Chapter Text
Agatha is swamped by the time lunch rolls around. Billy offers to pick up a burrito for her on his way back from his own break, but the two coffees, energy drink, and 2-piece packet of saltines that she’s already torn through have left her feeling too unsettled to picture eating anything so filling without getting nauseated.
Toughing it out through one last client that cut into her originally planned break, Agatha crams a handful of loose bills from her bag into her pocket and heads outside, ignoring the twinge of lightheadedness that suddenly hits her after hours of sitting in low light. Just as she passes Rio’s, slowing her steps to see if maybe she’ll be able to make her out through the window, the door swings open and the woman in question dangles almost cartoonishly out of it.
“Hey!” She yells from across the street, causing a few other nearby pedestrians to stop and turn to her in alarm. Agatha stops as well, glancing around for a moment as if Rio would possibly be addressing anyone else before she continues: “Are you taking a break?”
A few people slow down to glance at Agatha, one wincing away from her dramatically when she yells back a confirmation.
Rio makes a ‘wait’ gesture with both hands, almost losing her footing on her door’s ledge for her trouble. She hurriedly vanishes back into the shop, leaving Agatha alone in the middle of the sidewalk. She waits awkwardly for a few minutes, regretting her choice to leave her jacket behind, and ignores the surge of something akin to giddiness that lights up in her chest when Rio reemerges and locks the door to the shop.
“Starting one of your famous two-hour lunches?” Agatha asks as the other woman jogs across the road to join her.
“Uh-huh,” Rio replies, smiling and slightly out of breath. “Where are we going?”
“Oh!” Agatha quirks an eyebrow, a smirk pulling at her lip. “That’s awfully presumptuous of you.”
“Hm, you just waited out here in the cold for me without a jacket so we wouldn’t hang out?”
“I’m getting a salad.”
“Great,” Rio replies perkily, naturally falling into step with her as soon as she starts to walk. Agatha doesn’t have the care or strength to pretend that her presence exasperates her.
“Slow day?” She asks instead, regarding Rio's abandonment of the shop without warning.
“Very,” she groans in response. “You?”
“The opposite.”
Rio makes a not entirely sarcastic noise of sympathy.
“You, um…” She reaches over and plucks something from Agatha’s hair. She spots the fleck of purple-stained stencil paper floating away as Rio smoothes her hair back into place.
“That’s what I get for wearing it down,” she says, wondering how long that had been there. The other woman chuckles.
“It looks nice,” she says, eyes lingering for a moment before she turns forward again.
That was the point, Agatha thinks, before she can help it. She grabs Rio automatically by the elbow to steer her around the corner as they approach the end of the street instead of joining the small gaggle of people waiting to cross. She follows along wordlessly, with a more natural bounce in her step than Agatha thinks she could consciously conjure into her own even if she were paid to.
They pass two storefronts and a realty office before Agatha slows to a stop at the overpriced vegan cafe that’s become her only source of vitamin C during work hours over the last few months. Rio squints at the chalk-paint logo drawn on the inside of the window, but Agatha steps inside before she has a chance to try to change her mind.
The skinny twenty-something behind the counter starts tapping her order in as soon as he sees her, pausing when his eyes flicker over her shoulder to presumably take in Rio. If only to encourage him to continue - she’s worked hard to have a non-verbal ‘usual’ order; the creative dish names are all humiliating to have to recite aloud - she puts a little distance between herself and the other woman, already fishing the cash from her pocket.
She feels Rio approach more than she hears or sees her, too close to her back as she eyes the order screen and then the menu, before her gaze finally seems to land on Agatha trying to decide if it would be more gauche to pay in singles or ask to break a hundred.
“Can I get the same?” Rio requests. Before Agatha can say anything, she feels her arm wrap around her as if she’s done it a thousand times. Long fingers slide across her stomach, pressing the wind-cooled material of her worn t-shirt against her skin before tucking her palm firmly beneath her ribs. Everything feels haltingly, terrifyingly still for a second, but before Agatha can register the confusion that clashes into thrill in her mind, Rio’s fingers splay out, grasp firmly, and Agatha is being strong-armed away from the register in two swift steps.
Grabbing onto the offending strong arm in question with both hands, Agatha tucks away her observations about the wiry muscle flexing in her grip for later and tries to squirm free. Humilatingly, Rio’s hold on her doesn’t loosen, but she does angle her even further away from the register in retaliation, an action that fully - if only briefly - lifts Agatha entirely off the ground.
“I’ve got it,” she says, as if that is the pressing concern. She taps her phone to the reader and lets Agatha go without another word.
Agatha wonders why she didn’t find the words to complain in time, only to realize that the entire interaction had lasted maybe four or five seconds. She clears her throat, and Rio glances at her as she’s mid-reach for her receipt.
“I can’t believe you did that.”
“Did what?” Rio replies. She’s playing coy about paying for them both, but Agatha still feels an unwelcome heat crawling up her neck at how much the other woman’s constant need to touch her is starting to get to her.
She doesn’t wait for Agatha’s answer, taking the order slip and gliding off to the other end of the counter without an ounce of concern.
“Most people can pick up the check without the manhandling,” Agatha huffs as she joins her.
Rio grins, nudging her again.
“ Hardly. Didn’t realize you were so delicate; my mistake.”
Agatha tries to shoot her a glare, but the unwelcome blush is spreading noticeably, so she looks away before she has a chance to catch the other woman’s eye.
“What’re we having, exactly?”
“Tripe,” Agatha replies lightly, keeping her gaze fixed on the small glass panel that separates the food prep area from the waiting customers. “Lab-grown, obviously. Cruelty-free. And pickled onions… tofu-”
Rio cuts her off with a giggle; the sound of it is so pleasant and out of place that it startles her.
