Chapter Text
"Uuuuugh, why! Why is it always whenever we're snacking?"
"Rumi, do demons have, like, a 'Huntrix is about to eat a really really really good bunch of food' alarm? You'd tell us if they had that, right?"
"How in the world would I know if that's a thing?"
"I dunno, you've been doing this shit your whole life, maybe you beat the information out of one of them."
Rumi rolled her eyes at Mira. The apartment was still covered in demon glitter, as was a great deal of the mountain of food currently piled up on the couch, not that that was going to stop any of them. It was post-big-concert, and the carb loading before was nothing compared to the devastation they were about to rain down upon all the ice cream, chips, cake, boba tea, pizzas, pastries, kimbap, and cup ramyeon that was situated in front of their TV right now. And neither god nor Gwi-Ma could help the demons foolish enough to appear inside their penthouse and try to delay the inevitable. "Mira, have you literally ever seen me try to talk to a demon?" Rumi asked. "Because if you ever see me trying to talk to a demon, either that's not me, or I've actually gone insane."
Mira snorted as she flopped back onto the couch, ignoring the fact that the sleeve of her bathrobe landed in some of the strawberry syrup on her giant sundae. "Bitch, you've been insane since the first day we met you."
"Excuse me?" Rumi forced herself in between her bandmates, bisecting the heap of snacks and stealing from both halves, not even bothering to use a spoon as she took a messy bite from Mira's sundae before cramming a fistful of kimbap slices into her face. "I am the mosht normal, rational, and well-adjushted pershon on the fashe of the earth, thank you very musch."
"Uh huh," Mira said, muffled through an entire slice of pizza rolled up and stuffed into her cheeks. For her part, Zoey couldn't even be bothered to get involved with their argument, ripping open a bag of chips with a violence usually reserved for the largest demons while ravaging multiple donuts at the same time. As much as she clearly had the right idea, though, shit-talking with Mira was half the fun of these binges for Rumi, and they were both 100% capable of bickering and devouring at the same time.
...weirdly, the fact that they were both so good at that was kind of bugging Rumi? Also bugging her was the fact that Zoey's designated pile had nothing particularly spicy in it. That wasn't surprising, it usually didn't. But for very stupid reasons, Rumi had kind of been hoping that wouldn't be the case? Or that something spicy from Mira's would sneak in and Zoey wouldn't notice? She cursed herself for her instinctive skill at separating out her bandmates' preferred foods, but Mira hadn't gotten anything unusually spicy herself either, so even if Rumi hadn't made sure each girl had the right snacks, it was probably kind of pointless. Not that there was ever a point to any of this???
Yeah. In the past few weeks since appearing on Play Games With Us, Rumi had been pretty weird. She'd been reading a lot of medical articles lately, and she'd gained an extremely intimate understanding of the inner workings of a very specific bodily organ. Which, to be fair, she already had to some extent, given that she was someone who had to sing at the top of her lungs both while dancing and while kicking demon ass. But she'd gotten even more knowledgeable, particularly with regard to a very specific malfunction of said organ and related system of respiration, and boy did that not make a whole lot of sense.
Well, maybe it did. After all, said malfunction could cause a lot of problems for them if it came up at the wrong time. Like during a concert. Or while they were hunting demons. Or even while they were just trying to keep a low profile out in public. So it was good that it almost never happened. And it was especially good that Rumi couldn't think of it ever happening to her, even when she was a kid. That meant that it made a lot of sense that she wouldn't even be thinking the word whenever she could avoid it. Speak of the devil and all that. This was normal. This was rational behavior.
Which was also why she wasn't constantly hoping for some reason that that malfunction would happen, even in some of those really bad circumstances where it would be devastating and embarrassing and cause all sorts of problems. Nope. She extremely didn't want that to happen. Which was why she wasn't ever thinking about it happening. At all. It wasn't worth considering. A lot. All the time. Especially late at night. For some reason. Or for no reason, because it wasn't happening and she wasn't doing it. Like a normal person wouldn't.
Yeah.
This was all perfectly normal.
"Zoey, does that turtle have the hiccups?"
