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During another groggy morning ritual of stirring the correct amount of sugar into Agatha's tea, Rio is busy watching the sun rise over New Orleans when she’s struck with an unfamiliar feeling.
It takes all day to unravel, but she vaguely considers it must be déjà vu - one of those puzzling human traits she’s still navigating around like a baby bird flown from the coop too soon. How strange it is, she thinks, to be able to remember anything at all.
Rio understands she has forgotten many things since the creation of her kind, but she’ll never, ever forget Agatha.
At a tiny liquor store tucked in an alley off the busy streets, she finds Agatha perusing the wine aisle, bent over in a terribly compromising position for anyone walking by to admire. In mitigation, Rio possessively rakes fingernails down her spine; to which Agatha stiffens and quickly softens, immediately recognizing the touch.
“I almost cried out stranger danger, asshole. That security guard who winked when I walked in would have happily taken you out for me."
"I would love to see him try," Rio responds dryly.
"Maybe I would let him try and sweep me off my feet, too. How does that feel?"
"No one but me knows how to handle you, I'm not worried." Rio impressively ignores the lengths Agatha will go to rile her up. “Hey, doesn’t it feel like we’ve been here before?”
“No, because I cannot fathom ever willingly coming back to this cesspool. It blows.”
“Louisiana is beautiful, Agatha.”
“The food sucks. The temperature sucks.”
“Étouffée hasn’t crossed your lips yet. Your hair looks cute when it’s frizzy.”
“Now you’re just making shit up.”
“My incapability of lying to you is as strong as your willpower, love.”
“And what exactly are you capable of, again? I bet when they were creating the earth you had them make this place as intolerable as possible just to annoy me in the future. Guess what, it worked.”
“I told you, I had no say over anything, except-”
“A couple of pretty rocks, stars, the concept of love.” Hyper aware of her potent effects, Agatha leans in to soften the blow - “And that really selfish capability where only you can knock your wife up when she asks.”
“You know me, I love a hands-on task.” Rio’s giddy smile tangles its curved roots in Agatha’s hippocampus. “I also like how you pretend not to listen when I explain my existence to you.”
Just for the pure, selfish intent of seeing her equally adorable pout, Agatha adds, “I always listen to you. Except when it’s boring, which is most of the time.”
“Remind me again why I brought you here?” She picks up a bottle of white, hardly having the chance to examine it before Agatha snatches it back, nose wrinkled in disgust.
(Agatha prefers reds. The color of danger, lust, and Rio’s flesh after she gets her teeth into it.)
“Over my dead body were you going to come meet two of the most powerful witches on earth by yourself. Are you crazy? They’d take one look and have you drinking the kool-aid by breakfast. Uh-uh, not on my watch. I’m your one and only cult leader, baby.”
“They run a coven, just like ours.” Rio tries to ignore Agatha's tight press around her wrist, but this stupid mortal form of hers reacts to the touch as a sinner would a brush from God. (Stupidly and foolishly, since there is no saving from this immoral act of transgression.) “And you know how I feel about the dead jokes.”
“I bet they wear those stupid pointy hats and robes to cast spells. It’s a cult.”
“The girls at their academy wear uniforms, Agatha. I’m sure Misty and her girlfriend wear normal clothes, like normal adults.”
“Oh, it’s her girlfriend now?” How unfortunate for Rio, to still be standing in an aisle full of heavy objects within arm's reach. “Now I have to worry they’ll try and recruit you as a third.”
“You are the sole person I know who can make themselves jealous simply with their own made up scenarios.”
“Trust that I dream of being the only person you’re allowed to know.”
“And so it shall be someday. Pick a bottle, please, so we can get out of here.”
Agatha reaches out blindly towards the selection of reds, grabbing the closest one off the shelf. “I bet if you buy me a beignet now I can make myself all messy for you to lick clean before dinner.”
Always so sultry and hard to resist, Agatha is highly aware of what she does to Rio’s questionably fucked up psyche.
Rio takes it from her and places it in the shopping basket she’d been designated (ie: forced) to carry. She sighs. “I sent the itinerary, you know we don’t have time for that.”
The response is objectively very scandalized, rounded out with a perfectly aggravated huff. “You mean that dumb spreadsheet in which you scheduled time to eat me out?”
Rio’s eyes screw shut in preparation for the headache she’s about to receive in the form of her fire breathing, walking disaster artist. “Correct. I’m glad you’re done pretending you didn’t read it.”
“Just say you think I’m hideous and don’t want my pussy any time of day, it’ll hurt less.”
“Baby,” Rio links their pinkies together. Agatha pretends to study a wine label, acting like she doesn’t curl around it like a seahorse’s tail. “I’m really excited about meeting Misty. I’ll be on my knees for you the second we’re back in the hotel if you promise to be nice to them.”
“I’m always ni-”
Rio flattens her face. “Don’t.”
“Fine.” Those pretty blues are positively brimming with destruction designed specifically for Rio’s unprotected walls. “But we’re not staying longer than ten minutes.”
“An hour.”
“Thirty, and I’ll even make an effort to compliment their home.”
