Peter had clung very, very tightly to Arthur's leg when it had dawned on him that this strange place was somewhere he'd have to face alone.
"Come now, Peter," Arthur sighed. In retrospect, he probably should have informed the lad a little earlier and given him time to adjust, but being a parent wasn't exactly the easiest trick in the book and the thought hadn't crossed his mind.
"Peter, you have five seconds to let go of my leg or we're going home. Right now."
The boy seemed to take this as a good think, clung tighter, wailed louder. Arthur could practically hear the eyes of every mother in the room boring into him.
Well, sorry for lacking the woman's touch.
He was saved by one of the supervisors toddling over and kneeling beside his screaming child. Whether it was the panicked look on Arthur's face or a complaint from a hawk-eyed mother that had drawn her over, he didn't care. He would happily kiss the woman. Well, if she hadn't been at least double his age and in public.
She was whispering something to Peter in a sugary-sweet tone that all women seemed to conjure from nowhere and, slowly but surely, the vice-like grip on his leg loosened until Peter was holding onto the fabric of his trousers with a single hand.
After five minutes of coaxing and some gentle shoving on Arthur's part, Peter warily left the vicinity of his parent to mingle with the other children. The relieved father went with the few mothers that were still milling around to sit in a separate room until the day was over, all the while feeling a little uncomfortable under their judgemental stares. Peter himself was feeling a little uneasy himself. Face still tear-stained and eyes as bloodshot as that of a drunkard, he got a lot of stairs from the children around him. They didn't seem hostile, but Peter wasn't sure. He's spent his early years in a foster home, and the children there had been very good at putting up a very innocent front until they needed to pick on him.
The boy found himself missing Arthur again.
Plonking himself down in a corner with some crayons and a sheet of paper, he started scribbling something that vaguely resembled a landscape and two figures on it. He was just adding a thin strip of sky to the top of the page when someone dropped down across from him, throwing shadow onto his paper.
Peter looked up. A small, oriental boy sat at the top of his paper, hugging his knees to his chest and staring down at Peter's drawing. The blond was entranced. He'd seen people who looked like the other before, with the smaller noses and eyes, but they'd all been with him in the foster home and none of them had been allowed to grow their hair like this boy's. The ends of his fluffy, dark cut went all the way down to his chin! Peter thought it was very impressive.
"Hey." The boy muttered.
"Hi!" Peter replied cheerily, "I'm Peter!"
The boy didn't seemed too swayed by his pleasant reply. His face remained unmoving. Peter cowered.
"What are you drawing?" The other finally asked him, crossing his legs and putting his hands neatly in his lap.
Peter didn't want to reply at first. "O-oh…it's the sky, and the grass and the trees…and this here is," he pointed to the two figures in the centre, "me and my daddy."
"Your daddy?"
Peter nodded.
"He has big eyebrows."
"Only because I drew them that way!" Peter leapt to Arthur's defence. "They're actually normal sized, they're just a darker colour than his hair so they look bigger!"
The boy smiled then. It wasn't a scary smile or a malicious smile…it was as though someone had just told him a good joke.
"I didn't say it was bad, mine are pretty big too, see?" He pushed his fringe away from his forehead with his hand to reveal two eyebrows that certainly were bigger than the norm. "My dad says I'll have to get my fringe cut soon so I won't be able to hide them any more, but I think people will make fun of me for it. I'm Leon, by the way. It's not my proper name, but people can't normally say it right."
"Leeeeeon," he tested out, "That's a cool name. I've never heard of anyone with the name Leon before. We should be friends! That way I won't get scared when Arthur leaves me for the day and we can stop people making fun of you!"
Leon seemed unsure. He looked over his shoulder at the other children, all chattering and babbling together, stealing each other's toys and being generally boisterous.
A friend seemed a good idea.
He stuck out a hand. "Okay, friends."
Peter took the hand in his own. "Friends." He shook it.
Arthur's personal hell was finally over for the day. Hours of being pestered or just glared at by mother's had worn him down sufficiently (how on earth a single person could rabbit on for so long about primary school was beyond him) and he would have been happy just to drag his son out of the building as soon as possible.
The child seemed to have other plans. He was hanging around an Asian-looking woman and her child, leaping from foot to foot excitedly and chattering animately about something or other. The woman seemed amused, but Arthur thought it best to step in before that amusement wore off.
"Peter! There you are! Come on, stop harassing this poor woman, it's time to go home."
"Arthur, Arthur!" The boy's hopping only got more frantic. "Look, look this is my new friend! His name is Leon, isn't he great? Can he come round our house, please please pleeease."
Arthur was taken aback at the boy's enthusiasm and looked up at this Leon's mother - or at least, that's who he assumed she was - for support. To his dismay, she seemed to be pretty happy with the idea.
"Leon has not been making good friends like Peter recently. Would he like to come over to our house soon? I think that would be nice for them."
The man sighed in defeat. "I shall have to check the calendar but…I don't see no reason why not. But we will have to be going now, I'm very sorry." Arthur grabbed Peter by the hand and began to make his way out, Peter following him obediently.
They were almost at the door when he felt a light tugging on his trouser leg and looked down to see the boy, Leon, staring up at his face with a burning intensity that made him uneasy.
"No, Peter, you drew them the perfect size," he commented cryptically, and his son burst into poorly stifled giggles.
A/N: Thank you for reading! Sorry for throwing out a oneshot instead of a new chapter (gosh it's been a long time) but I've been very busy with exams as of late and I had inspiration for this (I asked for a prompt and I was given on uvu). I'll be sure to churn out another one or two single chapter fics over the next couple of weeks then get the next chapter of TIGW out!