Work Text:
“WHAT?!” Crystaline sputtered. “But—How?! This place is huge, you have to have at least— there are none??”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the receptionist sighed, “All of our rooms are booked. We have no two-bed rooms left….”
Glancing back at the three yo-kai behind him, Crystaline felt at a complete loss. Between the four of them, they’d need at least three beds. Kit could share with Crys or Bettina if truly necessary. Airan couldn’t share with Bettina; she values her personal space. Crys and Bettina couldn’t share for the same reason, and they’d tried once before years ago, and failed when Bettina quickly learned Crystaline spreads out like a colossal starfish in his sleep. Crys and Airan couldn’t share, because… yeah.
Crystaline huffed, his head drooping onto the desk. “Please, you have to have something left. We’ll take anything, I swear!”
The receptionist click-clacked on her keyboard, searching through the hotel’s availabilities with a barely masked pout, until she paused with consideration.
“It looks like we do have three rooms left,” she spoke slowly. “Each only have one bed, though.” She looked up, a hopeful gleam in her eye. “Is that okay?”
Crystaline instantly perked up. He leaned over the desk, tails wagging behind him fast enough to blow a breeze on the three yo-kai behind him. “Yes. Yes! That’s great! Oh, that’s perfect! Thank you so, so—“
He was shoved out of the way, and before he could even squeak out a retort, a lanky, bird-like yo-kai dressed in a dangerous-looking suit had assumed his position, leaning to the receptionist with a wad of cash at the ready. “I’ll take one of those rooms, thank you,” he spoke evenly, low voice scraping in the air.
The receptionist shrugged and took his cash, sighing as her eye bags seemed to sink even deeper.
Crystaline deflated. There goes tonight’s sleep. Maybe they’d have to pull an all-nighter getting home after all. With Crystaline’s power at a dangerously low level, portals were out of the question—even if he pushed himself too far, he wouldn’t be able to open a stable one. No doubt, his exhaustion was making the hunt for a place to stay the night even more infuriating.
As the lanky man strode away, Crystaline slunk back to the desk. His normally vibrant blue fur had faded to a sad almost grey.
“Just… give us the two rooms,” he mumbled, sliding the receptionist a card. She didn’t bother to reply, passing him two keycards and finalizing the transaction on the computer. She then took out a pack of cigarettes from underneath the desk and promptly walked out the front doors.
Crystaline looked back at his crew. Kitzya hadn’t been listening and looked completely out of it. Bettina had a pissy look on her face. Airan gazed away absently, nervously fingering the edge of his cape. Great.
“So,” Crystaline started slowly, “I guess I’ll room with Kit, and—“
“No,” Bettina growled. “Hell no. Tonight has been long enough, I am not playing this game.”
Crystaline’s eye twitched. He took Bettina by the shoulder and dragged her aside, rubbing his eyes and dropping his voice. “Look, Betty,” he whispered, almost pleading, “You have to have mercy on me. You know I would love to get us home, right? But I can’t without a good rest. Yeah? So just let me—“
“No.”
Crystaline groaned, slumping over dramatically. “Come on! You know I can’t!”
Bettina didn’t budge. “Suck it up, Crys. I’m not sharing a one-person bed with someone the same size as me. That’s not how it works. Kit can squeeze; he can’t.”
Crystaline opened his mouth to counter—
“Don’t.”
He huffed. “It’s easier for you to just say you hate me.”
Bettina would’ve smiled if she had the joy left in her to do so. “It’s just one night. Push through it, you’re strong enough. Besides…”
She glanced back at the suspect. Crystaline gazed over her head nervously. Airan was turned the other way, eyeing the hotel’s framed photographs lining the entrance foyer.
She looked back at Crys and shrugged. “Maybe you two just need to get the ‘uncomfortable forced intimacy’ part out of the way, yeah?”
If Crystaline had been gifted the godly power of sinking into the floor and avoiding awful situations, he really wished it would have come to him right then. It did not.
