A/N: Hey, guys. Meant to have this story up by Galentine's or Valentine's, then life got in the way. So, here it is, the day after. It's two parts, but I wrote it as a one-shot and since it's on the shorter side (for me), I'm just going to post both parts at once. It's mostly fluff, inspired by Wednesday the series and my unfulfilled dream of seeing the Hargitay-Hermanns dress as the Addams family for Halloween last year. There are some vague references to the long story that I'm working on, because that one begins in May 2022 and this one would have to take place after that to fit a real-life timeline (Wednesday wasn't released until November '22)... but I'm kind of just looking at this one as a stand-alone within the Devilishverse, with no definite timestamp. Hopefully that all makes sense. Also, just wanted to issue a little reminder that fluff isn't my typical style: please don't be fooled or lulled into a false sense of comfort by this and some of the recent shorter fics I've posted. There's some really dark stuff coming up, and I don't want anyone to be caught off guard. The fluff has been a way to mitigate that for myself and try to stay active within the community. Phew, okay, that said... enjoy! (Oh, and you should check out the full-size version of the cover art for this fic on AO3 or my DeviantArt crystallinejen, 'cause it's awesome. :D)
Act One
. . .
Olivia Rollins-Benson was not a dancer. She suffered no delusions to the contrary, and hadn't since the age of six, when her mother disabused her of them, quite handily, by enrolling her in ballet class. This was after their first time seeing The Nutcracker together on stage, what would become a yearly tradition (one of very few) that Olivia still practiced with her own children, and both were so caught up in the rapturous grace of professional ballerinas that they collectively lost their minds.
"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Livvy, but I don't think either of us is cut out for this," Serena had said the day Olivia brought home a costume assignment, to be completed by the mothers of each Little Apples Dance Academy student before the recital in eight weeks.
By the time the two months were up, Olivia still couldn't plié without wobbling, disliked wearing leotards (her mother made a fuss about how much they showed, although Livvy didn't understand what they showed), couldn't tell a pas de bourrée from a chassé, and was more interested in helping the instructor—who always complimented Olivia on her manners, if not her dance technique—than participating in the class. Then she had fallen on her tiny, tutu-clad butt in the middle of the recital and looked out to see Serena's face among the tittering crowd in the auditorium.
Not terribly devastating, as far as childhood traumas went, but for a six-year-old who longed to please her mother, to watch her light up with pride instead of laughter, it had left a scar. Small, somewhere she never noticed it without searching. Remembering.
But there.
Thus had been the extent of her dancing career, and, outside of a couple times on the job, she hadn't set foot in another studio until Noah traded his cleats for ballet slippers. And now it was happening all over again: the costumes, the dancing, the potential to make a total jackass of herself. "How do you get yourself roped into these things?" she muttered to her reflection in the lighted Hollywood vanity, and tugged on the sides of her wig, pulling it tighter at the scalp.
Yes, she was wearing a wig. She couldn't even remember the last time she had done that, but she'd definitely been undercover, whenever it was. Undercover and much younger and also not dressed like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Morticia, not Elvira, Amanda kept reminding her, whenever she referenced the queen of schlocky horror, You're Morticia, she's way classier. Think Anjelica Huston. Think Catherine Zeta-Jones.
That's where the generational divide had become glaringly apparent between herself, her wife, and their children. War hadn't officially been declared, but they were split into opposing factions that showed no signs of coming to a peaceful agreement. The topic of their heated debates: The Addams Family. The contention: which version of the creepy, kooky Addams clan was the best. In Olivia's opinion, the original cast of the 1964 series was the clear victor. She had grown up watching the reruns and daydreaming about being part of such a close-knit family, where differences were not only encouraged but celebrated.
Little Wednesday Addams had hair as black as pitch, and dark eyes too, and her mother never shamed her for those features. In fact, they shared them, another detail Olivia had loved (maybe she could run away and live with the Addamses! she'd reasoned when things were bad with Serena; surely they would accept and love her in spite of whatever it was that made her own mother despise her so). To her, the quintessential Morticia would always be Carolyn Jones, whose high cheekbones and entrancing gaze were difficult to replicate. Years later, watching a colorized version of the series, Olivia had felt a bit betrayed to discover Carolyn's eyes were actually blue, but the childhood attachment still remained.
Which was precisely why Amanda, who had watched the original Addams movie in theaters at the age of eleven—and the sequel at thirteen—swore up and down that Huston was the superior Morticia. Make that the embodiment, as in: "Oh, come on, Liv, the series is so outdated and cheesy. Thing can't even move around freely, he's just a guy under a table with his hand in a box. The movies are timeless. And the actors made those characters. Anjelica is the embodiment of Morticia. She's, like, five-ten!"
