Chapter Text
Rumi sits in their penthouse living room, bright, warm sunlight beaming in through the four-story window, unabashed in its brilliance. Rumi wishes she felt the same as she tucks her hands into her armpits to keep herself from shivering. Not from cold, but from nerves. “Thank you both for coming,” she says in a small voice to her two best friends, who are seated to face her. The two glance at each other.
“Coming?” Mira says, deadpan, turning her gaze back. “Rumi, we live here.”
“I know, I know!” Rumi responds, exasperated, “but it’s… There’s something I need to tell you.” Mira doesn’t respond, though her expression says ‘yeah, no shit.’
Zoey nods fervently, an honest, lopsided smile on her face. “Whatever you want to tell us, Ru. You know we’re here for you no matter what.”
Rumi takes a deep, shuddering breath. Her entire body is vibrating, like an electric toothbrush trying to clean plaque from the couch cushions. Ugh, very nice, Rumi. She closes her eyes and seeks comfort from the darkness. “It’s not just the patterns,” Rumi says, her voice quaking a little. She feels a small, soft hand on her thigh, and a calloused, long-fingered one on her shoulder. Mira squeezes gently, and Zoey gingerly traces one of her new, iridescent patterns. Rumi takes another—slightly steadier—breath, and focuses on the love flowing through those warm touches.
“I just… I still can’t go to the bathhouse with you two… And you deserve to know why…”
The light caress against her thigh stops. The gentle pressure against her shoulder remains, ever unflappable. Rumi takes a final, deep breath, like she’s about to belt out a chorus. Too much air, to force her to say something, to say anything. She only manages to quietly whisper the truth.
“I have a penis.”
Both hands freeze now, even Mira seemingly flapped. Rumi squeezes her eyes shut tighter. The room is silent for a few seconds, then Zoey speaks from outside the dark of Rumi’s clenched eyelids. “So?” she asks, “you can still come to the women’s bathhouse; nobody ever cares about Mira’s.”
“I know I can,” Rumi counters, “but I don’t want to make anyone feel uncom—” she pauses, registering the second half of the sentence, and her eyes shoot open, the light of the room throwing a blinding halo of morning sun around her two girls. “Mira’s?”
Zoey nods with a beaming smile, as if that one statement should have neatly tidied up all of Rumi’s insecurities and tossed them away. Mira’s face contorts in confusion, one eyebrow going up. “Uh, yeah?” the tall woman responds, “you know that I’m trans, Rumi.”
Rumi clenches her teeth, suddenly worried about Mira’s well-being rather than her own. “I know!” she says, “but I figured you would have gotten, you know, bottom surgery! We can afford the best!” Rumi searches Mira’s face for any sign of discomfort, but her friend’s stoic face betrays nothing of what’s going on inside. Mira just shrugs.
“I’ve never felt the need. After a lot of HRT, a few makeovers, and one big fashion overhaul, I feel comfortable in my body.” Mira says it nonchalantly, but Rumi’s mind is whirling.
Zoey leans over and presses her temple against Mira’s shoulder, looking up at her with big, brown eyes. “And quite the body it is, too,” Zoey says with an eyebrow wiggle. Mira sighs and rolls her eyes, then looks back to Rumi.
“So… I’m going to hope that you haven’t been lying about being cis to us,” Mira says cautiously. Rumi shakes her head vehemently. “Good,” her friend responds, “so this is a… demon thing.” Rumi nods, and Mira asks, “How long?”
“Puberty, as a teen,” Rumi says. “I was born with just… lady bits… but as I developed, I was cursed with more.” She hangs her head in shame. Despite Mira’s near-assertion that their conditions are the same, one is natural while the other comes from a supernatural curse.
Mira and Zoey glance at each other again. Mira’s face is an unreadable stone tablet, but Zoey’s concerned gaze scans the blank expression, translating it like an archaeologist. They turn back to Rumi, who can’t help but shrink away despite their warm looks. “Ru,” Zoey says, “none of what you are is a curse.”