A surrender that Rio would be dumb to pass up. She nabs it like a bandit on the run. “Always a pleasure doing business with you, hot stuff.”
Agatha sticks her tongue out when Rio leans in to seal the deal, but indulges the kiss at the last second. They buy the wine, nix the idea of bringing flowers, and subsequently succumb to the flow of boisterous streets, hand in hand.
(Rio does allow for a quick addendum to get beignets. Powdered sugar gets everywhere. Much like her tongue on Agatha in the cramped bathroom stall, with a line of people waiting outside.)
+
In front of Miss Robichaux’s Academy, located on a quaint side street in the Garden District of New Orleans, Agatha stands on the sidewalk, cranes her neck up, and complains to absolutely no one in particular.
“I didn’t know we’d be having lunch with the fucking royal family or I would have put on my Sunday best and practiced a curtsy.”
“What? I think you look beautiful today.” Busy studying an interesting weed sprouting from the cracked pavement, Rio looks up at the house, confused. “Oh. It's huge.”
“Stealing my lines now, are we?”
Rio’s stomach clenches something fierce. “Yes, I know how you like your things big.”
Agatha leisurely sidesteps the gate being held open for her, turning halfway through to torture Rio even more. “We’ll also be discussing later why you seem to think I only look beautiful today.”
And there’s nothing really to say back to that except a comically pathetic, “Okay, sweetheart.”
Cordelia Goode opens the doors to her school, walks out onto the threshold, and smiles broadly as the two of them meander up the stone lined pathway to the front door. “Welcome to New Orleans. I’m Cordelia.”
A perfectly pleasant introduction that causes Rio to slam into Agatha’s back as she stops mid-stride.
Quickly and quietly, she clarifies, “I might like this place,” before turning back to greet, “Sorry we’re late. Got a little too excited at the beignet place and Rio had to help get me cleaned up.”
“Agatha.” Those chipmunk cheeks flare such a cute shade of pink. “Hi, sorry, I’m Rio.”
Cordelia’s handshake is firm, her skin arguably a hundred times softer. Rio holds it for a beat too long, dumbfounded in the electrifying flow of power that prickles the hairs at the base of her skull.
“Oh, it’s fine, Misty’s never on time. She’s probably still out back, tinkering with some project.”
Another beautiful blonde with a wild mane multiplies out of thin air, munching on an apple, making it look more delectable than it has any right to be.
The juice drips down her knuckles as she unabashedly sucks it right up with eager lips, pulling a long buried, nostalgic daydream to the surface. Agatha perfectly envisions Rio many, many moons ago, less refined in her craft and more shameless in her exploration of desires. Something heady pangs, hard and heavy.
“S’funny, cause she’s actually right here, listenin’ to you lie like a filthy preacher to these nice guests of ours.”
“Speak of the devil.” When Cordelia smiles again; differently, something so obviously saved for this woman only, Rio instinctively grabs Agatha’s hand in solidarity.
Look, she says silently, it’s us.
Agatha squeezes back, I see it.
“This is my better half, Misty.”
“And this is my worse half, Agatha.”
Misty gleams, chalked up with such delight at the candid introduction. Cordelia looks slightly perturbed about the two snakes in the grass she’s inviting into her home. She takes the proffered gift of wine anyway, allowing them inside.
Inside, where Agatha has to manually reel in her astonishment at the lavish foyer laid out before them. She does mutter a rather gratuitous holy shit, which rightfully earns her a pinch to the elbow from Rio.
If Cordelia is flustered by the outburst, she plays it off beautifully. “Oh, I know it looks large,” she waves dismissively. “It’s mostly rooms for our girls at the school. Misty and I spend a lot of time at her shack.”
Agatha can sense Rio internally perk up before her limbs catch on. “A shack? We used to have a cottage. Agatha made me build it when running water became available.”
Said subject interjects, “Yeah, and I would make you do it again.”
Cordelia manages to politely cover what could only be a snicker of total solidarity with a light cough.
“Oh, this one refused to step foot in mine until I made it all fancy for her.” Misty’s reflexive eye roll and tenacious movement reminds Agatha so much of Rio it nearly keels her over. “But ain’t it awful nice, lettin’ your mind relax in nature like that?
“Sometimes I think that’s where I was meant to exist. Not as myself - just a little creature in a big world.”
“Yeah,” Misty nods seriously, eyes bright and wide. “We’re gonna get along real good.”
Agatha watches curiously as Rio stuffs her palms into pockets, honest to God blushing over this. “I think so, too.”
“You want the grand tour?” Misty’s rings clack with an audible clang as she claps. “Oh, you gotta come see our greenhouse first. Now that is my pride and joy. Besides Delia, ‘course.”
And if Rio bounced any higher on her tiptoes as she followed closely behind on Misty’s heels, Agatha would think there’s ground to be razed here. A small, hardly used portion of her brain allows this to happen without an immediate flare of raging jealousy, mostly because it’s kind of cute seeing Rio this excited.
(Like she’s just made a new friend on the playground who will eat dirt and scare off the other children with her. Agatha can remain the recess yard bully, who secretly wants to be a part of this exclusive club.)
Cordelia shoots Agatha a raised brow and shrugs, like, what can you do?
