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Phil’s bathroom sink is painted pink, which might be Tommy’s fault.
It was an accident, okay? It’s not his fault his hair can’t for the life of them co-operate. Seriously, all he initially wanted to do was make a small, tinny little braid. Just three strands of hair, interlocked one after another on the side of his head. It was not supposed to be difficult or complicated. Hell, even seven-year-olds can do it.
This does not explain why Tommy spent twenty minutes in front of the bathroom mirror trying to make a small braid to the point his fingers started fucking cramping. Literally, ten minutes in and he’d gained a newfound respect for hairdressers.
Fifteen minutes later and the moment his hair starts to look somewhat different from a bird’s nest, a strand escapes his fingers or he messes something else up and all of his hard work goes to waste.
After cursing his hair, his hands, the stars, and everything else, he took a break, snatching his phone from his pocket and typing “braid tutorial” on youtube. He also added “for beginners” in the end, just in case.
A couple of videos later, he concludes there’s nothing there he doesn’t already know. All the tutorials are done on long hair, so Tommy quickly deletes the “beginners” part and opts for “short hair” instead.
Now he’s thrust into a world of “second-day hair” and “texturizing spray”. Moreover, this woman has shoulder-length hair and is making dutch braids, so Tommy continues scrolling down. Thumbnails fly past him, one depicting hairstyles more complicated than the other.
There are crown braids, dragon hair braids, bubble braids, and Tommy is overwhelmed. He didn’t want to admit it, but all he hoped for was to look like his brother. Techno has shoulder-length pink hair and usually makes a small braid on his left side. It’s cool and it looks awesome, so Tommy wanted to try it.
He was too stubborn or simply embarrassed to ask Techno for help though, which is why he’s stuck in the hairstyling section of youtube. After a couple more tries and almost dropping a few tears out of anger, Tommy runs a comb through his hair, officially ruining any half-ass progress he might have made.
With a still hot face and frowned brows, he deletes his search history and goes on his home page. And of-fucking-course the youtube algorithm has caught on to his futile hairstyling attempts because he’s recommended all sorts of braids and “beginner friendly” tutorials. After tapping the “not recommended” button more times than he wants to count, he comes across a “how to dye your hair at home” tutorial. And it’s apparently beginner friendly.
He may not be able to depict his brother’s braids, but nothing can stop him from copying their color, right?
He’s seen Techno dye his hair quite a few times as well. He even knows where the man keeps the T-shirts he uses when he does so. Painting your hair must be significantly easier than braiding it, right? Hairstyling requires complicated hand movements and maybe even sorcery, but changing its color needs some hair dye, a brush and some foil.
Also, it’s not as if Tommy’s going to turn his entire head pink. He admires his brother, but not that much.
He will simply dye a small strand from the ones that twirl together and fall on his forehead. Sure, it might be more permanent than a braid, but it will also look cooler.
With newfound determination, he waltzes into Techno’s room and steals his favorite hair-dying shirt. It used to be white, but after numerous rounds of dye falling on it the collar is bright pink, with said color becoming less and less vibrant further down the shirt.
He pulls it over his head and returns to the bathroom. He can recall Techno bringing home more bottles of dye the last time he painted his hair, so he’s looking through the cabinets for those exact ones. Tommy comes across the weird plastic brush and the small bowl Techno uses, which he immediately puts on the shelf.
After a bit of digging around, he dismisses the bottles of bleach and finally finds the ones he’s looking for. He even brought the foil from the kitchen.
Now, he’s standing in front of the bathroom mirror, with all the above scattered around the sink.
Alright, he thinks. Time for more youtube tutorials.
He searches for people with blonde hair because he knows a bit about the whole bleaching thing to be sure that he doesn’t need it.
After watching an entire video and reading the comments, he opens one of the boxes. Gingerly, he puts the translucent gloves on and takes everything out.
According to the nice lady he just watched, he’s supposed to mix the two bags in the bowl, apply it on his hair, wait thirty minutes and then rinse it. That’s… easy, right?
He also finds a hair mask, but decides against it, as he doesn’t know if he’s supposed to use it before or after the dye.
Now, Tommy knows he won’t use all of the dye in the box, but he really can’t bother with measuring stuff. What if he makes too little and has to do the whole mixing thing again?
Fuck it, he thinks and pours everything in the bowl. That’s a problem for future Tommy.
He gives the chemical smelling substance a good swirl with the brush and puts the bowl down with an audible click. He still hasn’t picked a strand of hair, Tommy realizes and harries to do so.
