Chapter Text
She was late.
Interesting. She’s never late.
Rio leaned against the bus stop sign, music thumping from her Airpods as she faced the street in front of her apartment complex. She wasn’t waiting for a bus. She never waited for a bus. But it offered her the perfect excuse to stand there, watching Agatha drive by like she did almost every morning - always between 6:00 and 6:35AM. Rio was there more often than Agatha, who skipped her morning runs when it rained too much. She didn’t know what the other woman would consider “too much rain”, though, so she just showed up every day.
She had made a habit out of it not because she needed to see her, but because she wanted to. Because she could . It was a daily check-up of some sorts. A way to know if Agatha had been keeping up her remarkably boring routine. From home to the park, from the park back home, then work, then home again. Rinse and repeat. The only exceptions were her weekly errand runs. It was truly impressive. Rio had to give it up for the agent - Agatha Harkness was really trying to keep herself on a tight leash.
It was almost fate, how Rio ended up in Quantico, Virginia, of all places, living in a rented apartment less than ten minutes away from the FBI headquarters. She orchestrated it, of course, but the whole thing felt inevitable. It was tempting, too tempting. She couldn’t resist watching Agatha from afar. It was all his fault, really - the man who helped her start her new life - he couldn’t really be angry at her. He had taught Rio to keep a close eye on federal investigations! Said it was vital! She was just following orders.
“Killing across state borders will make it harder for cops to connect the cases, da?,” her mentor had told her, a Russian accent heavy on his tongue.
“Da,” Rio mockingly mimicked his deeper voice.
“But if they do connect it… find out it’s the same person… they’ll bring the big guns to take you down.”
“Ooooh, scary”
“Then you’ll be on your own, kid. I won’t deal with that shit.”
“Suuure you won’t,” Rio’s attention was back on the shotgun he had placed over the table. She grabbed it, pointing it at him, “how do I do this again?”
The man angrily grabbed the barrel. “What was rule number one?!” he roared.
Rio rolled her eyes.
“Don’t kill you.”
“And rule number two?”
“Don’t point guns at you.”
“OR?”
“Projectiles in general.”
“Thank you.”
They had started working together years ago. He approached her back in Puerto Rico, promising freedom in exchange for a partnership.
“Rosario! A friend of yours is here to see you”, the prison ward had told her, foreshadowing Rio’s relationship with the businessman she had yet to meet.
The bearded man somehow pulled enough strings to get them in a room together, probably to avoid talking via those stupid monitored phones. Rio was annoyed: that meant she had to wear handcuffs.
She stared at him quietly, studying him. His hair was very short and mostly white, with only faint traces of its original dark colour lingering at the roots. His beard was badly kept. He had a big frame, big belly, and wore an understated dark suit. Nothing too flashy, but clearly well tailored. His dark eyes seemed calm, and he carried himself with quiet confidence. There was an air of tranquil authority to him, of experience, knowledge. One that Rio was more than happy to ignore.
He started with small talk, but Rio refused to answer his questions about her prison experience. How the fuck does he think I’m doing? The man quickly took the hint, getting to the point.
“Look, Rosario. I’ve been told about you. I have eyes working for me in this place. You’re different. Special,” he said.
“You’re Russian, old and fat,” Rio finally broke her silence with a shrug, “since we’re describing each other.”
“I’m sixty, not eighty! And I’m on a diet.”
“I really don’t care,” she said, amused at how little it took to get under the man’s skin. He pursed his lips.
“My point is…your talent is being wasted. I can get you out of here, out of those,” he nodded at her bound wrists. “Help you make money, da ? Doing what you do best.”
“Which is?”
“Take care of business, of course!
Rio’s eyebrows shot up. “Business, huh?”
“The type other people are too… weak… to take care of. Like your father.”
She chuckled. He was clearly trying to inflate her ego, trying to make her actions sound honorable, but Rio needed no help with that. She didn’t regret a thing. Rio had taught him a lesson - one her father had it coming. She even warned him, the man was just too arrogant to take it seriously.
The first time Rio hit him back was also the last time he ever laid hands on her. A small shovel from their fireplace was still in her hand when she ran up to her room to pack her bags, her father left moaning in pain on the living room floor. Before she left, Rio made sure to crouch down and grab his swollen face by the chin.
“Look at me,” she could still smell alcohol on him, but it was now mixed with the metallic odor of his blood. “Blow your brains out while you still can,” she whispered, “or I’ll come back one day, and make you wish you had.”
