Content Warning: Mentions of weed smoking. Mentions of self-harm.

The first thing that Kiba notices upon waking up is the familiar feeling of Akamaru nervously licking his fingers to alert him. The second, after some necessary time to overcome sleepiness and disorientation, is not less wet, but infinitely less pleasant.

"Shit."

He turns around on the couch for what feels like an eternity before finding his way out of the blankets between his heavy legs, his numb hands, and the sheets sticking to his legs with piss.

"Fuck."

Akamaru nudges his hand with a whine.

"I'm awake. I'm okay. Thank you, buddy," Kiba assures with a scratch behind his ear.

Both of those affirmations are overstatements.

Sleep has taken a while to come to him after he was back from their walk and, after some attempts at calming his restlessness and anxiety and general spiralling about his inevitably upcoming talk with Kankurou, he had decided to pick the direction of the evening back where he left it and smoke some more.

Some of the effect has worn off since the moment when it reached a high enough point to allow him to pass out for a bit, but "awake" is still an optimistic way to put it.

As far as "okay" goes… Let's say it's been a while since the last time he wetted his bed, and he did not miss it.

That, and the fact that this is not his bed, but the new couch the polycule bought together, and that if he had any idea where the equipment to handle this sort of event was stored in this new place, he wouldn't be able to drag it out of his mushy memory right now anyway.

Whatever the answer to that question is, he can't leave the pillowcase here in this state, that much he can still tell.

The bathroom floor is cold under his naked feet when he enters the space, and the light stings his oversensitive eyes. He pats his thighs and ass vaguely dry with some toilet paper first – if he can not have to clean the floor in addition to cleaning the couch, he'll take the opportunity – then makes some warm water run in the bathtub. Maybe he can get away with just throwing the sheets with some detergent and let it soak for the rest of the night before he has to make some more radical actions about the matter.

He throws his shirt into the mix as well when it appears it hasn't been spared in the accident, and only then does he realise all of his change of clothes are in his bedroom, where Kankurou is sleeping, and where he can decidedly not enter in the middle of the night to pick up some underwear.

Of the three choices that appear to him – sleeping in piss-soaked boxers, sleeping naked in the living room, or waking Shino up for help – none seem very appealing.

In the midst of turning around the bathroom for an idea in the hope that maybe something before his eyes will be the spark that will finally connect his neurons together, he doesn't hear the noise coming from the living room.

When he does, it's way too late to do anything about the situation, because Kankurou is standing in the doorframe with a frown on his face.

He's wearing an old black T-shirt with a hole at the bottom left and a pair of boxer shorts that must be his pyjamas. It's the first time Kiba is seeing his legs, he thinks to himself before realising how terrible of a priority that is to be pondering over that now.

"Hey…" is the most articulate thing he can think of as a reaction.

"Hi. I was going to the toilets." Kankurou pauses and takes a silent look around the room before staring him down once more. "Are you okay?"

Now would be a good time to lie, arguably, but it doesn't take Kiba very long to reach the conclusion that he does not have the brain power to come up with something vaguely coherent, nor the brain-mouth coordination to say it convincingly. Even in a more functional state, though, he's not sure there would be a lot of ways to make sense of the scene they can both clearly see before them anyway, so…

He takes a sharp inhale.

"Yes. Sorry. I'm very high and I pissed myself."

By now, Kankurou has grown fairly used to the exercise of walking through the living room to empty his bag in the middle of the night. He is also starting to find sleep again efficiently afterwards, and he certainly hopes his body is going to keep the rhythm going smoothly once he's back home.

Tonight, though, the bedroom door doesn't open on the same darkness as usual. Light is coming from the bathroom, painting the space in greyish hues and allowing Kankurou to see much more than the vague dark shapes the blue LED of the internet box normally lets him.

Kiba is not on the couch and, well, most of the couch is not on the couch either. The cushions have been taken out and piled on the floor, maybe somewhat neatly at first before said pile collapsed into the messy shape it has taken now.

Water is running in the bathroom, and a cupboard closes with a sharp sound just as Kankurou arrives at the door.

