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Meeting Zoey’s family had gone well.
Rumi was polite and friendly and perfect, as always, and Mira had been… good enough. Quiet, mostly. Probably a little too sharp around the edges still, but there was really only so much she could do about that after the stories she’d heard about them from Zoey.
Still, Mira had managed not to cause any disasters. Mission success.
She made it back to the hotel with muscles tightly knotted by her composure, and a slight but clearly present urge to destroy something, but that was all to be expected.
What she hadn’t expected was for Zoey to drag both her and Rumi out into the wilderness to go birdwatching the next day.
“Okay, then, what’s that?” Mira asked, pointing at a black-and-white bird with a striking red patch on the top of its head. It was clinging to the side of a tree high above them, knocking its head forward slowly against the wood.
“Oh! That’s an acorn woodpecker,” Zoey beamed. “I love them.”
“I like it, too,” Rumi said, “but… what is it doing?”
Mira squinted. She’d worn her glasses for the trip, but they weren’t quite enough to let her see it in full detail.
And she’d never really thought about what woodpeckers were doing when they pecked at trees. She’d kind of assumed that they just… did that. Law of the universe. Roosters crow and woodpeckers peck.
“It’s storing acorns in the tree!” Zoey answered, practically vibrating. “They’re so cool, actually, they drill these holes into trees and then go find—hold on,” she pulled out her phone, typing into her browser frantically.
“Slow down, Zoey, we aren’t going anywhere,” Rumi reminded her, taking a seat on a bench nearby. “You know we’ll listen to you.”
Zoey nodded, grabbing Mira’s wrist and pulling her over to the bench as well. The page was still loading, but Mira and Rumi leaned in from opposite sides of Zoey to watch.
“They go find acorns and store them in these holes, see? Bird storage.”
When the image loaded, Mira recoiled. She’d heard of that fear some people had about things covered in holes, and never understood it—until now. Something about the way only some were filled in with acorns… she shuddered.
Rumi leaned over. “Yeah, that is… kind of gross looking.”
“It’s freaky,” Mira said.
Zoey just grinned. “Okay yeah, maybe a little. But it’s so cool. And, and—” she started tripping over her words again. “—they live together in these like, family packs. Like, multiple males and females and they all breed together and live together and take care of the babies together.”
Mira nodded along, remembering something from a previous Zoey ramble—lionesses raising all the cubs of the pride as if they were their own. “So, like lions?”
Zoey tilted her head. “Well, kind of, yeah, but this is different. With lions, it’s like, they’ll all nurse each other’s cubs or whatever, but only the ones who have cubs. The others aren’t involved. With the woodpeckers, though, the group has some who don’t breed at all that year and just help out.”
“That’s… unique,” Rumi said, but she looked about as in love with Zoey’s endless knowledge as Mira was.
“Yeah! It’s not super common. But there are a bunch of bird species who do it. And they all do it differently. Um… hold on.” Zoey was back on her phone in an instant, hunching over.
Over her, Rumi shot Mira a look that said something along the lines of oh my god, I love her and Mira had to fight not to laugh at it.
“Right! Okay, I had to search it to make sure I had it right. But for acorn woodpeckers, the helpers are usually just offspring from the previous year. So like, the current eggs’ siblings. But it isn’t always!”
“Yeah?” Rumi tilts her head.
“Yeah! So, for example, house sparrows. Sometimes they just don’t mate and they stick around and help raise the babies of a mated pair. They make their own wonky families.”
“Huh.”
That was kind of cute, actually.
Mira imagined three birds cuddling together in a nest, on top of their eggs. Her heart got a little warm and fuzzy.
She tamped it down before she could get too soft.
Zoey had gotten distracted looking at other pictures of birds on her phone, so Mira stood up and stretched herself out. “Want to keep walking? Lots more forest, lots more birds, right?”
Zoey hopped up and gave a salute. “Yes, sir!”
“Think we can find some of those house sparrows?” Rumi asked as they walked.
“Oh, definitely. They’re everywhere. And they make this sort of… okay I hate to say it, but generic chirping noise. It’s really cute, though! You’ll see!”
With that, Zoey was taking off into the woods again.
Rumi and Mira shared a smile and followed her.
It didn’t take Zoey long to find some, apparent bird-whisperer she was, and they gathered behind a tree as Zoey gestured out towards a few birds on the ground.
“They’re so… brown,” Mira said carefully. There wasn't much to take in, really. “That one might just be the most generic bird I’ve ever seen.”