He didn’t follow her advice. Years later, Rio kept her promise. Simple as that.
“What do you get out of it?” She asked her visitor, knowing he wasn’t just a good Russian samaritan who took pity on a girl imprisoned for patricide.
“Small percentage,” he raised his hands, “But don’t worry, it’s enough money for both of us. I have two other operations like that, I’m professional. I can teach you. Train you.”
“Train me?”
“You’re shit right now, but I help. I mold that shit shit into steel, wait and see.”
She scoffed. Shit. Yeah, she felt like shit. Looked like shit. She wasn’t shit, though. That’s why he was here.
“Flattery will get you nowhere, Mr…”
“Vassiliev. Konstantin Vassiliev.”
She was skeptical, but he kept his side of the deal. Konstantin pulled his strings, and she was released in the middle of the night. Rosario de la Plaza was a dead woman, tragically killed in a prison fight. Rio Vidal was born.
Rio was given a new passport, new documents, and a small place in Seattle to start anew. The Russian taught her everything she needed to know about forensics, taught her how to use different types of guns, how to defend herself, and how to strangle someone to death. She studied languages, kept fit, learned about the inner workings of the police. A year later, they got to work.
Konstantin was powerful. He seemed to have an inside-man everywhere, always arranging for Rio to get all the access she’d need, no matter where she had to pull off the kill. “In and out,” he’d tell her, “no funny business.” She’d always pull some funny business, of course, but she’d always get the job done. She was great at it. The best. He knew it, she knew it, and anyone who saw her work knew it too.
Rio had fun with him - he was so easily annoyed - and she enjoyed the new life she led. The two worked together like a… partially well-oiled machine, unsustainable, but mighty. Most importantly, they made a shitload of money.
The duo developed a close relationship, and to her surprise, Konstantin never tried to turn it sexual. They didn’t have to become friends, and neither of them would describe each other as such, but he cared for her, worried about her. It was almost paternal.
She wasn’t used to it, this absence of ulterior motives. People like him - like Rio - always wanted something. Any bond was transactional. Rio was bored. She wanted someone to talk to, someone to get a rise out of, to make her laugh, and Konstantin gave her that. But he was a man, and what men wanted out of her was sex.
That’s what she had assumed when he approached her in Puerto Rico with a business offer: they’d work together for a while, he’d try to fuck her, she’d have to kill him, and she’d be on the run again. Worth it. At least it wasn’t prison.
He had power over her back then too, held her whole new life in his hands. Men with that much control over a woman rarely passed the opportunity to subvert it. Yet, he never once crossed that line. No lingering stares, no crude comments, no veiled demands. It was a weird, but pleasant surprise.
She had worked swiftly and professionally since the start. Despite her dramatic disguises and methods of infiltration - something Konstantin constantly pointed out with a predictable "you're making it harder and more dangerous than it needs to be." - Rio built a reputation for herself over the years. This particular year, though, things changed. She had recently developed… What did Agatha call it in her book? A signature.
She wasn’t even sure why she felt the need to do it now, especially after so many years killing people for money. Maybe something to do with the fact that surviving this year meant Rio had officially lived longer than her mother was ever allowed to. Maybe she just got bored of the same old shoot-them-and-leave routine. Maybe she did it just to get a rise out of Konstantin, who cussed her out every time for “making it easy on the cops.”
Whatever it was, Rio found herself changing the way she dealt with half of the targets she took. The crooked rich men, specifically. She had personal experience with that sort of man, her father being one of them, and, needless to say, he didn’t paint a very flattering picture of his peers.
Rio abandoned the gun and started experimenting with them. Stabbing, poisoning, pushing from a window… the works. Finally, after strangling a shirtless idiot she managed to lure away from a fancy pool party, she crouched on top of him, knife in hand, and drew a familiar scene: a castrated dead man with a leaf on his sternum. The rush of seeing it again had Rio feeling like she was high on drugs for a week.
Her signature caught the attention of the media, like Konstantin said it would, but not before four more of her targets had been discovered with the same wounds. The fifth dead man found castrated with a leaf carved on his chest - the one from the gala - started a serial-killer frenzy.
Seven months ago, when the frenzy had just started, Rio read about it over breakfast, lazily scrolling through her phone while sitting on the outside deck of her million dollar apartment. The place overlooked the city, and although Rio hated Los Angeles, it was good for the cover-up job Konstantin insisted she needed.
