racing sunrise

by Lohikäärme (Myxinidae)

Summary:

So. She was maybe possibly a teeny tiny bit obsessed with Okarun’s wings. She couldn’t help it. She liked Okarun and she liked his wings, and she really wanted to see them stretched out, except Okarun always kept them folded away as some sort of psychological tease for her specifically.

Momo wants nothing more than to fly with her crush. Unfortunately, Okarun doesn't fly. Ever. Momo is determined to get to the bottom of this.

Chapter 1

Okarun didn’t fly. Ever. His wings looked completely fledged, but he always kept them tucked tightly against his back and out of the way. He didn’t express himself with them the way Momo did, flares and flaps punctuating her words as easily as hand gestures.

They were nice wings, too. Okarun’s wings were the polite brown-white-black of a sparrow, nicely shaped and small enough to cross their tips neatly behind his back when he stood. They were cute, auspicious, and completely, infuriatingly, unused.

Momo might have a bit of a complex about it. But she couldn’t understand why he never flew. The moment she’d been declared flight-ready (and honestly, for a year or two before she had finished fledging) she had launched herself off the roof of her house again and again until she learned how to fly. She hadn’t looked down since.

She loved flying and, selfishly, she wanted to fly with Okarun. He’d be a good flight partner, she thought. She’d like to dance with him sometime, wingtip-to-wingtip, see how in sync they could get before tiring out.

Momo chewed on her pen, imagining what Okarun’s wings would look like in flight. She sighed.

Beside her, Kei giggled. Her own wings, naturally the iridescent green of a bee-catcher, caught the sunlight from where she’d slung them carelessly across her chair. “Momo, you’re down bad.”

“Down horrendous, even!” Miko chimed in, fawn-brown dove wings fluttering in emphasis. “Kei was trying to cheat off you in class today, and you didn’t even notice her!”

Kei nodded sadly, but Momo paid them no mind. She didn’t have work today, and to the best of her knowledge Okarun had done his homework (or rather, she’d done it for him). So, that meant they had all evening together. All that she had to do was wait until he was done talking to his class representative about whatever, and then uninterrupted time with her best friend and crush.

She smiled, standing up and pushing her chair back.

Miko and Kei were still talking to her, but she didn’t think it was important. It was Okarun time, and these days she didn’t get much one on one time with him. She said her goodbyes as she darted out the door and into 2-C, where Okarun was seated and looking up at the class rep standing over him.

When the class rep saw Momo, her songbird wings mantled, shielding Okarun from her gaze in a cloak of dull brown.

Momo scoffed and shouldered her aside, grabbing Okarun’s bag and slinging it over her shoulder. “C’mon, nerd, time to go home.”

Okarun blinked up at her, then smiled.

Momo blushed. When Okarun turned to her and smiled, the sunlight caught him just so that the light diffused golden through his wings. Oh, but Momo wanted to touch them! She’d touched them before, of course, riding piggyback on him as he blasted his way through earthbound spirits. But that was always in stressful situations where she was as preoccupied with not crushing his wings as she was with keeping them both alive.

The class representative- Jin? Rin?- tried to intercede, worried as always about Momo taking advantage of Okarun’s purity with her delinquetness or whatever it was she was always on about. Not like Momo ever did anything worse than skipping class and sometimes smoking with her ex, but well. It was hard for some people to see past the stigma. And she supposed that she’d recently added quite a bit of fighting and breaking-and-entering to the list.

But that wasn’t relevant! Okarun had done all of that alongside her, and happily at that. He would tell her if she overstepped, she thought.

When she told Okarun as much several minutes later, on their way home, he’d just tilted his head. “Ayase-san couldn’t overstep,” he said. “I’d do anything for you.”

Momo didn’t have much to say to that! He had, yet again, melted all the brains out of her skull with his comments! The boy was shy, sure, but he was deadly straightforward when he wanted to and sometimes when he didn’t mean it. Or rather: he meant every word out of his mouth, but sometimes he didn’t think of how it sounded, she thought.

She forced herself to keep her hands still. She couldn’t be caught preening in public like a child, even if she really, really wanted to make sure her wings were nice and shiny for Okarun.

It was embarrassing. It was super embarrassing! She shoved Okarun, at a loss for words.

He rocked with the force of her push and laughed, scratching the back of his neck. “Sorry, did I embarrass you, Momo?”

“No! It’s just, well-” Momo said, then huffed. She didn’t have to stick around and listen to this.

She snapped out her wings and flapped hard enough to make Okarun’s hair fly up. He squinted against the wind and, behind his hand, rolled his eyes.

“Bye, Okarun!” Momo called out as she spiraled up and away in the direction of her home. Far below her, Okarun waved.

 

So. She was maybe possibly a teeny tiny bit obsessed with Okarun’s wings. She couldn’t help it. She liked Okarun and she liked his wings, and she really wanted to see them stretched out, except Okarun always kept them folded away as some sort of psychological tease for her specifically.

She could see them rustle sometimes when he was particularly irritated and occasionally the shrivelled wings of Okarun’s yokai form would twitch uselessly when Momo launched herself off him, as if he wanted to follow her. If he had proper wings in his yokai form, not the useless wings of a spirit, then she thought he might actually follow her. He certainly watched her wings enough. If he were anyone else, she would be offended and feel a bit violated, but having his red eyes tracking her wings felt a bit secure.

She sighed. Then, aggravated, she sighed again, flipping over from her perch on the roof of her house. It was a pleasant day, warm and breezy in a way that made her wings itch to be stretched. There wasn’t anything stopping her, really, but Okarun was supposed to come over ten minutes ago and she didn’t want to miss his arrival.

