Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ch. 1

As Agatha saw it, there was no mystery in her return. It was on the calendars of everyone who mattered. The finality of it had been made explicitly (and - in her opinion - excessively) clear. Plus the office's glass walls prevented her from taking anyone by surprise as she walked the long hallways she was re-familiarizing herself with.

But still she heard the gasps. The pings of Slack notifications as she walked by open office doors and the bullpen where the firm's administrative staff sat. She saw their heads turn, their eyes go wide, and she felt their collective gaze follow her as she walked by.

She didn't know them - the throngs of her underlings - and she was uninterested in learning any of their names. But they certainly knew hers. It was still on her door, after all.

And on her door it would remain.

She dropped her black, leather bag into the lap of whom she presumed was Lilia's executive assistant, given her proximity to the managing partner's office.

"Ms. Harkness," the young woman fumbled to secure the tote on her legs, making sure the contents wouldn't spill out and hit the thinly carpeted floor. "Ms. Calderu is just-"

"Through here?" Agatha finished, shooting the assistant a glare as she pushed her way through the frosted glass door. "Yes, I know."

Lilia's chair was turned away from the entrance, and all Agatha could make out of the woman was her gray hair piled high in a bun, her gaze clearly focused beyond the expansive windows and at the New York city skyline visible through them.

"Can I call you back, my one o'clock just arrived," Lilia made a show of lifting her bracelet adorned arm above the back of the chair and glanced at a non-existent watch. "Only two hours late."

Agatha rolled her eyes as Lilia wrapped up the conversation, and focused her attention on her own nails, inspecting the polish job that some technician in Miami completed the day before. She came highly recommended by the straight woman Agatha was chatting up at the hotel bar. Her hands had been a high degree of interest for Agatha, and the woman made an erroneous assumption on the motive.

It was fine. She needed a manicure more than she needed an inexperienced woman's fingers inside of her. Only one of those was going to bring her any fulfillment, after all.

Lilia ended her call as she spun her chair back around, sliding her phone in one of the many pockets of her patchwork quilt inspired jacket. It seemed that every year she spent at the firm emboldened her to include another eccentricity into her wardrobe. Agatha appreciated the liveliness it brought to the otherwise staid fashion fare in their Midtown building, though she would never tell her that, unless there was an opportunity where it would serve her to do so.

"And here she is," Lilia put her hands on her desk and her collection of bangles lightly jingled as she pushed herself upright. "The woman of the belated hour."

"In the flesh," Agatha held out either side of of her blue blazer as she bent herself into an over-embellished curtsey.

Lilia walked around her ornate wooden desk, another of the older woman's anachronistic additions to the firm's otherwise hyper-modern furnishings. "Jen is going to be so pissed you actually came."

"She says, as if that's not the exact reason I'm here."

Lilia chuckled, and stopped a few feet short of the younger woman as she assessed her. Agatha righted herself under the scrutiny, straightening her shoulders and adjusting the fit of her coat. "It's good to see you again, Agatha."

"Likewise, Calderu." Agatha returned, earning a thin lipped smile from the woman across from her. They stood, feet apart, uncertain of the next move. A handshake? Far too formal. A hug? Just the inverse.

Not wanting to leave the decision to the woman that HR kept informing her was technically her boss, Agatha made the decision before Lilia had the chance to, and offered her a quick head nod before collapsing in the arm chair seated next to the desk. "So, here I am. You got me. Your white whale. If you're wanting to gloat or take a victory lap, I will give you the next thirty seconds to do so."

Lilia shook her head softly, as she walked back around to her chair. "I don't want to gloat."

This caused Agatha to raise an eyebrow. "Why?"

"Contrary to what the rumblings around the water cooler would have you believe, it brings me no joy to cause other people discomfort."

"Then you're in the wrong line of work, toots." Agatha motioned to the name plate on the desk that included Lilia's Managing Partner title. "And you certainly chose the wrong path."

Another thin lipped smile. "Heavy is the head."

"Is that head heavy because it's dense, or..." Agatha trailed off, her teasing smirk fading a bit as as the woman across from her studied her with soft features and wide eyes. Agatha knew where this conversation was heading.

