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Aleksy was supposed to be in bed for three more weeks. Like, he was allowed to move around enough to piss on his own, and he could sit up to eat, but all this lifting? Probably not. Unfortunately, there was no one to defer Posies to while he was recovering, and so rather than nesting in bed he was perched on the counter-stool behind Posies' register. He could do account books in bed. He could do ordering in bed. What he couldn't do was trust the overseeing of Aleksy's livelihood to two high schoolers for five weeks total.

Honestly, even if he did have a manager, he'd probably be right where he was anyway--Aleksy had a control issue--and that would mean he'd be sitting right the ******** in front of a pissed-off Liam Noor no matter what, too.

"Hi, Liam," said Aleksy, pretending to be awfully busy with the register.

"I don't actually remember anything," said Aleksy, glancing at Liam's hands and then up to his face. "Does it count as an ordeal if it got me something I wanted and a fiercely competitive Animal Crossing rivalry?" He didn't think so, but like, Liam had strange ideas about what was worth doing and what wasn't, probably because he was old.

He peeked up at Liam through his bangs and brushed them back with his good arm. "There's no one to run the shop while I'm out. And I was bored."

Aleksy narrowed his eyes at Liam, suspicion etched into a quirk downward of his lips. "I couldn't impose," he said. "Renard would be upset if you came home with dirt underneath your fingernails."

Aleksy sighed, and then smiled, and then sighed again. "Will you bring me the account books and invoices at the end of the day so I can go over them?" Not that he didn't trust Liam, just that he liked the numbers. Also he wrote all of the accounts in Cyrillic, so someone else trying to write stuff in there would make… less than no sense. It'd look weird.

"I'd still rather not impose," he said. But when his kinda-dad got all purry like that, it meant put up and shut up. In a good way, though, like, I am here to help. Liam was a trustworthy dude, is what he was getting at. "I need to hire a manager."

"Da, da," grumbled Aleksy, sliding off his stool. Nobody got to order him around if he didn't want to be ordered, except for Liam. After the utter disaster that was Aleksy from ages nineteen to twenty, Liam had damn well earned the right to make Aleksy do s**t he wasn't particularly interested in doing. Going back to bed as ordered was a small price to pay for Liam's continued good will.

He looked into the back room and pulled out his spare set of keys. "You're sure it won't take up too much time," he asked, holding the keys behind himself in his good hand.

Aleksy held out for a moment longer, but Liam's Dad Expression was too strong even for one so inured to Dadly Disappointment as Aleksy. He handed over the keys, dropping them with a jingle into Liam's open palm.

"You're not going to tuck me in as well, are you," he grumbled, but it was the token grumble of the defeated son. There were no teeth in it.

"Yes," said Aleksy, but just to be difficult. "Shall we go?"

Aleksy got in the car and made himself as comfortable as he could. Liam's car was a damn nice one, but Aleksy was allowed to resent his presence in it: he disliked being told what to do, even when it was provably for his own good. "How's Renard," he asked. "Heard he commissioned a friend of mine."