Chapter Text
It’s been a while since that night, maybe a month, maybe longer – Zoey doesn’t like thinking about it. So much has changed. Rumi is her girlfriend now, for starters, something they’d talked over multiple times with Mira – and yet so much has stayed the same. Rumi still wears long sleeves and thick pants, Rumi still sleeps alone, Rumi still doesn’t instigate contact with them. But Zoey is patient, and so she doesn’t push. Instead, she sits with Rumi and asks her simple questions and brushes her hair on days when Rumi lets her.
It starts with Mira and Zoey, as always. They invite Rumi to movie night and sit on the couch shirtless, they kiss in front of her, they tell her about what turns them on, everything they can think of. Eventually, Rumi begins reciprocating – little comments that imply more than they tell.
“Do you always tie Zoey up like that, or do you have her on her knees sometimes?”
“You two look so beautiful when you kiss, I could watch you forever.”
“Oh, that’s a pretty collar-”
Zoey pulls every word she can about Rumi’s particular kinks and hides them away in her mental list of Rumi, takes the idea of Rumi weak and begging and turns it around in her mind at night, imagines the sounds she’d make when it’s late and Zoey’s got a hand shamelessly down her pants.
Touch comes at a stifled rate. Mira and Zoey are careful with her, never pushing too far, never forcing, but it still goes slowly. One day Mira is working at the dining table and Rumi just drops down and rests her head in her lap unprompted. Mira and Zoey share a look like Rumi had just hung the stars in the sky. Rumi ghosts kisses over shoulders and cheeks, grows more bold in watching Zoey and Mira with that hungry, unguarded look, allows her hands to be placed on hips and guided upwards. She likes their tits, that's for sure, and soon enough Zoey and Mira are allowed to become familiar with the image of her draped over bare chests, kissing and kneading and whining just slightly. Occasionally, on very good days, Rumi tells them they can do the same, as long as it’s over her shirt – the first time it happened, Zoey almost choked on emotion as her palms met marred and perfect skin. The idea of Rumi, trying once again to offer herself up to her girls, still so afraid of what they could do to her, haunts Zoey at night.
Because Rumi doesn’t stop shaking as they both slowly migrate up her torso, mapping lines of what feels like scar tissue and bone and petal-soft flesh beneath cotton. But she lets them touch her anyway. And that’s what makes all the difference.
(That, and the sound Rumi makes when Mira puts just the right amount of pressure on her nipple and Zoey’s sucking a hickey into her neck. That’s pretty nice too.)
It’s been a while. Long enough Rumi knows she should be fine by now, because seriously – her dramatic little attempt wasn’t that bad, not compared to usual – but it’s not. Rumi dreams of a baseball bat to the back of her head and Mira and Zoey leaving, always leaving. Sometimes the two blur together and she has to spend the night vomiting into the toilet bowl, feeling guilty as sin for even thinking that they would try to ever hurt her. She hurt them, not the other way around, and they had forgiven her without a second thought (only god knows why) – and here Rumi is, panting and crying like she was the victim.
Altogether, it hasn’t been that bad. Whenever one of them leaves – mandatory interviews, solo photoshoots, company meetings – the other stays. Rumi’s not dumb, she knows it’s because they don’t trust her alone, but the company is still nice. The hands stroking her hair and meaningless conversations and warm skin under her mouth are all nice.
Zoey and Mira have been so patient with her it makes Rumi want to die out of guilt. They haven’t made her do anything yet – always waiting for her – but Rumi knows the spell will end soon. They’re girlfriends now, and girlfriends have sex; it would be selfish to deny them that. And Rumi hasn’t done anything she hasn’t wanted to yet, but she can't keep luxuriating in soft touches and kisses without the idea of anything more coming up.
To be honest, Rumi doesn’t feel like she’s missing out on anything right now, but she must, because it’s clear that Mira and Zoey like it, and Rumi’s always been built wrong, hasn’t she? It’s not that she doesn’t want sex, because that's not the case – it’s that Rumi wants to be pulled apart and fucked raw and sewn back together, and that would mean being completely vulnerable and at the mercy of her girlfriends. The idea of being that open for anyone is terrifying.
