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"At least you have a moderately ok wig this time." Phil sighs, watching Wilbur try to balance a canvas on Tommy's head.
"Hey!" Tommy yells, taking great offense to the insult to his wig placing ability. He tries to turn his head to glare at Phil, but Wilbur lets go of the canvas with one hand and, without a word, grabs him by the face, squishing his cheeks, to keep him in place.
Of course, that makes Tommy turn his glare on Wilbur, who is unfazed.
"What are you doing?" Ranboo asks, holding a canvas of his own and watching the interaction, confused.
"He needs a hat." Wilbur mutters, mostly absent mindedly, as he continues to try and balance the canvas on Tommy's head, using both hands again.
The answer only confuses Ranboo further, but they just shake their head and walk away, propping their canvas up on an empty easle.
Wilbur carefully pulls his hands away, hovering near the canvas for a moment before pulling away completely. Tommy stays dutifully still, trying not to immediately fuck up Wilbur's hard work.
It doesn't last long anyway, as the canvas falls of its own accord a moment later.
Wilbur pouts, but doesn't try to fix it.
Tommy picks the canvas up from the ground, not having another one.
It was plucked out of his hands before he could choose an easle to put it on so that Wilbur could try to balance it on his head, apparently to give him a hat.
⁕*⁕*⁕
"You're a bad teacher." Tommy comments absently, trying to figure out why his paint brush is not paint brushing.
Charlie is laughing at him, holding an open tube of paint upside down.
"That paint is going to spill." Ranboo points out, pointing to the tube in Charlie's hand.
"Oh." Charlie looks down at the paint tube.
"Tommy that is the wrong end of the paintbrush." Phil sighs, walking over to take the brush out of his hand and put it the right way around and curl his fingers over it so that it won't get dropped.
"No, Phil, no. You just don't understand my process." Tommy denies, turning the paint brush back around to the way he had it.
"And what process is that, hm?" Wilbur butts in, arms crossed and expression somewhere between smug and expectant.
"Talent."
Wilbur rolls his eyes, fond.
⁕*⁕*⁕
"Canvases don't taste very good." Tommy observes, wrinkling his nose up as he sticks his tongue out in disgust.
"Well, what did you expect?" Ranboo enquires, holding a plastic pallet entirely the wrong way. There isn't neccessarily a right way, but the way Ranboo holds the clear plastic is just flat out not correct.
"For it to be better!" Tommy cries, starting to sound like he's in genuine distress.
"That's on you." Wilbur says, putting his wooden pallet down and walking closer. Tommy glares at him as he approaches, but slumps into the hug all the same when it comes.
"You really are my child." Wilbur sighs, resting his chin on Tommy's head.
"The fuck's that supposed to mean?"
⁕*⁕*⁕
Holding a little pot of green paint, Tommy approaches Charlie.
"We should play tic tac toe." He suggests, grinning when Charlie agrees.
"Great idea." Charlie says, picking up a stray paint brush and dipping it into the paint. Tommy expects him to find a piece of paper to paint on, but instead, Charlie pulls up his sleeve and starts drawing an arena.
Tommy just stares for a moment, but eventually shakes himself out of the shock, and dips his own paint brush into the green paint so that he can compete.
Charlie puts an X down in the, to Tommy, bottom left corner.
Tommy puts an O in the top right corner.
And so the pattern repeats.
Charlie wins three games, and Tommy wins two.
"We do have a video to film." Phil reminds, startling both of them, neither of them having noticed his approach.
Phil does nothing for a moment, then he starts laughing.
"Don't laugh at my son!" Wilbur gasps, lurching forward and wrapping his arms around Tommy's waist.
"And you're still milking it." Ranboo sighs, shaking his head.
"Ted-"
"No! Not again!"
Tommy giggles.
⁕*⁕*⁕
Ranboo happily ignores his surroundings as he paints the little rat on the centre of his canvas.
"Little rat, little rat." They mutter to themself, continuing to ignore the raised voices around them in favour of perfecting the little rat.
⁕*⁕*⁕
"Having fun, dear?" Wilbur asks, resting his chin on Tommy's shoulder and wrapping his arms around his ribs, hunching over kind of awkwardly to do so. Tommy hums in the affirmative, too busy painting a masterpiece to respond with words.
"Good." Wilbur hums back, tightening his hold.
