Chapter Text
Rumi has had the same reoccurring dream since she was young. She is always running towards something.
The object she is pursuing and the setting of pursuit change but the premise stays the same: there is something she wants – more than anything in the world at that moment – on the horizon, growing closer and closer. The nearer she gets, the giddier with anticipation she becomes. It spurs her on, limbs moving faster and harder with the surreal tirelessness and fluidity of dreams.
The sun is at her back; she can feel it beating down hot and relentless on her neck and see it in the shadow it casts in front of her. At some point in the dream, she becomes inexplicably aware that if this shadow touches the object first, it will rot. The black and cold will spread from the ground and consume entirely the thing she is so desperately trying to reach.
Anticipation veers into panic. Excitement into urgency. Her feet pound the ground and her lungs ache as the chase turns into a race against her own shadow.
But the sun is directly behind her and her shadow directly in front. Every step she takes, her shadow takes too. Every inch she gains, her shadow does as well. She was doomed to lose since the moment she set off running. The laws of physics, of the universe, of life, dictate that she cannot win.
Even still, she does not stop running until she wakes up.
**
Rumi, as always, gets there five minutes before Mira and Zoey to set up: plug one end of the HDMI cable into the TV and the other into her laptop; switch to the right source; get her laptop open and ready.
It’s her turn for their monthly ‘Presentation Night’ and she’s particularly excited to present her chosen topic this time. Once they have entered and settled down on the couch, Rumi clears her throat before commencing.
“Today we will be learning about,” A pause as she flicks to the first slide, “The Art of–”
She gets barely three words into the title before Mira and Zoey’s twin groans cut her off.
“Absolutely not.” Mira interrupts.
“We had a deal.” Zoey adds.
“I know but–”
“No buts. We agreed: no more cow-related topics.”
“We’re begging you, Rumi, anything but cows.”
“This one is a good one though.” Rumi refutes.
“You say this every time.”
“And it has never once been true.”
“You haven’t even given it a chance…”
But Mira and Zoey are already standing.
“No more cows.” Mira repeats, calling over her shoulder as she walks out of the room, “You have until next week to pick something new.”
“Sorry, Rumi.” Zoey pats her shoulder sympathetically before following.
Then, Rumi is left alone in their living room, standing in front of a TV screen reading, in carefully stylised font: ‘The Art of Making Butter’.
*
That night Rumi flicks glumly through the presentation she was denied the chance to give. She’s become a bit of a whiz at Microsoft Office over the years and this is definitely her best PowerPoint yet. She’d built a template for the whole thing in the master slides first before even starting on the content, which, despite Mira and Zoey’s dismissal, is not even really cow-related – cow-adjacent at best.
It's interesting too; a topic she’d been obsessed with a child, asking Celine to repeat the details to her over and over, jumping at every chance to put the theory into action. Something about the way the fat separated from the aqueous and the more vigorously you churned, the faster the separation happened. The direct link between how hard you worked and how quickly the unwanted parts could be skimmed away and forgotten about. It had fascinated her.
Clearly, Mira and Zoey do not share that same fascination.
Rumi shuts her laptop and begins the sift through her mind for a new topic. It’s no easy feat finding something she knows about that Mira and Zoey don’t. After all, she has spent the majority of her life training to be a hunter and an idol – both of which they are also experts in. Outside of that, most of her time is spent co-managing the group: finances, chart numbers, scheduling. Then, any spare time left at the end she spends with them.
That really just leaves the time during her childhood spent rearing cows. So, it’s a little unfair of them to veto the topic when it’s the only part of her life they haven’t been directly part of.
Well, apart from– that, she supposes, fiddling subconsciously with the hem of her sleeve, but there isn’t very much to say on that anymore.
Rumi lets her hand drop to her lap and blows out a sharp stream of air. She must know about more than cows. She must.
Surely?
*
Fast-forward one week and Rumi is ready. She’s nailed it this time; found a topic she has expert levels of knowledge on that the other two likely know nothing about. Furthermore, it’s both riveting and useful and, most importantly, has absolutely nothing to do with cows.
“Eight Things You Didn't Know You Could Do With V-Lookup in Excel.”
Smiling triumphantly, she turns to gauge their reaction.
They’re both completely still and silent. Rumi is having trouble interpreting exactly what this brand of stillness and silence means but it has to be better than interrupting and walking out.
Right?
It’s probably an interested silence. Maybe even an impressed one.
