pleasing a storm || an sbi family

practice doesn't make perfect.

practice makes perfect was a fucking bullshit phrase. this was something that tommy henley had recently decided on. he had tried relentlessly to be the "perfect" child, and yet here he was, starting this stupid fucking process all over again. go to a house, try to behave, fail at it, get angry or annoyed and stop trying, BOOM! restart.

every now and again, there'd be an additional factor as to why he didn't suit their family. he didn't get on too well with kids his age. he swore too much. his grades weren't good enough. he was too loud. too quiet. too mean. too aggravating. tommy honestly lost track of the things his former families- if you could call them that- had said about him, but occasionally when he'd be trying to sleep, some of them- the thoughts, that is- would come around and smack him in the face.

however, phil watson had yet to call him any of these things. granted, tommy had been inside of his house for about two seconds, and his social worker winnie was still with him, so yeah, tommy had no real reason to be angry with him, but he sure as hell was.

he wasn't an idiot. he knew phil was in no way responsible for him ending up here, but something about the warm feeling (both literally- there was a fire burning in the fire place- and, like, well, emotionally he guessed) made him annoyed. 

tommy had been told about phil before he'd gotten here. the man had two kids(something tommy was less than pleased to hear about), both of whom he'd fostered and promptly adopted after about five months. they were the only two that phil had fostered, so so far the man had a 100% streak. tommy couldn't wait to break it. he also had one HELL of a high paying job. je hadn't actually been paying attention to that part, and didn't actually remember having it happening, but could tell on his own accord on account of his house being HUGE. tommy had never really lived with a lower class family (privileged, he knew), but he'd also never lived with someone as wealthy as phil. despite his nice (enough) clothing, he felt uncomfortably out of place.

tommy  was pretty sure that an hour or so passed while winnie and phil discussed, well, something, he wasn't really paying attention to them. instead, he was inspecting what he could see of the house from his position on the living room couch. there's a lot of what he can only assume to be family pictures. phil is only in a few of them- three of the thirteen to be exact- and from what tommy can tell, he doesn't appear to be favouring either of the children. 

there's two kids- and tommy counts, there's five pictures of them both- then there's three that have both of them as well as phil. the first photo, the one that's particularly eye catching to tommy, is a picture of a boy with pink hair. this one particularly wasn't interesting to him because he has pink hair- no, he seems to have pink hair in all of them- no, this one was interesting to tommy because he looked to be about seven years old. this was the youngest that either of them looked in any picture. the youngest of the other boy, the one with curly brown hair, seemed to be around eleven or twelve.

the boy with the pink hair must've been techno. tommy had been told that techno was seventeen- a year older than him- and was the first to be fostered and adopted by phil. wilbur must be the boy with the brown curly hair. techno didn't seem to be very photogenic. he never really smiled in his photos, and he never really looked at the camera. it wasn't that he looked particularly bad in them, it just seemed that he didn't really like them.

wilbur, on the other hand, looked like he was born to have photos taken of him. he was smiling brightly in each one, and he had basically the perfect smile. seeing it made tommy run his tongue over his braced teeth subconsciously. great. this family had not only the perfect house, and from what tommy could see of the fridge from his seat, perfect report cards on the fridge, but they also had perfect smiles. assholes.

"thooomassss," winnie drew out his name, and tommy probably wouldn't have even acknowledged this had he not felt the need to correct her.

"tommy," the blonde intervened. yeah, his name was technically thomas, but he hated that name. it's fucking tommy. snapping out of investigator tommy mode, and into just normal kid mode, he realized that winnie and phil both were staring at him. his cheeks went slightly pink in embarrassment, but he kept an otherwise blank face and uninterested voice. "what?"

"i asked if you have any questions you wanna ask phil while i'm here or anything else you wanted to ask me." the woman repeated herself, smiling. she was used to tommy. she'd known the boy for most of his life, and could tell what he was doing. 

"oh. no. i'm good," tommy knew better than to ask rude questions around winnie (i.e. what the fuck kind of name was 'techno'???) so he figured he'd keep the thoughts to himself.

"alright, tommy" winnie knew how he was, and she knew that if she pressed anything on him, he'd say something that made him seem a lot worse than he actually was. tommy was a good kid, he just said dumb shit like most kids do. "i've got to go now. i've got paperwork to finish up. tommy, we'll talk soon and you know my number- phil, if you ever want or need to contact me for any reason, my number is in the file i've given you," she smiled, and the man, phil, nodded.

"alright. thanks, winnie, it's been a pleasure," the two adults stood up and phil began to walk towards the door to let her out. tommy was grateful for this. it gave tommy about a minute to get all the information he could. 

firstly, he noticed the house was extraordinarily clean. this meant they were either responsible, they cleaned because they were having company, or they had a maid. really, any of these seemed reasonable. 

secondly he noticed that there were a few movies and games on the shelf underneath the television. tommy concluded that this meant that they either had or used to have family nights.

third off, he could see a litter box and a cat tower right next to it, implying that they had a cat. tommy really fucking liked cats. he could only hope that the cat would like him too. 

these things aside, there were the rest of the photos. the ones that tommy had been interrupted while he was looking at. he figured he'd spend whatever time he had left checking out the rest of them.

besides the picture of seven (?) year old techno, there was a picture of what tommy would guess was either fourteen or fifteen year old wilbur with a guitar. he was grinning at the person behind the camera- presumably phil- and his hands were probably strumming, considering they were slightly blurry in the photo.

there was a picture of the three of them at maybe an amusement park? he couldn't be certain, but it seemed to have rides and a shit ton of people in the background, and it had a sentence in the corner. "thanks for coming to" but wherever the hell they'd gone had been cut off by the frame the photo was in. 

they'd both had one picture of them in front of a birthday cake. wilburs had eleven candles on it and he had one hell of a goofy smile. two teeth were missing, but could be barely seen growing back in. the candles were lighting up his face in a flattering way. honestly, the kid was made to have pictures taken of him. techno looked considerably less interested. his cake had eight candles on it and he honestly didn't look like he knew what he was meant to be doing. charming.

tommy analyzed a few more of the photos before he heard the front door opening and closing, then footsteps returning. his eyes moved from the pictures back towards the door frame from which phil had left from. the blonde man returned with a bright smile.

"so, tommy!" phil greeted. he really did seem like a nice dude. well, they all did at first. "you ready to get going?"