Chapter Text
The water is warm and soothing against Rumi’s skin as she sinks deeper into the bath, letting her head tip back until the crown of her hair just brushes the surface. The steam curls lazily around her face, carrying the faint scent of cedar and sweet rice milk from the bathhouse oils. She breathes in, slow and steady, and releases the tension in her shoulders. Even though she doesn’t feel the heat as sharply as Mira and Zoey, the relaxed, calming atmosphere seeps into her anyway.
A faint splash and a giggle break the calm. Rumi cracks one eye open just in time to see Mira shove Zoey away by the face with the lazy precision of someone too tired to argue. Ripples fan out across the pool, catching the light from the lanterns above and scattering it like shards of gold over their skin. Mira glides through the water to Rumi’s side, sliding in beside her with a low, contented hum that nearly dissolves into a yawn.
Rumi lifts a brow, her voice a quiet murmur. “Trouble?”
“She’s trying to start a splash war,” Mira mutters, eyes half-closed. “I don’t want a splash war. I want to sleep.”
Rumi lets her eyes drift back across the tub, where Zoey is frozen mid-motion, hands poised dramatically above the water’s surface. Her lower lip juts out in a pout so perfect it could have been rehearsed.
The lanternlight reflects in her wide, pleading eyes, making her look like a damp puppy denied a treat.
Rumi can’t help the small snort that escapes her. “You can come here if you behave and don’t bother Mira,” she says, her tone indulgent.
Zoey perks up immediately. In the next heartbeat, she’s gliding through the water with uncanny grace, barely disturbing the surface. She tucks herself neatly against Rumi’s other side, her damp hair sticking in faint curls to her temples.
“This is way better,” Zoey sighs, the sound melting into a contented hum.
Mira glares weakly at her over Rumi’s shoulder. “You said that last time. Five minutes before you started humming battle songs.”
“I can be quiet,” Zoey insists, already fidgeting with the edge of Rumi’s towel.
“You say that every time, too,” Mira replies, but her voice has softened.
Rumi lets them bicker quietly, feeling the tension in the air dissolve into something warmer, more familiar. The three of them sit in silence after a while, only the sound of dripping water and the distant creak of wood breaking the stillness. The bathhouse light flickers, painting the steam in soft amber.
At some point, Rumi gets shifted around, Mira muttering something about a massage as she settles behind her and Zoey slumps against her front. Mira’s hands start working on her shoulders and neck, rubbing firmly up and down, working out the knots that have formed at their junction. Rumi can feel her and Zoey breathing, pressed against her like this.
She lets her mind drift off again.
Mistake.
It starts as a faint pulse, somewhere deep within her. Rumi ignores it for a little, until it starts growing, asking for something to be done about it. Except, that’s not quite right – it’s not asking for something to be done about it or to it, but for it to do something.
This is a feeling that, very occasionally, attempts to claw Rumi apart from the inside. Usually, however, there is a very definitive stimulus for this feeling, and a way for Rumi to escape to deal with it by herself. Right now, neither of these criteria are present, and she is a bit concerned about how that might play out.
But one is definitely easier to solve than the other. Rumi opens her eyes.
She is immediately met with the top of Zoey’s head, hair done up and out of the way so it didn’t get (or wasn’t supposed to get) wet in the bath.
Even with the dimness of the room, the light is a bit disconcerting, but now that she has a general picture of what’s happening around her body, it is much easier for Rumi to pinpoint the source of her…distress.
Zoey is tracing her fingers absentmindedly over the patterns on Rumi’s legs.
Just as she realizes this, Mira presses a spot on Rumi’s neck that makes about half of her brain fuzz out from the outside, scrambling her coherent thoughts for a moment. She comes back to herself just on the tail end of a noise that she knows Zoey and Mira can’t interpret, but essentially means yes-good-satisfied-thank-you-mine.
She passes it off as a hum of contentment. Which, it isn’t not. It also just definitely isn’t.
“Good?” Mira asks her, and oh, awesome, great, her hands are moving to trace along the patterns on Rumi’s shoulders and upper arms, swirling over her scapula and biceps. The aching tug in Rumi’s stomach grows, begging her to do something, yours, pretty, good, take- and she clamps her fingers down on her own thighs underneath the water.
“Good,” she says back, and oh, fuck, when did her voice get so growly, goddamnit-
Zoey giggles, twisting around slightly to peer back over her shoulder at Rumi. “Did you fall asleep?”
“Almost,” she returns, barely able to focus from the combination of Mira’s hands stroking over her arms and Zoey’s skimming ever higher on her legs.
“You’d think we’d be able to convince you to relax more now that you like the bathhouse,” Zoey teases gently. “You’re still so resistant when we suggest it.”
“Mm.”
Rumi can feel Mira’s frown at her back. “Rumi, are you alright?”
“Uh?”
Mira grabs slightly lower on Rumi’s arm to pull it out of the water, and Rumi reluctantly loosens her grip on her thigh to let her do so.
Her marks are lit up.
This, by itself, isn’t so strange of an occurrence. Rumi’s patterns have started displaying a wide variety of colors recently, sometimes drifting randomly and sometimes very tuned to Rumi’s emotions. She’s gotten used to it. Zoey and Mira have gotten used to it – often they’re even excited when Rumi’s marks give away how she’s feeling, or how much of it she’s feeling, making a game of trying to get her to light up in positive colors the brightest.
