Work Text:
The kettle of tea only had enough to fill Rumi’s cup.
Celine makes no comment about it. She just sets it down on the low table in their sitting room, briefly touching Rumi’s cup to make sure that it isn’t too hot before pushing it towards her and turning back to the document she’s working on.
Rumi eyes Celine’s own cup—empty, untouched—and frowns.
“What about you?”
“I’m fine,” Celine reassures, biting at the end of her pen. Her brows are pinched, her glasses low on the bridge of her nose.
Rumi believes her.
If Celine says she’s fine, then she must be, right?
Rumi takes her tea, wraps her small hands around it. The warmth soothes her—especially in the dead of winter—and Rumi can’t help but wonder:
Does Celine not want to be warm too?
“I bet she isn’t expecting you to visit again so soon,” Zoey comments off-handedly, tapping at her chin while she looked over their pantry, then fridge, then their other, fancier pantry. “Did she like the soup?”
“I hope. I never got to ask.” Rumi turns on the faucet to fill their kettle up. “I wish I did a little more than just shove a thing of soup into her arms and then leave, though.”
“Hey, getting there was a great start!” Zoey turns her head to smile at her. “Baby steps and all that.”
Rumi shrugs with a wry smile. “I suppose you’re right.”
“You could bring her this cheese wedge,” Zoey holds up it towards Rumi.
“She can't have dairy, remember?” Rumi looks back at Zoey with an apology in her smile. “Like me. Thank you though, honey.”
Zoey grimaces. “I keep forgetting.”
“Is that where you get it from?” Mira mumbles out, the end of a ribbon pinched between her teeth. She’s gift-wrapping a box for Rumi, spreading out the wrapping paper on their dining table and folding up the edges where it needs to get cut.
“That’s not how it—” Rumi pinches the bridge of her nose, and in that moment chooses peace. “You know what, sure, yeah.”
Mira laughs, and the ribbon falls away and she’s fumbling to catch it. Rumi can’t help the wide, easy smile on her face that follows.
Their kitchen is a bit of a mess, and Rumi can tell from all the fidgeting and excitement that Zoey and Mira are just as nervous as she is, try as they might to hide it. They’re not coming with her on this visit to Celine—not yet, at least—but she carries their well-intentions along with her: in the patient attentiveness that Mira’s putting into wrapping Rumi’s gift, in Zoey’s earnest effort putting together a food basket for her to bring.
She hears the sound of running water.
“Oh shit,” Rumi mumbles to herself, rushing to the sink, so absorbed with Zoey and Mira’s affection that she hadn’t noticed the overflowing kettle.
It’s strange to see Celine like this—weary, unguarded, disheveled on the couch. Rumi worries at her lip, her cheek pressing against her forearms as she sits by the edge of the cushion to watch her.
Something’s wrong.
“Celine?”
She stirs ever so lightly, but her eyes don’t open. In a small, gravelly voice, Celine says:
“It’s okay, Rumi-ya.” She exhales softly. “I’m fine.”
Rumi feels the thorny vines surrounding her chest recede, and the world is right again. She sighs, relieved, her shoulders drooping low and relaxed.
Everything’s going to be okay, then.
But still, there must be something she could do to help. She runs to their linen closet and stands on the tips of her toes to reach a clean, fresh sheet. It’s a large and bulky bundle to hold in her arms, but Rumi manages to bring it back to their sitting room.
She lays it across Celine’s legs and pulls it up to her middle, quiet as a mouse, pleased to see the way her breathing has gone steady—deep, restful.
Rumi thinks and thinks and thinks—what would Celine do next?
She gasps to herself, and then runs to the kitchen.
—
When Celine wakes up again, Rumi’s holding her hand.
There’s a plate of food on the table, and a glass of water. Rumi’s teddy bear, for some reason, is beside her.
“Rumi?”
Rumi, who's almost dozed off on the floor, lifts her head to look at Celine. She brushes back Rumi’s disheveled hair, and then pushes herself to sit up. Celine looks out through the window and sees that the sky is dark. She pauses, her brows pulling together when she looks at Rumi. The first thing she asks is: “It’s late. Have you eaten?”
Rumi frowns. “But what about you—?”
“I’m sorry I overslept.” She gives Rumi’s hand a tender squeeze. “Come on,”
Celine beckons her gently. Her own food is growing cold on the table.
“I’ll make you something warm.”
Zoey, apparently struck by inspiration, runs off to rummage through the medicine cabinet.
Mira continues her quiet work of gift wrapping. She’s wearing one of Rumi’s oversized sweatshirts, and Rumi relishes the way it hangs loosely on her elegant shoulders—along with her lazy, unravelling bun. Rumi leans down onto the table on her forearms, just so she can look up at Mira’s face.
