Chapter Text
If Zoey thought about it really hard, the beginning of the end starts when they celebrate the end of their tour in a karaoke bar in Manila.
It’s tradition to them, basically; to finish off a concert really strong and celebrate together at the nearest private karaoke bar they can find so that they can drink to their hearts’ content and keep singing until they get sick of it.
Which, sure, isn’t really the healthiest thing in the world for their voices, but none of them are at risk for a throat infection just yet (at least, Zoey thinks so—maybe she should ask Bobby to get the three of them an appointment with a doctor just in case).
Their private room is painted with the neon glow of the walls, strobe lights flashing here and there while they hold onto each other and sing to their hearts’ content. The other patrons don’t really pay attention to them. Zoey can hear other people, drunk and young and just there for a good time, singing just as loudly through the muffled walls. It’s a camaraderie between singers in the building, and Zoey glows under the touch of the alcohol in her hand as she sways to the love song playing in their room.
Mira has the main mic right now. She’s screaming something like “You were just a dream that I once—!” into the mic, and Zoey whistles and sways. They don’t even know what else in the queue right now.
Mira’s face is tinged red from the alcohol and the exertion of getting to sing all night, and Zoey just wants to pepper kisses all over her face for it—but she holds back, partly because she likes hearing Mira sing these rare ballads and because she knows that Mira would want to finish first.
Zoey lays her head on Rumi’s shoulder, hooking her ankle underneath Rumi’s calf to keep them locked together. She giggles, her head feeling fuzzy, and Rumi does nothing but huff in fond exasperation and sway along to Mira’s singing.
“Sing it!” Zoey hollers, cupping her face to scream louder at Mira, who lazily looks at her with a glint of warning in her eyes. Not that Zoey minds.
Mira places down the mic to lean over and grab a shot from the table, then throws it back before burping loudly into the mic and letting it echo through the walls. Zoey and Rumi cheer her on for it, chanting, “More! More! More!”
The energy in the room is on fire. Zoey feels the glow of the night against her skin, resting there like steam from the bathhouse. These kinds of nights are always her favorites—nights where she gets to spend with her most favorite, most wonderful girls in the whole entire world, and nights where she can just scream her heart out to any and all songs that she can think of without worrying about perfection. These kinds of nights just scrape right above the ones they spend playing board games, and she gets to pull out her skills in Monopoly against the two’s better judgments.
Zoey chugs her club soda and burps directly into the secondary mic in her hand—it echoes, but not as loudly as Mira’s had. Rumi pats her back and tells her, “Aw, it was a really good try,” while Mira cackles in the corner for getting to win their silent burp battle.
Pouting, Zoey hands the mic to Rumi to kneel down on the floor to graze the feast in front of them: beer towers, fries, sashimi trays, the bar’s famous sisig, and cheese nachos. Carb-loading was definitely a staple for before concerts, but it was just as equally important to carb-load after to keep high morale! At least, Zoey would say so.
Zoey sits criss-crossed on the floor, stuffs some more fries into her mouth, then twists around to offer another glass of something-with-alcohol-in-it-probably to Rumi. She smiles at Rumi, cheeks full like a hamster.
Rumi laughs. She uncrosses her legs, a graceful move that Zoey still finds herself obsessed with after all this time, and gently plucks the glass out of Zoey’s hand.
But instead of drinking it, Rumi waits until Zoey swallows her mouthful of food, then brings it to Zoey’s bottom lip. Zoey can feel the thrum of the bass shaking her ribs as Mira continues on with another song—a rock ballad this time.
Obediently, Zoey parts her lips. Rumi tips the glass back, lets some pour into her mouth, then pulls away. Zoey feels some of the cold liquid dribble down her chin, but Rumi just swipes it away with a languid thumb before it can drip onto the floor. The liquid in question tastes like strawberry, with a tartness that definitely hints at an alcoholic fire.
“Oooooh.” Zoey smacks her lips together happily. “Who ordered the strawberry daiquiri?”
“I did,” Mira says across from her, leaning against the back of the sofa and spreading her legs as she waits for her cue to sing on screen. Zoey opens her mouth to tease, but Mira beats her to it by adding, “Ordered it for you, actually. And you’re about to touch my vodka.”
Zoey pulls away from the mysterious glass she’s about to touch like it’s made out of fire. She smiles guiltily at Mira, but Mira just throws her a sly half-smile.
Meanwhile, Rumi lounges back against her seat—crosses her legs again and throws her elbow onto the top of the sofa like it’s hers, and then lightly tips back the strawberry daiquiri that Zoey gave to her right into her mouth.
Notably, right on the lipstick mark that Zoey left on the glass.
Rumi gives the rest of it to Zoey, who giggles and smiles at her with her heart making little butterfly wings in her chest.
Mira continues the rest of the rock song she’s singing. She sounds strong, powerful. Zoey whoops and hollers for her like she’s at Mira’s concert, and Rumi even turns on the flashlight on her phone to act like the swaying audience. The floor beneath them is shaking with how loud they turned up the karaoke machine.
Zoey knows that they’re probably making the most noise out of all the rooms at the karaoke bar. She knows, and she doesn't really care. Sure, it’s almost one in the morning and that the waitress had stopped by multiple times to subtly tell them that their kitchen would be closing soon, but Zoey can’t find it in herself to tone anything down.
By some miracle, Zoey manages to eat 90% of the food on their table by the time Mira says she wants to tap out from singing. Mira glares at her for eating most of the calamari, but Zoey tries to rectify it by kissing her on the corner of the mouth and passing her a plate of hot fries. (It works.)
Zoey takes the microphone from Mira and jumps back up onto the long, leather sofa, landing right next to Rumi. She was tempted to sit in Rumi’s lap, but singing karaoke required ample leg room and lots of moving and kicking, a fate that she wanted to save Rumi from.
Sticking her tongue out from the corner of her mouth, Zoey flips through the karaoke bar’s binder of song codes while she holds up the microphone with the other.
She presses the windscreen under her chin and asks Mira and Rumi, “What do you think I should sing?”
Mira groans when Zoey’s words echo loudly through the room, screeching slightly at the end from the feedback. “You know you can just ask us without using that like a megaphone, right?”
“But what’s the fun in just talking to you?” Zoey asks, then pouts.
“The fun is being able to regain hearing by the end of the night,” Rumi backs up. Her arms are crossed over her chest, but she jostles Zoey’s shoulder as she whines. Rumi, like the leader she is, knows exactly how to placate the situation. She doesn’t even need to think about it before she asks Zoey next, “How about doing this one?” and points to one of Zoey’s most favorite rap songs ever from the binder.
“Oh my god!” Zoey gasps so loud that she swears she felt the sashimi she ate vacuum itself back up throat. “Oh my god, oh my god, Rumi! Rumi, we need to rap this together!”
Rumi’s already holding the other mic, so it’s not like Rumi has a choice, she thinks mischievously.
But Rumi’s laughing that awkward laugh, the kind that says, Well, I don’t know, Zoey, but Zoey’s already on full pleading mode. She turns around from her spot on the floor, dropping onto her knees and clasping her hands between her mic like a prayer.
“Oh my god, please! Pleeeeease!” Zoey begs, widening her eyes up at Rumi in a way she knows would get Rumi’s guard down. “This is literally my biggest dream!”
“I thought your biggest dream was taking us to Universal Studios?” Mira interrupts.
“This is literally my second biggest dream!” Zoey corrects with the same amount of pleading.
“Zoey,” Rumi starts with a laugh, and Zoey likes how she says her name—curled around her tongue, drawn out and sexy. Or maybe Zoey just had too much alcohol. “You know I can’t rap that fast. Other songs, fine, but you’d just—”
“I won’t make fun of you, pleaseeeee!” Zoey begs again. “I just think rapping it with you would be really cool and you’d sound really hot and I’m pretty sure I’d die happy right here and now if you did it, so please, pleeeeeeeeeeeease—!”
“If I were you, I’d just get it over with,” Mira says with a guffaw, looking at Rumi with a smile full of pity and amusement. “You know she’s not going to give up.”
Rumi exhales and slumps against the sofa in defeat. She brings the mic up to her lips, and Zoey is already halfway through cheering while she says, “Okay, okay! But I’ll just do one verse—one, Zoey!”
Zoey presses the code into the screen so fast that her fingers fly over the keys. It takes a moment for the screen to compute what the code is, then the melodic, slightly offkey version of the background track plays through the speakers in the room, and Zoey is already bouncing up on her heels to get ready. She’s punching the air too, and she can hear Rumi and Mira laughing at her little shenanigans.
She has time to drink one more gulp of her soda and a mouthful of fries before her cue starts, and Zoey starts rapping directly into the mic like she was still in the stadium with thousands of her fans—she’s spitting into the covered head of the mic, moving her arms, putting her shoe on the table, and everything in between. She definitely knows that they’ll need to leave a hefty tip to the staff after this.
Mira yells and hollers for her the entire time she’s rapping, and she hears a loud growl of “Let’s go, babyyy!” when the next verse begins to count in. Zoey feels the most exhilarated she’s ever had all day. Which is saying something, considering she had thousands of people chanting her name just a couple hours ago.
(But if she ever had to make the choice, she would choose the way Mira and Rumi chant her name, in every and any given context, over the world’s.)
Zoey uses the last of her breath to scream and rap into the mic, digging it downwards with each syllable and emphasizing every vowel with her hand. It makes her feel lightheaded until she sucks in a deep breath after her verse ends, but she’s smiling wide and proud.
She pivots on her heel during the break between the third and fourth verse, grinning like a madman at Rumi.
“Sing it!” Zoey shouts into the mic, and she points it directly at Rumi despite the fact that she already had one raised to her chest.
But even as the karaoke screen counts her in with a small flash and chime, Rumi makes no sound.
Zoey lowers the mic away from Rumi’s face. Her smile begins to fade off her face as she watches Rumi.
How Rumi just stares off into space, even as the hard hip-hop beat of the song jumps from the floors and shakes their chests, the mic to her chest frozen in place. Her lips are slightly parted, but not even the mic in front of her can pick out any of the noises she might be making.
Zoey frowns as the song transitions to another verse, still thumping and sprightly. “Rumi?”
Rumi doesn’t respond. She continues to stare at some spot just next to the karaoke screen, and Zoey turns her head to look. There’s nothing but the blank wall. Zoey looks at Mira, who’s already looking at her with her brow knitted and the fraction of a frown on her face.
Mira, who’s already sitting on the sofa, scooches closer to Rumi. She puts a hand on Rumi’s shoulder and gently squeezes. She calls out, “Hey, you okay?”
Rumi blinks, as if she’s just been tapped out of being frozen in place.
She looks back at Mira, the tightness in her face denoting her confusion. “Yeah, I—” she starts, and her face contorts even more. She’s pained.
