[thanksgiving] you'll marry a music man [charles]

As expected, Thanksgiving dinner felt like it had lasted for long, grueling hours. Most of the chowing down had been done in a single forty-five minute session, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, but the awkward jibes and snide comments in Spanish that no one knew her new husband could understand had made things less bearable. Kate’s parents were not usually the perpetrators of this kind of behavior, but she knew it made him uncomfortable to endure every time he was thrust into a group of her extended family.

She had a tattoo she hadn’t told him about yet. He’d surprised her with an inked version of her name on his arm awhile ago, in her writing, even, and she’d felt an overwhelming compulsion to do exactly the same thing to her own body. The timing hadn’t been right, though. There was the wedding, and then their honeymoon and his birthday, and all of those events involved him seeing her very naked at all hours of the day, including broad daylight. And she wanted the whole thing to be a surprise, so what better time to obtain it aside from being with her family? Kate and Charlie had their own home in San Diego, but sometimes staying in her room here made sense for the sake of convenience.

Kate and Francesca had gone to the reputable tattoo parlor they’d staked out in the morning, right when it had opened, to get Charlie’s name tattooed on the back of her thigh. Plastic-wrapped to hell, she’d come back soon after to help her mother and grandmother cook Thanksgiving dinner.

Now, here they were, in the party phase--the part of Thanksgiving that was actually supposed to be fun and involved a copious amount of delicious alcoholic drinks, many infused with traditional Mexican tequila. Older members of her family, choosing to stay away from blackouts and puking, opted for old bottles of red wine from the cellar. Both were reasonable choices given different stages of life.

Kate had gone to the bathroom to freshen up, go pee, and disinfect her tattoo. She hadn’t expected to come back to a disillusioned-looking husband, especially after she’d fixed his plate with non-spicy things to make sure he’d get full and given him plenty of alcohol (and water, to counter) throughout the last couple of hours. She straightened her dress and frowned at him, sitting close on the tiny ottoman he’d secluded himself to in the corner of the room. “What’s wrong? You look grumpy.”

Charlie had never experienced Thanksgiving before, and though the day wasn’t yet over he was in no great hurry to ever experience it again. The food had been fine, good even – better simply because Kate had been there to help him avoid anything beyond his spice-tolerance level, brought down a bit because there’d been a definitive lack of Yorkshire puddings and gravy – but the hospitality had been less than… well, hospitable. Charlie had kept his head down, playing dumb rather than revealing he now understood most of what Kate’s aunts, uncles and cousins were saying – and saying so openly because they assumed he had no idea what they were talking about. He wasn’t fluent in Spanish (yet), but he’d made a solid effort to learn as much as he could before their wedding – the official one – because he wanted to prove to Kate that he was serious about being part of her family.

He was regretting that now.

Perhaps if he hadn’t learnt their language he could have remained blissfully unaware, but Kate’s face would probably have given away that something was up – she wasn’t the best at hiding her emotions. They hadn’t said anything too offensive about Charlie specifically, the odd gringo comment, but they had remarked on how Kate was ‘still drinking’. It had taken him a minute to muddle his way through what her drinking had to do with anything, and then it had clicked: she was still drinking because she wasn’t yet pregnant.

Charlie knew it was expected in her family; he and Kate had loosely discussed (read: mostly avoided) the topic, coming to the conclusion that it wasn’t in their (his) immediate plans. Apparently, Kate hadn’t passed that information on to the rest of her family. Dinner was done and dusted, and now he had to endure however many hours of pretending that he wanted to be here rather than back home, as far away from Kate’s family and their obsession with popping out babies as possible.

Kate had gone to ‘freshen up’, as Americans did, and left him alone. Though he had no great love for Fran, he had found himself looking for her rather than being an open target for the likes of Consuela and company. No such luck. By the time Charlie’s wife returned he had escaped her most overbearing cousins, finished the drink he had been given by her before she’d disappeared, drank two more in quick succession, and found a quiet corner of the room to try and become as incognito as he could – which was not very, given that he stuck out like a sore thumb.

He tugged at his shirt collar. It wasn’t overly warm in San Diego in November, but it was several degrees warmer than London, and in a house full of Mexicans they had heating charms to keep the place even toastier. He didn’t look at Kate when she sat beside him. She'd done this on purpose, he figured. Brought him here and surrounded him with people who all wanted the same thing she did. "Did you think bringing me here was gonna change my mind?" he asked irritably.

