Hiroshi knew he should sleep. He hadn't slept for...what. Days? Weeks? Months? A long time. His eyes were gritty, his mouth was dry, and had long passed the point where the entire world seemed to swoop and yaw with every tiny movement of his head. Now he felt pretty much like an astronaut. Like gravity wasn't right on this weird planet he'd landed on.

It had been a good idea to come home. The bath had been very important, and it had been somehow comforting to find Mura-chan sacked out in the main room snoring away with his long limbs stretched across two entire futons. (Hiroshi wasn't there for this, but apparently Mura-chan had refused to sleep on the floor in Tetsu's room, saying there wasn't enough space for him to sleep properly. It was probably true. And none of them had been into Taiga's room.)

After bathing and eating and wishing Tetsu a pleasant night, Hiroshi got into bed. He laid on his back and stared at the ceiling. Then he closed his eyes. He tried breathing slow and thinking about his limbs getting heavy. He counted his breaths. He imagined how satisfying it would be to punch Tetsu's father in the face, just once. Now, he could add little Joji's mother to that fantasy, as well. It was usually a perfect relaxation technique.

Nothing worked. After a couple of hours, Hiroshi gave it up as a bad job. He sat up, switched on the light, and blinked stickily at the room for a while. No good. Everything reminded him of Taiga.

This room had been Taiga's for the year Hiroshi was trapped in LA, after all. It was the biggest bedroom in the apartment, and it only made sense for him to use it once they had realized that he was going to be living here alone. Hiroshi knew very well that Taiga had never really utilized all of the space, of course. His needs were simple and few. But he was a big guy, so he had deserved the room to stretch out.

When Hiroshi moved back from LA, Taiga insisted on giving him the room back, while he would take the room that had been Hiroshi's little office-slash-den for a while. Hiroshi had argued with him, but he hadn't won. So now he had the biggest room. He had his bed in one corner next to the window, and his office space in the opposite corner, desk and computer and bookshelves. There was even a small sofa against one wall, perfect for lounging in when he could work from home and he didn't feel like sitting in a desk chair with no one there to judge him. He did his best to always be grateful for the space, for his own little home within their larger, shared home. Everyone needed somewhere to retreat.

But now, it was too big. Hiroshi looked around the room. He studied every piece of furniture, the clothes he had abandoned carelessly on the floor, the papers scattered over his desk. His mind insisted on bringing up images of Taiga in here, picking up the clothes and straightening the papers, cheerfully scolding Hiroshi for not being a better example to his teenage sons. "You only act like an adult when you have to," he would say. "I know you're the one who's been stealing my shampoo, too. Whatever will I do with such a father? No one would ever believe them if I told them. Not even Tetsu-chan. He thinks you're a god."

They had never had that exact conversation. But Hiroshi could hear it all too easily. He could almost feel it, the warmth of his eldest son filling this too-wide space and making it feel like a home again instead of a trap. Hiroshi pressed his hand to his heart and closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at the room any longer.

This was ridiculous. Taiga was fine. He was wounded and hospitalized, and he might have a hard recovery ahead of him. But he wasn't dead. He wasn't. He might have been in danger of that at some point, abandoned on a cold street bleeding from the gut, but he hadn't died. Someone had found him. Someone had called for help. (And if Hiroshi ever found out who had done that, what anonymous angel had rescued his son from the elements for him... "Shower of gratitude" did not begin to cover what Hiroshi would subject that person to.)

Taiga wasn't dead. He was alive and well, and Hiroshi had seen him just a few hours ago. He could pick up his cell phone and call Tatsuya and hear exactly what Taiga was doing right this second. (Hopefully sleeping. He should be sleeping. They should all be sleeping.) He could even ask Tatsuya to wake him up so he could speak to him and hear his voice, if he really needed to. It might help him sleep.

But no. Taiga was fine. It wouldn't do any good to interrupt his rest, which he so badly needed. That would be selfish. Hiroshi would be an adult. He would not be selfish.

This wasn't working. Hiroshi needed some kind of change, or he was never going to be able to get any rest. For a moment, his gaze lingered on the top drawer of his nightstand, which held a bottle of pills small enough to hide in a fist. He had a high-paced, high-stress life, and his doctor had suggested he might need some help to calm down once in awhile. Tiny little white pills that promised a dreamless sleep for an entire night. Hiroshi hadn't tried them yet. He felt like once he did, he wouldn't be able to stop. He didn't want to be dependent on chemicals produced in a lab in order to control his life.

No, what he really needed was his sons, both safe and healthy and at home with him. Safe at home, just down the hall, where he could go and stop outside their bedroom doors and listen to them breathe, just to make sure. It had become something of a habit on those nights when Hiroshi had trouble finding sleep. He found it more calming than any drug he could imagine.

That soothing activity was not an option now. After sitting still in his bed for a bit longer, swaying where he sat, Hiroshi finally pushed the covers aside and swung his legs over the side. His feet touched down on the cool flooring, and his toes scrunched up in reaction. He didn't usually miss the American peculiarity of wall-to-wall carpeting (what a strange habit for a country where people wore shoes indoors) but at moments like this, he did.

Hiroshi pulled in a breath and staggered up on unsteady legs. He pulled the top blanket off the bed and wrapped it around his shoulders, moved to the door to turn on the overhead lights, then stumbled to the desk. Maybe some paperwork would calm him down. There were reports he needed to read, results he needed to absorb and analyze. And he really did need to make it up to his boss and the high-priority clients he had skipped out on when he cut his trip short. He had been joking when he told Taiga that he could have lost his job, but honestly, when he thought back to that look in his boss's eyes when Hiroshi had demanded to be allowed to leave...

