Gomez called him compañero, as though they were bound by some invisible thread of brotherhood. Isaac Night never corrected him. To contest it would be to waste breath, and besides, Gomez was useful. The Addams boy carried with him a strange magnetism that drew others into his orbit, and Isaac, who preferred shadows and silence, found himself quietly arranging those traits into the gears of his own, secret design.

To endure Gomez’s antics was tiresome, but strategic. Isaac let him chatter, let him mistake tolerance for friendship, all the while storing away what might later serve his plans. He thought himself immune to the Addams charm.

Until you appeared.

It was late afternoon when Gomez burst into the dormitory with a flourish, dragging behind him a sibling he spoke of with unrestrained delight. Isaac had been hunched over his workbench, ink staining his fingers, metal parts spread like a clockwork constellation. He barely spared you a glance, prepared to dismiss you as he dismissed them all.

But the glance lingered. Something unsettled in the stillness of your eyes, something unspoken in the way you carried the room’s light without bending to it. His pen slipped. The scratch of it across the page ceased.

Later, when Gomez had at last left him in peace, Isaac found you again in the corridor. You caught him staring, and for once his tongue faltered. His voice, stripped of mockery, lowered to something more fragile.

“Strange,” he said quietly, almost begrudgingly. “You are the only Addams I do not find intolerable.”