Chapter Text
Over the quarter-century that Agatha’s been tattooing, she’s seen pretty much every reaction to pain possible. Grown men will grunt and wince and clench their fists when faced with the shader, taking deep, dramatic breaths as if they consider it to be how ‘toughing it out’ works. One of Agatha’s regulars, a delicate-looking, thirty-something-year-old woman, needs to bring Red Bull to her appointments to avoid falling asleep listening to the buzz of the machines while having the entirety of her back covered in a multi-session snake piece. Just a week prior, Alice had picked up a walk-in wearing what Billy had to inform Agatha was an ‘infinity collar’, who seemed fine until the end of the first hour when she began squirming in a specific way that made Jen, Lilia, and Billy all retire embarrassedly to the back office for the rest of the appointment.
She’s seen the whole spectrum–terror, panic, agony, arousal, and outright indifference.
Rio’s reaction to the first stroke makes her feel like someone’s poured ice water over her head.
The muscle in her thigh jumps under the sensation, which takes Agatha by surprise. She’d expected tougher, maybe more of a guarded front. The twitch goes all the way down to her knee, but she relaxes under the machine immediately, not even opening her eyes. The reaction that makes Agatha freeze, though, is the sound that slips out of her, muffled into her folded arm. She lifts the needle immediately.
A sigh, but filthier. Caught between an exhale and a whine, it lingers, heavy, in the air. Agatha stops hearing the machine buzzing in her hand, like she’s lost the ability to hear anything else–or the interest to–after that.
Rio peeks one eye open, catching Agatha’s gaze.
“Almost forgot what this feels like,” she says. Her voice is thick, like she’s just been awakened from a good dream.
Agatha wordlessly lets her eyes roam down Rio’s arm, the tattoo-covered one, back to the leg she’s working on. All the pieces are well-healed, some even a little faded, blown out around the edges. It could have been months since she’d last been tattooed, if not longer. The thought doesn’t exactly explain the obscenity of the reaction, but Rio’s words, the reminder that this is a real human being under her hands waiting to continue their session, spur her back into her work.
To her credit, Rio doesn’t make that sound a second time, but her eyes are open now, chin dipped down into her arm so she can watch the side of Agatha’s face while she works. She pretends not to notice her, and after a few focused moments, she stops noticing for real.
Rio’s skin seems to open under her, reminding her of an old Magic Eye poster like the ones her mother never let her keep up in her room. (“Those are for drug addicts and socialists, Agatha, and I’ll be damned if I have one of those or their awful taste in decor under my roof.”)
Agatha’s pleased to know that she probably won’t have any issues with aftercare when it comes to the woman under her. If she’s this well-moisturized (not to mention the laser investment) and prepared for their first session, she can definitely count on her to keep it clean and turn in some decent healed photos in a few weeks. She hits a nerve that puts an unmistakable involuntary shake in her leg and wordlessly presses one hand to the ditch of her knee to hold her still.
“Thanks,” Rio mumbles. Agatha doesn’t look up, transfixed on the movement of the skin under her machine. Her vision nearly goes blurry around the edges from how hard she stares, unblinking. She won’t be able to keep this up for the entire session without needing a break and an aspirin, so she finishes the stem she’s working on and then sits back, turning her head to press her eye into her shoulder until the spots vanish.
Rio adjusts a little, having the nerve to pull a catlike stretch, seeming to melt across the bed while Agatha re-ups her ink.
“How long can you normally sit for?” She asks, inching her chair a little closer to move upward on the first flower, beginning the less intensive labor of the petals. The lines are shorter, and the curve to them makes them so easy to throw down that Agatha thinks she could probably do this in her sleep.
“For you?” Rio asks. Agatha can hear the grin in her tone and refuses to meet her eye. “Probably all day, if you’re not busy. You’re very gentle.”
To her horror, Agatha feels her cheeks heat up and realizes she’s fucking blushing.
“Most women are, I’m told,” she says, turning her body fully away and pretending to fiddle with something on the machine in her hands.
Rio hums in agreement, pushing herself up onto her elbows to turn to face the other woman a little better.
“Do I get a discount if I push past your hourly into a day rate?”
Agatha snorts. Then, in a flailing attempt to regain the upper hand, says boldly, “I don’t do day rate. There’s an extra fee if you keep flirting with me, though.”
She makes the mistake of looking up at the other woman as she settles back in and is frozen under the spotlight of her gleaming, mischievous stare. It was her own dumbass fault for taking the bait in the first place; it was never in her nature to not have the last word.
