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It was clear after Reigen had recovered some of his physical health that it would take time to recover mentally, if he ever fully did. He’d panicked after they’d brought him home from the hospital, transported back to the attic and so distraught he’d tried to pull off his daring rescue a second time. Reigen had been ill for a while after that and when it had eventually resolved not all of him came back, like he'd used what little he had left defending their son.
He was sluggish, movements sometimes minutes behind, slow to respond to their company and unable to answer their questions at all. Akane was working with him now, trying to help him grasp the toothbrush in his trembling hand and Hisao frowned at the look of utter concentration on his face. It had taken a long time before Reigen had been able to give her his attention at all.
“Good, love.” Once it was in his grip, muscle memory took care of the rest and Akane offered up a gentle smile and soft pass through his bangs. Reigen’s tense shoulders relaxed under her palms as he returned a tired, crooked grin, and Hisao wondered, not for the first time, if that was the key in all of this.
Reigen was frustrated. Over a toothbrush. He knew what they wanted him to do but his hand hurt, and everything was just so hard and he couldn't find the words to tell them that he just might not be able to do what they wanted. But he had to obey; that was important or there would be consequences. He was familiar with those. He didn't like them. Fingers stiff and non-responsive, he was trying harder than he’d ever tried in his life to comply with her request even while it felt like he was moving through tar. When he finally managed it she smiled warmly, tone happy, but the words were lost on him, a murmuring coming to him through a long tunnel. He smiled in return, a little lopsided like he'd forgotten how, and felt her fingers pet back his hair from a million miles away.
It was like being deep underwater even though he was only trapped beneath the clothes he wore, everything filtered and distorted like the sun through its surface, limbs heavy and mind slow. He was grasping for a connection and not able to complete it, frustrated because he kept missing his chances. It was exhausting to walk, to even sit up, and he knew on some level that he needed help to make it across a room. But he didn't recognize who it was, just that they were warm and patient with him, let him have the time he needed to decipher tasks like lifting a glass of water to his mouth, tugging a comb through his too-long hair, brushing his teeth. Things so outside this new realm it was overwhelming.
Names, voices, the sound of conversation drifted over and through him and there wasn't much for him to hold on to in the very beginning, busy as he was trying to figure out where he fit in this new slow space where even shifting the blanket aside felt like too much most days. He'd sleep forever if they let him; it was all he remembered how to do anymore.
But Mob. He knew Mob. That was his anchor in this new place as he drifted through rooms and time. Knew his voice, his presence, knew the people here cared about him. Mob was safe, so Reigen was safe too.
They’d discovered his fondness for classical music purely by accident after the news program Hisao had walked away from transitioned into instrumental song. Reigen hadn't been on the couch when Akane checked on him and after several moments of panic it was Shigeo who found him standing, unsteady, at the radio in the kitchen, staring transfixed with his head tilted slightly to the side. Their oldest took his hand, threading their fingers together, and when Reigen squeezed back he smiled broadly.
“Do you like it?” The smallest of nods after only a minute or two and he swayed on his feet. Placing a chair behind him, Hisao lowered him into it, settling heavy hands over his shoulders, stable and firm, as they listened quietly the three of them until the end of the piece. Head falling back, Reigen let it rest against the broad form behind him and looked up into his face, slightly off to one side and a little vacantly, blinking so slowly Hisao was afraid he might fall right asleep there.
“V’Vivaldi.” The barely there whisper was unexpected and Hisao smiled so hard his cheeks hurt.
“Is it?” Another minute went by and Hisao rubbed his thumbs over Reigen’s back, gentle and rhythmic as the man parsed the question. Another nod, as his eyes slid shut, expression calm and almost blissful and this time he did fall asleep, calm and easy, sat upright and leaning against him, hand still clasped in both of Shige’s own.
The music was familiar and he wanted to find it, enough that he was able to shift aside the lead draped over him to stagger upwards on shaking legs to go looking, following the sweet strains of the violin into another room. He'd heard this before. So long ago, in a small office, chin in his palm, laptop open in front of him.
It was comforting and something he remembered from before.
Warmth enveloped his hand, smaller fingers in the spaces between and reflexively Reigen gripped them back; it felt like the right thing to do. Holding another's hand. He liked it. Mob’s question floated to him, buoyed on the music, carried with it, and he nodded his answer, tried to twist his tongue around the name of the composer and failed.
The world tilted on its axis and before Reigen knew it, he was seated solidly in a chair, held there comfortably by two bands of heat clapped over his shoulders. Tired, he tipped his head back, pleasantly surprised when it met someone solid and kind. This was nice; safe, and close, and he blinked up into a face he knew should be familiar, tried again to grapple with a name, label the person offering him this comfort. He knew them. He thought he should anyway. Instead, the composer, mouth catching up to his brain minutes too late, tumbled out in a mess of consonants. Reigen thought he should feel bad, but the beatific smile stretching from ear to ear above him made warmth well up in his center, thawing some of the cold he seemed constantly suffused with. He didn't fully understand, but it felt good to be held like this, the pressure mollifying some of the static filling his head, and he caught the next question a little quicker, nodding his affirmation as he slipped down and away.
The nightmares were hard to watch, especially with his wrists close together and held above his head, a vision of his captivity that was difficult to stomach. Seized in their punishing fist he was often paralyzed in them, eerily silent and still, coming awake only when they reached their apex, breath harsh and labored but so, so quiet. Exhausted with them, he slept long hours and never came away from it fully rested.
When they realized the strange behavior was in fact because of his dreams, they would sit with him on the couch, speaking softly and either holding his hand or stroking his hair until he surfaced, gasping like he'd been too long underwater, eyes roving, until some part of him recognized where he was, or at least that he wasn't there. He'd lean into their touch, clumsy as he sought it out, caught between sleep and awake, and it made something inside Hisao and Akane twist painfully.