If long legs were the defining characteristic of the role, Olivia definitely had the advantage. Only one other mother topped her in height, but the lucky woman was out of town and couldn't participate. She probably just didn't want to get stuck playing Lurch, or maybe her child hadn't raised a hand to volunteer their entire family to be in the winter recital like Noah had. What possessed Olivia's son to put them all in such a spot, she couldn't imagine, but even more dismaying was everyone else's eagerness to join in.
And that was how she discovered the very real, very polarizing love she and each member of the Rollins-Benson family had for the family Addams. While she and her wife bickered over the older versions, their children were far more up-to-date, swearing by the Netflix series Wednesday. None of them had been allowed to watch it after a weekend screening by Olivia and Amanda deemed it too violent and too frightening for grade schoolers, but they caught on to the dance craze anyway, along with the rest of TikTok and, seemingly, the world. Even Olivia knew most of the moves to Wednesday's weird prom dance from the show, having scrolled past it so many times on Facebook and Instagram.
It hadn't come as much of a surprise when her kids started imitating the dead stare and quirky, spidery movements they had seen all their friends doing. Nor was it surprising to hear that Noah's dance class would be incorporating the number into an upcoming routine. But when the boy came home and announced that the whole family, right down to baby Sammie, was going to be in the show too, no one was more surprised or ready to ground him till his twentieth birthday than Olivia herself.
"You said it was good to participate and volunteer for things," was his response to her shrill what?—tamed down considerably from the what the fuck? in her head—after the news dropped. "Especially when it helps other people. This helps Miss Lavender. She didn't know where else she was gonna find the right look for all the Addamses, and I told her my family would be perfect! Aren't we, Mom?"
She had to admit they were. Heads had turned at the costume shop when she stepped from the dressing room in her slinky black gown, the octopus-like train casting its tentacles behind her. As requested, it wasn't revealing in the bust (this was a children's recital, after all), but it did hug her curves in a manner befitting a designer dress, rather than a cheaply made rental to be worn once and returned. The wispy black wig, reminiscent of a dark willow tree, hung nearly to her backside and prompted the strange, elfin girl at the shop to stage-whisper, "By the gods, you are her," around Olivia's shoulder. She'd half expected to get home and find the girl hiding in her pocket.
But that dress rehearsal was nothing compared to Amanda's. AKA Gomez. Conducted entirely in the master bedroom of their apartment, the prep consisted largely of Amanda strutting in front of the mirror, a pencil mustache etched above her top lip, blonde hair slicked back in a masculine coif, and her eyebrows flexing in crazed Clark Gable shapes until Olivia was doubled up with laughter. She had the debonair act down cold and could have believably engaged in a one-handed sword fight right there and then on their king size mattress if not for all the giggling.
"Cara mia," she exclaimed every time Olivia rolled her eyes at the hammy impressions. Olivia had taken to extending her arm to be nuzzled, sniffed, peppered with noisy kisses, and practically drooled upon whenever the Italian came out. Eventually she just left her hand in Amanda's to save time, but she categorically refused to respond with the solicited mon cher, if for no other reason than a matter of principles.
Cara mia was Italian, and it was inconsistent to respond to an Italian pet name with a French one, she had explained, while Amanda gawped at her like she was off her rocker. And Gomez was Spanish, if they were getting really technical, so why did he go absolutely wild over French especially, when relations between France and Spain had been notoriously rocky throughout history?
It just didn't make sense.
"Babe, they had a pet hand and they let their kids play with an electric chair," Amanda said, and though she didn't pinch the bridge of her nose like she had a desk covered in DD5's to fill out before lunchtime, she still gave off that aura. "They weren't exactly grounded in reality. Besides, aren't those all Romance languages? Gomez and Tish were all about the romance."
Her clever wife had her there. Not that Olivia really minded; Amanda got so full of herself when she outwitted her, it was impossible not to be charmed by it. Impossible for Olivia, at least, who loved to see la petite blonde shine. And shine she did, although tonight she wore a slicked-back wig as black as shoe polish, her small frame swam in an ill-fitting pinstripe suit (the smallest one available in the shop, unless she wanted to dress as Sexy Beetlejuice), and the fake mustache under her nose perpetually wiggled like she was about to sneeze.
They didn't actually have to dance, thank God. Miss Lavender had entertained the notion of a dramatic tango in the background for all of two seconds, until she noted the terror in Olivia's eyes and quickly retracted the suggestion. Now they were just supposed to serve as part of the backdrop themselves, Olivia snipping the heads off of artificial roses with a pair of wire clippers, and Amanda pretending to smoke a giant stogie while she drifted about, looking philosophical. Once or twice they could blow each other kisses, and flirting was encouraged, as long as it didn't distract from the real stars—the kids.