(And there’s another layer of it too, one that can’t be chalked up to dysphoria or body image problems or just insane trust issues – there was the producer. She was 15, working on an EP of solo songs, and he was – Rumi can’t remember much, but she knows he was careful. She knows he took an interest in her. She remembers liking him, apprehensively, but still liking. He was pretty similar to Jinu that way, but she doesn’t like to think about it like that.
She knows she didn’t ever tell him to stop, or get off her, or to get away, even when she wanted to. Sometimes he’d hug her after, and that made it almost worth it. He promised to make her a star, he whispered in her ear that he’d always ‘liked his girls with a little something extra’, he said anything he thought would get him on her too young and too frail body. She doesn’t remember what he even looks like but she knows those phrases and the way he touched her, because of course she does. Of course. Celine found them once, and that was all it took. He was gone by the next morning. The EP was scrapped. She never told anyone else, not even after she promised Zoey and Mira that there were no more lies. It wasn’t a lie, it was just – Rumi doesn't know how to get the words out.
Celine asked her about it, eyes full of hurt and guilt, and Rumi just shrugged and asked her how strong the NDA he signed was. Celine sighed and said he wouldn’t be able to tell a soul, and if he did, she’d take him to court without a second’s hesitation. The flip side – the knowledge that if they took him to court, he’d tell his side of the story – it’s still sour in Rumi’s mouth.)
So yeah, there’s baggage there – a lot of baggage. And Mira and Zoey are so good and sweet they’d let her get away with constantly refusing advances, leading them on and doing nothing else, never allowing them what they truly want. But resentment festers with unfulfilled desire, and Rumi cannot live with the idea of them resenting her.
So one day, when all three of them are on the couch, Rumi initiates a kiss with Zoey and keeps her there, fingertips skating up to meet Zoey’s pretty, perfect tits while she whines into her mouth. It feels good, but Rumi’s heart is racing with fear anyway. Mira is watching, like she always does, and then she’s placing a steadying, calm hand on her back and asking her, “What do you want, Rumi?” and she just grabs Zoey’s hand and places it on her hip, thumb catching on the sliver of exposed skin there.
“You. I want you both. You can touch me if you want.” and that last part is crucial, because if she’s miscalculated then this is only going to ruin things more than they’ve already been ruined, but Zoey just nods and runs her fingertips along Rumi’s waist until they meet the zip of her jeans. Rumi moves to mouth at Zoey’s throat, praying that she’ll be muffled by the skin there if she starts sobbing. Her body is buzzing with fear and forced want, and she knows she’ll only be able to get a minute into this before one of them asks her why she’s still soft, but she has to do it. She can’t chicken out now – she literally forced herself on Zoey and now she has to follow through. She has to.
When nimble hands have undone the zipper of her jeans, she gasps out the word “please” and tries to pretend it means please continue, and not please stop. God, she really is sick, isn’t she. Mira and Zoey have made her promise time and time over to be honest with them, especially about sex, and she’s just lying and breaking their trust over and over for her own pleasure. If she wasn’t so selfish, she wouldn’t have lied to them, she wouldn’t have forced them to date a girl who can’t fucking have sex, she wouldn’t have decided to call herself some twisted facsimile of a girl, she wouldn’t have done any of this. If only she wasn’t so selfish.
She can’t breathe. There’s hands on her and she can’t breathe, she can’t think, her skin is on fire and she only knows she needs to stay fucking quiet, don’t let them know, don’t look down, don’t look-
Rumi doesn’t remember much after that.
Mira’s been watching both of her girls carefully since Rumi had stopped picking at her cuticles and pulled Zoey to straddle her. It was out of character and abrupt, but she didn’t want to scare Rumi off by being aggressive or demanding in case this was really just desire and nerves. Zoey’s been similarly reserved, eyes meeting Mira’s full of questions.
Is she okay? I don’t know what to do.
I don’t know. Do what she asks, nothing more. We’ll talk about it after.
This feels weird.
I know.
But Mira is too headstrong, too caught up in promises and the thrumming rejection that this might just be another lie, that Rumi might just be playing pretend at all of this, that she doesn’t even really want them, that this was all fake. She can’t be that anymore. She can't keep lashing out at Rumi, can’t keep calling her on every single half-truth and making it worse, she can’t. So Mira just watches, a hand on each of her girls, as Rumi gets further away from her body and Zoey carefully undoes the button of her jeans. Zoey touches her once over her underwear before Rumi flinches and Mira already has her mouth open to tell Zoey to sit back a moment, but there’s no need. Her hand flies away on instinct more than anything, and then she’s crawling off Rumi and looking to Mira for help.
