Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Agatha writes the memoir on her life, the chapter about this particular hellish period is going to start exactly like this:

Agatha Ruth Harkness, senior lecturer on sexuality and power dynamics in colonial New England witch cults, had hit a gold mine. Four boxes of unexamined documents, mostly firsthand diaries and town meeting records, straight from her time period of expertise that she gets to be the first to decode. A research grant that will last through the spring semester, at least. A holiday break full of peace and quiet. The only problem was that she had suddenly been handed a bratty grad student (in forest studies, of all things) who was probably going to steal her thesis right out from underneath her.

The boxes of documents have been keeping Agatha going for the past three weeks, moving on autopilot through her classes and faculty duties, the little study room in the library she’s reserved like an office for all of December and the banker’s boxes piled within it practically calling her name. The aforementioned grad student, however, is the number-one thorn in her side.

Rio Vidal is a second year master’s student in the whatever-the-fuck department – honestly, Agatha hasn’t bothered to ask. One day she saw her carrying a book on the evolution of trees around and just sort of assumed it was something she wouldn’t care about. On principle, Agatha doesn’t spend much time talking to people outside of the cramped corridor of the PhD candidate offices in the history building. And even then, those bastards are lucky if she says two words to them other than why is the coffee maker broken again.

The only reason Agatha even knows who Rio is at all – the only goddamned reason – is because the chair of the history department owes the wife of the chair of Rio’s department a favor, or something, and word gets around at these elite universities and suddenly it was all oh, Agatha, you could help each other in your research, blah blah blah, even though Agatha doesn’t see how the firsthand accounts of a young woman who was seduced to the devil’s side in the 1630s could matter very much to someone whose last published paper was about fungi ecosystems.

(Yeah, so Agatha’s googled her. Whatever.)

Then again, the first time they met – when Rio let herself into Agatha’s library room, shook her hand with a weirdly manic grin, and started sifting through her documents like they were just anyone’s to touch – her glee had been obvious. Words like extraordinary and enlightening had come out of her mouth. And she’d mostly been interested in the ledgers from the subject’s family’s farm, as well as the detailed accounts from the mother regarding the brother’s mysterious devilish illnesses, which – okay, so maybe Agatha didn’t need those ones. At least not right at that moment.

Still. Rio typed abnormally loud on her ancient Dell laptop and made the entire room smell like pumpkin spice when she opened her coffee lid and chugged on it like an energy drink. Taking up space in the carefully protected sanctuary Agatha had carved out, using primary sources she had unearthed from university archives herself, and generally being a nuisance. A noisy, fidgety, gremlin-like nuisance who also had really stompy and loud combat boots. So Agatha had every right to be annoyed by her. Obviously.

---

Agatha goes to the library straight after her final class of the semester, having tired of staring into the dead eyes of undergraduates pretending they care about anything she’s teaching. Everyone always shows up to HST 251: Introduction to the History of Witchcraft with stars in their eyes and the desire to learn in their hearts, and leaves feeling like they just swallowed battery acid. Jen, Agatha’s fellow PhD candidate and all-around frenemy, has posited that it’s because Agatha’s a bad teacher.

“What could possibly make me a bad teacher?” Agatha had asked all affronted when Jen proposed this theory.

“Well, for one, you’ve never given a student an A on a paper in your life.”

Agatha rolled her eyes. “When one of those snot-nosed kids writes a paper deserving of an A, I’ll give it to them.”

Anyway, she’s divested herself of the younger generation for the next month, and she couldn’t be more grateful. She stops by the library café on her way down to the basement study rooms, acquires the perfect combination of caffeine and sugar for a long research session – black coffee with one splash of almond milk and a chocolate croissant – and finds the study room blissfully empty.

It does not remain that way for long.

Agatha is one paragraph into the first page of a stack of many she’s been hoping to get through today when Rio whirls into the room, dervish-like, bringing in a blast of cold air. She insists on wearing a leather jacket as a coat, even in December, and her cheeks are all pink under her alarmingly bright-colored scarf. She must have recently showered, because Agatha notices her hair has frozen in the cold. Who showers before walking all the way to campus in below-freezing New York temperatures?

Annoying grad students who were raised in warmer climates, apparently. (Rio has mentioned at least twice that she’s from Maine, which is a fact Agatha keeps pointedly trying to forget, as if to prove she doesn’t care.)

With great ceremony, Rio plops a coffee cup down in front of Agatha, narrowly missing setting it on top of her photocopied pages. It smells disarmingly sweet. Agatha takes a pointed sniff – that’s definitely cinnamon. She grimaces.

“What’s this?”

Rio looks between the cup, Agatha, back at the cup. “A gift.”

“Are you bribing me?”

Rio unwinds her scarf and shrugs off her jacket, revealing a cropped Fall Out Boy t-shirt over a thermal black Henley. “Why would I be bribing you, Agatha?” The sincerely confused look she gives her is infuriating; as is her habit of using Agatha’s first name in every conversation. Nobody says anybody’s name that often, Agatha thinks bitterly. She hardly ever says Rio’s name out loud at all, just to prove the point.

“I don’t know,” she finally scoffs, and tries a sip of the coffee, because her own is already draining low. It’s not as sweet as she first thought. It’s… fine. She sets it clear on the other side of the table so Rio doesn’t think she likes it.

Rio slumps into her chair on the opposite side of the wide table (which, in Agatha’s opinion, is not wide enough, considering how messy Rio likes to get with her papers and highlighters and absurd little scraps of notes ripped from larger pieces of paper). She unpacks her bag quickly, and within minutes, they’re working in a silence that Agatha refuses to call companionable. Rio tippy-tapping on her laptop, taking notes. Agatha doing her best to decode this diary that she’s starting to believe is overhyped. All this girl has talked about thus far – Thomasin, if Agatha’s got the name correct – is how much her little siblings piss her off and her guilt over maybe letting her brother get dragged into the woods by a witch. Theoretically this should be interesting. There are only so many ways a devout teenage girl can pray to God for absolution before it starts to get a little tedious, though.

Agatha gets through eight pages in an hour, which may not sound like a lot but considering how many red-penned notes litter the margins of her pages she’s pretty happy with it. Considering she’s had to translate from Early Modern English (her passion and her mortal enemy simultaneously), it’s not an insignificant amount of work. She looks up, pushing the set of pages to the side and reaching for her next pile before- fuck.

In hindsight, it was probably a bit of a cart-before-the-horse situation to start the notetaking before all the documents had been properly sorted. All that’s left for Agatha to reach for is a banker’s box of loose papers, painstakingly copied fragments of surviving documents. All of it is haphazardly gathered together with no rhyme or reason. This, Agatha thinks bitterly, is why we don’t let the undergrad library interns fulfill document requests, but she resolves to go through the rest of the box and try to get it into some sort of reasonable timeline before she leaves tonight.

First, however, she will need a snack.

The library café is already closed – damn off-semester hours – so she makes for the vending machine instead. She refuses to spend more than three dollars on a vending machine per day, so a granola bar will have to do for now. Maybe, if she really feels like treating herself, she can get dumplings on the way home. Maybe.

For a traitorous second, she looks at the row of energy drinks in the beverage machine and considers if she should pick one out for Rio, in exchange for the coffee earlier. Then, she realizes that would make it seem like she tolerates Rio’s company, might even make Rio think she wants her around, so she decides, no. Goes back to the study room with her pitiful granola bar. Already halfway finished by the time she kicks open the door.

Rio looks up when Agatha walks in. She’s elbow deep in one of the document boxes, seemingly uncaring about the disorganization. “Café closed?”

Agatha narrows her eyes. “Yes.” She expects Rio to say something else, maybe explain why she cares, but the other woman just shrugs and returns to her work.

And of course, because now she’s moving around and making all kinds of noise – including humming to whatever loud, probably hair-metal rock song Agatha can hear blasting through her earbuds, what kind of academic courtesy is that – Agatha can’t focus. Can’t get through looking at two documents from her own messy box before her attention is drawn to Rio again, to the effortless way she moves around her side of the room, making and unmaking piles. Agatha can’t get a grip on how Rio’s mind works, and it simultaneously freaks her out and pisses her off.

“What are you even researching?” she asks before she can think better of it.

Rio glances up, tugging one earbud out. Agatha winces when the too-loud music blasts for a second before automatically turning off, and- wait is that fucking Shostakovich? Okay, that’s something to unpack later. (Or not. Cause Agatha hates Rio, obviously, and doesn’t want to know anything about her music taste.)

Rio’s eyes are so big and stupid and innocent. She purses her lips. “What’d you say?”

Agatha almost thinks about taking it back, but there’s always the chance Rio heard her the first time and is just making fun of her now, so- “What are you researching?”

Rio looks down at her messy papers, impossible-to-decipher journal of notes, and the crammed text on her laptop’s word processor. “Uh, medicine.”

A beat. Agatha’s eyes widen. “The fuck?”

If Rio is taken aback by this answer, she does a remarkably good job of masking it. “Colonial medicine,” she explains distractedly, returning to pulling documents out of her box and placing them in weird, disorganized stacks that Agatha can’t make sense of. She’s barely even looking at them. “Specifically, herbal health remedies made from natural resources in the Massachusetts region circa the early seventeenth century. As a method for exploring alternative medicinal practices in North America. Post-colonial, pre-revolutionary, obviously.” When Agatha says nothing for a long period, she looks up. “Was that too much?”

Agatha practically splutters, except she doesn’t, because she has a very good grasp on her facial muscles and all that. “What the fuck does any of that have to do with forestry studies?”

Rio’s face is confusingly blank. “Nothing. Because I’m not in the forestry studies department.”

“What.”

