Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Jeez, it’s really coming down out there.”
Zoey was so close to the window that the tip of her nose was nearly touching the cool glass, both hands fanned out around the grey, foggy circle she was creating with her breath. The only sounds that filled the quiet room were the latter girl’s squeaky fingers against the glass and the quiet typing of Rumi jogging practice notes on her laptop--and the pounding sound of rain overhead, of course. It sounded like a thousand hooved animals with snare drums marching across their tin roof. The half-demon couldn’t help but think about how it would’ve made the perfect white noise for a peaceful late afternoon nap on their couch all together, cuddled up inside where it was dry and warm…but it wasn’t quite so conducive to getting work done and being productive. 

“Let me guess, you want to go jump in the puddles.”
Rumi was rolling her eyes in feigned annoyance, but the fond smile playing at her lips gave her away, the whisper of a laugh lingering in the back of her throat. They had a lot to get done today so she was trying her best to be the responsible leader she was meant to be and keep everyone on track--but Zoey’s childlike look of wonder as she stared out the practice room window and traced racing raindrops down the glass with her finger was just too cute to shut down entirely. The youngest girl really loved the rain (“We never had a monsoon season in California, Rumi!”), and this was the first big storm of jangma.

The shorter girl scoffed, glancing over her shoulder at Rumi on the couch with a borderline devious smile. Rumi knew the look well, their maknae was scheming.
“No! I wasn’t going to say that…”

Rumi raised her eyebrows challengingly and Zoey folded, her cheeky smile turning bashful at having been so easily caught.
“...I was just going to say that we are do for another break.”
Rumi glanced at her watch and sighed. Technically the younger girl was right, it had been over 2 hours since their last 15-minute break, but looking at their ever-long list of to-do’s you wouldn’t have known it. They weren’t behind schedule, per se--but they certainly weren’t ahead of schedule, and that was how Rumi liked it. 

Rumi, lost in thought, only looked up from the spreadsheet she was burning holes through once she felt the warm sensation of Zoey burrowing into her side. She hadn’t even noticed the younger girl make her way over to the couch, but before she knew it Zoey’s limbs were carefully wrapping around her own, her chin finding what the maknae referred to as Rumi’s “nuzzling spot” (the crook of her neck) as easily as slipping into pajamas after a long day. Immediately tension rolled off of the purple-haired girl in waves, shoulders relaxing as she slumped into the familiar shape of Zoey. Suddenly her cuddly-couch daydream was so close to becoming reality that Rumi had half the mind to just say screw it and take the rest of the day off…but even as she thought it she knew it was just a fantasy. She could hear Celine’s voice in her ear as clearly as though she were in the room with them, “Hunters don’t take days off.”

“Unnie, you’re tense.”
Zoey rubbed her cheek against Rumi’s like a cat, and the half-demon had to bite her tongue to keep from literally purring. Zoey had decided if she couldn’t go out and play she was going to stay in and snuggle, apparently.
“Well we have a lot of work to get done. And I thought I told you not to call me that.”
Zoey smirked, the same smug expression she made whenever she won a round in her silly shooting game on stream and was reading through the chat’s congratulatory messages.
“Well, we can’t get anything done without Mira here anyway.”
Zoey flexed the hand resting on Rumi’s stomach, fingertips playing teasingly with the hem of her tee. Rumi’s patterns flitted in response, their translucent shimmer flashing a soft, rose-quartzy pink shade under her girlfriend’s feather-light touch. It perfectly matched the blush on Rumi’s face and the tips of her ears.
“And I’ll stop calling you “unnie” when it stops making you light up like a light show.” 

Zoey’s words gave Rumi pause, the pink in her veins quickly replaced by a slightly more concerning shade of pulsing orange. The older girl sat up slightly in a way that jostled the brunette leaning against her, making the younger girl groan in gentle protest.
“Where is Mira, actually?”
Rumi had been so concentrated on the calendars and agendas and spreadsheets on her laptop, that she hadn’t even realized just how long the pink-haired girl had been absent from their work session. But if it had been over 2 hours since their last break, then Mira had probably been out of the room for at least the last half an hour. Which, in turn, would partially help explain why they were still so behind in their work--Zoey was right, they couldn’t get much done without their better half present. 

“She went to the bathroom, remember.”
Zoey planted a placating kiss to Rumi’s cheek, but the older girl didn’t even glance her way, eyes trained on the very door Mira had disappeared through some time earlier. Rumi’s eyebrows were creased with worry, and the sight pulled at Zoey’s heart. The shorter girl gently pressed the cool pad of her thumb between her brows where the cinched skin was, and pressed to help smooth out the little wrinkle forming there. She was quite used to Rumi’s usual paranoia, but it never hurt her heart any less to see her sweet girlfriend so anxious.
“Baby, I’m sure she’s just having some hot girl tummy issues per usual--you remember how spicy the kimbap she made last night was. But do you want me to try calling her?”
Rumi finally pulled her eyes away from the door, smiling nervously at Zoey for her efforts and hesitantly shaking her head. 

“No, sorry, I guess I’m just…feeling anxious. Besides, Mira would probably kill you for calling her while she’s in the bathroom.”
Zoey scoffed, waving her hand dismissively.
“Pfft, please, I do it all the time!”
The brunette’s antics finally pulled a gentle smile from the older girl, dimples blooming on her cheeks as she shook her head.
“Right, and she always yells at you for it.”
Rumi could still hear Mira’s voice crackling over speaker phone as she shouted into the receiver the last time: “The bathroom is my sacred space, Zoey!” Zoey just giggled good-naturedly,
“Yeah…but she hasn’t killed me over it. Yet.” 

Rumi let the laugh climbing up the back of her throat finally bubble out as well, re-enveloping Zoey so that she could bury her warm face into the dark hair on top of her head as the lyricist nuzzled into her neck. Rumi let herself just rest like that for a minute or two, both girls catching their breath and settling back into a comfortable silence together, framed of course by the still ever-present sound of rain pounding against the roof and windows. Rumi thought she heard the distant sound of wind howling in the trees outside as well, and she wondered distantly if the rain planned to grow into some sort of proper storm before nightfall. She made a mental note to check the weather before it got too-too late--the last thing they needed was to get stranded at the studio. 
“Sooo I’m not allowed to go play in the rain, but you’re allowed to lull me into a nap in the middle of the work day? Not fair, Rumi.”

 Zoey’s voice was thick with promised sleep and smooshy around the edges, muffled because of the way her face was pressed against Rumi’s skin. When she spoke she exhaled a ticklish warmth that made a pleasant chill run down Rumi’s spine. The taller girl squeezed her fondly,
“Well, you’re right that we’re due for a work break, I lost track of time. Who says we can’t spend our 15 napping?”
Rumi could feel Zoey’s smirk against the collar of her shirt,
“I mean, what else would they put a couch in our practice room for anyway?” 
The half-demon laughed softly again, adjusting her arms around Zoey so she could relax more deeply into the couch. Rumi slipped her hands beneath the bottom hem of Zoey’s crewneck so that her palms could rest against the warm expanse of the other girl’s back. Zoey melted under the cool touch, now practically lying on top of Rumi just how she liked it. The sound of Rumi’s heartbeat and soft breath in her ear was already beginning to fade out as she started to succumb to sleep. Zoey could fall asleep any time, any where, and at a seriously impressive speed. She’d fallen asleep in interviews before, at dinner parties, on the toilet--Rumi would’ve been worried if it weren’t a quirk so quintessentially Zoey. 

“I’ll set an alarm on my phone, you get some beauty rest, pretty girl.”
Zoey yawned, voice slurred, as Rumi planted a final kiss to the crown of her head.
“No, youuu.”
Rumi wasn’t sure if the smaller girl was complimenting her in turn, or whether she was also demanding that their leader get some rest, but either way it was adorable and made Rumi blush again, marks glowing a soft pink hue that turned the room appropriately sunsetty, bathing everything inside warm against a greyish outside. Normally Rumi was content to spend these power nap sessions in conscious but content bliss, mind as tuned off as she could get it without actually sleeping as she tried to just focus on the grounding sensation of one or both of her girlfriends so vulnerable in her arms. But with the perfect blanket of white noise that the rain outside their studio was creating, Rumi found herself actually beginning to drift off before she could help it, mind transforming the slightly rigid couch beneath them into their beloved sectional at home, perfectly sculpted and worn so that it held three perfect indents for each girl to sink into together. 

In Rumi’s mind the pounding rain became the background noise of some nature documentary Zoey had picked out for them all to fall asleep to, and she could smell the warm leftovers of something Mira cooked up on the stove. The sound of soft snoring harmonized seamlessly with the rain outside, and both girls probably would’ve slept well over an hour like that together to wake with very sore backs if it weren’t for the reliability of Rumi’s many alarms. Zoey hadn’t felt like she’d really been asleep for more than 5-minutes before their 15-minute “get back to work” alarm was going off, Rumi’s phone vibrating angrily in her pocket and disrupting the entire couch. 

The younger girl couldn’t help the dissatisfied groan that ripped from her throat at the sensation as she looked around the room and blinked blearily, remembering where they were and what they were doing slowly, like her brain was defrosting. When her eyes landed on Rumi she expected to see the usual tender expression of smug compassion that she braved when facing a sleepy, pouty Zo--but instead, the maknae was shocked to find that Rumi had clearly dozed off herself, her face a matching expression of mild irritation at the offending alarm and confusion at their state. Seeing Rumi grasp blindly for her phone beside them on the couch and then rub the sand from her eyes with her fist once her dreaded alarm was silenced made the sleep easily fade from Zoey’s mind, her hands coming up to cup the purple-haired girl’s face gently.
“Looks like I’m not the only one who needed a nappy.” 

Zoey kissed the tip of Rumi’s nose, her breath still hot and huffy like a sleepy puppy’s.
“Mph, this is why I don’t nap. I’m more tired now than I was before.”
The smile on Zoey’s face wavered slightly, worry pressing in around her eyes. It was no secret Rumi didn’t always sleep the best, nightmares frequently plaguing her and keeping her awake (between the three of them, Zoey was really the only one who slept more than 6 hours on average…and even then, it was usually from the hours of 4AM to 10AM). Zoey hadn’t thought this week had been particularly bad for her, but Rumi could also be quite sneaky about things if she thought it would cause Zoey or Mira to worry about her. Instinctively, Zoey pressed the back of her hand to Rumi’s forehead, just checking to be sure the demon girl wasn’t coming down with something from overworking herself. She was warm, but just sleepy-warm, Zoey was pretty sure.

“I know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe we should call it soon?”
Rumi was already opening her mouth to protest, but Zoey steamrolled ahead, sneakily shifting her hands around her girlfriend’s face so that she was massaging Rumi’s temples gently with her fingertips. The soft ministrations soothed the purple-clad girl back into silence.
“I know we didn’t get everything on your to-do list done, Ru, but it’s going to take us twice as long to get it done when we’re so tired. And--”
Zoey paused mid-sentence, suddenly bracing herself against Rumi so she could actually sit up. She slurped at the corner of her mouth as she did so, wiping away a little bit of drool that had found its way out of her mouth. Rumi was used to the feeling of a slightly damp shirt collar after snuggling with Zoey, so it didn’t really phase her very much any more. 

But the stark feeling of Zoey tensing so much on top of her as her suddenly alert eyes searched around the room helped rouse Rumi from the last little bit of sleepiness clinging to her, and she sat up slightly in turn, especially once she saw the ghost of concern in Zoey’s taut expression. The maknae looked uncharacteristically uneasy.
“Okay, where is Mira, actually? I wasn’t worried before but, it’s been like…an hour now. Usually she at least texts us some sort of apologetic emoji once her bathroom visits reach the 45 minute mark. I can’t believe she isn’t back yet.”
Rumi glanced at her watch and frowned at the time, a little bit of hot shame mixed with familiar anxiety climbing up her neck as she realized just how long she’d let the other girl go missing. What if something was seriously wrong and Mira needed them? What if she’d been ambushed by demons while alone? What if--

“Stop your spiraling, I’m calling her.”
Zoey ran a firm but soothing hand down the girl beside her’s arm, anchoring her to the couch so that she couldn’t get up and start pacing. Rumi settled for bouncing her leg with a small, grateful smile, watching as Zoey pulled her phone out of her pocket and easily navigated to Mira’s contact. Zoey pressed the call button and her phone came to life with a staticy ring, though the noise was short lived, only going through once before the tone was interrupted by Mira’s cold and professional voicemail. Zoey cocked her brow at the device, jutting out her lips before clicking the end call button just before automated Mira could instruct them to leave a message.
“Okay, so she’s alive enough to bitch button me. That’s a good sign…I guess.”
Rumi couldn’t really say she was surprised; Mira hated talking on the phone, and really only answered if she suspected it was an emergency or work-related. Apparently she deemed Zoey’s call neither. 

Before Zoey could even re-open her contact, a notification from Mira had appeared at the top of the youngest girl’s screen showing she’d texted her. The screen lit up with Mira’s incoming texts as they appeared, Zoey clicking on the pop-ups so they both could read:

Mira: everything ok?
Mira: sorry i ignored ur call
Mira: i can pick up if u need me
Mira: sorry i should’ve just picked up

Zoey’s fingers moved across the keyboard lightening quick in reply, top teeth catching her bottom lip in concentration. 

Zoey: No it’s okay!! <3 I know you don’t like to talk in the bathroom
Zoey: Everything is fine over here
Zoey: Except I miss my beautiful tall sexy girlfriend ):
Zoey: Is everything okay with you baby? Rumi getting worried

Rumi nudged Zoey with her elbow,
“Hey, you were worried too.”
Zoey nudged Rumi back with her hip,
“Yeah, but only because your worry is rubbing off on me.”
Rumi rubbed against Zoey teasingly as if attempting to smear some more contagious worry on her lovely girlfriend, but when the phone buzzed with Mira’s reply they both locked back onto the screen.

Mira: im fine
Mira: just lost track of time
Mira: sorry to worry u guys 

Zoey bit her lip harder. Her expression was skeptical, but her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a minute before replying, clearly uncertain.

