Archive of Our Own

After Gwi-Ma is sealed away, the new Honmoon blanketing the city in its protective embrace, the only thing Rumi wants to do is sleep. 

Her body aches, her vision blurs, and her head throbs with the pain of a headache long ignored. The moment Mira and Zoey usher her offstage, away from the hundreds of thousands of fans, the adrenaline leaves her as fast as it came. She sags backward, stumbling over nothing but her exhaustion, and for a moment, she thinks that hitting the floor would be a welcome sensation. At least that way, she could rest for a few minutes from the head trauma before she has to… address everything. 

She doesn’t make contact with the floor, though, Mira’s steady hands catch her underneath her arms, taking Rumi’s limp weight as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. There’s a soft chuckle, something so familiar it makes Rumi’s heart ache, because how dare things feel so normal when not even five hours ago her best friends had pointed weapons at her. That not even five hours ago, Rumi begged Celine to kill her. That a part of Rumi, quieter now, but still present, still thinks this would be less complicated if she were just—

“Careful.” It’s all Mira says, hands still firmly holding her up, and Rumi doesn’t have the energy to fuel the bitterness clouding her thoughts. If that acrid spiral hadn’t crumbled with Mira’s words, Zoey popping into her vision decisively deals the killing blow. 

“We’re gonna get you home, okay?” 

Home. What home does she have now? Had it ever been with Celine, despite the mountain estate being all she knew for most of her life? And now, she knows it can’t be with Mira and Zoey, because they saw her for what she truly was and tried to kill her. Guilt claws at her throat because of course they did. She lied; it was her fault for never telling them, her fault for existing to begin with, so of course they hated her. 

But she doesn’t say any of that, because her tongue feels like lead, her head pounds with a vicious wave of pain and nausea, and all she can squeak out is a mumbled, half-incoherent warning before she fully goes slack in Mira’s arms. 

✧——✧——✧

Somehow, Mira and Zoey get Rumi back to their penthouse without being seen by fans. It took some calls to Bobby, huddled up in the green room of the venue (hey, the Saja Boys weren’t using it anymore) as they waited out the worst of the mob. Zoey spent the first fifteen minutes in between calls, pacing and scrolling through her socials, desperate to find a suitable distraction to the anxiety that bubbled up every time she glanced at Rumi.

Laid across the couch, head propped up on a pillow across Mira’s lap, so the older girl could check her breathing, a hand hovering over her pulse point every few minutes. Her patterns, her demon marks, were lighter than when they first saw them, iridescent and pulsing slowly with Rumi’s heartbeat. 

Every time Zoey catches herself looking, the leaden regret in her stomach drops, a cavernous pit of spiraling emotions that supply her with far too much to think about when she feels this keyed up. Rumi’s makeup is smudged around her eyes, dark circles making her face look hollow and so, so tired. 

Before Zoey can think, before she can check her phone to see the next post about the botched Idol Awards, or their public breakup, the guilt forces words from her mouth. Her phone drops haphazardly to the floor, open to the latest app she’d been watching. “Why did we-”

Her voice wavers, unsteady around each word, but she doesn’t need to finish the statement for Mira to understand. Her hand twitches beside Rumi’s throat, and for a split second Zoey is so worried— but the guilt of believing that Mira would do such a thing, right now, replaces that worry with more shame. 

“I don’t know,” Mira replies, and Zoey had gotten so used to Rumi’s lies (they make so much sense now though, and Zoey isn’t sure if it hurts more that she understands why Rumi lied or that Rumi didn’t think she could trust them in the first place.) that it sounds strange hearing one slip so easily from Mira. Strong, stoic Mira, who had wanted nothing more in the last couple of days than to make sure Rumi was okay, who had seen through the walls but didn’t know what they were hiding. 

“She was so scared.” Zoey’s voice cracks then, and Mira’s flinch is more noticeable. Zoey can’t get Rumi’s face out of her mind, the horror, the resignation, when she had raised her blades to— to do what? She couldn’t kill Rumi. She couldn’t, even if she had wanted to.

“I know.” Mira isn’t looking at her, eyes tracking Rumi’s patterns instead. Zoey should know this is how Mira gets when she’s gearing up for an argument, closed off and dismissive, curt replies with little substance. Prepared to brush off insults through the guise of self-preservation. 

Zoey should know, but she’s so worn out, and both of her best friends feel like they exist on opposite planes right now, fractured and disconnected in a way they have never been, so she keeps pushing. “I was so fed up with her lying, and her talking with fucking Jinu, that I- I couldn’t see past it!”

“I know.”

“But it doesn’t make any sense! If she was working with Gwi-Ma, if she—” Her voice catches, the tender feeling in her throat that comes from trying to hold tears back “—if she wanted to hurt us, the Saja Boys would’ve never needed to exist! She could’ve done everything Gwi-Ma needed years ago, but- but she didn’t.” Zoey finally feels the tension break, tears slipping down her cheeks as she heaves in a breath of air. “She thought we were going to kill her.” 

It’s quiet. They can’t hear the sounds of the crowd from outside anymore, and Rumi’s breathing is so light it’s overpowered by Zoey’s sniffling. There's music playing faintly in the background, muffled to the point of being nearly incomprehensible. The room is silent for a moment. 

Then, Mira explodes.

“I KNOW, ZOEY.” Her hands are balled into fists, brought away from Rumi’s head, and tucked tight against her chest. She refuses to move Rumi, to bring Rumi into this argument, despite everything. “She lied to us for so long, and yet-“ there’s a bitter laugh Mira can’t bite back as she looks down at Rumi’s sleeping form. “And yet- I can’t help but feel more angry at myself than her! She might have hidden her patterns, but we pointed our fucking weapons at her…” 

Zoey is still, the escalation of everything catching tight on the already wound-up panic in her chest. She wonders if she feels a fraction as terrified as Rumi did when they threatened her. Numbly, tears in her eyes, she repeats, “She thought we were going to kill her.”

“She thought we were going to kill her, and she was okay with it.” Mira’s hands came down to rest against Rumi’s cheeks, fingers twitchy in a way that was so unnatural to her. Her thumb gently traced over the patterns around her eyes, jagged little curves of softly glowing light that grew brighter under her touch. There were still faint lines of tears across her cheeks, and Mira had to bite her tongue to stop herself from reacting. Rumi rarely cried. Sure, she’d shed a few tears when Zoey and Mira would start crying. She got teary-eyed over sappy movies, or how sweet their fans were (Mira doesn’t even want to think about their fans right now), but actual, vulnerable tears? 

Mira and Zoey had made her cry. It was just one horrible thing on top of another for them, things that if someone had asked them any other day of their lives, they would’ve called them crazy. They couldn’t stomach hurting Rumi; they wouldn’t want to be the reason she was crying, and yet. 

“Fuck.” Mira huffs under her breath, resolve crumbling bit by bit as she holds Rumi on her lap. Zoey is still crying softly, standing awkwardly off to the side, squeezing her fingers together and rocking on her feet, unable to use her energy in any productive way. In the pause, the music is audible again, and Mira strains to hear it because something in its lines is oddly familiar. 

“~A demon with no feelings don’t deserve to live. It’s so obvious~”

Zoey seems to catch it at the same time Mira does, if the little hitch in her breath is anything to go by. She dives for her phone, her crying turning something closer to blubbering as she grabs for the device, lost under the low coffee table. In between her sobs, she manages to say, “She thought we hated herrrrr-” 

Any remaining anger in Mira crumbles, a buildup of weeks of confusion washing over her like a tidal wave. “She- she hated Takedown because she thought everything we wrote was about her.” The video shuts off with a somber click, Zoey scrambling out from under the table to finally fall onto the couch, curling up against Mira’s side with practiced ease. 