“It’s kept me from doing so much, from going to the bathhouse, from feeling like a normal—”
“Rumi,” Mira interrupts, voice stern. “Look at me, and think about what you’re saying.”
Rumi does, and immediately wilts further. “I’m sorry, Mira…”
The pink-haired girl sighs deeply and puts a hand on Rumi’s thigh. “It’s okay, Rumi. It took me a while to get used to it, too. But I need you to ask yourself something very important. And really think about it, okay?”
Rumi nods, weakly responding, “Okay.”
“Is it really your body, your dick—” Rumi winces at the word coming from her friend’s mouth “—that makes you feel abnormal, or is that just how you’ve been raised to look at yourself?”
Rumi opens her mouth to respond ‘of course it’s my body!’ but stops. She closes her lips and really thinks as Mira had commanded. She thinks about all the things Celine told her about it.
“It’s… It is abnormal,” Rumi whispers, parroting her mentor’s teaching. “It’s weird, and disgusting…” Celine’s voice echoes in her mind, and Rumi is about to continue, ’...A woman shouldn’t have this, it’s a curse that reduces who you are.’ But she freezes, looking into Mira’s narrow, focused eyes—set in her beautiful, feminine face—and the lie crumbles. “That’s what Celine always said,” Rumi explains. “But… I guess… I think that might not be true…”
The corner of Mira’s mouth quirks up, the equivalent of a beaming smile of approval. “That’s good to hear,” she says softly. Mira lets her hand drop from Rumi’s shoulder to trace a pattern across her bicep. “Because we both think your body is beautiful, no matter what.”
Rumi nods. Suddenly, tears come to her eyes.
Zoey dives in for a hug, wrapping her small arms tightly around Rumi’s arms and chest and burying her face into her patterned neck. “We love you, Rumi! Please don’t cry!”
Rumi sniffles. “I’m not,” she says with all the honesty of Bill Clinton. Zoey tilts her head to look up at Rumi. The familiar glint of a hatching plan is unmistakable in the younger girl’s round eyes. “What?” Rumi chokes out, tears still leaking from her own.
“Do you still have a pussy?” Zoey asks innocently.
Rumi’s tears stop abruptly, dammed up by the shock of the question. Her jaw drops. “Zoey!” Mira calls out, giving her a smack upside the head.
“Ow!”
“Not the time!”
“I’m curious! And it got her to stop crying!”
Mira falls silent at the reasoning, just narrowing her eyes and giving a small grunt.
“I… uh…” Rumi says, awkwardly toying with her lavender braid. “Yeah, I still do…”
Zoey gasps. “Wow! Is it like, between the balls, or—”
Smack!
“OW! Stop doing that!”
Mira gives a sharp glare in response.
“I… um…” Rumi feels her face flushing hot beneath Zoey’s wide-eyed, curious gaze. The maknae is batting her eyes innocently as if she’s asking Rumi about the details of what she has packed in her lunch box, not what she’s packing in her pants. “I… don’t have… those.”
Zoey’s eyebrows rocket sky-high, nearly reaching her forehead’s escape velocity. Mira cocks her head in curiosity. “Wow…” Zoey mutters, “You’re like a real fut—”
SMACK!
“OWWW! That fucking hurt!”
“Then quit it with the freak-off!”
“I’m just curious!”
“Calling her a futanari is not curious!”
Zoey sits up, gasps, and covers her mouth. “Oh my god! Mira! You did not just call our friend that!”
Mira grinds her teeth and growls, Zoey getting under her skin in a way only she can.
“A what?” Rumi asks, hesitantly.
“Nevermind!” The two women respond in perfect harmony.
Mira stands and begins pacing while Zoey turns back to Rumi, her features set in the definition of mischief. She leans in, and Rumi tries to scoot away to avoid the incoming question, but the back of the couch holds her still.
Zoey’s lips reach Rumi’s ear. “Can it jizz?”
Rumi doesn’t need to know what that word means to know what it means, and her entire face flushes with heat. She hides it in her hands. “Zoey!” she screams, “Oh my goodness!”
“Come on!” her friend encourages, repeatedly poking her in the shoulder. “Can it? Can it? Can it?”
