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Ayase Momo’s consciousness slams back into her body on a bed of frigid concrete. For a few seconds, all she can do is breathe. It’s always the same routine. Breathe, thank whatever God she can think of that she’s alive, and then force open her eyes. The night sky is starless, dusted on the edges with the sun’s last remnants of pink and orange. A train roars in the distance. A bruise on her elbow scrapes against the rough concrete when she tries to prop herself up, and she winces. The same first thought occurs to her as always.
” Okarun ?”
Silence, for a few seconds. Then, a faint and gravelly, “I’m here,” from a few feet behind her. “You alright?”
”Yeah.”
She cranes her head over her shoulder to look at him. As is so typical of him, he asked if she’s alright when he looks possibly even worse than she feels. His glasses are splintered and cracked beyond recognition, his clothes torn totally off from the knees down and in shreds on his torso, a jagged wound marring his face and grime caking his body and hair. She might have been wrong, though; judging from the way he’s scanning her up and down with those huge brown eyes blown wide, she’s probably worse off for wear herself.
“The fact that we always come out of this shit alive never stops surprising me,” she sighs, half a pathetic attempt at levity and half the truth. Okarun always laughs at her jokes, though, no matter how stupid, with a high-pitched, hissing chuckle that’s sort of odd but it’s his and therefore disproportionately endearing. A hand with two bruised nails appears in her field of vision, then a head of dark, wild curls haloed against the sky with the last echoes of the light. She grasps it and he pulls her up with a surprising amount of strength.
They stare at each other for a few seconds, hands still intertwined. If Okarun’s anything like Momo, he’ll be simply processing the fact that she’s okay and pushing away thoughts of a scenario where she wasn’t.
“Come on,” says Momo. “You desperately need a shower. Let’s go home.”
It’s quite a while after they stumble through the threshold, Turbo Granny welcoming them with a snide comment about how they look like rats who crawled out of the sewer, that Momo realises just how badly beaten up she is. She let Okarun take a shower first, with the excuse that he stank really bad and she couldn’t bear it in her room any longer, but she’s taken the time to examine herself and breathe in silence for a while. A particularly hard hit she took to her shoulder throbs painfully, but nothing looks bad enough for bandages. It always starts really hurting a couple of hours afterwards, when the last of the adrenaline has seeped from her body and she’s left exhausted and weak. Looking in the mirror has the dangerous potential to make her feel even worse, but she chances it anyway: it ends with her mourning the loss of her favourite hairclip and trying fruitlessly to rake a brush through her tumbleweed-esque hairstyle. How the hell did a twig wind up in there?
Okarun chooses that moment to pad through the doorway, his features made even softer by the dim light. He’s wearing one of her oversized band shirts and the sweatpants he’s basically claimed as his own at this point, and he’s thankfully now free of all dirt and dried blood, but a deep-looking bright-red gash still stands out against his pale skin. Momo holds up a first-aid kid and pats the side of the bed in a wordless offer. Pointedly trying not to think about how the state her life is in means she always has a first-aid kit on her bedside table, she disinfects the wound; he catches a whimper with his teeth.
“I know,” she murmurs, torn apart at the prospect of hurting him. “I know. I’m almost done.”
Once the big one is infection-proof and adorned with a comically large Hello Kitty plaster, there’s thankfully nothing left to treat, but Momo’s heart still pangs at the angry yellow-blue bruises and shallow scratches left littered on him.
She takes his hand. “You okay?”
He slowly brings their conjoined hands together to his lips. They’re still new to their… thing , so they’re both still a bit freaked out by affection, but Momo would be kidding herself if she didn’t admit they’d been touchy even before feelings got in the mix.
“Yeah,” he replies after a heavy pause. “I just… fucking hate it. The way they always talk about using you…” Momo doesn’t need to press to know what he’s talking about. Bile rises in her throat at the mere mention.
“Me too. But, hey.” She nudges his shoulder. “We won’t let that happen, so I’m not too worried.”
A meek smile crosses his face. “You’re right. We won’t.”
Momo leans closer, but scowls as her stringy and tangled hair brushes her cheek. She really, really needs a shower. She stands up, but is hit with a sudden dizziness and sways slightly in place as her vision swims. It feels as though all her blood has become twice as dense and her flimsy skeleton can’t hold up her body’s weight. Her head pounds and the thought of everything begins to overwhelm her; showering, finding new clothes, setting up Okarun’s mattress, having to brush her godforsaken hair… She’s so tired , and it all hurts so much…
Okarun notices; he never doesn’t. He stands up and takes her arm to steady her. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“I’ll be fine. Just might have to sit down in the shower.”
Okarun’s ears blush, the first telltale sign preceding his face going beet-red. “I could… help, if you want.” At Momo’s raised eyebrow, he splutters and blushes so dark she has to hold back a laugh. “Not like that! Nothing weird! I could just… run a bath and help you wash your hair. If— If you want. Only if you want, of course—”
“Okay.”
