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the first to arrive, always, is techno, riding on carl in full armor, a crown lopsided on his head. he often takes his time tying carl to a branch, wary of what might happen if he leaves the lead too loose, sure to use knots tommy never took the time to learn. then he’ll sit, a book in his lap, but his sword always laying in the grass beside him.
then, comes phil, a bag and pick thrown over his shoulder. he often whistles a tune, and he calls out to techno even when he’s still hidden in the trees, knowing that if he didn’t, techno would sit tense until he emerged and likely end up shooting phil in the arm. by the time he arrives, the sun is setting, and so he’ll grab technos arm and force him inside, lighting the lanterns inside and telling techno about his day of mining.
tommy, usually, is next, once the sun has fully set and the stars have come out, sneaking away from l’manberg while the rest are in their homes. when he opens the door to the kitchen, the room goes silent, and technos shoulders tense and tommy grips the axe at his side a little tighter, but then techno gives a slight nod, and tommy grins, and phil stands to give him a hug.
last is always wilbur, who shows up when the moon is at its halfway point in the sky, simply shifting into being at a chair they leave pulled out. when he does appear, it always takes a moment for them to notice, for someone to glance over in the middle of the story and see him. he doesn’t speak much, content with listening to his families voices, but occasionally, he’ll give a little cough and tell a story from his few memories, his voice rasping in the moonlight. and even more occasionally, one of the others (usually tommy) will begin humming a tune in the silence, and wilbur will sing along, for a bit, his eyes lost in the haze.
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a common occurrence at these dinners, is the sight of three figures shouting over a table, chairs leaned forward and arms flung wide. these are fights of wits that sometimes become fights of fists, with someone launching over the table to wrestle another to the ground, screaming at the tops of their lungs.
these, these are not the terrifying fights, the ones that make wilbur go fuzzy and philza go quiet and tommy not show up to dinner for the next few weeks. these are fights that remind them all of simpler days of boyhood, fights causing no injury more severe than a bruise. they culminate in tommy laughing loudly like he did so many years ago as techno pins him to the wooden floor, smirking as he gives some poetic line about the inevitability of tommy’s fate as phil cackles maniacally in the background throwing his arm around wilbur’s shoulder thats just slightly more there.
no, the truely terrifying fights, are the ones that spawn from an offhanded comment techno will make about his day, some remark about mending a sword or perhaps from tommy talking about tubbo's newest idea, or sometimes even from phil casually mentioning he borrowed an item from techno. no matter how it begins, someone's jaw goes a little too tight, their eyes a little further narrowed than deserved, and soon enough a sharp comment about their affiliations are getting made. techno will dig his nails into the table and tommy will stand by the door ready to run and wilbur will float to a corner and close his eyes and phil’s eyes will harden as he stands between his sons, a hand on his axe, a reminder that there is no trust here anymore.
all it takes for these fights to end is for one of them to snap, pull out a weapon, get too far into another’s face, yell something just slightly too reminiscent of a time they nearly killed each other. a time they did kill each other. and then tommy will run, sprinting out the door, for even he knows he cannot win against his family. and techno will scream, broken and loud, and wreck as much havoc as he can on his way out the door, and there are sword marks on all the trees leading to his base. and phil will sit on the floor in the middle of the house and he cries, trying to pick up the pieces. and wilbur will leave, just as quietly as he came, and if one looked hard enough they could find him in his bunker, digging into the walls, searching for something, something, a memory to fix this.