Chapter Text
Rio sits in silence for the whole twenty-odd minutes that the fine line tattoo takes. The buzzing in her ear is undoubtedly too loud for her to hear any attempts at conversation that Agatha would make if she even wanted to, so she just tenses her jaw, grips fistfuls of the sanitary sheet on the bed, and lets Agatha work in peace.
The familiar, almost nostalgic scent of Rio’s perfume — potent but not overpowering — and the sound of her forced steady breathing are Agatha’s entire world for those several minutes. It’s not until she’s cutting out a small piece of Saniderm to cover the finished piece that they’re disturbed at all. The bell above the door chimes, and Agatha hears Billy roll his seat back for a better look before he greets them brightly.
“Hi, Mom.”
Whirling back around from where she was smoothing the wrap into place, Agatha looks over at the doorway in alarm. Rebecca Kaplan approaches the desk, resting her crossed arms gently on top of it, and Agatha breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of the very top of Nicky’s head poking up over the ledge at her side.
She raises one finger in front of her lips in a gesture for silence, watching Rebecca’s eyes drift to her. She nods slowly, making a similar gesture in return, then nods to Billy. He glances back and clears his throat.
“What’re you doing here?”
“We were out running errands and thought we’d say ‘hello’,” Rebecca explains. She lifts a greasy-looking paper bag over the counter and sets it down in front of her son, quirking an eyebrow. “And Nicky said that you’re always forgetting to eat when you take your break, so…”
Agatha can hear the blush on the boy’s face when he groans in protest, trying to shush her as he gratefully digs into the bag. Rio snickers, bringing Agatha’s attention back to her to finish the task at hand.
Nicky’s shoes squeak on the tile, but he’s still too short to see over the gate.
“Mama?” He calls out into the client area. Agatha winces
Rio eyes her for a moment, then looks both amused and surprised when she doesn’t immediately answer him. Instead, she pushes her chair back as silently as she can, reaching for her phone for a last photo before her workflow is interrupted entirely. She takes one photo, then winces when the second photo sets off the automatic flash that she still hasn’t figured out how to turn off.
Nicky grabs the gate and rattles it. Rio snorts, her head dropping forward and causing the third photo to come out blurry.
“Hey,” Agatha snaps over her shoulder. The rattling stops abruptly, and she rolls her eyes. Without thinking, she takes Rio by the jaw and raises the camera again, turning her head back into position. She realizes her mistake when the other woman’s breath catches and the amusement drops from her features.
If she didn’t have both Billy and Rebecca’s eyes on her, along with her extremely impatient son waiting for her, she might have given herself a moment to enjoy Rio’s expression; maybe even comment on it, but for the time being, she keeps her commentary to herself, and lets go of her chin after the last photo turns out perfectly.
"What do I owe you?" Rio asks, her voice low. She doesn't step back out of Agatha's space, forcing her to make the move herself to tuck her phone into her back pocket.
She checks her watch, then glances up at the clock on the wall to double-check.
"Three and a half hours, minus the hundred deposit... Six, even."
Rio steps closer, closing some of the space between them once more as she roots around in the pocket of her sweats before bringing her thumb to her lips and licking it. Agatha's sure she sees the flash of silver peeking out, averting her eyes back down to the folded bills in the other woman's hands. She peels back a few bills and holds them out wordlessly, then chuckles quietly when Agatha quickly tucks them into her bra and turns away.
She gestures toward the front area, turning her attention back to her setup and reaching out to begin tearing the plastic wrap off of her tool tray.
Billy is a little overenthusiastic with his greeting as Rio approaches, likely just in an attempt to focus the stilted energy of the shop elsewhere.
“Hey!” Rio says. Her voice, bright and happy, gives away that her greeting is specifically meant for Nicky. She steps slowly out from behind the separating gate and Agatha glances over in time to see Nicky lifting one finger and aiming it at Rio.