Crystaline slid the card through the door’s lock for the sixth time, getting ready to bash the door in himself, when Airan snatched it from his hand and unlocked it first try. He pushed through before Crys. Crys didn’t have it left in him to care.
As expected, the one-bed rooms were extremely small and not intended for 8-foot-tall gods and their strange, octagon-shaped crush. Crystaline’s ears constantly brushed against the ceiling, and it got overstimulating very fast. The room was big enough for them to walk single-file—trying to squeeze past one another was a nightmare waiting to happen.
Eye twitching again, Crystaline took a deep breath. “I’m showering,” he announced flatly, and escaped into the bathroom to the left.
Airan put the keycard down on the TV stand across the bed. He exhaled slowly as he sat and peeled off his arm and leg wear, dirtied from the night’s work. Discarding them at the foot of the bed, he slumped backwards into the pillows. Airan hadn’t bothered sleeping in ages. He discovered lots of things about the yo-kai body from sheer determination alone, one of which being that sleep isn’t exactly necessary. Sure, you get a bit cranky, but if you learn to control it, you’ll be fine. So, he didn’t plan on sleeping, obviously; he’d have to share with Crystaline, lest he sleep on the floor, and both plans sounded sickening.
Crystaline took his time in the bathroom, dragging his feet as he stepped into the shower, hardly bothering to do more than a basic rinse of his coat. The warm water beat softly on his aching back. He would’ve spent longer unwinding if he hadn’t felt himself beginning to fall asleep standing up.
He looked in the mirror hung above the sink, drying himself off with a flimsily thin towel. His face was sunken in; his ears drooped; his usually eccentric blue mane and ear tips had fallen into a sickly monochrome hue; all in all, he was out of it and ready to end this horrific night.
Airan only snapped out of his thoughts and sat up when he heard the bathroom door creak open. Crystaline stepped out, only...
“You’re… dry,” Airan commented blankly.
“Huh? Oh, yeah.” Crys shut the bathroom door behind him, combing through his mane in the adjacent wall’s mirror. “My body heat, y’know. Makes the water, like…” He waved a paw absently, trying to convey the word. “…it disappears, or something.”
“Evaporates,” Airan corrected.
“Whatever.”
Crystaline crossed the room to the bed, immediately realized he’d have to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with Airan, and instead swerved to take the bedside chair. He leaned back, groaning long and heavy.
“You don’t stay up late, do you?” he whined. “I’m beat. I need to sleep, like, now. I’m gonna get crazy unbearable if I don’t.”
Airan gave him a look. “More unbearable than you are now?”
Crystaline scowled. “You tread thin ice, dude.”
Giving up, Airan surrendered the bed and slunk away to the bathroom. He didn’t usually bathe post-mission—it was a massive waste of time, in his eyes—but this one had been so especially messy that he didn’t feel right sleeping in the hotel bed in such a state. He stepped into the shower, the water considerably cooler for him so as not to melt him, but warm enough to finally get his shoulders to relax. He took a minute rinsing off, and then took another just letting the water heat him up, and then another to enjoy how nice it felt. That’s strange, he thought; he wasn’t tired a moment ago, and now, that hotel bed was calling his name...
As Airan shut the bathroom door behind him, he found Crystaline had taken his place on the bed. Just as he had warned, he seemed to be out cold. His chest slowly rose and fell with every soft breath, and now and then an ear or a tail would twitch and flick against the sheet.
Awesome. The bed was spoken for. The only choices Airan had left were the chair or the floor.
He considered his choices carefully, eyeing the bed nervously. The floor was an immediate no; Airan had become so intensely lethargic that he craved an actual soft surface to lie on. He tried the chair, and it was better, but still not at all what he needed. Its wooden frame was hard to the touch, and it bit into him when he tried to get comfortable. Not to mention, the cushions were practically devoid of stuffing.
Okay, so the floor and the chair were out of the question. That’s fine. What did that leave him with...?
