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All in all, being in charge of someone on house arrest hasn’t changed Rumi’s life that much.
Sure, it helps that the “redeemable ex-villain” she took under her wing has no intention of creating trouble, but Rumi still switched from living alone and often on the move, to staying in one place and sharing with a person. She thought she’d have a harder time adapting, but the change felt almost natural.
She doubts it would have happened with anyone other than Kaina.
Kaina just has this way about her, which makes most things she does seem easy and graceful.
It’s cute the way she sits on the couch with her feet tucked under her butt, rarely blinking as she follows online courses for her future “redeemed” career. It’s soft and genuine the smile she gives Rumi when she puts a cup of tea in front of her face after she notices Kaina hasn’t moved or drunk anything in quite a while.
It’s surprising that when they watch movies together, when Rumi is almost forced to take a break from work, Kaina slowly inches her way across the couch, closer to Rumi, until she even falls asleep leaning on her shoulder some nights.
Rumi froze the first time it happened, unsure of what to make of a highly trained ex-hero and assassin falling asleep next to her, partly on her. It felt momentous, unbelievable.
She snagged Hawks to an isolated place the next chance she got.
He got this tender smile on his face when she told him. “She’s letting herself trust you.”
He didn’t need to say it meant a lot, Rumi knew. It filled her with pride, determination, a powerful feeling.
And she realized she had started to trust Kaina as well in the meantime.
Rumi hasn’t needed to rely on take out and carrots as her main source of food for a while now.
Coming home to a warm meal made from scratch is something that she can’t even remember when she last had before Kaina. And it wasn’t as if Rumi had asked her to cook or do shit just because Kaina was home, Rumi could look after herself and didn’t need help.
But when Kaina started doing things for her and the house, it didn’t feel like a subtle way to criticize Rumi or call her a slob. Kaina didn’t cook delicious meals because she thought Rumi was eating to subpar standards, she didn’t vacuum the place only to make snarky remarks about what fur Rumi shed. She did it all because she enjoyed doing it, because simple domesticity suited her so well, especially after the kind of life she’d had. When she greeted Rumi back home while busy folding laundry or stirring a pot, she smiled and looked radiant, from her scars to her frilly pink apron.
Rumi didn’t delude herself that Kaina actually enjoyed doing all that housework, because she’d never met anyone enthusiastic about doing the dishes, yet if Rumi came home with just enough energy to shower, scarf down some food and pass out, in the morning she would always find herself neatly tucked in, her gritty uniform washed, the kitchen clean. Kaina did it for her, because she cared, and Rumi found herself wanting to do things for her in return.
Coming home from a night patrol bringing Kaina some fancy concoction that seemed more sugar than coffee, but that made the ex-convict’s face light up with joy. Bringing home other food and sweets that she suspected Kaina had never had a chance to try. Rumi sometimes even bought little trinkets, cute but mostly useless in her opinion, though that had been before she met Kaina; now, the simple happiness a tiny plushie or colorful hairpin could bring her made each little thing a bit special, and worth every yen.
And when she introduced Kaina to the concept of bath bombs, well, Rumi isn’t sure she’s ever seen another adult quite so excited in her life. It made Rumi’s own chest all warm and fluttery.
That feeling only grows when eventually Kaina shyly asks if Rumi wants to share one of her fancy and fluffy bubble baths together.
Rumi says yes.