Zoey: Tummy hurting you? Or is it something else?

Mira: a little bit
Mira: better now
Mira: ill be back in just a few

Zoey responded to Mira’s most recent message with a thumbs up and a pink heart emoji, but something uneasy still sat in the pit of her stomach. Both girls sat quietly side by side for a moment, just reading and re-reading Mira’s messages, until finally Zoey sighed.
“She’s being weird, don’t you think?”
Rumi shrugged one shoulder, tempted to agree but trying not to let herself run away with her anxiety. If they were both going to be paranoid, Rumi needed to keep it together for Zoey’s sake, her leader face back on.
“Weird how?”
Zoey rolled her eyes as though it were obvious, but elaborated anyway for Rumi’s sake.
“Short, vague, cold?” 

Rumi pursed her lips, considering the other girl’s words before half-shrugging again.
“I mean, sounds like Mira. She’s a pretty dry texter, Zo.”
Zoey still looked dissatisfied by this response, shaking her head resolutely.
“Yeah, maybe when she texts you or the business group chat or something, but she knows how I can be about reading into text messages. She almost always adds cute emojis and exclamation points and stuff so that I know she isn’t mad at me.”
Rumi couldn’t help but crack a smile, rubbing Zoey’s shoulder comfortingly as she pawed at her own phone nervously.
“Zoey, when is Mira ever mad at you?”
Zoey rolled her eyes again (it was a bad habit of her’s) but was smiling too when she opened her mouth to respond. Before she could, however, a familiar voice from behind them interrupted.
“Me? Mad? Doesn’t sound like me.” 

At the sound of Mira’s voice both of the other girls turned excitedly, something clicking happily back into place with the pink-haired girl back in sight. Mira was standing just inside the doorframe, back-lit by the sterile overhead lighting of the hallway. Neither of them had even heard the door creak open behind them, but Mira had a way of navigating around silently. She was always accidentally jumpscaring her girls around the penthouse, feet completely soundless in her socks or slippers--Zoey couldn’t even count the number of times she’d jumped out of her skin standing in the kitchen as she did the dishes or lounging on the couch with a docu-series just for Mira to appear somewhere nearby, unspoken. They joked that she got some sort of thrill out of it, but in actuality, the other two figured it probably had something to do with her upbringing, silently creeping around some big, cold mansion like walking on eggshells. Neither girl had ever really asked about it--Mira told them things in her own time. 

“You’re going to give us a heart attack one of these days creeping up on us, you know that right? Mrs. never angry.”
Mira smiled easily, her only response being to softly close the door behind her with a click. Before either girl could beckon her over to the leather couch they were cuddling up on, Mira was already climbing with ease over the back of the couch (bless her long legs) and plopping herself down beside the two with a contented sigh. Zoey wasted no time at all ditching her phone in favor of clinging to the girl newly beside her, fidgety hands snaking up her black sweater sleeves so she could hold onto both forearms and actually feel Mira’s warm skin beneath her fingertips. Mira just kept smiling, though Rumi thought her jaw looked noticeably tense, teeth clenched behind her calm smile. 

“Well, assuming your poor little heart can take it, maybe we should get back to work?”
Mira continued, looking a little sheepish,
“I didn’t mean to….to throw off our work-flow. I know we have a lot to get done. Sorry, Rumi.”
Mira had been staring down as she spoke, eyes trained on the shape of Zoey’s hands under her sleeves, moving just slightly as the younger girl absentmindedly rubbed little circles on the backs of her wrists with the pads of her thumbs. But as she addressed their leader with her mumbled apology, she looked up lazily to meet Rumi’s eyes for just a moment, and what the purple-haired girl found there didn’t help quell any of the anxiety roiling around in her gut. 

Mira looked…well, if Zoey weren’t literally tethered to her, Rumi would’ve been tempted to believe Mira wasn’t even really there in the room with them. She looked like some sort of ghost--this far-off, wandering look in her dark eyes, like she was peering back at her girlfriends through a hundred layers of misty fog. And though it was true that Mira usually talked slowly, always choosing her words carefully in a way that made Zoey and Rumi so envious during interviews, her words now felt ridiculously drawn out, like the dancer was having to pull each individual syllable out of a sinkhole, the words sticky and muddy in her mouth. Zoey must’ve clocked it too, because she glanced over her shoulder at Rumi after Mira had finished speaking as though waiting for the leader’s response, but really, her eyes were pleading. Something was glaringly wrong, even if Mira was so obviously trying to hide it. They recognized this look.  

Rumi inhaled sharply, reaching across Zoey to help close the space between Mira and her as she set a hand of her own tenderly onto the taller girl’s thigh.
“Mir, you don’t have to apologize, we’re just glad you’re okay.”
Zoey picked up right where Rumi’s sentence had ended, nearly cutting their leader off despite herself. It was a bad habit she was trying to kick, but in this instance Rumi really didn’t mind, the two melding easily into a united front the second they noticed Mira was off.
“--Are you, okay?”
Mira licked her lips and gave a curt nod, but she couldn’t meet Zoey or Rumi’s eyes, even as she felt them both staring a hole through her. The other two girls both sat quietly, patiently, waiting for the taller girl to speak when she was ready. Eventually she sighed,
“I’m fine I just- I got sick.”
Mira grimaced and shook her head, clearly getting frustrated by her inability to properly communicate what exactly she was trying to say. Or maybe debating with herself about exactly how honest to be, her own words echoing back in her mind after the Idol Awards fiasco some months ago now: No more lies. 

They’d all been making small efforts every day to uphold that promise and be more authentically themselves with one another, and the effort didn’t go unnoticed. But obviously, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and old habits died hard. Rumi squeezed Mira’s thigh, urging her to continue.
“Was it your anxiety that made you sick?”
Rumi didn’t want to suggest anything specific, she just knew Mira was prone to nausea when her anxiety took hold--otherwise, their dancer had a stomach of steel. But Rumi had held back the dancer’s bright hair as she puked in their trailer, hands shaking as she braced against the toilet bowl, before nearly every performance the first year they debuted, back before the other girl had fully shaken her stage fright. And even though at the time neither girl had called it anxiety, their leader knew (from personal experience) that that’s precisely what it was. Now Mira was perfectly herself on stage, but her nervous stomach still struck when something was really wrong. 

Mira, unable or unwilling to speak, nodded again in confirmation, eyes still downcast. Zoey wiggled free one of the hands tangled in Mira’s sleeve and carefully grasped one of Mira’s, slowly guiding the taller girl’s hand up to her face so she could plant a soft kiss to the back of her palm. Zoey pressed her frown to the warm spot after so that her quiet voice buzzed softly against Mira’s skin when she spoke. The sensation was equal parts soothing and grounding.
“I wish you’d told us you weren’t feeling good, baby. We could’ve come to rub your back, or bring you some water.”
Zoey’s mumbled sentiments spoken in bumbly vibrations roused a small smile out of Mira, just the smallest quirk at the corner of her lips that you’d blink and miss.
“I should have. I think I meant to, but I…”

Mira’s sentence pittered off, her eyes totally glazed over in a way that reminded Rumi of warm, frosted glass windows in winter. Zoey tilted her head to meet Rumi’s gaze again, her concern palpable even as she tried to keep her cool. Rumi nodded in understanding, trying to reassure Zoey that they were both on the same page. Rumi leaned forward and rubbed Mira’s thigh where her hand had been resting before.
“Mir, baby, I think you’re dissociating right now.”
Zoey had suspected Mira might’ve been feeling foggy the minute she mentioned “losing track of time” in her initial text message, and the older girl’s odd behavior now after admitting she had some sort of anxiety attack in the bathroom only confirmed her suspicions. 

Mira dissociating wasn’t a super common occurrence, but it wasn’t something the girls had never seen before either--Zoey would never forget the first time, a little over a year ago now, that they both had found Mira after something had triggered her and left her dissociated (well, more dissociated than usual…that was another conversation entirely). It was the last time Mira had agreed to meet with anyone from her family, this time her older brother--Rumi and Zoey had insisted upon coming along for moral support, but Mira being Mira she wanted to brave it alone. So she’d gone to meet up with him at some dumb cafe for lunch (somewhere public, Bobby insisted) and was supposed to meet her girls back at the penthouse within the hour--not a long meeting, just straightening out some mysterious “family business” Mira didn’t care to elaborate on. 

But then it was 15 minutes past Mira’s agreed upon return time and she was nowhere to be found. 15 minutes turned into 30 minutes, and then eventually 30 turned into 45, and even though Rumi had called her cell half a dozen times (and Zoey probably close to 50 times), everything went straight to voicemail. Finally, when Mira was over an hour late coming home, and at the risk of overstepping her boundaries regarding family, the two went out looking for her. Zoey was crying too hard to drive so Rumi took the wheel and the two drove around the city aimlessly in their sunglasses and baseball hats for the better part of a half an hour, windows rolled down to let in the freezing January air as they shouted her name down little side streets and back alleys. After what felt like an eternity but in actuality was probably close to 40 minutes of looking Zoey and Rumi finally found her, shuffling through the snow down some street in the city lost, with her phone in her hand but dead and no coat in sight. 

When both girls rushed out to her, car left running idly right in the middle of the road, it took only a second to gather that the taller girl was almost completely nonverbal and near unresponsive, just clinging to her girlfriends limply. When they quickly guided her back to the car to get her out of the cold, they found that she was entirely unsure of her own way back home, even though they were no less than 10 minutes away from their shared penthouse. The entire ride back Zoey sat with her in the back, stroking her hair as she sat shaking and terrified. They almost brought her to the hospital thinking that maybe the dancer had suffered some sort of head injury, like maybe she’d been ambushed by demons or something on her outing alone. Anything to explain her strange and frightening behavior. 

But after they’d gotten her back home and calmed down with the grounding techniques both Zoey and Rumi had memorized from their own anxiety attacks, buried under weighted blankets and cycling through various breathing exercises, Mira was able to explain (in her therapist’s words) that sometimes, when her brain was convinced she was in danger whether a real threat or not, it protected her by “removing” her from the situation--aka, dissociating. When she was dissociating, it felt like someone else was in control of her mouth and body, and she was just some silent spectator, tucked up away into the corner of the room safe and out of sight. Like everything was on autopilot. A harsh contrast to the violent, often painful and intense anxiety attacks that stole away her breath--a one-two combo that left her utterly debilitated. 

Sometimes she could fight through the fog to get a word out, or to produce a laugh, something that might help convince the other people around her that she was okay, just quiet or tired that day--it was how she’d gotten away with dissociating through every painful family dinner, every awkward or uncomfortable interview; it was how her brain had decided this was a good coping mechanism to begin with. While memories from her childhood came back to her in fragmented pieces in her nightmares or sickening snapshots during flashbacks, most of the worst memories were wrapped in a nice thick layer of cellophane, the dissociation smoothing out all the sharp edges so she didn’t have to feel their pricking pain quite so deeply, so fully. There were levels to her dissociation--it wasn’t often that she found herself as far removed from reality as she had been the day she walked out on her brother and passed out in the alleyway beside the cafe. Sometimes it was so subtle and sneaky that she left her body without even realizing she was doing it, like setting down your phone in the middle of a conversation and stepping a few feet away so you can only hear the voice in staticky quiet. 

But, more often than not, being so dissociated was terrifying for Mira too--she felt like she had no control at all, something she absolutely hated. She also forgot important things when dissociated--meetings, grocery lists, important dates, things she usually prided herself on being so meticulous about. Sometimes she lost huge chunks of time like she had today, like her mind had just decided to take a vacation and not bring the rest of her body with it. She’d get confused and believe their penthouse was her parent’s house, would believe she really pierced Rumi with her blade at the Idol Awards, would let her nightmares and flashbacks morph into reality until she was huddled up in some corner shaking and crying until after hours of confusing fear she finally felt the numbness recede. 

Things had gotten better in the year since Mira admitted to the girls (albeit, sort of against her will) the extent of her anxiety disorder and the uniquely hellish ways in which it chose to manifest itself. She’d swallowed her stubborn pride and done a lot of work with her therapist, and now with improved communication Zoey and Rumi knew to look for the signs of things before they could snowball out of control even when Mira wasn’t brave enough to reach out for help herself--that far off look in the dancer’s dark eyes that told them she was here but not really here, her mind locked away some place else. But it didn’t really matter if this was the first time or the one hundredth time her girlfriends were helping Mira through an episode, it still scared them like nothing else, especially Zoey. There was something for her about seeing the person who was usually so present with them so…vacant, that made her bones feel cold with dread. 

The youngest girl looked to Rumi helplessly, but the leader’s eyes were still trained on Mira, waiting to see if she would supply any sort of response. Eventually she shrugged with one shoulder, something small and noncommittal.
“Do you want to talk about what made you upset?”
Rumi found that sometimes if they could get Mira talking before she shut down completely then they could sort of rouse her out of her dissociative state. More often than not it made her anxiety attack return with a vicious second wind, but an anxious Mira was preferable to a despondent Mira. But the pink haired girl shook her head no decidedly, brows furrowed.
“Are you having trouble with words?”
Mira hesitated, cheeks red with embarrassment no matter how many times her girls reminded her that her struggles were nothing to feel ashamed about--not with them. 

Eventually she nodded her head, evidently having given up on the response she was attempting to form on her tongue. Hot tears of frustration burned in her eyes, and Zoey gently smoothed out the single tear that escaped down Mira’s cheek with her thumb.
“It’s okay, Mir. We’re here with you. We aren’t upset.”
Mira shook her head again, and Zoey wasn’t sure if it was in disagreement to what she’d said, or just continued frustration at her state. Mira’s lips quirked again into a frown as she grit her teeth, inhaling sharply so she could squeak out a word through her grimace.
“Work.”
Rumi shook her head now, continuing to rub Mira’s thigh with one hand while the other reached behind her to close shut the laptop that still had the day’s forgotten to-do list brightly displayed. 

