Chapter Text
“Ouch!”
Billy’s exclamation precedes a delighted–if not slightly horrified–squeal out of Nicky, and Agatha glances over at the pair of them in time to see the former shooting her son a wink, dropping his pant leg back into place over the clear Saniderm covering his fresh update to the growing piece on his calf.
Nicky draws his hand back nervously and then giggles at the look his mother shoots him, realizing he’s being played with.
“Did it hurt a lot?” He asks curiously, still staring at the spot despite Billy’s pants covering it.
He shrugs.
“A little.”
Alice snorts, which draws another out of Agatha as well, but neither of them calls him on his downplaying of his relatively low pain tolerance. Alice told him once that she admires the people with lower pain tolerances who keep coming back for more, more than the ones who don’t seem to feel it, but Agatha thinks she was just trying to be nice and make him feel better.
“Should we go find a vase for that?” Jen offers, approaching Nicky as she comes back inside from removing the ‘walk-ins’ sign from the stand outside. He glances down at the flower still in his hand and lights up, following her off to the back of the shop with a little extra spring in his step.
Agatha turns back to wiping down her seat as the bell - that fucking bell - trills annoyingly above the door and Elijah makes his way in. To make matters worse, he’s whistling, but he soothes it over by slapping a wad of cash down onto the counter in front of Billy.
“You ready for me?” He addresses Agatha, running a hand through his hair and stifling a yawn as if he has the right to be tired after pulling her in for extra work.
She gestures to the chair and rolls her stool aside before collapsing into it.
“Not even going to congratulate me?” He asks, climbing up and making himself comfortable; he rolls up his sleeve and buttons it in place, eyes dancing mischievously.
Agatha finally meets his gaze and his face drops a little, clearly taking in how tired she is.
“Let me buy you a drink after this.”
“Can’t, I’ve g-”
As if on cue, Nicky barrels out of the back office, Jen in tow, her stride a little hurried and nervous, which is likely due to the delicate-looking vintage glass flower holder clutched in both of his hands, the daisy Rio had given him poking out of the top of it. He slows to a stop at Agatha’s station, about to hold it out to her when he notices her gloves and looks around for a safe place to set it down instead.
“Hey, the desk could use some color,” Billy offers over his shoulder, causing him to whip around and approach with it held out in his outstretched arms.
Agatha turns her attention back to Elijah and preps a disposable razor, rolling closer to him.
“Congratulations,” she tells him, voice rough but honest.
He smiles at her warmly and knowingly, then offers his arm over to her to prep. She focuses immediately, brushing one gloved finger over the lines from the previous session. This will round out three of three, finally putting the piece in the ‘finished’ folder of her mental filing cabinet.
A simplistic, thick-lined Victorian house stares back up at her unassumingly from the man’s arm, the picket fence and forced-perspective apple tree shaded vividly, a pop of color coming from the single temptingly bright apple hanging from a branch.
“You were supposed to tell me whose house it was,” Agatha murmurs, turning away for a paper towel to wipe down the area and then tossing it into the trash to pour her ink.
“I said after it was finished,” Elijah reminds her.
She lifts her gaze to him from the ink cups and glares - it’s withering enough that he looks away and clears his throat.
“It was the first place I ever demolished. Couple that lived there for like forty years finally kicked it and the new owners wanted it ripped down to rebuild on the land.”
Agatha flicks her overhead light on with her foot pedal and nearly cuts off his explanation with the buzzing of the machine in her hand coming to life. She presses her thumb into his arm, pulling it taut, and then slowly lowers the needle. His skin jumps under the initial contact, but he doesn’t miss a beat in his explanation.
“I’m going to rebuild one exactly like it one day.”
“With all the money you’re saving by skipping out on having a wedding?” Agatha asks, eyes not moving from the delicate shading she’s focused on.
“Yeah,” Elijah laughs a little at the lighthearted jab, waiting until her machine lifts for a brief moment to settle back into the seat a little more comfortably.
A moment later, she feels a presence at her side and closes her eyes briefly before speaking.
“That better be my son.”
“I just wanted to see how it was coming.” Billy’s voice finds her, predictably, and she resists the urge to roll her stool back against his legs to physically push him away from her. He’s smart enough to keep the right distance, though, giving her no real leeway to complain as he observes.