“I study biological anthropology,” Rio mutters, thumbing through her notebook. She clicks her fingers once, picks up a fragment of photocopied document, and then – to Agatha’s horror – pulls a fucking glue stick out of her back pocket and pastes the damn source directly into an empty space under her crammed notes. She holds it there to dry with two fingers and looks up at Agatha, eyes inscrutable, practically challenging her to argue.

Agatha isn’t sure what to say to that little revelation, so she just sits back down, returning to her sorting. It’s kind of impossible, with the way Rio is looming over the table, making her presence known. Or maybe Agatha’s just thinking about- “Okay, what’s the point of all that, then?”

Rio sighs heavily, like Agatha is the one being distracting, and braces her hands on the table. “The point of…?”

“Your research.” Agatha counters with a quirked eyebrow, her lips flat. “What’s the point of it? What’s it doing?”

“What’s the point of your research?” Rio counters, not giving an inch.

Agatha answers without missing a beat. “Shedding light on the independent female experience in the early colonial period and justifying the modern radical feminist movement by demonstrating that violence and what some may refer to as sin are simply a byproduct of being repressed and othered by a definitively patriarchal society.” It reads like the subtitle to an academic paper. It is, in fact, a slightly reduced version of the abstract of her master’s thesis, which she chooses not to reveal to Rio.

The younger woman just sort of looks at her, and if Agatha knew any better, she might interpret that blank stare as impressed. But really she doesn’t know better. Finally, Rio says, betraying no emotion, “that’s nice.”

Agatha leans forward, her documents forgotten, weirdly desperate for an answer to her initial question – almost like she’s intrigued, or something. Or doing this menial task is really boring. “You gonna tell me now?”

Rio’s tongue pokes against the inside of her cheek. She stares at the ceiling, seeming to gather her words – after a moment, she says, “It’s about history, actually. Just a more… technical way of looking at it. Most of the plants they had back then, we have today, if we haven’t ruined them with pollution and pesticides yet. There could be answers to things we haven’t even thought about yet, there.” She shrugs, simply. “Sometimes, looking at science from the past can teach us about science in the present.”

Rio sits down, reaches into her backpack, and pulls out a full-size Hershey’s bar. Without preamble, she unwraps the top half and shoves it in her mouth. “Plus, it’s cool,” she adds almost as an afterthought.

Agatha can only scoff, because if she makes any other sound she might start to seem impressed and that’s the last thing Rio needs – to think that Agatha cares. Otherwise, she might start talking to her, or something. “Plant medicine?”

Rio speaks around another mouthful of chocolate. “Yeah.”

“So you’re one of those homeopathic weirdos, then.”

Rio’s grin would be feral if not for the chocolate on her teeth. Actually, scratch that, it only adds to the feralness. “Oh yeah, I’m definitely a homo.”

Rio puts her earbuds back in and goes back to her work after that, and Agatha, distracted as she is, ends up misreading a whole two pages of documents. Rio Vidal, she has decided, is going to be the death of her.

---

The next night happens to be a Friday, which means Agatha has two options. She can curl up on her couch with her rabbit, a glass of wine (who are we kidding, more than one glass of wine), and an extended Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon, or she can put on her sluttiest dress, a pair of fuck-me heels, and follow Jen and Jen’s-nameless-cop-friend to a gay bar. Agatha takes one look at her sad couch, a pasta sauce stain still lingering on the cushions from last Friday night, and figures she owes it to herself to not be pathetic for once.

They end up at some ridiculous place called The Beta Lounge, cause all the good lesbian bars in Manhattan have closed. It makes Agatha feel old. She misses the sticky floors and dubious music taste at the real gay bars, not these polished lounges with the bisexual lighting and all that. She moans and groans and nurses a martini even though, as Jen reminds her, she had every right to stay home tonight.

It doesn’t help that there are string lights wrapped around every conceivable surface in this damn place, and every drink on the menu has a cheesy holiday-themed name. Agatha fucking hates December for this exact reason. Everyone goes all crazy for the holidays like they mean a damn thing. It’s a religious ceremony, she wants to grab the soccer moms bustling around Columbus Circle laden down with gift bags by the shoulders and scream, and it’s been co-opted by capitalism anyway, but it’s not like anyone would listen to her. Merry joy and all that bullshit.

Agatha does a Santa Claus-themed shot and hates herself.

Turns out Jen’s nameless cop friend is actually more than a friend, and because it’s a relatively new thing they’re draped all over each other, touchy-feely and taking up space on the dance floor. Which would be fine – Agatha is the first person to tell Jen when she needs to get fucking laid – but it means Agatha’s left alone for most of the night, getting progressively more tipsy as martini after martini keep finding their way into her hands. Some of them she buys herself, some are pushed her way by women up and down the bar. There’s a stone-cold blonde butch with a vintage leather jacket who seems sort of intense, but also not really like Agatha’s type. The brooding, muscular woman with the long braids is promising, at least until she starts pounding back beers with a blonde guy who fits the dictionary definition of dudebro. Gross.

She’s contemplating giving up and going home, texting Jen some lame excuse about Señor Scratchy being lonely (now that really would be a new low) but before she can go find her coat she catches sight of a familiar head of dark hair across the dancefloor. And shit. Well – well, shit.

Rio’s wearing ripped skinny jeans and a silver top with a plunging neckline, paired with black Converse sneakers, which is so in character Agatha almost snorts. The kids clearly don’t dress up for the clubs anymore. She watches as Rio, chaotic in all things, it seems, downs half of a fruity cocktail and does a little spin into the arms of a woman with shaggy black hair and very dark eye makeup. She looks older than Rio, on second thought probably older than Agatha – which doesn’t matter, nope, not at all.

Agatha should stop watching. Agatha should turn around and go home.

Instead, she leans a little against the wall and watches Rio dance with her back pressed to this mystery woman, head tipped back. The lights highlight the curve of her jaw. When she swallows, Agatha finds herself weirdly entranced by the motion of Rio’s throat.

And then, her eyes open, and she looks at Agatha looking, and the spell is suddenly ruined.

The start of a slow, satisfactory smile spreads across Rio’s face. Agatha whips around before it can reach its final form and busies herself with digging through the coats on the cheap metal rack, searching for the neatly labeled A. Harkness on her Michael Kors.

She isn’t blushing, she tells herself when she hears footsteps behind her. She isn’t nervous, she tells herself when someone clears their throat over her right shoulder. She’s feeling perfectly normal about all of this, she insists, even when she turns to be face-to-face with a smug, cheeky Rio Vidal.

“Fancy seeing you here,” she says, and her voice is oddly light and cheerful despite the dark look in her eyes. “Come by often?”

“Only for the toxic holiday cheer,” Agatha drawls. “I would ask you the same thing, but you seem to be a regular.”

Rio’s eyes widen. “And what if I told you this was my first time here?” She takes a step closer. “And I’m just that popular?”

I wouldn’t believe you, Agatha starts to say, but the problem is that she does believe her, so. Scoffing, trying to hide the way her tongue has gone slightly numb (partly from alcohol, partly from – god help her – Rio’s proximity), she rips her jacket from the plastic hanger and shoves her arms into it roughly.

“Can I buy you a drink?” Rio asks, stupidly, because Agatha is clearly on her way out the door.

“Does it look like you can buy me a drink?”

“I don’t know.” Rio’s eyes are big and blank and she sticks her hands in her jeans pockets, rocking back and forth on her feet. With Agatha in heels, Rio’s just a tad bit shorter, and the effect means she’s looking up at Agatha teasingly through her fucking eyelashes. “We could go somewhere else. Everything here is shit and expensive.”

Agatha sniffs. Rio smells like vodka. “Sure seems like you’re enjoying it.”

“Well, it’s alcohol.” Agatha hums noncommittally, doing her customary check through her coat pockets to make sure no one’s absconded with any of her personal belongings. When she looks back up, Rio is still there, looking at her expectantly. Agatha realizes, belatedly, that Rio had actually meant that offer.

“Not tonight,” she says stiffly, and tries not to notice how Rio’s shoulders deflate. “Have a good night with your date.”

“I don’t know her name, actually,” Rio calls, but Agatha is already out the door, shooting a shitty excuse text to Jen. Her couch, Scratchy, and that Trader Joe’s Secco is calling her name.

(She ends up doing a Parks and Rec marathon instead of a Buffy one, and it’s totally not because that one actress kind of looks like Rio with bangs.)

---

Campus empties out for winter break, and Agatha has never been happier. No one else in the coffee line. No one lingering in her favorite reading spots. No one in the library.

No one, of course, but Rio. Who had told her in a fashion Agatha deemed too blasé to be healthy that half of her family was dead and the other half was too homophobic to want her home for the holidays. “I have friends,” she had said, as if that made up for it, and went back on her merry annotating way.

My mother is the devil incarnate, too, Agatha had almost overshared, and thought better of it at the last second just as her mouth was opening. If Rio noticed the near miss, she didn’t say anything.

On Agatha’s third straight eight-hour day in the library – she’s all the way through sorting her documents now and is triple-checking her annotations before she begins her preliminary cross-analysis – Rio pokes her head in the study room and literally, out loud, groans. “How are you still in here?”

Agatha looks up. Rio’s wearing a red beanie pulled low over her ears and a black Dickies jacket. That, her Doc Martens, and the carabiner hanging from her baggy Levi’s make her a perfect lesbian cliché. “Where else would I be?” she asks carefully, shuffling her papers and trying to pretend like she can work with Rio’s eyes on her like that.

“It’s kind of nice outside.” Rio shrugs, shoving her hands in the pockets of her coat. Agatha notices she doesn’t have her backpack with her, or any of her materials – she’s just… there. To see Agatha. Well, no, cause that would be ridiculous. “You should get out some.”