“Rio,” he recalls. He sounds hilariously adult-like, but Agatha scolds him nonetheless.
“Hey . We don’t point.” The gate swings back shut before she can catch his eye, and both he and Rio ignore her.
“Uh-huh,” Rio agrees, focusing her gaze on him with playful scrutiny. “Nicky, right? You been taking care of that daisy I gave you?”
Nicky is uncharacteristically quiet for a moment, and is likely wearing an adorably guilty expression, because Billy jumps in to save him.
“We kept it at the shop,” he tells her. Rio’s eyes flick from Billy to Nicky again.
“Regifting flowers?” She tsks playfully, and Agatha makes her way back over to the counter just as her son starts stammering through an explanation. By the time she’s at Billy’s side, Nicky’s near-incoherent rambling has turned into giggling, Rio’s expression having softened and taken the sting out of her faux offense.
“I was going to crush them up into dirt, anyway,” Rio tells him. Nicky frowns.
“What? Why?”
“To help other flowers grow,” Rio says simply. It’s not exactly a good explanation about the ins and outs of composting, which quiets Nicky for the time being as he visibly rolls the idea around in his mind.
“We’re good here,” Agatha tells Billy, nudging him and nodding to Rio. She doesn’t mean to rudely rush her out, but the combination of all of the company crowded around the desk is making her fidgety. Billy dutifully clicks the ‘paid’ button on the screen, Rio’s appointment time vanishing and being replaced with the full spreadsheet schedule.
“I’m sure I’ll see you soon,” Rio says, shrugging her coat on. Agatha gives her a quick nod, and she makes it almost fully to the door before the compulsion for inappropriateness seems to hit her again, and she tacks on, “I have like, a whole other butt-cheek that could use some beautifying.”
Nicky bursts out laughing - he has no idea what the entire sentence means, surely, but a grown woman did just mention butt cheeks in front of him, which is the peak of comedy. Billy snorts, though Agatha hopes that it's in response to Nicky’s contagious giggling and not because he has a similar sense of humor.
The bell above the door rings, but before Rio can step outside, Rebecca spins around, gesturing to her with one hand and slapping the other to her forehead as if in total disbelief.
“Oh! You work at the florist’s, down the road.”
Rio pauses, turning around.
“I own it,” she corrects gently, but Agatha is pleasantly surprised to hear a hint of pride laced deep underneath her simple words.
“Rio gave me a free flower,” Nicky tells her, pulling Rebecca’s hand when he realizes the attention is no longer focused on him.
“That was very nice of her,” Rebecca tells him gently, before turning to Agatha once more. “If you’re still busy packing up, we can leave and come back-”
Before Agatha can respond, Rio cuts in again.
“You could come by the shop if you have a spare minute. Get a replacement, if you like.” She makes her offer to Nicky fully, eyes locked on him as if he’s as much an adult and part of the conversation as any of the rest of them. She only lifts her gaze back to Rebecca to double-check for permission. “Assuming you aren’t in a hurry.”
“No, not at all, that sounds lovely,” Rebecca clearly doesn’t notice the way Agatha bristles, but Billy does, glancing up at her like he’s wordlessly asking her if she’d like him to step in. She ignores him; there’s no other option when Nicky starts bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet and pulling Rebecca for the door.
Rio pushes the door open further to allow Nicky and Rebecca to pass her out into the cold air. Nicky doesn’t even glance back at Agatha before he bounds outside, and she busies herself with straightening a stack of business cards on the counter in a well-acted rendition of ‘ that doesn’t sting at all’.
The door slams shut loudly behind them, the wind adding insult to injury, and Billy speaks immediately.
“How’d it go?”
Agatha turns to him and narrows her eyes, but her heart isn’t in the glare; it isn’t his fault, but she needs someone to be annoyed with, so she swipes the bag off of the counter and pulls out a second pastry, tearing into it with her teeth before spinning on her heel to head back to her station.
