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“It’s a nice place you’ve got here,” said Rio, amusement in her tone.
Agatha glanced up at her, disgruntled by the interruption. They hadn’t stopped to speak much upon Rio’s arrival, they never did on days like these, when they’d been apart for longer than either one had counted, when they both knew better than to ask where they’d been, what they’d done.
“So what if I got sick of twigs digging into my back?” said Agatha.
She leaned up, sticking her chin out, but Rio stayed still.
“You know, there’s no rule that says our every meeting has to happen deep in some secluded wood,” she huffed.
“No, it’s very… you,” said Rio, her bottom lip jutting out as she shrugged.
Agatha rolled her eyes, evidently putting some effort into keeping the smile from her expression.
Rio allowed herself a smile before she leaned in once more to kiss Agatha, this time walking her backwards until she found the foot of the bed, kept going as Agatha’s knees bent like hinges and left her sitting there before Rio, a hungry expression in her eyes and not a single word of protest slipping past her lips.
Rio felt the raw energy of it rushing through her. She pulled her knife from its sheath in one smooth motion - it was second nature to her by now, had been for longer than she could recall. She still loved the way it tugged at Agatha’s attention like a flame to a moth.
“Ooh.” Agatha’s eyebrows danced upwards as she leaned backwards on the bed, her arms behind and supporting her weight. “Busting out the big guns.”
Rio twirled the knife around her fingers - just one full circle before she caught it again - and watched as Agatha’s grin flickered with something more serious, something wanting. Rio’s smile drew wide. She stepped closer, her knees knocking against the bed, and with her knife-free hand she scraped back Agatha’s hair from her face.
She wove her fingers through the strands and held her there, took the flat side of her knife and dragged it down the side of Agatha’s cheek. Agatha stuck her chin up towards her, and Rio felt her own eyes go wide and feverish as she kept going, pulled the sharp tip of the blade along Agatha’s jawline and in a slow, straight line down her neck. She was careful to barely let it graze her, not to give Agatha any feeling but that ghosting touch, just a breath against skin, almost nothing at all.
“Hmm.” Agatha’s head tilted to the side, her eyes slipping closed for a moment. “That’s nice.”
And Rio felt the air being pulled from her lungs as Agatha’s hand came up to wrap around her wrist, followed the trail of the knife across her skin. Rio wanted to tease her and beam at her and wrap her arms around her all at once, wanted to cling onto her for centuries and to pull far enough away to drink in a bird’s eye view. But all she did was keep trailing the tip of that blade, which so often felt like an extension of her own limbs, just dancing it across Agatha’s skin, ever so careful not to leave a scratch just yet.
When she pulled back Rio set one hand on each of Agatha’s shoulders. “You want to?”
Agatha just nodded, and Rio could practically feel the thrill of it fluttering through her. Then Agatha’s eyes lost some of their haze, just enough to raise something of a challenge.
“Go on then,” she said, looking Rio up and down with a wicked grin. “Do your worst.”
Rio clicked her tongue, trailing her hand through Agatha’s hair and down the side of her cheek. “I don’t hate you that much,” she said sweetly.
Agatha’s response was part-grin, part-snarl, tipping her chin up and pressing closer to Rio, but Rio pulled back, made her wait.
Once one was immortal, and entirely incapable of killing the other before her time - once a pair had stared down centuries together - pain became a different thing. It was no longer needed as a warning, the steps up to a threshold that had to be avoided at all costs. And so it became a challenge, a game. A sensation to chase down and feel in all its thrilling urgency, a way to make another immortal being - or close enough to it - feel nothing else in her whole body but you.
Rio lay her down with a palm flat on her chest, Agatha’s back landing against the sheets with a soft thud. Once she’d landed she fidgeted there a little, getting herself comfortable, until Rio climbed atop her with one leg on either side of her hips, holding her in place. Rio set her knife down behind her - having learned from experience that it was best not to leave it within Agatha’s reach, unless she intended for the night to take a different sort of turn - and turned her attention to Agatha’s left arm. She unbuttoned her cuff and then began to roll the sleeve carefully, pushing the fabric upwards until her whole forearm was exposed.