Rumi definitely didn't sit up shockingly quickly (so quickly that if there was a ceiling above them, she'd have hit her head on it), and she definitely didn't dart her eyes between the turtle video on screen and Mira, who definitely wasn't looking at her instead of at the screen or at Zoey. The turtle made a weird noise, and Rumi definitely didn't want to start pelting Mira with kimbap. "Oh, no, it's just having sex with the other turtle and making turtle O-noises," Zoey said.
"Pff, that's adorable," Mira said. Rumi had a horrible feeling that she wasn't talking about the turtle or the "O-noises" it was making. Mira was still looking at her. She could feel her stupid eyes even when she looked away. So Rumi took another massive chomp out of Mira's sundae. Her sundae now. Mira didn't deserve it. "Are there any turtle hiccup videos?"
"Nah, that's not a thing." Zoey was way worse at talking while eating than Rumi or Mira were. Her bandmates were the only ones who could understand her when she did, and even then not always. But Rumi hoped she'd keep doing it anyway. For no reason whatsoever. "Turtles are reptiles, they don't have diaphragms."
"What's that got to do with anything?" Mira asked through a faceload of chips.
Before Rumi could stop herself, even though she knew—she knew!—that she shouldn't and that Mira was doing this on purpose, through the entire kimbap roll she was in the process of swallowing, she said, "Hiccups are a spasm in the diaphragm that causes an abrupt inhalation of air, and that inhalation makes the glottis snap shut so the vocal cords produce the 'hic' sound!"
"Yeah, what she said!" Zoey said through the cream-filled donut currently stored in her squirrel-like cheeks.
"Damn." Mira's eyes were still on her. Rumi could hear her smirking. And Rumi had never hated a single demon more than she hated Mira at this precise moment. She nailed her eyes back to the screen, where, thank god, the video was now asmr of a turtle getting in a fight with a strawberry and losing. "That was some Zoey-level word speed. Maybe we should write a song about hiccups." The noise that came out of Rumi's mouth sounded enough like the threatening words she meant to say that she didn't feel the need to try again, and she could feel Mira laughing through the couch as she went back to her eating, taking the sundae and putting it on the opposite side of herself from Rumi. How dare she. Rumi was only in the process of being lit on fire. No big deal. She had never been more grateful for Zoey's autism than she was right now, because any other human being in the universe would probably have noticed however the fuck she was reacting to all of this.
God, Rumi loved Mira so much.
...HATED. RUMI HATED MIRA SO MUCH. GOD FUCKING DAMMIT.
Either her mental threats or mental Freudian slips seemed to be enough to convince Mira to give her a break, so the three of them were able to continue bingeing and watching turtle videos with fairly minimal bickering between Rumi and Mira. Not so little that it felt weird, but a small enough amount that she figured Mira was putting all her focus on the food. Which, fair enough, both fighting demons and performing at shows required a caloric intake to rival the gods. Glancing past the pile of snacks in between them, even through the dense fluff of her loosely-tied bathrobe, the way Mira was sitting let Rumi see her belly starting to push more against the robe than it normally would. With her naturally high metabolism, being the most physical dancer, and having by far the heaviest weapon, Mira was the biggest eater of the three of them. Unlike Zoey and Rumi, who had fairly average amounts, Mira's body also resisted ever forming much in the way of fat, so the difference between a full and empty stomach was particularly visible on her. Rumi had more than once found herself a bit astonished by just how round and tight her stomach could get under the right circumstances, and from the looks of things, she was well on her way to astounding Rumi again.
...the fact that her eyes had always been drawn to her bandmates' bellies was another thing she definitely wasn't connecting in any way to the weird thoughts she'd been having ever since that game show.
"Soda!" Zoey shouted at the top of her lungs out of nowhere. "Soda soda soda soda soda!" She bounced off of the couch with way more energy than she should have, given the day they'd just had. But the power of turtle videos to invigorate her was something Rumi had learned not to underestimate.
"Hey," Mira's voice came from the other side of mount snack, and Rumi watched as she thumped her chest slightly before muffling a burp into her fist. "Get me some sodas too. Like, a whole six-pack like you get."
"Really?" Zoey peered back from beyond the kitchen island. "Doesn't soda make you burp like crazy?"