Zoey is already taking a step towards her before she can say anything else.
She watches as the strobe lights above them slices through Rumi’s face, turning it into a kaleidoscope of colors that turn her skin from gold to purple to red to green—how it flashes over one of her eyes with a neutral lens, and spotlights the familiar pale yellow that Zoey sees sometimes.
Rumi curls in on her stomach, groaning in warped pain.
Zoey makes a quick detour to squeeze past Mira and slam her fist on one of the light switches in the room that the waitress had shown them. It turns off the strobe lights, and it paints their room in an impartial blue glow. Zoey has to blink a couple times to adjust her eyes to its darkened quality, but at least she can still see Mira and Rumi.
She kneels in front of Rumi, putting one of her hands on her thighs as Rumi groans, arms hugged to her stomach.
“What happened?” she asks. She’s not sure which person she’s asking, but Rumi doesn’t seem to register the question and Mira just shrugs at her helplessly with startled eyes.
The song is still playing in the background, but it’s starting to wane off as it enters its last few seconds. Zoey is grateful for that, at least.
Rumi sucks in a deep breath. She holds out her hand to Zoey, waving it dismissively. It does nothing to sway Zoey or Mira’s worries.
“I’m fine,” Rumi says, a strain to her voice. She looks up at them, smiling encouragingly; but it lands flat when Zoey sees how tense it looks on her face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Just—just a stomach ache.”
“Maybe you ate a little too fast,” Mira murmurs, rubbing Rumi’s back with one hand and holding one of her hands with the other.
“Or drank too much alcohol,” Zoey volunteers, but she’s frowning. She squeezes Rumi’s knee. “How about I ask for some water and we can get the bill?”
“No, no,” Rumi says quickly. She sits straighter, a move that clearly pains her as the corner of her cheek tightens with the feeling. “Night’s still young. I know you guys still have like an hour or two left in you. Don’t go home because of me.”
“Uh, and why not?” Mira asks, offended. “We’re not going to sing and clap while you’re actively dying next to us.”
“It’s just a stomach—” Rumi begins to argue.
“Nope!” Zoey declares, already standing. “I’m gonna wave down someone for some water and the bill. That’s final.”
Rumi gives her a smile. Strained, but fond. “I’ll be fine. Seriously. I’ve had worse stomach aches than this. I’ll just use the bathroom and come back good as new. Trust me.”
Zoey presses her lips together in thought. She looks at Mira, and they share that same unsure look.
“Maybe I just need to take a quick dump,” Rumi says casually. “And then I’ll come back and we can rap your song together, Zoey.”
Zoey hates that she knows her so well.
Rumi knows it too, and she smiles knowingly at Zoey while she stands and semi-limps out of the room.
“Well, if you’re having trouble pushing, just call me!” Zoey shouts after her. Rumi waves behind her back to let her know that she heard her before she passes through their door.
“What are you going to do if she’s having trouble… pushing?” Mira asks her curiously.
Zoey has to think about that. “Pass her some toilet paper under the stall and keep her company?”
Mira laughs. She beckons Zoey over to her, and Zoey pouts as she makes her way over to sit down firmly on her lap. Mira lazily wraps her arm around Zoey’s waist, natural as a bird settling in a tree.
Zoey sighs as she presses her ear against Mira’s collarbone. “I don’t feel like singing while Rumi’s out,” she says with another miserable huff. She drops her mic on the sofa.
Mira rubs her lower back, chuckling. “You heard her. She probably just ate something with too much cheese. You know how she is with lactose.”
“I know,” Zoey whines. She gently beats against Mira’s chest in protest, then taps a spot there to pass the time. “Do you think I should follow her anyway?”
“It’s been, like, two minutes.” Mira blinks at her. “I don’t think I can pass some turds out that fast even if I wanted to.”
“I know!” Zoey whines again. She’s growing frustrated that Mira’s not understanding what she’s trying to lay down. “It’s just that I don’t think…” She trails off, unsure of how to finish it.
She wants to say something about how she's seen that look on Rumi’s face before—right before they were going live with the first ‘Golden’ performance. The visceral fear and pain in Rumi’s face. Zoey hadn’t understood it then, and she desperately wishes that she had. She doesn’t know how to bring it up to Mira without sounding paranoid though, especially after how long Rumi had come in accepting that side of herself.
Mira grows quiet, and Zoey can hear the muffled sounds of other songs playing discordantly in the background as they meld together with the other rooms. It’s almost soothing in a way.
Then Mira asks, “I mean, if you want to go check on her, I won’t stop you.”
Zoey pulls back to peer at her face suspiciously. She knows Mira well enough that her words can also translate to, I’m worried too.
“You don’t wanna come with me?” Zoey asks.
“I would, but you brought your favorite wallet here on your favorite purse, and I don’t think I’d ever hear the end of it if someone steals it,” Mira says frankly. Zoey huffs through her nose. Mira knocks her forehead gently against Zoey’s to allay her. “Plus, I might come off too blunt. Last thing we want is to scare her right now.”
Zoey takes Mira’s face in her hands. “Are you sure you’ll be okay here?”
Mira laughs and squeezes Zoey’s waist. It makes Zoey momentarily breathless. “I’m sure I can handle being alone for five or ten minutes.” She pauses, and Zoey knows it’s coming just a split second before she adds, “Unlike someone I know—”
“Okay!” Zoey cries out, and Mira’s laughing again.
Zoey presses a quick kiss to Mira’s lips, tells her that she’ll back back with good news (hopefully), then hops off her lap to fulfil her quest in making sure that Rumi wasn’t 1) dying, 2) shitting all her guts out until nothing was left, or 3) all of the above.
She asks for directions to the women’s bathroom, then makes a beeline for it. It's hidden around the bend of the bar, but the interior is nice as she enters. It smells like soap and beer too.
And no one else seems to be in the bathroom.
Just Rumi, who’s leaning against the sink and staring down at it like it’s her mortal enemy.
“Rumi?” Zoey calls out.
Rumi startles, and she turns around to look at her with eyes as wide as a baby deer’s. Zoey lifts her hands up to show that she’s harmless.
Rumi’s face softens when she recognizes her. “What are you doing in here?”
“I wanted to check on your… progress?” she asks unsurely. She glances at the empty bathroom stalls nearby, then looks back at Rumi’s chagrined look. “Either you just set a number two record or—”
“My stomach ache went away as soon as I got here,” Rumi says quickly.
Zoey tilts her head at her. She closes the door behind her and walks over to Rumi, who seems to be avoiding her eyes. “Sooo… why are you still here?” Zoey asks in confusion.
“Just, uh, needed to get my bearings, I guess,” Rumi says, exhaling as she bounces slightly on the balls of her feet. She sucks in a breath through her teeth, looking pointedly away from Zoey. She’s still bracing herself against the counter of the sink.
“Rumi,” Zoey starts softly, and Rumi’s shoulders slump at her tone, “are you sure you’re okay?”
“‘Course I am,” Rumi says with faux enthusiasm. “Just really tired from all the touring, y’know?”
“Good thing we’re done for the next two, three weeks, huh?” Zoey asks happily. She’s desperately trying to keep the mood up in the room, but she can feel the ice starting to stick quicker than she can melt it away.
Rumi laughs. It’s as forced as it could get. “Yeah.”
The silence that passes between them is so… unlike them that Zoey feels like wanting to scream or randomly break into a dance right then and there just so that this weird tension could slice itself in half. She could hear people’s karaoke music traveling from the vents, and she wonders what Mira is doing in their room right now.
Then Rumi finally sucks in a breath, releases it, then says, “I feel like I already know what you’re thinking.”
Zoey blinks. “What am I thinking?” She was just thinking about how pretty Rumi looks right now.
Rumi makes eye contact with her for the first time since they got there. She pulls her eyebrows together, just slightly enough for Zoey to notice from their proximity, then asks, “You’re thinking I’m hiding something from you two again, aren’t you?”
“What? No,” Zoey says quickly, even though it was sorta, kinda, maybe what they were thinking lately. Kinda. Sorta.
Rumi purses her lips, and Zoey regrets not being able to lie as well as Mira could right in that moment.
“I’m not. I promise I’m not,” Rumi insists, and the sorrow in her words are so prominent that Zoey almost tears up right there. She wants to hug Rumi so badly, but Rumi just looks back at the sink, head down, and continues, “I’ve just been feeling a little… off. These past few days, I mean. I think I’m getting a cold or something.”
Zoey thinks about it. She thinks about how Rumi had been getting up from bed just a little bit later than she usually would in the morning, or how she was just a touch offbeat (that people can’t even notice!) with the choreography during their past few concerts. To be fair, she and Mira had bouts of tour fatigue here and there—she just hadn’t recognized it in Rumi because Rumi had been so keen on working hard for as long as she knew her that she forgot that Rumi could get tired too.
“You should’ve told us!” Zoey accuses lightly. She touches Rumi’s forearm, squeezes it to let her know that she’s not angry. “You know what we should do as soon as we get home? We should call Bobby and tell him to extend our break by another week so we can lay in the bathhouse until we’re shriveled-up raisins—”
“Zoey, it’s fine,” Rumi says with a laugh. “I’ll be back on my feet after a couple days. My immune system’s great.”
“Hey, no need to flex,” Zoey grumbles, and Rumi laughs as they both think of all the times Zoey had sneezed and coughed for weeks on end from a mild flu.
Rumi slips her hand down Zoey’s arm and squeezes her fingers. “Thanks, though,” Rumi whispers, and Zoey’s heart skips a beat at the way Rumi just looks at her, “for making sure I’m okay. You know I’d do the same for you.”
“We look out for each other, remember?” Zoey says proudly. She tugs on Rumi’s arm. “Now, let’s go, go, go! You look fine enough to sit there and look pretty while I make Mira do your verse instead. Oooh, actually, how do you feel about—?”
She feels Rumi bend over in her arms before she hears the grunt that barely makes it past Rumi’s lips.
Zoey stops in her tracks, alarmed as Rumi flails her other arm to grab onto the counter and limps towards it to cough into the sink. Nothing comes out, but Zoey can feel the trembles that ripples through her body—how powerful it feels, and how it only lasts for such a quick beat that she wonders if it had happened at all.
“Rumi!” she cries out, and the panic constricts her throat.
Rumi takes another moment to cough into the sink, and she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Zoey is still holding onto her abdomen, afraid that she might collapse right onto the ground if she lets go.
“Fine! I’m fine,” Rumi says quickly, but her voice sounds scratchy and weak.
“Rumi, you don’t look—”
“I said I’m fine!” Rumi snaps.
She doesn’t scream it. It’s not even loud.
But it ripples something akin to the beat from the loud speakers, trembles the floor like it’s made of glass, and when Rumi looks at her, Zoey sees the same snake-like quality to one of her eyes that accentuates the purple of her glowing marks. It makes the hair raise on her forearms.
Zoey takes a step back—not from fear, but just to take a look at her.
The pain that contorted Rumi’s face fades away. She softens at Zoey’s confused look, until the look on her face becomes something like remorse.
“Zoey, I didn’t mean—” Rumi starts, her voice wobbly.
“I know,” Zoey says quickly. “I—”
She doesn’t really know how to explain to Rumi that she wasn’t afraid. At all.
Just… curious.
Rumi looked wild, in that moment. Like it wasn’t her behind those eyes for the splittest of moments—or it was, but with a quality of brutality. Ferine.
But she also knows Rumi would never do anything to hurt her. Not in a million years.
In fact, the way she glanced at the sink, then at Zoey, kinda made her think that Rumi was about to ask her if she wanted to… y’know.
Which just leaves her… confused and curious.
“Are you okay?” Zoey asks instead. “You haven’t done that in a while.” That, being the whole crazy demon voice thing.
Rumi frowns to herself. She looks in the mirror, stares at the demon eye that’s been staring back at her for years, the patterns that glow on her skin—
“I think so,” Rumi says, and Zoey is surprised by the slight confidence in her tone. “Actually, can you give me a minute? I really do kinda feel like… using the bathroom.”
Zoey’s smile slowly creeps up on her face. “For a number two or—?”
“One!” Rumi groans, and she’s already pushing Zoey out of the door. “I just don’t want you hearing me pee and then recording it for your mixes.”
“I wouldn’t—!” Zoey gasps, and Rumi is already giving her that look like, Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it before, and Zoey is already halfway through a sulk by the time she’s being pushed out of the door.
Zoey stares at the door of the bathroom for what feels like an eternity.
She’s not even sure why. Rumi gave her a perfectly valid reason to leave, and she sounded reasonably sure in her ability to, y’know, not die in there.
So Zoey just glances at the door one last time, then makes her way back to Mira.
Mira’s on her phone while she plunks her head onto her lap. Mira’s fingers are already threading into her hair before Zoey says anything.
“So, is she dead?” Mira asks. “Or constipated?”
“No to both,” Zoey says, turning over her shoulder to stare up at Mira’s phone. Mira’s playing a puzzle game. “She just feels a little worn out from all the touring.”
“Good thing we’re done for a couple weeks,” Mira says.
“That’s what I said!” Zoey replies excitedly.
Mira quirks a corner of her lips upwards from Zoey’s joy. She glances down at Zoey for a moment, a rare moment that surprises Zoey considering how precious Mira considers her puzzle speedrun times to be.
“And… she’s okay?” Mira asks. “You’re good?”
“Yes and yes,” Zoey says, curling a finger into Mira’s golden necklace.
She tugs at it.
Obediently, Mira puts down her phone for a moment to give her a warm kiss. She can feel the tip of Mira’s tongue swipe against her bottom lip.
It makes Zoey giggle.
“Wanted to taste the strawberry daiquiri?” she teases.
“Ugh, fine!” Mira groans. She throws her hands up. “They’re good! Are you happy?”
Zoey nods with the biggest grin on her face, and Mira pointedly stares back at her phone to finish her puzzle without saying anything else to her. Zoey just laughs.
Rumi doesn’t come back to their quiet karaoke room for another five minutes.
When she does, Zoey and Mira are already putting on their jackets, insisting that they go home so that Rumi can rest. Rumi does her hardest to fight back, but two against one never ends fair and square.
Rumi insists on sleeping alone that night—just so that she doesn’t accidentally pass her cold to either of them, she explains.
Zoey’s a little disappointed about it, and she knows Mira is too even if she doesn’t show it, but they let her be.
She’ll come around when her cold goes away, Zoey is sure.
“Shopping! Shopping! Shopping!” the three of them chant down the street.
They hardly get any looks from people who turn to look—Mira’s glare is a great deterrent for that, they’ve come to find.
With their break still in full effect and their newest album coming along great in the studio, why wouldn’t they go shopping to celebrate that? And sure, Mira’s tried her hardest to convince the pair in front of her that they could just—y’know—buy stuff online, but Zoey had insisted that there was no greater joy than being in a physical mall. Rumi had shrugged and told her that it was a great way to pass the time.
“And spend it together,” Rumi had tacked on at the end, and that was unfortunately Mira’s weakest point.
So, here they were, walking down the white floors of their favorite mall with their brilliant disguises on, Rumi and Zoey with their arms linked as they huddled and schemed about which stores to hit up, with Mira following close behind them like a towering personal bodyguard. (And their shopping bag rack—but she gets kisses for her efforts, so. No harm, no foul.)
“Oh, look, look, look!” Zoey squeals, and she stops dead in her tracks to jump up and down on her heels. Mira nearly bumps into them. Zoey’s pointing at a store around the corner.
Even with her glasses on, Mira has to squint. She recognizes the mascot on the logo before the name even registers. She groans, even as she’s being pulled faithfully forward with Rumi by Zoey’s insistence, and says, “You know you probably won’t have enough room to put more blind boxes on your shelf, right?”
“Then I’ll ask Bobby to get someone to drill in some more!” Zoey insists, which, fair enough.
Mira glances at Rumi for some backup. Unfortunately for her, Rumi would most likely become president of the “Zoey deserves every cute blind box she wants” fan club, and she just shrugs at Mira with a tight-lipped smile of apology.
Mira gives a faux sigh of exasperation. It doesn’t really bother her at all, but she wants to make it at least a little known that she tried her hardest to sway Zoey from her addiction. And maybe so that Rumi and Zoey would feel a semblance of pity for slipping on more shopping bags on her long limbs.
Zoey bursts through the glass doors like she owns the building (which is… sorta true, since Sunlight Entertainment owns a couple shares of the company), and places her hands on her hips while she sucks in a deep breath like she’s in the great outdoors. Rumi snorts behind her, and Mira gives her a weak jab to the side.
The cashier meekly waves at them. She’s already seen them come into the store a couple times over the past month.
“Looking for anything in particular?” the cashier asks.
Zoey’s already in the middle of blurting out, “Do you have anything new in stock?”
“Certainly,” the cashier answers, and she’s already stepping from her post to show Zoey their newest finds, in which Zoey happily obliges with a skip to her step.
Rumi’s already perusing the shelf in front of them. She’s rubbing her chin, like she’s seriously considering picking up one or three boxes to take home. Mira’s already groaning behind her, slumping against her back and placing her chin on Rumi’s shoulder to stare at the boxes with her.
Mira drops a handful of shopping bags to snake her arm around Rumi’s waist. She can feel Rumi suck in a breath at the feeling, and she can’t help but smile to herself. They’ve been dating for a good couple months and Rumi still acts like their PDA is something new to gawk at.
“You’re gonna go down a rabbit hole when you buy one like Zoey did,” Mira reminds her. She knows her breath tickles Rumi’s ear from the way Rumi’s shoulders twitch at her words. “C’mon, Rumi, be better.”
“They look cute,” Rumi defends. She reaches over to touch one of the sample figurines—a tiny crying angel. Mira doesn’t get the appeal. “Besides, what harm is it going to do?”
“Are you forgetting the lines of figurines and plushies in Zoey’s room?” Mira asks, bewildered. “Babe, I’m not even joking. It’s like a parasite. You buy one, think you’re fine, then the next thing you know you’re dragging the both of us here every single week so you can buy fifteen—”
They hear Zoey scream in delight on the other end of the store, and Mira can feel Rumi’s chest shake with a gentle laugh.
“I’m not like Zoey, and you know it,” Rumi teases. She puts her fingertips over Mira’s cheek, turns her head, and plants a gentle, chaste kiss on the corner of her mouth. “Plus, if you’re going to complain so much about coming here, why keep going?”
“You know why,” Mira mumbles, pressing her forehead against Rumi’s shoulder as if it would protect her from the embarrassment. It doesn’t.
Rumi laughs some more and presses another kiss to her cheek to pacify her. (It works.)
Humming, Rumi looks through the other figurines in front of them. Mira keeps her chin on her shoulder, swaying them gently from side to side to the muffled sound of the radio chiming in the store; which is, ironically, playing one of their songs. She can feel Rumi mouthing the words to them against her cheek.
Rumi points to three figurines on the middle shelf. “How about this one?”
“What about that one?” Mira asks lazily, playing dumb.
“They’re matching,” Rumi says, a slight whine to her tone that makes Mira chuckle. “And they’re not blind boxes.”
“So?” Mira asks again.
Rumi turns to her sharply, glaring at her like she wanted to pierce her throat with her sword, and Mira can’t help but laugh. The glower on her face is as much of a turn-on to her as it is something funny.
“So,” Rumi hisses under her breath, and Mira can’t help but grin at her, “you can get this one, and I’ll get the other one, and we can buy the last one for Zoey. As a surprise.”
“And why would we do that?” Mira asks, just to pull her leg.
But Rumi takes a calm breath inwards, looks over at her, and replies, “Because it would make me and Zoey really happy and we can try that position you always wanted to do as thanks?”
Mira’s already grabbing all three boxes off the shelves before Rumi even finishes her sentence.
Rumi kisses her cheek while she marches up to the counter to ring it up. “Thanks, babe,” she says, a whisper of mischief in her voice.
“Yeah. Whatever,” Mira says under her breath.
All three boxes are in her possession now, Mira adds the bag to her long line of shopping bags on her left arm, and they wait near the entrance while Zoey brings up her giant tower of blind boxes to the poor cashier. Thankfully for Mira’s arms, Rumi shows her the text that she sent to Bobby to call an assistant to take their current bags from them.
Well, assistants, plural. Rumi snaps a pic of the blind boxes that Zoey is excitedly waiting for, and Bobby tells them to wait for a squad.
On the way to meet up with their faithful assistants, Rumi twitches next to her. It’s almost indiscernible to the eye, the way Rumi’s face contorts for that fraction of a second and her hand goes to stomach—her lower stomach, like she was kicked low and hard—until she drops her hand when she sees Mira looking.
“I think I’m PMSing,” Rumi complains to Mira, and Mira rubs her back comfortingly.
After dropping off their bags at a rendezvous point, Zoey takes them both by the elbows to drag them further into the mall. How Zoey can still act chipper after already looping the mall for three hours, Mira doesn’t know. But happy Zoey, happy life, she’d say.
“Oh! Oh!” Zoey is frantically waving her hand towards the direction of a hot pretzel place. “Should we get some?”
“Zoey, you ate an entire cheesecake half an hour ago,” Rumi points out.
“God forbid Zoey can eat whatever she wants after she polished up the lyrics to our entire album in eight days,” Mira says.
“Yeah, Rumi!” Zoey tacks on.
Rumi gives Mira an unamused look, but the slight curve of her lips betrays her. “How about we get a pretzel after hitting up one more store?” she negotiates.
“What store you thinkin’?” Zoey asks, giggles at the look that Rumi throws at her.
“I mean.” Rumi pauses, deep in thought. The smell of pretzel finally wafts over in their direction, and Mira kinda wishes that they were eating it now. “I know there’s a new shoe store upstairs.”
“We have like a bajillion pairs,” Mira points out. “And our sponsorship with Fila means we’re literally getting fifteen dozen more next week.”
“Ooh, I know,” Zoey says, turning to look at the both of them with that excited glint in her eyes. “There’s a store around the corner that I’ve always wanted to go to with you guys.”
“Then let's do it,” Rumi says without another thought. Mira couldn’t blame her. Who would deny Zoey anything? A monster, that’s who.
“Which store?” Mira asks, only because she wants to make sure that they don’t accidentally walk loop past the same store five times like they did an hour ago.
But Zoey doesn’t respond. She just grins at them with that impish smile, and she lets go of their elbows to rub her hands together as she giggles under her breath like she had the evillest plan in the entire world.
Which doesn’t look good for either Rumi or Mira. They look at each other, and Mira helplessly shrugs in a way that conveys, Well, if we die, we die together.
Zoey takes them both by the hands to drag them away to their fates.
It takes a little while for them to get there. It turns out that “a store around the corner” actually means a store that takes them two floors up and halfway across the other side. Zoey bumps into a guy talking on his phone. When he turns to glare at her, he’s cowed by the dual stares coming from behind Zoey, who’s already profusely apologizing to him.
“There!” Zoey says, pointing out in the distance. She’s so excited that she’s bouncing on her heels. “I can see the top of the logo!”
“Zoey, slow down!” Rumi calls out, but her words are punctuated with little bouts of laughter.
Zoey takes them both by the wrists and walks backwards. “Gaja gaja gaja!” she shouts. Neither Rumi nor Mira are immune to her whims and wants.
They stop right in front of the store. Zoey’s smiling victoriously at them. “Well? What do you think?” she asks, lips curling into that evil, impish smile that makes Mira want to groan.
Rumi’s staring next to her. They can see inside the store even from where they stand outside, and honestly, Mira can’t blame her for feeling a little shell-shocked. This was the last place that Mira would have thought Zoey wanted to take them to; but at the same time, at least it isn’t the worst place to be in.
“Here?” Rumi asks, perplexed and slightly red in the face.
“Here,” Zoey confirms with a stubborn nod of the head.
“Looks kinda cute,” Mira admits, and Rumi turns to look at her so fast that Mira has to snort back her laughter. She says in defense, “Look at it! You gotta admit that it looks like some place Zoey would go to.”
“Exactly right!” Zoey says, grinning enthusiastically. “C’mon, Rumi, don’t you think it looks a little cute?”
“It’s—well, I wouldn’t say—” Rumi stammers.
Mira pats her hard on the back. “Aw, is Wumi being shy?” she teases.
“She totally is!” Zoey agrees. They have a good laugh about it, much to Rumi’s dismay.
Zoey takes Rumi’s hands to tug her towards the store, and Rumi fights for a total of half a second before she reluctantly lets Zoey take them into the lingerie store.
Like Mira had said—it’s a cute lingerie store. She’s used to the ones with low, warm lights and brazen plastic models that wear basically transparent garments for the world to see, but Zoey’s choice of lingerie stores consists of ones with brighter lights, bubbly pop music on the speakers, and boxer brief underwear that look hella comfy to lounge in.
She’s not even sure why Rumi looks like she’s avoiding all eye contact from anything and everyone, or how she doesn’t let her hands wander on the garments in front of them even as Zoey digs through the pile like she’s a shark on the prowl.
Then Mira watches Rumi put a hand on her side as a customer squeezes past, like she’s trying her best to make herself smaller—or trying her hardest to hide away the patterns underneath her top.
Not even all the confidence in the world that Rumi seemed to garner in the last year could turn away her instincts like this.
Mira places a gentle kiss on Zoey’s temple and whispers, “I gotta check on Rumi. You good here?”
Zoey looks over her shoulder at Rumi, who’s inconspicuously tucked in the darkest corner of the lingerie store to look at hoodies of all things.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Zoey asks, dropping the bralette in her hands. There’s a twinge of worry in her voice and in the way she eyes Mira that makes Mira want to press another kiss to her forehead.
She does. Then she kisses another spot near the corner of Zoey’s eye, just because.
“You look a little busy,” Mira drawls, eyeing the giant pile of bralettes and lace underwear out in front of them.
Zoey giggles, but her smile is still subdued with a speck of worry. “I can look with you later,” she offers.
Mira shakes her head. “Find what you like and show me and Rumi later,” she counteroffers, and Zoey lights up at that. Mira smooths her hand over Zoey’s forearm to give her hand a nice squeeze. “I’ll be back.”
She leaves Zoey to her own devices, then makes a beeline straight for beautiful, wonderful Rumi, who has her arms folded decisively over her chest while she stares at the hoodies on the table like they’re the most interesting thing in the world.
“Hey,” Mira greets, and Rumi looks up at her with a gentle blink. “You know hoodies aren’t the only thing that this store sells, right?”
Rumi smiles, but she presses her lips together. “I know,” she says, feigning nonchalance. But Mira is the epitome of nonchalance, and she knows forgery when she sees it.
Mira narrows her eyes at her. “So… do you want to take a look with me, or—?”
“I've never been to a lingerie store,” Rumi blurts out.
Her shoulders tense, Rumi looks left and right like she’s expecting someone to jump out from between the displays to make fun of her.
“Okay,” Mira says. She tilts her head at Rumi, curious. “That’s kinda obvious, but okay. Do you wanna look around with me or what?”
Rumi sighs through her nose. “I don’t… know?” she asks, her voice strained. “I mean, I’ve thought about buying lingerie before but—”
“Really?” Mira can’t help but ask, and she lifts her eyebrows.
“Mira,” Rumi warns, and Mira holds her hands to show that she comes in peace (maybe in more ways than one).
Rumi huffs and turns on her heel to look back down at the table next to her hip—hoodies and shirts. “I just never saw the point before because of all—” She waves to herself dismissively as if it would speak for itself, “ —and now that I have you two, I’ve… thought about it. Maybe once or twice.”
Mira watches her carefully. She can feel that static of excitement thrum her veins just underneath her skin, but she tries her best not to let it show. The last thing she wants is to scare Rumi away from wearing something that makes her feel good. Wanted.
And she would be lying if she hadn’t thought of buying lingerie for Rumi before. After all, Zoey was more than a willing participant in her constant showers of gifts from expensive lingerie stores, and it would be blasphemous for her not to have thought about doing the same for Rumi once or twice (or seven) times. She and Zoey just figured that this would be something Rumi needed to dip her toes into.
A woman who still tenses for a moment at the bathhouse is not one who would wear a bralette that makes her nipples translucent, Mira knows that much. Hence, her surprise that Zoey had finally brought them here. Maybe Zoey was just the first one between the pair to break from the thought of seeing Rumi clad in lace—she’s kinda surprised that it wasn’t her, honestly.
“Do you…” Mira tries to fish for the words as thoughtfully as she can. God, she wishes Zoey was here instead. She knows for sure that Zoey wouldn’t fuck up trying to say what she’s about to say. “Do you think you want to look for something you’d want to… wear? With me?”
She hates how tight her voice sounds. She sounds like a teenaged boy trying not to cream his pants.
But Rumi just splits into that beautiful, beautiful smile, and suddenly Mira doesn’t care if she makes a fool of herself anymore.
“Honestly?” Rumi starts, and she laces her fingers between Mira’s. “I’ve always wondered what kind of lingerie you’re into.”
“Oh, you have no idea what you’re getting into,” Mira declares with a grin, and she takes Rumi deeper into the confines of the store.
They check the sleepwear first. It’s the easiest place that Mira can think of without overwhelming Rumi too much. The store that Zoey had picked has a great selection of teddies and night robes, if she’s being completely honest. They look silky to the touch, premium in feeling and in color. The speakers fade out of a bubbly pop song to one of their songs, yet again, and Mira tries not to smile under her hat.
Rumi, on the other hand, seems more visibly ecstatic about it than she is. She’s humming their song under her breath as she rubs her forefinger and thumb on the material of the night robes, and Mira finds her heart aching at the way Rumi just seems so happy to be where she is.
“This would look good on you,” Mira says, pointing to a silky purple robe with black trimming.
“You think so?” Rumi asks.
The image hits her so hard in the forehead that it feels like one of those camping nights when Zoey would stick a flashlight into her eyeballs by accident—Rumi, clad in this pretty purple robe, but clad in nothing but the robe.
“Mira?” Rumi calls again, a small frown on her lips.
Mira blinks herself back to Earth. “Oh, totally,” she says, pretending she hadn’t gotten a vision graced from angels above. “You should get it.”
But Rumi knows her better than that. She sees right through Mira’s indifferent tone, preening at the way that Mira is looking at her. Just like that, Rumi is injected with the confidence to believe that maybe racy underwear would look good on her (and it most definitely will), all because of the way Mira is staring.
Mira can’t even find it in herself to be embarrassed for being caught for more than a couple seconds before Rumi is draping the robe over her forearm and taking her by the hand to check out the other things.
The teddies that hang on display are… risqué. But they also look really, really good.
“What’d you get, what’d you get?” Zoey asks as she approaches them, a sparkle in her eyes. Rumi shows off the robe that she picked out, and Zoey touches the material with her mouth hanging open in awe. “This feels so nice,” she groans.
“Mira picked it out,” Rumi says proudly. Mira rolls her eyes in an attempt not to seem giddy that Rumi had felt it so important to bring up.
“Mira always has the best taste in clothes,” Zoey says, just as proudly. She turns to Mira and tugs on her wrist with both of her hands. “You should help me and Rumi pick out some teddies!”
And only because she feels like being a menace to make up for the times she hadn’t been today, Mira says, “Well, there’s a plushie store around the corner—”
“Miraaaaa,” Zoey complains.
“I’m kidding,” Mira says quickly. She doesn't want to push it too hard and come out of the store empty-handed. She’d rather spear herself with her woldo. “Were you eyeing something?”
Zoey shrugs. “I just got here. But look what I got!” She brandishes her basket full of underwear and lacy bralettes with a smug grin.
Rumi leans in to look into the basket. She gingerly picks up some of the underwear to look at the ones at the bottom, and her eyebrows raise in fascination. “Are these all for you?” she asks.
“Yes, ma’am,” Zoey replies happily. She smiles again then, but with that sly glint with it. She leans in close to the both of them like she wants to share a secret, and she whispers, “But I did find a bunch of pairs that I think would look good on you both to wear under the outfits during our comeback.”
