Thanksgiving Day
Title: Thanksgiving Day
Author: sakurashakedown
Pairing: Frank/Gerard
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Mild language, homophobia...
Disclaimer: Yeah...I don't own anything.
Summary: Gerard is biting his thumb when he says, "So, Frankie…you wanna eat dinner at my house Thanksgiving?"
A/N; It's like...1:55AM here and I am exhausted. So, please forgive any typos clean and Happy Thanksgiving, everyone; here's my gift to you. (I wrote it up in like 4 hours, so I'm proud as well as tired lol) XD
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Gerard is biting his thumb when he says, "So, Frankie…you wanna eat dinner at my house Thanksgiving?"
It seems innocent enough, but I’ve known Gerard long enough and know him well enough to know that he only starts off a sentence with "So, Frankie," when he’s about to tell me something he’s been thinking long and hard about. So, Frankie. You think we should…date? So, Frankie. I love you and everything, it’s just…my parent would kill me if they found out I was gay.
I look up from my guitar at Gerard sitting cross-legged next to me on my messy bed, my light-blue, poster-clad walls behind him. He’s got his sketchbook flipped open on his lap and his pencils strewn all over the bed. On the open page of his sketchbook is a smudgy drawing of me playing my guitar coming to life. Gerard’s wearing his too-big black hoodie with the frayed cuffs and he’s still biting the skin of his thumb, watching me for my reaction.
"I mean," he says, "If you’re not busy or whatever. It’s just, I know your mom’s working Thanksgiving and I’m always talking about you and my mom really wants to meet you ’cause she thinks I’ve got no friends and -," Gerard takes a breath, blinks, pushes his hair back and smiles at me, "I really want you to be there."
I feel my blood start to rush as something passes through my body and I feel nervous and excited at the same time, because I’ve just been invited to meet Gerard’s parents, the same parents Gerard has been having me skillfully avoid for the past seven months because he’s been terrified they’ll see right through him, see right into his soul, and be filled with nothing but scorn and disgust for what their son really is. It’s not that they’re explicitly homophobic, though, Gerard’s parents, it’s just, they’re Catholic and old school, and Gerard’s father’s father was a priest and his mother’s from some small nowhere town in Ohio and he’s got a grandmother from the "Old Country" and his paternal grandmother doesn’t think gays exist.
I place my guitar to the side and sit up straight, scoot closer to Gerard on the bed so that the knees of our jeans are touching. Gerard’s looking at me nervously with hopeful hazel eyes and his beautiful, crooked, awkward smile. His black hair’s still messy from our heavy make-out session earlier when he dropped by after walking his kid brother, Mikey, to some friend’s house and I just couldn’t keep my hands off of him. I had my fingers tangled in his hair when my mom walked in and told us she was leaving for work and that dinner was on the stove. My mom, she loves Gerard like a second son and she’s knows I’m all about him and she’s cool with that. And maybe because she’s young and Gerard’s a dude and can’t get pregnant, she’s okay with us French kissing in the living room or making out on my bedroom floor.
Gerard, he’d been embarrassed as always, turned bright tomato red and started mumbling. Then my mom left and things cooled down and here we are, sitting on my bed. My heart’s beating hard in my chest and Gerard has just invited me to spend Thanksgiving Day with his family.
The moment of truth is when I grab both of Gerard’s pale, graphite-stained hands and smile and say, "Yes!" like he just asked me to marry him. I kiss him full on the lips, then on his white, feminine nose and he laughs, embarrassed and says, "Frankie," and I kiss him again.
I say, "When should I come over?" and I pull him closer.
He says, still laughing, "One or two."
I wrap my arms around his waist and ask, "What should I wear?"
I feel Gerard nuzzle his face in my hair and say, "Whatever. Something nice. You get to meet my grandparents too."