“Calling me pale, Vidal?”

“Calling you obsessed, maybe.” The words should be mean, but they come out weirdly teasing. And soft. Which is awful, because the idea of Rio having affection for Agatha is awful, because… because something. Because they’re academic rivals. There.

(Agatha has no reason to have a rivalry with someone from the anthro department. Whatever.)

Rio steps into the room, crowding into Agatha’s space, and she smells like pine trees and printer ink. Agatha wrinkles her nose; Rio notices, and backs away, just slightly. “Will you come get a coffee with me?”

Agatha glances at her takeout cup, empty and surrounded by crumpled granola bar wrappers. She is at a decent stopping point in her work. She’s only had one coffee today, which means she’s undercaffeinated. And-

Rio looks almost nervous, standing there asking Agatha to leave her academic hobbit hole and go on a little walk.

“Fine,” she says, though in the end she isn’t totally sure why she says it, just that Rio’s smile when she agrees feels weirdly nice. Agatha starts packing her things up, and Rio hovers there awkwardly, and it isn’t until she’s locking the study room door and winding her scarf around her neck that she remembers Rio’s eager eyes in the bar. “Hold on,” she says, “this isn’t a date, is it?”

Rio’s lips twist. “Uh.”

“It’s not a date,” Agatha decides, and walks off ahead of Rio. She hears the heavy bootsteps behind her, and if Agatha appreciated sentimentality she’d almost say they were forlorn.

She waits when she gets to the library doors. Rio catches up to her, and fuck if she doesn’t look… vaguely disappointed. “Rio,” Agatha says, in her I’m gonna let you down easy voice, trying to get the younger woman to look her in the eyes. “I’m not trying to be an asshole.”

“You’re not trying to be,” Rio agrees.

“I just don’t really want to-”

“You don’t have to explain yourself, Agatha.” Rio pushes open the door and ducks her head against the cold, and Agatha has no choice but to follow her.

---

“Why did you say it was nice outside?” Agatha seethes, gritting her teeth. The wind is blowing in her face and she’s sure her skin is an ungodly shade of red. Rio just barks out a laugh, looping her arm through Agatha’s to drag her across the street, and the physical contact would make her recoil if she wasn’t freezing enough to crave the warmth Rio seems to give off like a radiator.

“At least it’s not snowing,” Rio grins, baring her teeth. She kicks at the door of a little Italian bakery and the smell of warm cookies envelops Agatha like a hug. She pushes past Rio to enter what she’s pretty sure could be considered heaven.

She’s passed the bakery about a million times on the way to campus and back, and even though the homey decorations and glass case of pastries seemed inviting, she had never had the time. Now that she’s surveying the pure range of homemade delicacy on offer, she’s cursing her past self. If there is one thing that is true about Agatha Harkness, it’s that her sweet tooth is one son of a bitch. And now that Rio knows that little fact, she’s sure it’s going to be exploited all to hell.

She’s still inspecting the display when Rio wanders back over with a receipt in her hands. “I just kind of ordered all of my favorites,” she says when Agatha gives her a questioning look. “You can come back and get more if you want something else, I guess. Oh, and coffee. I promised you coffee.” Rio brandishes the receipt with a smug grin. “Almond milk, right?”

She ordered two of everything. That considerate bitch.

It takes less than ten minutes for Rio to acquire a tray laden with tricolor cookies, rosettes, chocolate pasticciotti, and almond cookies dolloped with cherry preserves. It’s a delectable looking spread and Agatha deliberately ignores the way her stomach grumbles.

“So,” Rio says, taking a huge bite out of a cookie, crumbs sticking to her chapstick, “where’re you from?”

Agatha narrows her eyes over her coffee. There is cinnamon in it, but luckily for Rio, Agatha actually thinks she might like cinnamon in her coffee now. “What.”

“What?” Rio echoes. Instead of wiping off the crumbs with a napkin like a normal person she licks her lips deliberately until she’s gathered every single one. “I’m trying to get to know you.”

“What if I don’t want you to?”

“Then you didn’t have to come get cookies and coffee with me.”

Agatha fingers a chocolate tart. “I didn’t realize this outing was transactional.”

“Yes, extremely. And if you want to eat that pasticciotti you’re going to tell me where you’re from.” There’s a hint of teasing in Rio’s voice. Of course, she pronounces the Italian perfectly. Agatha groans.

She puts her head on the table and mutters into her arms, “Salem, Massachusetts.”

She expects the typical joke about witches, and witch researchers, or something, but Rio just nods and says, “cool. I’m from Cape Elizabeth, Maine.”

“I know. You’ve told me already.”

“Well, forgive me for thinking you weren’t listening.”

Agatha wasn’t. Or at least, she was trying not to. Doesn’t mean Rio has the right to point that out. “Do you… like Cape Elizabeth?”

The fact that Agatha is now trying to make conversation seems to delight Rio to no end. “I mean, yeah. It’s a nice place. But it’s kind of small, you know? One of those everybody-knows-everybody-else towns. Plus, the tourism gets so crazy in the summer and it’s really annoying.” Rio shrugs. “Do you like Salem?”

“No.” Agatha does not elaborate. “What made you go into biological anthropology?”

Rio shakes her head. “Nope. Your turn to answer a question. Actually answer one,” she elaborates when Agatha gives her a look. Rio thinks for a moment. “What’s the best book you’ve ever read? Like, of all the books.”

For most people, this would be an impossible question. Agatha, however, has an itemized spreadsheet keeping track of every book she’s ever read, complete with numerical ratings to the second decimal point. She recalls it with startling accuracy. “Atonement. Ian McEwan.”

“I haven’t read it.” Rio hides her face behind her coffee. “Tell me about it.”

And for some reason… Agatha does.

---

Rio Vidal disarming her enough to get her sharing her favorite books (and films, and movie theater candy preferences, and eventually worst date story) was not on Agatha’s bingo card. Neither was the sight that greeted her when she walked into their shared study space the next morning.

She is feeling perfectly refreshed, recently showered, and already halfway through her first coffee of the day (if Agatha was any more prone to self-reflection, the rate at which she consumes caffeine should probably be concerning). Rio, meanwhile, is slumped over the table on top of a stack of library books, Docs kicked off on the floor and fuzzy spider socks showing. Her hair is a mess and her reading glasses are pushed up to the top of her head and Agatha can’t tell if the red in her eyes is from exhaustion, crying, intoxication, or some combination of all three.

“You can’t smoke in the library,” she settles on saying, and Rio levels her with the kind of glare that could crumble cities. Agatha is a little proud to have gotten it out of her.

“I went outside.”

“Does weed help your brain work better?”

“Stop.” Agatha does. She drops her bag on the table and slips gracefully into her chair, unpacking and opening her laptop with clinical precision.

She hadn’t expected this. After their little coffee… not-date, Agatha had ignored Rio’s invitation to walk her home and practically sprinted in the opposite direction, already uncomfortable with herself for opening up so easily in front of a platter of Italian cookies, and with a veritable stranger. A stranger she purported to hate, no less. She had assumed Rio had just gone back to her own place and done… whatever it was Rio Vidal did with her afternoons, when she wasn’t working, studying, or haunting the same gay bars as Agatha.

It seems Rio had not, in fact, done that, because she was wearing the same jeans and crop top as the day before. She digs through her bag and produces a packet of fruit snacks, which she tears open. A fistful gets tossed in her mouth. She chews loudly and Agatha refuses to find it endearing.

She tries valiantly to focus on her laptop, but when Rio puts her forehead down on the table and doesn’t raise it for two whole minutes she gets… not worried, exactly, but vaguely uneasy.

“Are you okay?”

Rio raises her head, her red-rimmed eyes meeting Agatha’s over her laptop. Her lips twist around silent words, trying to find the right ones, before she finally shrugs. “Uh, I guess I’m just tired. I guess.”

“Why didn’t you go home last night?” The question is maybe more pointed then nice but that’s in character. Agatha’s fingers still on her keyboard and she realizes she actually cares about Rio’s answer when she hums.

“I had work to do. I blew off yesterday to help a friend with something and go out with you, and I have a bunch of data to parse over, so, uh.” Agatha opens her mouth to say that Rio didn’t need to waste her day eating cookies with her, but there’s a weird, quiet voice in the back of her mind warning her that maybe if she says that, Rio will never ask her to do it again. And unfortunately, Agatha weirdly sort of enjoyed herself. So there’s that.

“Well, did you get any work done last night?”

“Some.” Rio shuffles the papers in front of her around listlessly. “It’s, um. It’s not your fault, just so you know. It’s kind of a bad time of year for me, and my distractions haven’t been… distracting enough, I guess.”

Agatha raises an eyebrow, but Rio doesn’t elaborate, and she’s forced to ask, again, “you okay?”

(The Agatha of two days ago would have let Rio stew the entire day and not said a word to her. The Agatha of today is remembering what Rio looks laughing so hard coffee almost comes out of her nose, which is really, really unfortunate.)

Rio chews on her lower lip. “My parents died around Christmas,” she finally says, and holds up a hand when Agatha opens her mouth. “Nope, that’s it. Not gonna do the whole tragic backstory thing, not gonna listen to you give me your condolences, or whatever. Just, my family died, and that’s it. Okay?”

And, well, let it never be said that Agatha Harkness can’t respect boundaries.

But when she tries to turn back to her documents, Rio is still putzing around at the other end of the table, eating fruit snacks like her life depends on it and ignoring her work, and on top of it being somewhat distracting, Agatha feels… bad for her. Maybe. Or something. She isn’t quite sure, but her heart is oddly leaden and suddenly she just wants to distract Rio from whatever is making her sad.