The pokes do nothing but raise Rumi’s temperature until it’s unbearable. “I don’t know!” she cries.
Zoey stops. “You don’t… You don’t know?”
Rumi peeks between her fingers, then immediately hides behind them again when she sees the head-tilted confusion written on Zoey’s face. “Yeah, I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“It’s never happened,” Rumi says. She swallows so hard she’s sure Zoey can hear, but the awkwardness remains in her throat. “I’ve never tried.” The room goes quiet, then breaks out in hushed whispering. Rumi peeks to see Zoey and Mira’s backs turned, Zoey’s arm around the taller girl’s shoulder to bend her down into a huddle. Rumi’s demon ears, still on fire with shame at this line of questioning, pick up their words with ease.
“Did you hear that?”
“Of course I heard, Zoey.”
“She’s never jerked off!”
“Zoey, that is not our business!”
“What do you mean it’s not?”
“Zo’! She’s our best friend!”
“Exactly! Best friends don’t let their best friend miss out on the wonders of a good time!”
“Zoey, Rumi’s a big girl; she can handle herself… by herself.”
“Are you kidding? In a decade she hasn’t, you think that she’ll—”
“I think it’s up to her.”
“We should show her!”
“Zoey! Absolutely not! Be there for her and let her know she’s loved. Don’t make it awkward. Please. I don’t want to make things worse.”
Zoey huffs, but when she turns back to Rumi, she’s wearing a wide smile. Rumi quickly pretends that she hadn’t heard every word and forces a pained smile back. Zoey and Mira both melt at the awkwardness. “You don’t have to today,” Mira says, sitting next to Rumi, who immediately goes red as she thinks about what she just overheard, “but we’d still love for you to come to the bathhouse with us. Like Zoey mentioned, we found one where people don’t give trans girls—or, I guess, any girls with extra equipment—a second glance.” Mira pauses to give Rumi time to process. “Would you like to?”
“Can I, um, wear a swimsuit?” Rumi asks, trying to bargain.
Mira gives an understanding, closed-lip smile. “You can do whatever you want, but I’d encourage you not to. Maybe you can wear a towel that you take off right before the water?”
Rumi shivers at the idea, suddenly hyper-aware of the ever-present squeezing between her legs. She had promised herself after defeating Gwi-ma that she would trust her friends no matter what, always. She forces herself to do so now. Rumi closes her eyes and nods.
Mira, seeing her hesitation, tugs on her chin to make Rumi look up at her narrowed gaze. “Are you sure?” she asks. Rumi nods, but Mira persists, demanding, “Let me hear you say it.”
Rumi gulps, and wets her nervous lips. “I think I’d like to try,” she says.
Mira smiles, and pats her cheek. “Good girl.” Rumi entirely ignores what happens between her legs at the words.
There’s a sound like a kettle squealing behind Mira, so the two girls turn to catch Zoey about to boil over, fists clenched, biting her lip, vibrating uncontrollably.
“We finally get to go to the bathhouse with Rumi!!!!!” she screams with five exclamation marks—the sure sign of an insane mind.
————
Zoey is so ready to see Rumi naked, she can barely contain herself as she sits in the hot water beside Mira. She’s not going to ogle, she won’t, she won’t, she won’t. But a little glance should be fine, right? Besides, the laser-focused stare Rumi directed at Zoey’s progressively less dressed ass in the changing room definitely fell a few yards downhill of platonic. Of course, Rumi herself had asked the other two to go on ahead, opting to change in private. Which was fine with Zoey; she could wait. She was a patient person. But what was taking her so long?
“Chill…” Mira mutters, leaning back with her eyes closed, her towel-wrapped hair resting against the edge of the bath.
“I’m totally chill,” Zoey says, masking her total lack of chill with a suave voice, glad that Mira’s eyes weren’t open to catch her lie.
“The water is vibrating,” Mira says. “You’re not chill.”
Zoey sighs and leans back herself, trying to relax. Her own hair is still damp beneath the white towel she had formed into her signature space buns. They had, of course, showered before entering the baths to keep the water clean. Zoey’s attempts to share with Mira had been spurned in favor of “getting in there quickly for Rumi.” Zoey sighs again.