She finds herself rushing the takedown process and tries to force a little more deliberateness into her movements. She’s not going to cut corners just because she’s in a hurry to cut Rio, Nicky, and Rebecca’s time together short.
She’s in the process of crumpling up the used stencil from Rio’s originally-booked leg piece and folding it into a ball of plastic wrap when Billy approaches, forever unable to take a hint.
“Are you going to book her again?”
Agatha closes her eyes, picking up her bottle of disinfectant and picturing herself spraying it at him like a misbehaving cat before aiming it at the bed, instead.
“Depends if she wants to,” Agatha replies, tacking on: “Depends what she wants.”
The double-meaning of her own words isn’t lost on her, and if it weren’t Billy she were talking to, she might have regretted saying anything at all. Jen probably would have had a dirty insult locked and loaded to fire back if it had been her there to witness the events of the day.
“She sit alright?”
Agatha’s mind floods with images of the other woman shifting under her hands, the sounds she’d made - some that she was beginning to suspect were voluntary and intentionally timed to throw her off - and she wishes Billy would just go back to the desk and stop making her think about the session at all.
“Obviously. You saw her, she’s probably running out of space.”
“Except for the other butt cheek,” Billy jokes. Agatha can tell he’s trying to lighten the mood; maybe cut some of the frustrated tension in the air, but she wants to throttle him for making her think about Rio’s ass again when she just got the image out of her mind.
“Did you need something?”
She whirls around to glare up at him and he balks, shaking his head and taking a step back before holding out a fresh roll of paper towels for her, clutched between both shaky hands. She snatches it away and tears off a few squares to start wiping with, going over the same spot on the bed over and over again until she hears him give up and walk away again, heading for the back office.
Unfortunately, Rio had sat perfectly, flirting aside. It was one of the easiest new-client sessions Agatha’s had in recent memory. She tosses the used paper towel into the trash and pulls the cash out of her bra, flipping through it and paling at the bills still remaining un-flipped after she passes the threshold of what she’d been owed. Tips were expected, but between the flirting and the almost gratuitous excess cash, Rio’sbordering on a dramatic flair that Agatha isn’t sure she has room in her roster for, but isn’t in any financial position to ignore.
She grabs her bag and jacket, heading for the door just as Billy makes his way back out of the office.
“You taking off?”
She mostly grunts in response, tossing one of the extra bills onto the counter blindly for him and shoving out the door.
Unlocking her car as she approaches, she slumps into the driver’s seat and sits in silence for a moment, trying to fully decompress. Not that she’d ever admit it out loud, but Billy’s incessant insistence on making a mental pros and cons list during times of frustration was proving to be one of Agatha’s more commonly used tools.
Pros: She sat well; she tipped well; and she didn’t seem hell-bent on trying to impress Agatha, flirting aside.
Cons: A little over-familiar; new to the area and hard to read; possibly trying to force Agatha into unknowingly indulging some kink.
Agatha grips the steering wheel and presses her forehead to the top of it, exhaling with all of the air left in her lungs until she feels like she’s fully deflated, then turns the key in the ignition. With a little coaxing, the Plymouth roars to life, and rumbles reassuringly as she wrestles her way out of her jacket and fiddles with the worn-out seat belt.
There’s very little reason to drive around the corner to park at Rio’s shop other than to give herself the excuse of being parked in a loading zone, therefore having no time to chat and needing to grab Nicky and run. Her back is already starting to ache from the session and getting caught up in a triangle between Rebecca’s chattiness and Rio’s… whatever she classified her banter as, was the exact opposite of how Agatha wanted to spend her first hour of post-work freedom.
Pulling up right below the ‘NO STANDING’ sign, Agatha tosses the car in park and considers leaving it running before deciding that may be overkill. She retrieves her bag and pushes her way inside the shop just in time to hear Nicky’s yell of surprise near the counter.
