Chapter Text
Zoey thinks, lying back against the paper covering of the cold examination table, while trying to ignore the sensation of inorganic equipment being lodged in places they have no god-given right to be, that this is, inarguably, the least sexy way to get knocked up.
Her eyes are glued to the white tiles of the ceiling as she asks, trying not to squirm. “So, Doc, um — how long does this usually take?”
“Not long,” the technician replies. She’s a matronly woman: hair graying, dark brown eyes softened with smile lines. “The worst of it is nearly over, but we do advise you to remain lying down for at least ten minutes after.”
“Nice. Gucci. But I actually meant: how many attempts before”— she moves her hand in a gesture mimicking the silhouette of her stomach much larger than it is now —“you know?”
“Oh.” The technician performing unspeakable things to her nether regions pauses. “Well, how long does it take a raindrop to wear down a mountain?”
“Ah,” Zoey grimaces mildly.
“These things take as long as they take," she's told, patient and tactful. "I would assume from the thorough screening you had previously, that it should not be too difficult for you. But nothing in life is guaranteed."
“Accept death and taxes,” Zoey adds in English under her breath.
She glances up briefly from her position between Zoey's legs, sitting upon a saddle chair, her eyes peaking out over the upper rim of her glasses. “Sorry?”
“Nothing, just something from… home,” she has not called it that for many, many years now. Her fingers flex at her sides, before moving to nervously smooth down the folds of the hospital-issue gown over the flat planes of her stomach. As though it will help to counteract her nakedness from the waist down, save only for the thin layer covering her hips and upper thighs. “Am I at least allowed to know the name of the person putting a baby in me?”
“My name is Hyunok,” she says with a gentle, amused smile. The crow's feet around her eyes splinter in a rather enthralling way that only softens her whole expression. “Though you need no introduction.”
Zoey lets out an awkward laugh. She wonders if it’s better or worse to be recognised by a health care provider while in such a compromising position, but she supposes there’s very few people in the country by now who wouldn’t. It’s why Rumi and Mira had recommended this place.
It’s a ritzy ass fertility clinic if ever she’s seen one. Apparently, they’d been having appointments here for years — it was one of the few places in Korea marketed toward clientele that would value more… discreet services. Every member of staff in this building probably has NDA’s around their necks pulled tight like nooses.
“You got a PhD, Hyunok?” She does not mean it to be rude, she is merely curious if the Dr honorific is correct or not in this instance. Zoey also thinks it would be funny if she could brag about her impregnator like that, and would like to see the look on her mother’s face at that announcement.
Hyunok smiles faintly, relocating her tools to the trolley beside her. The removal of pressure is a blessed relief. “No, just a modest twenty years in nursing. Do not fear. You are in safe hands.”
Zoey begins to sit, bracing her weight on her forearms, either side of her torso, realising, at the reprimanding look on the technician’s face, that she’s not supposed to be doing that yet, she lowers herself back down again penitently. She taps the pointed ends of her index fingers together. “Do I get a treat for being brave? You got any lollipops? Stickers?”
Hyunok says, snapping off her gloves, discarding them in a waste bin below the table, “With any luck, very soon, you will have yourself a baby.”
Ha.
Funny thing about that, actually.
Her throat feels tight all of a sudden, her palms both clammy and cold, and that odd, achy tingle reappears in the knuckle of her right hand ring finger.
Zoey feels no need to correct her. To explain that this kid she’s planning to grow is being done so with the full intent of being handed over at birth. Zoey is not good at guessing ages. She would peg the technician to be from within her own mother’s age bracket, and she knows the views amongst the older, more traditional population lean quite unforgivingly toward the carrying, birthing, and handing over of babies as a lesser form of abandonment. Blood is sacred, paramount. Yada yada.
Instead, she says, at the lack of treats, “Aw, man.”
Hyunok pats her knee kindly. “Get comfortable, dear, I will see if I can rustle something up.”
Zoey beams as she settles, then, after the door finally closes at the older woman’s exit, blows a raspberry toward the ceiling to dispel the jitters that have been lurking in her central nervous system since that morning.