Rumi used to think work was the thing most important to her, a sentiment drilled into her by Celine. But then she met Mira and Zoey, and now they came first. Every single time.
“No, love, we’re gonna go home. It’s okay, really. The work can wait.”
Zoey nodded her head in agreement,
“Yeah, and we could always stay late a few extra hours a different day this week to make up for it. Rumi and I are tired anyway, the rain is making us sleepy.” 

At the mention of rain Mira suddenly tensed up and sat up straighter, extracting her slightly shaking hands from Zoey. Her eyes looked slightly more alert as though she’d just remembered something as she turned to look out the window. Both girls watched carefully as she stared at the drops of water loudly splattering against the glass windows, wind whipping the fat, heavy drops out from their storm clouds and straight into their side of the building. 

If Rumi had thought it was raining hard before it was no doubt worse now—they’d mostly drowned the sound out, but the pitter-pattering cacophony on the roof still droned on overhead, a solid blanket of noise. The rain was so dense outside now they could hardly see past it when looking out the window, the entire parking lot transforming into a greyish-blue warbling blob inside a fish bowl. Even Zoey wasn’t looking forward to braving the storm so they could make it back to their car--puddle jumping was no fun when you had to worry about potentially getting blown away too. Plus, the worry she had for Mira had solidified into a hardened ball in her stomach, and she thought bouncing it all around would probably make her sick. 

“Looks like it’s a good thing we’re heading home now, honestly. It’s only getting worse out there.”
Rumi moved first, carefully extracting herself from Zoey and Mira so she could stand, joints popping in protest as she did so. There wasn’t any reason to bring most of their supplies home with them since they’d be returning at a later date to finish, so Rumi left all the agendas and schedules and calendars she’d meticulously spread out right where they were on the coffee table; next time they came in the mess would motivate them. Zoey moved to follow, hand gently on Mira’s wrist to help pull her up alongside her, but even as she gently tugged, the pink-haired girl didn’t budge. Mira was sitting like she had a metal rod for a spine, knuckles white from gripping the couch cushion and digging her nails into the leather so there would be little crescent moon tears in her wake. She was totally still aside from her eyes, which were still glued to the window across from them, flitting back and forth, watching the rain. 

Zoey gave Rumi another unsure look, then gingerly slid down her hand to rest in Mira’s, giving it a gentle squeeze as she pulled it away from the poor, abused couch. Zoey could feel the taller girl’s tremors and her heart cracked open a little bit more realizing just how hard Mira was trying to be brave for them and keep it all together, like always. Even in her dissociated state, half out of her mind, not worrying her girl’s was still priority number one.
“Hey, baby.”
Zoey crouched down in front of Mira, one hand’s fingers intertwined with the taller girl’s and the other placed softly on Mira’s knee. She squeezed both hands as she spoke, voice quiet but firm, eyes boring into Mira’s in hopes that she could break her girlfriend out of her trance. When Mira still didn’t meet her eyes, gaze glued to the window, Rumi stepped to the left until her body was back-lit by the watery grey of outside, mostly blocking Mira’s view. Only then was Mira able to pull her eyes away, blinking a few times as though some sort of spell had been broken before she finally found Zoey. Her shoulder’s physically relaxed, and she subconsciously leaned forward closer to the girl knelt in front of her, wanting nothing more than to fall into her arms but stopping short. Zoey smiled, sad around the edges but still enough to make Mira’s heart flutter. She was having a hard time remembering where they were or what they were doing, but she loved Zoey’s smile always--that was easy to remember. 

“There she is. We lost you for a second there, pretty girl.”
Zoey could hear Rumi sigh out of relief behind her, but Zoey kept her eyes on Mira’s, glancing back and forth between the two as if they held all the answers.
“You don’t have to be scared, baby. We’re right here, I’m right here. Feel me?”
Zoey guided Mira’s hand to her chest and pressed her open palm flat against her sternum so that hopefully the dancer could feel her heartbeat humming beneath her sweater.
“We’re not going anywhere, okay? We’re not gonna leave you. We’re just gonna go back to the penthouse together and get all cuddly on the couch. Just us three together. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
Mira didn’t respond or react, but her eyes stayed glued to Zoey, breathing in her words. 

The maknae had no clue if her sentiments were helping quell Mira’s anxiety at all--she didn’t quite know what was scaring Mira so badly, exactly…only that she was clearly terrified. If she thought Mira could’ve effectively communicated with them right now she’d have asked what exactly triggered her (maybe the mention of the word “home”?), but this was obviously just a conversation they’d need to file away for later--for now Zoey just had to make her best guess and hope her words brought their darling girlfriend some much needed comfort at the least. Zoey knew that often when Mira got vulnerable and showed emotion of any kind, her anxious brain told her that meant the people she loved most would leave her (a coping mechanism developed after years of negative reactions from family, no doubt). So Zoey and Rumi always tried their best to reassure Mira of their permanence in her life, pulling her in and holding her before her brain could decide on pushing them away. Zoey and Rumi would always be there for their girl, and they’d remind her of that every day until the end of time if they had to. 

“Okay, come on, Mir. Up!”
Zoey tugged gently on the hand she was holding as she stood, rising from the couch slowly enough that she wouldn’t yank too hard on Mira’s arm, but firmly enough that the motion helped coax Mira hesitantly to her feet. She stumbled slightly as she rose, bracing her free hand on Rumi’s shoulder to steady herself as the other girl quickly slotted up beside her for support. Rumi was often a silent but steady presence for Mira when she went non-verbal, and the dancer admired how their leader could manage to communicate with her and bring such comfort even without words, just her mere presence like a bond on frayed nerves. Zoey preferred to pepper her with lots of pet names and kind affirmations--and that was certainly nice too. Mira’s brain still wasn’t great at processing all the youngest girl’s endearments, even after all these years, but the subtle warmth that graced her face subconsciously at the strung together sincerities was always welcomed when she was feeling particularly numb. 

Rumi happily let Mira lean the majority of her weight into the half-demon’s side, slinging the taller girl’s arm over her broad shoulders for maximum support. It was moments like these when Rumi was actually very thankful for her demon-strength; she loved being able to help support and carry her girlfriends with ease (and she especially loved how much they seemed to love it, Zoey practically swooning as she observed the other two and guided them towards the door).
“I bet you’ll feel better once you’re in some comfy jammies, and lying in your own bed, and-- Oh! We could finally order takeaway from that new jjigae place Bobby recommended!
It was a week night, and normally Mira insisted upon cooking dinner for them all during week nights; it helped regulate her, and she liked feeling useful around the house. Zoey and Rumi would never complain--Mira’s cooking was seriously delicious. 

But with Mira likely being out of commission for the night (dissociated cooking was indefinitely banned after normally competent, cooking-savvy Mira managed to cause a mini fire in the oven some months ago (she’d cooked her pizza at 425 degrees for 20 minutes still inside the cardboard box)), ordering out seemed like the obvious next choice. Zoey could cook if they got really desperate, and she was actually pretty good at whipping up most quick meals, even if her more “American” tastes were foreign to the other girls, but she didn’t at all enjoy the stress of being in the kitchen. Where Mira found peace in the careful measurements and bulleted recipes, Zoey wanted to cave in from the pressure of executing a perfect meal. Not to mention she wasn’t particularly…tidy. The kitchen usually looked like a bomb had gone off in it after she’d been cooking--drawers left half open, the faucet still running, mysterious stains on the counter and a pile of dirty dishes. Mira would’ve banned her from the kitchen a long time ago if Rumi weren’t already banned. She figured she probably wasn’t allowed to ban both of them. 

Rumi nodded her head in agreement,
“I think that sounds like a perfect idea, you can call it in when we get to the car so it’ll be ready by the time we’re showered and changed.”
Zoey was clearly getting excited by the picture-perfect evening they were painting, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet as they made their way down the long hallway of practice rooms and offices. She squeezed Mira’s hand as she spoke,
“And we could watch that new K-drama that came out! The one you’ve been wanting to watch?”
As soon as Zoey said it she thought better of it, casting a glance at Mira to see her reaction to her suggestion--or, really, her lack thereof. She’d forgotten for a moment that Mira wasn’t really an active participant in their conversation, her eyes still far-off and glassy. She was clearly trying to listen, her head giving a very subtle nod where she thought Zoey must be waiting for a response. 

But Zoey could tell the conversation was really only coming to her in bits and pieces, and she realized tonight wouldn’t be a good night for starting something new. Without all of Mira’s funny comments pointing out the hilarity of the show’s incessant heterosexuality it wouldn’t be as enjoyable anyway.
“Or, maybe we just rewatch one of your old favorites?”
Rumi smiled softly, clearly having followed the younger girl’s same train of thought.
“Yeah, maybe The Fiery Priest. Mira loved that one.”
It felt strange talking about the pink-haired girl as though she wasn’t standing right beside them, all but melting into Rumi’s side. But there was no use peppering her with questions she couldn’t answer. As the three girls finally approached one of the building’s exterior doors, Zoey grabbed two umbrellas from the coat rack, handing a big purple one to Rumi and taking the smaller green one for herself. She would’ve handed Mira the pink one left behind, but it just made more sense to let Rumi shield them both with hers’ given their close proximity. 

As Zoey helped zip up Mira’s coat, swearing at the zipper for catching on the taller girl’s sweater, she noticed how her eyes seemed to be fluttering closed, her blinks getting a little longer each time, all of her weight leaned against Rumi so she was practically dead on her feet but still probably too stubborn to be carried. Zoey wondered if she wouldn’t fall asleep with her in the backseat on the car ride home. It was only about a 10 minute drive, but Mira sure looked tired enough to pass out before they made it back. Maybe that would be for the best--Mira was a notoriously poor sleeper and almost always needed the rest.
“There we go. Ready to brave the outside?”
Zoey zipped Mira’s coat up to her chin and took the time to tuck some stray strands of hair behind her ears, fingers lingering on her cheeks a moment as she searched Mira’s pretty eyes for any signs of life. 

She exhaled when she saw a faint twinkle there, the girl sluggishly catching Zoey’s hand against her cheek with her own so she could plant a weak kiss to the back of her hand. She was exuding gratitude, even if she couldn’t express it verbally, and the gesture made both Zoey and Rumi melt, all the more eager to get their girl back home. Rumi couldn’t help but plant a tender kiss of her own to Mira’s opposite cheek, made easier by the fact that she was practically nuzzled into the crook of Rumi’s neck.
“Let’s go Mir, we’ve got you. Rumi and I got you.”
Even in her hazy state Mira clung onto the words as she all but prison marched toward the door, hands shaking as Zoey pulled it open and the loud pounding of the rain intensified tenfold. She focused on Zoey’s words, holding tight to them like tethered rope in the storm.
We’ve got you, Mir. We’ve got you. Rumi and I got you.

Chapter Text

Just as Zoey had suspected, Mira was lights-out asleep almost the moment Rumi peeled out of the studio parking lot, windshield wipers on high. This was really for the best, as it meant Zoey could unabashedly cuddle Mira the entirety of the ten minute ride home, head lolled to the side against her shoulder. It also meant that Mira couldn’t protest when Rumi eventually parked the car in their usual spot and got out of the driver’s seat to come around the back and scoop Mira up in her arms bridal-style. It was a rare sight to see Mira held in Rumi’s arms, and Zoey enjoyed the sight greatly. Usually Mira was too stubborn to let the half-demon carry her from the couch to her bed on the rare nights she fell asleep during a movie night, or even from a battlescene of demons back to the penthouse after particularly grueling fights, preferring to limp home no matter how Zoey and Rumi begged and protested. 

Mira almost always got the most banged up during demon fights, not due to carelessness or lack of skill, but due to her selfless nature. She always was blocking shots taken at Zoey or Rumi, using herself as a human shield. It drove the other two girls insane (especially Rumi, who constantly tried to remind her that she was both their leader, and a half-demon with increased healing abilities!), but they knew it was just in Mira’s nature to protect those she loved fiercely with no real regard for her own well-being. It was both her greatest strength and her biggest flaw. So it was a breath of fresh air to watch Rumi care for the strong-headed girl now, tucking some wet strands of hair that were sticking to Mira’s cheek carefully behind her ear as Zoey attempted to shield all three of them beneath her green umbrella. Even running from the car to the penthouse doors both Zoey and Rumi got pretty soaked, cold rain water running down their backs and sticking under their shirts since Zoey mostly concentrated the umbrella on Mira. The two of them could change into dry clothes once inside, but they wanted to let Mira keep sleeping if at all possible, without having to wake her up to change. 

Mercifully, as the the three finally plowed their way into the lobby and Zoey took the time to shake out her umbrella and hang it back up on the rack, Rumi gave the still sleeping girl in her arms a quick once over to find Mira had stayed 90% dry, which they’d take as a win, and that she was still breathing softly in the way she only did when asleep. Rumi felt her shoulders relax with relief and saw Zoey do the same.
“I can’t believe she hasn’t woken up.”
Normally Mira was a very light sleeper, often waking up every time Zoey got out of bed to use the bathroom at night (which was often, curse her small bladder), or whenever Rumi fell asleep without one of her nasal strips on and her snoring started up. Zoey slept like the dead and Rumi fell somewhere in the middle, but Mira was a restless sleeper through and through. Neither girl gave her much of a hard time about it because they knew it, like most of Mira’s quirks, was likely a result of her unfortunate upbringing. It made Zoey want to punch something when she thought about how little Mira never felt safe in her own house, not even when she was sleeping--so they all made a pretty generous effort not to think about it. Easier said than done, of course.

“I can. She must be exhausted. I don’t think she’s slept well all week--and when I got up to go for my morning run at five this morning she was already awake…I think she had been for hours. She’d cleaned the whole kitchen and reorganized the spice cabinet.”
Zoey pursed her lips in thought, guilt gnawing a little at her sides at having not realized Mira slept so little the night before. She knew Mira had been her usual restless self, but she didn’t realize she’d probably gotten less than 4 hours of sleep total. When she really thought about it, though, Mira had seemed off that morning when they first arrived at the studio. Quieter than usual, like something was on her mind. Zoey had figured at the time that she was just going over work schedules in her head or something (they had a regrettably jam packed week coming up at the end of the month that had everyone a little on-edge), but now she realized Mira had probably been starting to dissociate even then, and whatever anxious spiral was plaguing their girlfriend had likely been manifesting in deadly silence all week long right under their noses. The maknae’s heart twisted in her chest.  