With her hand not holding her phone, Zoey reaches out to smooth a few errant hairs back into place around Rumi’s braid. Her breath catches every few seconds in the silence. She squishes her face against Mira’s neck, trying to gain as much comfort as possible as the waves of guilt keep coursing over them. “It was the p‘formance at the idol ‘wards. We were there with ‘er, takin’ off ‘er jacket- singin’ that stuff at ‘er.” She heaves in a breath, turning her head just slightly to look down at Rumi. “‘m so sorryyyyyyyy-” She sobs, the hand on her head stilling, just pressing softly at her hairline. 

Mira drags one hand away from Rumi’s face and wraps it tightly around Zoey’s shoulders, pulling the maknae further against her with a quiet sigh. Her throat is tight, and she finds herself grasping at straws to get the right words out. “I’m… sorry, we weren’t there for you when you needed us the most.” The damn breaks as she inhales, breath stuttering as a few errant tears drip down her face. “We’ll never let that happen again.” A hundred other words are left unsaid, floating listlessly in the air between them, but Zoey and Mira feel them all the same. 

No matter if you’re a demon or a human. 

We’ll never be able to fix what we did, but we’ll do our best to try.

We want to protect you, to keep you safe. 

We care about you. 

We love you.

The silence that returns to the room is less suffocating than it was before, only broken by Rumi’s slow breathing and Mira and Zoey’s crying. Zoey has hidden her face again, tucked into Mira’s collar with her body pressed tightly against her side. Mira holds her there, attempting to let the warmth and grounding weight of another body soothe her, but every time she looks at Rumi, guilt courses through her, heavy and suffocating. She rests her forehead against the top of Zoey’s head, soft strands of hair tickling her face as she tries to pull her composure together.

They sit like that for a while, Rumi still propped up on Mira’s lap, Zoey clinging to her side with Mira half wrapped around her. It almost feels normal, like lounging together on the couch during movie night, if it wasn’t for the patterns running across Rumi’s body and the tension that sits heavily in the room. 

That, and the muffled music and buzzing that started sometime while Mira had zoned out. 

With a gasp, Zoey is moving away from Mira, pushing her hand down into the cushions and searching for… her phone! 

She grabs it out from the couch with a self-satisfied grin that quickly dissipates when she catches Rumi in her vision, and it takes her a moment to move to answer the call. The ringtone is a sneaky recording Zoey got of Bobby singing along to How It’s Done, and at this point, she uses it just to tease him. She settles comfortably back against Mira’s side, swiping on her screen to accept the call and send it to speakerphone. “Bobby!!” 

Her voice is scratchy, like it always is after she’s been crying for a long time, and their poor manager picks up on it immediately. “Are you girls alright?” There’s a squeal of rubber in the background, and then Mira catches the familiar jingle of Bobby’s personal car turning off. “I just got to the tech entrance at the venue, and the—” He huffs, and his voice goes distant from the speaker, “The doors are locked! You’ll have to-” There’s the sound of rattling metal, before he sighs and returns to his usual volume. “-meet me at there.”

Mira glances down at Rumi as Zoey responds, “Rumi’s kind of passed out right now… but! But she's okay! We can explain everything in the car.”

“I’ve got her.” Mira shifts Rumi in her lap, allowing herself to stand up off the couch without jostling her too much. She gives Zoey a small frown at the thought of explaining all this to Bobby (he doesn’t even know demons are real!) before getting back to the matter at hand.

“What do you mean Rumi’s passed out?” Panic is audible in his voice, even through the tinny speakers of the phone, and Mira feels a little bad, but the promise of getting home soon narrows her focus away from him and back to getting Rumi out of the green room. With a quiet grunt, Mira gets her arms under Rumi, hauling her up into an easy bridal-style carry. She’s held Rumi like this before, when fights got dangerous and Rumi would throw herself in harm’s way, injured and exhausted enough not to protest the help. (Until she’d pull away at home, insisting she could take care of it herself, no matter if she was still lightheaded from blood loss or fighting a definite concussion.)

Because of the last few days, something in Mira thinks that maybe Rumi’s injuries weren’t just simple lapses in judgment. 

She shakes that thought away and tunes back into the conversation at hand, Zoey tugging at her sleeve and talking a mile a minute as she assures Bobby everything is fine. Rumi is pliant in her grip, arms dangling awkwardly, long limbs more uncomfortable to maneuver than graceful in this moment. Zoey wordlessly, between opening the door to the green room and placating Bobby for a fourth time, gathers up Rumi’s hands, setting them gently across her chest. 

Mira gives Zoey an appreciative glance, stepping out into the hallway carefully. It’s dark, just the emergency lights illuminating the maze-like underground of the venue, and Mira has to think a little longer than she’d like to remember the path to the exit. It’s not difficult, just long, the green room being a decent distance from their destination with no shortcuts. 

But getting Rumi home is more important than any minor gripes she has about stadium design, and as Zoey falls right into step beside her, she feels just a touch better than she had ten minutes ago. “We’ll be at the doors in fifteen minutes, ten if I manage not to drop Rumi.” The joke feels weird in her mouth, unfair to make at the expense of their exhausted leader, but Zoey snorts, and some of the tension leaves the hallway, so it could have been worse. 

They’re at the doors in ten, Zoey almost kicking them open with her mounting energy to finally go home. Exhaustion doesn’t stick long for her, and the brief respite in the green room was enough to let Zoey cling onto some new hopeful thing, stretch the goalposts to let her hope for something else, and keep spirits up as long as she could. (She isn’t thinking about the guilt that sits like a stone in her gut, the way looking at Rumi makes her want to cry again. She’s holding it together now.)

Bobby is standing right outside the doors, and he jumps back as they swing open, fumbling his phone in his hands, barely managing to catch it. “Girls!” He greets them, before his eyes catch sight of Rumi, sprawled loosely in Mira’s arms, patterns scrawled across her skin. “Oh, you… weren’t kidding.” He moves closer to the two of them, Zoey pressed tight to Mira’s side. “Does she need anything? Do you two need anything?” He doesn’t even question the patterns, and it makes something turn in Mira’s stomach. Did he know? Was he also hiding this from us?

Mira shakes her head, Bobby’s usual fretting a familiar comfort despite the stress of the evening. “Just rest.” It’s dark outside again; the strange daylight from restoring the Honmoon long gone, and they’re up high enough that Mira can see the lights of Seoul sparkling brightly below them, blotting out the stars— and Huntr/x tower is visible in the distance, standing proudly in the middle of the city. 

“Rest it is! In the car then!” He springs back away from them, twirling the keys in his hand as he heads to the driver’s seat. 

Zoey and Mira follow quickly, Zoey hauling open a side door with a teasing bow and wink. “Right this way, Unnie.” Mira snorts, careful not to jostle Rumi as she slides into the backseat. Zoey was being courteous to help her out, but additionally, clearly trying to get a rise out of Mira when, honestly, all she wants is to get back home safely. 

“Shut up.” She replies quickly, although there’s no anger in her voice. She’s sitting carefully in the seat now, Rumi still curled in her arms. Zoey slips in quickly behind her, and with a bit of careful shuffling between the two of them, Rumi is propped up in the middle seat and buckled in, her weight resting against Mira.

