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It's a childhood illness of hers, only ever spoken of with the hushed and scolding gaze of her mother, the dark and disappointed gaze of her father. Doctors would say things like 'psychological issue' and 'early childhood stress' and tell them to take it easy around her. After enough time, she got used to just changing the bed-sheet instead of the mattress, using old clothes as towels under her crotch while she slept even as her thirteenth birthday came and went.
After enough time, she realized she hadn't wet the bed in ages. It never happened again, not even in Celine's estate.
So she doesn't know why it's happened now.
'Are you fucking serious?' Is the first thought on her mind when she wakes up in a too-wet bed, blanketed by two warm bodies and feeling like a dirty child again.
Rumi's laugh is warm and the grin she gives is hazy, wild-eyed from the buzz of the night air thrumming around them. Mira prepares them another round of drinks as Rumi lets her hold her face in two hands, closes her eyes and feels the sensation. Zoey has to fight the drunk giggle bubbling it's way up.
'I love you.' She thinks, watching Rumi relax for once. Let down her walls for once. Mira in the back, lovingly measuring the right amount of pomegranate juice to mix with the vodka.
"I love you." Zoey blurts out, leaning forward to nuzzle the side of Rumi's neck. Rumi hums, resting a hand on her back and they sway together to the music, to HUNTR/X's music, playing loud in the background.
"Hm... I love you too, Zoey."
"Come on you two." A cool glass presses into her cheek and the way she jolts into Rumi makes the woman laugh.
"Awwww, thank you, baby." She grins, taking the glass so she can take a sip. Mira's resulting smile is both pretend-mad and fond.
"Don't call me that." Their girl says, sitting on the ground beside them. Rumi pulls her into them and Mira hisses as the other glass in her hand sways. Zoey watches her slam a hand atop the drink, keeping it inside.
"Shi- Rumi, I almost spilled your drink." Mira tries. Rumi is still smiling though, loose and affectionate between them, so Mira loses her heat quickly.
Rumi pulls at her and she goes willingly, watches Mira get dragged into her opposite side until they're both staring at each other from across the expanse of Rumi's collarbone, faces flushed and smiles hidden into the cloth separating their lips from Rumi's shoulders.
"If I were any drunker... " Zoey murmurs before giggling at the wide-eyed look Mira sends her. Oh, she said that out loud.
She feels the weight of Rumi's lips on her head and sighs, nuzzles into it. Mira must have given the glass to Rumi when she wasn't looking, because she watches Rumi lift it to her lips and take a long slow sip. Looks to Mira with a teasing smile.
"And you said she was a lightweight."
Mira scoffs, looking away. "I said she looked like one."
"I think I have a..." Rumi takes another sip. "-normal alcohol tolerance."
"You're a drinker, Rumi." She smiles, wrapping an arm. "Just don't ever drink without us."
"Yeah, that's how you get alcoholics." Mira agrees, hand rising to take the glass from her free hand. Zoey gives her a grateful smile and takes the opportunity to wrap her arms around Rumi to give her a big squeeze.
'Like a teddy bear.' She thinks drunkenly. 'Our teddy bear.'
"Ofcourse, I'll always drink with you." Rumi says, far too calm considering how drunk she was only a moment ago. Or was that an act? Or was Rumi simply following the flow of the buzz Zoey was making? She doesn't know, she doesn't care to know, just lingers in the feeling of Rumi's gentle care and Mira's protective gaze with a happy heart.
"Always?" Mira asks quietly from somewhere outside the hazy hum in her ears. The Honmoon is dancing at her fingertips but even the vocals of it can't dim Rumi's response.
"Always. We're soulmates, Mira. We're each other's. I won't ever leave you." Rumi looks down at her glass for half a second before turning to Mira with a soft smile. She watches her, the curve of her jaw, and has to swallow to stop the sudden onslaught of tears clogging her throat and making her chin warble.
It takes Mira a second, but she says, "...Rumi, I, me too."
"Me toooo." She tries to say but it comes out snotty. Mira's eyes snap to her and then both her and Rumi are crowding her. Thumbs gently wipe away at her teary face and she feels a slender hand, Mira's, press a tissue to her nose so she can blow. Rumi presses kisses to her temples and shushes her throughout.
"I think that's enough alcohol for tonight." Rumi mutters at some point and when she pauses to look at her, Rumi is looking at Mira with an expression that can only be described as wholly trusting.
"Yeah." Mira doesn't see it, too busy gathering the glasses on the table. Rumi must have set hers down at some point and she giggles when she finds it to be empty.
"Rumi, you are sooo not a lightweight." She tries to lean forward but somehow leans back instead. It reminds her of inverting the axis in a game, it's strange. It makes her almost fall over, but Rumi holds onto her. She rights herself.
"Woah."
Mira sends her a smile and Rumi lets out a huff of a laugh.
