A/N: I haven't a clue what this chapter is; I have a bit of a cold and my brain just kinda threw a load of words into a document and this came out... so you can read it now. If you have any idea where this book is going, please tell me, because I don't.

Ta,
-Whisker

10:30am, Wednesday, Potter's Splay, Courtyard Lane, Willow Creek, somewhere.

Dan wasn't in the mood for waking up, and neither was his friend. Being June, it was swelteringly hot, so the unnecessarily thick duvet had been tossed onto the floor in an unceremonious heap, knocking over any unfortunate object that happened to be under it when it slid off the sofa. It was a good job that any potential coffee or tea cups would have been empty because nobody wants to be responsible for brown duvet stains.

The Howlters were already up, and so was Evan, and they were all having breakfast already. Dan wasn't in the mood for breakfast, either. After the day they'd had yesterday, he wasn't in the mood for anything but lying right there on that sofa and not doing anything. He rolled over to find his friend half hanging off the settee, bent in an arrangement that did not look like any normal sleeping position for a human being, but conveniently cushioned by the blanket on the floorboards. He had strategically missed hitting his head on the table by about an inch, which was impressive because Phil was the sort of person who would not be able to avoid hitting his head on a coffee table when he was fully conscious, but somehow he managed to do it in his sleep.

Dan sniggered, quietly, and lifted him back onto the cushions so that his spine, neck, or any other very important bones wouldn't snap from the aforementioned absurd positioning. He was quite light and Dan could pick him up without much trouble, and somehow he managed to stay asleep.

"Are you two not getting up yet?" Tabitha called to them, quite loudly, and Dan's efforts to keep his friend asleep were all a complete waste of time, "I know you're awake; you can't stay there all day."

"I know…" Dan smiled, tiredly, stretching and yawning, his joints clicking in any place that joints could click, and maybe even some places he didn't know could click.

Phil said something about this, but he was still half asleep so none of it was really perceptible, but Dan heard the word 'glowsticks' somewhere in the jumble of words that might as well have not been English.

"Oh, get over it," Dan sighed, knowing somehow what he was referring to.

The sun was streaming in through the window, and it had been from so early in the morning that the dust wasn't even visible anymore. What was the point in being awake if there was no dust to watch?

"Well, you'd better get up soon, or there might not be any cereal left-" Dil started, setting down a bowl beside the sink, and at the very mention of cereal, Phil was suddenly worryingly wide-awake, which was all well and good for everyone apart from Dan, who would now be abandoned to enjoy his dust-less sofa time by himself.

Even after everything that had happened yesterday, he and Phil had stayed up for quite a while to discuss their next move. It wasn't worth heading home just yet, without making every end meet, but it was also quite risky staying now that they knew that the game could lag or crash at any given moment, and they didn't fancy doing the portal thing again any time soon. This discussion had lasted until around 3am and had tired them out quite a lot. This was the reason that it was half past ten and neither of them had yet moved from the sofa (except Phil, because he was half-hanging off it but that doesn't count).

"Have we got any plans for today?" Phil asked, untangling his feet from the corner of duvet that had somehow not fallen on the floor and had instead decided to wrap itself around his ankles like a boa constrictor that had mistaken his legs for the neck of its prey.

"Not so far, no," Tabitha replied, watching him clumsily stand up, "I thought that you might need a lazy day today; what with your ordeal last night."

"What happened last night?" Dab asked, his mouth full of generic, non-descript flakes made out of corn and probably 5 other things that the cereal company didn't want to write on the box.

Phil turned to him and bit his lip, wondering whether he should tell him about the lagging, or whether that would scare him a bit too much.

Phil decided that he didn't mind if it scared him too much.

"Uh, the game just went a bit…" he started, but didn't know how to finish it so just improvised with some random arm waving and slight jazz-hands that were probably involuntary.

Dab did not quite understand this unasked for game of charades and stopped chewing on his cereal as if it was taking up too much of his thinking power and he had to stop so that he could focus all his energy into deciphering what on earth Phil was trying to convey to him. It did not make much difference… if any.

"What Phil is trying to say is that the game lagged and we had to go back and forth through the barrier to fix it," Dan explained, and though it was vague, it made more sense than jazz-hands.

Phil nodded in agreement.

"What game?" Evan asked.

