SF Chapter 21: Come Fly with Me II
Dylan, Daniel, and Claire went into the kitchen. Phil, who had been chatting with Leonard, noticed the new guest and said loudly, excited,
"Dylan! DY‑Money! Chillin' with Dylan the villain!" And he continued, now sounding like a cheerleader. "D to the Y to the-"
"Hey, Mr. Dunphy," Dylan raised his hand, a bit embarrassed.
"Hey! Come on in," Phil motioned toward the couch. "You're just in time to catch the end of the game."
"Oh, I'm not really a baseball guy," the boy replied, and after seeing a message pop up on his phone, he turned to Claire. "Haley says 'hi.'"
Daniel laughed and patted the poor boy on the back, while Claire made a face. "I was just being facetious."
"Come on," Phil called again. "I'll catch you up."
Dylan sat right on the edge of the couch, keeping his distance from Phil and Leonard.
"Sis, he's just a fake bad boy. Look how he's even afraid of Phil," Daniel muttered, sipping the coffee he had just grabbed.
"He's a hormonal teenager," she crossed her arms.
"We all are, we all are," her brother shrugged. "It's not like you were Mary Poppins when you were a teen." He turned to her. "A long time ago…"
Daniel ran to the couch before he could get smacked again by his sister. She was being incredibly aggressive today.
[Claire commentary]
The Dunphy matriarch was sitting on the kitchen balcony. "I condemn the use of violence as a teaching method."
Then she clarified, given the obvious hypocrisy of the statement. "I basically never hit my kids. My husband too, just… sometimes. But my youngest brother…"
She took a deep breath and defended herself first. "He's like a mischievous kid who keeps pressing buttons, and pressing again, and pressing. He knows exactly how to annoy people."
"Glares, yelling, none of it works on him anymore…"
She glanced around and confessed, "and it's kind of therapeutic."
"Wow, sis, I knew you were a sadist!" Daniel said right next to her, scaring the crap out of his sister.
"You see what I'm talking about," Claire made a face, looking ahead and then back at her brother.
[Commentary ends]
"Come on. I don't bite." Phil motioned for Dylan to sit closer, then growled at the kid.
"Kidding. I'm kidding." He chuckled. Phil pointed at the TV, where the player was about to bat. "Okay. See that guy? He's the tying run."
"Interesting story about him. He's been stuck on second base forever, and I'm pretty sure he's gonna try to steal third, which is just a terrible, terrible idea." He added, making it sound very suggestive comment using baseball innuendos.
Then he looked at Dylan. "How are you and Haley doing?"
Dylan made a face like he didn't understand half of what was said and simply replied, "It's good."
He stood up. "I think I'm gonna go wait in the car."
"Boy, being stuck on second base… that reminds me of middle school," Daniel murmured without thinking much.
Two heads snapped toward him.
"You… have never been stuck on second base, like, ever?" Leonard asked incredulously.
"In the past two years… very rarely. And on the few times it happened, I withdrew from the game," he replied. "But I usually don't go for a home run either on the first date."
[Phil commentary]
"I love Dani, D-Money, he's like a bro. And a future super bro," Phil remarked, sitting on the kitchen counter with his elbows resting on it.
But then Phil confessed, "But I think he's the kind of guy who is every daughter's dad's nightmare. Thankfully, he's my daughters' uncle."
"Nothing's gonna happen, right?" he laughed.
[Commentary ends]
"Anyway… Dylan was a little jumpy," Phil commented to his wife.
Claire adjusted the couch pillow. "Oh, go figure," she scoffed. "A teenage boy doesn't want to hang out with his girlfriend's dad."
Daniel nudged Leonard and whispered, "Especially if that same teenager has a brother who slept with the girl's mother."
He added raising an eyebrow. "It's weird to hang out with someone when you're doing his daughter, and your brother is sleeping with his ex."
His cousin was left speechless, just opening and closing his mouth.
Claire didn't hear what her brother had whispered, but she wouldn't have been surprised.
Phil didn't either, and he commented to his wife, "I thought we were past all that. I'm all about taking it to the next level."
"Really?" she said, a little surprised. "I thought you were all about keeping it real."
"Yes." Phil opened his arms as he explained, "But the whole point of keeping it real is so you can take it to the next level. Did you really not know that?"
"You haven't exactly taken it to the next level with my dad." Claire remarked while grabbing the soda cans from the table.
"What are you talking about?"
"We've been married for sixteen years, and you still walk on eggshells around him," she pointed out.
"What? Are you kidding? Jay and I are total buds."
Three faces stared at Phil. Not even Leonard, who didn't have that much interaction with his uncle (or ex-uncle), believed that.
Then the phone rang, and Claire went to answer it.
While she was talking, Phil grabbed a case of beer and made a gesture saying he was going to hang out with Jay.
"Monica, it's good to hear from you too…" Claire said, chatting with her cousin on the other end of the line while pushing her brother's head away as he tried to listen in on the conversation.
[Leonard commentary]
"Hearing Monica's name, my other cousin, made me remember some family gatherings we had in the past," Leonard began, still sitting on the Dunphys' couch.
"It was ten years ago. I was talking with Ross, Monica's older brother. We were seventeen years old, and we kind of admired our other cousin, Charlie. He was an inspiration to us."
"I remember Ross pointing at the woman Charlie was dating and saying, 'In ten years, that could be us.'"
"Yeah, we were dumb…" Leonard said self-deprecatingly. "At least Ross got married…" He added awkwardly, "…I wasn't invited for the wedding."
[Commentary ends]
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Friends time line: a few months before the pilot episode
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