To be fair, Doc, this wasn’t a shock. He shifts a little, reclines back into his chair when Doc slides into the one beside him, and his contemplations of leaving are put on hold, brows ticking up at the question. It wasn't the one he was expecting to come, and it startles a small, surprised snort.

“Well, let's see. There was no talking allowed at the dinner table, else we interrupt the riveting lectures of Herr Carlson, or whoever else Dad chose for the time.” Five sighs, watching the pour. “Sometimes it would be Homer’s Odyssey, so that the ancient Greek would stick.”

He remembers the moments of everyone’s small rebellions, too. Diego’s knife-marked armrest, Klaus’s blunts at the ripe and early age of thirteen. Allison and Luther, thinking they were anything but obvious in the puppy-eyed glances. He knows the things he missed thanks to Vanya’s book. Knows it only got worse with Ben’s death. They all skated by somehow, but he missed the fallout, pushed out into the periphery of written pages.

“Then, we’d all sneak out to the nearest diner, and eat as much ice cream as we could, until we’d all just get sick,” he ends that with a curl of a dimpled smile, there and gone.

“But, all of that was relegated to outside of the dining room,” he turns his attention to Doc. "And it's a surprise no one stabbed each other."