Archive of Our Own

The glow from their massive, 75-inch OLED TV—just one of the many fruits of their idol labors, and an indulgence they gladly partake in as reward for all of the otherwise thankless demon-hunting—is the only light in the room. Mira and Zoey are curled up on one end of the equally as massive couch, tangled together under a blanket that’s already halfway slipped to the floor, while Rumi is snuggled comfortably on the other end. They’re halfway through a horror movie—something loud and gory, more interested in jump scares and shock value than actual suspense—when a hulking, slime-drenched creature bursts through a window with a screech, all fangs and flailing limbs and terrible CGI. Rumi and Mira get a kick out of it, but Zoey still jolts in surprise, fingers tightening instinctively around the front of Mira’s sweater, not because of the gore or the terrible CGI—they’re demon hunters, after all, they’ve seen the real shit out there, fight the real shit on the daily: whatever the movies have doesn’t even come close to the things they’ve seen—but because of the way it hits her out of nowhere and makes her heart skip a beat anyway.

Tonight’s one of those rare nights where they don’t have to stay up rehearsing or recording, and the demons, pesky, stubborn fuckers that they usually are, are unusually quiet tonight too, giving them the room to just breathe. To relax, get some much needed couch time. Marathon some cheesy horror flicks that make them laugh more than they actually scare the shit out of them.

Eventually, Rumi yawns, stretches, and then sits up. “I’m heading to bed,” she tells Mira and Zoey.

“Whaaaat?” Zoey whines, and Mira chimes in with, “Come on, Rumi. It’s not even that late.”

“It’s 1:27,” Rumi says, like they’ve never stayed up later than that, like, ever. Demons don’t care about sleep schedules, and neither does the idol industry.

Zoey and Mira whine at her some more, teasing her for acting older than she actually is, but Rumi’s got her mind set and is already off the couch, gathering her pillow and blanket in her arms. She says, “Goodnight,” already padding off towards her room. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“Today is tomorrow,” Mira offers helpfully.

Rumi just raises a hand in a lazy wave over her shoulder, not even bothering to look back. She disappears into her room, and the soft click of her door echoes down the hall.

They’re quiet for a while after that, letting the movie play on in the background. More shrieking, more blood, more absurdly over-the-top visual effects. Mira’s still vaguely following the plot, or at least trying to, when she feels Zoey shift beside her, slipping an arm around her waist, her body curling tighter into Mira’s side. Zoey tucks her head under Mira’s chin, cheek resting comfortably against her chest like she’s trying to anchor herself to the beat of Mira’s heart. Mira smiles, fond, maybe a little giddy (definitely giddy), and instinctively wraps an arm around Zoey in turn.

For the next few minutes they stay like that, cuddling each other as the movie enters its third act, the big climax, which means more gore and more not even barely decent CGI, and Mira thinks this is about as perfect as any night could ever be—until Zoey’s hand starts to wander.

Mira feels Zoey’s hand slip lower, beneath the hem of her sweater, Zoey’s fingers cool at first against the heat of her stomach, then warmer, firmer as her thumb brushes lightly over bare skin. A slow, deliberate stroke.

Mira leans back slightly, cocking a brow at Zoey.

Zoey tilts her face up just to bat her pretty little lashes at Mira and say, all faux innocence, “What?”, like she doesn’t have her hand up Mira’s sweater right now. Her mouth twitches in that way it always does when Zoey is trying her hardest not to smile, to give herself away, but she’s grinning up at Mira soon enough anyway.

Mira huffs out a laugh, terribly fond. “You know what.”

Zoey giggles when Mira pokes her side in half-hearted warning, but she doesn’t stop. If anything, she only inches closer, tugging herself fully into Mira’s lap now. She fits herself there like she belongs there, like Mira’s lap is a seat saved exclusively for her. Mira almost laughs at the thought, at how ridiculous it is, but she can’t deny that she enjoys it all the same anyway.

“You’re gonna get us in trouble,” Mira murmurs, hands firm now against Zoey’s waist.

“Rumi’s asleep,” Zoey counters, her eyes bright and dark all at once with something heady. Something hungry. She leans forward, just enough to brush her lips against Mira’s, and says, almost sing-song, “We just need to keep it down then we’ll be fine.”

“Can you keep it down?” Mira teases.

Zoey lets out this indignant but very cute little hmph!, offended, but she lets Mira kiss her anyway.

It’s slow, at first. Familiar, a little lazy, like they’ve got all the time in the world—but there’s nothing lazy about the way Zoey instantly presses in closer, thighs tightening around Mira’s hips, hands clutching at her sweater again. Nothing slow about the way Mira’s tongue slips past her lips a beat later, greedy, like she’s been waiting all night for this.

They make out, grope each other a little, and then a lot, and then Zoey’s shorts come off, and it isn’t long before they’re sideways on the couch, still wrapped up and tangled in each other in a mess of limbs, the movie long forgotten behind them. Mira’s thigh slots between Zoey’s legs, and Zoey lets out a soft gasp, her leg hooking instinctively over Mira’s hip to pull her closer, needier now, hungrier.

Mira cradles the back of Zoey’s neck in one hand, holding her close, and slips her other hand down between Zoey’s legs, steady and sure, nudging the fabric of Zoey’s panties, sodden in the center with her arousal aside. For a second, she just drags her fingers through the wetness, teasing Zoey’s slit a little until Zoey’s whining for her to just stick it in already—and so, she does, sliding one finger inside, and then another. Zoey clutches at her back, mouth pressed to her throat now, breath hot and trembling as Mira works her open with practiced ease, bucking her hips with a broken, “Mira, Mira—please—”

“We need to keep it down, remember?” Mira teases a little meanly, fingers pumping slow and lush inside Zoey. Zoey lets out another small, infuriated whine, and it’s hot between them, stifling in the way only thick layers and flushed skin can be, their clothes clinging in all the wrong places—Mira’s sweater damp with sweat where Zoey’s pressed up against her, Zoey’s hoodie practically trapping the heat between them like a cocoon—but Mira murmurs, “Alright, baby, I know. I’ve got you.”

Mira fucks her now, fingers driving deep, slick and fast and curling just right, just the way Zoey likes it. Zoey gasps, body jolting and hips twitching helplessly with every stroke of Mira’s fingers. She digs her nails into Mira’s back like she’s holding on for dear life, trembling, her breath breaking apart into soft, bitten-off whimpers. She murmurs please, and more, and right there—shit, Mira—right there, in between gasps and barely contained moans and the warm, wet sound of Mira’s fingers fucking into her. Loud enough to echo in Mira’s own ears, and probably the hall too.

The squelch of it is wet, obscene, echoing between them as Mira fucks Zoey with her fingers, her knuckles slick, palm pressed flush to Zoey’s pussy, and Zoey is so wet she’s dripping down Mira’s hand, soaking through her fingers down to her wrist, and all it does is make Mira want to take her apart more.

Mira shifts just slightly, adjusting her angle, and Zoey cries out like it’s too much and not enough all at once. Mira would clamp a hand over her mouth if she just could, if both her hands weren’t occupied right now, but she can’t deny that she loves it—the way Zoey’s babbling incoherent, shameless, desperate nonsense now, gasping, “Mira, baby, please, please, m’so close, don’t stop, don’t you dare stop,” and Mira thinks she could come from that alone. She gives it to Zoey harder, rougher, plunging in deep and curling viciously on every thrust, determined now, fucking her with single-minded focus.

“That’s it,” Mira pants against Zoey’s ear, voice low and dark and wrecked with want. “Come for me, baby, come on, just like that—”

“Close,” Zoey gasps out sharply, curling into Mira even more, like she’s trying to crawl inside her, her breath hot against Mira’s neck, “close—gonna, ah—gonna come, Mira—Mira—”

And then there’s a squeak—sharp, startled, somewhere behind them—that cuts through the haze like a knife.

The both of them freeze, still tangled together, Mira’s fingers still curled deep inside Zoey.

They exchange a wide-eyed, comprehending look with each other before they both twist their heads towards the direction of the sound—towards Rumi, who’s frozen still where she’s standing, eyes bouncing back and forth between Zoey and Mira frantically, shocked, her face flushed a deep, dark red.

But Rumi doesn’t look away. Or maybe, it’s more like she can’t.

Her hands twitch uselessly at her sides like she can’t figure out what to do with them. There’s a beat—just a breath, blink and you’ll miss it—where her gaze drops, lingers, and then snaps back up again, almost—guilty.

“I—” Rumi starts, stumbling over her words, “I was just—water—I was just going to get some water, and—you know what,” she says, trying to laugh through the awkwardness but sounding hysterical instead in the process, “I’m not even that thirsty. So I’ll just”—she gestures towards the direction of her room, some vague point behind her—“you know,” and then she all but runs away from the scene of the crime.

There’s a long, stunned beat of silence once the door clicks shut again. Then, finally, Mira says, “Shit.”

“Oh my god,” Zoey whispers, absolutely mortified, face buried in Mira’s shoulder like she might die right there. “Oh my god.”

They stay like that for half a second—frozen, breathing hard—and then Zoey shifts just slightly, hips twitching. She whimpers.

Mira blinks. “You still want to…?”

Looking like she can’t believe it herself, Zoey gives a small nod, face still buried in Mira’s shoulder, and mumbles, “Please.”

It should probably concern Mira just how easily she gets back right into the groove of things, as if Rumi hadn’t just walked in on them fucking on the couch, and it should probably concern Mira that not even that was enough to stop her from still finishing what they started anyway, but she fucks Zoey fast and messy, determined all over again and with—something else—burning inside her now, until Zoey cries out against her skin and falls apart around her fingers, trembling as she comes, finally, with a gasping, broken sound that she muffles against Mira’s shoulder.

“I wanna,” Zoey says after some time, panting, and then clutching at Mira’s sweater, “I wanna touch you too.”

So, Mira lets her. It isn’t until Zoey’s slipped her hand past the waistband of Mira’s pajama pants and into her underwear that it even registers just how wet she is, worked up from taking Zoey apart and—something else, now, but before she can really begin to unravel that, Zoey starts touching her, shaky at first and then sure and steady, and Mira’s so cranked up that it takes very little to push her right over the edge. She squeezes her eyes shut, hips bucking fitfully against Zoey’s hand, and she comes with the afterimage of the look on Rumi’s face when she saw them scrawled across her eyelids.

She manages to muffle her moan against Zoey’s neck, and as she comes down from it, Zoey crooning praises into her ear all the while, that’s it, baby, Mira thinks:

What the fuck was that?

Rumi’s always been supportive of their relationship, and it’s not like this is the first time she’s walked in on them getting a little handsy with each other, but this is the first time she’s ever walked in on them having sex, and on their couch, at that, right out in the open like a bunch of filthy animals—not that this is the first time they’ve done this, it’s just… the first time they’ve done it and, due to a terrible bit of miscalculation on their end, Rumi was actually around to witness it—so they come groveling to her the morning after. Rumi, being Rumi, tries to laugh it off again and even tries to joke about it, even if the joke barely lands and it just makes things a little awkward for them again, but other than that, it’s fairly easy to just… move on from the little slip-up. Rumi doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, so neither Mira nor Zoey push it either… although Mira does notice that, for at least a week after that, Rumi makes it a point to avoid the couch, and once, Zoey says she spotted Rumi spraying disinfectant all over the couch when she thought neither of them were looking, so.

They try their best to behave after that. They even start picking up extra chores, stuff that’s usually Rumi’s to handle, like trash duty and cleaning the bathroom, or doing the dishes even when it’s not technically their turn. Are they overcompensating? Maybe, but Mira doesn’t think there’s any other, more concrete way to show their best friend they feel bad about making her walk in on that than by doing the sucky, shitty day-to-day things that not even Rumi, responsible control-freak workaholic that she is, enjoys. So Mira vacuums the living room three times that week, and Zoey folds Rumi’s laundry for her when it’s been left in the washing machine too long.

They’re both so mortified and so guilty about the little fuck-up that they don’t have sex at all the entire week after said fuck-up—which is, like, probably the longest they’ve gone without sex since they started dating. Can they really be blamed for jumping each other’s bones the second that they have the penthouse all to themselves?

This time, they make sure to wait until Rumi has left and is well out of earshot and eyesight, and then they drag themselves to Zoey’s room, lock the door behind them and then check just one more time to make sure they won’t risk traumatizing Rumi for life again before they pounce at each other, all clashing teeth and tongue and hands grabbing at each other’s clothes.

Mira’s got Zoey pinned down into the mattress, face buried between her thighs like she’ll die if she comes up for air, laying into her pussy like she’s starving for it. She’s got two fingers curled deep inside her too, slick and relentless, fucking her through the wet, obscene sounds between them as Zoey cries out and clutches helplessly at the sheets. It doesn’t take long to make Zoey come with her mouth alone. It never does, not when Mira’s like this—focused and possessed with the need to get Zoey off, especially after their week-long dry spell—and when Zoey finally comes, she does it with a loud, satisfied cry, like she’s relieved she doesn’t have to hold herself back this time, her thighs shaking around Mira’s head and hips twitching under her hands.

