Preppy Prat

Arthur wasn't sure if he should be angry or relieved that the whole make-a-spectacle-out-of-myself-so-everyone-knows-about-me thing hadn't seemed to work as effectively as he had hoped. Case in point, his father. It seemed that everyone, and he meant everyone, knew about him... except his father. The whole school seemed to be on Arthur's side all of a sudden; no one having told Uther anything, not even the instructors, who Arthur was sure knew about him too. It seemed that everyone who had hated Arthur now forgave him, having assumed that Arthur had been such an ass because he was in the closet. Either that or they assumed they must have been wrong about him if Merlin liked him. Arthur was pretty sure the latter was an explanation of Merlin's making.

Despite the student body now wanting to be Arthur's best friend, he felt even worse than he had when he was struggling against his connection with Merlin. He had told Merlin he would tell his father about them, and he had meant it, but the prospect of actually having such a conversation with his father was more terrifying to him than opening up to Merlin had been. He had known how Merlin felt about him, but he knew nothing about his father's feelings. It wasn't that Uther was cruel to him, cruelty would at least mean that he cared in some way, he just hardly acknowledged Arthur's existence. His lack of a relationship with his father made it impossible to know how he would react to the news. And the not knowing was what was making the prospect terrifying.

It had been a week. An entire week. Only a week. Arthur wasn't sure how to feel about it. It had felt like an eternity when he knew logically it hadn't been. Granted, Arthur had wanted to tell his father about Merlin the moment they had kissed in front of the whole school. He'd been psyching himself up for it ever since. Merlin never pushed him, told him he completely understood Arthur's difficulty. But Arthur wanted to tell him. He wasn't sure why this was so important to him, seeing as how he barely even talked to his father, but it was.

He would do this. He would do this today. Arthur was kind of hopping that his father actually cared but was just emotionally stunted. Like a constipated care bear.

REFERENCES

I (don't) wanna come out -reference to Afraid by Sarah Fimm (I see this song as representing Arthur's struggle up until this point)