"It is good to have you back, genuinely." Lilia's voice was delicate, and Agatha steeled herself for the inevitable. "I was so sorry to hear about your mother."

Agatha had to bite her cheek to prevent her smile from growing too wide. "Only because you didn't know her."

Lilia frowned at this, and Agatha turned her attention to her hands again, now resting in her lap. She needed to look at least a little sad. She needed to make it seem at least a little believable that the last year and a half of her four year hiatus from the office was because she was caring for a mother she loved, not a mother she'd debated smothering with a pillow every night since she was a teenager.

Feeling the silence, Agatha offered: "she was a difficult woman."

Lilia nodded in response, still gentle. "Sometimes that makes a passing even harder."

Incisive. Two minutes and she'd already been on the receiving end of a Calderu-counseling session. Classic.

"Yes, well. Grief is a tricky thing, isn't it?" Agatha said, placing her hands on her knees and standing up. "I like to get through mine by burying myself in work. And that's why you dragged me back here, is it not? Threatening to take my space just because I wasn't always there to use it."

"Not always there." Lilia mimicked back, rolling her eyes. "I can count on one hand the number of times you've been here since the COVID shutdown."

"My work got done."

"Yes, it did. Your work was never the issue."

"So the issue was...?"

"Real estate." Lilia replied, as if it were obvious.

Agatha guffawed. "I earned that office."

"And we wanted to give others the opportunity to earn it as well." Lilia motioned to the window behind her without looking. "It's a lovely view. Heck of a carrot to motivate a senior partner."

Agatha motioned to herself. "Less of a carrot and more of a stick for this senior partner though."

"Yes, well..." Lilia shrugged. "Here you are."

Agatha breathed out heavily, and glanced out the room's interior windows that lead to the greater office area. Upon seeing Agatha's eyes, dozens of heads turned away to pretend their attention hadn't been consumed by the conversation they couldn't hear.

"I can still work from home half time." Agatha confirmed, still looking out at the employees, trying to identify which ones were brave enough to hold her eye contact. "That was in the agreement."

"I know."

"And I'm not going to be leading any all hands meetings."

"No one would ask you to."

Agatha ignored the implication of the response. "And I don't want to shepherd another fresh associate this year."

"Alas."

"Alas?" Agatha returned her attention to the managing partner.

"That's just the job." She motioned out the door, in the general direction of Agatha's coveted space. "You only have one. It'll be fun."

Agatha sighed, but knew this was a fight she wouldn't win. There had been too many of those recently. It wasn't in her nature to be resigned to fate. The next person to cross her would surely feel the brunt of this fact.

"Agatha," Lilia called out, just as the woman turned to exit. "Can I ask you something?"

Agatha blinked, wondering if Lilia was going to end up being the next person to cross her. She didn't respond, and Lilia continued with hesitance.

"Why do you hate it here so much?"

"I don't hate it here," Agatha reflexively replied, not allowing her brain a moment to acknowledge the true answer. "I just like elsewhere better."

And like that she was out the door. She picked her bag up from the desk of the assistant without sparing her another glance, and walked left through a hallway that took her to the northwest corner of the building.

She didn't stop for pleasantries with Jen and Alice, who were waiting outside her door. The latter was waving, the former kept her arms crossed - Agatha briefly wondered if she was concealing daggers in her palms, or just shooting them with her eyes. There was a third person there who Agatha didn't recognize, nor did she care to observe at the moment. Her eyes were on the door, and the name that was etched into the placard on it. Her name. Her door. Her office.

She grabbed the polished metal handle and pushed.

It smelled clean. That was the first thing she noticed. Not the view. Not the empty desk. Those were all the same. Well, maybe the view had shifted a bit - she'd have to study to see how the city's ever evolving skyline had changed in her time away. But the smell. That was noticeable. It was... sterile. It brought back times and places that weren't welcome in this space.

She wasn't particularly big on candles or incense or fragrance. But that would be first on her list. She'd have to find an intern to fix that. Something oceany, perhaps.

Or no, rather, that would just remind her of all the destinations she had visited on her work-from-not-home journey. All of the sunny beaches and fruity beverages and distractions in the form of bikini clad women. Something safe, then. A linen candle, or woodsy. Just anything that took away the antiseptic odor.