“ Tofu? You’re trying to improvise the grossest food you can think of, and tofu makes the cut?”
“Tofu is disgusting.”
The woman manning a wok of caramelized onions behind the salad station shoots a sharp look of offense in their direction. Rio puts her hands up innocently, tilting her head toward Agatha as if to say, ‘Hey - she said it, not me.’
“It’s uh… some… bastardized Asian-fusion thing. With the edamame beans and sesame dressing,” Agatha starts gesturing as she explains, “Carrots. I don’t know. It’s the only thing I ever get.”
Rio eyes her, calculating, and just before it becomes uncomfortable, she softens and shrugs with a little smile.
“Cool. I like edamame.”
Agatha thinks she might have tried the tripe, too, if it had been her asking, but she shoves that theory into the back of her mind as two salads are slid onto the counter. Rio swipes both up, nodding to one of the rickety-looking nearby tables even though Agatha’s feet were already pulling her in the direction of the door.
“ Ow ,” She mutters as she collapses into the uncomfortable seat.
“Did you make it home in time?” Rio asks, ignoring her complaint. “I forgot to ask this morning when I saw you.”
“Huh?”
“Last night.” Rio tears open a dressing packet with her teeth. “You had to get home. Relieve the babysitter. How is Nicky?”
Not sure if she should even bother with the first question since she moved on so quickly, Agatha shakes her head.
“He’s, uh… he’s good. Having a rough morning, which is probably my fault because of last night,” she admits.
“Does that mean I won’t be able to convince you to come with me to Alibi tomorrow night?” Rio asks.
“Do you have some deep-seated phobia of going to bars alone?” Agatha asks in return, if only to distract herself from watching the other woman empty her dressing into her salad and sucking the remaining drop off of her finger.
“I like your company,” Rio says. It’s so simple that it entirely knocks the wind out of her for a few seconds. Trying pathetically to reinflate her lungs, Agatha waits for the other beat; the punchline, but it doesn’t come.
Rio sticks out her tongue, catches the ball of her piercing, and balances the bar of it against the tiny gap in her front teeth, her focus entirely on spreading her salad dressing as evenly as possible with the back of her flimsy plastic fork.
“Billy’s convinced we were on a date,” Agatha finally says. She regrets it as soon as she says it, but she had to find something to fill the gap in the conversation. Something to squash out Rio’s unembarrassed niceness .
The other woman’s eyes gleam as she looks back up.
“But you set him straight?” She asks, unbearably teasing.
“I have a bit of a rule about not asking out the people I regularly accept money from,” Agatha replies.
“Well, if it were a date, technically I asked you .” Rio stabs up a few leaves of her salad and takes a bite. She chews thoughtfully, then jabs her empty fork accusingly in Agatha’s direction. “Unless that was your plan all along.”
Agatha takes several large, unladylike bites in a row - nearly a third of the entire salad - so that she can justify a confused look and grunt in response instead of asking her outright to clarify her point.
An unsteady laugh at her antics cuts through Rio’s explanation.
“Y’know. Tricking me into asking you out so you’re not technically breaking your own rules, or whatever. But don’t worry, I wouldn’t threaten your integrity like that.”
“Really? ” Agatha asks, disbelief and disappointment muffled by romaine and shredded cabbage.
Rio’s eyes gleam again, but she drops her gaze to her salad and shrugs.
“Sure. That’s sort of all we have in life, right? Our rules?”
“Is that more liberal arts bullshit? Philosophy of meaninglessness , or something like that?” Agatha asks.
“Something like that,” Rio replies in agreement. She waits a beat and then tips the last of her salad into Agatha’s nearly-empty bowl. Before she can protest, she cuts her off: “You seem hungry. I already ate, anyway.”
She pushes back from their table and gathers up her garbage, taking it to the trash can by the counter and leaving Agatha struggling with the lid to her own salad while parsing exactly what just happened. Practically scrambling after her, she crams a couple of extra napkins into her pocket.
“Do you have to head straight back?” Rio asks once Agatha is back by her side. There’s a hint of whining under her question that Agatha’s sure she isn’t imagining.
“Lilia would probably hex me if I tried to pull off two-hour lunches,” Agatha replies, knowing full well that she already does get away with a lot more than she probably should.
“Well, do you have time to stop at the shop?”
“That depends on whether you’re offering free flowers or trying to rope me into helping you move something heavy.”
Rio grins, shaking her head.
“No manual labor.” She rounds the corner and glances both ways before stepping off the curb. She turns to walk backwards, beckoning Agatha with both hands as she adds on, “I promise. C’mon.”
Rio leans forward with an exaggerated pout, and Agatha’s eyes drop to the sprig and twine of her breast tattoo again; she steps out into the road after her without a second thought.
“Well, it’s no rabbit, but Nicky’s going to love it.”
Billy moves to poke the end of his pen at Seymour’s open, leafy little jaws, but Jen reaches out and slaps the back of his hand before he can.
“Ow!”
“Don’t poke at it!” Jen says shrilly, gesturing wildly in Agatha’s direction for backup.
“Word,” Agatha replies, glancing up briefly from where she’s been clicking around the webpage for a nearby pet shop, squinting at the prices of live-feeding insects. She remembers the glib warning sign that Rio had pointed out in the shop, taped to the glass shelf that housed a few baby Venus flytraps. ‘Please don’t tease the flytraps! How would you like it if someone stuck their finger down YOUR throat?’
“Don’t agree with her,” Billy huffs, rubbing his hand with a scowl. “I’m the one doing you a favor tomorrow.”