“Go find your boyfriend if you’re gonna be this emo about it!” Her grandmother called from where she was hanging the laundry to dry outside.

Momo rolled her eyes and leapt off the roof, catching a thermal and spiralling up and up until Seiko was a patch of silver hair and black wings. Far down the road, she saw a blob she thought might have been Okarun. She squinted in its direction, banking lazily towards it until it resolved into Okarun riding his bike.

“Hey!” Momo called.

When Okarun didn’t answer, she swooped down low enough to teasingly tap a wingtip on the top of his head.

He squeaked, swerved, and crashed.

“Shit!” Momo said, landing clumsily by his side.

He looked unharmed from where he was sprawled out in the ditch, his wings spread around him. Momo tried not to goggle at the white inner coverts on display. With Okarun always keeping his wings tucked away and his yokai form’s wings not having feathers, she’d never seen the insides of his wings.

Okarun looked up at where she was standing over him and wonderingly touched the top of his head. “Miss Ayase?”

When offered, he grabbed her hand to pull himself up. They both staggered under the weight of his wings, Okarun grunting unhappily as they dragged on the ground.

Okarun sat heavily on the ground. “Ow…” he moaned. He tried again to pull his wings back into their usual tuck and winced.

They were sodden and muddy. Had he not been preening properly? Healthy wings shouldn’t collect water like this after so short a dunk.

“Are you okay?” Momo asked.

Okarun looked at her with watery eyes. “Just peachy.” His wings had sunk to an incredibly uncomfortable looking stoop, the alulae so low they almost brushed the ground.

Momo started toward him, then stopped herself right before her hands touched his wing as the wing in question slopped wetly away from her hand. “Okarun? I’m not gonna hurt you, dummy.” The boy was staring at her hand like it was a venomous snake.

She could see him swallow, then brace himself, moving his wing back in reach.

Even though she’d climbed all over him in both forms, with both of them in varying stages of undress, he still didn’t trust her to touch his wings. The lack of trust stung. She’d let Okarun touch her wings without batting an eye. Friends helped friends take care of their wings. It was as simple as that.

She glared at him and he cringed away again, hunching over but keeping his wings obediently still.

Well! If he was going to be like that, she might as well just-

She shoved her hand onto his wing and ignored the full-body flinch. Then she just kept it there until Okarun’s shivers died away, gently stroking his outer primaries. There. Not too intimate, but also reassuring. She liked it when her friends preened her primaries- maybe Okarun would as well?

The brown feathers felt oil-free beneath her fingers and Momo frowned. Okarun darted an anxious glance at her, and she made an effort to clear the frown from her face.

He glared at the fake smile. “What?” Okarun demanded snippily.

“Nothing!” Momo said. Then, reconsidering: “Actually, could I preen you?”

Okarun flushed bright red. He blinked once, then, chewing on his lip, nodded shyly.

Momo beamed. “Great! We can do it at my house!” She was blushing as well, even though it wasn’t strange for friends to preen friends. As long as it was on the outer feathers, it was perfectly platonic and normal. Although, by looking at him he would need a proper preening, one using preening oil and going deep to the bases of the feathers. Just thinking of it made her feel faint. A true preening was intimate. Ever since she’d molted her natal down for pinfeathers, Seiko had declared her old enough to preen herself.

It required real preening oil, the type produced by the preening glands where the bottom tertials met the skin of a person’s back- not the fake nice-smelling stuff sold at beauty stores.

But, she figured, she’d sat mostly nude on Okarun’s back when they were fighting the Serpoians and the Loch Ness Monster. That was probably more intimate than - her heart pounded in her ears- caressing Okarun’s downy coverts. Right?

“Ayase-san?” Okarun asked, cutting through Momo’s increasingly flustered thoughts.

“Right! Ok. Let’s go!” Momo shouted.

Okarun looked mildly affronted, but followed her anyways, clambering onto his bike with a quiet oof and laboriously pedalling his way to Momo’s house. She watched him for a few seconds to make sure he wasn’t going to fall into another ditch and, like, drown or something, but he seemed steady enough.

She would have to fly quickly to beat him to her house with enough time to smuggle out her preening supplies from the gathering room without Seiko getting suspicious.

Nearly half an hour and several loud arguments later (so much for Seiko not knowing what was happening) found a shirtless Okarun seated on Momo’s bed facing the wall with his still-wet wings slumped down over the side, fidgeting nervously as Momo took a closer look at his wings. They were a mess. His barbs weren’t in the type of disarray that would be expected of someone who had never preened before, but they weren’t smooth and interlocking either. She hesitated, hands hovering over the bend of his wings, then dove in.

Okarun roused his feathers when Momo hesitantly pushed on his preening gland. She tested the oil between her fingers- not bad.

Then, she got to work.

She tried to be mindful of how nervous Okarun was by keeping up a running commentary on where she would be rubbing his feathers down with oil, and where she’d be manually rearranging his barbs to align. And at first Okarun was responsive, even if that responsiveness was his stuttering and occasionally making biting comments. Around the time that Momo moved on from preening his primaries to preening his secondaries, he was quiet except for sometimes humming agreement to what she was saying.

He had pin feathers scattered throughout his upper and mid-wings, all the parts that a person couldn’t reach on their own that were usually hidden by the way he kept his wings so neatly folded. She couldn’t help but wonder if this neglect- because it could only be neglect that his parents let him run around with pin feathers as if he were a fledgeling- was why he was so reluctant to use his wings. Surely between this and the improper preening, he couldn’t fly. As she worked her way through his feathers, she caught and crumbled their waxy sheaths, helping the plumes within extend properly. He shifted slightly as each previously trapped feather joined its fellows, lying flat and neat and clean along his wings.