“Mira,” Zoey says after, breathless, voice tight with need for more, more, and Mira pulls back long enough to breathe, to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand, looks up at Zoey—wrecked, flushed, waiting—and says, “Yeah—yeah, I’ve got you,” then she’s up on her feet. She comes back from Zoey’s walk-in closet with a harness strapped in and ready to go. The dildo itself is this ridiculous, garish shade of purple—unsubtle and just obscene, so very obviously picked out by Zoey, like all it’s missing now is a generous sprinkle of glitter to really complete the look—but Zoey’s into it, and Mira’s into Zoey, so as long as Zoey’s into it then Mira can get behind it. She straps it on fast, all muscle memory and practiced efficiency, and slicks it up with a generous amount of lube.

Zoey climbs into her lap on shaky legs, still breathless and twitching from her first orgasm. Mira steadies her, hands tight on her hips, and watches as Zoey sinks down onto the dildo with a low, shuddering moan. She takes it inch by inch, thighs shaking, until she’s fully seated in Mira’s lap, impaled on her cock. She stays there like that for a minute, breathing hard, her arms wound tight around Mira’s shoulders, as she adjusts to the size and stretch of the dildo.

“Easy,” Mira murmurs, holding Zoey close as she trembles in her arms.

That had been another thing that surprised Mira, when they first started fooling around with each other: she hadn’t expected Zoey, of all people, to be something of a size queen. Maybe it was just the unnie in her—protective, reluctantly doting, and maybe a little bit in denial—that made it hard to believe Zoey, their bubbly, ball-of-sunshine of a maknae, of all people, could be into something like this. That Zoey, of all people, got off on being filled to the brim, split open, and then left shaking in her lap like she’s shaking now. And, maybe, there was just that part of her that didn’t think Zoey could take it.

She couldn’t have been more wrong about that, though, and that’s just one of the many things she loves about Zoey. That Zoey wants her like this, wants her to be rough with her like this. That Zoey trusts her enough to let her fuck her like this.

Zoey sucks in a shallow breath and starts to move, slow and deliberate, rolling her hips in lazy circles as she grinds down on the strap. It’s not about speed yet. It’s about sensation—about hitting just the right angle, that sweet spot inside her that makes her sigh and bite her lip, that punches these soft, breathy little moans out of her mouth every time Mira shifts under her. Every grind sends friction sparking across her clit, and she chases it, again and again, hips circling with growing urgency.

Mira just watches her for a moment, completely transfixed. Zoey’s flushed and panting, already glassy-eyed from how good it feels, from how desperate she must still be even after coming once already. Mira slides her hands up, cups Zoey’s tits, thumbs brushing over her nipples, and then leans in to press her mouth to one. She sucks gently at first, then harder, tongue flicking across the peak before she draws it fully into her mouth, moaning softly around it. Her eyes flutter shut as she lavishes attention to Zoey’s tits, licking and sucking and biting in turns, like she’s trying to devour her. She rolls her hips too, matching the rhythm Zoey’s set, and Zoey whines, head falling back, her rhythm stuttering just slightly—then catching again, stronger, deeper now.

They rock against each other, unhurried, indulgent, and it’s perfect, everything about it is perfect, until Zoey breathes out, voice thin and ragged, “She saw us.”

Mira pauses, lips still against her nipple. She pulls back just enough to look up, blinking through the haze of arousal. “What?”

Zoey shudders, grinding down again with a shaky little moan. “Rumi.” A beat, a hitch in Zoey’s breath. “That night. She saw us.”

Mira’s head spins. They’ve talked about the incident, of course they have, but not like—this. Not in the middle of sex. And they’ve—fuck—they’ve definitely never talked about Rumi in the middle of sex, regardless of the context. It feels… wrong, it feels so wrong, it is wrong, but—Mira can’t stop, now, she can’t stop thinking of her, can’t get the look on Rumi’s face when she walked in on them out of her head, the way she looked at them.

Zoey grinds down again and Mira groans, “Zoey,” but she can’t get herself to say anything more, anything else, choking on the words she can’t get out.

Zoey bites her lip, moans through it, and says—quietly, almost like she’s afraid of saying it out loud, like she’s scared Rumi’s going to hear somehow—“I keep thinking about it. About her.” Her eyes flutter shut, her rhythm stuttering just for a second. “I—ah, I don’t—I don’t mean to but, I just… can’t stop.”

Mira’s whole body goes tight. She should say something—should tell Zoey to stop, should pull her back down and fuck the thought out of her—but she doesn’t. She just watches her, feels every tiny tremble as Zoey rolls her hips again, slower this time, as if she’s testing herself too. Her hips falter, just slightly, the rhythm they’ve been building slipping for half a second before she catches it again, grinding down with a soft, bitten-off whimper.

“You were thinking about her too, right?” Zoey breathes out, eyes squeezed shut now, like she can’t look Mira in the eye, like this is too much even for her but not for the reasons Mira is thinking, or the reasons they should be too much, too wrong. “That night—when you—you were thinking about her.”

Mira’s hands are still on her hips, fingers twitching like she might push her off, or pull her closer, she doesn’t even know. Her mind is spinning. This isn’t supposed to be happening. They don’t talk about Rumi during sex. They don’t think about Rumi during sex. They don’t tell each other they’ve been thinking about Rumi while they fuck each other. But—

But Zoey’s still moving, still chasing that heat between them, and Mira’s still letting her. Still watching her. Still so stupidly turned on she can barely breathe. Still caught somewhere between wanting to shut Zoey up with her mouth and wanting to hear every word spill out of her.

“Do you remember how she looked at us?”

Mira swallows hard. Yes. She remembers it too clearly: Rumi gawking at them, wide-eyed, slack-jawed, like she’d stepped into something she shouldn’t have seen but, at the same time, couldn’t stop looking at. Like she wanted to look.

Zoey whines, rolls her hips again like the memory’s fuelling her now. “I, hah, keep—I keep thinking about it,” and Mira’s chest tightens. Her hands grip Zoey’s hips harder, nails digging in, and that’s when Zoey opens her eyes—dark and glossy and so fucking wrecked already—and looks down at her. “Fuck, Mira, I think she liked it.”

Mira lets out a noise that’s not quite a moan, not quite a curse, and pulls her down. Not roughly, not gently either. Just—hungry.

She flips their positions, pinning Zoey underneath her, and there’s a beat—half a second—where they just stare at each other, panting, pupils blown wide. Mira can see the slick sheen of sweat on Zoey’s skin, the dazed, needy look in her eyes. She looks wrecked. She looks perfect.

Mira drives her hips forward in one smooth, deep thrust that makes Zoey cry out. The sound goes straight through Mira’s spine. She does it again, and again, setting a rhythm that’s slow and devastating, every roll of her hips deliberate, punishing, obscene.

Zoey claws at her back, legs wrapping around Mira’s waist like she’s trying to pull her in deeper. She moans, loud and shameless, and Mira loses herself completely, fucking her hard now, chasing the high—and Rumi’s face, flushed and wide-eyed and lingering, won’t leave her mind.

She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to focus—on Zoey, on the way she clenches around the strap with every thrust, on the wet, desperate sounds between them—but it’s all tangled up now. Zoey’s hands are trembling where they grip at her back, and Mira knows she’s thinking about all the same things. Thinking about Rumi. They’re not supposed to be thinking about her, not at all and certainly not like this, but it’s like the harder they try not to, the worse it gets.

Zoey’s voice rings in her head. She saw us.

She saw us.

Mira bears down harder, bracing herself on either side of Zoey’s head. She’s panting like she’s been running, sweat slicking her temples, the strap soaked between them. Her muscles ache, her mind's a blur, but she can’t stop. Doesn’t want to stop. Zoey gasps, thighs trembling around Mira’s hips, and the sound she makes isn’t just pleasure—it’s overwhelmed, overloaded. Like it’s too much, and she wants more anyway. She bucks up into Mira’s thrusts, chasing the friction, the heat, the feeling of something tipping out of control.

Zoey comes shuddering underneath Mira, her voice breaking on a sob, a moan, something else that Mira can’t even name. Mira’s hips grind down harder, chasing friction she knows won’t be enough, but her body doesn’t care. Her clit’s throbbing against the base of the strap, slick and swollen, and Zoey’s so fucking wet, every thrust slick and obscene. She’s close, so, so close—and then, finally, it rips through her. Sudden, brutal, nothing to grind against but skin and sweat and want. It doesn’t matter. She comes with a gasp she can’t swallow, back arching, hips rolling like she can’t stop, like she’s still trying to chase something.

She collapses on top of Zoey after. Zoey makes this sound like oof! underneath her, but she wraps her arms around Mira all the same. Mira lets her eyes flutter shut for a moment as Zoey treads her fingers through her hair, gently, absentmindedly. Or more like, her mind is elsewhere right now, and Mira’s got a pretty good hunch at where that might be and who’s there with her.

Once she’s lucid enough for words again, Mira mumbles, “That was messed up.”

Zoey doesn’t laugh it off.

She doesn’t say anything at all.

Later, when they finally unstick themselves from each other and their limbs work again—

The kitchen is quiet. Mira leans against the kitchen counter, sipping on a carton of banana milk, while Zoey is perched on a stool beside nearby, legs swinging lazily, gaze unfocused. She’s already ravaged three cartons of banana milk, so all she can do is just… ruminate. Neither of them says anything, neither of them can, not when they’re both still too wrung out—and not when they’re both still too scared to really say anything, too scared to address the Rumi-shaped elephant in the room.

But Rumi seems to have different plans, or if not that then telepathy or something, because just as their thoughts turn back to her, the front door clicks open. Rumi’s voice follows a second later, chipper and bright. Mira senses Zoey tense up just at the sound of it.

“You guys,” she says as she bounds into the kitchen with a small box in her hands, beaming, “check it out,” and she sets the box down, practically tears the box open, and plucks out a peach. She shoves it towards them, like, ta-da!, they both try their best to be a little more enthusiastic given everything. “I managed to snag the really good kind too. The ajumma I bought these from said these’ll be gone by next week—it’s the tail end of the season or something—so,” and then she’s reaching for a knife in the same breath. She slices into the peach, and the flesh parts easily. Juice pools instantly at the center, glossy and golden, and when she pulls the halves apart, it wells up and spills down the side, and down Rumi’s hand. Without thinking about it, she just licks the juice from her knuckle, and that—that almost ruins them.

Zoey and Mira’s eyes catch on Rumi’s hand, her mouth, the drag of her tongue over her skin. The slow, thick drip of peach juice running down her fingers.

Mira swallows. Zoey shifts in her seat, legs crossing, uncrossing.

Finally, Rumi glances up at them. Blinks. “What?”

Zoey and Mira blink at her, then turn to look at each other, and then back at Rumi. “Nothing,” they answer in perfect, totally suspicious unison.

There’s a beat. Rumi looks at them again, like really looks at them, gaze sharpening, and then comprehension flickers over her face. It’s like she’s really, finally seeing them now, with the way her cheeks flush just a little a the way Mira’s hair is still disheveled, sticking out at odd angles here and there despite her best efforts to comb it back into decency, and at the faint, red splotch blooming just under Zoey’s jaw.

Without having to say it out loud, they already know Rumi’s thinking it. A big, resounding, Oh.

Mira wonders, just for the briefest of moments, if Rumi’s thinking back to that night, on the couch—when she walked in on them—just looking at them now, with their poor attempts, or lack thereof, at pretending like they didn’t spend the afternoon they had the penthouse to themselves just having sex again.

Rumi clears her throat then just… goes back to attending to the peach, like nothing happened. Like this never happened. Zoey and Mira accept the slices Rumi hands to them, even smiling along when she says, “Here, eat up,” smiling at them in that way she only ever does when she so desperately wants things to be okay, or at the very least, in this case, not weird, like, yes I walked in on you two having sex but there’s totally not anything weird about that, but when they exchange glances with each other, they know:

They’re in trouble now.

Real trouble.

Thing is, Mira doesn’t think it’s that weird for either of them to be even just a little bit attracted to Rumi. Everyone is a little bit in love with her, so why would they be any different?

Rumi is gorgeous, and funny, and beyond talented. Yeah, she could be a pain in the ass sometimes with how much of a workaholic she is and how she’s just incapable of flipping that switch off in her head when it’s time to just go brain-off mode and RELAX, because if it’s not the demons then it’s definitely going to be the stress that finally does a number on her—but even then, Mira can’t deny that Rumi is a hard worker, maybe the hardest worker there is, even among the three of them, and she doesn’t know where they would be if Rumi weren’t like that.