“I bet you did,” she grumbles, knowing full well that what he really wanted to see was Elijah’s bare arms in his button-down, but she bites that comment back. “Where is my son, then?”
“Watering the flowerbeds with Lilia,” he explains. She had been so locked in on her work that she hadn’t even heard Lilia take him outside. “I heard congratulations were in order.”
Elijah claps Billy on the shoulder as best he can from his position while Agatha turns away to re-up the needle.
“Thank you. I’d invite you to come celebrate with us if I could,” he tells the younger man, who immediately blushes so severely that Agatha can feel the heat radiating off of him without looking. He lets out a nervous laugh and a half-thanks before retreating to the reception desk, and she raises her eyes to meet her client’s gaze with a knowing smirk.
“You shouldn’t tease him.”
Elijah shoots her a devilish look and shakes his head slightly, keeping his voice low and just between the two of them.
“I’m old enough to be his father. And he’s harmless.”
Agatha scoffs, moving in for the next pass with the shader without any further warning.
The bell above the door rings again, and the telltale sound of Nicky’s sneakers slapping in stumbling, uneven pace against the tiled floor draws closer.
“ Stop ,” she snaps when she can hear him a few feet back. He does, halting in place like he’s frozen, and she continues the section she’s working on before finally turning to glance at him over her shoulder.
He stands rooted to the spot, beaming as he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, gripping an empty watering can that’s nearly half the size of him in both arms.
“What did I say about running?”
His face falls slightly, but she doesn’t drop the stern act. In her peripherals, she can see that both Billy and Alice have stiffened up in their respective seats as well; an involuntary reaction.
“Not to?” Nicky says after a beat, tone lilting upwards.
“Do you need to go sit in the back office until it’s time to leave?”
He shakes his head, dropping his gaze shyly to the floor and drawing a little pattern back and forth with the toe of one of his shoes. She softens a little, then drags a second stool closer, patting it.
“Sit here. And be still.”
It doesn’t sound like a particularly fun demand. Still, Nicky lights up excitedly at the prospect of getting to watch her work, climbing up into the seat and, as is routine, immediately putting his hands under his thighs to keep himself from reflexively reaching out to touch anything - the equipment, the client, or her.
She peels off her glove and retrieves a fresh one, just as Elijah launches into his dramatic exclamations that it couldn’t be Nicky he was looking at because the last time he’d seen him, he’d been thiiiiis small.
Agatha tunes them out as she gets back into the flow. Elijah’s always been good with kids, Nicky in particular whenever he was around, so she knows that being forced to listen to him name every single breed of whale that he can remember isn’t the same torture as it would be for someone else.
The house begins to take on new life under her needle. She’d quite liked the outline on its own, though she could admit that it looked out of place in the center of the fully finished bits of the piece surrounding it. She’s done at least a hundred memorial pieces over her career, but she’s always especially curious about the ones that the client doesn’t seem to realize fall into that category. Divorce markers in celebration, childhood plushies and blankets that only exist in photos, children’s birthdays marking the end of life before parenthood, a favorite extinct prehistoric creature. A house demolished.
She thinks about the couple living there before, narrowing her eyes as she darkens a window pane near the roof and pictures peering through it at them. She pictures them as elderly; Elijah didn’t mention it, but it’s easy enough to infer. Forty years is a long time, but Agatha refuses to picture anything around sixty as ‘old age’.
Thirty minutes pass before Nicky gets restless. Agatha turns away to set down the machine and stretches her back a little, straightening her posture and sending Nicky off with a flick of her head back towards the reception desk.
“He’s a good kid,” Elijah tells her. She glances back to see him cramming himself into Billy’s chair with him to better see whatever it is the older of the two is doing on the computer.
“Somehow,” Agatha replies without thinking about it. She refills her ink cup and catches Elijah’s eye, speaking again before he can do something unbearable like try to reassure her of her child-rearing skills. “Where are you eloping?”
“City hall,” he replies, taking the bait to change the subject. “Quick and easy. A friend who introduced us is going to witness, but that’s it.”
Agatha knows better than to ask questions about the rest of his family; she knows at least one of his parents is still alive, or was the last time he’d mentioned them, but he’s as old as she is and has been out of the closet for much, much longer. It makes little difference if the parent in question is technically alive or dead, at least when it comes to Elijah.
“How’s that look?” She asks, leaning back in after shading in what she hopes is the last section.
Elijah turns his head and tilts his arm, pursing his lips.
“Yeah. Love it.”
She lets out a soft sigh of relief and brushes her pinkie over the area that gave her the most trouble, wicking away a little blood and lymph. A bruise is already blooming under her fingers and she clicks her tongue.
“Be extra gentle with this for the next little while. Don’t want you looking beaten up on the big day.”
“Can I get that in writing?” Elijah asks, his tone amused. “No strenuous activity, no heavy lifting, no operating heavy machinery…”
“I’m not getting you out of your domestic duties just because you waited until the last minute to get back under the needle,” she deadpans, shooting him a fond look masked by annoyance. She rolls back from the chair and sets the machine back down, reaching for her Bactine and paper towels.
Lilia practically materializes , and Agatha barely manages to hold back a yelp to accompany the way she almost jumps out of her skin.
Unbothered, she peers over her shoulder and eyes the finished piece, reaching out to pull the light closer for a better look. Agatha’s been working too long to feel nervous about the scrutiny, and Lilia wouldn’t let her carry on around the shop the way she does if her work was anything less than perfection, anyway.
A moment later, she makes a small sound of approval in the back of her throat, then pats Elijah’s hand gently.
“Good to see you,” she tells him before leaving them both alone again.
“She doing alright?” Elijah asks once she’s retreated fully to the back office.
Agatha catches his eye, shooting him a warning look before spraying down the tattoo and wiping it carefully.
“Lilia’s fine.”
He catches her tone and leaves it alone, laying back down as she stands up and reaches around him for her Polaroid camera. He stays still as she takes one shot and lets it develop before returning the camera to its place, then retrieves her phone to take a few more photos for posterity.
“I’ll need healed photos. I suppose that can wait until after the not-wedding.”
Elijah sits up as she turns off the light and blinks to adjust his eyes.
“You got it, boss.”
He offers her his arm as she pulls a sheet of Saniderm out of the box, eyeing the piece one last time as if expecting something to jump out at her– some mistake; some missed detail. It’s hard to consider anything perfect, having long ago surrendered herself to knowing that it only needed to be correct , and in the client’s eyes, not hers.
“Ooh, lemme see,” Alice insists as she pulls off her headphones and sees Agatha starting the wrap. She scurries across the space between them in the shop and grins as she peeks over her shoulder and gnaws on her lip. “I like the detail here, in the shingles.”
She points to the place she’s referring to, and Agatha bristles slightly; Alice is good with compliments, slinging them around easily and yet somehow never weakening them by quantity. It still catches her off-guard every time. She doesn’t respond, focusing on making sure she doesn’t leave any air bubbles in the wrap as she smooths it into place until the other woman retreats over to the front desk.
“You know the drill, but get the kid to give you an aftercare card on the way out, anyway,” she tells him. “Makes it look like I’m better at my job.”
Elijah snorts and slides off the chair, turning to Agatha and giving her a penetrating, knowing look. She’s briefly terrified he’s going to go in for a hug, so she stays seated on her stool. It passes, though, and he holds a hand out for her to shake. She snaps her glove off and takes it, chuckling in spite of herself.
“I’ll call you the next time I want to make some wallet-draining bad decisions,” he promises.
She tugs her other glove off and runs both hands tiredly through her hair as he leaves, then forces herself to her feet to start the cleaning process before she can lose her momentum. She hears Nicky’s abrupt laughter as she picks up the spray bottle from her cart, glancing over in time to see Alice scooping him up into the air to stop him from rushing over.
“Ah, you know the rules - she’s spraying poison over there; wait here.” Alice holds him up further, flipping him onto his side in her arms and grunting dramatically as she begins a set of bicep curls with him that leaves him too hysterical to speak.
It sends a tiny jolt of jealous frustration through Agatha’s system that she wasn’t anticipating, and she makes a mental note to get back to strength-training her arms if she ever finds time to make it back to the gym again. She focuses her frustration on getting the clean-up done as quickly as possible, then makes her way over to the desk and holds her hand out impatiently to Billy for the cash that Elijah had left.
Jen sidles past on her way out, leaning in close enough that her breath tickles at Agatha’s ear irritatingly.
“Did you ever pay me back for the grip tape?”
She sighs and pulls a twenty out of the stack, holding it up over her shoulder between her index and middle finger for the other woman, stopping her by pulling it away slightly as she reaches for it.