That wasn’t so bad. Though she acknowledges that, should anything be silently taking root within her, it was only the very start of what would likely be a wholly uncomfortable and drawn-out process.
The foam of the table only partially gives way under her shoulder blades, even after her attempts at cajoling it into submission. Her eyes fall to the clock on the wall, watching the hands tick as they rotate.
Zoey isn’t really sure how she ended up here, in all honesty.
Well, she is. She can recount the steps chronologically. How Mira and Rumi had looked so god-damned defeated. How her big, stupid mouth had opened and volunteered, initially, and then had said yes to all of their concerned interrogations as to whether or not she was sure, like, really sure, one hundred per cent sure?
And now she’s said yes so many times and so adamantly that it isn’t as though she can suddenly back track and say, surprise! I am actually no longer willing to carry the baby you have been so desperately trying for because I think it would be a really super-duper bad idea! Sorry for getting your hopes up!
Why she had offered in the first place was the puzzle. Sure, it has been difficult watching her two best friends (who are married, though not to her) struggle to conceive for years on end. They’d begun discussions of adopting, or finding a surrogate, if it looked like the timeline would drag on too long. They had other options, though they might have to venture out of the country to get them. But then, Zoey had opened her world-renowned yapper mouth and offered up the rent-free services of her own uterus.
Perhaps, a part of her had assumed her body would have been as wrecked as either of theirs after the gruelling dual career that was being a member of Huntrix.
Rumi has always been a perfectionist. Mira is hardly any better, and for every hour the three of them had practised choreography together, their visual had spent another two coming up with the movements alone in the first place. They’d all suffered through the latter half of their adolescence unable to sleep — a constant worry at any hour of the day or night of the Honmoon strumming like an amateurly-tensioned harp. That unworldly, anxious thrum informing them of a breach, a tear, a threat to the human race that weighed heavily and solely on their shoulders.
There is only so much you can push and push and push before something gives out entirely. She had not expected to have fared any better.
Instead, the doctors had given her reproductive system a gold star, alongside a whole list of homework, diaries and next steps. A date had been booked for the initial procedure. Months and months had passed, but it simultaneously felt as though it was all happening in an instant.
Zoey had stared down the barrel of a gun, known a bullet was coming, and leaned her forehead into it anyway.
Rumi and Mira asked her if she wanted them here with her. In the room. In the hallway.
She’d decided against it. Partially, she didn’t want to see their pained faces if she did the sensible thing and chickened out. But also, while shivering in a flimsy, unflattering hospital gown, she’s never felt so unattractive in all her life.
They haven’t lived in the same household for a while now. It’s been a hot minute since they’ve been exposed to each other’s bare, bruised and broken skin. Since the mortifying ordeal of having a human body had been perceived by another person, let alone them. (Her brain does not count the clinician who had, until moments ago, been speculum deep within her private parts; her bedside manner had been impeccable.) Making them wait outside seemed a stupid use of their time. She’d told them she’d go on her own and text them after. Once it was done.
Which is how she finds herself alone in the now-empty room of Korea’s most prestigious fertility clinic.
There’s a 3D model of a baby in utero on the cabinets to her left. One of those interactive diagrams that cuts the poor person in half straight down the middle, but also pretends the rest of their body doesn't exist above the diaphragm or below the hips. As though the only parts that matter are the reproductive organs found in the lower section of the abdomen.
She knows she’s being fastidious. It’s not like they show every distal vein and capillary in illustrations of the heart; what would be the point?
So. Why is she doing this?
Isn’t it obvious?
Zoey had known she was a sapphic-leaning pansexual open to the possibility of polyamory since teenagerhood. She had assumed since their first meeting that if she were to say that chain of words out loud around either of the girls, they would have blinked at her dumbly. That they would have been as lost as those moments where she started speaking too fast and too slangy in English. Zoey, who, upon discovering Rumi’s demon heritage, had been prepared to offer up a piece of her very finite and fragile soul should it ever prove a necessity for Rumi’s long-term existence.
And, despite it all, she had watched her two best friends fall in love, get engaged, get married, all while she’d been sitting on the sidelines trying to cheer them on without letting her own heartbreak show.