Rebecca turns to her first, admiring a large glass case near the door full of ready-for-pickup bouquets, each with its order slip tucked neatly below.
“That was quick,” she comments, and Agatha can’t even bring herself to respond, eyes flicking around the space until she spots Nicky sitting up on the check-out counter, kicking his feet softly against the worn wood side of it while Rio speaks to him in a hushed tone.
She moves to approach and pauses at how enraptured he is. It’s a look usually reserved for the television - often when it’s something he knows he shouldn’t really be watching - the grin threatening to stretch his cheeks permanently, eyes as wide as saucers. She follows his gaze to a potted plant, one of Rio’s hands wrapped around its base, though Agatha can’t make out what exactly it is from where she stands, and then back down the line of his arm to his hand, where he’s gripping a long pair of copper-colored tweezers.
Before she can step any closer, or make her presence known, he squeals again, dropping the tweezers entirely. Rio snatches them the moment they hit the counter, her free hand leaving the plant to slam down roughly onto the surface of the desk a few inches away just a beat later.
The pair of them freeze, and Rio lifts her hand again to look at her palm questioningly. Her gaze turns mischievous, and she reaches out to show Nicky. His fit of terrified laughter nearly sends him pitching off the edge of the counter. Something lights up in Agatha’s chest, shooting through her nerves and forcing her forward through the space; she catches him just as he loses his balance, landing squarely back against her torso and grabbing her arms for balance. Her heart pounds in her chest at the near-miss, and she shakily lowers him the rest of the way to the floor, muttering a nothing warning about being careful that he pointedly ignores to focus on the florist instead.
The grin hasn’t left Rio’s face, though she does have the sense to look at least a little guilty. Agatha looks to her for an explanation and then hones in on the little splatter of snot-colored goop with a few spindly, broken legs currently glued to the center of her palm, and makes a face before she can help herself.
“What is that?”
“It was a grasshopper. Still is, I suppose. That really depends on your personal opinions about dualism and the death of the body.”
Agatha stares at her.
“We were feeding Seymour!”
Nicky points helpfully to the plant on the counter, and Agatha drops her gaze from Rio to it, instead. An unimpressive Venus flytrap sits unassumingly between them, only about three inches tall.
“Wouldn’t Audrey be more appropriate?” Agatha asks. Rio purses her lips before they pull back into a dazzling grin, and Agatha is forced to drop her gaze again before it accidentally catches her.
“You a big Frank Oz fan?”
“Not particularly,” she sniffs, her hand dropping to Nicky’s shoulder if only to have somewhere to put it. She watches as Rio turns away to grab a paper towel from behind the till and wipes her hands clean, then pulls a container of live grasshoppers out from below the counter. “Just saying, you would be the Seymour in this scenario, if we’re -”
“Do you want to try again?” Rio fully cuts her off to address Nicky, and he wiggles out of Agatha’s grip to try to pull himself back up onto the counter again impatiently.
“Yes!” He insists, nearly falling once more before Agatha gives him a boost without thinking about it. He settles into his former spot and holds out a hand, shaking slightly in excitement, and accepts the tweezers that Rio places in it. At the end of the implement an angry-looking, wriggling grasshopper fights against the restraints; Agatha watches one of its legs tear free from its body and drop silently to the countertop. Nicky doesn’t seem to notice, focused on the plant, and follows Rio’s instructions to hold still until Seymour ’s jaws close around it.
“That’s good,” Rio tells him, helping him pull the tweezers free gently. Something in Agatha’s chest pulls at the way he lights up at the reassurance.
“What now?” he asks, eyes still fixated on the plant.
“Now we have to wait,” Rio says with a heavy sigh, like she’s preemptively agreeing that it’s a boring response. “He’s a little bit of a slow eater. But you can come back in a couple of days and see if you want.”
Her eyes flick back up to Agatha’s, but Nicky’s gaze does the same, and the latter wins her attention. He gives her a pleading look, already reaching for her to pull on her sleeve. She considers stepping out of his reach, as if it will help, but doesn’t want to risk him falling again.