Something had struck a sour chord within him. Kate was surprised that he’d come back with such a biting retort, and her face reflected that. She’d mostly been jesting, as she knew that being around hordes of her extended family could make Charlie uncomfortable -- he had grown up in a basically single-family exclusive environment, with his grandparents making occasional appearances. Kate knew nothing of the sort. It had been more difficult for them to attempt closing the cultural gap (and, culture aside, a simply different environment to have grown up in) since they’d been seriously dating. However, it had been a task she’d been willing to tackle and she felt that she’d done a good job of making it clear she was more than eager to meet him in the middle during this… assimilation process.

Now, though, she was starting to feel as though he did not reciprocate such earnest want and need to meld their families together. Had she done something wrong? Kate knew that some of her cousins were prone to unnecessary snide comments, but wasn’t it just status quo to brush that stuff off at big family gatherings? They didn’t know him. Her parents did, a little bit, and of all of her family (besides herself, of course) Francesca probably knew him the best. If one were to ask Fran, her insults were the closest to being on target, but Kate didn’t think he should heed anybody’s opinion but hers. She had told him this -- lots of times. And here they were.

Kate was a shade drunk, so her reactions were slower and… flubbier. “Babe, I don’t. Know what you’re talking about.” Kate lifted a clenched fist to her mouth to burp, as quietly as she could with her mouth closed. Another sip of her margarita with too much tequila followed. Who the hell had mixed these?

“Did something happen while I was gone? Please tell me what’s up, yeah?” More fearless than usual, she planted her hand straight on his kneecap and rubbed at his thigh firmly, not particularly caring if anyone was privy to their overt physical touching. He was her husband now, so things were different -- and what was acceptable was different as well. Kate was certain many of her cousins were quite confused about the dynamic of their relationship and why she was still allowed to speak out of turn. Their confusion made her giddy.

Her husband seemed anything but.

“You have to just. Ignore them.” Kate still didn’t know what specifically had triggered his troll-like attitude, but she had a hunch it had to do with her family and their… tactlessness.

A small part of Charlie knew he was being a little unfair – snapping at her like this – but she was being a little unfair too; using her family to push him into something he didn’t want. Expecting him to just roll over and agree to having kids before they were ready. And he was rather sure it was they, even if Kate knew she wanted to have children, he didn’t think she really understood what it meant – how much they would be giving up. She was only twenty (young, as he’d been reminded so politely by several concerned parties over the span of their relationship), they had years before they had to worry about any of that body clock business. Why was she in such a hurry?

He knew why. Every single person in this room – aside from him – had been brought up to think the exact same way Kate was thinking. That it was normal to get pregnant as soon as possible after getting married, and then to continue getting pregnant because the universe would give you only what you could handle, right? A load of shite.

Charlie turned his head a small degree away from his wife, frowning softly and taking another sip of his drink. Didn’t know what he was talking about? As if she hadn’t heard them all at dinner. As if she was the one who, as far as the rest of the family knew, didn't speak Spanish. Charlie might’ve pretended to everyone else not understand how blatantly they’d been discussing Kate’s drinking habits, but she must know he'd made sense of it. He wasn’t stupid, as much as she probably hoped he was. Stupid enough to get her knocked up, was probably what she wished he was. Well, he wasn't. He had another sip of his drink and licked at his lips as the tequila burned down his throat.

“Just the usual,” he bit back at her, vaguely aware of her hand on his knee and trying to ignore how reassuring it felt. He wasn’t sure he wanted Kate comforting him right now. He wanted to get up and leave, even if that meant Kate staying without him and having to explain to her family where he'd gone. “Ignore them?” he snapped his head sharply to look at her, mildly incredulous. “How can I ignore them? They’re fucking everywhere.“ He was being mean now, he knew – toeing the line, if he hadn’t already firmly planted a foot over it – but he couldn’t help himself. He was also probably speaking a little too loudly, but a voice in his head told him serve them right.

The usual? Kate could practically feel the exasperated heat coming off of her husband in warning-sign waves, but she didn’t really see a way out other than through at this point. If it got too bad, she could always retreat to her bedroom upstairs, but then he’d have to follow her (he didn’t like being alone in her family home) and they’d be right back in this position--potentially with him being even more on edge that she felt comfortable enough to ditch.