Mira snorts, forcing down the laughter that tries to desperately climb out of her throat. Rumi looks sharply over at Zoey, looking as if she was trying to decide between chastising her and asking her to show her what these aforementioned pairs might be.
Zoey’s already on another track in her mind. She leads them both closer to the one-piece lingeries, and she points out one at the top and out of her reach. “What do you think of that one?” she asks, looking between Mira and Rumi to watch for their reactions. It’s baby blue with the sides cut out.
“It’s nice,” Rumi volunteers. “The color looks nice with your eyeshadow.”
“Cute,” Mira instantly says. “And I think it’d match with the sweater you bought today.”
“You think so?” Zoey gushes, but she’s already making little gestures to ask Mira to grab it for her.
Mira exhales with her brief laugh, and she stands on her tiptoes to grab the outfit. The life of being the tall one, she supposes. At least Zoey likes to compensate her with kisses on the cheek for her brave service.
Zoey places the teddy on top of her basket with a gentle precision, and she’s already on the prowl to find something else for her and Rumi.
It doesn’t take her very long to find it. Zoey has an oddly great eye for things like this. She points to a red set for Mira and a black one for Rumi—but Mira’s set is spicy as she is, with most of its material sheer and see-through, while Rumi’s is more… modest. At least, as modest as a piece of lingerie can be. But Mira can still see it hugging Rumi’s curves, so she’s not one to complain.
Rumi doesn’t seem to share the same sentiment. She purses her lips in thought, tapping her chin while she stares at it.
“Don’t like it?” Zoey asks, completely unoffended. “There’s some other sets I saw near the entry zone that would look great on you, Rumi.”
“No, no, it’s not that,” Rumi says dismissively. She tilts her head at the set that Zoey had pointed out, as if trying to look at it from a new angle. She doesn’t say anything for a while, but Mira and Zoey let her deliberate her thoughts just in case she wanted to change her mind about wanting lingerie.
But then Rumi says, “Don’t you think it would look nicer if the bra part was more, I don’t know, see-through?”
It’s exactly what Mira was thinking. From the way that Zoey’s eyes widen at her and then at Mira, Mira can gander at the guess that she was thinking about it too. It was just that neither of them wanted to be the one to say it.
“What?” Rumi asks, looking between the two of them nervously. “Don’t think so?”
“Oh, no, I agree,” Mira says quickly.
“Agreed, agreed,” Zoey adds just as quickly.
Rumi smiles at them like she’s trying not to look too pleased at the speed of their answers. “If it’s too much…” she begins. The way she says it is curled like the corner of her lips, smug like she knows that she’s just playing with them.
Mira doesn’t really care. She’s already turned to Zoey, and she practically demands, “Find another one right now.”
Zoey speeds through the rest of the pieces on display. She bobs her head up and down to look more efficiently, until she finally finds a black set that looks almost like the one that she had pointed out in the first place—but more sheer, more brazen.
Mira almost snatches it from her hand to take it up to the counter before it can have the chance to disappear from thin air.
But Rumi laughs at their enthusiasm, and she plucks the set out of Zoey’s hand and gives her a kiss on the jaw in gratitude.
Mira’s already drooling at the mouth looking at her girls’ hauls. She can already see them wearing it for her—tonight, if she’s ever so lucky—and the way she’d get to run her hands over it. To nip it, tear it. Zoey always complains whenever she’d wreck a new set, though not for long after Mira would remind her that she could so very easily place a new order. She wonders how Rumi would react if, when she would do it for her.
Zoey puts her hand on her shoulder to jump up and bite down on the shell of her ear to wake her up.
Mira yelps, and Zoey’s already clutching onto Rumi’s arm for help while they giggle.
Zoey takes them to the front counter and strikes up an easy conversation with the cashier. They pile their things together, and Zoey is already rummaging through her purse to find her card when Rumi stops her with a gentle hand on her wrist.
“Use my card,” Rumi says idly, producing her black card from her wallet.
Zoey takes it and pecks Rumi’s lips gratefully, and the cashier gushes to her about how she wishes that her boyfriend would be so inclined to pay for all her things like that. It almost makes Mira laugh, especially when Zoey replies with a succinct, “If he won’t pay for your lingerie, just dump him,” even as the register chimes with a five digit number.
Rumi nudges Mira’s arm. “I feel like all the blind boxes she bought today just drained her account,” she murmurs to her.
Ah, so that’s why. Mira snickers under her breath, and Rumi just hits her again on the arm. “Don’t worry about it,” Mira tells her, hooking their pinkies together to give it a squeeze. “If she used up all her money, she’ll get it back in two days.”
“What’s in two days?” Rumi asks her, curious.
“Board game night,” Mira says bluntly. “You always bet your money with her and lose playing Uno.”
“Not this time! I practiced!” Rumi insists with a ferocity, and Mira tries to quell her with a kiss on the back of her hand (and so that she doesn’t laugh right in her face and make Rumi even poutier).
Mira glances at Zoey. She’s still there with an entire pile of their lingerie, and still chatting away with the cashier.
Mira yawns. She can already feel the mid-afternoon sleepiness beginning to hit her. Rumi yawns next to her, and Mira closes her mouth before she can make fun of her being infected when Rumi shoots her a glare.
She takes Rumi’s hand in hers to walk up to Zoey to tell her that they’ll just walk around outside of the store to keep their sleepiness away.
“Have fun, bubby,” Zoey says happily. She nuzzles her nose against Mira’s jaw. “We can hit up the cafe we passed to get some caffeine in your systems.”
Mira and Rumi walk into the store across the street. It’s just a generic clothing store, but Mira would rather walk around staring at cheesy shirts than stand in place for another ten minutes. She honestly can’t wait to lie down on the couch after this.
Rumi points at a shirt that says, “Let me taco ‘bout my cute girlfriend!” with a picture of two smiling tacos underneath it.
“I’d pay you so much money to wear this during the variety show tomorrow,” Rumi says gleefully.
“I’d do it for free,” Mira says. She points at the shirt next to it—the one that says, “I’m soy into you!” with a picture of a smiling soy sauce bottle. “If you wear that.”
Rumi makes a face so disgusted that Mira cackles loudly. A few patrons turn to look at them curiously.
“Come on, Rumi,” Mira drawls, plucking the shirt off the rack to place it underneath Rumi’s neck for a closer look. It’s actually a good fit on her. “Don’t you want people to know that you’re soy into me and Zoey?”
Rumi glares, but it’s not nearly as intense as she probably thinks it is. It just makes her look like a pouting baby, and Mira has to curl her lips into her mouth to keep from laughing some more.
She puts the shirt back on the rack anyway. She doesn’t want Rumi to kill her in her sleep, after all.
When Mira pulls back, her hand stings.
“Shit,” she hisses under her breath. She can feel the throb on her skin like a second heartbeat.
Mira looks at the palm of her hand. There’s an imperfect line that cuts through from her wrist to the base of her thumb. She’s bleeding, but it’s not anything bad. She probably just needs an antiseptic and a band-aid and she’d be good as new.
Rumi is by her side in a blink.
She wouldn’t be surprised if Rumi had teleported there in her panic. She takes Mira’s palm in both of her hands, turning her wrist over so that she can take a better look at the wound—if that’s the word for it, anyway. It’s hardly more than a bleeding scratch.
“What happened?” Rumi asks her, the pull of her eyebrows a denotation of her worry. “Does it hurt?”
“Just stings,” Mira says casually. “Nothing I can’t handle.” She’s fought demons who’ve scratched deeper than this.
Mira looks where she put the shirt back on. The jagged corner of the display rack sticks out like a sore thumb, and she almost hits her forehead on the wall for not seeing it. Rumi glances where she’s staring at, and she bites the inside of her cheek.
Rumi presses on the skin next to the scratch. It produces more blood to the surface, leaking rain-like droplets onto her palm.
Mira hisses at the feeling.
“Sorry, sorry,” Rumi says, relaxing her grip on Mira’s hand.
But she’s staring.
Rumi is staring right into the palm of her hand, watching the blood pool there with a look that Mira had seen on her before—had seen many, many times in the past, during long nights when they can’t sleep or days when the urge gets too much.
Awe, wrapped in desire.
Mira frowns. That couldn’t be right. She’s not even looking into Mira’s eyes.
“Rumi,” Mira says gently. “It’s gonna get all over the floor. I can just ask someone if they have any—”
Rumi wraps her hand around her wrist. She cups her hand underneath Mira’s to catch any of the blood that might fall—but seemingly not for concern of the store’s white tiles.
Time seems to drag slowly as Rumi brings Mira’s palm up to her lips.
She turns Mira’s hand until her lips wrap around the gaping wound, and Mira can feel her warm, wet tongue lap against her callused skin. Mira sucks in a deep breath. She can’t find any words to say to her.
Rumi flutters her eyes closed, and drinks.
She sucks until Mira can no longer feel the sting of her hand, but rather, the pulse that lies underneath Rumi’s mouth. Oddly enough, it feels… good.
Mira feels it right then.
She feels the points prodding against her palm as Rumi suckles on the last of her exposed blood, intimately familiar. It’s strange, though. Mira would usually feel that against her neck or collarbone—sometimes the insides of her thighs.
Never her hand, and certainly never against a wound.
“Rumi?” she calls as evenly as possible. It comes out hoarse.
Rumi’s eyes open halfway. She looks up at Mira through her eyelashes, staring at her like she had disturbed her from something momentous. One of her eyes is demonic again, yellow and keen and pretty. Her grip on Mira’s wrist tightens. It’s possessive.
Mira’s breath comes out shaky. Not from fear—just from something that she can barely decipher herself.
Rumi keeps her eyes on her as she pulls Mira’s hand away from her mouth.
She drags the tip of her tongue over the scratch, methodically slow and carnal. It reminds Mira of nights when Rumi would lie between her legs, nails digging into the flesh of her thighs—
Without warning, Mira takes Rumi’s cheeks in her hand. She doesn’t press or squeeze. She’d never do anything to hurt Rumi.
But Rumi grins maniacally at her, as if to dare; as if to want.
She can see the points of those canines when Rumi smiles like that before she even shoves her thumb into Rumi’s mouth—but she just wants a better look.
Mira’s thumb slips into her mouth with easy, known precision. She gently pries into the back of Rumi’s molars, coaxing her to open her mouth some more.
The canines are in her mouth, clear as day.
They’re sharper than Mira remembers them to be. It almost draws blood on the pad of her thumb as she pulls away. It’s painfully attractive.
Then Rumi blinks.
That strange, dark look in her eyes disappears, and she stares back at Mira like she’s not sure what to do. She glances at the wrist she still has her fingers wrapped around, then looks back at Mira.