“I’ll have you know he is a very fine-looking gentleman!” Zoey said, with quiet indignance. “Don’t listen to Mira,” she murmured in the bird’s direction, “you're beautiful just the way you are.”
Nothing could be done to stop the laugh Mira let out at that, and the bird flew away, startled.
“Sorry,” she offered, not that it really mattered. “I’m sure he’ll find some lovely girl somewhere.”
“Maybe!” Zoey spun around, eyes sparkling, clapping her hands together. “But like I was saying earlier… if he doesn’t find one, he might just go be some couple’s extra helper.”
Mira leaned against a tree, thinking.
Rumi was deep in thought as well. “I wonder why they’d evolve to do that. Do you know?”
Zoey shrugged. “Do I look like a bird expert?”
Mira looked her up and down. “Yeah. A bit.”
Zoey looked down at her shirt, which was printed with birds all across it and nice tits across the chest. “Touché.”
Huntrix family game night was always an experience.
Tonight: Jenga.
Not the most complicated game in the world, which Mira was more than grateful for. Their previous game night had ended in disaster, and Munchkin was now banned from the penthouse, much to Zoey’s disappointment.
They took their games very seriously, though, and even Jenga had become more intense than it had any right to be. Mira found herself holding her breath, enraptured by the tension a wobbly tower could fill a room with.
Rumi was hunched over, elbows carefully braced on the table as she poked at each block in turn. The tower wobbled threateningly, and Rumi bit her lip, not saying anything, not even breathing, it seemed, as she searched for one she could safely pull.
There was a small victorious puff of air from her nose as she pried one loose from a layer near the top. She laid it gingerly atop the pile, and it swayed back and forth… and finally, over, sending blocks scattering across the tabletop.
“No!” Rumi wailed, betrayed, dropping her head down and wrapping her arms around it.
Zoey cheered.
Mira patted Rumi on the head condescendingly. “It’s okay, sweetie. You’ll get it next time.”
Rumi groaned. “No more next times. I hate this game.”
“Couch time, then?” Zoey asked, perking up even more than she had been, somehow, while stacking the blocks back into the container.
“Yeah, but I need to hit the restroom first,” Rumi sighed, pushing herself away from the table, sending a few more blocks toppling off the tower. “Oh, here.” She neatly gathered the blocks into bunches of three, stacking them quickly and efficiently, putting Zoey’s random-grabbing technique to shame.
When they’d finished with that, Zoey flopped down onto the couch, and Mira took her own place on it nearby.
The moment Rumi was out the door, Zoey was leaning into Mira’s space. “Mira,” she said under her breath, “she’s so hot. It’s unfair.”
Mira looked over at her. “Huh?”
“Like, when she’s all concentrated, and she bites her lip, and gets all intense… fuck. Come on. You can’t tell me you don’t see it.”
Mira stared.
“Her abs, Mira. And her legs. And her arms, too, oh my god. Even through those stupid shirts she’s always wearing, she has such attractive arms!” Zoey groaned, slowly sliding off the couch into a puddle on the floor.
“You’re hopeless,” Mira told her.
Rumi was pretty, yeah. Beautiful, even. Everyone knew that. But it would be a lie to say Mira had ever been attracted to her. And really, if they were going to be talking about Rumi, they probably had more pressing concerns. Like the way she seemed to pull away from them more and more with each passing day.
“Okay, fine. I don’t believe that you don’t think she’s hot. But if not, then who are you into? You never talk about it. I wanna know.”
“None of your business,” Mira said, on instinct, because that was what she always said. It was easy. Safe.
“So it’s embarrassing, got it. Gotta be some guy, then,” which Mira took a little bit of offense to—since when had she given off the impression she was into men?—but Zoey had already started rattling off random boy group members. Some of which Mira had heard of, most of which she hadn’t, absolutely none of them even remotely “hot” to her.
When Zoey eventually landed on some 70-year-old actor Mira had never heard of, she cut her off. “Zoey, no. I’m just not into anyone right now.”
Which was true.
She just… left off the part where she wasn’t sure if she’d ever been into anyone.
The way Zoey talked about it made her nervous sometimes. It always seemed so foreign, her lusting over body parts Mira had never given any thought to. But then Mira would see Rumi’s equally horrified expressions at Zoey’s words, and remember that actually, Zoey was the weird one.
Mira was normal.
“No one?” Zoey asked, incredulous.
“Is it that hard to believe?”
“Yeah.” Zoey had pulled herself up and flopped onto the couch again, as though she’d never been engaged in any floor-based theatrics. “I’m so into people I can’t function.”