"Jen owes me a hundred bucks," Alice's voice entered Agatha's consciousness, and she turned around to see her colleagues walk in. Alice was wearing a black suit with a black button down underneath, the only color coming in the form of a chunky red pendant hung around her neck. "She didn't think you'd really do it."

"That was dumb of her," Agatha responded, as she looked the other woman in the room up and down. Jen was wearing a blush pink dress that cut just below the knees and its sleeves cut just below the elbows. She had a few layers of golden necklaces, and was wearing brown, high heeled boots that took her height a few inches above Agatha's. Noted. "She should've hedged it, so either way she ended up winning."

"There are no winners here, Harkness." Jen said, not looking at the other woman but rather ruefully taking in the view from the corner office that wasn't hers to be.

Alice raised her hand. "I feel like a winner."

Agatha nodded. "Me too."

"Really?" Jen scoffed. "You wouldn't rather still be on your sojourn in... Where were you exactly?"

"Anywhere with wifi and average temperatures above seventy five degrees." Agatha grinned. "Don't worry, I took covid precautions very seriously."

"I'm sure." Jen rolled her eyes.

"And then there was Salem, right?" A voice Agatha didn't know. A male voice, though a high pitch one - maybe pre-pubescent. She looked around to see the third figure from outside her door. Had he come in with the other two? She hadn't noticed.

He was a skinny boy with curly hair and a slit in his eyebrows. He was wearing a suit, but he was wearing it poorly. The pants were too tight and the jacket was too big. And then the shoes - Agatha had to do a double take. Was he wearing sneakers?

Agatha frowned at him, and then at her two fellow partners. "What is this, bring your child to work day?"

His eyes went wide. "Oh no, ha, that's funny, but no, I'm-"

"A teenager?" She finished for him.

"He was a summer associate." Alice offered.

"...Who no one showed the way out?" Agatha tilted her head, taking him in again. "It's September."

"He was a summer associate for the last two years." Alice continued. "And now he's a first year associate."

"A first year associate who needs a mentor." Jen pushed the kid towards Agatha, who took a step away from him. "And you've been assigned."

"The partner I was shadowing left." He said sympathetically and with a grimace. "But I promise that had nothing to do with me."

Agatha opened her mouth to respond to that inanity, but then shook her head and started on a new train of thought. "You're giving me a minor."

"A mentee." Jen corrected.

"A junior associate." Alice said.

"He's a child."

"I'm twen-"

"A babe," Agatha cut him off, "plucked from his mother's teat."

Jen recoiled. "How much time did you spend on that farm in Salem?"

"Well, I hope that farm had goats, because my name is Billy" he smiled wide, offering his hand for Agatha to shake as he puffed his chest out clearly thrilled with both himself and his segue.

This was met with a resounding silence from the rest of the group. Seconds that felt like eternities passed before Agatha broke the deadlock. "You're telling me he is a law school graduate?"

Jen shrugged. "We'll double check."

"And we'll also let you two get acquainted," Alice patted Billy on the shoulder before turning to depart. "Good to have you back, Harkness."

"Mmm," was all Jen offered, as she gave the office one final wistful appraisal before the two of them left the room, closing the door behind them.

Closing the door. Her door. Agatha's door, Agatha's office, Agatha's domain. Now acclimatized to the smell, Agatha closed her eyes and let another, much more pleasant sense take over. The feeling of power. The familiar rush of getting something that someone else wanted. Taking what belonged to her and not to the unworthy others who did lesser work and therefore had to settle for lesser spaces.

"So, I think you've been working on the Obelisk case, so I've been onboarded onto that, and I spent the day pulling documents from the-"

Agatha stopped the ramblings of the not-teenager with a raised hand. "My eyes are closed, William."

"Oh, actually, I go by Billy."

"And if you interrupt me again, you go back to the petting zoo." She continued, eyes still closed. "Understood?" When she heard nothing, she opened one eye to assess the situation. "Understood?"

"Oh, sorry, I was nodding because I didn't want to interrupt you. But yes. Understood." He gave her a two fingered salute at the end, and then immediately flushed and threw both of his hands in his pockets. "Or wait maybe understood, was the petting zoo thing because I'm young or was it a throwback to the goat thing?"

