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“I am going to stab you when I get out of these ropes,” Jango insisted, with far less energy than he would have liked.
“Oh, you are so well prepared, my dear. Which knives did you bring? Please tell me you at least brought the one with the cursed ruby I got you for the last solar eclipse,” the man driving the car said, seemingly unconcerned with Jango’s threat. Again.
Jango had not brought the – literally – cursed dagger. He did, however, have the serrated knife made of Damascus steel that Obi-Wan had given him, alongside his usual combat knife, swiss army knife, and a handful of throwing knives.
It still hadn’t been enough avoid getting abducted again by the man next to him. Nor had the revolver helped with anything but putting a new hole Obi-Wan’s hat, and the Molotov cocktail had only burned some paperwork instead of helping Jango get away from the man.
“Oh, but do be careful about where you pull out a blade, if Cousin Gomez sees it, he will begin dueling you, and we don’t really want a repeat of the Great Baba Ghanoush Incident of ninety-two,” Obi-Wan was blabbering on.
“Is it just you and your cousin that are off the wall or is everyone else going to be my newest headache too?” Jango growled out, rolling his eyes.
“I have no idea what you mean, my dear, Gomez and I are perfectly normal, upright Addamses. Although I would hope that I’m the one mainly occupying your head most of the time, Addamses tend to be possessive, and us Kenobi-Addamses are no exception,” Obi-Wan said brightly.
Jango narrowed his eyes as he glared at the man from the corner of his eye.
They pulled up to a wrought iron gate that opened automatically, giving them access to a long, winding driveway that seemed to end at an almost cartoonishly dark and eerie Victorian mansion.
“Ah, Lurch, glad to see you again!” Obi-Wan exclaimed as he parked the car and opened the door to a deathly pale, tall man that seemed halfway to wearing a Frankenstein’s Monster costume.
The man just groaned, before looking down into the car and groaning again.
“Ah, yes,” Obi-Wan said, practically chipper, as he walked around the car, “this-” he pulled open Jango’s door “-is my husband, Jango Fett-Kenobi-Addams!”
“I never actually agreed to that,” Jango insisted reflexively.
“Tell that to the courts, my dear,” the conman that had tricked a signature onto a marriage license replied, tugging Jango out of the car.
Jango felt a tug before the ropes started falling off him, uncoiling with ease.
There was an unfortunately familiar arm around his shoulders within a second. And then Obi-Wan was calling out “Gomez! Morticia!” before Jango could make good on his threat and pull out a knife.
Jango decided he didn’t want to deal with a sword fight. Nor did he want to deal with the various booby traps Obi-Wan had avoided while driving up the driveway.
He sighed as he followed Obi-Wan up the mansion’s stairs. At least there wouldn’t be bears or deer to try to gore him inside the mansion… probably.
The man who was probably Gomez was shaking Obi-Wan’s hand enthusiastically, before he kissed Obi-Wan on both cheeks. Obi-Wan turned to greet the woman, Morticia apparently, beside him. They exchanged a hug while they kissed each other’s cheeks, Gomez’s enthusiastic passion beside tham replaced with something Jango could only uncomfortably call sensual.
And then Gomez turned to Morticia and dipped the woman into a kiss with something Jango could very firmly call an uncomfortable amount of tongue.
Obi-Wan just took a small box out of his jacket and waited, Jango standing awkwardly beside him.
Eventually, after even more tongue and something not quite fondling but somehow more intimate, the two broke up their kiss and Jango felt safe to look back at the pair directly.
“Obi-Wan, won’t you introduce your friend here?” the woman asked, voice light and polite and immediately clocking her as dangerous to Jango.
“Oh course, my dear Morticia-” so Jango had guessed their identities correctly “-this is my husband, Jango,” Obi-Wan said. Jango didn’t need to look to see the disgustingly beaming smile on the man’s face as he introduced Jango and wrapped an arm around his waist.