The car rumbles to life, and Bobby’s quick to turn on the radio to something quiet. He glances over his shoulder at the three of them, one last wordless look of ‘if you need anything, tell me’. Zoey and Mira both give him a quick thumbs up, and he salutes back before turning to focus on getting the car out of the stadium. 

The quiet hum of the engine and the rumble of a moving vehicle are soothing; the streets mostly empty despite the large crowds that had swarmed out of Namsan tower. Mira finds herself dozing off in her seat and glances over at Zoey to find the girl already asleep, snoring gently on Rumi. 

… they’ve got a bit of a drive ahead of them, Mira thinks. Might as well take advantage of it. 

✧——✧——✧

Bobby wakes them when they get to the tower, and Mira finds enough grace in the kindness of her heart to not immediately complain. Zoey’s grumbling is solved easily enough with a quick kiss to the crown of her head, and soon Mira has Rumi back in her arms, heading up the elevator to their apartment. 

Mira has half a thought to drop off Rumi in her own bed, but there’s a clinging need to be around her, keep her safe, despite all the earlier betrayal. Zoey voices the same thought as the elevator doors ding open, mumbling it into Mira’s shoulder. “I don’t wanna be alone tonight…” 

The sight of their plush couch has never been more welcome, and Mira gently sets Rumi down onto the cushions, Zoey coming up behind her with a soft blanket already in her arms. Rumi’s still in her outfit from the idol awards, and the backs of her arms and shoulders have irritated scrapes on them, a few freshly closed scratches scattered around her shoulder blades. Mira frowns, because if this were anybody else (not anybody else, but the point still stands), she’d get them changed into PJs and out of sweat-soaked performance clothes. But after tonight, Rumi deserves whatever privacy she can still get from the two of them. 

“Zoey, can you grab one of Rumi’s hoodies while you go get changed?” Zoey perks up as she’s addressed, giving her a tired smile that does something to Mira’s heart.

“On it!” She pivots on her heel, heading off down the hallway with a tired stumble.

Mira heads to the kitchen, grabbing the overstocked first aid kit that they keep under the sink, if only to grab a couple of bandages for the scrapes and make sure there’s nothing worse on Rumi’s back. It’s habitual, in a strange way (Rumi always dressed her own wounds, now Mira knows why), to clean up the little bit of blood around her shoulder blades, smearing a touch of antibiotic ointment across irritated skin before bandages are carefully pressed over the most tender wounds. 

By the time Mira is done, she hears Zoey yawning beside her, one of Rumi’s biggest, softest hoodies clutched in her hand. And one of her stuffed animals tucked under her other arm. “I-“ She yawns again, blinking tiredly, and she reminds Mira of a particularly cute cat at that moment. “I’ve got it,” she drops the hoodie onto the couch, waving Mira off with a limp hand “go change.” 

She nods, packing up the first aid kit and dropping it back off in the kitchen before heading to her room to swap into her PJs. She’d love to shower, sweaty and exhausted, but her showers are at least a 30-minute affair, and that’s if she isn’t washing her hair. The sooner she can get back out to Zoey and Rumi, the better. She settles for taking off her makeup and washing her face, and then changing into an oversized sweater, a cartoon bear emblazoned on the front. 

Mira’s back in the living room in less than ten minutes, which has to be a record for her; despite that, Zoe is already fast asleep, curled up against Rumi (now dressed in her hoodie) with her head tucked into the older girl's chest. If the day hadn’t been as much of a shit show, she’d want to take a photo of the two of them, saving it somewhere where they won’t see and she can’t be teased over caring about them, of all things.

She turns off the one lamp Zoey must’ve flicked on sometime when they walked in, before settling down on the other side of Rumi. We’ll be here when you wake up. We’ll be here whenever you need us. 

✧——✧——✧

She’s back here again. 

Running backstage after the idol awards, the venue pitch black from the hundreds of shattered spotlights. Just the safety lights help her down the stairs backstage, although her vision is strangely two-toned— some points are defined while others are blurry. 

Her patterns are spreading, down to her hands and across her chest and shoulders, weaving down her torso and across her legs. 

Her head is pounding, and she almost stumbles on the last step, recovering just in time to look up and catch sight of Mira and Zoey in her vision. 

Their reaction is immediate, fear and disgust written across their faces as she approaches them. She pleads, but the words come out garbled, distorted with her voice. 

Jinu knew, he was the only person around who knew, and he’s a fucking traitor. Her rage seethes below the surface, spilling out for just a moment, voice strangled and grating. 

They back away further. Mira holds up her gok-do, and Zoey her shin-kals, and she can feel her heart breaking. 

It was always going to end up like this. 

She begs, grovels, kneels to the floor like submitting will be a worthy consolation prize for a decade's worth of half-truths and lies. 

Her memories fracture, events bleeding over one another. 

“Do what you should have done all those years ago.” She begs. First, it’s Celine, then it’s Mira and Zoey, and she knows that Mira and Zoey are less weak than her mother-figure. They would do it because her betrayal is all the more dangerous.

She sobs as she is dealt with, swiftly, like trash kicked to the curb for someone else to deal with. With her dying breath, she thanks them, lungs tightening as she struggles to take in air, three blades piercing her chest. 

She can’t breathe, so she thanks them, afraid to look, to see their faces again would be too much; the image burned into her eyelids as eternal suffering she has long deserved. 

She thanks them. 

✧——✧——✧

Rumi wakes up shaking. She feels surrounded, tight in a way that constricts her airways, pressed in on all sides. She is too warm, and her clothes are too tight, and she can barely take air in. 

Idly, she realizes she’s crying, damp fabric pressed close to her face and blocking out all light. Something constricts her tightly around her waist, more weight pressing across her legs and upper back. Muzzled, caged, like she deserves to be. She tries to push away from the fabric blocking her vision, breath coming in short bursts as she struggles. 

On instinct, frustrating, demonic instinct, Rumi whines, a pathetic sound that only has her struggling harder against whatever is trapping her. Something shifts, and the weight tightens its hold for a split second before Rumi finally feels open air against her face and blinks hard, struggling to adjust her eyes to the light streaming across her vision.

The first thing she catches in the hazy backdrop as her vision returns, still struggling as some of the weight lifts from her, is Zoey, staring at her with tired concern, brows furrowed in a way that looks so out of place on her face. She raises her hand to cup Rumi’s cheek, words unheard as the slightest brush of contact sends her reeling. She jerks her head away from Zoey’s hand, crashing it back against whatever is behind her— which makes it, no, Mira, move, weight shifting quickly as she tries to distance herself from Rumi’s flailing. 

Pain blooms from where she snapped her head against Mira’s shoulder, and that, on top of her general disorientation, breath still tight, painful, throws her to the floor in front of the couch, wild eyes finally catching sight of both Mira and Zoey. Her mouth scrambles to catch up with her thoughts, hitched breaths stopping her words often. “I’m- I’m sorry— I shouldn’t be- be here, you were supposed- supposed to get rid of me—“ 

Why are they here, forms shrouded by blankets, staring at Rumi with no fear, just concern— Zoey’s face pitches into something more akin to panic as she takes in the full meaning of Rumi’s words, grogginess dropping away like she’d been awake for hours. Mira’s face hardens, stoic shield at the ready. 

She’s a monster; she doesn’t belong here, she needs to be rid of. Why aren’t they doing anything?

