The Pediatrician's Closet

Perturb

He hadn't been moping by his door long before someone knocked.

"Masaomi?" came Ema's voice. "Masaomi, can I please come in?"

His knee jerk reaction was to say nothing and let her think that he had run somewhere else.

"I know you're in there. Juli saw you through the window."

He looked up at his window, stunned. Her squirrel? Yeah, they'd all caught her having quiet conversations with her squirrel, but only Louise took the idea of the squirrel being sentient seriously.

Could Ema talk to animals?

Before he could linger long on that, Ema knocked on his door again, harder.

"Masaomi, please!"

If anybody knew how that tone in her voice turned his will into puddy, he'd never live it down.

As it was, he was up and opening the door before his brain could catch up to his body and scream otherwise.

She looked petite and womanly in her casual baggy t-shirt and shorts. Her hair wasn't tied up as it usually was, but down about her shoulders. Even so, he could see red marks at the curve of her neck where Ukyo's mouth had been.

He shuddered.

Her eyes were on his face though, wan and wide with concern. Her eyebrows bunched up in dismay at what she saw.

"Can I come in? Please, I'm worried about you. You're so pale and..."

He had already stepped aside. After all, she'd unknowingly liquefied his will, and it was essentially twitching unconscious in some back somewhere corner. As she stepped in, he kept as far away from her as he could. She hadn't gotten far though before she turned around and reached for his face.

"It's okay, Masaomi. Ukyo's okay, you didn't do anything wrong, I didn't get him off me fast enough—"

"He's a grown man," came spitteling out of it before he could stop it. "He knows better than to drink in the living room, he can't hold his alcohol at all and he knows it." But that was beside the point. His insides cramped up painfully as Ukyo's terrified expression passed through his mind. He ducked his head down and away from her touch.

"I doubt you're like you're father."

He jerked up to stare at her, stunned.

"What?"

"That's what you're afraid of, right?" she said, hesitantly, having drawn back to the other side of the short entryway to his room when he'd jerked his face away from her.

"How do you...?"

She tipped her chin away guiltily. "Hikari took me out to eat the other night. He, um, told me a bit about you." Remembering that seemed to give her courage, though, and she looked back to him, mouth thin with determination. "Masaomi, it is perfectly healthy and normal for you to feel angry and to snap. If that was the worst you get, then you could never, ever even come close to being like your father. What you did was a perfectly normal reaction. Just because you lose your cool doesn't mean you've suddenly turned into him."

"But, Ukyo's face..." his jaw had turned rubbery. He couldn't think straight.

"That's because you were scary," red had crossed her cheeks. "But...not in a bad way. You're brothers respect you, and when someone who is usually so gentle and kind gets angry, it's always terrifying because it's rare and no one is use to it. It isn't because you've suddenly turned into an abusive jerk. Not to mention they all care so much about what you think, that the thought that you may think badly of them scares them, and that's also not bad." Despite her flushed cheeks and thin mouth, the smile she gave him reached her eyes. "You're a good parent."