“Are you ready to go?” She changes the subject.
He immediately regrets latching onto her, because it gives him no time to squirm to freedom before she pulls him down from the counter and rights him on his feet.
“Can we come back tomorrow?”
“No,” Agatha replies shortly, already dipping down to pull his sweater more squarely on his shoulders and reach for its zipper. “You have school tomorrow.”
“After?”
She doesn’t bother saying ‘no’ a second time, managing to get the zipper done up and narrowly missing catching her fingers in the teeth of it in her hurry. Rebecca joins them at the counter with a small bundle of carnations, and ringing her up distracts Rio for long enough that Agatha can lie to Nicky properly without being given away.
“It’ll be closed, after. Come on, we have stuff to get done at home.”
The idea of leaving the fun of a predatory plant to do chores only inspires more whining, and Agatha feels the last tight thread of her patience finally snapping.
“Nicky. Enough.”
He freezes, staring at her in shock for a moment before the glint of defiance slips into his glare around the edges. There wasn’t much Agatha wouldn’t do for him, but this particular setting for a tantrum feels like something crafted out of one of her very specific nightmares.
“But, I-”
“Now. Car.” She raises her voice just enough that it catches the other two women’s attention, and she sees them pointedly pretending to ignore her out of the corner of her eye. The idea of being publicly embarrassed is enough to briefly quell whatever attempt at independence Nicky had been revving up for, and he stomps grumpily over to the door, pressing his hands against the lower glass with all of his weight until it finally opens and lets him out into the street.
“I’ll be in touch!” Rio calls when Agatha goes to follow him. It lands in her ears like a threat.
Nicky’s in the middle of poutily kicking at the back tire of the Plymouth when Agatha steps out, so she doesn’t bother telling him to stop when she unlocks the car with the fob and triggers the horn to give off a single, warning ‘beep’ that he wasn’t expecting. He jumps halfway out of his skin at the sound, turning to glare at her and even completing the look by crossing his arms.
She can’t help but smirk a tiny bit, considerably more endeared by his shitty behaviour when she isn’t being overwhelmed by unwanted company in an unfamiliar location.
“What a face.”
A flicker of a smile pulls at his mouth and he forces it down dramatically, tightening his crossed arms as Agatha approaches and pulls the back door open for him, gesturing with a nod of her head for him to climb inside.
Taking care not to catch his jacket or leg in the door, Agatha closes it behind him and rounds the hood to her side, taking one last glance up at the shop front as Rebecca exits as well, her fresh flowers wrapped neatly in dark paper and twine. She lifts them in a gesture to Agatha, giving her a wave before heading back down the street in the direction of the tattoo shop. Agatha watches her until she completely vanishes around the corner, and then slips into her own seat.
Nicky pouts silently for the entire drive home, even when Agatha tries to get his attention once or twice with questions about his day. She can tell his adamance to stay upset with her is serious when he won’t even tell her about the Venus flytrap, even though she can see him physically squirming from the effort to keep from telling her everything. It’s not until they’re pulling into the driveway that she realizes he didn’t get a new flower from Rio’s shop like initially promised, so she makes sure to retrieve the nearly-wilted asters that have fallen into the footwell of the back seat before they head inside and she parks him at the kitchen counter.
He watches her curiously while she flits around the kitchen, finding a barely-used mortar and pestle from the top shelf of the cupboard above the stove, and a cutting board from beneath the sink. She hasn’t done much involved cooking since Nicky was a baby and she’d been petrified of accidentally causing his early demise by somehow missing some key nutritional factors. A few of her pricier kitchen tools had been gathering dust for years since she’d come to realize just how resilient little boys could be.
“What’re you making?”
“ We ,” she corrects, “Are making a potion .”