“I love this red you picked. Shall we?” She asks, motioning towards the kitchen. “I hate getting my shoes muddy.”
“Lead the way,” Agatha agrees, because she might actually be starting to enjoy Louisiana.
+
“So what’s it like, being the Supreme?”
Admittedly envious to some degree, Agatha gulps down half of the glass that’d been aerated and doesn’t bother wiping her mouth when finished. She also doesn’t bother hiding the invasive cadence of the question, either.
“Mind-numbingly boring,” Cordelia responds quite frankly.
“Boring?” Agatha lets the word roll off her tongue with disingenuous snort. “All that power, and you think it’s -” she trails off with a loose head shake. The world would be a very, very different place if she harnessed even half of what Cordelia holds, that much she knows for certain.
Unperturbed, Cordelia pours them both more. “No, the power is the fun part. I say boring because I’m forced to deal with men who think they know more about witchcraft than a woman does.”
“I ask Rio to speed up the process of eradicating them all the time.”
“Can she do that?”
“No,” Agatha admits. “But she’d try for me.”
“Misty once used her plants to poison a local government candidate who tried to gather a crowd with pitchforks to protest outside our gates.”
“Did he die?”
“No,” Cordelia echoes. “Unfortunate, isn’t it? She’s good, but she has a soft heart first and foremost.”
“Rio won’t even kill a spider for me.” Agatha feels something swell with aching affection. Her own heart, maybe, or a limb that still sometimes feels extra and unnecessary. “Guess we got ourselves a couple of saps, huh? Beats me how I fell for it.”
“I spent a long time without Misty, so I’ve decided to happily accept a few quirks in the meantime. Even if I do wake up suffocated by her hair wrapped around my throat daily.”
(Agatha typically wakes up with something of Rio’s wrapped around her throat, too. Less life threatening, more titillating.)
“I also spent a lot of years without Rio,” she finds herself disclosing. That terrible, terrible stain of rust in their otherwise sordid history. “Kinda felt like eternity, didn’t it?”
For a brief moment, Cordelia is lost in a graveyard of daydreams she’s so obviously fought to claw her way out of before. “Longer,” she agrees.
Rio had been wrong, asking if they’ve stumbled across these familiar paths before. They’re already here, somehow, in a parallel life. It’s those nasty tannins again, that whisper to Agatha, their approach tentative and kind. Today, they say, has granted her the perfect opportunity to make a friend.
(How to go about that - Agatha isn’t quite sure. Are there rules to this?)
“So listen,” she lowers her voice conspiratorially. “Rio’s been acting funny lately. I think her and Misty are planning something. Personally, I think they’re already making out in the greenhouse.”
Cordelia can tell by her smirk it’s meant to be a cheap shot that has no real force behind it. Her flawless features crinkle in amusement. “They met on a forum about plants, what did we expect? Misty's biggest wet dream is to get laid out there. I refuse to be around that much dirt.”
“Freaks of a feather,” is Agatha’s cheeky reply. “Or birds, I mean.”
“Something tells me you and I are not that far off from flocking together.”
“Which forum would we have met on? Hot bitches with mommy issues? Those romantically entangled with the neighborhood’s resident nutcase?”
“Definitely the latter. But we’ll need to circle back on how you knew about my well hidden mommy issues, first.”
Agatha shrugs, picking at the charcuterie board Cordelia had placed between them. “Takes a bastard child to know one,” she sing-songs.
Cordelia throws her head back in unrefined laughter, launching into a story about the time her mother found her making out with a girl in the garden decades ago. A story not quite unlike the dozens Agatha has, too.
Always a first time natural - Agatha is starting off strong at this friendship thing.
+
“You think they’re onto us?”
“Nah, Delia never goes through my email. Last week, I pretended not to know what goggle was just so I could sit in her lap n’ let her show me.”
“Google, you mean?”
“Ain’t that what I said?”
Rio’s chest puffs with a delicate sound of amusement. “Agatha had to teach me how to use it too, but she said I’m only allowed to use it to search for pictures of baby animals. If I see another woman I have to close the tab.”
“Ah, the jealous type?”
Rio scratches her neck. “More like the inventor of the idea.”
“I kinda like seein’ Cordelia get herself in a tizzy when someone tries to chat me up, I’ll have to thank her for that later.”
“Please don’t, the size of her ego scares me enough.”
“Yeah, but she’s crazy hot. Can’t say I blame her.”
“Put a little more emphasis on the crazy.”
“How’d y’all meet again?”
“Oh.” Rio drums her knuckles across the metal table in an uncanny bout of timidness. “There were these dead guys, you know, and she was there, um -“
“She killed ‘em?”
“Yeah, well, she - yes. She did. For me, I think. Or my attention, I guess.”
“Now ain’t that the most romantic thing I ever heard.” With a palm clasped to her heart, Misty regards her with fervent interest, enamored by what many would consider a storybook fantasy bred from evil.
Not many have portrayed such unusual ease amid ghastly topics - Rio is enthralled at the idea of not only being seen, but also understood. “Most are apprehensive at the mere thought of my being. I wonder why you’re not?”