"Dadbur." Charlie sniffles, wiping dramatically under his eyes and looking vaguely like he's about to cry.
Phil lets out an exasperated sigh, shaking his head.
"I could've just stayed home," Phil mutters, walking away from them while still shaking his head. "And yet I am here, not spending the day with my wonderful wife, but instead with three children."
"Does that include me?" Ranboo pipes up, somewhat hesitantly, and Phil stops shaking his head to shake it again, only once this time to signify 'No.'
"You're somehow the only muture one out of all of you." Phil huffs, but he's completely unable to hide the fact that he's fond of all of them. "Yes!" Ranboo hisses, throwing their arms up and then bringing them down, bending their elbows, while kind of caving in on himself in celebration.
Tommy ignores all of it, happily painting away.
Wilbur holds on to him even tighter, grumbling about being called a child, and kisses Tommy on the cheek.
⁕*⁕*⁕
They learn that Charlie can carry Wilbur.
Various noises of confusion and genral Charlie-ness come from Charlie, who is clearly incredulous at the discovery.
And then,
"I can carry the whole family!"
"Charlie no-" Ranboo starts to cry, but is drowned out by laughter before the clip ends.
⁕*⁕*⁕
"I have a cooler wig than you do." Tommy declares, crossing his arms and glaring up at Wilbur, trying his best to be intimidating.
Wilbur coos at him.
Tommy glares harder, trying to straighten his back so that he's taller.
It.. doesn't exactly work.
"Oh you do, do you?" Wilbur entertains, mimicing his posture and crossing his arms, straightening. Tommy narrows his eyes.
"You're mocking me." He decides, wrinkling his nose up when Wilbur snorts, clearly amused.
"Dad-"
"Oh I love you." Wilbur sighs, wrapping him up in a tight hug, holding him close. "Why're you being clingy?" Tommy asks, words muffled by the apron his face is being squished up against.
"I just love you."
And that's that.
"I love you too, dad." Tommy mumbles, giving up on his reputation and melting into the hug.
Wilbur hasn't buried his face in his hair since there's a wig in the way, so he can't feel the grin, but he knows that it's there.
⁕*⁕*⁕
A hand lands on his shoulder, turning him around.
"Tommy," Charlie starts, expression serious and tone solemn. "Would you like to be taller than Wilbur?"
His eyes go wide.
After checking that the man isn't in hearing range, which he isn't, standing in the corner and conversing with Phil, holding a paint gun, Tommy nods. "I would want nothing more."
Charlie's grin splits his face.
"Wonderful."
Tommy soon finds himself holding on to Charlie's shoulders for dear life, being piggy-backed for height.
It's kind of weird.
Sure, he's spent years of his life demanding Wilbur carry him like this, which he isn't going to stop doing any time soon, but this is different and Charlie is decidedly not Wilbur.
Regardless, they have reached their goal.
Tommy is now taller than Wilbur.
"Dad!" Tommy calls, grinning almost as widely as Charlie had been when Tommy agreed to his proposal. Wilbur doesn't seem to want to turn around, as he moves slowly, but eventually he does.
And he sighs.
"I'm taller than you!" Tommy cheers, ignoring the quiet, not very far away chanting of "Rats, rats, rats, rats." from Ranboo.
"We see." Phil assures, patting a very frozen Wilbur on the shoulder before slipping past and, shaking his head with a fond chuckle, going to resume painting on his canvas.
"I am stilts." Charlie announces cheerily, taking a single step and making Tommy yelp as he wobbles.
"Please do not drop my child." Wilbur requests, wearing an expression that Tommy knows well, a mix of exasperation and fondness. It's one of his most common expressions.
Maybe Wilbur should start trying on some new expressions, Tommy is getting too good at predicting them all.
Tommy is knocked out of his thoughts by a particularly loud, at least in comparison to the previous chant, "Rats!"
"Rats?" Phil asks, and Ranboo nods rather enthusiastically, gesturing him over and turning the canvas to let the older see as he approaches.
"I wanna see." Tommy vocalises, so Charlie lets him down, kneeling so that his feet actually touch the ground and he's less likely to fall and hurt himself. Tommy wanders over to the canvas, eyebrows furrowing as he notes the wonky letters above the black blob that is apparently a rat.
Everyone's attention is taken off the painting when Charlie and Wilbur both start laughing.
