Perfect Hex 🏳️‍⚧️

Mira thankfully has plenty of long sleeves in her closet; she runs cold. But of course, there are no high collars. Mira has such an elegant neck; there's no reason for her to hide it. Rumi has to rummage through the winter closet for a sufficiently light scarf. It's going to be a challenge in this heat. 

It's okay. Rumi loves a challenge. 

She's just finished covering everything when there’s a frantic knock on the door. 

“Rumi,” her own voice says urgently. Fuck, that's weird. “Rumi? Are you in there? Are you okay?”

“I'm okay!” she calls in Mira’s lovely, luxurious voice. Fucking weird. But also nice. “You can come in.”

Rumi's body spills into the room, with Mira’s effortless feline grace. The relief is crystal clear in her own face. And then Rumi is being swept up and squeezed firmly in her own arms. It’s—kinda nice. 

Rumi laughs. It sounds so good in Mira’s voice. “Hi. I'm okay. You okay?”

Mira nods against Rumi's neck, and Rumi feels an inappropriate surge of delight at being taller. “You run so fucking hot,” Mira grumbles, still holding on tight. “How are you not dying in these sleeves?”

Rumi takes a breath. The patterns are on her. They're in her. They're a mark of her inhumanity, her inherent corruption. 

No matter her current form, they shouldn't be on Mira. 

Rumi forces herself to laugh again. “Sorry. I guess I have weird temperature regulation. Wanna grab something from here?”

Mira lets her go with clear reluctance. Rumi feels guiltily gratified. 

“You used to have normal summer shit too,” Mira complains as she raids her own closet. 

“Yeah, I donated them, sorry.”

“Hm.” Mira shoots her an assessing look. “Can I..?” She gestures at herself. 

“Oh! Yes, of course! Let me—should I turn around?”

Mira’s look turns condescending. “It’s your fucking body.”

Rumi makes herself laugh again. “Haha. Right.” She doesn't look away as Mira peels Rumi's sleep shirt off Rumi's body. 

Except—it isn't. Rumi’s body. It has never looked like that, not ever. Smooth and clear and unmarked. Human, human, human.

So much more right, under Mira’s stewardship. 

She wishes—

Never mind. 

“That's better,” Mira says quietly as she pulls on a cropped top, and Rumi can't help privately agreeing. 

Incredibly relieved, though she’s still trying to be respectful, not to see anything. No scars, no needle marks, no nothing.

Of course, Rumi has fished out a longsleeve and a a scarf from Mira’s closet already, so. There’s that.

(It’s not even—it’s one of the ones she breaks out in late fall. Mira’s probably going to have to do some kind of insane shenanigans to point out the silk scarves she sometimes uses for her hair can very much also cover a person’s throat without Rumi going fight-or-flight at the slightest implication that someone might’ve noticed her weird modesty shit. Fuck.)

“The braid feels weird,” she says instead, pulling it out of the shirt collar. “It’s like I have a whole counterweight to everything I do.”

Rumi smiles a little, the expression small but certain and so clearly Rumi despite being on Mira’s face that it sends a shiver of confusion down her spine. “I guess I don’t really think about it.”

“No, but you remember Zoey’s whole idea about putting spikes in it?”

That earns her a laugh, and it’s so weird to see her face doing things—doing Rumi things!—that she kind of wants to hit something. Possibly her-slash-Rumi’s face.

…She thinks that’s called cuteness aggression.

Unfortunately, in the beat of silence afterward, Rumi’s expression settles back into this—this quiet, sad, earnest longing look that Rumi does, the one like she’s seeing something really wonderful (usually when she’s seeing Mira and Zoey being awesome, really) and she just knows she isn’t allowed to touch.

Mira hates it, because Rumi very much is, but she never just stops being a coward and does.

She doesn’t know what triggered it now, but she does know the feeling is less ‘bite you because I love you’ and more ‘bite you until you stop being dumb’.

“Maybe someday,” Rumi says. “We should probably go get her either way though, huh? Make sure she hasn’t been swapped with some demon.”

When they came into her field of view, Zoey glanced up at them, then back to her notebook; then her eyes snapped back to them and she pulled her headphones off while looking back and forth between them.

"Holy shit, did you guys do a Freaky Friday somehow?"

"It's Tuesday...?" Rumi asked tentatively.

"No, I mean, did you swap bodies?"

Mira and Rumi stated at her out of each other's eyes.

"How--?"

"Oh, come on. You--" she pointed at Rumi in Mira's body, "‐‐are making a classic Rumi-face. And you--" pointing at Mira in Rumi's body, "‐‐that is totally a Mira stance. We've been living in each other's pockets since we were sixteen, you think I don't know how you move?"

"Oh," said Rumi quietly. "I thought this would be harder to explain."

"How did you do it? Why did you do it? When is it my turn? I wanna be able to reach the top shelf for once."

Mira rolled her eyes--Rumi's eyes--"We didn't do it on purpose. And we don't have any idea how it happened."

"Oh." Zoey's eyes drifted to Rumi's sleeves and scarf, then quickly away. "Hey, um, Rumi, could you fetch me, um, my other headphones from my room? These ones are dying."

"You want headphones? Now?"

Zoey made maknae eyes, which had their usual effect, and Rumi sighed and walked away, and boy was Rumi's walk with Mira's legs weird to see but--Zoey grabbed Mira's arm and hissed, "Well?"

Mira whispered back, "I haven't really looked, I don't want to be a creep, but--" she held out one arm "‐‐no scars, no tracks, nothing I can see. And the first thing she did in my body was cover it up. I guess maybe it's just a Rumi-thing?"

"Huh. Still--thanks, Rumi!" Apparently Rumi's ability to move silently went with her and not her body. "Thanks! So, um, this is wild, huh?"

How it all began: