Chapter Text
Agatha manages to skirt the discussion about the rabbit’s foot tattoo by goading Rio into letting her teach her how to throw properly. She’s surprised it takes as much convincing as it does; Rio’s been going out of her way to flirt and disarm her as much as possible since the very moment they met, but it appears that having her in the spotlight - with the chance to make a fool of herself - has quelled her boldness a little.
“I want it on record that I’m doing this in a cool, ironic, post-cringe-culture millennial way,” Rio says, setting down their fresh beers. Agatha notes that she’s switched to a new label and is drinking from the can this time. “ Not in the ‘divorced old man who votes wrong’ way.”
“Which one do I fall under?” Agatha asks, head cocking to the side as she watches the other woman hike her cargo pants up on her hips a little before grabbing a dart.
Rio rolls her tongue over her teeth beneath her lips, eyes narrowing.
“You going to show me how to do this, or what?” She asks instead of answering as she gestures between the pair of them with the dart clutched between two fingers.
“You’re holding too tight,” Agatha tells her, reaching over and adjusting her fingers on the barrel of the dart before letting go and watching her focus ahead again. Her sigh makes Rio pause again, glancing at her questioningly. Pushing herself off the edge of the table, she approaches and gestures for her to step closer. She does without question, shuffling right into Agatha’s personal space as if it's a familiar place she frequents.
Wrapping just the ends of her fingers around the curve of Rio’s elbow, Agatha presses encouragingly upward, stopping once the line of her arm is straight enough, then ghosts her touch down the underside of her bicep, an admittedly self-indulgent choice. She follows the curve of the muscle, letting the hint of hardness there guide the pads of her fingers organically around toward the top of her shoulder instead of vanishing down the arm hole of her tank top, then presses firmly there in a gesture for her to hold her position.
And Rio does stay incredibly still. So much so that when Agatha lifts her eyes to her face, she’s not surprised to see that she seems to be holding her breath.
“Alright, now turn.” Her hand drops to the other woman’s hip, the other following suit to shift her until they’re face to face, then slides around her back. She presses her leg against the back of Rio’s, nudging her in place with her knee and dropping one hand reflexively to her hip to steady her before her own knee buckles.
“Easy,” Rio hisses, leaning more of her weight into Agatha than is probably necessary to maintain her stance. Agatha gives her the benefit of the doubt of the alcohol throwing her off balance, even though she knows they’re both holding their beers just fine.
“Relax,” she reminds her.
“There’s fresh ink back there,” Rio reminds her.
Agatha experimentally presses into her a little more, feeling the crinkle of the plastic wrapping beneath Rio’s pants brushing against her own pant leg. Rio makes another warning sound of protest.
“Oh, that doesn’t hurt, you big baby,” Agatha scoffs, fingers tightening around her hip.
She both hears and feels the other woman’s huff of amusement in her exhale as they both focus on the board again. Rio lines up the shot just like she’s been shown, then rocks backwards into Agatha slightly as if giving herself momentum. Her hand reflexively shifts back, thumb brushing over the curve of her waist toward the small of her back just as the dart is sent out into the air and lands anticlimactically in the pock-marked wall below the board.
“You did that on purpose,” Rio accuses as she whirls around. Neither of them takes the time to move away from each other, and her hair hits Agatha across the face. She raises both hands innocently.
“You’re a little jumpy,” she reasons, fighting the smirk off her face as best she can - a feat that only grows more difficult when she sees a flicker of frustration sharpen the other woman’s otherwise playful look.
“You wanna see jumpy?” She reaches for another dart, but Agatha covers her hand quickly, almost lacing their fingers together in her messy attempt to still her.
“Ah- rule one, no throwing anything sharp when you’re all riled up. Especially with your aim.”
Rio yanks her hand free and swats at her harmlessly, failing to keep her smile at bay.
