Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Rumi had thought that embracing her demonic side would bring her some manner of peace. That, by finally embracing herself, she might finally be free of it.

And, while she was definitely free of the guilt that came with hiding it, she has come to realize that it comes with a whole host of new things to contend with. Some of them were good. She felt her strength and durability increase tenfold. Shots that would have sent her reeling, before, instead glance of her with only a slight twinge of pain. She's become better at tracking demons that have escaped through the Hunmoon. Her voice has returned stronger than ever, perhaps even stronger now that she's bolstered by this freedom in her soul. She was more confident than she’d ever been before, able to actually go to a bathhouse with her girls without feeling terrified something would be seen.

But, there were definitely... downsides.

She can feel herself getting a lot more aggressive in fights. Not enough to lose control of herself, but enough that she notices it. She's more protective of her girls, her innate desire to keep them safe amplified to a degree that she will barrel herself into much greater danger just to do so. Her appetite has become much more voracious, as her body burns up calories so much faster with the sheer effort of being her. With this newfound appetite comes a new sense of smell, which has it's own upsides and downsides. Bad smells can really affect her, while good smells... well, more on that later.

The biggest thing that came with this was the fact that her body... transforms when she's highly emotional. It can happen with any emotional extreme, she's finding. She always has fangs, now. But, when emotional or flustered or heated, she's found that horns, claws, and a nasty-looking tail can make themselves known.

This brings her back to the whole smell thing. It mingles with her desire to protect, making her so much more receptive to her bandmates individual scents. But, recently, it hasn't been dying down. It's in her head all the time, making daily life almost impossible. She frequently wants to lose herself in it. Lose herself in them. Wants to just pick the shorter Zoey up and smoosh her face into her neck until she can't think of anything else. Wants to tackle Mira to the ground when she makes a cool, sarcastic little quip to someone and sink her teeth into her.

Yeah, maybe she'd always had a little crush on her teammates. But, this demon thing was making it so much harder to just accept it as that. It was bordering on something stronger, something insatiable.

Tonight was especially hard. Tonight, they had a meet and greet with fans. Especially after just coming off a concert the previous night, she was exhausted. She already had a headache, patterns on her skin seeming to throb with irritation. And, as much as she loved their fans, the general loudness of the venue wasn't helping any of it. It didn't help that she could smell Mira's perfume from down the table or feel the pleasant, buzzing energy of Zoey as she greeted people coming up to her.

Worst of all, she's finding herself... bristling any time one of the girls gets touched. Her demonic side seethes quietly every time a hand touches one of theirs, despite most being just excited and friendly. It keeps distracting her, though. Keeps drawing her eyes over to the point of connection, something hungry and jealous churning deep within.

Jealous… for what? It’s not like they were even together. They were just all close. What was there for her to be this jealous about? She’s being ridiculous about this. She’s just got weird new things about her demon side going on and she’s letting this get all in her head.

She blinks slowly, then looks up at a fan who's giving her a quizzical look. She flushes, annoyed with herself for getting sidetracked again. Who cares if fans touch them? As long as Zoey and Mira are fine with shaking hands and such, she should be too. They can handle themselves just fine, even if they weren't. She clears her throat and offers a tired smile to the person in front of her.

"Ah. Sorry. Who am I making this out to?"

The fan doesn’t seem to mind her momentary lapse in attention, happily telling her who to sign this for. And, as many fans do, start talking about the different songs they like and how big a fan they are of Huntr/x. While they’re talking and while she’s signing, she regrettably finds her attention drifting again. The voices start to become nothing but warbling hums as her eyes slide over to Zoey.

The other girl has just finished up an interaction with a grateful girl, leaning up to give her a hug before she sits back down. Her eyes then slip over to look at Rumi, widen a bit when she finds herself meeting the woman’s rather intense gaze, then saying something that Rumi can barely hear over the rushing of blood in her ears. She tries to focus on it, but all she can do is gaze down at Zoey’s lips. Watch as they form each word. She feels the heat spreading all the way to her ears, pictures covering it with her own mouth, sinking her fangs into her bottom lip, mine mine mine-

“-okay?”