“You insisted ,” Agatha reminds him. She lets go of the computer mouse for a moment to wring her cramped hands together irritably. Her post-lunch walk-in had picked one of her regrettably smaller, detail-oriented pieces of flash off the wall — ‘Hoisted by her own petard,’ she’d overheard Jen comment to Billy as she’d led her client back to her workstation.
Billy doesn’t have an answer for that, so he goes back to admiring the plant. When Agatha had returned after lunch with Rio - and Seymour - in tow, he’d overheard the florist’s re-request to join her for another drink the following night, and had demanded the opportunity for a movie night with Nicky. With the babysitting handled and no other convenient excuses, Agatha had agreed, and then promptly thrown herself into researching where to buy bugs in bulk for the new foster plant.
“Why doesn’t Rio give you… supplies?” Jen asks, pointedly avoiding looking at the photos on the monitor. Agatha catches her squirming and zooms in on an image of some maggots.
“She has her own plants to feed,” she replies.
“But you’re like… co-parenting this one,” Jen says, pointing to the plant with one freshly manicured nail.
Agatha whirls around to glare at her, and Billy, caught in the crossfire of the heat of it, whispers a startled ‘Oh my god’ under his breath. Jen smiles sweetly, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall.
“Two dates and suddenly you’re starting a little family. It’s very… U-haul,” she says.
“First of all, you’re not a lesbian, so you can’t say that,” Agatha snaps. “Secondly, this is for Nicky to learn some responsibility, and thirdly, they are not dates. ”
“They seem a bit like dates,” Jen mocks.
“Well, they’re not,” Agatha replies, mimicking the other woman’s cadence childishly. She clears her throat and sits up straighter when she notices both Billy and Jen drop their eyes in amusement at her sudden slip in composure, and then says more firmly: “We have actually been pretty explicit about the fact that they are not dates.”
“Well, all good relationships start with a clear discussion about boundaries,” Jen sighs. Her expression softens into something friendlier, bordering on affectionate, and she jostles Agatha’s desk chair with her outstretched foot before teasing, “You like her.”
Agatha sniffs and rolls her eyes.
“She’s a hell of a lot more tolerable than either of you two,” she says, eyes flicking from Jen to Billy. Terrifyingly, they both grin in response.
“So, for tomorrow, I’ll get my mom to pick me up and drop me at Nicky’s school - we can walk, if it’s nice out. He still on that weird pizza strike?” Billy holds a hand out as he talks, and Agatha wordlessly begins working the spare key off of her keyring.
“What kid doesn’t like pizza?” Jen asks. “I told you that Thirteens is nasty and overpriced.”
“They also hide all of his three a day in the sauce, and he’s practically wasting away,” Agatha replies. She holds the key just out of Billy’s reach before he can grab it from her, staring him down sternly. “No horror movies - I’m serious.”
“That was one time, and he was supposed to be in bed. And! I only let him stay for the end because he said he would sleep better if he knew how it turned out,” Billy reasons.
“You believed a six-year-old.”
“He was very convincing!” Billy replies defensively. “You should be looking on the bright side. He’s hitting the complex reasoning milestone with way more power than most of his peers his age usually do.”
Agatha narrows her eyes, then firmly presses the key into his still-outstretched palm.
“No horror,” she repeats.
“No horror,” he agrees dejectedly.
“Speaking of horror and six-year-olds, I need to go pick him up,” Agatha announces, shoving herself tiredly to her feet. She reaches over and snatches up the Venus flytrap, carefully transferring it to the crook of her elbow so she can shoulder her bag and reach for her jacket.
“Bye, Agatha!” Billy calls as she heads to the door.
“Bye, Seymour!” Jen tacks on, smiling innocently as Agatha flips her off.
The first thing Billy does when Agatha walks into the shop the following morning is wolf whistle, and she immediately considers calling Rio to cancel their evening plans.
His reaction causes both Jen and Alice to pop their heads around the corner, one above the other, the scene looking even more cartoonish when Lilia joins, cramming between them a moment later.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she warns, pushing his rolling chair aside as she rounds the desk to check her schedule. Just as she leans to peer at the screen, she feels a brush of something along her waist, way too close to her ass, and stiffens, whirling around.
Billy stares at her, wide-eyed, and puts his hands up in pure terror.
“Are these vegan leather?” Jen, the real culprit, asks.
“Vegan leather is worse for the environment,” Alice pipes up helpfully. “If anyone cares.”
“Those pants are older than Nicholas,” Lilia chimes in. She eyes Agatha curiously, leaning against the wall that separates them. “I haven’t seen them in years, though. Special occasion?”
“They’re pants ,” Agatha huffs, waving an arm dismissively. “How bored are you people? Do you all just sit around moping pitifully, waiting for me to get here each day? I’m more than just a personality hire - I’m also the most talented person here.”
Jen rolls her eyes, tilting her head in Lilia’s direction but keeping her eyes trained on Agatha.
“She’s got a date. With Rio ,” she says.
Alice gasps.
“Again?”
Agatha closes her eyes and takes a slow, calming breath before responding. Her morning routine with Nicky had gone much smoother today, and he’d been very apologetically snuggly the night before to make up for his behaviour. She’d had an inkling that the good streak she had going would end when she got to work, but she hadn’t anticipated how immediate it would be.
“If any of you make one more accusation about my romantic life, I’m reporting you to HR,” she threatens.
“Consider it reported,” Lilia replies flippantly. “You’re the one advertising it with the pants.”
“Oh!” Agatha’s voice goes up an octave, “So now I’m asking for harassment because of how I’m dressed. That’s great, Lilia. Really.”