She places the flowers onto the counter at the same moment that she remembers Rio’s warning about them attracting bugs, and drops a damp dish towel over the top of them as she turns away to pull out a large glass pot.
“What does it do?” Agatha is pleased to hear that Nicky’s voice has lost all of its previous grumpy dismissiveness, the excited thoughtfulness back in full swing.
“Make the house smell nice, mostly,” she admits.
“Do we drink it?”
She pauses, pulling her phone from her pocket and tapping in ‘are asters poisonous?’ before responding, “You could. But it would be pretty gross.”
She makes a face that makes Nicky laugh, then turns to pull the kitchen scissors out of the wooden knife block beside the sink. He reaches over and picks one of the flowers up, turning it around in his fingers and peering at the petals, before looking up at her again.
“What are they?”
“You don’t recognize them?” Agatha asks, narrowing her eyes at him playfully and challengingly. He frowns, running his fingers softly over the petals as if trying to tacitly jog his memory, then defeatedly shakes his head.
“I don’t know.”
“Asters. We were drawing them the other day.”
He lights up at the reminder, turning his attention back to the one in his hands.
“Why do you have them? Did Rio give them to you, too?”
“Uh-huh,” Agatha’s tone is two octaves higher than usual; she’s uninterested in bringing any more work home with her than her job already requires, so she moves on quickly. “Okay, this is your part.”
She cuts the head off of one of the flowers, plopping it into the stone bowl and sliding it across the counter toward Nicky. He pulls it closer still, pushing himself up onto his knees on the bar stool and then reaches for the pestle. Its weight seems to surprise him, and even in his grip it drops, hitting the counter with a worrying CLACK that sets Agatha’s teeth on edge. Neither the pestle nor the countertop seem to be damaged, though, so she bites the inside of her cheek as he readjusts his grip and looks up at her questioningly.
She cuts another head from a second flower before reaching over to help him, lifting his hand into the bowl and pressing down in a twisting motion until she feels the satisfying sensation of the petals squishing together and then being properly crushed into the stone. Once she’s sure he has the motion down, she lets him go to continue on his own, and begins to chop the stems from the two decapitated flowers into smaller pieces.
“Did you know some flowers can live up to 45 days?”
Agatha snaps the next stem more roughly than necessary.
“What did you and Ms. Kaplan do today?” She asks, trying to steer the conversation away from whatever other fun facts Nicky no doubt badgered out of Rio during their short time together.
Luckily, the distraction works. Agatha drops the head of the second flower into the mortar just as the first becomes a half-powder half-paste mess, and Nicky launches into a long explanation about the upcoming weather cycle for the week. Apparently, Rebecca had left the news on while making lunch, and it had been a slow day, headline-wise.
Agatha fills the pot and dumps the chopped-up stems into the water, setting it on the stove before turning her attention back to where Nicky has moved on from grinding to stamping the pestle into the bottom of the dish, and swipes it out of his hands quickly.
“That’s good. They can’t get any deader.”
He giggles at the faux-exasperated look she gives him, slipping down from the counter when she beckons him to the stove with one finger. Double-checking that his two-handed grip on the heavy mortar is sufficient, she hoists him up by the hips so he can pour its contents into the simmering water, and then gently lowers him back to the floor to stir it.
True to Rio’s word, a strong pine-like scent fills the kitchen as the water continues to heat. It sends an unexpected twist of pain through her chest - she’s never considered herself a Scrooge by any means, but some combination of the lack of vitamin D and the crooning, depressing Christmas music always seems to put a filter of melancholy over the whole time of year for her. Apparently, she’s learning, so does the smell of Christmas trees, even out of season.
“Are you sure we don’t drink it?” Nicky asks, snapping Agatha out of her thoughts.
She glances down at him and shakes her head, then pulls him against her thigh while she continues to stir, watching as the simmer turns into a rolling boil before lowering the heat.
“It does smell good,” He decides, despite his obvious disappointment at the lack of edibility. “Can we go look at Christmas trees this week?”