Okarun’s wings were still slumped down, but his breathing had slowed into steady, even breaths. She thought, maybe, he might be enjoying the preening.

When she took away her hands to wipe them clean of dirt, he let out a sleepy protest and looked over his shoulder at her.

Momo’s breath caught. He looked ruffled, cheeks pink with pleasure and eyes hazy and dilated. She thought, oh no. She thought, I want to see this again and again.

Eventually she fell into a steady rhythm of oil, preen, wipe hands, repeat. It was relaxing for her, too, something in her stomach feeling warm and mushy looking at how relaxed and happy Okarun was, how his wings steadily became cleaner and neater and shinier. She liked that.

She liked that a lot.

Time dripped by in a syrup-sweet haze of repetition, Okarun becoming more and more pliable under her hands until there was no resistance when she manouvered his wing to a more accessible position. Eventually she finished the backs of his wings and, feeling daring, sat next to Okarun on the bed and pulled him down until he was half-sprawled on her lap, his soft inner coverlets spread open and dazed brown eyes staring up at her. She stroked his cheekbones, resting her hands over his ears and feeling the silky slide of his hair between her fingers. His eyelashes were long enough to brush the skin of her thumbs in gentle tickles.

He blinked sleepily up at her. “Miss Ayase?”

She realized with a start that her wings were mantled protectively, blocking the two of them from the world outside in a raven-black shield. With some effort, she lowered them.

“Sorry,” she lied.

She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to fly with him. Instead, she watched as Okarun’s eyes fluttered shut and his lips parted with the soft breaths of sleep. Only when she was certain that he was deeply asleep did she dare brush her lips against his forehead. It wasn’t quite a kiss, not quite enough to fill the hungry thing in her chest that wanted to steal Okarun away from the world, all to herself. It would have to do.

Notes:

Momo - common raven
Okarun - Eurasian tree sparrow
Turbokarun - flightless, like all yokai and spirits in this AU
Seiko - large-billed crow
Miko and Kei - Asian green bee-eater and Oriental turtledove

This was originally a bit longer, but I was struggling with the next sequence and posted it as-is. There may be another chapter.

edit: changed the wording of one sentence to better comply with the social norms shown in the second chapter. "... [Kei's wings] caught the sunlight from where she'd [...] slung them carelessly over Momo's shoulder." became "...from where she'd [...] slung them carelessly over her chair."

Chapter 2

Summary:

Despite Momo cleaning up his wings for him, Okarun still doesn't fly.

Notes:

Please note that this chapter has briefly mentioned suicidal ideation and internalized fantasy ableism over being unable to fly.

They didn’t talk about the preening, especially not after Momo woke up with Okarun drooling onto her legs in his sleep, wings still splayed open enough to be touching Momo’s own wingtips. She was thankful Seiko hadn’t checked in on them- she never would have been allowed a moment of peace ever again, probably.

Momo also didn’t talk to anyone about her suspicion that Okarun couldn’t fly. At least, not for several weeks. There was too much else going on, anyways, between the Kaiju and the girl within moving in with them and then the Kur invasion and Okarun almost dying.

It was actually Vamola who had asked. The strange, wingless alien girl had squinted dubiously at Okarun’s wings and asked, “Okarun cannot fly?”

Okarun flushed bright red and darted a glance at Momo. “Can. I just don’t like it.”

Momo couldn’t believe her ears. Okarun could fly this whole time and didn’t tell her? What else wasn’t he telling her? Did he think it was funny, watching her fuss over him? She couldn’t help but blurt out, “Why not?”

Okarun glared at her and pressed his lips together so tightly they became a white line. “Because.”

“What the fuck, Okarun?” Momo demanded, aware her voice was pitching high and loud in outrage and her wings were stiffening from the comfortable sprawl they had been in.

“It’s none of your business!” Okarun snapped, every feather on his wings roused.

“Excuse me? Like hell it’s none of my business!” Momo hollered.

In the background of the growing haze of anger, Momo was distantly aware of Vamola slapping her hands over her ears. She didn’t care. Not when Okarun had been lying to her. She stood up and fisted her hands in Okaruns shirt from over the chabudai, dragging him forward until they were face to face. Her wings were fully extended and arched threateningly forward. Okarun’s, controlled as ever, were still folded behind him. Somehow this made her even angrier. He was still lying!

She flapped once and Okarun’s dark eyes tracked the movement before flaring red. His bones popped and creaked as he changed to his yokai form, the yokai form’s own shrivelled wings stretching out in mirrored aggression. She’d seen his cursed form’s glower before, but she’d never been on the receiving end. It was primally terrifying, and Momo flapped again.

Vamola keened at a high, inhuman pitch. “Stop, stop, stop!”

Jiji was starting to stand up too, wings tucked submissively behind him and hands placatingly outstretched.

Okarun snarled at them. “Stay out of this.”

“Take it outside, you two! No fighting in my kitchen if it ain’t over food!” Seiko shouted, slamming her hands on the chabudai with a loud bang and flaring her wings as punctuation. She was scowling. On her lap, Turbo Granny continued eating, entirely unaffected by the chaos.

“Ugh, fine!” Momo said, spinning on her heels and storming outside, stopping only to put on her shoes. She didn’t care if Okarun followed her or not. She wanted to be alone.

When she felt the spider-crawling sensation of Okarun’s cursed form sulking after her as she made her way to the rice field, she sped up and took off. It was petty, she knew, especially since Okarun couldn’t fly like this, but she couldn’t stand looking at his lying face.

There was a massive camphor tree in a forest a kilometer away that Momo liked to roost in when she had to get away from her grandmother and the shrine. She flew directly to it, swooping to perch on a particularly wide branch. The tree’s thick blanket of moss was soft and comforting beneath her fingers as she settled herself down, flopping backwards and covering her face in a wing.

