There's a buzzing in his head, and if he thinks about it for too long, it starts his hands shaking again. So he's been trying his best not to think about it at all.

Tadashi's hesitating by the stairs in the living room, and he wants nothing more than to head up to the attic and crash. Preferably for a week.

But he keeps picturing Fred's face, imagining he can feel the weight of lifting him up by the front, and- and remembering how easy it would have been to turn and throw him down the steps onto the street- and every time he feels remorse, every time he thinks he shouldn't have done that, he remembers what Hiro told him, and what he saw, and what almost…

Shit, he wasn't going to think about Fred anymore. At least, he was going to try. Because this cluster of thoughts screaming twenty different things at him is too wearying to deal with right now.

Tadashi exhales, and grimaces against the slowly-developing headache. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I'll talk to him."

Standing in the hallway, Cass looks to the stairs for a moment. "Thank you," she says quietly. "I tried, but… he didn't really…" She trails off, then gives a hint of a smile. "I had to be 'bad cop', this time."

"Right." It makes sense; Hiro's never been too keen on being punished at all. So the last thing he'd want would be to open up to the very person who just grounded him into the next century.

Nodding, Cass blinks and looks away. "So… okay. Okay. I'm-" For a second, she doesn't seem to move at all. Tadashi barely hears her when she finally says, "I really thought something awful happened."

She's still thinking of the fights. Not the other thing. The idea that's had Tadashi shaking since he got back from Fred's- the reason he has no clue what to say to Hiro right now.

He clears his throat. "Yeah," he says. "Me too."

Finally, she pulls him into a tight hug and waits there for a moment. "Get some rest, alright?" she says, then moves away to face him. Her hand squeezes his shoulder, and she has a smile that looks like it's about to break. "I think we both need it."

It's only early evening, but Tadashi's been fighting off exhaustion ever since Hiro stormed out almost twenty-four hours ago, and he can see that Cass is feeling the same thing. "Night, Aunt Cass."

She looks from him up to the attic, then back, and- she wants to say more, he just knows it, but- she turns away, and raises a hand to her eyes, and then she's gone down the hall, and a door closes, Tadashi's left alone at the foot of the stairs.

He doesn't even want to think about what this has been like for her.

So he tries to stave off the tired, and the worry, and the headache all at once, and starts up the stairs. The whole building feels still, somehow, like everything's finally able to breathe again- but he can't bring himself to feel relieved. Everything inside him, everything that was burning and panicking and finally exploded when he saw Fred… it's all still there. Just quieter. And it makes his stomach twist when he finally gets to the top, and pokes his head into the dark attic.

Dark, because the only light is coming from Hiro's computer screen. His brother is hunched over, motionless, silhouetted against some Youtube video or other, and the music in his earbuds must be loud, since Tadashi can hear it from the other end of the room.

One of the steps creaks, and Hiro takes out one bud before glancing over his shoulder. He sees his brother, and… nothing. He sighs, and takes out the other, but he doesn't turn all the way to face Tadashi. He just waits.

"Hey."

A nod that's so slight, it's hardly there.

Tadashi hesitates, foot still on the topmost stair. "You know your computer was part of the 'grounding' thing, right?" he says halfheartedly.

"Mm." He's not even looking at Tadashi, now. He's just staring vacantly to the floor in front of him.

…He hates feeling so useless.

This sucks. It's just- it's completely awful, and stupid, and Tadashi has no idea what to do about it. Even just seeing his brother brings a stab of protect-at-all-costs to his chest, as well as a slew of dark and angry thoughts about Fred, but- Hiro doesn't need someone to literally guard him, right now because Tadashi already screwed that up pretty well, didn't he but he needs something else, needs help in a different way, and… Tadashi has no idea how to do that.

What, should he sit Hiro down on a couch and ask him about his feelings? Grab a golf-pencil and a notebook, and start telling him what his dreams mean?

He crosses to his bed, on the other side of the room. It should be easy to talk to him, right? They're brothers. There's never been this… gap before. Like a void, stretching on and on, and he can see the other side but he can't get there. It's so easy to imagine himself saying the perfect thing, that overcomes all the silence and deals with both Hiro's running away and the friggin' traumatic experience he just went through, but he can't actually do it.

