Chapter Text
It had been a long day for Mira. For all three of them, actually. They’d been in the dance studio all morning and a good chunk of the afternoon going over the choreo for a single on their next album, so they hadn’t started dinner yet. Mira had demoted Zoey to ingredients-supplier, not because she was a bad cook, but because she’d burned herself when she couldn’t find the oven mitts (they were in the same place they always were) and thought she could grab the tray with her bare hands (she couldn’t). It was a mild burn, thankfully, but Mira wasn’t letting her near anything hot until it healed.
Mira and Rumi sat at the kitchen island, scrolling through recipes on their phones. They really needed to go shopping soon—every suggestion she or Rumi had made so far had been shot down because they didn’t have some crucial ingredient. Mira stopped on a recipe she’d made before. It was pretty simple, and as long as they had eggs she could work around anything else that was missing.
“Babe?”
It sounded so right and natural that it took Mira a second to realise that Rumi had said “Yeah?” at the same time as Zoey. She looked at Rumi, who had immediately gone so bright red Mira thought steam might start coming out of her ears like some old cartoon character.
Zoey did nothing to soothe her, because she immediately started cackling. “Rumi, did you-”
“No!”
“You did! Mira said ‘babe’ and you answered!”
Rumi looked to Mira for help. She found none.
“I was talking to Zoey, but uh. I can call you babe too, if you want.” she drawled. Rumi groaned and buried her head in her arms. Zoey’s laughs died down, her attention now intensely focused on Rumi’s form.
“I was gonna say I wanna call her honey ‘cos she’s so sweet, but maybe I should call her glowstick?” Now that Zoey mentioned it, yeah, Rumi’s patterns were glowing. Not brightly like they had backstage at the idol awards—even thinking about it made Mira’s heart twist unpleasantly, no matter how many times Rumi forgave them—Mira could only really tell because of how Rumi’s hair cast a shadow over her arms. Huh.
Rumi snapped her head back up and looked down at her arms with surprise. Mira’s curiosity got the better of her.
“I’ve seen them glow before, but not since the honmoon was restored. Wonder what triggered it.”
“I’m not sure.” Rumi said as she twisted her arms back and forth. Mira liked that she didn’t shy away from the patterns as much these days. Even after they’d found out, Rumi had continued to cover up out of habit, and then later out of what Mira could only assume was insecurity.
Rumi glanced at Mira and squirmed a little, which told Mira she was openly staring. She found herself doing that more often lately, and she had no intentions to stop.
“Ooh, what if it’s strong emotions?” Zoey chirped, hopping up to sit on the counter and lean closer to Rumi.
“What, like a mood ring?” Mira asked.
“Yeah, like a pink glow is-"
“I’m not a mood ring!” Rumi snapped. It made Mira snort in amusement. She was so cute when she got flustered.
This instigated what was one of the stranger weeks in their apartment. None of the things they were doing were unusual, but now they were being done with what Rumi had called ‘malicious intent’.
Zoey’s first attempt to get Rumi to glow had been an evil one. She picked a random mean comment on one of her pictures and told Rumi how much it had upset her. It had made her so angry that both Zoey and Mira had spent an hour convincing her that Zoey wasn’t actually upset, but it hadn’t made her glow.
Mira had gotten them both to watch a horror movie with her. It was one she’d thoroughly vetted to make sure it wasn’t too scary, because she’d been informed that her idea of ‘not that scary’ was not the same as Zoey’s. It had made Rumi glow, but only briefly when she got jumpscared.
Then Zoey had tried cute animal videos, because ‘super happy is an emotion too’. Rumi said she’d enjoyed that attempt the most when she realised what Zoey was doing. No glow, though, but Mira was pretty sure she’d glowed later when they were at the gym.
It was a completely normal—innocent, even—morning when Zoey landed on something that worked. Mira wasn’t even sure if Zoey had planned it, or if she was just being Zoey.
Rumi handed Mira a mug of coffee—a latte, because Rumi was one of the few people allowed to know that Mira didn’t actually prefer her coffee black—and sat next to her on the couch. It was one of the many sweet things Rumi and Zoey did for her without asking. If they were in public one of them would order something sweet, like a latte or a mocha, and swap it for Mira’s black coffee in private. She didn’t care that much, her image could take the hit, but she loved that they thought about it.
“Thanks, babe.” Mira said, not even trying to conceal her shit-eating grin. Rumi kicked her shin instead of answering, which was fair.
Zoey, always the last one to wake up, padded through the living room, yawning and stretching, and flopped down next to Mira. She had to balance her mug so she wouldn’t spill her coffee.
“So!” Zoey started, and Mira was immediately suspicious of her tone, “It wasn’t a kink I thought I had, but-” Mira choked on her coffee.
“Zoey! It is 7am!” she said.
“Yeah, and I had a sex dream.” Zoey said, and then to make matters worse, she looked around Mira at Rumi. Mira could already see the blush crawling up her neck. She sat back. “Rumi.”
Rumi looked at Mira like she might help, but Mira wanted to know where Zoey was taking this so she just shrugged and took another sip of her coffee.
“If we fucked- drink slower Mira, jeez- if we fucked, would you bite me?”
“What?!” Rumi said with a strangled squeak, and oh, Mira had to try very hard to not laugh. She knew what Zoey was doing now. “I- you- why are you asking me?!”
“Because you have fangs! Mira, don’t you think it would be hot?” Mira lounged back on the couch and hummed, as if she had to about it—she didn’t, obviously it would be hot—and then turned to Rumi with a feline smirk.
“Being bitten by sharp teeth, or being bitten by Rumi?”
That did the trick. Rumi’s patterns pulsed faintly, a shifting of purples, pinks, and silvers. Mira kind of wanted to kiss them, but Zoey’s genuinely delighted gasp shook the thought from her and made her laugh instead.
“I told you it was when her heart rate spiked.” Mira said, lifting up her mug when Zoey started to crawl across her lap to get a better look. Rumi looked down at her arms, then back up at them with a scowl.
“You two are the worst!”
Mira’s laugh turned into a wheeze.
Zoey planted herself between Mira and Rumi so she could tease Rumi better. Rumi’s patterns stopped glowing after a minute or so, and Zoey had started flirting to try and make the patterns glow again.
They’d asked Rumi if she’d wanted to join them once, but that was before everything came out about the patterns and her heritage so she wouldn’t have been able to say yes even if she’d wanted to, and Mira thought she did want to. She was good at reading people.
Mira watched the flirting become bickering, then teasing, then laughing.
She wanted to ask her again. She wanted her to be comfortable enough to say yes this time.
There was no shot she’d be able to control both of them, she could barely keep a handle on Zoey. Both of them at the same time would almost certainly kill her.
But she loved a challenge.