Reigen took to following them, helping out around the house when he got a sense of what to do and while they tried to stop him in the beginning, encourage him to rest, it became clear that he enjoyed the routine, or at least the praise that came with it, enough to insist in his own way. And both Akane and Hisao made sure to give it, tugging him into an embrace whenever the opportunity presented itself even though he wasn’t quite able to return it. Shigeo was patient when it came to explaining things, engaging Reigen in one-sided conversation while they completed this task or that, giving freely of his hugs and attention. Even Ritsu humored him, surprisingly indulgent. Akane came upon the three of them eating ice cream in the kitchen late one night and Reigen’s crooked grin was too sweet and tired to be angry at, so she aimed her questioning gaze towards her sons instead.
“Bad dreams,” Ritsu shrugged, spooning up another bite, and Shige nodded; so it had been the both of them. Sitting down between them, she tugged both sleepless casualties close, passing gentle fingers through their hair. Reigen sighed, heavy eyelids at half mast, the space between blinks less and less.
“Did you save any for me?”
It hadn’t been as much a discussion so much as a mutual decision made one night when they caught him staring longingly at the stairs, oversized shirt hanging off his shoulders and making him look so much smaller than he really was, eyes underscored by deep dark shadow. Akane wasn’t sure it was anything more than an abstract want, still skeptical of how aware of his surroundings he really was.
“G’n’night.” Quicker this time, the delay no more than a minute at most and they both knew he missed their exchange of glances. Hisao cupped Reigen’s face, brushing both thumbs over his cheekbones while he waited for his attention.
“Do you want to come with us?” The surprise dawned slowly, shifting fluidly into confusion as his gaze slipped between them, and Hisao drew him forward with an arm around his shoulders. He looked back at Akane, “I don’t think he’ll manage the stairs.” He’d only just figured out how to navigate the main floor. Carefully, Hisao swept him up and tucked him close as he reeled, already up the stairs and sitting on the bedside by the time Reigen had a limited grasp on what was happening.
He settled quickly, a little dazed cozied between them with Hisao at his back and his wrists above his head and Akane pulled them down, threading their fingers together and holding them fast. He was tired, that much she could tell this close to his face even in the dim light, and she pressed their foreheads together, smiling reassuringly, until the warmth and closeness pulled him under.
The first nightmare caught them both off guard and folded together as they were they could feel the rigidness of his body, the absence of his breath. Reigen was staring straight ahead, unseeing, unblinking, lips moving soundlessly until time forced him to take a ragged pull for air and he held it, resumed his muttering. Akane met Hisao’s eyes over him and released his hands to touch Reigen’s temple, move through his hair, surprisingly upset when they moved in tandem to that place above his head. Whispering softly to him, they urged him to come back, relieved when he finally relaxed, took a breath, and another, and another until they were coming too fast, accompanied by tears and no matter what they asked, he couldn’t answer. So they curled around him and held on until he held them back, going lax by inches; asleep again in the next moment. They were ready for the next one.
They lingered in bed the next morning, talking low and waiting for Reigen to wake on his own from where his head was pillowed in Hisao’s lap. It was quiet, like everything he did, slow and subdued, but when he looked up into their faces he met their eyes for the first time.
The couch was a good place.
Soft beneath him, supportive, clean. So different from the mattress he’d been chained to for a year or the hard, unforgiving ground skinned by the cold floor of his tent that it helped pull him out of memory. Reigen could curl into the back of it, hide in the fabric when the nightmares became too much, grounded by raised walls on three sides, surrounding and shielding him. Like they did, with their arms around him after he’d done something right, pressed so close he could focus on their heartbeat beneath his ear instead of the yawning, hungry void in his mind. It was different from Mob. Reigen could fold him up instead of the other way around, keep him safe. But it felt good, tethering him further to here and now when it would be so easy to let the pieces he had left slip entirely away.
He wanted more of it. Of their touch. And the realization was jarring. It had been a long time since he'd wanted anything like this, wanted something bad enough to attempt to ask for it. But he was so tired, thoughts a constant whirlwind, and he longed for the respite they offered whenever they reached out to him.
They were reaching for him now, extending the kind of proposal Reigen desperately wanted the words to accept but he was still parsing the question. He wanted to follow them but physically couldn’t, the prospect of stairs overwhelming considering crossing the room still took most of what he had. Gravity shifted and everything went sideways as he was lifted, carried to a room he’d never seen before and helped to sit, to process, before being tucked under cool sheets.
This was a better place.
Cradled between two warm bodies, held gently and completely with their soothing fingers carding through his hair. It calmed the maelstrom and provided him a way past it, a clear path through the dark crowding him out and he settled deeply into the best sleep he’d had since before.
When the nightmare came it was expected. It was familiar, and the way it took everything from him was familiar too. It was cloying, suffocating, hemming him in on all sides as it trapped him inside his own body and he sank helplessly deeper into the howling black. And then voices, kind around him, hands touching carefully, arms holding tightly and he held tightly back while their touch dispersed the lingering fear like a fine mist burned off by the rising sun. Reigen found himself crying from the sheer relief of not being alone, of feeling so safe, too wrung out to attempt an explanation even if he somehow could. So he clung to them, buried his face in their combined warmth and let it take him and when the dreams came again, they were already there.
The light was different here and everything around him was quiet and calm. Reigen was content to bask in it, reveling in the hum of the conversation happening above him, those familiar hands running over his back as he surfaced.
Looked up into a pair of kind faces.
And saw them.