So she shuts the lid of her laptop, folds her arms across it, and asks, “what have you been finding?”

Rio’s eyes jump up to look at her, startled. She frowns. “Uh, in life, or…?”

“In the research,” Agatha rolls her eyes. “I don’t specialize in plants, Rio, so I’m not very well versed. What’s got your attention right now?”

(She realizes this is the first time she has said Rio’s name out loud. She likes the way it tastes on her lips.)

Rio lets her surprise show on her face, but she flips open a page of her notebook anyway and taps it with two fingers. She slides it across the table to Agatha, even though the chicken scratch and general scientific terminology looks like hieroglyphs to her.

“There’s this particular strain of hemlock that we’ve confirmed to be growing in an area local to the subjects at the time,” she explains slowly, eyes lighting up as she talks, “and it produced similar effects to those documented by the subject’s family as, you know, devil worship stuff. So my theory is that they were being slowly poisoned. Now, the how is what’s tricky – since you’ve gotta be kind of intentional about hemlock poisoning…”

As Rio talks Agatha finds herself being weirdly… lulled in. She doesn’t understand all of it – at a certain point, Rio starts using scientific names of plants that ring no bells in Agatha’s mind – but it’s interesting, nonetheless, the way Rio explains it. How these people might have been driven so crazy by something that was in their own backyard. How belief in something so spiritual could have been founded on the effects of something so terribly natural.

“She’s interesting, too,” Rio says, tapping a block of cramped writing in her notebook labeled Thomasin. The subject of the documents. Agatha’s fingers twitch. “You’re focusing on her, right?”

Agatha nods sharply. “There’s, um, less after her disappearance… obviously. But some of the corroborating documents have traced her and others like her through neighboring settlements- I don’t know. It’s enough to propose a pattern of behavior. Maybe show that these women who disappeared were organized, you know, that they had intent.”

“To show that they weren’t crazy.” Rio nods, like she really gets it. “So in a way, we’re researching the same thing.”

Agatha stiffens. “We’re not.”

Rio’s undeterred by the negation. “We are. Just in different ways.” She hums and pulls her notebook back towards her, and Agatha notices that she seems… rejuvenated. Her shoulders are less hunched than they were, her eyes a little clearer. “You know, I kinda relate to her.”

Agatha scoffs. “Why, cause you’re a repressed seventeenth century colonist committing petty crime in the name of the devil?” Rio’s eyes narrow, but Agatha still needs to hit her punchline. “You’re right, I think that’s a pretty good look for you.”

Rio bites down on her lower lip and Agatha can see her fighting back a smile, even though she’s trying to look pissed. “No,” she says slowly, like placating a toddler, “because I had to claw my way to a purpose from a place that didn’t care about me.”

“…Huh.”

Agatha doesn’t know much about Rio’s childhood – because while she has googled her there’s only so much a search engine can turn up – and despite her poking and prodding she’s been slightly cagey about her past. Not because she has something to hide, Agatha thinks, but just because she’s probably tired of talking about it. Which… yeah. Agatha can relate to that.

She thinks about saying I’ve been on the outs my whole life or my mother hated me and it screwed me up intensely or even you have a purpose, and a place that cares about you, which would probably be a bit much but Agatha thinks it might be true, anyway.

Instead, mortifyingly, what comes out of her mouth is, “sometimes I think about how much all the people I research would have hated me.”

Rio raises an eyebrow and steeples her hands on the table. She looks curious. She looks… like she’s listening. Agatha’s mouth is open before she can think about it.

“I got into this field because I wanted to escape my life, you know. I hated being… me, so I thought I could live someone else’s life for a while, become them, and feel better about it. And I really liked this era of history, the isolation, the work that it required, so I just… but I thought about it, and I never would have- I mean, look at me.” Agatha waves a hand at herself, and Rio snorts. “I would not have survived the era of witch trials. But, like, I want to go there anyway. Just because it’s… different from here.” She bites the inside of her cheek, begging Rio to say something, but she seems to realize that Agatha isn’t done. “I mean, isn’t that incredibly self-destructive? To daydream about traveling back in time to an era you would have been murdered in?”

“Thoughts are just thoughts,” Rio says, easy as breathing. “Only actions mean anything. So as long as you’re not actively crawling your way backwards through time, I think you’re okay.”

Fuck.

She’s right, and it makes so much sense that Agatha feels like she might fall backwards out of her chair if she thinks about it any harder. Instead, she raises an eyebrow and turns the tables. “But your coping mechanisms are healthier than mine, right?”

“You know, weed is technically a medicinal tool.”

“You would know, plant guy.” Rio stiffens, but her answering smirk belies that she likes the teasing. Which... when did they start teasing? Agatha clears her throat and opens her laptop back up, and there is a smile flickering at the edges of Rio’s lips, and all of this feels… dangerous. “Um, I’m going to get back to work.”

“Okay, Agatha, Rio says softly, still fucking teasing, and before winter break is over, Agatha thinks she might be in an early grave. 

---

In the middle of making dinner (microwaving Thai leftovers), Agatha gets a text from an unknown number.

i need a favor sooooooo bad

Thirty seconds later:

shit sorry this is rio. got ur number from linkedin

Agatha knew she shouldn’t have put her resume online. This is her own fault.

agatha i know ur getting these

u have ur read receipts on

Agatha immediately goes into her settings to turn that damn thing off.

Hello Rio. How are you

better if u let me ask u for the favoooooooooor  

Agatha pinches the bridge of her nose and hesitates before slowly (knowing she is going to her own death) typing, what’s the favor?

i need u to come w me to anthro dpt xmas mixer  

It takes Agatha too long to decipher that text, and once she does, she groans loudly enough that her neighbor on the other side of her very thin wall bangs on it to get her to stop.

Her first instinct is to write back no and throw her phone in the toilet. Then, Rio sends her a GIF of a cat pouting. Her first instinct becomes lighting her phone on fire.

Why, respectfully, the fuck would I do that

bc ure not doing anything i know ure not  

How do you know that.

its tmrw night and u told me u werent gonna go to that thing w ur friend cuz u hate it

Becoming tentative acquaintances with Rio now means sharing things with Rio which means Rio knows things about her. Like she would rather do anything than go to trivia night at Jen and Alice’s favorite bar.

Okay

u spell out ok? thats cute. u agreeing?

Shut up. Two things

One: you do not need a date to your department’s Christmas mixer

Two: that date does not need to be me

neither of these things are true, aggie

Don’t you fucking dare.

Rio’s little text bubble appears and disappears three times before she finally just says:

sorry

Agatha immediately feels kind of bad. Sure, she hates nicknames. But she can picture Rio sitting… somewhere, she doesn’t actually know what Rio’s home looks like, or where she is right now – staring at her phone and biting her lip, looking like a kicked puppy.

It’s fine

Why do you even want me there anyway?

bc ure not doing anything. everyone i know is

and ure fun

theres alcohoooooooooooool

for freeeeeeeeeeeeee

u can make fun of stupid anthro kidssssssssssssssssssss

Truth be told, Agatha is very into the promise of free alcohol. Truth also be told, she is kind of curious to see Rio in her element, around people that aren’t Agatha and the paper remnants of long-dead historical figures. She has a morbid sort of curiosity. And being at a university function tomorrow will be a valid excuse to miss trivia night. She’s running out of those.

Is there a dress code for this thing

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

The sequence of emojis and GIFs Rio sends should be banned by law for being incomprehensible. (And for making Agatha smile.)

its cocktail casual whatever tf that means. davis ballroom 8pm ill meet u there.

cant wait <3

Rio sends a kissy face emoji. Agatha shuts her phone down and buries it between her pillow and her mattress until she’s devoured her lukewarm Thai food.

---

Agatha is forced to face a very inconvenient truth when Rio wanders up outside of the Davis Ballroom at 8:07 PM the next night (because of course she’s late to her own event).

The inconvenient truth is… Rio is hot.

It’s easy to ignore under her acid-washed band shirts and baggy cargo pants, but she’s cleaned up – in a tailored blazer, pinstripe pants, and spiky heels – and the way her hair brushes her shoulders, drawing attention to the sinfully low cut of her blouse, is… yeah, inconvenient is the only word.

She smirks when she sees where Agatha’s looking, but (thank fuck, for Agatha’s ego) says nothing. Just shrugs, hands casually lodged in her pockets.

“Sorry,” she hums, jerking her thumb over her shoulder. “Dropped my jacket off at the library. I wanted to… make an entrance.” She swings one elbow out to bat at Agatha’s side, who flinches away from the contact. It only makes Rio’s smirk deepen.

Agatha pulls her own puffer coat closer around her. “Can we go in? The faster you get your kicks in at this thing the faster I can leave.”

“Free alcohol, Agatha…”

She trudges inside, following Rio as the warm air inside the ballroom swallows them up. It’s a lackluster academic affair, as most of these things are. The history department has their faculty-and-grad-student mixer in the spring, but it’s no less sad to see lonely old bookworms flitting around an under-decorated room making bland conversation with their colleagues. Rio’s got a point, though – the bar at the back of the room is stacked up, and since Agatha made the mistake of coming to this thing with an empty stomach (she’s out of Thai leftovers) she has a feeling the free wine is going to settle delightfully warm in her stomach.

She hangs her coat and trails into the morass of people. Most of them seem to know Rio, reaching out to shake her hand or offer a small wave. They cut an easy path to the bar; everyone ignores Agatha’s presence, which is exactly how she likes it.

“Do my eyes deceive me, or does Rio Vidal actually have a date?”

Well. Almost everybody.

