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The oldest Kamado refused to admit to suffering from post-traumatic stress. Shinobu would tap her pen against her desk in such a way that he would hyperventilate after a while, but after the first time he did it he learned to control his breathing enough that it didn't make him pass out because she made him stay in bed for two days. He would admit to having been through trauma, because he couldn't convince even himself that finding his family hadn't been traumatic. But he wasn't still bothered about it, years after the fact. Not enough to call it post-traumatic stress.
The nightmares were just from eating too soon before bed.
Except after the train, after the fight with Akaza, after they lost the Flame Pillar... He had a harder time excusing himself.
It had been two months, and he and Inosuke were sent on solo missions that were near enough to one another that they wound up at the same Wisteria House. Moreover, Inosuke had been sleeping in a tree, and Tanjiro had crossed under him and been pounced to the path (carefully, Tanjiro noticed-- Inosuke had made sure neither of them damaged Nezuko's box or rattled her within it too terribly) and the older Kamado had convinced him to come along with him to the nearby house. Inosuke, it seemed, was too shy to stay at them when he was alone.
He woke up drenched in sweat, jaw clenched so tightly his head throbbed, to Inosuke's pale fingers carefully running through his hair. He hadn't cried, because he remembered Inosuke's insistence not to when Rengoku died, despite crying himself. Maybe he was a sympathetic crier, and it embarrassed him. That was okay.
Another month later, the three of them were sent on a mission together-- a rarity, anymore --and when they were attacked during Tanjiro's turn to keep watch, it was nearly two days before they slept again. None of their injuries were severe, but they were just enough that they decided it was wiser to get back to the Butterfly Estate than camp overnight again, and mid-conversation the exhaustion and his injuries made Tanjiro hallucinate.
They were walking, leisurely to not aggravate Inosuke's sprained knee or the blessedly shallow gash along Zenitsu's ribs, and a trick of the light put yellow hair and a white cape at the corner of his vision. He stopped. Stopped walking, stopped speaking, stopped breathing, at least briefly. When he started again it was short, gasping breaths, the same ones he would take to carefully keep from passing out when Shinobu tapped her pen.
The worst part was that he always knew when he was dreaming or seeing something that wasn't real, because dreams and hallucinations had no smell. Rengoku Kyojuro had smelled like the fire in a wood-burning stove and freshly cooked white rice, a smell that was as dangerous as it was comforting, but the dreams and the times his image flickered at the corner of his vision never smelled like anything.
When Inosuke's boar mask slid in front of him and broke his transfixed line of sight, his knees dropped out from under him and started crying so hard he threw up. Inosuke carried him to the estate on his back despite his muddled attempts to dissuade him, and he fell into a fitful doze with his face buried in his indigo hair, Zenitsu carrying his boar head and Nezuko's box.
His hair smelled like pine and dirt, his skin beneath it like sweat and ozone. He smelled like a storm rolling into the forests of a mountain, and Tanjiro figured that suited him just fine.
Zenitsu had called it a panic attack. The only thing Inosuke drew from that was that something was attacking Tanjiro, and that was absolutely not allowed. He kept a much closer watch on Tanjiro after that, determined to catch whatever panic was attacking him before it could harm his friend again. Zenitsu rolled his eyes and told him it didn't work like that, but the feral boy paid him no mind.
The next time he saw him they were at the Estate, waiting for their next missions order from their crows, and Tanjiro was seated on the engawa with his feet dangling above the dirt when movement caught his eye, disappearing around the side of the building. Inosuke had dozed off laying on his side behind him, chin propped up in a hand and drool trailing from his open mouth, and Tanjiro was just quiet enough as he got up and ran after what he was sure was a red-tipped cape torn like flames. Inosuke's over-sensitive skin tingled harshly as he turned the corner, startling him awake in time to watch his shadow as he stopped dead just around the corner and stared at what he absolutely knew wasn't there.
He knew it wasn't real, because he couldn't smell anything. He couldn't hear anything, either, he realized, but he kept staring at the visage of the departed Flame Pillar, standing with his arms crossed over his chest, his cape blowing in the wind just enough that Tanjiro couldn't convince himself entirely he wasn't real. His voice wouldn't work, though, he couldn't call out to him. His ears were ringing, his heartbeat thundering in them, pounding like the headache he always had when he clenched his teeth too hard during a nightmare to keep from making sound and waking anyone else up. His eyes got hot, and his throat burned, and he realized he hadn't blinked and wasn't breathing.
When Inosuke surged to his feet and stormed down the hall, he stopped just short of fully rounding the corner in order, ready to see this so-called panic that was attacking his friend with his own eyes, commit it to memory, and destroy it without a trace. But he saw nothing. For the first time in ...well, probably ever, Inosuke chose to stop and think of what else Zenitsu had said that night after they returned to the Butterfly Estate.
"He had a panic attack," he explained, tone worried despite how tired they both were. "Exhaustion can make people see things that frighten them so deeply their whole bodies seize up. It's like fear itself grabs your heart and squeezes it, so you can't breathe or stop thinking about whatever you're so afraid of. Never thought I'd see Tanjiro get one..."
But Tanjiro wasn't afraid of anything. He was too strong for that. And that aside, when he slowly slunk up alongside the redhead and glanced sidelong at him, he had only looked horribly, terribly sad. It was the same expression he wore as he watched the guy with the wide-staring eyes die. Right down to the way his eyes welled up and tears trailed down his cheeks, collecting at his chin and dripping onto the engawa below them. He tried to follow his line of sight, tried again to see this panic, see what Tanjiro was so afraid of he'd seized up like this, but there was nothing but the yard. His breath hitched, and Inosuke was reminded of how he cried so suddenly and loudly the first time he'd thrown up, and reached out instinctively, his hand closing around his wrist. He pressed two fingers against the pressure point where Tanjiro's pulse hammered erratically, remembering Shinobu mentioning that was a way to abate nausea, and Tanjiro turned to look at him slowly.
"Don't throw up," Inosuke warned simply, and around his voice the sound of the Estate filtered back slowly. "Shinobu would get angry." He pressed his fingers against Tanjiro's wrist a little harder, like a squeeze. "I'll fight whatever panic is attacking you."
He only remembered to breathe then because it was such a ridiculous and utterly Inosuke thing to say he had to laugh. The sound came out fragile, wobbled its way into a sob, and he made a quiet sound of affirmation, bringing his other hand up to his face to smudge his eyes mostly dry with his palm. He turned to look back into the yard, and Rengoku smiled, closing his eyes and ducking his head forward in a bow. When Tanjiro blinked, he was gone, and he took an involuntary step forward, reaching out. Inosuke took that wrist, too, stepping in front of him and shifting so his thumbs were against the pressure points in Tanjiro's wrists.
"I'll fight it," he reiterated. "So don't be afraid."
Tanjiro turned his wrists so he could gently grasp Inosuke's in return, smiling through fresh tears and nodding. He took a shuddering breath, tried to hold it, and when it wobbled back out of his chest as another quiet sob he just took a step forward and put his face against Inosuke's neck, breathing in the scent of a storm and letting it calm his thundering heartbeat. Inosuke let him, keeping gentle pressure against his wrists.