Charlie’s biting tone made the second option look even more attractive, and when he tacked on the latter part of the sentence, Kate visibly recoiled. They’re fucking everywhere? What was he insinuating? Her stomach churned and she felt like she was going to be sick. Maybe it was her drunkenness, but the pleasant buzz she’d been feeling only a moment ago despite some tension was completely gone. Her heartbeat slammed in her ears and before she knew what she was doing, Kate lobbed the liquid still in her drink all over her husband’s face. If the alcohol had gotten in his eyes, she was sure that would burn. Hopefully he had enough wit still left about him to have closed his eyes.

She didn’t check, though, and she didn’t bother to look back as she stomped clumsily up the stairs to her bedroom. Kate flopped onto her bed with a certain degree of recklessness and waved her hand at the door to magically shut it--it took a couple tries--she told herself she’d take a quick nap to cool off before going home.

---

Kate wasn’t sure Charlie had even gone home, but after waking up from a very restless, shortlived slumber, she clambered out of bed to change into some sweats. Her dress and shoes were left strewn across the floor--she’d get those later. She felt okay enough to apparate, and the house still sounded pretty noisy downstairs, so she figured she was in the clear in terms of gossip. If people wanted to talk about where they’d both gone, she could say she’d just apparated from her bedroom after grabbing…. Some necessary item. Would have to come up with said necessary item later.

She did just that, though, and popped home soon after her inner monologue petered out. Kate landed, to her own pleasant surprise, neatly inside the doorway at the front of the house. Not bad. Charlie wasn’t passed out on the living room couch, and he wasn’t in the kitchen making breakfast food. Kate frowned and strolled into the bedroom--not in there either.

Hand on her hip, she entertained the other options. Had he just… up and left? She really thought they were past that, but if he was that skittish about her family and being in it, maybe he’d decided that was enough. Tequila in the face was the last straw or something completely unpoetic like that.

She heard some splashing, though, and opened their master bedroom’s door to step out onto their (beautiful) patio. “Hopefully your swim’s been better than the rest of the evening.” Less articulate than usual, but still plenty clear, she crossed her arms. “Are you still an ass?”

Charlie closed his eyes tight just in time for the liquid to hit his face. He sat unmoving, in mild disbelief that Kate had just thrown her drink over him. Slowly, he lifted his empty hand to wipe at his eyes before opening them, blinking. By the time he’d done this, Kate had already stormed off (or scurried away, either was possible). He could tell by the sudden hush around him that that hadn’t gone unnoticed. He didn’t need to look to see Kate’s family staring at him. Fucking fantastic – just what he needed.

Charlie got to his feet quickly and downed the rest of the drink in his cup as he made his way for the exit; he discarded it on a side table in the hall before slamming the front door behind him. He knew he shouldn’t apparate – not in this state – but he wasn’t going to walk and he wasn’t calling a taxi from here. He took a few deep breaths in, concentrating hard to make sure he had his destination in mind— pop!

He grabbed at the letterbox and retched with his mouth shut defiantly when he landed – just able to keep it all together. The musician patted at his pockets, reached into the front right one to withdraw his key. It took a few goes, but he got it in the hole and gained entry to his – their – bungalow. He shut the door with a soft slam and stumbled through to the kitchen.

Charlie’s long fingers gripped at the edge of the bench. Water. He needed water, and to get out of his now-saturated shirt. In fact – he looked down – his trousers hadn’t escaped unscathed either. He was fucking mad at her – but he also knew, in hindsight, that he’d been a bit of a dickhead. He inhaled slowly, trying to focus on a single point in the room and failing. Christ, how much had he had to drink? He didn’t think it was that much – then again, it was tequila and they were Mexicans.

The Yorkshireman turned his head to the side, glancing out through the ranch sliders at the lit pool beyond – that wasn’t a bad idea. Charlie slipped out through the slider and shut it behind him more carefully than he’d closed any other doors so far, then started taking his shirt off as he meandered haphazardly towards the edge of the pool. He kicked off his shoes, balanced precariously to take his socks off, dropped his trousers, and his boxers, and dove in with a splash!

The water immediately woke him up, cleared his thoughts a little. He surfaced with a gasping breath and shook his head gently to get the water out of his eyes. Charlie coughed lightly, then spread his arms out in front of him in a breaststroke for a length before shifting into a front crawl.

