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Much like that time Zoey had tried to learn how to drive and realised that in turning her head, she should not at the same time turn the wheel, it had been a bit of an accident.
It was just that Zoey had only been, like, fifteen when Mira had first introduced herself to her, okay, she’d been practically a baby, and literally five days after she came out to her mom about maybe liking girls a bit more than she should, she’d been whisked away to K-Pop Demon Training Camp Hell to learn about demons and magic singing and soulmates, and when she’d met said soulmates…
Her brain had been a bit too full of demon lore to remember anything they had said during their introductions; she'd very stupidly asked Celine if there was anything she could do before she made it to Korea to prepare, and had received a reading list longer than Rumi's hair and Mira's legs put together. She’d spent the entire plane (and car, and train, and taxi) ride over trying to cram it all into her brain. So if this whole situation was anyone’s fault, it was Celine’s fault, really, and Zoey was going to stand by it.
Rumi said Zoey hadn’t been listening because when she’d seen Mira’s face for the first time, her brain had lost the ability to connect to the rest of her nervous system, which was maybe also partially true? It was really hard to separate how full of everything her brain had felt from the buzzy, alarming THIS IS AN IMPORTANT MOMENT feeling of meeting them for the first time — and Mira’s face was spectacular, one of the top two faces in the world, actually, so there were plenty of reasons, okay.
It was completely understandable — don’t listen to Rumi, stop laughing Rumi — that for the first two to three weeks of knowing Mira, Zoey maybe, just maybe, hadn’t been able to ask, because it would be too awkward, obviously, and then too much time had passed, and she just hadn’t heard it at first, okay, and—
Yeah. So she’d spent about the first month she’d been training alongside Mira not quite knowing what her name was.
She’d done all sorts to try and figure it out — dragging them out to get Starbucks (she didn’t even like coffee, and that had been a whole other thing, Mira had started buying her coffee which Zoey then had to drink, and it had taken two years to figure out how to make her stop), setting up an excuse to introduce Mira and Rumi to a new P.A. and hoping Mira would tell them her name herself (the P.A. had said Zoey was the kindest person in Sunlight Entertainment, and even now, six years later, Zoey still woke up writhing in guilt over it), actually reading the paperwork that Celine had sent across and feeling far too happy just to get the first initial of her name. She'd spent about two weeks trying to puzzle it out from Mira's signature and called her ‘M, like in James Bond,’ getting no more than a blank stare, which had resulted in a movie marathon that was now a yearly tradition.
So she'd done everything humanly possible to find out, and therefore was not at all to blame.
Or. Well. She’d done everything except maybe actually asking Mira what her name was.
At first, it had been a desperate way to refer to her that wasn’t waving in her general direction or sprinkling an English ‘you guys’ into her Korean, as if the constant stream of nicknames she threw Mira's way were just phrases she liked too much to swap out for the correct language.
She’d started calling her unnie with a rapidity that was entirely inappropriate, but thankfully, thankfully, Mira had just tilted her head at her and said, “Sure, little maknae,” in a way that had made her blush so violently that Rumi had dropped her saingeom on her own foot, she was laughing so hard at them.
“It’s Mira, by the way,” Mira had said, finally, when Zoey had drifted past calling her unnie to Girin or Kidari and on to Red Sonja, which Mira had seemed oddly pleased by once she'd figured out what it meant.
Zoey had looked at her, mouth agape, seeing the flash of light and turning to look at Rumi, who had been ready with her phone camera — assholes, what absolute menaces to have planned that, that had been a straight up attack.
“Rumi and I had a bet on how long it'd take you to ask,” Mira said, with a lazy grin, lips pinked with camera-ready make-up, and even then, even after being purposefully bullied by the both of them — how dare they treat their maknae this way — Zoey had wanted to kiss her and hit the laughing Rumi around the head both in equal measure.
She'd done neither, just pouted at Mira until she raised both arms for a hug that already felt natural, despite weeks of Mira trying to keep a careful distance; a distance that Zoey had just as carefully dismantled. “It felt like the joke was going to stop being funny, soon,” Mira said, holding her close, and her laugh at Zoey's only half-affected grumble was soft and affectionate, and if Zoey had hidden in her shoulder for longer than necessary to cool her face, probably only Rumi noticed.
