It was a testament to Gomez's lack of skill in Clairvoyance and Divination (and possibly common sense) that he had not only failed to foresee Morticia's appearance in his thusly titled fourth period class, but also completely failed to consider the possibility that he could have any other classes with her at all. Had such occurred to him, he might have sweet-talked Sister Crowley into giving up Morticia's full schedule, or else somehow found the strength to see how the rest of the day played out, before heading directly not to the nurse's station, as he'd told Balthazar, but to the registration office to demand that he be dropped from French and transferred to another language class - any other language class. (Now, he wasn't quite sure what he was going to do with Intermediate Hungarian, but that had been the least of his concerns at the time.)
As it was, he felt his body grow rigid with panic, for not only was Morticia Frump entering his current class, but Sister Lilith Edward Kelley was directing her to the empty space at Gomez's table, which up to this point he had been using as an occasional footrest.
He weighed his options. After his quick exit in French, the girl would probably take it personally if he ran. She wouldn't be wrong, but she would no doubt be offended, and the very last thing in the world he wanted to do was be the cause of her displeasure. Even though he should. Displease her, that is. It would make his life a great deal easier - infinitely more wretched, but easier - if she wanted nothing to do with him; and yet he could not bear the thought of deliberately inciting her hatred. But if he could not run, and he could not be rude...
He took too long to decide. She was standing next to him now, slipping gracefully sideways into the vacant chair, and he was stuck between a wall and a blasphemously beautiful face.
She was smiling at him slightly.
"Feeling better?" she asked.
Luckily, he'd learned in the hallway before second period that when she spoke English, the stupendous effect of her voice on his person was...not mild, but tolerable.
Just.
"Yes," he lied; then, as an afterthought, "Thank you."
"I don't believe we were ever formally introduced. I'm Morticia."
She extended one alabaster hand. Gomez stared at it for a moment before taking it. Her skin was cool and dry and soft.
"Gomez," he said.
Morticia's smile widened incrimentially. "Enchanté."
His reaction was instantaneous and inescapable: he lifted her hand to his lips, closed his eyes and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, inhaling sharply. He could smell the perfume with which she'd annointed her wrists, a drugging concoction of belladonna and bergamot, ladanum and leather, and he could all too easily picture her taking tea with one hand while wielding a bullwhip in the other. The scent was so unlike the waterlogged florals Ophelia favored; Ophelia who he could not hold without feeling positively smothered by petals, who preferred daisy chains to metal ones, whose poison of choice was allergens in lieu of arsenic.
Ophelia his fiancée.
His idyllic image of Morticia shattered with the sudden crashing of reality through the stained glass window of his thoughts. Like a lucid dreamer jarred awake by the hallucination of a sudden fall, Gomez remembered himself - where he was, and to whom he was betrothed. Wresting hold of his control, he drew back, dropping Morticia's hand as though it had burned him.
"Charmed," he coughed out, eyes riveted to the tabletop. "Bewitched" was more like it. Bothered and bewildered. Glamoured and enamored. Captured, captivated, enthralled, beguiled...
A dead fetal pig in a shallow aluminum bowl invaded his line of sight and was set down on their work surface with a dull clunk.
Oh, right. They were divining by entrails today.
Morticia pared the piglet. Gomez had tried, at first, but the poor dear's hands trembled like the chains of Marley's ghost.
"Neuroleptics," he'd sheepishly explained.
Morticia's own hands, enveloped in black latex gloves, moved as though they ought to have red hourglasses on their undersides. Her right hand was still warm from Gomez's lips. His show of gallantry had surprised her - Margaret's warning about Addams men aside, Morticia had been beginning to suspect Gomez didn't like her at all, what with his silence in the hallway and his almost terrified expression when Sister Kelley had indicated where she was to sit.
She wasn't sure what to think of him now. He'd kissed her, sort of, but he'd looked almost pained when he'd done so, and he hadn't looked at her since - at least, not at her face. His heavy-lidded eyes followed her fingers as they guided the knife through the abdominal cavity of the fetus, watched as she disemboweled it with as much deftness and precision of which she was capable, and splayed its organs in the bowl for examination.
She frowned a little, eyes darting between the entrails and the diagram in her textbook, looking for anomalies in the dead tissue that could be read as omens. Morticia herself was a semi-experienced augur, but Mama's specialties - and thus the major focuses of her daughter's training - had been crystal balls and tarot cards. In fact it had been Papa who'd schooled her most often on animal anatomy, and that had been from a gastronomic viewpoint, which, unless Sister Kelley intended to append the lesson with a request for a very small portion of prosciutto, wasn't overly helpful.
Morticia glanced at Gomez, who was chewing on his bottom lip in a way that, had she been standing, would have made her knees go weak. His mouth, she remembered, felt just as soft as it looked, and she found herself wondering what it would taste like. He certainly smelled good enough to eat: sitting this close to him, every time he so much as turned his head she could detect faint whiffs of patchouli soap and pomade, and something else, something warm and spicy that she couldn't quite put her finger on, but that made her feel at once safe and aroused, as if she could melt against him and into him and be perfectly content for the rest of her life to simply be a part of his space.
"Can you see anything?" he asked.
A ramshackle mansion with a wrought iron fence, and two-point-five dark-haired, sleepy-eyed and mustachioed children.
Morticia blinked the fantasy away.
"Either our crops will wither in the fields and our livestock be defiled, or I'm going to fail this class."
Gomez laughed. It suited him, Morticia thought. His smile was hatter-mad, and it lit up his eyes with bright sparks of maniacal delight that one wouldn't expect from his grimly good-looking features.
"What about these marks here?" Gomez gestured to three vague splotches that mottled the liver.
Morticia removed her gloves, flipped a page in her textbook and traced a line down the paper with one red-lacquered nail as she skimmed through the definitions. Next to her, she heard Gomez swallow audibly.
"The death of a husband," she read aloud, "at the hands of his wife, because she wishes to marry another." A cold feeling settled over her like evening fog. She shook her head. "No, that can't be right..."
The idea was simply too gruesome. Ophelia was flighty, true, but she could never...
Oh, yes, Morticia corrected herself, yes, she could. It might not be premeditated, she might not even mean to do it, but given enough emotional frenzy, there was precious little Ophelia could not be provoked to do. It was said that the Frump sense of sanity was only a handful of generations removed from feral, and Ophelia was too much a flower child to ignore the influence of nature upon her nature, even if the thought of Gomez being drowned in her flashfloods made Morticia want to weep.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair in the least.
Her hands itched for her own tarot cards, to do another reading on her own terms, and either confirm or deny what the piglet seemed to prophesy. If only Mama hadn't burned both their decks in a fit of grief...
Sister Kelley would undoubtedly have some, but their energy would be scattered, shuffled by too many students' hands, and Morticia had to be certain.
"Gomez," she asked, "do you play cards?"
Gomez, whose eyes had grown understandably distant, didn't respond at first.
"Gomez," Morticia said again, and rested a hand upon his forearm.
He started at the touch, reflexively covering her hand with his own. His skin was hot and his palm was sweaty. For a moment, they both froze, petrified, awkward, yearning, then simultaneously withdrew, embarrassed, and looked away.
Each was glad the other was well-mannered enough to let the incident pass without mention.
Gomez cleared his throat. "Only occasionally," he replied. "My cousin Itt's the card shark of the family. I would kill to have his poker face."
"Oh."
"But if you're interested, our dorm holds a game every first Tuesday of the month. The stakes can climb fairly high if you value your dignity, but if you wish to attend, I can arrange for everyone to be on their best behavior."
Morticia smiled, something she found uncommonly easy to do when looking at him.
"Please," she said. "I would like that very much."
So, Ophelia was going to kill him.
And not, as others might have assumed, in a fit of jealousy over his unabashed flirtation with other girls.
In this case, one other girl.
And he really was doing his damnedest to feel abashed over it, but it was hard. She was too wonderful.
