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Agatha knows it’s her trial even before Teen asks. A slumber party? Girl talk and pillow fights and giggling together into the night? Whose nightmare could this be, other than hers?
“A blood moon,” Lilia explains to the kid. “When the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest.”
Rio lifts her knife – hairbrush, shiv, whatever – to her mouth like a microphone, and stalks toward Agatha. “And who better to commune with the dead than someone who’s put so many in the grave?” she says like some deranged news anchor.
Agatha gives her a look. “Alright,” she announces, waving everyone away. “Let’s get this over with. Everyone spread out and look for a way to get this… party… started.”
The group fans out into the main room, searching through boardgames, tossing aside beanbag chairs and camp blankets. Agatha meanders toward the nearest doorway, poking her head in and peering around. A small bedroom: dresser, chair, bed.
“Wonder if there’s anything in here?” she asks loudly.
She steps inside and shuts the door behind her, leaning against it and closing her eyes.
Her trial is here.
She thought she’d been prepared for this; she’d been steeling herself, readying herself for the idea that it would probably have something to do with... him. Or her. But contemplating it was one thing – actually having to face it is something completely different. She’d hoped… well, she doesn’t know what she’d hoped. But knowing that she’s going to have to do this, here, now, alone, standing before a coven that believes the worst stories ever told about her, leaves her stomach churning, her breath coming fast. It’s Salem all over again, except this time she’s in fucking tube socks and a side ponytail. The Road couldn’t even leave her a little dignity.
“Knock-knock,” comes Rio’s voice from the other side of the door, and Agatha leaps forward, throwing herself at a chest of drawers, yanking them open.
“Doesn’t look like there’s much in here,” she says as the door creaks open behind her. “Any luck out there?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, chop-chop,” Agatha snaps. “Trials to complete, glory to attain.”
“Sure thing, boss,” Rio says in a dry voice, and then she doesn’t say anything else. Agatha holds her breath, waiting for her to walk away with a familiar mixture of dread and anticipation. It’s been hard enough trying to stay alive on the Road with the ragtag group of witches she’d managed to collect, never mind having to deal with everything that Rio’s sudden presence has guaranteed: chaos, absurdity, distraction. God, she’s distracting. The purpose of this entire endeavor is for Agatha to find a way to crawl out of the wreckage of her past – except now that wreckage keeps popping out from behind trees, grinning like a maniac and offering Agatha a disorienting combination of rage, relief, and conjured flowers.
She can also slink around like a cat when she wants to, silent and agile; Agatha can’t tell if she’s still there, and she isn’t about to check. She pretends to shift a few things around in the drawer she’d opened.
“Y’know… I’m really liking this outfit for you,” Rio says.
Fuck. Agatha turns around to find her leaning against the doorway, running her thumb across the bristles of her hairbrush-shiv, smirking.
“Don’t.”
“What?” she asks innocently, stepping into the room. “I’m not allowed to think you look good?”
“When I’m wearing this? No.”
Rio gives her a mischievous grin as she closes the door behind her. “I mean, I preferred the 70s rocker look, but at least we finally get to see a little leg. Do you have shorts on under there, or…?”
She grabs playfully for her shirt, but Agatha skitters out of reach as best she can in the tiny room.
“Hey.”
“Oh, come on. I don’t bite.”
Agatha snorts. “Yeah, nice try, but I happen to know for a fact that you very much do bite.” Not that Agatha had ever complained. In fact, she’s got a number of vivid, very enjoyable memories of—
No, she tells herself before the thought can get away from her. Absolutely not.
Distracting.
Rio’s laugh is low and throaty as she and Agatha circle each other. “It’s not my fault the Road forgot to give you pants.” She eyes her up and down. “And thinks you’re a jock.”
Agatha swallows, trying to ignore the lewd smile on Rio’s lips. “At least it didn’t put me in a terrycloth onesie. Small mercies, I guess.”
Rio takes a careful step toward her. “Well, if you don’t like what I’m wearing, Agatha, I’d be happy to take it off for you.”
Agatha shoots her a warning look, but Rio just smiles.
“Oh, sorry – would you rather do it? Fine with me, you can be in charge. We could do a whole ‘captain of the football team, head cheerleader’ thing if you want.”
Agatha scrunches up her face. “Well, that’s one of the most horrifying things you’ve ever said to me.”
“Okay, not a cheerleader,” Rio laughs as she takes another step forward. She’s right in front of her now. “So then… who do you want me to be, Agatha?”