The older woman stares her down boredly, undeterred. Losing their game of chicken, Agatha turns her attention huffily back to the computer screen.
“I mean, they are sexy pants,” Jen comments.
Just as Agatha considers blindly launching the wireless keyboard over her shoulder at her, the shop bell DING s, mercifully diverting everyone’s attention.
“Whoa, welcome wagon. Nice.” The rather petite blonde who makes her way inside strides confidently over to the desk, which the entire staff has convened around, and flicks her gaze across each one of them before landing on Alice. “I think I’m your nine o’clock.”
Alice lights up, slapping Billy on the shoulder.
“Dottie! Yes! Billy will get you a waiver. I’m almost set up.”
The group disperses immediately, Lilia returning to the office while Agatha, Jen, and Alice each slink off to their respective workstations.
Agatha throws herself back into the sketch she’s been working on for an upcoming sleeve session with a regular of hers, tuning out Billy’s irritating choice of music and Alice’s conversation with her current client. She’s in the middle of deleting and redrawing the same detail for the fourth time - a bloodied section of wire on a rusting gigli saw - when she is abruptly and rudely tuned back into the frequency of the real world.
“Yeah! I’m actually staying at Vidal’s , down the block. The flower shop. Have you been? So not the boring Hallmark -vibe that I’d been expecting.”
Dottie's words draw Agatha’s attention to her like a magnet, and she curses internally when she looks up to see Jen already looking to her for her reaction.
Alice looks up from the woman’s forearm that she’s inking her outline into and catches Agatha’s eye for a moment, as if silently asking for guidance, but Jen decides for them.
“Agatha’s there a lot,” she supplies helpfully. She points the piece of her flash she’s holding over to where Agatha’s sprawled out on her tattoo bench with her tablet, then returns to her task of pinning it to the wall over her tool chest before she can catch the scathing look Agatha gives her.
Dottie's eyes flick curiously over to Agatha in recognition, and drift over her slowly. Pursing her lips after a beat, she nods approvingly and turns her attention back to Alice.
“Well, it’s really cool, you should check it out. The guy I met on my flight - he said his ex-girlfriend used to work there.”
“The guy taking you out tonight?” Alice clarifies, turning away to reup her ink and shooting Agatha as subtle of an apologetic look as she can.
“Uh-huh!” Dottie takes the bait to change the subject and Agatha returns to her screen, but her momentum has already left the building. Snapping the case shut in frustration, she sits up and swings her legs off the bench.
“I’m getting some air,” she announces, heading for the back door past the office.
She can feel Lilia following her out of the office more than she sees it, but she ignores her until she reaches the trash cans out back and pulls out her phone to look busy.
Lilia shoves the door open with a creak and steps out as though Agatha hadn’t intentionally let it close on her.
“I thought I’d find you out here smoking,” she says.
“Told you I quit,” Agatha replies gruffly, opening and closing her weather app.
“Alice said that you still haven’t turned in your registration for the expo,” Lilia nearly cuts her lie off, already moving on. “If we have to late-register again, it’s coming out of your tips.”
Agatha waves a hand dismissively.
“I’ll see if I can get a sitter.”
“You should bring Nicky. He had so much fun last time.”
“Yeah,” Agatha mutters, “Except that now he won’t stop drawing all over himself with that stupid fake tattoo pen that someone bought for him.”
Lilia laughs lightly at that, then startles her by reaching out and taking one of her hands away from her phone and tilting it in the overcast sunlight to take a better look at the tattoo arching between her index finger and thumb. It’s only two years old, but fading fast; the constant hand-washing between work safety and the second occupational hazard of raising a little boy has aged the piece much more quickly than some of her others.
“He just wants to be like you,” Lilia says wistfully, her thumb brushing over the grey-black lines of silhouetted tooth marks. “This needs to be touched up soon.”
Whether because of the sudden unexpected tenderness or the almost far-away look that Lilia suddenly has, Agatha pulls her hand away and shuts the idea down.
“I like it how it is.”
Lilia eyes her for a beat, clearly trying to decide if Agatha was being truthful or not. It had been the last tattoo she’d done before putting the machine down for good, and while it was a little blasphemous in most cases to have another artist improve on someone else’s work, exceptions like retirement were usually considered fair game.
The decision to let the subject go clearly wins, and Lilia’s expression and tone turn stern and professional once again.
“You’re going to the expo. Coven needs to be a united front if I’m supposed to judge Best Freehand , anyway.”
“Oh, now I am so excited about going,” Agatha grins. “You should have led with that. God, those persuasion skills of yours are really getting rusty in your old age.”
“I’m going to let that slide because you’re already in an emotionally volatile state on account of being dressed in your best fuck-me -pants on a Thursday morning, but next time I’m putting you on first-call for walk-in flash-discount day.”
Lilia whirls around before Agatha, rattled, can respond, and vanishes back inside the shop.
The morning rolls by quickly, but the afternoon seems to drag on, almost as if time itself is aware of Agatha's increasing anxiety and is trying to rile her into such a sweat-soaked state that it'll be impossible to even take off her leather pants in the event that the evening were to go that far.
“Whoa, Agatha… Nice pants.”
Agatha groans loudly in lieu of her greeting as Rebecca Kaplan steps into the shop, pulling off her sunglasses to take a better look.
“I swear to god-” She begins, turning around to face the other woman and being met with two nearly identical Kaplan expressions of barely-harnessed glee.
“I’m serious! You look… really good .”
Her excited tone tells Agatha that Billy’s already filled her in on the occasion. The thought makes her want to return the compliment with an exceptionally crude one, just to make him squirm, but she bites her tongue.