"The Obelisk case." Agatha sighed, ignoring him as she opened her other eye, blinking to refocus herself in the situation. "A good first one for you. They've got deep pockets and no interest in winning a moral war - it will settle quickly I think."

"It's not my first case, I've been here for a while and-"

"It's your first case with me, so it's your first case that counts." Agatha pulls out her phone from her jacket to glance at the clock. Three thirty. She'd told her Uber driver it would only be fifteen minutes. It had been twenty. "I'm going to be working from my house for the rest of the day, Bill."

"Billy," he tried in vain to get her acknowledgement as she walked past him to open the door.

"I'll be back on my computer in an hour." She stepped outside, right into a huddled conversation between Jen and Alice.

"Leaving already?" Jen frowned, not bothering to hide her derisive tone.

"I work better from home." She said, hoping it stung as much as she intended it to. Cementing the office as hers and not even using it. Again. It gave Agatha a delicious rush.

"And where is home now?" Alice asked.

"I kept my pied-à-terre."

"Pied-à-terre," Jen's frown deepened. "That's one way to make your first post-partner apartment purchase sound chic and not like a tiny necessity."

"Both things can be true," Alice offered.

Agatha didn't stick around to hear the rest of the conversation, leaving the two of them and Billy behind to discuss whatever they fancied.

She adjusted her tote on her shoulder as she walked towards the lobby area.

Her heart rate wasn't increasing.

Her breathing was totally normal.

She didn't feel anything weird or strange as she walked by the entrance to the bathrooms - they barely even registered in her consciousness.

And, as she opened the doors to the hallway with elevators and pressed the button to call one, she only had to wipe her palms on her purple trousers once to remove the very light and totally normal sheen of sweat that had accumulated there.

Her drive from Midtown to the West Village was much more harrowing thanks to the driver's lead foot and loose understanding of yellow lights, but Agatha hardly noticed, as she kept her eyes closed in the back of the sedan. It had been a long day and she'd been dreading it for a while. Leaving her hotel, getting to the airport, dealing with unruly passengers on her Monday morning flight out of Miami had all felt exponentially harder given the destination she was flying back to. The life she was flying back to. Or perhaps the lack there of.

She didn't immediately recognize her apartment when the car pulled up. The front was small, and looked like any other in the neighborhood. Red brick facade. Big wooden door. Iron wrought fencing and stairs leading up the stoop and down to the garden level apartments below.

It was a long and narrow building, nestled into a corner lot. The units all faced the street to the south, windows looking out over one of the neighborhoods many treelined, cobblestoned lanes. But the front door was on a slightly more popular thoroughfare, and her driver nearly took out a passing bicyclist as he opened the door to get out.

She searched her tote for the house key she rarely needed, and got out just in time to watch watch the driver take her bags out of the trunk and place the wheels on the soiled concrete of the Manhattan sidewalk. With a grimace Agatha, directed him to take them inside. She walked up the tall stoop to her building, and punched in the blessedly-ne'er-changed-code to unlock the front door. He dropped her luggage on the floor of the interior hallway and she nodded her thanks, before waiting until his car was gone to close the entry door.

Muscle memory took over and guided her down the short and narrow hall to her place. Her bags glided over the scratched up parquet, beyond the stair case that lead up to the second and third story apartments, as she headed straight to unit 33. A strange number, given there were only a dozen units in the building. Three on her floor, three in the garden level beneath her, and another three in each of the respective upstairs levels, if she recalled correctly. She had the middle unit on the first floor. Not ideal, to be in the middle, but the floor level suited her nicely. She didn't want to walk up with groceries, and the elevated nature of the building provided enough separation from the street to make her feel cozy.

She unlocked the door and let herself in. It was smaller than she remembered, though then she remembered that she thought that every time she came home. It had been over a year since her last visit, and she hadn't stayed longer than a day.

She placed her bags underneath the wall mounted coat rack to her left, and took in the space. To her right was the tiny kitchen, whose oven she couldn't open if the cabinet drawers were being used. Just beyond the connected bar seating was her living area. Enough space for a couch, a television, and a coffee table. Not really enough space for the industrial bookshelf she'd squeezed in, but it probably didn't break fire code.