Back when they first formed HUNTR/X, Mira definitely had something of a crush on Rumi but it wasn’t anything serious. It was just one of those dumb, inconsequential little flares of attraction you get for someone who’s cool and funny and just kind of ridiculously hot. Zoey definitely had a crush on Rumi too at one point. It was obvious enough to Mira in the way Zoey used to hang around Rumi a little more than necessary, doing and saying anything just to keep her talking and to keep her attention all to herself. Nothing weird about that either. Mira thinks it’s just something everyone goes through, where Rumi is concerned. When she and Zoey got together, though, everything shifted, things got real, and Rumi was just… Rumi now. Their bandmate, fellow demon hunter, and best friend. Their previous crushes on her got filed away into whatever part of the brain handles embarrassing little feelings you’re never supposed to act on, and that was that.

That is, until Rumi accidentally walked in on them—and until they actually thought about her during sex.

“But, I mean—it’s not, like, weird-weird, right?” Zoey says, almost completely submerged in the water. Only her face remains above the surface, her mouth barely moving. “It was just… you know…”

Mira frowns at her. Her face feels so hot all of a sudden, and she knows it’s got nothing to do with the steam curling in the air. “Yes, Zoey. It is weird. It’s weird-weird.”

A beat, and then they both groan. They both sink a little deeper into the tub, the silence between them steaming just as heavily as the air around them. Water laps gently against the edge.

“This is,” Mira starts, choking on all of her confusion and frustration over this—this—thing they’ve got themselves neck-deep in right now. She takes in a deep breath, then tries again. “This is Rumi, we’re talking about. We’ve seen her running on seventy-two hours of no sleep and then doze off on the couch and slobber all over the throw pillows. We’ve seen her pick food off the floor and still eat it. We’ve been holed up in the dance studio with her for hours on end that I can practically taste her body odor.” When Zoey scrunches her face in disgust, Mira throws her hands up, water sloshing around them. “Exactly. That’s exactly my point. We’ve seen Rumi at her best, and at her worst, and at her grossest. It’s Rumi, Zoey. We know her. We’ve known her, like, forever. It’s Rumi, and we shouldn’t have—it’s—it’s fucking weird, Zoey.”

Zoey sinks lower, like a puppy that’s just been yelled at. After a while, she mumbles, “I’m just, you know, saying. It’s not like we’re actually going to do anything about it.” A beat, then: “It’s not like we actually want to, right?”

But then Mira doesn’t say anything, so Zoey gives her this look and repeats, “Right?”

Mira clears her throat awkwardly. “Y-yeah,” she says, trying not to squirm under Zoey’s gaze, “right. Yeah. Of course we don’t. Obviously.”

Zoey laughs, high pitched and half-manic. “Yeah, duh.”

They both go still. Dead silent. Then, without really looking at Zoey, Mira says, “You… don’t want to?”

Zoey’s mouth opens, closes. “I don’t know,” she says, the words tumbling out of her mouth more than her actually speaking them. “I—Maybe? No? Maybe? I mean—Rumi is—she’s hot, obviously—”

“Yeah, obviously,” Mira mutters, trying to play it cool. Trying to pretend that this isn’t their best friend, who accidentally walked in on them having sex, and who they thought about while they were having sex again, they’re talking about right now.

“Yeah—so.” Zoey purses her lips. “But, like, no, right? Obviously, I don’t—we don’t—”

“Yeah,” Mira says again, only fainter and less convinced this time, “obviously.”

But when Mira slinks lower and lower into the water, until her face is almost fully submerged, she thinks, Do I? Every bone in her body, every ounce of basic decency and common sense she has left in her is telling her NO, she doesn’t want to do anything about this, doesn’t want to turn this into anything, make it a thing, and she shouldn’t. She shouldn’t want to. Mira knows she shouldn’t.

But—

That’s the real kicker, isn’t it?

She shouldn’t, but.

Things get a little weird with Rumi for a while after that. Not that things went back to normal entirely after the little walk-in incident, but Mira is beginning to sense a shift in Rumi, specifically.

Rumi never used to be or feel weird around them when it came to their casual intimacy. She wouldn’t bat an eyelash if she saw them kissing or just straight-up making out, would maybe just scoff or, if she’s feeling more playful, wolf-whistle at them. Even when it came to sex, the most they’d ever get out of her was her telling them, sometimes, to just keep it down, not be too loud, some people need their beauty sleep too, you know! Because that’s just how Rumi is. She’s chill like that, and incredibly, unbelievably supportive of her best friends’ relationship. So supportive, in fact, that it didn’t even seem to shock her when they told her they were—finally, officially—dating. She just congratulated them, pulled them both into a big, warm hug, and said, grinning, “It’s about time!” Mira used to worry that Rumi would feel a little left out now that her bandmates and best friends were dating each other, but Rumi was quick to dispel those concerns, assuring them nothing would change between the three of them just because two of them were together now.

If only the Rumi then could see what’s become of them now.

Mira’s noticed that Rumi’s been acting a little weirder than usual lately, a little more closed-off, like there’s something that’s been eating at her but she doesn’t want them to know. Doesn’t want to tell them about. That’s nothing new for Rumi, to be fair. She can be… closed off, like that, which admittedly does frustrate Mira sometimes, especially when she can tell that Rumi’s problematic about something, worried about something, and all she wants to do is help her somehow but how can she, when she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be helping Rumi with in the first place?

But it isn’t just that.

Mira sees it—that subtle but still significant shift in Rumi—in the way she averts her gaze when they kiss, even if it’s not even a full-on make-out kiss, just something quick, something chaste and not the least bit scandalous (Rumi’s already seen that, much to everyone’s misfortune). It’s in the way she shifts a little awkwardly when they call each other babe or baby around her, and it’s in the way she gets a little flustered now when Zoey and Mira come into the kitchen together, having stayed the night at one or the other’s room like they usually do and have been doing for what feels like ages now, hair mussed, lips still kiss-swollen, love marks scattered across inches upon inches of skin, and Zoey’s got Mira’s shirt from the night before on, hanging loosely around her petite frame.

Rumi used to just tease them for being insufferable. Now, it’s like she doesn’t know where to look, or if she’s still allowed to look.

It gets bad enough that Zoey starts begging Mira to stage an intervention. It’s not ‘bad’ in the sense that they’re fighting, obviously, because if it ever got to that then they’d need more than just a simple intervention, but it’s ‘bad’ in the sense that Rumi’s awkwardness around them is making them feel bad. Maybe other people—a different set of best friends who also happen to be roommates—could laugh about something like this, could just go, can you believe I walked in on you two fucking it out on the couch?, and then call it a day, but not them. Not when Zoey and Mira have crossed a line much worse than ill-timed couch sex. Not when they thought about Rumi while they were having sex with each other.

Mira waits until things have slowed down a little before she approaches Rumi about it. She didn’t want to, but Zoey wouldn’t let it go, and she even busted out the puppy-dog eyes at Mira, which is a cheap and dirty trick, but—whatever. Mira’s here now, and the sooner she gets this over with, the better.

It’s past midnight when Mira finds Rumi in the kitchen. They got home just over an hour ago from a whole day of taping for a variety show. Rumi’s leaning against the counter, barefoot and slightly hunched as she waits for the electric kettle to finish boiling. There’s a half-opened cup of ramyeon waiting to be filled.

Mira rubs at her eyes as she pads into the kitchen, hair still damp from the quick shower she took. She’s exhausted, but her nerves are worse than her fatigue. Rumi looks up at the sound of her footsteps, and Mira catches it, the way Rumi just barely tenses, just for a split second, before her entire body relaxes again and she puts on a practiced, easy smile. She gestures to the ramyeon and asks, “You want some too?”

Mira opens her mouth to say no, but her stomach betrays her with a loud, unfortunately timed growl. She looks down and scowls.

Rumi raises an eyebrow, grinning. “I’ll take that as a yes, then,” she says, already reaching into the cupboard for another cup of ramyeon. Mira just sighs, then flops down into a chair at the dining table.

Since they’re both still too hungry to really engage in conversation, they eat their ramyeon in companionable silence for a while. Mira doesn’t really mind, if it means she gets to delay the inevitable for a little while longer. Eventually, it’s Rumi who breaks the silence by asking, “Where’s Zoey? Is she asleep already?”

Mira hums around a mouthful of noodles. When she returned from the bathroom, she found Zoey knocked out cold in her—that is, Mira’s—bed. She would wake her up for some ramyeon too but it looks like she needs some shut-eye even more right now. Zoey won’t begrudge them for having a midnight snack without her.

“Hey,” says Mira after a minute, and immediately she can tell she’s going to regret this, “Rumi.”

Rumi’s eyes flicker back up to Mira’s face, mid-slurp, just as she noisily sucks the last of the noodles into her mouth with a wet, inelegant shlup. “Yeah?”

There’s a brief moment where Mira considers saying, nah, it’s nothing, nevermind, but Rumi’s looking at her like she’s expecting something now, and it might only be more awkward for Mira to backpedal now, so she might as well commit. She chews on her noodles, swallows, then says, “I just, uh, wanted to apologize again for—you know—the, uh.”

Sorry too for thinking about you while Zoey and I were having sex, but it’s probably best she left that unsaid for now.

Rumi blinks at her then, she huffs out a laugh. “You’re seriously bringing that up again?”

Mira shrugs, swirling the ramyeon around with her chopsticks. “Well,” she says, trying not to sound like she’s been giving this a lot of thought, which she most definitely has been, “it’s just that it’s been feeling a little… weird lately. With you. And I—we figured it might be our fault.”

“It’s not,” Rumi says immediately, too fast. “I… I mean, yeah, it was really, really awkward—”

“Yeah, like, super awkward.”

“Totally. But… I got over it. So should you.”

Mira suddenly remembers Zoey saying, I think she liked it.

There’s a small, reckless part of Mira that wants to ask Rumi if she did. The only thing that’s stopping her is that—well—this is Rumi they’re talking about, and she doesn’t know how she would react or what she would do if Rumi told her she did like what she saw… or that, maybe, she would even want to be part of it, somehow.

She shuts that train of thought down before her libido can rear its ugly head and set its sights on it.

In the end, all Mira can really think to say is, “I just… hope we aren’t making you feel left out or anything.” A beat, just to gauge Rumi’s reaction, then she adds, “You’ll always be our best friend.”

Mira doesn’t know if she’s imagining it, but Rumi’s grip tightens around her chopsticks, her expression unreadable. Then, she just plasters a smile on her face like it never happened, and says, “Yeah, of course. I know that.”

Mira can’t shake her feeling of unease but just puts on a smile too. “Thanks for the ramyeon. I didn’t know I needed that, but… Leader always knows best, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Rumi says, even quieter now, not even looking at Mira anymore, “I guess so,” and then she shovels the rest of her ramyeon into her mouth.

Things don’t get any better from there, but they also don’t really get any worse either. It’s at least easier to pretend like whatever this is isn’t happening right now when they’ve got the promotions for Golden to keep them busy, and the Honmoon to seal once and for all. They’ve got no time to keep simmering in whatever this is when they’ve got the fucking Saja Boys and their annoyingly catchy soda-pop bop and their stupid fucking abs to worry about now too. She’s gotta hand it to Gwi-ma: the bastard is getting creative.

Things might still be a little weird between the three of them, with Rumi, but right now they’re united under their hate for those soda pop-guzzling skin-tight skinny jeans-wearing demons. At least, right now, they can all be on the same page about something, and what better, more noble thing than the objective of kicking some demon boy band ass?

For a moment, it’s like everything is… normal again, or at least the closest thing to normal that the three of them have been since that night Rumi walked in on them. It’s just them again. Late nights at the studio, with Zoey’s twenty-three notebooks packed with demon insults, and too much ramyeon and chips and late-night fried chicken runs that definitely don’t meet their diet but are all the sweeter for it. It’s not a walk in the park, of course, and there’s some… well, weird stuff going on with Rumi’s voice, though not exactly weird enough to raise any alarms in Mira’s head, but they’re getting somewhere with it, with Takedown, and Mira’s never felt more fired up in her entire life.

Mira’s never felt more relieved either, because it feels like they’re finally starting to get Rumi back.

So, of course, that’s when things start to get real fucking weird again.

“‘Woo, Jinu’,” Mira spits out, pacing around Zoey’s room. “Woo fucking Jinu—can you believe it? And now she wants to change the lyrics to Takedown, and—and—” She paces around some more, throwing her hands up in frustration. “Seriously, what is wrong with Rumi—and why now?”

Zoey’s curled up in her swivel chair, flipping through the pages of her notebook, forlorn. She doesn’t say anything for a while, to the point that Mira stops expecting her to, but then when she finally does speak, it’s to murmur miserably, “I hate it when you fight.”