She muffled a scream into its crook. She wasn’t even sure why she was so upset about Okarun lying to her about being able to fly, but it felt like a betrayal of all the times she’d gone out of her way for him. It sucked! It was really shitty! She stared up at the sky, at the calming grey blanket of low-lying clouds, and breathed in and out until she no longer wanted to break something. She was calming down.

“Momo-chan?”

Nevermind.

She ignored Okarun’s voice from far below her. She didn’t want to see him right now, especially not after he was such a jackass, even in the form that was normally sweeter to her. The fact that even his yokai form had lashed out stung worse, somehow.

He called her name again, then a third time. When she didn’t respond, he heaved a sigh so loud she could hear it even from her perch ten meters above him. She rolled over to her other side.

“Go away, I don’t want to talk to you right now,” she drawled, intentionally rude. Had she ever appreciated how fascinating this moss was? It was so… green. And mossy.

“Momo-chan,” he called again.

Four times now. He wasn’t getting the message. “Go away, Okarun.”

A pause.

“I hurt your feelings.” Okarun stated. It wasn’t a question. “What a bummer.”

Momo didn’t dignify that with an answer. Her feelings weren’t hurt, she was just… surprised. Was all. Okarun’s anger was usually as quick to fade as it was to flare up and she didn’t expect him to be so angry at being called out for lying.

There was another pause, and then a loud scratching noise as he scrambled clumsily up the tree with his claws, his useless wings splayed out for balance as he crept over. When he reached her side, he sat down, dangling his legs off the side of the branch. His characteristic jaw mask was gone, showing where the red tear-tracks tracing down his face vanished.

Momo forced herself not to rouse at his presence. She didn’t want to fight with him, not really.

He sighed again, quieter this time, and shrank into his human form.

“You’re mad because you thought I couldn’t fly, right?” Okarun asked quietly.

Momo didn’t dignify that comment with a response. Her wings twitched irritably.

“Sorry.” Okarun said. His voice was thick. “I didn’t mean to deceive you. I’m just-”

“What?” Momo interrupted harshly. “A liar? Did you think it was funny that I preened your wings?” Something black and acidic and hurt was pooling in the pit of her stomach again.

“No!” Okarun cried. “It wasn’t a lie!”

Her wings twitched again. “Can you or can’t you fly.”

Okarun tucked his feet under himself, hugging his knees close to his chest. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Momo echoed disbelievingly.

He shrugged his shoulders miserably. “I really don’t. Please don’t be mad at me for not knowing, Miss Ayase.” Okarun’s voice was pleading.

“How can you not know if you can fly or not?” Momo pushed herself up so she was facing him.

Okarun’s jaw worked silently a bit before he hunched in on himself, looking away from her and shrugging again. Momo valiantly resisted the urge to force him to face her. She could see the tension in his shoulders.

“I’ve never…” Okarun started. His voice was tiny, ashamed. “I’ve never tried.”

For once, Momo had nothing to say to that.

Okarun swallowed and continued. “I didn’t practice when I was younger because there was nobody to fly with, and I don’t fly now because I don’t know how to fly. I think I can, if I tried, but every time I go to a perch I think of how I’m flightless at seventeen and I’m so embarrassed, Miss Ayase, I just freeze up or- or I just want to jump off.” His voice cracked. “I know it makes me stand out that I don’t use my wings and I know it’s embarrassing for you to be around a flightless man, and I just- some days I wish I didn’t have them at all.”

He turned to face her, eyes shining with tears. “I didn’t mean to lash out at you, Miss Ayase, I really didn’t. I’m so sorry.”

Momo looked down at her hands. She couldn’t make eye contact with him as she hesitantly extended a wing and curled it over his shoulder. Okarun’s breath caught. She could feel the way he held himself stiffly beneath her wing, then relaxed in miniscule increments as she let him bear more and more of her wing’s weight.

She didn’t want to apologise, so she didn’t. Instead, she let her actions speak for her as she pulled Okarun in until he was next to her, nestled in the curve of her wing.

Ever so hesitantly, Okarun reached for her hand, entwining their fingers together. They watched the sky brighten from silvery grey to bloody red sunset, then fade to a gentle orange and finally deepen into the cool hues of twilight. Okarun remained bundled next to her, his wings but there, beneath hers. She could feel the occasional pressure of gentle fingers combing through her inner primaries. His preening was as hesitant and polite as Okarun was.

“If we stay any longer,” Momo eventually said, “Grandma will get worried.”

Okarun let out an irritated huffy noise that Momo was half-certain he wasn’t aware he’d made and somehow scooched even closer to her, his side a line of warmth against hers. It was, unfortunately, adorable.

“C’mon, nerd. Up and at ‘em,” Momo said, prodding him and delighting in the second huffy sigh he made. “Want to try gliding down? I’ll catch you with my mega-cool powers, so don’t worry about falling.”

Okarun took off his glasses and polished them. “Isn’t it too dark?”

“Nah, we can use my phone’s flashlight. What, don’t you trust me?” Momo cajoled, prodding him again and again until he shoved one of his wings between his body and her poking fingers.

“Of course I do, Miss Ayase,” he said seriously. “But it’s embarrassing. And I don’t know if I want you to see me failing at this.”

“Oh.” Momo said. Then, rallying: “I’ll close my eyes if you want. C’mon, Okaruuun. Practice flying!” She tugged lightly on Okarun’s alula and pouted when he twitched it away from her hands.

“You can’t use your powers accurately with your eyes closed!” Okarun yelped.

She made a peace sign. “Better not fall, then!”

