Chapter Text
There was probably something to be said about the cliche of Agatha enjoying working backwards out of shapeless shadows instead of following the rules that had worked for almost everyone who came before her.
Even the most reckless, famous-for-disruption artists that she admired had a grasp on the basics. Every high school art teacher and tattoo mentor she'd ever spoken to had told her that knowing the rules was one of the first steps to breaking them. She knew they weren't wrong, and despite what people came to expect from her, she really did respect the fundamentals. She knew, inside and out, how to create a piece that would make even the most stern AP visual art teacher relent and grade her well, but it was all mental. When it came to translating that to the page, she faltered every time.
'I can't teach you how to see what you aren't seeing already,' was what one of her first post-high-school visual arts teachers had told her. She'd been staring at the pile of randomly cobbled-together garbage that served as the subject of their current still-life oil session. A cheap plastic skull stolen from the drama department, a string of purple Mardi Gras beads, a dusty candle that probably couldn’t be lit anymore, and some silk faux-flowers laid on the table. Agatha's seat in the circle gave her a clear view of the leftover glue on one of the plastic stems. The half-torn price tag sticker still clung to the end of it.
Underpainting had been a pain in the ass for her to wrap her head around. The color theory just couldn’t find a way to make its place in her memory permanent. Still, without the scrutinizing glare of an instructor looming over her shoulder, Agatha could, in a few broad strokes, put together something that perfectly mirrored the tints and shades in front of her on the table. Starting with the brightest tones and trying to fill in the spaces had always felt totally backwards when her clearest work always came from brightening the highlights that stood out against a much darker sea.
She’d dropped that visual arts class after three weeks. She couldn’t force the administration or her instructors to see it her way, and no one seemed to care about the outcome when she couldn’t neatly show her work within the specific rules and technicalities.
That had been decades ago. The guilt over it had left her system just about as long ago, when she’d started spending more time loitering around a local tattoo shop.
Now, seated on her uncomfortable wooden stool in front of a secondhand canvas gifted to her from her boss, Agatha begins to paint backwards. She layers on her toning wash until the canvas is almost soaked, the overall shade of it too dark to be anything other than the quasi-scenery she’s picturing in her mind, leaving no room for a change of heart. Getting up from her seat, she shuffles the easel back until it’s directly under the flow of air from the ceiling vent, and reaches for her phone. It begins to vibrate in her hand before she can even unlock it, and an icy cold wave of shame hits her when she sees Lilia’s name on the screen.
She’d been about to call her, but suddenly she can’t bring herself to answer the call. She lets it ring and ring until the missed call notification appears, and only then does she unlock it and open up her group chat with the rest of the tattoo shop.
Hey, Nicky needs me home today.
I’ll be there tomorrow.
Jen, predictably, replies first, though it’s not the scathing accusatory message that Agatha had initially anticipated:
[9:02AM] bitch: Everything ok?
Before Agatha can respond, Billy’s text follows.
[9:02AM] future organ donor: if you still want to go to the con, i can come by.
[9:02AM] future organ donor: i haven’t left the house yet, we can swap places and i can watch him
I’m good here, Agatha replies.
Down the hall, the booming sound of the Netflix studio card blares from the television, followed by Nicky and Rio giggling before the volume is hastily lowered. Setting aside her phone, Agatha ignores the buzz of more messages joining the chat and stretches her arms over her head, turning her shoulders and twisting her back until she feels and hears the satisfying 'pop' of cavitation.
Whatever mystery mental illness that Nicky was suffering from that morning doesn't seem to be an issue now that Rio is around. Agatha realizes with another icy wash of shame that it was probably loneliness, the same kind that she knew made him so unhappy about leaving school or being told that he couldn't tag along with her to the shop most days.
Shaking off the sympathetic sadness, Agatha eyes the canvas and reaches out to stroke the still-damp material curiously with a single fingertip. Good enough. She'd wanted to paint a waterscape, anyway.
The colors basically bloom to life on their own when she blindly mixes her light tones, basing her measurements on gut instinct rather than any sort of discerning form of study. Waves appear as naturally as they would in the real ocean, her brush building up towering walls of salt water that dissolve into sprays of white on blue. When she pauses, lowering her brush to bring her palette closer, she feels another ghostly wave ebb through her arm and out of the tips of her fingers, like she interrupted the tide of her own brush strokes.