But it’s fine! It’s okay! It’s not their fault they don’t feel the same way about her as she does about them. In fact, most normal people only have one committed partner at a time, it’s unfair to expect them to be open to the concept, even if they did like her back. They were already under so much pressure being Korea’s out and proud queer darlings.
It had been really rough for them, initially. To be so candidly out in the public’s eye. It was one of the very few things that had been easier, growing up in America.
Here, queerness was not something to be announced, paraded around with colourful banners and flags. It’s something to be kept closer to the chest. Something to be kept quiet.
They’d gone and done it anyway. They always had been braver than her, but they certainly didn’t need Zoey’s personal brand of weirdness making things more complicated.
They’d consulted her, before the statement, sat her down and asked if she’d be okay with the two of them coming out publicly. She hadn’t fully understood why she’d been involved with that decision. Until after the declaration, and she had watched, dread filling her veins, at the mass exodus of their online fanbase. Both their joint and individual follower counts had plummeted like a rock through water, and had continued to fall for days, weeks, until it slowed. Stopped entirely. A hefty fraction of their audience had been lost that would likely never return.
The label had very nearly dropped them, too.
Which would have been fine, they could have survived. The Honmoon was steady — which had been their whole purpose up to now anyway. They could have floated on their amassed wealth if they’d been willing to live modestly for the remainder of their days.
Zoey, who had only ever been worth what she was capable of producing, had always been terrified of what would happen to her once Huntrix retired. Yet, of the three of them, she’d ended up with the most unsevered connections.
Things were calmer now, settled, like a shoreline after the crest of a storm.
All that to say, her best friends had gone through a really rough fucking time of it. With a double whammy of the industry being its usual brand of ruthless, and their own bodies being woefully uncooperative in their personal pursuits. If Zoey has to bake her own nibbling, then she thinks it’s really the least she can do.
It’s not like it’s that big of a deal, really. Zoey has always wanted kids — wanted to experience every wonderful and disgusting moment of carrying and birthing and raising them. But more than that. She’d wanted someone to be able to have them with.
Maybe this is the closest she will get.
Eight years ago
Mira and Rumi’s relationship had started as it had gone on. In Zoey’s absence.
She’d told the girls little of her life and the growing pains of being raised in California. Next to nothing of importance had ever happened to her during her time in the States, besides the scattering of notebooks and lyrics she’d stockpiled into her suitcase like treasured family heirlooms when she’d made the initial journey over.
She’d been nothing. A nobody. A mediocre musician who doodled lyrics in the margins of her school workbooks, and who should really, probably get checked out for the strange lights she kept hallucinating in the periphery of her vision. Weren’t there types of brain cancers that could do that to a person? Diagnosis and treatment would likely bankrupt her family, so she wasn’t gonna worry about it unless it became an unignorable problem.
And then Celine had found her. Not because of a talent showcase, or a standing-ovation worthy audition, but because the Honmoon had summoned its most senior hunter all the way from Seoul to the back-end-of-nowhere US of A and had swirled and rippled with the rhythm of Zoey’s footsteps as she had crossed the street one morning.
Three weeks back in her childhood home, and she feels like that same girl all over again. It’s her mother's fiftieth, she’s doing her best not to be a shitty daughter, so she puts on her best game face and gets on with it.
On a whim, she’d asked Bobby to reach out, and that angel of a man had managed to get her a spot on a special edition of American Ninja Warrior. It’s been on her bucket list for a while. Mostly, it’s so she has an excuse to escape that god-damned house.
She knocks it out of the fucking park!
For a while, she’s on top of the moon, her shoulders are stinging from being clapped on the back by the other contestants, and her eyes are stinging because she’s a little bit starstruck by some of these people on set.
Then, she returns to the house she’d grown up in, and despite it being full of the amalgamation of her family tree, there’s not a single person interested in celebrating with her.
It’s too many people, honestly. The household is full to the brim, the living room, the kitchen, the garden. She recognises these faces. Not all fondly.