Vaguely she wondered if she stood in the middle of the living area, where the coffee table currently sat, and extended her arms as wide as she could, if she'd be able to touch both walls simultaneously.

She thought yes. And then the thought depressed her, so she busied herself with pulling up her horizontal, wooden blinds so she could open the window and air out the place.

Unlike her office, this unused space didn't smell clean, it smelt musty. The service she'd hired to check in on her unit and maintain general upkeep clearly didn't care about keeping it fresh.

Nonetheless, she took a sense of pride in how cute she still found the apartment, and how it was made livable by the renovations she'd commissioned a few years back. Well, a few years before the quarantine. So, maybe it was more like several years back.

She'd kept the original hardwood floors and the exposed brick on the wall with the windows. But the kitchen was modernized, the living room furniture was sleek, she'd splurged on a compact steam shower for her compact bathroom... She had planned to upgrade her old hand-me-down shaker furniture that filled her pocket-sized bedroom, but then COVID hit, and she figured a better upgrade would just be going elsewhere instead.

Agatha didn't bother unpacking right away, though she did take a quick shower before settling on the couch with her laptop to get back to work. There was no space in her home for a desk, but she had grown quite accustomed to working from couches over the past few years.

Her computer didn't immediately connect to the wifi. She couldn't recall the network name, let alone the password but could recall that a previous version of Agatha had run into the same issue.

She found the paper she'd written the info down taped to the fridge, and thanked her past self, before quickly cursing her past self as she looked inside the fridge at all the expired condiments and semi-perishables she'd left in there.

After logging on, she placed a quick order for grocery delivery and then got back online to work her legal magic.

It was dark when her stomach grumbled a few hours later, taking her out of her trance.

Shit.

The groceries.

She raced off the couch and opened her door to see three brown paper bags sitting on the floor of the hallway. She looked through the contents - the vegetables were still cold, and the rotisserie chicken would be fine. She picked up the ice cream container, only to feel its melted contents slosh around.

The building's main door opened as she put the ice cream down outside of the bag it had melted in, and she turned to see two women stumble inside. One of them was giggling, the other had the hint of a smirk on her lips. Agatha saw they were holding hands.

She didn't want to see more so she pulled the bags over her threshold and closed the door behind them.

She used to be that person. Bringing women home with her. Hell, it was pretty much the only time she was home. As a junior partner she spent most of her life at the office. The majority of quality time she spent in this apartment was with someone else.

She didn't let herself reminisce too much, and busied herself by putting away her groceries, opening one the premade salads she'd purchased, and getting back on the couch to resume her work.

Or that was the goal.

Faint noises kept distracting her from redlining the document open on her computer.

It sounded a bit like... A ghost? But Agatha didn't believe in such silly supernatural things. Because if she ever were to encounter a ghost, it surely would've happened in Salem any time over the last three months.

So it wasn't a ghost.

The noise got slightly louder. A wail. A cry for help. Someone was in trouble?

That certainly wouldn't inspire Agatha to action. Not her monkey, not her circus. The golden rule of city life. Your nose shouldn't go where it doesn't belong and-

"Fuck," she heard, muffled through the wall behind her head, followed by another wail that was not actually a wail now that she was hearing it more clearly. It was a high pitched moan. And then it happened again, and was punctuated by a thump of something hitting the wall that Agatha shared with the back unit of the building.

Oh. Well. This was new.

There didn't use to be noise next door. Certainly not this kind of noise. The old lady who lived there didn't seem to be one for passionate sexual escapades. Mostly she seemed to be one for knitting. That might of been her loudest hobby.

So. This was a shift.

There was another moan, this one lower in register though still identifiably female. Had the walls always been this thin?

Neither of them sounded like the elderly woman Agatha had never gotten to know, which likely meant bad news for Mrs. Whats-her-face. And if the continued moaning against the wall Agatha's head was rested against was a harbinger of things to come, this also meant bad news for Agatha.