There’s a smile at the corner of her mouth, though her eyes don’t leave the paper while she slides the scissors through to make a clean cut. “This can’t be all that interesting to watch.”
“I'll have to disagree,” Rumi reaches out to tuck a lock of pink hair behind her ear, smiling like a fool. “I think you’re fascinating.”
It’s such a rewarding feeling, making Mira blush. Rumi tries to manage it at least once a day.
“You don’t have to go on your own,” Mira says kindly.
“I know,” Rumi hums, eyes falling towards Mira’s hands: slender, beautiful, calloused from every labor of love she’d done for the both of them. “I’d like to though, for today.”
Mira stops, puts down the pair of scissors, and looks Rumi in the eyes. “You’ll be okay?”
“I think so,” Rumi nods. “Yeah, I will.”
Her worry eases into a smile—and then Zoey comes barreling back into the kitchen.
“Hi,” she grins, her hand trailing across Mira’s back as she passes them. She picks up the discarded cheese wedge and starts wrapping a thick layer of cloth around it.
“Zoey,” Mira sighs at her, fond but exasperated, “Put down the cheese—”
She also has a giant box of medicine—Rumi’s giant box—and drops it into the basket with a wink.
It makes Rumi sputter into laughter, just as Mira facepalms with a groan.
“Come here,” Rumi says sweetly, tugging on the hem of Zoey’s hoodie. “You win. The cheese wedge stays.”
Zoey laughs as she leans closer, smiling into the clumsy kiss that Rumi pulls her in for.
“I drew this today at school!”
Rumi’s too excited to knock on Celine’s door like she’s been asked to, running straight into her study holding up a piece of paper.
When Rumi looks up to find her, she freezes on the spot.
“Rumi,” Celine’s voice is terse. “It’s not a good time.”
She's hunched over her desk, her jaw set like stone while she breathes slowly—painfully. She's hiding something under the blazer draped over her shoulders, one arm covering a spot on her tank top stained with—with something dark. With something that matches the blooming gash on her cheek. The paper slips away from Rumi's little fingers, forgotten on the floor, because Rumi is young but she's old enough to know what getting hurt looks like—
"Celine?"
"I told you to never come in here without knocking."
Celine doesn't snap at her.
Celine never snaps, or loses composure, but there is ice crawling underneath the calm surface of her voice—and Rumi flushes at the admonishment, a small lick of shame curling in her chest at the realization that in her haste—in her excitement—she had disobeyed.
Something burns in her arm, crawling outwards beneath the sleeve of her shirt. Rumi's hand comes up to hold her shoulder—Celine's eyes lock-in on the action like a hawk, ever-vigilant.
"I'm sorry," Rumi whispers, tensing up. "I—"
She's frozen because she doesn't know whether to step back or step forward, because Celine looks hurt, but Celine was also right—she hadn't asked. She hadn't been allowed to come near just yet.
Why won't she let her help?
Rumi doesn't even get the chance to knock on Zoey's door before it opens and she's being dragged inside by the front of her sweater.
"Oh! Uh, honey—?"
"Okay, so, I need you to help me pick an outfit," Zoey announces, still pulling Rumi forward by the front towards her walk-in closet. "I'm going to tour Jeju while you two talk! It has to be cute, but it also needs to capture the whole my-fiancee-is-meeting-her-estranged-mother vibe I have going on today—"
Rumi laughs a little awkwardly. Zoey's walking and talking a mile a minute, but she's never going to ask this woman to slow down for anyone, even herself—so she keeps up.
"You don't have to stay around the area," Rumi offers a little shyly, unable to resist the urge to stare when Zoey's bathrobe drops down and pools around her feet as she starts picking out an outfit. "I mean, we used to live there. I'm not sure there's going to be much for you to explore."
"Well, looks you're exploring plenty," Zoey says around a laugh—and Rumi flushes red because she's been caught—guilty as charged, but unapologetic. Zoey picks out a pale yellow blouse and a light jacket. It suits her. It's a sunny, albeit windy, day. "I just wanted to be nearby, y'know?"
Just in case, is probably at the tip of Zoey's tongue.
Rumi feels it then—the knee-jerk reaction to tell her that everything's fine. An inherited habit. Trained from observation. But she lets the feeling pass to make space for the tenderness of Zoey's concern.
"Okay."
Rumi takes Zoey's hand so she can press a lingering kiss onto her knuckles.
"Thank you."
"Let me go with you."
Celine had barely made it back into the compound when the Honmoon rippled with a warning—a tear. As far as Rumi knows, it's been a long day for her—but Celine never allows herself the luxury of exhaustion.