“Okay, Agatha,” Rio replies, tone bright and teasing. She pauses before delivering her final blow: “I can be good.”
She slides back down onto her arms, closing her eyes again. Hook, line, sinker.
Agatha stares at her, slack-jawed. She scrambles for another comeback, something, anything to add another tick to her side of the scoreboard, but comes up with nothing. Narrowing her eyes, she turns her attention back to the tattoo. She’d never risk making her art suffer, but she does pull the skin taut with her free hand a little harder than necessary, going through the motions of multiple connected petals without lifting the machine once and only stopping when the woman under her begins to tense.
She waits until she’s clenching hard enough that her skin is pulling back, away from her fingers, then lets go and wheels herself back to her cart wordlessly. Rio exhales slowly, shakily, and Agatha bites back the smirk threatening to cut through her guise of professionalism.
By now, she’d probably have asked how she was doing, but the last thing she needs is to give the other woman some kind of opening. She wicks away a single bead of sweat that rolls down the back of her thigh, then reaches up with the back of her wrist to nudge her overhanging light a little more into place as she continues. It isn’t until she’s finishing a third flower, and is convinced that Rio might have actually fallen asleep, that Billy’s voice cuts through the music.
“Agatha?”
She grunts back in response, eyes narrowed as she hones in on a small cluster of disc florets.
“Do you want to judge Miss Salem Ink this year?”
Agatha rears back from Rio’s leg, so bewildered that she doesn’t even have a chance to be offended when Rio almost mirrors her shocked and confused look, head shooting up from her previously restful position.
“Come again?”
“At the convention. You’re still coming to that, right?” Billy asks. He wheels his desk chair around the wall and peeks over the half-gate to the client area. She turns to glance over at him, because it’s better than having to look into Rio’s curious, amused face, and immediately regrets it when she sees the hopeful look he’s turned on her.
“I don’t know about the convention yet,” she tells him, deciding to tackle one issue at a time. She turns away from both of them and reaches for a paper towel instead.
Billy breezes past her non-answer.
“They asked for a female judge, and it would have to be you or Lilia with the experience requirement.”
Agatha cracks a genuine smile at that, chuckling to herself as she pushes back over to Rio and wipes away the smallest hint of blood blooming up on her skin where she’d overworked the head of one of the flowers a bit. The image of Lilia being responsible for judging a glorified ‘Twin Peaks potentials’ contest is funny enough to make Agatha want to preorder her convention tickets right then and there. Hell, it might be worth looking into group rates - she’d happily treat a few of her regulars to the show, too.
“I’m a little busy right now. Ask me later,” she tells him instead, then adds under her breath, “Or forget to. That would also be fine.”
Rio chuckles softly, fully alert again now as Agatha starts on a fourth flower.
“I think you should do it. It sounds fun.”
“It’s unpaid labor,” Agatha replies. “I don’t need to work for exposure anymore.”
The exposure would be good for the shop, though. Lilia’s going to have to retire sooner or later, though Agatha thinks its equally as likely that she’ll just stubbornly pass away in the back office one day, and Billy’s own portfolio is growing closer and closer to completion every week.
“Have you ever done it before?” Rio asks, clearly not planning to let it go.
Agatha sighs, lifting her eyes to meet the other woman’s gaze with what she hopes is a discouraging look.
“No.”
“Then how can you just say ‘no’?” Rio asks.
Agatha sighs a second time, much more defeatedly, and watches the telltale shake of poorly withheld laughter shudder up her leg as she readjusts her grip. She doesn’t even dignify Rio’s obnoxious question with an answer, shaking her head to herself and letting the sounds of the machine blend into the music once more.
The next flower comes to life much more quickly; Agatha’s thankful for the stencil, fully aware that if she’d let herself freehand the entire piece, it would end up crowded and dense like her original practice sketch had been.
Her playlist ends, and the quiet stretches the air between them long enough for Rio to speak again.
“When is it?”
“Huh?”
“The convention,” Rio replies. “The one you’re not going to be a judge at.”
Agatha stays quiet for a long moment, not wanting to break her concentration on the last of the half-blooms. At the desk, she hears Billy shuffle around before another playlist begins, the one he curated specifically for her. She rolls her eyes.
“Next month. You can get a flyer on your way out,” she says roughly.
Rio lets out a little thoughtful sound–a hum from the back of her throat that’s far too similar to the sigh she’d made earlier–and Agatha freezes, hands stilling as she lifts them away from her like she’s worried she’s done something to draw another one out of her.