That makes Mira freeze in her tracks. She feels all of the fight she still had left in her slowly leave her body. She pads towards Zoey’s bed, flops down onto it, and just… deflates. “Yeah,” she mumbles, scrubbing a hand down her face. “Me too.”

They’ve had their fair share of misunderstandings and disagreements just like any other group of friends—coworkers—out there. The disagreeing usually falls on Rumi and Mira’s shoulders, often leaving Zoey stuck in the middle and with the responsibility of calming things and calming them down. It’s not that they fought often, if anything they’ve always tried their best not to, if they can really help it, but maybe that’s what makes the fights, when they do happen, so much worse. So much harder on everyone, but Zoey especially.

But Mira can’t let go of this one. Because it isn’t just a fight over some stupid, inconsequential thing. They’re talking about a demon fucking apocalypse here, and she just can’t wrap her mind around why Rumi’s acting like this now, when the world needs her the most. When they need her the most.

“It’s all his fault,” Mira says before she can stop herself, feeling all of her frustration—her anger—starting to rise up to the surface again. “I don’t know what he’s said to her, or done to her, but he’s obviously the reason she’s like this. I mean, ‘woo fucking Jinu?’”

Zoey purses her lips. She looks like she wants to disagree, but she just can’t. She pulls her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around them, tucking her chin over her knees. “I don’t think it’s just him,” she tries, weakly.

Mira tries to calm herself down again for Zoey’s sake. “Yeah, it might not be,” she concedes as much, “but he’s still obviously a huge part of why she’s acting like this. It’s not just him, but it is still him.”

“She’s keeping something from us,” Mira goes on to say, seething again already, “and I know—I know—it’s got something to do with Jinu. You know, like how she’s been sneaking out a lot lately, and now she wants to just—scrap the song entirely, or something—and then at the fansign—” She stops to inhale, and then exhale, slowly. “He’s gotten into her head, Zoey. I don’t know what he’s been telling her, or how he’s doing it, but he’s doing it. And Rumi—”

Mira finds her voice catching on that. Zoey looks up at her too, her expression just shy of pained. They’re both thinking the same thing, Mira knows that much, but it’s Zoey who tries to put it into words: “Do you think she’s…?”

Mira can’t help the way she flinches at that. Suddenly her anger is replaced by something else, something dread-like, and something she can’t quite put a finger on. “She can’t be,” she manages to get out, swallowing around a sudden blockage in her throat. “She can’t, she’s—”

Mira stops there, just before she makes another huge mistake, but they both know what she meant to say.

Ours.

Rumi is ours.

The air between and all around them is heavy with what’s been left unsaid. Mira’s head is spinning with it, like she can’t believe she really almost said that—and the worst part is, she believes it, with her whole fucking chest and everything. And there’s just a part of her that can’t fathom Rumi loving anyone else but them, nevermind that Jinu is a fucking demon on top of everything else. Can’t help but think it should be them, and why isn’t it them? Hasn’t it always been the three of them? Shouldn’t it always be the three of them?

“Mira,” Zoey says gently, sensing Mira spiraling, “baby, hey.”

The next second she’s kneeling down in front of Mira, taking Mira’s hands into hers. She just holds Mira’s hands like that for a while, like she’s still trying to think of what to say, or what she can say, too. “I… honestly can’t understand Rumi right now either, and I’m trying to, I really am. I don’t want her to be in—whatever with Jinu any more than you do, but… this is Rumi we’re talking about, right? Our Rumi. I think she’s… scared, Mira. Scared about something. And I wish she wouldn’t pull away from us like this, just tell us what it is so we can help her, but I don’t think she’s, you know… choosing him.”

That unspoken not over us hangs in the air between them.

“Yeah,” Mira says eventually, breathing the word out like an exhausted sigh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

Zoey smiles up at her softly. “Yeah?”

Mira huffs. “Yeah.” Then, after a beat: “I’m sorry, by the way. About earlier. On the train.”

Zoey just shakes her head. “I hate it when you fight,” she says again, a little pouty, “but I guess…” She shrugs. “It just… happens, you know? And I guess sometimes it can’t be helped, not with the way you two are.”

Mira narrows her eyes at Zoey. “Okay, and what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

Zoey doesn’t actually answer her. She just flashes her this cheeky, lethally endearing little smile. Then, out of fucking nowhere, she hits Mira with, “You’re cute when you’re jealous, though.”

Mira tries to stop her face from burning bright red. “I wasn’t—” she begins to protest, but the words just die in her mouth.

“It’s okay,” Zoey says, and this time her voice, her eyes, her entire face, is dark with something headier. Hungrier. Then, before Mira can even think to stop her, Zoey pushes Mira’s legs apart and settles between them, her palms warm and firm against the insides of Mira’s thighs.

Mira’s pulse kicks up a notch. “Zoey…”

“What?” Zoey teases, her fingers sliding higher, edging beneath the hem of Mira’s bear nightgown. The fleece shifts under her touch, soft and pliant, rucking up inch by inch as her palms trace slowly up the insides of Mira’s thighs. Warm, possessive, like she’s claiming space there, one breath at a time. “You’re telling me you don’t want it?”

Mira doesn’t know why Zoey even needs to ask. She knows Mira wants it. But…

“I want to make you feel good,” Zoey says, determined and eager in that way she always is, like she needs it more than Mira does.

Eagerness to please, that quack doctor had said about Zoey. Maybe too eager. Mira can’t find it in her to see that as a flaw, though, not when Zoey’s got her head between her thighs and she’s looking up at her like that: like she’s going to make Mira come so hard her soul leaves her body, or she’ll die trying.

So, Mira tangles her fingers in Zoey’s hair, tugging just a little, just enough to make Zoey breathe in sharply, then says, “Okay.”

Zoey beams up at her and that’s probably the closest Mira’s ever going to get to having the sun shine at her from between her legs.

They go from zero to a fucking thousand in the blink of an eye. Zoey eats pussy with the same eagerness she brings to everything else she does. It isn’t long before Mira’s thighs are shaking against Zoey’s arms, toes curling and fingers clenching around fistfuls of Zoey’s sheets because it feels like she’s falling and she needs something to hold on to, desperately. Zoey’s got a surprisingly strong and firm grip around Mira’s body, keeping it in place, steady, even as the upper half squirms restlessly. Her hair is hopelessly tousled from Mira’s fingers, and two spots of faint pink sit high on her cheekbones, but despite all of Mira’s tugging and her pleas of fuck, baby, slow down and are you trying to kill me?, Zoey stays where she is, the flat of her tongue dragging down and back up. She licks up through her folds, fast and firm, and every broad caress of her tongue makes Mira moan and whimper in ways that she’s not the least bit proud of and would probably do serious damage to her rough-and-tumble image if anyone saw her like this.

Mira almost screams when Zoey fits her entire mouth over her clit and sucks. “Zoey,” she gasps, screwing her eyes shut, a hard arch bringing her back off the mattress. She doesn’t know if she wants to fuck herself against Zoey’s mouth or if she wants to get away from all of the sensation, all she knows is—“I’m gonna—oh, fuck, Zoey—you’ll be the death of me—”

She feels rather than hears Zoey giggle at that, thoroughly pleased with herself. She feels it rumble up through her pussy, can almost even feel the shape of Zoey’s smile against her skin.

It’s too much. Zoey is too much. Warm and wet and just relentless, her mouth working her over like she’s trying to win something, prove something, and Mira’s right on the edge of falling apart. She’s close, she’s so fucking close she can almost taste it. Every nerve in Mira’s body feels like it’s on fire, her body wound tight, taut, ready to just snap and break.

But then, somewhere in the dizzying haze, something shifts. It isn’t anything to do with Zoey, who’s still focused and still so perfect at what she does, where she is, still lapping at Mira like she’s starved for it and for her. No, it’s Mira—it’s her head, it’s all in her head. It’s her thoughts veering sideways before she can stop them: a flash of braided, purple hair, and a different mouth moving against her—slower, more tentative—not Zoey.

Rumi.

Mira’s stomach flips. She clenches her eyes shut tighter, tries to shove it down, tries to anchor herself back in the here and now. This is Zoey, this is Zoey loving her, touching her, not Rumi, and she shouldn’t want it to be Rumi, shouldn’t be thinking about her again like this, not when she’s done her best not to think about her again, even if it seems like her body just can’t let go of it. But the thought sticks, and it won’t let go, and of course—of course—Zoey feels it too. Of course she knows.

She pulls away and, breathlessly, says, “You’re thinking about her too, aren’t you?”

Somehow the way Zoey said that—you’re thinking about her too, not just you’re thinking about her, like they’re in this together, guilty of the same crime—makes it so much more damning. Mira’s throat works around a noise that’s half gasp, half denial. “I-I wasn’t,” she says, insists, even if it doesn’t sound the least bit convincing to her own ears, and even if Zoey isn’t jealous—she knows Zoey, so she knows she isn’t—but because it seems like the thing she ought to do as Zoey’s girlfriend. “I wasn’t—Zoey—”

Mira’s voice trails off into a high whine when Zoey leans in again and lays into her like it’s not enough that she makes her come, or that she pleases her, she wants to wreck her, break her clean in half, sever her tenuous hold on reality entirely. She buries her face in Mira’s dripping cunt, nose nudging against her clit, and licks into her over and over and over until Mira’s back is arching off the bed again and her fingers are tangled in Zoey’s hair again, tugging insistently, nails digging painfully into her scalp, but all of it just seems to feed right back into Zoey’s pleasure anyway, if the way she moans against her is any indication.

That’s when Zoey slides two fingers inside Mira without warning. Deep, sure, curling just right, and Mira nearly jolts off the mattress. Her voice breaks on Zoey’s name. “Z-Zoey, oh fuck, Zoey—” Her voice has shattered into useless little gasps, her thoughts a mess of white noise and unbearable need. She’s trying to hold on, trying to ground herself in Zoey, but—

“Say it,” Zoey says, and her face is flushed, her eyes the darkest Mira’s ever seen them, and she curls her fingers just so, hitting that spot that makes Mira see stars, “Go on, baby, say it—what you really want to call me.”

“N-no, Zoey, I—” The words hit like lightning. Mira’s eyes fly open. She knows what Zoey’s really asking. Knows it, bone-deep, even if she can’t bear to admit it. But her body’s already slipping out of her grip, and Zoey’s mouth is still on her, her fingers still moving inside her, and everything hurts in the most perfect, unbearable way, and then Zoey twists her fingers again as her teeth graze the soft folds of Mira’s labia, and that’s it, that’s what pushes Mira right over the edge, and she gasps out, “Rumi—”

Mira’s crying a little when she comes down from it. Zoey eases her fingers out and presses a kiss to the inside of Mira’s thigh before she crawls up the bed and flops down beside Mira, eyes bright. Her face is glistening with Mira’s slick, from her cheeks down to her chin. Mira throws her elbow over her eyes, just so she doesn’t have to look.

For a while, the only sound there is is the sound of their heavy breathing. Then, so softly that Mira almost doesn’t hear it over the jackhammering of her heartbeat in her ears, Zoey says, “Yeah. I’m jealous too.”

The next morning they talk it out, hug it out, and then just… carry on with their lives. With their duty. They’ve got the Honmoon to seal once and for all and a demon boy band to send right back into the pits of hell, after all. No use mucking about.

Before they head out to rehearsals, Mira whips the fridge open and reaches in for something to drink, something to take with her. Her hand brushes past a few cans and bottles before she plucks something out from the back—and then freezes. Peach soda, smug and pink and impossible to ignore. Images from the night before suddenly hit her out of nowhere, sweep through her, and for a second she’s back in Zoey’s bed. Zoey’s mouth, Zoey’s fingers. Her voice breaking on a name that wasn’t Zoey’s. Zoey coaxing it out of her.

Her stomach twists. She puts it back and grabs a few bottles of banana milk instead and hurriedly shoves them all into her tote bag as Rumi calls for her—come on, let’s go!—and then she slams the refrigerator door shut.

And then, just like that, it’s… over.

They’ve restored and sealed the Honmoon. They’ve defeated Gwi-ma. And it’s—it’s over. It’s all finally, really over, and they’re all still here, the three of them, alive and only a little worse for wear. Together again.

Mira still can’t wrap her head around it. She’s happy, of course, and definitely relieved, but when you’ve spent so much of your life working towards something and then you finally get there, and it’s just… weird. Now you’re left with nothing—or maybe not nothing, not entirely, but you’re left floating for a while, aimless, pathless, and there’s definitely a kind of freedom to be found in that, but right now it’s just. Weird.

It’s weird that it’s just… over, now, and all that’s left is just the three of them with way too much time to kill for the next three months before their comeback.

Mira and Zoey spend most of the hiatus glued to Rumi’s side.