---<>---
Two weeks later, I’m standing in front of the Way’s front door and I’m wearing the same white button-down shirt and red tie I wore to some cousin’s graduation in the spring. I’ve got jeans on - black ones with no holes, because I thought dress pants might be a bit over doing it - and the only clean pair of converse I own. In my hands I’ve got an apple pie my mom whipped up this morning because she was determined for me not to go over empty-handed. And maybe I should’ve cut my hair shorter, but it’s still uneven from the mohawk I was rocking in October so there really wasn’t much to be done.
All around me, as I wait on the Way’s front porch for the door to open, are bare, dark trees with piles of multicolored leaves under them - orange and yellow, red and brown - strewn across yards and cluttering up gardens. There’s old, bloated pumpkins from Halloween sitting pale on front porches and the empty, unlined street is filled with cooking smells and chimney fires. Up above, the sky is the shocked gray-blue color of late fall.
I’m standing on the front porch, looking around, taking all of this in and worrying about my handshake when the door opens and my stomach flips and settles and it’s Gerard looking clean and nice in his blue sweater.
I smile big the way I only smile when I’m smiling at Gerard and I say, out loud, "You look good, babe!" and Gerard tries not to smile as he opens the door wide for me.
"Yeah," he said, "my mom said I had to wear color." He looks me up and down as I pass through and he says, "You don’t look half bad yourself."
Inside the house, it’s warm and smells like turkey cooking and soups brewing. I look around. I’m in Gerard’s little front room with the big overstuffed red couch and the door leading to the kitchen off to the left. It feels crowded even though it’s just us; I can feel the presence of all the relatives I’m about to meet filling up the room already. I look at Gerard leaning against the couch. He’s got on dark jeans, his old drawn-on converse and his black hair is brushed and tucked behind his ears. His sweater is a perfect primary blue. Gerard smiles a small smile at me and I say, holding out the pie, "I brought a pie for you." Gerard takes it. "It’s apple. Mom sends her love."
And Gerard looks at me from under his lashes and says, "Want to meet my mom?"
---<>---
In the kitchen, Gerard’s mom is cooking up a frenzy. All the burners on the stove are going and there’s something in the oven and the countertops are filled with various vegetables in various states of preparedness. The kitchen table is too large for the small kitchen and it’s laden with every spice and seasoning imaginable.
Yet somehow, despite all the chaos and the wonderful mayhem of preparing a large feast, Gerard’s mother manages to look up just as we walk in - Gerard coming in first, me trailing slightly behind - and I instantly know where Gerard gets his good looks. They share the same long, dark lashes, straight, pointed nose, and sunless complexion. Gerard’s mom, she’s got thick blond hair - short and bobbed - but the roots are coming in dark so I know that this is another feature she’s passed to her son.
When she smiles, her smile is big and bright and her teeth are straight and white, not small and pointed like Gerard’s. She says, smiling big, "So you must be Frankie!"
Gerard awkwardly introduces us, shuffling and flushing. "This is Frank," he says, touching my shoulder, "Frank, this is my mom."
I shake her hand and, after the nice-to-meet-you’s, I tell her I’ve brought her a pie. Apple pie. She takes it from Gerard, who’s already embarrassed, and says, "It smells heavenly. And Grandma Lou was complaining earlier about our not having one. Thank you, Frank," she says, still smiling. She looks at Gerard, "It’s nice to see you bringing friends over, Gerard." Then to me, "Maybe one day he’ll bring a girl over." It’s awkward and strange, but I laugh with her anyway because she’s Gerard’s mom and she’s a pretty wonderful lady. She turns to Gerard again, "Now, go introduce Frank to your dad."
---<>---
Dad ends up being this burly manly man sitting in the den reading a newspaper with his feet up on the coffee table and the TV loud and tuned this game show station. He’s got dark hair - not nearly as dark as Gerard’s - and his tie’s off and slung over the arm of the couch. He takes one look at me and says, "My God, what’ve you done to your face."
His voice is loud and startling and I instantly jump and self-consciously bite down on my lip ring. I think about my nose ring and the hole punched through my right earlobe then hold my breath as I think, no I never got that eyebrow ring or the tongue piercing, and I never even gauged my ears properly, so, yes, I could look worse. Still, I should’ve planned this out, I should’ve took out the lip ring, worried about it closing up later…
Just when I’m about to panic, Gerard’s father starts laughing this big, chest-shaking laugh. I look at Gerard and his eyes are wide and he’s biting a hole in his bottom lip. Gerard’s dad laughs and says, "C’mere," and I do and he shakes my hand with his firm handshake and asks me what my name is.