Agatha grits her teeth and turns around to find a fluffy haired boy looking about no older than twelve clung to the arm of a strapping young man and definitely staring at them. He’s got a gratuitous amount of eyeliner on. It makes immediate sense that this is Rio’s friend.

“Don’t make a big deal out of it,” Rio rolls her eyes, turning from the bar and seamlessly passing a glass of something spiced and bitter into Agatha’s hands. “Agatha, this is Billy Kaplan. Billy, this is Agatha Harkness.”

“Agatha Harkness?” Billy’s hand goes to his chest, making an affronted gay person face. “Oh, my goodness. I’ve read your master’s thesis on Northeastern witch cults, like, six times. I’m pretty sure I cited you in a paper in undergrad.” Agatha forces herself not to make a face.

“Billy studies witch stuff too,” Rio says, helpfully, hiding her amused grin behind her drink. “Maybe you two could talk about it.”

Oh, this asshole. Agatha throws a glare in Rio’s direction, but she deflects it with a casual wink, and then – this asshole! – drifts away, leaving Agatha at the mercy of Billy goddamn Kaplan.

Unfortunately, listening to a first-year master’s student prattle on about witch representation in modern literature is not nearly as annoying as Agatha had thought it would be, and Billy’s boyfriend – Eddie? Teddy? Something – is funny and clearly very, very into him. Young love is begrudgingly nice. By the time Billy is called to some other important academic conversation by his supervisor, a redheaded woman Agatha has sworn she’s seen around somewhere, Rio has migrated back to Agatha’s side. She leans with her elbows on the small table they’ve claimed, unfortunately pushing her chest out and right into Agatha’s field of vision.

“Thanks for humoring him,” she hums, jutting her chin in Billy’s direction. “He’s small and easily scared. He kind of… latched onto me, as a mentor. I get lunch with him and his supervisor sometimes.”

“Yeah, who’s his supervisor?” Agatha squints at the mane of tangled red curls. “I swear to god I’ve- oh. Oh, no.”

“You know Wanda?” Rio raises an eyebrow. Agatha – immediately, mortifyingly – turns and hides her face in the lapel of Rio’s jacket.

“Don’t make her look over here. Please.” Rio’s amused chuckle is more of a huff against the side of Agatha’s head. “We… our paths may have crossed. At some point. Maybe downtown. At a bar. Maybe… you know.”

The eyebrow Rio quirks might kill Agatha. “And the last place you expected to find your ex was an anthropology department Christmas event, right?”

“She’s not my ex,” Agatha seethes. “She is an ex one night stand, okay? And if she has fond memories of me-”

Rio’s eyes rake over Agatha’s form, from heeled boots to wide-necked collar. “Oh, I bet she does.”

Agatha goes red. “If she has fond memories of me, that would be worse than her throwing her cheap wine in my face, I think.”

Rio takes a moment, her lips twisting with an emotion Agatha can’t exactly pinpoint. “Agatha Harkness, womanizer,” she finally says, softly – way too softly, for Agatha’s taste. She groans.

“Please get me more alcohol.”

Rio salutes with two fingers, and then – humiliatingly – pats Agatha twice on the back before disappearing towards the bar. It isn’t until she’s on her way back with two tumblers of whiskey in hand that Agatha realizes she could have just asked to leave.

Oh, well. The alcohol is still free.

---

“-and then, get this, it was his lack of proper citation that takes him down.”

Agatha snorts into her – third? Third, plus the glass of wine, so… well, she’s losing track – drink and covers her mouth with her hand, eyes shining at Rio over the rim of her glass. Rio immediately tugs at her wrist, whispering “no, it’s cute,” and her cheeks are just as flushed as Agatha’s sure her own are.

It’s nearing midnight. The mixer is winding down, guests slipping out without Agatha noticing. Billy came by before he left with his boyfriend and made a stilted offer of a networking lunch that Agatha’s pretty sure she accepted, though she can’t quite remember. Her and Rio have been posted up in their own little corner for the majority of the evening, trading embarrassing undergrad stories and making fun of the posturing being done by the department heads.

“It’s always the MLA errors that get ya,” Agatha murmurs, suddenly distracted by the smudge of Rio’s lipstick against her glass when she sips. Her hair’s been loosened from tugging on it all night and Agatha’s brain turns off for a split second as she imagines her own hands running through it. Rio licks her lips and Agatha’s eyes are drawn to the movement.

Yeah, probably time to set the alcohol down.

“It’s, um, getting late,” she says unconvincingly, fidgeting with her fingers. Rio’s face falls a little, and she sets her own glass down, leaning in slightly.

“I thought you were having fun?”

“I am.” Agatha says before her brain can catch up with her mouth, and she freezes momentarily, “but it’s late.”

“You mentioned that.”

“Are you walking home?”

Rio’s mouth snaps shut. “That… was the plan, but…”

“You don’t have a coat.”

“It’s at the library, remember?” Rio steps just a little closer, and with her heels being just an inch taller than Agatha’s she can peer down at her slightly, leaning up with her chin and forcing Agatha to crane her neck backwards. “Wanna walk me over there?”

“You don’t have to leave.”

“Nah,” Rio shrugs, brushing past Agatha and leaving a weird gap of cold where her body had been. “Nothing keeping me here, anyway.”

Agatha retrieves her own coat and they step out into the blistery night – colder, since they went in, and flurries are brushing the air. Rio starts crossing the quad in quick strides. Agatha stumbles after her. The shock of cold air has made her realize just how tipsy she is. Not quite drunk, but close. The stars are spinning and Rio smells really good and Agatha’s not sure why Rio won’t just walk next to her.

“Slow down, Sonic the Hedgehog,” she grumbles, and that gets Rio to stumble, a bark of a laugh leaving her mouth. “’m too intoxicated for this.”

“Did you seriously just call me Sonic the Hedgehog?” Agatha’s firm set of her lips is enough to dissuade any further questioning. “Well, at least the alcohol’s keeping you warm.”

They reach the library in record time, despite Agatha’s stumbling and Rio’s shivering, and use their campus IDs to swipe into the basement entrance. Rio sags against the wall the second they’re inside, head falling back and exposing the taut column of her neck, perfect and begging to be- what the fuck, Harkness.

“Shouldn’t have left my coat here,” Rio admits, fluttering her eyelashes at Agatha, who is jolted from a sudden, uncomfortable daydream of kissing Rio’s neck and whispering things like your annotated bibliographies are so fuckin’ sexy in her ear.

It’s a slower walk to the study room, Agatha trailing a little behind Rio and keeping her eyes trained on her upper back so as to avoid drifting any… lower. Rio unlocks the door – only drops the keys once, good on her – and tugs Agatha inside by her wrist, shutting the door gently behind them. She leans against it. The lights from the hallway barely creep in under the door, and Rio’s eyes shine in the dark.

“Agatha,” she says, carefully, “do you like me?”

Sober Agatha of one month ago would have said no, absolutely not, you and your youth and your passion and your vigor frustrate me to no end. Sober Agatha of a few days ago would have said maybe, because you’re smart and witty and your smile is nice to look at.

Drunk Agatha of now says “Yeah, duh, obviously,” and then hiccups.

It was clearly not the answer Rio was expecting. Her gaze darkens. She flicks on the table lamp on the long desk and now Agatha can see her, all the long lines of her, painted against the door in the relative dark. Rio looks dangerous like this. “Why… do you like me, Agatha?”

Agatha hums, licking her lips. Her mouth is dry and her hands need something to hold onto and she sees no reason why that something shouldn’t be Rio’s hips, but Rio is too far away. “You’re just… different,” she huffs, finally, and Rio’s nose crinkles. “You never take no for an answer. And you know all these things. Without even asking. I like how honest you are.” Rio’s shoulders loosen against the door. “You have a good ass.”

“I- what?” Her head cocks to the side, and Agatha’s brain catches up, and- well, fuck.

“I mean. Yeah. You’ve got a great ass for a, you know, annoying-ass biological anthropologist-”

“Agatha.” Agatha doesn’t think she will ever get used to the way Rio says her name, all soft and treasuring. Especially not when paired with her breathy, tipsy voice and the uneven strides she takes forwards. “Stop lying.”

“What- lying?” Agatha’s face scrunches up at the, frankly, ridiculous accusation. “I’m not lying about your ass, Rio.”

“Not about my ass.” Rio’s inches away now. Agatha’s fingers twitch. Her head is going fuzzy with static. “Just… in general. Stop pretending. About this, whatever this is.” She stops when her hand brushes Agatha’s at her hip, breath hitching for barely a second. “Unless… you’re not. Which is fine.”

“Self-conscious isn’t a good look on you, Vidal.”

The words are airy and light, and the second they leave Agatha’s mouth Rio’s hands reach up and frame her face. She holds her there, her touch a burning brand, and Agatha’s breath stutters.

“Tell me I’m wrong,” Rio whispers, breath ghosting Agatha’s lips, and Agatha… doesn’t.

What she does do is shove Rio’s shoulders until her perfect ass hits the ground, making her yelp, and then Agatha crawls into her lap and kisses the shit out of her.

Rio’s mouth tastes like whiskey and vermouth and Agatha wants to lap at her like a dog with a bowl. She feels hands, short nails, scrabbling at her back through her dress like Rio needs to find purchase on something. The way they’re sitting she’s practically close to tipping over, so Agatha braces her knees on the ground and wraps her arm around Rio’s neck to hold her up, shoves her tongue deeper into her mouth.