It takes Rumi about two and a half more seconds before she drops Mira’s wrist and takes a step back from her, eyes wide with alarm as she forces a laugh out of her chest. “Sorry, I was just—I don’t know—know why I—”
“Rumi,” Mira tries delicately.
But then Rumi scans the distance, points at something randomly, and loudly calls out, “Um—oh, look! That top looks great! I’m just gonna…”
And she’s out of her sight before Mira can say anything else. She’s, once again, surprised that Rumi didn’t teleport out of there.
Mira stares as Rumi situates herself on the other side of the store, looking through their selection of bags and tops with extreme fascination.
She feels Zoey’s presence before Zoey even gets the chance to trace her finger down her arm and holds her hand. She hears the paper bag of their new lingerie slap against Zoey’s thigh as she cuddles up to her.
“What’s gotten into her?” Zoey asks, staring at Rumi too. She leans her head against Mira’s shoulder, and Mira squeezes her hand in mild greeting.
Then Zoey narrows her eyes at Mira suspiciously and continues, “What did you do to her?”
“What? Nothing, we were just—” Mira pauses. She tries her best to gather her thoughts, then lifts her palm to show Zoey.
The bleeding stopped.
“Hurt my hand on the rack,” she explains, nodding her head at the jagged corner in front of them.
Zoey traces her thumb over the red-white scar. “Are you okay?” she asks.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore,” Mira says with a shrug. Then she steels herself, and she adds as casually as possible, “But Rumi licked up the blood.”
Zoey grows quiet. Mira doesn’t know what she’s thinking, a rare occurrence in all honesty, until Zoey finally says, “Do you think you could scratch my face really quick so Rumi can do that to me too?”
Mira jostles Zoey’s rib with her elbow with a grumble. “I’m serious!”
“I believe you!” Zoey insists. She hums, settling her head back on Mira’s shoulder. They’re still staring at Rumi, who has yet to leave the table that she’s been at for the past ten minutes. “I mean, it’s a little weird and a tiny bit freaky, but maybe she’s just—getting more comfortable around us?”
“I don’t know,” Mira says slowly. Her brow furrows in thought, and she has to push up her glasses to keep looking at Rumi. “You should’ve seen the way she looked at me when she was licking my hand. It was like she was…” Possessed? Out of it? Kinda sexy? Possibly all of the above?
Zoey makes a low noise in acknowledgement. Then she quietly says, “I think I know what you mean.”
“Do you?” Mira asks, suspicious.
It takes a split second longer for Zoey to reply than she usually does. “That night in Manila. I think I told you about it,” Zoey says, her lips pulling down as she thinks.
Then she blinks and shakes her head, as if to clear any weird thoughts (that Mira might be sharing too), and Zoey asks, “Maybe it’s stress?”
“Could be,” Mira says, unpersuaded. She tugs on Zoey’s arm instead, then smiles down on her so that the weird contemplative look on Zoey’s face goes away. There’s no need to worry about it now.
“Wanna make Rumi get some pretzels with us?” she asks, and Zoey’s face lights up.
Mira doesn’t think about the way Rumi looked at her while she licked up her hand for the rest of the day.
Until she lays awake at night, cuddling up next to Rumi and Zoey, wondering why that look seemed so…
When Zoey was little, her grandma used to tell her to eat all of the radishes on her plate every night so that she could gain superpowers; and as a teenager, she’d laughed at herself for thinking it was true for way too long.
But as she swipes another perfume patch over her arm over and over, Zoey is beginning to think that her granny was telling the truth. How else could she keep swiping her skin with strange perfume concoctions without puffing up in the face and needing to take a break like Mira had yesterday?
“Too lemony,” Zoey mutters after taking a deep inhale of her elbow. She tosses the perfume test strip into the giant graveyard of a discard pile next to her, then takes another. She wipes that perfume strip over the back of her hand next.
She inhales, then declares, “Too sweet! Too… wet?”
“Zoey,” Mira groans from the sofa nearby.
“Yeah?” Zoey asks happily, turning on her heel to face her girls. By now, every patch of skin on her arms has been doused with mysterious perfumes—blotted, sprayed, washed, and repeated. Honestly, she’s not even sure if she can smell things properly anymore.
Mira and Rumi are slumped on the couch. Mira is giving her an unamused look, her ankle entangled with Rumi’s. Cute! Zoey gushes. Rumi, on the other hand, has her fingers pinched on the bridge of her nose as she stares up at the ceiling half-lidded. They both look dead.
“We’ve been here for hours,” Mira complains, resting her head against the sofa back. “Did you at least make a little bit of progress?”
“You said you wouldn’t rush me!” Zoey complains.
“We’re not rushing you, Zoey,” Rumi says to placate her, and she throws a look in Mira’s direction to get her to behave. Mira scoffs, but stays obediently quiet. “It’s just that we’ve been in the perfumery studio since seven in the morning.”
“And you haven’t even picked a top note yet,” Mira adds flatly.
Zoey pulls out her phone to check the time; it’s nearly four in the afternoon.
“Oh. Sorry,” she says with a sheepish smile. She walks over to flop in between them, but neither Mira or Rumi seem to mind in the slightest. Zoey groans as she lays her head in Rumi’s lap and swings her feet over Mira’s. “I’m not making you guys stay here, you know. You can leave and come check on me later.”
Rumi chuckles, threading her fingers into Zoey’s soft hair. She gently scratches into Zoey’s scalp, a move that makes Zoey melt and groan, as she says, “You said you wanted our help, so we’re here. We’re not going anywhere until you’re done.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Mira jokes, and Rumi throws her another glare that makes her clamp her mouth shut. Mira channels her energy into massaging Zoey’s calf instead.
Zoey groans, “I feel like nothing’s working! I don’t know how you and Mira found your scents so fast, while I can’t even—” She makes random gestures with her hands, puffing out a frustrated sigh.
“It took me a while to decide on my makeup brand, remember?” Mira pipes up. “I swear there were, like, fifty thousand shades of magenta and none of them matched my hair.”
“Yeah, Zoey,” Rumi says encouragingly. She tucks a strand of Zoey’s hair behind her ear, and Zoey beams at her touch. “Some things just take time. But if I’m being honest, I don’t even think you need to put so much thought into it.”
“Why not?” Zoey asks. She pouts up at Rumi. “It’s our first perfume line since debut and we’ve already sold out of preorders. What if I disappoint everyone who buys mine? What if they think it smells really weird, and then they think I’m weird, and then they boycott HUNTR/X, and then—”
“Zoey.” Rumi laughs breathlessly, and she plugs Zoey’s nose between her thumb and forefinger to keep her from talking. Zoey whines and bats away at her. “It’s just perfume. And Bobby’s handling the return policy just fine. You have nothing to worry about. Seriously.”
“And if they don’t like how it smells, so what?” Mira says with a shrug. “I get complaints about my ramyeon flavor all the time—too spicy, too savory, too spicy and savory. You know what I say to the haters?”
“What?” Zoey asks.
“‘You have no taste and I don’t care,’” Mira deadpans. Rumi gives her a half-hearted shove of the knee. “So, try not to care about the haters.”
“But I do!” Zoey whines. “I’m not like you!”
Rumi hums in thought, then says, “What if you just… reused the scent from your last perfume? People liked it, didn’t they?”
“I liked it,” Mira volunteers. “What was the name again? ‘Zoey’s ocean breeze’ or something?”
“Sea breeze,” Zoey corrects, then makes a face at Mira. Rumi is still scratching her hair, but Mira has taken a liking to smoothing her hand over Zoey’s leg. “Some people said it was too… salty, I guess? I don’t wanna disappoint them again.”
“You can’t please everyone,” Mira points out.
“I can please your mom,” are the words that slips out of Zoey’s mouth with excellent precision. Mira pinches the skin under her knee as revenge, and Zoey yelps. “Sorry, sorry!”
“Did you like the scent from debut?” Rumi asks her. “We could always work backwards from there and just remove things you didn’t like from it.”
Zoey stares into the corner of the room and taps the side of her mouth to think. “I did,” she says slowly.
“But?” Mira prods.
“But… I kinda wanted it to be more…” Zoey makes more frustrated hand motions in the air. Mira and Rumi quietly and patiently watch. “Iconic?”
“Iconic?” Mira repeats.
“Yeah!” Zoey nods her head enthusiastically. “Like, Rumi’s perfume. It’s strong, and powerful, and—and Rumi! Y’know? And then there’s yours, and it’s all bold and earthy and Mira and—”
“Whatever you make,” Rumi starts, trying to hold back a giggle, “will be all Zoey, okay? You don’t have to worry about that.”
Zoey whines into her lap. Rumi pats her shoulder in pity, and Mira laughs and coughs into her fist before Rumi can give her another lecture.
“We could take a walk around the block and see if that helps,” Mira suggests, and Rumi eyes her suspiciously.
“What?” Mira asks defensively.
“Nothing,” Rumi says quickly.
“I can come up with good ideas if I want to,” Mira defends again.
“I didn’t even say anything!” Rumi argues.
Zoey sits up so fast that the both of them clamp their mouth shut in surprise. She looks at them, eyes wide like she just saw a ghost, and takes them both by the shoulders until her nails dig into their clothes.
“Oh my god, we can brainstorm on the walk!” Zoey gasps. “Maybe we’ll see demons!”
“And… you want to see demons, why?” Rumi asks her, incredulous. She’s already sitting up on the couch, groaning as she cracks her neck.
“Because I’m in my element when I’m taking demons to poundtown and maybe I’ll get some inspo there!” Zoey exclaims, driving her fist in her palm and cackling. It was the perfect plan, indeed.
Mira arches her brow. “Hopefully not the same kind of poundtown you take me and Rumi—?”
“Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous,” Zoey says dismissively. She pecks the corner of Rumi’s mouth, then Mira’s, then hops off to grab her jacket and to hurry them up.
Rumi and Mira are moving too slowly for her pace. She tugs them by the sleeves, urging them to move out of the door so that they can finally, finally find the notes in her super special Zoey perfume. This was going to be great!
Rumi meekly waves at the master perfumer near the exit of the studio. She tells him that they’ll be back in half an hour, all while Zoey tugs on her arm like they had somewhere really important to be.
Out in the afternoon air like this, Zoey feels like she can finally breathe normally again—which isn’t far from the truth, considering she’d been shoving chemicals into her nose for a good part of the day now.
She links her arms with Mira and Rumi, then exclaims, “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”
Mira says frankly, “Because you were sniffing perfume strips like someone had a gun to your head.”
“I don’t even know how you can even smell anything anymore, Zoey,” Rumi says thoughtfully.
“The power of my nose is a strong and sage one,” Zoey answers seriously, tapping the side of her nose. Rumi snorts.
