The crutches are not as horrible as he thought they would be.

He doesn't like them, for sure, but he has to admit that it's pleasant to be able to stand on his own for once, despite how weak his abs muscles are from the still-healing wound cutting them in half. Arguably, if those are the only two choices, he likes this much better than being held by someone. For all that it's uncomfortable to add more again to a body he already has a hard time inhabiting, the stability and independence might be worth it this once.

It does help, too, that Temari went out of her way to find a black and purple pair. "It's more you." She said when bringing them over. It's true, though it also highlights how long it's been since the last time he was healthy enough to sit down and do a real full face of makeup. This is not going to happen very soon again either, probably. He's been off the bed for barely a minute, and he can already tell that his limbs are ready to give up underneath him.

"Are you ready? Your cab will be there in a minute," she asks with a still slightly worried frown at him while Gaara picks up his bag.

At least for once, he has a good excuse to refuse to get on her motorcycle. That shit scares the hell out of him, she knows it, and she usually does not use that knowledge for good.

He nods.

"Great. I'll join you two at your place then," she announces, picking up her helmet from the chair lying in a corner of the room.

This is finally it, right? He's going home, going to get actual silence and actual loneliness for the first time in almost two weeks now. Somehow, he's still feeling anxious about it. It feels like so long since he left already, and although he's been desperately needing to leave the hospital since the first step he took in – which arguably wasn't actually a step considering he got pushed in a stretcher directly from the ambulance, but still – he somehow not sure he remembers how to be alive anymore.

Well, he'll have to find a way. For now, he needs to survive the ride there. Then, climbing up to his apartment. Then, he will get about a thousand years of sleep. Then, he'll see.

"Are we not waiting for Temari?" Gaara asks with a pinch of his shaved brows when Kankurou painfully pushes the entrance door of the building.

"Absolutely not," he affirms.

He doesn't know how they managed to be quicker than her to get to his place, but he will take any small blessing he can get.

"The less she sees me struggle, the less she will try to convince me to sleep elsewhere. Just text her that we're in already."

Gaara steps in to hold the second door to the stairs for him.

"Maybe she's right to," he notes.

He hasn't intervened too much in the matter yet, because it's obvious that it annoys the hell out of Kankurou, and Temari is doing it enough for it to be pointless to add more to the mix, but the visible agony in his brother's movement as he starts walking up the stairs is too painful for him to let it happen without comment. He won't stop Kankurou – he can't – but it feels wrong not to say anything.

"Oh, she is. I most definitely am not fit to walk up those stairs," Kankurou willingly agrees. "But I am also not fit for even just one more day of being looked at with protectiveness, and for all that I love her, I don't think she is capable of switching that off."

He isn't mad at her for it, he knows he wouldn't do better in her place. It's their respective role towards each other, and she's performing it excellently. And he needs it, regardless of how much it irritates him. He just can tell that if he hears more human voices and sees more human eyes this week, he's going to seriously start to consider piercing his eardrums and ripping his eyeballs off. No one wants that.

"You could come to my place," Gaara offers.

"With all the love in the world, Gaara," Kankurou starts, taking a break on the first floor and out of breath in a way that doesn't sound good to him at all. "You live in a studio that is barely twenty square metres. Both you and I are going to hate every second of it."

"But-"

"Leave it." Kankurou cuts, gentle but firm. "Please."

They look at each other for a handful of seconds, Kankurou's gaze fixed on his, his own wandering around the seriousness of his expression before he eventually swallows and nods. This is important, and not up for debate anymore.

"Okay."

"Thank you. Now," he puts his right crutch up on the next step. "We still have four times what we just did, so let's get going."

If he wasn't in so much fucking pain, this would feel like heaven.

After another good ten minutes of struggle and swallowed groans, he had finally managed to reach his doorstep and, after another good thirty others filled with a bunch of (half-empty) promises that he would call if needed to get rid of his siblings for the time being, he had finally been left alone.

Now, he is lying on his bed, pants and hoodie off, trying to appreciate the feeling of an empty room with a locked door despite the brutal aftermath of the day's efforts. The scar across his belly burns and pulsates from having used and moved the muscles around it too much, his back hurt like hell from overcompensating for his abs, and he can tell – though somewhat muffled by all of this – that he's getting growing nausea, too, but he suspects that this one is just the general exhaustion weighing on his still weak guts and that, hopefully, it will settle soon if he doesn't move again for a little while.