It’s hot. Considering the amount of saliva and the way Agatha’s rucked-up dress is digging into her hips, it shouldn’t be hot, but it is. Making out with her mortal enemy (which at this point might be an exaggeration but for the sake of Agatha’s internal monologue let’s go with it) on the floor of the library shouldn’t remotely be attractive, but god, she thinks as she grinds her hips down and swallows Rio’s answering moan, she’d probably let Rio tongue her to death right here on the concrete.

“Aga- tha,” Rio sighs brokenly, her hands finally finding purchase and skating down to squeeze Agatha’s ass. “We are… very drunk.” She gasps when Agatha detaches their lips for the sole purpose of sucking a bruise into Rio’s chest just under the collar of her jacket.

“Define very.” She inspects her progress – not nearly purple enough. Rio makes a hissing noise when she digs back in.

“Uh- it’s a- shit-” Agatha pulls off Rio’s skin with a smack and starts kissing her way back up her jaw – “it’s an adverb-”

“Rio.” Agatha pulls away and Rio blinks owlishly at her. “Are you about to give me a dictionary definition?”

Rio pouts, the insufferable idiot, and shifts her hips awkwardly. “This kinda hurts my back,” she says, detaching one hand from its death-grip on Agatha’s thigh to rub at her own tailbone. “Can we, uh-”

A little dejected, and more than pent-up, Agatha rolls to the side to allow Rio to straighten out, her back cracking. She sighs at the sensation and turns around, flashing Agatha a toothy grin before laying down beside her, tugging Agatha down to press into her side.

“Ouch.” Agatha pokes her in the side. “This floor is hard.”

“Yeah, now how do you think I feel?” Rio giggles, honest to god giggles, and leans in to kiss Agatha again. It’s softer this time, less hurried and frantic, and when Rio smooths her dress back over her hips Agatha whines. “No, Agatha. I am not going to have sex with you in Butler Library.” Agatha pouts. “Or dry humping. We’re not doing that. We’re drunk,” she reiterates, and… she’s got a point. “But,” Rio adds, smoothing a piece of Agatha’s hair out of her face and raising a smug eyebrow when a yawn crawls out of Agatha’s throat, “you kiss really good.”

“Well.”

“Sorry. Feel free to take my bachelor’s in English away from me.”

Agatha can fucking feel her eyes soften. “You have a degree in English?”

“Yeah, I was a double major.” Rio slips her arm out from under Agatha’s body and props herself up on her elbow as Agatha’s lungs are caught in another yawn. “All right, Grandma.”

“Kiss me to sleep,” Agatha says, nonsensically, and is kind of surprised when Rio cups her chin with thumb and forefinger and kisses her gently, tongue swiping along her bottom lip.

“You’re insane, Harkness,” is the last thing she hears before she, embarrassingly, drifts off into slumberland.

---

Agatha wakes up in pain.

That’s what I get, for sleeping on the floor, she thinks, and then, why the fuck am I sleeping on the floor?

The previous night comes back in a rush – the mixer, Rio, walking to the library, Rio, kissing on the floor, Rio. Instinctually, Agatha’s arm flies out, expecting to hit a warm body beside her – nothing.

Rio’s gone.

She sits up, sure her hair is flying in a million directions and her makeup is probably running down her face and her mouth is so, so dry, but what’s more important is that she’s alone, Rio’s gone, her jacket and her backpack with her. No note, no nothing. Just the smell of her perfume.

And all around Agatha, scattered on the floor and the table, is her research.

Thank god Agatha numbers her pages, because the papers are in no semblance of order. Where once there had been a carefully formatted series of observations on historical documents and preliminary analysis drawn from contemporary sources, there is now… that, plus awkwardly scrawled notes in the margins. Rio’s taken a green pen (a green pen) to most of Agatha’s research, highlighting important points and making commentary on her analysis.

Turns out there is a note, on a sticky note halfway across the room, covering a long annotative paragraph on why Agatha’s missed the importance of references to some weird berry or something. She’s too hungover to go through this. The note reads, in Rio’s customary chicken scratch:

Morning, sleepy. I get insomnia when I’m drunk so I stayed up and read your notes. Lots of great stuff here. Thought you might enjoy looking into what I left. Ignore me if you want. xo Rio

It’s signed with a heart, and, infuriatingly, a lipstick mark.

Agatha growls (okay, maybe it’s more of a screech) and throws the sticky note in a crumpled up little ball across the room.

After acquiring a water bottle from the vending machine and chugging half of it, she picks up her papers and starts shoving them into piles. She catches glimpses of Rio’s notes as she does, and she has to admit – her conclusions do make sense. She’d been ignoring specific references to the communities Thomasin and her fellow witches had encountered, assuming it had all been circumstantial, but the way Rio’s drawn it, there’s a pattern. Even more than that, the pattern suggests a purpose. What it is, Agatha can’t tell just from glancing, but it’s enough to build a thesis that these women wanted something.

It's interesting. What’s annoying is that Rio saw it before Agatha did.

Of course she’s smarter when she’s drunk.

Agatha boxes up her research, chugs the rest of her water, and calls an Uber back to her apartment. She needs a shower.

Her underwear still sticks to the inside of her thighs. So a cold one, preferably.

---

A refreshing shower, a bagel with peanut butter, and a blueberry smoothie later, Agatha’s headache has lessened, even if it hasn’t faded entirely. She downs two ibuprofen and sits at her kitchen counter, playing with the broken corner of her phone case. Rio’s contact is open on her screen, their last text – Agatha saying at the ballroom when you get here – glaring up at her.

She should say something. She should say sorry for throwing myself at you last night. She should say you’re beautiful but annoying and I don’t know how to reconcile that in my brain. She absolutely should not say I just brushed the taste of you out of my mouth with half a tube of toothpaste.

She doesn’t say any of these things. Instead, she clenches every muscle and hits the little call button under Rio’s name.

The phone rings twice before it picks up.

“Hi.” Rio’s voice is a weird combination of groggy, relieved, and apologetic, and it does… things to Agatha’s insides. “Good morning.”

Agatha checks the time on her microwave. “It’s one in the afternoon.”

“You and I both know we slept in today,” Rio says, low and soft, and there goes Agatha again, cheeks fire-engine red and stomach turning over. “Hi, Agatha.”

“Hi, Rio.” Agatha picks at a piece of food stuck to her countertop. She should clean her kitchen more. “Will you go out with me today?”

Rio makes a surprised noise that she tries (and fails) to hide. “Out?”

“Like, I don’t know, I need to finish some Christmas shopping-” that’s a lie, Agatha barely does any Christmas shopping – “and we could get lunch. Or something.”

“Or something.” Agatha can hear Rio’s self-satisfied smile over the phone. “You want me to go do Christmas things with you?” She earns a long-suffering sigh from Agatha’s end, the kind of sigh that, if translated into words, would say this woman is insufferable and I kissed her last night and despite my best interests I want to do it again.

“Please, can we just make this normal again?”

“Why isn’t it normal, Agatha?”

“You know why.”

Rio’s quiet for a moment. Agatha’s inner monologue spirals out, ifuckedthisupifuckedthisupifuckedthisup, before she finally says “okay. Let’s try it this way.” She clears her throat. Agatha’s heart is in her throat. “What is normal, Agatha?”

“I don’t know. Jesus.” It’s as close to a real answer as she’s going to get. “Will you just... can I pick you up? Do you want to meet me somewhere?”

“I haven’t agreed to go yet, you know.”

“Rio.”

“Meet me at the Strand. In, I don’t know, thirty.” There’s a shuffling sound on the other end of the phone. She pictures Rio getting out of bed, going to meet her, Agatha, at an independent bookstore like a Netflix rom-com. “I do want to hang out with you, Agatha, because despite what you think I actually really like your company.”

She hangs up the phone before Agatha can say anything stupid in response to that.

---

Agatha could get lost in the Strand – and has, multiple times when she first moved to the city – but Rio seems to know her way around backwards and forwards. She informs Agatha when they meet (Rio’s dressed appropriately for the weather this time, in a red scarf and her incredibly gay Dickies jacket) that she needs to get a few gifts for her friends at the Whole Foods where she works, so they wander the first floor for a while, Rio accumulating tchotchkes in her arms. Agatha splits from her to peruse the rare books floor while she pays, and they catch back up in – predictably – the historical fiction section.

“Have you ever been on a bookstore date?” Rio asks. Agatha shakes her head, engrossed in the inside flap of the newest Erik Larson book. Rio yanks it from her hands.

“It’s where you pick out a book for a person,” she explains, dragging her finger along the spines of the books at eye level, “and they pick out one for you. Blind.”

“What makes this a date?”

“Well, Agatha,” she says suggestively, rolling her eyes, “when a woman and a woman love each other very much…”

“Okay, Jesus.” Agatha shoves her hands under her arms. Her fingers keep twitching the same way they did last night, right before she kissed Rio on the mouth. In other words, she needs to get this under control. “What, do you want to… bookstore-date me?”

“Yes,” Rio says simply. “Ten minutes. Meet me by the coffee counter.”

Ten minutes is not hardly enough time to pick out a suitable book recommendation for Rio Vidal, who, despite being a weirdly open person, has obscure enough interests that Agatha can’t seem to translate. She settles on an illustrated oversized book about the meanings of flowers, thinking of the wisteria tattoo she had seen on Rio’s collarbone the night before. She thinks about it so hard she almost cracks the book’s spine.

Rio meets her at the coffee counter ten minutes later on the dot, a paper bag swinging from her hands. “Here,” she says, thrusting it into Agatha’s face without preamble.

The book inside is small, a paperback. Agatha pulls it out and almost chokes. What Rio has chosen for her is a lesbian smut novel, artfully decorated with a pornographic image of two women mid-sensual kiss on the cover. She shoves it back in the bag.

“What the fuck.