She huffed and walked to her bags, grabbing her headphones out of their case and putting them on. She still had thirteen more pages of associate-written-garbage to clean up tonight. If she was going to keep her hours at the office as loose as she wanted to, she needed to continue to overdeliver on her output.

She threw on a YouTube playlist of white noise and resumed her work once more. She had almost made it through five whole pages when the shaking started.

Rhythmic pounding against her back, turning her couch into the world's softest massage chair. While the moaning was drowned out by the ocean sounds in her headphones, she could still feel vibrations from the wall.

This would not do.

She looked at her computer sitting on her lap and lightly moving with each shake.

No, this would not do at all.

She didn't bother to look herself over in the mirror before she was out her front door and walking down to the end of the hallway, knocking on the door numbered 34.

No one answered immediately - no surprise there.

She knocked louder, bruising her knuckles against the dark brown wood.

It took another minute before the door was peeled open, revealing a dark haired woman in a short black robe that she was still in the process of tying.

"Can I help you?" The woman asked, looking Agatha up and down as she rested against the door frame of her apartment.

"Yes, hi, I'm your next-door neighbor, Agatha Harkness," she extended out her hand for the woman to shake.

The woman assessed Agatha's hand cautiously before taking it. "I like your nails."

Agatha ignored this. "I just came by to congratulate you on the performance - sounds like one or both of you are really doing a spectacular job in there."

The woman - still holding Agatha's hand - only responded with a single raised eyebrow.

"Now if you could kindly shut the fuck up - some of us have actual work to do."

The woman squinted at Agatha and tilted her head, before dropping her gaze back to their joined hands. Agatha followed the line of sight, and quickly retracted her fingers from her neighbor's grasp.

"You want us to shut the fuck up?" She asked with a smirk.

"Kindly though. Don't forget the kindly."

"I think I have a ball gag somewhere in here."

"Charming."

"Spare me the indignation, Agatha."

"Then spare the intimate details of your sex life," Agatha searched for a name she just now realized she didn't know. "...stranger."

"Rio."

"Oh, wow, that's your name?" A new voice entered the chat, and the other woman Agatha had seen in the hallway earlier came up behind Rio, wearing only a dark gray sheet. "That's so funny, my name is Rihanna."

"That is so funny." Agatha plastered on a fake smile. "And if I hear either of those names screamed out tonight, I'll vomit on your door mat."

"Go back to bed," Rio turned to her guest, using her head to motion towards an unseen area. "I'll meet you there."

"Thanks in advance for your understanding." Agatha turned on her heel to walk away.

"It was nice to meet you too." Something about the way Rio chuckled as said it made Agatha turn around. Made Agatha look at the woman. Made Agatha actually take her in. Her olive complexion, her deep brown eyes, her pink lips, slightly parted as her tongue did a quick glide over the gap in her top row of teeth.

One of Rio's hands was on the door but the other dropped to the tie of her robe. She was slowly undoing it, tugging at the long string. She gave Agatha one final smirk and pulled the knot loose just as she closed the door.

Agatha didn't move for a moment - feet frozen in place, as her brain replayed the scene. The conversation. The way Rio had looked at her, with a confident, mischievous, je ne sais quoi shining in her eyes.

It probably would be hard for the other woman to keep quiet, given the state of Rio. She was stunning, and if Agatha were ten years younger and not tied up in work, she might have tried to finagle her way into join them in apartment 34 that night.

But as it stood, she was too old, too busy, and too irritated by the nonchalance of the younger woman.

She turned back towards her own apartment, picking up the ice cream container she'd left out. She debated throwing it at her neighbor's door, but instead took it inside and let it drain in her kitchen sink before settling back in on the couch. She put her headphones on again, and opened up the document once more.

It only took five minutes before the pounding on the wall returned.

Agatha closed her eyes. No more work was going to get done tonight. Not while she was an unwilling voyeur to whatever the pair next door were up to.

Though she a voyeur or an accidental participant? It felt a bit like she was being thrust upon.