God. As if Mira could ever help with something as sensitive as this.
Rumi is gone. Her breath is shallow and ragged, her eyes are glassy, and she shows almost no understanding that neither Zoey or Mira have any intention of sex anymore. She looks back at Zoey with just as much helplessness, and so Zoey leans forward and begins speaking gently to their girl.
“Rumi? It’s okay. No one’s mad at you, okay? We love you both so much, come on Rumi, can you say something to me?”
No response.
Mira swallows and then cautiously says, “She’s not here.”
Zoey looks crestfallen and unsurprised.
Mira mulls the situation over again in her mind. Rumi very obviously has issues regarding being touched in general, and more specifically that part of her body – Mira won’t pretend to understand how Rumi feels, but what she can understand is waking up night after night terrified and hating what you are, and that’s enough to make her heart break in sympathy. Did someone-
No. It can’t be. Mira doesn’t want to think about it.
But it would make sense. Mira’s not dumb. She knows the statistics, and she knows the industry. Zoey and Mira have dealt with their share of fucking creeps, and Rumi, her poor, sweet Rumi, probably wouldn’t even protest if someone made a pass on her. It would make sense. She’s not having a panic attack – she’s having a flashback.
Jesus. She feels sick to her stomach.
She wants to ask if Zoey’s ever heard Rumi talk about being hurt, or touched, or anything, but the words feel heavy and clunky on her tongue and she just can’t bring herself to say it. Zoey looks like she’s about to start crying, and Mira knows exactly why.
“It’s not your fault, you know. You didn’t know how she was gonna react. She asked you to, you did what you were supposed to, you paid attention and stopped as soon as you realized what was going on. Okay?” Mira is deadly serious. Zoey hesitates for half a second, and then nods.
“Okay.”
They don’t touch Rumi, but they don’t leave either. Instead, they sit with her and speak to her, hoping eventually it’ll pull her back. It takes a while, but it does, and then Rumi is hunched over herself shaking. Mira bends down to meet her, softly asking, “Hey girl. You back with us now?”
Rumi nods her head, eyes shut so tightly Mira thinks she’ll give herself a headache.
“Can Zoey and I touch you? You can say no, we just want to help, okay?” Yes or no questions. No right or wrong answer. Mira knows this part of the night well, because she’s been doing it almost daily since the accident. Rumi nods again, and so Mira puts a hand on her chest and another on her back, bringing her up onto the couch where Zoey immediately hugs her. Rumi starts trying to say something but the words come out all jumbled, and Zoey gently shushes her.
“It’s okay, it’s okay Rumi, we’ve got you. No one is upset, you did just perfect, alright?” Rumi shakes her head and hides her face in her hands. When she gets like this, she seems almost more animal than human, like something primal is trying to keep her alive long enough to return to how she was before.
They sit like that for a while. Mira doesn’t bother to keep track of time, only the slight shake to Zoey’s hands and the dissociated tinge to Rumi’s expression. Things fade in and out. Breathing settles into regular rhythm. Rumi stops crying.
Mira knows it’s time to say something.
“I used to be terrified of sex growing up, you know. I hated the idea of some strange man taking me and holding me down and stripping everything that makes me me. I didn’t want kids, I didn’t want to be fucked, I didn’t want anything to do with it. I tried getting myself off a few times and it only hurt, and if touching myself was that bad, I didn’t even want to imagine someone else doing it to me.” She breaks her monologue to watch Rumi’s reaction, which so far just seems like confusion, like she doesn’t know where this is going. Zoey is just petting her hair and watching.
“And then I realized I liked girls, and suddenly things made sense – I wanted to be the one holding someone down, I wanted to be the one making girls feel good, I wanted to be the one in control. And for a while I could fake it, act like I wanted them to touch me in return, it didn’t last. It doesn’t work long-term, and you shouldn’t try in the first place.”
Another pause. Rumi looks like she’s on the cusp of crying again.
Mira speaks again, murmuring, “Rumi, sex is what you want it to be. That’s something you decide, not anyone else. There’s no expectation for you to let us do anything, you’re not failing us or disappointing us – we’d be completely happy to never touch you in that way, if that’s what you want. Okay?”