“…Okay?”
“Yes, Okarun. Okay. I’d like that. I hate doing my hair, I think my arms will fall off if I try it myself. But be warned,” she points an accusatory finger at the twig intruder and plucks it out, “it’s a complete mess up here.”
“I can deal with a mess.”
“If you say so. Use the rose bath salt, it’s my favorite.”
He makes a mockery of a salute against his temple, brown doe eyes sparkling the way they always do when he launches into tirades about things he’s passionate about or reads her passages of magazines, so excited he can barely contain himself. She always does her best to coax that lovely expression out of him, and she revels in how it becomes more and more common each day they spend together as he lets down his walls. The sound of rushing bath water calms her as he seems to get started quickly, and she deliberately chooses a shirt he’d left when he slept over once — to tease him, on a surface level, but also to soothe a craving in a deeper part of her. After alien attacks, it helps her to look out of the window and see things that aren’t pitch darkness. The sporadic dotting of stars above street-lights and houses in the distance further unclenches the pressure around her heart. She breathes in through her nose and out through her mouth, deliberately slow and measured. The air is crisp and cold. Although she’d obviously never been as much a fan as Okarun (who could be?) there were times as a child when she’d look up and imagine something was there. Not little green men with antennae, necessarily, but something watching over her. Keeping her safe.
”Miss Ayase,” calls a quiet voice, because she still can’t rid him of that stupid habit, “your bath’s ready.” Momo feels something warm take root inside of her as she realises, all this time, she’s been looking in the wrong place.
Well, Okarun does as he’s told — as soon as Momo walks into the bathroom she’s practically suffocated by rose-scented steam. “I hope it’s not too hot,” he mumbles, scratching at the baby curls at the back of his neck. She dips a finger into the water — boiling, just as she likes it.
He turns around and holds the doorknob to shut it, but Momo calls out to him before he closes it. “Wait— Okarun— You can stay. Just turn around.”
His face goes red, because he might be the easiest blusher Momo’s ever met, but he nods and turns around, pretty much nose to the wall. She giggles and takes (what’s left of) her old clothes off and tosses them into the corner to be thrown away, then steps in and lowers herself. It takes her a few seconds to adjust to the heat, but once she does it flows into every one of her tired, aching muscles and she sighs contentedly. Okarun even took the liberty of putting bubbles in it.
“You can turn back around now,” Momo laughs. It may be a little bit funny how seriously he takes it, but she also holds it close to her heart how he’s always taking such care to respect her and her boundaries. She’s met one too many men who would’ve taken advantage of her thousands of times in the situations she and Okarun have been in together. Even on the first day she met, he’d insisted so vehemently on her taking his clothes after their first alien encounter that she felt like she’d be kicking a sad puppy if she refused.
Okarun smiles at her, one of his rare, full, teethy, genuine ones. That’s always been him — more content than anything else to just help other people. He turns to a pile of products he’s lined up on the sink like soldiers marching into battle, and picks up the bottle of shampoo so carefully it’s as if it were made of glass.
“You’re holding it like it’s radioactive,” Momo giggles, “or like it’ll grow teeth and bite you.”
”I want to do this right.”
Momo softens. “You will. My hair’s not fragile, it goes through like two cans of dry shampoo a month.”
”Still. You deserve for it to be done right. I want to take care of you.” Okarun squirts some pink gel into his hand, and Momo marvels at how he can say such sappy stuff so casually sometimes when he’s that shy and easily flustered. You give me courage, she remembers him saying once.
His hands in her hair cut off her train of thought. Those long, dainty fingers she loves so much get to work lathering the shampoo immediately, massaging heavenly circles into her scalp. It’s a mystery how he does it so expertly, varying the pressure with his fingertips and thumbs and palms in all the right places. He moves down near the base of her neck and every bit of tension dissipates from her spine, leaving her a boneless jelly under his gentle touch. Any effort she had made to bite back the little noises of contentment escaping her has been abandoned. She thinks she could die right here and be totally fine with it.
The hands stop for a second and she damn near whines . ”Is this alright?” asks Okarun, unaware that him stopping is the only not okay part of this. “Harder? Softer?”
“Damn it, Okarun, keep going or I’m going to break something.”
“Okay, okay,” he laughs, “on it.”
”How did you get so good at this, anyway?”
“My mom used to like it like this.” The massage slows in pace, but doesn’t stop, thank God. Momo realizes that this is the first piece of information she’s ever learned about Okarun’s family. That he washed his mom’s hair. She feels slight guilt for never asking, but whenever the topic of family comes up he does his best to change the subject, so she can’t really be blamed.
With this in mind, Momo treads lightly. “Yeah?”
“Mm. She loved rose-scented products too.”