They’ve always been close, obviously, and they’ve always hung out together, all three of them, obviously, but it’s almost like they’re afraid to leave Rumi’s side these days. It was… rough, finding out about Rumi’s patterns—that Rumi, their best friend and fellow Hunter, was half-demon herself all along—the way that they did. Mira isn’t too proud of how she’d reacted at the time, and neither is Zoey. Rumi told them that she understood them, and that she might have even reacted the same way if she were in their shoes, but… “It wasn’t right,” was all Mira could think to say, guilty, her face covered in so much snot from how much and how hard she’d been crying. It wasn’t right, and Mira still believes that now. It wasn’t right that Rumi had to feel so scared like that, that she had to face that all alone, and that the two people who should have been by her side—on her side—no matter what pushed her away when she needed them the most. Rumi is still their best friend, still their Rumi, patterns and all.

So, yeah: maybe some of it is just them overcompensating.

It’s Zoey who instigates most of the hanging-out, dragging them to karaoke or the arcade, where they spend a fortune on the stupid fucking claw machine, or she sits them both down at the couch and finally makes them watch that list of seven hundred two-second videos all about turtles that Zoey just won’t shut up about, and it’s so mind-numbingly, gloriously boring that both Rumi and Mira are actually in tears by the end of it. It’s Zoey who forces sunshine back into their lives—between the three of them—again the way only she can. Mira’s always loved that about Zoey: how easily she can bridge the gap between Rumi and Mira, filling the void with all of her loud, bubbly energy to make up for all the ways Rumi and Mira tend to withdraw into themselves at times like this. After a fight. After an almost-demon-apocalypse.

For the most part, it seems that Rumi really appreciates it. It can still be a little awkward sometimes, even after they’ve talked, hugged, and cried it out, but she seems to appreciate their efforts in making sure she’s never left alone. Unloved. She does seem a little exasperated by it at times, but never enough to actually tell them to go away, leave her alone. It doesn’t seem like she wants to be alone, not right now, not after everything.

It’s taken Mira some time to come to terms with it, and the entire hullabaloo that was the Idol Awards certainly didn’t help, but maybe—just maybe, okay—there was a small part of her that was jealous over whatever affection Rumi seemed to have for Jinu. Even now, she feels a pang of it sometimes when she catches this faraway look in Rumi’s eyes, or when she can sense her drifting from them just a little, and her laugh isn’t as bright and her smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes and she might be there with them physically but Mira and Zoey know her mind is elsewhere. Whatever it was… It must have been real, or at least real enough for Rumi to be sad about it the way she is. She must have actually, really cared about Jinu, and, maybe, Jinu must have really cared about her too, as much as a demon like himself has the capacity to care for someone.

Mira can’t really say she understands it, or that she even likes it, but Rumi is their best friend, so it’s their job as her best friends to be there for her when she needs them the most.

Zoey is a whirlwind of motion and noise again. She’s rolling around the living room floor with the big blue tiger that Rumi somehow managed to, like, adopt right under their noses—seriously, where did she even get that thing?—wrestling it into a chokehold one second and then shrieking with laughter the next as it flips her over like a ragdoll. It’s chaos, and it’s joy, and it’s so Zoey.

Mira watches it all unfold with a smile, leaning against the kitchen counter as she waits for her ramyeon to cook. When she glances over at Rumi, she finds her sitting quietly on the couch, gaze soft but faraway, the edges of her mouth curved just a little. Mira watches her for a long, quiet moment, then she reaches up into the cupboard for another cup of ramyeon.

“Here,” Mira says later, holding the ramyeon out to Rumi like an offering. Rumi blinks, surprised, then carefully accepts it. Their fingers brush in the hand-off. Rumi’s eyes flick up to meet hers. Mira smiles, small and a little crooked, and Rumi smiles back. From the corner of Mira’s eye, she can see Zoey watching them, smiling to herself as she pets the big blue tiger.

They don’t need to understand, not really. They just need to be there.

Zoey names the tiger Derpy—“because it kind of looks like the meme—you know, the meme—wait, you don’t know?”—and neither Rumi nor Mira have it in them to argue against it. Zoey is their spoiled little maknae, after all, and they are nothing if not her unnies who really ought to know better.

The six-eyed magpie—“Sussie,” as Zoey also names it—squawks, like it’s amused.

Things are about as great as they’ve ever been between the three of them. They’re closer than ever, despite—or maybe precisely because of—everything they’ve been through. They’re in a great place right now, basically.

…Which is, maybe, why the urges start creeping up on them again.

They’ve got a lot, like a whole lot, of time on their hands now, and with no demons to worry about anymore, that means Mira’s got a whole lot of time to just be, you know, horny again—and she’s not the only one.

Lately, whenever they’re not at Rumi’s side—whenever Rumi’s holed up in her room, or they just get the sense that she just doesn’t need them as much—Zoey gets this look in her eye, the kind that says she’s got a whole lot of energy that she needs burning off, that she wants Mira, badly, and Mira is more than happy to oblige. Their sex life’s always been healthy, but now, they get to actually fuck without any of the urgency and without the fate of mankind hanging over their heads constantly. Now they get to really just take their time with it, enjoy each other. They’re careful about it now, of course—no more getting handsy under the blanket while Rumi’s on the other end of the couch with them—but maybe that’s part of the problem.

Maybe it only makes things a little bit worse for them, more intense, the way they have to keep it contained. Like the more they have to hold it and themselves back, the more it just simmers. Builds. Tightens. Until it’s almost unbearable. Because it is—it’s unbearable, having to pretend like they aren’t still, constantly, thinking about Rumi like that.

Mira tells herself Rumi doesn’t know. That she wouldn’t even guess. That she’s moved on, really, just like she said before, and that she’s fine now, and that there’s nothing left simmering under the surface… but then she starts to notice the way Rumi looks at them sometimes—or doesn’t.

Mira’s picked up on it, how Rumi’s started to avert her eyes a little too quickly again when she catches them kissing, even if it’s just a peck on the cheek, or holding hands, or the way she stiffens just a little when she finds them tangled up on the couch, half-asleep under a shared blanket. Or the way she just says, “Maybe next time,” sometimes when they ask her if she wants to go out with them—to the movies, for some barbecue, whatever—even if Mira can tell that she doesn’t really have anything better or more important to do anyway. It’s not that she’s pulling away from them again or anything, and sometimes she’s still her usual affectionate self with them, but Mira can still feel that something’s shifted again. That Rumi’s looking at them with something tightly wound behind her eyes, like she’s bracing herself for a punch that’s not coming.

As much as it (still) kind of annoys her, Mira tells herself it’s probably just about Jinu. That Rumi’s been through a lot and watching Mira and Zoey be so all over each other right now, even more than the usual, is just… you know, salt in the wound, or whatever.

But then she catches the look on Rumi’s face when she sees them come out of the same room—Mira’s, Zoey’s, doesn’t matter—together in the morning, or when her eyes catch on a new hickey just along the hinge of Mira’s jaw, or when she notices the funny way Zoey’s walking, like she can’t get her legs to move the way she wants them to, and like they always weigh a ton and a half, dragging her feet from one end of the penthouse to the other.

Mira shouldn’t be noticing this much. Shouldn’t be thinking about how Rumi’s gaze lingers—not on their faces, but on the marks they leave behind, the way Zoey walks like she’s still got Mira’s fingers inside her. But now that she’s thinking about it, she can’t stop.

She tells herself, tries to convince herself, that it’s just the grief. The bad timing. Maybe even jealousy. That—that would make sense, like, way too much sense, even. But then the thought keeps scratching at the edge of her mind, like an itch she’s too afraid to name:

What if… it isn’t anything as simple as that?

What if Rumi liked it—and what if she still likes it? Still wants it, with them?

Mira shouldn’t be thinking about that. She shouldn’t want it to be true.

But the moment the idea surfaces again, it hits her low and hard, curling hot in her gut.

It doesn’t help that Rumi’s demon patterns are, like, really doing it for Mira and Zoey too.

Sure, Mira was, in a word, aghast when she first saw them, but that was then and this is now. And now, Mira can admit that they’re actually kind of… beautiful. Rumi’s always been gorgeous, but there’s just something about her now, with the demon patterns curling all over and around her body, out in the open, no more hiding, no more shame, that’s just—it just gets to Mira.

Rumi still hasn’t joined them to the bathhouse, but they have been getting treated to more and more of what’s underneath lately. She isn’t always so bundled up anymore, now that she doesn’t have any reason to hide her patterns from them. And Mira—well, she tries not to stare. Really, she does. It’s just hard not to look when there’s so much skin on display now, and the patterns are just… there, curling down her arms, peeking out from the collar of her shirts, climbing up the back of her neck. Zoey’s just as guilty—Mira’s caught her sneaking glances more than once, her gaze drifting a little too slow, a little too low, like she’s trying to memorize them or something, perfectly map out the patterns and, then, perfectly map out Rumi’s body. It was especially bad, though, when one morning Rumi walked out of her room in jeans and a crop-top, walking around like it was nothing, but it wasn’t nothing, not to Mira and not to Zoey, not when Mira’s eyes caught on the lines slinking down her stomach to disappear into the waistband of Rumi’s jeans, and Mira thought, so the patterns do go all the way down there, before she caught herself and then felt like a total fucking creep for having given it so much thought in the first place.

Whatever look Mira had on her face that time made Rumi blush before she just ducked out of the room, a silent agreement forming between them to pretend like it never happened.

But even if Rumi is still a little shy about her patterns sometimes, Mira’s noticed that there’s been this new surge of confidence in her too, like she’s owning who she is, or at least learning to, 100%. Even after that weird, awkward little hiccup over the crop-top, Rumi’s been wearing more of those lately too, like she knows that Mira—and Zoey—definitely like what they see, and she’s more than happy to give them more to ogle at. Of course, it’s presumptuous to say that Rumi’s doing all of this for their benefit and their benefit alone, but—fuck. If her goal is to drive them crazy, then it’s fucking working.

“W-whoa, hey, Mira,” Zoey breathes out, scrambling for somewhere to hold her and then eventually settling on holding her by her hips, “Slow down.”

But Mira isn’t listening, not really. She’s too busy grinding against Zoey’s thigh, her panties yanked to the side, her slick dragging hot and shameless over Zoey’s bare skin. Her brows are furrowed in something between frustration and focus, eyes squeezed shut like she’s chasing something just out of reach.

She’d dragged Zoey all the way here. Practically hauled her into the bedroom, shoved her down onto the bed with a grip like she was about to fuck her stupid—and then just climbed into her lap. Zoey gave her this look, like, is this really happening, too stunned and too horny, really, to speak, and Mira had just pulled her panties aside and started moving.

Now she’s panting, rocking harder and harder, hips jerking forward with a rhythm that’s desperate, almost angry. Her thighs are starting to burn from all of the effort already, and there’s slick everywhere, soaking into the hem of Zoey’s shorts, smeared between Mira’s own thighs. It’s obscene, is what it is, how she’s soaking through everything, and all Zoey can do is watch Mira drags her cunt hot and wet all over her thigh, letting out these choked huffs and bitten-off whines against Zoey’s neck. She’s trying so hard not to come too fast, and she’s failing miserably.

Mira can’t stop thinking about it. She can’t stop thinking about Rumi, about the patterns all over her skin, about how she wants to—fuck; her hips stutter against Zoey’s thigh—how she wants to trace every inch of Rumi’s skin, those patterns, with her mouth, her tongue, wants to kiss all the way down, down, down—

“I want it,” Mira moans into Zoey’s neck, working herself harder, faster, against Zoey’s thigh, and she’s suddenly hit with how badly she wants, no, needs it that she almost sobs from it. “I want it, I want it.”

Zoey’s grip tightens on her hips. “Yeah?” she breathes out, voice heavy and hot with the very same thing that’s possessed Mira. “What is it you want, baby?”

Mira bites down on her lower lip like she’s still trying to put up a fight, like she won’t let herself succumb to this thing that’s been simmering and building up, up, and up inside her for so long, since that night, since they first both thought about it, until she finally breaks and groans, “Rumi—I want Rumi.”

It hits Mira before she even realizes what’s happening. Mira lets out a broken, guttural moan and clamps down, shaking as her orgasm rips through her body like a hurricane, leaving her whole body trembling, hips grinding helplessly through the aftershocks as she comes hard against Zoey’s thigh. She clings to her like she’s about to fall apart, forehead pressed to Zoey’s shoulder, breath coming in short, ragged bursts.

Zoey just holds her, arms firm and warm around her, smoothing her hands up and down her sides to ground her as she trembles in her lap, ruined and shaking and so full of want she can barely breathe. “That’s it,” she murmurs, gentle, soothing, “that’s it, let go,” and Mira just—collapses, goes limp, against her, “let go.”

Now that it’s finally out in the open, and now that Mira has finally said the fucking obvious out loud, has finally admitted to it—it all feels so much realer. It feels realer, like there are actually stakes now, and like they actually have to do something about it now.