Without accidentally painting his entire face pink, he applies the dye, and to avoid the rest of his hair from touching it secures it with some of the aluminum foil.
Now all he has to do is wait.
He picks the bowl up, just to place it somewhere else so he can clean the sink, and that’s when everything goes to shit.
That fucking bowl falls from his hand and before Tommy can do something, like catch it or pray that he’ll clean it before his dad finds out, it crashes against the sink. Pink dye splatters everywhere, from the tiles to the floor, to Tommy himself.
And if the gods don’t hate him enough already, the front door clicks open and heavy footsteps come towards the bathroom.
Fuck, shit, fuck, fuck, FUCK!!!
Please don’t be Phil, please don’t be Phil, please don’t be Phil-
The already half closed door swings open, revealing Techno, with the most perplexed look he’s ever given Tommy.
“Tommy, what-”
“Hello, Technoblade!” Tommy chimes. “How are you on this fine day?” he moves in front of the, now pink sink, attempting to hide it from his brother’s view.
Well, the floor’s pink too, and so is he, but that’s a conversation for another day.
“Um, what happened here-”
“Alright, it was nice seeing you, bye-bye!”, Tommy cuts him off and abandons the whole “trying to hide the evidence” act and instead actively shoves Techno out of the bathroom.
The man doesn’t move though, of course he doesn’t, and rather than walking out, he walks further in, despite Tommy’s protests.
“Listen here you bitch, I told you to get out, so-”
“Were you dying your hair?” Techno ignores him and picks the brush up.
“Hey, I’m asking the questions here and I’m telling you to get the fuck out!”
“Bruh, that’s not even a question, that’s a straight-up order.”
“Okay, then I’m ordering you to get the fuck out!”
Techno simply looks at him. Tommy glares back.
“So, were you dyeing your hair or-”
“Okay, yea, I was dyeing my hair, alright?” Tommy confesses. “Now, can you get out before I-”
Techno steps closer to him and lightly holds the foil Tommy had previously wrapped around his hair. Carefully he unfolds it, mindful of not letting any of the blond hair close to it. He gives it an approving hum, before folding it back.
“You did a good job with it, how much time has pashed?” he directs his attention back to Tommy.
“I- um… thanks I suppose, I don’t know, I think five minutes or something,” Tommy mumbles.
Techno sets a twenty-five-minute timer on his phone, which he places against the wall, away from the pink mess.
“I’m gonna change and then I’ll help you clean this up, okay kid?” Techno gestures around the room.
“Ah- okay, sure... I’ll wait, I guess,” Tommy responds, and with that Techno’s going to his room, and he just… sits on the closed toilet seat.
There are more footsteps around the house, a bit of commotion in the kitchen, and Techno’s appearing in the hallway with the entire kitchen roll under his arm. True to what he said, he’s changed into an old pair of pants and a shirt, both of which have a fair amount of pink stains on them.
The man is looking around the room with a critical eye. Tommy assumes Techno’s thinking about the most efficient way to clean this whole thing up with as little “casualties” as possible. He’s strategizing and all that, because he’s a nerd who reads too much Sun Tzu.
Tommy on the other hand is slacking against the back of the toilet seat, arms crossed over his chest, clearly done with life.
His brother on the contrary cuts a couple of paper pieces off of the kitchen roll, maneuvers around the ominous pink stains, and hands them to Tommy.
“Clean as much of the dye as you can without spreading it around.”
When Tommy takes the paper, he goes back to the sink and washes away the paint that had fallen into it.
Tommy takes more paper and busies himself with cleaning the smaller pink drops scattered around the floor and walls. Most of them get easily wiped off, but now he’s come across a particularly stubborn one, which just won’t get off.
“Are they gonna leave a stain?” Tommy asks and uses his nail to scratch some of the dye off.
“Nah,” Techno replies after a bit and throws some used paper in the trash can. “This has happened to me before, it will all come off.”
Tommy stops in his tracks. “Wait, what?” he whips his head around. “You’ve never told me that!”
Techno’s reflection in the mirror has an amused smile before he speaks.
“It happened a few years before you were adopted,” he explains “so you obviously didn’t know.” He walks to the trash can and throws some more paper away. “When I first started dying my hair, I had quite a few… accidents. One time I dropped the entire bowl on the floor before even using it.”
“And then what?”
“Wilbur and I cleaned it just before Phil came back from work. We did an awful job though, so he figured out what’d happened,” Techno laughs a bit at the memory.