This is good for her, she thinks. The rhythm. It tugs her muscles like she's haunted, the way it does when she tattoos, but this is a quieter, more ancient-feeling force. She finds herself holding her breath for long moments at a time, so focused and wide-eyed at the establishing feeling appearing in front of her that its almost like time itself stutters to a stop each time she pauses to reup her brush.
A sharp knock at the slightly ajar door causes Agatha to nearly send her thinner cup flying off of the wobbly side table it was resting on. Her eyes flick up to see Rio standing there, the door having slid just a sliver more open from the force of her knuckles.
"Hey. Sorry."
Rio eases her shoulder through the gap, wedging the door a half foot more open. When Agatha doesn't respond, she sidles completely into the room, edging forward like she might round the canvas; Agatha holds up her paint-stained brush, business end out like a warning, and Rio stops, hands up like it's a stickup. She doesn't need to verbalize the clear warning: Not for your eyes. Don't look.
"I just wanted to ask where your tupperware was. Nicky wasn't much help and I didn't want to go rifling through everything in case I accidentally exposed where you were hiding some contraband candy or something."
Agatha snorts at the thought despite her defensive stance, and slowly lowers the brush to the cup of thinner, dropping it in messily.
"Cupboard over the vent hood," she replies.
"'S a weird spot," Rio murmurs, already turning to go. Agatha squawks in protest at the random, drive-by judgement, and sees Rio's shoulders hitch with a stifled laugh as she makes herself scarce again without further explanation.
Wiping her hands on an old stained rag, Agatha turns her attention back to the canvas and sighs, eyes narrowing as she tries to force herself back into the flow state she'd been so suddenly pulled out of. She can't bring herself to pick up the next brush, though, as a weight that reminds her of a gentler pressure of executive dysfunction is starting to press in on her. Getting up from her seat abruptly, she makes the quick decision to take her first break. A glance at her phone tells her that she's managed to work for nearly an hour without realizing the time had passed at all, and she carries that reassurance with her to ease the creeping guilt as she heads out of the room and across the hall to the bathroom.
She knows she shouldn't be washing oil paint from her hands up here. None of the sinks inside the house are really suitable for it. When she's feeling particularly responsible, in the summer months when its warm, she'll go all the way outside to the yard after a painting session and spray her hands and arms off in the grass. When she's feeling especially patient for playing, she'll get Nicky to do it for her, knowing full-well that it always ends in a water fight where they're both freezing cold and soaking wet, skin prickling itchily from the high magnesium carbonate and calcium and leftover rust inside the old hose.
What she really needs is to install a utility sink in the studio room. But the idea of committing to a miniature renovation for a project she guiltily only puts the work into once every year, if that, rears up long-squashed financial anxieties that she swore she'd never focus on again once Nicky had been born.
As if her thoughts summoned him, she hears him.
The soft sound of Nicky's giggling protests draws her down to the kitchen unconsciously, and she pauses on the other side of the island counter to watch as he seems to be trying to employ some form of reverse gentle-parenting with Rio as she spoons macaroni and cheese into a small Bluey-printed child's bento box.
"What're we doing?"
Rio jumps, this time, and as Nicky whirls around, Agatha watches his face cycle through a storm of emotions; elated, horrified, disappointed, pouty.
"Noooo-" He marches around the island to grab his mother's hands, spinning around her to turn her away from Rio and the kitchen and try to drag her back towards the staircase with a few steps. "We were packing you a lunch, you can't see."
"I can't?" Agatha asks, trying not to laugh in the face of his dramatically let-down expression. It's not that she's happy to have disappointed him but the idea of a surprise – even in the form of boxed, food-dyed processed cheese and pasta – in the middle of her day is almost unbearably sweet.
"No!" Nicky stops at the base of the steps and then lets go of her hands, stomping around to get behind her and fix her hands at her lower back to try to push her up the steps like a rancher with a particularly stubborn member of their livestock supply.
"Nicky," she snorts, "I'm taking a break. You want me to go sit in there by myself twiddling my thumbs?"
Nicky pauses, his pressure on her back faltering before falling away completely.
"No," he agrees. "No, but at least go sit at the table. You can't see."
Turning around swiftly and catching him by surprise, Agatha grabs him by the forearms and lifts him slightly from the ground, letting his feet swing.