Agatha let her mind wander to the logistics - hypothetically, if Rio were using her hand or a toy or a strap or some type of appendage, and that appendage was inside of Rhianna, who was touching the wall, or more likely on a bed that was touching the wall, which was the same wall that Agatha was touching... She was sort of a part of it. The line from Rio to her was unbroken, and she did feel lightly jostled by the movement meaning she wasn't unaffected and-

A moan that broke through the white noise in her headphones shook her from the mental image of Rio's fingers inside the other woman. A mental image she didn't really want to have, and yet was sad to see go.

Agatha closed her laptop and got ready for bed. The moaning didn't stop as she brushed her teeth, as she changed into her pajamas, and as she got into bed. The only reprieve she had was when she finally got back up and opened her travel toiletry set to take out a set of ear plugs she'd been given on some flight ages ago. She twisted them up and plugged them in, cozying up in bed finally to the sweet sound of nothing.

This was an unexpected annoyance. A situation she hadn't accounted for. She'd loved the previous neighbor. So quiet. So respectful. So anonymous.

This new one though... Rio. There was something about her that gave her pause. Something that made Agatha think she needed to quickly find a solution so this woman didn't end up ruining her work schedule, or sleep cycle, or maybe even life.

But what could she do? Talk to her again? Unlikely to help. And talking to the HOA would no doubt be even more ineffectual.

Agatha sighed and rolled over in bed, absently wondering if Rio and Rhianna were still at it. She quickly pivoted to a more pragmatic, solution oriented thought.

What would she do if this were a client? What would she recommend?

And like that, the answer then became immediately obvious to her.

She would just buy her out.

Chapter Text

Ch. 2

"It feels a bit excessive," Alice said, attention on her computer as she finished composing an email.

"What, why?" Agatha frowned into her coffee. "People combine units all the time, and it's not like I couldn't use the extra space - I would just have to tear down a single wall and then, voila. Twice the square footage."

"Sure," Alice started, hitting send before looking over at Agatha, past the handful of empty chairs Agatha had chosen to keep between them when she sat down at the long conference table. "But wouldn't it be less hassle and less money to buy a bigger apartment somewhere else instead of buying and renovating this one?"

Agatha opened her mouth in shock, raising her palms up as she looked around the mostly empty room, hoping the others present would be just as quick to recognize the sheer audacity of the idea.

The others, of course, being the five senior partners who were in today, most of whom were engrossed in their own laptops as they waited for their weekly stand up meeting to start, and none of whom would have an opinion that Agatha would care to take regardless.

"And leave the place I worked so hard to decorate?" Agatha shook her head and tapped her fingers on the table. "The neighborhood I care so much about? There's a real sense of community in that building."

"Really?" Jen couldn't contain her snort. "Name one of your neighbors."

"And not the one you're trying to kick out," Alice quickly followed up.

Agatha used a loud laugh to cover her panic. "Please, easy. There's Mrs..."

She paused. The last name escaped her. The quiet widow who had lived in Rio's apartment previously. She was old. Wore a lot of sun hats. Always decorated her door for holidays. Halloween spider webs, and Christmas tinsel, and she'd even had a giant Valentines day wreath in the shape of a heart one year. Fuck it, everyone was looking at her so that would have to do.

"...Hart. Mrs. Hart, the kindly widow with a heart of gold, no pun intended."

"Not really a pun," a man Agatha only recognized from Zoom calls said. She shot him a look and he quickly returned his focus to his keyboard.

Jen crossed her arms. "Name another."

"Those weren't the rules." Agatha returned with a petulant smile.

Jen rolled her eyes. "I'm with Alice, for the record. But if you just need this girl to stop being so loud, why don't you use our fancy letterhead, draft an official looking noise complaint document, and put it in her mailbox?"

Agatha huffed. "That's an dumb idea."

-

Billy huffed. "How is this relevant to the case?"

"It's relevant because if you don't do it, you won't be working on the case," Agatha explained, elbows resting on her desk, and her hands clasped underneath her chin. "Just make it look scary and legitimate - and don't forget to print it on our letterhead."

-

She made it to one in the afternoon before her bladder reached worryingly full status. But that was good timing anyway, as she hadn't yet taken lunch, and she had a prepackaged salad beckoning her in her home fridge.

She didn't say goodbye to anyone as she exited the office, passed the bathroom that she totally, seriously, really was never even thinking about, and took a car back to the West Village.