Rumi had gifted the photo to them in fridge magnet form, several years later.
Zoey had tried to shift it to the side, but somehow it always seemed to find its way back to pride of place, centre of the fridge, a suspiciously exact number of inches above her own eyes.
Anyway, all of this was to say that Mira wasn't used to hearing her name from Zoey's lips. In front of cameras, Zoey played the good maknae, calling them both unnie with a respect that went out the window as soon as the doors closed behind them, reverting straight back to calling Rumi by her name (which both of them preferred — one time Zoey had called Rumi unnie in private to make fun of her, after she had started a slightly too intense lecture about the impact of keeping her phone in her bedroom on her sleep hygiene, and Rumi had actually gasped in outrage).
She dropped back into calling Rumi by her name as soon as they were in private, begging Rumi to make them pot noodles because Rumi made them best (Rumi had stopped complaining that the instructions were right there on the packet at least three years ago), but instead of using Mira’s name she called her her favourite skyscraper when she reached for the mugs in the top of the cupboard; called her jagi when she propped Zoey's head up against her chest and ran her fingers through her hair as they settled into their post-show comedown. Rumi looked over at them with that fond little crinkle at the corners of her eyes, flopping down on the armchair opposite to let them settle into each other, chiming into the conversation, because she was part of almost every moment of their lives, then stretching and leaving for bed with a knowing little smile when Zoey’s hand maybe sort of accidentally went under Mira’s shirt, because there was just one aspect of their relationship that Rumi wasn’t part of.
(Zoey had thought, sometimes, that maybe… she’d caught Rumi looking at them almost wistfully, fiddling with her sleeves, almost looking like she wanted to say something that she never found the words for. But just as Rumi had never pushed Zoey to add her rapping into their repertoire, waiting for Zoey to be comfortable with bringing it forward, just as Rumi had never pushed Mira to drop the spiky attitude with them, waiting for Mira to soften herself, they would be patient with her, with each other, always. They were too fundamental, too vital to rush.)
So Zoey called Mira by pretty much everything other than her actual name, except, sometimes, very occasionally…
Which brought her right back to the learning how to drive thing. The first time that she'd realised what using Mira’s name did to her had been a total accident.
A flashing crown of bright pink hair was all that Zoey could see of her. She’d been stretched back on her bed, enjoying the hell out of herself, but then Mira had slowed, teasing, drawing out the orgasm that Zoey had been happily on her way to, and Zoey had said (well, maybe whined, but this was her story, so she said it completely firmly and stoically, actually), “Babe, what the fuck.” And Mira had laughed into her vagina, which was offensive as fuck — girlfriends’ vaginas were not for laughing at. Which Zoey had reminded Mira of by pulling her further into her, getting a hum that was less laughter and more approval, but zero speed increase. “Jagi, hurry up,” got her nowhere, and it was with no small amount of frustration that she finally said, “Please, Mira.”
Dimly, Zoey registered that Mira was making a filthy sound into her. Vaguely, she noticed that Mira’s hips had jerked, followed by a hand lifting from the firm hold of her thigh and sliding down the front of Mira’s own underwear. But both of those things were overtaken in the moment by the immediate way Mira’s mouth started working overtime against her.
She came five times. Mira had strapped her brain out of existence, and it was still, at least two years later, one of their top ten nights together.
She’d remembered it a few weeks later when she could tell Mira was still in her head, still thinking a little too hard about something that wasn’t the movement of Zoey’s hands on her body and the kisses she was pressing into her skin. Saying her name had been like a switch being flicked. Mira had growled, bucked up into her fingers, flipped her onto her back like Zoey was nothing more than a happy little fish, and made it very clear that she was no longer thinking about anything but Zoey.
She’d maybe used it a few other times, to good effect. Never too much, never taking advantage, because with great power comes great responsibility, and all of that. But she’d used it often enough that…
Yes, look, okay, so. She’d maybe accidentally pavlov’d her girlfriend into getting turned on when she called her by her name. Accidentally! A little bit.