She was clever, quick-witted. She made him laugh, and while she might have appeared stone-faced to some, Gomez could read the minute shifts in her expression - a slight narrowing of her eyes, the subtle arch of a brow, a hairsbreadth parting of her lips - each of them a tiny tell, prismatic and shimmering, that spoke of a mind like a magpie's nest, a thing with thoughts collected like baubles, and memories compressed into jewels. If Ophelia was a fragile opal, a warped and milky freshwater pearl, then Morticia was a blood diamond mined to finance a war, an obsidian knife in the hands of a priest, poised over the heart of a human sacrifice.
Gomez wished that he could lay himself upon that bloody altar, but such was not to be. It was written in the viscera: like river weeds, Ophelia would tangle about his ankles and tug him down to rest in the same watery grave as her Shakespearean namesake.
The revelation had not surprised him. Frankly, it had brought him a measure of relief to know that his suffering would be cut mercifully short. He already expected that Ophelia would have affairs, if she wasn't having them already; that she would one day tire of him completely was a small and perfectly logical leap to take. The only question was, when? A year into their marriage? A decade? Perhaps she would prove Balthazar a prophet and become a true white widow, carting his casket home from their honeymoon alongside albino alligator luggage.
The only thing that pained Gomez about the prediction was that his time with Morticia would be equally finite. As long as he was married to Ophelia, he would at least have an excuse to see her, to glibly insist that she be invited over often under the pretense of fostering further closeness between his wife and her beloved "baby" cousin. The visits would be bittersweet, but he thought they might be enough to sustain him; that the nourishment to be gained from the sight and sound and scent of her might serve to temper the agony of his inability to feel her, to have her, and to call her his own.
Unless...
Unless he were to conduct an affair of his own. One final indulgence. After all, up until a few months ago, he'd always had it in his mind that when the time came for him to settle down with a wife, he would do so gladly, for she would be his one great love, his one great, enduring passion. The kind of woman who could stoke the infernal flames of his desire all the way from here to the gates of Hell and beyond, and he would know at once, as he knew right now, that he would never again long for another.
But then, supposing she someday returned his feelings, what of her happiness, when finally he succumbed to his destiny? Could he leave her so heartbroken, to while away her remaining years in mourning? How could he love her and damn her to desolation both?
The answer was simple, and singular: he couldn't.
Oh, could he have only met her before this whole mess had begun! Had he but known the extent of the consequences, he would never have broken Flora and Fauna's hearts (or did they share a single organ between them?), nor his brother's (Gomez knew for a fact Fester had two, but only now understood that his brother's medical anomaly was designed so that one could be devoted to each twin). And then there was the matter of Balthazar, already smitten, a second Fester waiting in the wings for Gomez's selfishness to again take center stage...
He couldn't make that mistake again.
It should have pleased him, that the iniquity he had sown had reaped such a bounty as the girl of his dreams.
The only trouble was that she would have to remain so, for her own sake; for everyone's sake, it seemed, but his own.
Gomez grew again quiet and reserved during the last fifteen minutes of class, but Morticia didn't let on that she knew just how personally meant for him the marks on the liver had been. Although she had the urge to somehow comfort and reassure him, there was nothing she could think of to say that would do either, and in any case she didn't know him well enough to judge whether he was the kind of person who would be resentful or appreciative of sympathy or distraction.
Best to keep mum, then, and so their walk from class to lunch was a silent one. The backs of their hands brushed together once, and Morticia folded her arms across her middle to keep her fingers from following their instincts and twining with his. Both selected little in the dining hall, green apples and bottles of salted black tea. He held the door for her as they returned to the courtyard, where Ophelia and Balthazar were already at the fountain, in the company of a boy with long hair who was introduced to Morticia as the third Addams cousin, Itt.
"I see what you mean about his poker face," Morticia said to Gomez.
"Oh?" Balthazar piped up, glancing between them with a look of suspicion so desperately earnest it bordered on pleading. "Who else have you been telling her about, cousin?"
Gomez shrugged, his expression deadpan. "The usual suspects. Bartholomew, Throckmorton, Montrose...you know, all the most eligible bachelors Endor has to offer."
Balthazar rolled his eyes. "Very funny. But just for the record," he clarified to Morticia, "no one is more eligible than I."
