Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s a weird feeling, having to relearn your own body from scratch.

Rumi has never felt at home in her skin, for obvious reasons, but the dissonance that washes over her now during the simplest moments is odd and destabilizing—passing in front of mirrors makes her stumble, eyes catching on the new iridescent gleam of her patterns, so different from the mottled purple they’ve been since birth. On a couple occasions, Mira and Zoey have visibly balked at the sight of her, only to leap up and start frantically reassuring her that they were just surprised by her eyes, slitted and glowing like coals in the dim. Other times, she notices on her own that she can hear the uncanny hum of electricity racing through the penthouse. Her night vision sharpens to crisp definition. Her steps, near-silent before, are now so soundless that she has to actively stomp around to avoid jumpscaring everyone.

Well, she avoids jumpscaring Mira and Zoey. Jinu thrives with a little bit of fear in his heart.

Admittedly though, all of these changes, this demon puberty or whatever, would probably be a lot more terrifying without him. Everything that happened during and after the Idol Awards is still so painful and tangled up that Rumi isn’t sure they’ll ever unravel it, but the facts are this: Gwi-Ma would’ve killed her if Jinu hadn’t stepped in and taken that blow in her stead.

For all his self-destructive misery and the despair that had been rotting inside him for four hundred years, when it mattered most, Jinu had chosen her. He’d chosen to believe her song over the voices in his head, and it had almost cost him his life—would have, if his intervention hadn’t distracted the other Saja Boys long enough for Mira and Zoey to rush to their side, to bear the brunt of the flames as four instead of one, and like that they rose up and drove back the dark.

The following few weeks had been equal parts harrowing and relieving. While they were cooped up in the penthouse’s private infirmary together, recovering from second degree burns that had been publicly blamed on a malfunction with the show’s pyrotechnics, many words were had between the four of them. There had been a lot of tearful shouting, explanations, breakdowns, hugging, apologies, secrets laid bare in all their ugly, gruesome glory, forgiveness granted freely and unearned, and quite a few hushed, fragile moments between just the girls from which Jinu very quietly and politely averted his gaze. Exhausted, they all agreed on one thing by the end of it: Rumi won’t be hiding her patterns anymore. She’s done letting shame rule her life.

“I wish it hadn’t taken me this long to realize,” she’d confessed one night, sitting very still in bed and watching Mira explore the patterns on her hands, tracing and retracing their shimmery paths with the tips of her nails. The girls had shoved all of their beds together to form one big mattress. Jinu was maintaining his own space, but he was still close—within her eyeline, because something had begun to tremble hotly in Rumi’s throat at the idea of not being able to see him, any of them.

Now, in the dim, yellow glow of the infirmary at night, Zoey and Mira were curled up with Rumi, their bodies sprawled in warm shapes like puppies crowding in close. On the floor, the tiger and bird were nestled together, asleep. In the nearest bed over, Jinu was leaned back against his pillows, watching them with a faint, bleary smile. Gwi-Ma’s flames had gotten him the worst, and it’d be a while yet before he was cleared to take the bandages off, but the doctor said he was recovering quickly.

Probably too quickly to be normal, or human—but if demon metabolism was healing his burns, it definitely wasn’t neutralizing the pain meds he was on, because his sedated ass kept reacting to Rumi’s every word like it was revelation from heaven and she was seriously struggling with how cute his behavior was.

Zoey’s head rested on Rumi’s thigh, her eyes half-lidded but still tracking the conversation. Mira brushed the pads of her fingers over Rumi’s palm, the patterns flaring and dimming with each gentle touch.

“Realize what?” Mira asked, voice low.

Rumi gave a helpless shrug. “That guilt doesn’t fix anything. It just gets heavier and heavier until you collapse under it, and then your only choice is to finally face it or get crushed.” There was a beat of silence, during which Mira moved to tracing her wrist, and then Rumi added, “I feel like I’ve wasted twenty-four years crumbling when I could’ve been living.”

Before Mira could respond, subdued laughter floated up from Jinu’s bed. “Figured it out faster than me,” he said lightly. Not self-deprecating, just honest.

Hope looked good on him. On all of them.

“No one ever said you were smart, demon boy,” Mira said dryly. Rumi poked her, fighting a grin. Zoey’s mouth wobbled with humor. When Mira’s eyes slid over to meet hers, Rumi felt the full gravity of that stolid gaze like warm, heavy sunlight, draped over her shoulders in a comfort that went deeper than words, deeper than their physical bodies. Her patterns, which constantly emit a soft radiance now, shivered with light under Mira’s eyes, briefly illuminating her narrow face with a prismic-white sheen. “I know what you mean. I just wish you hadn’t felt like you needed to do it alone.”

“I know,” Rumi murmured.

They’ve had this conversation to death. Mira and Zoey had been angry with her for the betrayal, not for her patterns, because her lies had communicated to them that they were untrustworthy in her eyes, that she didn’t confide in them because they hadn’t done enough to convince her that they were always on her team, always. It had never been about them, only Rumi’s own insecure desperation to be healed, but an erupting volcano doesn’t just destroy itself. People feel the earth tremble beneath them hundreds of miles away; smoke blots out the sky on the other side of the world.