The Honmoon ripples around them, strained in panic, and the tension is thick in the room, both girls staring at Rumi as if they moved, she would shatter right then. All the carefully pieced together shards from last night impossibly splintered again. 

“I— we, couldn’t imagine a world without you in it, Rumi.” Zoey’s doing the thing where she tries to sound sure of herself, but her voice trembles at the edges, and Rumi can see right through it. 

Rumi shakes her head, because everything in her body screams that she doesn’t— shouldn’t be here. Her chest is tight, and it hurts so bad, but she wheezes out a few more words. “I shouldn’t— you should’ve-“

Mira and Zoey take a step closer to her, and Rumi flinches. They raise their hands by their head, palms out, trying desperately to enforce that they won’t draw their weapons on her, not now, not ever again. 

“You should be here,” Mira says. Her voice is steady; it’s always been hard to believe that something isn’t true when Mira says it. 

“We want you here, you’re meant to be here.” Zoey echoes and steps closer, and this time, Rumi doesn’t flinch. Her breathing is still erratic, hitching with no rhythm, stuttering outside of time and meter. 

They move again, crouched just outside of Rumi’s reach, and it’s the first time Rumi gets to properly see either of them, eyes finally adjusting to the daylight streaming through the windows of the penthouse. They look beyond exhausted, the word barely doing their state justice. Zoey swims in her oversized shirt, and instead of it making her look small, cute, like it usually would, she looks fragile. Like she could snap in half from the panic of it all. Mira doesn't look any less worn, the hard lines of her shoulders not hidden by her baggy sweater. Stress makes her lock up, limbs strained as if she’s ready to fight the closest target, jaw locked. 

“Breathe, Rumi.” Mira’s voice breaks her quiet observation, and the pain in her lungs comes back at full force. Rumi meets her eyes, and Mira is looking at her with nothing but sympathy. Pleading, through just her eyes alone, help me understand. I want to help you.

Zoey’s hand hovers over her shoulder, and carefully, she sets it down, heat radiating from beneath the fabric of Rumi’s hoodie. She manages to not flinch away from the touch, and Zoey lets out a relieved little exhale, smiling at her softly. She presses gently against her shoulder blade, idly tapping her fingers in a slow beat. “In and out with my rhythm- like warmups.” She hesitates in a rare moment of thinking before she speaks. “You’ve always been the best at keeping rhythm anyway.”

It’s gentle, a barely there tease that feels so normal, a comfort Rumi desperately wants to sink back into. All of them are equally good at keeping rhythm. Mira feels it in her feet, resonating through the floor as she dances. Zoey always taps, drumming on countertops, or on her notebooks with whatever pens she has on hand, or on Rumi and Mira. It’s not even a true statement, but it’s so familiar it makes Rumi’s heart hurt. 

She sucks in a breath with Zoey, and the way she beams in response eases some of that tightness. 

They stay that way for a while, Mira and Zoey crouched beside her, quietly steadying her breathing into something manageable. Her patterns mellow from the sickly purple and orange they had been pulsing between to a pale iridescence, barely flickering across her skin. The Honmoon thrums gently with them, in sync with their rhythm. 

Mira stands slowly, groaning as sore muscles stretch out. She looks down at Rumi, expression carefully neutral but soft. “Breakfast?”

The thought of food hadn’t even crossed Rumi’s mind; her thoughts were moving too rapidly to focus on a basic necessity like eating. But, now that it had been mentioned, the full force of her hunger came back in a wave, almost painful. Taking just a moment to compose herself, focusing back on Zoey’s hand against her shoulder, she manages to nod. 

Zoey grins and bounces to her feet, projecting energy despite the clear weariness that sits heavy across her slumped posture. She bends down, offering her hands to Rumi, an easy guide— an anchor in the unsteady storm of the morning. Rumi takes her hands, and Zoey gives her another one of those encouraging smiles, and despite everything, she feels a little lighter because of it.

They follow Mira to the kitchen, Zoey gently tugging Rumi along in the quiet of the morning. The fancy coffee maker whirrs to a start, Mira standing sentinel nearby. Zoey could see Rumi retreating back into her head, and gave her hands a quick squeeze to pull her out of whatever spiral she was about to go on. When they got to the counter, Zoey finished guiding Rumi to one of the barstools, leaving her there with a quiet “sit, we'll handle it.”

Zoey fills the electric kettle quickly, locking it back onto the base to heat before grabbing three mugs, haphazardly balancing them in her hands as she deposits two by Mira and one by the kettle. Coffee for the two of them, tea for Rumi. 

It’s quiet, not tense per se, but unfamiliarly quiet. Usually, morning breakfast (although the clock on the oven says it’s about noon, five hours after they would usually wake up) is a comfortable and talkative affair, taken slowly, with soft clothes and a touch more real conversation than they get to have otherwise. There's always their brand of chaos running through the morning, though, and it’s severely lacking right now. It looks the same as usual; Mira preps the food as Zoey works on drinks, but it doesn’t feel the same.

Rumi remembers when she’d first gotten the coffee machine, an expensive gift from Celine for her 20th birthday (She doesn’t even like coffee. She doesn’t even know if she likes Celine right now.), and Zoey had lost her mind. Just before moving to Korea, she’d been working as a barista for a few months (it was to make ends meet during the divorce hearings. There was a part of Zoey that had been so worried she might end up going to the state instead, and she needed that money) and the coffee machine had reawakened that ‘fancy coffee kick’ she’d been on when she was 16. Mira, and by extension, Rumi, when she could be lured in with the promise of her favorite flavors and not just the acrid taste of coffee, were Zoey’s test subjects for about a month before she finally ran out of enough bookmarked videos, and mood boards, and recipe threads. 

She laughs softly, despite everything, warmth flooding through her chest at the memory. It feels so nice to have the comfort of old memories, especially because Rumi knows she won’t be getting any new ones. 

The warmth quickly turns to ice as reminders of her current situation leech all the softness from her thoughts, the sour taste of her closest relationships spoiled by her hand. Her patterns, visible from just under the cuff of her hoodie, stand out in stark contrast against her skin, iridescence quickly shifting to a bruised purple. She barely swallows back a noise of frustration, body running on fumes as she tries to stand up from the barstool. She needs to leave, to get out, stop spoiling her fondest memories in her home this building with her presence. 

Her foot catches on the lower rung of the stool, and she stumbles, scraping it obnoxiously across the floor. Rumi manages to right herself, hands clutching onto the countertop to keep her balance. Before she can run, Zoey and Mira are at her sides, hands steadying her as they guide her back onto the seat.

Her breakfast is placed in front of her, tea off to one side, and Mira catches her eyes as she goes to grab her own food. “We need to talk.” Her voice is steady, but painfully neutral in that practiced way Mira speaks when she’s trying not to let her emotions get to her. Dread sinks to the bottom of Rumi’s stomach like a lead weight, and suddenly, the leftover kimchi jjigae in front of her doesn’t seem that appetizing. 

“No more secrets, no more lies,” Mira sits down beside her, Zoey taking her spot on the opposite side. “But we’re eating first.”

Rumi swallows thickly, the relief from that simple delay feeling sour and unearned. Zoey nudges her arm gently, her physical touch so much lighter than it usually is. “We want to know your side of things, however long that takes and however far it goes back. We need to explain ourselves and…” 

“And we need to eat before doing any of that.” Mira finishes for her, although the way Zoey frowns over Rumi’s head at Mira says enough about the accuracy of her statement. 