Except that Zoey’s silence is not so much of a silence anymore. Her cheeks are puffed out and there are tiny strangled noises coming from her that sound suspiciously like… Is she laughing? Rumi frowns. Of course, she had sprinkled a few hilarious anecdotes throughout the presentation, but they haven’t even made it past the first slide yet.
“What? What are you laughing at?” Rumi then turns to Mira, whose expression has morphed into what can only be described as abject horror, “And why do you look like that?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Zoey is shaking her head, cheeks red with the exertion of holding back laughter long enough to choke out a few more words, “Please, carry on.”
“No.” The horror on Mira’s face somehow intensified as she turns first to Zoey, “No.” Then back to Rumi, “Absolutely do not carry on.”
Zoey, clutching her stomach, has dissolved into outright laughter now.
“What’s wrong?” Rumi scowls, crossing her arms.
But the only words Zoey seems to be able to manage out between giggles are “I’m sorry” so, feeling a little helpless, Rumi turns back to Mira.
A mistake.
“You cannot be serious.” Mira, naturally, is no help at all. Rumi huffs, looking away; that was on her, she supposes. “Oh my God. You’re serious.”
“I don’t see what the problem is.” She grumbles, “I’ve done exactly what you’ve told me to.”
Rumi hadn’t even realised how hot her face had become until she feels the cold skin of Mira’s palms against it.
“Rumi,” Mira murmurs, “Our beautiful, smart, talented, lovely Rumi.” And, oh, that’s nice. Rumi can’t help but melt into the soothing coolness of Mira’s hands, “You need,” Mira leans in, “to get a life.”
Rumi blinks, then jerks back. She opens her mouth to protest but all that comes out is an undignified squawk.
“Or,” Zoey jumps in, “a hobby.”
Rumi looks indignantly between them, “I have hobbies.”
Mira raises an eyebrow. “Name one.”
“I play several musical instruments.”
Zoey winces. “That’s sort of our job.”
“I exercise. I’m a martial art expert. I dance. I run and go to the gym.”
“You don’t exercise,” Mira corrects, “you train. And that’s also our job.”
Rumi scoffs, pauses, then opens her mouth.
Mira gets there first. “Microsoft Office is not a hobby.”
“Neither is scheduling.” Zoey adds.
Rumi shuts her mouth with a force that makes her teeth click together. “You’re a little quick to dismiss the things that our entire careers rely on.”
This, to her surprise, is the thing that makes them soften.
They share a look that she can’t quite decipher before Zoey is stepping forward to place a gentle hand on her arm. “That’s kind of our point. All of these things you do, you’re very good at them, but they aren’t exactly recreational.”
“All we’re saying,” Mira adds, coming to her other side, a second hand coming to rest on her shoulder, “is maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for you to have a hobby unrelated to work.”
“Yeah, you know, something the fate of the world isn’t contingent on your proficiency in.”
Rumi deflates a little. It’s always difficult to stay mad when they have their hands on her like this, gentle and sure and grounding. And, if she’s being honest, when they put it like that…
She sighs. “I suppose that makes sense.”
**
And so begins the hunt for a hobby.
At first, naturally, she looks for inspiration in Mira and Zoey. Mira designs and sews in her own time and also keeps enough of a healthy tab on word affairs to update the other two on the current political state of the planet when her turn to present rolls around. Zoey, of course, writes – even outside of their lyrics – and draws, and on top of that seems to cycle through a completely new and unrelated obsession every few weeks.
But Rumi can’t quite see herself in either of those things – Mira’s solidity and consistency, or Zoey’s whirlwind bouncing through ideas – so, she turns to the next best thing: the internet. She completes a series of oddly specific online quizzes until finally one of the spews up a non-music, non-sport related activity.
Gardening.
Rumi mulls it over. She likes the outdoors. She likes nature. She also has experience caring for living things far more complicated than a plant. In comparison, this should be a relatively painless endeavour.
So, following the internet’s advice, she obtains the easiest, most beginner-friendly plant there is. How hard could this possibly be?
*
Rumi quickly eats her words. Friendly, painless, easy. She recalls the thoughts of her past-self with a certain wry bitterness as she stares down at the swollen wound on her finger.
On the same day she had gotten the cactus, one of the spikes had lodged itself underneath her skin, too deep to pick out. After several failed attempts at removing it, Rumi had applied her least favourite strategy to the problem: ignore it and hope it goes away on its own. The plan is not one she has ever found much success with in the past and now is no different.
A few days on and the spike is still very much still in her finger. What’s more is that, instead of her body trying to push it out on its own, like she had hoped it might, it seems to have started healing around it, albeit reluctantly and angrily if the bulging red skin is anything to go by.
