Chapter Text
It’s a random, standard Tuesday when Mira makes a discovery.
The smell of the bath house is one of Mira’s favorites, if only for its comforting familiarity. The smell of lavender and eucalyptus, the slight tang of sweat and soap. The sound of running water nearly drowning out the faint piano music played from speakers overhead, and always enough to drown out the noise in her head. It’s comforting like nothing else, because she has nothing but good memories from this place. Nothing but calm, relaxing peace, the opportunity to unwind tired muscles and let her body feel rested.
Which is good, because Mira desperately needs to relax.
“Rumiiii!” Zoey beams as they approach the locker room door. “Aren’t you excited?!”
“Yes, Zoey, I am!” Rumi says enthusiastically, as though this isn’t the fourth time Zoey has asked her in fifteen minutes, with a large and slightly beleaguered smile.
It doesn’t stop Zoey from grabbing Rumi’s arm in excitement and shaking it like a ragdoll, squealing in both their ears. “Rumi’s first bathhouse trip!!!”
Mira pushes the door to the locker room open, holds it for them both. Zoey had faux-swooned when she’d done it once, and called her a knight in shining armor, so now Mira makes a point to do it whenever she can. Anyone who points it out, though, is getting a glower and a door slammed in their face.
Rumi smiles at her gratefully with a nod, and passes her by.
Her stomach clenches. Rumi has to know that look is lethal, right? Her face has graced every magazine in Korea for a reason, and the chance of catching just a glimpse of Rumi’s full attention has sent entire crowds to their knees.
Instead, Mira feels her face warm when she watches Rumi walk past. Zoey shoots her a knowing grin as she ducks under her arm. Then waggles her eyebrows.
Mira turns quickly to face the lockers and slams the door with a thud. She decides she can think about it more when she can’t feel her heartbeat in her ears.
She is Kang Mira. She doesn’t get nervous, and this is nothing she can’t handle. She’s just going to spend two hours three feet away from the very pretty, very toned, very naked Ryu Rumi.
The same woman who was previously so emotionally unavailable that it was a miracle that Mira even knew her favorite color, let alone her biggest and deepest secrets. The same woman she’s spent years admiring from a distance, appreciating the swell of her arms in her sword forms, cherishing the way she laughs, wondering if the skin on her neck was as soft as it looks-
(Zoey calls it pining. Mira calls it a nuisance.)
It was hard enough to go to the bathhouse with Zoey the first time. Because Mira simply did not ever have the kind of friends she felt comfortable enough to go to the bathhouse with. Certainly never one’s she felt comfortable enough to undress around.
Zoey would’ve respected it, she knows, if Mira had just grown a pair and just asked her to keep her eyes closed until they were underwater. Zoey had been nothing but kind since the moment they’d met, respecting boundaries that even Mira herself didn’t know how to clearly define yet
But, screw it, Zoey was so cute, and so pretty, and they’d been sharing their souls from the moment they were born, so what was the skin underneath her shirt compared to that? Still, she’d been so nervous to turn around, so terrified to lose this precious new friendship and unwilling to show it-
-then Zoey had damn near tackled her, pressed her against the lockers, and made out with her fiercely. It was only through the sheer force of willpower that Mira managed to overcome her shock, grab her by the shoulders, and kiss her back until they were nothing but a connected embrace of tongues and heat. Shock exploding in her stomach, then disbelief, then an all-consuming adoration she hasn’t shaken off to this day and knows she never will.
Somehow, it felt much easier after that.
But it turns something in Mira’s gut to see the way Rumi’s gaze lingers on them a little too long when they kiss, or hug longer than friends do, or when one of them leaves a room in the morning in pajamas she didn’t go to bed in. Mira hates it.
Not Rumi. Never Rumi. But Mira can’t stand that insecure look on her face. Because yeah, Rumi can put on a show for everyone else. But Mira knows her the way she knows how to move her own body around her gok-do: years and years of very careful, very attentive study. But Mira knows that that look on Rumi’s pretty face means she feels something Mira can’t stand for: not good enough. Wanting and never having. Unworthy.
Because they’d asked her years ago if she wanted to join the relationship. Her polite but strained thank you, but no had hurt badly enough that they’d never asked again, but they were more than happy to bask in Rumi’s friendship, if not her partnership. And maybe there was a small part of Mira and Zoey both that had hoped she’d changed her mind eventually, but Rumi was wonderful in any way they could have her.
But Mira can look at it now with different eyes. Because Rumi had had that same look on her face then.
She can’t help it. She’s never been able to help it from the very first day she met Rumi on Celine’s training ground. She hates to see her upset. Rumi is her leader, her unnie, and one of her best friends. It doesn’t take part of her soul to want to see her smiling instead.
