Chapter Text
Sleepovers have always been normal in the Huntri/x dormitory. You throw three women in their twenties into close proximity for almost every moment off the clock, and friendship just kind of… happens.
With how hectic idol life gets, it’s almost a relief to have each other to look forward to at the end of their long, gruelling work days.
Nothing says ‘relaxation’ after a ten hour press junket quite like pyjamas and nail painting with your two best friends. Who are also your colleagues. Who you live with.
Even with the complication of her patterns, Rumi had never had a friend before Zoey and Mira were dropped into her life - courtesy of the honmoon via Celine, in their quest to maybe, finally save the world from the demon uprising.
But then the idol awards happened. Celine, Gwima, the rainbow honmoon… it was all a lot. Especially now with a new world tour in the works, despite Mira and Zoey’s best efforts to reign things in, Rumi quickly fell back into bad habits. Especially with the new marketing promo for her patterns, it’s been pretty non-stop since that first trip to the bathhouse.
She shouldn’t have been surprised when she’d stumbled in from another pitch meeting with Bobby to find herself manhandled into the shower, Mira pressing her favorite choo-choo train pyjamas into her arms and threatening her favorite stuffed bear if she wasn’t out in the main room for take out and soju within a half hour.
Which would have been fine. But one bottle of soju quickly became two, became somaek; has turned into Zoey’s wide, very pretty eyes staring her down in mock outrage as their maknae does an admirable job of not slurring out her accusation.
“What!? You’ve never kissed anybody!?”
Zoey’s eyes blow wide with shock, her empty shot glass clutched absently in her left hand as she stares at Rumi slack jawed and openly confused. “But… you’re so hot!? What do you mean never?”
Mira kicks her under the table. “Zoey. C’mon, it’s not that uncommon. Please remember that Rumi was homeschooled by Celine and otherwise isolated until she started preparing for debut with the two of us. It’s not like she’s had lots of opportunities dropped at her feet.” Mira offers Rumi a reassuring smile. “Your first time can be… scary. For a lot of reasons. It’s okay, there’s no rush. It’ll happen.”
Cheeks hot, Rumi shrugs, fiddling nervously with her sleeves. “I just… I just never got the chance. It’s not like I’m waiting for someone.”
Zoey flops back against the couch with a sigh, blowing her bangs off her forehead with a deep sigh. She’s no sooner hit the back of the couch than she’s lunging forward, eyes bright as she claps her hands together and grins.
“Wait! We could totally fix that! Tonight!” She lunges across the low table, palms splayed on the sticky surface as she giggles with excitement. “I could kiss you! So you could practice! For your future crush!”
Immediately, Rumi panics. A high pitched ringing in her ears, she only finds a stutter where there should be a reply as something sharp races through her nervous system to send a wave of goose flesh across her skin.
“I… I… I just…”
Mira rolls her eyes, pouring herself a refill before throwing it back in one. “Zoey. Woah there. That’s literally the definition of rushing into things - she’s allowed to take her time with this.”
Rumi feels a rush of warmth for the taller girl. Quietly thankful as she shoots Mira an embarrassed smile, curling her hands into fists and feeling the reassuring bite of her nails carving sharp crescents into her soft skin.
There are a thousand reasons this would be a stupid, dumb idea. Namely that they’re drunk - or at least, getting there - plus, it’s a late night after a big week, and Rumi honestly can’t guarantee that she won’t cry in the aftermath. Whether the experience is good… or terrible.
She doesn’t even know how much she likes girls. Sure, she loves Zoey and Mira. But that’s… normal. You’re supposed to feel light headed and stupid whenever you catch a glimpse of your objectively beautiful friends… right? Just like it’s normal to crave bed share sleepovers, and lose all train of thought whenever you exchange gentle touches backstage when checking that your costumes are properly fitted.
It’s late. She’s kinda drunk. It has been a big week. A big year. A big life.
And… Zoey is looking at her so earnest and so hopeful; with such shy, barely contained excitement that maybe… maybe tonight isn’t the night for good ideas.
Zoey inches closer, and she feels her face heat, shyly looking away with a nervous swallow.
“Okay.”
Something stills in the air between them, nipping across Rumi’s skin. Electric and almost… dangerous.
She risks a glance at their maknae, who breaks into a goofy grin that lights her up like summer sunshine. Scrunching her eyes shut in delight, Zoey clasps her hands together and giggles with excitement.
“Yay!”
She wiggles around to Rumi’s side of the low table, pressing her hands into the tense muscles of Rumi’s thighs and leaning closer in anticipation.
Rumi feels something flare deep in her core, a shiver running drown her spine as Zoey inches closer.
