Archive of Our Own ^beta

I ask first for forgiveness—

I know my blood often turns to darkness, 

crouching beast-like in the corner 

to feed on meat that I've bloodied 

with my hands.                        

- Easter, Brandy Nālani McDougall

The bodies are really piling up.

Agatha breaks a witch’s neck with the casual curl of a hand, not even bothering to siphon her power until it begins leaking out of her eyes— she is too busy killing the next to stop for long enough to suck the first dry. 

Fifty witches. It’s a fucking feast. She almost can’t believe she pulled it off. Between the carefully placed rumors, the odd kidnapping and dismemberment, just the right clues artfully strewn about various murder scenes, it had taken months to trick the two covens into all-out-bloodshed. Then, once they were in one place and sufficiently distracted with killing each other, she’d slipped into the fray of it and started doing what she did best: bleeding the bodies for magic. 

Only a handful are still standing. They’ve teamed up against Agatha, the last few survivors on either side of this little war finally recognizing the game. Too little, too late.

“Well?” Agatha spreads her palms out magnanimously. “Aren’t you going to avenge your fallen sisters? Come on, kill me! Or are you all too weak to do the job?”

When it’s over she is new. Brazen, cock-sure, so very young. Agatha is alight and drunken in the carnage. Hair twisted up around her face as she pants. The power is overflowing her mouth, and by God it tastes sweet.  

There is a witch dead at her feet. She nudges it with the toe of her boot, flipping it onto its back. 

“That was quite a show,” says a voice. Agatha spins towards the sound but finds nothing. “Maybe even your best yet.”

The voice is dark and deep, vaguely condescending. Agatha’s hands, the veins of her neck, are thrumming. 

“Who goes there?” Agatha calls, stretching out her fingers towards the sound. 

A woman steps out of the shadows. “I am no one. You, on the other hand… witch killer.”

The stranger is dark haired and beautiful, a fingertip of a mole beneath her right eye. An eye which is a violent honey color. Both light and not light at the same time. 

Agatha presses forward her senses, searching. Nothing. No magic pushes back against hers. It’s almost as if the woman is human— but Agatha knows better. She cannot taste it, but she feels something—something—sitting in the space between the ridged roof of her mouth and her tongue. The shape of negative space. 

A masking spell, then. And one powerful enough to block her sight, despite having very recently gorged herself on fifty new magics. 

Defiantly, Agatha lifts her chin. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“I don’t, actually,” says the woman. She shrugs. “Who am I to deny a woman her pleasures?”

“Who are you?” Agatha asks again.

“A friend.”

She circles Agatha like a prey animal does a lame deer. Her mouth is smiling and raw-meat-pink. 

Agatha draws back slightly from this dangerous thing. “I don’t have friends.”

“Neither do I.” The woman holds out a small flower, and Agatha steps forward to snatch it from her hand. “See you around, witch killer.”

Turning the flower in her hand, Agatha tries to recognize it. A white lily. Innocence.  

She snorts and crushes it in her palm. 

The tavern is a delirious spot of blush against night. Orange light dribbles into the alley where Agatha waits.

She is thinking about that woman again. 

Agatha knows there’s something good hidden under that masking spell, and she wants it. Snapping up petty little pieces of magic is beginning to get boring, though she will not stop. Accumulated, they make her more powerful than any witch she’s ever known—bar one, she’s guessing—but nothing has given her the same high as those first few massacres. She needs the strong stuff. Mystery witch has it. 

It is possible that Agatha has become a bit of an addict. 

The witch she’s hunting stumbles out of the tavern, giggling into the neck of another woman. Two witches, then. One with her nose pressed to the skin behind the other’s ear. How darling.

Agatha smiles. Call her lazy, but sometimes she likes an easy kill.

“By God!” Agatha makes an offended noise. “Are you not ashamed?”

The women freeze in place. Their hands are clasped.

Agatha feels a smirk almost betray the left corner of her mouth. “Young ladies, deviant desires are a sin.”

One of the girls, the one Agatha had come here for, raises a dark, unimpressed eyebrow. Her mouth is full, her skin lightly browned. But it is her eyes that have killed her. The shade is rare. Very rare. As soon as she saw them, Agatha knew the girl would die at her hand. 

“We are sisters,” says the other one. Blonde and fair-skinned with blue eyes. 

Agatha raises her own eyebrows. “Sure you are. Now, which direction is the magistrate’s house?”

The young women share a tense look, the darker one tightening the proud bow of her mouth. 

“Never mind, I’m sure I can find it myself. Toodeloo, ladies,” Agatha says, fluttering her fingers.

She turns her back and counts. Beneath crickets chattering the sky, she can overhear the sound of them arguing. It is only five steps before she is struck in the back by a blast of magic. 

Yes, yes, however meager— this is worth it. Taking. Pinning down a twist of magic, taming it, making it hers. Frankly, the killing she could live without. For Agatha, it’s all about the power. She doesn’t want to kill; she just doesn’t mind it. 

The blonde one screams as her lover is husked in moments, and flees. Agatha catches her round the waist with a tendril of purple mist. She drags the girl back by the body. 

“Fight,” Agatha orders, and she does.

And she dies. 

Setting the young woman down very gently next to her partner, Agatha takes a step back. The bodies lay parallel and close enough that the backs of their hands knock against each other. 

Agatha’s hair is matted to her face with sweat, so she shakes her fingers through it in an attempt to dry it quickly.

She rests her back against the rock wall of the tavern and waits. Agatha has her running theories about Rio—has met her enough times over corpses to name her a buzzard—and so she always, always waits. 

It’s been a while, so there is a part of her that is hoping this little provocation will get her some attention. And she’s right to hope. Soon there is a flicker of green cloak shivering out of the forest and into the light. 

“There you are. I was wondering when you’d show up again,” Agatha purrs. 

She steps forward, making to grab at her gift. 

Rio has a somewhat rumpled purple flower in her hand. She seems— miffed? No, angry.  

“Are you a hypocrite, Agatha?”

“Certainly,” Agatha answers. “Why?”

Agatha smiles as if to say, And? her hands flourishing. Her chin pushes back into her neck, self-satisfied lines appearing around her mouth.

The crease of Rio’s cheek twitches. She answers Agatha’s question with another. "What was the point of all that?”

“Oh, don’t tell me I’m being lectured for playing with my food.”

Rio bends over the body of the dark-haired dead girl, pulling up her eyelid with the softest touch of her nail against the thin skin. Her mouth settles into a cool neutral instead of vaguely suppressed anger, but the look she shoots Agatha is still irritated.

“You are so young,” Rio sighs. 

Agatha bristles, kneeling over the body so that she and Rio are nose to nose. “I am better than witches my senior by centuries.”

Rio is a strange combination of rounded edges. Her features are somehow at odds with her. The sweet gap between her teeth, her full cheeks and plush mouth, all coalesce into something starkly dangerous where they might be… pleasant on another. 

Rio’s face cannot be described as pleasant. 

“Yes,” says Rio simply. A warning: “The cavalry will arrive soon. You’ve been very messy, witch killer.”

“Agatha,” she corrects.

“Okay, Agatha.”

Agatha surges forward, leaning over the body of the dead woman, whose jaw is still slack from the shock-twist of dying, whose eyes are now open and watching, eyes which are damning even in death—such a rare color, it had taken Agatha so long to find her—and tries to press her lips to Rio’s. 

Tipping her head back, Rio smiles. “Hypocrite.”

Agatha chases after her mouth, trying again more insistently until Rio stops her with a flat hand pressed against her chest. “Uh-uh.” Rio shakes her head.

Agatha stiffens. “Fine, then.”

She stands with a business-like brushing off of her skirts. Holding out her hand, she gives Rio a look.

Rio rolls her tongue along the inside of her cheek, sucking her teeth even as she hands Agatha the crumpled flower. A violet. What a fucking freak.

The fact that they are meeting over the body of a woman who Agatha killed specifically because she kind of looked like Rio is… lost on Agatha, somehow. Rio’s the freak here.

Turning her back to Rio, Agatha calls over her shoulder, “Have fun with your corpses.” Then she disappears into the night. 

The next time they see each other, they’re at the burning of a human woman.

There is no power to be eked out from this execution. It’s an interesting case: a woman turned in for witchcraft by her own mother. An indictment from one so close to the accused… Well, it wasn’t a good look, clearly. It never is.

Agatha will not save her, and it does not even occur to her to try. Agatha is here to watch. To allow herself a rare scrap of solidarity with the one kind of person who can’t betray it: the imminently dead. Perhaps even offer a moment of understanding from across the flames. 

That, and to bask in her own superiority. Agatha can admit it. She likes to watch other people die in the corners she herself clawed out of. They wanted to see you like this. Crying and cowering, then ashed. Pleading her innocence, whether honest or not, exactly like the young thing tied to a post at the center of this no-horse town. 

They wanted to make Agatha small. Instead, she has made herself big, big, big. 

Agatha lifts the fold of her hood to her mouth absentmindedly, feeling the shift of bodies around her. 

“This doesn’t seem healthy.” 

Rio’s teeth snap at the air next to Agatha’s ear playfully, the way some poorly-trained dogs do when they have yet to be punished out of their puppyhood. Her chin hooks over Agatha’s shoulder without warning. 

Agatha leans back into Rio’s chest ever so slightly. She is not warm, though she never is. The other witch always seems to be the exact temperature as the air around them. Rio’s breath is warm, though, and it flutters against her skin. 

“Never been one for healthy,” Agatha murmurs. 

Rio is fully pressed to her back now, and her nose skims the delicate skin behind Agatha’s ear. “Ooh, mommy issues. Intriguing."

“Shut up. I can’t hear.”

The woman begs for her life. She looks so young. Ten years older than Agatha was at the time, maybe. Agatha feels the proud weight of her survival. 

She keeps fucking crying for her mother. Like a mother’s love ever saved anyone.

Poor kid. 

Agatha can feel Rio studying her and—worse—learning. The kindling is set. Agatha turns away.

“Let’s get out of here, shall we?” she says, taking Rio by the arm.