Mira cracks an eye open. “What?” she groans.
“Nothing!” Zoey responds forlornly, looking away. She sighs again, louder.
Mira groans and pulls herself up, resting her elbows on the bath edge. “I’m not playing this game,” she says. Zoey catches the hint of fondness beneath her exasperated tone and looks back. Mira’s higher stance has brought her chest above the water, and Zoey bites her lip, admiring the pierced nipples and completely forgetting to act distraught about the lack of attention from her friend-with-benefits. Her finger twitches, wanting to grab.
“Nuh-uh,” Mira says, lowering herself back down, hiding her body from view. “Not in the baths, you know that. Save it for tonight. And again, don’t you dare make it weird for Rumi. Your best friend is in need of acceptance, not a sexual awakening.”
“¿Por qué no los dos?” Zoey mutters under her breath.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
They fall silent, and after a few minutes, Zoey’s mind has returned to what she imagines is a normal level of libido, just a dull growl in the back of her lizard brain.
That lizard starts barking when she opens her eyes to see Rumi approaching the bath.
Hot Damn, that woman looks good in white, Zoey thinks to herself, pursing her lips to keep from biting them. She doesn’t stop her eyes from raking over her leader’s body. The iridescent patterns across her face, neck, arms, and legs shimmer like moonlight in the pale mist of the room, an opalescent rainbow of blues, pinks, and whites in sparkling ribbons on her skin. The toned muscles of Rumi’s arms are still new to Zoey, after seeing her in only long sleeves for years, but she hopes she never gets used to them. Those long legs are far more familiar, but seeing her pop star princess in a towel that barely reaches mid-thigh creates thoughts in Zoey’s mind that would have gotten her slapped into next week if Mira could read them. Then, Zoey catches the slight shape pressing into the front of the towel. She swears her nose will start bleeding any second.
Mira bumps Zoey’s side gently with her elbow, knocking her from her reverie. Zoey wipes a rivulet of drool from the corner of her mouth and turns to see her tall friend pointedly looking to the side. When Zoey turns back, confused, she realizes that she had totally missed Rumi looking between the two of them awkwardly, gripping the towel with white knuckles and seemingly waiting for something.
“Oh! Sorry!” Zoey cries, looking away. Her lizard brain screams nooooooooo as she hears Rumi’s towel fall softly to the ground, followed by a light splash as she dips beneath the water.
“Okay, you can look,” Rumi says quietly. “Thank you.”
Zoey’s head snaps around like a whip, a giddy grin breaking out across her face at Rumi’s hesitant smile. “What do you think?” she asks, gesturing at the steaming water.
Rumi pauses, eyes shifting like she’s solving a tough math problem, then sighs and sinks deeper into the water. “Okay… Wow. This feels amazing.”
“We've been saying that for years!” Mira says dryly.
“Right?” Zoey asks, splashing gently in the water, “See what you've been missing?”
Zoey sees some movement beneath the water by Rumi, the pale shape of her body shifting, and Mira suddenly points a stern finger at the half-demon. “No, don’t you dare.”
“What?” Rumi squeaks.
“We can’t see anything,” Mira continues, “and we’re not looking anyway. Let yourself relax.”
Slowly, Rumi uncrosses her legs. “Okay…”
Zoey is proud of herself for not looking. She knows she might be a horndog, but she’s a well-trained horndog, and she traps her snarling lizard brain in a cage that keeps it far from the pilot’s seat of her mind.
For a while, they just… relax together, as friends, in a way they never have before. Zoey lets herself open up about the fear she had felt of losing the other two during the crazy events of the past week, and they respond in kind. Rumi is finally honest with them about more of her childhood, talking about her patterns and her “curse,” as Celine apparently called it. Mira stops her immediately, insisting that Rumi either use a real word to describe her dick, or call it a “blessing” instead. As more and more stories of Rumi’s repressed childhood come to light, Zoey has to squeeze Mira’s thigh beneath the water several times to keep her from getting up and marching into the countryside nude to beat Celine’s ass right then and there. Eventually, Rumi finishes and falls quiet, her eyes wet and blinking hard from emotion.