“Or, you know, we just don’t do anything about it,” Mira counters, the water sloshing around her as she sits up, “just like we’ve been doing all this time.”

They’re in the bathhouse again. Not for the express purpose of talking about Rumi without her knowing, although it has proven itself handy for that. No, they’re here now for the same reason they always are: to de-stress. Relax. That they’re talking about Rumi again is just pure happenstance.

Zoey gives Mira this look, then she says, “Yeah, but…”

Mira cocks a brow at her. “But?”

“You said you wanted it,” Zoey answers, like it’s really as simple as that.

“That doesn’t mean I have to act on it,” Mira reminds her, a mix of embarrassed and exasperated now.

Zoey goes quiet again for a moment, then sinking a little further into the hot, hot water, she mumbles, “I want it too.”

“Zoey…”

“I—” Zoey purses her lips. “I think Rumi wants it too. You saw how she looked at us, when she saw us. I-I don’t think I was just imagining things, Mira. I know Rumi. You know Rumi. And the way she’s been acting around us lately—all I’m saying is, whatever this is, I don’t think we’d be wrong to, like, do something about it.”

Mira stares at her. Just stares, for a long, quiet moment, like she’s not sure if she heard right—or maybe like she did, and she’s just trying to process it. The water laps softly around them, steam curling in the air between them, when she finally unsticks her jaw to say, incredulous but horribly not opposed, “So you’re saying we should, what? Corner her into having sex with us?”

Zoey’s face burns stoplight red. “N-no! I mean—you don’t have to put it like that.”

“It’s basically what you’re saying anyway,” Mira says, laughing even if there isn’t a single thing funny about this at all. “Just sit her down, hit her with a hey, want to fuck us both?”

“That is not what I meant!”

“Then what did you mean?”

“I…” Zoey sinks lower into the water. “I don’t know,” she admits, quiet. “I just thought maybe we don’t have to keep pretending like it’s not there anymore. Like we’re not all thinking about it.”

“And if she’s not?”

“Then… she’s not.” Zoey quirks her lips, then shrugs. “Then we just drop it, and… It’s fine. It’ll be fine.”

Mira cocks a brow at her again, smiling a little. “Will it, though?”

Zoey doesn’t say anything, or at least, she doesn’t answer that directly. “You know me, Mira. I can’t just… keep all this in. I hate having to pretend like I don't want it, or her, or that it doesn’t mean anything to me, because it does.”

Mira’s expression softens. “Yeah,” she sighs. “I know.”

They get home from the bathhouse past seven. It’s quiet in the penthouse, the lights low.

Rumi’s in the kitchen when they walk in. She’s slicing up an apple with a little paring knife, her oversized shirt hanging loosely around her frame. Her demon patterns are visible through the thin fabric. It’s weird, but for how much time Mira’s spent just staring at them, she’s never noticed until now that they have this constant, faint glow to them, like they’re alive. Her train of thought comes to a screeching halt when Rumi finally looks up, smiles at them, and says, “Hey. You guys eat already?”

She says it so casually that Mira can’t help but find it jarring. Like nothing’s changed between them, and like Mira didn’t spend the entire trip to the bathhouse half-drowning in the weight of her own thoughts and the conversation that’s been hanging between Zoey and herself all evening.

In the end, it’s Zoey who answers, plopping down onto the chair across Rumi,“Yeah. We had a light dinner on the way back.”

“Cool.” Rumi tosses a slice of apple into her mouth. “You guys want anything? Tea? Dessert? I think we’ve still got some of the rice cake Bobby brought over the other day—”

“It’s fine,” Mira interjects, and too sharply, if she had to guess from the look Zoey shoots her, like, DUDE, which is a funny enough thing to think about or call someone you play tonsil hockey with on the daily. She clears her throat anyway and says, slower, more relaxed this time, “We’re—I’m full.”

“Yup,” Zoey chirps, nodding a little too vigorously. “Me too. We’re full.”

It’s Mira’s turn to shoot her the DUDE look.

Rumi’s eyes bounce back and forth between them, like she’s trying to figure out just what the hell is really going on, but then she just shrugs in the end like she’s decided maybe it’s best not to probe. She does turn to look at Mira again, though, to ask, amused, “You’re really just gonna stand there?”

A blush burns across Mira’s cheeks. She sets her bag down too and occupies the seat on Rumi’s other side, so she’s dab smack in the middle of Mira and Zoey.

Rumi looks at Zoey and then at Mira, and then she laughs. “What?”

Zoey looks at Mira, like, HELP or please take one for the team, which leaves Mira with basically no choice but to say, “It’s, uh—well, Zoey and I—”

“Yes,” Zoey pipes up oh so helpfully.

“—we’ve just been, you know…” Mira’s eyes flicker back and forth between Zoey and Rumi, then she takes in a breath, and says, “It’s just that we’ve noticed you’ve been… a little down, I-I guess?”

“Yeah, like, um… Like something is bugging you,” Zoey says, actually helpful this time.

“And I—we just thought, you know…” God, Mira can’t believe she’s doing this, but: “Just—you and Jinu…”

Comprehension flashes across Rumi’s face. She slows her chewing, eyes bouncing back and forth between Zoey and Mira again before she swallows, just as slowly, then asks, “What about him?”

Mira drums her fingers against the table. “Well, there was obviously something going on between you two, and—”

“There wasn’t,” Rumi cuts in, unexpectedly. “Or, I mean—whatever you guys think it was, it wasn’t—that.”

Sensing the drastic shift in the room’s mood, Zoey steps in, just like she always does when Mira and Rumi get like this, and says, gently, “We’re not saying anything, Rumi. We just…” She glances briefly at Mira, then back at Rumi. “We know you cared about him, and after what happened, it’s okay if you’re not okay. That’s all we meant. And we just wanted to check in with you, that’s all.”

Mira can’t help the pang of guilt over how tactlessly she’d handled that, but she also feels tremendously grateful that Zoey is here—that Zoey is Zoey—because she manages to put Rumi at ease again.

She doesn’t say anything right away. She doesn’t look like she wants to, but eventually something gives away behind her eyes and she says, “Yeah. I… I did, but I guess… I guess it was also a little bit more complicated than that.”

Zoey and Mira exchange glances. Neither of them say anything just yet.

Rumi doesn’t, either. She just sits there, absently pushing at the last slice of apple on her plate, like she’s trying to decide if it’s worth eating. Then, finally, she says, “It’s not… just about him.”

Zoey and Mira both glance at her, but neither says anything. They just wait.

Rumi exhales, eyes still fixed on the table. “I mean, yeah, I cared about him. And I think—he got it, y’know? I’m… glad that he did, and maybe there’s always going to be that part of me that still wishes he didn’t anyway, because…” She shrugs, tapping her fingers against the edge of the plate, restless. “But it’s not just him.

“I keep thinking I should feel better—and I do. It’s all over, we don’t have to worry about demons anymore, or saving the world anymore, and we can just be—”

“Normal?” Zoey supplies, smiling at her gently.

That makes a smile tug at Rumi’s own lips. “Yeah, normal. We can finally be normal… but it’s like my body, or maybe my brain, hasn’t quite caught up yet. I—” Her voice catches here, and Mira doesn’t make light of the way Rumi’s eyes flickers from Zoey to her, and then back down to the plate in front of her when she says, almost meek, almost hesitant, like she’s dipping her toes in the water to check just how cold it is but she can’t commit to fully jumping in just yet, “I feel like something’s still missing, but I don’t know what.”

Mira catches the sudden twinkle in Zoey’s eye before she casts her glance Mira’s way. Mira knows what she’s thinking. She is, unfortunately, thinking it too.

Maybe we don’t have to keep pretending like it’s not there anymore. Like we’re not all thinking about it.

And if this is the game Rumi wants to play, then…

Rumi does that thing again, looking back and forth between them like she’s trying to decode the looks they’re giving each other, like she’s trying to gauge their reaction to what she said, specifically, before she shoves the last slice of apple into her mouth and tries so hard not to get up too fast that she only ends up looking all the more awkward for it. She’s already got her back turned to them when she says, a nervous lilt to her voice, like she thinks she’d overstepped somehow or threw a shot in the dark and got nothing for it, “I really appreciate your concern, and I appreciate that you guys are looking out for me, really—I do—but I’m fine, I will be fine, and—”

Mira throws one last glance at Zoey and, feeling all of the emotion and all of the uncertainty and all of the want from the past few months swelling up inside her, thinks, What the hell.

“Rumi.”

Rumi turns around, and in a few quick strides Mira is at her side—and then she seizes Rumi in a kiss before she can manage it. Rumi almost drops the empty plate.

Somewhere behind them, Zoey gasps. And Rumi—Rumi stands there, stiff and frozen, but she doesn’t try to shy away from the kiss either. Doesn’t try to tear herself out of Mira’s hands. She just stands there, Mira’s lips pressed to hers, wide-eyed.

When Mira finally pulls away, she takes a good, hard look at Rumi’s flustered face and says, “So?”

Rumi is quiet long enough for Mira to start doubting herself, and to start coming up with some flimsy apology and excuse for what she did, but then Rumi sets the plate down by the sink then suddenly grabs Mira’s face in her hands and then hauls her back into another kiss.

There’s no hesitation this time, no second-guessing. Rumi kisses Mira like she’s been dying for it, and maybe she has been, and—damn it—Zoey was right, Rumi wanted it too, still wants it. All Mira can do is kiss her back with the same fervor, the same heat, months and months of pent-up frustration and longing spilling out between them. Mira swallows down the whine Rumi lets out when she grabs her by her hips and presses her closer, harder, against her body, like she wants to actually take Rumi into her. Rumi, in turn, grabs at Mira’s shirt, her neck, her hair, and she just keeps making these soft, almost broken noises as Mira kisses her, until the inside of her mouth is hot and bruised and all she can taste is the sharp sweetness of apple lingering on Rumi’s tongue.

“Hey! No fair!” Zoey says, and Mira hears the sound of the chair scraping against the floor as Zoey rushes out of it to join them. Mira breaks away just as Zoey wraps herself around Rumi’s back, sandwiching her between them, and then tilts Rumi’s face towards hers to say, cheeky, “This was my idea, you know,” before she captures her lips in a kiss too.

Somehow watching Zoey and Rumi kiss is even more exhilarating than kissing Rumi herself. Mira watches them, feeling that familiar curling of heat in her gut, that familiar ache growing between her legs, then she dives back in, pressing kisses along Rumi’s jaw, her neck, while Zoey devours her lips. She smiles when she hears the small gasp Rumi makes when she slips her hand underneath the hem of her shirt, splaying her fingers against her taut stomach, feeling up all of the warm, soft skin there, then—

“W-wait,” Rumi gasps, breaking out of Zoey and Mira’s hold.

“What’s wrong?” Zoey asks.

Mira tries to swallow down the panic rising up fast in her throat. That maybe Rumi’s changed her mind, or maybe they read this wrong somehow even after all of that, even with the way Rumi just kissed—has been kissing—the both of them, that Rumi will say this was all a mistake and that it should never happen again, but what actually comes out of her mouth levels Mira even harder than any of the stuff she’d imagined:

“I-It’s not that I don’t want it, because I do, I really, really do, like—you have no idea just how badly I want it, but I—I can’t do this if it’s just once, and I’ve never—” Rumi, already flustered as all hell, is so red in the face now that Mira starts to worry she’ll suffer a heart attack or something. “I’ve… I’ve never, you know… been with anyone like that.”

It’s quiet for a long, long moment, then finally, Zoey says, “Wait, so you’re…?”

Rumi nods meekly, like it’s embarrassing enough that she’s had to tell them she’s never slept with anyone, much less two people at the same time, before, and now she has to confirm it again to their maknae, who somehow has more experience in this area than she does, which is definitely salt to the wound.

Mira can’t even think of what to say. Rumi just dropped the bombshell of the century on their poor heads and now—now she’s trying so hard not to come in her fucking pants just thinking about how they’ll be Rumi’s first if they push through with this. Mira desperately wants them to, fuck, but this isn’t about her or Zoey, and as horny out of her mind as she is right now—and has been, for Rumi, for months now—she doesn’t want Rumi to feel forced to do anything she doesn’t want to.

Zoey’s on the same page because she places her hands on Rumi’s shoulders and says, gently, “We really, really want this too, but if you aren’t comfortable going that far, then that’s okay with us.”

“You don’t have to do it,” Mira says, solemn at first, before a smile eventually breaks over her face. “It won’t change the way we feel about you.”

Zoey nods, smiling now too. “Nothing will.”

Rumi is so thrown by their sincerity, that she looks like she might actually start crying. She doesn’t, thankfully. She just looks at them both, brimming with all the emotions she’s holding back, and says, “I… want to. I still want to.”

