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"O-oh my god, Mira, I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry, I ruined everything, can we please please please just forg–mmgf!"
Mira was trying to get out of the habit of telling Zoey to shut up, even jokingly, but especially seriously. Way too many people had told her that for the dumbest fucking reasons, and Mira wished she could punch every single one of them. But right now specifically, Zoey seriously needed to shut the fuck up, and thank god Mira had an option she was pretty sure she'd like better.
If Mira weren't a terrible person, instead of leaving Zoey in limbo like she had been, she would have initiated this herself years ago. Probably within the first year of knowing each other, frankly. But if Zoey was going to start this, she sure as fuck wasn't going to let her think it was a mistake for any reason that had anything to do with her. So instead of letting her keep worrying herself into a panic attack, Mira grabbed two fistfuls of Zoey's stupid shirt covered in fucking flamingos and yanked her into a second kiss.
God dammit. She couldn't believe she was having her first and last kisses with this girl while she was wearing a bucket hat and cargo shorts. And while they were waiting for their meal to be delivered at a chain restaurant with nobody else in it at two in the afternoon. This was the worst best day of Mira's life ever.
Zoey didn't have a single clue what to do with her hands and apparently defaulted to flapping them. She didn't know what to do with her mouth, either. Mira'd had worse kisses, but she'd definitely had better ones too. The idea of teaching Zoey how to kiss better in the future tied her stomach in quite a few different knots, but she forced that thought out of her brain.
Remember. This isn't going anywhere.
God did she wish it could. But it couldn't.
When she pulled away, Zoey stared at her like she'd been the one to put every single star in the sky. The dumbest grin spread across her face, and a tiny little giggle came out of her, and Mira's heart clenched. "You kissed me," Zoey said, her voice high and sweet and perfect.
"Yyyyyyup." Mira let Zoey's shirt go and leaned on the table between them as casually as she could. "To be fair, you started it."
"I-I know, and I kinda, um, I know I kinda did that out of nowhere and—"
"Zoey, that was not out of nowhere. This has been going on for so fucking long."
She blinked a few times, the smile falling off her face, but not going into a frown, her nose wrinkling with thought instead. "It has? Wait, so I..." she looked into Mira's eyes, and how big and brown hers were was just not fucking fair. "So I'm not crazy?"
"No, Zoey. You're not crazy." Another little giggle bubbled out of her, and god dammit, Mira had to stop this right fucking now before things got too real and hurt even more than they were already going to. "You are unlucky, though."
Zoey did her little puppy head tilt thing, and Mira wondered if she had any idea what it did to people whenever she did that. "How come?"
Alright. No turning back. No trying to make it work. No desperation, no lies, no fucking cheating. Just the stupid, horrible truth. Mira braced herself with a deep breath, let it hiss out of her chest, then locked eyes with Zoey. "Because no matter how much I want you and like you, I can't be with you. Because I'm also attracted to Rumi."
Okay. Bandaid off. Get ready for the emotional fallout, you terrible person, you. Zoey was probably going to cry, even though Mira absolutely wasn't worth her tears, and—
"Oh my god, me too!"
What?
Mira refocussed on the girl in front of her and saw her flapping her hands again, eyes sparkling, smiling her widest, most ridiculous smile. "Me too, me too! She's so beautiful, right? Like, even when she's just wearing normal clothes and her choo-choo PJ pants she's cute, but when she gets all dressed up, I get, like, so wrecked by her I don't even know how to stand it! And she's so nice all the time! Plus she's so brave, and isn't it kind of super hot how she kicks demon ass? I mean, the last time we were fighting them, she did that one move with the tree branch and—"
"Wait, hold it, what?" Zoey blinked up at Mira, and Mira blinked back before giving her head a rough shake, having to push her glasses back up her nose when she did. "What the f—Zoey, what? Why are you happy about this?"
"Uh...because we both like Rumi?" She said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe. "Did you not know that I like her too?"
"No, I—I knew that! And she likes you too!" Zoey's face went bright red, and she let out a gleeful little squeak, kicking her feet against the booth seat underneath her. "But what are you—okay, hang on, maybe I wasn't clear." Mira rubbed her face and took another attempt at a cleansing breath. "Look, I'm not just saying that I'm attracted to her. I'm attracted to a lot of people. You know that." It'd become a common topic of conversation between the two of them, the various absurdly handsome and beautiful and just plain hot people that their jobs would constantly bring them into contact with. And even though Rumi didn't participate in it, her mild chastisements and teasing were just as good an addition. "I'm saying that—" Mira's throat choked shut, and she berated herself for having to struggle like this to tell the basic truth. But it really was an ugly truth. Anyone would. Especially having to say it to someone like Zoey. "I'm saying that If Rumi a-asked—" fuck, don't cry. Don't make this a thing. Don't cry in a 24-hour pancake restaurant. "If she confessed to me—and I need to be real, I don't think that's a completely insane thing to happen—that even if we were dating, I might—" Mira couldn't bear to keep looking her in the eyes. Pathetic. She wrenched her gaze down to her fists in her lap instead. "I might just...take her up on it. And cheat on you."