As much as the discomfort that spirals low in her stomach is doing to persuade her away from eating, Zoey and Mira’s poorly hidden glances at her bowl, and the smell of hot food, are convincing enough. She takes a hesitant bite and watches as some of the tension rolls off their shoulders, posture slouching into something more comfortable than what it had been, and they turn to their meals.

They eat in silence, spoons scraping against ceramic and the clink of mugs against the stone countertop, the only noise to fill the space. Usually, Zoey would be playing music, or more accurately, playfully fighting with Mira for control of the speakers, but even on slower mornings, the drone of her scrolling through her multitude of social media apps would drown out the stifling emptiness of an apartment as big as theirs. 

There’s an extra-large bottle of over-the-counter pain meds sitting at the corner of the island, always there to deal with the routine aches and pains of idol and hunting life. It was a rarity to wake up without sore muscles, a swelling bruise, or a tender injury— and today was no different. Zoey grabbed it lazily, twisting off the childproof cap to shake out her dose before sliding it over to Rumi. It’s easy to continue the hand-off, almost pure muscle memory as she takes her few, passing it off to Mira without even looking. It grounds her, like all the familiar habits of the morning have, and that’s what makes it all the more jarring when Mira clears her throat and stacks her dishes together. 

Rumi looks up at her, startled, and Mira is staring, like she’s trying to read her mind, her brows furrowed and eyes intense. The second their vision locks onto one another, Rumi looks away, finding Zoey’s face instead. Zoey glances between her and Mira before she sighs and stacks her cleared plates as well. “Couch?”  

Rumi would rather simply not be here, not stuck to wait out a soft morning until her friends (her best friends, her only friends, she doesn’t have anybody else) reject her, tell her that the sin of her birth is unforgivable, and kick her aside. 

She’s already broken, but this would shatter her.

She doesn’t get that choice, though, to leave of her own accord, legs weak and body sore from the previous night. (She had felt so good last night. They had made their own Honmoon. They hadn’t just succeeded in their task; they had surpassed it, so why now was it all crumbling apart again?) So instead, she concedes, carefully standing to shuffle her way over to the couch. 

Zoey follows close behind, a buffer between Rumi’s anxious spiraling and Mira’s locked-up rage, and as Rumi sits, folded up tightly on herself, Zoey plants herself right beside her. Close enough to touch, but far enough not to be constantly in contact. Mira sits next to Zoey, easily sliding one hand into hers, interlacing their fingers together like second nature. 

The couch is silent.

It’s stifling. Rumi’s chest aches as panic claws at her throat, trying to avoid looking at either of them. The one mercy she can grant herself, so the last look she gets of her girls isn’t here, isn’t like this. She misses when Zoey’s mouth opens, fighting to figure out her first words, a conversation none of them ever expected to have— 

“I-I’ll understand if you-” Want to get rid of me. Never want to see me again. Raze my existence from this Earth and make sure nobody remembers who I am. “-don’t want me around anymore…” Her voice is tight, pained, and the breathlessness is coming back again like a tsunami, stealing air from her lungs and forcing her words out faster than she can catch up with them. “I betrayed you and your trust, lied t-to you for years, went behind your backs multiple times because I thought-” It doesn't matter that Mira and Zoey had said they wanted her here, because she knows, despite what they say, that she shouldn’t be here. “I thought I’d be a-able to fix my mistake, that you’d never have to know, that this wouldn’t be me anymore.” 

She sucks in another pathetic half-breath, but Zoey’s words are faster. “What mistake, Rumi?” 

It’s so obvious it hurts. Her patterns glow a murky purple, deep and tinted red, and her vision is blurring in one eye again. “Being a demon, being- being born-” Her breath hitches at the wrong moment, cutting her off before she can finish. Being born like this. That’s what she meant to say: that being born a demon was a mistake, but the meaning is the same. 

Zoey’s stifled inhale and Mira’s hissed “fuck.” are nothing but background noise as Rumi’s claws, because of course, she has to stumble back down to her worst in front of the only people she loves, (and doesn’t it hurt only to realize that now, in the aftermath of everything, that she loves them, would be lost without them, and is about to lose them anyway.) as her claws peirce through the fabric of her hoodie, drawing pinpricks of blood out from her biceps. 

“Rumi-” Zoey’s voice is gentle, so gentle, and Rumi can’t stop the tear that rolls down her cheek, airways tight, head pounding, breath stuttering. “You’re not a mistake.” 

She tries to retort, to spit out another contradiction, to prove that she is, but a small, forbidden part of her preens at the words. The first time somebody (someone as important as Zoey, her maknae, the glue of Huntrix, a constant source of light even at her lowest) had ever said those words in that order. It’s a flicker of hope, and she can feel the Honmoon brighten with it, even for just a fleeting moment. 

In the few seconds Rumi withdrew, Zoey had shuffled closer, cupping her hands on her cheeks and drawing her vision to their side of the couch. “You’re not a mistake, you're not, no matter if you have patterns or-” Zoey’s breath catches for a moment, and her thumb idly wipes away another tear that trails down Rumi’s cheek. 

Rumi leans into the touch like she’s trying to memorize the lines of her palm, where the callouses lay on her fingers, the warmth of her skin. A touch so unfamiliar, heat firmly against her patterns like they have changed nothing. She’s hopeless, even when she knows she shouldn’t be here, be around them, she still craves their easy companionship. Zoey blinks hard, and draws in a fortifying breath, looking Rumi dead in the eyes. “After last night, we didn’t get anytime to actually talk, and we- we wanted to apologize, for, f-for-” The words are too stilted, like she had been rehearsing them the entire morning, and her breath seizes for a moment—

“You thought we were gonna kill youuuu,” Zoey’s voice breaks off into a sob, and she’s looking at Rumi with so much regret, guilt, shame, that Rumi can’t look at her. She closes her eyes, scrunches her face tightly because it’s too much, and the rubber band around her chest hasn’t left. 

“I could never hurt you,” it’s Mira’s voice, clipped at the edges with her own overflowing emotion. “I’m sorry,” another hand is pressed against Rumi’s shoulder, warm and grounding, and Mira’s apologizing, of all things. It’s not that she doesn’t ever apologize, but usually it’s wordless actions, or it's mumbled quietly into dead space when everyone has stayed up far past their bedtime. “I was so… scared— not of you —but, it- it felt like I was a kid again, and I just- lost any fucking grip I had on myself.”

That admission hurts more than the apology, and Rumi can’t hold back the half-choked sob she makes in response. Mira feeling scared, feeling like a child, the antithesis to her attitude and hard edges. “I-I, ‘m sorry-” She mutters out, because she made Mira feel like that.

“Don’t apologize, Rumi. I’m mad about the lying, but we—” She clears her throat, cutting off the way her voice rasps a touch more than usual as she speaks. “I know why you didn’t tell us- I wouldn’t have either, if I were in your position.” The olive branch, the understanding, even surface level, makes Rumi’s heart ache, that Mira knows even just a touch of how she felt. She sobs again, eyes still shut tight, and Zoey’s hands are persistent on her cheeks, thumbs wiping away Rumi’s tears despite her own. 

