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“Hey, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” Bood asks Xander after practice the week before Canadian Thanksgiving.
Xander glances over while towelling off, “my mom is coming in and we’re having the rooks over.”
“Your siblings aren’t coming?” Bood frowns. He knows Xander has three younger siblings and that they live pretty far away, two in different countries, but he still thought they would come over for Thanksgiving.
“No, it’s got my mom all kinds of ways, but she likes doting over the rooks who don't have family nearby” Xander explains as he pulls on his boxers. “Hell, she somehow got Haasy’s mom’s number.”
“She has my mom’s number?” Luca looks up from across the locker room.
Xander sighs and shakes his head. “Don’t ask me, kid. All I know is that she’ll be sending you back to your apartment with mountains of Swiss food.”
Luca flushes and goes back to changing while Xander looks back at his best friend. “You and Cassie heading to her parents or yours?”
Bood sighs, getting to the real point of why he started this conversation. “Her folks are coming to us. Man I swear… her dad loves me, her mom thinks I’m the devil on Earth.”
“It is religious thing?” Ilya questions from a couple of lockers down.
“It’s an expression, means that she thinks Bood is evil” Shane explains patiently, having clued in on the conversation when Ilya did.
“She has not seen you shriek from little spider” Ilya grins and Bood throws a towel at him.
“Hey! That spider was huge! And you hid behind Shane!”
There are multiple exclamations from around the room, referring to the spider from last practice. It had been an afternoon practice and Xander was a little late getting out of a meeting with Coach Wiebe and some of the assistant coaches. When he had arrived, half of the team were standing on their benches, clinging to each other at the sight of the spider.
Ilya had been practically on Shane’s back with how close behind him he was, using his boyfriend as a living shield. Despite his fear, Ilya was telling Shane he couldn’t just kill the spider and he had to be released outside alive.
Xander had found his entire team ridiculous and it had taken him two seconds to usher the spider onto the dust pan of a broom and another minute to release the spider safely into the forest next to the practice center parking lot.
It had been a completely ridiculous turn of events and Xander still automatically rolls his eyes whenever he remembers it.
“All of you were cowards” Xander corrects before turning back to Bood.
“I thought you got on her good side after she let you cook Thanksgiving last year” Xander tells Bood.
“She told me I could cook Thanksgiving, but then she showed up at Cass and I’s house with a fully stuffed turkey and five different sides” Bood huffs. “Cass was pissed and got her to agree that I will actually cook this year.”
“You got this, man. Hell, you catered my wedding, you’ll be fine” Xander assures, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Could you help me?” Bood asks and Xander gives him a look.
“Come on, man, you’re the second best cook on the team” Bood begs, but Xander still isn’t exactly sure what Bood wants.
“What do you need help with?” Xander questions. “I mean, I’m sure you have all the recipes down pat.”
“Yeah, but Cassie is driving to go get them and I need a sous chef” Bood pleads and Xander finds himself agreeing.
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That’s how Xander finds himself knocking on Bood’s door at three am. The in-laws are supposed to be here around three pm, but Bood insisted on Xander being here twelve hours prior to their arrival. It’s absolutely ridiculous and Xander told Bood this several times to no avail.
Xander is just lucky that he brought his mom up two days prior, so she’s there to help Lilah with Zoe. Though, Lilah and his mom’s relationship isn’t all that great, so Xander is eternally grateful that she had agreed somewhat easily to him spending the majority of Thanksgiving cooking with Bood.
“Cap!” Bood is way too enthusiastic for three in the morning as he swings the door open. “I’m already getting some stuff prepped.”
Xander has no idea what Bood is prepping considering Xander is here this early to prep, so Bood is somehow prepping the prepping.
“Is Cassie still asleep?” Xander asks, toeing off his shoes and looking into the darkness of the quiet house.
“She woke up just enough to flip me off when I got out of bed” Bood answers with a pep in his step. “Did Lilah curse you out for this?”