"Frank," I say, still nervous, "Iero."
"Iero? Never heard that before! What is it?"
"Italian, sir."
"Italian? Donna’s mom will love you then! She’s straight off the boat, y’know."
Gerard’s dad, I notice right away he has a thing for starting off every sentence with a question, much in the same way Gerard starts off every serious topic with, "So Frankie."
We spend the next thirty minutes or so in the den, Mr. Way lounged on the couch asking me questions and telling me about his sales work and me standing awkwardly next to him, ending every sentence with "Sir". Gerard, he hovers a few steps behind me, mumbling something every now and then and I realize how different they are and I try to picture Gerard and his dad fishing or tossing a football. The only thing they have in common, it seems, are their hazel-green eyes and thin lips.
---<>---
After Meeting the Parents, we beat a retreat to Gerard’s room in the basement and his brother, Mikey, joins us. We spend the next hour lounging around Gerard’s room, listening to music, shooting the breeze. Gerard’s brother is blonde and scrawny and anemic-looking with thick-framed glasses, but he’s a people person and he knows everything. At some point, lying on Gerard’s dirty carpet floor, he says, "You’re pretty cool, Frankie. I don’t know why Gerard doesn’t bring you around more often."
And Gerard just looks at me, chews on his lip, and shrugs.
---<>---
The grandparents start pouring in around two-thirty. I stand in the front room next to Gerard and meet Father Geoffrey, who’s tall and thin like Mikey and his short, fat wife, Grandma Lou. Father Geoffrey shakes my hand for a million years and asks me if I’m church-going. I’m not, but I say yes anyway and he shakes my hand and says, "Ah, fine, fine…"
Grandma Lou, on the other hand, is tart and bitter from the start. She says, to no one in particular, "And here I was thinking this boy’d brought a girl home and whadda I find?" She looks me up and down, squinting behind her frames, "Well ya look girly enough. In those jeans." She turns to Gerard and says, "And when are you cuttin’ your hair? You look like a sixteen-year-old girl." Then she wanders into the kitchen and begins to chew out Mrs. Way about her cooking.
We’re sitting awkward and uncomfortable in the front room -Mikey, Gerard, and I - with Father Geoffrey falling asleep in the chair across from us and Grandma Lou shouting in the next room when Grandma Elena shows up and the tension immediately dissipates.
She’s tanned and rosy with masses of curly gray hair and I watch Gerard’s face light up as she comes in. He jumps up and hugs her and gets really excited.
"Grandma, meet my - friend."
I stand up and he places his hand on my shoulder, as if presenting me, "This is Frankie."
Grandma Elena immediately decides to like me. She says, her Italian accent thick and dripping, "I like the look of you already; remind me of my husband, except he wasn’t much for sticking metal in his face - he had a bunch of tattoos instead."
And I smile big because that’s maybe the best compliment I’ve got all day.
We spend the next forty minutes or so in the front room, Father Geoffrey sleeping in the chair, Grandma Elena telling us stories - meeting her husband when she was sixteen, he was a sailor; coming to America in the sixties. She talked about her husband a lot.
"He was French, you know," she says, lighting a cigarette, "Or, he was American and his parents were French." She waves her cigarette at Gerard, who’s looking at her with devotion in his eyes, "Why do you think his name’s Gerard? He’s named for him, you know." She took a drag. "And that woman in there, she never could accept it."
I look at Gerard sitting next to me, look at him for a long time and just drink him in, finally comfortable enough to do so. Grandma Elena watches me as she smokes.
---<>---
The shit hits the fan at dinner time.
We’re finally all seated around the table, dinner steaming in front of us, Mrs. Way’s masterpiece. Mrs. Way’s holding her hands, looking around nervously for any sign of disapproval and Mr. Way’s got his tie back on and is seated at the head of the table saying, "Wonderful, dear, just wonderful. You’ve outdone yourself."