“You’re sure?” Zoey asks, squeezing Rumi’s shoulders.

“I’m sure,” Rumi answers without hesitation, then she gets all shy again when she adds in a murmur, “Just, you know… take it easy on me, I guess.”

Mira turns and meets Zoey’s eyes, and Zoey grins back at her. The silent exchange makes Rumi smile too, and then she kind of just laughs. A little nervous, but mostly fond.

“It won’t just be one time,” Mira assures Rumi, and Zoey leans in to wrap her arms around Rumi, brushing her lips against Rumi’s pulse as she promises, “We’ll take care of you.”

They end up in Rumi’s room.

It’s quiet at first. A little awkward, a little tense with anticipation. The door clicks shut behind them and, for a moment, all three of them just stand there, taking each other in. Mira’s heart won’t stop pounding so hard she’s sure the other two can actually hear it. Rumi looks nervous as all hell, but also stubborn, and brave, that Mira feels a fierce affection surge inside her.

In the end, it’s Zoey who makes the first move. She tugs Rumi gently towards her, and Mira watches the way Rumi begins to relax again when Zoey kisses her, soft and steady. Mira knows she should probably get in on the action too but… She’s honestly kind of content like this, just watching them for now. It’s hot, yeah, but it also just makes her feel a little warm and fuzzy inside.

When Zoey pulls away, she asks, “Still okay?”, and Rumi nods.

Zoey smiles at her, then she turns to Mira to say, “You’re really just gonna keep standing there?” When Mira makes a face at her, she adds, just fucking cheeky now, “At this rate, Rumi and I will get started without you—but something tells me you wouldn’t mind watching.”

Rumi makes a strangled noise, like a woman being tortured.

Mira groans. No, she would not mind, but she steps closer. Her hands find Rumi’s face without thinking, thumbs brushing her cheeks, then she leans in and kisses her too. She starts out gentle at first, just so she doesn’t accidentally psyche Rumi out or anything, but when Rumi sighs into her mouth, relaxes into her touch, she deepens the kiss and kisses her like she did earlier in the kitchen. Hungry, and maybe a little desperate.

When they break for air, Mira glances over at Zoey and Zoey’s pupils are so dilated they’re almost black. Mira huffs, amused and more than a little turned on herself. She feels… a little giddy too, getting to finally share this—have this—with Zoey.

They both press in again, until Rumi’s body slots perfectly between theirs. Mira takes Rumi’s face in her hands and kisses her again, and Zoey slides a hand around Rumi’s waist and kisses her ear first, almost chaste, before she starts kissing all over her neck. They kiss her softly, reverently, like Rumi might slip through their fingers if they’re not careful.

When Zoey slips a hand underneath her shirt, Rumi doesn’t pull away this time. Mira can feel the way she shivers, a little, but she doesn’t pull away, which thrills Mira more than it probably should. Zoey presses her mouth against Rumi’s ear again and asks, voice hot and low, “Is it okay if we take all this”—and she snaps the waistband of Rumi’s sweats playfully, making Rumi jolt with a surprised squeak—“off of you?”

But Rumi just nods anyway. She’s biting her lip now, like she can’t trust herself to speak.

They take their time undressing her. Mira helps lift her shirt over her head, and Zoey works at the clasp of her bra with steady fingers, then she slides the straps down her arms. Every inch of skin they reveal makes Rumi squirm and blush harder, but she never tells them to stop. She just keeps looking at them like she still can’t believe this is real and this is happening to her.

When they’ve got her down to just her panties, Mira steps back and just… stares.

Her gaze sweeps over Rumi’s body, slow and reverent, like she’s trying to memorize every inch of her. The patterns stand out stark and striking against Rumi’s skin, winding down her arms, curling over her shoulders, licking across her chest. Mira’s eyes follow them without meaning to—down the swell of her breasts, where Rumi almost raises her hands to cover herself… but, in the end, she doesn’t. She hesitates, then drops them again, shoulders drawn tight, like she’s reminding herself not to hide. Reminding herself that the whole point is to be seen. Mira’s eyes continue downward, tracing the patterns as they snake across Rumi’s ribs, her stomach, the lines sharp and beautiful and dizzying as they trail lower still—until they vanish just beneath the waistband of her panties. If the crop-top had been bad, this is just—it’s better, and it’s worse, and it’s everything, and Mira’s eyes are locked on the very edges of those lines again, knowing exactly where they lead and how badly she wants to follow.

“You were staring that one time too,” Rumi mumbles, pulling Mira out of her thoughts.

Zoey snorts out a laugh, and Mira glares at her, embarrassed. “I mean, it’s kind of hard not to stare,” Mira says, letting her eyes wander all over Rumi’s body again before they lock on her eyes. A smile tugs at the corners of her mouth. “Have you seen yourself, Rumi?”

Rumi looks away like she’s shy or something, but she’s got this thoroughly pleased smile on her face all the same. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” she clarifies, bolder now.

Mira huffs, then she leans in to peck Rumi’s lips. “Come on,” she murmurs, and takes her hand.

It’s Zoey who gets on the bed first, scooting back against the headboard with a quiet huff. She opens her arms in invitation. Rumi hesitates only a second before climbing in too, letting Zoey pull her into her arms, her back snug against Zoey’s body. That’s when Rumi gives a shaky laugh and says, “It hardly seems fair that I’m naked while you two still have all your clothes on.”

“We’ve got time for that later,” is all Zoey says, sing-song, then she reaches up and cups Rumi’s tits, squeezing. Rumi mewls, back arching, almost pushing her away from Zoey, out of her hold, but she melts right back into her. Zoey turns to Mira and, with a smile, says, “Chop-chop, babe.”

Mira rolls her eyes, but pushes up onto the bed too and settles down between Rumi’s legs, sitting on her haunches. She pushes in a little closer, and doesn’t miss the way Rumi spreads her legs out just a little wider to accommodate her. Mira’s always been the tallest and, by extension, the biggest of the three of them, but hovering over Rumi like this, she feels it more than ever. Rumi looks so small like this, her thighs bracketing Mira’s knees, her chest rising and falling fast like she doesn’t know what to do with herself. It does something to Mira—makes her want to be careful, gentle, even if all she wants to do is just devour her. Fold her in half, press her down and make her take everything Mira’s been holding back for so long, everything she and Zoey have wanted to do to her since she walked in on them that night. But she reins it in and just lets herself savor the sight of it all first, because holy shit—this is real. Rumi’s open to her, open for her, and Mira isn’t going to waste a second of it.

“Hey,” Zoey says, pulling Mira’s attention to her just long enough to pull her into a kiss, almost crushing Rumi between them. Rumi doesn’t seem to mind, if the way she shifts against Mira’s body is any indication, and when Mira pulls away from Zoey, Rumi just stares at her—at them—with this dark, heady look in her eyes, lips parted slightly, so Mira leans down and kisses her next.

Rumi reaches up and cups Mira's neck, fingertips pressing against the hinge of her jaw, behind her ears. “That’s it,” Zoey coos, encouraging, “We’re here now. Let us make you feel good,” and Rumi makes this whiny, helpless noise that sounds a lot like please.

Mira breaks the kiss and moves down Rumi’s body, pressing open-mouthed kisses across Rumi's delicate collarbone, down her sternum, tasting the fine sheen of sweat on her flushed skin. She reaches up to palm Rumi’s right breast, squeezing, then she finally ducks her head and closes her lips around Rumi’s nipple.

Rumi arches into Mira’s mouth with a low cry, scrabbling for something to hold onto. Mira hears Zoey soothing her with quiet murmurs of it’s okay, baby, and breathe—just breathe, but Rumi just gasps out, “Mira, fuck,” when Mira swirls her tongue over the tightening nub. “I can’t,” she breathes out, almost like she’s crying now, like even this is too much for her already, “M-Mira, Zoey, I—I can’t, I can’t—”

“You can,” Zoey says, encouraging in that bright, overly optimistic way she always is, but it’s colored now by the heat in her voice, the want threading just beneath. “Just breathe, Rumi. We’ve got you.”

Rumi’s chest heaves as she tries to collect herself, calm down, not let herself get overwhelmed by all of the sudden stimulation and sensation, then she nods. Mumbles, “Okay,” and then another breath. “Okay.”

At that, Mira moves on to suck Rumi’s other nipple, kneading her breasts in her hands. She’s wet, fuck—she can already feel herself starting to soak through her own panties, can feel every drag of the fabric against her cunt—but she isn’t going to stop now just to get rid of her clothes or to even shove a hand down her pants to take some of the edge off. No, nothing else matters right now but Rumi. The desperate, breathy noises she makes as Mira lavishes attention to her tits. The way she whines, please, over and over like she doesn’t know if she wants more or if she wants to tell them to stop, because it’s just too much, all at once. The trembling of her abdomen as Mira kisses down her stomach, and the way she just lets Mira push her legs even further apart.

Mira settles between Rumi’s legs, breath catching when she gets her first real look. Even with her panties still on, Mira can smell her, sweet and heady, and fuck, she’s soaked through. She dips her head closer, nuzzles just once against the damp heat, and feels Rumi shudder beneath her.

She hooks her fingers past the waistband of Rumi’s panties—then pauses. She glances up, checks her face. Rumi’s biting her lip, hard, her cheeks flushed deep pink, her chest rising fast, but her eyes are locked on Mira the entire time, wide and pleading, almost like she’s about to cry. When she nods, it leaves no more room for questions or doubt.

Mira peels the panties down, slow, deliberate, trying to savor every second of Rumi revealing herself to them inch by perfect inch. Mira tosses the panties aside without second thought then just—stares. Again. Because what else can she do, when she’s faced with how soft and slick and so, so wet Rumi is right now for them? How she’s now finally completely, stunningly bare for them, and she’s just so much more perfect than either Mira or Zoey could have ever imagined?

“Fuck,” Mira says, like a breath that’s been punched out of her chest.

“Mira,” Rumi groans, turned on and embarrassed all at once. Like she wants to beg her not to stare the way she’s staring now, but she isn’t exactly opposed either.

Mira couldn’t look away if she tried anyway. She’s so close now that her hot breath skates down Rumi's pink folds and rustles Rumi’s hair. She just stares, rapt awe plastered all over her face, until she remembers she isn’t here to stare, she’s here to fuck Rumi, so she braces her arms around Rumi’s thighs and leans forward. Her eyes dart up, once, just to check if Rumi’s still okay, and Rumi nods down at her frantically, like she’ll die if she doesn’t get Mira’s mouth on her soon. It gives Mira a much appreciated ego boost. Finally, she darts forward and licks one broad, solid stripe up the length of Rumi’s cunt.

The sound that comes out of Rumi’s mouth isn’t even human. She thrashes, almost crushing Mira’s head between her thighs, her legs trembling restlessly. Zoey wraps her arms around her, holding her down against her body, and tells her, “Try to hold still.” Rumi tries her best to do as she’s told.

Mira repeats the expansive licking motion, torturously slow. Rumi isn’t trying to wrangle herself out of their hold now, and she isn’t screaming either—not again yet, anyway; Mira’s working on it—but her thighs continue to shake against Mira’s arms, slowly but surely unfurling beneath her ministrations. She moans low and sweet for them as Mira licks through her silky folds, loud and wet, every flick and broad caress of her tongue making her body twist against Zoey’s body. Her hands keep flailing about, like she doesn’t know what to do with them, so Zoey grabs her by the wrist and guides her hand into Mira’s hair. “There,” she says, mouthing against Rumi’s neck, pawing at Rumi’s breasts with her free hand, “just like that—that’s how Mira likes it.”

When Rumi tangles her fingers in Mira’s hair and actually tugs, Zoey croons, “Good girl,” and it shoots straight through Mira, landing hard and heavy in her cunt. She moans against Rumi, rolling her hips down to chase any bit of friction she can get like this. The words hit Rumi like a jolt, and Rumi gasps, hips jerking up, her thighs trembling where they cage Mira in. Her head falls back against Zoey’s shoulder, mouth parted, eyes unfocused, like the praise knocked all of the air out of her lungs.

Zoey, of course, is thrilled by this. Thrilled by the way she’s undone both Mira and Rumi with those two words alone—so, of course, she keeps going.

Zoey brushes a kiss against Rumi’s temple, voice low and unhurried in her ear. “You don’t even know how long we’ve wanted this,” she says, almost dreamily. “How long we’ve thought about you. Every time Mira fucked me… every time I came, I kept wondering what your voice would sound like when you broke.”

Rumi whimpers. Her hips twitch, like her body’s reacting on instinct, like she’s trying to chase more of Mira’s tongue even as Zoey’s words overwhelm her.