"Oh, that's totally okay!"
"What?!"
Zoey was grinning and flapping her hands again, and she didn't seem to notice Mira's shock. "I would love it if you and Rumi got together! I mean, I'd definitely love it if I got together with one or both of you too, but—"
"Zoey, what the fuck?" Mira's voice came out harsher than she meant it to, but at least Zoey didn't look scared yet. Just confused at being cut off. "Don't fucking—don't try to people please or make that okay!"
"I'm not! I think it'd be hot!"
The two of them seemed to both realize at once that they were shouting, and Mira shut herself up, Zoey sitting down from where she'd half stood up, her face bright red. Mira really appreciated that the various waitstaff and cooks weren't being paid enough to care, though she hoped they weren't bored enough to be zeroed in on their drama.
"Okay, let's fucking—" Mira took yet another deep breath and took off her glasses to rub at the bridge of her nose. "Let's start over and take this shit from the top, okay?" Zoey nodded, twisting her face into something very serious, and it took all of Mira's willpower not to laugh at how cute that was. "We're both attracted to each other." The serious look on Zoey's face suffered even more as she squirmed happily in her seat, but she also nodded rapidly. "We both..." Mira swallowed. She was pretty sure she was right, but the idea of learning otherwise still hurt, even with how unrealistic it all was to begin with. "We both like the idea of dating each other." Zoey nodded so hard that Mira was afraid her head might snap off, so she reached out and physically stopped her. She couldn't pretend to not be incredibly happy, though, and the dumb smile on her face felt impossible to get rid of. It fell easily with her next statement, though. "But I can't, because I can't actually promise I wouldn't cheat on you."
"That's fine."
"No, that's—" Mira growled and curled her hands into claws against her face. "Zoey, I know you want to make me happy, but you can't just bend yourself into a pretzel to make shit that's bad okay."
"I'm not!" Zoey stood up and grabbed one of Mira's hands, pulling it away from her face and holding it in both of hers. "I'm not, Mira. I'm really not. Look at my face. You're good at reading people, right?"
"I mean, yeah," Mira muttered, though she didn't look at her yet. She couldn't bear to. Zoey had to be hiding her sadness, and she was doing a better job at it than normal, but Mira knew that she'd see the misery in her face if she looked, no matter how much effort she put into trying to conceal it.
"So look at me." Fuck, she couldn't disobey a command like that. Not when she sounded so fucking earnest. So slowly, painfully, Mira turned and lowered the hand still on her face. And Zoey was staring up at her, face flushed, eyes wide, and looking so much like herself that it just shot an arrow right through Mira's heart. "Mira, I'm not lying to you. The idea of you and Rumi together..." her face went pinker, and a nervous little giggle escaped as her smile widened. "I really like it. And I like it even better if we're together, too. At the same time."
"...oh shit."
Fuck, she was serious. She was actually fucking serious about that. Not kidding. Not trying to make it okay.
She actually liked that idea.
"So you're, like, a cuck?"
Holy shit, Mira regretted having a tongue.
Zoey's eyes widened and she broke down into cackles as Mira slapped both hands over her face. "W-wow! Okay, 4chan anon!"
"Leave me here to die," Mira mumbled, her face getting redder as she heard Zoey laugh even harder.
"No way, Mira! If I d-did, then I wouldn't get to be cucked by you-hoo-hoo!" Her sentence broke down completely, and despite herself, Mira couldn't help but snort out a few laughs too, even as she kept hiding her face. This was the dumbest conversation she'd ever had in her life. If this was how she ended up getting happiness, Mira swore that she would fucking fight god about it. Once both of them had wound down laughing, Mira chanced a look at Zoey and saw that she had an oddly pensive look on her face. "You know, no, actually," Zoey said eventually, looking back at Mira.
"Uh, no what?"