Mira paused for a moment, and Rumi swore she could see her Adam's apple bobbling in her neck before she spoke again. "I'm already going to be bu–uuuuuuuuurp–ing like cr–aaaaAAAAaaazy." She belched through her words, and Rumi rolled her eyes with an "ugh" that she knew Mira knew was completely performative.
It was actually even more performative than it usually was, though. Because from the articles she'd read, she knew what repeated burping could potentially cause. And Mira better not have been doing what Rumi was terrified she might be doing.
From across the kitchen, Zoey laughed. "Okay, fair enough, I guess. It's your IBS. No being a whiny little baby about it later, though."
Mira blew a puff of air past her lips. "I'm never a whiny little baby about anything." That was almost true, but the painful results of her overindulgence and overspicing were one of the very few things that Mira actually was a whiny little baby about. She was lucky that both Rumi and Zoey liked her too much to let her suffer without digestive aids and sympathy, even though she 100% did it to herself.
That didn't mean Zoey wasn't an enabler, though, as she demonstrated when she skipped back over to the couch, throwing a six-pack of root beer over Rumi's head to Mira. If she were a normal pop star, Rumi may have found that somewhat threatening, but as it was, she just ducked slightly to be careful. "Now remember to cut the rings apart, or I'll—" before Zoey could finish her threat, Mira pulled the plastic rings off and repeatedly stabbed them with her Gok-do in what Rumi knew Celine would call an unbelievably frivolous use of the Honmoon. "Thank you!" Zoey said brightly before cracking open one of her own sodas and guzzling it.
Despite her better judgment, Rumi glanced past the snacks at Mira and saw her looking at a can of root beer. Her expression was even less readable than usual, with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. Those eyes suddenly caught Rumi's, and those lips twisted into a smirk, and Rumi felt like she'd made a horrible mistake in acknowledging this as Mira cracked the can and then started gulping its contents down just as quickly as Zoey. Rumi forced her gaze back to the turtle videos and ignored Mira's very audible gulps as hard as she could while she crammed a fist full of chips into her face.
Dammit, could her brain please just choose to hope for it or to be terrified of it instead of somehow doing both at once? Or better yet, split the difference and do neither! That would be great! How about doing that?
Her brain would apparently not be doing that, as instead her eyes shot back to Mira when she let out a downright room-shaking belch, groaning after the fact and slumping even lower onto the couch. The fact that she was almost lying down on it made how much bigger and rounder her stomach had gotten even more obvious, its size deforming her bathrobe and nearly starting to push it open. "Woo!" Zoey pumped her fist in the air from the opposite side of Rumi. "Perfect score, ten out of ten!"
"You know it. Mmmrrrgp." Mira shot Zoey a lazy double finger guns before covering her mouth with her fist, a burp catching inside of her cheeks. She then cracked open another can of root beer, to Rumi's horror. At least this time she only took a small sip, muffling another burp afterward. "Fuck, this stuff is, like, pure sugar water. I can feel it rotting my teeth. Why do I still want more?"
"That's the power of America, baby! Cultural hegemony for the win!" Zoey punctuated her shout with a genuinely menacing evil cackle before her face fell back into a pout. "But seriously, I am so sorry for us."
Mira rolled her eyes, slurping up another sip of her soda. "I'm not sorry for America, it gave us you."
The smile and giggles that radiated out of Zoey at that, along with her bright pink cheeks, were the cutest thing Rumi had ever seen. "Mi-raaaaaaa, you're so gay!"
"Still bi, but yeah."
Zoey giggled more, then bounced from her own food pile to sit down next to Mira. The fact that she could pull Zoey away from snacks really was a sign of how much they adored each other. Rumi could feel herself smiling like an idiot watching the way Zoey rocked back and forth on her tailbone, looking unbelievably happy just to stare down at an overstuffed Mira with her makeup washed off, her hair in a towel, and lying halfway off of their couch drinking soda and belching.
...her mix of happiness and the thread of envy inside of it were another thing she definitely hadn't been thinking about at all since they appeared on that stupid game show.
Her brain ricocheted from one inappropriate thought back to the other when one of Mira's burps was punctuated with a choked-off noise. "Mmmmmmrrrrg–*HRK*–rrp. Puh...fuck."
Zoey's gleeful rocking stopped, and she tilted her head down. "Are you okay, Mira?