Momo turns to look into his eyes, always so expressive in betrayal of his tendency to secrets. They’re alive and soft, far from that emptiness she’s grown terrified of seeing when he’s really hit his limit, but a look from him tells her, not now. Later. This is another thing Momo can’t recall ever having started between them — they’ve always just been able to tell what the other’s thinking through a look, to everyone else’s confusion. Okarun fills a plastic cup with water and uses it to rinse out the shampoo. Momo hasn’t had this done for her since she was a baby. That makes her ache a little, for some reason.
A brief cold hits her from a breeze through a sliver in the window, and her mind drags her back for a second to somewhere worse. Bright fluorescent light. Restrained on an operating table. Cold iron on her wrists. Being watched. Exposed. Cold. So cold.
Goosebumps rise against her skin, but are quickly washed away by the warm water. Okarun’s hand slots into hers. He’s noticed, of course he has. She leans into the water against her neck, sighing and stretching. It’s safe here. Warm. Smells like roses. It’s only her and Okarun, who won’t let something like that happen again. He rubs his thumb across the back of her hand before retracting.
The conditioner is next — he lathers such a generous amount of it onto his palm she would yell at him for wasting money if she weren’t feeling so warm and mushy. She’s also vulnerable and exposed like this, but a whole world away from what it was from the aliens. She’s trusting Okarun with so much, and he’s cognizant of that, and repaying that trust with nothing but tenderness. His hands are so gentle as they work the conditioner through to the ends, and even when he combs through the knots she barely notices it. When he hits a nasty tangle, instead of trying to rake the comb through, screaming, and pulling out a clump of hair the size of a hamster (like Momo would), he takes the time to pull it apart with his fingers. That’s how he loves her. Pulling her apart gently and patiently. Dismantling all the invisible defenses she’s put up with soft words and kind hands.
Once the conditioner’s out, the water is tepid. Okarun hands her a towel. “Do you want some tea?” he asks.
Momo shakes her head. “I just wanna sleep, to be honest.”
“Me too. There’s nothing stopping us, I guess.”
Once she’s dry and changed, she comes out of the bathroom and breathes in the cool air, letting the steam waft out through the window. Okarun is perched on the side of her bed, looking sheepish. There’s something unbearably tender in his beautiful brown eyes.
”Shit, Okarun, I’m sorry. I forgot to take your futon out.”
She moves to get it from the closet, but something tugs at her. She thinks of going to sleep, thinks of the nightmares she’s going to have like she always does. Picturing herself over and over again back in that operating room with the cold iron restraints. She thinks of the pure warmth emanating from the pads of Okarun’s fingers and already misses the feeling.
”Okarun?”
“Yeah?”
“If it’s okay with you… I don’t really want to sleep alone tonight.”
His face goes bright red within half a second, but some of the tension is released from the line of his shoulders. The Hello Kitties on his cheek plaster stare up at her. “…No. Me neither.”
”I guess there’s only one solution to our problem, then,” Momo says, jerking her head towards her bed. “Move up.”
They’ve never slept in the same bed before, but it’s hard for this to feel really new and intimate to Momo with the amount of cuddling they’ve done in the past. It’s just a natural step forward. She gets under the covers, but he remains sitting up.
“Okarun? Come lie down, it’s alright.”
He stands up and takes a look out of the window, then shuts it with more firmness than she’s seen from him in a while and flips off the lights. “Sorry. I just… want to make sure it’s gone. You know.” His throat bobs as he swallows. “I still feel like I’m there. When I close my eyes I can still see them. See… you.”
Momo practically drags him down to sit with her. She puts a hand on his jaw and runs her thumb over his cheekbone. “Hey. It’s okay, Okarun.”
He bites down a sniffle. They’re so attuned to each other’s bodies she’d know he was upset if she were blind and deaf, she thinks. Her thumb continues its idle motion. He’s always throwing around these promises that he’ll protect her — someone needs to be there to protect him as well.
They can do whatever they want to me, because I’ll have you to come back to. Okarun was talking about bullies there, but the statement could apply to both of them, for so, so many things.
“It’s okay,” she repeats.
He collapses onto her, and she holds him without hesitation. She’s warm and safe and exhausted, cocooned under the blankets with her head on Okarun’s chest and his heartbeat under her ear.
“Thank you for the bath,” Momo whispers, so softly it sounds more as if inside her own head.
”Of course.” He leans down and kisses her forehead, feather-light, like a passing spring breeze laden with sunlight. “I’m here whenever you need me.”
Their breathing syncs up. Momo remembers an insult from Grandma Seiko. You two share one brain cell . It had the opposite reaction than intended on her, making her feel giddy, like sunshine was bursting out of her core. They’re together in everything they do. No matter what happens, they have each other to fall back on, to come home to after a long day and be taken care of. They’re wearing each other’s clothes, enveloped in each other’s scents, and if they merged into the same person right now Momo doubts anything would feel that different.