"Yup, bedtime."
And then Rumi is sweeping her up into a princess carry. The shriek of laughter she lets out is more than a bit exaggerated but she giggles and lets Rumi sit her down and tug at her slippers so she can slide socks over her feet. Sips away at the glass of water Mira handed her in the blur that time has become.
When she goes to bed, she slips under the covers, wiggles her very warm toes and waits.
A warm body slips in beside her, then another. They envelop her like, well, a letter in an envelope. The thought makes her smile and she hides it in the curve of Mira's shoulder. Rumi slings an arm over her body and she settles under it.
Sleep comes easy, with laughter bright in her chest.
Something is wrong.
She can tell, innately, something is wrong. She's not sure what it is but it is something serious, something she has ignored, something is wrong.
There's a pressure in her body, somewhere, buzzing out like a live wire in a pool of water, electrocuting everything in reach and she reaches out for that buzz of energy, some thread leading her to-
The relief hits her first. The sense of wrongness, of inherent wrongness, of being filthy, that always follows reaches her second.
Clarity is the one thing she wishes would leave her alone but it finds her anyway.
When she wakes up, she wakes up sticky, gross, and with the lower half of her body drenched. There's a terribly warm wetness to her pants and the bed-sheet and to oh god she went to bed with them.
'Oh fuck no,' Zoey thinks against the sudden tears in her eyes. 'Oh no.'
'No, no, no.' She inhales, tries not to sniffle. fails.
She crawls out of bed using the walls, the Honmoon lets her cling to it and climb it like a mountain side, hanging off the threads, its a core workout and she just prays her soaked pants wont suddenly start dripping. The wet patch on the bed is damning even in the little light emanating from the reality-fabric of all things Hunter-related.
'I cant just let them lie there.' She grimaces. She doesn't want to do this, have this conversation, be here, she wants to run off and find someplace to hide. Why did she try to sleep with them, she should have left it alone, ofcourse this would happen now.
Rumi, ofcourse, chooses to wake up exactly as she's finally stepping down onto solid ground again.
"Zoey." Rumi whispers, pushing her hair back. It falls down in long loops of that set of ponytails Mira always has her do before sleeping and Zoey whimpers when Rumi pauses, a small frown darting across her face.
Rumi looks to her own feet, more specifically to the bed-sheet beside Rumi's crotch where it must still be wet.
"I'm sorry." Zoey tries. The hotness in her eyes blurs her visions, slips down, and she puts her hands in-front of herself, trying to hide the offending part of her pajamas which would be terribly obvious if the light was on.
Rumi just stares at the space behind her, frowning. She takes a step back and Rumi's eyes snap to her, widening when they take in her expression.
Rumi leaps out of bed, crossing the space between them. "Hey, hey, hey..."
She hiccups.
"Hey, Zoey..." Rumi shushes her, pressing a gentle hand to her shoulder. "Hey, you're okay. You're okay."
"I didn't mean to." She whines. "I didn't mean to, I just- I used to wet the bed when I was younger, not-"
"It's okay, I don't mind." Rumi smiles softly. "Soulmates, remember?"
She stares at her, trying to understand what that even has to do with this, with Zoey pissing herself like a kid while they're all sleeping together but then Rumi takes her wrist and leads her into the washroom.
The white light is harsh and she grimaces. When she turns around, Rumi is washing her hands in the sink.
'I should do that too.' She thinks just as Rumi steps back, motioning for her to do the same. She gets her hands wet and tries and fails not to watch Rumi lather her hands. She does it so precisely, getting the skin in-between her fingers and scraping her nails against her palm to get the dirt under them.
By the time her own hands are washed, Rumi has left and returned with a fresh new change of clothes. Sea-themed pajamas with fish and crabs on the shirt and pants. She can't help the way she smiles.
"There." Rumi hangs them on the hooks. "Take a shower, babe. You'll be okay."
She can't find the words. She just nods.
"Okay."
The smile Rumi gives her as she shuts the door is perfectly indulgent and terribly sweet, as if Zoey could never do anything wrong in her eyes.
This time the hotness in her face isn't just from the tears, though she won't ever acknowledge the red she sees when she looks in the mirror. When she gets in the shower, she takes a moment to cry.
"Mira." She's shaken awake in the dead of night.
The groan leaves her throat unbidden, and she curls up, tucking her limbs into herself. Everything is strangely sticky, and she can feel a wetness at her hips that makes her shuffle away to the edge of the bed.
"Mira." Rumi's voice whispers again, presses a kiss to the back of her head. "Please, baby, Zoey needs us."
That is, in the end, what makes her open her eyes and turn to the call.
"Rumi?" The world rushes in with darkness, the only light is the lamp lit on the other end of the room. Rumi is standing over the bed, eyes soft and hands full with clothes and there is a strange acrid smell in the air she can't pinpoint. She breathes it in, sits up.
"What...?" Rumi's hand lies on her shoulder when she almost puts her hand out to the side, at the darkness to at her hips.
"Zoey had an... accident." Rumi says, gently guiding her away from the center of the bed. "I need to change the bed-sheets and you need to go shower."
"An accident?" She asks, frowning before her mind catches up to both the smell and the wet patch. "Oh."
She looks to Rumi. "I didn't know she... had those issues?"
"I didn't either. Childhood problem, she said." Rumi nods to the soiled bed. "It happens, the alcohol must have had an effect."
"You know," She stands, taking the pajamas Rumi gives to her. "For all that she gripes about you not being a lightweight, I think she might be one."
"Oh she definitely is." Rumi grins at her in the dim light of the lamp, eyes glinting with affection and she softens, asks,
"So what's the plan, dear Leader?" Mira teases. Rumi huffs but guides her all the same to the doorway.
"Go to your room, take a quick shower. We can sleep there." Rumi instructs. "I'll join you after I do the same. If you leave before Zoey..."
She nods at the glance Rumi gives her.
"I'll take care of her."
The smile she gets in return is openly trusting and openly fond. "I know you will, Mira."
Rumi cups her cheek and she can't help the smile that spreads across her face.
"Our dear protector." Rumi mutters, she shivers when a thumb swipes across her skin, gentle like a brand. "Take care of her, okay? I'll be right back."
Rumi steps away, waving lightly as she turns on her heel. Mira waves back, biting back a smile.
When Zoey gets out of the bathroom, Mira is waiting for her, lounging on a bean-bag she must have dragged in from Zoey's room, phone in hand.
Shame flickers across her heart again and she collapses in on herself, shoulders rising to her ears. The moment she takes a step forward, Mira's head shoots up and she stands, smiling gently.
"Zoey."
She clasps her hands in-front of her, looks away. "Mira..."
"Hey." Warm hands clasp her shoulders and Mira's presence enraptures her enough that she forgets to be terrified. Is simply afraid.
"Look at me." Mira mutters.
*'She's disgusted with me.'* She thinks but if she doesn't look up, Mira will be disappointing and think she's skirting the responsibility of her actions.
(Again and again, you keep doing this?! Her father yelling, standing in the doorway, faceless in the dark and she scoots back into the bed, When will you learn- most people learn this at eight! Are you eight years old, Zo-?)
"Zoey."
She looks up and- Oh.
Mira smiles down at her, expression filled with warmth. With love.
'Nothing's changed.' Zoey thinks, softens. 'With her and Rumi, nothing's changed.'
"I love you." She says and it comes out garbled by the tears in her throat. Mira shushes her, draws her in close as can be and Zoey loves her, loves her dearly. Loves them both so much. The giggle that escapes her when Mira presses a kiss to her head is light, airy, and Mira lets out a huff of laughter.
"Come on." Mira whispers. "Let's go to bed."
Zoey lets Mira guide her, past the ruined bed and the bean-bag and out of Rumi's room and into Mira's. Mira's room is flooded with pinks and blacks and she sighs when Mira turns off the cool lights and engulfs the room in utter darkness. She stumbles into bed, collapsing in.
A blanket is draped on-top of her and she sighs, stretches her arms to get rid of the fresh clarity from bathing and tries to fade into sleep instead. It's not particularly hard but it gets infinitely easier when Mira slides into bed beside her and pulls her in close.
She hums, stirs. "Where's Rumi?"
"Right here." A familiar voice comes and she looks over her shoulder to find Rumi in the doorway. Rumi doesn't seem tired like her, has a calm expression which warms and softens when they meet eyes.
Rumi pads over to her other side, sitting on the bed. A hand comes to rest on her back, it makes her shiver even if the touch is dulled by the blanket separating them.
"Feeling better?"
She nods. "Yeah. Thank you, I..."
Mira slips a hand up to cover her mouth. "No."
She frowns, mumbles "What?" into her skin.
"Soulmates, remember?" Rumi says from behind her and she smiles, letting the tears sit heavy behind her eyes even as warmth floods her chest.
"Soulmates." Mira affirms, pressing a kiss to her head. Then Rumi's heat is at her back, front pressed to her so she can nuzzle her nose into the crook of Zoey's neck.
Mira takes the hand off and Zoey sighs. She nuzzles into her chest, mutters.
"Yeah, soulmates."
Rumi's arms squeeze her tight. Once, twice, before she falls boneless with a yawn. Rumi echoes it behind her and she chuckles with hazy eyes at Mira's bitten lip in an attempt to fight it off.
"Love you." Zoey mutters before sleep takes her. Mira kisses her cheek, Rumi kisses her shoulder.
"Love you too, Zoey." One of them says, it doesn't matter who. She knows the feeling is mutual.
fin.