Jango pried the man’s fingers off as painfully as he could, knowing he wouldn’t be able to break them with Obi-Wan’s combat skills.
“Ah, yes! And this is for you, of course,” Obi-Wan said, using the hand Jango had just removed to offer Morticia the box.
Morticia opened the box, Gomez looking over her shoulder. “Ooh, hexes!” the woman declared.
“Excellent choice, Obi-old-chap!”
“We stumbled upon one of Crowley’s vaults on our honeymoon. Most of the items were garbage, of course, but that was tucked away in a corner, clearly ignored. Oh, do be careful though, one of Crowley’s friends managed to trap their spirit in the blue vial and they’re as awful as you’d expect,” Obi-Wan explained.
Jango very strongly controlled his urge to whip out a knife to help him deny Obi-Wan calling that abduction their honeymoon again. But Gomez had had a look in his eyes this whole time that made Jango certain Obi-Wan hadn’t exaggerated the man’s dueling tendencies.
“Very good, very good!” Gomez announced, “welcome to the family, cousin Jango!”
And then the man was pressing a kiss to his lips, two seconds of chaste passion that froze Jango, before he was released.
Obi-Wan wrapped a hand around his waist again and guided him into the mansion while he was still dazed, Jango barely registered Gomez switching to a different type of kissing on Morticia as they left.
So “normal, upright Addamses” apparently meant that, yes, everyone here was going to casually put Jango in mortal peril or extreme annoyance, and then laugh it off and offer Jango a refreshing cup of poison. Jango felt the urge to find a pillow and scream into it. Or better yet, find a normal, unbooby-trapped bed in a normal, run-of-the-mill hotel with no Obi-Wan within the city, and yell into a pillow there before getting a good night’s rest.
Jango saw Obi-Wan glance at a tapestry depicting some sort of bloody, fiery battlefield, a familiar glint in his eyes, and open his mouth. Jango quickly found something to distract the man before he could be exposed to another lecture – usually interesting and informative, if morbid – that would lead to a historical reenactment – not fun, especially given Obi-Wan’s disdain of basic safety measures.
“So uh, Crowley. Was that the person who owned the vault in the cave or in the fake catacombs?” Jango asked.
“I thought I told you abo- oh right, I suppose I introduced him while you were still a little deaf from the shrieking doorknob. Aleister Crowley, creator of the fake catacombs we visited. Almost as bad of a magician as he was a person, which is quite impressive given the man’s absolute insistence on anything proven to not work. Grandmama once hit him over the head with her cauldron while she visited a friend in India,” Obi-Wan explained.
“When was this?” Jango asked. The catacombs had been decently old, and Obi-Wan had excitedly photographed a colony of apparently not actually extinct beetles down in the vault.
“Oh, you know, a little after Grandmama’s curse on the queen took and she was travelling around in celebration.”
Jango decided he didn’t want to get involved with regicide today, especially as they seemed to be coming up on a filled ballroom that he was probably going to have to enter. And deal with all the people in there. Who were either Addamses or people who liked hanging around Addamses. Jango wondered if he would be able to find anyone else like him.
Jango managed an hour, during which he was introduced to a group of people that would put three circus freak-shows to shame – and put them out of business for being far more interesting instead of exploitive, if so intense they’d scare off all the customers – before he messed up. Someone was juggling food from the buffet, including the apples Jango had seen a few children poison earlier, and messed up. Jango couldn’t dodge without stepping into Flora and Fauna’s hold, which he had been avoiding quite purposefully, or back into a spiked candelabra. Of course he pulled out a knife to intercept the apple.
Jango quickly flicked the apple off onto the floor, and then flicked the knife a few more times for good measure after seeing the tile floor start to sizzle from whatever was in the apple. He made to put his knife away when-
“Good show! What spirit! What skill! What a worthy opponent!” Gomez’s passionate voice boomed in front of him.
Jango looked up to a disembodied hand perched on a chandelier knock a rapier into Gomez’s waiting hand.