But Rumi understands Mira’s concern, since the color she’s displaying now wouldn’t be one she or Zoey had seen before.
It’s a deep, luxurious purple – not luxurious in a way associated with expensive wine and furs, but luxurious in texture, as much texture as a single color can have. From a color mixing perspective, Rumi knows, the combination is from a purple the same shade as her hair, and a deep, ethereal pink, so warm it’s almost red, but much softer than the violence and anger that usually brings that color out on her.
Rumi has only seen this shade on herself the previous times when she has gone to deal with it herself.
Mira’s hands have obviously stopped their work on her shoulders. Zoey’s haven’t stopped theirs on her legs, and Rumi can just glimpse their colors starting to get brighter.
“Yeah,” she forces her mouth to say, “I’m fine.”
“Rumi,” Zoey frowns at her, half a second away from pulling the puppy eyes back out.
“I am,” she tries to protest, “I’m good. Very good. The water is good. The massage is good. Resting is good. I feel great.”
Which, really, isn’t even kind of a lie. She does feel great. It’s just not the water or the resting making her feel that way, and also not even exactly the massage.
She’s not going to say that, though. For the time being, she has enough self control for that at least.”
The two of them must read at least some sort of honesty to her words, if not sincerity, and Mira goes back to her work on Rumi’s shoulders.
Which would be fine, except Zoey doesn’t turn back around, and actually turns further to face Rumi before starting up her slow tracing of her legs again.
Which means she catches Rumi’s facial expression the next time Mira rubs over that spot on her neck, and catches her fingers digging into her own thighs.
Silently, Zoey flashes a hand out to stop Mira’s movements, eyes locked on Rumi’s. Which basically means it’s over, because-
“Your pupils are huge.”
Rumi shuts her eyes with a sigh.
Mira goes absolutely still behind her.
And slowly, so slowly, she leans forward to hook her chin over Rumi’s shoulder, and she can hear the smug grin in her voice as she says, “Oh?”
Well then.
Somehow, this kicks Rumi’s competitive side into gear. It’s not a competition, and not even a proper game, but she is going to win.
“It’s dark in here,” she starts. It’s weak. She knows it’s weak. That’s what she wants.
“Not that dark,” Mira counters. “And we’ve been in here a while.”
“My eyes have been closed.”
“Not for a few minutes,” Zoey grins sharply. “And you’re giving off enough light at this point that it shouldn’t matter much.”
She has a point there. Rumi’s glowing pretty much all over by now.
“There’s a lot of reasons someone’s eyes might be dilated.”
Mira smells blood in the water. “I think you know exactly what this color on you means.”
“I do,” Rumi allows. One of them is going to break. She’s betting on Zoey.
“What’s it from?” Mira goads her.
“Touching them,” Rumi gives, letting her tongue flicker out to wet her lips, watching Zoey track the movement. But contrary to what Zoey might think, it’s not a twitch of nerves or lost ground.
Rumi’s just scenting the air.
“Touching them? Like this?” Mira asks, skimming her fingers down Rumi’s arms, all the way to the thinner patterns on the pulse-point of her wrists. She’s playing dirty.
So Rumi does too, letting the rumble from deep in her chest spill out into the air, not quite a hum, not even really a purr, but a deep, instinctive rumble of satisfaction.
“Aw,” Zoey teases, or tries to at least, and cups Rumi’s face with a hand, gently swiping her thumb close to Rumi’s bottom lip. “Does that feel good?”
“Very,” Rumi lets out with that same rumble, delights in the way the noise throws Zoey off balance, makes her eyes widen a little and a flush start crawling up her cheeks.
“Yeah?” Mira purrs into her ear. “Does it feel like we’re touching somewhere else? Does it make you think about that?”
“No.”
A pause. “No?”
Zoey goes to remove her hand. Rumi is faster.
She catches the tip of Zoey’s thumb with her canine, trapping it between her teeth. She caresses it with the side of her tongue, wiping up the pinprick of blood from the scratch of her tooth, and lets it go.
Zoey herself is sitting stunned in front of her, eyes still wide, jaw hanging open. Rumi licks her lips again.
“It makes me think about what I always think about when my patterns go like this,” she tells them, words twining with the rumble in her chest that hasn’t stopped, “and it feels like it does when you and Zoey walk around covered in sweat in sports bras and running shorts, and-”
Rumi cuts herself off.
“And?” Mira pants in her ear, breathing like she’s flustered. Rumi brings both of her arms above her head and arches her back in a show of a stretch, reveling in the punched-out noise Mira makes as she moves against her, before bringing her arms back down in a loop that slings around Mira’s neck and traps them together.
“And I think about ripping them off and cleaning the salt off of both of you with my mouth, holding you down with a hand while I push-”
Rumi is interrupted by a sudden splash, Zoey falling backwards and scrambling out of the tub, making a beeline for the changing room.
She blinks, the feeling in her gut sinking like a stone. It’s actually crazy she had managed to ignore that possibility for so long, when usually it’s the thing keeping her from losing control and doing anything like this-
Mira starts moving and practically forces Rumi to stand with her, grabbing her arms from around her neck and tugging her towards the door. “What-”
“Bathhouse is sacred.”
“What?”
“The bathhouse is sacred, Zoey refuses to fuck in here,” Mira says. “I’ve tried. Hurry up so you can finish what you started.”
…So maybe Rumi misread Zoey’s reaction.
Nice.