“What are you doing?” Agatha asks her in a low voice.
Rio’s eyes drift downward, settling on Agatha’s lips. “What do you think I’m doing?”
She starts to lean in, and a pulse of traitorous desire rockets through Agatha, sharp and dizzying. Fuck. Even now, when she can’t decide whether she loves Rio or hates her, her body knows – knows, remembers, wants. And it would be so easy to do this, to erase the last few inches between them, capture Rio’s perfect mouth, lose herself in soft skin, warm breath, the tip of her tongue. It would be as easy as breathing.
As easy as dying.
She turns her head. “We – I need to focus on the trial,” she says, her own voice strange in her ears, hoarse and unsteady.
“No.” Rio takes her by the chin and forces her face forward again. “That’s not what you need, Agatha.”
She tries to pull away, to disentangle herself, but Rio has managed to back her into the chest of drawers; there’s nowhere to go. Agatha makes the mistake of glancing down, looking for a way out. It’s a prey response, a rookie mistake, and Rio clocks it immediately, breaking into the slow grin of an apex predator. She nestles her thigh between Agatha’s bare legs, sharp hip digging into her own, and it’s all Agatha can do not to moan at the sudden pressure. Instead she wrenches her face out of Rio’s grasp and tries to put some bite into her voice.
“You don’t know what I need.”
“No?” Rio asks, arching an eyebrow. “Isn’t that why you summoned me here?”
“I didn’t summon you,” Agatha scoffs. “I didn’t,” she insists when Rio shoots her a cynical look. “I specifically asked for someone who wasn’t annoying. If anything, it was Jen’s fault.”
“Yeah? Why, what did Jen ask for?”
Agatha opens her mouth to answer, then realizes what she’s about to say. “Nothing. Never mind.”
Rio braces her arms on either side of Agatha, boxing her in. “I do know what you need,” she says softly. She nuzzles into Agatha, running her tongue along the curve of her neck, and Agatha’s breath catches in her throat. “I’ve always known, haven’t I?”
Agatha can’t afford what it would cost her to answer that question. Instead she tilts her head back, looking Rio in the eye. “Just because we’re stuck in some psychotic slumber party doesn’t mean we have to act like horny teenagers.”
Rio nods, slowly, a dangerous smile playing on her lips.
“What?” Agatha asks warily.
“Oh, I was just thinking about you as a teenager,” she says. “How adorable you were. How the girls fell all over themselves for you.”
“Oh, yeah. Seventeenth century Salem was paradise for a little queer witch.” But she knows what Rio’s getting at, and she swallows. “I don’t – you already know this story.”
“Tell me again.”
Agatha knows that she shouldn't. She knows exactly where this is going, and she knows she shouldn't do this. Her trial is waiting on the other side of the door; there’s no good reason to stay in this tiny room with Rio, playing out the same old games, ending up, inevitably, in the same place she always ends up with her.
Except… her trial is waiting on the other side of the door. And Rio is here, as striking as she’s always been, body warm against her, thigh pressing into her like a promise.
"What was her name again?” Rio asks, running an indifferent hand up Agatha's waist. "Evelyn?"
"Eleanor." She should go. She should walk out of this room.
"Eleanor. Right. Sweet, innocent Eleanor." Rio shifts as she speaks, growling a little, adding to the pressure between Agatha’s legs. “Tell me about Eleanor.”
Fuck. “Rio—”
“Tell me about the first time.”
Agatha takes a shaking breath. Rio’s eyes have come ablaze with something intense, suddenly, something like desire, like lust. Like she isn’t just toying with Agatha now; like she needs her. Craves her.
For the first time since she’d stepped foot on the Road, Agatha can feel herself settling, centering in the face of Rio’s naked hunger. Rio might have her in a trap for the moment, but Agatha’s always been clever enough to find her way out. The sudden rush of it is almost like having her power back. Almost.
She clears her throat. “Where do you want me to start?”
“You were studying scripture together,” Rio says, not bothering to hide her distaste.
Agatha gives her a look. “It was Salem. I had to pretend to be a good little Puritan.”
“Mm. Right.”
Agatha closes her eyes, searching for the memory. “We were in my bedroom, sitting next to one another on the floor. Leaning against my bed. She had this long dark hair, and her lips were just – god, I’d wanted her for years.”
“Her lips,” Rio echoes. “You’ve never mentioned her lips before.”
“They were perfect. They had this little divot….” Agatha reaches up, brushing her fingers over her own lips. “She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It always drove me crazy, being that close to her. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but I said something that made her laugh, and she put her head on my shoulder. My heart was pounding so hard I thought I might pass out. I thought I might die from how much I wanted her.”