“En garde!” the man shouted before lunging at Jango.
Jango parried with his troublesome but still useful knife, cursing in Te Reo under his breath.
He should have just gone with Obi-Wan to the greenhouse instead of sticking around. Surely there was no plant as troublesome as the man in front of him trying to stab him, even at the Addams’ estate.
Unfortunately, even though a rapier had limited movements, it had far more reach than Jango’s dagger. And Gomez was faster than him, so Jango had almost no chance to get in close enough to go on the offense even as they danced around each other through the ballroom.
“Don’t you think,” Jango managed to yell out between Gomez’s continued exclamations, “that bringing a sword to a knife fight is a little unfair?” Jango found himself jumping up and back over a food-laden table. Gomez followed him by somersaulting underneath it. “It’s not exactly gentlemanly.”
That, thankfully, had been the right button to push, the man pausing his assault in a guarded stance.
“You know, you’re quite right! There’s nothing as fun as a fair fight!” Gomez announced, circling around Jango a bit to get to the hand and, well… hand off his rapier.
Gomez started looking around, clearly looking for a “fair” weapon, but Jango was not actually the sort of man who wanted to risk limb, let alone life, for fun. He sheathed his own knife and charged.
He watched Gomez’s expression morph from surprise to glee as he tackled the man. They rolled through the open doors behind Gomez, and Jango could hear cheering from the ballroom as they tumbled down the stairs right outside.
“Stupendous!” Gomez yelled on their way down, wide-eyed and still grinning, “the purest, most passionate of fights! Fist to fist, body to body! A true warrior’s spirit, you are!”
Yep, Obi-Wan was definitely part and parcel for his extended family. At least his conned-into-husband had good stories to tell Jango and preferred to openly offer him poison instead of just charging him for a fight. Usually.
They hit the bottom of the stairs. Gomez grabbed his collar.
Jango grabbed the man’s wrists and pulled him closer for a headbutt.
His husband looked absolutely breathtaking, suit still fitting him deliciously but a bit roughed up. Obi-Wan wanted to kiss the red blooming on Jango’s cheek, marking the beginning of a bruise. He wondered if Morticia had any similar desires for the black color quickly covering her own husband’s eye.
“Your husband is quite a catch, you know, very courteous,” Morticia informed him, “Gomez does get so riled up when he’s having fun, it’s a good idea to get him out of the ballroom for the décor’s sake.”
“He’s a very conscientious man,” Obi-Wan agreed, “did I tell you about the time he tried to kill me in a lovely little café in Istanbul? Made sure not to get in the waiter’s way at all…”
Jango watched Obi-Wan approach him and Gomez, and found he couldn’t decide if he should be relieved or worried about switching from Gomez’s company alone to having Obi-Wan introduce him to more Addamses.
Well, he’d probably be fine so long as they didn’t fight him like a feral dog like Gomez.
“Gomez, darling,” Morticia greeted, “it’s almost time for the feast to begin, we need to host. Grandmama is quite anxious to get the mystery meat soup on the tables, before it wrecks the kitchen.”
Jango really wished there was an in-law in the same position as him, instead of Morticia, as respectable as the woman was.
“Quite right!” Gomez cheered, looking up at his wife, starry-eyed.
Jango let Obi-Wan lead him away as Gomez cleared his throat, not wanting to be involved with whatever chaos a dinner announcement entailed here.
Most of the food at dinner wasn’t poisoned, thankfully. All though Obi-Wan did try to get him to eat three separate dishes, enthusiastically describing the ways they’d historically been used on people each time. Jango did end up eating the hemlock sauce glazed goose though, since he was pretty sure he was half-immune to hemlock poisoning at this point, while he had no faith in his ability to handle whatever was in the other main course option that smelled like someone had dumped curdled milk onto a garbage pile and left it in a dank cellar for a week.