“Your different forms and I have crossed paths many, many times. Death don’t scare me one bit, I can swear that.”
With the strange urge to apologize cresting at the tip of her tongue, Rio shifts back and forth on both feet. “I really wish I could change that inevitable for some of you.”
“You mean for Agatha?”
She doesn’t skip a beat. “I worry sometimes that it makes me selfish. I don’t even really know what that feeling is, though. All I know is how to exist for her.”
“If Cordelia didn’t have radiant health I would have lost my damn mind ages ago, that’s for sure. We’ll be happy with the time we get together, and we’ll be happy to see each other someday in whatever world comes next. That bond you and I are familiar with will never truly die, don’t you think?”
And Rio can picture the sweet sorrow so clearly - a universally contracted parting of two intertwined souls, the shared love stretching thinly across timelines but never breaking, and finally, the rejoining of said souls in a place not far from where they are now.
“Yes, you’re right. But I'm also positive Agatha fully plans on haunting me again if I don’t follow her into the next life. She hated being a ghost, so I know she’s serious.”
“Again?”
“Long story.”
“No offense, but that right there is an apparition I wouldn’t mind bein’ haunted by.”
“None taken. At least when she was dead I couldn’t feel the stuff she continually tried throwing at my head.”
“You’re real funny, Rio,” Misty is genuinely perplexed on the legitimacy of this, but snorts nonetheless. “You wanna see my mud now?”
The star of the show. She pulls out a suspiciously dark jar filled to the brim, dropping it casually in front of Rio, whose eyes light up in amazement.
“You know the drill. Stop the bleedin’ first, apply sparingly, don’t let it get wet. If the wound is takin’ too long to heal, just slap some mugwort on there and hope for the best.”
“Got it,” Rio nods very seriously, like she’s prepping for the exam of her life.
“Last rule is to come back when you need more. That’s partly selfish on my behalf, only ‘cause I don’t have a lot of friends ‘round here.”
“I don’t have a lot of them, either. Agatha’s my best friend, I guess, but she’s more -“
“She knows what all your gory insides look like?”
“Yeah. Yes, exactly. There’s not a single part of me she doesn’t understand.”
“Well, I saw enough of you to like what I see, so consider us pals for life.”
“I’m really glad we met, Misty.”
Misty’s smile is nothing but real and true. “Me too, Rio. You got that spell for me?”
+
Excited voices carry across the lawn, announcing Misty and Rio’s arrival well before the back door swings open and dirt flies out in clumps across the floor.
“Is dinner ready yet? I’m gonna die if you don’t feed me soon.” Misty wraps her arms around Cordelia from behind, pressing a fat, wet kiss to her temple. “And greetings to you, darling of mine.”
Agatha has the good sense to glance away from this intimate declaration of love, coming face to face with her personal heroine of tenderness.
“Hi. Did you miss me?”
Was the earth tilted on its axis 4.5 billion years ago by an object the size of Mars? Was the Mesozoic era terminated on a bright, boreal spring morning by a cataclysmic asteroid? Did Rio weep, then, for the extinction she would soon face someday because of that unknown figure haunting her every step?
Simply, “Yes.”
“Good,” Rio’s fondness leaks out of her in spurts like a pulsing, bleeding heart. “Because I really missed you.”
“Can’t you wait until after dinner to get sappy and gross on me? You know how it ruins my appetite.”
“Food?” Misty nudges an elbow into Cordelia’s ribcage yet again.
“Everything’s ready. We’ve been waiting on you two.”
“Jeez, can’t a gal entertain some company for a hot sec?”
“I could hear your stomach growling from all the way outside, sweetheart.”
-
Halfway through a divine bowl of split pea soup grown right outside in the garden, Rio feels Agatha tweak the muscle at her femur bone. It’s followed by a carefully curious, “What’s in the bag?”
“Patience is a virtue you have yet to master.” Rio shifts in her seat uncomfortably, avoiding the stare driving a hole right through her skull. “It’s a surprise. You can wait until after dessert.”
Agatha’s warning signal grows louder. Rio loves it when she works herself up, typically because she falls so poetically beautiful. “Remember what happened the last time you tried to surprise me?”
“My memory’s fuzzy. Which came first, the Titanic, or the Hindenburg?”
“Rio.” There’s a rough and sexy edge to the moniker. It’s delightful.
“Yes, dear?”
“Tell me what’s in the bag before I ask our nice new friends to leave so I can beat it out of you.”
Bless Rio’s heart. Misty and Cordelia watch this back and forth as one would a game of tennis played with razor sharp precision.
“It’s mud,” she blurts.
Agatha retracts in shock as if Rio has just slapped her. Which, on any other given day, she would have probably leaned in and asked her to do it again. “You two were out there giggling like schoolgirls over mud?”
“This is special stuff.” Rio looks to Misty for help, who is busy looking at Agatha; who is busy looking at Cordelia.
“It is special,” Cordelia kindly cuts in. “The healing properties are remarkable. It can bring you back from near death, pardon my euphemism. What use do you need it for?”
“Yes, Rio, enlighten us all, please.” Agatha’s tone is dripped with annoyance at being on the outside of some joke everyone else is laughing at.
