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Uther watches in confusion and a little bit of bemusement as Arthur stands in front of him, looking like he was moments away from fleeing the room. It reminds him of those times when Arthur was still a young child, caught doing something he wasn't meant to be doing, looking determinedly at anywhere but him, the thoughts visibly whirring through his mind.
"You said you wanted to see me," he says plainly, and Arthur winces.
"Yes," he squeaks, then coughs, clearing his voice. "Yes. Um. Father, I have something to, um, tell you. About myself."
Well, at least he's being direct.
"Okay, son. What is it?"
He can't imagine what it would be. Uther already knows pretty much everything about his son. Maybe Arthur finally decided to take on the role of heir of his company officially? Maybe he decided to enrol into one of the business schools that Uther had been reminding him off all month? That would be good. Arthur had been stubbornly putting off applying for those schools, even though they would only benefit his future career. A future career that he couldn't really get out of, no matter what things he did during his rebellious teenage phase. One didn't just simply stop being a corporate heir to a multi-million dollar business, and even without Uther's rigorous training, Arthur still displayed an aptitude for business, taking to it like a fish in water.
Then Arthur says quickly, "I'm not, er, straight," and immediately goes red, and Uther's thought train careens off the rails and crashes.
Uther stares at him in silence, and Arthur squirms uncomfortably where he stands.
"... You're not straight," he says slowly, and Arthur nods. "Then ... what are you?"
Arthur relaxes a fraction at his seemingly calm reaction. "I'm pansexual," he says simply, and Uther's thought train crashes and burns again.
"Good god," he says, alarmed. "You're sexually attracted to kitchenware?"
Arthur makes a very un-Arthur like squawk, which Uther might have found amusing in another situation. "What?? No! That's not what it means!"
He looks mortified, and Uther mentally flails. I don't know what I'm doing, he thinks. I always know what I'm doing. There wasn't training for this in the James C. Collins's book on management.
"- and you can stop trying to set me up with other business CEO's daughters, because I'm already ..." Arthur, is possible, goes even redder, but stands straight, almost seeming proud. "I'm already with someone."
The burning wreckage that is Uther's thought train flops helplessly.
"You're ... what?"
Staring at him in shock and resignment, Arthur buries his face into his hands. "I should have listened to Morgana," he mumbles under his breath, and Uther hears it anyway.
Well. It's always nice to know how much faith his children have in him.
"So you're not straight," Uther says slowly, and Arthur gives an encouraging nod. "Then ... you're gay?"
"I mean ... no?"
"But you're not straight."
Arthur shakes his head.
"And you're not gay?"
"Not exactly."
There's a long silence in which Uther makes several confused faces and says nothing. Arthur, the last bit of hope diminishing, heaves a sigh.
"Oh my god, I give up. Father, wait here, I'll get Merlin to do this."
Before the word "Merlin" even processes in Uther's brain, Arthur is turning around and walking out of the door without being dismissed, and Uther hears his son yelling the name down the hall in a manner that probably should have all of his staff members sticking their heads out of their doors to see what was going on. On the contrary, however, even the guard outside his office doesn't react to Arthur's shouting, seeming accustomed to it.
"Does he do that a lot?" Uther asks. The guard shrugs.
"Pendragon Corp wouldn't be the same without those two," he says, grinning. Uther sits back down and wonders how much he actually missed.
A few minutes later, Uther's office door bangs open again and a stranger with big ears and black hair walks in, sitting down in the chair opposite his desk. Uther raises an eyebrow at him .
"Do you have an appointment?"
"No." The stranger beams, his bright blue eyes sparkling with mischief, and Uther is immediately put on edge.
Uther stares him down with the glare that usually reduces stubborn businessmen to cowering servants within a matter of seconds. Unaffected, the stranger just smiles wider.
"Arthur sent me," he says finally, and Uther squints at him.
"I see. Are you Merlin?"
The boy - Merlin - nods cheerfully. "Yes," he confirms. "Arthur told me to come and explain sexuality to you because apparently you thought 'pansexual' meant being attracted to pans."
Oh.