“Hey,”
Zoey’s train of thought must’ve passed clearly across her face, because as they stepped into the elevator Rumi shifted Mira in her arms so she could briefly place one hand reassuringly on the shorter girl’s shoulder. She gave her a small yet affirming squeeze before resuming her hold on Mira, a slightly wobbly smile gracing her face as she met Zoey’s eyes.
“Don’t go feeling sorry for yourself over there. No self-deprecating, remember? Aren’t you the one always telling me that?”
Zoey rolled her eyes, but a small smile of her own tugged at the corners of her lips, the butterflies she got from Rumi’s comfort at odds with the guilt still roiling in the pit of her stomach.
“I wasn’t deprecating! I didn’t even say anything!”
Rumi raised her eyebrows challengingly,
“But you were thinking it, I could tell.” 

Zoey covered her face with both her hands, groaning.
“No fair. You always read my face.”
Rumi shrugged, looking smug,
“I’ll stop reading your face when your face stops giving you away.” 

Then her expression sobered, voice soft over the whirr of the elevator going up to their floor at the top of the penthouse.
“Seriously though, Zo. Don’t beat yourself up over anything. Mira wouldn’t want you to--wouldn’t want either of us to.”
Zoey nodded her head. Even if there was still a little voice in the back of her head saying she should’ve known, should’ve done more, should’ve been better--Zoey knew Rumi was right. 

If knight in shining armor Mira knew that her girlfriends were feeling so awful as a result of her week-long facade cracking, she’d do whatever she could to never be vulnerable with them again, tamping down all her anxiety until she reverted to the angry beehive she’d been back when they’d all first met. Neither girl missed those days, so if Zoey had to tighten up her bootstraps to help keep the dancer’s progress in regards to her “emotional constipation” (as Mira liked to put it), then so be it.
“You’re right. Mira’s here and she’s safe, and that’s what matters.”
The elevator dinged as the doors finally opened, revealing the girl’s penthouse. Zoey and Rumi both shuffled quickly inside, stepping out of their waterlogged shoes and stripping out of their sopping wet outer layers. Their house had wood floors, and the last thing Rumi wanted was to slip while holding a sleeping Mira. 

“Couch or bed?”
Rumi stood uncertainly in their hallway, rocking Mira involuntarily in her arms after the girl made a quiet little sound like a whimper in her sleep, face buried in the wet collar of Rumi’s sweater. She’d be happier once they were all dried and warm and cozy. Zoey touched her finger to her chin as she thought,
“Bed, more room and less light.”
Rumi nodded, padding over to Mira’s room with Zoey following close behind. Zoey didn’t need to specify that by bed she meant Mira’s--Mira’s room was practically the three’s de facto bedroom, and they spent nearly every night cuddled up there together. It was the only room in the penthouse with blackout curtains to cover the tall windows (which was a must for Mira, who was light sensitive and suffered from migraines often) and it was also the only bed big enough to comfortably fit all three of them since Zoey’s was usually covered in stuffed animals and Rumi’s was usually covered in Derpy. Or, at the very least, lots of blue Derpy fur, which made Zoey sneeze incessantly (Zoey never let her own allergy prevent her from snuggling the kitty, but it drove the other two absolutely crazy). 

When the three got to Mira’s bedroom Zoey wasted no time at all peeling out of her wet clothes, starting at the bottom with her socks because that felt like an absolute sensory nightmare. She watched with quiet reverence as Rumi made her way over to Mira’s bed and set the tall girl down in the center so softly it was like she floated down from a cloud. Their leader took a few moments to straighten Mira out and get her comfortable--turning her head to the side so she didn’t get a crick in her neck, slipping off her shoes but leaving on her socks (the way Mira preferred), and swiping the pad of her thumb across the dancer’s bottom lip where a little bit of drool had collected. Then she took one of the blankets folded at the foot of the bed (Mira’s favorite, a woven blanket with a faded polar bear on one side and a winter fox on the other) and smoothed it out over the sleeping girl, carefully tucking the edges in around her frame so she wouldn’t be cold. 

Mira snuggled into the blanket instantly, probably having missed the warmth from Rumi’s arms (the half-demon was like their own personal space heater). Rumi just watched on quietly, assessing her work, tucking another stray strand of hair behind Mira’s ear before nodding her head to herself, clearly satisfied by the content expression on the pink-haired girl’s face, twitching with sleep. In the low afternoon light pouring in from the parted curtains, Zoey couldn’t help but think the scene was incredibly tender and sweet, Rumi so consumed by the sight of Mira safe and happy at long last. The shorter girl couldn’t resist it any longer and slotted herself behind her girlfriend, snaking her arms around her waist and propping her chin on Rumi’s shoulder (though she had to stand on tiptoe to do so). Her skin was bare and still chilly to the touch from the rain water, but Rumi leaned into Zoey’s touch anyway, her back flush with Zoey’s chest. The maknae shivered, realizing Rumi’s clothes were still very much wet. She wasted almost no time shifting her hands so they were fiddling with the hem of Rumi’s sweater, tugging at it slowly enough that she could stop if Rumi showed any resistance. 

But her girlfriend just kept the same lazy smile on her face as she raised her arms over her head, a silent invitation for Zoey to strip her equally bare. The lyricist made quick work of her clothes (she had a little bit of practice), and pretty soon even Rumi’s undergarments had joined the wet heap of half inside-out clothes piled at their feet on the rug so that both girls were standing naked. It took everything in Zoey to bite back all her crude, dirty comments, but she did at least sneak in an eyebrow wiggle as she was helping Rumi step out of her underwear, and that earned her an eyeroll and some serious blushing, Rumi’s patterns flashing that schmaltzy pink that was her absolute favorite. Now wasn’t really the time to be intimate--Zoey knew that. But she could still have a little bit of fun. She pressed a warm kiss to Rumi’s shoulder. 

“Do you want to shower with me? Strictly professionally, of course.”
Rumi shook her head, a light laugh that sounded like wind chimes escaping her lips.
“Please, there is nothing professional about that.”
Zoey gasped, feigning great offense as she clasped at her heart.
“Oh, how dare you! I’ll have you know I’m actually very professional, and I resent your implication.”
Rumi crossed her arms over her bare chest, biceps flexing.
“Oh? And what implication is that?”

“That I’m somehow interested in showering with you for some nefarious reason aside from saving time and water.”
“Oh right, of course not.”
Zoey swatted at Rumi’s arm,
“In your dreams, maybe, Tiger.”
The nickname set off another ricochet of pink that completely undid Rumi’s bravado, the singer covering her face with her hands for a moment as she tried to will her patterns into submission. It was like her marks just knew when she was trying to hold something close to her chest and gave her up everytime much to her dismay but to her girlfriends’ absolute delight. Looking smug and satisfied, Zoey finally let up, bending to scoop up all the wet clothes before they could create a huge puddle.
“I’m gonna put these in the laundry room then hop in the shower just for a quick rinse. You wanna watch Mira for the next ten or so minutes, then I’ll just keep the water running and we can switch over?” 

They were probably being a little paranoid. Realistically, Mira would most likely be perfectly fine to sleep on her own for the maximum of 15 minutes it would take for both girls to shower and change. But neither hunter felt great about the idea of having their better half out of sight for even a minute or two, so this seemed like a fair compromise. What if Mira woke up frightened again and no one was there to comfort and ground her? Just the idea sent an unpleasant chill across Zoey’s still-exposed skin. When she told Mira they’d be there for her she’d meant it. Rumi looked thankful for Zoey’s suggestion, so she was quite certain their leader felt the same.
“That sounds perfect. I’ll check on the food too while I wait.”
Zoey bounced on the balls of her feet as she exited the room, wanting nothing more than to shout “FOOOOD!” but settling instead for a quiet chanting under her breath the entire way to the laundry room. 

As Zoey hopped in the shower Rumi mostly sat on the edge of Mira’s bed and looked at her phone, watching as their doordash driver made his way through the storm to their penthouse with their long-awaited (and frankly sort of ginormous) jjigae order in toe. She really wanted to cuddle up with Mira--especially because she was starting to get chilly without her clothes and Mira just looked so warm and uncharacteristically soft curled up under her blanket, fisted hands tucked under her chin, nose crinkling. But she knew if she let Mira tangle her arms and legs around her she wouldn’t get up again, and she really needed a shower. So instead of letting her eyes drift over to Mira, Rumi focused on the little red dot flitting around the map of their city on her phone, wondering how exactly their delivery driver was even able to see through the absolute sheet of rain that was still enveloping everything. She made a mental note to tip him very generously at the same moment Zoey came traipsing back into the bedroom now wrapped in a towel. 

“Your turn, the water's still warm. The rain is loud on the skylight above the shower, though, just warning you.”
Rumi rose from the bed and pressed a quick kiss to Zoey’s cheek as she passed her.
“Thanks baby, food should be here any minute.”
Zoey quickly fell victim to the same plight as Rumi, her body yearning for nothing more than to sink into the mattress already so perfectly dipped by Mira’s body. Instead she ditched her towel and flitted around the room, stopping first by the windows so she could pull closed Mira’s heavy shades to drown out the grey storm raging on outside and then by Mira’s wardrobe so she could borrow (steal) some jammies. Zoey loved stealing her girlfriends’ clothes, but she especially loved stealing Mira’s things because they were usually oversized and warn-in in a way that made them irresistibly comfortable. Mira acted like she hated it, but they all knew she secretly loved seeing her girls walk around the house all wrapped up in her. 

The lyricist settled for some pink, plaid boxers, fuzzy socks with little kitties (a Christmas gift to Mira from Bobby the year prior) and a big, grey t-shirt Mira had cut the collar off of ages ago, the graphic too faded to discern. She also picked out a pair of black boxers and an oversized muscle shirt for Rumi, folding the pajamas in a neat little pile at the end of the bed for the purple-haired girl to put on once she returned. Mira’s size small boxers would be tight on her but, well, Zoey wouldn’t complain about that. She was just about to start folding Mira’s clean laundry too, just to have something else to do with herself aside from watching the other girl as she slept, when a knock sounded at the front door. In the same second the knock sounded Rumi shut off the showerhead in the bathroom, but Zoey was already on her way, mouth practically watering at just the thought of a belly full of jjigae as her socks slid down the hall.
“I’ve got it!” 

In the 2 minutes it took Rumi to towel off and emerge from the bathroom, a sopping, purple bun on the top of her head, Zoey had already collected the food from the hallway outside their apartment and ripped into the deliciously smelly brown paper bags containing their food. It was spread out beautifully at the end of Mira’s bed--a conglomeration of takeout boxes, bowls, napkins and chopsticks. Zoey was perched on the corner of the mattress with her own order in hand, letting the steam coming off her rice waft over her face. Her eyes were like saucers and Rumi had to laugh, shaking her head. You’d have thought the poor girl was starving, when in actuality it had only been about four hours since breakfast. But Rumi couldn’t really tease her too harshly, since the sight of all that food spread out before them and the rich scent that hit her in the face once she entered the room elicited a shameless and fierce grumble from her own stomach. 

Rumi stepped into the boxers and threw on the tank Zoey had left out for her, fretting a little over the tight waistband stretched taut across her hips before eventually deciding it was fine (much to her girlfriend’s chagrin) and settling onto the opposite corner of the mattress across from Zoey. The shorter girl was already unwrapping her chopsticks and popping steamy lids off various containers, but as Rumi reached for her own takeout box the half-demon hesitated, hand frozen midair.
“Should we..wake Mir up to eat?”
Rumi jutted her head toward the still-sleeping girl. At some point she’d turned in her sleep so that her pretty face was fully obscured from them and buried into the pillow, but her soft breathing, huffy and warm like a puppy’s, confirmed that she was still sleeping soundly. Zoey chewed the inside of her cheek in thought before responding. 

“Well, she’s probably hungry. And she’s definitely gonna be pissed once she finds out she missed this…”
Zoey turned to follow Rumi’s gaze, eyes falling on Mira. The gentle rise and fall of her chest, the way her fists grappled weakly at the sheets, entire body curled up, long limbs tucked away beneath her. She looked so small and soft in a way she seldom ever did, saved for the wee hours on Sunday mornings and late-night movies on the couch. It wasn’t lost on either girl how special this sight was, something reserved only for their eyes, meant to be cherished. Looking at her so cozy and still Zoey couldn’t wait to hold her, the sudden urge almost overwhelming. Sometimes she swore there was some magical element that connected them physically, golden strings from the Honmoon that tugged and pulled on them until they were all together, close, touching. Mira and Rumi insisted Zoey’s love language was just touch. From the outside looking in, maybe it just looked like co-dependency. But secretly she knew they felt it too, that invisible force that wanted--no, needed them near one another like magnets and compass needles pointing home. 

The Honmoon worked in mysterious ways--if their demon hunting magic could make glowing weapons materialize out of thin air and lace their singing voices with power strong enough to save souls, who was to say it didn’t also ship polytrix? Zoey ran a hand over her face,
“...But we can save her plenty of leftovers, I think she needs the sleep more.”

Rumi nodded in agreement--she felt guilty excluding her, but Zoey was right; this was certainly best for Mira. The fact that their quiet voices and the smell of food hadn’t woken her up or even made her stir was evidence enough that the poor dancer was running on empty.
“If she’s not up by the time it’s dark outside, we’ll wake her up and make her eat something. Plus, she needs to take her contacts out.”
Zoey nodded her head and took a huge bite of her oi muchim just as Rumi spoke, four cucumbers pinched between her chopsticks. 

As the flavors hit her tongue her posture slumped forward, a satisfied groan escaping the back of her throat which made Rumi smile. The lyricist spoke around her very full mouth, chewing between words.
“You’re gonna haf’ to make sure we save some for Mir’, ‘kay? It’s your job, ‘cause I’m just eating everything in sight. All that work at the studio really worked up an appetite!”
Rumi chuckled fondly, she loved so much that she and her girls were all such foodies. They couldn’t always be as loud and proud about it as she wished because of Korea’s fierce diet culture and harsh expectations for women (especially idols), but here alone, just the three of them, she secretly adored watching Zoey stuff her face. 