“It may be time for the FBI to take over,” wrote a journalist, "our team reached out to Supervisory Special Agent Agatha Harkness, Chief of the Behaviour Analysis Unit in Quantico. She had nothing to say in regards to working the case, but guaranteed that if a Serial Killer is truly roaming the streets, the FBI will spare no resources to keep the American public safe.”
There was a picture. Undeniably hot, long nose, piercing blue eyes, brunette.
“Great hair,” said Rio, to no one in particular. She kind of wanted to run her fingers through it.
The description beneath it read “Acclaimed criminal psychologist and B.A.U. Unit Chief Agatha Harkness has many works published on female psychopathy. She’s considered one of the leading experts in the field.”
Rio almost scoffed. It was the first time she had seen someone be an expert in female psychopaths specifically.
“Sure you are,” she skeptically mumbled.
Looking up this so-called “leading expert” in “female psychopathy”, Rio started her investigation, huffing and scoffing at Agatha’s FBI press conferences. She knew the type: bureaucratic bitch, pre-written sentences, thinks she knows everything. Stick up her ass. Probably two kids, a husband, and a stupid annoying dog - all terrified of her. Insanely hot, sure, but clearly miserable.
That’s their expert? I’ll be fine. Konstantin is worried about nothing.
It wasn’t until Rio clicked on an old video - an introductory lecture Agatha had given prior to joining the bureau - that she finally saw something noteworthy. A surprise.
When Agatha stepped into that auditorium, she did it with the stride of someone who knows they’re stunning, knows they’re brilliant, and knows the crowd is about to be taken aback by it. The woman commanding that class was nothing like the FBI agent in those interviews. She was more confident, more irreverent, and way more interesting a person than the cop Rio had just heard deliver at least four pre-written speeches.
Rio abandoned her breakfast, going inside and sitting on the green silk sheets of her California king, a flowery robe pooling around her naked legs. Her laptop was already there, and she opened it with a mission. Her little internet research into Agatha Harkness had just become a full-on murder investigation.
Who killed that woman and replaced it with this one? And why did she let it happen?
She found the same Youtube video - the lecture - opening it full-screen to better examine the scene of the crime. Agatha stood at the podium, commanding the room with a quiet intensity that Rio found magnetic. The way Agatha carried herself made her a thousand times more attractive than the stick-up-her-ass version she brought to the press conferences. Her physicality was theatrical, exaggerated, seeping with confidence. It came naturally to her, as if her inner self was so big she had to throw her arms around a bit to do it justice.
She was funny too, Rio soon learned. But although Agatha often got a chuckle out of the crowd - and out of the woman watching her from LA - she clearly didn’t care about making other people laugh. Her jokes and sarcastic remarks were catered to herself only, and she always seemed amused at her own sharp wit, even when the rest of the room didn’t.
Agatha used that stupid word, “psychopath ”, but did it in a way Rio had never heard before. It wasn’t an insult, she never replaced it with “monster” or called the rest of the world “normal”. She said “psychopath” with respectful neutrality. Rio could tell she was passionate about the subject, and, for the first time in her life, she actually wanted to hear a psychologist tell her about herself. She started focusing on the lecture, but her mind often got lost when her gaze fell on the woman’s face. That bone structure is just criminal .
With effort, Rio paused the video, opening another tab to search for another recent press conference. She could tell the woman was walking on eggshells when talking to the media. Rio noticed the way her jaw clenched, how her hands gripped the desk tighter every time a reporter said something stupid. Rio saw the ferocity in Agatha’s eyes, and how her words often seemed insincere.
“We’re happy to announce that this monster is behind bars,” said Agatha. She looked proud of herself, but not in the way she did when giving those lectures. It was an empty pride, as if she had just completed an arduous and boring house chore. Rio frowned.
“What happened to you, Agatha?” She liked the way the name sounded coming from her lips. “Agatha, Agatha, Agatha.”
Was it just a work persona? How did Agatha act outside of the job? What was she like in person? At a party? What was she like in bed?
Rio was beyond curious - almost fascinated.
Opening another lecture, she watched the professor’s every move. Agatha was wearing a sleek black dress. Simple. Elegant. It whispered power, instead of shouting it. The fabric clung to her body delicately, hinting at the curves beneath it. The hem hit just below her mid-thigh, revealing long toned legs that ended in black heels. On top of it all, almost glowing with the attention it called, was a big round locket.