Upon her arrival, her mother immediately sets her to work. Prepping food, taking the trash out, and offering drinks like a good little maid. Which is fine! She’s not going to complain, she’s never been above a day of manual labour, she hasn’t forgotten her roots.
Eventually, a respite is granted, and she joins the assortment of cousins, siblings and grandchildren in the main living space. Zoey perches like a songbird prepared to take flight on the arm of an occupied love seat.
“Hey, Zo, nice to see you join us mere mortals,” Kat, a daughter of her mother’s sister, begins. She has a disgruntled eight-month-old girl in her lap that she’s attempting to settle.
Zoey, instantly smitten, beams at the baby, wiggles her fingers in greeting, and the infant immediately lights up in a bashful smile.
“Oh, whatever, someone’s clearly finicky today. Here,” Kat says, and then said child is being thrust in Zoey’s direction. She accepts without complaint. It’s not often she gets to interact with little kids, so she’ll take every chance that’s offered to her. “I’ve been needing to pee for hours.”
“Go. I’ve got her,” she says, taking the opportunity to sink into the prime spot of the chair now it’s unoccupied, content with the warmth and weight of a little body to hold onto. “Are you giving your mom a hard time?”
“Babahlabha,” she gurgles, reaching for the necklace sat against Zoey’s clavicle and attempting to put it in her mouth along with the rest of her fist.
“Oh, I know,” Zoey agrees. “You’re so right. But I don’t think you should be eating that.”
She pries it carefully out of tiny, precious fingers, and is grateful the only protest she receives is a short, “Ehh.”
“So, Zozo,” a voice begins, and its owner has her hackles rising worse than any demon she’s ever faced down. Alex (Eomma’s brother’s daughter) is staring straight at her with the eyes of a slaughterer to its lamb. “Your mom says you were here doing a movie or something?”
“Um, not quite, but yeah,” she lets the baby in her lap grab onto her fingers, pulling them at angles her knuckles were never designed to go. “It’s a special edition of Ninja Warrior. I have some clips, actually, if you want to see?”
Alex scoffs, and it feels like an old bruise pressed forcibly until the skin is blue and blotchy all over again. “Aren’t the specials supposed to be for celebrities?”
Zoey lets out an affirmative, insecure hum, leaning a cheek against the fine and wonderfully soft head of hair tucked under her chin. She takes a breath. Inhales the scent of baby, aloe and camomile unsteadily.
“She is,” It’s her seven-year-old, first-cousin-once-removed (she thinks) that stands at her defence, looking up from the blue and orange Nintendo Switch in his hands. Bless his heart. It has very little sway on the jury; she had, after all, begged the production to do it, rather than them scouting her.
“It’s K-pop, Milo, it’s like the Temu of the music industry. It kinda doesn’t count.” There’s multiple origins of snickering in the room, but Zoey’s not fast enough to figure out who they’d come from before they’ve died out again. Cut off like they know they shouldn’t, starting in the first place because they just can’t help themselves. “Anyway, Zo. We’d all been curious how your love life was faring on the other side of the pond. Any boyfriends? Girlfriends? Maybe one of each, you’re still into that, right?”
Zoey shakes her head, subdued, swallowing uncomfortably. “Idols aren’t really supposed to date.”
“Oh, is that the excuse you’re going with?” It’s followed by more muffled laughter, and a stern, reprimanding, Alex.
It’s been like this for as long as she can remember. As old as she gets, she’ll always be the youngest in her generation, little Zozo who talked too much, daydreamed too much, fell just short of expectations too much. Who laughed and fawned when she was shoved into the dirt, stood and brushed herself off every time, while ignoring the wet stinging in her eyes.
She wants to crawl into a hole in the wall and never come out. She wants to lock herself in her room with the light off. She wants to scream at them about demons that prowl the night, and Shin Kal summoned from the essence of her predecessors' songs, and how she’s saved their ungrateful asses along with the rest of the human race!
But she can’t do that. Not without coming across as alarmingly schizophrenic, so she says nothing at all.
By the end of the trip, she’s more than ready to leave. Bobby helps it happen a day early.
