Endangeredslug said:

Topic: it's time for the sex Ed class in school and Bae brings home the permission slip.

Westcoastmalone said:

Prompt for your adoption verse. Gold feels like he should have the sex talk with Bae, due to a girl, and stumbles his way through it. Bae doesn't have the heart to tell his dad that Belle gave the talk to him years ago, and really "imokaydadpleasestoptalking noplease!"

It had been a couple of days since Belle's almost-confession, and Arthur frankly had no idea what to do. So far, she hadn't made any further moves to discuss her secret crush with him, and while he was pretty sure he knew what she meant, there was still that little part of him that couldn't believe she'd really been about to say what he thought she was. It had sounded an awful lot like she was in love with him (because really, what other man did she spend any time with?) and that was just absolutely impossible. Women like Belle didn't fall in love with men like him, they just didn't.

Still, though, what else could she possibly have meant? She had no reason to tell him if she'd meant somebody else, and her hand on his knee had been fairly suggestive. And then the dream – at least he assumed it was a dream since she'd been murmuring his name in her sleep. He still couldn't think about that too hard without risking letting his imagination wander, which of course meant he could barely stop thinking about it when she was around.

She was around a lot more lately, too. He'd been going over earlier and staying later, half hoping she'd find another opportunity to finish their conversation and half terrified that he had drastically misread the situation. She was bound to get sick of him eventually at this rate, but oddly she hadn't yet. Belle remained all warm smiles and friendly greetings even as his visits started lasting until Bae's bedtime when he couldn't possibly find any more excuses to stay with her. He was hopeless, and if he were a braver man he'd have said something by now.

So instead, he just quietly arrived at her house about twenty minutes after he knew she usually got home with Bae. Nothing suspicious there! It wasn't like he was waiting around the corner in his car until he was pretty sure she'd have arrived or anything. He'd only done that maybe twice, and then decided that arriving at precisely 4:25 more than two days in a row might arouse some suspicions.

The fact that nobody seemed particularly surprised to see him when he rang the bell every day only drove home how right this all felt. He wanted to be here with them in more than a visiting capacity, and that could perhaps give him bravery.

Bae let him into the house, and Belle was at the counter flipping through mail but her face lit up when she saw him there and for a moment it felt like coming home.

"Hey," she said, grabbing a piece of paper off the counter and holding it out for him. "You need to sign this."

Curious, Arthur walked forward and took the paper from her. Bae seemed to suddenly find something incredibly, intensely interesting about one of the back issues of Reader's Digest that Belle for some reason had on her coffee table.

"What is it?" he asked, not quite able to make the words on the paper quite make sense.

"It's his sex ed permission form," Belle explained. "Both parents have to sign it."

"Why does he need sex ed?" Arthur couldn't help blurting out. "He's only eleven."

He damn well knew why the boy needed it eventually, but still – the thought of his eleven-year-old needing to know the facts of life...he just got his son, it couldn't be time for that already.

"Because," she replied. "He's eleven and hasn't gotten into any trouble yet. They like them to know what's going on before that happens."

Arthur glanced back at Bae, who had pretty effectively burrowed into the chair as far as he could go in his effort to not have to pay attention to his parents' conversation about his potential sex life.

"You still don't think this should wait until he's a little older?"

"He's old enough," Belle replied. "He's known the basics since he was little, and I'd rather he heard it from someone he trusts than the Internet or one of his friends."

"Why would it even come up?" Arthur asked, completely unable to process the idea of Bae ever being exposed to pornography. Belle shot him a withering glare.

"You were a teenage boy, Arthur, use your imagination."

The truth was, he didn't really have to use his imagination. Granted, it had been harder to get a look at a naked woman when he'd been a child, but he definitely remembered doing everything in his power to see one.

"He's just so young," Arthur finally sighed, trying hard not to look back at Bae who really did not seem at all like he wanted them to even be having this conversation.

"He'll be in middle school next year," Belle replied gently, putting a hand on his arm. "And I know you don't want to think about it, but they start doing things by then. The first girl I ever knew who got pregnant was pregnant in ninth grade. Hell, one of his teachers was pregnant when he was in second grade, it's why we had our first talk."

"And they let her teach seven-year-olds like that?"

He could have slapped himself for his outburst, because he knew he sounded ridiculous, but he just hated the idea of his son needing to lose this piece of innocence so young.

"She was pregnant," Belle said icily. "Not a werewolf. Children have siblings at that age, too. They have to know that babies come from someplace. And anyway, it was the best opening I ever had to explain that sort of thing."

"I'll do it," Arthur replied, before realizing exactly what it sounded like he just said. "I'm his father, if anyone should talk to him about this it's me."

He was prepared to argue his point, and began mentally rehearsing what he'd say to her. He'd point out that he obviously had at least some experience in what was going on, and that the whole thing would be less impersonal and hopefully make it easier for Bae to ask questions. What he hadn't been prepared for, was what she actually said.

"Okay," she said with a shrug. "If you want to do it, then do it. You're totally right, this is something you should handle."

He did manage to stop himself just short of saying 'really?' because that would have been a touch undignified.

"When should I do it?" he asked, suddenly wondering if this was a level of parenting he was prepared for.

"Now would be fine," she replied with a shrug. "Dinner won't be for awhile and the school wants an answer by tomorrow anyway."

He wasn't really sure how he felt about her leaving the class as a safety net, because he was technically against Bae learning that way, but given his sudden stage fright he was suddenly wondering if maybe having professionals do this wasn't a bad idea after all.

"Hey Bae?" Belle called to the boy who somehow seemed to be growing into the upholstery at this point. "Your dad wants to have a talk with you."

He didn't think she was trying to throw him off to prove her point, but he was pretty sure that she was enjoying his discomfort at least a little bit. She was trying to hide the smirk on her face as she ducked into the kitchen, but it was still there if you knew what you were looking for.

That, at least, triggered a little bit of self-righteous indignation and parental pride. If she thought he was going to need someone else to help with this, she had another thing coming. He'd made a child, he could damn well tell that child how everything was supposed to work. At least, he was pretty sure he could. It had, admittedly, been awhile.

He briefly wondered if he should get 'the talk' himself before this continued.

Arthur came to sit near Bae, who was obviously pretty sure he knew where this was going and just as obviously uncomfortable with everything as his father was. Well, evidently Belle had held some kind of conversation with the boy on the topic before, so perhaps that would be a good enough place to start.

"So, apparently it's time for you to take sex ed," Arthur said to his son, who looked for all the world like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole.

Bae didn't say anything, just nodded and watched his father not know what to say. Oh good.

"So I know you know the basics from your mom," Arthur continued. "But I thought it'd be a good idea for us to have a talk about what you know and what you don't know and try to answer any questions you have."

"I know where babies come from," Bae blurted out, his face beginning to redden. "Mom already had that talk."

"Well, that's a good start," Arthur was silently cursing because that was the part he was pretty sure he had a good handle on. "But there's a lot more to sex than babies."

Bae looked some combination of horrified and curious, which Arthur was willing to take as a good sign. He was pretty sure Belle was listening, which was not helping either. This was bad enough with the audience of one, but having the woman he loved listening in really just seemed like the wrong way to win her over.

"What do you mean?" Bae said, sounding suspicious.

Arthur was suddenly wishing very hard he'd just listened to Belle and signed the damn form. He was still convinced his way was better, assuming he could actually go through with it, but man it seemed like it would have been a lot easier to just let some random teacher handle this. It was usually the gym teacher, wasn't it? He liked Mr. Knight, and the man seemed on the ball – his wife was pretty enough, anyway. Fred probably knew some tricks...okay this was definitely not where his train of thought needed to be going. Alright, time to focus. What did kids need to know about sex?

Was it too late to back out of this gracefully and sign the permission slip? Probably. Damn.

"Well," he stalled. "As you get older you're probably going to start getting...urges."

Fantastic, this was off to a brilliant start, wasn't it? Bae still looked like he wanted to die a little bit and Arthur wasn't sure if the room had always been this hot or if he was just going crazy.

"Alright," Arthur finally blurted out. "Look, I know this is awkward as hell. Trust me, it's not really fun for me either or how I wanted to spend my afternoon together but well...this is important." What was the thing Belle had said? "Next year, you're going to a new school and you're going to start noticing the girls in your class a lot more and I want to make sure that you know what to do when that happens."

"...are you talking about boners?" Bae finally whispered with a look of sheer terror on his face and Arthur came damn close to laughing except he knew Belle would be able to hear that.