She is staring down at it dismally when Zoey catches her.
“Ouch, that looks nasty. Splinter?”
“Cactus.” Rumi supplies, not looking up from her finger.
“Let me see.” Zoey holds her finger up to the light to inspect it, “That’s wedged in deep. Hold on, I know what do to.”
When she returns, there is a sewing needle between her fingers.
Rumi pulls back, eyeing it dubiously. Zoey’s solution to her getting impaled by a sharp object appears to be impaling her further with a different sharp object. “I’m not so sure about this.”
“Relax.” Zoey laughs, “My brother used to do this whenever I got a splinter. It works like a charm.”
It, in fact, does not work like a charm.
Rumi is left in more-or-less the same position as she had been before Zoey arrived: staring dismally down at her finger. The ‘more’ of the situation is that Zoey is also now staring down with her and the ‘less’ is that there is a lot less skin on her finger.
“Don’t worry. We’ll get it out.” Zoey reassures.
“Sure.” Rumi agrees, not really feeling very sure at all. Maybe they won’t. Maybe it will be stuck there forever. Maybe she is destined to be part-cactus for the rest of her life.
“Hey,” Zoey bumps their shoulders together, pulling Rumi out of her thoughts, “Watch this.”
She fiddles with the needle for a moment before revealing, with a dramatic flourish of her other hand, the most disgusting thing Rumi has ever seen.
Rumi recoils. “Ew.”
Zoey has pushed the tip of the needle below the first layer of her skin so that it appears to be stuck to her finger in a kind of gravity-defying feat.
“I know right.” Zoey is grinning. “My brother taught me.”
“What’s going on here?”
Mira’s voice freezes them in their tracks, hands still suspended mid-air. The needle is hanging spookily from Zoey’s finger and, at that moment, a drop of blood decides to take a leisurely stroll down Rumi’s own.
As they slowly turn to face her, they find that Mira looks, understandably, already tired of the situation.
“Cactus spike.” Rumi offers up.
“I’m removing it.” Zoey waves the hand with the needle in it in the air.
Mira sighs a deep, long-suffering sigh before pointing at Zoey’s finger. “That is disgusting.” Though Rumi agrees with the sentiment, there is an element of pride in Mira’s voice she cannot reconcile with the words (Zoey, however, seems pleased). Then, to Rumi. “You. Wait here.”
She returns with a bowl of hot water to soak the offended finger in.
“Oh yeah.” Zoey winces, “I forgot about that part.”
Once the skin has softened and crinkled, Mira uses the needle to deftly and near-painlessly pick at it until enough of the spike is exposed to pluck out.
“You’re so quick with a needle.” Rumi murmurs, eyeing her spike-free finger with awe. She is embarrassingly relived to have it out.
“Not as quick as you are to injure yourself and keep it hidden,” she retorts, flicking Rumi on the nose. It stings a little but Rumi has barely any time to dwell on the feeling before Mira is turning to Zoey and pinching her cheek, “Or as quick as you are to suggest a stupid solution.” Her voice is firm and reprimanding as she addresses to the both of them, “No more spikey plants.”
All Rumi can do is nod, arms rigidly by her side, as Mira swipes up the cactus and turns to leave. She doesn’t dare turn to look but the but silence at her side tells her Zoey is in a similar position, pink-cheeked where Rumi is pink-nosed. Though, Rumi is feeling a little pink in the cheeks as well. Actually, she’s feeling a little pink everywhere, in a way she isn’t completely familiar with.
Before she goes, Mira pauses to look at them over her shoulder. Whatever she sees prompts her to sigh and turn back on herself to press four kisses to Rumi’s nose and another four to Zoey’s cheek.
*
Rumi and Zoey visit a local garden centre and bring back a basil plant for the kitchen windowsill. It’s perfect: spike-less; easy to look after, the shop assistant assures them; and, what’s more, is they can use it in their cooking. The journey home is filled with excited talk of a future full of thriving fresh herbs and aromatic home-made meals.
Their fantasies are quickly dashed as, to their dismay, the plant begins to wilt almost immediately. Despite hours spent agonising over internet articles on soil nutrients and sunlight requirements and water drainage, they end up holding a funeral for it after two weeks.
Looking down at the soggy brown remains, Rumi feels a little sorry for it.
Zoey nudges her, “Screw the internet. It was no help at all.”
“Screw the internet.” Rumi agrees.
“Why don’t you try sewing or knitting or something?” Zoey suggests after a moment, “That way, at least if you get stuck, Mira will be able to help.”
