Work Text:
Having your soul finally pulled out of the object it was stuck in feels like waking up from a coma, or at least, how Jinu imagines how it feels. Awareness comes back to him at a glacier’s pace, fingers numb for the first few minutes and vision darkened and blurry for a couple minutes longer. His tongue feels more like a brick in his mouth than it ever has, awkward and thick and heavy.
He processes the world around him but it takes a while for anything to really click. Like the cushions below him, the fact that the overhead lights were dimmed for his sake, and the hands currently cupping his.
It takes longer than it should for Jinu to realize he’s not alone. In his defense, coming back from the dead is never fun. Usually it hurts more, but Jinu finds he’s not in any pain now. He’s traded pain for a slower wake-up, a trade that he might’ve been hesitant to make once, but there’s no danger to be found here. There’s only gentle silence, comfort, softness, and one of the few people Jinu trusts with his life sitting in front of him.
Rumi gives his hand a little squeeze and Jinu realizes that she’s been doing that for a while now but he’s only just now processed it. He squeezes back and her breath catches. “Jinu..? Are you with me now?”
It feels cruel of him to have kept her waiting for this long. He doesn’t know exactly how long he was stuck but he had brief glimpses of awareness. He knows it’s been a while. He knows he heard his name a handful of times, always from Rumi, like his soul was responding to her the only way it could each and every time she called for him.
Jinu doesn’t think he can deny her, not then and not now. So he musters up a smile with the energy he has, mouth parting to murmur a soft, “Hey, Rumi.”
Her eyes sparkle with tears, disbelief dancing in her eyes before something harder and more determined takes over. Jinu has a good guess for why— the way they left things wasn’t… Great. The betrayal, what he said to her after, and the concert… Sacrifice or not, Jinu knows he has a few things to answer for. He opens his mouth with the intent to do just that.
Not a single word manages to leave his mouth before there are hands clapping over his face. Jinu makes a noise of surprise and alarm— no matter what Rumi might say later, he does not squeak, thank you very much— but meets Rumi’s intense gaze steadily.
“We need to talk, and we will later.” Rumi tells him very seriously. “But right now, I just really want to kiss you until you forget your own name. Can I do that?”
Jinu abruptly thinks maybe his head isn’t back in working order like he thought it was. “Uh.” Jinu utters, eloquently. “Could you repeat that?”
“I want to kiss you,” Rumi repeats, slowly, enunciating each word so it’s unmistakable what she’s saying. “Until you forget your own name. Can I do that?”
So, apparently Jinu did hear right. But he’s not any less confused. “Why?” He blurts out before he can stop himself.
“Do you not want that?”
“No, no—” Jinu says quickly before the offer is rescinded. Because there’s not a world in which Jinu is not interested in that. He just… Doesn’t understand. “I’m a little confused how we got here, is all.”
The searching and intensity in Rumi’s gaze softens, just a bit. “Jinu…” She sighs his name like it’s meant to be treated with respect and not like the many, many times it was said in anger or disgust by others. “It’s been a little over six months since you died, and it’s been… Difficult. For me. I thought about you a lot. How you died, everything leading up to it, what we talked about before the Idol Awards— all of it, really. And knowing your soul was still here, just out of reach, was… Frustrating.
“I thought about all the things I wish I said. All the things I wish I did. And seeing you now makes me realize I don’t want to wait. I want to kiss you. Because I think I might be in love with you.”
Jinu chokes on nothing but her words, getting shot straight through the heart. “You— that’s—” his head spins with her words, bouncing around his head and only seeming to pick up speed in the process. “That’s a terrible idea.” He finds himself saying without being able to stop himself.
Rumi’s mouth curves into a smile. “I’ve had a lot of terrible ideas. Releasing Golden right after our world tour ended for one. Writing Takedown like I did for another. But this? I don’t think it’s a bad idea at all. I think it’s a very good one.”
Like a tiger sneaking up on its prey, Rumi slowly moves closer and closer. Unlike any sensible creature, Jinu doesn’t move a muscle. His heart flutters like a butterfly caught in a spider’s web, trapped in his chest with nowhere else to go.
“Are you sure?” Jinu can’t help but ask.
“I’ve had six months to think about it.” Rumi straddles his lap. Jinu rests his hands on her hip before he can think about what he’s doing. His face feels hot but the last thing he wants to do is pull away, able to feel the warmth of her skin from under the palms of his hands and remind himself how real this is.
Even in his wildest fantasies, he doesn’t think he could dream this up. There’s a part of him that screams you don’t deserve this but his head goes quiet as Rumi gently tilts his head up to look at her. Her mouth is parted and he swears there’s wonder in her eyes, like she can’t believe he’s really here again. Jinu can scarcely believe it either.
“Tell me if I’m moving too fast.”
“This is definitely too fast,” Jinu tells her honestly, thumb brushing against her skin, “But I don’t want you to stop.”
“And if I kissed you?”
“I’d kiss you back.”
Like a tiger who’s already caught its prey, Rumi pounces. Rather than sharp claws and skin tearing, Jinu earns warm lips against his, but they’re hungry all the same. It’s been centuries since he’s kissed anyone but Jinu finds it’s easy to kiss Rumi, or maybe, neither of them care enough to know the difference. They just meet each other, matching each other’s energy, and devour one another like demons trying to suck the souls out of each other.
Rumi makes good on her promise. She kisses him, over and over and over again, barely coming up for air before she dives right back down again. Jinu keeps up the very best he can, getting lost in the sensation in the process, and finds that soon enough, his head is quieter than it’s ever been. That he can’t think about anything other than Rumi, Rumi, Rumi.
He does forget his own name for a while. And it’s a freeing thing to lose, because the only thing he needs to know is that he is safe here, and that he is loved. Unconditionally. Unrelentingly. And he hopes to never forget it.
—
Mira and Zoey return home to a demon on their couch, dazed and deliriously happy. Judging by the way Rumi is humming loudly in the kitchen as she peels a few oranges, he’s not the only one. Rumi gives them a little wave, preening like a peacock, and the pair find that said demon has several hickeys on his neck and a lightly bruised and bleeding lip.
“Wow, Rumi.” Mira raises an eyebrow. “You do not play around.”
Zoey giggles like she can’t keep it in, immediately zipping to the kitchen to pester Rumi for details. Mira intends to join them but first takes a good look at the demon in question, slumped and drunk on what appears to be a pretty intense make out session.
Rumi had a lot of pent up feelings apparently. Mira knew as much— the past six or so months were very illuminating for many reasons, but learning about the bond Rumi and Jinu had was one of them— but even so, she’s a little impressed Rumi had it in her. Going from repressed and having only kissed maybe two people before to pulling a demon out of her sword and trying to suck the soul from out his body is a big jump.
If Mira didn’t see this relationship coming, she might’ve been skeptical about Rumi’s taste in partners. But she had a few months to come around to it.
Still, Mira has a job to do here. “Hey.”
Jinu blinks like he’s only just realized she’s standing there. Drunk on love indeed. “Hey.”
“If you hurt her again, I’ll kill you.” Mira gets straight to the point. Jinu blinks again before he starts nodding.
“Yeah, okay.” He says, like nothing in the world can faze him right now. Like Mira could kill him right now and he’d die happy.
Damn, Rumi, Mira almost wants to whistle. The hell did you do to him?
Mira leaves Jinu there to continue riding on whatever high he’s on and heads to the kitchen with the intent of asking exactly that.