“Well,” Rio says, a jealous edge to her voice. “I guess I’d have gotten to watch, then.”
Agatha opens her eyes, but she doesn’t stop; after all, the jealousy is the point. “She put her hand on my knee. Just sort of rested it there for a while. Neither of us said anything. And then she started moving her hand up. It was – god. It was so, so slow. It was agonizing.”
Rio moves her thigh and slides a hand between Agatha’s legs, tracing gently up and down the soft skin there. “Here?” she asks. Agatha inhales as the throbbing in her cunt sharpens into something electric. She manages to nod.
“I used to lie in bed at night and touch myself, imagining it was her,” she says, and Rio’s eyes flash. “So when her hand was there, her fingers, it was like – torture. I’d been waiting so long, Rio. I needed her so badly.”
Rio’s hand twitches against Agatha, and she exhales a small noise like a groan. Her eyes are fixed on Agatha’s; she doesn’t seem to realize she’d made any sound at all.
“After a while, I just – I couldn’t take it anymore. I put my hand over hers,” Agatha says, “and I slipped her under my dress. When her fingers finally slid inside me—”
Rio snarls, cutting Agatha off and flipping her around, pushing her down onto the small bed in the corner and straddling her. The movement is so sudden and fluid that Agatha barely has time to register what’s happening before she’s on her back, arms pinned above her head. Rio leans over her, panting, and Agatha stares up at her mouth.
“Kiss me,” Agatha breathes. “Now.”
Rio doesn’t hesitate. She crashes into her, growling, insistent, hungry, and Agatha groans into her mouth. She tries tugging her hands free, eager to run them over Rio’s skin, to catch her fingers in her hair, but Rio tightens her grip and holds her down. Agatha arches her back, desperate, trying to press into her, to get as close to her as possible.
She’s kissed Rio thousands of times before, after hours or days or years apart; she knows her body as well as she knows her own. Better than she’d have liked, actually, during the last century or so when she’d so badly wanted to forget her. No matter how well she’d schooled her mind during the day, refusing to think of her, every night her feverish dreams had shown her Rio’s lips, her neck, her thighs, the delicate dip and rise of her collarbone. It was like the smell and touch and taste of her had seeped into Agatha’s skin; she was always there, always waiting just beneath the surface. It was only when Wanda wiped her memory that the dreams had finally stopped. It took a spell from the Scarlet Witch to finally purge Rio from her veins – but as soon as the fog had lifted, she’d come flooding right back in.
Like this, like this, like this. Agatha stops fighting, finally, and lets Rio wash over her, overwhelming her senses, reveling in her taste, the sounds she’s making, the way her body slowly slides against hers, fingernails digging into her wrists.
Don’t stop, she thinks. Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop.
A sharp rapping sound cuts through the room, and Agatha groans as Rio pulls away.
“You’ve got to be—”
“Go away!” Rio yells toward the door, and Agatha hears the locking mechanism slide into place as Rio uses her power to bolt it. “We don’t want any.”
“Oh my god,” comes Jen’s voice from the other side of the door. “Tell me you aren’t in there doing what I think you’re doing. We’re stuck in some magical hellscape, and you two are—”
“Oh, look!” Rio says loudly. “Another clue. It would be a real shame if we got interrupted and had to start our whole search over again.”
Jen makes an exasperated sound. “This is your trial, Agatha. I swear, if you’re not out here in five minutes—”
“Yeah, fine,” Agatha pants. “Five minutes. Go.”
Jen exhales another frustrated puff of air, and for a moment it seems like she might keep arguing. But then, with one last growl, her footsteps pad mercifully away.
Rio grins down at her. “Five minutes? Really?”
“Ignore her,” Agatha says. “Where were we?”
“Eleanor was fucking you,” Rio says. She shifts so she’s holding onto both of Agatha’s wrists with one hand, and brings the other between Agatha’s legs. “No shorts,” she says with a wicked grin. “I knew it.”
Agatha’s snarky comeback is lost in a long moan as Rio’s fingers slip over her clit, and her entire body erupts into ache and burning flame.
“Fuck,” she manages to choke out as Rio starts slowly, gently circling.
“Did she touch you like this?” Rio asks. “Or was it more like… this?”
Her fingers speed up, moving over her hard and fast, and Agatha arches her back again, gasping. “Fuck – Rio—”
“Well?” Rio asks, slowing down again. “Which one? This… or this?”