Slowly but surely, although the pain recedes very little, he can feel his body and brain relax and sink into the silence and semi-obscurity. Well, not silence, not exactly, he doesn't get that – and he doesn't want to, it was horrible enough the one time it did happen – but the absence of any sounds that aren't his own. There's the one of his breathing, still, the one of the static that's been following him around for about ten days but that is now lightly fading, and the one of crackling and whispering, of a chatter he cannot draw words out of, but that he knows well enough to recognise as his "back home" chatter, filling the room as if to check that every corner and detail is still properly in place, making the inventory of everything around him to approve of the conformity of it, and letting him know that he is safe and tidied back into the controlled environment of the tight enclosure of his studio.

There are pins and needles in his hands and neck, but the good kind, the kind that comes from his mind reconnecting to the pieces of him, like nerves growing back into numb limbs. He doesn't feel intact or really clean again, but now he's able to fully appreciate the feeling of not having rotting organs inside him anymore (for now, though it physically shouldn't happen again, he knows he's not free of the possibility of still being convinced that it is), of his blood being inside of him, not leaking out, not being injected into, and of no more fucking eyes looking at him.

It's a good start.

He closes his eyes to the light buzzing of the air around him, cradling him in its weight and warmth, and falls asleep after a few minutes.

The first days home are frankly not as bad as he might have feared. It's painful to sit up and walk through the room, for sure, but doable. He hates to G-d the feeling of his stoma bag against his skin and the way it constantly makes him hyperaware of the spot on his body where it rubs when he moves, weighing him down and distorting the whole rest of him like a blooming black hole, but he has yet to genuinely feel like he's about to rip his gut out, and frankly, that's the best he can ask for right now. When a few more of his brain cells can stay awake and focus all at once, he will try to figure out something better.

For now, he needs to try and use his little time of somewhat clear consciousness for a more urgent matter. He's summed up the general situation to Sasori before the surgery, knowing himself well enough to anticipate – rightfully – that he probably wouldn't be in a mental state to use his phone and communicate with the outside world directly after it. They've exchanged a bit over the past few days, but ultimately, there wasn't much Kankurou could tell him until he was home and in a position to assess his current autonomy and state of recovery.

[14:27] Kankurou: Good afternoon. I have gotten home on Friday. I'm still too weak to sit down long enough for any kind of work for the moment, but I can tell it's getting easier every day, so I'm hoping to be able to do some seated work starting next week. However, I'm not sure yet how I can get to the workshop to do that so I am still trying to figure out a solution on that end. I will keep you updated.

He could ask Temari to host him at that point, probably, after a good week of alone rest and, if he's lucky, her having some more work trips in coming, it would be manageable. She has, however, the bad taste to live in an apartment that, sure, has an elevator, but that is also situated twice as far from Sasori's workshop as his own place is, so this is not exactly going to solve his issue. And if it doesn't, well, he might as well stay home.

His phone buzzes after a few minutes.

[14:31] Sasori: Happy to know you're not dead yet

[14:31] Sasori: I could pass by to drop you some pieces in need of a paint job. It'll be less physical than woodwork, and more doable from home.

G-d yes.

For all that he loves the whole process, he must admit he finds particular serenity and pleasure in painting. The type he would really benefit from right now. He's been doing painting for longer than he's been doing crafting. On paper a little, but he's always preferred surfaces with more texture and lives on their own. Clay, wood, rocks found on the ground… his own body, too, a lot. Ever since his psychosis settled, body paint and make-up have been a very precious tool to get to feel the outline and the existence of his body again. It's easier to take care of a piece of art than of a sac of meat that you think is rotting half of the time. The reframing is simple, but arguably efficient.

[14:33] Kankurou: That would be wonderful

[14:34] Sasori: I'll see what I have for you at the end of the week then

[14:34] Kankurou: Thank you

[14:41] Sasori: Take care

By the time Friday comes, Kankurou can tell he's doing better because he's starting to grow restless to do something, anything, which is a very different and new state compared to the apathy of the past few weeks when he mostly alternated between wishing to pass out again so he wouldn't have to deal with pain and shit and blood and nausea and everything else, and being in an acute state of hypervigilance preventing him from engaging in any activity or interaction as everything felt too dangerous and unpredictable while he knew very well he didn't have the mental nor physical resistance to deal with any more aggression than he already was.