Well, it was done. Nothing Hiroshi could do now but try to mend any bridges he might have accidentally burnt in the extremity of his fear. He gathered a handful of papers from the briefcase he had abandoned on his desk what felt like ages ago, then went over to the little sofa at the edge of the room and not so much sat down on it as fell loosely from a height.

Sitting, Hiroshi pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and blinked down the papers. This...was a report. Not the one he'd meant to grab. It would have to do. He squinted his eyes against the harsh light and the pounding behind his eyes and began to read.

A soft scuff at the door interrupted him. Hiroshi was almost breathless with gratitude. He looked up and found Tetsu standing there, holding the door open only a handspan, his face sleepy and bashful. "Dad?"

"Tetsu-chan." Hiroshi lowered the papers into his lap. "Are you all right?"

Tetsu nodded, blinking with great care as he tried to adjust to the yellow light of Hiroshi's room. "I saw the light on under the door..."

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you. Do you want to come in?"

Tetsu nodded more easily this time, then pushed the door open and let himself in, bare feet padding noiselessly on the floor. He was carrying his pillow in front of him, one arm wrapped around it to hold it against his stomach. It was almost like a child with a teddy bear. Almost like Joji earlier today, and Hiroshi's heart clenched at the comparison.

"You didn't wake me," Tetsu said, already moving closer to the sofa where Hiroshi sat. "I was already awake."

"I see." Hiroshi patted the cushion next to him, and Tetsu plopped down. He leaned his head against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again and stared straight ahead.

Hiroshi smiled, thought it was twisted and sad. "You couldn't sleep, either? I'm sorry to hear that."

"Mm. I slept for a little while. It was good. But I woke up again."

"Did you have a bad dream?"

Tetsu was quiet, just staring into the distance. Hiroshi waited, then began to regret the question.

"It's all right, you don't have to answer that if you don't want to."

Tetsu blinked, coming out of wherever he'd gone, and turned his head to look at Hiroshi. "I have a lot of bad dreams."

Hiroshi felt a pang in his chest. It was a good thing he knew what this was, or he might have to start asking his doctor about heart problems, too. "I know," he said softly. "Taiga usually helps you with them."

Tetsu must have missed his big brother tonight. Damn. This wasn't fair.

"They're usually about the past. This one was different. It was about the future."

Oh. Hiroshi went very, very still. "What did you see, Tetsu-chan?"

"Taiga-nii told me once that he had bad dreams sometimes, too. But they were about me. He would dream about me disappearing in front of him, or being taken away by some dark and terrifying force. He said he never dreamed about my father hurting me, I guess because he's so confident, even in his subconsciousness, that I'm safe from that now. But he would dream about something he didn't understand instead. Because that's what Taiga-nii fears. He fears things he doesn't understand and can't beat off with his fists. My depression. My trauma. My lack of self-esteem. My panic attacks and flashbacks."

Hiroshi nodded. He and Taiga had discussed this more than once. When Tetsu had a bad dream, he went to Taiga. When Taiga had a bad dream, he went to Hiroshi.

Tetsu sighed and looked away again. "I never really understood why he was so afraid of those things. Didn't he know that he was already defending me from them? That my brother, and my dad, and my team, and my friends are all my stalwart allies in this fight? There's no way I can fail with all of you beside me, behind me, in front of me.

"But I understand now. Because for the first time, I had a dream like that, too."

"I see." Hiroshi dumped his papers on the floor. Then he wrapped his arm around Tetsu's shoulders and pulled him in, his other arm circling around the front to hold his son close to his side, warm and real and breathing and alive. "It must have been terrifying."

Tetsu relaxed against him. He nodded, his soft hair tickling under Hiroshi's chin. "I know Taiga-nii will recover physically. It might be hard and long, and he might miss out on a lot of things he'd rather be a part of, and that's bad and it hurts and it makes me sad and angry that all of that was stolen from my precious nii-san. But I'm not afraid of that, because I know Taiga-nii is strong and he can get through any physical challenge. He always has and he always will. I'm scared of other things. I'm scared of things I don't understand."

"I think you might understand them better than you realize,Tetsu-chan. I think you might understand better than anyone else. I hadn't even realized that we might have more to worry about than just the physical aspect of Taiga's recovery. But here you are, already looking ahead and seeing the other challenges we might face. That's very wise of you."

Tetsu pulled his knees up so he could rest his feet on the sofa, turning his body into a cuddly little ball rolled into Hiroshi's side. Hiroshi let go of him long enough to pull the blanket away from his shoulder and wrap it around them both. Tetsu leaned forward to accommodate the movement, then rested against him again

"Can I stay here for a while?" Tetsu asked. "I'm sorry. You looked like you were studying something."

"It was nothing," Hiroshi said. "Those papers were useless. I wasn't even really reading them. Of course you can stay a while. You can stay as long as you want."

"Thank you."

Tetsu tucked his head under Hiroshi's chin again. Hiroshi held him warm in both arms, though he raised one hand to trail slowly through Tetsu's hair.

"Don't be afraid," Hiroshi murmured, the words rumbling deep in his chest. "Whatever Taiga is going through, whatever he suffers now and in the days ahead, we will never, never let him go. He's not going to disappear. We're not going to let anything take him away. All of your allies are his allies, too. Besides that, he also gets you. You're worth ten of the rest of us. So Taiga will be fine. He can't be anything else. It's not possible."

Tetsu drew in a deep breath, then let it out. "Thank you, Dad. I'm glad you're here."

"Me too, Tetsu-chan." Hiroshi kissed the top of his head. "Me too."

Hiroshi's eyes began to droop. Tetsu's breath was slow and even. The light no longer seemed to burn. And they slept.