Obi-Wan was seated to his left, while Flora and Fauna were to his right. Jango did his best to mainly talk to a woman named Margaret who was sitting across from him, who seemed normal until she started talking about her spouse It and their children, showing Jango pictures and describing the “basic childhood milestones” the children were hitting, sometimes literally.
Although Jango supposed a few of the milestones, like “baseline flame retardation”, were probably good things for children to develop.
“Oh, and what about you two? Any plans on children? Or are you planning to be a set of Keepers?” Margaret asked.
Jango carefully did not choke on his still-smoking drink at that.
“Oh, we haven’t talked about it yet. We’re still fresh off the honeymoon, after all,” Obi-Wan answered, turning away from his conversation with the veiled Addams beside him.
“Keepers?” Jango found himself asking. His curiosity had bitten him many times since he met Obi-Wan, especially when Jango first met the man, but at this point ignoring information was dangerous more often.
“Oh, you know, if you get a child, you’re a Giver, expected to give your knowledge to the child. But if you don’t get a child then you keep your knowledge as a Keeper, and act as a resource for the family at large, instead of focusing on just your branch,” Obi-Wan explained.
Jango decided that he had been curious enough and thought better of asking for why Obi-Wan had said “get” a child instead of “have” like most people.
“However, I can’t say I don’t think Jango would be well-suited to it, you should have seen him the last time I gave him a bear cub to calm down,” Obi-Wan continued, casually, still clearly unrepentant about that fiasco.
Jango felt himself snap, and then let himself snap.
Obi-Wan moved his hand out of the way barely in time, leaving Jango’s steak knife to plunge into the table instead.
Obi-Wan just beamed at Jango as he glared.
Jango pulled the knife out of the table. Obi-Wan opened his mouth to offer some morbidly outlandish or sassy comment.
Jango stabbed an Agaricus mushroom from a nearby dish and stuffed it into the man’s mouth before he could speak.
There was a scavenger hunt after dinner. Jango gave himself three seconds to sigh before making to follow Obi-Wan. The man was likely to lead him into some booby-trapped torture device storage room, but Jango was well aware after his tussle with Gomez that the entire house was like that to some degree. At least Obi-Wan would be likely to remember to help him out.
But then there was a tug on his sleeve, and Jango looked down to see a grim-looking child. Another child, with an almost chipper expression, came up behind the first child.
“Wednesday, Pugsley! Hello, how have you two been? I didn’t get to see you earlier,” Obi-Wan said, moving towards them, saving Jango from navigating the last quarter of the ballroom.
“Uncle Obi-Wan!” the children greeted him, enthusiastic.
“I made a new hex. And Pugsley’s been getting really good at tombstone carving,“ the girl who had to be Wednesday said, voice somehow somber and childishly excited.
“Excellent!” Obi-Wan declared.
“Uncle Obi, this is your new husband, right?” Pugsley said, tugging on Jango’s other sleeve, “can we hunt with him, please?”
“Oh, all right. But do try to return him to me with at least his head all in one piece,” Obi-Wan decided for him.
Jango glared at Obi-Wan as the children cheered and tugged him away. He had not agreed to this.
“Your hair’s a lot fluffier than Bruck’s,” Pugsley commented blithely as they corralled him down the stairs.
“Bruck?” Jango asked.
“Uncle Obi-Wan’s former partner. From when he was looking for the ‘bad boy’ type,” Wednesday answered.
“Mother said it was a good thing Obi-Wan found a nice man to settle down with now,” Pugsley continued.
Ignoring the fact that Jango still wasn’t really Obi-Wan’s husband, or even partner in anything but attempted fights to the death, Jango was pretty sure most people considered him the “bad boy” partner, not the wholesome settle-down with partner.
It was also the first time Jango had heard of any former partners, Jango noted as he ducked under a swinging axe.
“So, they uh… broke up a while ago?” he asked.
“Uncle Obi-Wan broke something, all right,” Wednesday said ominously.