Rio felt her mouth fall slightly open as her tongue instinctively pressed against the inside of her cheek. She whistled in a whisper. Goddamn , that woman is hot.
Agatha turned to scribble something on the whiteboard. The sharp angle of her jaw, the curve of her neck exposed as her hair fell backwards - each detail burned itself into Rio’s mind. It was like watching a slow flame burn, she couldn’t take her eyes out of the woman. A warmth spread through her chest and lower, pooling deep down her stomach.
She pulled the laptop onto her abdomen and laid back on the bed, propping herself up ever so slightly against the headboard so she could still watch the video. Holding the screen up with her left hand, her right one slowly undid her robe and traveled down her naked body. She couldn’t concentrate on the words, but when Agatha’s voice dropped slightly as she described a particularly important point, Rio’s pulse quickened, imagining the way that voice would sound while whispering her name.
Her eyes followed Agatha’s hands as they moved to adjust her glasses, her slight smile, the subtle arch of her eyebrows when she posed a question to the audience. Rio’s chest rose and fell in slow, deliberate breaths, each one coming heavier than the last, her skin flushed. She pressed her fingers against her center, finding it already wet.
She watched the sway of Agatha’s hips as she walked to lean against the podium, arms crossing casually over her chest. The movement highlighted the lines of the older woman’s collarbones and the contour of her cleavage. Rio’s breath hitched. She closed her eyes and let herself lay back completely, laptop falling to her side. Rio slipped into fantasy, guided by Agatha’s voice, circling her own wetness.
She conjured up a scene. The auditorium was dark, empty. Agatha stood at the podium in her sleek black dress and big-framed glasses. Rio saw herself slowly approaching the woman from behind, placing two hands on the woman’s waist. When Agatha turned, her eyes gave it away: it wasn’t the Agatha from the video, it was the present Agatha. The one in control of everything, the tightly-wound bureaucratic bitch trying to take Rio’s business down.
The woman stiffened, her breath catching as Rio slowly backed her up towards the podium.
“Rio.” Her voice sounded like a warning. “I’m at work. We can’t-”
The woman’s torso harshly hit the wooden surface, and her lips parted in protest - or perhaps something else - as a gasp echoed through the big empty room. Rio leaned in, her hot breath against the side of Agatha’s neck. She slipped one hand up Agatha’s bare thigh to push her dress higher, the other braced against the side of the podium, keeping the other woman caught in her embrace. Agatha’s hands flew to her waist, first to hold her at a distance, but then to pull her closer. Rio smiled.
“Let go, Agatha.”
“I- I can’t.” But the agent’s husky tone, the pull of her hands, the heaviness of her breath, it all said otherwise. Rio kissed her jaw, her hand moving lower, her touch firm. “You’re shaking,” she murmured, leaning in so close against Agatha’s mouth she could feel the other woman’s breath on her lips. “You like this, don’t you?”
“I…I…”
“Does it feel good?” Rio’s hands found the hem of Agatha’s underwear, and she gently scraped her fingernails around the woman’s lower stomach, then her inner thighs. It sent noticeable shivers up Agatha’s spine, again, and again, until she let out a sharp, high-pitched noise.
“Agatha? Do you like this?”
It was no more than a whisper. “Yes.”
Watching Agatha’s carefully constructed control crumble under her touch, sent a flame through Rio that burned hotter than anything she’d ever felt. She wanted to see Agatha gasp, to hear her whisper Rio’s name as if in a prayer. She pictured the way Agatha’s body would arch beneath her, how her fake composure would slowly crack until it shattered under her touch.
Rio’s breath quickened, her body squirming against the sheets as her hand moved frantically. She rubbed four fingers against her clit, her wetness splattering to her thighs, ruining green sheets that had the highest thread count available in Los Angeles. Rio whimpered, thrusting her hips up against her own ministrations, while her other hand palmed her breasts. She was close, so close, so fucking close.
Suddenly, the scene changed. They were in an office. It was not Agatha who yielded control, but Rio. Behind her lids, she saw Agatha pinning her against the cold surface of a big wooden table. Her left hand gripped Rio’s wrist, while the other grabbed her hair, pulling it just enough to make Rio gasp.
Rio’s chest tightened, and she fought the instinct to open her eyes and stop by pressing them impossibly shut, wrinkling them with force. She had never let anyone touch her like that, never even imagined. And yet…
“Fuck…” Rio said out loud.