“But the shop will be there?” Rio presses, seemingly oblivious.
“Uh-huh,” Agatha replies, unsure where she’s going with this, but continuing to find herself leaving her defenses down. She waits for a follow-up question, not feeling safe to lower the needle back to her skin until she’s sure she won’t be thrown another curveball, but it doesn’t come. She looks up to see that Rio has closed her eyes again, and exhales softly as she gets back to it.
Despite the conversation that always feels like a trap, she finds herself growing more and more comfortable with Rio as a canvas. She doesn’t hesitate to nudge her back and forth, nearly manhandling her into turning onto her side and dipping her knee closer to her as she gets started on the last couple of asters. She wipes away the excess ink between passes without a hint of acknowledgment of the way the other woman twitches away or gasps, easing up her pressure when she sees the tension in her jaw.
The linework only takes two hours. They’re interrupted by Billy just as Agatha’s pulling off her gloves, clutching two frosty bottles of water in offering. Agatha takes one, popping the cap off and swigging from it before even bothering to hand Rio the second one, and then lowers it suspiciously to watch the condensation bead under her fingers.
“Where’d you get this?”
“...The back room?” Billy stares at her, head cocking slowly to the side.
“There’s no fridge in the back room,” Agatha points out.
Billy shuffles on the spot, stammering for a moment and then hanging his head.
“They were in the… mini fridge. At the desk.”
Agatha glares at him, opening her mouth to berate him, but he cuts her off.
“Wow, this looks great so far,” He sidesteps her, closer to the table to take a look, like he’s using the fact that she won’t want to jostle Rio as his first line of defense in the unlikely event of a physical attack.
“Yeah, I don’t usually hear any complaints,” Rio says. Agatha doesn’t have to look to know Billy has immediately averted his eyes.
She’s absolutely not smiling when she grabs her saline, though the actual yelp of shock that Rio lets out when she suddenly sprays it over her leg does make her smirk.
“Whoops.”
She plants the paper towel in place, soothing it over her soaked skin with a slow wipe, making sure the paper is completely saturated before dragging it across the sore and raised flesh under it. Rio inhales sharply, which Agatha assumes is out of irritation, and makes the mistake of deeming it safe to look up at her questioningly. She intends the look to be challenging, but her breath catches in her throat at the sight of her client worrying her lower lip between her teeth, eyes wide and pupils blown out.
It takes her a moment to remember that Billy is still standing beside her, staring at the ceiling tiles with extreme interest, hands crammed into his pockets.
“I’m out of Bactine,” Agatha tells him. She’s not; she triple-checked her cart before he or Rio arrived that morning, but it gives him an excuse to leave and gives her something to say other than the first string of expletives that came to mind. Billy nearly falls over himself in his hurry to rush to the back office, and Agatha presses another dry towel onto the tattoo.
“How is it feeling?” She asks because she should, even though she half-expects Rio to answer with something absolutely obscene.
To her surprise, though, she doesn’t. She pushes herself up onto her elbows, cheeks flushed, and clears her throat with what Agatha would guess is uncharacteristic meekness.
“It’s good. I’m good. I could do this all day.”
Agatha chuckles darkly before she can help herself.
“Oh, that doesn’t surprise me at all.”
Rio’s eyes gleam, but before she can retort, Billy jogs back over with a fresh spray bottle and hands it to Agatha, then makes himself immediately scarce. She makes a mental note to remember to tip him out before she leaves for the day.
“This might sting,” she says, tugging the cap off of the bottle and leaning forward to spray it across the fresh linework. She’s so close that she inhales a little of the mist in the air, feeling it burn in the back of her throat. There’s a pause as it lands, and then Rio lets out a full-body shudder of discomfort, lips tightening for a moment in reaction to the feeling. It’s little more than an itch, Agatha knows from experience, but she also agrees that it’s much worse than the more demanding, unrelenting pain of the needle. This pain inspires the urge to make it worse, to scratch for relief.
Rio’s fingers twitch briefly, then still as the sting subsides to the kind numbness that takes over.
The song playing over the speakers changes to something lighter and pop-toned, and Agatha grits her teeth. Billy’s been sneaking a few of them in each time he updates her playlist, clearly trying to brainwash her into expanding her taste.
“Billy!” She calls, smiling self-satisfyingly when the song stops and skips to the next track. She focuses on Rio again, finally meeting her eye. “I’m going to let that sit for a minute. You need a break?”
She wheels back from the table and sips her water again, watching as Rio pushes herself to sit up completely and uncaps her own bottle.