“Oh, the indecency,” Agatha cried out in a mock-scandalized tone.
Rio snorted, grabbing her knife again before she leaned all the way over Agatha and planted a kiss on her lips to shut her up. She brought the knife back in while she was still nibbling on Agatha’s bottom lip, holding the blade flat between their necks as they moved until Agatha tipped her head up and pressed her own skin right into it. Her eagerness set a jolt right through Rio’s body, settled deep in her stomach, and when she pulled back it was just far enough to see the challenge in Agatha’s expression.
She breathed out a single laugh, and then she started, gently grazing the tip of the knife back down her neck, over the ridge of her collarbone, then the collar of her shirt, pressing a little harder over the fabric so Agatha would feel it on her shoulder, her upper arm, the dip of her elbow, all the way until she reached bare skin again. Then she wrapped one hand around Agatha’s wrist, holding her in place in a way that seemed unnecessary at present, ran the flat side of the blade up and down her forearm a few times, a priming of the creamy white canvas. She glanced back up at Agatha, who had gone quiet, whose eyes had turned dark and stayed closely trained on Rio, on the knife. Rio smiled - a quivering, involuntary thing - as she felt the pressure of Agatha’s trust in that moment, felt it straining against her ribcage like it might spill out at any moment.
And then she finally did it. In one measured slice, starting near the dip of Agatha’s elbow, she cut a clean crimson line about half of the way to her wrist, watching as the blood swelled up and dripped in long lines down her skin. She heard a muffled grunt as she did it, felt an involuntary shuddering in her arm, and looked up again to find Agatha’s face all scrunched up and straining.
“Does that hurt?”
Rio half expected Agatha to shoot her a dry look and some sarcastic response - that no, obviously, the blood seeping from the slice in her skin was no trouble at all, hardly noticeable thank you very much. The fact that she didn’t speak a word, just squeezed her eyes together and nodded into a deep gasp of a breath, Rio took as a sign of how far gone she was already.
“Do you want to stop?”
Agatha made a strained little whimper as she shook her head.
Rio smiled, quiet and self-satisfied.
“How does it feel?”
Agatha wedged her eyes open and let them land, dark and lidded, right on Rio's.
“Like you,” she said.
Rio felt her breath shudder for a few moments, heat coiling deep inside her and rippling over her skin, before she could bring her attention fully back to Agatha. When she did there was something satisfied, almost smug, in Agatha’s expression that hadn’t been there before, something so pleased that she had no need for knives or blood, that she could draw such a reaction from Rio with her words alone.
Rio’s smile turned to stone.
“Good,” she said simply, trailing her fingers through the endless brown waves spreading out across the sheets. Then she took her knife and pressed it back into the corner of the wound, dragged the slice across her skin another inch or two.
Agatha cried out, practically wailing, her stomach and hips thrashing about underneath Rio's weight. Her eyes were bloodshot and swimming with tears, but she kept them trained intently on Rio the whole time.
Rio leaned over her and reached for her face - not too gently - her thumb smudging away the tears that had spilled out over her cheek. Agatha keened up into her touch like a cat, a low groan escaping her lips, and Rio felt a delighted little laugh escape her own lips before she moved to grip Agatha’s jaw with more force, holding her in place.
They were still there for a few moments, the sound of heavy breathing filling the air, and then Rio moved again, this time slow and deliberate. Her hand came to rest where it fit so neatly around Agatha’s neck, not exerting any pressure, just keeping her there.
She noticed the feeling of Agatha’s pulse, hot and vibrant and shuddering against the pads of her fingers, and just for a second Rio imagined letting all that blood drain out of her, out and out until the throbbing of her pulse went dull. Not to kill her, but perhaps just to have control over every last inch of her. Just because she could. Just because she knew Agatha would give it willingly and would find it dizzying to offer up that last drop of power, and then together they’d have gone to a place that’s impossible to go to and they’d have come back, because they were more than mortals and more than gods.