"You want to try adding a 'please' on there?"
"Please!" He giggles hysterically, going limp in her hold and grinning up at her excitedly.
Agatha eyes him suspiciously for another beat and then gently sets him back down, swatting his butt softly as he turns to go back to the kitchen. She sits at her usual spot, lifting Seymour from his spot and tugging one of the cracking plastic place mats from the center of the table toward herself.
Rio's voice filters back in from the kitchen, too soft to make out the words, and a moment later, Nicky appears with a bowl, bringing it over to Agatha's spot and serving it with the flourish of a true five-star waiter.
"Appetizer," he announces, the bowl slipping slightly as he puts it down and rocking in place before settling. Agatha bites back a snort at the freshly rinsed carrot sticks and immediately picks one up as Nicky vanishes once more.
"How's it coming in there?" Rio asks as she slips out of the kitchen as well, and sets two steaming plates of macaroni and cheese at the other two empty spots at the table.
"This your idea?" Agatha asks instead of answering, gesturing at her 'appetizer' and the other plates.
Rio chuckles and shakes her head.
"No. We were trying to pack you a lunch, which was also Nicky's idea. You interrupted," she says. "I figured this might not be your thing, but I guess you have to suck it up now."
"And it’s your thing?" Agatha clarifies.
Rio fixes her with a serious, wide-eyed look.
"Mac and cheese is literally my favorite food," she says, hand to her heart. "Y'know. After every single adult food."
Agatha snorts just as Nicky returns with another plate clutched carefully in both hands. He holds it up for Agatha to take and her breath catches at the sight of the shaky, overzealously squirted ketchup heart topping a slightly over-buttered portion of neon orange pasta.
Agatha never allows herself to feel embarrassed by anyone witnessing how soft around the edges everything Nicky did could make her – in fact, she suspects a little that the juxtaposition of the people around her seeing just how capable she is of patience and sweetness makes it all the more impactful when she doesn’t dole it out for just anyone. Still, the way Rio's face immediately softens in reflection at the way Agatha is suddenly so genuinely caught off guard makes her cheeks warm, an unwelcome fluttering filling her stomach that has nothing to do with the impending and inevitable heartburn that she's about to subject herself to.
"Thank you, sweetheart." She takes the plate and sets it aside, catching Nicky gently by the head when he turns to go and pulling him closer, kissing the crown of his hair and smoothing the wild strands down. He giggles and whines shyly, squirming under the affection being witnessed by his Very Cool New Best Friend.
Rio politely pretends not to notice Nicky's embarrassment, but Agatha catches her hiding her smile behind a forkful of macaroni.
Climbing into his own seat, Nicky leans his entire upper half across the table to take one of the 'appetizer' carrot sticks.
Agatha is careful to eat around the ketchup heart – preserving it, she tells herself, not just because the idea of ketchup and macaroni triggers her gag reflex without having to even reach her tastebuds.
"We're gonna make cookies after lunch," Nicky tells her, dipping a carrot into the liquid cheese on his plate and taking a bite.
Agatha reminds herself that fondue exists to trick herself into not finding it as gross as she does.
"We don't have any cookie dough," she points out.
"We have all the ingredients," he replies, unconcerned. "Except the chocolate chips. But we're gonna order some."
"We are, huh?"
"I am," Rio corrects, amused. True to her word, she actually is making her way through her plate with few issues. Agatha can't tell if she's just being nice for Nicky's sake or if she really does have a palate similar to the six year old beside her.
"That's awfully generous," Agatha says, pointedly, to Nicky so he mumbles a quick 'thank you' between enthusiastic bites, and then toward Rio with an air of suspicion creeping in.
"Not really," the other woman shrugs, not looking up from her plate. "Can't make cookies without chocolate chips, it just has to be done."
Before Agatha can point out that they didn't really need to make cookies in the first place, Nicky cuts her off.
"Mama, it's going to get cold."
Agatha glances down at her barely touched plate that she's been swishing her fork aimlessly around in for a moment, then hums thoughtfully and sets her fork down.
"Y'know, I'm not super hungry right now."
"We can save it for later," Rio insists, giving her a quick out. She stands up and grabs her own half-finished plate as well, taking both into the kitchen as Nicky continues eating.
