Their eye contact for a few silent minutes was a conversation in its own. The only sound in the room was the distant roar of the ballroom from somewhere underneath, underscored by strings and a harpsichord. Gusts of wind knocked on the delicate window, tugging at the latches.
A fit of denial pounded its fists against the inside of her lips, but she knew there was no point. She could also paralyze him where he stood, letting him fall frozen on the hardwood floor while she fled downstairs, but why? There was no cause for self defense. She revealed herself to him years ago by her own choice, and left her home, tonight, by her own choice. Be honest, she thought to herself, did you really never want to be figured out? His eyes had softened and his pink lips smiled around his cigar. She stared at the cigar swaddled between his lips so naturally and realized that was the mystery scent she couldn't put her finger on earlier in the corridor. She pictured him lighting one of those cigars on his way up to the tower for years to, to put it quite plainly, obsess over her. It exhilarated her.
She turned around and walked over to the desk where the wooden spoon and ribbon sat on display. She picked up the spoon and examined it. It was one of her mother's stirring spoons for her brews, and she remembered very clearly snatching it from the kitchen drawer before running off into the night. She remembered the twinge of guilt she felt the next morning while watching her mother look high and low for it from the breakfast table. To think that night had as much impact on him as it did her. She figured this must be what her mother meant by saying your actions come back, tenfold. And now looking at every item in this room, it all seemed so precious. She turned around with the spoon in hand and looked at him. His lips were rubbing together in anxious anticipation.
"You really kept this to yourself all these years?"
He exhaled a sound of relief, as if he had been holding his breath while awaiting her response. "Never told a soul. It was so dark that Argus and Nate didn't even notice my wrist splint, which worked like a charm, may I add."
"So that's who those other boys were."
He fell into a state of trance as he watched her fiddle with the spoon. The image in his mind of a small, blank-faced girl in braids holding that exact spoon now stood before him as this ethereal, full-grown woman. It felt surreal. She was intimidating, standing comfortably with a grin on her lips in the middle of a room that was dedicated to her. A shrine. It suddenly felt embarrassing. The books, the research, none of it mattered, anymore. It was all standing before him.
"It really is you." He put the cigar in his breast pocket, which made a soft sizzle as the fire went out. She nodded, her eyes becoming misty. Her lips pressed together and she turned to place the spoon back on the satin cloth and quickly swiped a finger under her eye.
"Sorry, it's been quite an emotional evening." She forced an awkward laugh. She felt the warm sensation of a firm hand on her lower back and her stomach leaped. She turned and was startled by how close he was.
"What do you need?" His voice was just above a whisper. She felt his thumb slightly caress her, brushing over the zipper track on the back of her dress. "We can leave this room. Get a drink?"
"A drink... but I think I need to stay here for a moment longer, if that's alright." Her shoulders rose as she looked around the room again.
"Anything." He nodded as she slowly made her way to the far wall, keeping his hand on her back until she was out of his reach. A chill breeze had replaced her closeness. He watched her walk to the tacked newspaper clipping of the mysterious woman fleeing to Willow Peak. It had occurred to him, now, that there were things she didn't know. And he realized, how would she? Here was the answer he had been looking for his whole life, while she was the one with the questions. He reached for the Remy Martin Louis XIII Cognac on the desk and poured two glasses; his choice drink while he studied. He kept glancing over to her as he did so. She hadn't moved.
"I have to know, before anything, how did you end up coming here, tonight?" He walked over to her and handed her a glass. She took it in both hands and pealed her eyes from the wall to look at him.
"Well, I..." She looked down into the swirling, reddish brown liquid. He watched her contemplate what she wanted to say next.
"I won't badger you, but I want you to know that anything you say is protected here. With me. You're an old friend, no?"
She wanted to let the glass shatter on the wooden floor and throw her arms around him. She knew safety and comfort, but this was from the outside. She was accepted by him. She sipped the cognac and welcomed the burn to her throat.
"My older sister had the most "brilliant" idea to leave the mountain for the first time in our lives and attend. And her serpent tongue convinced me to come along."
"Your sister was the girl in white, I presume. The reason we crossed paths, again." He smirked as he raised his glass.
"Mm. She's also the reason I'm using this cognac to debilitate my nerves." She took another sip.
He touched her arm, noting the truth behind her blasé humor. "Help me understand."
She avoided his eyes, trying hard to make sense of all of this herself. He made it difficult to think.