Fun’s over, anyway. Rio ruined it.  

Rio keeps tabs on her.

Death keeps tabs on all, of course, but Rio keeps tabs on her. She does not understand her own fascination. Rio has taken a body for herself. She reaches for Agatha with hands. She watches Agatha move.

Agatha is at her campsite for the night, skinning and gutting a rabbit for dinner. Rio’s body wants to watch her eat. 

Stepping out of the shadows, Rio allows Agatha to see her. The other witch leans back, straightening up, the rabbit still dead in her hands. Rio notices him idly but ultimately pays him no mind; she is here to see Agatha. She understands that Agatha does not appreciate yet what this means. 

“I would like to sit with you,” she calls, shaking her cloak hood from her head. 

It’s a bid for a truce, a show of vulnerability to set Agatha at ease. 

This is a woman who needs the upper hand, and Rio gives it to her gladly. She has no desire to compete with mortal beings. 

If Agatha would like a few centuries of calling the shots, she can have them. They have the rest of eternity to do things on Rio’s terms. Death does not lose.

The corners of Agatha’s mouth twitch. 

“Then sit,” Agatha says. 

Rio settles on the log closest to Agatha’s and feels the heat of the fire. The light across Agatha’s cheek smells of ash. Rio wonders what is happening to herself. 

Eventually, Agatha finishes cleaning the rabbit, pikes it on a spear of wood and sets that across the fire. Agatha wipes her hands with a wet rag as Rio watches. 

Setting the rag aside, Agatha lowers herself to her knees on the ground. Looking up at Rio as she crawls across the campsite, she says: 

“Come on. What’s a girl gotta do?”

Rio swallows. Agatha puts her hands on Rio’s thighs, slipping between her legs. 

“Just let me see,” Agatha murmurs. “Let me see all of that power you’ve got hiding away under there.”

Of course. The covetous little monster. She is so perfect it makes Rio’s stomach clench. 

Rio takes Agatha’s wrists in her hands, holding them up in the space between their bodies so that Agatha cannot touch her. 

Agatha pouts. Rio’s thumbs soothe over her tendons.

Rio shakes her head. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

“Uh, yes. That’s kind of the point.” Agatha is doing her very best impression of a woman just begging to be kissed, and it’s a damn good one. But Rio knows what she wants. Or, perhaps more accurately, Rio knows that Agatha’s wants extend far beyond just the kiss. “Unveil yourself. Show me.”

Rio smiles a very wry thing. She snaps the spell like a chord.

Agatha’s eyelids flutter and her nostrils flair. Rio can see her go through the phases: her predator’s instinct rumbling to its feet, then flattening its ears to its skull as it realizes the shape and size of Rio’s power. Agatha could no more swallow her whole than eat the sun. 

Rio watches her reckon with this, eyes scanning Rio up and down. Her fingers extend— considering it, really, truly thinking about it. Taking Rio’s magic. Her teeth around a star. She is such an Icarus that for a moment, Rio worries she might actually try. But Agatha has only one thing which supersedes her greed: her own survival, at all fucking costs. 

“I’d die,” Agatha laughs. She sounds… delighted?

Rio cocks her head in answer. 

“Who are you?” 

“I am a river,” Rio answers. “I am a fact.”

Agatha is not an idiot. She knows. She may have already known. 

And then she is back between her thighs, putting her mouth to Rio’s stomach over layers of dress and underthings. Her eyes are up and looking at Rio through their lashes as she presses another slow, dry kiss above the first. 

“You want me,” she tells Rio’s ribcage, tugging the front laces of her dress between her teeth. 

Rio shudders. “I’m here for the rabbit.”

Agatha laughs again— is Rio funny? She is only just getting to know herself. Agatha’s laugh feels good against her body. Perhaps Death has a sense of humor.

“So we cannot kiss.” Agatha shrugs. “I’m creative.” Her hands pull Rio close to her by the waist, and then she is biting Rio’s earlobe, tugging at it with her teeth. She moans into Rio’s ear, hand sliding possessively up Rio’s ribcage. Suddenly she stops, pulling back to brush her nose against Rio’s, breathing heavily against her cheek. 

Her hair falls in tendrils around her face. “How does it work?”

“I do not— I have not workshopped it.”  

Agatha’s eyes light up with a sort of proprietary glee. “Good.” 

She lays her back against the grass, pulling her skirts up to her thighs. They bunch around her hips and her hair fans out around her face. 

Pointing to the delicate knob of her ankle, she says, “Start here.”

Rio is on top of her in seconds. The audacity, Rio thinks, as she presses her lips to Agatha’s ankle. 

A smug smile comes across Agatha’s face. She lifts two fingers to the arch of her neck, where Rio can see her pulse pounding from sheer fucking desire. Proof that Agatha is play-acting her indifference.  

One leg bent at the knee, she arches her back and spreads her thighs shamelessly. Pressing down on her own heartbeat, she drawls, “Still kickin’. Guess it’s not my time.” 

Rio is kissing up either leg, switching between them every couple of inches— lips dragging against the fine hair on her calves, teeth against her knees, shocking a bright moan out of her. She’s soft beneath Rio’s mouth. She tastes like a clean sweat. Rio slides her tongue against Agatha’s curves, the salt on her skin. 

Rio has never wanted anything more than to fuck her. Rio has never particularly wanted anything in her very long life. 

“I have not—” she stumbles over the first shred of insecurity she’s ever known. 

Agatha wraps Rio’s hair around one fist, lifting Rio’s face so they’re looking each other in the eyes. Rio whines as she’s pulled up by her hair. Her eyes are hazy, and she feels a bit wrecked. 

Agatha studies her for a long moment. 

“You’ll be fine.”

Agatha tightens her grip in Rio’s hair, and something shoots down Rio’s spine. She settles onto her back again, still pulling. Not to guide or force Rio anywhere. To feel Rio shake. To hear her moan as she begins to lick firm lines along the edge of Agatha’s slit. 

Of course Rio moans. Moans and whimpers and sucks. Agatha tastes incredible. 

The host of human fables about bodily desires come back to her. Lust of the flesh, or whatever the kids are doing these days. None of it had ever quite made sense before. 

Now, she gets it. Desires of the flesh— they feel fucking good.  

Agatha is so wet, and Rio is trailing her fingertips up Agatha’s thigh, looking up at Agatha with wide, dark eyes that she knows do something for Agatha. There are a handful of dead girls for evidence. Rio teases Agatha with the sharp tip of her tongue. Her fingers move in tight circles around the crease of Agatha’s thigh.

“Yes.” Agatha nods. She rolls her hips. “Yes.”

Rio presses inside and Agatha’s abdomen tightens, warm and easy. Rio flexes and curves her fingers, throws an arm over Agatha’s hips to pin her in place when they jerk up into her hand. Rio doesn’t particularly know what she’s doing, but she has—is—a body, and she has a body’s wants. And what her body wants is to fuck into Agatha like this.  

Rio kisses her gently on her clit, then rolls it between her tongue and her lips. “I cannot believe you. You’re so— selfish, and petty, and mortal. You enjoy doing this to me.”

Rio twists her fingers inside of Agatha savagely. 

Agatha makes a reedy noise, theatrically breathy with the blunt force of a real grunt at its base. “You love it,” she says, her voice hoarse, “Admit it. I’m the dream.”

Suddenly, Rio is level with her face. She nips hard at the hinge of Agatha’s jaw to punish her, still thrusting. 

Half-smiling condescendingly, she gasps. “Agatha Harkness? I love your work!” Rio moves closer until her lips are brushing the apple of Agatha’s cheek, her face dropping into something serious. Her voice goes low. Almost threatening, which makes Agatha tighten around her fingers. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what this is.” 

Rio stares down at the way her fingers slide in and out, just appreciating the look of it. Every time Rio brushes against that needy spot, Agatha makes the prettiest noises. 

Moving to bite gently at Agatha’s collarbones, Rio rasps her tongue against the very edge of Agatha’s neckline, where the top of her dress meets skin. She pushes it beneath that edge gently, and Agatha arches up into Rio’s teeth as her tongue makes slow, slick circles under the fabric. 

Rio whines against the curve of Agatha’s breast. Her hand works between Agatha’s thighs. 

“God, you feel,” Agatha moans, “your fingers, dearest, curl them— yes, like that. Rio.”

Rio starts to let Agatha fuck down onto her fingers, no longer concerned with how Agatha comes, just that it happens soon. The palm of her hand is grinding down on Agatha’s clit, and she shifts so they’re breathing down one another’s throats like— like lovers.  

Rio understands kissing, now, and it begs like all the other desires of the body. As Agatha comes around her hand, she peppers kisses along Agatha’s shoulders and chest, her forehead, her eyelids. She doesn’t stop even as Agatha starts pulsing and clenching around her. All rolling hips. An aching ah-ah-ah sound in the very lowest part of her throat. Rio presses her tongue to the vibration at its hollow. 

Agatha is unprecedented.  

She is wrapped around Rio’s fingers, fluttering, hot and wet and taking it, babbling about how good it feels. How good Rio fucks her. Rio cannot believe she is allowed to see this. That she gets to watch Agatha’s eyes roll back in her head as she comes. Death does not want, but Rio does. All Rio does is want. 

Rio has known more apocalypses than women like Agatha. 

Agatha groans, sliding her hand lower, into the hair at the nape of Rio’s neck, cupping the back of her head. Her nails scratch lightly along Rio’s skin.

Rio could keep going— will fuck Agatha for as long as Agatha lets her. Her fingers stretch and rock searchingly as Agatha comes down from her orgasm. 

Giving Rio a look, Agatha wraps her hand around Rio’s wrist, easing Rio’s fingers out. She gasps when Rio’s callouses drag against her walls, as Rio slips out of her with an obscene noise. Agatha lifts their joined hands to Rio’s mouth. 

“Take care of this,” she orders, rolling Rio onto her back. 

Agatha uses her own fingers to press Rio’s into her mouth, watching for a gratuitous moment as Rio sucks them clean. Then she’s lifting Rio’s skirts with one hand and holding her own up to her chest with the other. 

Biting her lip, Agatha positions them so that her cunt is against Rio’s. She is above Rio, pressing down on her, grinding. The sound of it, the feel of Agatha’s clit rubbing against hers makes Rio feral— primal. Ancient and violent and possessive. To have Agatha now and to have her in death is such a self-indulgence. Rio now has a self to indulge. 

There is a low, sweet tightness in her stomach. 

“Keep sucking,” Agatha says, throwing one of Rio’s ankles over her shoulder. Rio hollows her cheeks around her own fingers.

“I am—” Agatha stops. She does not finish the sentence, but her hands slide over Rio’s inner thighs, squeezing. “I would kill anyone you wanted. Anyone.”

Rio grins. Her gut twists pleasantly. 

“You’re such a romantic.”

Agatha takes a long pull from her drink, passing the ale through her teeth. She studies the witch across the room over its brim while Rio studies her.

She must feel Rio coming in the air, her eyes glancing left just before Rio makes herself visible to her. Swallowing her drink, she turns away. “Voyeur, much?”

Rio plops onto the barstool next to her. “I like watching you work.”

“It’s been a while,” Agatha says, and she sounds pissed because she is. Rio's forehead wrinkles at her tone. “Two years, Rio.”

“Time passes differently for me," Rio explains. 

“Hm,” Agatha hums and jumps off of her stool. 

She hands Rio her mug, giving her an unimpressed look. The lines around her mouth are angry. 

Moving through the crowd, Agatha makes her way to that witch. She smiles at her, looking apologetic in that way that’s half flirtation, gesturing at the woman’s mug. Rio can practically hear her: I’m so thirsty, and it’s so hot. I thought perhaps I could trust another witch’s kindness. Something like that, some perfect manipulation. 

Agatha’s shawl slips off her shoulder. She looks chagrined but simply fans herself instead of fixing it. So many people. Too hot. 

Rio rolls her eyes and finishes Agatha’s drink, gesturing at the tavernkeep for a second. Another of this body’s little pleasures. The ale is sweet and strong. It has no effect on her blood, obviously, but gives her the opportunity to roll bubbles along the inside of her cheek. 

Rio watches as Agatha coaxes the woman back to her cottage and follows behind them through the streets. 

Is Agatha actually going to go through with this? Has she been doing this these last, lonely couple of years? It’s the first time Rio has even considered the idea. Her hands tremble at her sides. 

As they pass through the cottage’s entryway, Agatha throws a glance over her shoulder. The door swings shut behind her. Rio waits and waits. Then— a flash of purple overtaking pink. 

Rio enters without knocking. The woman is dead on the hearth rug between two plush chairs. The bed is perfectly neat, as is Agatha’s hair. She’s lazy-postured and unbothered at the center of the room, but her shawl is still slipping down her arms. Someone has seen her like this. Rio is a thing of rage. 

“Did you kiss her?” Rio demands. 

Agatha drops onto one of the chairs, relaxing into a lounging slouch. “So what if I did?”

Clicking her tongue, Rio points at Agatha, then waves her finger. She draws her knife from her belt and gently, but firmly, shicks it into the woman’s chest to sever her soul from her body. Agatha watches with rapt hunger dashed with a fair amount of genuine annoyance. 

The witch’s soul emerges from the opening in her chest, and out she crawls. She looks at Rio with fear, and at Agatha with anger plus fear.

“Did you kiss her?” Rio asks, gesturing at Agatha.

The witch shakes her head in a frantic gesture. “Please, I’m not ready.”

Rio shushes her kindly. Her face softens. 

“You’ve done well. Now, come with me,” she says, standing. 

Taking the woman’s hand, Rio guides her to the door. She gives Agatha her most annoying, gloating look. One that preens, You are in this with me and we both know it.

Agatha’s lip curls. “I didn’t know Death expected exclusivity.”

Rio laughs, her hands on her charge’s shoulders now as they pass through the door once again. Her voice is mocking. “What else, sweetheart? You thought I would share?” 

Agatha huffs. Her throat bobs. 

“Where do you go?” she asks, sounding on the very edge of a tantrum. 

It still surprises Rio how childish she can be. Somehow, she is still a young witch, weighted under the tyranny of her first century. Another witch might think Agatha barely out of adolescence. Not that another witch would, mind you. Given Agatha’s history.

Agatha who is as obviously—and shockingly—jealous as Rio. Rio cannot help but take pleasure in it. 

“We do not share.” Rio answers her real question.

Agatha’s mouth snaps shut. She frowns, glaring.

“I will… visit,” Rio concedes. “More often. Should it please you.”

Agatha nods but continues frowning. Her chin jerks in the direction of the witch fearfully listening in silence. She clears her throat, holding out her hand. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Rio extends her palm, and out of its lineless face pops a languidly arched purple flower. A veronica. 

Agatha plucks it greedily from Rio’s grasp. She secures it to her hair using a fine wooden pin.

“Find me when you’re done,” Agatha sniffs. “And don’t be long.”

“Where do you go?” Agatha asks, later, her head propped against the dead girl’s bed frame. 

Rio’s cheek is nuzzled into the flat of her chest. “There’s a house.” Rio shrugs.

“A house?” Agatha presses.

Rio says, not quite looking at her head-on, “It’s not… new, or nice. It’s very old.” 

Breathless, Agatha realizes— “Your house.”

There is nothing Agatha will take but the truth. “Yes.” 

“Can I…” 

It hangs in the air like a mote of dust on a patch of light. 

“Not yet,” Rio answers softly. “I don’t go there much these days, anyway. And I never did.”

Agatha looks at her with this baleful, expectant expression. Rio laughs under her breath. She looks up at Agatha as she continues:

“The house became. It just… happened. The way I just happened.” Rio doesn’t think about this much. She doesn’t particularly think very much at all, in the human sense. On this planet, she finds her inner world much more similar to that of a whale. Expansive. Listening to the calls. “First there was you guys, beings. And then— us. In this world, nothing is certain except Death and tariffs, and all that. Life’s a bitch and then you die, right, kids? Or maybe Death’s the bitch. I mean, not that I would know.” 

Rio puts on a silly voice, reaching up to dock Agatha on the chin.

Agatha catches her by the wrist. She pauses, kissing the knuckle of Rio’s thumb. “Haha,” she says slowly with contempt. “Settle down. I’m not going to die for a long, long time.”

She’s so self-centered, but what’s worse is she’s actually right. It is all about her. All of it. And, truly, Rio hates it when Agatha is right. 

She nuzzles her cheek into the palm of Rio’s hand. “Vultures never starve, my love.”

It is somehow the exact right thing to say. Rio settles back onto Agatha’s chest. 

“Mmm. My favorite little murderess,” she hums.

“Murderer, dearest. Is killing different because a boy does it?”

Rio laughs. It catches like fire in her belly. “You are the single most infuriating person I have ever met.”

“No, really. I insist upon it,” Agatha drawls. 

Rio realizes that Agatha is distracting her, and still, she lets Agatha run gentle, cunning fingers through her hair. It seems that in becoming an animal, Rio has become a creature of pleasure.

She does not dislike it.

Agatha is being chased through the woods by a mob of men, which easily makes her list of top five worst experiences ever. Somewhere above manipulating stupid people for menial gain and below attempted public execution orchestrated by own mother.  

Stupid, stupid girl. She can’t believe this is happening. Any of it— her hands tied behind her back, her powers bound by that apothecary’s wife, that little bitch tucking her magic under her husband’s tinctures to disguise herself. Agatha had been too busy watching the husband. She should know better.

Her foot snags on a root, causing her to come crashing down to the ground. In seconds, she is surrounded by pitchforks.

They crowd her like dogs, a pack. A coven. That this is how she will die curdles her blood. Killed by men who know the safety of numbers. Agatha swallows down her viciousness. 

“Now, now,” she soothes. “We can work this out, canʻt we?”

The big one, the town's sheriff, laughs. “Cute,” he says, and kicks her in the chest.

No. 

She can’t die like this. On her hands and knees. Her ribs screaming. She thinks they might be cracked inside her, bent like the legs on a half-dead bug. Twitching up at the wrong angle. She coughs and tastes coins. 

Agatha is scared.

Shaking her hair from her face, she smiles up at him. “Well that wasn’t very nice.”

The backhand is both a shock and an inevitability. 

Eye-level with his boots, she imagines ripping out his throat with her nails. Instead, Agatha claws at the dirt. She tries to push herself to her feet so that she can die looking in his eyes, but there are hands on her shoulders forcing her to her knees. So many hands. Her own fear tastes like bile. Like nausea. It sits inside her, thrashing. Agatha had thought she’d be older when she finally got taken out. She’d also assumed it would be a witch that did her in— that she’d die the way she was always supposed to. Instead she will be beaten to death by men.  

A green flash of movement in the forest. So many hands. She will string each of them together and hang them like a fucking banner. 

“What are you still smiling at?” asks the sheriff. Agatha will enjoy killing him most. 

She grins. “Not you.”

With a casual flick of her wrist, Rio slams them all face down onto the ground. 

Their wrists click behind their backs in perfect synchronicity. The ropes around Agatha’s fall free. 

Rio snaps and Agatha’s magic comes weeping into her, hangs its coat on the rack, apologizes for being late. Just like that. Agatha reaches into her cloak for her dagger to take what’s hers: their deaths, their loose hands. Ribs creaking, she moves to split open the sheriff’s jugular. 

“Kill them,” Rio snarls.

Agatha stops short. 

She blinks, looking at Rio for a long time, eyes scanning her face and the hunched set of her shoulders. 

“No,” Agatha says slowly.

Rio shoots her a venomously offended look. 

Agatha presses the bruise on purpose just to see what will happen. “You do it.”

Rio makes a face. It’s her puny mortal, incapable of understanding my vast and ancient ways face. Agatha hates that face. “I cannot interfere.”

“This doesn’t count as interfering?” Agatha gestures to the wiggling, worm-pile mess of men crying into the dirt around them. 

Rio rolls her tongue around her mouth in a familiar, irritable motion. “There are some lines that should not be crossed, even for you.” 

Agatha scents vulnerability in the air. “Yeah?” she purrs. “Even for me?”

“Don’t.” 

“I had not realized I was so special.”

She’s fishing openly, now, which would be embarrassing if it didn’t have the added bonus of annoying the hell out of Rio. Agatha is still metabolizing her fear into power. She gropes blindly for some kind of reaction.

Rio backs her up against the nearest tree. 

She lifts up to her toes to make herself taller than Agatha, mouth brushing Agatha’s cheek. It is one of her favorite spots, along with the arch of Agatha’s back and the sweet bone at the very top of her spine. 

Her fingers tangle with Agatha’s. “There has never been another.”

Yes, this will work. They are stomach to stomach, chest to chest. Agatha exhales, so close that it ruffles Rio’s hair.

“First time for everything.” Agatha shrugs. 

Rio presses Agatha up along the harsh bark behind her, hips angling to slot against Agatha’s.

“There will never be another.”

Agatha groans, her hips moving against Rio’s in a slow, endless grind. Rio is right there, and Agatha’s eyes are wide open. The pointed center of her upper lip catches Rio’s cupid’s bow, and they both moan. The air between them is hot as they whine into each other’s mouths. 

“Oh, please.” Agatha rocks her hips back, forth, back again. “Like you won’t replace me once I’m dead.”

“When you’re dead,” Rio hisses, “you’re coming with me.”

Agatha spins Rio so that her breasts are pressed to Rio’s back, her teeth grazing the shell of Rio’s ear. One arm wraps around the other woman’s waist. 

Agatha pulls Rio tight to her. She bites the tender skin at the very top of Rio’s neck.

“Is that a promise?” Agatha growls. 

Rio’s head drops back against her shoulder. 

Agatha winces at the weight. “Ribs, dearest.”

Rio’s hands reach back behind her to fit along the curve of Agatha’s waist. She turns her face into Agatha’s throat, mouthing at its arch. Her magic is delicious. It always is. Raw, honey-flavored. 

Rio is the strongest witch Agatha has ever known, and she’s dead weight in Agatha’s arms, about to beg Agatha to fuck her. And she doesn’t even know it yet.

Agatha puts her hand around Rio’s windpipe and holds it there, doing nothing. Rio makes a desperate noise in the back of her throat. 

“Kill them,” Rio demands. She’s pressing herself into Agatha’s hand, trying to goad Agatha into squeezing. 

Agatha sneers. “Ask me nicely.”

Rio puffs a quiet laugh through her cheeks. “Please kill them.”

Biting down on the slope where Rio’s neck meets the strong line of her shoulders to reprimand her for being such a fucking brat, Agatha unlaces the top of Rio’s dress. 

Her free hand slips into the bodice. She glances quickly at the mob on the ground, possessively double-checking that even if they can hear this, they will never, ever see it. Besides, she’s not planning to drag out this part where they’re still breathing for too long. The grip around Rio’s throat tightens into a barely-there press of fingers. 

“Why? What did they do?” Agatha asks, gently rolling Rio’s nipples against the palm of her other hand. “Did they touch something that doesn’t belong to them?”

Her fingertip brushes back and forth across Rio’s nipple. Slowly working her up, making it hard.

Rio nods desperately. 

“Say it.”

“You.” Rio gasps. Agatha can feel it against her hand. “You’re mine, and they hurt you. They have to die.”

Good. Agatha pulls at the top of Rio’s dress until Rio’s breasts pop free, just so she can see them. 

“Now beg,” Agatha orders. “Beg me to kill them.”

Rio’s stomach flutters as Agatha pushes her dress down, down, down, until the top is falling over Rio’s hips. She stops, biting Rio’s shoulderblade hard. The message is clear: Play along, and eventually I’ll let you come.

Rio’s head rolls against Agatha’s shoulder with every move of their bodies. The most powerful being in the universe is desperate for it. Agatha’s thighs squeeze together, and then she’s rocking herself into Rio again.

The friction is— oh, Agatha thinks, hooking her ankle around Rio’s to pin Rio tight against her as she grinds her clit into Rio’s ass. Her hand splays out across Rio’s abdomen. 

Rio groans, “Please, Agatha. My love. Mí vida. Do it. Oh, God. My God, Agatha. Please.”

“Well,” Agatha says casually. She lets go of Rio’s neck, snapping her fingers—and fifteen necks—at once. “Anything for you.”

Immediately, Rio is fumbling for Agatha’s hand. Pressing it down between her legs. The drag of Agatha’s dress against her own nipples is perfect, and so is the way Rio trembles when Agatha cups her, teasing open her pussy. 

Rio starts circling her hips, trying so hard to get Agatha inside of her.

Agatha wants to kiss her. Her lips skim the edge of Rio’s hairline, her jaw, the nape of her neck. 

She imagines her tongue in Rio’s mouth. Rio sucking on it. The heat of her. The taste.  

Agatha moans, running her lips along every inch of Rio’s skin she can get at. Agatha licks and bites dark bruises into the tops of Rio’s shoulders and watches as they fade, thinking of Rio’s mouth. She’d bite her there, too. She wants to tug Rio’s bottom lip between her teeth and pull until Rio cries. She wants to fuck her face to face.

“Look at me,” Agatha urges, releasing Rio’s throat so that Rio can turn towards her. “Look at me.”

Rio falls into Agatha’s arms, looping her own over Agatha’s shoulders, forehead dropping onto Agatha’s chest. Agatha pushes into her slowly. Enjoying it. 

She loves when Agatha is a little lazy, a little cocky. She’ll never admit it, but when she’s like this—pliable and begging for it—mostly she wants Agatha to be gentle. 

“There you are,” Agatha says, smoothing down Rio’s hair. “So good at doing what you’re told.”

Rio whines. “I want— fuck me hard.”

Agatha takes Rio’s jaw in hand. She lifts Rio’s face until they’re level. They pass their breath back and forth with every gasp, every tight, reedy noise. Rio pants into Agatha’s mouth. 

Fucking Rio so, so slowly, Agatha curls her fingers. 

She palms Rio’s breast. “You’ll take what I give you.”

There is almost no space between them. Her thumb plays with Rio’s clit, and she’s still holding Rio’s jaw to keep her close. 

She has to kiss her. She has to. But every time Agatha shudders forward, Rio pulls back. 

Just barely. Just enough that Agatha never gets what she wants— Rio’s soft, generous mouth. Chasing it like she doesn’t know better, because right now she doesn’t. Right now, she doesn’t care about the risk. And if she is an Icarus, so what. It hasn’t failed her yet. 

Agatha cannot be killed. Being inside of Rio has made her a God. Rio isn’t Death. Rio is power.  

Agatha fucking loves power. 

She’s thrusting hard and rough, but still slow. Agatha lines her hips up with the back of her hand to press into Rio deeper. She keeps her even, steady pace, looking into Rio’s eyes.

Rio goes tight around her fingers and comes with a whine. 

Breathing heavy, Rio presses her face into Agatha’s neck. She stays there for a few long seconds, moaning lightly against Agatha’s skin every now and then. 

Agatha withdraws her fingers and immediately wraps Rio in her arms, kissing behind her ear. Rio falls into Agatha with her full weight. 

Rio gasps, “I missed you.”

Agatha hums, rubbing broad, easy circles into her back until her breathing steadies. “It hasn’t actually been that long, you know.”

Two weeks. Agatha had gone half-insane, though she’d been expecting another three before she saw even a flash of Rio again. Like the glint of fishscales through water. But while the neediness is cute when Rio does it, Rio is also the one who does the leaving. As such, Agatha keeps hold of her goddamn dignity. 

“Oh?” Rio reaches down between them to hastily lift Agatha’s skirts, running a fingertip up the curve of Agatha’s inner thigh. Agatha’s hips roll into her hand. “Feels like longer.”

Rio sinks to her knees at Agatha’s feet. A hand on Agatha’s hip steadies her and she kneads the fat there, the other pinned to Agatha’s stomach to hold up her skirts. She is looking up at Agatha like the prettiest girl in the world, who is about to have a very full mouth. Agatha is wet down her thighs, so Rio’s fingertips slip along the slick skin. 

“Open,” Agatha instructs, but she is already pushing her thumb between Rio’s teeth and hooking it over the ridge of them. 

Her other fingers dig into the underside of Rio’s chin, and then she is circling her thumb against Rio’s tongue— opening her mouth for her. Rio pushes her tongue up to meet the motion, and Agatha rubs messy, haphazard circles into it. As Agatha slides out, she drags the very tip of her thumb against Rio’s swollen bottom lip. 

Rio sticks out her tongue, eyes wide and innocent. The corner of her mouth twitches, and she’s clearly barely holding it together. Rio is so spoiled— but if she wants Agatha riding her face, she’s damn well gonna get it. 

“What do you think?” Agatha slides a smirk from one side of her mouth to the other. “Have you earned it?”

Agatha watches as Rio tenses down to her calves, her muscles fluttering under her skin. She looks at Agatha with this delicious, obsessive adoration. Agatha tries to keep the same expression off of her own face— but she fails, she knows she fails, because Rio is glowing under it. 

Rio sits back on her heels. “Does that matter?”

And frankly, Agatha mostly says things like that to turn Rio on anyways, so no. It doesn’t actually matter. Besides, Agatha’s not into self-denial. She’s more of a scratch what itches kind of girl.

Rio shuffles closer on her knees, slipping both arms between the backs of Agatha’s legs and the tree. Her hands come up to grab Agatha’s ass. 

Agatha gives in easily, letting Rio settle between her legs. She braces herself as Rio gets into position, holding out her tongue for Agatha to grind down on. 

Agatha lowers herself onto it, clenching as Rio moans into her. The light through the trees is getting caught in Rio’s eyes and she’s got her hands clasped behind her back, letting Agatha do whatever she wants with her. Agatha’s hips jerk into her mouth.

Rio makes her tongue hard and flat, using her chin to keep the pressure just right. Her nose bumps up against Agatha’s clit whenever she dips down to slide her tongue along the ridge of Agatha’s slit. 

Rio moans again, eyelashes fluttering.

Agatha is overcome by the sight of it: Rio on her knees. Agatha feels as though she is lit up, burning. She feels ruined. It builds and builds in the tight spot beneath her bellybutton, coiling hot in her stomach. She is in love. Soul-crushing, abject love. Rio sucks Agatha’s clit, then pushes her tongue inside. 

“Tell me you missed me,” Rio murmurs, her lips brushing Agatha’s clit.

Agatha flutters around her tongue when she thrusts it into her, the needy drop in Rio’s tone going straight to her veins. She gasps when Rio curls that tongue, Rio’s voice vibrating through her. 

Tell me you missed me. So fucking clingy. It’s so hot that Agatha’s eyes roll back in her head. 

“Oh, honey. You need it that bad, huh?” She rocks her hips, rubbing her clit up and down the full length of Rio’s tongue. 

Rio glares at her but she keeps her mouth right where it’s supposed to be, right where Agatha needs it. Agatha eases her leg over Rio’s shoulder, pressing down, and something about the new angle makes the noises so much more.  

The wet sounds Rio’s tongue makes as it slides in and out of her, the way Rio can’t stop moaning. How Rio loves it, how much she loves Agatha. How desperate she is to be good for her. It all hitches her higher and higher.

Agatha feels that delicious snap of herself coming, the hit of her orgasm pulsing through her as she grinds and grinds and rides Rio’s face. 

She pants as she comes down from her orgasm, her leg trembling over Rio’s shoulder. Agatha presses the back of her hand against her forehead, closing her eyes. 

Rio is still between her legs, kissing Agatha’s clit sweetly as Agatha catches her breath. Agatha melts a little, goes boneless and sinks to the ground. 

Naked, Rio climbs into her lap all cat-like, casually wiping her mouth on the inside of her arm before burrowing her face into Agatha’s hair. Agatha looks out at the bodies around them and holds Rio close, resentful—oh God, jealous—that they will have Rio’s attention sooner than Agatha would like. 

She spreads her fingers over the dimples at the base of Rio’s back.

“Of course I missed you,” she says.

Rio makes a happy noise at the back of her throat, shifting on top of Agatha. “Good.”

Agatha strokes up and down Rio’s back, resting her head on the tree. She decides to close her eyes, hoping that when she opens them again, Rio will be back, and done with shepherding the damned-dead.

“I’m pregnant,” Agatha says as Rio steps out of the shadows. “It’s yours.”

Rio freezes, flower in hand. Baby’s breath, ironically. 

“Huh,” says Rio. “Neat.”

“I tell you that I am with child, and all you can come up with is neat? Neat?” Agatha waves her hands around, and Rio notices that beneath her sleeping shift there is a gentle, barely there curve to her stomach. “Death’s a deadbeat, and, oh, also, she knocked me up. Neat!”

Rio laughs despite herself. Agatha gets so shrill when she’s angry. 

“What do you want me to say, Agatha? I love you. I know we have not”—she gestures between them with her casual, ancient confidence—“discussed it much, but we are in a relationship. You’re pregnant. I’ll find you a house. Us. We will have a house for the baby.”

Agatha softens visibly, but she is four months pregnant and sleeps on the floor of the forest nightly, and she has decided that both of these things are Rio’s fault, so Rio will pay for them. 

“I do not want one of your cadaver dens!” Agatha screeches. 

Rio scoffs. “You like my cadaver dens.”

“I,” Agatha says, “cannot do this alone.”

Her voice breaks.

Fuck. 

Rio cannot promise a day ahead of sunrise. Her job keeps irregular hours; Death takes her personal time whenever she can. Hours, sometimes minutes. Rarely weeks. Never years. 

It finally hits her what she has done. A baby.

“Agatha, I am as I always was.”

Agatha makes a face, lip curling. “I know.”

“No.” Rio gathers Agatha’s hands in her own, begging her to understand. “I am as I always was. You witches see a few centuries and believe you know everything, but you know nothing. Are nothing. I watch stars blacken. I hold them as they die. You cannot ask this of me.”

Agatha’s mouth snaps shut. “I am asking.”

“You are being unreasonable.”

“So what. What’s the point of having all that power if you never get anything out of it.” She huffs, closing in on the closing argument of her pitch: baldfaced manipulation. “You’ll do it, won’t you? For me?”

This— this selfish, short-sighted, blindly single-minded banshee, entirely unable to see anything from outside her own perspective— and Rio is bending to the ground, kissing her stomach again and again. 

Agatha guides Rio’s hand, pressing it low to the swell of her abdomen. Rio puts her lips there. 

Fingers splay out over Agatha’s skin, pressing indentations into the first home Rio’s child will ever know. This image strikes her in the throat: Her hands changing something by choice.  

“You were born knowing what’s yours,” Agatha says, cupping Rio’s face. “This is what you always were.”

Rio’s eyebrows twist and she slowly shakes her head. “You are terrible to love.”

Agatha laughs. It’s full and firm. Chest rumbling, her hand moves to stroke Rio’s hair. 

“Love is always terrible, baby.”

Rio stumbles through the entrance of their little cottage clutching her chest. She falls to her knees, palms slapping on the wood flooring, the doorhandle crashing into the wall. She scratches her nails on the floor. A couple of them break.

Agatha lounges on their loveseat, her feet propped up on the table, and doesn’t move. 

Rio glances at Agatha and knows. “What did you do?” 

Agatha puts down her spellwork and leans back against the chair’s arm, her hand going automatically to her stomach. She is almost seven months along now. Rio sings to him about bunnies in cradles.

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

Rio makes an anguished noise and thumps her own chest. Inside of it, she has a heart. This is not new, necessarily, except that it is moving.

“Oh,” Agatha hums, like she’s just remembered something. “That. I bound our souls together.”

Rio stares at her. “You what?”

“You know, a simple binding ritual. Basic stuff, really.”

Binding ritual. Basic stuff. Rio’s world does not make any sense, and she is distracted by the noise in her ears, her own pulse plucking relentlessly at her nerves. It’s irritating. Her hands return to her chest. A piece of meat pounds away inside her ribcage, endless and unfamiliar.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Rio asks.

“Honestly, no,” Agatha acknowledges. She asks, “Do you?”

Rio just stares harder, because no, she doesn’t. She’s never tried to bind her soul to a mortal’s, since that would be dangerous and stupid. 

“What can I say?” Agatha rubs her stomach. “I figured it was time you made an honest woman out of me.”

Rio almost laughs at the idea of Agatha being an honest anything, but then gets netted up again in the feel of her body becoming real and hot with blood. Sweat lines her hairline for the first time.

She falls back onto her butt, her legs stretched out in front of her. Rio looks at the kitchen, at Agatha’s herbs hanging above the basin, and feels the sun warming her skin. 

Through all of Agatha’s hamfisted posturing, Rio understands why she has done this. She is insistent that something is wrong with the baby. He doesn’t kick enough. He hiccups too often. He doesn’t give her enough morning sickness. He gives her too much.

Agatha has been traveling days to meet with midwives, reflexively carving protection runes everywhere. Lately, she’s been using Rio’s knife to do it. 

And she’s insecure, always setting traps to trick Rio into admitting she loves her. Never asking for it outright and only saying it back once Rio has, but it’s— sweet, almost. Agatha has never been more devoted. She is constantly reaching for Rio’s hand, always finding the small of Rio’s back. Rio comes home every night now, because she knows that Agatha cannot sleep without her. Agatha wraps herself around Rio just to make sure Rio doesn't leave while she's asleep, and in the morning pretends not to care when Rio does.

Rio understands. She would have understood. She would have said yes.

Agatha’s joints grind together loudly as she stands and waddles over to Rio with an expression of genuine remorse on her face. She bends as much as she is able, lifting Rio’s chin.

“Is it alright?” she says softly.

Rio shakes her head. The thing is already done.

“Yes. It’s alright.”

Agatha felt it when her labors started, so she ran.

She felt it as she swiped the stray lemon from the fruit basket on her way out the door. She felt it stumbling through the forest. As the blood crept down her leg. 

And she feels it now, holding her son in the entryway of the only home two people have ever known: Death. Clinging, needy, many-fingered Death. When she started all this, she was young. She never stopped for long enough to think about the fact that someday she might have to run. Too young to realize that it is a bad idea to fall in love with something you can never actually leave. 

She never considered what it means to be owned by someone— even a person that she owns back. There is no out, there is only her. Somehow that used to be a comfort.  

Agatha drags a fingertip along the bookcase where Rio keeps her human fascinations. She tears through novels like bread: As though there will always be more. There are stacks upon stacks of them littering the living room. Agatha never expected her to be so interested in people. The stories humans like to tell themselves about the world.

Rio had shrugged and said, “I became interested later in life.” 

They were going to do this together, in this house. It was going to be three. Three people were supposed to live here. 

Fine. Good riddance. Agatha will be her son’s home.

“You’re here,” Rio says on a breath, and Agatha turns to see her jumping clear over the short, white fence around their yard. 

Agatha steps back, away from Rio, but all that does is walk her backwards into the house. Rio appears in the doorway, wild-eyed but not blocking it— yet. 

“Don’t get used to it,” Agatha says, pulling Nicholas closer to her chest, “I’m here to say goodbye.”

Actually, Agatha’s here to get her things, but now that Rio’s back, she can’t do one without doing the other. 

Rio deflates, her back falling against the wall to the left of the doorway. Her arms cross over her chest. 

“Yeah, well. Good luck with that,” she bites out with her usual sense of inevitability. Rio will find them whether she wants to or not. 

“Don’t act like you’re some martyr,” Agatha sneers. “After all these years, slinking off to wherever, doing God knows what, disappearing for months— pick a side. It or me. The job or our son.”

“It’s not,” Rio sighs, “like that.” Agatha scoffs. It never is like that with Rio. Somehow everything is always so goddamn inexplicable. Coward. Rio slinks towards her, all corners, her eyebrows furrowing. “Let me see him.”

“No,” she snaps. 

“Agatha,” Rio begs, “You have to understand.” 

“No, I don’t.”