Crossing the space to the desk, she snorts when Billy flinches like he's expecting her to shove him, and then slaps a couple of bills down in front of him.
“For dinner. No pop, please, I can't handle that tonight, or ever.”
“Got it,” Billy agrees, swiping up the bills and getting up from the desk. “Do you want us to call you before bed?”
Agatha hesitates, feeling the stares of both Billy and his mother piercing through her as she finds a very interesting scuff on the wall to focus on instead.
“Text me first, you know how the service can be.”
“Right, the phone service,” Billy agrees sarcastically, rounding the desk and glancing back at her before saying more seriously: “Have fun. Please.”
Waving him away in embarrassment, Agatha turns back to her station and pretends not to notice that it’s exactly three hours and fifty-nine minutes until she needs to leave to meet up with Rio.
Agatha drives extra slowly past Alibi, twice, to see if she can spot Rio through the large fisheye-like window of the bar. Realizing as she starts her third pass that her oversized car isn’t particularly inconspicuous, she gives up on her mission and parks a few doors down, sitting in the quiet dark of her car for a few moments.
It’s nearing ten past, which also makes it ten past the time she told Rio to be there. Deciding that it’s enough of a buffer, Agatha tucks her keys into her pocket and steps out into the street, slinging her jacket over her shoulder.
The temperature has dipped sharply in the mid-afternoon, but the cold air feels energizing against her skin, buzzing with the heat of anxious nerves in a way that it hadn’t in years. These nerves feel much sweeter than the ones that consistently flared up with various Nicky-related events; she feels oversensitive, restless in her own skin, and hyperalert. Like a superhero, not like a small animal being hunted for sport.
The irritation that being around her nosy coworkers instilled in her melts away with each step closer to the door that she gets, and goddamnit, her heart picks up speed when she wrenches open the heavy door and immediately spots Rio at the corner of the bar.
She’s seated with her back to the door, which gives Agatha a split second to compose herself before the rush of cool air that follows her inside alerts Rio of her presence. Her curious look morphs into a genuine grin, so open and honest that it almost stops Agatha in her path, her steps stuttering a little as she makes her way over.
The grin morphs into a smirk, taunting and unfairly tempting, and Rio kicks out the seat beside her for Agatha as she approaches.
“You’re late.”
“Hardly,” Agatha scoffs, glancing around at the nearly empty bar. It’s a small space, crammed between two more uniform buildings. A spite property , the plaque behind the bar indicates. An intentional olden-days obstruction of a structure, a symbol of the owner’s refusal to bow down in the face of new builds trying to price locals out of the area. Fewer than five other patrons are scattered about. “I’m shocked you were able to get us in.”
Rio snorts, then slides a condensation-coated bottle of beer into the spot on the bar before the empty seat.
“I’m just saying, you were early last time. That kind of inconsistency can really turn a girl off, you know.”
Agatha purses her lips and takes a sip of the beer, holding Rio’s attention rapt for an agonizing beat before shrugging.
“Well, if that means this is the last time you want to do this…”
“I haven’t decided. Maybe you’ll win some points in the back half. You gonna sit down?” Rio’s eyes drop for the first time as she takes her in properly. Her stare lingers over a few of the tattoos that weren’t visible to her before, now all out in the open in her ribbed muscle tank, and Agatha doesn’t miss the way her eyes briefly pause on her breasts before tastefully darting back up to her face.
“Yeah,” Agatha nods. “My eyes are up here.”
Rio doesn’t even respond, just smiles genuinely into the lip of her own bottle as she takes a calming, cooling swig and blushes.
Brushing against Rio’s side as she squeezes between the two stools, Agatha finally sits in her own and sets down her beer.
“Met your friend today. Sort of,” She says.
“Oh yeah?” Rio turns her entire body in her seat to face her. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be in or not. The tattoo came out great. How long has Alice been there?”
Agatha squints thoughtfully.
“Eleven years, now, I think.”
“Were all of you guys like… founders, then?” Rio asks.
“No,” Agatha shakes her head and chews her lip. “No, Alice and Jen weren’t. Alice’s mother - she and Lilia and I opened together. Alice took her spot in the shop when she died.”
“Oh.” Rio’s expression falls a little bit, and she awkwardly takes another sip to fill the air before plucking up the courage to ask, “Were you close?”
“Close enough,” she lies, moving on. “Alice was in some dickhead private studio in Silicon Valley. Came back for the funeral and never left. Salem has that effect on people.”
Something about Rio’s demeanour shifts, but Agatha can’t put her finger on what exactly it is. Before she can ask, the other woman moves on to her next question.
“And you? Have you been here your whole life?”
Agatha scoffs quietly, shaking her head.
“No. Just most of it.” The idea of revealing any hints that might lead the other woman to start formulating a tragic backstory for her makes her feel suddenly cold and clammy, so she changes the subject once more. “Where’s your friend tonight?”
Rio frowns in confusion for a moment before realizing what she means, then laughs out loud.
“Oh my god. She met some local guy on the plane, and she’s like… in love. They’re going to a museum and getting drinks, I think. She’s smitten . It’s gross.”
Agatha shakes her head in amusement.
“Awfully cruel way to talk about your friend. What if he is the one?”
Rio fixes her with a playful look of disbelief.
“Her track record sucks. He seems normal enough from what she told me, but…” she sighs wistfully. “I don’t know. He sounded a little… boring.”
“Well, we can’t all be florist-philosopher-botanist-globetrotting…” Agatha trails off, and Rio does a terrible job of trying to look unamused.
“I’m just looking out for my friend.”
“Mmhmm.” Agatha nods sarcastically, twisting out of the way mid-sip when the other woman reaches out to prod at her and just managing to dodge it.
