There was something about working with kids that always brought a smile to Sam's face. His smiles were small, showing a little bit of his teeth, and he'd been told he closed his eyes a little bit. Like a contented kitten. He objected to the comparison on basis of cuteness, it was the same as calling himself cute. He wasn't cute. He refused to be cute.

"That looks awesome!" he said to one of the kids, who looked up at him with a grin that was missing a few teeth. The child's fingers were stained with paint and Sam couldn't really tell what the painting was supposed to be of. But it was creative!

He moved on to the next, a small girl painting what looked like a mermaid. He said some encouraging words to her, moving on to the next. Repeat. And who said the life of an artist was different than the mundane life of an assembly line worker? Everything came down to repetition eventually in any job. It was just a matter of how much wiggle room existed for throwing in the occasional spontaneity.

And there was his spontaneity now. He just barely caught a jar of blue finger paint before it spilled onto the grass.

"Careful, Tommy," he shot the boy a small grin. The boy grinned sheepishly back, a bit embarassed.

"Sorry, Mr. Greene," he said. "I got excited."

He ruffled the boy's hair. "No worries. I caught it before it could make a mess."

Moving on he realized he'd unconsciously wiped his hands on his T-shirt. Which was now streaked with blue in lines that conspicuously matched the spacing of his fingers. And another clean shirt bites the dust. Oh well, he preferred them paint-stained anyway, it gave them character. Or something like that.

It was a hot day, not really surprising in the middle of summer, and he was working up a good sweat. Perfect compliment to blue paint, he thought wryly. Oh yes, he'd have all the boys falling over him. He wiped sweat from his hand and turned back to his young charges.

The job hadn't appealed to him at first. As a single child he'd never really gotten on with other kids growing up the way he imagined that people who had siblings did. And children were something of a foreign concept to him now. However, commissions were slow in coming and teaching children classes at the local community building had easily offered better pay. Money triumphed every time, it simply came down to that.

It was just a bonus that he was actually enjoying working with the little brats. But only if they didn't manage to spill paint over his sneakers. Again.