“Fuck you.” Rio says it flat. “Turn his face towards me.” 

Agatha loosens her grip on the infant, lowering her forearms so that the boy’s face angles up for Rio to see. 

She waits, watching as Rio studies him. She sees as Rio’s eyes widen, and stay wide— head cocking left and right. She looks enthralled by him. It hits Agatha for the first time that Rio loves him.

Agatha cannot stand knowing that Rio really, actually loves him. 

She snatches her baby back. 

Rio pauses, finger extended in the air as if she was about to gently press her fingertip to his nose. 

“I think we should go.” Agatha turns to quickly gather everything they’ll need for the road. Nothing personal. She doesn’t want to stick around long enough to sift through it, hastily picking out what to carry on her back, already regretting the choices she hasn’t yet made. No, better to cut and run.

Rio straightens up, silently letting Agatha put together her pack. Agatha notices the circles under Rio’s eyes with a degree of disgust. Shut up, you immortal bitch. You don’t have it like the rest of us. 

Agatha is stacking up reasons to hate her even as she keeps looking. Rio’s hair is unbrushed, the smudged eye makeup unusually dark. That feral edge she’d had a century or so ago is back with a vengeance. The look she used to get, the one where she’d seem as though her skin was both too loose and too tight. She is keeping her hands to herself very well, is something Agatha would think, except she absolutely does not. 

She simply gathers her things, pulls the tie of her pack until the ruched fabric around the drawstring is tight, and shoulders past Rio in the doorway.

Rio grabs her arm. Her nails dig into Agatha’s skin, and she tugs Agatha towards her with a snarl. “Or—maybe—maybe I just take you both now.”

Agatha firms herself against the way Rio holds her, bringing her own arm to her chest in a harsh push-pull grapple that has them tangled up in each other.

She meets Rio’s eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

They stare at each other. Agatha’s forearm in Rio’s grip. Vipers with their tails knotted together. 

Agatha’s eyes cut to the knife hanging from Rio’s belt, but then Rio is making an exasperated noise and— and softly putting her mouth to the highest point of Agatha’s cheekbone. Her cupid’s bow is a high, arching M. Not nearly bow-shaped.

Her sigh spreads heat across Agatha’s cheek. 

Agatha stands and allows it. And her skin screams for it, so she will have it, and she will enjoy it. Agatha lacks a terrible amount of self control. 

Rio flattens herself into Agatha’s side, away from Nicholas, and it’s too much. It’s not sexual but it’s too close. Agatha lifts up into Rio’s kiss.

“He is your son,” she says, glaring at Rio from so near that she goes halfway cross-eyed. 

Rio pulls back, sniffing, flicks her thumb against the tip of her nose, then shrugs. She turns her profile away from Agatha as the tears in her eyes start to glint. 

“And I’ll pay for that.”

She steps aside to let Agatha go, and, damn her, leaves the door swinging open as Agatha does.

As Agatha walks away, she remembers Rio once saying that she didn’t realize she could even have children, so she’d never, not once, thought about it before Agatha got pregnant. Death cannot be a mother. All she does is take. It had not occurred to her that she could be anything more than that. 

Agatha had surprised her by laughing and grumbling, Me too.

Agatha turns back to look wordlessly at the open door when what she really wants to do is scream. 

Her son is asleep and Agatha is sneaking away to fuck his killer.

She always knew her complete lack of discipline would eventually become a problem. 

But God, she aches for her. 

Agatha thinks she may go to her death with gravedirt already under her nails. She will probably die trying to suck Rio dry.

She settles onto a rock near the mudbank of a half-dead creek. It’s sort of their thing. Along Agatha’s travels, if she and Nicky stay near a spring, Rio will… join her. For a while.

So Agatha waits. And waits. 

And, really, it’s not like Rio to be late for one of these appointments. Rio generally sweeps in with the frantic edge of something starving the moment Agatha sits down. Hands shaking and outstretched, teeth making for Agatha’s neck. 

Her thighs squeeze as she remembers the last time— Rio stomach down with her hips up and tilted, watching Agatha touch herself and begging for the privilege of doing it for her. Rio never misses an opportunity.

Something is wrong. 

She marches straight back to Nicky and gathers him into her arms, tucking his sleepy face into her neck as she begins to walk. She leaves their things behind at the camp, protected by circles upon circles of runes. Walking through the night has her at the little witch’s cottage by the early hours of the morning. 

Agatha arrives with the blue light of dawn. She knocks on the door.

The pink witch who opens the door sees her and immediately tries to slam it in her face, but Agatha’s foot has already been shoved into the gap. The force of the slam crunches her toe into its frame. She winces. So much for old friends. 

“Get off of my property.” 

Jennifer Kale widens the door only to give her next slam more momentum, and then she’s closing it on Agatha’s foot again. When Jen hits resistance, she bears down. Agatha’s toes make an awful grinding noise. 

Slapping her hand against the door’s face, Agatha starts. “I’m… sorry about that little birthing group mishap,” she says through gritted teeth. “My bad. They really were so welcoming. Such a great group of girls. What a tragic accident.” 

Jen gives her a disgusted look. “You killed all of my clients and their unborn children.”

“The children were more of an unfortunate byproduct,” Agatha admits. 

Jen tries to close the door for a third time, so Agatha shoulders her way inside. She turns, looking at the other witch. Jen is shaking with anger and fear, and Agatha wonders if perhaps she has taken this whole thing—her life—a bit far. 

She realizes very suddenly that fear feels the same for everyone. That Jen experiences it as deeply, sickeningly oily as Agatha does. She has not often been made afraid, and never for very long. But Agatha remembers. She can feel hands and thrashing. For a moment, she even feels shame. 

“I didn’t… I am sorry. And I actually was pregnant, as you can see. I was just hormonal that day.” Jen glares at her like she doesn’t believe a word Agatha is saying. Which, fair. “Okay, I— I saw an opportunity.”

“You saw your pregnancy as an opportunity,” Jen repeats.

“Look, I am what I am, so let’s move this along.” Agatha claps her hands together impatiently. She has finished apologizing, and now that is done. “I need you, Jennifer, to keep my son. Protect him for a while.”

Jen asks, “Why would I do that?”

Agatha sucks in a deep breath. “Immunity. I leave you—and your mothers—alone.”

Jen pauses. She eyes the baby in Agatha’s arms like it might be a changeling that Agatha has trained to slit witches’ throats in their sleep. Again, fair.

“Forever?”

“For the rest of our long, long lives.” Agatha bounces her eyebrows, saying, “And yours is about to get much longer.”

“You’re serious?” Jen pushes, and a sharp, silvery intelligence comes into her eyes as she thinks about Agatha’s offer. “Protection from the witch killer?”

Agatha doesn’t blame her. She’s grown quite the reputation in the last century and a half. If she’s honest, Agatha has killed more witches than the trials ever did. Mostly, that makes her proud. Other times she chooses not to think about it. 

The safety of never having to lock your doors against Agatha Harkness is something most witches would kill a covenmember for, if only to save the rest. 

Agatha spreads her fingers in the air. “You’ll never have to see me again.”

Jen considers it for a moment. “Why would you do this?”

Because my spine is a traitor, and it remembers her mouth.

“I have some business that needs taking care of.” Agatha half-shrugs, making a demure face.

The glint of cunning is back in Jen’s eyes, and she glances between Agatha and the baby. She passes her hand over his face to scan for curses.

“Deal.”

The babe is carefully passed between them, and then Agatha is leaning over Nicholas to kiss him on the forehead. Blocking Jen’s view, she quickly plucks one of his eyelashes before tucking it firmly between her thumb and forefinger.

She glances up at Jen. “You actually trust me?”

“No,” Jennifer answers. “But after this, I won’t just be some nameless midwife with a flock of easy pickings. I’ll be the witch who protected your son while you went and did whatever it is you need to do. I think you’ll remember that. Maybe even want it for other women’s babies.”

Agatha rears away from her. Oh, she absolutely has to get out of here.

Jen raises her chin and fixes Agatha with a level stare.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” says Agatha, slowly backing away.

Before Nicky, Agatha would have taken her time finding Rio. Let her suffer. Maybe if she wasn’t the source of all humanity’s grief, Agatha would be more accommodating. 

Anyway— before Nicky, Agatha would’ve roamed the streets of the world, asking strangers questions in languages she barely spoke—and only ever used because of Rio—and collected information. She’d drink exotic tea and flirt mercilessly with informants. She would track Rio down piece by piece. Because Rio would know she was coming, and it would be fun. 

Unfortunately for her, Agatha now has a clock. She will not be away from her son for a second longer than she has to. 

With all that in mind, she decides to simply locate Rio using Nicky’s eyelash.

It’s a cheap trick, but maybe now Death will see there is, at least, value in having a son. A living son. Who breathes and blushes, and sleeps with his nose pressed to Agatha’s chest.

So, yes. She uses Nicky to find Rio.

She holds his eyelash to her lips, whispering the words. Then, she tosses it into the air and it turns into a small, spitting flame. 

Blowing on it, she solidifies the spark. Agatha delivers its instructions sparingly, half embarrassed by them: Find her.

She follows, wondering if the clever witch who must have caught Rio knows how to cause her pain yet. Agatha feels strangely full of grief at the idea. 

Agatha follows the bouncing light for another four hours, taking her eight hours away from her original camp, running on no sleep. And she has left her son with some woman. She is more than murderous.

So when she arrives to the house, she stumbles through the front door with one hand pressed to her pounding forehead and the other shooting out a spell in front of her. 

The spell misses, hitting the mirror. 

A redheaded witch in the middle room stares at her, then bursts out laughing. She gives Rio a look. “This is Agatha Harkness?”

There are manacles attached to Rio’s wrists and ankles, and she sits with her legs criss-crossed on a black pedestal. Her skin is raw beneath the steel. Enchanted, clearly. She looks exhausted— really exhausted, sunken eyes and cheeks, stringy hair. 

There is a long, deliberate cut along her cheekbone that trails down to her jaw. Another splits her lip.