“You’re the one being bent over for hours,” she says, and even though it’s completely honest and accurate, the tone she chooses is anything but. “It’s up to you when we tap out today.”
Agatha exhales directly into her water bottle at that, fixing the other woman with what she hopes is an unamused look.
“What did I say about the flirting tax?”
Rio cocks her head to the side, lowering her own bottle before she can take a sip. She completes the innocent look by having the nerve to flutter her lashes.
“What do you mean?”
Agatha narrows her eyes curiously, then stands up from her seat.
“I’m going to stretch my legs.” She nods toward the door. “Do you smoke?”
“Good guess,” Rio replies, slipping down from the table and presenting her leg as Agatha grabs a fresh pair of gloves and a roll of plastic wrap.
She wraps the piece loosely, careful not to press on any of the fresh lines, and then tapes it into place before Rio retrieves her folded sweatpants and steps back into them, tugging them up around her hips and following Agatha out of the client area and back into the foyer. She digs in the pocket of her coat on the rack for a moment before pulling out a small snakeskin and gold-plated case, flipping it open, and pulling out two cigarettes. She offers one to Agatha, who hesitates, then avoids Billy’s judging gaze as she accepts it wordlessly and tucks it between her lips to free up both hands to put on her own jacket.
The cool air presses in on them from all sides once they step outside, and Agatha bristles uncomfortably as she tightens her jacket around herself and adjusts to the stark difference from the warm, comfortable shop.
She watches Rio light her cigarette with an ornate-looking lighter that Agatha doesn’t get a good look at and then holds a hand out for it. Rio snorts, taking a quick drag to make sure that it took, and then sticks her smoke between her teeth, speaking around it.
“I already took my pants off for you; we can probably save the butane and just fuck.”
The cigarette nearly drops out of Agatha’s mouth entirely when her jaw goes slack, but she straightens up when Rio leans in closer and pinches both cigarettes to steady them. She presses the lit butt of hers against Agatha’s, and after a beat, she remembers to inhale as well, lighting it.
Rio seems perfectly comfortable in the silence between them as she straightens back to her full height and takes a few more drags. For the first time in a long time, Agatha finds it to be unbearable.
“How long have you been at the shop?” She asks, hearing the stutter cutting into her question but forcing herself past it. She nods down the road a little, toward the corner where the flower shop is.
Rio narrows her eyes as she inhales, nodding slowly in thought as she mulls over the question.
“I inherited it a few months back, but negotiating with the employees– employee , I should say–wasn’t going well. I’ve only been there myself for a couple of weeks.”
“Is it just you, now?”
Rio nods, watching as Agatha takes another long drag before speaking.
“For now. Unless you know anyone who got a diploma in floral artistry or whatever.”
Agatha snorts, a puff of smoke exploding from her lips from the force of it, and then looks away.
“That’s definitely not a real thing.”
“Oh, it is,” Rio replies, amusement lightening her tone. “At least, according to the last girl. Which was why I was supposed to be paying her more. Apparently, working for cheap was a favor for my uncle for being such a pillar of the community or something.”
She makes air quotes with her fingers, the ash from her cigarette falling off of the butt end of it from the movement.
Agatha eyes her thoughtfully, wondering briefly if she’s even aware of the truth in that.
“He was, actually.”
“Was what?” Rio’s question is muffled around the cigarette returning to her lips.
Agatha flicks the ash from the end of her own.
“A pillar in the community. I, uh…” She scratches the back of her neck with her free hand when Rio looks at her curiously. “I didn’t know him, though. We’d probably only met once or twice.”
She’s a little embarrassed to realize she doesn’t even remember his name.
“Well, don’t… beat yourself up over it?” Rio suggests, brow furrowing a little as she tries to parse the uncomfortable tonal shift the conversation has taken. “Most people don’t have a close personal relationship with their florist.”
“He did most of the planters around here,” Agatha gestures to the street. Rio follows her gaze, eyes snapping back to Agatha when she speaks again. “He was here long before I was. All the weddings and baby showers for everyone in every one of these shops, all him.”
She points to a few of the buildings, but this time, Rio’s eyes don’t leave her. She doesn’t meet her gaze as she takes another drag, long enough to burn harshly in her throat.
“Funerals, too, right?” Rio’s voice is tentative now, audibly tiptoeing through a minefield.
“Yeah.” Agatha finally meets her eye, holding her gaze as she drops the nearly finished cigarette to the pavement and stomps it out with her toe. “You about done?”