"My mother is a lioness to two cubs. She hid us from view all our lives, and she taught us everything. Above all, she taught us what people have done to witches for centuries. My sister and I had nightmares about it, we would tiptoe into each other's rooms at night and hold one another. Mother never gave us any personal stories, however. But our way of living is so normal to me, I suppose, that I never questioned it." Her eyes met the newspaper clipping, once again. Gomez placed his hand on the article.
"Do you suppose this is your mother?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she stared at the paper a moment. She then turned away and walked over to the desk and sat upon it, staring distantly at the floor. After a small exhale, she downed the rest of cognac and set the glass down beside her. Gomez eyed her, perched delicately on the desk. He made a mental picture of the way she looked this very moment before making his way to her, slowly. He motioned his hand to the bottle and she nodded, and he stood before her as he refilled the glass that sat at her hip.
"She doesn't know you're here tonight..."
She shook her head. She crossed her legs under her dress, and her knee brushed his upper thigh. Both acted as if the small touch went unnoticed, but his head was spinning and he felt his face growing hot without a sip of alcohol. He decided to finish his drink in one swallow to give the reaction an excuse.
Morticia reached for the open book of healing elixirs and set it in her lap, a momentary distraction for her wandering eyes and her slowly blurring vision after downing her first taste of hard liquor like it was juice.
Her eyes scanned the pages in the book. She wasn't reading anything. She simply did not know what to do with the energy that was radiating off him like lightning bolts off a cumulonimbus. He stood right in front of her while she sat, giving her a feeling of warm enclosure and yet an entirely new feeling building from her core. She felt his eyes on her skin like lasers.
"What else can you tell me?" She asked abruptly, turning a page a little more forcefully than she meant to. He stared at the top of her head, still trying to process this evening's events. He wondered if she was, too, and if she also thought that things were strangely comfortable for the circumstances.
"I can tell you people have searched that mountain for decades. For a cottage, for any artifact, for some sort of unexplainable encounter. Teenagers trail up there with Ouija boards and tourists with cameras... some come back with fabricated stories. Some come back with something like this." He reached behind her to take an old black and white photograph laying on the desk. The same photograph of the tall, silhouetted figure among the trees that a once 10-year-old Nate Crowley presented to both he and Argus in middle school.
Morticia took it from him and looked closely. "Where did this come from..."
"Nate possessed it, years ago, from some old brute in town. "
Morticia touched the silhouetted figure with a slim neck and blurred out face. No doubt in her mind this was her mother. She began to feel unsettled, and even a weighing feeling of guilt. She stared at the picture and could almost hear it beckoning her to come home.
"Morticia..." he leaned down, "do you remember the warning you gave me that fateful night?"
The word fateful danced in Morticia's ears. She held the photo in one hand and reached for the cognac in the other. She sipped away any thoughts that she might be overdoing it, a little. She finally met his mild eyes as she set the glass down.
"I do."
"What did it mean?"
"Exactly what it meant." Her eyes were drawn to small movement upon his right shoulder, where the tiniest of spider legs climbed their way into view. A small, black-footed yellow sac spider pulled itself onto his shoulder in a most innocent fashion.
"So if I wanted to see you, see where you're from, I would get hurt?"
Morticia reached over and softly ushered the creature onto her palm, cooing soft sounds. Gomez hadn't the faintest clue of what she was doing, but was too distracted by the scent of her perfume on her wrists. Strangely, he wondered if it tasted just as good. Once her arms pulled back, he noticed the small creature in her hands. He watched how she cradled it like a newborn babe.
"Gomez. All I can say is, when we were children and we heard close voices, mother told us to hide. We would soon either hear people screeching and running feet, or nothing at all."
He watched the creature weave itself through her fingers, and it seemed like they were dancing together.
"You know, Native American tribes believe that spiders are an omen for destiny," he leaned a hand on the desk beside her.
"Oh? Is destiny packed with a venom with at least 40 different toxic proteins, sure to kill you in minutes?"
"...I hope so."
They stared at each other, now, each a little tipsy. The spider dropped from her palm to the floor, on its way to wherever it pleased. Gomez licked his dry lips.
"But what happens after tonight?"
"I don't know."
"Morticia, I want to see you again..."
"I don't think that's quite practical right now, Gomez." She took the glass in hand again, her eyes retreating back to the open book on her lap.
"What can I do to convince you... your family, even, that you won't be hunted? It's not like it was, I mean, you're adored!"
She scoffed, shaking her head. "We're not adored, Gomez, we're mocked. You're adored."
"These people are my friends and family, Morticia. I'm not sure if you paid close attention to the headstones outside, but Addamses have been far from adored for centuries."
Morticia looked up and closed the book in her hands.
