Kyo runs away sometimes too. That's a habit from when he was a kid that he's never been able to break. Danger comes in many forms, it's always safer to run from it if you can't hit it til it shatters and fucks off

Kyo runs away more impulsively than Kaashi, if that makes sense. While Kaashi usually has a rough estimate of how long he'll be gone and packs accordingly (or even just leaves a spare bag in his car for when he's too high strung to pack), Kyo leaves on a whim, not caring -

- about how long he could be gone or where he might go. Sometimes he'll walk into the city under the blanket of darkness, nobody daring to mess with him, withdraw some money from his personal account, and take a random bus. Where he ends up is where he ends up, the bus can -

- choose his fate. He gets in a few fights, gets kicked out of a bar or two on a bad night, he even got invited to a few underground fights once or twice. They're interesting, he likes watching them, he likes participating in them, but it's not something he'd do full time.

The bars he finds himself in usually have cheap, shitty liquor, the kind that burns, the kind that sears the inside of your nose and makes your chest warm. He growls at anyone who gets too close, but he's always friendly with the bartender.

He rarely takes his phone with him, a voice in the back of his head always tells him he needs to take it with him, but he doesn't want to deal with concerned and worried texts and calls and freaked-out "where the fuck are you!?"s. None of that shit

Sometimes he wakes up in a dingy motel, the yellow-stained wallpaper chipped and peeling; a place, he thinks with a wry smile, Kiyo would deem as "absolutely fucking disgusting". Sometimes he'll take another bus the next night, heading somewhere else, sometimes he'll stay -

- in the motel for the next few days, deeming the area he's in to be far away enough from anyone who'd find him. He's never gone for more than a week, when he suddenly gets needy and alarm bells are ringing in his head because his two aren't with him and his collars are far -

- away so he can't calm himself down well enough and /neither of them are here with him/ and he barely fucking knows where he is and /he has to get home right fucking now/.

So he asks the receptionist, the bartender, a random drunk guy half-assed out in the street, anyone close to him when the reality sets in, how he can get home. Nobody's dared to give him wrong information, he's not someone to fuck with, so he always makes it home.

Sometimes Kyo opens the door and heads straight upstairs to the bathroom, peeling off dirty clothes and replacing it with scalding hot water that makes his skin scream or warm water and the gentle scent of his husbands' bodywashes. If it's a scalding hot shower, he -

- ignores the knocks on the door and the calling of his name. It's not like they can get in with the door locked. If it's a warm shower, he'll allow them to come in, but never further than the door.

Sometimes it's ice cold water that makes him gasp, shock pulling air from his lungs as liquid ice runs over his arms, his back, his legs, and pools at his feet, flowing languidly down the drain. He doesn't warm it up, though. Just like a scalding shower, he won't answer them.

Sometimes he goes straight to their room or the kitchen or the living room, wherever there's a light on, unable to look either of them in the eyes when they hold him, ask him where he's been, ask him if he's safe, ask him where those bruises came from, if he needs to see a doctor

- if he feels safe, if it wants anything to eat, if pup needs any of its collars to help pull it into pupspace which it hasn't indulged pupself in for so long.

Iwa asks less questions than Kawa; Kyo would run away a lot when Kawa was in Argent!na, so the occasional incident doesn't fill him with as much stabbing anxiety as it used to. It still scares him, he still takes time off work and stays at home, but his puppy's always come home -

- intact. He can handle the bruises, the scrapes, the cuts, the busted lips and the bruised, broken noses, as long as his puppy comes back to him. That's all he wants.

I don't know where I was going with this thread