Rumi knows now. She knows, god, she knows.

And if she forgets, she will be reminded, over and over again.

In the infirmary that night, she’d gripped Mira’s hand and cupped Zoey’s cheek and met Jinu’s tired eyes across the room, unsmiling, but her patterns had flushed golden like the dawning sun and there was no mistaking what it meant.

And since then… a new normal.

Per Bobby’s decree, all of them were going on a six-month hiatus for their health. Rumi had wanted to argue, but the firm, unwavering kindness with which Bobby had put an end to her protests was genuinely frightening. She’ll never underestimate that man again. Jinu moved into their singular guest bedroom at the penthouse, alongside his bird and tiger, and somehow it just felt like he’d always been there, which Rumi is thankful for every day. Zoey and Mira are her first priorities, and if they argued against Jinu’s presence, then she would have been upset but ultimately stood by them—but those two have basically adopted him like they would a shelter dog, so it wasn’t even a question that he would be staying with them. They’d all really bonded in the infirmary.

And so it’s in the midst of this weird domestic routine, around halfway through the first month, that Rumi’s, um… more unusual traits start to crop up. There is no rhyme or rhythm to when new abilities make themselves known. It doesn’t take long for a habit to be established—Mira and Zoey look at something, conclude, yup, demon thing, and call Jinu up to diagnose the issue before Rumi can panic too much about it.

Just like that, he kind of accidentally becomes their font of wisdom for all things demon.

Well. Sort of.

Jinu’s knowledge ends where his experience does, and Rumi’s circumstances are something entirely new. Also, Jinu has only really paid attention to himself in the last four centuries, so she suspects there might be things he doesn’t know by virtue of having never cared enough to go out and witness it. But he tries to be helpful.

When Rumi explains her shifting eye colors: “Oh, that just happens sometimes. You can learn to turn it on and off though.”

When Rumi is near-tears in a sea of shredded cereal boxes, holding up her clawed hands in desperation: “Uh… let’s find a nail file for now.”

When Zoey takes Rumi by the arm and thrusts it in front of Jinu’s face, demanding, “Look! It’s changing again! What do the colors mean?”

Rumi grimaces, wiggling a bit in Zoey’s grip, but she’s all steel and unrelenting determination to decode Rumi’s new chameleon ways. For a long moment, Jinu squints at the rippling colors, now mostly a pale, foamy green, before relenting, “I… actually have no idea. I’ve never seen them change colors before.”

“You’re useless,” Rumi says.

“Look, mine have never changed.”

It’s true—even now, Jinu’s patterns are a dark, dappled purple, but Rumi still feels like they’re lighter in shade than they were when the two of them first met. Less fuchsia, more lavender. Jinu steps in closer, taking her arm from Zoey to better inspect the markings, and abruptly the way she’s sandwiched between the two of them as they scrutinize her with their full, focused attention brings a hot flush to her face, tension winding her up into a stiff rod as Jinu—caresses her patterns, ugh, with Zoey’s chin hooked over her shoulder and watching closely.

“Huh,” Jinu says curiously. “They’re changing again.”

“Oh, wow, you’re right!”

Embarrassed, Rumi watches her patterns shift in hue from green to bright, pastel yellow, exactly in lockstep with her darkening blush. Oh, lord. The colors are synced to her—

“Emotions!” Zoey suddenly gasps. Her grip on Rumi’s shoulder tightens, her cheek rubbing against Rumi’s with her excited bouncing. “What if they’re tied to her feelings? Oh my gosh, she’s like a walking mood ring.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Jinu says, his hands burning hot as they turn her limp arm over, positioning her like a doll, “but it makes sense. But if that was true, surely it would’ve been the same for other demons too.”

Rumi feels like steam must be whistling out of her ears. No one ever tells you that over two decades of barely touching anyone for fear of having your flaws discovered will leave you with some serious issues surrounding physical contact, issues which have been simmering, neatly, beneath all of her more pressing mental breakdowns over the last couple weeks, and now are roaring to the surface as Jinu and Zoey work together to turn her brain into mush.

Jinu squeezes her wrist. She lets out a tiny squeak.

“Oh, sorry, did I press too hard?” he asks, eyes full of concern.

“No,” Rumi wheezes.

“Okay. Maybe…” Jinu’s mouth twists into a wry smile. “Maybe the reason I’ve never seen this before is because demons normally only feel bad.”

“Depressing, but plausible,” Zoey concurs. “I’m guessing, purple for baseline misery, pink for when you feel really, really bad?”

“Sounds about right.”

“Stay right there, I’m gonna grab a whiteboard.”

Zoey zips off, presumably disappearing into her room. For his part, Jinu finally seems to realize that he’s been holding Rumi’s arm and stroking her skin for many minutes at this point, because when he meets her wide eyes, he immediately makes a strangled sound and lets go, taking a quick step backwards. Rumi gulps. They stare at each other for several seconds.