"No, I'm not a cuck." Mira blinked at her. "Because that's kind of about being made fun of, right? Like, 'oh ho, my dick's so much bigger than your dick, I fuck your girl so much better than you.' And I don't actually like the idea of that." Her face went pink. "I-I mean, there are other ways of being made fun of that I think I do kinda like," Mira could feel herself smirking, and Zoey's face went pinker still. "B-but that's not the point! It's that...yeah, I like the idea of people I'm dating being with other people. Kissing them. Having sex with them. Even also dating them, if it's the right person. But not because they'd make me feel bad about it. Because I'd feel good about it. I'd like seeing them feel good and knowing they feel good." She cleared her throat and looked away. "Andmaybewatchingthemmakeeachotherfeelgoodtoo." Mira just barely hid a snort, and Zoey violently shook her head. "But even without that! Even without that...it makes me happy to think about that. Not sad or jealous."
Mira pursed her lips and tapped a finger against the table for a moment, glancing at the kitchen to see if their food was anywhere close to done. When she turned back, she sighed. "Zoey, are you an actual angel?" Zoey abruptly started choking on the soda she'd been sipping. "Because I'm pretty sure you have to tell me if you're an angel."
"Wh-what?" Zoey gagged out, face going bright red again.
"Seriously? It doesn't make you feel jealous at all to think about? Or nervous?" Mira moved around the table to pat Zoey on the back as she coughed, and she couldn't help but be astounded as she shook her head. "It doesn't..." Mira looked away and gave Zoey a chance to get her lungs back, rubbing her back up and down as she did. "It doesn't make you feel like they love you less?"
Zoey pursed her lips and wrinkled her nose, and Mira could tell she was thinking hard about it. "I don't think so, no," she said eventually, looking back up at her. "Especially not when I think about it with you. I know that you're full of love."
Mira's face went bright red and she scrambled back to the other side of the table, feeling her heart beat even faster as that made Zoey giggle, like she thought Mira was the one being adorable here. "Fuck, I don't even know how you exist like that, Zoey. I'd fucking turn inside-out with rage if anyone I was dating even kissed someone who wasn't me."
"Has that happened before?"
Mira looked back at Zoey and saw her sincere, curious face. "Uh, no. Some of the people I dated were dicks, but not like that."
"Then have you ever actually thought about it?" Mira blinked. "Not thought about being cheated on. Like, with the word 'cheated'. But thought about being with someone and knowing you were still with them and having them kiss someone else with you knowing about it. Someone that you get along with." Zoey's face went a bit redder, and she squirmed in her booth. "You know. Like Rumi."
Mira's brow furrowed. After a long moment, she closed her eyes and tried to get an image in her head. She imagined Rumi into the restaurant, sitting next to Zoey. She imagined Zoey standing up and kissing Mira from across the table, just like she had for their first kiss.
...she imagined Rumi watching, and something in her definitely liked that.
Then she imagined Zoey backing off and smiling at her. That adoring smile that she couldn't believe she was lucky enough to see directed her way. And then she saw Zoey's hand on the back of Rumi's head. The flush of Rumi's face. Zoey pulling her in with far more confidence than she had now, but a level that Mira was certain she could get to with practice.
She imagined Zoey's lips against Rumi's. Both of them flushed. Hands touching each other from the other side of the table. And then the kiss breaking and Zoey still looking at both of them like she loved them. Like they meant something. Like they were hers.
"Shit." Mira opened her eyes, a hand having automatically gone up to her lips.
"It's good, right?" Zoey said, her voice soft and unsure.
"Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of...it's really good." Mira stunned herself with just how much she liked it.
Zoey's smile widened, though she was still a little shy, and she rested her fingers on the hand Mira still had on the table. "That's what I want, Mira. I don't know if it's possible, but if it is, I want both of you. And I want you to be with each other, too."
"Fuck." Mira leaned back into the booth and stared at the ceiling, though she moved her hand to be on top of Zoey's so she knew she was still with her.
After so long trying to fight those conflicting thoughts in her head, Zoey's permission was blowing the floodgates open, and the image of both of her girls together were coming far too fast and heavy for sitting in a shitty breakfast restaurant waiting on a ridiculously named stack of pancakes. It took a few deep breaths and a sip of her icy water before Mira turned back to Zoey, smirking when she saw her just staring happily at their hands together. Even so, she swallowed back the good feelings and flattened her face out. "So. What are we going to do?"
"Mm?" Zoey looked up at her, still seeming distracted by just having Mira's hand on hers. And that was painfully cute, but goddamn it, they had serious shit to talk about.
"About this. Us." Mira huffed softly and pulled her focus fully to Zoey. "You, me, and Rumi."
"Uh, date?"
Mira slapped her forehead. "Okay, that's on me, should have been more specific."