“Bruck was homophobic, so Uncle Obi-Wan couldn’t really help it,” Pugsley offered.
Jango shut his mouth, not willing to break his brain any more than the night already had.
Children, Jango decided as he slid bonelessly out of the pipe, were exactly like their parents without having any of their restraint yet.
And when it came to children of Morticia and Gomez Addams, this was a very exhausting, stressful thing.
Jango heard scratches and growls in the pipe he’d just exited, moving closer, and groaned in response. He made himself stand up and attempted to straighten his now acid-splashed tie, to only limited success.
A movement beside him caught his eye. Jango turned to see some hulking, feathered form, with a bone-like face. Or mask. Jango really hoped this thing was just an English-speaking person in a costume that wouldn’t try to drop a chandelier on him.
The being stalked closer, trotting alongside the house in an odd sounding gait. Jango pulled out the Damascus steel dagger, just in case.
“Oh, is that the one you brought today?”
Oh, thank fuck. It was Obi-Wan.
Jango was going to respond, but the dog-things in the pipes chose that moment to howl instead.
Obi-Wan tsked as he approached. “Honestly, how rude.”
“I think trying to eat me was ruder, actually,” Jango deadpanned back, rolling his eyes.
“Oh? Did they not ask first?” Obi-Wan questioned. With the mask preventing Jango from seeing the man’s face, he couldn’t tell if Obi-Wan was being genuine or teasing.
Obi-Wan opened up the pipe’s cover, which had Jango instantly stepping back into a fighting stance, bringing his knife up in preparation. Obi-Wan took off his mask – and the attached cloak – leaned down, and whistled a very odd tune with a sound that didn’t sound like any whistle Jango had heard before.
Jango heard frenzied scrambling, that quickly faded away from them, in response.
Obi-Wan let the cover drop back into place as he stood up and whirled around to face Jango. The man’s face scrunched a little in confusion before he spoke.
“Didn’t Wednesday teach you the anti-dog whistle?”
Wednesday, Jango thought, had taken great delight in not telling or teaching him quite a few things that night.
“I think she was a bit busy sword fighting with Pugsley, Thing, and a mutated cat on the porch roof,” he said instead.
Obi-Wan hummed and nodded like this made perfect sense.
He picked up the mask/cloak ensemble from the ground. “Well, I’ve finished with taking care of the crypt, so if you want to head back now, it’s a polite time to say goodbye,” Obi-Wan offered. Jango ignored the implication that you need to dress up as a bone-faced feathered creature to do grave maintenance. “Best to go before cloud cover comes in to block the moon, yeah.” A storm system was moving in, and the driveway didn’t have any lights; and Jango remembered at least two large holes right beside it that could fit a hearse and then some.
Obi-Wan guided him to the family graveyard, where Morticia and Gomez were alternating from making moon eyes at each other and talking with guests. Obi-Wan deposited the costume with the woman who he’d been introduced to earlier as Grandmama, and then dragged him over to their hosts.
“Morticia darling, Gomez, I’m afraid Jango and I will be heading out while there’s still moonlight,” Obi-Wan said.
“Driving off in the witching hour, how fortuitous, of course,” Morticia said.
Gomez gasped, “a moonlit drive through the most stupendous part of the night! What a Romantic idea! Tish darling, perhaps we should consider having Fester put the children to bed tomorrow, and take one ourselves,” Gomez exclaimed, “Oh, but of course, you two must leave post haste to get the most out of it!”
“What a terrific idea, dear cousin. Thank you both so much for hosting this, it really was a lovely evening, perfect for introducing Jango to at least part of the family,” Obi-Wan enthused.
How many Addamses were there that Obi-Wan was going to drag him in front of?
Morticia opened her mouth, presumably to welcome them, but was cut off by a child’s booming, maniacal laughter.
Jango had a bad feeling about this.