“I was just trying to—” he sputters, at the same time she blurts out, “You don’t have to stop—”

They both fall silent, mortified.

And remain that way until Zoey comes back, bearing aloft a tall whiteboard and a cluster of markers in her free hand, at which point they spin around with matching nervous grins.

“Operation decode Rumi’s patterns is a go,” Zoey announces, uncapping a marker. Jinu, who by now is a master of slithering out of uncomfortable situations, seizes his opportunity to escape and slips over to Zoey’s side, taking up his own marker. The way he puzzles over it for a moment like an alien before Zoey uncaps it for him does a lot to diffuse the tension in Rumi’s heart, and after she collects herself, she sits down on the couch beside them with a quiet smile.

Idiot.

“So we’ve seen purple, pink, rainbow, green, and yellow,” Zoey mutters as she writes on the board, creating a grid with clean, neat penstrokes.

Jinu adds, “And gold, I think—at the infirmary? I was kind of out of it though.”

“No, you’re right, it was definitely golden.” She adds a column. “Okay. We know that purple is for guilt and shame. Pink is…”

“Self-hatred. Could also be desperation, the suicidal kind.”

Rumi winces, but neither of them catch it. She honestly has no desire to revisit that particular portion of the night, when she’d begged Celine on her knees to be treated like the mistake she was. She doesn’t believe that’s true now, anyway, and it would be pointless to upset everyone by bringing it up out of nowhere. She hasn’t wanted to die since then. But… maybe eventually, she’ll work up the strength to say it out loud. She’s had enough of keeping secrets, but she needs more time.

They’ll give her as much as she needs, she knows. She lets herself lean back into the couch cushions as Zoey and Jinu really hit their stride together, working each other up into a feedback loop of encouragement that’s genuinely adorable. She wonders if Jinu might’ve led the Saja Boys just like this—with a kind of easygoing, playful support, underscored with the warmth of his direct focus. The long, dull shadows behind his eyes light up every time Zoey turns to him for advice or with a new idea. It’s not lost on Rumi that it’s precisely where Jinu struggles most that he seems to derive the most personal satisfaction: being reliable.

She doesn’t have to guess at why. But it’s nice to see him enjoying himself.

Zoey, too, is in better spirits these days. It turns out that the floodgates of her affections have held steady only due to Rumi’s self-enforced barriers, and now that said barriers have been pretty thoroughly crushed into fine powder, Zoey’s love burns brighter and hotter than ever before. Mira’s, too.

Rumi had lived in terror for so long at the thought of losing that love, the love she’d cradled so closely and possessively to her chest in those selfish, weak moments when she still believed she was a monster, she hadn’t even considered there could be more, if she could just let herself reach for it.

Then Jinu, shining light through the cracks.

These days, there’s so much love, Rumi can’t see beyond it.

Other things crop up as time passes. They handle it as a team. Everyone becomes adept at reading the shifting colors on her skin, in a way that might be unnerving to someone else, but for Rumi just feels like an enormous weight lifted off of her shoulders. She no longer has to stress about the best words to explain herself; she can, for the most part, let her patterns do the talking. Zoey and Jinu hang their color wheel up in the kitchen, for ease of access. Mira smirks when she sees it.

“That’s right, get subjected to the mortifying ordeal of being known,” she says, and Rumi lets out a laughing groan.

She invests in quality noise-canceling headphones, for when the constant buzz of electricity starts to bug her in quiet moments. It occurs to her eventually that everything she finds bothersome might be bothering Jinu too, and he just doesn’t know there are tools to mitigate them now, but he shakes his head when she asks.

“I’m used to it,” he assures her. “Honestly, it’s kind of nice to have background noise. The silence can get overpowering.”

And among other things, Rumi is constantly stunned by how Zoey and Mira just… accommodate her. Celine was exacting, disciplined in every facet of her life, and anything that didn’t fit her standards had to be carved away. Rumi had never considered before that it is possible for the world to change for her instead of the other way around—that for once, she could be free to take a full breath without fear of her selfhood growing too large.

Fearless and undefined. She sang those words to a crowd of thousands, and now she has to learn to live by them.

Taking up space is still hard for her. She catches herself shying away from the girls when they’re all on the same couch, habitually avoiding any scenario where her clothes might ride up from being touched. Going to the bathhouse with them is an exercise in hardcore exposure therapy every single time. But they’re so, so patient with her. She sort of feels like a feral cat being coaxed into a loving home for how they act around her, but not in a bad way—it’s honestly hilarious, she can’t blame them for it.

And she can’t deny positive results. It feels nice to be coaxed.

It does take her way too long to realize they’re doing it to Jinu too, though.

She has to bite down on a semi-hysterical giggle when she realizes, leaning on her elbows at the kitchen island and watching Mira and Zoey bully him into making a grocery list. She loves her girls.

“I really don’t care,” Jinu tries to say, inching away from Zoey on the couch, but Mira steps over to his other side and traps him. “I’m grateful to eat whatever you have.”

“That wasn’t the question,” Mira says. “What do you like?”

Jinu’s eyes dart.

