(A/N: request as a pic. valid, and sure! have some painter!tommy teaching ranboo how to paint, because I had an Idea for a different au and it fit. assume that in this au, tommy's the first person to discover how to make paint n brushes n stuff like that)
"Are you sure you're okay? I mean, there's water in the paint, and you're..." Tommy gestured vaguely at him, and Ranboo resisted the urge to sigh.
"Yes, I'm fine, I'm only half-enderman. A few drops of water won't hurt me that much," he said exasperatedly. Tommy still didn't look like he fully believed him, but he handed him a big 'paintbrush' and gestured to the swatches of paint he had put out.
"Right. Uh, you can read the letters on the wall, yeah?" Tommy asked, referring to the small letters written onto certain parts of the stone wall. They were in a cave — one of Tommy's 'painting caves', to be exact — and he was teaching Ranboo how to paint for the first time. "The L-Y stands for light yellow, so you take this swatch of light yellow, not to be confused with gold or plain yellow..."
Ranboo watched as he dipped his own big paintbrush into the swatch of light yellow, and gasped as the colour was smeared onto the stone walls, the light colour standing out starkly against the dark grey of the stone.
"...and you just kinda move it like this," Tommy demonstrated by painting inside the circle while talking. "Make sure to look out for the edges. If the paint seems to get too dry, or the colour kind of fades or lightens up, you dip your brush into the swatch again, and you continue painting, until everything... is... done!"
"That's supposed to be the Sun or something?" Ranboo asked. Tommy nodded.
"Yeah. Well, it still needs a bit of blending, but I can't really teach you that yet because you're supposed to be starting from the basics," he said. "So we can be like a team! You paint the base, and I'll do the whole blending thing!"
"Sounds fantastic!" Ranboo agreed, and they started to work on the painting together.
Ranboo had to admit that he didn't know anything about what they were supposed to be painting, but he was having way too much fun to ask, and the way Tommy blended the colours was fascinating and beautiful enough that he didn't actually care about what the end result would be. The colours were amazing, so surely the final artwork would be amazing too?
Finally, after a while of painting, Tommy said it was done.
"Step back a little," he said, as he walked backwards to stare at their painting with pride. "You'll see what it is."
Ranboo followed his instructions, and when he gazed upon the wall again, he gasped. The deep blue sea had a sheen of orange-pink from relflectingbthe Sun, and the sky was coloured from orange, to pink, to purple, to blue, and finally to black. Little white stars from when he saw Tommy flicking the edges of his brush onto the wall gleamed, and with the two trees at the forefront of the painting, it made for a very calm and beautiful painting.
"Oh, it's a sunset!" Ranboo gasped. Tommy smiled and nodded.
"Yeah. I wanted to go for something simpler because you were kind of just starting out, but trust me when I say that this isn't the best I can do," he said, a hint of smugness in his voice.
"I could tell," Ranboo replied, remembering the few pieces of artworks Tommy had shown to him a few days prior. He had no idea something could be so detailed, intricate and nice, but Tommy's painting of an apparent pre-explosion L'manburg was exactly that.
Ranboo had to leave now, no matter how much he wanted to stay for a while longer. He helped Tommy pack up and wash everything, and asked one last question before stepping out of the cave.
"Could we do this again someday?" Ranboo asked. "That was fun. I liked it."
Tommy laughed. "Sure, Ran-boob! You're free to stop by anytime. Just don't, like, expose this place to anyone else, yeah?"
"Sure, I promise," he said sincerely, quickly writing the coordinates and a note to not tell anyone down in his memory book. "Thanks, Tommy. This was nice."