Regina looked at the table with disdain. It was covered with newspaper, and her son bounced up and down in his seat.
"Are you sure this is what you want to do?" she asked once more. She had failed to persuade Henry to try something less…messy.
"Of course I'm sure! I'm going to paint you and Ma a picture," he said. And as if on cue Emma waltzed in from the garage and made her way over to the kitchen. In her arms she held a small bag of some colored paints.
"Got em," she said brightly, and set them down on the table.
"Is that what you're wearing?" Emma questioned as she eyed her girlfriend.
"What's wrong with this?" Regina asked. She looked down at her crisp button up, and then inspected what Emma was wearing. The blonde was in an old and faded classic rock t-shirt.
"No, I just don't want you to get paint on it," Emma said, walking over to her behind where Henry was sitting. "Take mine."
Emma lifted her shirt up to reveal her white tank underneath and struggled to pull it off over her head, messing her hair.
"I'm not wearing that," Regina said when Emma tried to hand her the ratty t-shirt.
"Please," Emma teased. "It's not like you have anything not nice to wear."
Regina felt the corners of her mouth lift incrementally. "Fair enough," she relented.
Emma placed her hands on the brunette's hips and worked her way to her bottom button of her shirt as she started to undo it for her. Green eyes met dark brown in a smirk. Regina let her climb two more buttons before placing a hand gently on the blonde's and giving her a pointed look towards their son's back.
"Okay, fine," she sighed melodramatically and then more playfully, "I was just trying to help."
Regina's heels clicked away from the room, and Emma rummaged around through the kitchen cabinets until she found a few paper plates. She set them on the table in front of Henry and started to squeeze out some paint for each color. Henry's smile grew wider with each massive glob that fell out.
"Got anything in mind?" she asked him.
"Yeah," he answered enthusiastically, "I want to paint a dragon!"
"A dragon? Sounds hard."
"Well," he mused, "either that or maybe just something I really like."
"Like wha—" Emma stopped mid-sentence when her girlfriend walked back into the kitchen wearing her ratty classic rock t-shirt. It was tighter around the brunette's chest than hers, but it still hung off her small frame in a baggy fashion.
"What?" Regina said at Emma's open mouth.
"N-nothing," she said. It always amazed Emma how anything could look sexy on that woman. Regina walked over to the table where the paints were set out.
"Where are the brushes?" she asked.
"The what?" Emma said absentmindedly, coming out of her momentary daze.
"Oh yeah, the brushes," Henry repeated for his mother. Emma looked at the table to see only paint and paper.
"Uhm…"
"You didn't buy any?"
"No, you said you had some."
"I said I had paint."
"I can still paint though, right Mom?"
"I don't know honey, I think we should do it another day."
"Don't be silly, we've already got everything out."
"What do we use then?" Henry asked.
Emma wriggled her fingers at him, bringing them an annoying inch from his face. "You up for some finger painting?"
"Yeah!"
She passed him a sheet of paper and then instantly dipped her fingers into some red paint. Henry followed her lead and tentatively dipped his own fingers into the paint. Regina watched them by Emma's side passively.
"Oh come on, you can't just sit there," Emma noted as she tapped the page in front of her with green paint. "Not when you got all dressed up," she teased.
"It's fun," Henry said in persuasion.
"It's messy," Regina stated, but nonetheless filched a sheet of paper from the stack on the table.
She stared at the globs of paint on the paper plates that were already starting to mix from the usage. Her hand hovered over the closest puddle of blue paint as she carefully tapped its surface. Emma side eyed her. Regina poked at the paper in front of her in a hesitant manner, and stared at the resulting blue dot that had appeared on the blank page.
"Pass me another!" Henry said eagerly as he rolled onto his second sheet of paper.
Emma waited until Regina finally went to tap her finger into the paint again. She was only centimeters from the purple paint when Emma playfully swatted Regina's hand down and into the blob of color.
"Emma!" Regina gave the chuckling blonde a cross look, for half of her hand was now covered in purple.
"Hey!" Emma said when Regina reached over to smear the excess purple onto Emma's paper.
"You started it," Henry noted from across the table.
"Yeah, but I was working on something!" she refuted.
Regina and Henry stared at her paper together. Besides the purple smear, it was covered in only fingertip size dots.
"What is it?" He asked.
Emma scoffed. "Can't you tell?"
"No," he said cheekily and Regina smirked.
"It's rain," she explained as if it were obvious.
"Oh." The two brunettes shared a look complete with a matching raised eyebrow.