“You’re really mean to me. I don’t know why I keep hanging out with you,” Rio tells her.
Turning to her, impressed with how beautifully Rio teed her up, Agatha quirks an eyebrow.
“ Because I’m really m-”
Rio swipes at her again, managing to loosely swat at her and accidentally graze the tips of her fingers across her thigh, too high for the energy to not suddenly crackle between them.
They both freeze, but Rio drops her gaze first, focusing on her legs and then boldly putting a hand on her knee. The leather warms immediately under her touch, and Agatha’s skin suddenly feels too hot, the giddy, nervous itch returning and forcing her to make a conscious choice not to squirm.
“How’d, um-” Rio clears her throat, pulling her hand back agonizingly slowly. “How’d Nicky like the new foster-plant?”
The reminder of how happy her son had been the night before, insisting on reading Seymour a bedtime story and making a name tag for his planter, floods Agatha with an entirely different warmth - bright and heavy and making her chest suddenly feel so full that it almost aches.
The conflicting, overwhelming feelings loop together and become one giant, confusing mess of adoration and excitement. The genuine happiness and frazzled, hopeful anticipation become such a surge of affection toward the woman in front of her that she’s surprised she doesn’t launch herself out of her seat and into Rio’s lap on reflex.
“He loves him,” she breathes, smiling and rolling her eyes with a shake of her head.
“Good.” Rio smiles brightly, then tacks on playfully, “Anything I can do to keep the bunny discussion at bay for as long as you need.”
Agatha groans and rubs her temple, then chuckles defeatedly.
“I’ll be lucky if I make it another month. Between the stupid rabbit and this fucking tattoo convention, I’m very quickly losing control of my own destiny at this point.”
Rio makes a sympathetic noise that sounds entirely too amused to land.
“Did you finally get suckered into judging that contest?”
“No, thankfully,” Agatha admits. “Lilia’s doing it, and a few others. Which will, at least, be funny enough to make the day less horrible.”
“Oh, you don’t have to put on a brave face and hide your disappointment, you poor thing. Lilia took your job of staring at the bikini-clad tattoo models?” Rio teases, feigning sympathy. “You must be absolutely gutted.”
“Half of my job is staring at hot tattooed women. It loses its novelty after a while,” Agatha replies.
“Guess I better come up with a better schtick, then,” she hums, punctuating the implication with one of the last sips from her beer.
Before Agatha can find her footing again, Rio’s expression morphs into one of startled confusion, and she lifts the bottle to the light, shaking it and peering up into the bottom of it.
“What is it?”
“Shit,” she says, voice slurred as if she’s curled her tongue inward. Her next word is even more garbled, as she points past Agatha to the bar. “Napkin.”
Confused but following along, Agatha hands her a cocktail napkin and watches as she frantically upends the last couple of dregs from the bottle onto it. Dropping her gaze to the mess, Agatha spots the tiny silver ball that rolls through the foam, just before Rio snatches it up and glances around.
“Come help,” she slurs, grabbing Agatha’s wrist and all but dragging her away across the bar.
The bathroom is only marginally better lit than the actual bar space, but much, much quieter. With no music or other patrons to add an extra layer of dampening to their interactions, all Agatha can focus on is how close Rio pulls her, adjusting the jewelry bar in her tongue so close to the mirror that Agatha is briefly concerned she might accidentally lick it and pick up some mysterious disease.
“Mm,” Rio grunts, holding the piercing ball out between two long fingernails, which Agatha quickly establishes as the reason for being called in for the assist. She turns to the small sink and makes quick work of washing the condensation from her hands.
She takes the ball wordlessly, twisting it around in the light to find the hole and then gesturing for Rio to dip down a little as she opens her mouth and extends her tongue, the height difference making her task twice as difficult.
“Alright,” she sighs, reaching in and gripping what’s visible of the bar between her fingertips, fumbling for a moment before managing to screw the pieces together. She tightens it into place and hesitates, eyes flicking from Rio’s mouth to her eyes briefly, really taking in their positions for the first time. “That good?”
Time slows down as Rio moves to pull back, firmly running her tongue down the half-length of Agatha’s fingers, knuckle to tip. There’s no way it isn’t intentional. She straightens to her full height and wipes the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand just as slowly as she’d licked the other woman’s fingers, and nods.
“Good. Perfect. Thank you .”
Her eyes are dark, obvious even in the poor light. Agatha watches breathlessly as she rolls her tongue around in her mouth to test the security before speaking again.
“That was really -”
Whatever it really was, Agatha doesn’t get to find out, because she closes the last inches of space between them in a messy, nearly bruising kiss.
The combination of beer and a distant cigarette and mint gum takes over Agatha’s senses, and it’s the only thing she can focus on before realizing Rio is backing her toward the large single-stall door.
“Can I be honest with you?” Rio breathes as they finally separate. “I had a totally different plan for getting you into this bathroom like this.”
Jolting forward to steal another brief kiss, Agatha watches the excited rise and fall of the other woman’s chest.
“I’m not sure ‘come keep me company while I pee’ would have inspired as much urgency,” she replies, imagining the mystery tattoo she knows is hiding under Rio’s shirt. The thought of it drains almost the last of her inhibition from her body, and she takes another step backward, letting the door to the stall creak open.
“I was thinking more along the lines of, ‘please let me touch you, I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I saw you’.”
That shoots a hole in the barrel keeping Agatha’s remaining self-control intact, letting the last of it dribble away and evaporate.
The look on Rio’s face tells her that whatever expression she’s wearing on her own has completely given her away. It’s almost out of spite how roughly she grabs Rio by the belt loops and drags her the rest of the way into the stall, forcing her to awkwardly twist her arms behind herself to close and latch the door.
