Chapter Text
An array of tropical fish danced behind the glass of the aquarium, flitting around each other like bits of rainbow stardust. A yellow angelfish drifted lazily across the span of glass, Zoey following its trail.
“Look at this one!” she exclaimed, eyes aglow. “It’s so pretty!”
Mira and Rumi stood a short distance back, partially looking at the fish but mostly watching the wonder on their girlfriend’s face at every single exhibit. Neither of them had ever had a particularly strong interest in the aquarium, but they had made it a tradition to bring Zoey here every year for her birthday and she was still just as awestruck every time. Seeing her joy was always worth the trip.
This particular year was their first time going as partners rather than friends. It didn’t change anything about the aquarium itself, but it did change the swell of adoration in their chests watching Zoey flit around the space, eyes sparkling, that lovely excited tone in her voice when her love for the world spilled out.
Rumi smiled, grateful to have something normal and consistent in their lives again. The events leading up to and at the Idol Awards had really shaken her up. She had been doing everything in her power to atone for the years of lying and shutting them out: taking on some of their work, making them treats, giving them extra kisses, fighting to be as open as possible about how she was feeling, even though her patterns often did that for her.
She knew Mira and Zoey were shaken up too. She could still feel it sometimes, in the way Mira would subtly avoid her gaze or Zoey would go quiet if the conversation veered too close to what had happened in the last month.
The weeks after the Idol Awards had been a whirlwind of processing and recovering and sort of acknowledging what happened while also dancing around the biggest topics that none of them wanted to broach. In the end, the whole situation had been a mess and it was unclear where all the pieces had scattered.
But she didn’t need to think about that. Not today. Today was about having fun with her girlfriends.
Snapping out of her thoughts, she focused back on Zoey, who was gesturing the two of them over to a tank excitedly.
“Lookit, lookit, that one looks like Rumi,” Zoey said, pointing to a bright purple fish.
Rumi chuckled. “Just because it’s purple doesn’t mean it looks like me.”
“It does have her blank stare,” Mira noted.
“Excuse me?”
Zoey giggled at that, taking Rumi’s hand and pulling her toward the next room. “It’s ok, Rumi, your blank stare is cute.”
“Wait, you agree with her?!”
The only reply Rumi got was another giggle. She glanced back at Mira, looking for that self-assured smirk she always had after poking fun at them, but Mira wasn’t looking at them. Her eyes were cast to the side, distant, lost in thought. Rumi tried not to read into it. If she still seemed bothered by something later, they could talk about it. No need to bring it up now.
Either way, Rumi did appreciate that some of their teasing had started to return. Since the Idol Awards, they had treated her almost like she was fragile, like they had to be careful with what they said around her. Which was well-intentioned but had really started to bother her. She didn’t want to be protected or pitied. Why should she be pitied when she was responsible for what happened?
But this wasn’t the time to think about things like that.
Rumi turned her attention back to Zoey, who was still holding her hand but had stopped in front of the next tank. Her mouth was slightly open in awe, her eyes alight. Her hold on Rumi’s hand softened.
A large shadow fell over the two of them as a sea turtle glided upward along the glass, its flippers rippling at its side like a dancer. Another dipped into the center of the tank, showing off its shell to the onlookers.
Mira walked up beside Rumi, arms crossed as she watched Zoey watch the turtles. “She really loves them, doesn’t she?” she mused.
Mira had assumed Zoey was too entranced to hear her, but she did reply. “Of course I love them. They remind me of you two.”
“Huh?”
Zoey turned to them with that signature grin on her face, the one she wore when words were flowing freely from her heart, no overthinking. “They have hard shells, but they’re so soft on the inside!”
Rumi and Mira were stunned into silence for a moment. After all this time knowing each other, it still never ceased to amaze them how Zoey saw the world and that she didn’t seem to realize when she said the most heartwarming things.
“Wait, hold on,” Rumi said. “That’s your reason? Did you not like turtles before you met us?”
Zoey turned back to the tank, smiling warmly at a turtle that was now hovering in front of her curiously.
“Well, I did, but I like them even more now.”
Mira stepped over to Zoey’s other side, looking up silently at the turtles with her. Zoey wrapped an arm around hers and leaned into Mira’s shoulder.
“You’re so soooooft,” she said in a sing-song voice.
Mira let out a breath, almost a chuckle. “Not as soft as you. You’re like a naked turtle.”
Zoey snorted before explaining, “Turtles actually can’t be naked! Their shell is part of their body! It even has nerves in there so they know when something is touching their shell, and-”
She proceeded to prattle off more turtle facts while wandering toward the next area of the aquarium, Mira following behind her, hands in pockets.
Mira had seemed distant to Rumi all day, but she couldn’t tell if she was imagining it or if something was actually off. Well, more off than usual.
Rumi figured she could talk to Mira later, privately, so as not to intrude on Zoey’s day. For now, she walked up beside Mira, lightly pulling at one arm and intertwining their fingers together. Mira glanced over briefly, not resisting but also not engaging beyond letting Rumi hold her hand. She looked ahead and kept walking.
Rumi’s heart twinged. She meant to comfort Mira, to silently check in and let her know she was here, but that didn’t seem to be what Mira needed. It would be even more awkward to pull away now. So Rumi kept holding her hand and walking beside her, feeling as if Mira now had to accommodate her instead.
Zoey pulled Rumi out of her thoughts again as they entered the touchpool room.
“Are you guys ready to touch a shark?” Zoey squealed, trotting over to the handwashing station. After they washed up, Zoey skipped over toward one of the pools. She watched the small bamboo sharks drift and circle through the water, waiting for one to come close enough to reach.