Rumi hesitates, not particularly jumping to get on board with anymore of Zoey’s ideas so soon after the splinter fiasco, but the more she thinks about it, the more she realises:
“That’s actually not a bad idea.”
**
Rumi decides on crocheting in the end. With the current internet craze surrounding it, she figures there will we enough decent tutorials for her to breeze through the basic with so, that way, she only needs to bother Mira when she gets to the trickier parts.
Or, at least, that had been the plan.
Rumi ends up spending a whole forty-five minutes squinting alternately at pictures of people’s hands then down at her own, trying to figure out how to get the wool properly on the hook. Then, once she has managed that – or she thinks she has anyway; it’s difficult to tell – there is the task of actually making the stitch.
For what seems like the millionth time, the wool unravels from around her fingers and Rumi lets her head drop against the table with a thud. Soft laughter floats across the room and Rumi lifts her head to see Mira in the doorway, arms crossed and eyebrow raised.
“Need help?”
“Please.” Rumi groans, dragging her hands over her face. By the time the gesture is over, Mira has disappeared from her vision and, a moment later, there’s something warm and solid against her back.
“Here. You want it like this.” Mira has come up behind her and is looping wool around Rumi’s fingers.
Rumi stares down at their hands, Mira’s long nimble fingers working quickly around her own frozen ones. This wasn’t exactly what Rumi had been expecting when she asked for help. Not that it isn’t welcome. Just surprising. And that initial surprise means that she hasn’t quite taken in what Mira has just done.
She blinks and tries to focus on the position of the needle and wool.
“And then you want to…” Mira is close enough that her breath tickles Rumi’s cheek and she squirms a little in response. Mira pauses, “You okay?”
Flushing, Rumi nods, then stops immediately as the action rubs her skin against Mira’s. “Yeah, fine.”
“Okay, then you want to slip the needle through like this.”
Focus, Rumi wills herself, focus.
Miraculously, her brain complies. Only, really, she ought to have been more specific because it chooses completely the wrong thing to focus on, lasering in on the low murmur of Mira’s voice in the shell of her ear, the whisper of hair against her temple and the coolness of fingertips on her skin.
“You wanna give it a go?”
“Um.” Rumi looks blankly down at the needle and wool. A kind of worm-like creature seems to have magically appeared at the end of her needle but Rumi is none the wiser to how it got there. “Can you show me again?”
Mira laughs lightly and Rumi can feel the hum of it against her back. “Sure. Like this.”
The worm grows at the same rate that Rumi’s concentration shrinks. It’s absolutely no use. She can’t focus on anything other than how exceptionally close Mira is. Too close.
Come to think of it, suspiciously close, even.
“Are you doing this on purpose?” Rumi questions, as Mira’s thumb runs along Rumi’s palm in a motion that, even with her total lack of understanding of crochet, Rumi is pretty sure has no educational value.
“Hm? Doing what?” Mira practically purrs, all but confirming Rumi’s suspicions.
Rumi huffs, “You’re distracting me.”
“I’m not distracting you. I’m instructing you.”
“This isn’t your instruction voice.”
“My instruction voice?” There is a rare amused delight twinkling out from beneath Mira’s usual dry apathy.
“Yeah, your…” Rumi face is hot, “You know what I’m talking about.”
“I might have an idea. Something like this?” She plucks the needle from Rumi’s fingers, “Rumi, turn around for me.”
Mira’s voice has dropped, in both pitch and volume, right alongside something in Rumi’s stomach.
“Yeah.” Rumi swallows, “Something like that.”
When she turns, she finds that Mira’s expression very much matches the tone of her voice and it isn’t long before the crochet needle is left abandoned on the table.
**
Rumi’s next attempt is yoga. Yes, she knows, technically it is exercise but it feels so far removed from their usual training that surely it doesn’t count. So, Rumi chooses an amateur video to follow and sets it up in her bedroom.
They start in mountain pose, standing upright with the hands clasped in front, before stretching the arms upwards over the head, then downwards until the palms are flat against the floor.
It’s easy enough. Rumi has the strength and flexibility to pull it off. However, though she can appreciate the stretch in her muscles from the poses, they leave her mind a little unoccupied.
The video, of course, offers a running stream of optional topics to think about:
Focus on yourself in this moment.
Think about the kind of person you want to be today.
But these provide little substance to Rumi, who already knows exactly who she is going to be today – she has an itinerary for it.
