Author's Note: Yeah, I finally decided to get up off my ass and actually update this. Is anyone even still interested in reading? O.o

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Niall stopped in the middle of the school’s main courtyard for a moment the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, eyes automatically scouring the surrounding area for the sight of his friends. It didn’t take long for him to spot them; Seth, having clearly resolved to try to act more like his normal self since Niall’s conversation with him, had dyed his hair a rather vibrant shade of lime green that was easy to spot even from across the quad. Seth, Tim, and Drew were seated on a blanket under the shade of a tree, the afternoon sun still bright enough that they felt the need to try to shield themselves from it, even in late November.

Upon spotting them, Niall hurried quickly across the grass, dropping his bag and settling beneath the tree next to them. None of the three boys looked up at his sudden presence; they seemed deeply embroiled in conversation, enough so that they didn’t seem intent to acknowledge Niall. Niall managed to catch their conversation mid-sentence.

“…for your birthday?” Seth intoned with a playful smile, one that was directed at Drew. Niall was barely able to suppress a smile; now that he knew the motivations behind Seth’s constant teasing of Drew, and his attempts to make the other boy happy, Seth’s behavior suddenly struck him as extremely cute. Or it would have, he supposed, if Seth hadn’t been so miserable over the whole issue of Drew’s feelings for him, or lack thereof.

“I can’t think of anything I want, okay?” Drew rejoined a moment later, sounding a little defensive at the question— and he had the right to, Niall knew, because Seth had been pestering him about it for at least three days, seemingly frustrated that his friend couldn’t give him an answer about what sort of gift he’d like. “Just get me whatever, okay? I’m sure I’ll like whatever you give me.”

Seth pouted visibly at his friend’s continued refusal to give him a more complete answer, seeming more and more agitated as Drew’s birthday approached. Drew’s birthday happened to fall on Thanksgiving that year, a date only two days away, and apparently, Seth still hadn’t purchased a gift. Niall had managed to figure something out more than a week ago, remembering a CD by some contemporary composer that the older boy had expressed interest in the last time they’d gone to a music store in the city. Seth’s memory, however, apparently hadn’t been quite good enough for him to make a conjecture himself about what his friend might want.

“That’s mean!” Seth complained, crossing his arms over his chest and giving Drew his best pleading look, one that seemed to have no visible effect on Drew, much to the green-haired boy’s dismay. He harrumphed softly, picking a piece of grass from beside the spread-out blanket and shredding it in frustration.

Niall almost wanted to laugh at Seth’s obvious petulance; the childish anger was as cute as it was irritating, and Niall had no doubt that Drew thought so as well. But Drew, unlike Niall, did not know the reason Seth was obsessing so much over the gift; if he did, he might be a little more sympathetic. Then again, if he did, there’d also be quite a few less problems in general.

Seth turned stony and silent, picking more single blades of grass and shredding them with long, purple-painted nails. The other three boys couldn’t help but watch him; something about Seth’s dramatization of the whole issue seemed to demand attention, which was likely what Seth had intended. After a long moment, Drew seemed to become frustrated by his friend’s tantrum and sighed quietly.

“Look, I just don’t want to think about my birthday, okay?” Drew admitted a moment later, picking agitatedly at the loose end of his belt as if to distract himself from his words. Seth looked up in surprise at the sudden admission, gaze inquisitive. Drew was looking down at his hand, though, didn’t notice the gaze— but thankfully, he elaborated without further prodding from any of his friends.

“I got a call from my mother yesterday, reminding me to send my cousin a gift for her wedding,” Drew explained slowly, his voice low and bitter. “She didn’t even mention my birthday at all. I think she forgot. Again.”

Seth’s expression, which had moments earlier been frustrated and irritated, immediately softened into delicate sympathy. Niall still didn’t know the details about Drew’s relationship with his parents, but what he had managed to glean was that whatever was going on in his family, Drew was extremely broken up over it. At the very least, Drew’s parents seemed cold and distant— but Niall wouldn’t be surprised if they had spent most of Drew’s life being openly neglectful as well.

“Oh Drew, I’m sorry,” Seth breathed, sounding both upset for his friend and guilty over his own behavior. “And here I am pestering you about a gift. I’m sorry. I’ll stop.”

Drew shook his head. “It’s okay. You didn’t know,” he acknowledged softly, still not looking up— and his expression remained sad and troubled. Niall exchanged a look with Tim, who had remained silent during the entire conversation, wondering whether he should say something to try to break the silent tension that had suddenly formed. Tim simply shrugged.

Still, Niall realized that he was going to have to say something eventually; he had some news to share with his friends, which had been the reason he’d gone to search them out in the first place. They all had plans to spend Thanksgiving weekend at Niall’s parents’ vacation home, but as usual, things were not going according to plan for Niall. After a short pause, Niall opened his mouth to speak.