“Well, she’s right,” Rio starts, “The healing properties are life-saving. Misty is letting me have some to give you, in exchange fo-”
Agatha’s paroxysm clangs louder than her fork on the porcelain fine china. “What do you mean, for me? What am I going to do with it?”
Those who run feral often get caught in carefully laid traps. Rio loves it when Agatha bleeds, but never at the hand of others.
“Sometimes I’m too far away,” is the only explanation offered.
“You don’t trust me not to hurt myself?”
“I trust you with my full being. I don’t trust anyone else.”
“Ow, cute. Where’s my heart when I need it?”
Rio cocks her head. “I ate it, remember?” Her teeth snap on a mimicked bite.
“Like it was yesterday.” The twinkling chandelier swaying above reflects back in Agatha’s eyes as she narrows them in perplexion. “You were saying it was in exchange for something?”
It’s silent for a moment. Rio opens and closes her mouth, the words refusing to crest and form. Agatha holds her gaze questioningly, not pressuring.
“Rio and Agatha had a son, a while back,” Misty says quietly, turning toward Cordelia. “His name was Nicholas, and he was all theirs.”
Cordelia knits her brows together in abject confusion; still a complete vision of angelism. “I don’t understand what you mean by that.”
Rio’s palm flies to Agatha’s knee, holding it there as if to say, please don’t be upset.
Still stuck on the hapless expression painted across that perfectly crafted face, Agatha simply covers the hand with her own and remains silent.
“There’s a spell - an incantation. Rio is the only one who knew how to make it work.”
“How is that possible?” Cordelia sounds strained, like the dots are finally connecting, falling into place. “I’ve spent years -”
“Pure magic,” Misty beams like a golden ray of sun, holding up a handwritten spell encased entirely in Rio’s essence. “For a lil’ mud we got plenty of at my swamp.”
It’s only right to confirm - “And it doesn’t require the typical components?"
Effectively cutting through the tension ossifying Rio’s bones, Agatha beats her to the punch with a sharp cackle. “Never. Rio got very lucky in that department.”
Rio glances at her; part ferocious adoration, part mellow equanimity. With a toothy grin, she spurs her on. “Don’t be shy, tell them who he looked like.”
Agatha rolls her eyes but still knocks her forehead gently against Rio’s cranium. “Just like his daddy. Didn’t even bother trying to pretend I spent nine awful months making him.”
“I don’t understand,” Cordelia repeats. “This works? And you’re letting me have this?”
“Figured we’ll save it for a rainy day. Feel free to ask for a demonstration, though,” Misty's excitement is infectious and equally charming. “Rio walked me through it.”
Cordelia can’t find it in her to form a reply; too busy reaching for Misty, cupping both cheeks, kissing her.
“Did you?” Agatha crawls a hand up Rio’s thigh; gripping, releasing, and repeating. “Did you mention size really matters?”
“I think that’s something only you care about,” Rio whispers back. “It can be done with much smaller components.”
Mild disgust flickers over those flawless features at the thought. Rio kisses it away, replacing it with something much dreamier.
+
Dessert, drinks, laughter flow well into the evening. By the time Misty is hugging Rio goodbye in their nice foyer, chattering in a language only the two of them will understand, Agatha finds herself being swept into a similar embrace.
Cordelia murmurs, “I understand there’s a story there that might have brought up some painful memories, but I’d like to thank you for sharing this gift with me, anyway.”
With softness where there would normally be apprehension, Agatha conquers another significant hurdle in an effort to be kind. “Ah, that’s what friends are for, right?”
“Promise you’ll come back?”
Agatha actually means it when she says, “Promise.”
-
It’s a little past midnight. The streets are lively and shiny with the reminder of earlier rain. Arm in arm, Agatha doesn’t allow them to part as they skirt around puddles and Rio does the necessary job of pulling her in whenever drunken people come dangerously close to bumping them.
When they step into the hotel room; separating themselves as demons from angels, another small part of Rio’s soul is set aflame and reaped by hungry beasts of desire.
With the force Agatha shamelessly uses to get her up against the wall, she can already tell they’ll be politely banned from this arguably very high end hotel chain. Wouldn’t be the first, certainly not the last. Warm lips suction to her neck, sucking and biting and leaving phenomenal little marks.
“Agatha,” she shucks in a wounded whine, feeling arousal lick fire up the walls of her cunt and her heart. “Baby, are you mad? I know I should have mentioned my plan before.”
“Could you save the apologetic spiel for after? I can hear the pulse in your veins. You’re throbbing.”
(So, no, she’s not mad.)
Rio shoves a knee between Agatha’s thighs, a consequence Agatha stupidly hadn’t considered prior. “Seems like I’m not the only one. Now what?”
“You made me wait hours. I would have gotten off for you in one of their twenty plus bathrooms, thirty seconds tops.”
“There’s only four. I needed privacy for the sounds you’re going to make for me. They’re mine. My noises.”
“Oh, I’m yours, now?” Agatha flicks Rio’s nipple, bracketing her trembling form to feel the full body shake that follows. “I thought I was losing you to that little friend you made.”