She is going to be kind of person who ticks everything on it off, on time and to an exceptionally high standard. The kind of person that the world can depend on to keep the Honmoon safely intact. The kind of person deserving of millions of fans across the globe. The kind of person deserving of Mira and Zoey.
The kind of person she will be today, and tomorrow, and every day for the rest of her life, has been predestined, written into her future long before she had a say. Her survival and, more importantly, the world’s survival is dependent on it.
Rumi exhales in time with the video. But these are the kind of things she had promised Mira and Zoey to take a break from thinking about, the whole point of getting a hobby in the first place. So, she makes an effort to expel them from her mind alongside the air in her lungs.
The pose changes. Child’s pose: knees tucked into chest, forehead flat against the ground. Curve of the spine – the tree trunk of the skeleton and lifeline of the nervous system – exposed, soft part of the arms turned outwards, sight buried in darkness. This is vulnerable position. This is an exposed position. This is not a position Rumi particularly associates with childhood.
Downward dog she finds to be more aptly named. Upward dog less so, but the logistics of it satisfy her well enough.
Focus on your body, the video tells her. So, she does.
Press your feet into the ground. So, she presses.
Then they are back to mountain pose. Rumi is thoroughly bored now.
Think about your breathing. Yes, she knows. Feel the air fill the lungs. Feel the lungs expand downwards towards the belly. Hold. Release. She knows, she knows.
She doesn’t need to think about her breathing; she has absolute control over it. She can belt in her upper register free-falling from burning planes. She can dance and sing for entire concerts. She can hit and hold notes most people wouldn’t dream of – and that is after sprinting miles across the city and fighting demons into the ground.
Focus on your breathing, the video repeats, insistent, and Rumi breaks her hands from their prayer to brush her fingers against the base of her neck. She breathes in. The air passes freely through her windpipe and into her lungs.
But there had once been a time when it hadn’t.
She breathes out. Looks down at her hands, at the patterns curling around them. They don’t hurt anymore. Tingle sometimes, sure, but not prickle like something lodged beneath skin or squeeze like a net caught in, tightening and tangling the more she struggles.
They’re faint these days too; papery white instead of purple, similar to the scar tissue forming over the splinter wound on her finger. Different. But not gone.
Rumi lets her hands drop to her side. It feels like hours have gone by, like she has sifted through a lifetime’s worth of thinking over just the course of a few yoga poses. The video surely must be nearly done now.
She taps the keypad of her laptop to bring up the timestamp. Blinks. Then, slaps the laptop shut.
*
“Yoga is overrated.” She grumbles, flopping onto the sofa next to Mira.
Mira snorts, not looking up from her book, “I could have told you that.”
“Since when do you not like yoga?”
“I’m impartial towards it. I could have told you you wouldn’t like it.”
Rumi sinks further into her hoodie. “Well, why didn’t you?”
“You didn’t ask.” Only now does Mira look up, the smirk on her face falling away, “Is that what you’ve been doing? Yoga?”
Rumi nods.
Mira sighs and puts the book down before patting the space between her legs. “Come here.”
Rumi acquiesces, crawling between them and leaning back into Mira.
“Zoey?” Mira calls over the top of Rumi’s head and a second later Zoey’s head pops round the door.
“Yeah?” Rumi must be looking a sorrier state than she had realised because Zoey pauses, a crease appearing between her brows, “What’s happened?”
“Rumi has been trying yoga.”
“Oof.” Zoey cringes and Rumi tries to hide herself further into Mira.
“Is it really so obviously a terrible choice of hobby?” She mumbles, feeling a bit annoyed that they both seem to see this part of her so clearly that she doesn’t see at all.
“Yeah, kinda.” Zoey answers. She’s closer now, tucking herself underneath Rumi’s legs.
“You can’t be in your own head for more than two minutes without exploding.” Mira explains.
Rumi scowls, thinking of the video timestamp glaring mockingly from the screen. “4 minutes 37 seconds, actually.”
They laugh softly, then Zoey is leaning over to brush stray hairs out of her face. “What kind of thoughts have you got yourself tangled up in?”
Rumi looks down at her fingers. Her patterns peak out from underneath her hoodie sleeve. She presses down on the healing splinter wound enough that it hurts a little, a dull kind of pain that is unsatisfying.
This is a difficult question. Or rather the answer is difficult to put into words.
“What if I’m just not meant to be good at anything else?”
Her whole life she has striven to be good at one thing: protect the Honmoon. What if there is just no more room left in her to be anything else? And even that, a voice hisses from some cold and sinister place in her mind, you couldn’t do properly.