"I need more green," Henry suddenly announced, and got up to circle round the table where the little bottle was sitting next to Emma. He grabbed it, painted hands and all, and tried to turn the top. "I can't get it."
Emma, with her hands messy as well said, "That one's weird, you gotta shake it loose a bit first."
Henry shrugged and with full force shook the bottle up and down as hard as he could, and Emma gasped in shock when the lid instantly flew off, splattering her neck and cheek with cold green paint.
Henry's eyes grew wide when he realized he'd just gotten paint all over his shirt, the floor, and his mother. His chocolate brown eyes quickly flew to his brunette mother about the mess. But when he looked over, she was trying not to laugh at the stunned blonde's reaction. Regina lasted another two seconds before she burst out laughing. Henry relaxed when he realized he wasn't in any trouble.
"It's not funny," Emma grumbled when she came out of the initial shock. She wiped her cheek with a painted hand, succeeding only in adding blue and purple to her face.
"You missed a spot," Regina said sarcastically.
"Where? I can't see. You get it," Emma said.
The second Regina turned to face her Emma launched herself at the brunette, catching half her mouth in a smooch. Regina shrieked as she felt the paint on Emma's face smear all over her own, and it was Emma's turn to laugh.
"Emma!"
"What? You look good in green," she said through her joy.
Never one to have the lower hand, Regina covered her palm in a glob of orange from the table, and added to Emma's spectrum of color as she smeared a handprint on her bicep.
"You did not just do that," Emma said in a challenging tone. Regina's face fell when she saw Emma shove both of her hands into puddles of paint on the table. The brunette's chair scrapped over the floor as she pushed her chair back to leave her place next to Emma. Emma pushed out her own chair, ready to chase her when Henry called out a warning too late as Regina's heel caught the slick of green paint that he's spilt on the floor.
Luckily Emma was right behind her as she tried to catch the unbalanced brunette. With her hands. Full of paint. She at least managed to soften her fall when they both floundered to the paint splattered floor. Regina's gasp was of an epic proportion as Henry quickly asked if they were alright.
Regina's wide eyes met Emma's huge grin, and they both started chortling after a tense moment. When Henry lent out his hand to help them up, Emma pulled him down with them and onto the ground. Regina swiped a green goop from the floor and booped him on the nose.
"Mom!" he exclaimed as if to tattletale to Emma before he realized he'd be tattletaling to Emma.
The three of them sat piled all together as they wiped up some of the green paint from the floor only to put it on each other. When it was somewhat cleaner, they finally got up from the cool tile. They smiled, chatted, and painted for a while longer until they ran out of blue paint.
"Alright, kid," Emma said when they had finished up their masterpieces. "You hit the shower, and we'll clean up down here. Deal?"
"Deal," he said, happy to skip out on the mess they'd made as he scampered up the stairs.
"That was fun," Emma cracked as Regina ran a small washcloth under the facet.
"Come here, you," she said when she turned the water off.
Emma made a show of having Regina clean her face by scrunching her nose and crinkling her eyes.
"Stop it," the brunette chastised lightly as she wiped the paint from her face. "You look just like him sometimes," Regina admitted.
"I could say the same for you," Emma said. "Don't think I didn't see that eyebrow raise earlier." Regina smiled softly.
"What did he paint, anyway?" the blonde asked curiously.
The two women found the table once more and gazed at the damp pages that were laid out to dry. Regina had only painted one page which was a picture of a horse. Emma had her rain picture with the massive purple streak and two sloppy landscape pictures that included a tree. Henry had made far more paintings that included his name, a fish, a fish with wings, a flower, a pretty good dragon, and one with three people in it.
Regina and Emma looked at the last painting of a little boy with scraggly brown hair being hugged by two figures. One with long and yellow hair, the other with a smudge of black.
"It must be something he really likes," Emma murmured faintly. Regina's arms found Emma's waist as she rested her head on her shoulder, and they admired their son's finger paintings.
"I think it's time we cleaned up," Regina said after a while.
"Oh, so soon?" Emma asked as her hands found Regina's hips. She got her face dirty again by kissing the brunette's paint streaked cheek.
"Well, when you finish cleaning up your mess," she said seductively as she pulled away, "I'll be waiting for you."
Emma grinned stupidly as she watched Regina slink away from her and around the corner where she could hear her heels clink up the stairs. Emma's attention returned to the paint smeared floor and table as her voice echoed through the empty room.
"Wait a minute. My mess?"
A/N: It always makes my day to read 'em, so by all means, please review!