Zoey offers her a surprisingly gentle smile, slowing her approach as Rumi tries desperately to relax.
“Hey.”
She blinks up at the girl in her lap, trying to contain the nervous fizz that lances through her veins as Zoey watches her with tender, wide-eyed delight.
Zoey tips her head, offering a small shrug. “It’s just me, okay? You can relax.” She pats Rumi’s thigh with a cheeky wink. “Close your eyes.”
Feeling a little bit a lot like she’s drowning, Rumi scrunches her eyes shut, shoulders tight as her brain tries to spiral.
Zoey doesn’t let her. She presses in quickly, almost painfully gentle; nipping at Rumi’s lip despite the fact that that she’s too frazzled to do anything other than sit there stiffly and take it.
Undeterred, Zoey presses in a second time. Delicately taking Rumi’s mouth with such softness that she gasps; Zoey pressing against her with a tenderness that’s almost decadent, until Rumi’s body somehow remembers how to move of its own accord.
Scared for her fucking life, she starts to move against Zoey’s hot, plush mouth; their maknae making a happy, startled sound as she nudges right back into Rumi’s hesitant touches with firm, pliant lips that only welcome comfort… as well as a spark of something else. Something unfamiliar.
Breaking away, Zoey offers her a radiant smile. Tipping her head, she gives Rumi’s quad a gentle squeeze. “Good?”
Cheeks exploding with warmth, Rumi offers her a startled, shaky nod. Something not unlike disappointment sneaking up through her ribcage under the fuzz of adrenalin and peach soju as Zoey quietly starts to drift away.
Somehow, something catches behind the eyes of two-bottles-deep-Zoey, and she pauses her retreat, skating her gaze up Rumi’s body with an anticipatory, delighted grin.
“Okay, now let’s go again!” Ever gentle, Zoey presses Rumi back into the seat of the couch, splaying her fingers wide as she pins her down and brushes their noses together in a hopeful, hungry tease.
“Tilt your head. Good, now part your lips…”
Once again, Rumi barely has time to breathe - let alone think - as she blindly follows Zoey’s coaching and lets her eyes flutter closed.
She isn’t sure if it’s the alcohol or the exhaustion, but there’s something endlessly intoxicating in each brush of Zoey’s soft lips against her own; the faintest whisper of something more as they angle gradually a little closer and Zoey’s right hand drifts barely an inch higher up her pyjamas.
Rumi delicately offers a tug on Zoey’s lower lip, and Zoey immediately stiffens, moaning almost involuntarily as she pulls away pink cheeked with a little giggle of surprise.
Shaking her head as if to dislodge a thought, she grins widely at Rumi as she relinquishes the space between them. “Wow! Rumi!” Ears pink, Zoey’s eyes sparkle as she drunkenly leans back on the soft carpet. “You are a natural! Jinjja! I refuse to believe that was your first time.”
Laughing awkwardly, Rumi drunkenly presses two fingers to her mouth, still tingling from the barrage of sensations as it all slowly sinks into her system.
She makes the mistake of looking up, and catches Mira watching them from her seat on the floor. Leaning almost lazily against the couch, she watches Rumi with an expression that would almost pass for indifference… if not for the red hot sparks of curiosity that lash against Rumi’s skin across the distance.
Following her eyes, Zoey turns to Mira, eyes bright as she steals her gaze. “Mir! Oh my gosh! You gotta show her how to do that thing with the tongue!”
Mira’s eyes narrow in contemplation, and something heated and dangerous begins to pool between Rumi’s thighs.
(Oh… no. Well.)
Rumi swallows, mouth dry, suddenly much more nervous. With tongue? With… with Mira? And, more importantly… how often does Mira kiss Zoey? And… and…
(And why isn’t she invited?)
Shunting the little voice in her head far, far away, preferably to never return, she looks up at Mira with nervous trepidation.
Mira tips her head in a question. “That… depends. Maybe Rumi doesn’t want that. She’s done a lot of kissing in one night for someone who’s spent twenty four years doing absolute zero.”
Flushing pink, Rumi tries for a smile, but is pretty sure it comes out more like a grimace. “Ah. I…” she falters. Mira watches her with an unreadable, intimidating intensity as she leans back against the sofa in a pantomime of ambivalence that is dislodged by the slightest set of her jaw; a tremor in her left pinkie finger that Rumi knows from nervous warm ups all the way back from their debut days.
She offers a stilted, shaky nod. “I… ah… y-yeah. Okay. I can…” she lets her eyes flutter closed again, feeling shy. “I can do that. If… if you want.”
Mira stands, padding across the room before she hikes Rumi onto the couch. Knocking her thighs apart, she stands between them, carefully tracing a thumb up the slant of Rumi’s chin.