“You’re plenty good.” Mira counters, “And that isn’t really the point of a hobby. You’re allowed to not be good at them.”
Rumi adjusts herself in Mira’s arms, letting the words sink in. The meaning is clear – Rumi understands that much – but there is a little chasm between knowing and believing and these words don’t build up quite enough momentum to bridge the gap.
Zoey is tapping lightly against the side of her head. “How do pull you out of there, hm? You want to do some kneeling?”
Rumi shrugs, “Maybe.”
“Or, what about something a little more activity-based?”” Mira suggests propping Rumi up gently by the shoulders, “Let me do the thinking for you for a little bit?”
Rumi nods. That sounds good. Nice. Better than yoga, which gave her far too much to think about and far too little to do.
Then Mira is leaning down to murmur, “Zoey’s looking pretty hot right now, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah. Obviously.” Rumi agrees easily because, well, Zoey almost always looks pretty hot.
“I can think of a few things I wouldn’t mind doing to her right now but I’m feeling a little lazy to do them myself.”
Oh. Rumi, flushing, is beginning to see where this is going: let me do the thinking and, in return, you do the doing.
“How does that sound?” The words are hot in her ear.
“Yeah,” Rumi’s voice is a little tight, “that sounds good.”
“You in Zoey?”
Zoey jerks forward. Her eyes are wide and her cheeks are pink. “Yes. Absolutely, yes.”
Mira guides Rumi like a puppet on strings – strings with one end attached to Mira’s velvet tongue and the other to Rumi’s compliant hands and mouth. And once they have taken Zoey over the edge for the second time, Rumi is rewarded for her performance.
She is leaning back against Mira, Zoey between her legs. Zoey’s mouth is capable of wonderous things: executing impossible tongue twisters; delivering cleverly laid entendres; squeezing syllables into spaces they shouldn’t fit. But none of that even remotely compares to whatever she is doing between Rumi’s legs right now.
Until, suddenly she isn’t.
Rumi heaves her head upright to discover the source of the interruption only to find Zoey has pulled away from where Rumi would ideally like her to be and is instead looking directly at her.
“Baking.” Zoey tells her, very very seriously.
Rumi blinks. “Um.”
“Your hobby.” Zoey, to Rumi’s horror, pulls back even further, “You should try baking.”
“Um.” Rumi repeats, reaching out with the intention of guiding Zoey back down. Zoey, however, misinterprets, intertwining their fingers together and kissing her knuckles, which is very sweet but not really what Rumi was going for.
“It keeps your mind and your hands busy. And I used to do it all the time as a kid so I can help you start out.” Zoey continues but Rumi isn’t really listening anymore because Zoey has let go of her hand now and Rumi can see very clearly her own slick glistening from where it had come into contact with Zoey’s mouth.
“Um.” She says a little more frantically, clawing behind her for Mira this time. Mira who, thank God, notices and catches her by the wrist.
“And it’s basically just following instructions.” Mira adds, voice dry with amusement, and then she is licking Rumi’s hand clean and oh my god oh my god oh my god
“Great idea, Zo. I think you might need to get back to the task at hand though. Rumi is short circuiting.”
“Oh.” Zoey looks down like she is just remembering why Rumi is there, half-naked and quivering beneath her. Rumi might have been insulted if there weren’t other much more pressing things on her mind. “Sorry Rumi.”
Zoey backs up her apology with a series of actions that leave Rumi a dead weight sprawled across Mira, panting and heady. Once her thoughts have started to come back into focus a little, Zoey crawls up the length of her until they’re close enough that Rumi can see each of the individual eyelashes Zoey is batting at her.
“So… baking?”
“Baking.” Rumi parrots back, blearily. It takes a moment in Rumi’s still sluggish mind to register why the word leaves such a sour taste in her mouth.
“Let’s make something together tomorrow?”
Rumi fights back a grimace; after today she is pretty sure she never wants to hear that word ever again. But Zoey is smiling at her all sparkly-eyed and buzzing in a way that Rumi knows she has already planned out exactly how this is going to go, so there’s really little else she can do besides smile back and nod.
*
“Okay!” Zoey clasps her hands together, “Let’s get started.”
Rumi looks up in surprise, “Haven’t we already started?”
They’ve been in the kitchen for a good few minutes now, rummaging through cupboards and drawers for various ingredients and paraphernalia.
“Well, sort of.” Zoey waves her hands in the air vaguely, “But not really.”
Rumi frowns, distinctly not understanding what that means. Her hopes for this endeavour are already very low – like, crust-mantle-core levels low – and this does little to reassure her.