“Don’t say souls. It won’t put me off.”

“What foods did you like when you were alive?” Zoey presses—as the one holding the notepad, she’s the most immediate threat, but Rumi can already tell that Jinu isn’t formulating his plan of defense properly. He’s already let Mira box him in. Fatal mistake.

Jinu’s shoulders curl in slightly. “Everything I ate in the palace just tasted like ash after a while. And before that I was drinking muddy water out of ditches, and eating grass. So.”

“Awesome, that’s horrifying,” Mira says.

Zoey taps her chin with her pen. “You didn’t eat anything up here while you were with the Saja Boys?”

“We were busy eating souls.” Jinu says this like a gotcha. Rumi pities him.

“Clear your schedule for tomorrow,” Mira says, somehow even more severely than before. “We’re going to Mangwon market and you will be getting at least twenty different foods to try, all of which you’ll form an opinion on. Thirty if you test me.”

“I—thirty—” Jinu chokes, “we’re on hiatus, I don’t have a schedule—”

“No excuses then.”

Zoey squeals, vibrating in place. “Oh my gosh, this is gonna be so fun! We haven’t been to Mangwon market in forever! Jinu, you’re gonna love it, they have literally everything there.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” Rumi finally chimes in, smiling sweetly in the face of Jinu’s betrayed look. Zoey grins, gleeful; Mira crosses her arms smugly. “Maybe we can all try something new while we’re there? We’ve been cycling through ramyeon, tteokbokki, hotteok, and kimbap basically on repeat for the last month.”

Traitor, Jinu mouths, but he quickly holds his hands up in surrender when Mira glances back down at him.

Totally whipped. You and me both, she thinks.

Jinu is infuriatingly ambivalent about most of the foods they try, but even he can’t suppress the honest delight on his face when Mira forces him to try frozen persimmon. They buy an enormous bag of it. Rumi calls it a victory that he only protests a little bit.

A short list of things, new and old, that Rumi is learning to savor:

1. Sunshine on her bare skin.

2. The women's bathhouse. Zoey and Mira are mandatory.

3. Zoey's arms curled protectively around her in bed, when she can't sleep and her ears ring with nightmares.

4. Mira's steady hands cupping her jaw, angling it upwards to plant a kiss on her forehead.

5. Jinu's fingers laced with hers at the breakfast table.

6. Her own face in the mirror.

7. Her voice, honest and free.

8, and so on. Movie nights, songwriting sessions, cuddle piles on the couch, birdsong, napping against the tiger's side, all of it, everything, her loves, her life, herself.

The first time she hears Jinu laugh, it seems to bring everything to a standstill.

She's scrubbing a pan in the kitchen sink, because their dishwasher is no longer functional after Zoey mistakenly put a few non-dishwasher safe cups in there and they melted, destroying the interior racks. Whatever, it's good for them to go back to the basics every once in a while. Keeps them humble. Meanwhile, Zoey, the culprit, is sprawled out in a beanbag chair and plucking at a ukulele in the living room, eyebrows furrowed as she meanders through a new tune.

Mira meets Rumi's gaze and rolls her eyes fondly. She's snacking on a bag of peach gummies at the kitchen island, looking soft and rumpled in her oversized hoodie.

And on the living room floor, Jinu and the tiger are earnestly trying to figure out what a laser pointer is.

He's developed a fascination with turning it on and off, prompting the tiger to react with huge, dilated pupils and an enormous paw slapping down on the little red dot every time, before Jinu turns it off again and the tiger's eyes shrink back to normal, retracting his paw like nothing happened. On, off. The soft thump of paws hitting the carpet. Jinu is biting his lip, stifling chuckles. On. Off.

Rumi grins to herself as she rinses the pan, unable to tear her eyes away from the illegally adorable scene unfolding in front of her.

Zoey plucks a string with discordant twang. Jinu's hand twitches, diverting the laser's dot, and before anyone can react, the tiger pounces to catch it—in so doing, bumps the end table with a hard flick of his tail and sends someone's cup careening off the side in a spray of water, spilling all over the floor.

Everyone jumps, startled. Zoey yelps.

"Ugh," Mira sighs, "Nobody move, I'll get a towel…"

Jinu opens his mouth, but he gets instantly distracted by the tiger, who calmly pads over to the mess and, with full sincerity, begins to paw at the water puddle as if trying to scoop it back into the overturned cup. He radiates only mild confusion as to why the water is not acquiescing to his best attempts to fix it.

Rumi giggles, shaking soapsuds off of her hands. "C'mon, Jinu, he's getting all wet—"

Jinu makes a strangled noise. And then, without warning, he slaps a hand to his forehead and just laughs, a wild, helpless, nearly childish sound that wheezes on the way out like his body doesn't know what to do with it, his shoulders shaking and his patterns abruptly flaring with the same iridescent sheen as Rumi's own, and Rumi finds herself rooted in place, slack-jawed.

He laughs, and laughs, and laughs until he's gasping for air, doubled over and trembling with the force of it. His patterns shimmer like sunlight at the bottom of a pool. And when he calms down enough to heave a deep, pacifying inhale, he opens his eyes, sees the tiger still pawing at the water, and loses it again.