It’s barely a whisper between breaths, but Rumi forces out “I wanted to.” Zoey makes this quiet noise in response, a little soft “hm?” between all of her tears, and Rumi finally opens her eyes at that, frantically looking between her girls. Mira is teary-eyed. “I wanted to tell you, t-to show you, but- but the Honmoon was supposed to fix it, and, and Celine told me to never—”

It’s a rush to tell who speaks first, Mira and Zoey’s voices overlapping in frantic harmony to be heard. “The faults and fears thing is bullshit!” “Y-You have to trust your friends, a-and you can’t do that if you’re forced to t-tell them nothing!”

“I do!” I do trust you. You’re my family, I couldn’t trust anybody more. 

Zoey’s voice is watery, thick with tears. “But Celine, s-she, didn’t want you to.” She sniffles, but doesn’t move her hands off Rumi’s face to wipe off her own. “She wanted you to hide.” 

“B-Because I’m dangerous-!” The admission burns, but Rumi knows it's true, from the claws still pressing into soft flesh and the way her voice split the Honmoon apart last night, she is a threat. 

“The biggest thing you were a danger to was yourself, and the Honmoon. And, we all helped in breaking the old Honmoon, but you made an entirely new one.” Rumi can’t fight another sob at Mira’s words, because they don’t even know. Rumi is a danger to herself, she has to be, and Mira doesn’t even know. “You're not dangerous, or a mistake, hell, Rumi, I’d let the world burn to keep you safe, you’re-” Mira’s voice hitches then, and all three of them are crying.

You’re the only family I have.

You make me feel like I’m enough.

I don’t want to hide anymore. 

The admissions rippled through the air silently, unspoken but heard loudly, thrumming in time with the Honmoon around them. Zoey pulls her hands from Rumi’s face before climbing into her lap, legs strewn off to the side as her arms clutch tightly around Rumi’s torso. One hand weaves itself between the back of her head and her braid, hair loose and falling from the intricate pattern due to hours of wear. She feels Mira stand up more than sees it, Mira crossing to her other side to place her firmly in the middle of their group. Strong arms curl around her, pulling her back against Mira’s front as the taller girl all but drapes herself over them. They breathe as one, Zoey’s head tucked against Rumi’s collarbone and Mira’s pressing against the crown of Rumi’s head. 

Time bleeds together as they sit, huddled together like a lifeline at the end of the world. Zoey’s tears soak into Rumi’s hoodie, and with every shuddering breath Mira moves all three of them. The weight of being sandwiched in between them, what woke her up that morning in a blind panic, is now grounding, firm and comforting, and something in Rumi yearns to feel this forever. They understand, even if a little distantly, clumsily, they understand. They heard Celine's voice, ever present in their ears— not as long as she had —but enough to understand. The hiding, the lies, the shame. They understand why she hid, and they still want her around. To protect her. 

Zoey’s voice is thick, muffled, tears still lingering on the edges when she breaks the silence. “How long have you had the patterns?” The hand holding Rumi’s head shifts, thumb gently tracing the glowing marks in the space between her neck and jaw. The sensation is electric, and Rumi finds herself shifting just slightly, tilting her head to give Zoey more room.

“Since I was born.” Rumi’s voice isn’t faring much better, hoarse from the abuse it took the last two days and the sheer amount of crying she’s done in the last few hours. Something seems to click for Zoey and Mira then as she continues, their embrace getting tighter, touches a little less reserved.  “My father was a demon, and my mom was a hunter, and I’m…” Both of their worst parts. 

“You’re Rumi.” Mira’s voice rumbles softly, resonating in her chest, and Rumi can feel it with how close they’re pressed together. “It doesn’t matter what your parents were. You’re more than enough.” She knows Mira means it, the conviction in her voice so easy to grasp onto. Mira’s parents had been out of the picture for almost a decade, dropped her off at a boarding school when she was 14, and she had been stuck there for two years until Celine found her. 

Zoey’s hand is still moving, tracing over gently glowing patterns that pulse under her touch. “You didn’t even—” She huffs, and it tickles against Rumi’s skin. She can barely suppress the shiver that trails up her spine. “I thought you had made a deal with Gwi-ma,” Her tone is light, and there's a touch of incredulous relief at the edge of her words. “which I totally understood, ‘cause he gets in your head really easily, and I would’ve supported you anyways since whatever you had made a deal over would’ve-”

Mira clears her throat, and Zoey stuffs her face back against Rumi’s neck, mumbling out the rest of her ramble into the fabric of her hoodie. Rumi feels warmth climbing up her face as Zoey’s words fully register. They thought she had gone behind their backs to bargain with Gwi-ma, go against their entire purpose as Hunters, and even then, they had still been so gentle with her this morning. So willing to listen. She laughs then, pure relief bubbling out from under her skin, as she finally pulls her hands off her arms, moving them to cling onto Zoey and Mira both. “No, I-I’ve just always had them- but,” Her voice sombers a little, and she tilts her head to knock it gently against Zoey’s, “he can sound very convincing… regardless of if you like what he’s saying.” All demons do is feel. 

“At the Saja Boys concert, after you…” Mira’s voice wavers there for a moment, like she’s trying to find a word that won’t shatter the fragile peace they’ve found, “left… he started talking to me, and I don’t think I could blame you for listening to him, even if we know that's not the case now.” 

“He says exactly what you don’t want to hear when you have nothing else to listen to.” Zoey’s shaky sigh fans out across her shoulder, and Rumi wraps her arm around her just a touch tighter. “Worms his way into your thoughts, and when you realize he’s there, everything he’s saying already feels natural. It sounds like you.” Well, there's a reason Zoey’s their main lyricist. She sits there in silence for a moment, but any amount of silence is too long for Zoey. Her hand dips slightly lower, tracing the patterns around Rumi’s collarbone, where her hoodie has slouched down. “Where… did you go?”

Rumi swallows, breath catching in her throat, and she knows Mira and Zoey both feel her tense because they press impossibly closer. Zoey rushes to fill her unease with a quick change of topic, an easy out, but Rumi starts before Zoey gets far. 

No more secrets, no more lies. 

“I… I went to see Celine. I don’t really know why— well, I- there's… I-” She cuts herself off, mouth refusing to form around the words. She knows why she went to Celine. Because she could never ask Zoey or Mira to do what was needed, and she thought Celine would listen. She tunes out the gentle platitudes they offer at her hesitance, mouth shaping around words that stick in her throat. Her voice is quiet, tone slow and careful, like her admission will break everything apart again. 

“I asked Celine to… fix her mistake.” 

What mistake, Rumi?

Being born. 

It’s as if the air had been sucked out of the room the moment the words leave Rumi’s mouth. She regrets it before she even finishes speaking, the sentence falling off to a halfhearted whisper. Zoey’s hand stops its idle tracing, Mira’s fingers dig into her shoulder instead of comfortably holding, and nobody moves. 

She tries to think of some way to backpedal, or any kind of excuse she could make to remove the absolute stillness that’s overtaken the room— as if saying “Hahah! Just kidding!! That was a prank, I totally got you! I didn’t actually beg my guardian to kill me!!” would go over well.

Instead, to her horror, she just keeps talking. 

“I thought that maybe if- if you didn’t have to worry about me anymore—” Too presumptuous. She didn’t even think they were worried about her. She had thought they were disgusted by her. “Or- Or that I was the one who was breaking the Honmoon, so if I just- if I just went away-” She can’t even get the right words out, dancing around the actual meaning because saying it would be too much. Rumi wasn’t trying to die; she didn’t want to die, but she was a threat, and threats have to be neutralized. 

Like a rabid animal. Something uncontrollable and dangerous, acting on corrupted instincts. Better for the animal and everyone else if it is just put down.