Rumi blinks her eyes again, now finding Zoey’s brow lightly creased with concern. “Mm?”

“I said, are you okay? You’re kinda, uh… ruining that print, there.”

Rumi looks down and finds that her signature has turned into a stream of gibberish and curls. The very patient fan is looking at her with a slight bit of unease, eyes looking up between their print and their idol. Instantly, she feels so embarrassed she could let the ground swallow her up. She rubs the heel of her palm across her eyes, then slipping it back to massage into her temple. She lets her voice tumble out in a tired mumble. “Sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Rumi?” Zoey says quietly, gently placing her hand on one of the girl’s arms. Mira, who has now noticed something going on between the two, looks over with a questioning expression to them both. The embarrassment comes all the harder now that both of them are looking at her like that.

“Just a headache. It’ll go away.” She replies in an attempt to quell her teammates’ concerns. After all, they’ve had to spend long enough worrying about her. She doesn’t want them to have to, anymore. She can handle this. She can definitely handle this. She just has to get through this meet and greet. Then, she can go home and take a long, scalding shower, take some headache medicine, and stuff her face into her pillows. Just a little longer, that’s all.

Luckily for her, the rest of the time seems to go by as smoothly as can, given the circumstances. The looks on Mira and Zoey’s face say that they don’t really believe it’s all just fine. But, they more or less have to accept it given their current environment. Rumi makes sure not to look at them, lest she get distracted again. Even though she can still feel them close. Still smell them.She makes sure to give the fan whose print she ruined something extra to take with them, then soldiers on through the next hour.

She usually loves these but, by the time it’s wrapped up, she is so ready to leave that she nearly leaps out of her chair to go backstage. Her forehead is getting itchy, her patterns feeling much the same as they shift between something like a dark purple and their usual blue. By the time Mira and Zoey get back, she’s leaned up on the wall of their dressing room and taking slow, deep breaths. She’s taken off her jacket, which seems far too hot right now, and tossed it over a chair.

Mira approaches first. She doesn’t touch Rumi, but gets as reasonably close as she can. The proximity of her warmth makes her dizzy. The perfume still smells just as strongly as it did at the table, amplified ten times by their proximity to each other. “Okay, something’s up. This isn’t just a headache, is it? Your patterns are…”

“Changing color. Yes. I can see it. I think I can feel my horns coming in, too.” Rumi answers, chewing her lip as her eyes dart around from Mira’s firm gaze. She’s always been the more confrontational of all of them. The direct challenge in her eyes just begs to be met. Makes her mind drift to how her eyes might look if she was pinned to a wall. “I, ah... think it’s… side effects? Of my demon side. I just feel off. Bad off. I think I just need to get home. All this is a lot, right now. Too much stress.”

Technically not a lie. But, she can’t really just come out and say ‘you two are setting my demon side off something fierce and I want to kiss you both like crazy’, can she?

Mira face softens a touch and she takes a half step back. She immediately misses the warmth. “Okay. We’ll get around and go quick, then. Come on, Zo.”

Zoey nods, still hitting Rumi with that sympathetic expression. It makes her face prickle with heat. If they only knew the thoughts that were running through her mind, they wouldn’t look at her like that. She doesn’t know how they’d look, honestly. And, that’s the scariest part.

They give her space as they go to change into something more casual for the streets, which lets Rumi make some attempts to calm herself down. It works, for the most part, though it doesn’t completely die down. For some reason, she just can’t shake it today. And, when they get close together like they might usually do, the fog drifts around her brain all the more prominently. She feels stifling, even dressed casually as she is. Zoey’s arms wrapping around one of hers floods her eyes with the narrow slits of her demonic half. Nice as that might be, it’s not helping. Now she can smell her scent much more potently, sweat mingling with that fruity two-in-one that Mira tells her not to use.

But, she can withstand. At least out to their car.

And, then, the worst possible thing that could happen occurs.