Which was not at all a problem until Zoey found herself in front of a variety show host who had just announced a role-reversal game, with no small amount of glee at whatever Zoey’s face was doing to hear it, regretting every life choice that had brought her to this moment.
Zoey was (panickedly!) installed on a throne, a sparkly tiara placed between her space buns, and told she was supposed to get her ‘own back’ on the other two by forcing them to run errands for her.
And they were supposed to call her unnie.
And she was supposed to call them by their names.
Rumi was normally very good at getting them out of anything they wanted to keep from having to show the public, but this was the one weakness of Mira’s that Rumi had no reason to know, and Zoey's manic attempts at beaming the word HELP by various Honmoon, morse code, frantic telepathy methods of communication weren’t getting her anything but a confused look and an encouraging nod, like Rumi thought she was worried about their stupid brand, and not the inevitable future state of her (secret) girlfriend’s vagina.
She started by just instructing Rumi, until the host made a joke about how Rumi must ride her hard (the phrasing!!) if she was so focused on getting her own back on their leader, and Mira drawled, “Yeah, unnie, don’t you remember all the times I’ve asked you to get something for me?”, dissolving into laughter like she wasn’t perfectly aware that a) Zoey got shit all for Mira, Mira barely let her lift a finger she was princessed so hard (forced into the princess life! Completely against her will!), and b) that she was actively participating in the method of her own downfall.
“Fine,” Zoey said, as sweetly as possible, giving a pained look to the camera that was only partly for effect. “Please can you slice some apple for me, Mira?”
Mira’s eyes widened, a splotchy flush creeping up her neck as she turned to grab the knife, and as the host crowed at their expense, she scowled at him with a fierceness that was well past appropriate for TV. Rumi cast Mira one of the subtle looks that only the two of them — and maybe Bobby — knew meant please fix whatever you are currently doing before it becomes a PR nightmare, and Zoey dramatically crossed her arms, drawing the attention of the cameras back to herself.
“This is so weird,” Zoey said, pouting. “I thought I was going to enjoy this, but I don’t think I do.”
Mira came over with her apple, her public-facing persona firmly back in place as she swished her hair so the cameras could better see her face and said, “Here you go, unnie,” and handed over a plate, brushing her fingers across her wrist deliberately.
Zoey’s coo was entirely involuntary. The apple slices were arranged into a heart, and Mira’s smirk was deadly.
What a lovely asshole. Zoey tossed her a quick finger heart with one hand as she happily picked up one of the apple slices and bit into it. Mira rolled her eyes, but there was a real smile tugging its way past her smirk.
Thank god Rumi cottoned on to something happening, because despite throwing them a confused look that meant we are talking about this later, with Rumi’s help Zoey managed to stay away from saying Mira’s name more than one more time — which made Mira’s eyes flash with a heat that made Zoey very happy she was sitting down, because she had to clear her throat twice to be able to speak, and her legs felt wobblier than her voice.
“Glad that’s over, unniedeul,” Zoey said, placing the crown with mostly fake reverence on Rumi’s head before throwing her arms around both of them, feeling them laugh against her and their hands tighten around her, lifting her to her tiptoes to rest most of her weight against them.
Rumi stepped away to hand the crown back, saying a few words to their host as the game show wrapped up, leaving Zoey inside the happiness of Mira’s arms.
“That was more fun than I thought it’d be,” Mira said, her voice a lovely, low rumble that was just for her, before she said, loud enough for the boom mic above them to pick it up, “We wouldn't be Huntr/x without you, our little maknae.”
Mira's face was always getting her into trouble, was the thing. Right now, she was looking at her like she was the best thing on earth, like she always deserved to wear a crown. It was a face that made her forget to listen, or look, or remember things that probably should have been important to remember, like how many people were watching, and the number of cameras around her, and that she was probably not supposed to lean in to—
Look, okay, so she’d maybe, just maybe, forgotten that she had a bit of a weakness of her own. Because Mira didn’t often call her her maknae, either.
There were about 42 NDAs signed that day, and a good 3 minutes of video erased.
But not before Rumi made another fridge magnet.