Mira made a hm noise.
Zoey was silent for a minute.
“Okay, but you can at least admit Rumi’s hot, right? Objectively?”
Mira sighed and gave in. “Yeah. She’s hot.”
If it made Zoey happy to hear… whatever. Even if it felt a bit wrong to say that about Rumi.
She was pretty sure she didn’t mean it the way Zoey did.
Especially since Zoey was practically drooling.
Ew.
Rumi was off, lately.
Not that she wasn’t usually. She had always been a little strange, reserved, distant—but this was different.
She was acting erratic.
The midnight release of Golden behind their backs had been a choice, and ever since then it was like she’d gone completely off the rails.
And “woo, Jinu?”
Mira hated to admit it, but that one phrase had sent her into a bit of a tailspin.
Rumi’s talk of demons and her poorly-concealed midnight escapades were one thing—but the way she looked at Jinu… that was something else.
Mira knew that look. It was Zoey’s look, and she didn’t know what to do with that.
Rumi’s face softened, and she cheered for him, and she got that goopy look in her eyes.
It was like she and Rumi were losing some sort of understanding. Zoey was supposed to be the weird one. They loved her for it, but Zoey was the freak when it came to thirsting for people. Mira and Rumi were the normal ones. At least, they had been.
Until now.
There was no way Rumi was suddenly falling to Zoey’s level over a demon, right?
Mira had to know—so, she did what she did best. She confronted Rumi about it. She didn’t name it outright. She tried to be tactful about it. And she did a damn good job, actually.
But it didn’t do much to assuage her fears. Rumi was editing their lyrics, getting cagey and evasive, and despite her reassurances, Mira still felt something off. Rumi was hiding something.
Mira trusted Rumi enough to know she hadn’t changed allegiances overnight. That wasn’t really what she was afraid of.
She just wanted to know what it was that twisted her heart when she saw the way Rumi looked at him.
The Honmoon cried out, and she was quickly distracted.
“No more secrets, right?” Mira asked, looking between them. “No more lies?”
They laid in bed together, for the first time in months. Everything was out, now. Rumi’s patterns, the truth of what she had been up to for the past few months. Her… thing… with Jinu.
Mira wouldn’t say it out loud to Rumi, but she was glad he was gone.
They’d gone in loops for hours, saying every last secret they’d ever kept from each other.
Of course, the magnitudes of deception varied, but it was the thought that counted. It seemed to help Rumi to not be the only one revealing things.
Zoey sighed. “Okay, fine. One more.”
Uh oh.
Mira braced herself. Whatever was about to come out of Zoey’s mouth could really be anything from “once I crushed an ant” to “actually, I have patterns, too”, and it was anyone’s guess where it would be on the scale.
“I've kind of been in love with both of you since we first met.”
What?
Mira knew Zoey was into Rumi, but…
“I knew you were into Mira, but—”
Mira whipped her head to the side to stare at Rumi, jaw dropping. There was no way she didn’t look stupid, but she couldn’t do much about that.
It was all a little too much, all at once, and she was not processing it. “You what?”
“You didn’t know?” Rumi asked, eyes going wide. “Mira, she’s always staring at you like a starving wolf or something. And then you leave the room and she’s all ‘god, I’m going to die and it’ll be all Mira’s fault.’ Like, every time.”
“She does that to me, about you!” Mira flipped back to look at Zoey, who had turned away towards the wall. She was attempting to block her face with one of her hands, but it was impossible to hide the bright red.
“I’m not here,” she said. “Who’s Zoey? I’ve never heard of her.”
Rumi was the first to start laughing. “I cannot believe you. You were doing it to both of us this whole time?”
“It’s not my fault you two are oblivious!” Zoey cried, using her non-shield hand to toss a pillow in their general direction. It missed, spectacularly. “And hot,” she added, afterwards, as if they didn’t already know now that she thought that.
Rumi’s own cheeks dusted with pink. “Okay, you’re right about that. Mira is definitely hot.”
Mira froze at that.
What was she saying?
Rumi, who looked at Mira with that expression whenever Zoey was being particularly unhinged about some celebrity? Who clearly felt something, but always kept it quiet?
Rumi was into her?
“What?” Mira breathed out.
Rumi’s eyebrow furrowed. “You… know that you’re attractive, right?”
Of course she knew that. Mira was one-third of a world-famous K-pop group. She kind of had to be attractive.
But that was something that strangers thought of her. Not Rumi, not Zoey, not people who knew her. Not anyone she might have to interact with.