Zoey presses a kiss into Rumi’s hair and quietly says, “It’s okay. Sex is a lot, okay? You don’t need to push yourself to do anything, I promise.”
Rumi makes a sound that’s too bitter to be a laugh and Mira’s entire body freezes in return before they hear her speak, still buried in Mira’s sweater.
“‘m not even a virgin.”
It’s said so muffled and sharp and cruel that Mira can’t even fathom the words for a moment. Her head is spinning. Who? When? Rumi wouldn’t even let them touch her for almost all 24 years of her life, too afraid to be seen by anyone at all, and then somewhere in that time period she went and had sex? Mira isn’t jealous, because virginity is a fucking bullshit concept to begin with, but she is confused. She shoots a look at Zoey, implicitly asking “did you know?” and Zoey shakes her head.
Zoey’s the first to ask the question that’s lingering on Mira’s lips, the name “Jinu?” tumbling out before either of them could think twice. Everyone flinches at the name.
Rumi gives a bitter half-chuckle and folds further into herself, shaking her head and listlessly remarking, “The most Jinu and I did was hug, once. He didn’t- I think I could have loved him. Maybe.” She sounds so small.
And Mira hates herself for the knot that loosens in her chest at that, because she tries so hard not to be a jealous asshole, but it’s relieving all the same to hear he wasn’t the one to do it. He took so much from her – she doesn’t want him to take this too.
“Then who?” Mira asks the question this time, her voice finally able to rise out of her throat.
Rumi shakes a little.
“Just some … producer. He wasn’t around long. It wasn’t a huge deal.”
The way she’s speaking right now, the way her knuckles are white with the pressure she’s putting on Mira’s sweater, the catch in her breath – it all begs to differ. The knot in Mira’s chest has returned full force, strangling her.
A producer. Mira is trying not to let herself draw any conclusions at all, trying to remain calm and supportive and not jump back to how awful and hollow and broken Rumi looked twenty minutes ago, but it’s not working.
Zoey prods, “when?” like she’s not breaking apart too.
“I was 15? I think? Hard t’ remember.”
And with that, Mira’s world shatters.
She was 15. Rumi was 15 and god, Mira’s flashed back to how Rumi looked back then, small and awkward and so fucking thin because she was always too sick to keep food down, and Mira wants to wrap her up in a blanket and keep her safe and calm and loved forever. Mira wants to murder a man. She pulls his face from her mind, vague mentions here and there – he was helping her record something, he preferred one on one sessions, he left abruptly and was never spoken of again – the world stops turning. Everything is cold and numb and Mira is going to throw up.
Zoey is crying. Mira and Rumi realize it at the same time, and then they’re both grabbing her and holding her so fiercely she might break.
Rumi hates to see Zoey cry, she’d do anything to stop it, and so she’s brushing Zoey’s hair out of her face and reassuring, “Hey, hey, Zoey it’s okay, I’m okay, I promise it’s not that big a deal-”
She gets cut off Zoey sobbing, “It’s not that big a deal? Rumi you were a child, you were a kid, and you didn’t say anything, we didn’t even think-, we could have done something- we could have helped-”
Mira knows when Zoey is locked in a spiral like this, and she knows that it won't do anyone any good to let her continue, so now it’s her turn to rub Zoey’s back and talk her out of it, shushing and crooning until the crying subsides. She takes the time to check in on Rumi, who looks like she’s being crushed by guilt but trying not to hide it.
She jumps when Mira reaches out a hand and brushes it against her arm, but she allows it to stay there as Mira softly whispers, “It’s okay. Thank you for telling us. I’m sorry we weren’t there.” She means every word of it.
Rumi still looks shaken and anxious, like she’s about to bolt at any moment, but she still replies, trying to brush it off with, “It wasn’t your fault. No one knew except me and Celine, and that’s just because she saw-” and oh, the trembling way she says the last few words is ripping Mira apart, “I just didn’t know how to tell you guys. I promise I wasn’t trying to keep anything from you, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I lied, and for earlier, fuck”
Mira cuts her off with the same ease and pressing need as she did with Zoey (who’s now quietly watching them speak with a deep ache in her eyes).