He bowed and winked, and Morticia raised one wicked eyebrow.
"Oh," she quipped, "that I believe," and Balthazar winced, cheeks reddening.
"Cariña! You wound me. But you know what they say: you always hurt the one you love."
"If that's the case," Gomez chimed in, "I doubt you'll ever love so much as a fly. Cariño."
Surprise and a kind of betrayed hurt registered on Balthazar's features before he could camouflage them with a strained look that was more grimace than grin.
"Well," he said, "perhaps I've finally found my muse."
"Speaking of muses," Ophelia, oblivious, brightly interjected, "I'll be playing one, of a sort. We chose our spring play in Drama today, and Sister Strindberg picked me for Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Isn't that wonderful?"
A round of lackluster congratulations ensued, and Morticia was made to promise she would run through Ophelia's lines with her on the nights when there were no official rehearsals.
"It's such a shame you have to room with that kooky Margaret Womack," Ophelia complained. "We could have had so much fun together. It would have been just like that summer in France!"
"It probably would have, yes," Morticia evenly agreed.
"Mdkahvn kasdgh hdfh hakjdh," argued Itt.
"What do you mean, Margaret's not so bad? That peaches-and-cream complexion, those Alice bands, that pink lipstick..." Ophelia shivered. "Ooh, she gives me the willies!"
Morticia only shrugged. "She's a little different, but she seems to be a perfectly lovely person. I think her heart's in the right place."
"But isn't that dangerous?" Balthazar asked. "The right place is the first one most people would think to stab."
"And I suppose you've stabbed so many people in your day, Baz, that you would know?"
Balthazar flinched, clearly taken aback by the jab, and further by his cousin's sneering tone. Morticia, too, was taken, when she looked at Gomez and found herself rendered breathless by the unadulterated loathing ablaze in his dark eyes. If looks could kill, she thought, Balthazar would have been falling at her feet in more ways than one.
A shock of pleasure purled through her. She liked the idea.
Balthazar, as might be expected, did not.
"What is wrong with you today?" he snapped.
The fire in Gomez's eyes scaled down to a smolder. He looked away, chagrined. "I told you, I'm not feeling well."
"Ohh!" Ophelia cooed, feeling his forehead with the back of her hand. "What's wrong with fair Gomez? You should have said something earlier! Do you need to go to the nurse?"
"He's been," said Balthazar, still scowling. "Apparently he's had a relapse."
The fire flared again. "I'm sorry, all right?" Gomez opened his mouth, teeth bared, as if to say something more, but he only hissed a heavy breath and shook his head in frustration. He ducked irritably away from Ophelia's hand, lobbed his uneaten apple into the nearest trash receptacle and stalked off.
"Gomez?" Ophelia called, following after him. "Gomez, duckling, wait!"
"I must apologize for my cousin," Balthazar muttered. "I really don't know what's gotten into him. He's usually very jovial."
"It's quite all right," Morticia promised, still looking in the direction in which Gomez had fled. "He probably has something weighing on his mind."
"Kklafsjdlfkajfg lkds askldjf laksd kasdjf?" suggested Itt.
"No, he was fine this morning," said Balthazar. "And then suddenly, halfway through French, he bolts for the bathroom and goes all Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde while he's in there."
"Pkladsja?"
Balthazar frowned. "I don't think so. I didn't see any potion bottles lying around, at least. And anyway, you'd think he would have shared."
"Ikdsljafl."
Morticia blinked, a tentative notion breaking through her thoughts like moonlight emerging from cloud cover.
"He's been that way since French, you said?" she asked.
"Yes, since just after..." The same light dawned in Balthazar's eyes, but their innocence was quick to dispel it. "Oh, no, I'm sure it's not your fault. Gomez never avoids anyone he dislikes; he enjoys their company too much."
"Who does he avoid, then?"
"Generally, only three things: Buick dealerships, the police, and-" Balthazar leaned in close to whisper conspiratorially in her ear, "-the fathers of past lovers."
Morticia raised an eyebrow. "Have there been many of those?"
"Fathers?" he asked. "Or lovers?"