Huntr/x doesn’t generally have rude fans. For the most part, they’re all very pleasant and good to be around. Sometimes a little too excitable, but that came with the territory. However, as is inevitable with any fandom that gets large enough, you’re going to have the people who are real unpleasant. There are people who get way to pushy with trying to get signatures, who try and ambush them after shows and get them to sign a whole bunch of stuff.

‘Probably to sell them online’, she remembers Mira saying with a scoff.

And, of all the times for someone to try and pull that, why now?

The moment they come around the corner, a guy is waiting for them. He’s got an obscenely numerous amount of things bulging in his arms. His voice is immediately loud and grating to Rumi’s already fraying nerves as he approaches. It’s striking enough that she doesn’t really hear what he says, it just becoming a shrill ringing in her ears. He wants autographs, that’s about all she can make out. She can hear Mira getting annoyed, likely out of concern for the rather horrible night Rumi seems to be having.

She sorta wishes they’d left with some kind of security, but the threat of her horns sprouting out in front of one of them was too big a risk. The patterns were easy enough to explain away as tattoos, but actual horns… it would make too much hassle.

She hears the guy get louder. Pushier. Zoey is speaking now, quick and insistent as she lets go of Rumi to take a position in front of her. Mira’s voice warbles past as everything becomes hot, the taller woman stepping right up to the guy to tell him off.

And, then… he lays a hand on her.

She’s not sure what he was doing. What his intentions were. It doesn’t matter.

She lunges out from between her girls. Her body hits the guy like a freight train, sending the both of them spilling to the ground ten feet from where he’d been previously standing. She ends up on top, feeling her horns jut out of her head and her patterns burn with fury. Her voice comes out in an echoing snarl as her clawed hands rip into the collar of his shirt to drag him closer.

“Hands off! She’s MINE-”

That’s when her version goes dark.

Chapter Text

Mira has really been trying to come to terms with what they’ve discovered about Rumi. She’s not a person who likes liars, who likes being deceived and played with. She got enough of that sort of runaround back with the family she no longer talks to. So, coming around to the idea that Rumi had been lying to her the whole time they’d known each other was a tough pill to swallow.

But… she could see where Rumi had been coming from. They had been taught that all demons are emotionless, evil, hateful beings who lived by their most base instincts. That was just the facts. The thing they faced every day, in protecting those who tumbled past the Hunmoon and into their world. So, to have a person who shook that very foundation? That was an even harder thing to wrap her head around. And, before the events that saw Gwi-Ma nearly swallow the whole world, she would probably have never been able to reckon with it. Even if she’d loved Rumi before, it was that kind of secret that tore relationships apart.

That is… until she’d seen that not hiding her heritage had helped Rumi come back better than before…

Well, how could she still feel the same way? If there was anyone who knew that not hiding who you were before lead to feeling better about yourself, it was her. You had to try and love yourself before you could spread it to other people.

But, it was clearly a learning process for Rumi. Accepting who she was has come with some caveats that they’ve all needed to get used to. Some of them have been pretty surprising. You know, growing horns when she’s getting frustrated by something is generally an occurrence one would get a little concerned about. But, her and Zoey have been doing their best to get her through all of this. In standing by her side as she struggles to merge these two things into a whole person.

This had to be their hardest night, yet. Rumi was stressed out and unfocused the whole signing. Kept going between staring into the distance and staring at them with a much more intense focus. She’s not really sure what’s going on with her. And, she’s not sure just what she feels about the way she’d caught Rumi’s eyes on them a few times. But, she knew they needed to get her somewhere where they could chill out. And, her progress toward that goal is being halted by the most annoying type of person to walk the earth.

“What, you don’t want to sign anything for a fan? Just like you celebrity types! No appreciation for the fans who made you!” The guy complains, trying to balance his myriad of items to sign in his arm while pointing accusingly at the trio.

Yeah, Mira wants to crack this guy in the nose. But, that would be a bad idea on several levels. One, she’s way stronger than this guy, so it would probably cave his head in. Two, assaulting any member of the public was just an exceptionally bad idea, considering both their status as stars and protectors. Three, causing Rumi and more stress than she was already feeling was something she wasn’t going to allow.