“You and Cordelia were getting awful chummy over that wine,” Rio challenges. It works perfectly - Agatha’s expression turns into something voracious. She shivers again, this time on the thought of being eaten alive, swallowed whole by a python on the forest floor.
“Is that jealousy I’m sensing? Use your big girl words. You think she’s hot?”
Rio tosses her head back and forth under duress as Agatha continues an aggravated assault, introducing sharp teeth with no warning. “Nice try. Last time I fell for that you tried slitting my throat.”
“But we had fun cleaning that up, didn’t we?”
“Off, off,” she gasps in response, tugging at the bottom of her shirt.
Agatha grabs a fistful of it but stalls in contempt, flipping between some awful ideas only this wretched mind of hers could conjure up. “I want to hear you say it first. Did you think about fucking her like you fuck me?”
And with what brain cells is Rio supposed to answer that? Blood rushes to her head, drowning out every last thought. “Agatha,” she pleads hopelessly, “Fuck, please just touch me.”
“Because you know what, Rio?” Agatha nudges Rio’s eyes open with a light squeeze to the neck. She obeys, eyes blacked out in pure lust. “Are you listening honey?” She presses hard enough that the squeaky yes is followed by a cut off moan.
“Because every time Misty opened her mouth I wanted to shove my fingers inside just to hear what kind of noises she’d make.”
“Cordelia reminded me so much of you,” Rio openly sobs in pleasure as Agatha dutifully puts more bark in her bite. “All that strength in just her handshake, I’ve never felt something like it before.”
“Yeah? You don’t think I’m strong?”
Rio’s shirt is up and off, now. Shadows conceal past bruises scattered across her chest. Agatha wants it to glisten with blood. She wants to peer inside at the viscera that may or may not be there.
(She saves the latter for nicer rooms, too busy creating a weeping puddle of desire to ever think of pausing to find the nearest sharp object.)
“Answer me.” Goosebumps instantaneously crop up the second she releases Rio to the cool air. A dribble of spit connects her bottom lip to the swell of her breast, not unlike the red string of fate tangled between their hearts.
“You are,” Rio babbles, thoroughly flummoxed by the conversation at hand. “You are strong. I just think she’d be softer with it. Refined.”
“Aw, baby wants it soft?” Agatha slowly drives her hips forward, finding the action to cause such a delightful reaction. “Why didn’t you say so?”
She smiles something crazed. Dangerous. Up close, Rio smells of soil and earth, of the moon and acid rain.
“No. Baby likes how you touch her.”
“Yeah? How is that?”
The serpent in the Bible was a reference to Agatha, Rio understands. But never, in a million years, could any variation of that text accurately depict the beast coiled in front of her, ready to strike.
Or maybe this is another of Eve’s terrible retributions come to fruition - remembering her short bout of sin in the Garden of Eden, she’s back for more with a vengeance.
“I come harder when you fuck me like you want to hurt me.”
A thin wrist slides right under the waistband to cup at Rio; checking something, harsh and cruel in its quickness to retract. “I want to break you. There’s a difference.”
“You’re going to, someday.”
“Promise?”
“It’s been sealed in your blood and mine.”
The air is pleasantly sucked from Agatha’s lungs, though she fights courageously to remain stoic. “Yet here you are, conniving behind my back to try and keep me alive.”
“For as long as possible,” Rio drawls, the words wrapped in dueling regret and predeliction. “Is that so wrong of me?”
“I would think so. Can you turn around?”
Agatha takes a single step back. Rio misses the contact immediately, but turns. Her body is merely a vessel contracted to serve this deity - over and over until the galaxy turns to cosmic stardust.
“Your hands on the wall, please.”
Agatha rubs circles at her hip bone; meant to be soothing, doing nothing except increasing dizziness. Rio tries to grab her wrist and drag it to a better place, but it’s smacked away with sharp reprimand.
“Put your hand back in my pants.”
“I told you to put yours on the fucking wall.”
Both palms splay flat against the expensive lacquered wallpaper. Thunder rolls above; a warning, perhaps, that will go completely unnoticed. Rio bucks back against the soft pouch of Agatha’s low belly - cause for more penalization if not for her mercifully choosing this moment to find out how wet she is.
The brief brush of contact errs too far on the side of gentle, when everything inside is screaming for tenacity.
“I wish we were at home.”
Resting her chin on Rio’s shoulder and batting those pretty, pretty lashes, Agatha nips at an earlobe. “Yeah? Why’s that, sweetheart?”
Back in action, two fingers swirl lazily over her clit before horrifically choosing to rest there. “Because I could be eight inches deep in you right now, making sure you regret this.”
Rio could knock the grin off her face when she asks, “Whatever do you mean by this?”
“A thousand whorehouses could tease me less than you.”
Agatha hums, a harmonic sound that pairs beautifully with the rain pounding the window, begging for this madness to end. “And you’re only going to give me eight inches for it? I hear Cordelia knows how to teleport, baby boy. Why don’t you go ask for another favor?”
Red faced and ruined, Rio shifts her legs open when Agatha finds trouble perfecting the angle to dip inside. “They’re probably busy.”
