Hetalia x Male Reader

Iceland x Ghost!Male Reader

But Emil didn't want to excuse it. He had no actual excuse anymore. Because Lukas had seen it too. 

Emil sighed as he looked back over at the plates. They were full soap and still weren't washed properly. Emil pulled a short smile, chuckling a little to himself. Perhaps it had just been one of those kind of laugh where you breath air out of your nose with a smile, for Lukas did not hear. Emil fingers got wet once again as he picked up the sponge from before. He rubbed the plates just as earlier, but as a difference they actually became clean once he placed them under the water. 

There was no soft breeze touching his back, no soft breeze touching his anything and Emil felt somewhat lonely. 

Was it because Lukas knew? Or was it because Emil wanted to know?

Emil didn't know, but he was hungry for answers. He was drying a glass when it happened. It wasn't a big thing, Emil simply pushed a plate off the counter causing it to shatter on the floor. 

The white splints were placed on the glossy looking floor, spread all over in a thousand bits and pieces, at least in Emil's mind at the moment. He could see a tall figure behind him, of course Berwald had come to check on him when he heard the plate break. 

The plates were new, from when Berwald needed a break some weeks back and Tino had found it soothing to take him to Ikea, only to get lost in the kitchen sections for hours that seemed to have no end at the time. 'Maybe Berwald will get mad.. They were new after all..' Emil thought as he put down the glass to clean up his mess. 

Berwald was about to speak up, Emil could hear him take in a breath to scold him, but no words ever came. Not from Berwald at least. Something had stopped him. 

Tino soon came into the kitchen and helped Emil clean up, while he sent away the swede with a promise that they could buy some new. Somewhere in the process of cleaning some glass had slipped, one of the pieces too small to even notice.

It had cut a small hole in the tip of Emil's pointer finger and Tino being the mom friend that he is, promised him a bandaid as soon as he had talked to Berwald. 

"It's not important" Emil said. He was used to saying the words. It's not important. He had those three words tangled up against his tongue just for the sole reason of knowing that he would need those three words again. 

And every time, he was right. The phrase was something he had gotten so used to, so used to it that it was almost the twin brother of 'I'm fine'.

But when Emil's foot left the last step on the stairs and when his body drooped and pulled itself back into his room, there was a bandaid. 

A bandaid. And a note. 

Emil instantly knew it wasn't from Tino. He could still hear the soothing and motherly voice just doors down, a rusty and deep voice answering. 'That's Berwald' Emil thought to himself as he let his thoughts wander a little. The sound of a door closing against rough wood could be heard as Emil pushed onto the knob and closed the door behind him. He pulled himself towards his bed, looking at the paper on the thick covers. The bandaid. He didn't want it, Emil wanted to prove that it didn't matter. Prove that it's not important, not important to him. That caused him to let it be. To let it be on the covers of the bed, alone. The paper was thin and the writing was shaky, Emil could see that as he picked it up. 

He took a moment to feel the paper. To let his fingers run over the edges where it had been ripped, ripped wrongly because the hand that had pulled it probably was shaky, uneasy and nervous. It was from the notepad that Emil would keep on his desk, right next to his computer and the pen, well there was no pen. It was carefully written in pencil. Emil smiled as he ran his hand over the writing. He couldn't feel any writing, as if it didn't exist. The one who had written the note hadn't pressed down on the paper in the desperate manner Emil had expected. No, it was calm, barely there. A bit shaky, but the writer was also calm. 'How can someone be calm, but nervous and shaky?' Emil thought as he looked at the rough and thin paper with a confused look. With a look that did not understand.