“Avast, all ye puny beings and despair!” Wednesday yelled, apparently from the roof, if the silhouette backlit by the moon Jango could see when he turned towards the mansion was any indication. It wasn’t the only silhouette on the roof. “The Plagues have come again, brewed once more from the bones of their victims! And now ye shall weep and despair with this mighty flood of blood, come for their spirits’ vengeance!”
The other silhouettes moved, looking about right for Pugsley and a bigger version of Pugsley, who moved another silhouette between them.
Jango could vaguely see something pouring down the side of the house. And then whatever was being poured started expanding dramatically as it rushed towards them all in the graveyard.
Morticia and Gomez gasped and embraced each other in excitement, while Obi-Wan started laughing. Jango looked around to try to prepare himself.
Obi-Wan ran backwards a few paces, then turned around and sprinted up the side of an obelisk, perching himself on top to laugh again and observe the scene.
Jango swore under his breath as he looked around again. If Obi-Wan wanted a vantage point that tall, then Jango needed to also be somewhere high up.
“Everyone find some high ground!” Obi-Wan yelled out, gleeful.
Jango was already running to a grave marker with a massive, sculpted tree on top.
He managed to sit, with some difficulty, on one of the “branches” about a meter off of the ground.
By the time he secured himself, the flood, revealed to indeed be blood red in the moonlight, was almost at the tree. It was also foaming up top, and still growing. Jango sniffed the air, confirming the smell of a lot of corn starch and no iron – so prop blood, not real blood – and a few things he couldn’t identify that were likely responsible for the foaming.
And then the flood started pooling around Jango’s tree, rising a bit.
And then the foam grew a bit higher.
And the foam started appearing around his tree.
Jango cursed as he scrambled further up the statue.
Unfortunately, there weren’t too many branches and he found himself quickly faced with an impenetrable canopy of stone leaves. And the foam was still rising.
Jango picked his feet up and then looked up at the canopy. The angle and size meant that he wouldn’t be able to climb on top, but he could get half a meter more of space if he clung to it.
Jango found a decent spot he could reach and hoisted himself up, letting his head fall so he could watch the situation, even if it was upside down.
The foam finally started to slow its rise as it engulfed the branch he had been on.
A few minutes later, Gomez and Morticia floated by, red-stained and foam-covered, with Gomez using a gondolier’s oar to try to keep them afloat, serenading his wife. Jango watched them dip under the foam and back up twice before they floated out of his view.
It took about twenty minutes, during which time the blood-evoking foam slowly began to recede, for Jango to lose his grip. He barely missed the branches and curled himself up as he fell, hoping to not get to hurt when he hit the stone platform at the bottom of the grave marker.
Instead, though, he found himself landing in a pair of strong, if slightly skinny, arms.
Jango wasn’t surprised to open his eyes and see Obi-Wan smiling down on him.
“Well, let’s get out of here, shall we? We still have half of the witching hour left for us, after all.”
Jango sighed and gave up, letting his head fall back and not bothering to struggle out of Obi-Wan’s grip as the man waded through the still mid-thigh high flood of foamy fake blood.
As they climbed out of the bowl containing most of the graveyard and approached the end of the driveway, Obi-Wan’s car drove up. Lurch got out, walked around, and opened the passenger door.
Lurch groaned as Obi-Wan gently put Jango back into the car and buckled his seatbelt for him.
“It was of course a splendid family reunion, as usual. And I was quite impressed with the fun you and Wednesday cooked up for this,” Obi-Wan praised, “until next time, my dear sir.”
Lurch gave another groan with a slight bow, and then walked away as Obi-Wan walked around the car.
Obi-Wan slid into the driver’s seat, red-soaked pants and all, and quickly adjusted the seat, fastened his own seatbelt, and started moving down the driveway, the field of clouds visibly drawing closer to the moon as they went.
“Well, that was a lovely evening, I’m so glad we enjoyed ourselves and got to introduce you around,” Obi-Wan said, blithe.
Jango stared at his fraudulently legal husband.
“I hate you. So much.”
“I love you too, dearest.”