He looked around the room. He could lie in the shower, maybe? Or set himself up on the closet shelf? Perhaps the space under the bed was tall enough...
No matter how he looked at it, he really had no choice. Nothing was acceptable to sleep on, except, of course, the bed, put there with the express purpose of having guests sleep on it. Thing is, he’d have to live with sleeping next to Crystaline. “Next to” might be an overstatement; he had a gut feeling that he’d find himself underneath the other in the middle of the night.
Airan was close to sucking it up and dealing with the chair when a wave of fatigue ripped through him, pushing a yawn out in its wake. He couldn’t kid himself any longer; he needed that bed. At this point, he couldn’t care less if he was stuck sleeping with his decades-long enemy (though, when he worded it like that, he felt a bit ill).
Taking extra caution not to stir Crystaline, Airan slipped under the sheets next to the former. He was close to falling off the side of the bed, but it was worth it—he'd managed to fit himself without even nudging Crys. This was perfect, this would work! At last, he’d get his long-awaited rest... his eyelids grew heavy with sleep, and he melted into the pillows beneath him, slipping off into a light slumber...
...until he was thwacked in the face. He jumped, startled, only to find the culprit was a familiar paw connecting to one Crystaline who had begun his infamous starfish spreading.
Airan sighed. The night would be a long one. But perhaps, even with Crystaline’s strange sleeping habits, he could find the good in it.
Like how he was sharing a bed with his also decades-long crush. That was a big step up.
Suddenly, falling asleep with Crystaline’s arm across his chest was easy.
Sunlight crept into the room from cracks in the blinds. Airan awoke to a blank space in the bed next to him. He sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes and looking around for the missing yo-kai.
As if on queue, Crystaline peeked out from the bathroom, smiling brightly. His spritely demeanor was fully recharged, fur as vibrant as ever, ears standing straight up and tails billowing with energy.
“Good morning, sleepy,” he chimed with a grin. “Wanna head home soon? Or we could spend the day in town here. I was thinking we could all hit that coffee shop across the road?”
Airan blinked. He felt... perfectly okay with that idea. Gods, maybe sleep played a more detrimental life on a yo-kai's health than he had hypothesized.
Hesitantly, he nodded, even cracking a bit of a smile himself.
“Yeah, might as well.”
The coffee shop was a dainty little place, a sort of hole-in-the-wall business with a tiny menu that somehow didn’t fail to satisfy each of the four yo-kai. Bettina sipped her iced coffee and poked Crystaline, leaning over to whisper “Was it as bad as you thought it’d be?”
Crys had to hold back a smile, eyes trained on his smoothie as he stirred it absent-mindedly. “Nah, I was just being dramatic,” he hummed.
Bettina grinned, elbowing him a few more times. “Really? You both came out of there ten times happier than you were going in. I expect that from you, but Airan? That’s rare.”
The two looked in Airan’s direction, where he happily drank his hot coffee and skimmed a light novel left for guests on the coffee table.
Crys couldn’t refrain from grinning back. “Yeah, well, I fell asleep when he went to go shower, and I woke up with him all curled up against me, so...”
Bettina choked on her coffee, sputtering “He—what?”
Crys beamed, taking a long sip of his smoothie. Bettina punched him.
“You can’t leave it there, Crys! What the heck?? Are you messing with me?”
He only smiled. “I wasn’t conscious, I can’t tell you what happened. That’s just how he was when I woke up.” Standing, he patted Bettina on the shoulder. “Why don’t you ask him?”
With that last comment, he joined Airan by the coffee table instead, hovering over his shoulder and making small talk on his novel. Bettina huffed, slumping down in her chair and chugging down more coffee.
Kitzya stole Crystaline’s seat, glancing back at the boys across the room. “Betty, why are they being weird?” she whined.
“They’re hormonal teenagers, Kit," Bettina groaned. "They love being weird with each other.”
Kit frowned. “I thought they were in their sixties?”
Lightening up, Bettina chuckled and ruffled Kit’s fur. “That’s what they want you to think.”