Zoey had flown commercial on the way out because it felt kinda weird to take the private jet to go to the States, where she would land and be largely unrecognised. Dolled in a bucket hat and a face mask, it’s not much of a challenge.
Returning was always such a hassle, bodyguards, private chauffeurs and black, shiny cars.
She feels like a young dog that’s tried to become best friends with the first porcupine it's ever met in its life. She just wants to go home, to the penthouse, snuggle up with her girls and show them the behind-the-scenes Ninja clips she’d managed to catch on her phone. She wants to brag about her time. She wants to hear them shower her in praises and tell her how amazing she did, how they knew she would. She wants them to gently pry all the quills out and hold her through it.
There’s music serenading the whole floor when the elevator finally draws to a stop, doors sliding quietly open. It masks the sound of her arrival.
She abandons her luggage near the entryway, slips her boots off and pads on bare feet across the expanse of the penthouse towards the kitchen. She can smell kimchi. Either the staff are cooking, or Mira has dismissed them, and she’s doing it herself (as she’s prone to).
She finds her by the stove, back turned and singing under her breath, herbs and spices and wooden spoons scattered around the countertop, an orchestration of a favourite meal.
Zoey snakes her arms around the taller girl’s torso, clinging to her back like a baby koala, and presses her forehead against the expanse of a well-defined trapezius there. She smiles weakly as Mira startles, before relaxing, in her grasp.
“Oh, it’s you,” Mira says fondly, turning, until they’re face to face (the perfect height for a chin to rest atop a head.) “How was Cali?”
Zoey lets out a long, guttural, exhausted noise from the pit of her stomach.
Mira laughs like the sunrise, Zoey can feel the vibrato of it through one chest cavity to the other, and the taller girl says warmly into her hair, “That bad, huh?”
Zoey nods feebly.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Mira asks, careful as always. Zoey wants to stay like this, to be held for an eternity and then some, to crawl into the taller girl’s ribcage and build a home there, to step onto her tip-most-toes and find Mira’s lips soft and warm and unsurprised against her.
You know, your usual, platonic girly things.
It’s such a shame they’re not into women, she thinks. She could lay herself at their feet, and she knows they’d not do a single thing about it. They never have before. She’ll take this, though; she’ll treasure every inch of affection she can pirate away from them for however long it lasts.
“Not right now,” Zoey mumbles into her unnie’s sternum, as arms enclose around her in turn.
Mira begins to talk, and she’s pressed so close that Zoey can feel the vibrations and the timbre through her body, “We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”
Zoey peels herself away, just enough to observe the apprehensive look on Mira’s face, the guilt that flickers there like the dying flames of a burnt-out matchstick. The taller girl’s attention is elsewhere, across the room, and Zoey rotates to find the third member of their group approaching from the direction of her bedroom.
Rumi’s wearing her floral-patterned gardening gloves, there’s soil on her knees, and a brush stroke on her cheek. She tends to her plants when she’s anxious, Zoey knows.
Mira continues, eyes on Rumi, before flickering back to their maknae, “There’s actually something… we wanted to talk to you about.”
“Me?” Zoey asks. She feels the pace of Mira’s heart rate against her skin, and knows this rhythm from their time in battle, on stage.
They both nod, and Rumi is looking at her with the same demeanour of someone who’d been left in charge of a pet goldfish and in that time span had managed to kill it. Mira switches the stove off, dims the music. And it’s that more than anything else that has Zoey’s own pulse spiking.
They sit her down, on the couch, amongst the cushions and the blankets, and the view of a city she loves more than anywhere else in the world.
“So, uh,” Mira settles, her attention flickering back and forth from Rumi to Zoey, as though she needs the bolstering of their leader to get this off her chest. “Something kinda… happened, while you were away.”
“With the Honmoon?” Zoey frowns. It’s been so secure since Namsen, the strongest it’s ever been.
“No, with—” Rumi starts, her patterns pulsing a nervous, shamed lavender. “With us.”
Mira visibly swallows. “We might have… uh, kissed. Started dating. While you were gone.”
Zoey blinks. Gears grinding in a system that's had far too many spanners thrown at it over the last few weeks. She clarifies, “Each other?”