“I said black , by the way. I really doubt that they only had pink.”
“ I only had pink,” Jen clarifies, snatching the twenty and tucking it into her bra as Agatha turns to face her. “And I didn’t feel like running out and wasting time. You’re welcome, also.”
“Whatever,” she huffs. It’s not the comeback she’d have slung if she were less exhausted, and Jen only responds by snorting and turning on her heel to leave.
“C’mon, kiddo, it’s go-time.” She nods to Nicky, who immediately whines as Alice sets him back down. She doesn’t even look slightly out of breath - Agatha will need to find a way to subtly get her arm-day routine out of her.
“Noooo, no, can we stay?” Nicky pleads, peering up at her with a well-practiced puppy-dog-eyes routine that she dramatically rolls her eyes at as an excuse not to have to look.
“There’s nothing to stay for,” she points out, gesturing around the mostly empty shop. “It’s getting dark, and you still need to eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” he insists.
“You’re not?” Billy asks, raising an eyebrow at him faux-curiously. He tsks and shakes his head. “I’m so hungry. You’re so lucky you get to go have dinner.”
Nicky narrows his eyes, putting on the same calculating, serious look that Agatha does when she feels like she’s being manipulated into something and weighing the pros and cons.
“And,” Agatha tacks on, feeling the weight of the cash in her jacket pocket and thinking about the abysmal state of their refrigerator, “If we go now, we can go out to eat.”
Nicky squirms on the spot, looking back up at her curiously. She bites back a smile, knowing he’s about to crack.
“...Can we go to Longboards ?”
Agatha pretends to consider for a moment longer than necessary, then sighs.
“I suppose so. You paying?”
“No,” he replies, his tone so haughty and offended that she chokes, snorting to bite back a genuine laugh.
“They have the best chicken fingers,” Billy agrees, nudging Nicky softly.
Agatha sucks her teeth and then nods, glancing at him instead and then narrowing her eyes and deciding to throw him a bone, especially for his assist with Nicky.
“You closing?” She asks.
“Alice is,” he replies, pointing back over his shoulder with his thumb to where the other woman has gone back to her station to pore over another drawing. A small smile begins to creep across his features, and Agatha’s annoyance and fondness wage war over her expression as she watches him realize in real time what’s happening.
“Alright, come on.” She jerks her head toward the door, watching Nicky scramble around the counter to her, suddenly enthusiastic with the promise of chicken fingers. “Nicky’s buying you dinner, too.”
Billy nearly falls over himself to join them, rushing to clock out on the computer and pull his hooded sweater on in the same movement.
Agatha nurses the single beer she’s allowing herself with the knowledge that she’s both about to put away her weight in carbs and that she’s always been able to hold her fucking booze.
She only mocks Billy for his decision to copy Nicky’s choice of chocolate milk for a few minutes before she’s too tired to put in the effort any longer. He quietly helps Nicky with the maze on his menu for a while, giving her a chance to decompress until their food arrives and only turning his attention to her once Nicky is on the verge of choking on his french fries with the speed he’s inhaling them.
“So your Sunday morning appointment…”
“The asters.”
“Rio, yeah.” He looks down at his plate and uses his fork to dig a ditch in the middle of his rice. “Did you know she owns the flower shop up the block?”
“I did,” Agatha replies slowly, setting her burger back down to properly level a warning gaze on him with all of her focus. “Why do you know that? Taking up gardening?”
Billy’s cheeks flush and he shakes his head slightly.
“It was on her LinkedIn.”
Agatha sighs and goes to rub her temple before thinking better of it and wiping the burger grease from her fingers first on her napkin.
“If I don’t ask why you were looking her up, will it make this conversation stop here?”
Nicky, sensing tension, sets down the handful of fries he’s holding in one ketchup-covered hand and looks between them curiously. Agatha catches his look and sighs defeatedly, gesturing at Billy to carry on.
“You haven’t had anyone new in a while - and all of her stuff looked like it came from different people, so I wanted to make sure she wasn’t a weirdo.”
“A lot of people have a lot of artists,” Agatha points out.
“You don’t have much tolerance for a lot of people,” Billy points out, not missing a beat.
She stares him down for another moment before dropping his gaze, picking her burger up again, and taking a generous bite. It gives her a moment to consider her next question as she chews, and even Nicky senses the danger is at bay enough for him to dive back into his fries.