Kiba is there – expectedly – naked but for a pair of underwear – less expectedly but, well, it's his bathroom – and when he turns around, Kankurou's first thought is that he was right the other day about him having more scars than the ones he'd seen so far, and the second is that he was wrong about exactly how many.

There are the ones he knows, pale and thin and half hidden under the hair on his arms. There are the ones he imagined, some of the same type, some longer and thicker up his legs. And then there are some more, more hidden and that he's never had a glance of, swollen and reddish, tracing contrasting lines over the skin of his inner thighs and lower belly.

They are, by all accounts, healed. Not as faded as the others, but not fresh. They are not an emergency and not his to worry about. They are what Kiba said, proof of healing and that wounds, even the deepest, do close eventually. Still, they tell a story he doesn't know of, and didn't know was there, living alongside him this whole time. He doesn't know what to do with this knowledge now, and doesn't think he was meant to access it in the first place.

Only when he does tear his eyes away from them – because he doesn't want to be rude, because he doesn't want to be intrusive, because they are just a fact that there's nothing to say about now – does he notice the deep dark stain on Kiba's underwear, and the sheets soaking in the bathtub.

"Are you okay?"

Kiba opens his mouth, seemingly without finding a way to formulate an answer at first, and it hangs there, silent and confused as he painstakingly scraps his brain for words. He looks sleepy and haggard, and the bags under his eyes only serve to highlight the redness of them.

"Yes," he finally says after a long moment. "Sorry. I'm very high and I pissed myself."

For a handful of seconds, Kankurou can't help but think to himself he is not remotely qualified to handle this situation. After that, however, comes the idea that Kiba was probably not more qualified to handle him shitting blood and passing out at his feet, and that it did not make him run away in the slightest.

"Okay. Do you need help?"

It takes another moment of disoriented looks around the room before Kiba says something more.

"Yes. I need pants."

Twenty minutes and a shower later, everyone is as clean as they're going to get tonight, and wearing more clothes than they were at the start of this adventure.

Kiba seems a little more present than he was before too, maybe from being more awake, maybe from being vaguely more sober, maybe from being grounded by the existence of a second person in the room talking to him. Regardless, Kankurou is glad.

He didn't say anything during the evening because Kiba assured him he was fine, and if he needed support, he had better people to seek it from, but he has been worried about him, and the fact that he is higher now than he was when he left for bed is not sitting right with him at all.

Far from Kankurou to judge whatever Kiba does with his body – he's in a good position to know that some people need to cope with life and that whatever way works is sometimes not the less fucked of them all and it still has to do the trick – but, this once, it has evidently taken a turn Kiba himself is not fully able to handle.

"Are you ready for bed or do you need anything else?"

Kiba shrugs.

"Well, the couch won't be dry for another few hours so I don't think I'm getting any more sleep anyway."

"You have a bed."

Is his brain that fried tonight?

"But you're using it."

"I'm- What the fuck, Kiba? Do I look like the kind of guy who is going to sleep in your bed while you're sitting on the floor waiting for the morning to come?"

Somehow, this looks like a question that needs a real thought-through to his interlocutor.

"… no?" he answers tentatively after a moment.

"No indeed. Get your ass in there."

A loud and wet sniff at his side is Akamaru's participation in the conversation.

"Yes, you too buddy."

This is going to be a lot. He hasn't shared a bed with anyone for years, and he hasn't shared a bed with anyone other than Temari or Gaara ever. One foreign human and a massive dog are a mile out of his comfort zone, but he didn't lie: he is not the type to leave Kiba hanging. It's Saturday tomorrow. If needs be, he'll ask to spend the weekend alone in the room until the sirens in his head wear off.

For another couple of seconds, Kiba looks like he's going to try and protest against the idea, then, probably, he realises he is not in any state to do so, and nods.

"I should have mattress pads somewhere in the bedroom then. If this has to happen again, I'd rather not fuck my mattress or get piss on you."

Kankurou had not realised this was a risk to factor in his offer.

"Ideally not," he agrees gladly.

After another ten minutes of digging around the remaining cardboard boxes in the bedroom's wardrobe, some pads are found that look too similar to the ones he had to sleep on at the hospital to Kankurou's taste, but that he isn't going to comment on now, no matter how much the sight of them makes the room shiver and crawl in disgust around him.