Agatha pushed Rio back against the desk, and the younger woman fell with a guttural sound, scattering documents and pens all over the floor.
“You think you’re in charge?” Agatha asked, climbing on top of the table and straddling Rio, her voice low, dangerous. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
Rio’s back arched as she saw Agatha’s hands pinning her wrists above her head.
“Agatha… Agatha…” She chanted, and the sound filled up the air in her apartment.
“Is this what you want?” Agatha leaned closer, her hand sliding down between Rio’s thighs. “Me, ruining you?” She felt Agatha’s fingers entering her slowly, sliding in and out at an agonizing pace.
Rio gasped, clenching around nothing. She hastily shoved two fingers inside herself, finding no resistance.
“Yes,” Rio whispered, her voice trembling.
Agatha’s smirk was devastating . She kept her pace, Rio’s own hand but a faded imitation.
“Say it again,” she demanded.
“Please!” Rio wasted no time in giving in, desperately quickening the pace in which her own fingers pumped into her center. She could see Agatha’s piercing blue eyes darken as her thrusts followed Rio’s, growing faster, harder, deeper. Both of them moaned against each other’s mouths, both of their bodies jolted together with every plunge of Agatha’s fingers.
“Please, Agatha!”. She couldn’t tell if she was screaming out loud or in her head, her fantasy mashing together with reality. “Fuck me! Fuck me! I’m gonna- Fuck! I’m gon- Ffffffff-”
Rio yelled, her body tensing. The intensity of it all made her thighs clasp together as she clenched around her own fingers, sitting up, then falling back down. She barely recognized her voice in this high-pitched tone. “AH. AH. FUCK. FUCK.” Wetness gushed from inside of her. Her back arched, her body trembling as her fingers finally stilled. “Shit.. Oh my…” Rio’s breath came out in rough bursts.
When she finally pulled her fingers out, Rio laid in silence, attempting to control her breath. She looked up at the ceiling and tried to gather her thoughts as she came down from the strongest orgasm she had ever had. She stayed there, the sounds of her breaths were the only thing filling the room. Her mind was empty. Fuck. Holy shit. Wow.
Over the next few months, she devoured every single word Agatha had ever written, and consumed every bit of content the internet had to offer about the woman. Her fascination slowly turned into obsession.
“Why are you reading her books all the time?” asked Konstantin, “Criminal psychology? Developing a conscience all of a sudden?" he shook his head. "Tsk, tsk, tsk… Bad for business.”
They were in her apartment. Konstantin was occupying himself with the coffee machine while Rio was splayed on the couch, distractedly reading a copy of “Quiet Fury: Inside the Mind of Female Serial Killers by Agatha Harkness” . The Russian man often visited her to brief Rio about potential targets. Her operations were high-class - like the events she pretended to organize - which meant the people she dealt with were really paranoid about cops, Konstantin included. Most communication happened face-to-face.
He’d give her three or four targets and let her pick however many she’d like - it was a condition Rio had established when they started the business partnership. She wanted to choose who died and who lived - or, at least, who lived for a bit longer. Those she didn’t want to murder ended up dealt with by Konstantin’s less talented, less good looking, and less intelligent associates.
“Shut up, look!” Rio excitedly pointed at the page, “This paragraph. She says ‘women famously go for indirect means of aggression, like poison…’, blah blah blah, ‘female psychopaths’, blah blah blah, and then she says ‘we’re seen as cunning and manipulative’! See?!”
“So? She’s a woman! You are cunning and manipulative,” his accent fit the bigotry perfectly.
Rio rolled her eyes, shaking her head no. “She’s talking about female psychopaths! And she said ‘we’, Konstantin.”
“You…” he chuckled, amused. “You think she’s a psychopath?”
“Dunno. Something like it. We’re just… similar, that’s all.”
That made Konstantin burst into his trademark aggressive belly-laugh. She threw a cushion at him, and he grabbed it mid-air while trying to catch his breath. “You and the fed? Similar?” He laughed again, amused, and Rio just rolled her eyes and tried to go back to the book.
“You wouldn’t get it...”
“Neither would she.”
“You don’t know that,” Rio defended. “She’s smart. She probably knows she’s different. I think she’s just… restraining herself.”
“She could teach you a thing or two…”
“Or I could teach her ….”
Oh. That’d be fun.