They don’t really have a destination in mind. They throw around some ideas here and there: maybe a convenience store to grab a quick snack, a detour to an arcade, a restaurant to get ahead on dinner, or even a skincare store to stock up on what they’re running low on in their bathrooms. None of it really sticks or feels very appealing.
They’re just happier to be chatting with each other down the street, laughing and making fun of each other for mistakes they made during dance practices or to gossip about certain things they’ve heard in the industry. It’s nice. Zoey hopes that they never run out of random topics like this—but she doubts that after nearly a decade of being by each other’s sides, that it would happen at all.
They could be retired and shrivelled up in a retirement home together on Jeju Island, and they’d still be making fun of each other’s outfits.
In the meantime, Zoey spitballs some ideas for her perfume to see what her girls think. “Oh! Oh! How do we feel about… ‘Zoey’s Seafoam Salt?”
“Sounds…” Mira pulls a face. “Weirdly gross?”
Zoey hums in agreement. Rumi leads them around the corner to avoid a crowd down the street, all while Zoey adds, “How about ‘Zoey’s Hamburger Mania’?”
“Good for ramyeon,” Rumi says with a laugh. “Perfume? Not so much.”
Zoey pouts. “If you guys have any better ideas, just say it,” she whines.
Mira runs her long nails over the inside of Zoey’s forearm as a sort of apology. She presses her lips together to keep from laughing when Zoey just gives her a side-eye. It smells like honey butter along this street, and Zoey keeps an eye out for a potential bakery they can slide into.
Mira smells it too. She suggests, “How about straying from the whole ocean theme that you have going on and go for something sweet? Like… uh, warm vanilla or toast?”
“Why would I do that?” Zoey asks, slightly offended. “Who the heck would associate me with sweetness?”
Rumi has to sputter back the rest of her laugh. “You’re joking, right?”
“You’re like the embodiment of sweetness,” Mira says without a hint of irony. Rumi nods eagerly in complete agreement.
Zoey has a few sample arguments against that—but she doesn’t have the time to pick one out of the tree in her mind before Mira’s leaning down to her ear, and she whispers, “You can try smelling as good as you taste.”
Zoey yelps in surprise, and Mira’s already standing up straight to laugh at the shock written all over her face. Rumi isn’t giving Mira a glare to make her stop this time—she’s looking at Zoey instead, her lips pressed tight together to keep from smiling, but it’s futile in its attempt. She shrugs at Zoey, as if to say, Sorry, but completely agree.
Her face feels like milkbread fresh out of the oven—warm to the touch and all puffed up.
“You guys are the worst,” she declares, even though they really aren’t.
Especially when Rumi brings their laced fingers up to her lips and kisses the back of Zoey’s hand, and when Mira rubs her lower back in the way that she knows Zoey goes crazy for. So, maybe not the worst.
“It’s a good marketing tagline,” Mira says with a shrug. “‘Smell as good as you taste, sponsored by Zoey of HUNTR/X’. It has a nice ring to it.”
“If you like it that much, why don’t you make it your tagline?” Zoey grumbles.
“Because I’m not sweet,” is Mira’s instant reply. She’s grinning like she knows that she has the upper hand.
Rumi lets out a quiet, warm laugh at their banter. It makes Zoey bite down on the tip of her tongue from saying something like, Well, you definitely taste sweet. Always the mediator, Rumi only asks, “You could do both, if you want. Sweet like your personality and salty like the sea.”
“Oooh.” Zoey nods slowly at the idea. She kinda likes it. She wraps her arm around Rumi’s bicep and cuddles up to her as a reward, and she sticks her tongue at Mira when she makes a face at them for the betrayal.
“Sweet and salty, like…” Zoey thinks out loud. She’s momentarily sidetracked by the solid feel of Rumi’s bicep under her hands, how they feel so full and big and—Rumi clears her throat when she presses her arm a little too hard.
Then the flashbulb lights over Zoey’s head in an instant: “Like salted caramel!”
“It sounds pretty good,” Mira admits, scratching the side of her neck. “Could be something I’d buy too.”
Rumi hums in agreement. “It reminds me of you,” she says, and Zoey nuzzles her cheek for how sweet and helpful she’s being. Rumi lets out a breathless laugh, then adds, “I could text the perfumer and ask him to mix something while we’re out here.”
“Could you, please?” Zoey asks, batting her eyelashes.
Rumi already has her phone pulled out to text, and Mira snickers.
They walk for a little more down the street, until the smell of chocolate and a bakery gets too strong and they use their noses to follow it all the way to the end.
The bakery has an ‘OPEN’ sign flashing at the front, and they can see a couple people in line through the big windows. The three of them are stepping closer to the entrance like they’re possessed by the smell when they see it: a group of teenagers, a few of them wearing HUNTR/X shirts and the rest with little buttons or keychains on their bags.
They stop in their tracks and silently begin to panic.
They look left and right, looking for some place to duck into before they’re seen, and Rumi pushes them into a back alley near the bakery.
Successfully hidden, Zoey complains, “But I really wanted some cream cheese buns before we go back.”
Rumi’s stomach growls. She grimaces and replies, “Yeah. I don’t know if I can stand walking another block without something in me.”
Mira’s smile turns sly, and Zoey opens her mouth to respond—but Rumi steps on Mira’s toes and gives Zoey a small swat, and they stay yieldingly quiet.
“I can make the run,” Mira volunteers. At their incredulous looks, she explains, “I’m wearing a hat and my glasses and I can glare at the nosy ones. And I’m pretty sure two of them are your biggest fans.” She points at two girls, who have matching Rumi and Zoey keychain plushies on their bags.
Zoey and Rumi can’t help but coo at the sight. Mira’s lips twitch in amusement.
“So trust me.” Mira says, waving her phone in their face. “I got this.”
“Can you send me a picture of what they have on their menu?” Zoey asks with her big, puppy eyes.
“Obviously,” Mira drawls. She pauses when she sees the look in Zoey’s eyes, then warns, “But I’m not buying everything off the menu this time. That’s just asking for more attention.”
“How about three things?” Zoey negotiates, pouting her lips to make her case.
“Two. Maybe three if one of them is something small,” Mira says, and Zoey pumps her fist in victory. She turns to Rumi next. “What about you?”
“I’m fine with a bun,” Rumi says with a shrug. “And a cold latte if they have any.”
Mira nods along to her order. She adjusts her hat, and Zoey can’t help but stand on her tiptoes really quickly to press a kiss to her cheek in gratitude.
Mira waves at them over her shoulder, and she slips into the bakery with an untraceable ease.
Rumi loosens the breath in her chest, and she gently knocks the back of her head against the wall. They’re hiding in plain sight in this back alley, and they can see Mira through the window of the bakery right where they are.
But considering how long the line seems in the bakery, Zoey tries to conjure up a way to pass the time.
Zoey rocks forward on her toes, then onto her heels. Then again, until she asks, “What do you think Mira’s gonna get?”
Rumi hums as she crosses her arms over her chest. She’s still staring at the window, like she’s half-expecting Mira to be jumped by a bunch of rabid fans or demons. “Nothing with powdered sugar, that’s for sure. After she spilled some on herself last week on the bus, I don’t think she ever wants to tempt it again.”
Zoey giggles. She hadn’t seen the incident herself, considering she was snoozing the entire time they were traveling, but the specks of powder on Mira’s shirt when she woke up was a sight she wished she snapped a photo of.
Silence settles between them. It’s not awkward, it never is, but it still makes Zoey continue to rock on her feet to have something to do while they wait.
Then Rumi shuffles closer to her side until their arms touch.
She feels the warmth that radiates from Rumi’s body like a blanket. It’s grounding. Zoey inhales the late afternoon air, and she’s surprised to smell the faintest aroma of Rumi’s perfume—not the new one that she curated for their fans to put on the market next month, but the one that she always wears, even at home.
Rumi smells like home. Floral with cedarwood—sweet with that intense kind of kick. Like Rumi often is.
Then Rumi murmurs, “You okay?”
Zoey slumps her shoulder at the question. She wasn’t looking forward to Rumi asking, even though she knew she would. There’s nothing she could hide from Rumi or Mira in this world, even if she wanted to.
“This perfume stuff just sucks,” she admits. “Like… what if we come back and I smell the sweet and salty stuff that we asked for and I still don’t like it? What if I don’t find something that feels like me?” She really should have said smells like me there.
But Rumi would have picked up on it one way or another, and her eyes soften as she looks back at Zoey. And for a moment, as the wind breezes past them and picks up the scent of Rumi’s perfume and the bakery’s sweetness, Zoey sees Rumi’s demon eye glow. It’s gentle.
Rumi’s quiet for a while. Then she says, “You will.”
It’s resolute. Like she somehow looked into the future with her crazy demon powers.
The thought cracks a smile on Zoey’s face. “You think so?” she asks.
“I do,” Rumi says softly. “I don’t think it’s possible for you not to smell good.”
She doesn’t elaborate any further. It kinda drives Zoey insane—because what the hell does that mean, and why does she like it?
But then Zoey asks, “Well, what do you think I smell like?”
The question throws Rumi off guard. To be fair, Zoey hadn’t been meaning to ask it either. She just wanted something to fill the loaded silence between them.
“Like… right now? Or for your perfume?” Rumi asks.
“Right now,” Zoey confirms. She shrugs as Rumi shifts, and she can feel the heat come from Rumi’s skin as it rubs gently against her arm. “I mean, I’ve been swabbing my arms with so many perfume strips that I probably smell like everything or—I dunno, nothing because it cancels all of it out.”
Rumi laughs, even as Zoey rolls up her sleeve to brandish her perfume-stripped arm. “I’m curious!” Zoey argues, and she tries to shove it in Rumi’s face. Rumi gently swats it aside. “Come on, pleaseeeee? I’d smell myself but I don’t really trust my nose right now. It’s probably on cooldown.”
Rumi huffs, but there’s that fond and resigned smile tugging on her lips. She makes a motion with her hand for Zoey to come closer, and she says, “Alright, alright! Just… don’t make it weird, okay?”
“I’m literally the opposite of making things weird,” Zoey claims.
A smile ghosts over Rumi’s lips, sharp and quick.
The way that she takes Zoey’s wrist over her curled fingers is gentle. So gently, in fact, that Zoey is still halfway through digesting her surprise by the time Rumi has the base of her wrist close to her nose.
She can feel Rumi lightly inhale her scent, slow and intentionally. It makes her shiver.
Rumi’s eyes fall shut, and she hums in a way that trembles Zoey’s ribs.
Zoey taps the heel of her shoe against the wall, suddenly feeling a little shy. Does she smell so bad that Rumi has to think of a way to break it to her? “Well, what do you think?” she asks as casually as she can.
Rumi hums again, tone low. “You were right about it smelling… all over the place,” she starts. She blinks up at Zoey. She holds her gaze. “I… kinda like it. I think it’s rosewater, and lemon, and—and something else?”