“Well, I have some bad news,” he began quietly, speaking just loudly enough that he knew the others could hear him over the noise of the courtyard. Both Drew and Seth turned to look at him immediately, no surprise in their features— and it reassured Niall to know that they’d at least noticed his approach, even if they’d been too busy conversing to acknowledge it.

“Oh?” Seth inquired with a raised eyebrow. Niall nodded disappointedly.

“My parents absolutely insist that I have Thanksgiving dinner with them, despite the fact that they’ve never given a shit about holidays or family functions before,” Niall seethed slowly, still feeling an acute sense of annoyance toward his parents after the argument they’d engaged in on the phone a few minutes before. “No matter that they didn’t tell me until today, not even considering that I could have other plans. They insisted that even if I do, ‘family comes first.’” The last words were spoken in a high-pitched, mocking tone.

Seth’s eyebrow jumped a little higher, brow crinkling as he realized the implications of Niall’s parents’ sudden decision.

“But we’re supposed to spend this weekend at your vacation house,” he protested, stating the obvious. Niall nodded slowly.

“I know, but I can’t get out of it,” he apologized with a sheepish expression— because he’d spent the better part of the last half hour trying to find a way to get his parents to let him be before his father had seen fit to threaten him for upsetting his mother, as if he truly cared about her feelings at all, either. In the end, it had been pretty obvious that Niall’s fate had been sealed.

“You guys can still go, though— and I’ll meet up with you later in the weekend. I’ll just give you keys, and you can let the others in after they arrive from Mass. They already have flights booked, so it would be completely shitty to cancel on them.”

Seth looked thoughtful at the suggestion, seeming a little taken aback; clearly, he hadn’t expected Niall to trust them with a key to the place, roommate or no. Seth, however, chose not to remark upon that, always a little unpredictable.

“Won’t that be a little awkward, though, without you there to introduce us? I mean…we’ve never actually met any of these guys.”

Drew rolled his eyes with a disbelieving exhale. “Right. Because you’ve always been oh-so-bashful about meeting new people.”

Seth reached across the space between them and smacked Drew lightly on the back of the head.

“Shut up,” he bit out, actually sounding a little hurt at the mocking tone. Niall was sure that Drew hadn’t meant it that way, but Seth had clearly taken the words as a dig at Seth’s promiscuous lifestyle. And Niall knew how touchy Seth was about Drew’s opinion of that.

Deciding to head off any argument before it started, Niall interrupted their interaction with speech.

“Now I just need to figure out how the fuck I’m going to get down to L.A.— another thing my parents didn’t taken into consideration,” Niall complained in annoyance. “I suppose I could take the train, but that means I won’t be able to get back up to the vacation house until late Friday morning or early Friday afternoon, depending on how many times I have to change trains. Listen to me once again lament not having a car.”

“I could drive you,” Drew offered after only the briefest of moments, no hesitation in his tone. “Although it would be somewhat rude of me to invite myself to dinner with your family. Still, though, the offer stands if you want to take me up on it. If you don’t want me at dinner, I’m sure I could find a way to occupy myself in Los Angeles for a few hours.”

Niall immediately opened his mouth to acquiesce vehemently to the offer before a realization suddenly hit him.

“You don’t want to spend your birthday with my family, Drew,” Niall protested evenly after a moment, his tone somewhat remorseful. “They can be…unpleasant, to say the least.”

Drew shrugged unconcernedly. “They can’t be any more unpleasant than my family, I’ll tell you that.” Niall didn’t bother to disagree.

“Then by all means, come along!” Niall exclaimed, suddenly a lot more at ease with the prospect of going home to see his parents. “You can help keep me sane through the whole experience, while my mother and father fight about everything and disapprove of my every action!”

The words were spoken in jest, but all the boys sensed the underlying truth in them. Drew chuckled quietly but largely without humor.

“Of course. That’s what friends are for.”

Having the issue resolved suddenly made Niall feel a lot better; they discussed a few more details, deciding that they’d leave early Thursday and return right after dinner was over, so that hopefully they could arrive back at the vacation home late Thursday night or very early Friday morning, Drew insisting that he didn’t mind driving through the night. Niall was relieved to be spending the least time possible with his parents. It was only after that conversation faded away that Seth piped up.

“Hey!” he objected abruptly, as if some realization had just settled upon him. “That means that I’m going to be going up to your vacation home alone on Wednesday afternoon! That kind of sucks, Niall.”

Niall just shrugged; he very much would have preferred to be going with Seth rather than driving down to meet his parents, but he didn’t think pointing that out to the lime-haired boy would do him much good.

“William will probably be there sometime Wednesday evening. So you won’t be totally alone,” he pointed out after a moment, trying to sound upbeat. Seth frowned, averting his eyes.