“Yeah,” Mira nods stiffly. “Kinda a new thing, obviously, but we wanted to know what you… thought about that. Or, if you might want to, um…” She clears her throat, attempts to try again, before an exasperated hand runs over her face, and she groans. "Why is this so much harder?"
Zoey observes the pink-haired girl’s eyes flickering nervously between all three of them, and can’t help but think, God, the universe isn’t giving me much of a break right now, is it?
Zoey is taken aback for a number of reasons. Why on earth are they looking at her with a weird mix of expectancy and dread?
Do they think she’d be mad? Do they think she’d flip out and be a disgusting homophobe about all this? Surely she’d come out to them, right? At some point? She’d certainly been dropping plentiful hints since debut that she’d be open to something more, so perhaps the contributing factor this whole time has not been their lack of attraction to women, but their lack of attraction to her specifically.
And mostly. Wow.
It really had only taken a few weeks of her being out of their way, absent from their shared living space for the first time in years, for them to finally find each other like that. Huh.
None of this articulates in a way her brain can get out of her mouth, so instead what comes out is a thoroughly disbelieving, “You're gay?”
Mira flinches almost imperceptibly at this, then nods, her fingers flexing out from where one hand had gone ghostly white as a fist in her lap.
Rumi inputs shyly, her patterns an aurora borealis of blues, reds, pinks. “Bi, for me, specifically.”
“Oh,” Zoey says. The knuckles in her hands feel sharply achy. “Uh. Alright, that’s… awesome."
Rumi’s shoulders have yet to untense. “Are you— Are you okay about this?”
It made perfect sense, really, the pop star princess and the chaebol heiress — who were both insanely and utterly flawless and had been since the minute they were born. Who had both been someone, even before Huntrix.
Mira, who’d had the wealth and connections to have ended up a model, a dancer, if the Honmoon had not hand-picked her. Rumi, who would probably have ended up as an actress or something. They were too perfect not to have found themselves under the warm beams of a spotlight. And Zoey. Who would still be in Burbank, who would still be not much of anything at all.
Of course, they would end up together.
They’d just needed her out of the way.
Zoey remembers herself, smiles brightly, heart ripping into shreds. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“We don’t want it to be weird. Or for you to feel uncomfortable, or for you to think that this has to change anything between the three of us that you don’t want to change, just because the two of us want, where kinda hoping—” Mira starts.
Zoey promptly cuts her off with an unstoppable giggle. “Are you kidding? No, this is great, I’m super happy for you! Don’t worry about it. It won’t make anything weird. Pinky promise.” She settles her breathing, offers her most dazzling smile.
Rumi’s face is pinched as she says, in very much the same way they often had since their debut, “And you know we love you too, Zo?” As they always have, as they always will do.
“So much,” Mira adds.
Yeah, she thinks, just clearly not the way you’re capable of loving each other.
Zoey replies with an air of finality she doesn’t want either of them to dissect too far, “I know. I love you guys, too. I just, um, think I’m going to go to bed. Now. I’ll leave you two love birds to your dinner. I, um, I already ate on the plane.”
She stands, leaves, goes straight to her room to crawl and bury herself under bedsheets that have gone cold and stale from lack of use.
— — —
Zoey wakes and stares at the ceiling. The pressure sitting over her chest cavity from the last few weeks is immediately present, and when she remembers the events of last night, the weight of it seems to grow exponentially.
She feels like an ass.
Last night was probably really scary for them, had likely taken a lot of bravery on their part, not just because of the queer thing, but because they would have known coming out about being together would have put Zoey in a compromising position. The last remaining of a third. She knows Mira, knows Rumi, knows they’ve always hated to make her feel left out.
The three of them had always existed in this liminal space between romantic and platonic, for so long she’s chalked that down as what happens when three girls share a life, a home, and an undercover existence as the frontline between the demonic realm and the land of the living. But now there exists a line. A spoken division between what the two of them are, and what she is not.
She can’t have them thinking she hates them for it, that she doesn't support them with her whole being. It’s making her feel like she has hundreds of worms in her stomach, chewing on her decomposing insides. She’s proud of them! She is! Having the guts to do that always deserved, in turn, unconditional support.