With that, Momo stood up and backflipped off the branch, purposely showing off as she snapped open her wings to glide onto a branch a few meters below the branch Okarun was still perched on. She took out her flashlight and turned it on, illuminating Okarun and the tree in a white glow.

His eyes shone eerily red back at her and Momo frowned. He didn’t seem like he was about to involuntarily transform, but. Well. Sometimes he surprised her.

When no creaking bones happened, Momo let out an encouraging, “You can do it, Okarun!”

The underlighting made it so that Momo couldn’t quite tell what expression was on Okarun’s face, but the nervous shifting and anxious wing tucking was obvious enough. He opened his wings halfway, then closed them, then opened them again.

“Just jump and keep them open!” Momo called. “I’ll catch you!”

She manifested her spectral hands and gave him a thumbs up with them. Okarun rocked forwards as if to jump, then reeled back with a clumsy flap of his wings. Momo cheered, but then he sat down.

She booed him and he picked a clump of moss free from the bark and threw it at her. “You’re not helping.”

“And you’re not trying!” Momo fired back.

Okarun jumped off the branch, screaming as he plummeted wildly, wings locked closed.

“Shit!” Momo said and grabbed Okarun by his midsection right before he fell past her.

He extended his wings.

“Too late, numbnuts,” Momo chided as she hauled him up to the safety of the branch. “Try extending them before you start falling.”

He adjusted his glasses, dangling loosely in her grip. “Sorry.”

“Maybe if I hold you while I glide?” Momo mused. Okarun wasn’t that heavy, and she’d carried him around in his transformed state before while flying. “You can hold out your wings, feel the air and all that.”

Okarun blinked owlishly at her. “That’s…. indecent though, isn’t it?”

Momo flushed. “It’s not like we’re actually doing anything! And I’ll just be holding you, it’ll be like those people that help injured people learn how to fly.”

Okarun stumbled as he was deposited back onto the branch. “So you’ll be carrying me? Is that okay?”

“Only for a bit! Just enough for you to practice flapping.”

His gulp was audible. “O-okay. If you think that’s best, Miss Ayase.”

“You’ll have to carry my phone though, if I’m holding you I won’t be able to hold it, too,” Momo said. She checked her battery. It was half-full, more than enough to get them to the lit main road. “Okay, I want you to make sure to have your wings out this time.”

Okarun obediently extended his wings. Momo frowned as she noticed a tremble at around half-extension. She delicately took his outer left wing in a hand and manually extended it, noting how much it shook from the effort.

“Can you… not fully extend your wings?” Momo wondered aloud. It would make sense though, wouldn’t it? He never used his wings and always kept them tucked tight to his back. The muscles might be atrophied. She stroked a reassuring hand over the bend of his wing and gently folded it back.

“Can too.” Okarun said waspishly. He was hunching over again, protective arms crossed over his abdomen as if to ward off any cruel comments.

Momo stroked his wing again and he relaxed a bit. “It’s fine if you can’t. We’ll have to build up your muscle later! But today, just try and keep them open.”

He nodded with determination, then squeaked like a mouse when Momo grasped his shoulders in a half-hug. He was just slightly shorter than her, and when she extended her wings in an overlap of his (wow, she wanted to do this more!) his wings were much smaller, especially when he was holding them awkwardly half-extended. He was kind of a tiny guy. And she really liked that.

“Ready?” She asked.

His nod brushed his hair against her nose and Momo resisted the urge to bury her face in his hair.

She jumped, wrapping her legs around his waist, and extended her wings.

It was weird, doing this when they weren’t in imminent danger from spirits or aliens or chasing down living anatomical models. She was used to holding Okarun’s transformed state like this; all sharp bony edges, lanky limbs that were longer than they had any right to be, and flaming hair that smelled like dank tunnel. Not the human Okarun. Human Okarun was a warm weight in her arms, small and soft and smelling like her shampoo.

He hesitantly extended his own wings to follow as much as he could. Their trembling occasionally brushed his feathers against hers, which made flying a bit difficult but it wasn’t anything that Momo couldn’t handle. She flapped once, pushing his wings down with her own, then twice, lifting their glide enough that Okarun would be able to feel the wind between his primaries.

They couldn’t have been in the air for more than a minute before Momo started to tire. Carrying a person was hard work!

“I’m gonna bring us down, okay?” Momo said into Okarun’s ear.

“S-sure,” he said, breathless.

Momo raised her wings up in a wide V angle and tilted her primaries, banking downwards and leftward. She felt the air pressure above her wings increase as the air flow below decreased, pushing them down and down until-

She lifted her legs to absorb the impact onto the ground and muffled a shriek into Okarun’s shoulders as he flapped and kicked, throwing off the angle of their landing. They fell, Okarun twisting below her to break her fall and colliding with the ground himself. His breath rushed out of his lungs with a hiss of air and Momo winced.

“Ow.” Okarun said.

“Ow.” Momo agreed.

She pushed herself off from atop him, collapsing gently on a brown-feathered wing and giggling breathlessly. “Why didn’t you pick up your legs?”

Okarun joined her in laughter, throwing an arm over his face. His wing was soft beneath Momo, warm and fluffy and smelling of Okarun. It shook with his laughter. “I-I don’t know! I think I didn’t want it to end.”

“Really?” Momo said, propping herself up with one hand on his inner wing and looking at him.

She could see his smile, partially hidden beneath his arm. “Yeah. It was pretty good.”

“Only pretty good?” Momo demanded, settling back down and slinging one of her own wings over his body. Her breath caught at the feeling of Okarun gingerly touching her coverts. His fingers were light, barely making contact with the vanes and barely perceptible.

“Well… maybe a bit better than pretty good,” Okarun admitted, still avoiding her gaze.

“Heh. Told you.”

In the deepening chill, Momo cuddled closer to Okarun, hiding her pleased grin as he stuttered and blushed before he wrapped his remaining wing, the wing she wasn’t lying on, around the two of them.

“Miss Ayase?” Okarun asked.

“Yeah?”

“Wasn’t your grandmother expecting us back?”

“Fuck!”

Notes:

Momo - common raven
Okarun - Eurasian tree sparrow
Turbokarun - flightless, like all yokai and spirits in this AU
Seiko - common raven
Vamola: wingless, like all aliens in this AU
Jiji: rose-ringed parakeet

interested in Momo/Okarun? join me and a bunch of other cool people in the mokarun discord here at https://discord.gg/VWt5bqKb4H

 

vamola: okarun can you fly?
okarun, feeling embarrassed and lying: yes. im so good at flying
momo: you can WHAT???
okarun, now getting defensive: ok well fuck you too im the best flier in the world
I lied.... I think there will be three chapters.

Chapter 3

Notes:

Many thanks to rainbow for beta reading and being a bird consultant! Read their fic at https://archiveofourown.org/works/62134081/chapters/158930161 - it's got a really cool bird. and okarun suffering in the backcountry.

Momo panted as she spiralled down, the crane wife’s feather attack clipping her cheek in an arc of red-hot pain. On her back, weighing her down, Okarun made a feral snarling noise, clawed hands tightening painfully on her shoulders.

“Momo-chan! Let me off!” Okarun said urgently.

She groaned and flipped upside-down, breath leaving her in a woosh of air as Okarun decided to use her back as his personal launchpad. She flailed in midair for a second before righting herself and shielding Okarun in a haze of psychic blue from the crane wife’s following feather attacks.

The misshapen, featherless crane let out a grating cry and flapped her bald wings in a futile effort to lift off the ground. Like all spirits, she remained stranded. Momo wasn’t always the most sympathetic to her adversaries, but something about watching a flightless bird struggle pulled deep at her heart. She couldn’t imagine being plucked and grounded like some common beast.

But still- fuck this bitch!

Momo dodged yet another spectral feather attack. At least a plucked goose had the decency to stay plucked! This crane was making feathers of her own spiritual energy and launching them like arrows at Momo. And it was only Momo she was aiming for. Jealousy, maybe?

She couldn’t even begin to guess. Regardless, even though Okarun didn’t have to worry about the ranged attacks, he was still in danger from the crane’s razored beak and piercing talons as she rampaged around.

It would be easier if he could fly, Momo thought, and then immediately felt guilty for it. He’d been trying to learn and was making admirable progress. And his cursed form could never fly anyways- her grandmother’d said that it was a miracle he had the potential to fly in his human form with how closely connected to Turbo granny Okarun was.

So, she was carting him around yet again. It wasn’t like she minded giving him piggyback rides, just how he didn’t mind her clambering onto his back and being zoomed around on the ground but.

Well!

An extra 50kg made flying really, really, really, really hard. Like, really hard.

Momo prized herself on her midair acrobatics, the way she could flip upside down and rightside up and fly the whole way through it. Corvids were good at trick flying. But, she couldn’t trick fly with Okarun weighing her down. Which was unfortunate when she had to dodge feathers from a flightless, homicidal bird.

She pulled in her wings and dropped after Okarun, who was already barrelling feet-first into the crane, making the creepy cackling noise he was wont to do when going ‘all out’. The crane shoot her head, trying to dislodge Okarun as he swarmed up the side of her half-human, half-bird face before running down the long length of her neck as she turned and pecked at him.

Momo pulled back a psychic fist and clocked the crane in the head.

“You’ll pay for this!” the crane slurred seconds before Momo hit her with another punch and she swayed, then fell to the ground with an earth-shaking thud.

Momo alighted next to the fallen crane and prodded her neck with a hesitant foot. A thin trail of blood leaked out from the crane’s eerily fleshy beak.

“Think she’s beat?” Momo asked Okarun in a hushed whisper.

He gave a laconic shrug, then his eyes widened and he crashed into Momo, tackling her to the side before the crane’s beak stabbed into the ground where Momo had been standing.

Okarun whirled around, dark smoke whistling from between his teeth, and lunged forward to snap his massive jaw shut on the crane’s neck. She spasmed, cawed weakly, and crumbled into dust. Okarun coughed and shook his head, scraping his black tongue against his hand to get rid of the yokai’s remnants.

Momo blinked. “Well, she’s certainly gone now.” It took more than an injury to kill a yokai, she knew. The crane wife would be back sooner or later for revenge. And Momo would beat her ass. Obviously.

Okarun coughed again, then turned back into his human form and gave Momo a wheezy thumbs-up.

“Home?” Momo asked.

“Actually,” Okarun said, “I was thinking we could practice flying?”

Despite every muscle in her body aching from the strain of carrying Okarun around in the air, she beamed. “Yeah!”

Okarun’s flight progress had been slow, to say the least. She suspected that the whole process would go faster if his yokai form could fly instead of being earthbound like other spirits- part of the danger Okarun was in was growing flustered enough by Momo showing him how to fly that he transformed midair and dropped like a stone.

That had been an exciting afternoon that neither of them were keen to repeat.

But still, Momo prized the small moments they carved out together to practice Okarun’s flying. It was a chance for the two of them to be together in private, without the imminent threat of loss of life or banana organs. It was nice. Sometimes they stopped by a konbini and bought onigiri for a picnic by the tree that Momo was quickly beginning to think of as their tree. She’d listen as Okarun rambled on about his theories of cryptids and aliens and yokai, kicking his legs happily in the air.