"My great, great, great Aunt Singe was burned in Salem."
"My Aunt LaBorgia was executed by a firing squad," he leaned closer, "60 years ago."
Her eyes flashed wide and turned their focus to the shine of his silk burgundy suit jacket. She had the urge to trace the black embroidery with her fingers.
"And I could keep going. We're not so different, you and I."
"That's a bold statement."
She lifted her hand and flexed her fingers. Before Gomez could turn his head to the wall, the tacks popped out of the corners of the newspaper clipping. The clipping shot like an arrow into her hand before the tacks could hit the floor, bobbing to a silence. He stared at the paper, his lips parted in disbelief. She folded the paper, slipping it inside her dress sleeve. She thought perhaps she shouldn't have demonstrated that, but he was testing her temper. She looked at him.
"We're different, Gomez. In fact, I'm different from every single person under this roof except for my sister."
"The only difference is you don't want to see me again."
He took his hand off the desk and backed away. Her eyes fell, realizing the warm feeling of enclosure was just broken.
"I found you. Understand? I-I finally, finally found you, and..."
His voice trailed off and he scratched the back of his head. There was a slow building tension in the room, like someone had planted a bomb under the floorboards and at any moment, something was going to give.
"But you're making it plain, enough. I won't push."
He turned, taking another cigar from his pocket and hesitantly reaching for the door. Morticia didn't even notice herself get off the desk before the sound of her heels clicked on the floor.
"Guérisseur de Tout!"
The foreign words brought a complete halt to Gomez's body. His fingers, as if frozen, let the cigar drop to his feet. He turned over his shoulder to look at her, and it was almost as if he wasn't breathing. Morticia stepped back from the alarming look in his eye.
"Guérisseur de Tout. That's what I gave you that night, that's what you drank from that bottle. A powerful healing draft that was brewed for the first time in France in 1778, by a witch named Cadence Dubois who gave it to her husband before he left to fight in the American Revolution. It's the reason you woke up the next morning and your wrist was no longer broken, I know it. It was my trade for your promise that you would never come to the mountain again, I was protecting you. It's not that I don't want to see you again, Gomez, I can't. There are things you just don't understand, but I stole from my own mother that night and left the safety of my home in my bare feet, putting my family at risk, to find you and to heal you, and to warn you and I still don't know why."
She lifted her hand and pointed her finger directly at his stunned face.
"So don't you ever tell me what I want and don't want."
He took her hand and pulled it to his lips so forcefully that she almost fell forward. Both hands gripped her arm and it felt like his lips were searing her skin. All she could do was watch. His lips trailed up her arm, his head moving unnaturally fast. She tried desperately to catch her breath, her chest heaving as his lips came closer and closer. His hands gripped her hips and shoved her backwards into the desk. Books and drinking glasses fell, shattering right underneath them. His mouth moved from her shoulder to her neck, and she gasped at the feeling of static pulsating through her body. A sound she never made before left her throat as she held his head close to her neck, his tongue on her collarbone making her want to scream. His hands never stopped moving, his nails raking down the lace on her thighs and wrapping around her tighter than a metal corset. Grunts of desperation were muffled in her hair, and her eyes fluttered shut as she gave up on the need to breathe. His mouth found her jaw, her cheek, her chin, and finally her mouth, that latched onto his with just as much desperate need.
It was what they were craving the entire night since the cemetery. He groaned at the feeling of her velvety lips, the taste of her. The fact that she had never kissed anyone didn't mean anything to her, for their mouths glided together as naturally as dancing. Her hands found his face and held onto it for her life as they both spiraled into an abyss entirely their own. He moved his hand to the back of her neck and she softly moaned at the warmth. The sound of it could have knocked him out. He scooped her up with one arm around her waist and took her across the room to press her against the wall. Papers, pictures and tacks fell to the floor from the force of her body writhing against his. His mouth left hers against her desire and trailed down her neck, her chest, to her stomach until he was on his knees.
"Gomez..." she leaned her head on the wall, breathless and disoriented. Hearing her say his name drove through his ears to his hands that ripped a slit in her dress in one motion. He stared, helplessly, at the slender legs and black garters contrasting with cream thighs. It was a sight that could make Aphrodite weep with jealousy. She gasped as he took her right thigh in his hands, squeezing and kissing the flesh so tenderly. He took her hands and pulled her down to him, her back sliding down the wall with the rest of the papers flying around them like embers around a fire until they settled on the floor. She pulled him on top of her and took his lips in hers, once more, letting him dissolve on her tongue like warm honey. She felt his hand creep under the slit he tore and almost begged him to be quicker with whatever he was going to do, whatever he was going to touch. His fingers danced over the lace between her legs when the door creaked open.