That fucking knife sits prone on the table. Agatha knew it was only a matter of time before someone other than her figured it out. But now that Ginger has actually drawn blood—despite the fact that Agatha herself regularly daydreams of taking that knife and burying it between Rio’s ribs—the bitch has got to die. 

Agatha glares at both of them. She adjusts her dress and straightens up. “It was a long trip.”

Ginger laughs. She grabs the knife on the table and slashes at Agatha wildly. Agatha barely flinches away. They stand, circling. Waiting for the other to move. 

Agatha feints left, then sends a skittering of sparks at the woman’s right side to test her defenses. 

“Don’t bother trying to get me to use my magic. I know your tricks,” the witch says, twisting away from Agatha’s attack. 

“Aw, honey, been talking about me to your friends?” Agatha coos at Rio. 

Rio snorts. She clanks the manacles around her wrists together, flaring her eyes. The message is clear: Off, off, off. “Of course not. Now, get me out.”

Agatha ignores her, dodging another vicious jab. 

Using the weight of Ginger’s own momentum, she cracks her foot against the woman’s kneecap. Smacking the knife into a corner, Agatha pins Ginger’s hands behind her back. As she bends double and bucks to get Agatha off of her, Agatha leans down to speak directly into her ear. 

She chuckles lowly. “I don’t need to drain your magic to kill you. I can do it the old fashioned way.”

Agatha summons a ball of magic into her palm, shaping it into the right form. 

“By setting your fucking house on fire.”

She burns a rune onto the door of a nearby closet and tosses the other witch inside, sealing the door behind her. Then she sets fire to the curtains. 

Rio grins. Her eyes reflect the flames and she shivers with delight. “Great. Let’s go.”

She holds her wrists out to Agatha with an expectant look. 

Agatha walks to the other side of the room to collect Rio’s knife. She twirls it in her hands as she crosses back to Rio, stepping slowly towards her. Agatha’s mouth is pulled into a sharply curved smirk. 

“I never said I would free you,” Agatha says, tossing Rio’s knife at her feet. “She needed to die for trapping you.” For making you feel afraid. “But if you think for one second that Nicky and I aren’t both better off with you out of the picture—” Agatha trails off abruptly. “Well. Let’s hope fire doesn’t melt steel.”

“Agatha…” 

Rio shakes her head, just barely.

The fire is pulling down the rafters, and Agatha has to go. She makes a vague gesture as if to say, Come on.

And, really, what does Rio expect? Agatha loves her. She can admit that right here, right now, and only to herself, but it is true— Agatha loves Rio. Does that make Agatha stupid enough to free her, knowing that Rio’s freedom is Nicky’s death?

Let’s be serious. 

“Do not leave me,” Rio shouts. Toppling from her pedestal, whipping and twisting her torso around. “Agatha!”

“You’ll”—Agatha waves her hands—“figure out something. Eventually. From under the rubble.”

When she reaches the doorway, she looks back over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. You won’t be bothered.”

Which means: Nobody will hurt you again, but nobody will save you, either. 

Rio screams after her, “Agatha!” And then, “Agatha!” And, “Agatha!”

Two days later, Agatha wakes up, makes breakfast for her son, and packs up their camp. 

And everywhere they travel for weeks, there are fields and fields of violent-colored wildflowers. Agatha stops traveling near creeks.

Agatha gets… demonstrative after Nicky dies. 

For several decades, she simply drains and runs because Rio might actually catch up with her. Rio understands, as irritating as it is. She’s a very good witch, but Death has many mouths, and Agatha is not nearly strong enough to hide from Her. 

Or, whatever. Rio has no actual desire to impose her godhood on Agatha. She simply goes about her steady, animal work. Rio does her job. Agatha runs, and Rio trails her, never quite catching up even though they both know she could. Feeling Agatha at the edge of her grasp, always. Resisting the urge to grip. Talk about a thankless task.  

So when Agatha disappears from her radar entirely, Rio fucking loses it. 

At first she doesn’t understand.

Actually, for an embarrassing amount of time she doesn’t understand. 

But she finds the bodies, hours or days later, when she should have heard their calling immediately. Rio starts to hear the stories. Spirit witch. The Darkhold. 

Clever girl. 

Rio rages and rages. 

She switches through body upon body. Stealing faces. Changing her name. Occasionally sitting and talking quietly with a new charge for hours. What does it feel like? Are you angry? And then wearing their resemblance for a few years. 

Rio is angry. She finds the answers that humans give too narrow to fit inside. Instead, she tries to fit herself inside the whole human, rather than just the answer. It has yet to work. 

So this—seeing Agatha on the bow of the ship—is like being slammed back into her real body. 

One moment, Rio is an elderly woman with her hair tucked under a scarf, and then she is suddenly herself. Her first self. The self she made because she wanted, loved, a woman.

Agatha has her face turned towards the wind. It pushes back her hair. Her hands are on the railing.

She turns at the sound of Rio’s footsteps. 

Rio has barely said, “It’s been a long time,” before Agatha is dragging her into a dark corner, grabbing the soft curve of Rio’s waist.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she asks, but she is pulling at Rio’s silk neckline, putting her mouth to the flat of Rio’s chest. She goes no further, just mouthing at Rio’s skin. 

Rio relaxes into the wall against her back. “It’s the event of the season, sweetheart. I’m here for the party.” 

Agatha pauses. She draws back and studies Rio’s face with a calculating look. “They said it can’t sink.”

Rio drops her jaw and widens her eyes in mock-surprise. “And you believed them?”

A slow smile spreads across Agatha’s face. “So it is that kind of party.”

Rio grins at her. “And it’s about the start.”

“So you’re— you’re, what, then, you’re not here to see me?” 

Agatha’s mouth sort of twitches, half-pursed haughtily the way it does sometimes. She tightens her coat to her body. 

“Agatha, the last time we saw each other, you quite literally left me to die in a fire.”

“Wrong,” Agatha says. “You can’t die.”

Agatha lifts up to bite at Rio’s earlobe, pulling it between her teeth and tugging. The boat shudders, one long, languid side of it screaming up against an iceberg. Rio moans and arches into Agatha. 

So this is why. Rio lets Agatha bite a trail up her neck and sighs. Part arousal, part relief. She knew it. 

“I can’t stop,” Agatha hisses, kissing her throat so gently, so passionately. Just the barest brush of teeth. “I hate you.”

“You love me.” Rio curves herself up to rub her breasts against Agatha’s.

As one side of the boat sinks low into the water, Agatha pulls Rio onto the ground. Rio’s back is against the wooden deck. A chair moans across the ship’s plaza before tumbling over the railing, and in minutes they are surrounded by the desperate press of bodies running. 

Someone fleeing for the lifeboats goes, What the fuck? as he passes them, face trapped in the horrific limbo of confusion and fear for his life. Finally, finally Agatha has come home: amidst the chaos, in Rio’s arms. Rio decides to do whatever it takes to keep her here.

Agatha unbuttons Rio’s black slacks with one hand before slipping it into the waistband. Her tongue is now rolling up the length of Rio’s neck. Her fingers push Rio’s panties to the side. 

And then she’s dragging Rio’s trousers down her legs and kissing Rio’s stomach. She stops to sink her teeth viciously into Rio’s ribs.

Rio cants up into it, demanding more. More teeth, more of Agatha. 

Her hand slides into the roots of Agatha’s hair just to feel it slip through her fingers. She turns her face, groaning into the wood flooring. Everyone around her is screaming. Rio will get to them later. 

Agatha slides one hand into the crotch of Rio’s underwear, stretching them to get them out of the way. She doesn’t even bother pulling them off. Just noses into place, sucking Rio’s clit into her mouth.

She hollows her cheeks around it and uses the barest scrape of her canines on its tip, remembering the way Rio likes to be fucked. 

They’re doing this fast and dirty, swept up in the feel of each other’s bodies for the first time in so long. Agatha holds nothing back. She uses every trick she knows to make Rio come hard, soon.

She twists the wrist of her free hand, conjuring a silicone cock that must have already been in her quarters. She holds it up for Rio to see without stopping her mouth.

“Wanna fuck you with this,” she says, licking around Rio’s clit. 

Rio spreads her legs without a second thought in a silent, pleading yes.  

Agatha pushes the toy inside her, groaning as it bottoms out. She thrusts up at an angle, her palm on its base to fuck Rio harder. It’s big, bigger than Agatha’s fingers, bigger than anything they’d had access to the last time they did this. Rio feels herself clenching around it, her heels slipping against the hardwood as she lifts her hips to ease Agatha’s way. 

Agatha is staring down at where Rio is taking her with the same look on her face that she gets when she’s about to have a good kill— eyes lit up, so alive. So much more alive than anyone Rio has ever met. And Rio has met everyone.   

She kisses her way up Rio’s body, stopping to suck and bite Rio’s breasts through the thin, clingy fabric of her blouse. The wet circles around Rio’s nipples are cold, throbbing, the sound of the cock sliding in and out of her making her head fuzzy.

Agatha hits a spot deep inside her that has Rio crying out and thrusting down onto the toy.

Rio never thought she would have this again.

The ship of dreams. Well it’s certainly living up to its name.

Agatha hovers above her face, lips brushing Rio’s temple. “Let me kiss you,” she whispers. 

Rio’s hand is wrapped around Agatha’s throat in seconds, stopping everything. Everything except Agatha’s cock, which is still sliding in and out of her at a wicked, pounding pace. 

Rio locks her ankles behind Agatha’s back, but keeps tension in the grip around Agatha’s neck. “You don’t want that.”

But Agatha is desperate. She will not have no for an answer. She takes Rio’s wrist in one hand, pinning it to the floor beneath her—perhaps Rio allows her to do this—and then Agatha’s mouth is pressed against the ridge of skin lining Rio’s lip. The very edge of it almost touches Rio’s. Her lips flatten and spread, sinking into the tiny divot at the corner of Rio’s mouth. 

“Close,” she breathes.

Rio comes around her cock.

The entire world sparks, little puffs of electricity spitting off of a nearby fuse box. Rio’s calves are digging into Agatha’s waist.