“What, like you’re not going to read it?” Agatha doesn’t deign to respond to that. “It’s supposed to be kind of a silly thing. This is really cool, though,” Rio murmurs, paging through the book Agatha had very thoughtfully picked out with growing interest. “Yo, wait. Moonflowers.”

“Rio.”

Rio’s head snaps up, that damn toothy grin taking over her features. “Come on, play along, Agatha,” she teases. “We can read it together over the phone. You know, trade passages back and forth. I have the same copy at home, only mine is a little used, if you know what I mean.” She fucking winks.

Agatha turns as red as Rio’s scarf, which she subsequently uses to drag her out of the Strand, grinning and cackling. “I need coffee,” she grumbles.

They grab coffee at some artisan place down the street – well, Agatha gets coffee, and Rio gets a hot chocolate with enough whipped cream to drown a small child. She smiles unreasonably wide when she sees Agatha shaking cinnamon into her coffee but thankfully doesn’t say a word.

They window shop for a little while, going everywhere and nowhere. When Agatha runs out of coffee, they go into the nearest Starbucks and refill, and they even split a cranberry bar. Agatha would be a little ashamed of the way she’s keeping Rio all to herself – dragging her away from every subway entrance they pass and inventing new street corners for them to turn down, monopolizing her time – but Rio is eager to go along, looping her arm through Agatha’s and pressing closer to her with every growing minute until they’re practically sharing body heat.

The sun has dipped low and the streetlights are twinkling when Rio turns to Agatha and without preamble says “go ice skating with me.”

And as much as the flush in Rio’s cheeks is kind of cute, Agatha has to put her foot down at some point. “No.” Rio pouts. “Please, no.”

“Aaaaagaaaaathaaaaaa.”

“No.” The last – and only – time Agatha went ice skating was with her roommate in college, and she cut her head open on the ice and was in bed for a week. She’s not any more athletic than she was back then, and she’s not exactly looking to repeat the experience.

Rio must see something in her eyes that screams please god don’t ask again, because she softens. “Okay,” she says, crowding into Agatha’s space and pulling a tangled white wire out of her jacket pocket. “Then wear these with me and walk to Midtown so we can go see the tree.”

In Rio’s palm sits a pair of earbuds, worn with age. The very same ones Agatha has seen Rio wearing as she works in the library. For some reason, the idea of putting something in her ear that has also been in Rio’s ear makes Agatha’s chest fill up with warm, fuzzy static.

“That’s disgustingly sweet.” Agatha snatches the earbuds and shoves one in her ear while Rio digs for her phone. “You’re going to be the death of me.”

“I’m planning on it.” Rio pokes her phone screen, and Brenda Lee’s Rocking Around the Christmas Tree fills Agatha’s ears at an insane volume.

The walk to Rockefeller Center is at least thirty minutes from where they are, but it feels like almost no time at all once Rio reaches down and tangles their fingers together. She swings their hands, mouthing the words to seemingly every Christmas song known to man, and Agatha just... lets it happen. Stops fighting it, or telling herself she hates Rio (she doesn’t hate Rio), and allows her hand to be held. Rio’s fingers are calloused, but her palms are smooth. Agatha rubs the knuckle of her thumb and lets Rio’s pleased hum wash over her.

Despite having lived in New York for four years, Agatha’s never been to see the tree in person. Always thought it was too touristy, and then she ran out of time, and then she got too jaded to even care – well, who is she kidding, she’s always been too jaded. But when Rio gets there, the look of pure, childish joy on her face makes Agatha practically melt. Full-on, Wicked Witch of the West melt into the slushy pavement. “It’s really big,” Rio says, astounded like she had thought it would be pocket-sized or something, and Agatha’s heart clenches. She’s short of breath all of a sudden.

She might be having a heart attack. Is this what a heart attack feels like?

Rio pauses their music and swipes open her camera app. Agatha’s distracted by the pink in her cheeks, by the lights on the tree twinkling on her face. She’s distracted by the little drummer boy thumping of her own heart. What the fuck is happening to her.

Rio’s eyes catch her own, and she’s beaming, and then she leans in and kisses Agatha on the corner of the mouth.

It’s practically nothing. It should be nothing. But Agatha’s whole body freezes, everything narrowing into the point where Rio’s lips connect with her body – and then she turns her head and kisses Rio properly, one hand flat against the small of her back, pressing into her as hard as can be through the layers of their gloves and jackets and sweaters.

It’s a nice kiss. Rio tastes like peppermint and chocolate and youth. Agatha-

Agatha really likes Rio Vidal.

Fuck.

A light flashes. Rio pulls away, snickering, and shows Agatha her phone – a blind selfie of them kissing, lit by the tree, shaky because Rio’s eyes were closed but undeniably… cute.

“I got you,” Rio smirks, pressing a kiss to Agatha’s temple with a smack.

Actually, Agatha hates Rio Vidal.

---

Rio sends her the picture she took later that night, along with three kissy face emojis and a GIF of a sloth hugging a zoo employee.

Completely unrelated, Agatha has finally set Rio’s contact photo in her phone.

---

Rio Vidal is under Agatha’s skin in a way she can’t control. It’s weird. Incredibly weird. Rio texts her and she reaches for her phone immediately, even smiling when she sees the notification. Rio gets her snacks from the vending machine while they work and sometimes deposits them in front of Agatha with a kiss on the forehead. Stupid, sweet shit like that that has Agatha opening up like a dissected body, spilling her guts for Rio to play around with.

Except Rio is oh-so-careful with her guts, and it makes Agatha want to scream.

She beats at the walls of her enclosure. I don’t deserve this, she hollers. Rio smiles impassively back at her from the fringes of her mind, saying without saying anything, yes, you do.

The way Agatha knows she’s fucked is because she’s thinking about this on Christmas Eve while she writes. She’s drowning (positively) in research and overcaffeinated and scarfing down cookies from the Italian bakery like nobody’s business, and she’s… thinking about Rio. Missing Rio.

Agatha’s a workaholic, hence her presence here in the library – Rio, despite similar trends of obsession with her work, had the good sense to take the night off and go drinking with some work friends. She had texted Agatha a sweet little merry Christmas eve message and, devastatingly, a selfie of herself in a bar downtown, wearing a sheer white shirt (black bra very visible underneath) and a red beret. The smirk on her face shows that she knows exactly what she’s doing to Agatha. Even in picture form.

Suffice to say, Agatha has her phone turned off and shoved in her bag to avoid that little distraction.

Her notes on Thomasin are open on one screen of her laptop, her draft doc on the other. She’s been circulating around the same point for paragraphs, giving herself grace since it’s only a first draft of what she’s sure is about to be a life-ruining-ly complicated paper, but every time she types the words desire to be free her lungs feel like they catch on something.

Desire to be free.

From Rio’s drunken notes on her research, she’s drawn a line, from the small village near where Thomasin lived with her family to the settlements far up north that would eventually become Canada. Reports of young women, rulebreakers, entering villages and seducing proud young maidens away from the Bible and into lives of sin. With every village, the coven grew, until eventually… they just disappeared.

In her paper, Agatha will say something about a lack of documentation, or perhaps draw a connection to a particularly deadly flu season. But when she looks at Thomasin’s diaries, reads her words, her pleas for salvation – its own kind of freedom – she sees a different story. The kind academia has never really been interested in, but that Agatha feels resonating deep in her chest.

Desire to be free.

Those women – those witches – they knew what they wanted, and they chased it, all the way to the Canadian wilderness. Beauty. Love. Freedom.

The remnants of Thomasin stare up at Agatha from her computer screen, and she seems to be saying, what do you want, Agatha?

Agatha digs her phone out of her bag, turns it on, and opens her text thread with Rio. That stupid picture. Red lips, red beret, teasing, what do you want, Agatha?

She types before she can think better of it.

Are you home yet?

---

Rio lives in a first-floor walkup in Morningside Heights and has roommates but, as she helpfully informs Agatha on her way over, they’re home for the holidays. Which means Rio’s there all alone, and that makes Agatha sad for a reason she can’t describe.

When Rio opens the door (to Agatha’s very insistent knocking) she’s already changed, into a pair of green lounge pants and a cardigan. And, Agatha notes with some glee, a lacy red lingerie top.

“Shut up,” Rio says, pulling Agatha into the warmth of the apartment by her wrist. “It was the first thing I grabbed.”

“Very festive of you.” Agatha doesn’t get much of a look at the apartment as a whole. Rio drags her into the little galley kitchen at the back, lit by one of those candle-warmer lamps and the lights outside the window. There are two wine glasses already on the counter. “This is nice.”

“It’s tiny,” Rio points out, “and I’m sure it’s much shittier than your place.”

“That’s not true.” Agatha inspects the tea rack by the toaster oven, humming when she notices the herbal blends with high fantasy names that she assumes are probably Rio’s. “My place is… impersonal. This is homey. I can see traces of you in it.”

“Good traces, I hope.” Rio passes over a glass of white wine, and Agatha accepts it, as well as the light touch of their fingers brushing, with a smile. “Sorry. I don’t really drink red.”

“It’s perfect.” Rio’s mouth twists, her fingers worrying the stem of her own glass.

Rio leads her into her own bedroom instead of the living room. “It’s nicer,” she says, “and it’s cleaner, to be honest.” Rio has the largest room, one of those bedrooms with a separate little space blocked off by French doors that are all-too-common in older houses, and she has an overstuffed couch facing a TV along the back wall. Blu-rays and PlayStation games are lined up neatly on the shelf underneath. Agatha has the sudden impulse to sink to her knees and memorize every title just to know something else about Rio.

