She yawns hugely. "Nope, I napped like a very cozy log. What time is it?"

Eliza shows her glowing phone screen to Lenore. 

"Acceptable. We've got time for plenty of silly party games before bed, if anybody's into that."

Suspicious squint. "What kinds of silly party games. I'm going to pre-emptively veto beer pong." 

"Can't play beer pong anyway, we don't have any beer! What silly party games would you like?"

"I always wanted to try a pinata! I dunno, I haven't really been to--many--parties." 

"Need I point out that we also don't have a pinata?" Then she pauses consideringly. "I guess we could make a pinata... no, we also don't have a huge bag of candy. Tell you what, though, you bring the huge bag of candy and we can totally do a pinata anytime. In the meantime, does somebody have a suggestion that uses only materials we already have?"

"If we can find a deck of cards and a card game we all know, we could try that," Dylan suggests. "I didn't bring one, though."

"Oh, I know card games! ...I know...two-person card games...that don't require manual dexterity...some of which were homebrewed and probably don't stand up to outside inspection." 

Snort. "I have a deck of cards."

"Oh, please teach me your insane unplayable homemade card games," says Lenore, clapping her hands together delightedly. "We can extend them into bigger insane unplayable homemade card games together! Fun for the whole family!"

Joey levers himself out of the cozy pillow fort. "My suite is in a different building so I might be gone as long as ten minutes." 

"We will miss you terribly."

The corner of Eliza's mouth and one of her eyebrows quirk up slightly. 

I will miss you terribly. 

A miniscule dip of his head, and a glance at the other two--yes, but isn't real human socialization going so well. 

Her lower lip creeping forward less than a millimeter in the barest hint of a pout, then her eyes close and she relaxes back into the pillows. I'm totally going to complain about it anyway, but yes, you're right. 

And he exeunt. 

"So Dylan, this pillow fort idea was brilliant, can I contribute to the enterprise? I want us to build one that takes over the whole common space."

Oof, how to play this...

"Yes but only if you give me all your contributed building materials and I keep them in my room when we're not using them. I'm very territorial. I may also start demanding tribute in the form of snacks."

"I will get you a little crown and call you King of the Pillow Fort."

"Sounds good." Now is not the time to dig into how weirdly, disproportionately good it felt to hear her say that.

"I volunteer as royal snackmeister." 

"Awesome. Hey, you were making food when I showed up, too—do you like to cook?"

"Yeah. --I don't know how prominent a hobby it'll be going forward but it's something I'm already good at."

"Well, then I'm glad to have you around, because I suck at it pretty bad." He stifles a wince with the ease of long practice; it's useful and practical to acknowledge your flaws, he can't just magically become perfect at everything and so dodge having to ever admit there's something he's bad at.

(Well. Maybe he can, now? But that sounds terrifying and should be a project for later when he has the time to think it through.)