They sat together on the bed for a while after that, glimmers of the way things had been before showing through — Break nattering on about all sorts of frivolous things, and Liam helpfully deadpanning his responses. The Hare was burbling a happy little song to itself, pleased as punch. It was reassuring, comforting, all sorts of nice, until Xerxes suddenly announced, "I have empty-nest syndrome."

Liam stared at him at this pronouncment. At length, he said, "Pardon?"

"Gilbert kicked me in the spine," Break explained.

"…what does that have to do with —"

"You're all grown up," Break said, his head emerging from the pillow he had been burying it in. "I told Sharon about my eye, and she neither cried all over me nor beat me into the ground. You can get into serious trouble and come out of it alive without me there. And Gilbert has actually retained something I taught him."

…ah. Yes, Break had been the one to teach Gilbert — and Liam himself — how to kick like that, ages ago. Owing to his disdain for violence against others Liam had generally only ever used the move on doors, and he'd always sort of felt bad for the doors later. Gilbert, however — yes. He could see how Gilbert might have simply logged the information away to only pull out when necessary. He did have a tendency to always utilize the same methods over and over, and his guns were openly his ideal weapon.

Well. At least he had the presence of mind not to shoot Break in the spine. Liam really did wonder some days.

"You ought to be proud of us, I think," Liam said presently. "In some way or other, all of that is your doing, after all."

"It'll be Oz next. He'll learn to pick out his own clothes and straighten his own bow ties."

"Ah, I see. You don't actually care about my responses, you just want someone to rant to. Carry on, then."

"And I think Elliot might finally stop idolizing me, too."

"Well, at least you won't have to beat him up anymore."

"I always sort of secretly enjoyed beating him up," Break admitted. "It always took a couple seconds longer each time."

There was silence for a little while then, Liam simply mulling things over and Break idly rolling around with his pillow for some reason. A thought occurred to him, after a while. It made him smirk. He spent some time debating whether it was worth the possible violence to actually say it.

Finally, Liam couldn't stand it anymore, and suggested calmly, "Perhaps soon they'll all start pairing off and making babies for you to play with. They'll call you Uncle Xerk and steal the candy from your pockets and climb on you, all the time."

Break stopped rolling. Then, very slowly, his eye emerged to glare in Liam's general direction. One flapping pajama sleeve came up and gestured toward the door.

"Get out of my bed," Break ordered flatly.

"No," said Liam smugly.

The resulting pillow fight only lasted a couple of hits, because they both hurt too much. But it got the point across.