Turning around, they find Wilbur giving Charlie a piggy-back ride, walking fairly quickly around the studio.
Charlie nearly hits his head on a light, but yelps and ducks at the last second, nearly knocking Wilbur over. There's silence for a moment, then they both let out incredulous laughter.
⁕*⁕*⁕
"You wanna be a rat, Gretchen?" Ranboo asks, holding their obnoxiously green paint gun and pointing at at him.
"Why yes, yes I do." Tommy, Gretchen, rather, nods, standing straight.
Ranboo grins, visible even beyond their mask, and raises the gun.
Tommy gets shot, and flinches back.
He's done paintball before, he knows it hurts, but he forgot just how much it stings.
"It didn't even explode!" He still manages to say before he can actually vocalise the pain and find himself crushed in a hug by his overprotective father.
⁕*⁕*⁕
"You've definitely copied me." Wilbur decides, crossing his arms and glaring at both Phil and his painting.
"I haven't copied you, Wil." Phil laughs, continuing to paint.
He totally has, but he won't admit it, so Wilbur narrows his eyes and glares harder.
Distantly, he hears "Do you think I should give Gretchen a haircut?"
⁕*⁕*⁕
Applause surrounds Wilbur as he slowly peels off the tape on his canvas, turning around to face Tommy.
He goes to hand the tape to his son, but quickly decides that just won't do.
Wilbur sticks the tape in the wig, giggling once he pulls back and gets to look at it. Tommy has grabbed part of the synthetic hair, pulling it forward and twisting it, so that he can see the tape, too.
"Bows." Tommy decides, then nods, as if to confirm his own decision.
"Yeah?"
"Bows." Tommy reiterates, looking up at him and brushing his hair back over his shoulder.
⁕*⁕*⁕
Eventually filming wraps up, and they all start getting ready to leave.
First, though, Wilbur finds all the small brushes he can and takes his pallet from earlier, putting every colour he can find on it.
"Toms!" He calls, settling down in the middle of the floor. He's found one stool through all of their chaos, and he needs two, so is instead just sitting cross-legged on the floor.
A noise of confusion greets him as Tommy takes his attention off his phone.
He gestures his son over, holding his arms out while he waits.
Tommy looks very confused, but pushes off the table he was leaning on, pockets his phone, and stalks closer. "What?"
Wilbur just gestures him closer again, then pats the ground to signify that he should sit down.
Tommy lets out a huff, but does as requested, crossing his legs too. Wilbur scoots forward, grinning when he gets close enough to lean in and kiss Tommy on the tip of the nose.
He gets glared at.
Undeterred, Wilbur continues to grin, pulling his pallet and brushes closer.
"Why am I here?" Tommy asks, watching Wilbur dip the thinest of all the brushes in white paint.
"Turn." Wilbur just instructs, not answering the question as he gestures in the direction Tommy should turn. Tommy looks at him weirdly for a moment, but gives in after a moment and does as instructed.
Wilbur starts to paint little stars across the side of Tommy's face, humming quietly as he does.
"You know this isn't face paint, right?" Tommy checks, and Wilbur nods. "Yes, darling, I know It's not face paint, but you used to eat paint, you'll live."
Tommy stalls.
"I what?"
"You used to eat paint." Wilbur confirms, continuing to draw small stars across his face like a little galaxy. "Well, why didn't you stop me?" Tommy questions, sounding somewhat indignant, and Wilbur snorts.
"I tried, sweetheart, trust me." He huffs, pausing momentarily to lean forward and to the side so that he can kiss Tommy on the forehead.
Tommy rolls his eyes, but says nothing else on the matter, sitting dutifully still as Wilbur continues to paint.
"What are you painting, anyway?" Tommy inquires, trying to look but failing miserably. Wilbur snorts, snickering at the failed attempt and ignoring the glare immediately sent his way.
"Stars." Wilbur hums, leaning in to do smaller stars.
Tommy is quiet for a moment, momentarily distracted as he watches Charlie walk over, intrigued.
"Why?"
"Because you're my starshine." Wilbur grins, pulling away to look at what he's done so far. Tommy glares at him, trying his hardest not to get distracted again when Charlie starts clapping.
He only laughs, putting the brush down and leaning forward again to kiss Tommy on the forehead.
(They all leave that filming session with painted faces.)