“If I had a better teacher-”
Agatha pries the dart out of her hands, lining up her shot quickly and tossing the dart directly into the center bullseye before Rio can finish her sentence. She trails off as she turns to face her again, then clears her throat.
“Sorry to interrupt. You were saying?”
Rio snatches another dart from the case, wordlessly turning to face the board again. After a beat, she clears her throat impatiently, and Agatha realizes she’s waiting for her to help position her again. She steps closer, adjusting her arm just as before and leaning in to see how well she’s lined up.
“Hands off, this time,” Rio insists.
Smirking but lifting her hands up and away, Agatha takes a few steps back for good measure.
“Alright, fine. All you, superstar.”
Scoffing under her breath, Rio shakes her hair back from her face and then rocks back and forth before flinging the dart. It lands in the third ring, sticking firmly in place. Agatha reaches for the next dart and wordlessly places it into Rio’s still-outstretched hand.
“Try it with three fingers.”
“If I had a nickel…”
“Shut the fuck up,” Agatha says through a laugh, nodding to the board. “Focus.”
“Bossyyyy,” Rio teases under her breath, biting down on her smirk to try to stifle it before throwing again. It lands just beside her last attempt, and Agatha can tell she’s beginning to lose the plot a little.
“It’s a good thing I’m too nice of a person to have put money on this,” she lies, leaving Rio at the table to retrieve the darts. Plucking them out one by one, she looks back and watches as the other woman pulls one of the last remaining ones from the box, turning it over in her fingers.
“No, I think I was really getting it at the end there. Why don’t you stay over there, and I’ll see if I can get it through your earring?”
Agatha rolls her eyes, snatching for it as she approaches. Rio keeps it out of her reach, her hand falling to Agatha’s waist when she gets close enough as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. She’s smooth , Agatha will give her that. Effortlessly charming and quick in conversation, truly invested - and playful . She knows exactly when it’s safe to reach out and touch Agatha without startling her into shying away, even managing more than once to make it Agatha’s idea to touch her , drawing her in like a fly into a spiderweb.
And she’s very, very sexy, which doesn’t hurt, either.
Still, none of it manages to cloud her judgement long enough to keep her from remembering that this is a new neighbour and patron, and she hasn’t been around quite long enough to suss out what kind of problem she’ll be if Agatha leans in.
As if she can sense that she’s about to say something to ruin her fun, Rio lets go of her waist, leaning around her unnecessarily to put the dart back among the others in the box.
“Come have a smoke with me,” she insists. She delivers her request with a knowing look, like she’s baiting Agatha into lying again.
“You’re corrupting me.”
Rio lets out a single bark of laughter, and despite her half-hearted protest, Agatha follows her to the door.
The cold air is unforgiving against Agatha’s fingers as she clutches her beer can, forced to use both hands to keep her grip when she pulls her sleeves up over her palms for a minuscule amount of extra warmth. Rio lights a single cigarette and then holds it out to her before she can free her hands, leaving her no choice but to lean forward and take her drag from between Rio’s fingers. The other woman silently takes a drag of her own and then offers it to Agatha for another. Anticipating it this time, she doesn’t hesitate as she leans forward for it, playing along.
“Why’d you tell everyone you quit?”
Agatha finishes her inhale before replying, a small puff of smoke accompanying her answer.
“To be left alone, mostly.”
“But then you never get any peace,” Rio points out. “Always… sneaking around.”
“I don’t find sneaking around that difficult, especially in exchange for some peace and quiet.”
Rio’s eyes gleam as she takes another drag. She looks like she’s considering her next jab, but stops when Agatha sets her beer on the ledge and gathers her wind-disturbed hair back, beginning to pull the elastic from her wrist.
“You should leave it down.”
She pauses, elastic between her teeth and fingers, considering. On the one hand, she doesn’t want to set the precedent of asking how high? when Rio says jump , but on the other, denying her something so simple seems petulant; childish. To encourage her further, Rio offers her the cigarette to take from her, this time, forcing her to drop her hair back into place.