Of course she would, someday, claim Agatha in her entirety, the same way that she eventually claimed all. She would consume her and become her and erase her all at once. The fact that she’d chosen a witch would delay their ending, would not prevent it. But in all the time she had to anticipate that final moment of unison, that last implosion, it could be so deliciously thrilling to stray as close to that veil as the two of them would dare.
When Rio moved again she worked quickly, pulling the pointed tip of her knife down the length of her neck without breaking the skin, running parallel to the veins beneath the surface that clenched and buckled as her expression drew into this wonderous watery surprise. The next cut she made, a shallow one just beneath her collarbone, where at other times Rio liked to leave bite marks or softly trail her lips, drew a delicious whimper from her throat and set Agatha’s good fist clenching against the sheets.
Rio pulled back, sat up straight to admire her handiwork. The left side of Agatha’s body would be on fire by now, the right side perhaps conspicuously blank, perhaps slipping out of her awareness entirely. Agatha herself had gone still, her eyes closed and counting her slow, measured breaths the way Rio knew she did when she was just inches away from that cliff edge.
Agatha had told her before how it felt to have a wound healed - the way it stung to be touched for a breath before the healing actually began. One last hurdle to finish the game, and Rio liked to keep that in mind when she was choosing her precise moment to pull the plug, knowing Agatha had one last trial ahead of her.
Surely enough, Agatha clenched down on gritted teeth and made a low whimper as Rio finally dipped her tongue out against her collar bone. She sealed up the new cut quickly, felt the familiar taste of Agatha’s blood pooling against her tongue. And then she turned her attention to Agatha’s arm, which had been laying out on the sheet and waiting for her all this time. She moved along the wound slowly, almost infuriatingly so, holding herself back from drinking in that sharp, intoxicating taste all at once in order to ensure these last few moments dragged on for Agatha as long as they possibly could. Agatha writhed against her and Rio's fingers encircled her wrist again, holding her arm in place until it was done.
And then all at once the canvas was good as new, save for the splotches of watery blood left behind - one last sign of Rio on that perfectly white skin. She sat up, her knees still split over Agatha’s lap, and watched her lungs heave, reached down to touch her frantic face, her wild hair that had been strewn about all over the bed.
“You did good, babe,” she said gently, and it would be a lie to say there wasn’t a part of her that enjoyed the way she towered over Agatha in that moment, the way they both knew exactly what had just happened and now there was nothing left for either to do but to bask in it.
Agatha practically snarled as she pushed her head upwards and captured her lips, and Rio laughed into the kiss. She hoped that Agatha could taste her own blood in the same way that Rio could taste her tears, could feel her wet cheeks still trailing with the proof of what they’d done, of how far Rio could push her, how far Agatha wanted her to go. And in truth they’d pushed further, had in the past danced much closer to the veil and entwined themselves much more intimately with pain. So much so that something so tame as a knife to the arm, the spillage of a little blood, felt like a tenderness between them, a truce they both shared.
Rio ran her thumb along Agatha’s forearm, tracing the line that had a few moments before been stinging white-hot and spilling out with blood. Now it was pearly white and flawless once more. Agatha’s eyes had slipped closed as she sucked in deep breaths, slowly starting to even out as she regained her footing, as her once-scrunched fists hung limp at her sides, as the tense lines in her forehead began to erase themselves. Rio leaned over her and kissed away the last of those lines, kissed the glassy redness in her cheeks and the thrumming veins running up her neck. She only had a small window, she knew, in times like these when Agatha could still stand to be vulnerable for as long as she was warmed by the glow of what they’d just done, still wanted to give way to Rio without any of the force.
Rio pulled back for just long enough to slip her knife back into its sheath, and then she climbed over Agatha and slotted herself into her side. Agatha’s right arm pulled tight around her back, and just the pressure of it felt like it turned Rio’s insides to liquid. She let out a quiet hum; she’d stay for as long as Agatha would let her.