“Rumi. This – what happened earlier – it can’t happen again. I think you already know that. I’m not angry at you, but this is serious, please,” here Mira’s voice breaks, so she pauses. She needs to get under control. When she feels slightly more put together, she begins again. “I’m not upset about you not telling us about what happened to you, I need you to believe me, okay? That’s- that’s yours to tell. You didn’t owe me or Zoey that, and you’re not less of a girlfriend for not wanting to talk about it. I promise. It’s hard, I know, I fucking know, okay? You don’t need to want sex, if it brings something up, or if it's not enjoyable.” The last part feels a bit clunky as she speaks it, but there’s only so much Mira can do, and she’s never usually good at comforting people to begin with.
When Rumi speaks, her voice is shaken and quiet.
“But I want that, I mean it, I want that. I just can’t, it can’t be, I-” she breaks off, turning and hiding her face in Zoey’s shoulder, Mira’s hands still gently on her shoulder and cradling her legs. Now it’s Zoey’s turn to speak, and she does it so gently, big eyes concerned and so caring Mira feels like her heart might burst.
“Rumi, We love you so much. I love you so much, okay? There’s no reason why you shouldn’t let yourself have what you want, and if that’s me and Mira like that, we’d love to give it to you.”
Rumi sobs something into Zoey’s chest, and Mira doesn’t know what it is but the look on Zoey’s face is devastating.
“Rumi. Rumi, that's not true, not at all.” She sounds so serious, like if Rumi keeps thinking whatever she does the world will end.
“What did she say?” Mira has to ask, she doesn’t even think about it.
“She- she says it’s different because you’re a lesbian. She thinks you can’t love her the way she is now.” Rumi’s full body shakes when Zoey’s words hit the air, and for a moment, everything stops. Mira is moving forward before she can stop herself, pulling Rumi to face her and cupping her cheek.
“Rumi. Rumi look at me.” The command leaves no room for interpretation, and suddenly Rumi is staring at her eyes with an expression so full of shame and heartbreak it makes Mira want to kill whoever told her she wasn’t a real girl. Every word is enunciated and soft as a bullet.
“Rumi, jagiya, I love you so much. I’ve been in love with you for years, and finding out that you weren’t born a girl hasn’t changed a single part of that for me, okay? You’re my girl, you’re my beautiful girl, and there’s not a single part of you that I don’t love. I promise.”
Rumi whispers a completely broken ‘okay’, and then she starts crying again. Mira doesn’t want to be anywhere else in the world then right there, right with her girls.
Rumi lets them sleep in the bed with her, after that.
Zoey finds Rumi first, because of course she does.
Today had been hard on all of them – Celine visited early in the morning, requesting to take Rumi on a short walk, as if Zoey and Mira were her handlers (although, in a way, maybe this has been Celine’s biggest concession yet. Rumi was always her treasure to guard, her ward to care for, hers and hers alone. Seeing Celine’s stricken, wan form in the doorway with a plastic container of cut fruit asking to see Rumi felt just as foreign to Zoey as waking up in another country without knowing how she got there). Mira didn’t like the idea, but Rumi wanted to, and Zoey just doesn’t have the heart to tell Rumi no anymore.
And it’s not like Zoey knows what Celine said to Rumi, and it’s not like she had the guts to ask, but she knows something happened, because when they came home Rumi went straight to her room with a thousand yard stare. They’re both antsy about leaving her on her own, but it’s been long enough now that constant supervision would send Rumi into a fit. Seeing her retreat, Celine only sighed in her very Celine way and left in turn. Mira threw a bowl at the place where her head would have been, should she have stayed.
(Secretly, Zoey thinks that Mira isn’t being entirely fair to Celine, because she really did her best with raising Rumi, it’s just that Celine’s best still wasn’t good enough, and Mira can’t see past that. Zoey’s not sure she can either. Things have been … strained, to say the least, but especially between Mira and Celine. If it wasn’t so sad to look at, Zoey would have laughed at how similar they are to each other.)
The sun has set now and Rumi still hasn’t emerged from her room to get food, and that’s cause for concern, so Zoey sets off to check in on her. It feels awfully reminiscent of when things got bad that first year of touring, when the bottom of the little party trick she’d been nursing for years fell out and she plunged into something sharper, stronger, something all consuming. She doesn’t remember much from that time except that it was always Rumi who found her first. Always Rumi to be the one to wash the vomit from her hair and put ointment on the steadily worsening wounds on the back of her right hand, always the first one to walk her over to Mira’s room with a soft, sad little smile and a Gatorade Zero to help with the electrolyte imbalance.