Zoey uncovered her face, then, and looked at Mira with concern alongside Rumi. “Do you not think you’re attractive? Is this like, some kind of body image thing? Because I’ve told Rumi a million times she’s gorgeous exactly the way she is, and I will start being annoying about it towards you, too, if you need me to—”
“No, no, it’s not that,” Mira said quickly. “It’s just…”
Rumi awkwardly shuffled towards her, wrapping an arm around her. “No more secrets, right? Whatever it is, we’re here for you, you know.”
Zoey nodded, and it became clear that it was going to be a Mira sandwich day when she too nestled into Mira’s side.
“When you say I’m hot,” Mira started slowly, “what do you mean by that?”
It was embarrassing. Mortifying. Possibly the most painful thing she had ever had to do, and she’d once told her parents she was abandoning their plan for her, to go be a pop star.
She shouldn’t have had to ask. For fuck’s sake, she was 24 years old! Even someone half her age would probably have some answer, so why didn’t she?
There was silence, and somehow that was worse than the Hotness 101 lecture Mira had expected.
“You know, like.” Zoey gestured vaguely. “Hot.”
There was an even longer silence.
Mira could interrupt it. Laugh, say she was kidding, that it was all a joke, that she thought they were hot, too, of course she understood it. But her own words rang in her ears. No more lies.
She stayed quiet.
“So you’ve… never been attracted to anyone?” Rumi asked.
Mira shook her head slowly.
“You’ve never seen anyone and gone, ‘yeah, I’d smash that?’” It was Zoey’s turn.
What a terrible way to phrase that.
But…
“No.” She said, honestly. “I haven’t.”
“So are you, like, asexual?” Zoey asked.
Mira recoiled. “Am I what? Like bacteria?”
“No! It’s—It’s like, people who don't feel that way about anyone. I don’t know a lot about it, because I’m so not that, but...” Zoey stumbled a bit.
Rumi made a small, guilty noise, shifting uncomfortably.
Suspiciously.
Mira turned. “Do you know about this?”
Rumi shrank a little. “I might have… done a little research,” she bit her lip, “to use it as a cover in case anybody was ever into me. Because of the patterns.”
“You were going to fake being… asexual,” Mira said slowly. She was starting to think there was no end to the bizarre web of lies Rumi had spun. “To get out of somebody liking you.”
Rumi winced. “Well, when you put it like that, it sounds bad.”
“Could you not have just said no?”
Rumi was silent.
Mira sighed and dropped her head. So much for lying mastermind Rumi. She had certainly been committed to her deceptions… but her logic left something to be desired.
Zoey waved in her face. “Focus, Mira. So you’ve really never looked at someone and wanted to smash faces. Smash bodies. Smash—”
Mira stopped her with a hand. “God, Zoey, stop. I got it.”
Which was probably answer enough, but she still hesitated. They were both watching her now, waiting, for how she was going to reveal this deep, dark secret about herself.
She settled on an “I guess not,” and a shrug.
“Well… that explains a lot.” Zoey flopped backwards.
Rumi glared in her direction. “What she means to say is, that’s okay. You don’t have to. And there’s nothing wrong with you.”
Just that, those words, sent a wave of calm through Mira, soothing a stress she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying. She kind of hated it—being so reliant on them, so worried if they would approve of something so stupid about her. But they were her everything, really, her family.
“There’s nothing that would change how I feel about you, Mira. We handled Rumi being a demon… we can take on anything.”
Mira nodded.
“Okay, all that aside,” Zoey said, “I’m still in love with both of you, so…”
“And?” Mira asked, teasing. As serious as the conversation might have gotten, she couldn’t resist the chance to toy with Zoey a little.
“And,” Zoey flicked her in the arm, “would you two want to do something about that?”
“The Summer Triangle is a good place to start,” Rumi says.
She lifts her hand, gesturing to the panoply of stars above them. The night air is warm; at the height of summer, not even darkness is enough to truly cool the earth before the sun rises again.
“Straight up,” Rumi continues. “Those three bright stars. See them?”
Mira follows the line of her arm and nods. Beside her, opposite Rumi, Zoey shifts in the grass, her shoulder bumping Mira’s.
“I see it,” Zoey says.
“Do you know the story of Chilseok?” Rumi asks.
It sounds familiar, a story Mira had heard long ago in bedtime stories. She shakes her head anyway. “Not really.”
“Well, I don’t know any,” Zoey says cheerfully. “Educate me.”
Rumi’s small laugh is soft and tinged with affection.