Rio’s gaze drops to her own cigarette and she frowns, like she’d forgotten she was holding it. She drops it as well, pulling her hair back from her face as she leans over it and spits. It’s quiet enough between them that Agatha can hear the sizzle of it going out, and looks away with a soft sound of disgust under her breath.
It draws a laugh out of the other woman, and she wordlessly follows her back inside.
When Agatha returns from the sink, she finds Rio leaning against the reception counter, talking to Billy. The latter looks up at her, almost guiltily, as she approaches.
“Hey, so–”
“What am I being suckered into?” Agatha cuts him off with her question, slowing to a stop a few feet away from the pair of them and cramming her hands into her pockets.
“I just thought… we’re tearing through this so quickly,” Rio gestures at her leg, “If you still had time, after, we could do something else.”
“Depends what you had in mind.”
She thinks about Nicky, and about how she shouldn’t leave him with the Kaplans for too long. Still, Rio is right; they’re moving through the piece a lot more efficiently than she’d anticipated when she’d first started planning the appointment, admittedly due mostly in part to how well Rio is sitting for it, and it wouldn’t hurt to get another piece in or started.
Rio lifts one hand to her ear, tracing her index finger in a curve behind it, as if she’s tucking back her hair.
“Just a little vine.”
Agatha purses her lips. Rio, with her actual flower shop and camera roll full of floral displays, undoubtedly has something more specific in mind than what she’s saying.
“What kind of vine?”
“Dealer’s choice,” Rio replies. It takes Agatha a second to realize that that isn’t the name of a plant species. It throws her off a little - some of her oldest regulars still don’t let her make decisions like that for them.
She gestures back towards the bed, then nods.
“Yeah, sure. If we have time, after the shading.”
Rio lights up, a little spring in her step that Agatha pretends not to notice as she makes her way back to the bed and kicks off her shoes.
She’s careful as she slides the sweats off, and when the plastic is peeled back, Agatha can see the beginnings of some swelling, but Rio doesn’t seem bothered, so she sets out a few fresh ink cups and readjusts her machine.
Sometime during their time outside, Billy has moved on to his own playlist. Too tired to complain about the sickening back and forth of dark alternative pop and the dreamier-sounding top 40 tracks, Agatha works in silence for the next several minutes.
Rio's resolve to sit well seems to be waning. To her credit, she doesn't complain or even flinch, but when each pass grows too long, her muscles tighten to the point of almost outright resisting the needle.
"You still doing okay?" Agatha asks, not even realizing she's said anything until Rio gives her a surprised look. She doesn't blame her; she could hear the genuine concern in her own tone, and it sounded foreign to her, too.
"Yeah," Rio replies softly. "Yeah, I'm alright."
Her expression, almost touched, matches her voice almost unbearably. Agatha drops her gaze again and wicks away a little blood with the back of her pinky finger. Her needle returns to the same spot, and she hears the first real sound of pain from the other woman that she has for their entire session.
It's a groan. Her fingers dig into the side of the table, and she laughs in disbelief when the needle lifts again.
"Okay. That's... a little tender."
Agatha feels her lips twitch upward before she can help herself.
"Just wait until you finish this off," she warns, brushing the backs of her knuckles across her kneecap - some of the only other uninked skin on that leg.
Her skin jumps under the touch, too light after such sharp pain, and she inhales sharply.
"Yeah, not looking forward to it," Rio agrees, shifting slightly and trying to get comfortable again without going too far. "We'll have to figure out something good for it - worth it."
Agatha pauses. That is quite the assumption, but Rio is no longer looking at her, so she can’t fix her with a look to convey it.
They make it through the next hour without another word to each other, but the quiet is surprisingly comfortable. Rio might have actually fallen asleep, breathing evenly and slowly without stirring while Agatha finishes darkening each of the stems. She only stirs when the cold, wet paper towel makes contact with her leg again.
“Please tell me we’re done,” she groans, drawing a laugh out of the artist.
“That’s your call,” she tells her, wiping away the excess ink slowly and gently, then sitting back to look at the final piece with what she hopes is a bit of objectivity.
Rio arches awkwardly to take a look, then swings her legs off of the side of the bed to pad over to the mirror. It’s definitely swollen; Agatha can see the difference now that she’s a little further away. The black and grey lines are outlined by a faint reddish glow of irritation, the centers of each flower already intensified with slight bruising, but the work is solid, and the look of appreciation on Rio’s face seems to confirm that.
“I think it’s good, I don’t see anything I’d change.”