“No, she agreed quickly enough, but I did have to use a pillow to get her to stop clinging to me this morning,” Xander responds, eyeing the state of the kitchen, which is a terrifyingly level of organized.
“Has it gotten any better?” Bood murmurs, referring vaguely to Lilah.
“Some days I think so, and others I realize that’s just the front she’s putting up” Xander sighs, looking over the printed out recipes. “So… how exactly are we doing this?”
“So, I’ve got each of the individual recipes here, and then also this masterlist of everything that needs to get done in chronological order for each dish” Bood explains, gesturing to his computer, which is open to a thirty page google doc with each step bulleted pointed and described in detail.
“And what happens when we finish in five hours and suddenly Thanksgiving dinner is ready at eight am?” Xander questions, because there is no way all of these recipes are going to take them twelve hours.
“Trust me, man, we’ll be lucky if we’re done by three” Bood pats him on the back before shoving some onions at him.
Bood is definitely not wrong. By eight am, the prepping is done, but nothing of true significance has been made yet and Xander is starting to worry that he’ll never see his family again with how long the google doc. He feels like it’s gotten exponentially longer in the span of five hours.
Cassie is up by now and has delighted in the breakfast Xander cooked her while making fun of both men.
“I might just steal you from Lilah, Xan, if this gets me breakfast every morning” Cassie teases and Xander rolls his eyes.
Bood huffs, looking fondly at his wife, “Hey, he’s my guy to steal.”
“Whatever you say, babe” Cassie grins before exaggerating a wink at Xander.
Xander turns back to the mashed potatoes, which Xander had no idea could take so long to make and could have so many steps in the process of cooking it. However, based on the recipe, it’s definitely a recipe either Bood came up with, or he got it from a family member, so Xander will follow it to the letter.
He knows Bood was really passionate about assimilating to Canadian culture after having been raised in America by Trinidadian parents. He never celebrated American Thanksgiving growing up, but when he moved to Ottawa after being drafted to the Centaurs, he decided to double down on all the food related holidays because food was his love language and he felt alone in a whole new country.
It’s one of the reasons Xander agreed to making Thanksgiving dinner for Bood, because he knows how much it hurts Bood when people don’t enjoy his cooking because he puts so much effort into it.
Effort which unfortunately includes waking up at three am because his mother-in-law isn’t his biggest fan.
This effort extends to 2:45 pm, when Cassie comes back after leaving to go pick up her parents from her parents fifteen minutes earlier than they anticipated.
Bood is not gentle in pushing Xander into the pantry.
“Where’d you park your car?” Bood demands, closing the door behind him.
“A little bit down the road, I didn’t want to block Cassie from being able to get out” Xander hisses, stopping himself from tumbling into boxes of cereal.
“Okay, slip out when we move into the living room, there’s a window in the bathroom you can use” Bood orders and Xander gapes at him.
“You want me to climb out the window?” Xander looks at Bood like he’s crazy.
Bood glares at him, though it seems more anxious than angry. “They’ll think that you cooked all the food for me and she’ll never let me host Thanksgiving again.”
Xander sighs, not able to believe that he’s about to climb out a window like he’s a teenager sneaking out to go to a party.
“Fine” Xander surrenders.
Bood thanks him before quickly slipping out of the pantry to greet his in-laws, who are currently removing their coats in the foyer.
Xander is 6’2’’ and over 200 pounds, which makes slipping through a small window in a bathroom next to impossible and he definitely bruises his hip in the process. He has to move quickly when he hears voices approaching the bathroom, with Bood’s father-in-law saying that he can never use the bathroom on planes and that he’ll only be a minute.
Xander slips out of the window and out of sight just before the bathroom door is opened.
He escapes through the backyard and ends up falling asleep on the couch at eight pm that night after spending twelve hours cooking and waking up at 2:30 to drive over to Xander’s house.
But, the next day, Bood comes in with the widest grin on his face and says that Susan, his mother-in-law, called his cooking “acceptable”.
So Xander decides that it was worth it.