Rumi took a careful bite of her own stew and had much the same reaction as Zoey, shoulder’s relaxing as the flavors melted on her tongue and the broth from her jjigae warmed her from the inside out. Her patterns flashed a bright golden-yellow for a moment before settling back on her usual soft purple. This food was delicious. 

“We’ll have to tell Bobby his recommendation was a hit.”
The two girls fell into a steady quiet as they ate, the room filled with the sounds of fervent chewing, Mira’s quiet breathing, and the still pounding rain outside. Rumi alternated between watching Mira sleep and looking out the window behind Zoey. The curtains were now drawn so the room was dark aside from the warm glow of Mira’s pink lava lamp on the bedside table (which she always kept on while sleeping as a nightlight (though she never ever called it that, of course)) but she could still see small slivers of grey light peeking out from the bottom of the curtains, just the littlest bit of wet glass still visible. 

She wondered again if the bout of rain was going to blossom into a full blown storm, her thought from much earlier in the day returning to her. It had been a long time since they got a storm bad enough to knock out the power or do any real damage. Places like Seoul, which were more inland, got the worst of it during monsoon season, but in Busan they mostly just got buckets of rain and nothing more. Sometimes high winds. Even where she’d lived more rurally growing up, Rumi could probably count on one hand how many times her and Celine had actually lost power themselves due to a storm. But tonight it felt like there was something heavy in the air, and on the ride home Rumi had thought the sky peeking from behind heavy rain clouds looked peachy-orange in a way that begged for extra caution. She tried to recall where flashlights and candles might be, extra blankets too just in case. She was ever the planner. Maybe in the hallway closet upstairs? 

Rumi finished chewing the last bite of her tofu and opened her mouth to ask Zoey what she thought (there was a difference between being a planner and being paranoid, and often she had to check-in with someone else to properly differentiate between the two), but the words died in her throat as their near silence was suddenly interrupted by Mira.
“Mmmmph!”
Though her mouth was closed and her voice was muffled by her pillow, the low sound made both Rumi and Zoey’s heads turn with a start. Mira was making a high, gravely sound in the back of her throat, and Rumi thought, with a sense of dread, that she sounded somewhat like a wounded animal. The whine started so quietly they probably would’ve missed it if they’d been talking, but gradually grew in volume, scooping at the end before pittering off into a sharp sigh. 

Neither girl moved for a moment, waiting to see if Mira might resettle all by herself. But when a second cry came, even rawer than the last as it seemed to scratch her throat the whole way out, both Rumi and Zoey wasted no time jumping into action. Rumi grabbed both of the discarded paper bags from their takeout order and made quick work of their combined mess, stuffing trash into one and food that needed to go into the fridge in the other. As she quickly snapped on lids and closed up boxes, Zoey crawled up from her corner of the bed until she was kneeling on the mattress beside Mira, hands easily finding her back so she could rub small circles. Mira’s response to the touch was instantaneous, unfurling a little from her fetal position and finally turning her face away from the pillow it was buried in as though searching for more contact, more Zoey. The younger girl happily met her request, one hand remaining firm between her shoulder blades as the other curled around her warm, sheet-pressed cheek. 

Watching Zoey go into protective-mode, her entire body curling around Mira’s in an instant, Rumi didn’t want to let either girl out of her sight for even a moment. Every responsible, chore-ridden bone in her body begged for her to properly clean up the mess from dinner and put away the leftover food in the kitchen…but another quiet whimper from their dancer had the half-demon quickly abandoning her instincts in favor of unceremoniously tossing every paper bag, food container and crumpled up napkin into the corner of Mira’s bedroom by her waste bin. They could deal with spoiled jjigae in the morning if need be, Mira needed them now.
“Shh, you’re okay, pretty girl. I’m right here, Rumi and I are right here. We got you.”
Rumi waited for Zoey to give her an encouraging look before carefully climbing on the other side of the bed herself, nervous to upset the sense of security Zoey was trying to conjure up with any sudden movements. 

But as the bed sank under her weight and forced the taller girl to rest nestled between the other two women, Mira’s quiet whimpers mostly ceased, her hands reaching out blindly in search of her other girlfriend. Rumi quickly scooched closer until the other girl’s nervously grappling hands found purchase on her waist, gripping the singer’s tanktop tightly in her fist, like she feared their leader might disappear in a puff of red smoke if she let go. Rumi wrapped her own arms around the pink-haired girl, rubbing up and down Mira’s goosebumpy arms with the warm palm of her hand as Zoey continued to rub her back and pepper kisses on her shoulder, sweet words whispered quietly into her sweater between pecks.
“I’m right here, Mir. We’re right here. Not gonna let anything happen to you.” 

As Zoey and Rumi’s gentle ministrations and calming words helped sooth Mira back into her slumber, the warmth of Mira’s body pressed against their own and her huffy puppy breath took only a minute to instill a similar sense of sleepiness in the other two women. Rumi hadn’t realized just how tired she was before, but now, lying down for the first time since her alarm had gone off at dawn, the singer realized just how exhausted she was deep in her bones. The emotional turmoil of seeing Mira in such a state, plus the stress of overdue work had clearly taken its toll, and she was about to admit as much to Zoey when she heard the all too familiar buzz of Zoey’s quiet snoring (well, quiet now, but give it a few minutes and she’d sound like a lawn mower). 

Rumi couldn’t help but smile, tightening her arms around Mira as she settled her chin on her hair, breathing in the dragon fruit-y scent of her shampoo. She pressed a gentle kiss to the crown of her head, her soft smile growing wider as the act elicited a small sigh of content from the taller girl, face buried in their leader’s neck. Unable to stop herself, Rumi began to purr, a quiet, somehow healing sort of rumbling that came from the very back of her throat and harmonized with Zoey’s snores. It wrapped Mira up in its vibration, coating her in a love thick like honey and smoothing out all the jagged edges that threatened to puncture their little bubble of peace. As she drifted off to sleep herself, she mumbled into Mira’s hair,
“I got you, baby. My Mira, my brave Mira. I got you...”

Chapter Text

The arched doorway to their family’s dining room stretched endlessly up, looming over Mira like the ready and waiting mouth of some big, lumbering beast. Ju-won emerged from the room and strolled confidently down the beast’s lulled out tongue, shoes quiet on the long, red carpet. As he passed his younger sister he only just grazed her shoulder with his own. Still, it was enough to make her stumble back a step, unsteady. The younger girl turned to follow her brother with her gaze, scowling, but froze when she saw Ju-won’s head was also turned to meet her, eyes locking. He smiled cockily, too many teeth to reasonably fit in his mouth peeking out through cracked lips. 

The sight sent chills down both of Mira’s arms, and her own expression of annoyance melted away to one of uncertainty and slight fear, big round eyes like pooling inkwells looking up. Ju-won’s face was half obscured by the darkness of the big, empty hallway, but the shadows cast frighteningly across his already pinched-tight features. Even at just twelve years old, he looked so much like Abeoji. When he spoke his voice was a whisper, so soft it would’ve been obscured by the sound of Mira’s breath if she hadn’t been holding it.
“You’re in such big trouble.”

Every muscle in Mira’s body felt tight, pulled taut by some invisible string knotted to the end of her spinal column. She hated the way her brother could make her shrink beneath his gaze, and she hated even more the way he clearly reveled in it. But when she tried to lift her chin higher, she felt her bottom lip wobble, giving away her fear. Ju-won’s smile grew impossibly larger, smeared across his face. He inched closer to her, stopping only when his face was a few inches away from her own. Mira felt his hot breath when he spoke,
“Appa wants to see you now.” 

Mira tried to open her mouth to speak, to say something, anything-- “What did I do this time?” “How angry is he?” “Screw you, Ju-won.” but all the words died in her throat, her lips opening and closing helplessly. Eventually Ju-won just laughed, as though she’d told some sort of joke, and then turned around, not sparing a second glance as he strolled off again down the hallway, leaving his sister in his wake, cowering beneath that monster’s maw, preparing to enter the belly of the beast. Mira probably would’ve stood there forever, white, tight-clad feet fusing to the fibers of the rug in sticky pools of muted pink, if it weren’t for the bellowing call that came from inside the dining room a minute later.
“MIRA.” 

It wasn’t yelled (her father never “yelled,” he didn’t have to) but it was spoken firmly and at a volume which implied Kang-Dae knew his daughter was lurking right nearby, lingering outside the doorway. She wondered how long he’d let her just stand there shaking, building up the anticipation. With what could only be compared to a soldier’s obedience following a command, Mira wrapped her own arms around her midsection in an attempt to hide her tremors and entered the dining room silent as a mouse, save for her featherlight footsteps and the soft swish of her school uniform skirt. When she finally rounded the corner into the dining room, her father was standing with his back to her down at the opposite end of their long dining table, just behind where he’d been seated at dinner some hours ago. 

It was clear that while the rest of the family had departed to squirrel away in their respective rooms after dinner, Kang-Dae had stayed put in the diningroom. Five or six empty, green soju bottles littered his placemat at the head of the table, and though he stood with his arms crossed and his feet planted firm, Mira could tell from the familiar smell on his breath and the slight sway in his stance that he was drunk. When he finally turned to look at her, Mira bent deeply in a bow, keeping her eyes cast to the ground, waiting for him to cast his judgments. Ju-won didn’t have to rub it in her face, she knew she was never summoned for anything good. In their house, the best thing Mira could be was invisible. 

Kang-Dae let the uncomfortable, nearly stifling silence between them stretch on for an uncomfortable length of time, probably enjoying the way it made Mira squirm, her hamstrings beginning to ache from maintaining her bow bend. When her father finally spoke, his sudden and crisp voice made her jump, which was certainly the intended effect.
“At dinner tonight you looked disgraceful. What is this?”
Mira’s father gestured vaguely to her legs and the young girl followed his gaze, quickly realizing he was referring to her tights, which she hadn’t noticed until now were ripped on one side. Her left knee was bruised a deep black and blue, peeking out through the stretching hole that had been ripped in the white tights, sending a run down the fabric covering her shin. 

The other knee had no hole, but there was an angry smear of green and brown down her calf staining the stark white, obviously from grass and dirt. Mira’s cheeks grew hot, she hadn’t even noticed anything was amiss with her uniform, otherwise she never would’ve worn it to dinner, especially not on a night when they were hosting company. A business colleague of her father’s and his wife, the Hans, had joined them that evening as they often did on Sunday evenings, and Eomeoni had given both Ju-won and her specific instructions to look presentable in their presence--evidently it was someone Kang-Dae was looking to impress.
“Do you hear me? I asked, what is this!?”
Mira startled again as her father’s voice raised an octave, his large hands flailing about angrily. 

She wanted to take a defensive step back but kept her feet firm on the ground, not wanting to upset him further by behaving disrespectfully. She studied her shoes as she spoke, her voice gravelly from disuse.
“I fell at school, Abeoji, when we were out at recess. I didn’t notice my tights got ruined. I’m sorry, I should’ve changed before dinner.”
It was mostly the truth--Mira hadn’t really fallen at recess so much as she had been wrestled to the ground, fighting with some meathead 4th grader about who would pitch in their game of baseball. The boys never wanted to let her play with them because she was a girl, and they especially didn’t want to let a girl pitch for them, even though she had the best arm bar none. The jerk had kicked her in the knee with his cleats on and it had hurt, so she figured it would bruise. But she really hadn’t noticed that he’d managed to rip her tights and stain them with dirt, too caught up in the moment. That part was entirely true. 

Mira continued to stare at her shoes, but when her father didn’t speak for a long enough time, she chanced a small glance up at him. He wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at the dining table, warbled reflections of them both bouncing off the glossy dark-stained wood and reflecting back at them. His eyes were wide and wild looking, his nostrils flared. He was literally vibrating with anger, his hands both in fists at his sides. When he spoke next his voice was far from shouting, instead low and deadly, like a predator’s growl as it wound up to pounce.
“Meongcheonghan nyeon.”
Stupid girl. 

Mira could sense what was about to happen right before it happened; a slight change in the air and the shift in her father’s stance that, at some point, she’d apparently memorized from many a backhand or belt. As he moved towards her in a motion quick and swift like a viper biting, Mira’s blood ran cold and her brain short circuited, muscles working on autopilot as she turned away to flee. She only made it a few short steps before her father caught up with her, fueled by soju and rage. His baseball mit glove of a hand tightened fast around her bicep and squeezed like a vice, snapping her back into place so quickly she lost her footing, her tights slipping on the smooth, glossy tile. 

Before she could fully hit the ground, Kang-Dae wrenched her arm back and up so that her feet actually dangled from the ground. Her entire arm felt like it was on fire and was easily eclipsed by his hand, the skin rough and calloused against her own. His grip was tight enough for little bruises to already begin blooming on the pale skin beneath his white-knuckle fingertips.
“Aya! Stop it, let me go!”

Mira tried in vain to pry her arm away from her father, feet kicking futilely in the air. It only served to make him angrier, and he shook her like a doll as his voice boomed down into her face, spit flying.
“You think it’s funny making a fool out of your mother and I in front of the Han family? Huh?” 

Mira wrapped her opposite hand around his own, clawing with her fingers at his hand. Her eyes were skewed shut tight but she could feel her father close enough that his hot breath was hitting her face, the stench of his soju making her eyes sting. She was still too young to have learned yet that struggling against her father when he got like this only ever made things worse.
“N-no! I don’t-- I didn’t mean--!”
Kang-Dae squeezed his hand impossibly tighter around his daughter’s arm, pulling her up higher into the air so that her toes couldn’t graze the ground. Mira felt something grotesque pop in her shoulder and gasped, stubborn tears sliding down her cheeks against her will.
“You didn’t notice it, you didn’t mean it, you didn’t THINK, that’s your problem, Mira. You don’t THINK.”