"I-I know it's not that simple!" Zoey sat up, then shrunk again under Mira's gaze. "I know it's not. No matter how much I want it to be. But isn't it important to say what we want so we know what page we're on before we have to think about all the other stuff?"
Mira sighed softly and rubbed the side of Zoey's hand with her thumb. "You know, that's a great point. So, cards on the table, I haven't actually thought about that possibility until now, but..." She swallowed. The idea of saying it out loud made it so much more real. And actually wanting something, admitting to wanting it, was the sort of vulnerability that Mira really hated showing. But for Rumi and Zoey? "Yeah. I think I want that too."
The look on Zoey's face made Mira truly hate the fact that humans couldn't have tails, because Zoey would be wagging the shit out of hers right now if she could. A high-pitched noise caught in her throat and her eyes sparkled, and before Mira could even fully think, Zoey took her hand in both of hers, then pulled it to her lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.
Something in the contrast of Zoey's overjoyed squealing and the impossibly gentle way her lips touched her fingers just destroyed Mira, and she got up and pulled her hand free, putting it on Zoey's face and pulling her up so their lips touched each other again.
For the third time.
And almost certainly not the last.
Holy fucking shit.
A loud crash had Zoey and Mira spring apart from each other, and they looked down to see that a bunch of plates had been haphazardly dumped onto the table, each covered in an obscene amount of breakfast food. "That's your 'Big Dang Bang 2000 Pile-o-Pancakes' and 'Mr. Happy Eat-Me Bear' fatboi shortstack with bacon necktie."
"Uh," The bear-shaped pancakes were on Mira's side of the table. She had not ordered the bear-shaped pancakes. "Fuck off?" She'd meant to say "thanks," but the waiter walked away with what she presumed was the exact same energy he would have had if she had succeeded at that.
After a moment of staring, Zoey gently pushed the breakfast in front of her over to Mira's side of the table. Then she snorted, twitched, and finally broke down laughing. And her laughter set Mira off too, though Mira at least managed to keep a little bit of composure. She started to cover her mouth, but before she could, Zoey popped up onto her toes and pressed a smooch to her lips as best she could, which wasn't very well, since her whole face was twisted into a grin. But Mira couldn't stop smiling either, and the two sunk back down, still giggling as they rapidly swapped plates and started tearing through the piles of fried batter.
"Oh my god, worsht firsht date ever, fuck me," Mira slurred through cheeks full of carbs. "No matter where thish goesh, at leasht let me take you shomewhere nice firsht."
"Ooh, ooh! Theresh an arcade I've been wanting to vishit!" Zoey started rambling, maple syrup and drool dripping down from her chin as she ranted about the cheap crap they could get with tickets won from rigged games, and how she absolutely killed at skee-ball. And Mira took the opportunity to cram her own stack of incredibly mediocre pancakes into her face, groaning at the sheer adequacy of this massive meal.
Yeah, worst first date ever. That's why she'd only sell her soul to relive it a thousand times. There was no way her first kiss with Rumi was going to be in a place this stupid, though. But the fact that that was a possibility at all in her mind now made the whole world feel bigger and brighter than it had in almost five years. And as she watched Zoey's face get covered in sticky sweet goop, Mira stared at her and thought "God, I love you", and for once she didn't feel the need to fight her brain about it.
Because she did. She loved Zoey. And she loved Rumi too.
And maybe...just maybe that was okay.
...
@GreatandpowerfulTr/x/e
OMG DO NOT TELL ME THAT 2 MEMBERS OF HUNTR/X ARE GETTING PANCAKES AT MY STUPID FUCKING JOB
@Zoe-me-4-lyfe
@GreatandpowerfulTr/x/e PICS PICS PICS PICS PICS@GreatandpowerfulTr/x/e
@Zoe-me-4-lyfe NO THATS CREEPY+NOT SELF DOXXING BUT IT LOOKS JUST LIKE THEM???
@GreatandpowerfulTr/x/e
KISSING?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!????!
@Rumiraqueens
@GreatandpowerfulTr/x/e WHICH TWO? WE NEED TO KNOW!
@GreatandpowerfulTr/x/e
I just put their food down and the maybe Mira one told me to fuck off??? This is the greatest day of my life!!!
@GreatandpowerfulTr/x/e
...@GreatandpowerfulTr/x/e
Okay false alarm everyone. Extremely not huntr/x.@Zoe-me-4-lyfe
@GreatandpowerfulTr/x/e What? Why? How do you know???@GreatandpowerfulTr/x/e
@Zoe-me-4-lyfe imagine a firehose going backwards@Zoe-me-4-lyfe
@GreatandpowerfulTr/x/e ????????????