“Can I give you a hug, Rumi?” Zoey asks, wiping tears from her own eyes. Her lizard cheers at the idea, and she punches it in the face.
“N-now?” Rumi asks. “We’re… naked, Zoey.”
“I know, but…” Zoey sniffles, “I think we both need it.”
Rumi, lip quivering, nods, so Zoey scoots around the wide bath, then carefully wraps her arms around the older girl’s midriff. She presses her forehead into the crook of Rumi’s neck, and, not trusting her eyes to keep from wandering, closes them. “It’s okay,” she whispers, “you’re beautiful to us.”
The water ripples, and a longer pair of arms wrap around them both from Rumi’s other side. “You’re beautiful inside and out, Rumi,” Mira’s low, soft voice mutters, “and that shines, especially through what your demon side has blessed you with. Gorgeous amber eye, gorgeous patterns, gorgeous claws, and I’m sure a gorgeous dick too.”
Rumi sobs and hugs the two of them back, seemingly forgetting her nakedness for a few moments and leaning into their shared embrace. They stay like that for a few minutes before separating. Zoey catches Rumi’s red eyes flicking to Mira’s pierced nipples before they dip beneath the water again. Zoey returns the favor just a little while her friend’s head is turned, glancing down and getting a wobbly view of Rumi’s tits through the rippling water. She swears she can see the sparkling patterns wrap all the way to her—
“Do the patterns go all the way down?” Zoey blurts out without thinking. Her lizard brain, escaped and gripping the controls, cackles maniacally.
Rumi blushes. “What? All the way…” Before Zoey can avert her gaze again, Rumi follows it down. She covers her breasts with one hand, the other diving through the water to her crotch. Her face goes even redder, and her patterns sparkle with a hint more pink than usual. “Ummmmm…”
“Zoey!” Mira yells, “Seriously, knock it off!” She turns to their red-faced leader, “Rumi, you do not need to answer Zoey’s perv questions.”
Rumi nods, “I know, I know, it’s okay though, I don’t… I mean… I think it’s good, actually. I promised not to keep secrets from you two ever again.” She breathes in deep, and when she sees that Zoey is looking earnestly into her eyes instead of at her body, she lowers her arms. “Yes. Yes, they do.”
Zoey, bastion of self-control that she is, stops herself from squealing in delight. “All the way all the way?” She asks to confirm, “Like…” she pokes at her own nipples beneath the water.
Rumi nods, biting her lower lip. Zoey wants to bite that lip, too.
“And…” she continues, pointing down to Rumi’s crotch but forcing herself to keep eye contact, “to the tip?”
Rumi somehow blushes even redder, the pink in her iridescent patterns more akin to red embers than faint pastel sparkles. Zoey sees Rumi’s thighs press together beneath the water before she relaxes again, then nods. “They’re, uh… denser there, actually.”
Zoey’s eyes widen, her lizard brain shaking her slumbering curiosity awake, both devouring popcorn as they watch the conversation unfold. “Denser? How?” She sees Mira cock her head to the side in her peripheral vision. Of course she’s interested too. Don’t worry, Mira, leave this to Detective Zoey!
“Well, uh…” Rumi wrings her hands, still chewing on her lip. “It’s like… They kinda… swirl around…” The cylindrical spiraling gesture Rumi makes with her finger almost makes Zoey faint, and she tries to ignore how long the motion is. “And then they all meet at the top. So the whole, um, tip is… patterns…” Rumi’s voice quiets through the explanation until she’s whispering the last word. She goes to cover her face, but Zoey intercepts her hands, grabbing them in her own.
“That’s super cool,” Zoey says honestly, and Rumi looks back up with unsure eyes. “Thank you for telling me, Rums. I know that took a lot.”
Rumi nods, her body bobbing in the warm water. “Yeah… Thanks for, uh, not being weird about it.”
Mira scoffs, and Zoey shoots her a glare that she hopes says ‘let me work my magic here, ice queen.’