Mira hissed a curse out under her breath before her hand relaxed against her arm, moving to tilt Rumi’s head to look back at her. The angle is awkward, but Mira’s eyes are wide, panic and horror set in the way her mouth can’t seem to stop fighting with unsaid words, eyes tracing over every inch of Rumi’s face. She feels like she’s being examined, chest cracked open with her secrets laid bare to be picked apart by Mira’s gaze. “Rumi-” She’s breathless, wind knocked out of her lungs, a far cry from the solid foundation Rumi knows her as. At this rate, she should take up a hobby in demo work. 

Mira’s still searching her face when she feels Zoey’s arms move to loop around her waist, as she tucks herself impossibly closer to Rumi. Her head presses against her chest, just over where Rumi’s heart is, hunting to hear her pulse. She makes a choked noise as she finds Rumi’s heartbeat, her words only catching up to her now. It’s muffled by her hoodie, just shy of a scream, and her hands grab fistfuls of the fabric as she mumbles frantic “No’s” against Rumi’s sternum. 

“I-” Mira’s hand is shaking. Rumi has never seen Mira so rattled before, and she was there the first and only time Mira’s parents had shown up at an event, clawing for a chance to appease their daughter now that she had a fortune to her name. “We threatened you and… and then you-” Rumi watches as she tries to get the words out, before her eyes lock back on to hers. “Fuck, Rumi- I’m so sorry, I don’t- I should’ve never even thought to do that, what the fuck was I doing?!” 

Rumi shakes her head, “It’s not your fault-!” Isn’t it, though? They threatened you, and this is what you did next. “I-I wasn’t thinking clearly-!” It’s a pathetic attempt at refuting her earlier words, but deflecting has always been one of her best skills. “I just- I didn’t-” Didn’t want to live in a world without either of you. 

“Why- why did you come back?” Zoey’s question carries more guilt than anyone like Zoey should ever have to bear. Why did you come back for us when we hurt you? Her voice rasps painfully around another horrified sob, “I didn’t wanna hurt you- ‘m sorry, ‘m sorry- I couldn’t ever—” She inhales sharply, words cut off by a desperate need for air before her shoulders shudder as she muffles another cry against Rumi’s hoodie.

Rumi knows, she knows, and the feelings twist uncomfortably tight in her stomach. Too much, too close, too desperate for love and care she’s been denied or denied herself her whole life. It’s so easy to admit to herself she cares more about Mira and Zoey than she does about her own well-being, that she’d lay down her life for them again and again, but the words burn at the back of her throat. “I-” Mira’s expression is still raw, still frantic, clawing for anything to hold onto as the events of last night splinter their long-existing dynamic. Rumi recognizes a bit of herself in those eyes, in the way Zoey’s cheek is squished just beside her heart, arms wrapped tightly around her, and hands cradling her face like she’s something precious. 

It breaks her open, and she doesn’t fight it. 

“I thought… if I didn’t have anything left, I could at least do as much as I could to fix things for you both.” 

Zoey squeezes her tighter, one hand shoving up the hem of her hoodie to press against the heated skin of her lower back. Just to find contact, to be closer. Something in Mira’s expression breaks, lips trembling, and she dips Rumi’s head lower to place a hurried, barely-there kiss against the crown of her head. It’s the same kind of casual affection she shares with Zoey, and it stitches something in Rumi’s fragile heart back together. Mira tugs her closer, fully letting go of her face to crush her and Zoey in a hug. 

“No. You don’t get to leave us.” Mira’s voice is tight, words said firmly against Rumi’s hair. “We go where you go, you don’t get to pull that self-sacrificial bullshit again.” 

“You’re stuck with us-” Zoey’s voice wavers around the edges, tears no longer falling, but her voice still carrying their weight. “You don’t get to try and t-take yourself out of our lives!” She lifts her head to look Rumi in the eyes, frantic and terrified in a way Zoey has never looked— even close calls with demons have her grinning and breathless, taunting them despite the danger. Instead, she’s looking at Rumi like the very act of witnessing her is both the most relieving and haunting thing she can comprehend. “That’s not your choice t-to make—!” Her voice chokes off into another dry sob, and she stuffs her head back against Rumi’s heartbeat, hand shoving further under her shirt to find her pulse by her shoulder blade. 

There’s a feral, instinctual part of Rumi’s brain that panics at the contact. She’s still wearing her top from the idol awards, so most of Zoey’s palm is pressed between the hoodie and her shirt, but her mind still chants with paranoid conviction. She’s going to rip your heart out. Pull it still beating from your chest and rid you from this world for good. 

A softer, warmer piece of her supplies; you wouldn’t trust anybody else to hold your heart in their hands. You’d bare your soul to them and know they would treat it like it is worth something. 

She sags in their hold, and Mira’s arms only tighten more, pressing Zoey closer and pulling Rumi further against her. Something about having the two of them, her girls, crowded around her— holding her like she is precious, valued— Rumi can’t help but choke out a laugh, a watery thing that's closer to a sob. “I couldn’t imagine life without either of you— there’s nothing I’d want more-” Despite the doubts and shame still swirling messily in her head, the desperate reassurance from Zoey and Mira is louder. They want her, they want her, they want her. She repeats it like a mantra, over and over again if just to drown out her other thoughts for a moment. To protect a crack in her walls, to let them in easier next time, to try and crush that ever-present echo of shame that clings to her like a second skin. 

Mira presses another one of those soft kisses against the crown of her head, a sigh of relief half cut off by her own frantic laugh. “I’m serious, Rumi- tell us when you— what you’re feeling.” One of her hands is tucked between her and Zoey, arm wrapped across Rumi’s waist to hold her. That same hand has also found the hem of her hoodie, carefully splaying her fingers across the flickering patterns. The contact makes her shudder, but Mira continues talking as if she hadn’t felt it. “We weren’t there for you once and- and that's never going to happen again, I won’t fucking let it.” She grits out the end of her sentence, teeth clenched, frustration pointed inwards.

“You’ve always been there for us.” Zoey’s fingertips have started tapping against her back, following the quick pulse of her heartbeat but lagging behind every so often. It’s like she’s trying to will it slower, to calm Rumi’s racing heart and mind with whatever she can. “Like- remember our first hunt in the city? I-I got so lost, and was totally surrounded, ‘n then you appeared from an alleyway with Mira half conscious and s-still fought off all the demons without letting her fall over.”  

Mira groaned quietly, but some of the tension left her shoulders. “Don’t remind me-“ her tone got softer, a little less frustrated, warm around the edges. “But Zoey’s right, you’re always throwing yourself into work or in front of demons or, or into whatever the fuck last night was for us, so let us be there for you.” 

Zoey hummed against Rumi’s hoodie like she was saying, “That’s exactly where I was going, Mira, thank you”, a little self-satisfied and pleased in a way that made Rumi feel warmer. It was familiar, underneath all of the stress, that same dynamic of Mira’s feigned disinterest and Zoey’s kind teasing. Despite the fractures, their care burrowed its way into a familiar corner of Rumi’s heart, a spot always left open, yearning for them. 

Rumi would stay here, pressed between them, for an eternity if she could. Give in to the feeling of being held, being cared for, and protected in a way she never let herself feel. Had they always wanted this? This closeness, unabashed in its intent to keep her safe? The thought spread through her veins like something molten, a heat near uncomfortable in its intensity. 