Slowly, Agatha unwraps the scarf around Rio’s hair, using it to clean up between her legs. Rio slumps into the ground, the orgasm still thrumming through her. Looking up at the stars. She half-cackles, half-huffs.

Rio stretches her arm out to trail a finger around Agatha’s knee. Agatha takes her time wiping the come from Rio’s thighs, not meeting Rio’s eyes. 

She looks disgusted with herself, and, worse, disgusted by Rio. The scarf is balled up and tossed away. 

Rio unhooks her legs, scooching back and lifting up onto her elbows. Now loose, her hair falls over one eye. 

“You— you’re not leaving me again,” Rio says.

Agatha just glances at the lifeboats.

Suddenly Rio’s forgotten rage is back and clawing up her throat. Doesn’t Agatha get it? Doesn’t she know how little time they have like this, and how many millennia of death will come next? Doesn’t Agatha realize that she is wasting it?

Rio is owed this time. She is entitled to it, damnit— it’s hers. Agatha’s scant centuries of living belong to her. Were promised to her. She will not lose this time with Agatha, Agatha as she is, Agatha burning her aliveness into the world like the tip of a cigarette sizzling into skin. 

“No,” Rio hisses, coming up into an animalistic crouch. She withdraws her dagger. “This isn’t happening.”

Agatha looks at the knife with blunted surprise. “Don’t make it difficult.”

Rio points at her accusingly. “You make this difficult.”

The cock is in Agatha’s left hand, glistening in the low-light from what they’ve just done. Rio is still pulsing between her legs. Agatha is already pulling herself together, going cold and mean.

“Please,” she condescends. “Don’t tell me you thought this was some lovers’ reunion after a little spat.”

Rio stands, brushing off her knees, her pants unbuttoned and slipping slightly. Her arms hang limply at her sides, and she stares at Agatha almost uncomprehendingly. 

Agatha's laugh is curdled. “I hate you.”

“Stop,” Rio murmurs, flinching.

“I will always hate you.”

Rio flips her knife and waves it in threat, realizing that she has just become one more of Agatha’s victims— bled of whatever Agatha wants from her and left in the dust. 

“Stop.”

More screams, most of them coming from somewhere inside of Rio’s stomach. She feels manic, deranged. Cut clean from her own sanity. Drumbeat waves crack over the side of the railing, crowding the sound of music in the air. 

The boat tips dangerously, making both of them stumble. Agatha grabs a pole for balance, body careening. 

Her knuckles turn white as she leans into the pole. “I’ve been running from you for centuries. Nothing, nothing has changed.”

Rio’s mouth opens, closes, her eyebrows furrowing. 

She takes in this Agatha, so much older, somehow even tougher than she was before. The crow’s feet burrowing into the corners of Agatha’s eyes remind Rio that she is missing it. Agatha is stealing what is hers.

A strange buzzing worms its way through Rio’s brain, going mine, mine, mine, mine, mine.  

“Oh, something’s changed, alright.” Rio grips the handle of her knife. “Me,” she says, advancing on Agatha. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Agatha stiffens and stands tall. Rio closes in on her, fully intending to drag her to the other side now, kicking and screaming. Agatha will see— she’ll see that Death is not a woman to be fucked with, that Rio will have what's hers by blood if she cannot have it by love. 

Steel flashing, Rio grins. 

Agatha rolls her eyes. Moving so quickly that it must have been planned, she grabs Rio’s knife by the blade, throws it overboard, and hits Rio with a blast of magic strong enough it knocks Rio’s head against the floor. 

She wakes up on the deck with ice cold water rising up to her ears. Agatha is gone. The boat has cracked in two, its halves turned towards each other like dead lovers, face to face.

Rio allows herself a few moments to lay flat on the floor and scream.  

Then she slips shark-like into the ocean, wading through it, snapping up souls and looking for her knife.

Rio settles her back against the log, her elbows resting on her spread knees. 

The Witches’ Road. Huh. She wonders idly how Agatha pulled this all off. 

It’s definitely an improvement on the old con, but she can’t seem to feel out the edges of Agatha’s magic. If she’s honest, Rio doesn’t even know where they are. Digging the heel of her palm into the dirt under her, Rio sends a pulse through the earth looking for Agatha’s signature and doesn’t find it. Strange. 

Lilia sits next to her, and Rio briefly considers the parallel lines of their jawbones. “I know what you are.”

Rio shrugs. “Not for long.”

She knows Lilia well. 

“What are you doing here?” Lilia asks. She motions at the boy. “Did you— are you here for Teen?”

Rio chuckles. She jerks her chin in Agatha’s direction.

“Really?” Lilia pauses. “Can I ask you something?”

Rio nods, watching as Agatha leans back against a tree with her eyes closed, quietly apart from the group. 

“Why her? I mean, no offense to Agatha, but she’s kind of—” Rio shoots her a dangerous look, and Lilia smartly shuts the fuck up. Changing tact, she says, “Out of all the witches in the world, all the witches who have ever been born—every animal on every planet, every perfect, green leaf—and you picked her to love. It’s a fair question.”

Every time Agatha’s eyes creep open, they go to the boy. The proud line of her nose breaks against scenery. Rio studies and notices. She decides to answer honestly:

“She makes me laugh.” Rio twirls the flower in her hand. “We… understand each other.”

“Agatha understands you?”

“Well.” Rio’s lip twitches. “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes what?” Lilia asks, her voice lilted with the genuine confusion that means Rio’s friend is gone. 

Rio gets up and walks away instead of explaining. 

That night, Rio crawls over Agatha as she sleeps, hovering her face over Agatha’s. Just watching. 

God, she had forgotten what it feels like to look at Agatha. How it rips through her. The delicate shadow of Agatha’s lashes against her cheeks are a shrike in her throat. And is Death anything more than a nest, really? Or maybe— maybe a snare?

Rio had also forgotten how absolutely morose Agatha makes her. Trite little thoughts come to her all at once, tripping over each other to get to the front of the line. 

Agatha’s eyes are open. 

Rio freezes, still cataloging the rise and fall of Agatha’s chest. She is so close and breathing. Bleeding warmth all over the cold night around them. Rio’s bones stutter inside her fats and meats. 

Agatha says nothing, and neither does Rio. But they are talking. 

As Rio’s chest lowers onto Agatha’s, as Agatha’s shaking hand cups the back of Rio’s head— they are talking.

Agatha takes the full weight of her, and Rio sinks her body down into Agatha’s. Every puff of air out of Agatha’s mouth heats the something wet on Rio’s cheeks. 

Rio tucks the flower from earlier behind Agatha’s ear.

Down, down, down. 

Everything that happens, happens like this:

Agatha is in love with Rio. She can admit this here, now, and only to herself. 

Here and now: Finally, Rio’s mouth is on hers. Agatha should have expected this— and she had, actually, had sort of known she would end up here. All roads, and all that.

Well, she’s been walking this road for a long time, and it’s about to end. 

She’s tired of pretending she doesn’t want this. Agatha is coming home.

Their teeth clack together as Agatha forces her tongue into Rio’s mouth, the feel and flavor of it brand new. She has been alive for so very long. Almost nothing is new to Agatha anymore but this— is a revelation. Her fingertips buzz from the feel of Rio’s skin. Rio’s magic slides down Agatha’s throat, hitting the back. It’s so sweet. It tastes like her.

Rio’s tongue slides against hers—hot—its tip brushing the point of Agatha’s canine. Agatha bites down gently, edging in some pain. 

Rio gasps into her mouth, pulling back only enough that her nose is no longer folded against the curve of Agatha’s cheek and that is too far.

Agatha presses forward to get more. Her teeth find Rio’s bottom lip. Desperate. Undignified. Her tongue down Rio’s throat. Her head beginning to get hazy, orange spots projected on the insides of her eyelids.  

She will take anything and everything Rio will let her. She knows that will mean taking everything Rio has. 

Take, take, take. The two of them, still ripping pieces off of each other simply because it feels good. If all Death does is take, then she has met the right girl.

And if there is one thing about Agatha Harkness, it’s that she will have her due. 

Not only will she have her—

Rio’s gonna lose. She’s gonna give.  

And she doesn’t even know it yet.

Of course Rio has imagined Agatha’s afterlife. Often, and gratuitously. 

In her version, Agatha is just as sharp but slightly more compromising, and she arrives angry but ready to work. She yells at Rio, and she throws things, probably, since she can’t lash out with magic. She comes to Rio’s bed at night. 

The other side makes her no less irascible, but Agatha is finally, resolutely at peace. Her soul set to rest among Rio’s bouquet of dead. Protected. All roads lead to Death, who loves you. And also owns you a little bit. 

The reality is this:

Agatha spites her.

She moves through the living at will. She travels, she causes chaos. She haunts the Westview Public Library bathroom and crashes society events, the drunk girl at the party swinging from the chandelier— but, you know. Dead, and sober. She cackles and cackles and does things on her own terms. She spits in the face of Rio’s natural order, baby. 

Because her own peace would be Rio’s, she rejects it. She becomes an abomination just to piss Rio off. 

She comes to Rio’s bed at night. 

Rio should’ve known that Agatha would do things on her way. She always has. 

“And where the hell have you been?” Rio asks as Agatha comes through the door of Rio’s very old, very ugly house. 

Agatha pecks her on the lips as she passes through the entryway and into the dining room where Rio sits, reading a book. 

“Oh, you know. A little of this, a little of that, a little tormenting the descendants of my long-dead enemies.” She gives Rio a sly look, draping her coat over the back of a chair. “You ever heard of a hung jury?”

“No. Should I be jealous?”

Agatha laughs and settles onto Rio’s lap, looping her arms around Rio’s neck. Rio sets the novel facedown on their dining room table.

She kisses her slow and dirty, moaning when Rio sucks her tongue between her teeth. Biting down just slightly—Agatha curls her tongue against the roof of Rio’s mouth in response—Rio groans. 

Rio’s hands slide up Agatha’s ribs, palming her breasts. Eventually they will get so worked up grinding against each other, Rio’s thumbs rolling over Agatha’s nipples, that they will fuck on the floor.

But for now, they are kissing.