"You're well equipped," he comments while Kiba lays one down, more to distract himself from the feeling of overwhelment that's already rising in his gut than to really prompt him to say anything more.

"I've been wetting my bed for the past twenty years, so I'm kind of a professional at this point." He pauses. "My skills haven't been really showing tonight, admittedly. I would probably have thought about putting something down if I'd been in the bedroom but. I've been a bit off my routines between moving out and everything."

"Sorry."

Arguably, "everything" here is mostly him.

"It wasn't a criticism." Kiba corrects. "I'm just saying please don't judge my incontinence-handling capabilities on that one. I usually do better than this."

His tone is light as he makes the comment, and overall, very Kiba in a way that soothes a bit of Kankurou's anxiety. He's taking it better than he would have if he had to ask for Kiba's help handling a stoma bag leakage, no doubt. (But he hasn't been doing this for twenty years. Maybe it'll get easier.) (Damn. One day it'll be twenty years that his body is like this?)

"And hey, there used to be blood with it!" Kiba adds with a playful smile. "So really, we're doing well here."

Part of Kankurou wants to play along with this newfound energy and composure and trust that Kiba is simply really feeling better than he did for most of the day, but the other can't help but think maybe a lot of it is a façade built to smooth out the worried face he can tell he's been making during the whole process, and that he can't seem to be able to let go of now.

The mattress sinks a bit when Akamaru jumps on the bed to join them and settles heavily against Kiba's stomach in a savant imbrication both of them probably know by heart at this point.

When he turns the light off, Kankurou hasn't stopped frowning.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he tentatively asks in the dark and, for a moment, believes maybe he whispered it too low for Kiba to hear.

"Yeah," he answers after a few seconds. "I'm sorry about the whole piss thing. I swear it's fine. I told you, it just happens, I'm used to it."

"I wasn't talking about that."

Well, also about that a bit, maybe, but certainly not just about that.

"What?"

"I don't know. You smoked a lot today. And you looked down. I was worried." He pauses. "I am worried. Did something happen?"

Kiba doesn't answer after that. It's too dark to see him now, and any of the sounds that his breathing could make is covered by that of his dog. Maybe Kankurou dreamed him. Maybe he isn't there at all. Maybe it's just him, a big mutt, and the memory of Kiba's tired eyes imprinted on his brain.

"I'm sad that you're leaving," his voice finally says in the night.

That is… less worrying than anything he could have imagined.

Kankurou chuckles.

Kiba doesn't.

"I didn't know you liked me this much."

"Well. I do."

Kiba's answers as none of the playfulness his had. It's serious, a bit sad, and Kankurou thinks upset though probably not against him.

"Oh." Shit. "Like-"

"Yeah."

The sheets bristle as Kiba sits up and snorts.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't be here. It's embarrassing and weird."

It takes Kankurou an attempt or two before his left hand finds Kiba while fumbling in the dark.

"Stay."

His thigh is warm under his palm, and he immediately bites his cheeks at the thought that this is probably the last thing Kiba wants to feel right now.

He withdraws his hand.

"Sorry. But really. You can stay. I don't- I don't think it's like that for me. I'm sorry. But I still care about you, and you still need sleep. It doesn't bother me. Stay."

He's never really rejected or dumped anybody in his life – hasn't really ever been rejected or dumped either – and he has very little clue what the right course of action is now. He would like to say it doesn't change anything, which is true for him, but, evidently, it does change things for Kiba, in a way he may not be in a position to understand, and that he doesn't know what to do with.

Maybe he shouldn't have asked him to stay. Maybe this is more painful than the other way around. Maybe this is why Kiba didn't consider sharing the bed with him in the first place. Maybe Kankurou just cornered him into it and should learn to let it go.

Kiba disappears into the silence a second time then, before reappearing in a sigh.

"Okay."

It must be four a.m. by now, they both more than need to lie down and talk about this another time. This is a truce Kankurou can offer, and maybe for now, one that Kiba is willing to accept.

"Good night."