She restrains the urge and shucks off her coat and bag, leaving them on the floor. She settles onto the couch on the opposite end from Rio – although it’s a small couch, so their legs are still brushing, and Agatha can press the curve of her foot to Rio’s calf and relish her tiny inhale. Across the room, a baby Christmas tree twinkles.

“I kind of missed you,” she says, and Rio smirks, barely hiding it behind her wine.

“You saw me- what, yesterday?”

Agatha scoffs. “I know. What, I’m not allowed to miss you?”

“It’s encouraged, actually.” Rio’s throat bobs as she swallows and Agatha finds her eyes tracing the movement. It would be really, really easy to set her glass down and stretch her whole body along the length of Rio. Pin her to the couch, maybe, kiss her senseless, maybe. She’s not sure where the impulse is coming from, but- no, that’s a lie. The impulse has been there the whole time, since the first time Rio walked into Agatha’s study room, poked her tongue through the gap in her front teeth, and said smells like consternation in here. Who uses the word consternation in everyday conversation?

Agatha clears her throat, mouth suddenly dry. “What if,” she asks, swirling her wine in her glass and becoming engrossed in the little tornadoes it makes, “we did this together?”

Rio sets her own glass down and inches closer. “What’s this, Agatha?”

“This.” Agatha waves her hand in the air, unable to find the words. “This… thing.”

“Do you mean,” another inch closer on the couch, and Agatha’s breath catches in her chest, “this, as in our research? Or this, as in Christmas?” A warm palm lands on Agatha’s thigh. Rio’s breath caresses her ear. “Or this, as in… us?”

She kisses Agatha’s cheek, eyes sparkling. “Come on,” she teases, making Agatha crane her neck back to look her in the eye. “You’re so confident, Harkness. You’re gonna make me do all the work myself?”

No, she’s certainly not.

Agatha takes Rio’s face in her hand and kisses her. It’s different than it was the night of the mixer. The desperation, the drunken fog, is gone – replaced by a gentle need to taste Rio’s mouth, to figure out what she kisses like when she really wants to.

Turns out, she kisses like a careful, possessive thing, claiming Agatha’s mouth as her own. “You’re so oblivious,” she mutters, leaning forward to pin Agatha to the couch (okay, this is the exact opposite of what she thought was going to happen), and plucking the wine glass from Agatha’s hand. “Jesus, I’m so obsessed with you. I’ve been trying to get you to kiss me since I met you.”

“I’ve already kissed you, stupid,” Agatha points out, tangling her fingers in Rio’s hair and pulling it half out of its ponytail.

“Not like this.” Rio shakes her head. “Not like you meant it.”

A hand on Rio’s chest forces her back, hovering, chasing Agatha’s lips. Agatha quirks an eyebrow. “Rio,” she cautions, and the warning tone of her voice brings a delightful red to Rio’s cheeks that she wants to kiss and kiss and kiss. “Why didn’t you think I meant it?”

“You’re really confusing sometimes.” Embarrassed, Rio buries her face in Agatha’s neck, but can’t stop herself from kissing there, too, and it makes Agatha keen and rolls her hips underneath them. Sue her for being sensitive.

“Okay, then let me make it clearer for you.” She drags Rio up by her hair, slots their lips together, and shoves a knee between Rio’s thighs.

“Yup!” Rio squeaks, earlier bravado gone. “Okay. Got it now.” Fumbling fingers begin to undo the buttons on Agatha’s shirt, and for the first time in her life, on the precipice of sex… Agatha laughs.

And then helps Rio take her shirt off, obviously.

---

They spend Christmas together. After all, neither of them have anywhere else to be.

It’s already Christmas morning by the time they make it out of Rio’s bed, exhausted and sore, even after some sleep. Agatha uses Rio’s shower and feels weirdly domestic about borrowing her conditioner. When she emerges, toweled off and also shamelessly wearing a pair of Rio’s sweatpants and her Fall Out Boy t-shirt, Rio is staring forlornly into her freezer.

“What’s up?”

“It’s Christmas,” Rio points out. “All the good take-out places are closed. And all I have are Trader Joe’s appetizers.”

Agatha pulls a package of mandarin chicken from the freezer. “…This is a problem because?”

They whip up enough food for a small army and spend the rest of the morning gorging themselves and watching bad holiday movies on Rio’s couch. They fall asleep around noon, and when Agatha wakes up – on Rio’s floor, somehow, with her feet propped up on the couch cushions – Rio is prodding her in the side.

“I, um, I never got you a Christmas present,” Rio says shyly, hands behind her back, “which feels like a major oversight on my part, so I did this instead.”

Agatha raises an eyebrow. Rio pulls a tray of cookies from behind her back, still warm. Agatha’s heart fractures into a bunch of tiny little pieces. “They’re pumpkin and white chocolate chip,” Rio hedges, refusing to make eye contact. “Cause you said you like pumpkin things, and Yelena was supposed to make pumpkin pie before she went home but she never did so we had a few cans.”

Agatha grabs one of the cookies off the tray – not really caring if it’s too hot – and sticks it in her mouth. She moans appreciatively. Rio’s eyes go dark.

And after yet another round, Agatha taps Rio on the thigh and drags her back up her body. “I didn’t get you anything, either. Give me your phone.”

“What? Um, okay.” Rio passes it over to Agatha – it had fallen between the couch cushions at some point – and gets up to get them both water. When she comes back, Agatha has both her phone and Rio’s side-by-side and is hard at work in the Amazon app. “Wait, what are you doing?”

“Ordering all the books on your Amazon wishlist,” Agatha says simply. When she looks up, Rio’s jaw has dropped open, brows pinched together. “Merry Christmas.”

Rio flops on the couch. “Well, now my gift feels inadequate.”

Agatha presses order and watches happily as a little over a hundred dollars leaves her bank account, all for Rio. A good way to spend it, honestly. “Don’t sell yourself short,” she hums, crawling back up onto the couch and into Rio’s lap. “You know how to treat a girl.”

Rio proves she knows how to treat a girl again, and again, and again, and then she lets Agatha sleep on her couch, holding Rio close to her chest while she snores. (While Rio snores. Agatha doesn’t snore. Obviously.)

---

Agatha wakes up to Rio wafting a mug of hot chocolate under her nose with very intense eyes.

“Will you drink this and tell me if it’s any good?”

Merry Christmas, Baby, is playing on the radio, low and scratchy. Brain still spinning a little from sleep, Agatha grasps the mug and takes a gentle sip. It’s actually really good. She tastes peppermint and cinnamon and real whipped cream and when she gives a little hum at the taste Rio’s eyes go soft.

“Yeah, you did good.”

“I know it’s not caffeinated,” Rio tangles her fingers together, suddenly nervous about eye contact for the first time since Agatha’s known her (which is insane since her head was between Agatha’s legs a few hours ago).

She takes another long sip of the frankly sinfully good hot chocolate. “It’s got enough sugar to knock out a small horse, so it’ll do.” Rio is still kneeling on the carpet, a foot away, which is too far away. “Can you get over here?”

Rio blinks. “I didn’t know having sex with you would unlock all the vulnerability in your body.”

“What did you think it was going to do?” Agatha raises an eyebrow.

Rio shrugs, and climbs to her feet, coming over to the couch. Agatha moves her legs so Rio can sit, curling into her side, warm and pliant. Chocolate and cream sit heavy on Agatha’s tongue. In a warm haze, she says, “fuck, I guess you’re not as annoying as I thought you were.”

Beside her, Rio stiffens.

“Right. Uh, yeah.” She makes to sit up, and- wait. No. Not what should be happening. “I’m gonna-”

“Shit, no, Rio, that’s what I say to people I actually like.” Agatha tightens her grip around Rio’s shoulders, tugging her towards her with her hand on her chin. Rio goes willingly, her familiar eyes big and wide. “I actually- wait. I’m gonna do the whole big confession thing now, if that’s okay?”

“Big confession?” Rio’s hands crawl up Agatha’s sides, digging into her sweater.

“I haven’t hated you for a really long time. I don’t think I ever did. You’re… weird, and smart, and incredibly difficult, and I think it scared me how much I wanted to be around you so I pretended I didn’t. But I do. I really, really do.” Rio’s hand comes up to trace the side of Agatha’s face, and she leans into the touch. “I think I like being challenged by you. And teased by you. And just… feeling like I matter to you. I’ve been alone for so long I kind of forgot what it felt like to matter to someone.”

“Yeah, well,” Rio sighs, sitting up a little so she can reach Agatha’s lips, “you do matter to me, a lot. You’re probably the most interesting person I’ve ever met, actually.”

“That’s a high title, Vidal.”

“Want me to prove it?” Rio’s eyes sparkle. She kisses Agatha like a promise.

---

On the morning of December 26, Rio helps Agatha get dressed and they walk to the library together. Agatha digs an elbow under Rio’s ribs every chance she gets. Rio trips her through the library door, but helps her up with an arm around her back, so it evens out.

An hour into their work, Rio shuts her laptop and waggles her fingers in Agatha’s face, halfway through constructing a very good argumentative paragraph. “I’m getting coffee,” she says. “Grande, almond milk, cinnamon, right?”

Agatha sticks her tongue out at her. Rio, predictably, takes it as a yes.

When she comes back, two takeout cups in hand, she sets one down on top of Agatha’s papers and leans over, quick as lightning, to kiss her. Fleeting, like there will be a thousand other kisses to savor down the road. Agatha barely has a second to kiss her back before Rio’s disappeared to her side of the table, chugging her coffee like usual and cranking away at her laptop.

Right, Agatha thinks, sipping her own coffee and smiling at the taste of cinnamon. This is how it’s supposed to be.

(For the record, Agatha doesn’t hate her winter break. Not at all.)