Around her, when it was just the two of them, Okarun began expressing himself with his wings. It was small gestures at first, an excited flap or reflexive flare if he got spooked, but quickly grew into him shyly reciprocating Momo’s wingtip brushes or mirroring her own wing’s movements, a brown shadow to Momo’s black wings.

She chose a perch higher in the tree than usual, out of arm’s reach of Okarun while still being within psychic grasp and made herself comfortable as Okarun stretched his wings. She wasn’t intentionally staring, but she definitely wasn’t not staring. She liked to think of it as a watchful gaze in case of problems, but realistically she was just ogling his wings from above. It was hard not to!

Okarun looked up and she dragged her gaze away, but not quickly enough to avoid making eye contact with him. Busted. She heard Okarun start to stammer out something, squeak, and then jump to the branch to glide to the ground.

His form was improving, too. At least, so Momo thought. She wasn’t the wing expert. But he’d gone from flapping uselessly to rigidly holding his wings out, to a proper gliding position. Aside from the whole ‘occasionally transforms into an earthbound spirit’ problem, Okarun struggled with the intuitive flight understanding that fledgelings had. Probably since he’d been suppressing his wing movements all his life. The stabilizing muscles had been built up enough over the past few weeks he could glide, but the filofeather senses of the direction of air flow was a difficult challenge to surmount.

She’d googled extensively about how late was too late to teach someone how to fly, and every source had said that the filofeather sensing would come naturally with time. Which was annoying, because she wanted to fly with Okarun like, yesterday.

Still, despite everything, he was nearly always up to a flight lesson and never complained about doing exercises meant for newly-fledging eight year olds.

 

“Miss Ayase,” Okarun said one day after practice. He had progressed to short, controlled falls that were halfway between gliding and properly flying under his own power.

“Hm?”

“I was wondering if you could, um, show me your tricks?” Okarun took off his glasses and cleaned them on the hem of his shirt.

Momo blushed. It wasn’t as though Okarun had never seen her trick fly before- he saw it during every fight they’d ever been in. But there was a difference between acrobatics to save their lives and trick flying. She stilled her wings from where they were mid-rouse. “O-okay!”

He grinned, starry-eyed. “Cool!”

She scrambled back up their tree, taking a few moments for Okarun to follow. He wasn’t far behind, which was a nice change from when he used to be stuck climbing up and down, always arriving at their preferred takeoff point a minute or two after Momo did.

He promptly sat on the branch, hugging his knees to his chest and looking at her with awed fascination.

Momo couldn’t help but preen a bit, straightening her hair and brushing dust from her wings before stretching them out to their full length and jumping backwards off the branch. She fell, upside-down, for a few moments before tucking her wings in and rolling into an aerial somersault, flipping over one, two, three times before snapping her wings out and flapping hard against the pull of gravity as she climbed up and up and up, dipping and diving and flipping.

“Miss Ayase!” Okarun shouted somewhere below her.

An acorn went whizzing by her head and she caught it, laughing, as she punted it back to him. “Come on up!”

The leaves of the tree rustled, and then Momo cheered as Okarun clumsily flew out of the undercover, his brows creased in concentration and effort as he joined her in midair.

She darted forward and snatched the acorn back from his hands, dropping it and wordlessly inviting Okarun to join her in a diving game.

He did, although he wasn’t very good at it. They alternated between flapping up and gliding down until Okarun was so red he looked like he was about to faint and Momo guided them safely to the ground.

Okarun put his hands on his knees and gasped for breath. Momo rushed to his side, placing a hand between his wings. “You did it!”

“I- I did it!” Okarun gasped. Momo could feel his heart pounding in his chest.

She bunched up a handful of her sweater and wiped the sweat from his face. “Great work, Okarun!”

Somehow, his face flushed further. Momo swallowed back her own embarrassment and kept mopping his face, tucking wet hair behind his ears. Okarun’s big brown eyes shone, then with a horrible creaking noise she found herself tucking white hair behind pointed ears as Okarun transformed.

Okarun looked at her, head and big blocky jaw tilted to the side. He blinked slowly, then carefully, deliberately leaned into her until her arms were full of sweaty undead Okarun. He sighed and looked dispassionately at his now-ruined shoes.

“Damn.”

“Grandma’s gonna be mad that she’s gotta buy you another pair,” Momo said.

Okarun grumbled and burrowed further into her arms.

Momo held him for a moment before releasing him. “Okay, turn back.”

He made an unhappy noise in protest, slouching over himself before sighing and shrinking back to his regular form. Momo watched in fascination as his shrivelled wings grew and feathered out while the rest of him shrunk. Unlike his cursed form, human Okarun was panting with exertion. Not for the first time, Momo wondered how the transformations worked.

Okarun only improved from there. He seemed desperate to please her, desperate to hear the joy in Momo’s voice as she cheered him on and complimented him. The acorn game became a regular pastime, lasting longer and longer as Okarun built up strength and stamina and improved his finer flight skills.

They were practicing Okarun’s liftoffs one day when he absently remarked that he wished he were some sort of raptor, something with cooler wings.

Momo almost fell over herself in her haste to reassure him that sparrow wings were perfectly cool! And auspicious!

Okarun looked at her from beneath his stupidly long eyelashes. “But you always look so nice when you’re flying with your wings. And I’m just… fluffy.”

Momo scratched her nose, flustered. She didn’t often get complimented on her wings. Sure, she liked them fine and corvid wings ran in the family, but ravens weren’t lucky or sacred the way that Seiko’s crow wings were, and non-human ravens, the birds, were kind of loud and annoying. She didn't dislike them or anything, but she was aware that she was hot despite- not because- of her wings.