Finally curling into the warm heat, Agatha chuckles ruthlessly at the crazed whine it elicits. She thrusts once, twice, then stills. “Busy doing what?”
“You know what,” Rio responds accusatorily. “They’re, ah, come on. They’re probably practicing the right position. How many times did it take us?”
“I bet they’re having tons of fun trying. Aren’t you having fun, Rio?”
“Not yet. Add another finger, and we’ll see.”
And truly, the wail that follows couldn’t be considered anything but a masterful piece of art. Three eager fingertips press hard against the slick, swollen flesh, seeking something dangerous that can only be found in such dark, dark spaces. Just as quickly as they come, Rio is horrified to feel them go.
“Get on the bed. Same position.”
That plush California King, miles away from Rio’s weakened legs. Just for the inconvenience, she doesn't wait for Agatha to tell her to take pants off. When she bends over and slides soaked panties down, too, it’s enough gratification for both parties.
Flat on her stomach with arms in cactus position, Rio waits for the ceiling to come crashing down, for the gods to rush in demanding such immoral acts be ceased.
“Do you really love me that much, Rio?”
The bed dips. Hair brushes against her lumbar spine as Agatha situates herself.
“Before I knew thy face or thy name, I knew of your voice and shapeless form. My heart thought of you first before it ever began to beat.” Each finger slides back in one by one, to the knuckle. Rio bites back a wail. “Does that answer your question?”
“Implicitly.”
Agatha begins to fuck her like it’s been years since last, teeth grit in docile determination; a woman left alone to run with the wolves. One hand spreads her ass cheek open, the other works furiously between clenched thighs.
Rio’s control cracks, one large hit producing a thousand other pieces to fall apart. “You’re mine. Until each hill turns flat and every drop of sea is sucked dry.”
Agatha merely doubles the brutal pace, burying herself to the hilt. She pushes in, every stroke deep and deliberate. Rio can hardly think, breathe, or explain why something this wretched feels so goddamn holy.
(When she begins purring those horrid sweet nothings in between rough thrusts, Rio imagines going back in time to stop the original immaculate conception from ever happening. What use does she have, upholding this earthly balance of good and evil when she’ll continuously choose evil every time?)
“You are out of control, Rio. Going against nature like this. Selfishly trying to keep me here with you forever.” Speaking like she can fully hear those disparaging thoughts, it’s a substantial statement that flows like casual conversation over the morning newspaper and coffee.
Though a thumb starts sending electric shivers down her spine, Rio makes a large effort to reply - “You prefer belonging to me. I am nothing without you. I’ve concluded it must be my sole duty to keep you alive.”
“It’s not a preference if you made me this way,” Agatha pants, “You fucking sadist.”
Limbs thrash. Rio’s clit throbs. Her insides feel shallow and broken. Maybe it’s just Rio, herself, who is the broken thing. Who else could make her whole again, but Agatha?
“Pillow,” she gasps, raw and hollow. Words are no longer making sense. “Need a pillow.”
“You’d rather grind against it while I watch? Great idea, why didn’t I think of that?”
Silly Rio. All she’d wanted was a better angle to feel Agatha as deep inside her cunt as she is in the depths of her stunted heart.
It feels like a truck has careened into her sideways when Agatha slips out and dangles her wrist in front of Rio’s face. “You got my fucking arm all wet. Is this what I do to you?”
“The worst thing this universe can think of producing couldn’t depict what you do to me.”
“How romantic.” She shoves a pillow between the bed and Rio’s thighs - not before sneering, “Say thank you, princess.”
“I bow at your feet, as one would a queen.”
Agatha props herself up on an elbow to tuck a lock of hair behind Rio’s adorable ear. A lion and her little baby lamb, lying side by side. An innocent sort of cooing noise follows when Rio grunts in frustration, finding the pressure to be right but not perfect.
“Did you need something?”
How aggravating, that relief will only prevail after a torturous, extended period. Such is life. She might as well make the build up to the guiding white lights worth it.
“Nope. I’m going to make myself come like this. Watching you, watch me.”
A diabolically placed smack leaves behind an imprint that will blossom into an impressionable welt. Rio wants her to leave them everywhere.
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will. I’m close.”
“No, you’re not.”
Because, right, she can tell Rio is still a couple of well timed slaps away from coming. Having effectively ruined the pillowcase already, Rio decides to really amp up the show. On wobbly knees, she spreads herself even wider, incessantly hitting the spot that feels just like the hot lick of Agatha’s mouth if she lies to herself extra hard.
Agatha cups her chin with enough bruising force to pucker those lips into a pout. “Tell me what you’re thinking about, you needy slut.”
“You,” Rio moans as the pace becomes sloppier, frantic. “Only ever you.”
“Care to be more specific?” Agatha watches her scramble to find the correct syllables floating in the current mess made of her mind; a beautiful consequence for this tangible disaster they’ve made of each other.
“I’m thinking about letting the taste of your pussy linger on my lips for hours. And the way you take all of me so, so good. Fuck, you never complain it’s too much.”
“It’s never enough,” Agatha chastises.
Sharp nails leave thin red ribbons of lust down her back. The friction of sheets on her chest and the pleasant tremors crashing like waves are all coming together in beautiful harmony. “Spank me again.”