“The Hans were going to agree to my business deal, a very IMPORTANT business deal, and now-”
Mira knew it was the wrong thing to do but she couldn’t help herself, interrupting her father’s rambles with a loud groan of pain. With all her body weight pulling on her arm her shoulder felt like it was about to pop out of its socket, the bone grinding with every shake from Kang-Dae.
“Appa, please! You’re hurting me!”
Her father sneered, red-rimmed eyes blown wide with equal parts shock and fury at what he deemed to be back-talk.
“Oh, I’m hurting you?! I’m HURTING YOU?!”

Though she was too afraid to look, she felt her father shift as though reaching for something behind him, then the distant clink of glass.
“I’ll SHOW YOU HURTING, YOU LITTLE--” 

*SMASH*

.

.

.

It took a minute for Mira to realize it was glass that was raining down around her head and shoulders, a soju bottle having been smashed against her left temple. A trickle of something warm ran down the ticklish space behind her ear and then down the back of her neck, no doubt staining the collar of her dress shirt, though Mira had no idea if it was blood or leftover soju (or both). Another drop ran down her forehead and down between her eyes, sloping off to the side of her nose, and from the corner of her eye she could see it was pink-ish in color, like her hair. For several seconds she couldn’t hear anything except for a high ringing sound, deafened briefly by the loudness of the shattered glass. She couldn’t feel anything either, though she knew her head should’ve hurt. Instead it just felt hot and wet, the adrenaline and shock coursing through her body masking all the pain in a thick layer of numbness. 

Smashing the soju bottle had had its desired effect, at least, in that Mira had finally gone still in her father’s painful embrace. Her thrashing from before had entirely ceased, and she now just hung limply in her father’s grasp, stunned. The ache from her arm was entirely forgotten now, even though a small part of her brain knew her shoulder was still throbbing. But she couldn’t feel it, any of it, and eventually Kang-Dae released his daughter rather unceremoniously. He watched with what could only be described as mild disinterest as Mira crumbled like paper to the ground at his feet, producing her first sound in minutes as she hissed, landing palms down on the shards of glass glittering the tile with a sickening crunch. 

Her father looked down at her the way one would a particularly disgusting bug, maybe, or a scuff on the tip of your dress shoe. Indifference laced with disdain. All his rage from before had evaporated as quickly as it had appeared, replaced now with complete apathy. He’d taken his anger out on his intended target, and now he just wanted to pass out drunk somewhere. He sighed, rubbing a hand across his face as though this entire ordeal had really taken it out of him.
“Aigoo, now look what you made me do.”
Mira began to cry softly to herself, the backs of her hands pressed awkwardly against her eyes so that the glass in her palms wouldn’t scratch her face. Kang-Dae merely sniffed, then cleared his throat and turned, as though he’d grown bored of the scene. 

Mira watched as he picked up another soju bottle, and she flinched violently before realizing he was just bringing it to his lips for a sip. Before he fully turned his back to her she swore she saw him smile around the bottle’s rim, pleased with himself, and perhaps humored by what he deemed to be her theatrics. As he finally began exiting the room, he spoke once more over his shoulder, 

“And don’t you even think about going to bed until you’ve cleaned up your mess.”
And then, at last, he was gone, stumbling his way back down the dark hall, the beast satisfied.

Mira tried her best to listen to her father’s final instruction, she really did. She remembered scrubbing at the same spot on the tile all night, pushing around smeary-pink blood with her wash rag for hours without realizing that the drops she kept wiping up were only being replaced, fresh blood and soju mixed dripping down off the tip of her nose. She kept trying to stop the bleeding from her head, but then she would get distracted by the mess surrounding her, and all those glittery shards of glass. Everything felt foggy and strange, like she was playing a video game, or watching herself do all these things from where she was tucked up away in the corner of the room. Once, to try and stop the frightening cycle she found herself trapped in, she deliberately pressed her palm to the floor and rolled it over a patch of glass, letting the shards crack under the heel of her hand as she pressed them into her skin, and distantly she realized she really couldn’t feel the pain anymore. 

Everything was numb, and her mind felt like it was enveloped in this thick fog, even though she knew that was probably just her concussion. All she could think about was how loud it had sounded when that bottle came smashing down over her head, the wild crescendo of glass and the pounding of blood in her ears playing on a loop, the way everything just stopped in an instant. It had been so loud--Mira knew loud, she’d been screamed at more times than she’d been spoken softly to. But nothing in her recent memory felt as loud to her as that glass had sounded when it cracked open over her skull, emphasized by the deafening silence that followed. 

Somehow, when she played the memory back in her mind, all of it, even the morning bit when her mother found her still sitting in a lazily scrubbed pool of blood and soju and broken glass only to sigh disappointedly, it was that noise of the broken glass that scared her the most.

Chapter Text

*SMASH*

Mira didn’t just jump out of bed, she practically jumped right out of her skin, sitting up so quickly and with such force that she woke up from her nightmare no longer in bed but tangled up in her blanket on the floor. Disoriented and entirely blind in the darkness of her room, it didn’t take long at all for Mira to start panicking. She couldn’t quite tell where she was, so of course her mind supplied the information for her and blended reality with her nightmare. Rumi and Zoey weren’t here, so she couldn’t have been home-- home? Oh god, she was home. Their home. She had to have been, that’s why her hands were so shaky and her chest hurt so bad, like cable car wires and thorny brambles and first place ribbons knotted tight enough to crush. She was trapped with them, with her--
*SMASH*
Both of Mira’s hands flew to cover her ears, fingers finding purchase in her knotted hair. 

When the soft hallway light flicked on and filtered in through a slim crack in her bedroom door, widening slowly as someone on the other side pressed, Mira went into full fight or flight. She had half the mind to summon her gok-do, but her fingers were shaking too wildly to find the featherlight threads of the Honmoon. Instead she picked flight, scooting back on the carpet until her shoulder collided hard with her wooden bedside table. She curled up into a tight ball, tangled comforter forgotten on the floor, and kept pushing until she was able to slot her body into the small gap of space between the table and the wall, tucked away into the corner.
“-ira?”
The silhouette of someone (appa, she thought, it must be appa) began approaching her slowly from the door, face obscured but pink-rimmed from the dim light cast by her lava lamp. 

Before the figure could come fully into view, dried out contacts blurring and distorting her vision anyway, Mira skewed her eyes shut tight, like a child might to hide from something frightening. If I can’t see them, they can’t see me. The hands clasped around her ears tightened, the whir of blood pounding in them drowning out the sound of the silhouette calling her name. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, though the dancer wasn’t sure if it was from the stinging pain of her contacts or if she was genuinely beginning to cry. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t let him see you crying. It’ll make him angrier.

“-ira? Mira?”
The person crouched in front of her and placed their hand on top of one of the knees Mira had pressed to her chest with all the tender grace of a butterfly, but even just the slight physical sensation sent her reeling, her muscles locking up tight and her head slamming hard against the wall behind her as she flinched so aggressively. The person removed their hand instantaneously, like touching a hot stove, but Mira didn’t notice, her mind screaming danger blindly.Words tumbled out between her lips in a quietly hissed plea, jumbled and frantic between her great big gulps for breath.
“No, no, no, please. Please don’t, please--”
*SMASH*

The words died on her tongue as another loud crash sounded around the room, a phantom tickle behind her ear transforming the raucous noise seamlessly into that of familiarly frightening broken glass. All the air in her lungs evaporated as though she’d been vacuum-sealed, doubling over and curling in on herself further as she fought to inhale. Don’t make too much noise, don’t cry, don’t move, don’t make it worse. As her mind descended further and further, the fingers tangled in her hair pulled tight, ripping hard at the pink strands hanging limply by her face. When that didn’t help bring the smallest bit of air back into her lungs, Mira extracted one hand begrudgingly from where it was clasped over her ear and brought it to her opposite arm. Making a claw-like hand, in one swift motion the hunter brought her nails to her forearm and raked them downward, getting about halfway through her scratch before her wrist was snatched up by someone else’s hand, ceasing the contact. 

Mira stiffened in their grip. She thought about fighting to break free but then both her wrists were being held firm and she chose to just go limp in their grasp, one hand held suspended in the air where it was trapped by her attacker and the other being pulled gently from where it was tangled in her hair. Her arm now stung intensely from where she scratched herself, the familiar burn of open air on a wound bringing her the smallest bit of relief.
“-ira, I’m so sor…baby, we can’t let…can you h…? Just listen to my…”
With her ears now exposed to the room, Mira was starting to make out the voice (voices?) of someone speaking to her, probably whoever was crouched in front of her and kept touching her. She tried to tilt her head so she could bury one ear against her shoulder, muffling the sounds with the warm fabric of her sweater, but the persistent voice still bled through. 

Mira’s head was starting to seriously hurt, half because she’d slammed it against the wall behind her and half because her mind was reeling as it tried to grapple with her reality and her anxiety in equal parts. She just wanted Rumi and Zoey, if they were here then she’d be able to calm down, to stiffen up her upper lip and survive whatever punishment was about to befall her.
“...at me, can you do that…? I’m right h…just listen to…pretty girl?”
The petname stirred something in Mira’s gut, slicing through her panic with a clarity that was near startling. There were only two people in her life that ever--
*SMASH*
Like rats and dust and glass and blood fall-running down, her thoughts scattered with the sound, pulverized by its loudness. It sounded like smashed bottles and pounding feet up spiral stairs, like Rumi’s scraped knees hitting the concrete at Namsan tower or a door slamming closed so hard the wood splinters. 

Nauseated and exhausted, Mira’s mouth welled up with saliva like she might puke, and acutely the dancer realized the person who was still holding her hand was rubbing small circles with their thumb on the inside of her wrist, almost like they were attempting to comfort her. She felt like she was about to pass out, and she likely was. If her eyes had been open her vision would’ve been swimming, little black spots decorating everything, but as it was she just let herself go slack in the darkness. Defeated, Mira didn’t fight off the offending hands when two additional warm palms landed on her knees, squeezing slightly.
“It’s okay, Mir…just breathe. Just try to….focus…” 

As a last ditch effort at grounding herself, and mostly at the behest of the mystery person still speaking (seemingly sweetly?) to her on the floor, Mira bit down hard on her bottom lip. She felt a little pop as her front teeth sank into the tender flesh, until she tasted the salt of blood in her mouth. 

She had been trying to ground herself, but the taste of blood only seemed to fuel her addled brain, supplying more twisted bits and pieces from her nightmare and shaping them into a sinking and cruel reality. Just as her breathing began to pick up even more, gasping and wheezing by this point, the person crouched low in front of her chanced another touch. This time, they lifted their hand from her knee and ran their thumb gently over Mira’s bottom lip, prying it away from her teeth with the cautious fervor of someone trying to keep her from hurting herself. Something about the sensation sparked a familiarity within Mira, and when the hand migrated from her lip to the side of her face, clearly emboldened by Mira’s lack of overt protest this time, the pink-haired girl almost found herself leaning into the touch out of muscle memory. 

So at odds with the rest of her residual tension, the sudden desire to be nearer to this strange entity half-broke Mira free from her spiral. Appa would never have touched me so gently.
“Open your eyes, Mir. It’s just us, baby. Just Rumi and Zoey.”
Rumi and Zoey. Mira opened her eyes cautiously, almost scared to let her vision adjust to the dark in case it would dash the fluttering hope growing low in her belly, in case this was just another mean trick. But when Mira opened her eyes and landed on a pink-rimmed Zoey, with matching tears in her big brown eyes as she searched Mira’s for a sign of recognition, the dancer finally exhaled the big, wet breath she’d been harboring in her chest. The relief seemed to leak out all around her like a sucker punched balloon, her cheek nuzzling into the hand she now realized was Zoey’s, her Zoey’s. The younger girl smiled with relief of her own, watching as Mira’s pupils dilated once they were set on her.
“Oh, there’s our pretty girl, Rumi.”

Rumi. Mira didn’t want to take her eyes off Zoey now that she’d found her. It felt like setting your eyes on paradise after being lost out at sea for days. But at the prospect of seeing Rumi too, Mira chanced a glance at the mysterious hand still holding her wrist, inhaling and exhaling again softly at the sight of fingers which were clad with softly glowing marks. She followed the halo of napalm orange until she found Rumi’s face in the darkness, tucked just behind Zoey’s shoulder where she was sitting behind their maknae, trying to make herself look small and unthreatening. When Mira’s eyes found hers, the half-demon smiled softly too, eyes full of love and marks simmering down from anxious orange to a more peachy pink. Even so, guilt sank in her stomach like a thrown stone at the subtle signs of stress each of her girls displayed--the way purple strands of hair had escaped from Rumi’s braid and stuck plastered to her clammy forehead. Zoey’s fingers tapped nervously against Mira’s kneecap, fidgety and restless. 

“S-sorry.”
The sound of her own voice startled her, the scratchy and unpleasant quality of it from all that wheezing and crying. Zoey’s thumb brushed a stray tear away from her cheek, smile turning sad around the edges as she took in the frayed sight of her girlfriend, usually so stoic and untouchable. Right now, with blood gathered at the corners of her mouth and eyes bloodshot red, her hair stuck up in every direction and her entire body still trembling with residual fear, she looked nothing of the sort. She hated how terrified she looked, how miserable and small and broken today had left her. It made the maknae feel utterly helpless.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for, my love. Nothing at all. Everything is okay, just focus on me, okay? Focus on the sound of my voice and the feeling of Rumi and I’s hands, and focus on your breathing. Can you do that?”

Mira nodded her head once, grappling with Zoey’s words like they were an anchor in a storm. The lyricist placed the hand that had been lying restlessly atop Mira’s knee to the dancer’s chest, pressing her palm flat against her breastbone. She held it there firm--not with enough pressure to hurt, but just enough to ground.
“Inhale deeply for me, baby.”
Mira followed Zoey’s instructions, though the sound that her unsteady intake of breath elicited was rattly and harsh, like the air was scraping against every edge of her throat on its way down into her lungs. She tried again, but sputtered when Zoey’s soft praises were drowned out by another loud crashing sound from outside. Thunder, her brain suddenly recognized, but the harsh sound still made her jump, still made every muscle in her body tense and her eyes skew shut tight like not seeing could help protect her from the threat coming. 