Okarun reached halfway to her wings, then paused, drawing back a bit before Momo pushed her wing into his hand. He was touching her inner wing, but it was fine. Their relationship was close enough to not worry about outer versus inner wing touching propriety at this point, anyways.

He traced down her primary coverts. Momo’s eyes fluttered involuntarily closed. Then, seemingly realizing what he was doing, he pulled away.

She didn’t dare ask him to return to… petting her wings. Instead, she rambled. “I like your wings! They’re small and cu- uh, useful. You’ll be able to hover someday if you practice enough! I could never hover.”

He extended a wing and looked at it dispassionately. “I don’t even have bright feather colors. It’s not very manly.”

“No! I mean- you totally do! Your, um, whites are super bright.” Momo brushed a finger over one of his extended primaries. She wasn’t lying- there was a really crisp, lovely patterning in his wings. And besides- “I don’t like neon colored wings much anyways.”

“Y-you don’t?” Okarun said, suddenly shy. His wings twitched out. She could practically hear the calculations he was making in his brain, some of his insecurities around Jiji’s bright green wings fading away.

“They’re like, kind of eyesores. Don’t tell Kei I said that. Yours are just- nice.”

“Oh.” Okarun said, blushing all the way to his ears.

Momo and Okarun walked to school together the next day in a comfortable silence. By the gates, there was a throng of people watching the sky.

Momo looked up, shading her eyes against the early-morning sunshine.

Far above them flew a couple, a vulture and an eagle that Momo distantly recognized from the class above her. She watched the couple from the corner of her eyes, admiring their twinned graceful swoops and dives. She tried to imagine herself in the eagle girl’s place.

It was difficult.

“W-we could do that if you wanted. Miss Ayase.” Okarun said, fiddling with his wings.

Momo froze all the way from her head to her toes. “W-what?”

She could hear Okarun swallow, could almost feel the way he wrapped his courage around him like a blanket as he said, “We could fly together, if you wanted.”

Momo licked her lips. “You- you know what that means, right?”

“I do,” Okarun said, all firm commitment.

She found herself breathless, blushing, bashful in a way she so rarely was. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “You do?” She chanced a sideways glance at Okarun and found him staring resolutely at her with his wings flicking erratically. At eye contact, she looked away again.

“I know I’m not the best flier, and there are better fliers around, but I- I want to fly with you. If you’ll have me.”

Momo cycled through seemingly every emotion possible before she settled on pleased embarrassment. She nodded, a tiny little thing, willing herself to not screw this up.

Okarun’s breath let out in a loud whoosh. “You will?” Okarun said, his smile audible. “Yay!”

Momo cracked up. “Did you just say yay?”

“I guess I did, didn’t I?” Okarun laughed, high-pitched and nervous. “Yay!”

Momo leaned into his side and he hesitantly extended a wing around her shoulders. She tangled their fingers together and he squeezed her hand.

“After school?” Momo asked, pushing her bangs back behind her ears again.

“O-okay!”

There was an awkward pause. Then Okarun coughed. “I’ll just- I’ll just head to class, okay?”

Momo realized with a start that they both were late. “Me too! I mean. I’ll also go to class. And I’ll see you after school.”

They walked together to their classes, not looking at one another and blushing.

The second half of the day felt like torture. Momo kept her head firmly planted on her desk and ignored the world, willing time to move faster and for classes to be over as soon as possible.

The bell rang and Momo didn’t wait for Miko and Kei to get their bags packed before she was darting out the door.

“Whoa, where you blastin’ off to?” Miko called to her back.

“Bye Miko, bye Kei! See you both tomorrow!” Momo shouted.

“Girl, it’s Friday!”

Okarun was waiting for her by the school gates, his shoelessness telling her that he had transformed to arrive to the gate sooner. Momo took his hands in hers. “Want to fly home?”

Okarun smiled so widely his eyes creased. “Yeah! U-um, did you still want to…?”

Momo shushed him. “Not here! There are too many people. On the way home?”

He nodded, resembling a bobblehead. “Right! Not here. That sounds good. Great! That sounds great.”

Momo motioned for him to go ahead and he took off running, lifting off with a few quick wingbeats. He wobbled a bit on the downstrokes, but nothing too bad. Momo watched him for a moment before following.

They flew together in a comfortable silence, alternating between riding each other's updraft. By unspoken agreement, they veered off from the road to the little copse of trees that Momo had began thinking of as their trees some time ago.

Momo flipped herself over, matching Okarun’s wingbeats as she flew upside-down beneath him. He was flying steadily and then, with a look of determination, he carefully dipped down until their wings brushed.

Momo’s heart skipped a beat. She looked at Okarun, at the tiny furrow between his brows and the way a sharp canine was worrying at his lip. He was blushing, looking behind her instead of at her. She wanted to change that. She wanted him to look at her, to appreciate the inky iridescence of her well-groomed wings the same way she appreciated his soft browns, to see her and her motions and dance with her.

She reached out a hand and Okarun grasped it. His lips trembled, then straightened out into a thin line. His hands tightened on hers.

“Ready?” Momo asked.

“Ready.” Okarun said.

Then, together, they tucked in their wings and fell.

end.

Notes:

thank you for reading!

Notes:

Momo - common raven
Okarun - Eurasian tree sparrow
Turbokarun - flightless, like all yokai and spirits in this AU
Seiko - common raven
Miko and Kei - Asian green bee-eater and Oriental turtledove

This was originally a bit longer, but I was struggling with the next sequence and posted it as-is. There may be another chapter.

edit: changed the wording of one sentence to better comply with the social norms shown in the second chapter. "... [Kei's wings] caught the sunlight from where she'd [...] slung them carelessly over Momo's shoulder." became "...from where she'd [...] slung them carelessly over her chair."