“Yeah, and that won’t be awkward,” he grumbled beneath his breath. “Hey, Will, nice to see you! Sorry about giving you syphilis and all…”

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By the time Thanksgiving dinner began Thursday evening, things were already going quite as badly as Niall had anticipated. He’d informed his parents that he was bringing Drew along Tuesday evening, something they had only begrudgingly agreed to, for reasons that Niall couldn’t quite comprehend. He hadn’t expected it to be a problem, because his parents were usually obsessively kind toward guests, taking care to portray a guise of perfection and domestic bliss that had never been the truth in his family.

This time, however, had been different. His parents had both been polite to Drew, who had been a perfectly-mannered guest (something he insisted had been pounded into his head at school in France), but there had been a coldness to their demeanor that Niall was used to only being directed toward him. He’d pulled Drew aside and apologized for his parents’ behavior more than once, and despite Drew’s reassurances that it wasn’t a big deal, Niall still felt guilty for his parents’ conduct.

Niall glared down at the piece of baked turkey on his plate, stabbing it with a quiet vengeance as he remembered how the evening had progressed from there. It had gone on with his parents criticizing everything from his choice of attire (“Couldn’t you have worn something a bit…nicer…for a holiday occasion, dear?”) to his grades (“And really, we thought we made it clear to you that if your grades don’t improve, there will be repercussions,”) to his choice not to take up hockey again after switching to Akerton (“Without any real extracurriculars, Niall, I don’t know how you expect to get any respectable colleges to accept you…”).

Niall had sat through all the criticisms staunchly, without protest or complaint, though he couldn’t help but feel somewhat embarrassed at having all his faults hashed out directly in front of his friend. Drew had taken it all in stride, though, being almost sickeningly polite to his parents, something that seemed to take them a bit off guard, much to Niall’s amusement. He had been especially amused at his mother’s shock when Drew had asked, in an offhand tone and perfectly-pronounced French, if the pinot noir they had chosen was from the Marsannay-la-Côte region of Burgundy, stating that he recognized the scent.

Other than that, though, there had been little positive about the evening; it had seemed one criticism after another, Niall being quickly reminded why he hated spending time at home, why he’d grown to become so thankful of the fact that his parents had sent him away to school, though he’d resented them for it at first. At home, his parents always made him feel as if he was a failure at everything. At home, he could do nothing right.

Niall was silent throughout much of dinner, not even bothering to try to engage his parents in further conversation, regardless of the fact that he knew that his mother would be bitching at him on the phone in just a few days about how rude and uncouth he’d been in front of company. He felt somewhat guilty for leaving Drew the awkward task of trying to make conversation, but Drew seemed to be holding his own quite easily, telling pointless anecdote after pointless anecdote about his time in France and his experiences in various activities in which he regularly participated, such as violin and swim. It seemed as if Drew was practiced at this, making useless small talk and seeming as if he were truly enjoying himself. It was a skill Niall had never really bothered to learn.

His parents seemed not to know exactly what to make of Drew, both seeming to resent him for some unknown reason and to be impressed by his worldliness, politesse, and experience. It would have been amusing if Niall wasn’t so busy being angry at them and at himself for being related to them in the first place.

The gentle rumble of conversation around him lulled Niall into a slight stupor, so much so that he was surprised when he heard the conversation unexpectedly turn to him. His head snapped up in shock, blinking repeatedly as he realized that he hadn’t even heard what his father had said. He’d been too busy stabbing angrily at his food with his fork. Niall cleared his throat sheepishly.

“…sorry?” he prodded quietly, knowing that his lack of attention was going to glean some sort of response from one of his parents, and likely one he wasn’t going to enjoy. He wasn’t wrong.

“Really, Niall, you could at least make an attempt to listen to your father when he speaks to you,” Niall’s mother criticized shrilly, and Niall had to fight not to roll his eyes at the woman.

“Sorry, mother,” Niall mumbled a moment later, unable to curb the obvious annoyance and animosity in his tone. His mother pursed her lips as if preparing to admonish him once more before she seemed to, for once, think the better of it. She remained silent as his father moved to repeat himself.

“I said,” he intoned for emphasis, as if wordlessly adding on to his wife’s earlier condemnation, “that the reason we insisted you come down here was that we wanted to discuss something with you. Something we both agreed would be better discussed in person than over the telephone.”

Niall raised an eyebrow, glancing back and forth between his mother and his father in dim surprise. For a moment, he thought that they were going to finally announce that they were getting a divorce…but no, his father was too wary about the fact that she could take half of his money, and his mother hid behind a faux-religious opposition to divorce. He couldn’t imagine what else his parents would want to discuss with him, however; his family was notorious for not speaking to each other at all about anything of value unless perfectly necessary.