"Both."
"Fewer of one than the other. They say discretion is the better part of valor; in Gomez's case, it's the better part of the word 'indiscretion.' At least, until your darling cousin came along."
"Is he very devoted to her?"
" 'Committed' would be a more appropriate term."
"Slkjfasldkjfaklsdfaldk awoig aklsdjf," supplied Itt.
"Indeed," Balthazar agreed, "straightjacket and all."
Gomez tore through an empty hall, fists clenched, jaw locked, trying vainly to escape the thunderous buzzing behind his eyes.
He couldn't do this. How on Earth was he going to do this? He'd tried, damn it all, he'd tried, but jealousy, hot and thick and sour, had sucked down his intentions swift as quicksand. It had infuriated him to witness Balthazar's inane overtures and lukewarm flattery, when Morticia deserved so much more.
Baz should have fallen to his knees and flayed open his chest with his bare hands to offer her his heart to lunch on instead of her apple, should have dashed his own lunch to the ground and vowed to subsist solely on what scraps of affection she saw fit to bequeath him, for his every other appetite diminished in the presence of his hunger for her. It was what Gomez would have done - indeed, it was what he had had to fight not to do, until the flies in his head had aggravated every ulcer on his soul for which sin was the only known salve; a sin that was beyond his willingness to commit.
An Addams caught in the throes of a moral crisis. Fester would laugh himself sick if ever he got wind of it.
Gomez heard the clicks of Ophelia's footsteps behind him like the bony stride of death itself, and without warning he turned and hied into an empty twilit classroom, picked up the desk nearest the door and hurled it with a snarl into its fellows across the room.
"Gomez, stop that, this instant!"
And in that instant, Gomez found himself mimicking the desk, judo-flipped heels over head to land flat on his back on the floor.
When at last the pain and shock receded, and he managed to regain his breath and blink the stars from his eyes, he found Ophelia standing over him, breathing hard and looking leery.
Gomez did the only thing he could think to do, under the circumstances.
He laughed.
Hysterically. Nearly to the point of tears.
Ophelia stared down at him, head tilted, nonplussed.
"What in the world is the matter with you?" she demanded. "Why were you so unspeakably rude to poor Balthazar? And what Tishie must think of you! A fine spectacle to make of yourself in front of your future cousin-in-law on her first day!"
At the mention of Morticia, Gomez sobered at once. God, she was a fool.
Ophelia shook her head, exhaled a what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you sigh, and offered a hand to help him up. He accepted it, and made as if to rise, but instead pulled her down on top of him.
"Gomez!" she squealed in protest. "Gomez Hidalgo Alonzo Francisco Franco Addams, you let me up this- mmf!"
It was more a gnashing of mouths than a kiss, brutal even by his standards, as he poured into it the bruising sum of his frustrations, his powerless rage, maddening desire, and total, insoluble despair.
Predictably, Ophelia didn't notice.
"...oh," she said when they broke, and then, shifting her hips against his, "Oh. Is that what this is all about? You silly man, all you had to do was say so!" He released her and she moved to crouch over him on her hands and knees, wan mouth curled in a coquettish smile. "Let Mommy kiss it all better, hmm?"
All things considered, it was, he supposed, the least she could do. His general aversion to her aside, she did have certain charms, certain well-practiced talents he could appreciate, that before he had counted as one of the few boons their marriage would bring him, and that now in his hopelessness he had no qualms about cheapening, if they could alleviate the most superficial of his torments by even the smallest measure.
She kissed his cheek, his neck, trailed kisses down the front of his shirt as she undid the buttons of his trousers.
Gomez closed his eyes and surrendered to the images that had been ripening in his mind since the early afternoon. He tangled a hand in golden curls and willed them to feel like sleek rivers the color of mourning jet. He lengthened the fingers of the hand that encircled him, painted them bone-white and tipped them with talons stained scarlet from their greedy spearing of his heart. He turned the hot tongue that toyed with him and the thin lips that enshrouded him crimson as the color of life itself, and when he came he crushed daises in a trembling fist, and wished for a palm full of thorns.