Uther looks at this boy - really, how old is he? Definitely younger than Arthur, at any rate, and the student ID card poking out of his hoodie pocket only proves it - although Uther recognises the logo of the Imperial College of London and maybe feels a flicker of approval. At least Arthur didn't pick up a random moneydigger from the nightclub.
"I'm at least thirty years your senior," he says flatly. "Don't try and give me the talk."
Merlin shakes his head, looking far too relaxed in the CEO's office. "Well, according to Arthur, you clearly need it, so -"
Now he's really feeling insulted. "I'm the CEO of Pendragon Corp, you cannot address me like that."
Snorting, Merlin waves a hand dismissively, only adding salt to the wound. "Ha. What are you going to do, fire me? Too bad, I don't work here." Ignoring Uther's offending spluttering, he bends down and opens a bag that Uther didn't notice before, depositing a laptop with about a million stickers onto his desk. Uther has just enough time to read what looks like a customised sticker of "Prince Prat" of a blonde knight that looks suspiciously like his son before Merlin pulls up a PowerPoint presentation.
"Lets get down to business," says Merlin, clapping his hands.
Uther sees the numbers "1/69" on the screen, and thinks, Oh no.
It turns out that the last 23 slides of the PowerPoint are just filled with various photographs and mugshots of Arthur, and Merlin, unabashed, says something about liking the number sixty-nine that Uther doesn't quite make sense of. In some strange way, however, Uther doesn't quite mind, watching as Merlin flicks through the photos while happily babbling on about the stories behind them. He doesn't think he's ever seen Arthur look so happy.
After five missed actual appointments and a delayed board meeting, Uther sits back and lets Merlin close his laptop and replace it in his bag.
"So," he says, somewhat awkwardly. "You're Arthur's ... boyfriend."
Merlin nods, and he looks almost challenging. Uther can see why Arthur, wilful and determined (stubborn) as he was, fit well with him.
He supposes it could be worse. "Fine. I ... approve."
"Excuse me?"
"I will allow Arthur to ..." Uther waves his hand. He doesn't know what the kids call it nowadays. "To court you."
Merlin snorts at the word, mumbling something about "medieval" and then breaks into one of the most blinding smiles Uther has ever seen - good lord, if he could somehow hook up the brightness of that smile to his office building, they'd need no electricity - and laughs.
"Good!" he says, shaking Uther's hand merrily. "Not that it would have stopped us if you disapproved, of course. But for the sake of your peace of mind, that's good!"
Uther blinks, processing those words, and Merlin glances at his watch and jumps to his feet.
"Whoops. Arthur wanted me to have finished by now. I hope you learned something today! Your homework is to go and tell Arthur that you accept him as he is, because he is very smart but he is also clueless and sometimes completely thick when it comes to human interaction and social cues, and he will think you're going to hate and disown him unless you tell him otherwise." He snatches up his bag, swinging it over his shoulder, and practically sprints out of his office, spinning around once to wave. "Goodnight, sir!" He rounds a corner and disappears from view.
Uther blinks after his receding figure, and wonders how on earth Arthur managed to find someone like Merlin. He makes a note to himself to ask him about it later - maybe he should arrange another family dinner, and go and do his ... homework. Grimacing, he shakes his head and calls up his assistant, asking her to reschedule all the appointments he missed.
"Nice fellow, isn't he?" the guard says to him as he walks out. Uther pauses. "Merlin, I mean," the man continues, and how did Merlin somehow manage to befriend his entire company staff without him knowing? "Not to be rude, but your son was a bit of a pain in the ass before they met. He's much more put together now. I hope you won't be too hard on him?"
Biting back his instinctive "Don't talk about my son like that," Uther grudgingly agrees. "I don't plan on being hard about this," he says, and the guard lights up and starts talking a mile an hour about how Merlin had taken to following Arthur during his business rounds, and that one time when Merlin somehow managed to tag along during their meetings with another business and handed out free drinks, and how "He's going to graduate soon, sir, and he's apparently top of his class - you should think about hiring him, boys so competent at such a young age are hard to come by," and Uther was really going to have to have a talk about disrupting workplace environments with Merlin, who doesn't even work here, but if he had managed to wriggle into the good graces of even his security guards ...
Maybe he should invite Merlin to the family dinner, too.