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Ted isn't quite sure how they managed to displace two of the most important features of this portrait they've spent all day preparing for, but that doesn't do anything to change the fact that they've been looking for the girls for the past ten minutes without having much luck.
If Ted's being honest, he doesn't hold much weight for the idea of family pictures. He likes photos well enough, but they're just not interesting if they're posed, really. The fun comes from capturing a moment, not pretending for one; he likes photos taken from concerts better than the shoots they've started being pressured into doing recently for the same reason. But Elizabeth has liked cameras from the moment she saw them, and Ted doesn't really have a reason to deny her it when she's been so excited for the girls being old enough for their first 'proper portraits' lately. He supposes he should just take the same gratitude Liz has about no longer having to pose for hours for the painters.
All of this would still be a lot easier to get over with if they could actually find the girls in question, though. The four of them have split up in an attempt to end the search quicker - Bill's heading to the streets out front, the princesses got the two floors of the house, and Ted's on his way to the backyard.
He kind of wishes he knew who taught them to sneak around so well. Probably Death after a spat about bass lines, if Ted had to guess, which figures. (Though it's equally likely that the girls had merely asked, and Death hadn't argued because he never seems to be able to deny them anything, which is, at least, funny.)
When he finds them though, he knows for sure that no one had taught them how to find trouble. They came by that naturally, just like he and Bill had.
According to Ted's watch, noon is currently creeping by, which means Joanna and Liz have been getting everybody ready for these photos for about four hours now, with Bill and Ted getting roped into trying to iron out details according to their specifications. That's a lot of time to put into something - they barely spend half that preparing for actual concerts together.
So, really, Ted can't be too shocked to discover Billie and Thea in the backyard, wrist deep in a channel cut through the grass near the fence by rain, their previously perfectly styled hair now artfully kept out of their eyes with the mud they've found. It really shouldn't be funny - that's a lot of effort now put solidly to waste - but he's having a hard time reminding himself that he probably shouldn't laugh, even if it is more resignation than amusement. A child's uncanny ability to throw a wrench into any plan is certainly something to behold.
"Hey little Bill and little Ted," he calls, heading on over and trying to step carefully to keep from ruining the shoes Liz got for him too quickly.
"Dad Ted!" Thea says happily, both of them grin up at him - white teeth the only thing left clean on them.
(Until recently he'd been Uncle Ted, but Thea's still been slow to catch up with speaking and she has too much trouble with the syllables to be worth pushing. Plus, Ted kind of likes it even if his own father says it's weird.)
"It's mud," Billie informs him brightly, raising a messy hand to squish it between her fingers demonstratively, letting it ooze down her wrist. "You've gotta feel it."
A memory halts Ted in the tracks of trying to figure out a way to explain the photos they've yet to take. Less of a moment remembered and more of a story recalled - of a pre-school aged Ted wandering into a fountain outside of the studio Mom had taken them to for pictures, thoroughly ruining his planned outfit in the excitement of splashing. When his dad had found him, he'd shouted as he yanked Ted out of the fountain and shook him until he'd cried. Mom had been able to find a spare outfit in their car, and Ted took the photos looking most out of place - wearing an outfit that didn't match his parents' and a face red and blotchy from the tears. Dad had been all to relieved to replace the mistakes with new portraits barely ten months later. If there were any surviving photos, Ted never found them.
Ted today looks down at matching ruined outfits and bright guiltless smiles. He tries to imagine the anger, muster up the frustration of four hours of preparation he hadn't really enjoyed lost. Tries to imagine shaking Billie, or Thea, wanting them to cry, to feel scared or guilty, so that they'll think twice next time. Even just yelling on its own, getting up close to their faces the way his dad always had just to scream. Forcing eye contact and letting quiet angry threats itch over their skin.
It makes him feel nauseated, sick down to his stomach. Ted has never found anger an emotion that comes easy and he's suddenly grateful for it. He never wants to grasp the feeling of their tiny wrists in his angry hands.
"Oh yeah?" he says instead, and squats down beside her. She pulls her hands from the puddle to make room, and Ted only hesitates long enough to tuck his wedding ring into his shirt pocket before plunging his hands in too before he can think too hard about it. In for a penny in for a pound, and Ted giggles a little childishly at the thrill of it.
The mud squelches between his fingers, thick and cool and pleasant over the calloused skin of his hands. Billie and Thea shriek in delight at the sound, flapping hands spraying mud over all three of them, and Ted grins because he can give them this joy. Grins to know that he will always choose to hand them delight even at his own detriment, knowing that he has the power to knock them down and break them and knowing that he will never choose to do so despite its apparent ease.
"Most excellent," he tells them, and can't help but laugh when Billie sticks her hands in over his, pressing down with tiny bird fingers, the warmth offsetting the cold. The water runs over their skin and the mud lodges underneath Ted's fingernails, the sound of Thea smacking the wet surface ringing in his ears. It's been a long time since Ted has indulged in a sensation just because he could, taking apart textures and slotting them into memory, delighted shivers up his spine at the sensations. He wonders when he stopped, then wonders why, and then decides that he should do it more often. Take the time and allow the mess, invite his daughters along and follow in the footsteps of their unabashed discovery if something tries to stop them.
"What on earth? Theodore!" Elizabeth shouts from the porch, and Ted laughs at that too. She's the only one who calls him that and the shape of it in her mouth never gets old the way it does from other people, even when she's scolding him.
"Sorry babe," he calls over his shoulder, sharing a conspiratorial grin with the girls as he leans forward to dig his hands into the mud even further, watching in satisfaction as it wells up around his fingers. He only pulls them free to stop Thea from putting a handful of it in her mouth; it's not like it's an overall bad experience but that's probably not a habit to encourage. "Things seem to have gotten a bit messy."
She comes up beside him, bare feet in the grass instead of letting her heels sink into the mud, and Ted looks up at her and grins. He knows she probably is a little upset; she'd been alternating between excited and nervous fretting since last night, but he can't quite help himself. It feels a little like getting trouble with Bill when they were kids, the threat of other people's disappointment not nearly enough to drown out the fun he'd had before getting caught. The girls are equally undaunted, holding out their mud caked hands as if Liz might also want to feel it.
"Billie," she scolds half-heartedly instead, "The photos."
"It's mud," Billie corrects, beaming, and Ted laughs, stops curling blades of grass around his fingers to squish his hands over hers just to hear her giggle.
"If we take them now, they would be very us," he points out, and Liz scrunches up her face like she can't decide whether she wants to laugh or scowl at him.
"Aw man," Bill cries from the porch, and Ted twists a little to see him leaning out of the door with a dejected expression on his face. "You guys started playing in mud and didn't invite me?"
"Don't you even think about it," Joanna says sharply, but she's doing a poor job of disguising her amusement at her sister's circumstances, wiggling her fingers indulgently when Thea waves at her.
Ted reaches up and takes Elizabeth's hand while she's glaring back towards the house, and the startled noise she makes at the sensation makes Billie laugh so hard she topples over. Liz pulls her hand back away from his, but she isn't able to fight back the smile from her face, and Ted grins right back because he loves the sight of it.
They do wind up taking the pictures anyway, Billie and Thea and Ted all grinning wide and caked in mud, Bill looking just as thrilled while the princesses look on in fond exasperation. It's the best family photo Ted's ever taken; he carries a copy around just to show it off to everyone he can. They also do take cleaner pictures later on, hang those up on the wall properly like Liz had originally wanted, but Ted never even thinks of throwing out the original ones. He loves them and the memory they carry too much to even consider it.