Zoey looks back at Rumi, looking deep into her eyes. “I did want to ask, Rumi—” Her voice falters when she feels her friend’s grip tighten in her own. “And you don’t have to answer, but… You mentioned that you’ve never tried to, um, touch yourself. Is that right?”
Rumi blushes red, but holds Zoey’s eyes with her own vulnerable gaze and nods almost imperceptibly.
“Not even your lady bits?” Zoey asks. The word feels so juvenile, but that’s what Rumi had used, and she didn’t want to freak her out too much with new vocab.
Rumi shakes her head in silent agreement. Zoey takes a deep breath, then a focused exhale. I could never, she thinks to herself.
“Okay, I just want you to know, that’s totally fine. Have you wanted to?”
Rumi quickly starts to shake her head no, but then pauses, and mutters quietly, “yeah…”
“Okay!” Zoey says, smiling warmly. She glances to Mira, who gives her a motion to continue. “Why didn’t you?” she asks.
Rumi pauses and seems to shrink into her own mind. Zoey gives her a second, but then decides she needs to interrupt whatever uncertain spiraling is happening in there. “Hey,” she says, pulling Rumi’s eyes back to hers. “Talk to me, Rums.”
“I just… I felt like… Because this,” she gestures to her nether regions, hidden beneath the rippling water and mist, “was always a curse to me… when I felt an ache to, I don’t know, touch it… I felt like that must be the curse trying to cement itself more. So I never did.” The older girl, despite having several inches on Zoey, looks so much smaller as she glances back up. “Was that… wrong?”
For once, Zoey is at a loss for words. Thankfully, she’s not the only one who cares for Rumi.
“No, it wasn’t wrong,” Mira says from across the bath, scooting close once more, “it was born from misunderstanding and shame, which are wrong but aren’t your fault.” She presses a caring hand to Rumi’s back. “Do you think you can put those feelings aside?”
Rumi thinks for a moment, chewing her cheek, then responds. “I think so.”
“And, if you do, how do you feel about it?”
Rumi ponders again, fingers softly toying with Zoey’s palms, back leaning against Mira’s hand. “I think,” she muses, “I think I’m sad that I never did. That I let the shame win. I feel stupid.”
“You’re not stupid!” Zoey throws in, “Don’t you dare think that. Being raised one way, but wanting to live another, is hard.” She pauses, thinking about her own childhood. “Trust me, I get it.”
Rumi nods. “Right. You’re right. I guess… Not stupid, just sad. Bummed. Like I missed out on a big part of life. Like by hiding so much, my life has been… incomplete… My patterns, my—” she glances at Mira “—my blessing… my heritage, how much I wanted yo—” her eyes widen, and she rips a hand free from Zoey’s grip to slap it over her mouth with a loud clap. Zoey jumps, and Mira raises an eyebrow.
Zoey gently pulls Rumi’s hand down. “Ru?” she asks.
Rumi’s eyes are squeezed tight. She’s mouthing something over and over.
“Rumi,” Mira says, caressing her back with one hand. “It’s okay. You can say it.” Rumi shakes her head, so Mira whispers to her, “Trust me.”
After a deep breath, Rumi finally whispers, “I like you guys.”
“We like you too, Rumi!” Zoey replies, smiling and squeezing her hands. Mira rolls her eyes and sighs, so she shoots her a ‘what?’ gesture.
“Sorry, Rumi,” Mira drawls, “you may need to spell it out for general subtext here.”
Rumi giggles, opening her eyes and gazing into Zoey’s. The vulnerable expression there says everything. “Oooooooooooohhhhhh,” Zoey says, her own eyes widening.
“I just knew,” Rumi starts, before correcting herself, “I thought I knew, that it would never work out with what—who—I am. Besides…” Rumi tries to pull her hands from Zoey’s, but the maknae doesn’t let them go. “We’re coworkers! And besides that, I can’t like both of you at once!” Rumi leans back, her towel-wrapped hair against the edge of the bath, staring up at the ceiling and seeming to talk to herself. “What kind of terrible leader can’t get over her two bandmates? What kind of indecisive girl can’t pick a crush? What kind of stupid hunter would risk the world even having such thoughts?”
