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There are these things Rui does that Wumuti knows — or should know, or believes she knows but isn't really sure — it's only to piss her off. Like waiting a little too much to grab her cup of coffee from the other room so now it is almost room temperature, or spraying a perfume Wumuti didn’t choose that day or even just stare at her too much, as if they’re trying to tell her something Wumuti never gets to figure out. It drives her crazy, but not crazy enough to ask them why they’re doing all of this, just enough to get under her skin, to make her simmer in a light irritation that bubbles in a controlled, safe way.
Rationally, Wumuti knows — and this, she knows for sure — that Rui loves her. When they wake up, they are always ready to chirp her name, hug her from behind, kiss the top of her head. Before XLOV, they used to spend lazy afternoons together, eating junk food and watching movies, dreaming about their future and what they could do. Wumuti already had a plan, but she couldn’t tell them right away and risk an even bigger disappointment. She couldn’t be another reason for Rui’s smile to falter. So they would lay on the floor, cold tiles on their back, and dream away for hours, and Wumuti would hold that secret so tightly against her heart, praying for everything and anything that it would work this time — and it did, and they did debut together, and now Rui still loves her very much, but has apparently decided to also drive her insane.
It’s just one of those days, this day.
Wumuti wakes up and immediately finds Rui and Hyun curled up on the couch, feets tangling and everything. Rui looks up at her, eyes widening a bit and then softening again, a smile — lazy and full of never-happened conversations — curls her lips.
“Morning” Wumuti croaks, voice hoarse and temper suddenly short. Hyun seems to finally notice her, smiling and greeting her back. Rui doesn't say anything. Wumuti feels how sore some muscles are and decides there’s more important stuff to care about right now. When her whole body winces when she notices Rui whispering something in Hyun's right ear, legs crossing just a little too much now, she walks a little faster.
It’s just one of those days, this one.
Haru does seem to notice if something is weird, but if Haru understands anything at all, Haru doesn’t speak on it — and Wumuti likes it that way, when it’s their turn to roll together on the single bed, watching cartoons that Haru didn’t even care about that much. She never has enough time off to properly rest, but being with Haru helps put her heart and mind at ease, so by the end of the third episode, when she can’t ignore her phone vibrating on her pocket anymore, she feels well enough again to face the world — and Rui.
Falling into routine is easy, Wumuti slips into it with the exact grace of someone who has dedicated their entire life to it. There’s so much to plan, so much to discuss, that suddenly there’s no space in her mind to bother ruminating over her long running Rui thoughts. Work is easy, work is everything Wumuti has ever known. Hyun approaches sooner or later, asking something about songs and singing, and Wumuti indulges, pushing back everything about closeness or relationship status and just helping him — Jinhyung is her best friend, right? he wouldn’t hide something like this from her, right? Right?
The schedule is nothing short of chaotic, with radio and tv shows appearances, fansigns and fancalls all happening one after the other and they barely have the time and space to breathe. It’s saturday night when she finally has to face Rui again — the simple realization of how much she has been running away from them already taking the air out of her lungs. Rui has black, messy hair pointing in every direction, loose shorts and an oversized shirt that Wumuti swears must be more than 10 years old. Sitting by the table, Rui’s face is pink from embarrassment while Hyun and Haru laugh, clueing Wumuti to what may be happening.
“Are you guys bullying Rui again?” she asks, body leaning against the entrance.
Immediately, Rui turns on the chair to look at her direction, eyes shining and mouth in an impossible smile right before turning down, a fake, exaggerated pout forming.
“Jiejie, they hate me! I swear, they hate me!” Rui says, and Wumuti laughs, rolling her eyes while getting closer, hugging Rui and trying to look half-serious to question Hyun and Haru.
“They wouldn’t stop pestering me, so I resorted to telling hyung about the time on Boys Planet that they ate something bad an—” Haru begins, a half eaten sandwich on one hand, the other gesticulating wildly in the air when Rui cuts Haru off.
“STOP THAT” They yell, throwing a grape at Haru’s general direction. “I can’t live like this anymore, oh my god”
Hyun silently picks up the grape, washes it on the kitchen sink and eats, not a care in the world. Wumuti feels ill.
It’s later that night, when everyone’s eating a lazy meal and Rui is sitting right by Wumuti’s right side, that everything gets weird again. Hyun’s washing some dishes, Haru is by the fridge and Wumuti is picking apart an egg, already getting uninterested in her food, when cold fingers bend over her exposed thigh. She has to concentrate to not let her chopsticks fall, turning to look at Rui with big, exasperated eyes and only stopping when she realizes they’re right there, nose almost touching her skin. When they talk, low and fast, almost like a secret, Wumuti feels faint.
“Don’t run away from me” in a hurried whisper and they sit back on their chair, finishing their meal and chatting about something mundane with Hyun. Their hand never leave Wumuti’s thigh, though, and every once and awhile their fingers will move a certain way, long nails lightly scraping sensitive skin, and Wumuti will have to swallow a noise. If Hyun or Haru see something, they don’t say anything. Wumuti doesn’t either and when Rui finally gets up to wash their own dirty dishes, Wumuti is left feeling cold on her entire right side.