“It’s in my face,” She says through the smoke. “Maybe we should go back in.”
“What happened to peace and quiet?” Rio asks. Instead of answering her, Agatha shakes back her sleeve and sighs at the sight of her watch face.
“Actually…” She sees Rio’s posture deflate a little, preemptively disappointed. “It’s getting late. I need to pick up Nicky, and it’s a school night-”
“I get it,” Rio cuts her off. She forces a quick smile, holding a hand out for the cigarette and taking one last quick drag before dropping it to the sidewalk and crushing it beneath the toe of her boot. “Really. I’ll walk you back to your car.”
“Wow,” Agatha can’t resist teasing, “ Now who’s the gentleman?”
Rio drops her gaze to laugh under her breath, reaching over and picking Agatha’s beer can up off the window. She holds it out for her, then nods over her shoulder for them to start on their way.
“Assuming you’re not on the other end of town, I could give you a ride.” Agatha hears the offer leave her mouth before she consents to making it.
“I’m, uh… No,” Rio disagrees, clearly surprised enough by the gesture to keep from making the dirty comment that Agatha had been expecting. “That’s fine.”
Agatha’s steps slow as she tries to catch her eye, which Rio pointedly avoids.
“I can’t keep watching you shiver. You look like a… stressed-out stray dog.”
“Thank you, that’s very kind.”
“Seriously, I don’t mind-”
“I’m staying above the shop.”
Agatha stops walking altogether, watching as Rio keeps on ahead before realizing. She turns around and stuffs her free hand into one of the too-small pocket of her jacket, the cropped cut forcing her shoulder to shrug stiffly upward.
“And?” Agatha presses.
“I mean, it isn’t exactly… legally outfitted. But the hotels are so expensive this time of year, and I haven’t decided how long I’m going to stick around, so I don’t think looking for a lease right now is a good idea.”
An itch settles at the unreachable spot between Agatha’s shoulders as she takes in the guilty, nervous expression marring Rio’s usually much brighter, more pleasant features. Bit of a dick move to be so pushy about making friends just to skip town, if you asked her, but she’d find time to complain about that later.
“Whatever,” she says instead. “What am I, a cop?”
Rio deflates in relief, and the itch between Agatha’s shoulders vanishes as she sips from her beer to mask her own uncontrollable expression of relief.
They fall back into step together for a few quiet moments before Agatha speaks once more.
“Rough estimate, how long do you think before you go back?”
“Mm?” Rio looks startled by the question, like she’d been totally off in her own world.
“To Wichita,” Agatha presses. “You said you didn’t know exactly how long you’d be staying here. Do you have a general idea?”
“Oh. No, not really. I don’t think I’ll go back, though. Not anytime soon - I was getting bored, anyway.” She sips ruefully from her beer, thoughts clearly drifting somewhere unpleasant for a brief moment. When she catches Agatha’s eye again, her expression softens into a smile, then sharpens mischievously. “You going to miss having someone to make fun of?”
She shrugs, pursing her lips in thought as if really considering it.
“You tip well,”
Rio tilts her head back and laughs at that, and it’s contagious enough that Agatha has to take a few long sips from her own can to avoid mirroring it.
They round the corner onto the main road and their steps slow even further, as if they’ve both unconsciously decided to drag the moment on just a little longer.
“Thank you for tonight. It's always a bit weird not knowing anyone in a new place. I know you’re probably busy, so…”
She trails off, waiting for Agatha to fill the space in their conversation, then clears her throat when she doesn’t. Unhooking her keys from her hip, she fiddles with them twitchily.
“Anyway. Just… thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” Agatha replies. The soft genuineness in her voice makes Rio look at her properly, then stumble a little as she hits her shin against one of the flower boxes they pass from not watching where she’s going.
“We should do this again, sometime.”
Rounding her car and leaning against the roof of the driver’s side, Agatha pitches her half-empty beer can into the sidewalk trash can with a jarring CLANG of metal on metal, but Rio doesn’t even flinch.