At some point, he vaguely tries to entertain the idea of going for a walk but is cut short in his impulse by the voices hissing at him to not be a stupid idiot again if he doesn't want to die. He goes on to spend another day checking his belly under his clothes every ten minutes because of the leaky wet feeling on his skin there every time he stops looking at it, which he eventually has to assume is meant as a warning of what will happen to him if he isn't careful enough. It feels like simply telling him should have been sufficient and that the semi-constant sensation of his blood and shit and organs dripping out of his open skin is a bit overkill, all things considered, but he's not the one to choose, and his brain has evidently decided otherwise.

After a few hours spent almost solely trying to manage these obsessive thoughts, he ends up texting Temari a picture to confirm that his scar looks normal and very much not about to re-open if he stops thinking about it for too long, which she kindly does. It does not stop the hallucinations one bit, but at the very least it settles part of his anxiety about them, and that will have to do for now.

When Sasori knocks at his door on Friday evening, he can feel himself acting like a feverishly excited puppy, and no matter how much he tries to contain it, he can tell by the way the man looks at him when he opens the door – brows slightly frowned, eyes slightly squinting, mouth slightly pouting – that he must look somewhat dishevelled and very obviously like a guy who has been stuck in a single room for three weeks now.

He's so eager to see what work his master brought over that it takes him a few seconds to notice the second person standing behind him, and that says a lot because the guy is huge.

"Oh. Kisame-san. Sorry, I hadn't seen you. Hi."

By all means, he's a rather impressive silhouette to have standing in the middle of the narrow corridor of his apartment building. He has a large frame and muscles that make his clothes look like he's going to tear them apart if he moves, small eyes darkened by a prominent brow ridge and cheekbones, and short spiky black hair that doesn't help with his overall rough aura, but Kankurou knows better than to assume it means anything about him. He's not going to deny having been the slightest put off the first time he saw him at the workshop, but there are only so many lunches you can share with a guy who brings neat and pretty little bento boxes to his boyfriend over at work on his free time before you forget about the mass of raw physical power in the body that made them.

The sight of Sasori putting down the wooden head and pair of arms for him to work on later on his desk – he's cleaned it the day before, thoroughly and pushing probably a bit too much through the pain but too impatient and scared his master would change his mind if his workspace wasn't spotless to help himself – makes the tip of his fingers tingle with impatience. He wants to touch them so bad, feel the smooth sanded texture of them against his skin and let the smell of wood wrap around his brain like a soft familiar blanket.

He has, however, the restraint not to do that while trying to focus on the instructions he's given.

In the corner of his field of view, he can see Kisame patiently waiting for them to be over, a paper bag in one hand and eyes scanning over the pile of take-out and frozen meal boxes piling over the counter. There's not really any judgment in his attitude – he has to assume his boyfriend somewhat updated him on the situation, if only to explain why they were coming over there in the first place – but it doesn't really make it less uncomfortable. It's not on him – and it's not any of them, really, Kankurou physically cannot make the place more decent than he's managed to for today, and Kisame is not going to just close his eyes and not look anywhere around him – it just tickles Kankurou's desire to not be perceived as much as possible in a way he doesn't like and that is hard to ignore.

"Are you sure you're healthy enough to do this?" Sasori eventually asks when he's done summing the project up to him.

There's still that slight frown on his face that Kankurou doesn't like, but that he assumes he's going to have to get used to until he's proven himself again.

Sasori has looked at him in a judgmental way since his first day at the workshop, only softening over time to a slightly more trusting and horizontal demeanour over time, but it hasn't really been a bother. It was fair. He was a newbie who mostly just got the spot because he was bold enough to go for it and make the opportunity for himself, of course he wasn't going to be trusted right off the bat, and the judgment was not a suspicion of incompetence, it was a neutral stance in the suspension of being proven one way or the other. If he'd suspected him to be incompetent from the start, he simply wouldn't have taken him in.

This, right here, is suspicion. And while he doesn't think it's one that mixes with feelings of treason or disappointment – he hopes to G-d it isn't – but it still is suspicion, and doubt that he is right to let him do what he's about to let him do.

"I am," he assures.

He's in pain still, for sure, and his mobility is still quite limited, but as long as he's working from home, he knows he can lie down in between two layers of paint, and that it will actually be easier to convince himself to do so when he has a good reason to. (Not hurting himself should probably be a good reason, but he's lucid enough about his own state to know that it isn't, as opposed to not messing up the work his master has entrusted to him.)

Sasori stares him down for another handful of silent seconds, eyes dragging over the hand he rested on the desk to support himself and on the crutches over the wall next to it, then, eventually, nods.

"Okay," he says, settling for now with that promise. "Text me when you're done. We'll pass over to pick it up."

