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Gremio stopped singing (with some relief, really), stifled a sigh and smoothed the covers down over Tir again. "All right, then. What do you want to hear, young master?"

"I want the lullaby that Dad sings me." Tir kicked his feet under the covers, messing them all up again.

"Your father..." Gremio trailed off there, trying to imagine Teo McDohl singing anything. It wasn't easy. "...what does your father sing to you, Tir?"

"Rec room," Tir said matter-of-factly.

Gremio's expression was totally blank. "Rec room? Ah... I don't think I know that one, young master."

"You do too," Tir insisted. "It's the rec room. You know." And he hummed a few high-pitched and breathless notes, the notes tumbling out over each other as fast as he could hum them.

For a minute Gremio couldn't place it, although it sounded naggingly familiar, even at that fast and halting pace. Then Tir stopped and gasped in a quick breath and started mangling the next line, and suddenly he managed to place it. "Ah..." Gremio paused, his eyes widening. "Tir, that's the Scarlet Moon Army's Requiem For Those Who Have Died In Battle."

"Uh huh," Tir said, burrowing under the covers. "Rec room."

Gremio stopped, at a total loss. "But... it doesn't have words, Tir. It's just the bugle..."

"Dad hums it." Tir's eyes shone in the dim lamplight. "I want the rec room. Or I won't go to sleep." 

Gremio had been in the house for only a week or so, but he knew a threat that the five-year-old Tir could make good on if he so chose. Privately, Gremio made a mental note to ask Teo why on earth he'd chosen a funeral requiem as his son's lullaby, the next time he saw the master; but for now he pulled his chair closer to Tir's bedside and hummed the Requiem as best he could remember it, trying to pitch it low so that he'd sound more like Teo.

Tir hummed along for the first couple of lines, but was reduced to the occasional sleepy "Mm" by the fourth, and by the end of the piece was fast asleep, sprawled out over his narrow bed with one thumb firmly in his mouth.

"Whatever works," Gremio breathed, easing Tir's thumb free before he rose to blow out the lamp, and he was halfway out the door before he realized that 'whatever works' might very well have been Teo's rationale, too.

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