“You’re okay, Mira. Just keep breathing for me.”
And Mira tried, she really did, she wanted to be good, but the heart in her chest was still hammering so quickly it sounded like a constant hum, and when she tried to exhale again the breath she was holding in her chest still seemed to get hung up on every jagged piece of glass seemingly lodged in her throat, left over from her nightmare. Even though Zoey kept the same placating smile on her face, Mira could see the way her eyebrows met in the middle with worry when she forced herself to peel her eyes back open again despite her fear, her desparate need to see her girlfriends outweighing the dread of opening her eyes to someone else. She watched as Zoey subtly beckoned over her shoulder to Rumi with a twitch of her head, who wore a matching expression of anxiety.
“Rumi, can you go grab Mira’s inhaler? I don’t know exactly where--”

Rumi was already moving, rising from her spot on the carpet.
“It’s under the sink in the bathroom, I know where. Can you…do you think I…that I can…?”
It took Zoey a second to realize Rumi was stumbling over her words as she tried to figure out what exactly to do with the pair of hands she was still restraining, blood from the three lines of scratches down Mira’s inner forearm beginning to coagulate in the crook of her elbow as Rumi held the offending arm upright. When the pink-haired girl caught sight of them herself she grimaced, fighting the urge to bite down on her lip again. Hot shame pressed down all around her. Had she done that?
“Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-- fuck, I didn’t mean to.”
Zoey leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to Mira’s lips, ignoring the bitter taste of blood so she could swallow up her apologies.
“Baby, it’s okay, you’re okay. No one’s mad at you.”

Mira shook her head, eyes locked on the sight of her arm like it was some strange and disturbing foreign object, not something literally attached to her.
“No, I-I made a m-mess, Zo.”
Zoey pressed another kiss to Mira’s wet cheek,
“And we’ll clean it up babygirl, it’s alright.”
Zoey glanced back again at Rumi who hovered uncertainly behind her.
“I think she’s done scratching, and I’ve got her. Grab some gauze pads and Neosporin from the bathroom too, would you?”
Rumi let go of Mira’s wrists gently, resting her hands in Zoey’s lap before retreating quickly and quietly from the room, a woman on a mission. Rumi struggled to comfort and calm, but she could certainly follow an order, relief flooding her at having something to do, some way to help. 

“We’re gonna get you all patched up, Mir, don’t worry about it. Just keep focusing on me and on your breathing.”
Mira felt the guilt over having someone else clean up her mess eating away at her, her mother’s words from her dream echoing so clearly in her mind it sounded like she was in the room with them, lurking in the dark corner by her closet, shaking her head disapprovingly at another bloody display; don’t you even think about going to bed until you’ve cleaned up your mess. But thankfully there was another voice, one that was even easier to listen to, and that voice was Zoey’s, trying desperately to use every trick in the book to help Mira calm down.
“Can you tell me where we are right now?”
Zoey rubbed Mira’s cheek with her thumb as she spoke, the soothing strokes perfectly in time with her words. Mira gripped Zoey’s pajama bottoms with her newly freed hands, desperately wanting to be somehow closer to the girl, to climb inside her shirt and be pressed against her warm skin, to hear her heartbeat flush against her ear, to be entirely safe from the terrors her mind was still certain were looming just out of sight in the dark. Quietly she admitted,
“I-I don’t know.” 

Zoey drew stars on her chest, running her fingers up and down her collar bones and her bobbing adam’s apple, like she was trying to rub the life back into her the way you would a newborn kitten who failed to thrive.
“We’re in your bedroom, pretty girl. In the penthouse, where you live with me and Rumi. Remember?”
Mira nodded her head, but her hazy eyes were filled with uncertainty. She looked around the room and tried to make sense of it, to pick out shapes in the dark she found recognizable, but none of it seemed especially familiar. Even though her surroundings didn't necessarily look like her childhood bedroom, there was still a large part of her brain convinced that must have been where she was, the part that still felt her heart hammering in her chest from her dream.
“...Just you and Rumi?”

Zoey nodded her head, certain.
“Just us three, baby. No one else is here. No one is going to hurt you, not with Rumi and I around.”
Zoey didn’t have to say: your parents aren’t here, they aren’t going to hurt you again, not that exactly, but Mira knew that’s what her girlfriend really meant. She felt her shoulders relax from where they were hiked up around her ears, hunching forward slowly until Zoey was wrapping her up in her arms, cradling her pounding head to her chest and shifting so that her hands could rub Mira’s back. Mira’s hands found purchase at Zoey’s sides, fists balling up the fabric of her t-shirt, and when the next clash of thunder came it stole away her breath just a little bit less. With her chin resting on Mira’s shoulder, the brunette lowered her voice to a hushed whisper, warm breath directly hitting the dancer’s ear.
“The noises outside are just from a passing storm, and the room is pink from your lava lamp over on the side table, and your blanket from your bed is over here on the floor by us, the one Rumi crocheted you for Christmas.” 

Zoey leaned away from Mira briefly so she could grab the aforementioned blanket, and the pink-haired girl groaned in protest despite herself, immediately displeased by the lack of contact. Her buzzing heart rate was finally starting to come back down, she didn’t want Zoey going anywhere.
“Here, your Rumi-Blankie.”
Zoey draped the pink and purple threaded blanket gently over Mira’s back and shoulders, the soft feeling of the yarn against the back of her neck sending positive goosebumps down her arms. 

Zoey held Mira at arm’s length for a moment so she could take in the sight of her, feeling herself relax at the sight of Mira slowly starting to come back to them. 
“It’s a totally hideous blanket, but you insist upon sleeping with it every night anyway.”
Mira’s lips quirked up in a small smile, and Zoey beamed at her before pulling her back into their embrace, securing the blanket around Mira by tucking it under the other girl’s chin.
“There you go, baby, all wrapped up in both of us.” 

For several beats the two girls sat in near silence, the only sounds filling the room being Mira’s quiet, ragged breathing punctuated by soft sniffles and the pounding rain overhead. The dancer leaned so hard into Zoey she was practically in the smaller girl’s lap, eyes still scanning the room from over Zo’s shoulder in case someone snuck up on them. Mira stiffened briefly when she heard footsteps rounding down the hall toward her room, but she relaxed again when she saw it was just Rumi, smiling at her nervously in the dark over an armful of supplies from the bathroom. She smiled even wider when she sank down to her girls’ level and saw Mira was much calmer and much more cognizant, the fear of total unfamiliarity mostly gone from her eyes and replaced with simple caution. 

“Here, Mir, this should help.”
Rumi dumped her findings in a small heap on the rug and rooted around for a moment before finding her girlfriend’s little blue inhaler. She held the device up for Mira to take, but when she saw the pink-haired girl’s hesitation, her hands still shaking fiercely where they were rooted to Zoey, she smiled tenderly before volunteering to hold the device for her, slowly guiding it to Mira’s lips. She waited for a subtle nod from Mira before pressing down the inhaler’s button, watching as Mira inhaled the albuterol and visibly relaxed, the drug bringing her instant relief as her lungs expanded instantaneously. 

Rumi leaned closer and patted her on the back gently as Mira held the inhaled chemical in for as many seconds as she could before exhaling, coughing a little from the effort, though the grateful expression on her flushed face clearly showed her gratitude.
“A little better?”
Mira nodded again, her head lolling to the side so it could rest against Rumi’s arm. Rumi quickly shifted so she could be nearer to the other two women, her fingers carding through the loose threads in the blanket cast over Mira’s shoulders as she settled. Like the final pieces of a puzzle clicking into place, surrounded by the two people she loved most in this world, Mira finally felt like she could breathe, a clarity finally coming to her that felt like waking up from some terrible, hazy dream. It wasn’t over, not entirely, and Mira knew that. But she could breathe again, at least. Better than before. And Rumi and Zoey were there, tangible and real. Mira tried to focus on just that and block out all the other noise, even as thunder still rumbled threateningly in the distance. 

Chapter Text

Mira rubbed her cheek against the warm fabric of Rumi’s tee and shifted her hands so they were more so wrapped around Zoey’s waist instead of grappling her. Zoey ran her fingers through Mira’s hair, taming some of the frazzled pieces she’d upset during her tumble from the bed.
“Can I take your contacts out for you? Your eyes look like they hurt.”
Mira squeezed her bloodshot eyes closed and felt the way they burned, painfully dry despite all her crying. She nodded her head and surrendered herself to Zoey. The younger girl cupped her face in her hands, and instructed the pink haired girl to blink her eyes a few times, sighing with relief as she carefully slipped the little contacts out of her girlfriend’s eyes the same way she had a dozen times before. A single tear rolled down her cheek and Rumi wiped it away before slipping Mira’s glasses up the slope of her nose. The cool, golden metal felt nice on her clammy face, and the room finally looked right again, all the amorphous pictures and posters on her wall taking familiar shape at long last. 

The girls fell into a comfortable quiet once again, the tremors in Mira’s fingers slowly receding and her breath fully evening out.
“Do you want to talk about your dream?”
The serene expression on Mira’s face shifted, even if only by a small twitch above her mouth, and Rumi quickly added:
“Only if you want to, love. No pressure.”
The low, rolling rumble of thunder somewhere far off in the distance outside, so different from the cacophonous, shattering thunder that battered their penthouse minutes before made Mira’s next words seem random and halting, like someone had struck her in the gut and forced them out of her. She needed to get them out before the storm came back their way and stole away her bravery.
“I’m scared of thunderstorms.” 

Rumi tried to hide her initial surprise, but Zoey did not, her eyebrows shooting up to her hairline and mouth opening with a soft pop as she pulled back a little from their cuddle puddle. Mira pressed on before either girl could interject,
“Well, I’m not scared of thunder storms specifically, it’s more like, I’m scared of…loud noises? And thunder is…well, very loud.”
To Zoey’s credit, she made an earnest effort to school her expression, though her brows were still knit in clear confusion, her shock obviously broadcast to the other two girls, even in the pink-darkness of Mira’s room. Rumi, on the other hand, looked like she was having a subtle epiphany, her forehead creased in what Mira knew to be her signature concentration face. Rumi mumbled under her breath, speaking to herself really.
“That’s why you were so off at the studio earlier…it had just started to rain.”
Mira’s ears burned, but she nodded her head in confirmation. Rumi’s eyes fell, we should’ve noticed sooner.
“It sounds stupid when I say it out loud like that. I mean, who is scared of noises, but…”

Mira’s voice pittered off, wind gone from her sails. Rumi and Zoey were quick to pick her back up, speaking over one another in their rush to reassure:
“No, no, that’s not unusual--”
“--it really makes perfect sense for you, baby.”
Now it was Mira’s turn to look confused, eyes squinting at Zoey who ducked her head nervously. The maknae’s fingers paused in their gentle movements as though also frozen by Mira’s scrutinizing look.
“...What do you mean it makes perfect sense...?”
Zoey knew it was the wrong thing to have said the moment the words flew out of her mouth, but like so often, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from saying them, the realization that her word choice needed serious tweaking coming just a moment too late. 

The youngest girl pointedly avoided Mira’s hard gaze and turned, almost pleadingly, to Rumi, hoping their fearless leader would know how to translate what the rapper had meant into words which wouldn’t offend or upset an especially vulnerable Mira. No one outside of their little circle probably would’ve guessed it, but Mira was hands down the most sensitive out of their group, the most minute of details and the slightest shift in tone weighing on her long after a conversation had ended. It had taken Zoey and Rumi a long time to realize words held such weight for the dancer, because she’d worked so hard for so long to keep anything that could be perceived as a weakness out of sight (Rumi knew the exhaustive effort that took oh too well). But Zoey was glad they’d all gotten to a place where Mira was able to openly communicate her thoughts and feelings without fear after a lifetime of walking on eggshells…expecially since Zoey was, unfortunately, often at the root of their communication errors. 

Even though Mira knew Zoey didn’t ever mean what she said in the way she inherently interpreted it (meaning the worst way to interpret it, because old habits died hard), she still struggled to shake the perceived slight unless they verbally worked it out. Mira found her own needs excessive and exhaustive, and was continually stunned by her girlfriends’ willingness to cooperate with her. But Zoey and Rumi much preferred it that way too--anything to avoid the bottled-up nightmare of a relationship they’d had back during training, when Mira would just stew for hours until snapping, usually at someone like Bobby, who didn’t even warrant her venom. 

Rumi cleared her voice, only giving Zoey a slightly annoyed look before coming to her rescue. The half-demon squeezed Mira’s shoulder reassuringly as she spoke, punctuating her soft, slow words.
“I think what Zoey means to say is that, well, it’s understandable certain loud noises would frigh- startle you, given your…history?”
Mira bristled naturally, but was soothed again by Rumi’s touch, a firm but tender hand running from the nape of her neck all the way down to the base of her spine. When she pressed on her voice was as soft as a whisper, earnest and raw in a way that made Mira want to crack open all over again.
“We should’ve realized sooner, Mir. I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t tell us.” 

Zoey kissed the corner of Mira’s mouth. Words weren’t coming to her as easy as usual, too consumed by the thought of Mira waiting out every storm by herself for so long, lying two doors down from them and jumping at every sound in the dark, making herself small. She shook her head and kissed her again, something hard forming like a promise deep in her chest. Mira wouldn’t have to go through it alone any longer, not so long as they were there to hold her until the rain stopped. 

“It’s not your fault, either of you. I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want to--”
Mira paused, both finding the right words and fighting her embarrassment in equal measure. Zoey and Rumi both waited patiently, holding her a little bit tighter when the thunder outside rolled and rumbled again, now somewhere far off in the distance. Hopefully the storm was coming to an end.
“I thought if I told you I was scared of something as stupid as thunderstorms, I’d have to tell you why.”