When he's about to go for the door, Kisame stops him gently with a hand on his shoulder. These two's dynamic is a little confusing because it often feels like Kisame is each time the one providing and creating a frame for their interaction – together and with others – while Sasori mostly either resists it a bit or lets himself be pushed by the movement of the water, but maybe this is just an illusion caused by Kankurou's own inability to imagine his master in a more intimate and human-sized manner.

"Do you need help with this?" he asks, pointing at the trash he's been gazing over for the time of their conversation.

It's kind, and it doesn't really sound pitiful or disgusted, but it's overwhelming all the same.

"I'm good," he assures. "I'm supposed to have friends over to help soon anyway, don't worry about me."

It's a lie.

Well, it's not a lie that he's supposed to. But it's dishonest to imply he has made moves for that to actually happen. Maybe he should take care of that soon. His body decay delusion has receded much now that his bowel is not literally destroying itself inside of him and that he's drug and tubs and IVs free, but it's not a reason to try and see what happens if he decides to live in a pile of trash.

As a baseline, he is a rather organised and neat person, and there are reasons why he needs to be. It's about time he tries to fix the general decomposition of his living place his recent month of illness has induced.

"Kisame, you're embarrassing him," Sasori comments, still facing the door. In another context, or from another person, or maybe just if he had said it in a different way, this statement would have made Kankurou feel much much worse about all this.

Here, for some reason he cannot precisely pinpoint, it's crystal clear to him that it is not made out of second-hand embarrassment or social convenience, but that it is, rather, an expression of Sasori's empathy and sharp understanding of the situation.

"I was just asking," Kisame defends himself with a shrug.

"Well, there's no need. Kankurou is a grown-ass adult who can ask for help when he wants to. Can't you?" he asks, glancing at him over his shoulder.

There are a lot of silent implications in those three sentences, and all of them come to confirm his gut instinct. Sasori understands that none of this is comfortable to Kankurou, and that what he needs most right now is to be given the right to get his life back without everyone treating him differently just because he's sick. It doesn't mean he wouldn't need or benefit from being treated differently, but it does mean that this isn't anyone else's call to make than his.

Sasori wants him to know he can ask for help, and that maybe he would want him to if he needs it, but acknowledges that the move will have to come from him. It's precious.

"Yes, sir," he answers and they share a nod of agreement.

The matter is settled.

"Can I still give him the doughnuts or am I in jail again?" Kisame asks with some annoyance in his voice but the complaint is mostly playful.

"Ah, right, had forgotten about that," Sasori admits before turning around to him. "Do you want food?"

Kisame raises the paper bag in his hand.

"I promise this is not pity food, it's just a fraction of the day's leftovers from the bakery and we throw out everything we don't bring home, so I don't even care if you eat it or not."

Kankurou's not gonna lie, for all that he's not fond of external intervention in his life, especially right now, he is fond of doughnuts.

"Sure," he says with a shrug to convey detachment and not sound too desperate for sweets.

He hasn't been able to cook a meal for three weeks and he spent a good amount of the ones before that starving because he was in too much pain and nausea to eat, so he has some catching up to do. He also hasn't dared to run on energy drinks again as he often does, so he needs all the sugar rush he can get.

"You can just leave them on the table. Thank you."

"Okay, are you done with your fussing?" Sasori asks, evidently as uncomfortable with this (very mild) effusion of normal interpersonal feelings as Kankurou is, if not more.

"Oh, I'm the one fussing now?" Kisame exclaims with an offended pout. "My ass. We live together, you know. I'm more than aware you've been worrying for your kid all month, I was there and I had to suffer every minute of it."

Sasori's expression closes.

"He's not my kid and I wasn't worried, just overworked because he wasn't there."

"Sure, you tell yourself that, buddy."

This might be the first time in his entire life that Kankurou has seen Sasori embarrassed. It's almost uncanny. He has that disturbing porcelain face, intact and soft in a way it should really not be with the life he's had and the age he is. (Kankurou doesn't actually know his age, but if he is what he is today, he must be at least forty. Either way, more than he looks.) Seeing him blush even the slightest feels like he's been replaced by a fake one.

"We're leaving and next time you stay in the car," he calls. "Good evening, Kankurou."

"Good evening, master, Kisame-san."

Kisame awkwardly waves him goodbye before turning around to follow his half-storming-out boyfriend, and the apartment falls silent again.

He's itching to work on the puppet tonight already, but he can tell that he's been standing for way too long and he promised he would keep himself healthy enough not to mess his work up, so that option is out for now.

Time for a movie and doughnuts in bed, then. Life could be worse.