“Signings are over, buddy. More than welcome to come to the next one, just like everyone else. Instead of, you know, ambushing us by our car when we’re trying to leave.” Mira says as graciously as she can manage, though her annoyance is clear and biting.

“Ungrateful, that’s what you are! If you really cared, you’d spare the time!”

“Why, so you can just turn around and sell it?” Mira bites back, temper starting to rise. She’s known for having the shortest fuse of all of them for a reason. She doesn’t like her personal space invaded. Doesn’t deal with direct conflict as amicably as she should. And, in a situation where one of her girls is already feeling uncomfortable, that tends to show itself quicker and hotter. She finds herself moving in front of Rumi, who is seeming to space out and start breathing more heavily, to keep the guy from directing any of this at her. “Why don’t you go get a real fucking job, huh?”

“Oh, yeah, because singing all the time is a real job-”

“Hooookay, why don’t we all just calm down, okay?” Zoey interjects, also taking a stance in front of Rumi. That’s something she loves about Zoey. For as punkish and spunky as she was, she’s always been better at mediating these sorts of things. Not nearly as quick to anger, but just as capable of stepping up to protect people. She handles it different. Better. And, Mira can’t help the corner of her lips gently curling into a smile. “Sir, we’re clearly just off a signing. And, I don’t think it’s very fair to the people who had to wait in line-”

“I don’t give a shit!” He says, stepping right toward Zoey with purpose.

The little bit of smile is gone, immediately. Because, yeah. You don’t square up to any of her girls like that. She finds herself moving in to get in front of Zoey, too. She might not be able to start it but, if he starts to throw down, she can incapacitate him in a way that won’t hurt him too much. Maybe just a splitting headache when he wakes up. They can defend themselves, after all. No one would argue that.

She wishes they’d had security. Then, she wouldn’t even have to do this. But, with Rumi nearly about to change… it’s just better they don’t. Oh, well. This is where they’re at, now.

“Hey, fuck off-”

When his hand comes around to grab her by the wrist, her body tenses for the coming conflict. She knows he’s about to pull her, so she’s already going through the motions in her mind. Bring her other palm up to strike his chest, using her forward motion as momentum to pull her trapped hand back. Use his stagger and weakening grip to throw him over her shoulder. Once grounded, a swift strike to the neck should be enough to incapacitate him. Then, she can… lay him up against a trash can or something. It’ll be fine. Easy, even.

Well it, was supposed to be. Because Rumi seemingly decides she wants to go on a war path.

It’s so fast that Mira can barely realize what just happened, let alone stop it. Rumi surges out from between her and Zoey, full horns and glowing patterns, to smash into the guy. Whatever force she just hit him with, it knocks the wind out of him. She can hear it leave his mouth in a staggered groan, only for them to land a few feet away with Rumi on top. She’s so startled by it that she doesn’t move to act until she sees her claws slice into the collar of his shirt and haul him up with a practically murderous snarl.

“Hands off! She’s MINE-”

Oh, fuck, this was bad.

“Zoey, get this guy out of here!” Mira calls out, immediately moving to intercept before Rumi actually tears this guy to chunks. She brings her arm right around the woman’s throat, catching her by surprise and yanking her back. Rumi roars out in rage, her clawed hands grabbing wildly toward the stunned man looking up at her. She’s actively fighting Mira to get a piece of the guy, her struggle keeping Mira from getting a really good grip on her.

Luckily, Zoey is right there to bring the bewildered guy to his feet and start pushing him as far away as she can down the alleyway. “You wanna be a statistic? No? Well, come the hell on, then!”

Rumi doesn’t seem to like that, as she gnarls and gnashes against Mira’s grip. It’s hard to keep her contained. Since accepting her demonic self, Rumi’s become so much stronger. Demons were pretty strong, normally, but adding a huntress to the mix? That was like a supercharge to her already impressive strength. She’s having to use all her effort to keep her from breaking out and charging the guy before Zoey can get him away. Given how fast she was, Zoey was going to need as much of a lead as Mira could get her.