They’d made their choice. Taken first pick to bat, and it hadn’t been her for either of them. She needs to respect that.
She’ll be alright, though.
She’ll get over it eventually.
Two weeks. Fourteen days. Three hundred and thirty-six hours since she’d had her legs spread in a clinic in South Daejeon.
Zoey stands with her fingernails drumming against the hardwood of her bathroom counter, a little white stick on its surface with the display screen facing downward so she doesn’t have to look at it while her phone counts out five whole minutes. It’s overkill, but she wants to be sure it’s done cooking.
She cleans her apartment in the meantime, fidgeting and restless. She’s shocked, honestly, that neither of them has reached out to badger her yet about the results — they’ve been as quiet as a held breath the last few weeks. The message she’d sent to relay that the insemination had gone by without any hiccups had been received with two hearts, and three dots that had come and gone for the following couple of hours before settling on no further response at all. It was as though it had become a topic that would not be named for fear of jinxing something delicate.
She’d been bracing for the questions every time they’d met. Studio sessions. Fan meets. Do you feel any different? No. Nauseous? No. Tired, achy? Also no. But as plentiful as the list of her expected inquiries, what they had asked her had simply been an unwaveringly earnest, “How are you doing?”
To which she had showcased two thumbs up and said, “Good. Fine, peachy.”
Right now, she was overly confident about what the result would be. Nothing at all had changed, so nothing at all could be changing. Weren’t people supposed to feel something by now, know something was up? Certainly, neither Mira nor Rumi assumed it would happen any time soon. They’d have been on her back chasing a result otherwise.
She’s halfway through reorganising her bathroom cabinet — and she really needs to remember to stock up on toothpaste, but not the kind she got last time because they must have changed the recipe, the flavour was off — when the alarm from her phone suddenly blares through the small room. The back of her head smacks against the cabinet door as she startles.
“Fuck's sake,” she mutters under her breath while rubbing it better, moving to absentmindedly flip over the test. She’ll get a negative. Probably the doctors were wrong. One of her cousins was told she’d struggle to conceive and then had popped out four kids in quick succession; they could be wrong in the inverse as well, she supposes. But also, like, it was the first attempt, what were the—
At first, she thinks it’s a consequence of knocking her head. She’s staring at the display, but that can’t be right because…
Oh.
Oh fuck.
Okay. Wow.
This isn’t really a revelation she wants to face alone, and after all, it’s not really her revelation, so she taps out a message (are you home atm?) and is already calling her driver before they even have the time to reply. She’s not sure if it’s unsanitary or not to bring the stick.
She brings it anyway.
— — —
Despite her departure, the Huntrix tower remains somewhere she spends the majority of her working hours. Their studio is here, both dance and recording. The gym too, and their expansive work wardrobes. This place is contracted into her god damned veins.
It’s the living quarters that are a reminder of nostalgia. But this isn’t work. This is personal, family, they can’t have this conversation anywhere else.
Zoey had thrown an outfit on in haste. She was ruminating on the sanity of that now. A knit sweater two sizes too large, skinny jeans with rips and tears that hadn’t existed when she’d first bought them, and sneakers that had originally been a brand deal that had moulded so perfectly to the outline of her feet over the years that they’d become her go-to kicks for dressing down.
Should she have glammed up a bit? Tidied her hair at least? Had she even done anything to it at all since waking up this morning, or had she actually rolled out of bed and simply tied it out of the way? Zoey can’t recall. God, had the mirrors in here always felt so judgmental?
She tries to settle her erratic breathing as the elevator ascends to the highest floor.
For the first time, she feels dizzy, and she can’t distinguish if it’s the rapid change in altitude, the stress of the impending situation, or the natural consequence of having the beginnings of a tiny human implanted in her uterine lining. Zoey’s going to go with all three.
The sinking feeling under her feet as the elevation slows makes her pulse pick up, and her ears pop. The usual chime sounds to announce her arrival, and then the doors slide open noiselessly. She doesn’t step out immediately. She thinks she deserves a medal of valour when she finally does.