Agatha exhales, flexing her fingers uncomfortably and setting down the machine on her cart. Beckoning Rio back over to the table, she reaches for her towels again, spraying another one down until it nearly drips on the floor.
"Hold still," she says, reaching out with one hand for Rio's leg, cupping the inside of her thigh from behind. She realizes her mistake as she does it, feeling a twinge of something akin to interest when Rio makes some sort of sound halfway between a giggle and a sigh. Her cheeks flush and she slaps the wet paper towel down to her skin with a bit more enthusiasm than necessary, like she's trying to physically cut her sound off.
"Cold," Rio hisses, leg twitching forward with a jerk, like her knee was about to buckle.
"You still want that vine?" Agatha asks, a challenge more than a question.
Rio stills, looking down at her and pursing her lips to try to hide her amusement.
"Yes."
"Alright," Agatha replies lightly, standing back up to her full height to retrieve the Polaroid camera.
Billy pokes his head around the corner as the flash goes off, and Agatha can tell he's desperate to come and see the finished product but possibly still too nervous at the possibility of Rio making another off-color joke when he isn't expecting it. Agatha silently adds a tally mark to the 'pro' side of her mental pros and cons list of having Rio as a client on her roster.
"I'm assuming you know the drill: give it a week, take it off in the shower," she smooths the cover over the piece carefully, avoiding pressing down too hard on any of the more concentrated areas.
Rio nods along, dipping down to retrieve her pants.
"Yeah, I got it," She promises. Her face is so close to Agatha's for a moment that she can smell the smoke on her breath, mixing in with the mint from the piece of gum she must've been grinding between her molars since they'd come back inside earlier. She steps into the sweats and hikes them back up her hips, leaving them hanging just a hint too low to meet the hem of her tank top once again.
"I'll set up for your vine," Agatha says, gesturing to her cart and then all but shooing the other woman away from her station. "You can go stretch your legs if you need to."
It's less of a friendly suggestion and more of a demand to get out of her space. Rio takes the hint, testing the feeling of leaning her weight onto her freshly tattooed leg and heading back towards the front of the shop.
She pulls up a few references on her tablet before bothering to spray anything down, pulling out a fresh needle pack and swiping the empty ink cups into the garbage can. She glances at the stencil printer briefly and then reaches for a couple of her markers instead.
“What’re you thinking?” She calls over her shoulder to the other woman. “Fine line?”
“Sure, sounds good.” Rio’s voice is way closer than she anticipated, and she jumps almost out of her seat entirely before whirling around to look at her. She’s returned silently in the last few moments, clutching a fresh bottle of water in both hands.
“I’m just going…” Agatha’s voice falters and she starts over. “Show me how big you want it.”
Rio tugs the hair tie off of her wrist and pulls her hair back messily, then sinks down to run her finger along the area again. Agatha watches her as she pulls on a pair of gloves, then rolls closer with an alcohol wipe. Blindly reaching back for her marker, she leans closer to begin her rough outline.
Twitching away, Rio huffs out a sound of surprised frustration, then returns to her original position so Agatha can put her non-marker-wielding hand against her jaw steadyingly.
“The needle won’t tickle nearly as much,” Agatha assures her, acutely aware of how close they are when she continues to freehand the design, ignoring the twitch that travels down the woman’s entire neck as her fingers brush into her hairline near her nape.
“Oh, good,” Rio exhales shakily; it isn’t a funny enough comment to laugh at on its own, but combined with what seems to be obvious nerves, it draws a chuckle out of her. Agatha’s eyes narrow slightly but she doesn’t question it, sketching out a few more tiny leaves and then stepping back.
“Get Billy to grab you a hand mirror,” she tells her, stepping back and letting go of her jaw.
She watches Rio for a moment too long as she wordlessly heads back over to the desk and then settles back at her station, fiddling with the machine until she returns.
“Round two,” Rio sighs, sitting up on the edge of the table without needing to be asked.
Agatha stands up and gestures for her to turn her head to the side, buzzing the machine in her hand to life.
“Don’t get any more brilliant ideas halfway through this one,” she warns, though the playfulness in her tone is unmistakable. “Unless you trust the apprentice to do it. He’s not even off-paper yet, though, so do it in the alley out back or we’ll lose our license.”
Rio laughs, leaning away from her a bit to make sure she doesn’t bump into her from the movement of it.
“Okay, noted. Final round,” she amends.
“Better,” Agatha replies, leaning in closer once more. She lowers the machine to skin, almost drowning out Rio’s next words:
“Today. Final round, today.”
