, reminding Morticia quite succinctly of herself, her face almost seemed wiped of emotion and was replaced by a saccharine smile a moment later.
"But anyway-"
The dinner gong, clanging through the room, interrupted her.
-0-
Wednesday pulled back from him, their knees touching still though and their heads pressed together. The only noise was their breathing and the creaking, moving house around them. Her bedroom door was closed, despite her future father-in-law's wishes.
"Your house, your room," he laughed a little, "Is so cool."
"But not my family?"
She backed away a little to look at him. He looked so incredibly out of sync in these surroundings with his Oxford sweater and his sandy coloured chinos and his blonde, corn-coloured hair. He looked so painfully normal that she was shocked that he had fallen in love with her for a moment. Then she remembered his love of dark poetry and his goal of being a pathologist and remembered keenly why they had so much in common.
"Hey," he moved from her bed to look around the room, "You never even let me meet them, not properly."
"That's a good thing," she answered despite herself and angry at herself too.
"I'm convinced that's not true," he lifted the skull that sat on her desk and in who's eyes she held her pens.
She wanted to snatch it from him; it had been a gift from her father when she went through her phase of wanting to be a writer. He had bought her an entire new desk and beautiful ivory parchment and a silver pen and that skull because he was convinced she was going to be an award-winning writer who spun dark, gothic tales. She had read him her stories and he had listened enraptured, gasping and laughing at all the right parts. She had grown out of it of course, and he had laughed, and indulged her next whim just as equally as the one before.
"My mother would have tried to seduce you."
She didn't say it with bitterness or nastiness but he turned to look at her, his face incredulous.
"Not because she meant to," she quickly amended, stepping off the bed to join him, "Just because that's what she does."
He shrugged, "I think they'll like me, Wednesday, and it offends me that you don't."
"I don't think that," she answered defensively, "I told my father."
He spun on his heels, the skull still in his hands, "You what? We swore we'd tell them together, Wednesday."
She felt suddenly chastened, "I-"
"You promised."
His disappointment was a wound in itself.
"I was desperate," she muttered, "I am sorry."
"No wonder he wanted to kill me," he answered, "You should have seen the way he was looking at me. Thank God you distracted him with that ridiculous dress. Which, by the way, is weird looking on you. Why are you dressing like someone who is not you? I mean, you look good in anything but…"
He shrugged, "I love you with your black dress and your red lipstick. I fell in love with you, as crazy as you are. And I'll love your family, even if they're crazy too."
She just stared, not sure of what to say next. She realised it wasn't Lucas' reaction she was frightened of. She was frightened of her family's reaction; the people to whom she was so intimately tied that their opinion meant everything. And no one's opinion meant more than her mother's. It was simply terrible how much she wanted her mother to approve of her choice to marry this boy that she physically balked at it.
"Why don't you want them to know?"
"I don't know," she lied, "I don't know but it's got nothing to do with you."
"I want to believe you," he said, "I do."
She went towards him then and, just as the gong rang, reached forward for a kiss.
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