Both girls opened their mouths to interject, and Rumi graciously closed hers so that Zoey could have a chance at redemption.
“You don’t have to tell us, Mira. Not if you don’t want to talk about it. It sounds like it might be an upsetting memory for you.”
Mira shrugged noncommittally, though her heart was hammering in her chest, the sights and sounds from her dream (flashback?) flickering in the back of her mind. It felt like rubbing salt on an open wound, and every fiber of her being begged to put her crumbled walls back up for a little bit and close herself off again, to push Zoey and Rumi off of her and out of the room so she could slam the door and slide down the length of it. Instead she let herself melt further into their embrace, tightened muscles flexing beneath feather-soft fingers. They held her like they were protecting something precious and priceless, and it made her heart hammer in a different sort of way, swelling painfully during the off-beats. 

“I mean, sounds like you already have it sort of figured out. Ya know, if it makes perfect sense and all.”
Zoey sucked in a great big breath, clearly about to defend herself with some big, long Zoey ramble, but stopped short when she saw the small, tentative smile playing at Mira’s lips. She was teasing her! The maknae deflated into one of her signature pouts,
“That’s not-!”
Rumi cut the younger girl off with a gentle whack to her arm,
“How about Zoey works on cleaning up your arm while you talk about whatever you want to talk about? Or don’t talk at all and just let us hold you until the storm passes. It sounds like it’s moving away from us, anyway.” 

Mira bit her bottom lip nervously, but only got a single good bite in before Rumi was smoothing the lip out again with her thumb.
“And I’m going to get you some dinner so that you have something to do with your mouth aside from biting your lip.”
Mira shook her head, slumping forward to stop Rumi from getting up.
“Not hungry.”
Rumi cocked her eyebrow, unconvinced.
“It’s past 8PM and all you’ve eaten today is breakfast.”
Mira had no idea it was so late, she must’ve been sleeping for hours. Zoey raised her pointer finger in the air and waggled it,
“And all she had for breakfast was two cups of coffee, so someone is definitely hungry.”

Mira shot Zoey another scathing glance from over the golden rim of her glasses.
“We didn’t need to tell Ru that, Zo.”
Rumi threw her hands up in the air,
“Um, yes we did!”
Rumi took a deep, steadying breath before speaking again, bringing down her volume when she noticed it made Mira’s residual tension flare beneath them.
“Baby, you’ve gotta eat something.”
Zoey nuzzled Mira’s neck, coaxing her sides gently. 

“...Does it help to know we saved you some of the world’s most delicious jjigae?”
Zoey figured mentioning their order would get some sort of rise out of Mira, a: Seriously? You ordered without me? Or a: You guys really can’t cook for yourselves, huh? Instead she just shook her head again, closing her eyes. She looked uncomfortable and squirmy, the weight of their care lying heavily against her chest.
“If I try to eat right now, I’m just gonna puke it up. My head is killing me.”
Rumi kissed Mira’s temple, as if she knew that was right where the phantom pain was. She rubbed her hands tenderly over the taller girl’s head, smoothing down her hair and feeling for any obvious bumps. She paused when she felt a small raised area at the crown of Mira’s head.
“Did you hit your head when you fell off the bed?”
Yes.
“No…”
Rumi’s stare was piercing, something golden twinkling in her right eye until Mira continued.
“...not hard, anyway.”

Rumi sighed, running her hand over the spot on Mira’s head again as she rose from her spot on the floor, not missing the way Mira winced ever so slightly at the contact.
“Well, I’ll at least get you some water and ibuprofen, then. Maybe if you feel less nauseous in a bit you can try some left-overs.”
As Rumi hurried out of the room, Zoey took the opportunity to fully envelope Mira in her arms, sighing happily when Mira scooched into her lap and wrapped her legs around the shorter girl’s waist.
“You wanna stay tucked away in this little corner forever? Or should we move this party to the bed?”
Zoey waggled her eyebrows suggestively with one of her classic shit-eating grins, and Mira rolled her eyes but nodded her head yes anyway. Her butt was starting to feel numb from the floor, and maybe the feel of her cushy mattress instead of the tile-- no, carpet, would stop reminding her so much of her dream. 

Zoey moved all the medical supplies Rumi had brought with her from the bathroom first, making a neat little pile of alcohol wipes and gauze beside Mira’s pillow. Then, the lyricist wasted no time at all placing her hands under both of Mira’s warm thighs and hoisting her up from the floor--she may have been the smallest of the three, but Zoey’s biceps were nothing to scoff at. Because of her shin-kal training, she probably had some of the most toned arms Mira had ever seen. She made picking up and carrying her 6-foot something girlfriend look like child’s play, gently depositing her onto the mattress, back resting against the headboard. Zoey sat parallel to her, scooching close enough that Mira’s legs could rest again in her lap, hands still rubbing Mira’s thighs. The dancer still had Rumi’s crocheted blanket draped around her shoulders, but Zoey grabbed another fleece blanket that was sitting at the end of the bed and balled it up so that it acted as a pillow before setting it in Mira’s lap, propping her injured arm up on it so it was lying flat. 

Mira avoided the sight of her arm as best she could, though the coagulated blood flashed red in her periphery like some sort of warning bell. It made her head pound harder, and she fought the urge to claw at her ears again. Zoey smiled at her girl sympathetically, seeing the way she wore her guilt like a too-big coat.
“...’m sorry about my…”
She gestured with her free hand vaguely toward the arm on display in her and Zoey’s shared lap, eyes still pointedly turned away, but she stole a glance or two at Zoey when she felt the other girl tugging softly on her arm. She watched nervously as she pressed a warm kiss to the inside of her wrist. Zoey was studying the long scratches, tentatively running her fingertip parallel alongside them on Mira’s soft skin, beyond gentle in case the taller girl indicated that it was causing her any discomfort.
“It’s been a long time since you scratched yourself this bad.” 

When Mira responded to the words by shrinking in on herself and skewing her eyes shut, Zoey was quick to continue.
“I meant that as a good thing, baby. You should be proud of yourself!”
Mira opened her eyes at the sound of Zoey bunching up a wad of paper towel and uncapping a water bottle sitting on Mira’s side table, passing the paper wad carefully beneath it once, then twice, wetting it without soaking it through. When she spoke, her voice was hardly a whisper.
“I hadn’t meant to do it.”
Mira didn’t know why she said it again, echoing her pleaded sentiment from earlier. Zoey and Rumi already knew she didn’t mean to do it, that her scratches or bruises after a nightmare weren’t done with any intention other than to wake herself up, to come back into her body, to feel something. Zoey smiled sadly anyway, keeping her voice painfully soft.
“I know, baby. It’s okay.”

The two fell into silence, but Mira watched with reverence as her girlfriend passed the cool towel over her arm, back and forth--staining the white pink with dried blood as she scrubbed gently at the dark pool in the crook of her elbow like peeling away chipped paint. One of the scratches, the deepest one of the three, the one dead center, opened up and wept a little more due to Zoey’s efforts, ugly clearish-orange little beads all in a line. The rapper was quick to dab it dry, applying light pressure until the angry cut closed some more. Mira hadn’t realized she was so entranced by the sight until she was startled upright by the feel of a gentle hand on her shoulder, Rumi slotting in beside her with a glass of water and a palmful of little red pills. The half-demon smiled at Mira, 

“Here, sip.”
Mira tilted her head back as Rumi guided the brim of the glass to her lips and helped her drink, groaning in relief as the cool water slid down her throat. She hadn’t realized just how dry her mouth had gotten.
“Small sips if you feel nauseous, love.” 

Mira resisted the urge to groan in frustration when Rumi stopped her from downing the whole glass, pulling back the cup so Mira could catch her breath. Rumi offered her girlfriend her other hand, carefully thrusting the pills toward her.
“Think you can keep down some ibuprofen?”
Mira hesitated for only a moment before taking them with her free hand.
“I can try.” 

Rumi smiled at her like she’d just hung the moon and all the stars, slowly guiding the cup back to her bitten lips.
“There’s our brave Mira.”
Mira’s cheeks and ears burned instantaneously until her face was the same color as the pills in her hand, quickly slamming them back with a roll of her eyes, but her chest tightened at the praise. Rumi just continued to smile, fully aware of the power her words had over her girlfriend. They wanted to comfort Mira, of course, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t also enjoy watching her squirm just a little bit under the microscope of all their love and attention. As long as Rumi and Zoey were around, Mira would learn to accept their love even if it killed her. 

Eventually, once the skin was deemed clean by Zoey despite its slight pink staining, she discarded the ruined wad of paper towel in the trash can. She gestured silently toward Rumi who was also carefully watching the scene unfold, and she handed Zoey the yellow tube of neosporin resting atop the pile of first aid supplies from the bathroom. The brunette uncapped the small tube using her teeth (which made Mira and Rumi cringe in tandem) and placed a pea-sized amount on her fingertip. She turned it over in her fingers for a moment before carefully spreading it over the scratches on Mira’s arm, now more pink then they were red. It didn’t sting at all as she applied it, though Mira wouldn’t have shown it even if it had. 

Once the ointment was evenly applied Zoey handed the tube over to Rumi and traded her for the roll of gauze through a series of silent points and frustrated head jerks. Mira had seen her like this before after many a demon hunt, fully immersed in her first aid. The two girls watched with reverence as Zoey carefully unraveled the gauze with one hand until she had about two feet of unrolled bandage. Bracing Mira’s arm against her lap with her other hand, Zoey carefully wrapped the gauze around their dancer’s arm with all the tenderness of an artisan creating Kintsugi, tight enough to keep everything in place but not tight enough to constrict. When the bandage had run out, hiding away Mira’s forearm in a blanket of clean white, Rumi readily handed Zoey a little safety pin to secure it all in place. The lyricist examined her handiwork, a small smile gracing her features as she kissed the new bandage with a flare of finality. 

“There we go, all patched up!”
Even in the worst of situations, Zoey prided herself on her ability to play nurse for her girls. Mira and Rumi’s days of “toughing it out” were long behind them now; there would be no infections on Zoey’s watch.
“Any pain still?”
Mira shook her head, flexing her arm a little to see how the bandages faired.
“No, can’t feel anything.”
Her lips quirked up a little as she realized what exactly she’d said, adding:
“Not that that’s saying much.”
Zoey bumped her shoulder chastisingly as though to say, this is no time for jokes! But her own smile betrayed her--she was relieved that Mira was acting like her usual, smart-ass self again. 

“I think the storm is finally starting to pass. I counted the seconds between the last lightning strike and clap of thunder, and it was 12 miles.”
A look of visible confusion passed over Mira’s face, her brow furrowing just slightly. Her eyes were downcast, tracking the movement from Zoey’s thumb, but she looked up to catch her girlfriend’s eye briefly as she spoke.
“...12 miles?”
Zoey smiled, 

“Yeah, you know, counting the seconds between? No one ever taught you that?”
Mira looked sheepish, but eventually shook her head no, embarrassed to admit she had no idea what Zoey was on about. To be fair, she often had no idea what Zoey was on about, but seeing as Rumi didn’t look the least bit lost, she hated feeling like the stupidest person in the room. 

Mira almost let herself sink into her usual self-deprecating spiral, almost let Zoey’s words turn into mere background noise for the cruel thoughts in her head that sounded an awful lot like her parents. But then she saw the way Zoey’s eyes lit up, her smile morphing into the grin she only ever wore before infodumping about her turtles, or turning to tell Rumi or Mira the latest fun fact she’d heard in some documentary. It was like hitting the reset button on her brain, seeing Zoey’s pure glee at getting to share knowledge with one of the two people she loved most. It had taken Mira a long time to believe people could be capable of teaching her something without making her feel like she was lesser than, and Zoey was best of all at that. 

“Well, I’m not sure if it’s entirely scientifically accurate, but we used to get a lot of thunder storms in the summertime in Burbank--heat lightning, ya know? And so when I was little, my grandma taught me that trick, said that counting the seconds between the flash of lightning and the rolling sound of thunder would help tell you how many miles away the storm was from your location, 1 mile per second. If the seconds between increase, it means the storm is moving away.”
Zoey smiled bashfully, realizing she’d been talking quite animatedly with her hands as she rambled. She would’ve felt embarrassed if Mira weren’t studying her so earnestly, entirely captive. Rumi was listening too, but Mira had that special look she got in her eye when she was attempting to dedicate something Zoey had just said to memory.
“She also might’ve just been getting me to count because it kept me calm and quiet. But it’s still something I do during storms without even thinking, counting the seconds between.”

Mira nodded her head very seriously, eyebrows slightly furrowed in thought.
“And you’re saying the last time you counted, the storm was 12 miles away?”
Zoey nodded in turn, smiling.
“Yup! It was only a few seconds between when we first came in. Then 7, then 9, now I think it’s 12. We could count the next one together, if you want?”
Mira hesitated, heat creeping up her neck. She felt painfully childish. Rumi jumped in seamlessly,
“I’d like to.”
Mira looked at Rumi skeptically, even if her shoulders relaxed a fraction at not having to answer herself. 

She figured Rumi was only suggesting it for the taller girl’s benefit, but to her surprise her girlfriend had an air of vulnerability about her, clearing her throat awkwardly after squeaking the words out like a confession.
“My mom had taught me that same trick when I was young. I think, anyway. My memories with her are fuzzy because I was so young but, it sounds familiar.”
Mira’s doubtful expression quickly morphed to one of somber softness, and she silently reached for Rumi’s hand, which their leader gave to her happily. Zoey reached for the other with the hand which wasn’t holding Mira’s other hand, until the three of them were sat in a tight circle, clasping onto one another. Mira squeezed Rumi’s hand and felt the squeeze travel around them quietly, returning quickly as a gentle squeeze on her other side from Zoey. She was trying to think up something to say when lightning flashed outside, reflecting off the darks of Zoey’s eyes, who sat up excitedly at the sight.

“Ooo! Ooo! Okay, one, two--”
Zoey kept a steady count under her breath, Rumi counting in her head but mouthing the numbers alongside her, until her gentle whisper was cut off by the far-off sound of thunder. It sounded like a bowling pin knocking over a bunch of pins, as though their next door neighbors had installed a bowling alley several rooms over. The last number Zoey had gotten out was 14, and the maknae smiled triumphantly.
“See! Totally moving away. Pretty soon we won’t be able to hear the thunder at all, I bet.”
Mira didn't want to get her hopes up, but desperately hoped Zoey was right.