“I haven’t had to use a handicap stall for a hookup in a while ,” Agatha says pointedly.
“When was the last time?” Rio asks. Agatha suspects she’s just nervously making conversation for the sake of not having them fall into awkwardness.
“Too long,” she replies. Deciding the lock will hold well enough, she turns to the other woman and kisses her again, messy and impatient this time. It does the trick, though; Rio stares at her hungrily when she breaks away, gaze dropping to her lips before she speaks breathlessly.
“Well, that’s okay, you’re my first anyway.”
Agatha, in the middle of closing the last few inches of space between them, freezes.
"I'm kidding. I promise I have slept with women." Agatha notes the slight shake in Rio's hands as she palms one of her breasts a little clumsily.
"Any this decade?" Agatha asks as gently as she can while mocking someone. She covers Rio's hands with her own, stilling her.
“Don’t be shitty,” Rio huffs back, her free hand slipping behind her back and up under the hem of her top. Her fingers wick through the sweat beginning to gather at the small of her back, then flatten firmly to her spine, forcing her forward.
Agatha kisses her again, almost apologetically, though she truthfully just has no further comeback, and the slow build of tension in her thighs and core muscles is rearranging her priorities, putting ‘arguing’ somewhere near the bottom of the list.
Her thigh slots between Rio’s, and one of her hands slips from her neck to her shoulder, pushing her downward and forcing her legs to spread further around it. She tenses; Agatha feels what’s coming in the split second before it happens just from the way she freezes mid-kiss. The moan Rio pours into her mouth is loud enough that it feels like everything around them goes silent just to make room for it. It trails off into a small laugh of disbelief, like even she can’t quite believe what just came out of her.
Pressing one’s knee between someone’s legs mid-makeout is a notable classic from the lesbian playbook, but Agatha doesn’t remember it being quite that effective. She tightens her hand on Rio’s shoulder when she goes to stand up straighter, keeping her still as she leans forward to press insistently against her a second time.
“Agatha, waaai- ohmygod-! ”
“Jesus, ” Agatha breathes, her stance wavering when Rio’s forehead connects with her shoulder. “Are you sure you -”
“It’s- my- “ Rio struggles around the words as she scrambles to grip the straps of Agatha’s top and starts shoving them down impatiently. “Just be gentle.”
“Okay,” Agatha agrees, exhaling sharply when her shirt is shoved messily down to her waist and then her bra to her ribs with no hesitation from the other woman.
There’s no more shaking as Rio thumbs small circles around both of her nipples at once, letting out a soft chuckle as she eyes them in the low lighting.
“Huh. Twins,” she notes, her thumbs brushing over them again simultaneously, circling the barely-perceptible indents of scar tissue there. Suddenly conversational, apparently, she begins to ask, “D’you find they’re any less sensitive now that you’ve let them heal-”
Agatha cuts her off with a sound halfway between a moan and a laugh when she brushes feather-light over the tip of one, then the other. Rio stills, then grins almost predatorily.
“Guess not.”
She looks just a little too cocky as she works one hand into the infuriatingly tight waistband of Agatha’s leather pants, just managing to get past the first barrier and start in on her underwear when Agatha shifts forward, pressing her breast further into Rio’s hand and nudging her back to the stall wall once more. Jolting at the change, Rio’s hand shoots up from her breast to her arm as if she expected to fall.
She experimentally pushes her thigh up against her best estimate of where Rio’s clit is through her jeans once more and lights up when the other woman’s hands dig into her skin roughly, leaving tiny crescent-shaped indents in her bicep. She lets out a high-pitched moan that has such an unexpected pornographic quality to it that Agatha might have assumed was fake, if she wasn’t already becoming so increasingly aware of how vocal Rio is.
“Stop doing that , you demon,” Rio growls, squeezing her legs tightly around Agatha’s thigh to still her, before letting go of her iron grip on her arm and freeing her hand from her pants to work open the button and zipper of her own jeans instead.
Agatha laughs softly, brushing Rio’s hands aside once her fly is open and pushing her hand into her panties impatiently.
“Never heard you angry before,” she notes, easing past the wiry, trimmed pubic hair in her path and seeking out her clit.
“Still haven’t,” Rio grits out, head falling back against the wall of the stall again. She bucks upward when Agatha’s fingertip finds its target, and then stutters to a stop when it brushes over something unexpectedly solid.
“You’re kidding,” Agatha breathes, brushing her middle finger over the silklike skin of her hood and feeling her nail bump almost clumsily into the bit of metal sticking out above and below it.
Rio’s eyes flutter closed with a shiver, and for a moment, Agatha thinks she can hear her heart before realizing it’s her own. She’s suddenly tingling all over, curiosity piqued and not-entirely-unwelcome butterflies taking off in a cloud in her chest and stomach.
Adrenaline shakes the usual reliable steadiness out of her hands, and she pulls free as carefully as she can, clutching the material at Rio’s hips to drag the garment down and out of the way. Righting herself awkwardly, Rio’s hands bump clumsily into hers as she moves to help her. The material sticks to her bare skin but glides smoothly over the saniderm wrap on her leg; Agatha is vaguely aware that it’s probably bad tattoo-artist karma for her to be helping Rio work up a sweat this early in the healing process.
Even once the jeans are bunched around her thighs, she can’t see , so Agatha drops to her knees without hesitating, and only then takes a beat for a silent prayer that the floors have been cleaned somewhat recently. The leather of her pants squeaks against the tile as she dips forward and cards her fingers smoothly through the slick patch of hair before her.