Everyone in the room went very quiet as they realised that Evan didn't actually know that he was living inside a simulation and was occasionally partially controlled by his neighbour's childminder, 'uncle', 'family friend', babysitter thingamajigs who never really elaborated on who they were or why everyone seemed to do whatever they said. Knowing that Evan had a very intense interest in science, everybody decided mutually and through no words at all to not tell him just yet: just in case he decided to do some weird experiments on them.

"I'll tell you later," Dan told him. He knew that it would be safer to explain it himself because if Dil did, it probably wouldn't be very accurate, and if Phil did, there would predictably be more charades. Dan also didn't know when exactly 'later' was but he was sure he'd cross that bridge when he came to it. Whenever it happened to be, Evan seemed pretty content with this reply.

"I suppose you'll be wanting to get home soon?" Dil hummed, changing the subject ever-so-slightly. He knew that his creators weren't the type of people to risk destroying a universe by being careless, and they'd probably want to head back to the 'real' world before anything major happened again.

Dan looked up to Phil with an expression like he was completely abandoning the responsibility of decision-making by asking his friend to resolve something instead, but still wanted to discreetly offer his opinion on the matter. Do not ask what this expression looked like, because there's no brief way of describing it, but if you were friends with someone for years, you just know what it looks like.

"I don't know," Phil said, shortly, "What do you think, Dan?"

Dan frowned at this betrayal. He had wanted no part in this judgment but here he was.

"As soon as we get everything fixed up," he decided, eventually, turning to Dil, "There's still Summer and Erica to try and make friends up with. Besides, we can't just up and leave without telling anybody else – that would be a bit suspicious."

"I agree," Phil affirmed, putting his hands behind his back. He supposed that he ought to be getting around to making ends meet with his acquaintances, too, instead of just lying around all day. Maybe today would be a good day for it.

Before anyone could say anything else, however, there came a moderately quiet knock at the door which probably wouldn't have even been heard if people were talking. Everyone in the room stared at the door as if they had never heard a knock before and wondered why somebody would want to punch their property with a fist. In actual fact, they were just staring because none of them were socially confident enough this morning to answer it.

Ultimately, the most awkward of them all answered because standing in silence was probably even worse.

"Hello?" Phil started as he poked his head around the doorframe after unlocking it with a click. Outside, right there in front of him, stood Summer Holiday: the very person that Dan had just mentioned.

"Hey..!" Summer grinned, gingerly, staring up to him. In her hands was a small box of chocolate, "I… Came to apologise."

"Apologise?" Phil repeated, as if he was confused by the very concept, "Why?"

"Well, for being so overwhelming and uncomfortable, of course," Holiday replied, handing over the box in her hands, "It wasn't fair on you for me to keep pestering you like that. Sunday went a bit fair; I could see that you were uneasy when you up and left quite quickly… so I came to apologise. And to give you chocolate – you like chocolate, right?"

Phil paused, stuck for anything to say. Saying 'sorry' and accepting apologises were pretty difficult things to do when you were a person who struggled to think of things to say in important situations.

"…Yes," he said, slowly placing a hand over his heart, "Thank you."

He found himself wrapped in two arms for a few seconds before Summer let go of him, gave a little wave, said 'I'll be seeing you around!' and then promptly left as abruptly as she had arrived.

Phil watched her go down the street as the confectionary in the purple box in his hands started to melt. It would be a job peeling that of the paper when it solidified later. Phil decided to go back inside before anybody walked past and wondered why he was standing in the doorway, looking like someone had just revealed to him the meaning of life, dressed in jogging bottoms and a t-shirt that hung off his skinny form as if it were 4 sizes too large for him, and holding a very small box. Not that anybody had a fantastically idealistic concept of him anyway.

"Is everything okay?" Dan asked in a voice sweeter than aspartame, getting up off the sofa at last. He pulled Phil away from the door and closed it behind him.

"Yeah; fine," Phil nodded, and he sounded like he meant it for once, "I guess that's one job done, then."

The quicker making up to everyone got done, the better. Then again, he was having the same feeling he'd had last time where he wasn't sure whether he really wanted to leave or not. On one hand, he did, because even though time was slower back home, it didn't stop, and if they stayed here for too long people would get suspicious. Phil didn't fancy anything going wrong and being stuck here for virtual months or even years.

On the other hand, he and Dan had already decided that this would be their last visit to the Sims universe, and he wanted to make the most of his time here.

Seeing as how nothing in this place ever played out how he intended, though, Phil supposed he didn't have much of a choice.