“You’re even prettier like this than I imagined,” Zoey goes on, breath hitching a little when Rumi clenches down around Mira’s tongue. “So sweet, letting her wreck you like this, letting us have you.” A shaky laugh escapes her, like even she’s starting to get a little overwhelmed at what she’s saying. Like it’s just too much, finally being able to say all this, after months of having to hold herself—themselves—back. “We’ve wanted this so bad it hurt, Rumi.”

“Zoey,” Rumi moans, sobs, and Mira looks up. Rumi’s eyes are wide, glassy, like she’s caught in some daze of heat and disbelief.

“You’ve been thinking about it too, haven’t you?” Zoey murmurs, nosing at her cheek. “About Mira’s mouth on you. About what it would feel like if I got to watch you fall apart for her.” Rumi doesn’t answer, can’t answer, not with the way she moans as Mira fits her mouth over her clit to suck lightly, moving her tongue in quick circles—but she doesn’t look away, and she doesn’t stop shaking either. Zoey whispers, “She loves the way you taste, you know. I can tell. She’s been dreaming about this since the first time you walked in on us. Did you know that?”

“Zoey,” Rumi gasps, grabbing at Zoey like she doesn’t know what else to do. Her shoulder, her arm, anything to ground herself. Her other hand stays tangled in Mira’s hair, clinging for dear life. “Zoey, fuck—you can’t just—you can’t just say that.”

“Can’t I?” Zoey says, teasing, a little bratty. Mira suddenly wishes she could be two places at once because she needs to just—shut Zoey up. It’s unfair how hot she is when she gets like this.

Zoey brushes her lips against Rumi’s ear and says, “You’re close, aren’t you?”, like she’s talking about the weather. Not a question, really, just a casual, inconsequential observation, like Rumi isn’t hanging on by a fucking thread right now.

Rumi shudders, her breath catches then breaks, a gasp that trails off into a high, desperate whine at the end. Mira hums against her, encouraging, steady, still lapping at her with the same single-minded focus and determination to make her come, tear her apart and then put her back together piece by piece, and Zoey just keeps going.

“You’re trying so hard not to come yet, aren’t you?” Zoey says, not waiting for an answer. She cups Rumi’s breast, squeezes just enough to make her gasp, then brushes her thumb over her nipple—slow, deliberate, like she’s testing how far she can push—and Rumi arches into the touch with a whimper, thighs clenching around Mira’s head. In response, Mira thrusts her tongue deeper, and slurps loudly as she keeps sucking on Rumi’s clit. “You want to be good—want to wait until we say you can. But it’s okay, Rumi. You can let go.”

Rumi makes a wrecked sound, some high, desperate thing that hits the back of her throat like a sob. Her hips twitch and buck, trying to chase Mira’s tongue and flee it all at once.

“Oh, shit,” Rumi says, writhing now, “Z-Zoey, please—I—I can’t, not anymore—”

“It’s okay, Rumi. Just let go,” Zoey says, softly, encouragingly. Her eyes meet Mira’s across the plane of Rumi’s flushed, sweaty body, every devastatingly perfect inch of it, and her gaze sharpens, just a little, as if to tell her, do it. “Come for us, Rumi.”

The sound Rumi makes when she finally comes is nothing like the ones before. It’s loud, unrestrained, ripped out of her throat. She screams—actually screams—and her whole body jolts, seizing up around Mira’s mouth as her orgasm tears through her. Mira groans against her, holding her down as hard as she can, tongue still working as Rumi thrashes, riding the wave even as it overwhelms her. Her legs clamp around Mira’s head like a vice, her hands scrabbling at Zoey’s arms, nails digging in hard enough to leave marks.

Zoey, the fucking menace, just laughs in that way she does after a particularly amazing orgasm. Breathless, delirious, and delighted. “There you go,” she says, kissing the side of Rumi’s face, brushing her sweaty hair back as she trembles and shakes and makes these soft, whining noises in the back of her throat, like it’s so good it actually hurts. “That’s it, baby, just breathe. Easy, now. You did so well.”

And Rumi can’t say a word, not yet. She’s too far gone: boneless, pulsing, her whole body caught in the aftershocks, as Mira finally lets up, finally draws back with slick lips and flushed cheeks. Zoey’s still holding her, still kissing her through it, and all Rumi can do is just melt into her.

Mira feels a sudden rush of affection inside her. She climbs back up Rumi’s body and, without really thinking about it, takes Zoey’s face in her hand and kisses her. Her face is still covered in Rumi’s slick, and her mouth, her tongue, is still thick and heavy with the taste of her—but that’s the point, maybe. Zoey hums, pleased, opening her mouth easily to let Mira’s tongue slide in, greedy for a taste of Rumi too.

When they break, they find Rumi watching them, wide-eyed, and like that was the hottest thing she’s ever seen—and she’s literally walked in on them having sex.

Zoey giggles, leaning in to nuzzle Rumi’s face affectionately, like she wasn’t just talking absolute filth to her a minute ago. Mira settles down in front of Rumi again, between her still widespread, trembling legs, and asks, “So, how was it? Was it as good as you imagined it would be?”

“Better,” Rumi sputters out thoughtlessly, all inhibition thrown out the window. “So much better.”

Mira’s chest swells with pride. She says, “I did say it wouldn’t just be once,” but just as she starts to get back in position, ready for round two, Zoey suddenly squeezes Rumi in her arms possessively and says, “Nuh-uh! You had your turn already. I get Rumi now.”

A laugh is punched out of Rumi’s chest, like she can’t help but be amused, or fond, but she also can’t believe they’re doing round two now and this time, she gets to do it with Zoey.

“Fine,” Mira grumbles, but it’s more lip service than anything at this point. Honestly, she’s thrilled at the thought of getting to watch Zoey and Rumi go at it with each other too.

They rearrange themselves in Rumi’s bed. Zoey nuzzles her cheek, voice soft now, almost reverent. She murmurs, “Want to touch me?”

Rumi stiffens a little. She looks like she didn’t expect she’d be touching either of them tonight, which makes Mira huff out a laugh. “I—I mean, if you want…”

“I do.” Zoey takes Rumi’s hand and guides it down, slow and steady, until her fingers are pressed against the soaked fabric between Zoey’s legs. “I want you to.”

Mira, still curled up on the other side of Rumi, watches them lazily through hooded eyes. She’s close enough to feel the heat coming off both their bodies, close enough to see every twitch of Rumi’s fingers as she peels off Zoey’s shorts. Zoey lifts her hips to make it just a little bit easier for her, giggling at how nervous Rumi still is. She rucks Zoey’s hoodie up beneath her armpits, after, and then just takes a moment to take Zoey in like this. As Mira watches them, she thinks, yeah, I get it. She’s been with Zoey for so long now, has had sex with her more times than she can count now, and Zoey never stops taking her breath away with how gorgeous she is.

Then, finally, Rumi starts to move.

She teases Zoey through her panties at first, tracing the damp outline of Zoey’s folds through the fabric. Distantly, Mira wonders if this is how Rumi likes to touch herself too. It’s clumsy at first—hesitant, almost shy—but Zoey lets out a soft breath and relaxes into it, her hips shifting forward, like she’s telling Rumi it’s okay, and like she’s begging Rumi for more, and that seems to unlock something in Rumi. Her touch grows more deliberate, more confident, until she slips her fingers past the edge of Zoey’s underwear, and when Zoey gasps—sharp, breathy—Rumi keeps going.

She finds a rhythm, and it works. Zoey’s panting into her neck now, helpless and high-strung, her thighs trembling as Rumi fucks her slow and deep. There’s a little flush of pride on Rumi’s face now, blooming under the sweat and afterglow. She curls her fingers just right, and Zoey chokes on a moan.

Mira can’t look away. She’s seen Zoey like this before—flushed and gasping, undone—but never like this, never for someone else. And it isn’t just anyone else, it’s Rumi, their best friend, their Rumi, who was tentative at first but is now touching Zoey with real intent, with care and curiosity and want, and Zoey unravels for her, bit by bit, with every press and curl and thrust of Rumi’s fingers.

Heat coils in Mira’s gut, low and hot and impossible to ignore. Her thighs squeeze together instinctively. She honestly thinks she could come just from watching Rumi fuck Zoey. From the way Zoey gives herself over to Rumi so openly, softly, in a way Mira’s never quite seen from her before, and from the way Rumi leans into it, gaining confidence with every choked, desperate sound she pulls from Zoey’s mouth.

As if it wasn’t hot enough already, Rumi suddenly says, voice tight, “Yeah, I’ve thought about it too,” and it just knocks all of the wind out of Mira’s lungs, hearing Rumi actually say it out loud.

“Rumi,” Zoey whines, grabbing onto Rumi like she’s holding on for dear life, “You’re gonna make me—” She breaks off with a sharp cry, jerking forward as she comes hard on Rumi’s fingers. Her body trembles against her, and Rumi holds her through it, stunned and breathless and a little bit awed.

A moment of total, breathless quiet, follows… before Zoey, still panting, grabs at Rumi. Rumi barely gets a protest out before Zoey’s hand is between her legs again, coaxing her open, stroking her gently—then not so gently. Rumi’s still so raw, so sensitive, and it hits her fast. She comes again with a soft, shivery whine, curling into Zoey’s arms and burying her face in her chest.

Mira, watching the whole thing from just inches away, is absolutely soaked.

She told herself she’d wait, that she could hold off until Zoey and Rumi finally got their fill of each other, but it’s no use. She slips a hand down her sweats, down between her legs, where she’s soaked and swollen with need, and she doesn’t even have to work for it. Her fingers barely brush over her clit and she’s already trembling, breath catching in her throat. It only takes a few tight, desperate circles, hips grinding into her palm, before pleasure crashes over her in a sudden, shuddering wave. She comes hard, clenching around nothing, letting out a loud, satisfied groan as her body jolts against the mattress.

“You really couldn’t wait?” Zoey teases, lazily stroking up and down Rumi’s side as she comes down from her own orgasm. She’s got her eyes on Mira too, and even through the haze of it all, there’s something almost reverent in her gaze.

The room is quiet for a long moment. Not awkward—just still. Just full of heat and the steady, quiet thrum of their hearts. Rumi’s lying between them, boneless and wrecked, Zoey’s arm slung across her waist. Mira’s fingers are twined loosely with hers.

Mira lets her eyes flutter shut for a while, succumbing to her own pleasant exhaustion, until Rumi suddenly says, “I… didn’t think I was allowed to want… this. Not—not with you.”

Mira peels her eyes open, then turns her head just enough to get a good look at Rumi. She looks just as sleepy as Mira and Zoey, but there’s… something else too on her face, behind those eyes. Something a little sad, like she’s afraid that if she shuts her eyes, this’ll all disappear the next morning. That they’ll go back to normal, or whatever semblance of it they can muster.

Then, Rumi says, “I just didn’t want to mess anything up,” and falls silent again.

Mira gently strokes her wrist. Admits, “We didn’t want to mess things up with you either.” She feels like she ought to say more, but at the same time, she thinks there’s nothing left to say either. That it doesn’t need to be said.

For a moment, it’s just the sound of their breathing again. The warmth of skin on skin. Then Mira presses a kiss to Rumi’s shoulder and promises, again, “This isn’t a one-time thing, Rumi. Not for us.”

Rumi doesn’t say anything at first. She just nods, like she’s still trying to contain all of her joy and her relief, then she says, “It isn’t for me, either,” as sure as she’ll ever be about anything.

Zoey grins into her neck. “Good. Because I’m definitely not done with you yet.”

Mira snorts. “Give her a break, Zoey.”

Rumi blushes, but laughs along with them.

The exhaustion hits them all at once, drowsiness creeping in to overtake them. Zoey shifts, slinging a leg over Rumi’s thigh and burying her face in her shoulder. Mira curls in from the other side, close enough that their foreheads bump. Rumi’s well and truly sandwiched now, pinned under the full force of their affection, and from the quiet, breathless laugh she lets out, she doesn’t seem to mind.

Mira gets it. They’re all sticky and gross, and it’s absolutely perfect.

Just before she passes out completely, Zoey says, face smushed into Rumi’s shoulder, “Hey. We love you, you know.”

There’s a pause, just long enough to hold its weight, before Rumi whispers, soft and certain, “I know.”

There’s a smile in her voice.

A moment later, quieter still, she adds, “I think I wanna come with you. To the bathhouse.”

Zoey lets out a sleepy little noise that might be joy or approval, or both, really, and Mira curls tighter around Rumi’s other side. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Rumi sighs, happy. “I mean, you’ve seen me naked already anyway,” she says jokingly, at first, and then adds more earnestly, with meaning, “I’ve got nothing left to hide from you two.”

Mira just smiles into Rumi’s shoulder, warm and aching with affection. Zoey’s pretty much out cold and dead to the world by now, but her arm tightens faintly around Rumi’s waist too.

Somewhere between the warmth and the weight of it all, they finally fall asleep. Three bodies pressed close, breathing in sync.