"Do you have to go back to painting right now?" He asks, his voice suddenly much smaller than it had been for the cookie-making discussion. Agatha's heart clenches uncomfortably and she fixes him with an amused look to hide it.
"Uh-huh. More chocolate chips for you, I guess."
That improves his mood immediately. Slipping down from his spot, he takes his plate to join Rio in the kitchen, leaving Agatha to her thoughts and the carrot sticks.
If she spends the next hour on the distant strip of skyline at the top of the canvas, it should be properly dried down by that night, and she can probably get a good extra forty minutes in once Nicky has gone to bed while still leaving enough time to work on her sketches for the upcoming week. She'd been on a roll with the seafoam, though. The idea of sacrificing a flow that good for the sake of efficiency makes the entire project suddenly feel more like work than it’s meant to. An uncomfortable dread tickles up the back of her neck, a familiar, unwelcome guest in the form of impending burn-out waltzing back in, an old friend she hasn't seen since art school.
Popping another carrot back into her mouth and getting up, Agatha calls for the pair of them, muffled.
"I'm going to get back to it!"
Not having to see either of their disappointed faces at the abrupt and quick end of her break time makes it easier to make a clean break back to her painting.
The sunlight has already begun to turn grey outside the window and the makeshift studio room feels a lot colder when she steps back in, but she knows from experience it’s just a trick of her mind, trying to dissuade her from getting into it. Ignoring the chill, she settles back in at her easel and pulls her brush from the thinner, wiping it messily on the nearest rag and immediately getting back to work.
"Oh, good, you're alive in here."
Rio flicks the overhead light on before Agatha can register her presence in the doorway. The sudden brightness makes Agatha wince so violently it takes everything in her power not to hiss like an injured vampire to complete the theatrics. She hadn't even realized how dark it had gotten outside the window, the low, warm light from her standing lamp behind her in the corner lighting up the dark seascape she was working on like an eerie, distant lighthouse.
"Little warning, next time?"
"Nicky says you never forget to eat," Rio says, ignoring her as she edges into the room.
"That's nice of him."
Snorting, Rio crosses her arms and leans back against the wall beside the light switch and regards Agatha thoughtfully.
"You alright?"
Agatha glances back at the canvas and is startled to find that it suddenly looks like paint. Beautiful, sure, but just shades and tones, now, no longer the actual crashing waves she'd been swimming in a moment before.
"Yeah. Yeah, just lost track of time."
She stands up, tossing her rag down onto her seat and subtly turning the canvas a little further away from the door.
"We were thinking about dinner. Any suggestions?"
"Oh, am I getting out of having to eat my leftovers from lunch, then?" Agatha asks, sliding past Rio and gesturing for her to step out of the room first, then pulling the door closed behind her. Rio brushes against her unnecessarily as she goes, then follows Agatha across the hall to the bathroom.
"Uh-huh. You've skirted punishment for not finishing your vegetables, too. You should count yourself lucky."
Agatha flips the tap on and watches flecks of paint slide down the drain under the running water. A tiny smirk pulls at her lip as she lifts her eyes to catch Rio's gaze through the mirror.
"I don't think you have that authority."
Rio sets her jaw, eyes sparkling.
"No?"
"Not under my roof, sweetheart." Wiping her hands on the closest hanging towel from the rack, Agatha turns around to face the other woman properly, just as she steps into the small bathroom space and boxes Agatha against the vanity. An embarrassing gasp of shock leaves her lips, her eyes dropping reflexively to the other woman's mouth. Rio leans in a little, posture hunching slightly so her eyes are level with Agatha's.
She close enough for Agatha to see the faint dusting of freckles across Rio's nose. She can feel the warmth of Rio's body, and smell the faint scent of cinnamon, warm and spicy and just distracting enough to make Agatha wonder where it had come from. She tries to remain rigid, hackles up, but her body acts on its own accord, melting in Rio's gravity without her express permission.
"Shame," Rio breathes. "It would have been a really fun punishment."
Agatha's already weak breath hitches a little more, but she gathers the strength to retort.
"That sort of defeats the purpose."
The silence stretches taut. Agatha forces herself to lock her gaze above Rio's mouth, whose expression had shifted from playfully predatory to curious. Crazily, Agatha pictures herself surging forward to kiss her right then and there, but before she can take the plunge, Rio purses her lips thoughtfully, nods once, and steps back.
"I think Nicky was hinting at fried chicken. Sound alright?"