Zoey doesn’t know what else to say other than, “Oh.”
Zoey thinks about pulling her arm away, but Rumi doesn’t let go of her.
In fact, Zoey swears she can feel Rumi squeeze her wrist—as if to dare her to pull away. She doesn’t.
With Rumi’s fingers still coiled around her wrist, she gently tugs until the middle of Zoey’s forearm sticks close to her nose. She takes in a deeper breath than she had last time.
“It smells like burning wood there,” Rumi murmurs, eyes half-lidded. “In a good way. Sandalwood, I think. With mint and eucalyptus.”
“Really?” Zoey asks. Her mouth feels dry.
Rumi brings her nose up her arm, close to the hinge of her inner elbow. It tickles when the tip of Rumi’s nose faintly presses against it, but Zoey tries not to let it show.
“Sea salt and—and coconut,” Rumi says, pleasantly surprised. “Like when you put sunscreen on at the beach. It’s warm. Delicious.”
“Delicious?” Zoey repeats, slightly higher-pitched.
Rumi acts like she hadn’t heard her. She follows her nose closer up Zoey’s arm, over her sleeve. Zoey thinks that it would be the end of it—that there wasn’t any more skin that she could give to Rumi for inspection.
But Rumi hums, low and guttural in her throat, and uses her other hand to slip Zoey’s jacket off her shoulder.
Zoey doesn’t protest. She just stands there, frozen and a little stirred, as Rumi strips off half of her jacket from her body with such sensual care that her knees nearly buckle.
Rumi inhales deep, near the drop of her shoulder. She can feel Rumi’s breath tickle her arm.
“I only put one strip up there,” Zoey volunteers, a trembling quality to her voice. “It—it’s just—”
Rumi exhales the same time she guesses, “Vanilla bean?”
There’s this edge to Rumi’s voice that sounds akin to teasing. And… want.
The thought of it is already making Zoey feel lightheaded. She grips the back of Rumi’s jacket, where her shoulder blade should be. She can feel her hand trembling as she holds her, but Rumi doesn’t seem to care nor mind.
She feels Rumi’s knee fall flush between her legs. Gently pressing.
Zoey lets out a breathy whine.
Rumi’s breath is warm against her skin. She feels that warmth travel from her upper arm to her collarbone. Her pulse drums in her chest.
“You smell so good right here,” Rumi murmurs, voice dreamy. Zoey exhales the same time she does.
“I didn’t—” Zoey has to swallow to remove the hoarseness in her mouth to answer. “I didn’t put any perfume there.”
Rumi pretends not to hear her. She says instead, “You smell like when everything is golden and alive and a little sweet. Like the moment after something catches fire in a fire pit.”
Zoey feels her heartbeat pound in her chest. Rumi breathes her in again, deep and unhurried. Savoring her.
“It’s incredible,” Rumi finishes quietly.
“R-really?” Zoey asks faintly. She can feel her heartbeat beginning to pick up again. She’s not sure what to do.
Rumi’s other hand slides over her body, faintly tracing the outline of her stomach, until it reaches just above the zipper of her jeans. Zoey feels like she can’t breathe. Rumi, on the other hand, breathes her in like she can’t get enough. Zoey’s chest stutters.
She feels the sharp tips of Rumi’s canines as Rumi greedily whispers, “Good. You smell so good, Zoey.”
“I—I don’t—” Zoey stammers. She’s not sure what she wants to say.
Rumi’s lips shift—into a smile or a snarl, she can hardly tell the difference.
“Wanna know something else?” Rumi murmurs, her mouth brushing against the pulse in Zoey’s neck.
“What?” Zoey hears herself asking.
She feels it, then—the way the flat of Rumi’s tongue falls against the base of her neck, all the way to the underside of her jaw, in a languid, pressing line.
She feels how Rumi breathes her in again, insatiable in the way she exhales.
“You smell like someone who belongs to me,” Rumi says quietly in her ear, and Zoey just whines. Rumi presses her knee deeper against her core, ruts against her like she’s just as affected.
Rumi sniffs the back of her ear, bites down on her lobe, nibbling it between her teeth. It feels so good that Zoey almost collapses against the wall behind them. She can hear Rumi’s breathy whimpers as she breathes her in this close against her ear.
“Rumi,” Zoey whimpers. Her heart is hammering.
That makes Rumi come to life. The wood to her fire.
She grinds against Zoey’s thigh, frustrated and greedy. Zoey can feel her trembling, as if she was trying so hard not to bite down.
Then Rumi breathes her in one last time, and snarls, “I want to devour you, Zoey. Just like this.”
The noise that comes out of Zoey’s throat is half of a gasp, and half whimper. It’s soft in her throat, but it’s exactly what seems to get Rumi off. Zoey grips the back of Rumi’s jacket even harder. She doesn’t try to pull her away; mostly, she tries to press her in closer.
“I need you,” Rumi begs, voice low and rumbly. Zoey recognizes it, even in the haze of her arousal. There’s this wild look in her eyes that makes Zoey feel insane. “You smell as good as you taste, Zoey, fuck, I—”
She peers up at Rumi. She sees the glow of her marks even underneath her jacket—and she sees, just faintly, the outline of horns on her hairline.
They’re not large by any means. One even seems incomplete, jagged and stumped close to the skin like it had just barely broken free.
The sight of it makes her moan, salacious and wanting, and Rumi responds in kind by letting her sharp teeth drag over her collarbone.
She feels the pressure like it’s in slow motion. She feels how Rumi’s canines have found a suitable spot, how Rumi’s other hand begins to wander south on her body with the other pinning Zoey’s wrist to the wall, feels the way those teeth begin to dig into her skin—
“No one was responding to my texts, so I didn’t get the muffins they had on sale at the counter. Your loss,” Mira says. She’s staring at her phone as she approaches them, and Rumi jumps away from Zoey so fast that Zoey is left there blinking. “Did get the buns though. No cold latte, but they said that there was a store nearby that sells it, so maybe we could—you… good?”
Mira looks up from her phone to stare between Zoey and Rumi. She cocks an eyebrow at them, perfectly arched and suspicious.
“Good—good as new!” Zoey speaks up, breathless and high-pitched. It was a mistake to say it the moment it comes out of her mouth, and Mira looks at her with more suspicion.
Mira looks at Rumi next to inspect her—but she must have seen the tiniest sliver of horns coming out of her hairline, even from where she’s standing, because her eyes nearly pop out of her glasses and she exclaims, “Rumi! Is that—are you—?”
Rumi frowns at her, even as she tries to steady her breathing. “Am I, what?” she asks, but Mira just points to her forehead with open-mouthed awe.
Rumi tries to look up at her own head. She can’t see anything, so she brings her hesitant fingers over her horns and touches them.
Her fingers fall back like it’s shocked her.
She looks at Zoey first, wide-eyed.
“Yeah. Horns,” Zoey confirms breathlessly.
“But I don’t…” Rumi trails off, looking between the two of them. Lost, confused.
“It’s—it’s actually kinda sexy,” Zoey adds, a strain to the way she says it. It was a panicked response—one that comes from wanting to make sure that Rumi doesn’t run from them in alarm. At least she wasn’t lying.
Rumi only blinks at her. She’s stunned, frozen in place as she looks at her hands like she’s expecting them to morph too. At least, Zoey thinks with relief, that she isn’t running away from them.
Mira exhales hard, as if she’s trying to steel herself. She walks over to them and places a hand on Rumi’s shoulder comfortingly. “Okay. Okay. Uh. Horns are sick, so we have nothing to worry about.”
“To you,” Rumi says sharply. Her chest is heaving up and down at a quicker pace, and Zoey desperately tries to rake up a solution in her mind before Rumi explodes with panic. “I didn’t know—I don’t even remember what I was—I don’t know what’s happening to me—”
“It’s okay! It’s okay,” Zoey says quickly. She puts her hand on Rumi’s arm and squeezes. “We’re right here. It’s okay, Rumi.”
They can hear people coming closer towards them. Mira flips up Rumi’s hoodie and pulls it over her eyes. Rumi yelps.
“We’ll figure it out after we eat!” Zoey suggests. She pats Rumi’s back as they quickly make their way out of the back alley.
“What if—?” Rumi asks, despaired.
Mira hushes her. “We’ll be fine, Rumi,” she tells her, gentle but firm. “We could just tell Bobby that we’re, I don’t know, pushing more of the demon concept next comeback or something.”
“And me and Mira can wear fake horns on stage with you!” Zoey pipes up.
It gets a small, strained smile out of Rumi. It’s all that she wanted.
By the time that they make it to the perfumery, with the master perfumer humbly presenting Zoey with a small sample of her salted caramel scent and a few other vials that she could potentially mix with it, the horn situation shoves itself in the back of their minds.
They take turns sniffing the perfume strips, and Zoey spritzes a few sprays against her neck this time after the second round.
She loves it.
But she asks the perfumer to make sure the scent isn’t too overpowering, so that her natural smell can still shine through. For… no other reason, of course.
Rumi has to excuse herself to the bathroom while they eat because of another small stomach ache. Mira and Zoey enjoy the food from the bakery, but they make sure to glance at the bathroom door once in a while.
When Rumi comes back fifteen minutes later, an eased smile on her face, Zoey gapes at her. She notices how flushed Rumi’s face looks first—suspiciously the same color after they would have sex. Or masturbate together. After that, she notices the horns. Or, lack thereof.
“What’d you do to your horns?” she asks, a little disappointed.
“Did you saw them off in there?” Mira adds, only half-joking.
Rumi flops onto the sofa with them, groaning. “No, I…” She blinks, rubbing the base of her stomach like it was still hurting her. “I didn’t do anything. I just went to pee, and then when I washed my hands, it was just… gone.”
“Gone?” Zoey repeats. Somehow it’s hard to believe that it’s all she did.
She looks at Mira, only to find Mira already looking at her.
Their looks are silent: disappointed, but a little relieved at the same time. Patterns were easy enough to pull off to their fans as an abstract artistic concept, but horns were a little… trickier.
Zoey wonders if she’ll ever see them again though. She certainly wouldn’t complain.
Rumi rests her head against the back of the sofa. She has her eyes screwed so tightly shut that her eyelids are twitching.
Zoey lowers the bun from her mouth to shake Rumi gently. “Hey, are you okay?”
Rumi doesn’t even open her eyes to look at her. She just nods her head, a hand on her stomach. “Sorry, I’m…” she mumbles, her voice a little faint. She waves at them dismissively when Mira tries to place her food down too. “Keep eating. I’ll join in a bit. My stomach just hurts again.”
Mira stands up to find some Advil. Zoey brings a water bottle up to Rumi’s lips and coaxes her to drink.
It’s all they can do right now. She just hopes that a stomach ache is all it is.