“You know where to find me.”
Rio snorts, already turning to the shop door to unlock it.
“You’re really not even going to give me your number?”
Wordlessly, she wrenches the car door open and slips inside, focusing pointedly on starting the ignition until she sees Rio vanish inside the flower shop through her peripheral vision. Plugging in her phone, she pointedly ignores a text from Billy, asking for a ride the following morning. Chances are, he doesn’t even need the ride and just wanted to interrupt her night and see how it was going.
The clock flashes just past 9, so she guns it to the Kaplans and hurries through a hushed apology for her lateness as she’s handed Nicky’s limp form. He’s utterly dead to the world, flopping heavily against her chest silently.
“How was he?”
“Sweet as always. How was your date?” Jeff’s eyes have the same optimistic sparkle as Billy’s, which immediately inspires annoyance.
“Not a date,” Agatha corrects pointedly, adjusting Nicky to keep her balance. “Tell Billy I’ll pick him up tomorrow.”
She leaves before there can be any further questions, tucking Nicky into the back seat and staying well below the speed limit all the way home to ensure he stays asleep.
Wednesday morning is hell.
Agatha bounces back and forth between bribes and threats until her list runs dry, but nothing really affects Nicky, who refuses to get out of bed. The only reaction she does manage to get is tears when she starts to strip the bed while he’s still trying to sleep in it, but she pushes through the initial heartbroken instinct to apologize, forcing him to his feet.
He’s not running a temperature, and besides exhaustion, he doesn’t seem to be experiencing any other discomfort. Agatha knows she only has herself to blame for his attitude - he’d probably had too much excitement with the Kaplans the night before, and having to wake him to get him inside and into bed had messed up his whole routine. Not her most brilliant move on a school night.
“Seriously, you’re too old to be acting like this. They’re going to send you back to daycare. Is that what you want?”
“No they’re not!” He snaps back at her shrilly, doing an excellent job of managing to squirm out of his coat each time she manages to force one arm into a sleeve. Agatha drops his gaze before the angry tears brimming in his eyes can get under her skin and weaken her resolve.
“They will after I tell them how you’ve been acting all morning,” she replies, jaw clenching when he frees his left arm from the jacket just as she wrangles the right again. His fist collides sharply with her shoulder in his flailing attempt to get away from her, and she snatches his hand, hard. Realizing her mistake, Agatha instantly softens her grip until it’s firm enough to keep him from lashing out again, voice low and cold. “Absolutely not. You’re already in so much trouble, do you want it to be worse?”
Nicky makes one last pathetic attempt to pull free before sagging a little in her grip.
“We’re going to be late.”
“I don’t care,” he whines, kicking the toe of his boot on the floor. He refuses to catch her eye for a beat, so she waits until he does before speaking again.
“Tell me the rule about hitting.” She yanks the jacket back on, nearly catching her fingers in the zipper at the breakneck speed she does it up for him.
“Not to. Unless I’m in danger.”
Pushing herself to her feet, she grabs his backpack and offers it to him, breathing an internal sigh of relief when he takes it without another word.
He fights with his seatbelt as if it’s strangling him, and it’s annoyingly distracting enough that Agatha drives for ten minutes the wrong way before remembering Billy. She swears under her breath as she pulls an extremely illegal U-turn on a mercifully empty street, and nearly takes out the recycling can as she slams on the brakes outside of the Kaplans’.
“Trade me,” she demands when Rebecca answers the door with Billy in tow. Nicky makes a petulant, offended sound, stomping forward when Agatha takes him by the arm to usher him inside.
Billy steps into his boots as Rebecca laughs, clearly completely unfazed in the face of Nicky’s attitude.
“Y’know what? I think we have time to stop for hot chocolate before school. It’s pretty cold outside… might be necessary.”
