"Dad! It's Saturday!" Shawn moaned piteously, trudging up the stairs after his father.

"So?" Henry grunted, pushing the door to Shawn's old room open. The ancient hinge squeaked horribly like nails on a chalkboard.

"So, it's the Sabbath!" Shawn protested, following Henry into the room. "Isn't it supposed to be, like, a day of rest or something?"

"First of all, we're not Jewish," Henry informed him, rolling his eyes as he pushed ahead to the far wall, where there were several cans of paint stacked under the window. "And, secondly, what the heck do you need rest from, anyway, Shawn? Goofing off?"

"Goofing off is hard work!" Shawn insisted.

"Yeah, well…you're the one who insisted on filling your wall with nails when you were a kid." Henry muttered. "So you're the one who's going to fill in the holes before I paint."

"You're painting my room?" Shawn gasped, pretending to be horrified, as if he hadn't noticed that all furniture had been moved to the center of the room and draped with sheets or the paint trays and rollers his father had laid out. "Dad! How could you? I used to live here!"

"You haven't lived here since you were seventeen." Henry reminded him. "And I haven't painted it since you moved out. It needs a fresh coat, Shawn. It's an embarrassment to the rest of the house."

"My room's an embarrassment?"

Henry adjusted his paint-spattered baseball cap as he knelt down next to the cans of paint, his back to his son now. "What the hell would you call having walls full of Def Leppard posters?" he demanded. "For God's sake, Shawn, it's 2008!"

"Def Leppard is timeless!" Shawn shot back defensively, gazing fondly up at his walls, which were still adorned with various posters of the band. "Just like Matthew Broderick's boyish charm. Or polyester leisure suits. And the drummer only has one arm! He's an inspiration! How can you put an expiration date on inspiration?"

"You can be inspired." Henry told him, inserting the blade of his pocket knife under the lid of the first can of paint and gently lifting it. "Just get them off my damn walls so I can paint!"

He dropped the lid onto the blue drop cloth that was spread across the carpet and gestured at the corner of the room, where an already open container of spackle was waiting for Shawn. "There's the spackle. Start pulling down posters and filling in the nail holes. I'm going to start taping up the woodwork."

He stood up to get the painter's tape, but as he did, the light hit the paint just right and he stopped dead in his tracks. "Damn it!" he growled, glaring at the paint, as if it could somehow be made aware of the fact that it was pissing him off.

"What?" Shawn asked, stepping alongside him. He looked down at the white paint, but couldn't find anything particularly offensive about it.

It's not like it was insulting his mother or anything…

"Damn Home Depot mislabeled it!" Henry snapped. "It's supposed to be eggshell!"

Shawn blinked down at the white paint, then looked back up at his father, raising an eyebrow. "It's… white," he murmured, completely oblivious to the problem.

"It's cream!" Henry insisted bitterly. "Trust me, Shawn. I think I know the difference between eggshell and cream!"

"Really?" Shawn shot back. "Do you know the difference between normal and obsessive and creepy?"

"It has a beige tint!"

"And the fact that even know that disturbs me to my very core." Shawn rolled his eyes and turned back to the spackle. "You should sue Home Depot. Or maybe just go down there and lecture them. I'm sure you could find some high school kid making seven bucks an hour to yell at. Hell, you could probably reduce him to tears in ten seconds flat if you really tried. I'll bring the stopwatch."

"They're probably all cream," Henry muttered, ignoring his son as he sighed and stood up, pointing at another can of paint by Shawn's feet. "Toss me that one so I can check."

Shawn grabbed it, casually lobbing it at his father without looking back over his shoulder. He released it slightly harder than he meant to, however, and Henry didn't see it coming, as he was still staring angrily down at the cream paint can.

"Dad!" Shawn called a moment too late. The paint can was already flying straight at Henry's head. Henry looked up, just in time to get smacked square in the forehead. The paint can exploded in a burst of white, covering him as he stumbled backwards in surprise, tripping over the cream paint can and falling on his back in a white, wet heap.

"Dad!" Shawn exclaimed, running over to him. "Are you okay? You said to toss it to you!"

Henry didn't respond at first. He was staring blankly up at the ceiling, still in a daze from the blow to the head. He blinked a few times, as if trying to re-join the world of the conscious.

"Are you okay?" Shawn asked again, standing over him now.

Henry blinked up at him once more, trying to place his face.

Shawn mentally braced himself for the impending lecture. Even though he had never actually officially received the Henry Spencer "Don't Bean Your Father With a Paint Can" lecture, he was more than a little certain he could already quote most of it.

But as Henry slowly sat up, groaning and rubbing his head, which was already sporting a sizable goose egg, he didn't seem to be in the mood to lecture.

He wasn't even scowling or cursing his son under his breath.

In fact, he almost seemed to be…smiling.

Shawn couldn't tell through the dripping paint at first, but as his father climbed to his feet and wiped his face off on his sleeve, he slowly became more certain that he wasn't just hallucinating.

His father was, in fact, smiling.

More than that, however, every ounce of tension and hostility seemed to have left his body. As he flung the paint off his fingers onto the blue, plastic drop cloth, his shoulders drooped with a relaxed, almost lackadaisical, ease.

"I'm fine," he replied with a slow, lazy drawl, the paint smearing across his forehead as he continued to try to wipe it off his face. "How are you?"

He smiled warmly at Shawn…and not a sarcastic half-smile, either.

A full-blown, genuinely happy-go-lucky, couldn't-be-more-content-with-the-universe smile.

"What?" Shawn asked, not believing for a moment that he was about to get out of this that easily. He already had a dozen witty retorts for everything his knew Henry was going to say…but so far he wasn't cooperating and just saying it.

How was he supposed to retort wittily when his father wasn't lecturing?

"How are you?" Henry repeated, resting a gentle, almost loving, hand on his son's shoulder, leaving a white handprint on his shirt. "We never just talk anymore, Shawn. What's going on with you?"

Shawn stepped back from his father's touch, his stomach feeling vaguely unsettled as Henry continued to beam at him with fatherly affection.

"Not much…" he replied slowly. "I think I just gave my father a concussion…but other than that…"

Henry laughed, shrugging it off as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "Hey, it was my fault. I told you to toss the can. No biggie."

"No biggie?" Shawn snorted. "Dad! You're covered in paint!"

"So?"

"So…" Shawn prompted, waiting for his father to pick up and run with the lecture. "…I was careless…I messed up…I made a mess of everything…"

"So?" Henry shrugged, still smiling warmly.

"So…doesn't that make you want to yell? Or lecture? Or glare?"

"Not really," Henry blinked, looking confused. "Should it?"

"Yes!" Shawn shouted, his eyes wide in horror now. "For God's sake, Dad, two minutes ago you were shouting about eggshells and cream!"

Henry laughed, gently mussing his son's hair as he passed him and walked out the door, leaving a trail of cream-colored footprints across the otherwise spotless carpet in his wake. "Shawn, life's too short to nitpick and obsess over every little thing."

"Since when?" Shawn demanded, aghast. "Nitpicking is what you do!"

"Do you feel like cookies and milk?" Henry called over his shoulder, already disappearing down the stairs. "I feel like cookies and milk…"

Shawn ran a finger through his white-streaked hair, watching silently until Henry was out of sight, then pulled out his cell phone and called Gus.

"Gus…remember how I said the body-snatchers were going to invade and you just laughed…? Well…I was right."