“Rumi, calm down! I know that guy was an ass, but you can’t just assault a regular pers-” Mira grunts out. She’s cut off when Rumi flexes that demon strength and uses her whole body to flip the redhead right over her head and down onto the pavement. It knocks the wind out of her with an ungraceful ‘unff’ from her lips. And, before she can do anything, Rumi is on top of her.

Her hands grab Mira’s in an iron grip, pinning them to the ground. She can feel the claws lightly against her skin. The narrowed slits of her fiery eyes are focused solely on her, now. Her fangs are bared, looking stranger than her usual fangs. They’re larger. Two of them poke out of her mouth at slight angles, reminding her dazed mind of old, ancient illustrations of Onis she’d seen in her training. They glint menacingly in the dim city lights. Rumi’s breathing is low and deep, less angry and more… strangely calm now.

“Rumi, get the fuck… off!”

Mira struggles hard against the hold, but she’s finding that just makes Rumi tighten her grip. The woman then lowers her face right in front of Mira’s, huffing a puff of almost steam-like mist from her her mouth. Her heart races as those fangs get closer to her, her struggle picking up as she kicks her legs out and wiggles her body to try and throw Rumi off her. It’s no use. With the superior power and position, Mira can’t get any traction. Her struggle comes to a stop when Rumi’s face presses into her neck. She takes a sharp inhale of breath and grits her teeth, almost certain that those fangs are about to tear her throat out. She braces for it, only hoping that Zoey gets out of here before she has to face Rumi down alone.

Nothing happens.

Swallowing thickly and trying to get a hold of her hammering heart, she chances speaking with a single, confused ‘Rumi?’.

Rumi, then, takes a deep inhale. Almost as if she’s… smelling her?

What the hell is going on?

“Mine.” Rumi rumbles against her neck after taking another deep inhale of breath. Mira had heard her snarl that earlier, but hadn’t really been able to focus on it when she was holding Rumi back. She’d thought that Rumi had suddenly transformed because of the stress of the situation. But, now she can’t help focusing on those words. Though, she doesn’t really get to actually put any focus on it. As, she’s pretty sure her brain whites out at what she does next.

She feels an intensely warm tongue slide up the length of her neck, leaving a hot, sticky trail along the path it follows. That certainly… wasn’t what she was expecting. Though, how could she have possibly anticipated this outcome? Not when, moments ago, she had been certain that Rumi was about to kill her. That she would lose someone she loves to demonic influence.

Her breath hitches in her chest when Rumi slips it along her skin again, this time able to feel it’s forked end as it flicks off her jaw. It’s hot and sticky and ridged with strange bumps that seem to catch on her skin. Each area she leaves that trail flushes with heat and tingles. She feels her face heating up in bewilderment, heart pounding as the tongue then slides up and curls the shell of her ear.

That makes her squirm. “Rumi-”

“Mira.” Rumi’s echoing voice purrs into her ear. Another lick, Mira’s teeth sinking into her bottom lip as Rumi almost lazily traces the shape of her ear again. Then, she pulls back so she can look down at the woman with an expression that’s so quietly intense that the normally outspoken Mira finds herself at a loss for words. Her voice slides out with a smooth, echoing rumble from deep in her chest. “Can’t hide. Not anymore.”

Mira stares up at her, chest rising and falling quickly. Rumi growls softly, baring her fangs again. “Don’t let me… hide, Mira.”

Then, suddenly, she grunts in pain and tenses like she’s been hit. Her demonic eyes roll up into her head before they close in unconsciousness. She falls off of Mira and spills to the side, allowing her to sit up on her elbows. She looks up to find Zoey standing above them both, palm out from a strike. She’s panting softly, seemingly having run from wherever she’d left the guy off. Her eyes are wide and surprised, darting between the two.

But, there’s a shared, unspoken question between them.

What the hell was that?