It takes Mira returning with a towel and giving him a hard thump of her fist between his shoulder blades for him to finally suck in a desperate, hitching breath. He wipes his cheeks, eyes streaming.

"Got it all out?" Mira deadpans, and Jinu nods, smile trembling with humor. "You're glowing, by the way."

"Oh. What—?"

"Woah, you're totally glowing," Zoey says.

"We match now," Rumi adds, when she remembers how to sound normal instead of lovestruck, like she hasn't been flash-banged by Jinu's happiness in all its raw and unrestrained glory, like it doesn't make her so, so proud of them both and how far they've come in such a short amount of time. It hits her all over again, the bliss of freedom—like a song that climbs and climbs and never comes back down.

Jinu stares at his shimmering hands, still smiling like he doesn't know how to do anything else. "… Huh."

With Mira mopping up the water, the tiger loses interest and wanders back over to Jinu, nudging him with his huge, unwieldy head so hard that he topples over backwards with a soft oomph.

"No, wait," Jinu protests, arms flailing, "I was going to do things today, wait—"

The tiger flops down on top of him and pins him to the floor. Jinu half-groans, unconvincingly.

Rumi dries her hands, steps around the counter, and comes to stand over Jinu, looking upside-down at him as he succumbs to the weight of a several hundred kilo spirit tiger. He looks exactly as pathetic from this angle as she'd hoped.

"Rumi," he pleads. "Help."

"Aw, but he loves you so much."

"His love is crushing my ribs."

"You'll live."

Rumi does crouch down though, close enough for his eyes to get big and round and his expression to sink into something shy, captivated by her nearness. She lays her hand over his own, where it had been rubbing the tiger's nose, and they both watch as their patterns begin to pulse and dance in a tantalizing rhythm together. Jinu's breath catches.

It's beautiful. It's all them.

She can hear Zoey and Mira making themselves scarce, giving them a moment to themselves, and is so grateful to them it burns.

To Jinu, she says, non-judgementally, "That's the first time I've ever heard you laugh."

"I don't remember the last time I…" Jinu trails off, disbelieving. "I don't know if I've ever laughed like that. Maybe not since I was a little kid."

Rumi's heart aches, but not in a bad way—like her heart is a ripe fruit and someone is massaging it gently, testing for a good one. She slides her hand underneath his, lacing their fingers together, and then brings their joined hands up to her mouth so she can press a light kiss to his knuckles. Instantly, both of their patterns flare bright yellow, rippling with undertones of green and white. The look in Jinu's eyes is overwhelming in its intensity. The tiger blinks at them, slow and placid.

"I'm happy you're here, you know that?" she says. Softly, but firmly. "Not just for me, but for you. I'm really glad you got a second chance."

"I am too," he whispers, like the words are too heavy for any other tone. "I would've died for you. I came so close—"

She kisses his knuckles again, eyes stinging a little. "I know."

He speaks in a rush, as if worried that she won't let him finish. "I'm glad I didn't. I like being alive. But—you gave me something so important, I didn't know any other way to give you something back. I didn't feel like I had anything worth giving, except my life, and my soul—I've spent so long just hating myself, wasting it, but if I could've given it to you—"

"Jinu," Rumi says, "Jinu."

"You gave me my soul back," he says wetly, squeezing her hand. "And now… I'm doing my best to take care of it."

"You gave yourself your soul back when you chose to have hope. No one made that choice for you. I just gave you a reason."

He drags in a shuddering inhale. The tiger somehow snuggles in even closer, grumbling gently. Rumi maneuvers herself to sit beside them more comfortably, propping herself up against the tiger's side, never letting go of Jinu.

She lets him collect himself in silence for a few minutes, and then hums, pulling his attention back. "I know what it feels like to waste your life wishing it was different. But there's nothing we can do about it now, except try to live, and make up for lost time. And for what it's worth… I think you're doing a good job." She holds his gaze, smiles fiercely, like she can impress this sentiment upon him irreversibly through sheer telepathy. Hell, no one like her has ever existed before—maybe she can. "I'm glad you didn't give your soul to me. I'm such a workaholic, you would've never known rest."

Jinu chuckles, quiet at first but then growing in strength, and then they're both laughing like children on the living room floor, holding hands, doing the bravest thing in the world by continuing to exist.

Thunder rumbles darkly outside, storm clouds louring over Seoul in a haze of pelting rain and brief, white-hot shears of lightning that flicker through their window curtains. Those same windows which they used to look through with grim resolution, watching acrid-pink patches eat up the fabric of the Honmoon, now covered with tall, draping curtains that keep the roiling dark at bay and the warmth of their space sequestered, safe.

Zoey and Jinu are bickering in the kitchen over how best to season the popcorn. They've thoroughly broken him of his reluctance to have opinions and it shows.

"You can't have a movie night without buttered popcorn, absolutely not," Zoey asserts. A bowl clatters against the counter.

Jinu groans. "Why are you so obsessed with putting butter on everything? Is that something they do in America?"