Father Geoffrey’s droning his approval at the other end of the table and Grandma Lou is nodding his head, and saying, "Yes, yes, well."
Mikey’s sitting next to his mom, looking content at the amount of food on the table. Me, I’m sitting beside Gerard trying to be a model guest because I’ve come so far, and Grandma Elena’s sitting on his other side, saying how lovely everything is in beautiful, flawless Italian. Between us, Gerard is staring at his plate seriously, brows knitted together.
The first thing we do, before we eat, is hold hands and let Father Geoffrey bless the food and lead us in prayer. We hold hands, Father Geoffrey’s warm, boney hand in my left, Gerard’s soft, sweaty one in my right. After that, Mr. Way carves up the turkey and Mrs. Way starts passing around the stuffing and says, sweetly, "So. Why doesn’t everyone tell what they’re thankful for, hmm? It is Thanksgiving after all."
Mikey says, mouth full of food, "I’m thankful for acing my chem test last week. That class is ridiculous." He swallows, "And for family and friends and all that."
Mr. Way goes next as he dips mounds of mashed potatoes onto his plate. "I’m just thankful for family. Sweet wife, nice kids," he looks around the table, "and wonderful parents."
Grandma Elena goes next. "Mia famiglia," she says, "All of them. In the new country and the old."
Then it’s Gerard’s turn and he’s too busy pushing his food around on his plate to notice. I nudge him and say, "Go, Gee, I’m waiting for my turn," and I hear his dad laugh down the table.
Gerard, he looks up like a deer in headlights. He puts his fork down, hand shaking and says, slowly, voice unsteady, "I’m…thankful for…Frankie."
Everyone looks at him, silent, and I swallow whatever’s in my mouth because I was not expecting that.
He continues, less nervous, "I’m thankful for meeting Frankie…and for him always understanding me…and for him…being here….but mostly…," he looks around nervously, "I’m just thankful that he loves me as much as I do," he looks at me with bright, doe eyes, "and I’m really thankful for getting to spend the last seven months with someone I love. I love you, Frankie. Happy Thanksgiving."
He smiles at me. My mouth is open. All around the table, no one knows what to say, except for Grandma Lou who hisses, "Faggot. Faggots at the dinner table. Contaminating a nice family dinner with their sin," she points a finger at me - at Gerard - "I could see right through you the minute I walked in today and -"
And Grandma Elena says, sternly, "Just shut up for once, you old bitch," and Grandma Lou goes silent, her mouth shaping into an O.
Mrs. Way looks across the table at me sadly and I turn to Gerard and say, calmly, "Well. I, for one, and very thankful for you, Gerard. That was very brave. I love you."
The rest of the dinner is tense and silent. I squeeze Gerard’s hand under the table. When it’s time to go, I shake hands with everyone and Gerard walks me to the door. "I’m really, really, really sorry about that Frankie, I should have warned you."
It’s cold and I can see my breath. I smile. "You were amazing, Gee, you are amazing."
Gerard smiles a small, sad smile. "Please don’t hate my family."
"Couldn’t if I tried."
"I love you."
"You know I love you too." And we kiss, for the first time, on Gerard’s front porch.
---<>---
At school Monday, Gerard sidles up to me as I’m shoving books in my locker.
"So, Frankie. Thanksgiving. Talk about crazy, right?"
I say, "So, Gerard. At least we’ve got a new story to tell," and Gerard’s smile mirrors my own.
He says, "So, how about getting another story to tell?"
He says, "You wanna eat dinner at my house Sunday? My mom feels awful about everything. Dad thinks it’s funny though. They…like you."
I smile big and slam my locker shut. I grab Gerard, kiss him full on the mouth and say, "I’d do dinner with your family anytime." I kiss I’m again, ""When should I come over?"
Gerard laughs, "One or two."
I pull him closer, "What should I wear?"
And Gerard wraps his arms around me and says, "Any old thing. Whatever."