Bae had grass stains on the back of his shirt and his pants today. He'd clearly been in a fight again. It didn't look like it had been a bad one, but Arthur couldn't help wondering how long this was going to last and whether or not they should all go to some more therapy over it.
"Did August say something to you again?" he asked his son as the boy climbed into the car, but Bae looked surprised and then shook his head. "Then what happened?"
He was mentally bracing himself to hear about some other child bullying his son, some other crisis to avert, but that's not what happened. Instead, Bae blushed and glanced away towards the school. Arthur followed his son's line of sight, but didn't see anything particularly interesting, just the usual assortment of children.
"Bae?" he prompted.
"Can I ask you a question?" Bae replied.
"You can ask me anything," Arthur reassured him.
"What do you do when you like a girl?"
Well, that was certainly an unexpected question. And Arthur was not at all prepared to deal with this. What did other men do when they liked girls? So far, his patented method of 'pretending like he didn't like her while secretly hoping she'd suddenly decide to make the first move' hadn't yielded great results. Well, his complete inability to even approach Belle had gone swimmingly for George, but that really wasn't going to help Bae with whatever was going on.
"Was the fight over a girl?" he prompted his son, hoping to divert his attention.
"Sorta," Bae admitted. "Emma kissed me. And then she pushed me and ran away."
"She pushed you?"
"Yeah," Bae said with a shrug. "I fell over, but it didn't really hurt or anything. Mostly I was surprised."
This was a level of parenting Arthur wasn't sure he was prepared for. He knew that Emma and Bae had a tendency to be at each other's throats constantly, but Belle had never mentioned them being physically violent. That was something he was fairly certain he would have remembered.
"What led up to her kissing you?" Arthur asked. He was mostly hoping to stall having to answer his son, but who knew? It may provide some insight he needed to give good advice.
"Some of the girls were making fun of Emma because we hang out so much," he said dispassionately. "I told them to stop so then they started singing about us sitting in a tree. So we ran away and hid for a little while."
"And then she kissed you?"
Bae nodded.
"She kissed me," he said slowly. "But after a minute she stopped and then I don't know, she looked really confused and she pushed me over and ran away."
"Ah," Arthur replied. It was actually all coming into focus, because he could totally understand the impulse to kiss someone and run away. "Well, son, it sounds like Emma probably likes you."
"Then why did she push me?"
"Because sometimes when people like you, if they don't know how to handle it they can react strangely. Which doesn't mean she was right to push you, and I'll have to talk to your mom about it, but I think probably that's what happened with Emma. She likes you and she isn't sure how to handle it."
"That's weird," Bae said simply.
"It is," he admitted. "But that sort of thing can be confusing for everyone, especially when it's your first love."
Bae looked at him suspiciously, but didn't argue or ask any further questions. Arthur was fairly relieved, actually. This was not something he really felt qualified to handle. He was never what could be referred to as a lady's man even at his prime, and it had been a long time since he'd even tried. Things with Belle were barely worth mentioning, and he really had nothing else going on in his love life. He'd hoped to have a little more time before Bae would want this sort of help, but since when could he count on actually getting what he wanted?
"Do you really have to tell mom?" Bae said softly. "I don't want her to worry."
"You won't be able to hide it," Arthur pointed out. "The back of your clothes are completely covered in grass stains."
"We can tell her something else," Bae replied. "Tell her I tripped in PE."
"She's your mother," he reminded his son. "She needs to know what's going on. Anyway, I don't think she'll be as worried as you think."
"You don't?"
"She's had you for a long time," he reassured his son. "I think she's made of sterner stuff than all that."
Bae grimaced a little, but nodded in reluctant agreement with his father's plan. Now Arthur just had to actually sit down and discuss it with Belle. Fantastic.
Things between them had become a little strained lately, mostly because he'd been avoiding having any serious conversations with her since Bae got in his last fight. He hadn't handled that day well and he knew it – he wouldn't admit it, necessarily, but he knew it. If he hadn't insinuated that she'd been neglectful, he might have apologized by now, but after that...he wasn't entirely sure that she'd forgive him if he did apologize and he was self-aware enough to know that his pettiness over her new boyfriend (was George her boyfriend? He hadn't asked because he didn't want to know the answer and she hadn't volunteered it) wasn't going to go away just because he wanted it to. If he did try to apologize, he was entirely likely to randomly insult her intelligence and accuse the other man of only being with her for the sex. Assuming, of course, they were having sex. He knew they'd had sex when they dated before, but had no idea about now. He didn't want to know now. He didn't really want to think about now. Oh God, why couldn't he stop thinking about now?
He couldn't blame Belle, really. He hadn't ever actually told her he had feelings for her (except that one time it kind of slipped out, but he wasn't sure she'd really understood him, either) and he'd definitely never made any move. She'd gone out with the man who asked. It was really just that simple. Arthur really halfway hated himself for being so angry about it, or at least for letting her know of his disapproval. But somehow not having any real right to be jealous hadn't really helped him not be jealous.
This, he knew, was not a healthy situation for anybody. He was being a jealous bastard, Bae was only now starting to come back out of his shell after Milah's funeral, and Belle was...he didn't know what Belle was doing, in fact. They'd been so close to something beautiful as a family, and now he wasn't sure if it was even salvageable anymore. That's the part that broke his heart the most, he decided. For the second time he'd lost his family. It had taken him ten years to regain this one, would he ever get another chance? Could he even blame Milah this time, now that she was dead?
He wasn't above wondering if she'd done it on purpose to spite him. He hated thinking that. The police had said that they couldn't determine if it were an accident or a suicide, just that there was no sign of foul play. She was clearly distraught at the time she'd taken the drugs (she'd just lost Bae again, after all) but that could lend itself to either interpretation with equal ease – either she decided to end it all or she was simply trying to forget. It was egocentric to even imagine that she'd thought of him in her last moments, but he'd meant something to her once hadn't he? But no, he was fairly sure that Bae would have been on her mind no matter what. He'd been the one thing she seemed to have wanted more than the drugs in those last few weeks.
Maybe he'd discuss this at their next session with Dr. Hopper – or maybe he'd get himself some private sessions. He couldn't lose his family again. He needed Belle and Bae more than he'd ever needed anyone else in his life.
He felt a strange kinship to Emma at that moment, stuck between the warring urges to love Belle and to shove her away where she couldn't possibly hurt him. Which didn't mean he still didn't need to talk to Belle about it, because he felt like this was something modern parents were supposed to deal with differently than his parents had (when he was a child, 'that means she likes you' was the end of the conversation after all) and she and Mary Margaret would want to have a series of long talks about appropriate emotional outlets. Maybe he should sit in on one or two of those, the information couldn't really hurt.