They are not waiting by the entryway. There is no ambush. A tea set sits assembled and steaming on the kitchen island, and the two are perched on barstools on opposite sides like it’s breakfast on a random Saturday — but they’re watching her with the rapt, devoted attention of a believer to a prophet. She’s finding it hard to return their gazes.
“Hey,” Mira greets casually, one fleeting hand clasping around the chamber of the locket tied around her neck. It’s recognisable enough by now. Silver, heart-shaped, with a triad of swirling patterns branching out from the centre. Either they both have one of exactly the same design, or they religiously took turns wearing it. It had appeared around the same time the two had gotten engaged.
They’re dressed impeccably as always, like they’ve just stepped out from a photo shoot.
“Hi,” Zoey returns, the warmth in her voice a well-practised disguise.
Ever the polished host, Rumi offers, “Would you like some tea?”
The waver in both their voices is telling.
Zoey sits. Across from Mira, aside from Rumi.
“It’s decaffeinated,” Rumi confirms, as she reaches for the pot, nearly knocks it over, before successfully pouring the contents into three individual mugs. Mira’s is purple. Rumi’s is pink. Zoey’s is covered in turtles, and she’d think she’d forgotten to pack one when she’d moved if not for the fact she’s well aware they’d gone and bought a replica of one of her favourites to keep at theirs on hand. “Not that I wanted to assume or anything, I just thought…”
“Thank you,” Zoey says pleasantly, wrapping her lithe fingers around the warmth of the ceramic and bringing it up to her mouth. The steam tastes like raspberry leaf. It's odd they’d still keep a stock of this since the two of them have no real fondness for it. It’s her favourite with a drop of honey.
Zoey does not rush her first sip, lets herself mellow in it, it’s over too quickly anyway. “So…”
The two of them wait, patiently, quietly, as they always have been with her, as though if only they were to give her enough time, something truly monumental would come out of her mouth. More often than not, it was nonsense that followed, though, historically, they’d never seemed to mind.
Unfortunately, her brain suddenly throws up an error 404, and her jaw is being remarkably stubborn about letting her get words out. The mug clinks against the countertop as she places it down, and her hand is moving towards her back pocket where she’d stuffed the pregnancy test encased within a face towel.
She unwraps it like a present from its bundle, centre stage between them, confirming the pink plus sign is sunny side up before her line of sight flickers back towards their faces.
A few seconds pass before Mira lets out a startled, disbelieving, "Oh my god," and slaps a hand over her own mouth. Rumi’s just staring at it. Staring, staring, staring. Zoey begins to wonder how much of the knot growing in her forehead is envy or awe.
“So, congrats,” Zoey beams joyfully at them, “I know it’s early, but—“ she’s cut off when a body suddenly collides with hers. She recognises the preceding squeak of a disturbed barstool only after the fact that she’s being pulled onto her feet and into someone’s warm embrace. Strong arms wrap around her midsection and hold her firmly, desperately, hands pressed flat against the planes of her back, pulling her impossibly close. Her own slot around Rumi’s neck because there’s nowhere else for them to go with this little space between them.
She can feel a heartbeat that isn’t her own against her chest. Feels the warmth of another human seep through her sternum in much the same way the tea had. Feels her ribcage shake with the echo of a single, choked laugh. Rumi’s hugs had always been something sacred. But has she always smelled this nice? Jasmine, magnolia, and something else sweet and edible, like marshmallow?
“Sorry. Sorry, I should have…” Rumi fusses, pulling back instantly, though her hands fall to linger on Zoey’s forearms, her wrists, before Rumi notices what she’s doing, and drops those too. “I should have asked first. Was that okay?”
Zoey hates that they’re at this stage now, that the boundless familiarity they’d once had is gated by permission. It’s her own fault, she knows. “Of course.”
Rumi returns to her seat, collapses into it, and it appears as though it’s not quite where she expects it to be, since it was thrown backwards in her haste.
“God, Zo. I don’t even know how we can begin to…” Mira lets out a shaky breath of air, her eyes shining like pure starlight. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Zoey says. “I’m only getting started.”