Tadashi wants to make things right so badly it hurts.

Just a little bit of the this is all your fault comes back through, and he presses his thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose, as if he can push it all away if he tries hard enough. God, he's tired. And part of him's afraid to turn around and look at Hiro, because he'll break down and crowd him and ask him too much, and Hiro will probably freak out, because the last thing he needs right now is someone prodding him about what happened, but… hell, maybe that is what he needs to do? He doesn't know. He can't figure it out. He can't find the solution.

The buzzing in his forehead is back. Tadashi takes off his hat, and lets it fall down onto the sheets of his bed. He rubs at his eyes. He looks out the window for a while.

He grits his teeth, and turns. "Hey, Hiro-"

But Hiro's out of his chair, already starting down the steps to the living room, and he pauses. "Huh?"

For a second, Tadashi just blinks stupidly at his brother. "Where are you going?" he manages.

It's a weird combination, seeing the blank stare from a minute ago with just a bit of Hiro's snark. "…Just getting some food," he says quietly. Then, he raises an eyebrow. "On the way, I'll rob the cash register and get arrested, if it makes you feel better."

…Oh, perfect. It probably looked like he suspected Hiro of trying to sneak out again. Tadashi mentally slaps himself, and tries to stutter out an apology. "I didn't mean, like- I wasn't saying that, okay? I know you weren't…" He gestures lamely towards his brother, then gives up. "You know."

The scowl gets darker. "Sure." He turns away again.

"Hiro, wait."

The look he shoots Tadashi flies past 'rebellious' and lands straight in 'mutinous', but Tadashi came up here to talk, dammit, and even if he has no idea what to say, and even if he can't stop worrying that he already messed this up so badly that he can't fix it, he still has to try, so he takes a deep breath and-

"I already said I was sorry."

He's not looking at him again. Instead, Hiro's staring up at the ceiling, as if focusing on something else will help. "I- I screwed up," he says, voice breaking. "I get it, I was wrong, and- and I shouldn't have said all that to Aunt Cass. I'm sorry."

The attic is quiet. Hiro glances down the stairs for a second. "You can do the whole 'I told you so' thing," he says, and there's an angry edge in his voice, but he still looks… resigned. "But it doesn't matter. I already know I was wrong, and I should have listened to you, and-" He bites back his own words, then glares at his brother again. "It doesn't matter," he repeats.

That stings. Hiro's looking at him like he's already been completely humiliated, and he doesn't care if Tadashi decides to lord it over him. That… shit, that burns. Tadashi can't say anything for a moment, but when he finally finds his voice, it's wavering and weak. "Hiro, of course I'm not gonna make fun of you."

He looks down again, shrinks, one hand rubbing at his elbow again, avoiding eye contact again, pulling away again.

"Do you think I wanted you to get hurt?" Tadashi fights to keep his voice from getting louder, or hysterical. "You think I was waiting for a chance to prove something?"

It's hard to tell in the light, but it looks like Hiro is- oh, hell, Hiro's shaking. Tadashi's not gonna be able to handle this. There's already a lump in his throat. "Listen, bud," he says as steadily as he can. "I don't care about any of that, all right? I want you to be safe. That's it. Everything else- none of it matters. That's why the bot fights freaked me out so much, and that's why Cass got mad at you, and why-"

He knows what he's going to say, and… yep, there it is, he's crying for real now. "-why I don't know how to do this," he finishes, and he doesn't care that his words are closed off and heavy. "I know I'm not D- I'm just me, and I can't tell you what to do, all the time, but I want to help, man, I just- I don't know. And everything that happened today, and yesterday, it's all-"

Tadashi trails off. Hiro's still not looking at him. "I don't know," he says again, and the words are gone in a second and suddenly the void is back, filling up the room and smothering it with quiet.

And then Hiro scoffs. "You don't know?"

There's something about the way he says it, and the way he still refuses to look up, that makes Tadashi wonder if… maybe he's never heard him say that before. Maybe he's always thought of Tadashi as a genius, but an arrogant one who would never admit to being unsure of anything. It tears at him just like everything else Hiro has said, but he holds his ground. "Right," he says. "I keep trying to think of what I should do, but… I don't know what to think about any of this."