Her response, despite the warmth of safety running through her limbs and bolstering her thoughts, comes out soft, a secret unearthed by Zoey and Mira’s careful hands. “Okay.” 

It’s all that needed to be said. 

Some time had passed, evident by the morning sunlight no longer streaming through the east-facing windows of the apartment. The tangle of limbs Rumi was sandwiched in the middle of had lessened its grip, becoming gentler— panicked edges filed down —instead of the frantic desperation that had necessitated the contact. 

Rumi had leaned her head back against Mira’s shoulder, and Zoey had shifted with her, pulling her head away from her heart. There’s a moment where Zoey’s breathing stutters again, and Rumi feels it, worry scrambling to take over her thoughts after the brief respite she just had. 

Before it can get a grip on her, Zoey grabs Rumi’s hand, tangling their fingers together gently. She pulls her hand close to her face, eyes tracing over the patterns that crawl around her fingertips. (They aren’t claws anymore, but blood is still dried under her nails, the polish chipped and cracked.) 

“Your patterns are really pretty.” Her voice is quiet— reverent almost; a much needier part of Rumi’s brain fills in, and she stomps out that thought before it can take root. The statement still leaves something warm and vulnerable unfurling in her chest, and Rumi cannot for the life of her make sense of how to respond. She sits there, tucked between her girls, unable to speak or pull her gaze away as Zoey holds her limp hand in her own and eyes her patterns with something close to wonder. 

Mira’s exhale curls across the nape of her neck like honey, chest pressing against Rumi’s back with each steady breath. She can feel Mira shifting, feel her eyes wandering over the exposed skin of her neck; the patterns across it. “She’s right, you know.” Rumi can’t see how she flushes, but she feels the heat across her face at Mira’s certainty, the level assurance in her voice. “If anyone would know how to make demon marks look good, it’s you, Rumi.”

Oh. Well. That certainly is a statement Rumi can react normally to. She starts to choke out a response, all the distress from earlier draining out of her system as it’s replaced by the frenzied warmth that crawls up her neck and the flustered confusion that overtakes her thoughts. 

“They’re pink!!” Zoey’s voice pitches into a soft squeal of excitement, a sound reserved for exceptionally cute baby animals or the times she would find Rumi and Mira curled up, fast asleep, fully unintentionally, after a movie night.

Rumi squirms in her grip, trying in vain to calm her very obvious flush that has now taken over her patterns for fucks sake. Zoey’s pulling her hand even closer to her face, the rapidly pulsing rose across her skin capturing her attention. She’s grinning, poking and prodding at her fingers and the sliver of wrist revealed by her hoodie, and her eyes light up every time the patterns flash a little brighter. Even with tear tracks running down her cheeks, hair down and messy from a night of fitful sleep, Zoey looks nothing short of radiant over the reaction her patterns are having. “I-I didn’t know they changed color- they’ve- literally my entire life, they’ve been purple.”

Both Zoey and Mira laugh, quiet delight as they take in the newly pink marks staining her skin. “That’s so cool.” Mira hums, tone stuck between awed and impressed, and it only fuels the tight swirl of flustered appreciation (pride? God forbid, pride) for her marks that settles somewhere deep in Rumi’s ribcage. Her patterns only flash a brighter pink, and it reflects in their eyes, little catch lights of bubblegum that spark in time with her heartbeat.

“Do you think they can be more colors??” Zoey’s fingers have found a spot against her wrist, hidden under the edge of her sleeve, directly against her pulse. The pressure makes every thundering pound of her heart all the more obvious. “Because they’ve been purple and iridescent last night, but now they’re pink and—“

“Zo, you’re gonna freak her out.” Mira half mumbles, half laughs, Rumi’s patterns pulsing a wild range of pink as Zoey keeps pressing her fingers against her wrist. Her voice drops a little, and Rumi barely catches it, but her quiet rasp is flooding more heat up Rumi’s face, staining her patterns red at the edges. “We can figure that out later.”

“I-I’m not-!” Rumi chokes out, the rational part of her brain rejecting being some… experiment for her girls— but there’s a much louder part of her that delights in the attention, preens under the idea of that much care and time being spent on her. “You’re ganging up on me just to embarrass me-!”

They both laugh again, and Rumi wants to bottle the sound. Save their tired, genuine laughter that she is drawing from them, hold it tight in her chest forever, and pull from that warmth whenever the usual weight of her shame comes back. Screw the embarrassment flushed across her face, Rumi wants to drown in the bubbly, all-consuming relief and delight that surges through her veins.

Zoey is grabbing her cheek with her free hand (the one not pressing so perfectly against her wrist) and pulling Rumi to look at her— so lethal they should be a war crime— puppy eyes. “The colors are so pretty! I just wanna see if there are more of themmmm.” 

“That’s so not fair—“ She manages out, and Mira laughs even louder, the unabashed kind when the bit is simply too good to resist. 

“She’s got youuuuu.” Mira teases, voice soft and full of affection. They have both fallen victim to Zoey’s pleading stare many a time, succumbing to the whims of their maknae whenever she whips out her infuriating talent for looking particularly like a pleading dog. 

Zoey pushes just a little more, keeping her gaze steady with Rumi before hitting the killing blow. “Please, Rumi?” Her eyes grow imperceptibly wider, bottom lip pushed out just a touch, and Rumi couldn’t say no if she wanted to. 

“Okay- okay, fine! God, Zo, put them away-” Zoey blinks, beaming, looking nothing like she had mere seconds before. Rumi is flushed and warm from their attention, and despite her complaining, she’d let her legs go numb if it meant Zoey would stay this close to her forever. 

The moment doesn't last long, because Zoey goes bouncing off her lap, her steps a touch uncoordinated from how long they had all been sitting together. “I gotta grab a notebook! Hang on, hang on-!” She's off down the hallway before Rumi can blink, socked feet padding quickly against the wooden floor.

Mira laughs at the whine Rumi can’t stifle at the loss of contact, leaning back against the armrest and pulling Rumi with her. Mira’s legs end up bracketing Rumi’s hips, arms slung comfortably over her waist, and it’s closer than they’ve ever been, but Rumi doesn’t care because Mira is warm and she is here, holding her, choosing to be here, through everything. 

Another one of Mira’s barely-there kisses is placed against the crown of her head, and Rumi sinks back against her just a little more. “Hope you’re emotionally prepared for whatever it is Zoey plans on doing.” Rumi can hear the smile in her voice, the gentle teasing that comes so easily to Mira— to all of them, that constant push and pull of affection from years of proximity. 

Rumi hears Zoey sliding down the hallway before she can respond, patterns swirling back into calm iridescence as she laughs, the weight of a generation's worth of responsibilities off of her shoulders for the first time. 

Zoey kneels in front of her, knees brushing her shins, pencil behind one ear, and notebook opened to a fresh page. ‘Rumi’s Super Cool Color-Changing Patterns!!!’ is scrawled across the top with a smattering of doodled sparkles around the header. When she spots Rumi’s patterns have faded back into that white, mother-of-pearl type sheen, she grins, pulling out her pencil and quickly rattling off a list of ideas that Rumi doesn’t quite catch, cozy and content between the two of them. 

It’s so easy to settle further into Mira’s hold, easy to relax to the soothing rhythm of Zoey’s voice, and Rumi feels truly content as her eyelids flutter, the calm embrace of a midday nap right around the corner. 

There will be more conversations to be had, growing pains to adjust to, but she is safe, she is loved, and she is home.