Konstantin must’ve seen her face lighten up with an idea. His amused expression dropped.
“Absolutely not. Don’t even think about it.” His accent always got thicker when he was annoyed at Rio’s antics. A daily occurrence, at this point. Apparently, out of everyone Konstantin worked with, Rio was the hardest one to control. “It’s like working with a five year old that drinks,” he told her once, and she mockingly showed him her tongue as an answer.
“What?” Rio feigned innocence.
“You’re not making contact with that woman.”
“I didn’t say I was…” she widened her eyes, mocking the old man, “...mom.”
“Your eyes did.”
“Eyes can’t talk, silly. You’re crazy.”
“No, you are. That’s why I hired you.” He put both hands on his hips, forgetting the coffee and fully facing the woman. “The feds haven’t officially taken your case yet. If you stop doing your little art projects when you’re supposed to be working, they won’t have shit on you.”
“Yeah, yeah…”
"I mean it, kid. Look at me."
Rio let her head fall to the side, giving her mentor an annoyed look. His expression was stern, and he shook a scolding finger at her - as if that gesture had ever been effective before.
"Do not. Contact. Agatha. Harkness."
She pursed her lips, raising the book high enough to completely block her own face. Rio smiled behind the pages, a plan about Agatha was already taking shape in her mind.
"Okay, sure, I won’t."
"Promise me."
"I promise." The casual tone in her voice gave Rio’s real intentions away. She knew it would, Konstantin was too accustomed with her mischief to let it convince him.
"Rio!" he barked, forcibly taking the book from her hands. She promptly protested by yanking it right back.
The duo stared each other down until the man gave up, sitting down with a dramatic sigh. Rio mockingly mouthed his next words, knowing exactly what he was going to say.
"You’re bad for my blood pressure! I have heart problems, you know?!"
When the list of bodies found with Rio’s personal signature grew to eight, the FBI officially took over her case. Konstantin told her they’d have to stop operations, but she knew he couldn’t stay away. He liked her too much, Rio was like his daughter at this point. Plus, the other morons he had working for him couldn’t pull off the high-end stuff. You know? The jobs that actually paid well.
Still, she pretended to believe it, told him she’d lay low for a while and made her way to Virginia. She watched Agatha for about a month, and when she learned it wasn’t, in fact, just a work persona, she was even more fascinated.
Rio was told people with her diagnosis couldn’t feel empathy, but when she thought about Agatha, she knew what the woman must be feeling. Granted, she didn’t feel it. That was absurd. It was like knowing what someone was thinking - it was factual. But it was still a new experience for her. When it came to people’s feelings, she had always had to guess based on things Rio had observed about other people. With Agatha, she knew it based on herself.
It amused Rio, how predictable the agent was. It wasn’t just control and discipline for the sake of it. To Agatha, her carefully maintained routine was a lifeline. Like the diet of a diabetic, her choices weren’t about preference, they were about survival. Everything had to be calculated in order to keep her from losing control, to maintain the persona she had so meticulously constructed.
Rio could tell. It was written on the tension of her shoulders, the sharpness of her gaze.
One wrong move and FBI Agent Harkness would be dead, freeing the other Agatha Harkness from its cage - the one screaming from behind Agatha’s eyes. The real one.
She couldn’t relate. Rio thrived in chaos, relished in it, bent it to her will. She was endlessly amused by watching the other woman fight - oh so hard - just to keep herself from becoming the exact type of person Rio was. There was something almost poetic about it. Agatha didn’t realize how fragile her control was, how easy it would be for someone - someone like Rio - to make her house of cards fall with nothing but a single nudge. That was the beauty of it, Rio thought. Agatha had no idea she was already losing the game.
Rio had already nudged.
She wasn’t sure how long it would take for Agatha to find the letter she left for her in New York. The man she killed wasn’t a target, she had made no money out of it, he was a messenger, bearing gifts. A note - an invitation to a chess match - carefully wrapped up in a ziplock bag and buried gently down a mutilated corpse’s throat. For safekeeping. She couldn’t wait for Agatha to break, and she had front row seats to the show here in Quantico, Virginia.
That’s how Rio found herself at the bus stop, waiting for a ride she’d never take. Today was cold, but sunny. A cloudless sky. Still, it was already 7:18 AM and there had been no sign of the dark SUV on its regular early commute to the park. That had never happened before on a sunny day. Agatha was never late.
Maybe something happened to her.