Mira let out an uncomfortable little grumble, thumping her chest with her fists. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, I just–UURR–*UCK!*–guh! *HMNK*–grrp–b-buh. Fuck, I–*HUK!*–shit!" Oh fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Code fucking red. This was happening.
"...p-pfff!" Rumi's attention was yanked away from Mira's mildly distressed face (and visibly bloated and jerking stomach, fuck fuck fuck!) and up to the giggly girl sitting over her. "O-okay, sorry, Mira, but you kind of did this to yourself."
"Uh, yeah." Rumi forced herself to say. "Yeah, yes! Yes, you did do this to yourself! So you'll get no sympathy from me!" She crossed her arms and forced her eyes shut, turning haughtily towards some random corner.
From the other side of what remained of Mira's snack pile, Rumi heard her barely-audible chuckles, though they were surrounded and interrupted by nearly silent...spasms and quiet burps. "Yeah yeah–*hrk*–mmf, how will I ev–urr-*CUP*–ver survive? *HNK-ggh* fuck, ow."
Hearing her actually express pain brought Rumi's focus back to Mira, and she saw that she'd closed one eye, thumping another small burp out of her chest and grunting after hiccups. A more concerned look crossed Zoey's face too, and she helped sit Mira back up, a large belch escaping with a hiccup and moan tacked to the end of it. Zoey patted her back a few times before letting her relax back into the cushions. "Did that help?"
"Mmf. *HMK-rrk* Little bit. *HRK*–rrp. S'not really my sto–*huh*–omach, though. *HNK*–ggh." She opened the chest of her bathrobe a bit more and rubbed the space below her neck. Rumi stared and saw the way the triangle just above her hand caved in with every hiccup, overdefining her already very visible collarbone, and emphasizing the way that her chest pushed up and backwards each time. "Kinda hu–*urk*–urts in my che–*uck*–est more than I *hnk* thought it would." "More than I thought it would", she said. Rumi knew she had fucking planned this, and she glared as hard at Mira as she could. When Mira's eyes shifted slightly to meet hers, Rumi realized her glaring would be a lot more effective if she wasn't also literally drooling, and she barely contained a squeak as she wiped her mouth and chin on the arm of her robe. Mira's smirk told Rumi that she had definitely noticed it, and she let out a half-interrupted sigh. "Worth it, though. *HNK-klp* Pffuck. Hwoof."
"Well, you'll want painkillers and tummy medicine for later anyway," Zoey said, oblivious to the psychological war crimes being committed next to her. "I'll go get those. Oh! Also also also! I know I have a bunch of hiccup cures written in one of my notebooks, I'll grab that one too!"
Zoey scampered off, leaving Rumi and her tormentor alone, with nothing but Mira's hiccups and occasional belches filling the space between them. Rumi tried as hard as she could to look away from her. Rumi failed even harder. Instead, her eyes were still glued to Mira's jolting, apparently aching chest. The fact that it was hurting her...shouldn't that have stopped it from being hot? Not that it should have been in the first place, but shouldn't she not be aroused by something actively harming and bothering someone she cared about? Was she some sort of sadist or something?
Was this part of the demon in her showing through her skin?
An empty soda can bonked off of Rumi's forehead, and she yelped in response, rubbing it and glaring at Mira. "I could hea–*urk* hear you think---king from over the–*hrk*–ere. Just chill. *hlk* Relax a little for–*hnk* for once in your life. *HNK-glk* fuck, ow." She rubbed her chest again, eyebrows pinching in and frowning, but then looked back at Rumi and moved back into a smirk. "Like Zoey said, *hlk* I did this to–*HOOK-ulk!*–oo-ooh...*hnk* to myself." After a few more hiccups thunked inside of her chest, Mira's smirk widened as she slowly pulled her bathrobe more loose. That let it fall open on her chest, just barely clinging to and hiding her bare breasts. She also reached down and pulled the belt undone, letting the bottom half of the robe slip off of her, revealing her incredibly bloated belly, which jerked over and over with every hiccup.