"No," he said instantly. "Well, sort of. I mean, that's the kind of thing you have to kind of learn to sort out yourself. I mean…" he had no idea what he even meant. "You're going to be dating soon, son."

If that boy didn't get his first hickey from Emma Nolan in the next three years Arthur would be completely gobsmacked.

"And when you're dating a girl – or a boy, I guess –" this could absolutely not be going worse. "Then sex is a possibility. Now, I'm not going to tell you to never have sex. But I don't want you jumping into it because you think it's something everyone else is doing, either. Sometimes – a lot of times – the right choice is to wait, because there are so many things that can go wrong when you try to do something you're not ready for yet. And when you are ready for that, I want you to know that it's okay to come talk to me about it. I'm not going to judge you or hate you, I just want to make sure you have the best information available to you."

There, that was pretty good. He half felt Belle's eyes on him and glanced over to where she was trying to be very discreet, but also definitely was staring at him.

"What kind of information?" Bae asked suspiciously, and Arthur breathed a little internal sigh of relief because maybe he wasn't screwing this up too badly after all.

"Things like condoms," he replied. "How to use them, where to get them...that sort of thing. How to treat your partner…" oh God, what else would the boy need to know? "What to do if your partner isn't treating you the way they should be."

Bae still looked awkward, but had relaxed at least a little bit. Arthur wasn't really ready to call this a rousing success, however Bae seemed to have heard at least some of it.

"You mean like not hitting girls," Bae said confidently.

"I mean not hitting girls," Arthur replied with a smile. "But I also mean making sure your partner is comfortable and not pressuring them into anything they don't want to do. I mean taking care that they enjoy themselves, and that you're doing what you can to make that happen."

Belle had abandoned all effort at discretion now and was openly watching them both, a strange look on her face. He couldn't help glancing over to her periodically as he continued. These were things he wanted her to hear as well, some sort of evidence that he cared, too.

"Girls you need to be especially careful of," he continued. "Because a lot of them don't really know how to ask for things, because nobody ever told them it was okay and sometimes they'll do things they don't want because they want you to like them."

Bae nodded a little bit, but seemed to have become a little distracted by his knees.

Arthur really wasn't sure where to go from here. Anything beyond what he had just said would be getting into details that his son was definitely too young for (and that Arthur was pretty sure he was too rusty to be giving any pointers on anyway) but he just didn't know what else to do besides escape.

"So what I want you to get out of this," he finally said. "Is that you can come to me with any questions you have after your class at school."

He could have sworn he heard Belle snort but refused to look away from Bae as the boy nodded and gave his father a weak smile.

It was the coward's way out, perhaps, but at least maybe the gym teacher would have a slide show or something. He'd just have to make very sure that Bae had a box of condoms along with his first serious girlfriend so they could revisit this.

Arthur didn't say anything as he walked to the kitchen, grabbed the permission slip from where Belle had left it and signed his name on one of the lines.

"Don't say anything," he warned Belle as Bae (released from his awkward conversation) ran upstairs as fast as his legs could carry him. "I know I messed it up."

"Aww," she said from behind him, quickly wrapping her arms around his torso in a hug that made his knees feel weak. "Don't be too hard on yourself. You tried, and you rallied toward the end there. I thought you did a good job preparing him for the class, and hopefully he'll know he can come to you afterward. That's the important part, right?"

"I guess," he murmured, missing the heat of her body once it was gone and she'd come to stand next to him. "But still, I should have been able to handle this. I do know how sex works."

Well, that wasn't a creepy thing to reassure her of at all.

"I'm sure you do," she said with a teasing grin coming over her face. "But knowing how to do something is very different than knowing how to explain it to an eleven-year-old who doesn't want to hear about it. Besides, I'm glad you told him what you did about consent and making sure his partner doesn't feel pressured. I wouldn't have thought to say that, but I love that you did. It's important for him to know that, too. We can cover the condoms later when it's more likely to be put to a practical use."

He couldn't help how much he still loved hearing her use the word we. It made him feel like maybe they were getting a little closer to that elusive something that he'd half been hoping for since before they met and that she'd alluded to the other day. Maybe – just maybe – there was still hope. Or maybe he was going crazy and reading too much into all of this.

And maybe he should see if he could sit in on that sex ed class, because honestly the refresher couldn't hurt.