Memory: Thanksgiving Dinner (4 years previous to story)
In the history of awkward dinners, the Thanksgiving after meeting Matthew's parents would have to rank pretty high. It was one thing to have a big family like Alfred did over and share embarrassing stories, and it was another to have dinner with a family friend on the holiday.
This was neither of these things. Mrs. Williams insisted she was called "Mama" by the American while Mr. Jones wouldn't accept anything other than "Sir" or "John." What was worse was that they wanted the boys to come for the whole week. Madeline wanted Matthew to go out on Black Friday with her. After a heated whisper argument between the two it was decided that they would visit from Wednesday to Saturday of that week. It was enough to appease Matthew's mom and now explained why the four were sitting at a large table covered with enough food to save all the children in Africa from death.
At first it wasn't that bad, Mr. Williams was only glaring some of the time at whom he believed to be his son's boyfriend. He asked if Alfred followed any sports. When Alfred joked that all of Miami's sports teams kinda sucked, the table shared an awkward laugh before falling silent.
It didn't last long since Mrs. Williams was around.
"Have you been using our presents, Alfred?"
"Mama! Why is he choking?!" Matthew yelped as he watched his teammate start violently coughing and smacking his chest, trying to dislodge some of the stuffing that decided it wanted a visit to his lungs. The crime scene expert merely watched with purse lips when Matthew nervously hovered around Alfred and the American calming down, red-faced and still lightly tapping his chest.
Dinner continued and Matthew would look nervously between Alfred and his mother. Just what did she send him that invoked such a reaction? Curiosity gnawed at him but he didn't ask.
Well, until he had three bottles of wine in him and was safely in his room that his parents set up better with the assumption that he and Alfred would be sharing. Of course the look on the much less drunk blond was priceless as he tried to avoid the question.
How could one person say "yeah, your parents didn't believe the whole 'no sex between us thing' and sent not one but multiple boxes of condoms to me" without sounding weird? You couldn't so he wouldn't even try.
It got harder to not try when Matthew pressed the question, and himself, upon Alfred. Kisses were followed as the tactical genius tried to pry the answer out with his own lips. Kisses led to small bouts of making out and hands grabbing, but never to sex. That was silly. That didn't make breakfast in the morning any less awkward than the first time they had awkward breakfasts. Only this time Ivan wasn't around to enjoy the death glare Alfred got from a none-to-please John as he observed once more the bite marks Matthew left and the messy hair said boy came down with, as well as the first shirt he reached, one of Alfred's. The hangover the smaller sported didn't help either as he clung to his profiler in his pain.
Alfred didn't want to be alone with John that day. He knew what chemists could do.
And he might have begged Matthew not to go with Madeline, but that was a different memory.
Memory End.