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After Rio commits the mortifyingly embarrassing act of saving Agatha Harkness’ life, she cleans her off. She magics some water from a nearby stream to cascade over her, to wash all that swampy shit off of her, to even clean her clothes. Then, to save Agatha from looking like a sad wet rat, Rio conjures a warm breeze to dry her and her clothes.
Through all of it, Agatha just sits on an outcropping of rock, shaking. It’s not from the water, Rio knows. It’s from everything. From mommie dearest, from that freaky kid, from Alice’s lifeless body.
Rio knows it’s bad, knows that it’s bad bad, because Agatha is shaking and weak and vulnerable in front of Rio of all people. It’s unsettling to say the least.
“Hey,” Rio says, sitting next to Agatha on the rock. She moves some hair back from Agatha’s face, searches for words of comfort. “At least your mom’s still dead.”
A huff of air leaves Agatha’s mouth. Almost a laugh. It’s a start.
Rio pushes a little further. “You better be careful, being all sad like this. Some people in this wood are desperate to take advantage of you.”
She knocks her knee against Agatha’s thigh. Agatha looks up at her, eyes guarded and anguished. Still, she manages to roll them.
“Oh, I’m sure seeing me bested by my cunt of a mother and then almost killed just turned you right on.”
“You know me,” Rio says cheerfully. “I’m just an animal.” She winks for good measure.
“You sick freak,” Agatha says, a hint of warmth in her tone.
“Guilty,” Rio says. Her hand finds her way back to Agatha’s hair, damp and tangled and gorgeous. She tucks some of it behind her ear. “Hey, remember the Salem woods? 1690s?”
Agatha snorts. “Are you still on this?”
“Always.” Rio strokes her hand over Agatha’s cheek. “I know you remember our first time.”
Rio remembers it. Cherishes it. Agatha was so young then, full of power and beauty and hunger. Rio had been mad for her. Still is. The first time Rio felt Agatha’s hands, frantic and electric on her skin, Rio finally realized the purpose of having this body, the pleasures it could feel. The first time Rio felt the warm press of Agatha’s mouth on her own, Rio finally understood why men killed other men who so much as looked at their wives wrong. And the first time Rio had her back against a tree while Agatha’s long beautiful fingers curled inside of her, Rio finally understood why mortals believe in gods.
It was also in those woods West of Salem, during their first precious days in each other’s arms, that Rio saw Agatha weep for the first time. Rio had seen thousands upon thousands weep, had seen anguish on countless faces, but she had never felt someone else’s pain within herself the way she did when Agatha wept. Rio wanted to kill those who were already dead for the way they made Agatha feel, for how they made the most powerful and gorgeous person Rio had ever met feel that she had no worth.
Rio held Agatha against her until she had no tears left to cry. Only then, Agatha whispered into Rio’s skin, “just make me forget it all. Please.” So Rio did, the only way she knew how — with her hands and her mouth and her body, until Agatha forgot, at least for several blissful moments, anyone who made her feel unloved.
Over 400 years later, Agatha looks at her with those same big mournful eyes. But Rio sees that spark in them, sees the way Agatha has always looked at her, with a fire that refuses to be put out.
“Of course I remember,” Agatha says, almost angry about it. Good.
Rio moves her hand to Agatha’s chin, tilts her face closer, looks her right in the eye.
“Anything you need,” Rio says, directly. “Anything you need to forget.” She leans in closer to Agatha's face, lets her breath hit Agatha’s lips. “I was always good at that, wasn’t I, sweetheart?”
Agatha puts a hand on Rio’s shoulder, a soft touch at first, but then something firmer, her thumb digging into Rio’s flesh. Her eyes are wilder now. In a flash, Agatha pulls her face from Rio’s grip and pushes her away with a force that makes Rio smile, makes Rio shiver.
“You think so highly of yourself, don’t you?” Agatha hisses.
“When I’ve taken you 152 times in the woods, darling, it’s hard not to get an ego.”
Agatha pushes again, shoving her off the rock. Rio falls with pleasure, sits on the forest floor and looks up at Agatha defiantly. Agatha looks back, jaw set and eyes narrowed. She’s gorgeous like this.
“I’m yours, if you need me,” Rio says from below her, voice low and steady. Then she stands, as gracefully as the situation will allow, brushing the dirt off her ass. “Oh, and you’re welcome for saving your life.”
Agatha makes an indignant noise in the back of her throat and Rio grins. She turns to saunter off into the forest, vowing to check back in approximately 10 minutes.
She makes it 10 seconds before, once again, blissfully, joyfully, her back is against a tree and her front is against Agatha Harkness. Rio could weep with relief.
This time, Agatha’s forearm presses into Rio’s neck, holding her captive. Rio can barely breathe out of anticipation alone, out of the way there is no space between them, chest to chest, hips to hips, arm to throat.
“You’re disgusting,” Agatha hisses. She shifts then, intentionally, so her thigh presses right between Rio’s legs.
“I know,” Rio all but moans.
“I have had a very long day,” Agatha growls.
Her thigh presses in further, as does her forearm. Rio knows for a fact that heaven is not real, but she is absolutely in heaven right now.
“I know, baby,” she chokes out. “Let me help.”
Agatha growls. “I don’t need your help.”