But the longer this stalemate goes on, the harder it is to ignore that secret, simmering, jealous part of her that wants to be the one who put it there.
Even so, the bathhouse is sacred, and with scarcely a month since the disastrous Idol Awards, Rumi’s been fragile with them in a way she never was before. Open in a way she never was before, with her skin and her heart. It’s too early to push the boundaries of this new bond they’ve been building, no matter how much stronger it is.
So no, they won’t have that conversation here. This is the spot for prime relaxation and much needed rest, not for the airing of years-long crushes, or an invitation to join a relationship that already makes Mira happier than she’s ever been before. Definitely not for admitting how long she’s wanted to trace the sharp bones of Rumi’s hips with her tongue-
So this is fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine.
“I am so looking forward to tonight, you would not believe.” Zoey sighs, tosses her bag into a locker. “I can’t wait to eat my body weight in carbs and spend a good looong time with Couch.”
“Couch.” Rumi nods sagely, wraps a towel around her neck, strokes the ends of the towel as though she were a wise old man stroking his beard. “I’m gonna spend so much time on there that they can use me for a mushroom farm.”
Mira smirks. “And Rumi puts her phone in the safe, so she can’t release anything.”
Rumi squawks with indignation, but Zoey just throws an arm around her shoulder. “Nope! Just us, some snacks, and this cool new show I found on tiktok!”
Zoey pulls out her phone to scroll through her likes, and Rumi leans into her shoulder. “Ooo, is that the one with the blackpink cameo?”
“Yes! They look so cool!” Zoey gushes. “I wanna binge the whole series and-”
“Absolutely not.” Mira pulls her shirt over her head, tosses it carelessly into her locker. “We’re watching Weapons.”
“Aw, what?” Zoey complains. “But I wanna see if the hype is worth it!”
“And I have been waiting to see this movie for months, because someone changed her mind last minute and just had to spend our one free night on tour stalking Arden Cho’s instagram instead.”
Zoey giggles, completely shameless. “Guilty. But also, no regrets."
Rumi snorts as she ducks out of Zoey’s grasp with a dancer's grace. Miras heart twinges pathetically in her chest and, fuck, she really has no idea what she’s gonna do if Rumi doesn’t want to join their relationship. She’ll respect it, obviously, because she loves Rumi so much and because she puts a slightly unhealthy amount of attention towards being a decent person, but Zoey and her poor vibrator can only take so much.
She pops the clasp on her bra and slips it down her shoulders. She glances towards her bandmates. “Rumi, what do you-
-Only to see Rumi, stumbled back and patterns lit up like a magenta Christmas tree. Shoulders hunched like she has hackles raised. A dumbstruck look on her scarlet red face. The ends of her towel slipping from her fingers.
“Oh.”
Rumi swallows thickly. Her patterns pulse so bright that Zoey winces and covers her eyes.
Hot, Mira thinks. “Oh shit!” She yells.
“Fuck, I didn’t-” Rumi looks down at her arms in horror, before flaring them out wildly, eyes darting from the lockers, to the floor, to the benches, anywhere but at Mira- ”You. I’m- I didn’t-”
Mira’s stomach drops. “Rumi?”
Zoey’s reaches for Rumi's shoulder, concern blooming on her face. “-Ru? Are you okay?”
Rumi jumps like she’s been zapped with lightning, and Mira winces at the sound her shoulder makes when it collides with the wall behind her. She jerks her shoulders into the corner with a loud, painful thunk.
Zoey yelps like she’s the one who’s been hit. She’s on Rumi in an instant, reaching for her shoulders, her wrists, anything she can hold onto. Rumi’s too busy trying to launch herself out of the room, out of her own skin to think about shaking her off.
Mira doesn’t think twice before lunging, bracketing her arms on either side of Rumi’s corner, caging her and Zoey in with her own body. Nowhere for Rumi to run, nowhere to hurt herself-
-Mira forces air into her lungs. This is not a trapped animal, this is Rumi, and she’s upset, and Mira will always go to the ends of the earth if needed to fix that-
“Breathe, Rumi! What’s wrong?!” Mira yells.
Rumi wheezes at the ceiling. Points.
“Piercings.”
Mira glances down.
Oh. Oh.
Little silver bars. Gemstones on the end. Purple gemstones.
“... you like them?” Rumi nods quickly, eyes firmly directed towards the ceiling. Mira grins, and lets a deep breath out, shoulders sagging. “Good. Zoey picked them out.”
Zoey looks down to blatantly ogle, then groans. “Yeah, that’s my bad. Also, you’re welcome.”
Rumi whips her head towards Zoey, betrayal in her eyes (still looking anywhere but at Mira). “You knew?!”