Eyes dark and unreadable, Mira carefully holds the distance between them. “Only if it’s a definite yes. We’ve all been drinking and, ah…” Rumi is more than a little slanted right now, but she swears to god that Mira starts blushing. “…only if you want this. Too.”
Looking up at Mira wide eyed and slightly frantic, Rumi nods. With the barest of smiles, Mira tips her chin towards her. “This okay?”
Somewhere thought Rumi’s soju soaked senses, her inner Rumi starts screaming wildly in panicked protest, but is quickly drowned out by the hammering of her heart inside her chest.
She nods.
Eyes alight, Mira leans in. “Relax.”
They crash together. Mira takes her mouth insistently, without apology, but no less carefully than Zoey, as she parses out the sensibility of Rumi’s consent with every patient, heady touch.
Heart thrashing against her ribcage, Rumi tries to tip her head in a clumsy invitation, desperately gripping onto the edge of the sofa as though the smooth, cream leather can save her from herself.
Smiling into the kiss, Mira dips in to meet her. Taking her readily, she tugs on Rumi’s lower lip, the older girl releasing a strangled sound of wanting as Mira skates her tongue against the border of her mouth in a patient, elegant ask.
Rumi answers. Parting her lips eagerly in invitation; drinking in every flash of arousal as Mira darts her tongue inside her mouth and Rumi carefully, excitedly learns to follow.
Mira clips her with the flat of her tongue in such a way that Rumi’s eyes blow wide with pleasure, both girls releasing twin sounds of delight before abruptly pulling apart, shoulders shaking; slack jawed in their ecstasy.
Catching the sound of a happy sigh, Rumi turns to find Zoey watching both of them with a sappy, vacant grin plastered across her face, head in her hands as she takes it in.
Noticing Rumi’s stare, Zoey offers a giggle that almost has a sharp, nervous edge to it; quickly pivoting by lunging across the table to top up each of their glasses with the blueberry soju that tastes more than a little bit like cough syrup.
“A toast! To Rumi’s first kiss! And second! Jaan!”
It’s gone three by the time they drift off to bed; Zoey reduced to being piggy backed by Mira, claiming that the world is spinning too much for walking to win against gravity.
And Rumi would believe her… but an hour ago Zoey did execute a perfect backflip off the back of the sofa. Looking at the way she melts into Mira’s touch, with a tender smile Rumi suspects that she just wants to be carried.
They pause outside Rumi’s door, Mira raising a bleary eyebrow as she stops. “Zo’s gonna bunk with me for the night… are you going to join, or do you need some Rumi time?”
For a moment, she pauses. Usually it would be an easy yes, especially here, especially now (drunk, tired, more than a little overwhelmed by the need for the soft skin on skin from her two best friends…)
But tonight, something makes her heart give a funny little skitter in her chest. Even soft eyed and a little hazy as she blinks at Rumi across the hall, Mira is still evidently a little kiss drunk from a few hours before; hair slightly mussed and lips faintly swollen from their moment on the couch.
Throat dry, with an unwelcome heat flaring to life between her legs, Rumi offers an awkward, uncoordinated shake of her head. “N-no, thanks… I think I need to, um, be by myself tonight.”
Something a little unlike hurt and a lot like disbelief flashes across Mira’s face, so Rumi gives a dramatic stretch and reaches all the way into her back pocket for some kind of acting ability as she releases a breathy, exaggerated yawn. “Oh, goodness. Big night, hey? I’d better get some sleep before we hit the studio tomorrow for that new choreo. Sweet dreams.”
With a reigned huff, Mira offers her a sharp, knowing smile. “Sweet dreams, Ru. You know where to find us if you need to, okay?”
With that, Mira shoulders her increasingly floppy companion and shuffles down the hall, vanishing into her own room with a soft snick from the wooden door.
Rumi counts to three, then flees. All but slamming her door as she face plants into the bed with a groan.
It’s pretty… unfortunate that the only thing she can feel is the hot, sharp press of Mira’s mouth against her own, beneath the drunken stupor of soju and sleep deprivation. And right along side that is the ghost of Zoey’s soft, insistent kisses that could threaten everything if she’s particularly unlucky.
But… maybe she’s just touch starved, and needs to kiss more people. Sitting up, Rumi nods to herself once, decisively. It probably isn’t the girls at all, she rationally - and a little drunkenly - concludes. She just didn’t have anything to compare this to - of course she wants more, it was really good.
Somehow she forces herself to brush her teeth, only vaguely resisting creating a dating profile on one of the many available apps to test her theory.
Some things are better done sober, after all. The last thing she needs is for this to awaken something in her.
—-
To be continued…