And yet, here she is, body poised to wreck Rio from the outside in, or from the inside out, depending on how things go. Rio’s all too human body is serving the purpose it did four centuries ago, giving Agatha an outlet to turn her pain into pleasure.
Rio doesn’t say anything. This is a careful dance she’s danced many times. Say the wrong thing and Agatha will stab her, or worse, stop touching her.
Instead Rio arches her entire body into Agatha, leans as far forward as she can, baring her neck, canting her hips, begging, pleading with everything but words.
Agatha answers the plea with her own body, pressing back, pushing Rio further into the tree. She removes her arm from Rio’s throat, instead grabs her hair, tugs it so that Rio’s face is angled up at her, vulnerable and eager.
Rio loves it, loves every part of it, loves Agatha’s body seeking hers, loves the little spark of pain when Agatha pulls her hair, loves the hard press of Agatha’s thigh. She can’t help the grin that overtakes her. She presses her tongue against the back of her own teeth to stop from crying out with pleasure.
Agatha notices it though, notices Rio’s sick joy at being handled like this.
“Fuck you,” she says, harsh and direct and breathy and beautiful.
“Please,” Rio begs.
Then Agatha kisses her.
Agatha kisses her with teeth and grit and familiarity and Rio almost cries with the joy of it. This is where she belongs, tasting Agatha’s tongue, feeling the sweet sting of Agatha biting her lip, licking into the warmth of Agatha’s mouth. Rio’s hands slide up Agatha’s neck, as her hips cant up into Agatha’s thigh, needing to be closer, needing to be connected on every level.
Agatha pulls her mouth away from Rio, causing Rio to whine at the absence. Agatha scoffs, then tugs at Rio’s hair so Rio’s neck is exposed. She kisses Rio there with the same bite, quite literally, tongue licking over Rio’s heartbeat, before her teeth press in. Rio moans, unbidden. She can feel Agatha’s grin against her neck in response. Rio knows her, knows that she likes it when Rio is loud and unashamed and desperate for her touch. And Rio is all three right now, her body a live wire, so eager and needy. It’s been years without the touch of this woman, and now that Rio has it, she is drunk on it, craving more.
And Agatha gives more. Agatha slides a hand down to Rio’s exposed slice of stomach and runs her nails over it. Rio gasps, leans into Agatha’s touch at every point. Agatha slips her hand down, sliding back under Rio’s pants to the swell of her ass, palming her skin with those strong wonderful hands.
“Agatha,” Rio moans, unable to help herself, unable to keep the name from her lips.
Agatha kisses from Rio’s neck up to her earlobe, biting semi-gently, before whispering into her ear.
“Yes, darling?”
The term of endearment makes Rio even more alive than she already is. She presses further into Agatha. Agatha’s hand is teasing, moving now to stroke over her hip bone, not quite where Rio so desperately needs it, but so close. Rio aches all over for it, to feel Agatha’s perfect fingers inside her, to feel the skin on skin she has been thinking about for years upon years.
“Please,” she breathes, her own hand covering up Agatha’s, pushing it toward where she wants, “please, baby.”
Agatha’s fingers hover on the edge. Then, painfully slowly, her hand slides over just where Rio has been dreaming of. She doesn’t touch yet, just hovering a centimeter from Rio’s flesh.
Rio is breathing heavily, practically panting, so ready to be touched that she is a wild animal, only answering to the whims of her body.
Agatha still doesn’t move her hand, but she presses a kiss to the skin below Rio’s ear, then another to her cheek, then finally back to her mouth. This kiss is less harsh than the last, but still open-mouthed, still eager, two lovers drinking in each other after years of thirst. Rio moans into it.
When Agatha pulls away from the kiss, a thin line of saliva connects their mouths. Rio thinks it is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.
Agatha smiles at her, a real one, mouth wet from Rio’s, teeth bared and glistening in the moonlight. Her hand still hovers over Rio. Then, slowly, eyes locked on Rio’s, Agatha dips her perfect fingers into where Rio is waiting for her, raw and wet and desperate.
Something between a scream and a sob claws its way out of Rio’s throat.
“Oh,” Agatha says, smile growing impossibly wider, “you really have missed me.”
Rio nods, frantic, addicted to this touch of this woman.
“Good to know.” Agatha’s grin goes sideways.
Then, suddenly, tragically, Agatha removes her hand, steps back from Rio. The cold air hits Rio like a slap in the face.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Rio yells ineloquently. Her body is throbbing and wanting and on the cusp of exploding and Agatha just stopped touching her?
Agatha tilts her head, arranges her perfect mouth into a mocking pout.
“You wanted to cheer me up, didn’t you?” Agatha asks innocently, before slowly licking her fingers, closing her eyes at the taste of Rio on them. “Well, you did great. I’m in an amazing mood.”
Rio has seen this woman kill dozens of people in one blow. But this is the cruelest thing she has ever done.
“Well, come on,” Agatha says, cheerful and evil, “we have unfinished business to attend to.”
Rio is going to kill her. She just saved her life, but she is going to kill her. But not before Agatha finishes what she started. Several times.
It’s complicated.
“I hate you!” Rio calls after her.
“You love me!” Agatha calls back.
She is, unfortunately, correct. Rio screams her anguish into the woods, and then follows after Agatha, just like she has been doing for the past 400 years. Humiliating.