Nicky perks up just a little as he toes off his shoes, his eyes flicking from Rebecca to Agatha, expression softening. He’s visibly changing alliances from that simple bribe; Agatha would complain about rewarding his behaviour, but she’s been equally as guilty too many times in the past to count.
“Ready!” Billy pipes up, ruffling Nicky’s hair in passing and accepting a kiss on the cheek from his mother with a blush. He awkwardly squeezes around Agatha when she makes no effort to move out of his way.
“I’ll pick you up after school,” she says, trying to catch Nicky’s eye. “Okay? Have a good day, I lo-”
Having finally freed himself from his shoes, he darts past Rebecca into the house before she can finish her sentence, and she feels the eyes of both Kaplans burning into her as she sets her jaw.
“Right. Okay. Talk to you later,” she tells Rebecca, turning to follow Billy down the driveway while pointedly ignoring the gently sympathetic look he’s trying to give her.
“So…” He starts, once they’re both settled into the car. For a terrifying moment, she thinks he’s going to try to say something reassuring about Nicky. In an annoying turn of events, he chooses her second-least-desired topic of discussion. “How did last night go? With Rio?”
Agatha’s fingers tighten around the steering wheel, and she sighs heavily.
“Roll down your window, your cologne is giving me a headache.”
He does as asked, but it isn’t enough of a distraction as she pulls away from his house.
“Are you seriously not going to say anything? Was it that bad?” He presses.
The opposite , she thinks, totally uninterested in sharing that information with the boy next to her. After Nicky was back in bed, she’d been restless, continually getting up for water and telling herself it was headache prevention even though she’d barely had enough to drink to get a real, authentic buzz going. She’d found herself grinning to herself whenever she remembered a particularly funny thing Rio had said, spending a little extra time before bed braiding her hair back to keep it neat enough to wear down at work that day; none of this was going to be repeated to Billy - or any of her coworkers - if she could help it.
“It was fine. Just an after-work drink. I don’t know why you all have to make such a big deal out of everything.”
“Agatha!” Billy’s tone has spiked upward in pitch, dripping in such sheer delight that she fears she may have said the part about giggling alone in her kitchen over something the florist had said out loud. “It’s a big deal because you are making it one. You’re never this skittish when you don’t care.”
“I value my privacy all of the time, thank you.”
“Right.” Billy turns his attention back to the road, and Agatha readjusts her grip on the steering wheel as she pointedly ignores the smugness radiating off of him, more potent than the cologne.
“Which also means I don’t need you telling your parents that I’m abandoning my child at yours so I can go on dates .”
“First of all,” Billy turns his whole body in his seat to face her, “It’s babysitting that they agreed to, and love doing. Secondly, I said nothing about a date. But since it very obviously was one, they came to the conclusion naturally, just being given the basic facts.”
Refusing to ask what those basic facts are, Agatha takes a deep breath through her nose and centers herself.
“We were only out for a couple of hours. We talked about the shop, had a beer, and left.”
“You’re blushing.”
She isn’t, but he’s trying to make her.
“I’m never picking you up again.”
Billy sighs heavily, slumping in his spot a bit.
“You could just humor me. It would be painless.”
She glances over at him and does a double-take, feeling smug at the look of defeat he’s finally wearing. Point Agatha.
“Don’t you have your own love life to be worrying about? What’s going on with Theodore ?”
“Still no contact, thanks for asking,” Billy replies, surprisingly sharply. “Forty-three days, not that I’m counting.”
“I told you, hooking up with an ex is never worth it,” she replies, recalling her warning to the younger artist about his decision to reach out to Teddy post-breakup. Whatever semblance of friendliness they’d had was shot dead afterward, and the shop playlists had reflected the event for a torturous week of Olivia Rodrigo.
“I imagine that that’s easier advice to follow when none of your exes can stand to be in the same room as you,” Billy replies. His voice sounds shaky, like he can’t fully commit to the cruelty. Agatha laughs, though, and sees his shoulders straighten more confidently.