"Okay, maybe, but there's some things we got right over there and one of them is butter on popcorn."

"Yeesh. If you really care that much, why not just make your own and let us share the rest?"

"It has to be family style or it doesn't count."

"Now you're making things up."

"Am not, you're just a grubby demon with no respect for culture—"

There's a scuffling noise and a soft, muffled Jinu-ish yelp that has Rumi exhaling sharply from her nose with sleepy amusement. Mira, sprawled out beneath her on the couch, sighs.

Her hands are tangled in Rumi's hair, for once let down from her tight braid, and the scrape of her nails over Rumi's sore scalp is a decadent bliss the likes of which Rumi has never known. One of Mira's legs is hooked over her own, the steady thump of her heartbeat under Rumi's ear is a low, soothing rhythm, and her radiating body heat seems to sink into Rumi's every nook and cranny, melting the stiffness from her joints and making her whole body feel limp and heavy and swallowed up by Mira's protective embrace.

On the rug, the tiger is stretched out on its back in a dead sleep. The bird is nestled in the very center of its furry belly, also asleep.

"They're ridiculous," Mira mutters. Her fingertips massage Rumi's temples, relieving itchiness she hadn't even realized existed. "He really is an older brother."

"Probably wouldn't say that to him," Rumi murmurs, half-drifting under Mira's attentions.

"Tragic backstory?"

"Yup."

"Got it."

Mira's fingers travel and up down Rumi's head, working their way across all the places where her braid normally tugs and then some. She scratches along Rumi's hairline, thumbs briefly smoothing down Rumi's nose and cheeks. In the kitchen, Zoey gasps, loud and offended, followed by two distinct sounds: the shing of her shin-kal manifesting, and the warping woosh of Jinu's teleportation.

He appears on the floor next to the couch, crouched low enough that he's out of Zoey's direct sight. Rumi cracks open an eye, just to see the sheepish grin on his face. A hint of fang peeks over his bottom lip.

"Coward," Mira says.

Jinu ignores that in favor of settling in with his back against the couch, stretching his legs out towards the TV. "So, what are we watching?"

"Something overblown and anachronistic."

"My favorite."

Rumi closes her eyes again, letting the conversation wash over her. Turns out, she was right to avoid relaxing for too long all these years—now that she's given in to it, she never wants to stop. Mira's nails scritch scritch scritch over the nape of her neck in a way that feels indecently good. She'll never, even in her own mind, bemoan the feral cat treatment ever again. Her skin tingles with the shifting light of her patterns; nearby, Jinu slowly, carefully, leans back just enough to rest his head against her arm, despite the proximity to Mira's personal space that he normally doesn't encroach on. He's not quite at cuddle status with her yet.

But maybe someday. Rumi likes to dream of all her favorite people held close, love bleeding from the edges of all the soft spaces where they press together, like marbles tucked under the flat of her tongue. No conditions, nothing static.

Nothing can change, until your patterns are gone—until your memories are erased—until you're enough—until you're easier to handle—until—until—

That's the funny thing about change. Never has it ever asked for permission, nor waited politely, twiddling its thumbs, for you to be ready.

Zoey finishes buttering the popcorn to her satisfaction and joins them all in the living room, slotting herself next to Mira's head so she can easily reach over and feed her girls kernels during the movie. Mira takes her hand out of Rumi's hair just long enough to press play on the remote, and then she returns to that heavenly scratching, up and down, up and down.

None of them are quiet watchers, which suits Rumi just fine—she slips into a warm, drowsy haze as the other three gasp and jeer and argue over the events of the movie, some soapy historical drama that's easy to turn your brain off for. Jinu nitpicks every detail of the Joseon period even after admitting that he lived some two hundred years prior to when the film is set. Mira's voice vibrates in Rumi's ear, droll and familiar. She has possibly never felt this safe and comfortable in her entire life.

Which is probably why it takes Mira's hands stilling in her hair, a higher, questioning note entering her voice, for Rumi to realize she's also vibrating.

She blinks rapidly, coming down from her floaty headspace and settling back into her body, where a throaty, clicking sort of sound has begun to bubble up from her chest and spill out of her against her will. Mira's grip on her doesn't let her push herself up, but she does twist her head to bring a hand to her throat, pressing on her neck in bewilderment.

"What—" she rasps around the persistent noise, "what am I—?"

"Uh, I have no idea," Mira says. "You just started doing it."

"Oh my gosh," Zoey says, her eyes wide and bright and rapidly growing enormous with excitement, "are you purring?"

Rumi opens her mouth. The—the purr somehow gets louder, but it's not a purr that she's ever heard from street cats or even the tiger, but rather something airier, croaky, almost a bird's croon.

Mira says flatly, "This is the most adorable thing you've ever done. Please never stop."

"I don't even know why it's happening, I can't control it!" Rumi exclaims. Her eyes dart to the baffled demon boy sitting in front of her. "Jinu! Explain this!"

Jinu holds his hands up in surrender. "Don't look at me, I didn't know demons could purr."

"Why do we even keep you around?" Mira asks.

"Maybe it's like the pattern color thing," Zoey suggests. "Jinu didn't know what that was either because it's a feelings thing, and demons only know how to be angsty and sarcastic and tortured."

"It's plausible," Jinu concedes.

"So? How were you feeling when it started?" Mira asks Rumi, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. Rumi swallows, still absently rubbing her throat, but her earlier shock is fading into resignation; this might as well happen, and it wouldn't be the strangest development she's run into so far. Sure. Demons can purr. Demons purr when they feel really, really happy apparently. Two decades of repressing her demon side and all her emotions, and now it's taking revenge by plastering those emotions all over her, for anyone with eyes to see. Or hear.

Rude, Rumi thinks, and sighs. "Really good," she admits. She sinks back down to rest her chin on Mira's chest, pouting. The purr continues to leak out between her clenched teeth in huffy, forceful rumbles. "Your stupidly perfect head scratches did this to me."

"Mira has magic hands, it makes sense," Zoey says, nodding rapidly.

"You learn something new every day," Jinu says. He sits up, turning around and shuffling closer on his knees so he can brace his elbows against the couch, looking more closely at Rumi. She has the sudden and definitely too humiliating urge to whine "fix it" at him like a child, but she knows he never would, even if he had the ability, because he has never seen anything deficient in her, not from the very beginning.

And she doesn't hate the purr that much to actually ask. But it's—it's revealing, okay, and animalistic in a way that makes her a little uncomfortable, and she can't stop—

Jinu raises an eyebrow, mouth curling into a small, amused smile. "What's wrong? Are you embarrassed?"

"It's weird," she mutters, tipping her face forward and burying it firmly in Mira's chest. She can just hide here forever. Mira won't mind.

"Well, if being weird was that big of a deal, I definitely would've been kicked out a long time ago," Zoey says, in a casual way that belies years of baggage behind that word for her, and it gives Rumi the courage to pick her head back up, meeting Zoey's gaze. Zoey smiles at her warmly. "Rumi, it's okay. It's always okay with us."

"Yeah," Mira says. "Being weird is basically a requirement at this point. I wake up every morning and drink coffee made by a four hundred year old demon, and I can't even pretend to hate on it because it's insanely good every time. Some purring isn't going to break me."

"I still don't understand how you can master the coffeepot and not the smart fridge," Zoey says, to which Jinu scoffs.

"Boiling water and adding ground-up beans is not the same as an icebox that talks to you."

"You're so old," Rumi groans, but she's smiling, and still purring, and it doesn't stop even when Zoey starts to fervently explain the mechanics of the smart fridge for the nth time to a smug, stubborn Jinu, whom Rumi is pretty sure feigns ignorance about modernity half the time just to be an ass, and Mira keeps petting her hair, and the rain keeps drumming against the windows, and she continues to be okay.

Some weeks later, a different evening; this one slow and syrupy and bathed in dusky pinks and blues. They're in her bed, Jinu sprawled out across her sheets at the foot, Rumi sitting cross-legged against the headboard, strumming her guitar to the melody of a tentative new song. He seems content with this arrangement. Sunset seeps in through her windows, painting stripes of gold over his features.

His eyes haven't left her face in a while.

Of course he has his own life, as much as possible right now, and they don't spend every waking minute together, but he's always… oriented towards her, almost. Like she's his center of gravity. Every time she walks into a room, his gaze finds her; every time she speaks, there's something so active and attentive in his body language that tells her nothing she says will be inconsequential to him. In many ways, literal and metaphorical, it feels like he hasn't looked away from her since the concert at Namsan Tower, when she caught his eyes from across the wrong side of a sea of faceless demons and chose to walk towards him anyway.

He's said as much, in different words. How world-shattering that moment was for him. The choice between shame and hope, the familiar and the unknown—and the fear, when Gwi-Ma's flames came roaring down.

I'd forgotten what that felt like, he'd told her, while they were recovering in the infirmary. Being afraid.

You weren't afraid before that?

No. I was miserable, but not scared. And then you walked in, and… He'd ducked his head a little, eyes crinkling. I couldn't look away. I was so scared.

She'd gripped his hand, careful of the bandages. Are you still? Scared?

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be a little bit terrified, all the time, for the rest of my life.

That's fine. I think that's called being human.

Can I get a refund?

Nope, sorry, it's part of the package. You get a whole menagerie of new emotions to deal with now. You thought shame was bad? Love is a million times worse.

Jinu had laughed then. A little patronizing, a little pained, a little fond. I think that's what made it worse. That I loved them and left them anyway. … I don't know if I'm made for it. I definitely don't deserve it. Loving, or being loved—I just keep getting it wrong.

I don't think anyone is made for it, Jinu. It's not set in stone. It's a choice you have to make, over and over again, even when you mess up. And if Mira and Zoey say I deserve to be loved, after all of my lies and fuck-ups, then I say so do you. No refunds, no take-backs.

… Okay. I'm sorry. For everything.

I know. I am too.

It feels like it shouldn't be this easy.

