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“Momo-chan.”
Momo groans and bats away the freezing fingers on her shoulder, curling deeper int ot he warm safety of her blankets.
“Momo-chan.”
There’s a gentle shake. Momo cracks open an eye and then flinches back as Okarun’s creepy yokai face looms from the darkness of her bedroom. He blinks placidly, accepting her surprise without question.
“Momo-chan,” he says for a third (?) time, like the world’s most depressed alarm clock. His eyes and curse markings glow faintly red.
“What? Why are you in your spirit getup?” Momo asks, sitting bolt upright as adrenaline rushes through her veins. Was there an evil spirit waiting outside? Did an alien set off the second doorbell again?
“I wanted to see you,” Okarun says. Momo sighs and flops back onto her throne of pillows.
“Okarun, it’s-” Momo groans, checking her phone, “three in the morning. Why now?”
“Got scared,” he responds, so unabashedly that it takes Momo a few moments to understand what he said.
“You got scared?” She echoes.
He nods and hunches into the spectral ruff of mystery substance that hurts Momo’s brain if she thinks too hard about it. “Had a dream you got hurt real bad and got scared.”
“Huh.” Momo says. “I didn’t know you could get scared like this.” Her heartbeat is beginning to slow from its frantic gallop and she scooches back, creating a space for Okarun to join her on the bed.
Normal, human Okarun wouldn’t have taken it, but yokai Okarun dives right into the little divot her body had created and curls up so that he’s snuggled into her space. He latches on like an octopus, freezing-cold limbs sapping the warmth from Momo’s body. It’s not altogether unpleasant, especially knowing that he’s upset. Possibly. It’s hard to tell with the way his face is contorted into a fierce glare.
There’s an inhale, then another.
“Are you sniffing me?” Momo hisses, pushing him away from where he’s stuck his cold nose into the crook of her neck.
“Mhm,” Okarun agrees dreamily. “You smell nice.”
She’s abruptly thankful for the darkness of the room, because she flushes bright red as he noses back to his previous place.
“D-did you run here all the way from your apartment?” Momo asks to cover up her embarrassment.
Okarun stops sniffing her for a few seconds to nod. Then he starts rubbing his massive jaw all over her neck in a confusingly pleasant rush of smooth tooth on Momo’s overheated skin.
Momo squirms in his arms and he grumbles, clinging tighter.
He tangles his feet with hers and Momo stiffens, remembering that he had just ran over four kilometers barefoot and that those same disgusting feet are in her bed. She elbows him. “Okarun! You need to go wash your feet!”
Okarun hums, clearly mulling over her words. Several seconds pass as Momo contemplates the benefits of using her powers to drag him out of her bed. Then: “Nah.”
“What do you mean, ‘nah’?” Momo demands, her voice rising in outrage. “Go wash your feet! You can’t be barefoot in my bed with those things! You’re probably tracking bugs and shit!” SHe elbows him again, harder this time.
“What a bummer,” Okarun sighs, but doesn’t move except to cling tighter for her. “Can you wash them for me?”
“OKARUN!” Momo shouts, and then covers her mouth in her hands. Granny wouldn’t be happy about Momo interrupting her beauty sleep, even if it was for an overly clingy yokai.
Okarun lets out a jaw-cracking yawn and pulls a blanket over the two of them. “Momo-chan, I’m tired. Can I just do it tomorrow?”
“No!” Momo pries herself from Okaruns grasp and scrambles over his dead weight, grabbing one clammy hand in hers. She kicks on the light to her room, squawking in dismay as she sees the smears of dirt Okarun’s nasty-ass feet left in her clean bed. She yanks him from her bed.
He doesn’t even brace for the fall and crashes to the ground with a dull thud that makes Momo wince before dragging him out of her room and across the hallway to the bathroom. Okarun lets himself be dragged, his currently undersized sleep clothes- are those alien boxers? wow, Okarun- riding up to expose an uncomfortably thin midriff as she heaves his long legs into the tub.
Okarun stays like that, lower half dangling over the tub and upper half sprawled on the bathroom tiles, as Momo turns on the bath’s faucet and waits for the water to warm up. “A bit of help here?” Momo asks, taking her salux towel and wetting it in the lukewarm water before getting to work scrubbing Okarun’s feet.
The water runs off a disgusting black. Momo shudders at the thought of that having been in her bed and studiously ignores Okarun’s stare drilling into the side of her head.
His feet aren’t quite human when he’s transformed. He has a tendency to run and walk on his tiptoes, never letting his heels touch the ground. Momo had previously thought it was just a strange inclination of Okarun’s yokai form, but as she cleans his feet she realizes that they don’t lie flat the way a normal person’s would.
Okarun hums happily as she scrubs the arch of his foot, flexing out short black claws from his toes before retracting them.
“You’re so nice, Momo-chan,” he murmurs, watching her with unblinking eyes as she scrubs mud from his ankles. “I’d do anything for you, you know that?”
Momo scoffs. “Yeah, anything except washing your own damn feet.”
“Mhm.”
“You’re gonna be so embarrassed about this when you turn back,” Momo warns. She can already seen human Okarun’s humiliated scrambling.
“Why would I be embarrassed about Momo-chan taking care of me?” He eels his way so that he’s wrapped around her leg, chin resting on the floor.
Momo breaks eye contact, hand squeezing his narrow ankles. Okarun’s bones grind beneath her fingers and she rubs an apology into the hollows behind his achilles tendon.
He’s fragile like this, all bones and gristle without any muscle or fat to cushion his landings. He looks starved and Momo wants nothing more than to bundle him up and keep him safe until he returns to the secure roundness of his human form. A spidery hand wraps around her calf.
“Thank you for letting me in, Momo-chan,” Okarun whispers, barely audible.
“Always,” she says.
When the water finally runs clear and Momo deems him sufficiently cleaned, she drops Okarun’s legs into the tub and wanders off to grab a towel to dry them both off. At Okarun’s wounded noise, she rushes back.
Momo rolls her eyes when she realizes he’s not hurt, just being weird and angsty as usual. She’s never spent this much time with him in his yokai form before, not outside battle. His joints pop and creak as she picks him up under his armpits and drags him to her bed.
Okarun dangles from her arms, seemingly content with anything as long as she’s holding him. When she carefully covers the dirty sheets with a blanket, letting go of him for a moment, he sighs and gripes until she returns to within arm’s reach.
As she settles the two of them into bed, he returns to his previous position, clinging to her with all his might. His face is smashed into her chest, his cold breath freezing her alive. It’s uncomfortable and awkward and honestly kind of gross since they’d been running around all day, but she feels safe like this.
Momo falls asleep with a too-light, too-long body curled atop her, glowing red eyes watching her every movement. She wakes up to Okarun: normal, soft, warm, and drooling onto her shoulder. Outside, watery light filters through her curtains, casting painted stripes onto Okarun’s sleeping face.
When she finally moves from under him, he murmurs a sleepy protest and curls closer. There are salt tracks crusted down his cheeks that follow the same trails as the curse markings of his other form. Both his hands are fisted tight in the loose material of her sweater.
His eyes blink open, all honey-brown in the morning light.
She smiles down at him.