She just shrugs off her blazer and prepares to head back out again with a simple reply:
"No."
"Why not?"
Celine turns to look over her shoulder and levels Rumi with an unyielding glare.
"I've never known you to talk back at me, Rumi."
For a brief moment, her glare flickers over to Mira—who they both know is hiding behind a nearby doorway with Zoey, eavesdropping. It lands back at Rumi.
The implication makes her blood boil.
"The demons—"
"—are my problem alone." Celine says with finality, buckling up her utility belt of supplies. "You three will have your time. Together. Your job for now is to wait, and train. Can you do that?"
Celine looks at her again. They hold each other's gazes for an agonizing minute, and Rumi finally sees through the mask: the tiredness is there—prominent enough that they slip through the cracks, and her unbreakable stride is slowly beginning to falter.
"But, Celine…"
She isn't ready for Celine's shoulders to drop ever so slightly as she steps outside, for her brows to knit together when she looks back at Rumi one last time. Somewhere there, it almost looks like—
"I don't want you to get hurt."
Was it worry?
Was it disdain?
She couldn't tell anymore these days. The gap between them feels nothing like the few feet that it is—instead stretching out in front of Rumi like a gaping chasm, growing day by day, in every dismissal that Celine had sent her way, in her insistence that this burden was hers and hers alone.
It's the last thing Rumi sees before the door closes shut in her face.
"Mira," Rumi smiles into Mira's lips, standing at the threshold of their penthouse doorway. Mira persists, bringing her hands up to cup Rumi's face, kissing her softly, lingering into her space when Rumi leans back to smile up at her. "I'm going to be late."
"And I'm going to miss you," Mira says quietly. Somewhere deep in Rumi's heart, a sense of pride glows at the thought that she's one of the two people in the world who gets to see Mira like this: with her messy bun, with her glasses, and the pitiful look on her face at the thought of a few hours without her or Zoey. There's no pretense left between the three of them. No room for second-guessing anymore.
"We'll be back soon," Rumi gets up on her tiptoes to gift Mira one last kiss goodbye. "Don't burn down the house while we're out."
"The audacity!" Mira laughs, and there's a crinkle in her eye. "As if I'm not the one keeping this household together."
Rumi knows better than to argue with the truth so she just smiles. "I'll tell you when we get there?"
"You better," Mira fixes the collar of Rumi's shirt. "Especially since Zoey's driving."
"It could be worse," Rumi offers. "It could be me."
"You're right," Mira whole-heartedly agrees. Rumi rolls her eyes. "The truth is in the writing of our monthly auto insurance premiums, or so Bobby says."
"If Bobby says so then it must be true," Rumi giggles. "We'll see you in a bit, okay?"
"Okay," Mira kisses her one last time—for real this time.
Rumi finally walks out to the elevators. She doesn't hear the door click shut until she's out of Mira's sight. Even then, Mira does so gently.
She always does.
Even in her anger, even in her frustration.
Rumi watches as Celine tends to the shrine, to the garden, to her mother’s grave, to the world—
To her.
She’s old enough now to figure out what empty looks like—can see it in the way Celine tries to pour Rumi a cup of tea, her hands uncharacteristically shaky in the aftermath of seeing her patterns spread a little further. They've crawled out from underneath the rounded collar of Rumi's t-shirt, unapologetic and glowing in jagged violet stripes.
They don't speak, sitting across from each other at the low table of the living room. Zoey and Mira had been sent off to run an errand. There's no need to mince words between them now. And yet, and still, Celine insists:
"It's fine."
Rumi doesn't quite believe her.
"I'll figure it out."
Celine tips the kettle further and further—but nothing comes out. It's empty.
Rumi wants to offer to help—but she looks down at her own hands and realizes she's come up empty too.
There isn’t anything left to give.
(In Celine, in Rumi, in the dying warmth of how the two of them used to feel like a family.)
Rumi’s standing in front of Celine's door, and she realizes she doesn’t know how she's going to knock when her arms are so full.
Zoey and Mira had piled one thing of food after another until one basket became two, adorned with ribbons and a post card bearing a neatly-written note with a spattering of doodles. There's a bottle of wine tucked between the infamous cheese wedge and a packet of something obscenely spicy, and a little box that had an assortment of tea: a small selection that either Zoey or Mira remembered either of them might like. The other basket held a small army of tupperware and thermoses: food they had cooked at home for the two of them to share.
It's way too much for lunch between two people.
It warms her all the same.
They're sitting across from each other at the low table of their living room, sharing tea and some snacks. Rumi realizes she hadn't quite thought this far ahead.