"Gomez, what do we do about the glass everywhere, every ballroom window is completely... shattered..." Argus Brown stared at the two, panting on the floor and staring up at him with doe-like eyes. Red lipstick was smeared all over Gomez's mouth that was hanging open, pathetically, as he hovered over Morticia who looked utterly disheveled and mortified. Argus gave the two a knowing smirk and leaned against the door frame.
"There you are, Morticia. I see I no longer have the need to introduce you to Gomez Addams."
In full panic, Morticia shoved Gomez off of her and scrambled to her feet.
"Morticia!" Gomez reached for her hand, but she had already squeezed past Argus and took off down the stairs. Argus pursed his lips at Gomez, his shoulders heaving from internal laughter. Gomez took his collar and shoved him into the room.
"Fucking move." He slammed the door and ran down the stairs after her.
Morticia rushed through the conservatory to the living room, ignoring any stares from guests as she bolted upstairs to find her sister. She was desperately trying to hold the tear in her dress together with one hand while the other gripped the banister. She stopped in the doorway of the ballroom, scanning the sea of dancing guests, looking for any bouncing daisies above everyone's heads. Two hands captured her waist and whipped her around. She was met with those pleading, sparkling eyes that pierced her with apprehension.
"Morticia, please-"
"I need to find my sister," she pulled away, and he took her arm in a battle of tug of war.
"Give me one second!"
"Gomez!"
Just then, the dancing crowd shouted multiple rejoices of "Gomez!" followed by "Where have you been?" "You missed everything!" and began to surround the couple like a pack of starving hyenas. Morticia ducked under and tore her way through the people and back downstairs. When she came to the landing, she was almost taken out by a flying Nate Crowley, flipping through the air and landing, roughly, on his back across the room. He moaned and laid motionless in the fetal position. On the other side of the room was Ophelia, giggling and clapping her hands, gleefully.
"I told you, it adds at least 5 feet when I warm up my arm, properly!"
"Ophelia!" Morticia ran to her sister and took her hand.
"Morticia, where have you been? Dear me, you look dreadful, and I mean that..."
"We're leaving, now." She began dragging her sister out of the front door.
"What? But it's nowhere near dawn, I haven't even said goodbye - Morticia!"
Hearing the faint sound of her name being called from inside the house, Morticia began sprinting off the property and down the road.
"Slow down!" Ophelia cried. "What is the meaning of this?"
Morticia didn't answer and kept pushing forward, with Ophelia whining behind her. Once at the thorny bush at the side of the road, Morticia let go of Ophelia's hand and pulled their broomstick out from the branches and quickly mounted it.
"No!" Ophelia stomped.
"Ophelia, I am not fighting with you."
"Tell me why you're doing this!"
"I will leave you here!" Morticia hissed, her eyes like blades. Ophelia's eyes softened and her lip began to quiver. Defeated, her daisies drooped and she stepped up to the broom, sitting behind her sister. Morticia kicked the ground and they lifted into the night sky. Ophelia sighed and watched the mansion grow smaller and smaller, and then completely disappear from her view.
...
Ophelia groaned as she followed her sister in through her bedroom window, awkwardly crawling over the sill and falling in a heap on the floor. Morticia gently opened the door and looked down the hallway before quietly making her way to her own room.
"Oh, no you don't," Ophelia whispered as she climbed to her feet and quietly rushed after her sister. "You're not going to walk away without explaining to me what just happened!"
Ophelia shut the door and looked at her sister who had her back to her, taking off her heels with her other hand on her bed for support. "What in the devil, Morticia? You completely disappear, and hours later your dress is torn and you look positively mangled! And you rushed me out of there without saying a word, I didn't even get to say goodbye to anyone I met! And Nathaniel, I kissed his cheek - I kissed my first cheek, Morticia! Now, explain to me what on Earth..." Ophelia stopped midsentence at the sound of soft sobs coming from her exhausted sister. Her back still turned, her shoulders were heaving and her hands covered her face. She had never seen her sister like this. She had never really seen her display any extreme emotion. Morticia pitifully crawled into her bed and lifted the covers over her head. Ophelia's heart sank.
"Oh, angel..." Ophelia walked over and joined her underneath the covers and held her like she did years ago, when they were little girls, terrified of what lurked beyond the mountain. She stroked the tangled black waves on the back of her head, "It was just a little too much, huh..."
Morticia nodded, crying softly into her sister's neck, and let herself be held.
