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He’d been stressed for a while. Emu normally was extremely good at keeping his stress in check. He knew it caused him pains for a long while, despite the reasoning for this only being revealed to him recently. Still, with Kuroto around being an absolute menace even when he was being helpful and Hiiro still gone. It all felt like too much. He’d hardly left the CR ward and barely slept at all. Even then, something in his chest couldn’t help but also feel another, different stress. A fear not his own.
It was all getting to him. He did his best not to let it be so obvious, however. After all, if the doctor is worried then the patient is also more likely to be worried. He had too much to focus on, he couldn’t lose himself to the stress.
Unfortunately, his fool-proof plan of being emotionally repressed was no match for a recovering compulsive liar’s natural lie-detector. Kiriya watched as Emu stepped into the CR; the saddest looking cafe sandwich wrapped up in his hands.
The younger looked up to see him and momentarily had the look of a deer caught in headlights. He must have noticed Kiriya observing him as his greeting consisted of a rushed, “I should have asked if you wanted something!” Clearly referring to his lunch.
Kiriya gave a chuckle and waved the comment away. “Bugster, remember? I don’t really eat anymore. ‘Sides I’m more a soup ‘n’ salad kinda guy,” Kiriya joked as he kicked his feet up onto the break room table.
“Oh right…” Emu mumbled more to himself than the other. He moved to sit next to Kiriya and quietly munch at his sandwich.
The coroner let the silence linger comfortably for a couple moments. Both allowing Emu to eat and also for him to observe the other. The younger of them was definitely off lately. Not that Kiriya could blame him. With everything going on and all. However, Kiriya also knew of his condition and he’d be damned if he let anything bad actually happen to the soft-hearted intern.
“You should really get some more sleep,” he said casually.
Emu paused mid chew to process the others words before mumbling out an, “Eh?”
Kiriya’s eyes were focused on his nails but he took the second to send the other a side look. “You have bags under your eyes blacker than coffee.”
“Oh,” the other more sounded than said around his continued chewing. He swallowed before continuing his words, “I’m fine! Honest-“
“For someone who always gets on me about lying you can be just as bad.”
His words stopped Emu completely in his tracks. He blinked in surprise, unable to double down on his words. Maybe if it were Poppy or Hiiro that had come to him about it he’d be able to convince them. But he couldn’t convince Kiriya. Alive or dead the other always seemed to know what Emu was thinking or feeling. Even the stuff he thought he shoved down low enough to be practically invisible.
The thought didn’t bring him comfort. Maybe to others, the idea of being known and cared for so much would soothe them. But for Emu it only sent a wave of fear through him that rammed directly into his heart. Of course, this wave and everything else culminating in him caused a sharp pain to stab like knives into his skull.
He gave a sound of pain as he reached his hand up to his head with a hiss. He hardly even noticed when he dropped his food to the table so to use both hands to hold himself through the agony.
Just as suddenly as the pain appeared, so did hands on his shoulders. He hadn’t noticed Kiriya move to his side so fast. “Hey, breathe for me Ace,” he instructed calmly.
Emu attempted to do as he was told. He sucked in breath much harsher than what was needed and shakingly forced it back out. The pain in his head and the feeling not unlike muscle spasms (which he could now identify as glitching) was making it hard to focus on much else but his stress. The horrifying cycle of thought in which he attempted to calm himself but only kept being pulled back to the mental strains causing all of this.
Emu felt callused hands on his cheeks. One pushing fingers through his hair while his head was pulled to look up at the man beside him.
“Don’t think just do. Breathe, okay?”
The intern did as he was told and continued to force his breathing in and out. It was pretty ridiculous, if you asked him, how years and years of medical training went completely out the window the moment he, himself, was having a medical issue. But the cool hands felt like heaven against his heated skin, and the soft voice practically encompassed the very air Emu was using to calm himself.
Finally his breathing was under control. He finally remembered the 8-4-7 breathing and began to focus on that instead of anything else. With each breath he calmed more, his momentary fever raigning back in and the pain ebbing away.
When the virus in him finally went back into its hibernation he let out a long sigh of relief. He let his head fall forward and into Kiriya’s chest. He felt more than he heard the other chuckle lightly. The hands returned to him, one on his back and the other in the back of his hair.
“Sorry ‘bout that. I didn’t mean to stress you out so much.”
Emu moved his head enough to talk. “It wasn’t you,” he admitted. “I just… a lot’s been goin’ on, ya know?” He gave another deep sigh.
There wasn’t an immediate response to that. There was a short moment of silence before, “You know you can talk about it, right? Not just to me either. Just, in general.”
Emu didn’t respond. He just laid there. A part of him wanted to give in and just let it all out. Talk about everything that had been weighing on him. Talk about how he was terribly worried for Hiiro. How he wished Taiga and Nico would trust them enough so that they could really all be on the same team. How he wanted to be there for everyone but that with Chronicles he didn’t even know who ‘everyone’ was anymore. How the phantom anxiety in his chest that he knew wasn’t his was stirring and just wouldn’t go away. But none of that came out.
Another part of him wanted to respond with a simple ‘no’. No, he couldn’t talk about it. Whether it was because he’s never talked to a soul about how he felt for his entire life since he was born and just doesn’t know how or because he feels his own problems are unimportant when the lives of so many people are calling to him, begging him for help. But he didn’t say any of that either.
Instead he didn’t say anything at all.
Instead Kiriya stood up and pulled him up to stand as well. “C’mon, Ace. Let’s go take a nap, huh?”
Emu gave a tired smile to the other and let the coroner lead him into the CR’s sleep room.