𝕊𝕥𝕦𝕡𝕚𝕕 ℂ𝕦𝕡𝕚𝕕 ➶

𝕋𝕨𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕪-ℕ𝕚𝕟𝕖: 𝔽𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘

Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc. The Addams family credo. It translated roughly to, We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us. Not just pretty words, either! In some cases, they took it quite literally.

How Gomez would have loved to dine on Deuce, feed what little remained of him to his former friends. Substitute his liver in the foie gras au torchon, his blood in the boudin noir, his tongue in the langue d'agneau en papillotes...

Unfortunately, when you destroy someone stoned by a gorgon, they never revert back to flesh. It would have made for a much messier clean-up if he did, though. Tish must have had a lot of fun with that sledgehammer, because all that was left in the shower stall when she was done was gravel-sized chunks of marble and a lot of dust.

Oh, and the stone head. She kept that as a trophy. He could understand, was just as sentimental about the mementos he took from his past victims.

He looked to his left, at the devil on his shoulder. Simultaneously, Morticia glanced up from her tête de veau en sauce verte and gave him a secretive smile. They shared such a connection that he could instantly tell that she was thinking the same cannibalistic thoughts as he was.

He knew from the moment he laid eyes on her at his cousin Balthazar's funeral that she was going to make an excellent Addams.

It was his other love that he was worried about.

He looked to his right, at the angel on his shoulder. Valentina was staring down at the ortolan bunting on the plate in front of her, the color drained from her face. The tiny morsel had technically been the first course --just a hors d'oeuvre-- but she still couldn't bring herself to eat the cooked songbird.

She was too soft, too innocent, too precious... So much as that it sometimes filled him with playful aggression. It made him want to pinch her cheeks until they turned red, to squeeze her waist until she had bruises with his fingerprints, to bite her neck until his teeth left a distinct mark.

His family would accept her in a heartbeat, as they did everyone. But she would never fully understand their family credo. C'est la vie.

As if sensing his gaze on her, she suddenly looked up. Her smile was a hesitant and watered-down thing, showing not even the slightest hint of teeth. Still, he loved it all the same. To think he'd almost snuffed it out, without a second thought... He'd never been more thankful for an arrow to the arm.

She was dressed up as Eros right now, but he likened her more to Kore: the Maiden, the Virgin Goddess of Spring, Persephone before she became Queen of the Underworld. But she was so focussed on how different she was from her beaus that she failed to see the ways they were alike.

Before he could follow that train of thought down the rabbit hole, something --or, rather, someone-- else drew his attention.

Vincent, who somehow found himself seated on Valentina's right despite Morticia setting him a space much further down the table, muttered something under his breath that made his cariño laugh and look away.

Her little psychic was toeing a dangerous line. Apparently he had a vision of Deuce dying. But it must have been a hazy one, if his suspicions were on Gomez and not Tish. After all, Gomez hadn't laid so much as a finger on the young gorgon. All he did was remove the towel from the bathroom mirror and hand Morticia the sledgehammer.

He didn't realize how tightly he was gripping his fork until he felt the silver start to bend out of shape. The temptation to lunge across the table and gouge Vincent's eyes out with the sharpened tongs was nigh impossible to resist, but he managed. Barely.

Jealousy, jealousy... That little green monster was rearing its ugly head more and more often as of late.

He never felt this way when someone looked too long or spoke too casually to Tish, but it was different with Valentina. Probably due to the fact their relationship was unconsummated. Frustratingly so. It felt like she could be taken away by anyone at any moment. Sometimes it even felt like she was looking to be stolen.

If that was the case, then Gomez would gladly oblige. But she raised such a fuss over a minor abduction that he wasn't willing to chance an outright kidnapping. Not yet, at least.

He hoped that this rocky patch of their liaison smoothed out soon, but, in case it didn't, well... There was always Plan B.