She's already back across the bathroom and hanging on the doorframe, head turned back over her shoulder before Agatha has a chance to register what even happened.
"I don't–"
"I have, like, a hundred dollars in credit because the delivery drivers can never figure out that I'm like, in the flower shop. My treat." Rio is already pulling her phone out of her pocket as she turns to leave Agatha breathless and confused at the vanity.
Agatha follows after her, speechlessly outraged though she can't quite figure out how to explain why. Rio practically skips down the stairs, glancing back and up at Agatha as she reaches the bottom, and Nicky comes barreling into her, unable to successfully skid to a stop in his thick wool socks on the hardwood floor.
"What did she say?" He asks, though he's looking at Agatha while addressing Rio.
"Jury's out," Rio replies, eyes fixed on Agatha as well.
Agatha's gaze flicks between the pairs of wide brown eyes staring up at her and sighs, trying to shake off the residual anticipation from the almost-but-nothing in the bathroom just a moment earlier.
"Yeah. Chicken. Whatever."
Nicky cheers, straightening himself and rushing off to the living room. Agatha eyes Rio suspiciously.
"You didn't give him sugar, did you?"
"No, not since the Pop-Tart this morning. He hasn't even had one of the cookies yet, they're still cooling. Oh. And a glass of juice, I guess."
"An actual glass of juice?" Agatha clarifies, then sighing when Rio nods innocently. "You're supposed to like… dillute it."
"Ew. Really? Ew." Rio makes a face, stepping back to give Agatha room to step off of the last stair.
As they round the corner to the dining area, Agatha is greeted by half a dozen coloring sheets, some sketches on matte white computer paper, and two of Nicky's books spread open on the table. She picks up the nearest drawing and realizes it's Rio's, not Nicky's. At least she assumes as much, peering at the steady and sure outline of a venus fly trap with cartoonish eyes on top of its closed jaw, the ends of which are inaccurately curled upward into a smile that looks more menacing than friendly; it's probably not what Rio was going for, thematically.
Rio playfully snatches the paper out of Agatha's hand, folding it over itself and then once more, tucking it into her cleavage so it vanishes past the visible sprig of mistletoe.
"Ah ah, no. You can't see mine if I can't see yours."
Agatha scoffs, reaching forward like she's really about to grab it back out of Rio's shirt. Rio believes her, stepping back further with a little grunt of complaint as one hand comes up to ward the other woman off.
"I was admiring your visual storytelling," she insists.
"Don't be a dick," Rio replies, voice catching on a laugh. She nods to the remaining papers on the table instead in distraction. "Nicky did a really good one of some roses. Did you teach him that?"
Agatha, now properly curious, abandons their current game to follow Rio's gaze and pick up a different piece. It's not bad at all, once she gets past the initial motherly instinct to believe it's a total masterpiece. There's actual layers to the petals, folding outward from one another in a slightly-too-uniform but extremely impressive for a six year old sort of way.
"Did you show him how to do this?" She asks, eyes flicking curiously up to Rio.
"Nope." She shakes her head, smiling genuinely. "He showed me, actually. The plant theme was his idea."
Agatha's gaze slides back across the table and she takes in the details with clearer eyes. The books are propped open to scenes of greenery, Seymour's pot has been turned around to face the messy workstation that clearly belonged to Nicky, and all of the pencil crayons that are lined up next to the abandoned coloring sheets are in floral shades.
"He wants to impress you," Agatha says, before she can stop herself from sharing the obvious truth.
"Really?" Rio asks, looking genuinely flattered.
Feeling a little guilty for divulging as much when he's not there to defend himself from what he might consider an embarrassing admission, Agatha glances over toward the living room where her son is fully engrossed in a cartoon, sprawled on his stomach way too close to the television to be advisable.
"Don't tell him I said that."
Rio mimes a cross over her heart, then a locking-key motion over her lips, though the gesture is somewhat ruined by the easy, relaxed smile on her face.
"Here." She hands Agatha her phone, the delivery app already open. "Pick what you want first."
Leaving her unlocked phone in the other woman's hand, a modern-day act of trust so profound it briefly causes Agatha's breath to stutter, Rio spins on her heel and heads to join Nicky in the living room.
"Hey buddy, how about we scoot back like… a good five feet from that screen? Even four would be good. Three?"