“Make sure you only pet down their bodies,” Zoey told them. “If you rub them the wrong way, they’re rough and prickly! Like Mira!”
She warned them about this every single year, but they never cut her off. She liked sharing animal facts, even if it was something the girls already knew. This was the first time she added that last bit about Mira though.
“Like me, huh?” Mira ran her hand along a shark’s back as it swam by, her thin fingers drifting lazily over its back. “I’ll take it. Sharks are cool.”
Zoey petted the shark next as it swam past her. “Ok, so then Rumi is the turtle of the group.”
“Why can’t I be something cool too?” Rumi protested.
Zoey gasped, an overexaggerated look of hurt on her face. “Rumi! Are you suggesting turtles aren’t cool?!”
“No, that’s not what I-”
“That’s it, you must be punished,” huffed Zoey, promptly grabbing her hand and dragging her to the other touchpool.
Rumi had forgotten what was in this one until they got closer.
“Zoey, nooooo, you know I hate this!”
“That’s why it’s a punishment,” Zoey said matter-of-factly. “Now touch the sea anemones. And if you don’t, you’re the anemone of the group.”
Rumi winced, the eyeless bundle of appendages somehow staring up at her. Her fingers twitched involuntarily at the memory of their first aquarium visit.
“I’m waitiiing,” Zoey sang teasingly.
Rumi sighed. “Only because it’s your birthday.”
Zoey grinned at that. With a grimace, Rumi dipped her hand into the water, down towards the small alien menace affixed to the rock beneath. She fought her instinct to recoil as the tips of her fingers began to brush against it. As soon as she made contact, the tentacles wrapped around her fingers and gently suctioned to her. She yelped and pulled away.
Zoey fell into a fit of giggles. Rumi scolded Zoey for forcing her to relive marine life-based trauma. Zoey grabbed her wrist, trying to drag her hand back down, which only increased the volume of Rumi’s screeches and her desperation to pull away. Mira leaned against a nearby wall, arms crossed, a gentle smile on her face as she watched them.
Rumi caught a glimpse of Mira as she was scrambling to escape Zoey. Something in her settled when she saw a smile on Mira’s face again. Though she quickly had to turn her attention back to not letting Zoey inflict the anemone on her again.
After Zoey finally relented, the girls ended their trip in the gift store. Not that you could exit the aquarium without walking through it anyway, but it had become a tradition to let Zoey pick out a new turtle-themed item each year as a birthday gift.
Mira and Rumi stood out of the way of the other customers as Zoey milled around, intensely debating every option. After a few minutes, she pranced back to her girls with three turtle plushies in tow.
“Breaking the birthday gift rules, I see,” Mira said.
This counts as one gift,” Zoey insisted, “because two of them are for you! See, look, there’s one with a pink shell and one with a purple shell!” She held them out towards Mira and Rumi, keeping the green one for herself.
“I think we can allow it this one time,” Rumi teased, glancing over at Mira.
Zoey held the green turtle plush up under her face, whipping out her best puppy eyes. “You can’t separate them, Mira, they’d be so saaaad.”
“If they can’t be separated, does that mean they have to stay in the same room? Because that sounds like you getting three plushies for yourself,” Mira pointed out.
Zoey huffed in indignation. “I would never do something so devious! They will rotate rooms every night, just like we do!”
Mira stared at Zoey a moment longer as if seriously debating whether the compromise was fair. Zoey continued using her puppy dog eyes to plead.
“Fine, but only because it’s cute. And so are you.”
Zoey beamed as Mira grabbed the three plushies to take them to the counter. In reality, they could buy the entire stores’ worth of merch if they wanted to, and probably the whole aquarium, but Zoey enjoyed the game of asking for gifts and making her girlfriends’ willpowers crumble the more she begged for them. She didn’t need anything more. Each turtle item in their penthouse served as a reminder of each year Zoey had known Mira and Rumi.
And that was the best gift of all.
====
The buzz of TV static hummed through the room, a faint glow casting shadows among the empty ramyeon cups and snack wrappers littering the floor. Zoey’s head was slumped against Mira’s shoulder, her chest rising and falling slowly to the rhythm of her breathing. Rumi sat on her other side, arm and leg still entangled with Zoey’s from their earlier cuddling, unwilling to move it and risk waking her girlfriend up.
Rumi stole a glance at Mira. Still awake. Eyes fixed ahead, though seemingly not on anything in particular. Thumb running gentle circles across Zoey’s hand.
“Mira?” Rumi said, voice low.
The glow of the TV shimmered across the woman’s face. “Hmm?”
“You ok?”
Mira kept staring ahead, face unchanging.
“Yeah.”
Rumi tucked herself closer to Zoey’s side, reaching over to rest one hand on top of Mira’s. The contact caused Mira to briefly glance over.
“You just seem…I don’t know. Off.”
“It’s nothing,” Mira said, gently pulling her hand out from under Rumi’s. She quickly added, “Nothing we need to talk about. Not now.”
Rumi caught the immediacy of her first response, the deflection. It was a language Rumi was fluent in. It made her stomach churn, knowing the breadth of things she herself had dismissed as “nothing” over the years.
But Mira had immediately corrected herself and said they could talk another time. Mira wasn’t keeping secrets. That wasn’t what this was. It was just late and Zoey wasn’t awake to listen or contribute. It made sense to wait.
Not right now.
Not the time to think about it.
“Zoey’s bed tonight?” Mira asked.
“Hmm,” Rumi hummed, unable to hold back a yawn. “We could just stay out here…”
“We are gonna feel it in the morning if we fall asleep like this,” Mira replied. She started to get up, scooping the birthday girl up with her. Rumi relented and followed, carrying the three turtle plushies in her arms. The ghost of Mira’s absent touch lingered against her palm.