Mira is there too, propped in a kitchen chair, reading, having brushed off their offers to join in with the excuse “I don’t have much of a sweet tooth” (to which Rumi and Zoey had shared an incredibly dubious look). Rumi turns to her now, for solidarity or explanation perhaps, but Mira doesn’t even look up from her book, either completely engrossed in the story or completely nonplussed by Zoey’s lack of sense.
“The first step,” Zoey continues, “is almost always pre-heating the oven, probably to something around this…” Rumi doesn’t particularly like ‘almosts’ or ‘probablys’ but she happens to know from the recipe that the temperature required is close enough to the one Zoey has flicked the dial onto to let it slide, “Then, let me just check…” Zoey trails off, rooting around in her pockets.
Rumi, who presumes she is looking on her phone (which is on the kitchen table in front of them), fills in, “Cream together 120g of butter with 75g of both white and brown sugar.”
Zoey’s search freezes and Mira’s eyes snap from her book to Rumi.
“You actually read the recipe?” Zoey asks, half a second before Mira adds, equally incredulous:
“You memorised it?”
Their confusion is contagious; Rumi cannot understand their perplexion. Why else would Zoey have sent her the recipe in advance? “Wasn’t I supposed to?”
She realises that not only do they seem to be confused but also stunned as her question is followed by a long, staring silence.
“Oh shit.” It is Mira who, eventually, breaks it, “This might actually work.”
“I think you’re right.”
Though they’re clearly talking to one another, neither have taken their eyes off Rumi, until Mira’s gaze slides downwards to Zoey, a smirk playing on her lips. “Damn you’re good.”
“What can I say?” Zoey grins back up at her, “I was feeling particularly inspired when I had the idea.”
“Alright, enough.” Rumi snaps her fingers, ignoring the heat creeping up her neck a she realises what Zoey is referencing. Besides, there is a twin glint in their eyes that doesn’t bode well for any kind of productive afternoon and Rumi just wants to get this over with as soon as possible. “I don’t want to run the oven unnecessarily.”
“Sure, sure.” Zoey acquiesces, breaking away from Mira, who just rolls her eyes and returns to her book.
The process runs surprisingly smoothly. Rumi recounts each step of the recipe to Zoey who, in turn, shows her what it means. Zoey is patient and thorough in her explains of both terminology – cream, fold beat – as well as technique – how to use colour to know when the sugar and butter is properly mixed, how to sift flour with as little mess as possible.
“How do you know so much about this?” Rumi asks Zoey, at the end of an explanation of the different types of sugar.
She shrugs, “We learnt a bit in Home Ec then I got really into it on my own.”
“Home Ec.” Mira makes a face, “I was thrown out of that class more times than I can count. The teacher had a serious problem with me.”
“Completely unsolicited, I’m sure.” Rumi comments, dryly.
“Completely.” Mira agrees, then pauses, “Or, mostly.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you were the absolute picture of innocence.” Zoey teases, “Did they make you stand outside the principal’s office?”
“Worse. Lines.”
“Yikes.”
“What are lines?” Rumi interjects, not completely following the conversation.
“Writing lines.” Zoey turns to explain. While her attention is on Rumi, Mira capitalises on the opportunity to scoop up and lick clean a fingerful of batter from the mixing bowl, “Like writing what you did wrong over and over, you know?”
Rumi doesn’t know. It must show because Zoey’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, “Really? I thought that would be right up Celine’s alley. What did she do instead?” When all Rumi can do is stare blankly back, trying to work out what exactly she is being asked, Zoey continues with what Rumi can only assume is meant to be a helpful addition, “Time out? Ground you?”
“Make you run laps?” Mira adds.
“Rumi likes running laps though.”
“True,” A sly grin makes its way across Mira’s features, “did she confiscate your sticker chart?”
“Or force you to lie in?” Zoey giggles, elbowing Mira lightly, who nods in approval.
“Good one.”
“We had to run laps anyway.” Rumi counters, then, inexplicably, she feels the need to add, “And I didn’t have a sticker chart.”
“That was a real miss from Celine.”
“Totes. What was the punishment of choice then? Stand with your nose touching a chalk circle.”
“Old school. How about the cane?”
“Mira,” Zoey gasps, “No way Celine is mean enough for the cane.”
“She made us read the entirety of that pre-historic coma-inducing text on demon slaying. That’s pretty much as bad.”
“That’s not–” Rumi splutters, “Those were important sacred documents,” Then, to put an end to their guessing, “And besides, she didn’t punish me.”