Hiro's hand drifts towards his elbow.

"And I'm sorry, man. I'm so sorry this happened."

Hiro's stare is boring into the floor.

"So if you ever… like, want to talk about it." Tadashi fights to keep his voice under control. "I'll be here."

And that's not enough. It can't be, because- because what Hiro told him, what Fred told him, it's all so- and he has no idea what on earth it would be like to be in Hiro's shoes right now, especially since he was there, and just like before, he keeps feeling like he's not doing enough, he's useless, he's not being the brother he's supposed to be-

Finally, Hiro looks up at him.

The computer's light is dimmed, so he can barely see his brother's face by the faint light coming up the stairs. Hiro's brow furrows, and he blinks a few times like he's trying to work thorugh what he's saying. "When he, um-" He breaks off immediately, then tries again. "I- I was thinking, like-"

He's grabbing his arm tightly, right where the scabs were. "It was like- like I couldn't-" He keeps trying, but the sentence never finishes, and Tadashi can't do anything but wonder what he's saying, what he's thinking, what he's feeling.

The room's quiet.

Tadashi fights back the urge to say me too, because the look on Hiro's face- the frustration, the jumble of worries and confusion and half-formed ideas- is exactly how he's been feeling for a while now. But instead, he just waits.

He looks trapped. No, worse, he looks torn apart- like he's halfway between the boy who wants to apologize, and be comforted, and run to his family so they can make everything okay, and the teenager who needs to break away and figure out his own mind and wrestle with questions he can't answer, and fears he never should have had to imagine.

It's haunting, and a thought hits Tadashi, dark and angry: even if Fred never touched Hiro, that doesn't mean he didn't hurt him.

Hiro brings a hand to his hair, and the shaking is more pronounced, now. "He seemed fine," he says. "But then he tried to ask me-"

It's the first time he's mentioned Fred since Tadashi came back. And right when Tadashi realizes that, Hiro closes his eyes tightly, and his entire frame seems to collapse.

Tadashi has his arms around him just before Hiro starts sobbing.

He's sick of thinking, so he doesn't worry about it, this time- he just stays there, holding onto him, occasionally saying 'it's alright' because he doesn't know what else to say. He doesn't know how much of this is Fred's fault, and how much is from their mess of family drama, and how much comes from Hiro's eagerness to get into trouble, but maybe it doesn't matter, right now. He can't analyze his brother- he can't perfectly understand the dark looks, and the anger, and the panic, any more than he can know what Hiro felt like when he was coming home on the tram.

Maybe he can't fix it.

And that hurts, but he holds onto the hurt and he doesn't falter when Hiro falls against his shoulder and hugs him back, shaking and unsteady. Because Hiro is so much more important than any of his doubts, or worries, or the bullshit happening around them. And even if he doesn't know exactly how, he's going to help him through it.

The sniffling dies down, and Hiro steps away, wiping his eyes, taking a moment just to breathe. He doesn't look better, exactly. But he's not glaring into empty space like before.

Abruptly, he turns to his desk. He picks up a coin from near his computer and, after looking briefly towards Tadashi, tosses it at the jar on the shelf on the near wall. It misses, and clatters to the floor with a soft ping.

Tadashi stares at the fallen coin, but Hiro's focus is back on his computer. "It's fucked up," he says suddenly, with an angry weight still choking his words. "It's just- it's really-" He's glaring, now, defiant. He almost speaks again, but it must be too much, because he stops and wearily presses a hand against his face.

…He almost thinks about Fred, but he can't. Because he was one person for years, and then suddenly he was another, wrapped up in drama and missed phone calls, and still another when he talked to Tadashi in the park. Then Hiro told him a story, and everything changed.

And then someone else entirely, on the steps of the mansion.

Slowly, hesitating, Tadashi gets up and takes a few steps towards the middle of the room. When he kneels down to grab the quarter, Hiro lets his hand fall and watches him with red in his eyes.

Standing again, Tadashi drops it in the jar. "You're right," he says quietly. "It's fucked up."