“It’s months away from Christmas,” Agatha snorts. “The trees don’t live that long.”
“Rio said they live for a thousand years .”
“Oh, we’re talking about Rio again,” Agatha breathes, before she can help herself. She turns to Nicky and sighs, taking in the confused look on his face and closing her eyes. “Why were you talking about Christmas trees?”
She realizes her mistake when he opens his mouth, stopping him in his tracks by raising one hand for him to hold it - whatever long-winded train of thought he’s about to take her on probably won’t make the entire situation any less perplexing. He stills, shifting his weight from foot to foot, then holds his hands out.
“Can I crush the rest of the flowers?”
“Absolutely,” she agrees, depositing the mortar back in his grip and sending him back to the other side of the counter.
The remainder of the afternoon and even evening goes by without another mention of Rio, even when Nicky is inspired while picking out his clothes for school the next day to choose a graphic tee with a scientific illustration of several healing herbs and their names. She stares at it as he hands it to her to set on top of his dresser, waiting for him to verbally make the connection, but he just stares back at her expectantly, so she doesn’t bring it up.
Returning to the kitchen to tidy up the floral murder scene, Agatha relights the burner under the aster-filled simmer pot almost without thinking and then retires to the living room with a heavily poured glass of wine and her tablet.
She first flicks through her photos from Rio’s sessions that day and chooses the clearest shot of the leg piece to email to Lilia for the shop’s social media. While Agatha’s own online presence was lacking, she didn’t argue with the older woman about the importance of enticing their client base into making a split decision to spend more money mid-scroll.
Staring at the photo once she clears the email from her screen, she lets her eyes ( professionally , she tells herself) wander. Disappearing out of view of the focus of the photograph, another of Rio’s tattoos pokes out from beneath the shorts she’d worn to her appointment. Agatha briefly wonders just how far in the spindly, twisting stems go, but cuts that thought short with a gulp of wine big enough to hurt her throat on the swallow.
Refocusing on the photo with a strictly artistic lens, she shrinks it into the corner of the screen and opens a new canvas, resting the tablet on her lap in order to hold both her glass and her stylus in each hand.
Rio had mentioned liking the asymmetrical choice Agatha had gone with for the asters and her current pieces were mismatched enough that she could surmise that she would appreciate it for the next session, too. The leg she’d been space-filling had lots of leaf-work. Thorns and branches and greenery whose lushness shone through even in shades of black and grey ink. Her other side might benefit from something softer - where the flowers Agatha had already done had stood out on one side, they could be more commonplace on the other.
She gets halfway through her second attempt at a climbing rose when she realizes she’s drawing the other woman’s ass from memory and every hair on her arms stands on end so suddenly that she nearly upends her wine onto the screen.
She barely manages to calm her nerves when Nicky’s soft voice behind her startles a scream out of her. He looks equally as alarmed as she feels when she whirls around to face him, and she forces herself not to snap at him in misplaced frustration.
“Why are you up?” She asks tersely.
“I had a bad dream. Can I sit with you?”
Agatha closes her eyes and exhales slowly, trying to center herself before hazarding a glance at the clock.
“No,” she tells him, watching his face fall with a pang of guilt. She downs the last of her wine and sets the glass aside blindly. “It’s past my bedtime, too. C’mon.”
She snaps her tablet shut and pushes herself off the couch, then leads Nicky back to the stairs before doubling back to turn off the stove. He hesitates outside of her bedroom door and she pretends not to notice so she doesn’t cave, marching him insistently back to his own bed. When she’s sure he won’t get up again, she brushes the remnants of wine from her mouth and crawls into her own bed. She digs three melatonin pills from the drawer in the side table, though her fingers do hesitantly brush over her vibrator with the thought that it might put her to sleep faster, and swallows them dry before she can mentally conjure up any interesting ideas for bad dreams of her own.