She gently takes Mira’s wrist, using her hand as a pointer, guiding her. “That bright star there—that’s Vega. She was Jiknyeo, the weaver. The king’s daughter.”
Mira nods.
“One day, she fell in love. With that star there,” Rumi says quietly, “Altair. Gyeonwu, the cowherd.”
Her fingers are warm. Mira never tires of the way her pulse quickens at Rumi’s touch.
“They fell in love,” Rumi continues. “The king allowed them to marry, but they loved each other so much that she stopped weaving, and he neglected his animals.”
Zoey makes a small sad noise at that.
“So the king separated them. Banished them to opposite sides of the river. The Milky Way.”
Mira can see it now, the band of stars that runs between the two. She finally remembers the rest of the story, but she lets Rumi tell it. She’ll listen to Rumi tell anything.
“They were devastated, of course,” Rumi says. “But once a year, the crows and magpies gather and build a bridge so the two of them can be together again.”
There’s quiet for a moment after that, just their breathing and the faint rustle of grass.
Zoey breaks the silence first. “What’s the third star, then?”
Rumi hesitates. “I guess nothing, in this story.”
“So why’s it part of the triangle?” Zoey asks.
“Well,” Rumi says slowly. “the stars are part of other stories, too. That third one, that’s Deneb. In the west, it’s the tail of Cygnus, the swan. And Altair is the head of an eagle. Vega is part of Lyra, the lyre.”
Zoey tilts her head. “So two birds… and an instrument.”
“I guess so.”
“That’s kind of lonely,” Zoey says. “I’d rather be a bird, not the sad, left-out lyre.”
Mira lets out a quiet huff of laughter.
Rumi does, too. “Well, in some stories, Altair is the odd one out. In those, the swan is actually Orpheus, and Lyra is his lyre, specifically.”
“So the eagle is the one that doesn’t belong.”
Rumi shrugs.
Zoey is quiet after that, and they all look up at the stars. The triangle shines brightly.
“You can lump two together, and leave one out… or you can make a triangle of all three,” Rumi says softly. “You can draw whatever patterns you want. They’re just stars.”
When they make it home, the cuddle pile is near-immediate. It’s tradition now.
Some nights it ends there, just holding each other until they drift off to sleep.
Other nights…
Well, Zoey is kissing Mira. Rumi is next to them, still looking dazed from the kisses she’d received not even a minute prior.
When Zoey pulls back, she asks, “You’re sure you’re good with this? ‘Cause if not, there’s this new documentary…”
Mira laughs. She’s starting to think Zoey’s rooting for her to say no, just to have an excuse to turn their cuddle piles into rambling sessions, but the twinkle in Zoey’s eye says she was definitely not planning on actually talking about that documentary tonight. “I’m sure,” Mira says, and kisses her again.
She’s asexual, they know this now.
They know a lot more now, after many nights spent researching and, on Rumi’s insistence, filling out quizzes and questionnaires.
She doesn’t hate sex. She just… doesn’t have a lot of feelings about it. She’d let each of them get her off a couple of times since they first got together, on top of years of her own solo experimenting, and it was just never that interesting. Rumi and Zoey don’t seem to mind. They check in with her, and on the admittedly-not-infrequent occasion she says she’s not up for it, they are more than happy to chill out and cuddle instead.
Tonight, though… Mira’s feeling warm and fuzzy and more than happy to be involved.
Zoey makes grabby hands at Rumi. “Patterns, please,” she says, and Rumi obliges, stripping her top off and throwing it onto the floor.
“Hot,” Zoey says, like it’s the first she’s ever seen a shirtless Rumi.
Mira rolls her eyes at that, but can’t suppress her fond smile. No matter how much time has passed, Zoey is still Zoey, with little filter and an overactive imagination and an endless fountain of what Mira now fully recognizes as sexual attraction.
Of course, Rumi has it too, but she doesn’t express it as loudly as Zoey does. Hers is quieter, in the way she takes in the image of her girlfriends and peppers them with kisses in the dark.
They’re both still into Mira.
Somehow, she isn’t bothered by it.
The discomfort she always felt from hearing strangers call her hot, or attractive, or whatever terrible new word the internet had invented for the week—she doesn’t feel it when it’s them. It just feels right, the way Zoey’s jaw drops and Rumi gets all flustered when Mira wears a particularly revealing dress, the way they call her hot or gorgeous or god forbid handsome and kiss her without expecting anything more.
It’s a beautiful thing, the way the three of them fit together. Sturdy. Like a pyramid. Like they were always meant to be.
