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It took them quite a while to notice.
There were a lot of contributing factors to this, in their defense.
First and foremost was the sheer euphoria of being able to look at each other and think “That’s my wife~”, which was typically accompanied by a massively dopey grin. As such they simply refused to take their respective rings off unless forced to by outside forces. One such force happened to be out of the necessity of doing a photoshoot in which the simple wedding bands clashed with the photographer’s vision.
The second factor was that the marks started off small and pale and lined up in such a way with the rings that their first thoughts were simply that their habit of leaving the rings on constantly had naturally resulted in a tan line.
Make-up touched up Zoey and Mira’s hands— Rumi’s wasn’t nearly as noticeable for some reason —the shoot finished successfully, they slipped their rings back on and carried on as normal.
Mira, the one with the most photoshoots of the three of them, was the first to clock that something was amiss.
Some time after their wedding, she pulled her ring off for yet another shoot, fully expecting to see the ‘tan line’ that had been there before.
What she hadn’t expected, was the fact that it had grown.
Instead of lying under the band, as it had before, the streak seemed to be stretching down her finger in what could almost be dubbed a line down towards her knuckle. The color, she thought, seemed to have changed as well. Where before it had simply been paler than the skin around it, now it had an almost pinkish tinge to it; less flushed skin and more faded ink.
Rubbing the finger with the opposite hand yielded no further information. It didn’t feel inflamed; there was no swelling; and the texture felt the same as it always had.
An allergic reaction? She wondered, before the director started getting antsy and so Mira allowed the make-up crew to simply even out her fingers color and went out to do her job.
She didn’t think about it as the shoot ended— a cursory hand washing was not good enough to remove the make-up lingering on her hand —and so completely forgot about it as she returned her ring to its rightful place and went home to her girls.
Zoey was the next to notice.
She’d been doing a ‘let’s play’ gaming stream, her setup done like normal, down to the wristwatch on her left wrist she always donned solely because using it to set her timer was more effective than anything else.
When it began vibrating three hours into her stream, Zoey cursed out the boss she’d been trying to deal with, just barely managing to get in the final blow as it continued to shake on her wrist.
“Annnnnd down he goes! Whoo, and not a minute too soon!” she giggled as the boss finally went down. “Alright, I gotta cut it here! Rumi and Mira will make bad faces at me if I don’t. Thank you all so much for watching, and I’ll catch you next time! Sweet dreams, hunters!”
She shut down the stream with a final grin and wave, finally having a hand free to reach over and click the alarming watch off.
But as she looked down to do so, her eye got caught on her ring.
She smiled at first, as she always did, but then her gaze noticed the knuckle right next to the ring. It almost looked like she had scribbled on her skin with a marker and then had lazily tried to rub it out. Which was not unusual, but marks like that were typically done on the inside of her forearms; not right next to her fingers, let alone her wedding ring.
She didn’t remember using a marker that specific shade of teal either, nice as it was even while looking so washed out.
She rubbed it with a finger, puzzled when-
“Zoey? You better be off that stream!” called Mira from somewhere else in the living room.
“I am!” the maknae called back.
“Then hurry up and get out here-” Rumi joined in, smile in her voice, “-or else I’ll let Mir eat all the shrimp crackers!”
“-Oh like you’re not eating just as many!”
“Ack! Wait- I’m coming, I’m coming!” Zoey shrieked, leaping out of her seat and dashing out of her room; watch alarm shut off and the odd color on her hand completely forgotten.
Rumi was the last to notice, but the first to actually understand what she was looking at.
They were all in bed; exchanging the lazy kind of kisses that came with the knowledge that they had all the time in the world.
Rumi had just pulled back from Mira’s lips, cradling the dancer’s left cheek with her hand lovingly. Mira had raised her own left hand up, holding Rumi’s in place against her face— her eyes full of nothing but adoration and love and meeting an equal amount of both in Rumi’s eyes —when an unexpected spot of color caught the half-demon’s attention.
“What happened to your finger, Mira?” Rumi asked softly, intertwining their fingers so she could bring the redhead’s hand in for a closer look.
“Hm? ...Oh...” Mira murmured as she also got a good look at the back of her hand, “...I forgot about that...”
Where before the odd line she had notice had barely begun to point down towards the end of her finger, a thorn poking out from beneath the band, now it had truly started to zigzag its way away from the palm of her hand.
“I noticed it at my last shoot a few weeks ago,” she admitted to Rumi’s questioning glance, “Make-up had to cover it, and I just...forgot. It wasn’t that big before, though. Or that deep in color,” she brought her hand closer to her own face, realizing the pale pink from before had since darkened into an almost pure dark magenta without her noticing.
“...Mine neither,” Zoey confessed, holding up her own hand for the others inspection. Like Mira’s, her mark had also gotten darker, now an almost rich vibrant teal as it danced its way halfway across the back of her hand.
As the trio stared at the hands the marks seemed like they almost flickered with light, and Rumi felt her face pale and she realized what she was looking at.
Without a word, she raised her own left hand up, holding it right next to those of her wives.
The marks were different, in both placement and hue, but there was no mistaking the iconic way all three dipped and jolted across their skin.
Patterns.
Demon patterns.
“Oh no...” Rumi breathed, a mounting horror beginning to brew in her gut.
Said brewing was rudely interrupted by Zoey throwing her head back and cackling for all she was worth.
“Z-Zoey?!”
“Care to share what the hell is so amusing?!” Mira rasped out.
“O-Our vows!” Zoey gasped, almost tipping backwards with the force of her own laughter.
“What?!”
“Our- Rumi, at our wedding! You-Your vows were that you would be ours so long as we were yours!”
“S-So?!”
“Rumi-” Zoey giggled, cradling the singer’s face gently, “-Vows are a promise; a deal. And since we agreed to said deal-”
“-we made a deal with a demon,” Mira finished, shoulders sagging in relief.
“Well, half-demon,” Zoey shrugged, “But apparently that’s close enough.” She started giggling again and Mira wound up joining in with her own light chuckles.
“I am so-”
“Don’t!” Zoey barked, eyes turning dead serious, “Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Choi-Ryu Rumi-”
“Oooh, she brought out the full name~” Mira cackled.
“If this-” Zoey held up her hand for Rumi to see, “-means that we are bound together forever? Great! I was planning on staying with you for that long anyway!”
“Same,” Mira nodded, “Mildly annoyed at the spontaneous tattoo forming on my hand of all places, but I’m far from mad about it. I do like the color.”
“Right?! Mine reminds me of the ocean!”
“Ooh, you’re right.”
Rumi’s head ping-ponged back and forth between them.
“So...this-this is okay?”
Mira and Zoey’s eyes softened as they leaned into their wife.
“More than okay.”
“We’re yours.”
“And you’re ours.”
And that, was more than enough.
For all of them.