“She better be dying,” Rio grumpily mumbled to herself, looking up to confirm it wasn’t, in fact, pouring rain.
The idea that something might’ve happened gnawed at her thoughts. Maybe Agatha was sick, or maybe she had just decided to have a lazy morning in - although that didn’t sound like her at all. Maybe she did die. Her kitchen could’ve caught on fire, she could’ve fallen down the stairs. Or maybe she was just hungover. Agatha didn’t go out last night - she never did - but Rio had followed her a couple of days ago to her favorite grocery shop, then watched as she tossed at least four newly bought bottles of wine into the trunk of her car.
Maybe she already got my note.
The thought excited her. Her little love letter would’ve been disruptive - Agatha would have to choose to keep investigating the case or not, choose to keep up the facade or rise up to Rio’s challenge. She would have to resist temptation, and people like Agatha - people like Rio - weren’t the type to deny themselves of anything. The agent had clearly been miserable in her abstention. Rio hoped that this time she would devour.
Rio had invited her to a chess match, and signed the letter as Death - like in one of her favorite movies. The protagonist reminded her of Agatha, foolishly trying to delay an inevitable encounter with the natural order of all things. Agatha didn’t fear death, of course. Like Rio, she probably barely felt fear at all. Adrenaline, sure, excitement, tension. Fear? There wasn’t a situation Rio could think of, not a room she could walk into in which she wasn’t the scariest thing in it.
Her fingers tapped against her thigh impatiently, and before she could talk herself out of it, she pushed off the sign and started crossing the street. If Agatha wasn’t going to show up, Rio would just go to her. It wasn’t a long walk, and she knew the way by heart anyway.
“SHIT,” she heard a woman scream. The sound of it -paired with screeching tires - startled her, and Rio felt her body jolt. Another angry shout echoed through the air. “WHAT THE FUCK?”
She stood frozen in the middle of the street, a dark SUV dangerously close to her body. In the driver's seat, gripping the steering wheel and closing her eyes to calm herself down, was Agatha Harkness.
Piercing blue eyes met brown ones and Rio felt a strange tug in her chest. Something sharp and electric that she couldn’t quite name.
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?”
Her voice was the same from her old lecture videos - the ones Rio had repeatedly watched over the last seven months - rich and commanding, but it was the fire in her eyes that catched Rio off guard. Agatha’s eyes pinned her in place, making her feel exposed in a way she hadn’t since… ever.
She stormed towards Rio in a whirlwind of rage, dark curls bouncing as she got off the car.
“I ALMOST HIT YOU!” Agatha yelled, and Rio said nothing back, trying to fight the corners of her mouth twitching upward. Agatha’s desperation was amusing, almost endearing.
“Yeah, no shit,” she replied casually. The angry brunette seemed to be taken aback by her tone, and Rio felt Agatha’s eyes go down her body. Why the fuck did her face feel warm all of a sudden?
Am I horny?
Her eyes fell to Agatha’s hands. They were a bit shaky, Rio noticed, probably from adrenaline.
“You good?” she asked the agent.
“Me?!” Agatha scoffed, amused. Rio almost smiled at the stupid question. She had clearly not been run over, and she wasn’t the one yelling and shaking. Plus, who else would Rio be talking to? “Yeah, I’m good. You?”
Wait, what is she wearing?
“I’m great” Rio absentmindedly answered, noticing Agatha was not only wearing a tank top, but her legs were completely exposed. Defined calves, slender thighs.
Okay, now I’m horny.
They locked eyes. The sharp pull on her chest hit her once again. It wasn’t new per se, but it was way more intense than anything - anything - Rio had ever felt. The anger in Agatha’s gaze was gone now, replaced by a cautious curiosity.
“Well… try not to jaywalk next time, asshole .”
There she is. I knew it.
“Try not to run me over next time, sweetheart .”
She knew the pet name would catch her off guard, and it did. Agatha laughed exasperated as she got back into her car. Rio smiled for a second, watching her. When their gazes interlocked again through the windshield, Agatha raised her eyebrows in a challenge.
“Are you gonna fucking move or what?”
Rio did, slowly. She didn’t want to miss a second. Seeing Agatha’s gaze follow her, her pulse quickened in excitement as the agent hesitated to keep driving.
“Te veo,” Rio promised, walking away. She bit her lip as she heard nothing for a while, then looked back once the sound of Agatha driving away finally reached her ears. Rio smiled.