---

He was doing a lazy backstroke on a weird diagonal line when he heard Kate’s voice between his quiet splashing. He stopped immediately and stood up in the shallower end of the pool, the water level around his waist, and pushed his wet hair back from his forehead. Her first few words had gotten lost, but he heard the last few perfectly clearly. Charlie frowned softly and looked away, his hands smoothing across the surface of the water. “I’m always an ass,” he replied simply. He glanced up at her a little reluctantly and murmured: "I'm sorry."

Even when she was this angry with him, it was hard for Kate to ignore how gorgeous her husband was. That hadn’t even been the first thing she’d noticed about him, upon their first meeting--then, he’d had much longer, floppier hair, skin that hadn’t been as clear and bright as it was now (thanks to her forcing him into a skincare regime and cooking him healthy, tasty food) and his clothing style had developed a lot. That was all to say that she’d noticed a marked amount of growth in his physical appearance. Perhaps it wasn’t as dramatic as the emotional and mental changes they had each gone through, but it was apparent. He was the most beautiful person she’d ever seen.

Her eyes flicked to his hands gliding over the surface of the water and she felt another lurch. Two of her favorite things in the world remained those. “Why don’t I get in with you. We need to talk about what happened.” Kate declared, more firmly than she usually declared things. Being married had actually seemed to both help her confidence in their relationship and hurt it. Helped it in that he couldn’t up and leave so easily, and they’d been doing really well, and hurt it, because, well… of these types of things. Abhorring her family and the idea of having children so much that he’d made a complete dick of himself at her family’s Thanksgiving dinner.

Kate wasted no time in stripping off her clothes. She’d noticed he was naked, after all, and if she had a bathing suit on, it wouldn’t have felt like a level playing field. Why was she concerned with fairness right now? He hadn’t been treating her fairly this trip. How could he expect her to control everything her cousins, aunts and uncles had to say?

She dove in as smoothly as a drunk person could once all her clothes were discarded, and popped up with mermaidy hair slicked down the back of her head. She breathed deeply to get ahold of her oxygen intake for a second and then blinked the chlorinated water away from her eyes. It stung a little. She never wore goggles if she could avoid it, though. Uneven tan. Even sunglasses could be cringey that way sometimes.

“So what’s wrong with you?” Kate asked, slightly more firmly than was necessary. She had to try not to sound shrieky, now, or they’d have another argument. “Do you think that I can control everything my family says? I was enjoying my more civil relatives’ company. Like my grandmother’s, and my mother’s, and usually yours. What were they saying that made you so mad?” Kate frowned deeply, her smooth skin creasing into frustrated, harsh lines.

Charlie didn’t wait to see if Kate accepted his apology or not, focusing instead on his pruney fingers as he turned one hand palm up - how long had he been in here? He frowned and glanced up at her, confused that she’d gone from being rather furious at him to offering to get in the pool with him. “Er, yeah,” he nodded, his brow still lightly furrowed in confusion. He supposed her offer did come with the caveat of talking. Actually, if he dissected it, only the first part of it was an offer – the latter half was more of a statement. It was difficult for it not to feel like an ultimatum: talk or else.

Though she wasn’t shy about stripping off in front of him (nor should she be), Charlie kept his eyes averted from her body. He didn't need her to have another reason to be pissed off with him. A soft splash signalled her entrance into the water; he turned towards her and watched as she surfaced like something out of a movie. Why had he been such a prick to her again?

Oh, right. Charlie scowled; he didn’t appreciate her accusatory tone. “What’s wrong with me?” he repeated, but it was lost in her next question. His feet remained planted on the pool floor and he was regretting the fact that there was no easy way to storm off in waist-high water. He supposed he could be incredibly childish and simply duck under, hold his breath -- but he was trying to be less of a moody teenager now that he was married. “I didn’t say you could control them, but you didn’t even bother to correct them, did you?” He shot back, referring to the ‘private’ discussion her family had had across the dinner table - when he’d been right there - because they’d assumed he couldn’t understand them. Nevermind the fact that they’d been rude enough to exclude him in the first place. How civil were her family, really?