Truth to be told, Wumuti doesn’t really realize how proactively she’s running away from Rui until they point it out. Blaming her getting-smaller-by-the-day patience, she compromises — in an entire inside conversation with herself — and swears she’ll be normal, and that next time Rui bothers her again she’ll just tell them to stop.
(she doesn’t and she swears she sees Hyun looking at her disapproveling)
When they find each other in the middle of the corridor one night, aching joints and overconsuming tiredness, they don’t say anything. It’s 3 am and they’ll have to wake up in one hour, but right now everything is quiet. Wumuti swears she could hear Rui’s breathing if she tried to. Standing there, they look at each other and Rui smiles. It's nothing like their almost passive aggressive smiles, or the ones full of confidence, or even the fake ones they’ll do for cameras. It’s one so small, so sincere, Wumuti feels her heart swell in her chest. Their hands find each other, bodies leaning against the wall and silence.
“Couldn’t sleep?” Rui asks, voice just above a whisper.
“No. You?”
“Same”
The silence is comfortable, it kind of reminds Wumuti of their afternoons. She feels cold fingers running through her knuckles and looks at it, admiring their hands together. Rui’s always felt delicate, and Wumuti knows hers are too, but theirs are just… Soft, cold, thin. Wumuti feels like she could pop one of their fingers in her mouth and it would just mean nothing. Zero weight and super soft skin. It’s a strange ache to chew on them, consume them in a way just so intimate that Rui would become part of her too. Some days she feels they already are. She laughs.
“What?” Rui asks, words sounding heavy with sleepiness.
“I’m going crazy, that’s all” and Rui doesn’t question it or her at all, instead, they laugh too, tightening their hold on her fingers for one second before letting it go.
“We should go back to bed” Wumuti doesn’t know how to hide the way her face falls. “Don’t make that face, today is going to be a lot and you know it” they say, laughing a little when they start to push Wumuti back into the direction of her room. Wumuti laughs, limping her arms dramatically and letting Rui take her to bed — and if she thinks for half a second in all the other ways this could work out, she shuts it even faster.
So, Rui is still annoying.
Wumuti has to admit to herself that she truly believed for a second that they would be normal again — not like their night had been special, but maybe it was. Maybe it was special to her and maybe she thought a bit too much about it now she’s realizing she may have been the only one. All she wanted was the cake waiting for her in their fridge and now she’s mad because Rui has eaten it and the only thing she can ever think about is how much she should punch them and how soft their hands are.
She isn’t dumb and it’s important to make that clear: she knows where this is going, at least for her part of the overall thing. The price is just too high — the group, her dreams, their dreams. Also, the annoyed part is real too, and she knows she should do something about it, but she never does because how could she talk about only half of her problems? So she keeps quiet and keeps bubbling, knowing fully that there’s no way this is the best way to deal with the whole situation, but entirely too tired, too scared, too proud, to do anything else.
The week is again full of little things, stuff that only gets on her nerves because she’s noticing too much, thinking too much. One day, Rui uses her expensive shampoo and leaves it open on the bathroom’s floor. Another day, and Wumuti finds out that Rui has only bought the kind of soda she hates. Once, she even sees them hiding the cap of one of her perfume’s bottle. It 's insane. Completely insane.
“You should talk to them” Hyun says, sitting on her side on the couch, and Wumuti melts in his arms. Cuddling really isn’t Hyun’s thing, but maybe he’s feeling needy today, or maybe she’s just way too upset over dumb shit, but in the end, he does wrap her in his arms and let her rest her head on his shoulders.
“And they should stop being annoying” Wumuti retorts, not caring for how childish she sounds. Hyun laughs, body shaking and eyes closing.
“It’s true” he begins, one hand gently caressing Wumuti’s right arm. “I do believe you should kiss, though”
“Do you want me to die?” it’s the only thing she says for a second before speaking again, now way quieter than before. “I thought you guys were dating…”
“Oh” Hyun says, falling silent for a moment. “It’s complicated, but you should talk to them, to be honest”
“...Hm”
It isn’t uncomfortable — even if it is weird because now Wumuti’s mind is racing through every possibility of whatever that means at the speed of light — so they stay like this. Wumuti has to appreciate every second she gets to rest, and she did miss her best friend a little. So there, right on Hyun’s chest, Hyun, who may be Rui’s kind-of lover, Wumuti thinks about perfumes and Rui putting one so obediently this morning, the same one Wumuti had chosen for them, and the memory lulls her to sleep. Not for long, but for enough time to dream, and in her dreams, everyone kisses and she has no worries at all.