“What else?” She asks around a swallow, dropping the burger onto her plate and then reaching over to turn Nicky’s around so his last remaining chicken fingers are closer to him than the fries he’s massacring. She’s going to make this lazy excuse for a dinner nutritiously balanced if it kills her, so help her.
“You didn’t want me to look into her, so maybe I should just -”
He cuts himself off with a literal gasp at the threatening look she gives him. At least she’s still got it.
“I don’t know, her page was pretty empty. It looked like she studied around here, but that was a while ago. She had a couple of middle-management credits in New York before the flower shop.”
Agatha can feel herself tucking the information away neatly by category despite really not wanting to. It feels like a waste to know she’s using up so much mental storage on someone she’s going to work with for a few hours and then likely only ever see again when she needs to make funeral arrangements for someone or buy a last-second apology bouquet.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Something to talk about when she’s in the chair, I guess,” Billy replies. “Honestly, I mostly checked her out because I was bored. It’s not that often that we have a new face, Not in your corner of the shop, at least.”
Agatha hums and steals one of Nicky’s fries from his plate when he isn’t looking and winces at the sickly sweet ketchup it’s been caught in the crossfire of.
“Well, if I don’t end up having to pawn her off onto Jen or Alice, maybe she won’t be a new face for long.”
Billy shrugs as he skewers a few pieces of chicken onto his fork and then uses the blunt end of his knife to pile some rice on top.
“She didn’t seem like she’s going to be an issue.”
“We’ll see how she sits,” Agatha dismisses, turning back to her own food and letting Nicky regain Billy’s attention with a riveting discussion about his Christmas wishlist, ignoring that it was months away. As the pair of them wrap up in conversation again - if it could be called a conversation, Billy was painfully accurate about Nicky talking at him - she sips her beer and leans back against the uncomfortable booth seat.
“... Aaaand a bunny,” Nicky finishes his list with a dramatic flourish. Agatha’s sure she has no idea where he got that particular trait from.
“Excuse me?” She pipes up, raising an eyebrow at him curiously.
“And a bunny,” he repeats, a little slower, emphasizing each syllable. He has no idea how (hilariously) rude he’s being, and explaining it to him would mean admitting that it was also rude when she did it to people, so she doesn’t correct him for the time being.
Billy stifles a laugh and she takes another of Nicky’s fries, pointing it at her colleague threateningly.
“I haven’t decided how I’m exacting my revenge for this, by the way. But once I do… just make sure you have your affairs in order.”
Billy doesn’t seem too concerned. Maybe she doesn’t still have the edge she thought she did.
Pushing the last few bites of her burger aside, she points to Nicky’s plate.
“Eat another chicken finger, or the entire pet discussion is off the table,” she tells him, ignoring his grumbling as he obediently picks one of the last pieces up and begrudgingly takes an aggressive bite. Billy obviously catches the amused look she gives Nicky but doesn’t say anything, dropping her gaze when he catches it and being saved by his phone buzzing on the surface of the table.
He picks it up and snorts at the screen, reaching into his pocket with his free hand.
“My mom wants me to get the check,” he says. He reaches toward the tablet mounted at the back edge of the booth. Agatha nearly slaps his hand away before catching herself, hand freezing mid-air before she redirects and grabs the edge of the tablet, turning it away from him.
“Don’t be fucking annoying,” she tells him, hitting the ‘request server’ button before he can reach for it again and then sliding it back into its spot. “Next she’s going to be sending me gas money.”
“BAD WORD!” Nicky exclaims, pointing at her so aggressively that a little bit of loose breading from his chicken finger flies across the table at her and bounces off her shirt. She considers them even in terms of dinner-table offenses and doesn’t even respond. Billy clears his throat, looking at her more seriously.
“...Did you want gas money?”
“Billy, finish your food.”
She tugs some cash from her pocket as she sees their server making her way back over to their table and then slams the last of her beer. Despite everything, her mood has significantly lifted from its sourness earlier that day – not that she’d admit it. Nicky giggles at her using the same stern tone with Billy, clearly finding it much more amusing when he’s not the one on the receiving end of it.
She can’t help but smile a tiny bit in reaction to the sound, shooting him a wink and then leaning back in her seat much more contently. The weekend ahead of her seems a little brighter; the company she’s kicking it off with doesn’t hurt either.