Agatha groans; she can barely string a thought together. “I don’t – I don’t know—”
“You don’t know? You don’t remember if her fingers were gentle…”
Agatha groans, whimpers, shakes her head—
“—or if she touched you like she couldn’t get enough of you?”
“Fuck,” Agatha gasps. “Rio, fuck, that’s gonna make me—”
“Did she tease you, Agatha, or did she fuck you? I need an answer.”
“I don’t – know, I don’t know, I just – fuck, I just want you, I just want you, Rio, please—”
Rio gives a wolfish smile and leans into her ear. “Good answer,” she murmurs, forearm muscles flexing as she shifts her hand to press her fingers deep inside her, and Agatha knows she should try and be quiet, she knows, but she cries out anyway. Rio still knows exactly what to do, exactly how to touch her to make her frantic, to bring her right to the edge.
“I’m gonna – Rio—”
Rio’s hands are strong and steady, her breath hot in Agatha’s ear as she growls a stream of filthy nothings, detailing everything she plans to do to her, everything she wants Agatha to do in turn. And Agatha tries to hold off, she does – she tries to make it last as long as she can – but she wasn’t made to withstand Rio, her voice, her hands, her profane mouth. The orgasm thunders through her, fierce and pulsing, strong enough that things go hazy for a moment, every inch of her transforming into yes and oh and exactly this.
When she finds her way back to herself, sound and shape coming into focus again around her, Rio is buried in her neck, chuckling.
“What?” Agatha pants. “What’s funny?”
“Nothing.” Rio rolls off of her, finally freeing her hands. She lies on her side, propping her head up next to Agatha in the small bed. “Just… I’m pretty sure that was under the five minute mark.”
“Ah.” Agatha gives her a wry smile as she rolls her shoulders. “Well. You always were good at that.”
Rio widens her eyes, feigning astonishment. “Was that – a compliment?” she asks, placing a hand over her heart. “From Agatha Harkness?”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get used to it.”
Agatha turns over to face Rio. She trails a finger down her shoulder, over the absurd terrycloth shirt and down her arm, and she’s inordinately pleased to see goosebumps rise on Rio’s skin.
“My turn,” she says, leaning in.
There’s a sudden pounding on the door, and Agatha closes her eyes, growling through gritted teeth. She makes a mental note to kill Jen if the Road doesn’t do it for her.
“Come back with a warrant,” she calls over her shoulder.
But the voice that responds isn’t Jen’s.
“Uh… Agatha?” Teen says in his hesitant little voice. “I think we might have found something?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?” she mutters, but Rio is already starting to sit up.
“Wait,” she says, taking her by the arm. “Come on, they can wait a little longer.”
Rio glances down at her, tilting her head, looking almost apologetic. “We should probably just get this over with, yeah?”
In the span of a single second, all the heat in Agatha’s body turns to ice in her veins.
“Yeah,” she says easily, shrugging. “Sure. I mean – I got what I needed.”
“...Glad to hear it,” Rio says to her back as Agatha climbs out of bed. She snakes her hand out and grabs Agatha’s wrist before she can walk away. “Hey. It’s going to be fine.”
“I know that.” Agatha tries to pull it out of her grasp, but Rio holds on, refusing to let go. She gazes up at her from beneath those impossibly long eyelashes, eyes inscrutable. And then she lifts Agatha’s wrist to her lips and bites the absolute shit out of her arm.
“Ow! Jesus, Rio, what the fuck?”
Rio cackles and brings her tongue to the bite, healing the wound. “What? I’ve got a reputation to live up to. Anyway – you’re always at your best when you’re a little pissed off.” She jumps out of bed and smacks Agatha’s ass. “Come on. Let’s do this, hot stuff.”
Agatha follows Rio out into the main room of the cabin, glaring at the back of her head and rubbing the spot where she’d bitten her.
“There you are,” Jen announces when she spots them. “Finally decided to join us for your own damn trial?”
Teen holds up a board game. “We figured it out. We have to Ouija.”
“It’s not a verb,” Agatha mutters, her stomach giving an uncomfortable lurch. She glances over at Rio, who’s looking back at her. But then Rio turns to Jen.
“So hey,” she says casually. “What did you ask for when you guys were summoning a green witch, anyway?”
Oh, for fuck’s— “Jen, don’t answer that,” Agatha orders. “Let’s… talk to some spirits.”
Okay, she thinks, taking a long breath in as Rio looks over at her and winks.
Here we go.