Okay, he had to admit, her mother and grandmother were civil but the rest of them could jog on, as far as he was concerned. “You know exactly what it was,” he replied snippily, then, under her glare, softened. He’d sobered up a reasonable amount since he’d left the party, but there were still some woozy bits hanging around the corners of his thoughts. He sighed, glanced away, then glanced back. Communicate. He had to communicate. He looked up at the moon, rather than at Kate, because he didn’t want to see her face when he said “It’s just— it’s none of their business when or if we’re having kids.”

She hadn’t bothered to correct them. She pondered this for a second, and watched the lights on the side of the pool dance around in the tiny chops she’d created when she jumped in. No, she hadn’t bothered to correct them, because--at the time--she’d been enveloped in other things. Kate had far too many family members to keep track of what each one of them said at parties or holidays, and if she was being honest, she didn’t care to. If she hadn’t developed the skill to ignore them--most of the time, anyway--someone as sensitive as her would shrivel under the snide remarks and rude comments. Kate listened to the people who really mattered, and her nosy cousins gossiping in Spanish across the tables didn’t mean for anyone to hear them, she was sure. Since Charlie had been in a big fat sulk after dinner, she assumed this issue was the culprit for his dumpster-fire attitude.

“Charlie, I don’t know exactly what it was. You know how big my house is and how long that table is. Everyone is included, shitty or not. You have to know that when I’m busy, or paying attention to you, I don’t hear everything that everyone says.” Kate informed him, with a tone that still had a slight edge, but he had really gone about this the wrong way. Delivery was important to her. Almost as important as the message itself.

When or if we have kids.[/i] Something inside her twanged and stung. She was faced with another dilemma, now: focus on one issue at a time or bring that theme into their conversation and risk an even more colossal argument. Kate closed her brown eyes for clarity and reopened them after just a moment. “I. Okay, one thing at a time,” She was resolute. One thing at a time, indeed. If she overwhelmed herself with thoughts of the wrong future, she’d take a deep dive--metaphorically, this time--into a hole with no foreseeable end.

“You’re right. It’s none of their business. But you knew, when you married me,” Kate said a little softer, “That my family is full of a bunch of nosy… brats. They don’t know what they’re talking about. And you have to treat it that way. That’s what I’ve had to do my whole life, and you’re part of my family now. I’m happy to help you with whatever you need, but you also have to tell me--and not just get mad at me for something they did,” Kate’s voice escalated in volume, and she drifted around in the same area of the pool, choosing to stop there.

She didn’t respond immediately – and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Probably not. He was just considering chancing a glance at her when she started speaking. Automatically, he looked at her – unable to resist the pull. One thing at a time. What was that supposed to mean? He hadn’t brought up his list of grievances with her family (and he certainly had one), his only issue (right now) was with their not-so-quiet desire for Kate to be pregnant as soon as possible. That it was unfathomable that she wasn’t already. What had they been doing for the last few months? A sly comment that maybe it was because he was a gringo – and Charlie had known they didn’t mean it in the cultural sense, they meant that maybe he wasn’t physically able. He didn’t want to think about the fact he’d – thus far – not fathered a child (thankfully) despite his less than careful approach to avoiding an unwanted pregnancy and he certainly didn’t want people who didn’t even really know him discussing it so openly over dinner.

He’d known when he married her… He’d been ready – for a brief moment – to snap back that there had been no discussions about… any of that, but thankfully he’d been slow off the mark because she wasn’t talking about the having kids part. She was talking about her family poking their noses in. Right. Well, that much was bang on the money.

“I wasn’t mad at—” He was. He was mad she hadn’t corrected them. Mad at the way this was normal to her and her family. He still didn’t even know if he wanted kids, so he was mad about that too. If he did, he definitely didn’t want them soon. He wasn’t even sure why Kate would be in any hurry – she was twenty. She couldn’t even legally drink in this country yet. Charlie didn’t want to ask her when she wanted children because he figured that would somehow plant the seed in her head – if it wasn’t already there – that it was a sure thing. He knew she wanted them – she’d never hidden her feelings about having her own family – and now there was a strange, heavy feeling of guilt in his gut that there was a chance he mightn’t be able to give her what she wanted – either through choice or through circumstance.

He waded deeper into the pool, though not far enough for his feet to not reach the bottom; chest-level. “I just don’t see why there’s a rush, or any expectation at all,” he said finally, sounding a little firmer than he perhaps intended. “If we have kids, we'll have them when the time is right for us, not for people who don't even know us."