All this means that when Zoey walked over to her the first night back from the hospital and asked if she could change her bandages, Rumi only nodded and unbuttoned her nightshirt so Zoey could get at the wounds on her ribs. It’s not that Zoey or Rumi trust Mira any less, it’s just that somewhere in Rumi’s body there is a memory of kindness and secrets kept and the knowledge that if Rumi asked Zoey to do the same for her, Zoey would.
All this means that when Zoey knocks on her door with her heart in her throat, there’s a notification on her phone that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.
You can come in if you would like, Zoey. I am okay.
In an easier time, Zoey would have giggled and made fun of Rumi for texting like such an old person, but as it is, she only pockets her phone and opens the door.
The blinds are drawn thick and heavy over everything, and that should have been enough to stop Zoey from catching the way Rumi’s room is uncharacteristically messy or the tear tracks on her pillow, but Zoey notices them anyway. It’s not hard when you’re looking for them.
Rumi is laying on the floor. She’s wearing a sweatshirt, but it looks hastily thrown on, and Zoey tries to make as neutral of a note of that fact as possible. When Zoey sits next to her, just a foot away, she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t react at all.
For a while, that’s all they do: sit in the dark.
It’s not a bad way to spend time together, all things considered. They could be sitting in a hospital, or a grave. Rumi’s been to both, rather recently.
It’s plain that Rumi is thinking of something to say, and so Zoey remains silent (through no small effort) while Rumi figures out how she wants to do this.
“Jinu called.” is what Rumi finalizes on, eyebrows knotted, body tense.
Oh. Oh. Jinu.
Zoey tries as hard as she can not to react. She’s pretty sure she still stiffens at his name (after all, he fucking outed all three of them for the sake of a popularity contest, he stripped Zoey of the two girls she loved the most, he fucking hurt her.) She pulls herself out of the spiral with the forced reminder that this is about Rumi, not herself.
“Yeah? What’d he say?” Neutrality is good. Calm is good. Zoey’s doing a good job at this.
“He says he’s sorry.”
What a fucking prick.
“Was that why Celine visited?”
Rumi huffs, like something Zoey has just said is funny.
“No, he called after. I guess I forgot to block his number.”
Rumi’s lying about not blocking him, and if it was Mira she would have pushed, because Mira is all about talking – despite how much she hates it – and Zoey’s never been that brave. Besides, they have rules for this kind of thing.
“It’s not as bad as it looks, Rumi. It’s just a thing I do sometimes, Jesus, it’s a thing everyone does sometimes. It wasn’t about the interview today. I haven’t looked at social media all week, come on, you have to believe me.”
And maybe Zoey doesn’t know if letting all of those white lies slide was helpful for her, but she’s certain if Rumi had pushed back when she was already so frayed things would have only gotten worse. It’s better to stay here with Rumi and let her know she’s not in trouble than it is to fight every inconsistency in the story, as far as Zoey’s concerned. They decided that rule the first time Rumi walked in on Zoey with enough food to last someone a week, pristine and laid out like some kind of offering – pasta, cheese, ramen, chips, cake, donuts, chocolate – the door to her en suite bathroom propped open with a towel laid at the base so Zoey wouldn’t bruise her knees later.
So Zoey doesn’t say anything, when Rumi lies about ‘forgetting’ to block Jinu. What she does say, is “What did you two talk about, specifically?”
A shuffle next to her. Rumi’s head laid out in Zoey’s lap, throat bare and cut open from a strip of light from the window. From this angle, Zoey can see the dimples where the surgeons stitched Rumi back up. They did a wonderful job. Her voice is barely damaged.
“He said he was sorry about the recording. He didn’t mean to- his manager sucks, Zoey. Like, really fucking sucks. He got trapped in a contract that’s not gonna let him go for like, four hundred years, and he’s fucking miserable.”
The second part of that statement, he’s miserable, just like me, does not have to be said for how it hangs in the air.
“He says he started messaging me because Gwi-ma – that’s his manager – asked him too. Wanted to see what dirt he could gather on us, wanted to incorporate it into a diss track or something.”