“ Ouch , kid.”
He smiles twitchily and then shakes his head before burying a hand in his hair.
“It’s fine. It’ll obviously never happen again, anyway. He’s probably eyeballs deep in guys at WIT anyway.”
“Well, I don’t know about eye balls, but -”
“If you finish that sentence, I will hurl myself out of this car right now.” Billy’s tone is sharp; Agatha bites hard on her lip to physically force the joke back down her throat.
She pulls up to the flower shop and parks in Rio’s spot, already out of the car before Billy even manages to get his seatbelt off. Her eyes immediately land on the front display window, and it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to what looks like a floating torso. Rio’s head pops out from behind a hanging planter a moment later, the rest of her dark outfit - a cropped top and long, open cardigan - almost blending into the darkness of the shop.
Even though she can hear Billy getting out of the car behind her, Agatha struggles to tear her eyes away for a moment. Peeking out from the underside of the top is a small, wispy bundle of some kind of greenery, the tattoo contrasting brightly against unblemished skin. Its curved design vanishes under the material and undoubtedly follows the curve of her breast, a small ribbon appearing on her cleavage to tie the 2D plant together.
Rio is already watching her when she meets her eye. Wearing a smirk that Agatha thinks she might be imagining, she lowers one hand and waves with just the tips of her fingers, then adjusts her top so that it slips upward and reveals just a little more of the tattoo.
“Does she even care that you stole her spot?” Billy asks. His voice suddenly at her side makes Agatha jump, whipping her head to face him.
“Her car is still in Wichita,” she tells him automatically.
“Oh, my mistake,” Billy says, not missing a beat. “You know her much better than I do.”
He heads down the street toward the shop before Agatha can threaten him properly, leaving her awkwardly in front of Rio’s window. She turns to take one final look, then realizes the display window is empty. Frowning in confusion -and, admittedly, disappointment - Agatha turns to follow after Billy when Rio’s voice interrupts.
“Morning.”
Turning to follow the sound, Agatha sees the other woman leaning languidly against the open door, arms crossed loosely over her chest.
“Morning,” she replies, “Y’know, knowing you’re living here really takes some of the pressure off of trying to get here before you in the mornings.”
Rio chuckles, head tilting.
“I didn’t realize we were competing. I take two-hour lunches, if that makes you feel less inadequate about your work ethic.”
“That, and my job is significantly more difficult than yours,” Agatha sniffs.
“Right, right,” Rio doesn’t look even slightly deterred by the comment. If anything, it only pushes her grin wider as she pushes herself off the door with one elbow. “The Venus fly trap is about ready for Nicky to visit again, by the way.”
Thinking about Nicky and the state she’d left him in that morning makes Agatha immediately tense, and she tilts her head to loosen her neck a bit before responding.
“Mm, not today. He’s a little… prickly, right now.”
Rio nods in understanding, turning to head inside.
“Of course. I’ll see you.” She smiles and then vanishes back into the dark of the shop., Agatha briefly feels a pang of disappointment, but brushes it off to head to work herself. She spots Billy down the street, his hands stuffed in his pockets and his shoulders scrunched from the cold morning air as he waits for her to unlock the door.
As she approaches, she fishes a few loose bills from her pocket and hands them to him.
“You go pick up coffee, I’ll do the tills,” she promises, letting herself inside.
The warmth is hugely welcome, even after such a short time outside. Agatha autopilots through the opening procedures and digs out her sketchbook at the desk, flipping open to her older half-finished piece of the waiting room. This time, she doesn’t let herself overthink (or unpack at all, really) as she continues working on the contours of the woman on the recliner. She feels at peace in the morning quiet, scribbling the vague shape of the bit of tattoo she’d seen on Rio onto the faceless figure.
It’s not until the bell above the door signals Billy’s return that Agatha smoothly tucks her pencil behind her ear and swiftly shuts the book, but the image stays unrelentingly in the forefront of her mind.