“Huh,” Mira’s leans back a little, “surprisingly liberal.”
“Still makes more sense than the cane.” Zoey reasons before turning to Rumi, “But what did she do when you misbehaved then?”
“I…” Rumi thinks back, flicking through the pages of her childhood for something akin to what they’re looking for with little luck, “I didn’t. Misbehave, I mean.”
They’re looking at her again, all silent and staring, and Rumi no longer feels like she has one foot out of the conversation but her entire body has been flung ten feet in the opposite direction.
“What?” She prompts, shoulders involuntarily rising alongside the silence.
“Nothing, nothing.” Zoey starts forward immediately, a reassuring hand coming to rest on her arm, and Rumi’s shoulders halt their path to her ears. “It’s just… ever?”
Rumi shakes her head.
“Ever ever?” Mira clarifies.
“No,” Rumi repeats the motion, feeling a little embarrassed. “Never.”
“That… actually checks out.”
“Yeah, makes a lot of sense.” Zoey agrees, tugging Rumi towards her, “Our Rumi, always by the book.” Then she lifts herself onto her tiptoes to press four quick kisses to Rumi’s nose.
The display makes Rumi’s brain stutter just enough so that she can’t tell them that it wasn’t like that. She wasn’t some perfect little angel child, there just simply wasn’t the time for misbehaving. There were bigger things on her plate than frivolous temper tantrums or rebellious teenage phases.
By the time Rumi’s brain has kick-started back into action though, Zoey has caught Mira making another beeline for the mixing bowl.
“Stop it.” She chides, swatting Mira’s hands away, “You’ll screw up the ratios. Baking is a science.”
“Screw science.” Mira retorts.
“Screw you.”
“Hm,” Mira tugs Zoey between her legs and licks the batter clean off her finger, “if you insist.”
Rumi rolls her eyes as Zoey folds into Mira’s arms with a flustered giggle and continues her own folding of the rest of the flour into the mixture. Once this is done, it is clear to Rumi that Zoey is not going to be pulled away from where Mira is now languidly making out with her, so she works through the rest of the recipe alone.
The final steps aren’t difficult: add chocolate chips (the hardest part of which is keeping the packet out of Mira’s blindly reaching arm), rolls the dough into balls on a baking tray, then pop in the oven.
Then, wait. For ten minutes, during the entirety of which Mira and Zoey continue their antics. More than once they try to pull Rumi into the mix, but she finds that she can’t quite be peeled from where she is crouching in front of the oven door.
Squinting through the tinted glass, she can see the mixture transforming in the heat. The balls melt into disks though the chocolate seems to holding shape unexpectedly well (“It’s cooking chocolate.” Zoey breaks away from Mira to explain). Removing the them from oven reveals that the colour and texture has changed too, from the pale and doughy to a golden crust.
As soon as Rumi sets the tray down, Mira makes a grab for one but Zoey bats her away. “You have to let them cool first.”
“Urgh.” Mira groans and Zoey sends Rumi a half-fond, half-exasperated look.
“What happened to not having a sweet-tooth?”
“It’s Rumi’s first baked good. What kind of girlfriend would I be if I didn’t try one?”
Rumi snorts. “How selfless.”
The process had been interesting enough but the main event, Rumi realises as she takes a bite out of one of the cookies, is the creation itself. They’re still warm, chewy on the outside and soft in the middle, hot chocolate dripping through the surface.
“They’re good.” Rumi comments, voice quiet, staring at the remaining cookie in her hand.
“No shit.” Mira says around a mouthful of her second, “They’re amazing.”
Rumi can’t pull her eyes away from the cookie. This was her first attempt. She hadn’t expected everything to go so smoothly, not after the track record she had been building up as of recent.
Because of this, she misses the knowing look Mira and Zoey share over her shoulder. She doesn’t, however, miss the taunt in Mira’s next dig.
“You would have so loved sticker charts.”
“Totally.” Zoey snickers in agreement.
“Oh, shut up.” Rumi shoots them both an unimpressed look before swiping the tray of cookies from out of their reach in retaliation.
They’re teasing her occasional somewhat uptight tendances and, though she takes a level of satisfaction from their dismayed protests at the confiscated goods, she knows they’re not completely off the mark.
Sure, she can be a little high-strung, a little chart-mad. But, looking down at the rows and rows of near picture-perfect cookies, it’s difficult to see the issue. She likes being by the book. She likes straight-forward rules and clear-cut instructions. It’s easier. It’s safe. And, as attested by the physical evidence in her hands, it works.