“I wish I had our riding crop, baby. I love it when you get all mushy and soft. You let me hit you harder.”
“Just use your hand,” Rio trails off in a shuddering gasp as Agatha’s light tapping across her tailbone is rounded out with an unexpected strike at the top of her left thigh. She rocks pitifully, chasing an elusive pattern that will not be given her, no matter how hard she begs for it.
“You’re really going to come thinking of me, when I’m right here just waiting to be used?"
“No, no,” Rio’s flushed cheek is squished into the mattress, slurring her words. “Please, I want your fingers too.”
“Fingers? Or mouth?”
A dam breaks. Warm, sticky, and wet. “Everything,” she sobs.
The pillow flies across the room. Rio would collapse against the bed if not for Agatha replacing it quickly with her face. When a warm tongue parts her open and gently, gently flicks over her clit, she screams and sees the stars she was born from so many million years ago.
Agatha eats her out blasphemously, like she was excommunicated from the black hole that hovers above their heads and sent down to spread filthy prophecies for her one loyal and eager follower. There’s certainly scripture to be studied in the way it makes Rio sing praises.
“I love nothing but you,” she whispers, tears leaving wet spots on the sheets not unlike what’s happening below the belt. “How could I ever want this to end?”
A reassuring fist reaches up; to which Rio grabs, anchoring herself to this bed. She squeezes it encouragingly, indicating that she can handle more - she can handle whatever Agatha throws her way, whatever bone is tossed from owner to pitiful pup.
So Agatha puts her entire face in Rio’s dripping pussy, the same way she typically stores for special occasions. Rio refuses to turn and look, afraid the slickness covering those facial features will send her into an overdrive she’ll never return from. She grips the sheets and holds on for dear life, instead.
Rio comes like that, riding Agatha’s face and fingers; relinquishing two orgasms into her mouth and a third on the bridge of her nose. Agatha dutifully laps at her through it all. A small aftershock rumbles in the distance, the beginnings of another, but the ringing in her ear says it’s too far off to reach. She has to physically squish Agatha’s cheeks and remove the death grip those lips have suctioned over her clit.
Agatha moves like a bolt of lightning. She shoves Rio flat, holds her down while shucking uncomfortably damp pants off, and grinds wetly against the sore swell of her ass until she comes. Rio talks her through it. Soft, quick, and easy.
After, she cleans up her mess, carefully paying more attention to the places that make Rio jerk and sigh and say please, please, please without even really knowing what she’s begging for.
Falling forward in exhaustion, she sinks canines into Rio’s shoulder. One of them shatters. The other is right there to put the misshaped pieces back together. “If that wasn’t clear, I love you, more.”
“Impossible. It's me who loves you beyond the scope of belief.”
“I don’t think that word applies to us, sweetheart.”
“C’mere,” Rio reaches for her with a grunt of effort, using the momentum to roll Agatha underneath her. She presses her pelvis down. Agatha meets it halfway. “Now you’re gonna rub our pussies together and make an even bigger mess for me to lick clean this time. Can’t let you have all the fun. Sound good?”
More than good, but - “I have to do all the work?”
“I can be easily persuaded to put some effort in if you take your top off.”
With audible disgust, Agatha tosses her shirt to meet its long lost pillow friend on the floor. “I’m married to someone with the hormone levels of a teenager.”
”Was that a complaint in there?”
“Shut up and spread your legs, Rio.”
-
In the spacious hotel bathtub, somewhere after four, or maybe five am, Rio’s body pressed flush to her front is the only thing keeping Agatha upright. The water turned cold hours ago. Neither of them have moved.
“You’d let me do anything, wouldn’t you?”
Agatha tweaks at her nipple. Rio keens. She watches a ripple pan out before the surface returns to stillness, like it hadn’t even happened. How substantial - to exist, and then not.
“Within reason.”
“Nothing I want is reasonable.” She slips down to find Rio to be exceedingly wet; still, again, doesn’t matter.
“Love isn’t meant to be reasonable.”
“And what would you know about that?”
“I know that as long as you exist, so shall love on earth. We’re really doing everyone a favor.”
That’s all, in the grand scheme of things. They’ll talk about it in the morning. Or maybe they won’t. Agatha will sleep in, Rio will bring her tea, and the cycle will continue over and over, until one of them gets tired.
Although - Rio has no need for rest. Agatha has never been known to partake in such an act, either. There is so much to see in this world, after all. She has been given the ability to explore it however long she wants.
“Rio?”
“Whatever you dream of, I’ll make it happen.”
“I don’t need anything, I just wanted to say thank you for tonight.”
Rio reaches up behind her, facetiously checking her temperature with the back of her cool hand. “Yeah, you were definitely replaced with a clone when you died and came back. My Agatha would never say such a thing.”
“Your Agatha is going to try very, very hard to drown you in this tub for even suggesting you hadn’t noticed.”
Typical Agatha, giving Rio something soft before following it up with razor sharpness just to keep her on her toes.
Typical Rio, falling for it every time.
Forever - until humanity is long gone and all that’s left are two lovers walking the scorched earth, enjoying the ruin.