With an unexpected rush of water, Mira moves, rising from the bath to kneel on its bench, towering above Rumi. Zoey tries to put her lizard brain into a headlock as Mira’s perky chest rises above the surface, followed by her fit ass and pretty cock, dripping water across Rumi. Rumi’s eyes go wide as Mira’s hand slams into the tile beside her head, the other pointing sternly into their leader’s face.
“Don’t you dare,” Mira growls, “talk about my friend like that.”
“Eeep!” is all Rumi seems to be able to say. Her eyes drag down over Mira’s exposed body, and Zoey doesn’t blame her for clapping her legs together at the same moment she forces her gaze back up to Mira’s face.
“I’m not even going to justify those thoughts with counterarguments,” Mira continues, her voice low and serious, “but know that Zoey and I have been waiting patiently for over a year for you to come clean about your crush on us.”
“What?” Rumi says, eyes flicking between the two of them. “You… you knew?”
“Are you kidding me?” Zoey laughs, “We’ve picked most of our favorite outfits based on how flustered they made you.” At the realization, Rumi’s jaw drops.
“But… The two of you…”
Mira waves a hand dismissively as she dismounts Rumi, much to Zoey’s dismay. Her lizard brain salutes as it helpfully stores the visual in a filing cabinet for later. “Whatever, Rumi, who cares if it’s two of us. The heart wants what it wants. We both like you. At least, I do.” She glances at Zoey, who nods so quickly her neck hurts.
Rumi continues to reel for a few seconds, which stretches into over a minute of silence. Zoey and Mira stay quiet, letting the woman think through the realizations she’s had, face the flawed teaching she’d compartmentalized over the years, and generally just try to sort out a tangled mess of mental knots that should probably be dealt with by years of therapy. Zoey and Mira are content to just relax in the warm water, their physical tension unspooling in the heat, their mental strain softening with a long, loving look between the two of them. They lose track of time in the comforting stillness.
Eventually, Rumi shifts. Zoey and Mira look up. She squeezes her hands together tightly. “I’d like to try,” she says quietly. Mira is about to ask her to clarify, but then Rumi continues with certainty, clearly having rehearsed the statements in her mind. “I’d like to try to experience things sexually, and if you two would be willing to help, I’d be really grateful, because I do really love, and trust, and want you two, and I think it would be a lot better with your guidance.” She says it all in one breath, then looks up at them, reading their expressions one after another. Zoey’s lizard brain raises an ecstatic hand for a high-five. She kicks it in the nuts while its guard is down.
“Absolutely, Rumi,” Mira says. The look she gives Zoey seems almost proud that she hadn’t blurted something out instantly, and Zoey smiles. “We’re happy to help. Honestly, I’d love to.”
Zoey’s smile breaks into a grin despite her best efforts to remain chill, and she starts bouncing, sending ripples across the bath. “Yes please! Gosh, Rumi, you are so hot I would absolutely love to take your virginity!”
Rumi’s mouth drops open, and she goes beet-red instantly, her patterns flaring orange.
Zoey raises a hand to Mira to stop her outburst, “I know, I know, too far too quick!” She turns back to Rumi and takes one warm, soft hand in both of hers. “But seriously, Rumi, whatever you want to try, we’re here for.”
Rumi nods. “Thank you… You don’t think it’ll be… weird with my, uh, blessing?”
Zoey’s grin widens, growing lopsided and mischievous. “You say that like I haven’t taken girl dick before.”
Rumi blinks once. Twice. She looks from Zoey to Mira, then back to Zoey. Then a quick flick of the eyes to Mira again before returning.
“Wait, you two…?”
Zoey cackles, the sound echoing throughout the large bathhouse and drawing enough eyes that Rumi tries to disappear beneath the water. Zoey slaps her knee, raising a splash that soaks all three of their head towels. “Ru,” she wheezes as they wipe their faces, “I know I’m the one that supposedly struggles with social cues, but you are the queen of obliviousness sometimes.”