This wasn't the first time Rumi had seen Mira naked (or close enough to naked that the difference didn't meaningfully matter). Despite not sharing a dressing room or joining them in the bathhouse, the reality of living together for going on four years now made it nearly inevitable. She still saw it significantly less than Zoey did, though, so she had no idea how to react. Apparently her body decided to deal with it by freezing while her gaze was still trapped on Mira, watching her belly jolt, pushing outward while her chest tried to shove her up and back. Even though she wasn't looking at her face, she could feel Mira's gaze on her and her evil evil evil grin, and if her brain had been at all connected to her mouth, she might have just started yelling at her. But no. Instead, she was staring.
...instead, she was crawling forward, shoving what remained of Mira's snacks off the couch.
Instead, she was hovering a hand over Mira's belly, which had gone from flat to unbelievably round.
Instead, she was having that hand pushed down by Mira until it was against her hot, stretched skin, Mira's longer fingers directing her to start pressing very softly into her completely taut tummy. She groaned and hiccuped, and her belly jolted up beneath Rumi's touch, and an incredibly humiliating squeak came out of Rumi's throat.
Without really thinking, Rumi started rubbing Mira's stomach up and down like she had for Zoey. They were so different. Zoey's belly had that soft, perfect layer of fat, and Rumi had watched it slowly get slightly bigger as she drank more milkshake. This time, with how little fat formed on Mira, she could feel the growls and tremors of her stomach inside of her. Zoey's hiccups had been much faster, often sending ripples or waves down her belly. Mira's were slow, but each one was a single, powerful jolt that seemed to wrench through her whole body. Rumi could absolutely see how that would hurt.
And she could also see how her touch might be comforting to Mira's incredibly overworked stomach.
"Okay, I'm back!" Zoey's voice shocked Rumi out of her hypnosis, and she tried to sit up straight and yank her hand away, but Mira grabbed her wrist and at least stopped the second one. "Sorry it took so long, I needed a minute to find the book that I—" Zoey froze upon seeing the nearly-naked Mira and Rumi touching her like an insane person, and Rumi tried to brace herself for...
God, she didn't have a fucking clue how Zoey would react to that.
Possibly the last thing she expected was for Zoey to grin and coo. "Awww, cute! I know she said that that wasn't where the trouble was, but hey, belly rubs can't hurt."
"Nope. *hnk-np* They can onl–*hlk*–ly help. *HMK*–mmf."
Zoey plopped down on the opposite side of Mira again, passing her two tablets and a handful of off-brand tums, all of which she, slightly horrifyingly, dry swallowed and washed down with the last of her second root beer. "Uh, I brought you water, but okay. Anyway!" Zoey flipped open her notebook, "So, the first cure that you should try is—"
"No eat–*ingkh* or drinking cures. *HRK!*–ghhh."
"You know what, that's fair. How about standing on your head?"
"Absof–*huck*–inglutely not."
Zoey rattled off a large number of cure options, ranging from ones Rumi had read about to the esoteric and just plain weird before Mira managed to redirect her. ("Look, just ru–*huk*–ub my chest and play with m–*hmk*–my boobs until I f---feel better." "Yes ma'am!") So Rumi and Zoey wound up massaging Mira for the rest of the evening, and it occurred to Rumi that they'd both 100% gotten played. God dammit.
Somehow she couldn't bring herself to be all that upset about it, though. Especially with how the sounds and sensations of those hiccups still filled her head while she was alone in her room. Even so, there was more than a little schadenfreude in hearing Mira's misery the next day, and Rumi took some solace in the fact that she probably wouldn't try that again anytime soon.
...though some part of her kind of wanted her to.
That could wait, though! After all, just because Mira apparently enjoyed humiliating and tormenting her didn't mean that Rumi had to sit around and take it. No, there were other ways that she could
That she could
You know
Experience
Hiccups.
For science.
Yeah.
So, for purely scientific reasons, and to make sure it never happened at inopportune moments, when Rumi had time she knew was private, she would often try and give herself the hiccups with various methods she'd read about online. It was sort of shocking how little any of her attempts got her, though. She never even had a single hiccup from any of them, and it was so stupid how frustrating that was.
...was it a demon thing? Did demons have diaphragms?
Unfortunately, there was nobody on the face of the earth she could possibly ask that question. So instead she kept trying and failing for over a year, until, in desperation, she finally gave in and decided to try drinking with Mira and Zoey. But when the morning after came, all that she initially found herself thinking was
Fuck, I hate drunk Rumi.