“We went together!” Zoey breaks into a mega-watt grin. “Our first tour, in… Chicago, I think? We had to mark the occasion!”
Rumi blinks, incredulous. “You wanted to celebrate our debut by getting stabbed?”
“No, we celebrated with a shit ton of soju and a nightclub.” Zoey laughs, and pokes Mira in her side. “One thing led to another. Someone may have drunkenly dared someone to get a fun souvenir.”
“Hey, no, you were drunk. I’d been planning since the second we got off Jeju.” Mira snorts. “Can you imagine? ‘Hey Celine, I need the night off so I can get needles put through my nips. What do you think, horizontal or vertical?’”
It makes Zoey giggle, and Mira can’t help but to follow, and let the rest of the tension seep out of her body.
That relaxes Rumi a little, patterns calming to a deep, still glowing violet. Enough that she lowers her gaze to Mira’s hairline, at least. But her face looks downright wounded. “You… went together?”
She doesn’t say without me, but it rings just as loud. A sharp little pang of guilt hits Mira in the gut.
Zoey scratches the back of her neck, and has the decency to look sheepish. “It… might’ve been one of those things you were too busy for. And we… we didn’t think you’d come if we asked.”
“Oh.” It’s fascinating and horrible at the same time, to watch cool and confident Ryu Rumi, popstar princess and the voice of a generation, wilt into something resembling a kicked puppy. “You’re right, I probably wouldn’t have. My… my patterns…”
But she wanted to, Mira realizes. Rumi had wanted to spend time with them, even if it was a pulsing nightclub or a seedy body piercing studio. Things she’d never said she was even remotely interested in. But she’d wanted to, because Zoey and Mira wanted to. And she couldn’t.
Something in Mira crumbles.
“We know.” Mira lowers her arms and, not for the first time, wants nothing more than to wrap them around the purple-haired girl of her dreams. “We know, Rumi. You weren’t ready yet. We’d never hold that against you.”
“You know we’d ask you now, right? Now we know better.” Zoey nudges her shoulder with a little smile. “You’re stuck with us, Ru. Heart and soul. And patterns.”
Sweet, sentimental Zoey, with a heart of gold Mira wants nothing more than to hold in her hands and protect. Mira feels her own heart clench. Part of her hopes it’s visible through her skin, just so Zoey and Rumi both know what they do to her. Even if she isn’t convinced Rumi will ever look her in the eyes again.
Mira’s lips curl into a smirk. “And hey, never too late. Just say the word, and-
Rumi's arms cross in front of her chest protectively. “-No. No. Absolutely not.” Her eyes flick over to Zoey. Mira’s not sure it’s possible for her face to get any redder, and yet Rumi chances a glance at her shirt. “Zoey, do you…”
“Nah, I chickened out. But I did get a tattoo!” Zoey does a full 180, hooks her thumbs in her waistband, and drags them down. “Here, let me show you-”
Rumi whimpers. Whimpers. Thank god Mira hasn’t taken her shorts off yet. She doesn’t get the chance before a poof of pink smoke replaces Rumi, and she disappears.
A beat of silence. Then Mira turns to Zoey.
“Wooow Zoey, I thought we were gonna ease her into this gently.” Mira drawls, lightly elbows her. “At least wait for the second date before you show her your ass.”
“Oops.” Zoey pouts. “I didn’t mean to scare her.”
“That’s alright, baby.” Mira snatches her by the waist, pulls her in, and pats her ass with a kiss on her cheek. “I like your turtle.”
It’s not until later, much later, until the remote is in her hand and the credits are rolling, that Mira realizes something important.
Broadly, Mira is used to fighting for what she wants. Whether it’s terms of her modeling contracts, slaying demons, or arguing passionately against whatever bullshit has the misfortune of crossing her path that day. She’s used to winning, be it with sharp words or sharper strikes if needed.
But fuck her, she’s never be able to say no when Zoey hits her with her big sad eyes, or Rumi flashes her a dorky, eager smile. The art of denying her girls anything (because they’re both her girls damnit, Rumi just doesn’t know it yet), anything is a skill she hasn’t yet learned to master. Selfishly, she hopes she never does.
But they’d watched her movie. Hadn’t bothered to put up a fight, didn’t say a word when she threw herself down on the couch and switched on her choice of movie, only cuddled up to her on either side. And now there’s Rumi, asleep on her shoulder, a little puddle of drool staining her shirt. Zoey drowsily scrolling through her phone, eyelids drooping against Mira’s thigh.
They hadn’t argued. They hadn’t bickered. They hadn’t even brought it up again. Because Rumi had seen-
A wicked grin overtakes her face. Oh yes. Interesting.