“Shit,” Tommy uttered. “What did he do?”
“He took this spray,” he says and raises the blue bottle, “and showed us how to properly clean it.” He tosses the spray to Tommy. “Put a bit of that over the hard stains and after two minutes wipe it off.”
Tommy gave up on scratching the dried dye with his nails and preceded to spray the thing over every stain he found.
“Tommy, I told you to put it over the hard stains.”
“I know.” pchit “But if this works for hard stains,” pchit “imagine the wonders it’ll do for soft ones.” pchit
“Tommy, there are no “soft” stains-”
pchit
“-and that’s not how the spray works-”
pchit
“Okay, you had your fun with it, give it back.”
“How about no-”
pchit
“That’s it, you’re never allowed to touch this ever again,” Techno said and grabbed the bottleneck, twisting it away from Tommy’s hands. The latter might had made a run for it, was it not for the dye fallen across the floor. Thus he resulted to the best option he knew: swearing.
“You are a bitch!”
“Mhm.”
“You are a fucking moron!”
“Oh, you’re getting quite creative, good for you, good for you.”
“I will fucking-”
brrring brrring brrring brrring brrring-
“Time’s up,” Techno says and points towards the sink. “Time to wash it off.”
With a huff, Tommy crouches down and pours water over the single pink stand. He squeezes all the water out, but before he grabs the nearest towel Techno stops him.
“Wait, you have to put conditioner over that.” He brings his own conditioner for colored hair over and applies a bit on Tommy’s. “You won’t have to use it every day,” he explains, “because you don’t have that much colored hair. Twice a week should be okay.”
He pulls away and washes his hands. “Wait a couple of minutes and then you can wash it off as well,” he instructs Tommy and returns the bottle to the shower. “Oh, and don’t put it close to your roots or your hair will become oily.”
Five minutes later, Tommy’s hair is good to go, except for the water dripping out of them.
Techno hands him the hairdryer and promises to clean the rest while Tommy dries his hair off.
Now, they’re both standing in front of the mirror, observing Tommy’s new look.
“They look really good,” Techno admits, and Tommy… Tommy’s grinning like an idiot because it does.
His blond curls have always been soft and nice and lovely, and now that new pink strand is complimenting them even more. The pastel color swirls around the blond in beautiful waves and- It reminds him of Techno, more than any stupid braid would.
Especially now, that they’re both standing next to each other, Tommy finally has one part of himself that he shares with his brother. Sure, he might not have long pink hair, but there’s a bit of similarity there and he couldn’t be happier.
Now whenever someone asks him or comments about it, he can say it’s the same color as my brother’s hair. Like yes, I paint my hair the same color as my older brother. Isn’t that awesome?
“Do you like it?” Techno asks him and only then does Tommy notice the affectionate smile Techno’s lips have pulled into.
Tommy smiles back.
“I love it.”
Techno ponders something for a bit and then turns around to Tommy.
“Do you want me to braid it?”
Tommy’s caught off guard, but he utters an eager “Yes!”
Techno makes him sit on the closed toilet seat because you’re too tall for me to do it properly.
“You can’t have the color and not the braid,” Techno comments as he twists Tommy’s hair. “I have a specific brand, we can't have only half of it.”
Tommy laughs a bit at that and says “Actually I tried making one before dyeing them.”
“Ah,” Techno exclaims. “How’d that go?”
“Fucking awful,” Tommy admits. “I couldn’t do it, so I dyed them instead.”
Techno ties the small braid’s end with an elastic band and ushers Tommy to look at the mirror. He takes his ponytail down, revealing his own braid, which, admittingly, had seen better days.
“Now we match,” he smiles and Tommy beames in response. “If you ever want to braid your hair again you can ask me. I can even teach you how to do it using Wilbur.”
“That’s um- yea, I want you to show me how to do it,” Tommy smiles sheepishly.
“Okay, we can arrange that,” Techno says gently and stares back at their reflections.
Tommy fidgets for a bit but eventually turns to his brother and timidly asks “Hey Tech, can I um- can I have a hug?”
Techno’s smile softens and he opens his arms. “Of course Tommy, come here.”
Tommy buries his head in his brother’s chest while Techno cradles the back of his neck and rubs his other hand along Tommy’s back. It’s a hug from his older brother, and it screams love, safety, protection. Tommy melts further into the touch and sights in content.
“Love you,” he whispers against Techno’s shirt.
“I love you too kid,” he responds and hugs him a little bit tighter.