Things are mostly the same, save for a few noticeable changes here and there. The TV is newer. The dining set had been replaced. Celine's old display cabinet reorganized and repurposed. There's a photo she'd never seen before, sitting on one of the upper shelves. It's a picture of the both of them from what must have been more than two decades ago, where she's sitting on Celine's lap, barely a toddler, smiling in a cream jacket with a ribbon in her hair while they looked over a bundle of vibrant lilacs. She remembers that day like a dream. Like a different lifetime.
Celine finally breaks her silence. "You liked them so much because they're the same color as your hair."
"Did we used to have them in the garden?"
"Yes," Celine hums. "I planted them for the same reason."
"I see," Rumi's eyes linger on the picture for a little bit longer before she turns to Celine. "I wish you told me that."
To her surprise, Celine actually relents and says: "Likewise."
Their conversation continues cordially. There's a lot to catch up on. She tells her about Zoey's new bonsai hobby, then asks for her kimchi recipe for Mira. Celine has apparently been content to see their success in recent years from the sidelines of retirement. Yes, she still gets updates from Bobby. No, she hasn't ever had to go on hunts anymore.
Yes, she's heard of the engagement.
From Bobby—thankfully—and not some random article on the internet.
Rumi is halfway through some rice cakes that Zoey had snuck into one of the baskets when she says: "We'll have to figure out your dress, or get a suit tailored, if you prefer."
That's when the first ripple in the water breaks through. Celine's voice wavers as she looks up to Rumi, barely-concealed surprise on her face.
"My dress?"
"For the wedding," Rumi replies.
There's a stretch of silence where Celine's just staring at her—searching and confused. The way her brows knit together breaks Rumi's heart because she realizes—just then—that there are only two things that can break Celine's infallible facade.
Tragedy, like the night of the Idol Awards, in the aftermath of Rumi asking for the utterly impossible.
And, apparently, forgiveness.
She looks at Rumi—at her eyes, at her features, even down to her exposed arms, along the branching patterns that Mira and Zoey have loved with their hands and their hearts and their souls—like she's catching up to the race, wondering if there's time enough for her to learn how to do it herself.
Celine looks anguished. Rumi picks up on the way she's started breathing a little faster.
"I hardly deserve—"
"I don't care," Rumi almost spits it out, her jaw setting as she looks back at Celine. "That doesn't matter."
"But—"
"We want you there," Rumi keeps going. And then her shoulders slacken as her expression goes softer, refusing to look away from Celine after so many years of shying away from her. She feels a tightness in her own chest—like she's about to start having a hard time breathing too. But she pushes forward and whispers: "I want you there."
"Why?"
"Because you put me first."
Celine's silence is fraught and unsteady.
"Every single time," Rumi finally drops her gaze, staring at the cup of tea between her hands. There's just a thin sheen of liquid left, with a few loose leaves settled at the bottom of the cup.
She looks up across the table and sees that Celine had just been watching her. It's almost instinct, the way Celine reaches over for the kettle when she sees that Rumi's had run low.
Rumi beats her to it.
"Let me?"
She stands up and lifts it from the table, it hangs heavy from her hand.
(Full. A heart filled to the brim at the thought of a yellow shirt and a light jacket and a sunny smile by her side when she's finally ready to come home, of a loose bun and an apron and messy kitchen that they'll both come back to. Freckles in the summer, dancing in the fall.)
Celine frowns when Rumi moves to her side of the table. "What about yours?"
"There's enough for us both," Rumi tips the kettle over.
(It's overflowing now—with Zoey's laughter, with Mira's tenderness. Weekends where they sleep in past noon, Zoey on their balcony tending to her one million plants, Rumi in the living room building the furniture for Mira's studio.)
Rumi's movements come out unsteady and she almost spills the tea—
(There's so much. She could almost drown in it—in every single press of Zoey's lips along her patterned neck, or Mira's slender hands tracing down the purple lines across her shoulders—they love her and she loves them and they love her so, so much that it feels like a flood. She sinks underneath the surface of the water—pulled in by the undertow—and Rumi can hardly imagine a world where it would ever run out. Where there wouldn't be enough.)
Celine's hand comes up to steady the kettle.
They're holding it together now.
(And at the bottom of that flood, beneath the raging tide of Mira's devotion, weaving in between the currents of Zoey's care, is everything Celine had given her. Until she had nothing left to give.)
"This time," Rumi pushes through the doubt and the pain and the resentment and makes a choice. "Will you let me pour you a cup?"
"Okay."
Celine says it so quietly. Her hand comes up to cover Rumi's as they slowly tip the kettle over. They don't look at each other—they can't—but the warmth is enough.
"Thank you."