Rumi had just breathed, in and out, staring at their joined hands in the dark. Maybe it should never have been this hard.

In the present, Rumi gives a breathy hum, testing a chord. The strings vibrate under her nails; strands of the Honmoon pulse and glister in the air, responding to the music, and finally Jinu's eyes do wander, if just to track the patches of Honmoon with mild awe.

They'll eventually have to figure out what the new colors mean for the sanctity of the barrier, but that is an issue for another day.

For now, there's only Rumi's voice, her quiet bedroom, her fingers dancing over the guitar strings. The Honmoon, singing. Jinu, barefoot and rumpled in her bed, watching her creation—watching her—like it's the loveliest thing he's ever seen.

She runs through a few more bars, tweaking things here and there and jotting them in her notebook, before setting the guitar off to the side. "Come up here," she says, patting the space between her legs. Jinu wastes no time, rolling over onto his stomach and shuffling up the bed in a way he probably thinks is suave but really just reads as charmingly puppyish. He readily accepts the invitation to settle himself between her thighs, sliding his arms around her waist and pressing his face into her stomach. His body goes limp the moment she hugs him back, as best she can from this angle.

He lets out a long, tired exhale. They haven't done anything today, not really, but he'd admitted to sleeping poorly the night before due to bad dreams, and sometimes, the malaise just can't be helped. The nightmares creep in. The shame rears its ugly head.

They cope as best they can, all four of them, but Rumi knows how heavy it is regardless.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks, rehashing the conversation they'd already had this morning. He hadn't wanted to then, but he seems to be on less shaky ground now.

Jinu doesn't move for a few seconds. Then he turns his head, just enough to speak and be understood. "It… wasn't a nightmare. Not really. Honestly, it was pretty tame compared to what I usually get." Rumi combs her fingers through his fringe, pushing it out of his eyes, then brings her hand down to trace his temple, the line of his jaw, the corner of his mouth. He leans into her touch; she presses her palm to his cheek. His eyes are closed. "It was a memory. My sister and I used to spin tops for fun. Something to do when I wasn't out begging. I mostly made her do it when it was cold out, to keep her hands from getting too stiff, but… we played it other times, too. That was all it was. Just some tops. And her laugh."

There's nothing to say to that. Rumi isn't sure Jinu wants a response anyways. She just keeps running her fingers through his hair, letting him press himself closer to her and hide, because she of all people understands the desire.

Outside, the sun slips below the horizon, casting her room in deepening navy shadows. They rearrange themselves, shuffling lower down the bed so she can wrap an arm around his shoulders and Jinu can curl against her side, and they both finagle the blankets up and over themselves, forming a warm cocoon where they're tangled up together.

Jinu noses against her collarbone, brushing his lips over the crooked patterns there. Something radiant and shivery flutters in her chest; she breathes out a rattling croon, throat vibrating with the happy sound.

She feels Jinu's chuckle ghost over her bare skin. "You know you sound like a pigeon when you do that."

"One of these days," Rumi threatens, "I'm going to make you feel so safe and loved that you start making dumb bird noises too."

"A terrifying prospect."

"Every demon's worst nightmare: being happy, and everyone thinking you're cute to the point of humiliation."

"You're not actually humiliated by the purring, are you? Because I think Mira and Zoey can telepathically sense when you're not happy." Jinu shifts closer, winding an arm tighter around her torso and flattening his hand over her spine.

She leans down and tips her cheek against the top of his head. "It's kind of embarrassing. But it doesn't upset me. It makes me really easy to read, and that still scares me. I spent my whole life lying about everything, constantly, that being honest feels like slicing myself open sometimes."

"Yeah. Mira was right to call it a mortifying ordeal," Jinu says, faux-glum. "I hate being healthy and growing as a person. Can we go back to being toxic?"

"That window has closed. Sorry to disappoint. It's only up from here."

"Ugh."

After a moment of calm silence, Rumi smiles and kisses the top of his head. His patterns instantly ripple with color, still so easily flustered after all these weeks of steady affection, doled out and accepted in turn like precious stones, and it strengthens the purr in her throat, makes her teeth tingle with it. Her Jinu.

"We're okay," she says softly, tightening the arm around his shoulders. "I can't believe it sometimes, but we did it. We're free."

"Yeah," Jinu whispers, voice catching. "Just like we said."

Their first song, shadowed by the secrets yet unspoken and the darkness on the horizon, but still something tender, something raw, for the people they were back then. A song they sang as a confession, but that was always, in truth, only a wish.

Night steals over them like the brush of a wing. Jinu's breaths even out, eyes slipping shut, and Rumi can't bring herself to wake him up just to tease him for the way he unwittingly begins to purr, low and hoarse, in his sleep. There will be plenty of time to make fun of him in the morning, when he can appreciate the irony properly, and of course Mira and Zoey will be delighted to hear all about it. Their three way operation get Jinu to purr like a kitten or possibly a bird—we haven't figured out how to classify it yet, only that it's extremely adorable has been stagnating for weeks now.

Rumi suppresses her laughter, cradles him close, settles in.

Only up from here.