Zoey hums, a bit like how Mira would when she’s trying to fill the silence of a room without betraying her thoughts.
“So he was doing it with malicious intent, not because he’s evil, but because of his contract?”
Rumi nods a little, seemingly satisfied with Zoey’s attempt at continuing conversation.
“Yeah. Apparently, even after he found out about me, y’know,” and oh, Rumi’s shame over what she's done to herself is so palpable right about now that Zoey thinks she’s choking on it, “he didn’t tell Gwi-ma. He lied for me. He kept my secret.”
He also exposed it. Zoey has the distinct feeling Rumi is aware of this more than anyone else, so she bites her tongue.
“And the recording?”
“He couldn’t lie forever. Not to Gwi-ma. I think- he mentioned his family. Something about his mother and sister. I don’t think he’s had much of a choice in any of this” is all Rumi says.
“Oh.”
Zoey says it like it changes things. To her, it does. Doing whatever you can to protect the people you love, ruining yourself out of guilt because you’ve failed despite trying everything, clinging to any sense of control possible – that’s familiar, and that changes things.
“He’s quitting. He’s taking the fall for me – he’s going to get some things straightened out with publicists, and then he’s quitting. He already released a statement. I don’t know. I guess- I hated him, and then I liked him a little, and then the Idol Awards happened and I hated him even more, and now … now I don’t know.”
Zoey doesn’t know where to even start with that, so she opts for the joke “If there’s one thing the boy’s good at, it’s giving you a break, huh?” Rumi laughs a little, but it’s definitely forced, and more of a chuckle than anything. Zoey doesn’t blame her.
The timeline – if it’s to be believed – is one of a slow, agonizing day of Rumi trying to figure out feelings that seem more confusing than the Gordian Knot. Huh. Zoey wonders if they use that parable in Korea and makes a mental note to look it up as a potential introduction to infodump on Alexander the Great later.
“Mira made seaweed soup. You wanna get up and come downstairs to eat with us, or do you want me to bring you up a bowl?” and Zoey knows Rumi won’t refuse food if she’s the one offering, not with Zoey’s history, so it’s a safe bet.
Rumi looks like she’s contemplating both options, weighing the comfort of her room over the gentle lull of Mira’s presence, and then she grimaces suddenly before sitting upright and fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve.
She mumbles, “I’ll come down, in a second.”
“What was that?” Zoey’s voice is soft, even to her own ears.
Rumi huffs out “You’ll be mad,” and starts picking at her lip. Zoey doesn’t think she’s heard a more untrue statement in her life, and tells Rumi as much.
She rolls her eyes. “Fine then, Mira will be mad.”
Zoey thinks of Mira, stricken thin with grief in the back of an Uber on the night of the accident, and can’t believe it. Her heart is in her throat at the implications, because Rumi sounds so similar to how Zoey sounded every time she fucked up (‘not fucking up, never fucking up’ Mira would say, in the softness of the night), all apology without explanation.
She thinks of all of those nights she spent alone because she ran away and no one looked for her, and decides this will not be one of those nights for Rumi.
“Did you hurt yourself?”
Rumi flinches at the question. Zoey just waits.
Rumi laughs, and it’s cruel and painful just to hear. Zoey wonders if it hurts her to talk, with her throat still healing the way it does. She is flashed with the all-too familiar imagined scene of Rumi with a knife to her neck and fights the urge to gag.
Rumi looks away.
“I mean. Isn’t it obvious?”
And as Zoey kisses her temple and begins to stand, arms wrapped around Rumi’s shoulders to pick her up too, she thinks to herself ‘Yeah. Now that you mention it, it really is.’
(They do not address it head on. They eat dinner first, Mira asking Zoey silent questions from across the table. Zoey will say nothing, and Rumi won’t either, but Zoey spots Mira and Rumi talking quietly in the kitchen as she tidies the living space, and she sees Rumi pull the hem of her sleeve up after Mira asks a question, the movement hurried and shameful, and Mira will make this pained little sound that tells Zoey she’s seen. Later, they will clean and bandage the wounds together, with Mira standing by and distracting Rumi gently as Zoey gets to work. It says a lot to Rumi’s recovery that she lets both of them be in the room for it. Zoey cries in the shower for a full hour after Mira takes Rumi to bed.)