“About what?” he inquired neutrally after a moment, setting his fork down next to his mostly-untouched food. He shot a quick glance in Drew’s direction, hoping that his parents didn’t want to discuss anything too terribly revealing about how fucked up their family was in front of someone else. He was still a little sheepish about Drew witnessing that fact, even though by Drew’s own admission, his own family was worse.

“It’s something we’ve been meaning to bring up with you for awhile now,” Niall’s father began to preface, and Niall sighed deeply; he wished his father would just get to the point instead of dawdling around the issue. “We just haven’t encountered the right opportunity in which to— ”

“Dad, just say it already,” Niall mumbled with a sigh, already fed up with the conversation, though it had barely started. But he figured the sooner his father got to the point, the sooner the conversation would be over, and he could get back to stabbing ineffectually at his turkey, which (as usual) was a little dry.

Niall was surprised to see his father looking uncertain, an expression he wasn’t accustomed to seeing on the older man’s face very often. Instead of answering immediately, his father shifted uncomfortably in his seat— and Niall felt a knot of anxiety settling in the pit of his stomach at the realization that this really did seem to be something important. Niall wondered idly who had died.

Niall was surprised when his mother was the first one to speak, words tumbling out of her mouth in an uncharacteristically nervous rush.

“Niall, are you gay?”

A silence so pervasive that it seemed to scream in Niall’s ears suddenly settled through the room as every occupant glanced at each other in disbelief— Niall’s mother at the fact that she had asked the question, Niall’s father at the fact that she had been the one to take the initiative, Drew at the fact that it had been brought up in his presence, and Niall at the fact that the question had been posed at all. After the silence had stretched on uncomfortably for a few long seconds, Niall managed to find his voice.

“…what?”

Niall’s mother seemed to have heard something completely different from what had just been uttered, if her next words were any indication.

“Oh God, you are, aren’t you? I knew it!” She turned to Niall’s father. “Didn’t I tell you he wasn’t normal? And now he’s bringing his boyfriend to our family functions— ”

“Drew’s not my boyfriend!” Niall protested immediately, so shocked by the sudden turn in the conversation that he couldn’t think of anything else to say. His mother ignored him and continued raving.

“— flaunting his aberrant lifestyle— ”

Niall blinked in disbelief. “Aberrant…lifestyle?” he parroted contemptuously, part of him still in disbelief at the words he was hearing come out of his mother’s mouth. He had suspected that they wouldn’t react well upon figuring out he was gay, but he hadn’t quite imagined this. And certainly not over Thanksgiving dinner, not with a friend present, and not with this level of overreaction without even giving him the chance to speak. To be entirely truthful with himself, Niall had tried to pretend that this situation might never come up at all.

“— bringing his sinful desires into our home!— ”

Niall pushed his chair back from the table angrily, feeling fury beginning to pulse through his veins as he stood up, glaring at his mother. “Sinful desires?” he snapped, barely able to hold back the wrath he felt swirling through him. “What the fuck would you know about sin? You only go to church so people will think you’re a good Christian; I don’t think you’ve ever actually read the fucking Bible— ”

His mother’s eyes flared in anger.

“Don’t you speak about the Holy Bible in that manner, young man!” she yelled back, in unison with his father’s exclamation of, “Show your mother some respect!” Niall’s frustration mounted.

“Am I even allowed to say anything in response to this, or have you already relegated me to hell for my ‘sinful desires’?” he snapped. He scarcely had to wait for a response.

“The Bible is very clear on this matter, Niall— ” his mother began, taking on am lecturing tone automatically. Niall released a long groan of aggravation.

“— and it isn’t something that we’ll tolerate under our roof.”

Niall stepped back, grabbing the back of his chair and forcefully jamming it back against the table, the legs making a painful-sounding scraping noise against the wood floor on which it was positioned. Niall felt a rush of satisfaction at that, hoping that he’d left a long, unpleasant-looking scratch on his parents’ wood floors.

“Fine!” he screamed agitatedly, feeling blood rushing to his face in anger even as he clenched his fists tightly to try to control his roiling emotions. He had known that dinner was bound to be unpleasant, but he hadn’t been prepared for this— not at all. “Fine— I’ll leave, and go back to big gay San Francisco and practice my aberrant fucking lifestyle and exercise my sinful desires there!”

Niall turned on his heel and moved automatically for the door, only spotting Drew at the last moment, remembering his friend’s presence for the first time in many minutes. He gave Drew a look.

“Grab your coat; we’re leaving. Now.”

Drew looked slightly uncertain for a moment before nodding and moving wordlessly to follow Niall’s direction, the other boy continuing to stride angrily toward the door even as his mother’s voice called after him.

“Come back here, young man! You may no longer live under our roof, but we’re still paying for your expenses, and you still have to obey our— ”

Niall slammed the front door behind himself, silencing the rest of his mother’s exclamation.