Haru follows her around daily most of the time, and Wumuti is eternally grateful for having her own soft toy that instead of chewing on, she kneads and pushes and pinches and hugs. Haru laughs all the time, hugs her back and even brings her food. It’s not like Haru doesn’t have Haru’s own problems, griefs and annoyances, but mostly, Haru does seem to like this dynamic: Haru helps Wumuti to not kill anyone, and in turn, Wumuti pampers Haru to the moon and back. If she had a uterus, Haru would have been born from there. She doesn’t care if it’s weird to say it, it’s true.
So today Rui will spend the whole day with the choreograph team and Hyun is sorting his academic life so he’ll be able to work one more comeback before taking a little more time to get back on his studies, so this leaves Wumuti and Haru. Wumuti has, as always, a ton of stuff to do, and Haru’s job today is to just talk to her from time to time so she’s able to decompress and not explode on anyone.
Except this time, Wumuti keeps failing to do everything she needs. She talks in botched korean to important people, loses her key more than once and even trips falling down the stairs. At some point, Haru has to stop her, politely ignoring her watering eyes, and guide her to the nearest seat available — it’s a chair in a corner and Wumuti feels like a child and a bad leader and everything feels like it’s falling apart even if she knows everything is fine and the only one tweaking is her.
“You should talk to them,” Haru says, voice stern, and Wumuti doesn’t even care to ask how Haru knows about it.
“It’s going to fuck everything up”
“Doubt it”
“They will hate me”
“They won’t”
“What if I punch them?”
“You won’t”
“Yeah, I won’t”
“So… Talk?”
“Yeah” Wumuti sighs “Talk”
Later, Wumuti will remember this moment as one of the most shameful moments of her life, but right now, advice from someone a thousand years younger and with much less fear in their heart might be exactly what she needed.
Naturally, she shouldn’t talk to Rui right after this. She has plenty of rationalization in her brain yet to know she should think this through so a calm and mature dialogue can happen. What she does, though, is march right into the dance studio a couple of hours later, barge into the door like a lunatic and, crazy eyes and all, look at Rui’s face in complete silence for almost ten seconds before leaving again. Rui, thank god, understands and follows behind quickly, apologizing for the staff left behind.
“Noona, I don’t think you should do that” is the first thing they say, scratching their head in confusion. Wumuti pushes them into the nearest bathroom, entering right after and locking the door. She feels crazy, she might really be going insane over this.
“Shut up” she says, and Rui doesn’t do anything except leaning against the wall, chewing on their bottom lip a little. “Are you trying to kill me?”
“Why would I try to kill you?”
“Oh, sorry, way of speech. Are you doing stuff to, on purpose, drive me mad?” and that gets Rui’s attention. They sit in silence for a minute. Rui has their hair tied in a half ponytail and wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt big enough to show their collarbones. Wumuti feels her skin burning and hands trembling, this can’t be real.
“Is it bothering you this much?” it’s what they chose to answer, head falling to the side and hair escaping to the front of their face. Wumuti feels like crying.
“Yeah, I’m this close..” Wumuti pinches her two fingers together “...to going insane”
“I…” Rui begins, stops, thinks for a second, and begins again. “I wanted your attention, sorry”
Dead silence.
Rui is visibly honest and without their usual defensiveness, expectant eyes waiting for Wumuti to do something, anything, and she only stares at them, trying to find answers to herself. She thinks, for a brief moment, that all of this is so funny. If it was Hyun in her shoes and she was only listening to him telling her this story, she would laugh the whole entire time. How can anyone be so stupid? Right now, though, she feels like sitting down and cry. She doesn’t, because she’s grown and that’s enough drama and freaking out for a whole entire life. But she thinks about it, and maybe she’ll need more Haru later to decompress again.
What she does do, though, is sitting on the closed toilet.
“We need to talk” she says and Rui visibly withers, but gets closer to her anyway.
It’s easy, though, talking to Rui. They extend their hand in Wumuti’s direction and, the moment they skin touch, it’s like everything is fine again. Wumuti almost wants to slap herself over it — how could she forget the most simple fact about Rui: it can be messy sometimes, but even then, it will always be easy. So when she talks, and she does talk a lot, they listen, attentive and serious, skinny finger rubbing the palm of her hand in a soothing way when she feels like crying again.
“Baobei…” They begin right when she finishes speaking. Wumuti watches, tired as if she just ran a marathon, the way Rui approaches her, laying their head on her lap and speaking quietly. “We should’ve just talked, huh?”
And they laugh because they are dumb, because everything is fine, and maybe because they do really want to kiss each other — but not in this bathroom, so they just sit there, in questionable hygienic conditions, and drown in each other's presence. Wumuti feels so good that, for a split second, she thinks that maybe this is already enough, that nothing can be better than this.
Obviously, she’s wrong about it too, and later that same day, when Hyun laughs and stumbles his way out of the room at the same time they stumble into Rui’s bed — “we WILL need to talk later, just saying!” — pieces of clothing flying all around and mouths kissing hungrily, she thinks there’s so much to find out still.