Noah had scored himself what he considered a plum role, that of Pugsley Addams. Olivia wasn't about to tell him the character he was pouring his heart and soul into portraying didn't have many defining attributes, beyond being chubby and a bit dim. It might end up working in his favor, since he was currently the only boy in his troupe. All the little girls, including his sister Matilda, had been cast as Wednesday, in keeping with the spirit of the dance they were to perform. He would get to stand out from the crowd and showcase his dancing skills, which, in Olivia's slightly biased opinion, were far superior to those of his classmates.
Tilly, though. Just the sight of her in that wig with the long black braids had tickled Olivia so, she could hardly catch her breath. Her little ray of sunshine dressed in head-to-toe black—except for the pointed white collar—and trying her hardest to look grim without bursting into giggles of her own was the single most adorable performance Olivia had ever witnessed. Noah had spent hours with the four-year-old, teaching her all the steps to "Goo Goo Muck," until she was frugging and doing "Thriller" hands with the best of them. The tiniest girl in the group, ranging from ages seven to nine, Tilly was bound to attract the most attention for cuteness alone. Her size won her a spot front and center, and with her natural rhythm and apple-pie personality, she was in no danger of humiliating herself or either of her mothers on stage.
And then there was Jesse. "I don't want to be Wednesday," the newly minted seven-year-old had proclaimed a week ago, when her special order costume arrived and had literally just been unboxed. Olivia was still holding up the little black dress by the shoulders at the time. "Everyone else is being her, 'cept Noah. I want to be something different too."
"Like what, Jess?" Amanda had sighed. They'd learned long ago not to argue with their middle and most headstrong child when she had Her Own Ideas.
"I want to be the hairy one that talks funny. Cousin Itt!"
Hellbent on maintaining outlier status, she had then professed her undying love for the animated Addams Family movie from 2019. Not one member of the Rollins-Benson family could recall her ever having watched it or Itt. Nevertheless, both mothers had dutifully tracked down the two longest blonde wigs they could find—one for the front, one for the back—a bowler, and a pair of steampunk sunglasses (courtesy of Daphne's Alice in Wonderland cosplay phase) at the eleventh hour, and their silly, shaggy girl was thrilled. At least that's how it sounded when she garbled something at them in Itt-ish, then scurried off to complete the look with her yellow Converse sneakers.
"I guess that means thank you," Amanda had said bemusedly, watching her go.
"You should know," Olivia teased, ruffling the blonde fluff on her wife's head. "Hairy little bugger gets her looks from you. And her weirdness."
"Oh, you're one to talk. Our baby looks like you had a little thing going on the side with Uncle Fester. Bald heads really do it for you, huh?"
Samantha did resemble Olivia so much it was hard to believe they weren't biologically related, and just like Olivia, she had never been bald a day in her life. Her mommies had to get creative for that one, too. The Fester effect—a term coined by Amanda while she hissed laughter like a leaky car tire—was achieved with a gray knit cap that covered Sammie's shock of dark brown hair and blended with her corpsey gray makeup. It had been disturbingly easy to find a baby-size monk robe, and Olivia's declaration that they were both going straight to hell, as they fitted the sacklike costume over their infant daughter's head, only made Amanda laugh harder.
Perfect, just as Noah predicted. They were absent a Lurch ("You're hysterical," Daphne deadpanned when Amanda invited their very small friend to play the very large character); Thing was a mannequin hand, stiff as a board and even less motile than his small screen counterpart, although a clever bit of stage-left choreography by Miss Lavender—or Miss Lavender's hand, to be precise—did allow him to perform solo at one point in the show; and Uncle Fester snuggled in the crook of brother Gomez's arm ("Mamushka!" Amanda cried whenever she lifted Sammie, pretending to launch her skyward), a pacifier in his mouth instead of a lightbulb; but, for all intents and purposes, they were the Addamses. And they were about to go on.
"That's our cue," said Amanda's voice, close to Olivia's ear and slightly muffled by the heavy black wig. Indeed, The Addams Family theme song had just kicked in over the auditorium speaker system, campy and low-budget compared to themes of today, but catchy as ever. The big entrance came on the sixth set of finger snaps, when a remix of the classic tune, mashed up with "Goo Goo Muck" by The Cramps and "Bloody Mary" by Lady Gaga ("Goo Goo Gaga," Olivia had dubbed it, much to her wife's delight and her children's mortification) blared to oversynthesized, overamplified life. "You ready, Tish?"
"I'd rather be strapped to the rack right now," Olivia said around the curtain of fake hair. She might just become the first Morticia ever to pee in front of a live audience.
"Oh, querida, you always know how to light my fire." Amanda's mustache twitched playfully in the bluish glow of stage lights that filtered into the wings.
Then, before Olivia could answer, she heard it for the sixth time: snap snap.
. . .