Rio gasps, hips lurching forward and almost bumping herself into Agatha’s face. A tiny gold bead peeks through beneath her fingers, and as she presses up gently, its other half reveals itself nestled neatly below her clitoral hood.
Her gaze drops a little further, and she hums softly, dropping her hand and dipping her fingers almost inside of her as she gathers a little of the wetness beginning to gather there.
“I’ve never…” Agatha trails off as she eyes the string of slick connecting her fingers to Rio as she pulls back slightly.
“She’s a teammate, not an obstacle,” Rio explains breathlessly. She sees her head drop forward in her peripheral vision and looks up to catch her gaze, holding it steady as she boldly leans in and flattens her tongue to her with no further preamble.
All of those loud, startled moans she’d managed to pull out of Rio earlier seem to have left her system. Instead, she almost purrs , both hands dropping to Agatha’s hair with surprising gentleness as she takes her time and savours.
The piercing nudges against her nose, and Rio stiffens in anticipation; Agatha internally rolls her eyes at herself. Coward , she thinks. It’s a piece of anodized titanium, not a bomb needing to be diffused, and damned if Agatha fucking Harkness is going to let herself blame inexperience for ignoring the clit for the first time in her life.
Replacing her tongue with the pads of her middle and index finger, she shallowly eases Rio open with a scissoring gesture and then latches her lips around her clit as gently as she can manage.
She swears she feels her insides liquify at the sound that Rio lets out; like all of the air is knocked out of her at once, her groan would be almost inaudible if Agatha weren’t intently listening for it. A split second later, her hands tighten in her hair, a warning that she ignores in favor of trying to get an encore of that sound by letting go just enough to flick her tongue beneath the ball of the piercing, nudging it unintentionally in her effort to get to the target below.
Rio seizes, her grip turns painful and sends a dizzyingly pleasant tingle across Agatha’s entire scalp, and she pushes herself up onto the balls of her feet with a voice-cracking, high-pitched moan of defeat. Agatha can feel her pulse against her fingers, the wetness she’d been admittedly practically just playing in suddenly spreading down the digits toward her palm.
She lifts her head in shock.
“Did you just -?”
“Fuck my life.”
Rio lets go of her hair, and Agatha lets out a bark of laughter before she can help it. It’s an empowering sort of relief to be on her knees with her tits out in a bar bathroom and still somehow have the upper hand of composure.
Rio wrestles her jeans back up her thighs, muttering under her breath in something that sounds like it isn’t English. Agatha chews her lip and feels such an unfamiliar surge of affection well up in her chest that she can’t help but lean forward and wrap her wet fingers around the back of Rio’s knee and then press her lips to it apologetically as she looks up at her.
She can’t wipe the smug little smile from her face, but Rio’s glare softens anyway. She rolls her eyes and looks away when a smile of her own threatens her expression, and she runs a hand through her hair with a groan.
“I should get that fucking thing removed.”
Agatha laughs again, pushing herself to sit upright on her knees as she begins pulling her bra back into place, pausing when Rio makes a quick noise of protest.
“Oh, please,” Agatha scoffs. “We need to relocate. I’m not going to be that quick, and someone’s bound to have to pee eventually.”
“My, um… my friend sort of has dibs on the shop right now, in case her date doesn’t go well,” Rio explains, guiltily refusing to meet her eye.
“Is that why you were so… gung-ho about a bathroom hookup? I just thought you were, like… an exhibitionist, or something,” Agatha says. Her mind is reeling, though, trying to parse the inevitable fact that she’s going to be going home unfucked despite Rio’s best efforts.
“I’m so sorry,” Rio starts to ramble, “I didn’t - I came in here to get you off, I wasn’t trying to like… use you, or whatever. I’m sorry. Seriously, there were only like three other people in here, I don’t think anyone’s coming in-”
She reaches for her hintingly, but Agatha steps back in the cramped space, readjusting the straps of her top and shaking her head.
“No, we’ve been in here long enough.”
For an idiotic, desperate second, she considers getting them a hotel room, but somehow that feels even dirtier than kneeling on a bathroom floor. The shame that hits her from the idea is followed by a burst of white-hot arousal, unexpected and sudden, distracting her enough that Rio manages to close the space between them again to kiss her.
“What about your car?” She suggests, pressing her forehead to Agatha’s when she breaks away, then surging forward and nipping at her lower lip before she can answer. “Please. I’ve been thinking about making you feel good all day.”
Her fingers hook into the waist of her pants again, but this time they grip tight, pulling Agatha’s hips against hers. As they bump into one another, she lets go, hand dropping to cup her greedily through the increasingly uncomfortable material.
“Okay,” she agrees, not even realizing what she’s saying as her hands land automatically on Rio’s hips.
Rio lights up like she’s won the lottery; the giddiness on her face would be almost laughable if Agatha’s brain weren’tt so fogged over from her own delirious horniness. Rio nearly knocks the stall door off of its hinges in her enthusiasm to get out, shouldering out of the bathroom altogether.
Agatha shakes her hand free from Rio’s as they emerge, not wanting to give anyone any more cause for suspicion, but the other patrons don’t seem to pay them much mind as they return to the bar for their jackets.
“I closed out before you got here,” Rio tells her, grabbing her wrist to stop her when she reaches into her coat pocket.
“Presumptuous,” Agatha accuses, though she’s beginning to realise that might be one of Rio’s most prominent traits.
Rio just shrugs in response, her poorly concealed smile forcing an infuriatingly charming dimple onto one of her cheeks as she nods impatiently toward the door. It’s a little more of an ego-boost than Agatha would ever admit aloud to see just how desperate and impatient Rio is - and how badly she’s trying to act anything but.
“Where’d you park?”
