"So how's life back home?"
Dan's eyes shot up from the menu in front of him, and looking left, he raised his line of sight to Dil's face.
They were all seated at the very booth where they'd sat the first time they came back in February. Thankfully, there was no Erica opposite them this time, though.
"Back home?" Dan repeated, thinking. He couldn't quite remember what had been happening back in the real world; it felt like he'd been here for so long now. What had been happening?
"We moved house," Phil put in for him, realising he was taking an awkwardly long time to reply, "We partly came to visit to get away from the stress of the move, really. You know, moving house is one of the most stressful things someone can go through. That's what I heard. Thought this might be a nice retreat."
"It didn't really work out the way you'd wanted, huh?" Tabitha hummed, biting her lip and looking a little bit guilty. Not that any of it was her fault.
Phil shrugged and turned away, casually, to go back to reading the menu, resting his chin on Dan's shoulder.
"Hmm. Guess not," he sighed. He didn't seem like he wanted to continue the conversation any longer.
"Anything else?" Dil asked, not taking his manner into account.
"I… can't remember," Phil swallowed, eyes widening and pupils contracting, "I honestly can't. You know, this… trip… has taken so long and so much energy, I can't remember anything about back home apart from the move…"
Dil was about to ask something again, Dab could tell. Dil wasn't very good at noting when somebody wanted to end a conversation – but then what could you expect from a creation of his particular creators.
"Don't annoy him, dad," Dab whispered, annoyed.
Phil smiled, contently, ruffling the kid's hair without even breaking his gaze from the menu. He took in all the smells and sounds around him: the noise of cutlery clinking against tableware, the soft chit-chat of toffee-nosed voices, the aroma of different food combinations drifting through the air from the kitchen right around the corner from their table and finally the most comforting scent of warm from his friend's clothes. Warm was an odd smell to define. Maybe it wasn't a smell at all. Maybe the smell of warm was an emotion. Safety.
Or maybe that was just thinking too deeply.
"What do you want?"
"That didn't need to be phrased so aggressively, Phil," Dan replied, "And the whole point of the ordering game is that you order for the person sat to your right. Why are you asking me what I want?"
"Oh, are we doing that thing again?" Phil sighed, quietly. He didn't seem enthused, "And are we really calling it 'the ordering game'?"
"What do you want to call it? Menu Susan?"
"Watch it, Danny."
Dan gave a chuckle and looped an arm around his friend, tightly. He knew Phil wasn't truly annoyed because if he was, Dan's shoulder would be covered in bruises by now.
"You're to my right, Dan," Phil whispered, realising that he had the power to force feed his friend anything from the menu. He chewed his lip, pensively, but his thoughts drifted away from the decision at hand and instead focused on what had been going on before they arrived here on the 1st.
Apart from the move, not much had been going on. The last video they had posted had been a Sims episode back at the end of May – one about bowling, if his memory served – and that was really all he could remember.
Drinks had already arrived – their order had been taken a while ago – so Phil took a small sip of wine before swirling the drink about in his glass.
"Remember when we all went bowling? That was fun," he started, looking to his Sims out of the corner of his eye.
Dil looked a bit bewildered for a second as if clueless as to how Phil would know about the bowling trip, then he finally remembered who his creators were.
"O-Oh, yeah," he nodded, "I forgot that you knew about that."
"Know about it? Dan was the one who convinced you to freeze everyone in the building. Let's not forget that we micro-manage your every movement when we're not here. Oh, the things we've saved you from… and the things we didn't save you from…"
"Elaborate?"
"Awkward encounters, out-of-date food, alien abductions; you know, the usual. One time we had to stop you putting some food or other in your mouth that was excreting green steam two seconds before you ate it. Only just managed it. Don't know what the steam was all about… Then again…" Phil mused, wistfully, sitting up very straight,"Things worse than that were usually my fault, if not Dan's. Freeze ray incidents, interactions best left unmentioned, and things of that ilk. In fact, we discovered that it wasn't just your household that we could control-"
He stopped here as he noticed Dan's expression.
"Sorry, I was rambling," he said, slipping his blue jacket off to uncover his snug-fitting waistcoat. Dan noted his svelte figure and how his chest curved so trimly inwards. He'd definitely slimmed down since they'd been here – in fact, they probably both had. It was a good diet, this universe; maybe not the healthiest, but effective nonetheless. Maybe this could be one last good meal before they left.
"No, no, carry on," Dan encouraged him. He felt it was probably time that Evan knew about what happened, anyway.
Phil cleared his throat and looked down to Evan, who was sat two places to his left and struggled to throw out the words snagging in his throat.
"Evan…" he started, sounding and looking a tad unsure of himself, which wasn't a good way to start, "Before you were born, there was a small… fire… in your bedroom. You might have heard your parents mention something about the freeze ray. Well… that was our fault, too. An accident. It would have ended there, too, if we hadn't felt so bad about it…"
His breath caught as he saw Evan and Dab's expressions. Clearly Dab didn't know about their ability to switch between households, either.
Dan placed a soft hand on his friend's dipped back as if willing him to go on before it got awkward, and his subtle hint worked.
"We found that we could switch between households to manage anybody we like. We switched to your parents' house and made sure that they got a brand new bed… I don't know how to put this next part, but…" Phil stuttered, wringing his hands, "You are kind-of our fault, too."
'Bad phrasing,' Dan thought to himself, 'But it'll do. No time to elaborate right now; here comes the waitress…'
"May I take your order?" The waitress offered, with a look on her face that suggested that she remembered serving them before. Her silver hair framed her face and she looked down to her clients with an almost impatient air.
"Yes," Dil said, eager to get away from the awkward conversation that they had been having before. Apparently everyone besides Phil was decided.
Waiting in a petrified manner as the waitress went around the table, starting from Dil, who was sat the furthest away, Phil scanned his laser-like eyes over the small portion of the menu that he could see over Dan's shoulder. He picked the only thing that didn't look toxic.
"Spherised fruit gel… in a foam nest," he blurted out as the ice-cold stare of the waitress fixed on him, "Please."
To his relief, she moved on.
Phil gave a sigh and leaned back on the cushions behind him. His request had been a bit rushed and Northern, but it was as good as he could do and it sufficed. He hoped that his order wasn't noxious. He hadn't really thought it through as it was the first thing his eyes had caught on the page.
"Good job, you spoon," Dan snickered when the waitress had left their table, giving his companion a playful nudge on the arm. He leaned slightly on his shoulder and picked up his glass of white wine. It was getting dark outside by now eventually, and the candlelight added to the soothing ambience.
Phil gave a snigger.
"Hope you like fruit foam," he said under his breath.
"I'm sure I will. And if I don't, I'll force-feed it to you," Dan replied.
Phil had no doubt that he would. They'd have an awkward moment of Dan randomly spoon-feeding him at regular intervals and it was foreseeable that nobody else would understand that that would be pretty much normal. The refined wine-drinking would keep their appearance up until then, though, or at least they hoped so.
The group conversation turned to stuff more light-hearted, and Evan would tell Dil about his science experiments, Dab would draw away on the little piece of paper the restaurant had given him, and Phil and Dan would recite funny little anecdotes to Tabitha about anything and everything from the world above, from strange music teachers to The Amazing Tour is Not on Fire.
Every short story would strike a little cord in their hearts that played on their craving to be back home in their own beds with their own kitchen and no children running about their legs begging for attention. They could go home soon, they knew, and that knowledge kept them hanging on through whatever this world might throw at them. Especially Spherised fruit gel and freeze ray incidents.