It wasn't like leaving work at one meant she stopped working at one. Agatha was diligently online, responding to emails, chastising employees on Slack, and combing through endless documents on the variety of cases she was overseeing.

She was good at her job no matter where she worked. Unless the place she was working shared a wall with Rio's bedroom, apparently.

The moans from next door became audible just after ten.

Two nights in a row?

Fucking christ.

Agatha gave a halfhearted attempt at finishing a review while Rio's houseguest repeatedly called out a variety of inanities.

"Don't stop," she could hear the non-Rio woman chant, but this directive certainly wasn't aimed at Agatha, who did stop her work and tabbed over to Slack.

Agatha Harkness: 10:03pm

Minion, why didn't you write that cease and desist for my neighbor like I asked you to?

She tapped angrily on the side of her laptop as she waited for a reply. After a full thirty seconds with nary a typing bubble, she wrote again.

Agatha Harkness: 10:04pm

Also it's far too early for an associate of your level to be offline.

William Kaplan: 10:04pm

hi yes sorry im online

William Kaplan: 10:04pm

and i wrote it

William Kaplan: 10:04pm

honestly i thought you were joking

William Kaplan: 10:04pm

but i printed it out and put it in your bag before you left

William Kaplan: 10:05pm

just in case you were serious

William Kaplan: 10:05pm

which you were

William Kaplan: 10:05pm

i guess

Agatha got up from her couch and opened her tote bag. She'd missed it when she left the office, as she'd hastily stuffed her laptop in its sleeve and slid it into the bag without glancing inside. But sure enough there was a letter that she didn't recognize amongst its contents.

She took it out and looked it over. He'd not only (presumably, at any rate) used the firm's letterhead, but the firm's envelopes as well, with its name and address printed on the upper left corner, and her home address (sans name) printed in the center. How had he gotten that information? And the initiative to put it on for her...

She made a mental note of his craftiness and returned to the computer to send a quick thank you before thinking better of it.

Agatha Harkness: 10:06pm

Work on your professionalism when you type out messages, William.

She didn't wait for him to respond, and closed her laptop. She stopped at her bathroom mirror briefly - not to reapply her make up, per se - just to make sure it wasn't smudged, so her delivery of the letter would carry the proper gravitas, and wouldn't be undercut by something as silly as some flaking mascara.

She had to knock on the door to unit 34 three times before it was opened. But not by Rio, nor by the woman Rio had over last night. This new woman was wearing the robe Rio had on last night though. She looked worse in it. Maybe that was just her scowl.

"What?" The nameless woman barked, and Agatha stood up straighter, a smirk reflexively forming.

"I'm looking for the owner of this unit," she held up the envelope. "Urgent communications."

The woman rolled her eyes, and stepped out to reach for it, but Agatha shook a finger at her.

"For the owner's eyes only."

The woman sighed, and turned her gaze back inside the apartment. "Someone wants to talk to you," she called out, and shot Agatha one more annoyed glare before leaving.

Agatha fought the instinctual urge to lean her head in and watch her walk away. But then Rio would've seen her, and she needed to present as the powerful attorney next door, not the sad, single, thirsty, middle-aged lesbian she shared a wall with.

Both things were of course true. But Rio didn't have to know that.

The thirst might be hard to hide though, and Agatha swallowed as Rio arrived in the doorway, a smirk already playing at her lips.

Rio had on two items of clothing: a pair of simple black underwear and an unzipped gray hoodie. Her entire torso was open, the fabric of the jacket was just barely covering her breasts on either side.

She was tanned and toned, and Agatha's eyes drifted down every visible inch of her body before she could stop herself. At the lipstick marks on her chest, and the edge of a tattoo just visible by her ribs, and the legs that just went on and on and-

"Is that for me?" Rio's low drawl brought Agatha's eyes back up.

"Nighttime reading material," she smiled extra wide, hoping it would distract Rio from the flush that she felt flooding her cheeks. "Enjoy."

She held the letter out, wishing the woman would snatch it so Agatha could return to her apartment before her fluster was too apparent. But Rio just stood there, watching. Looking. Assessing.

Agatha wasn't sure what she was looking for, but Rio's gaze had stayed focused on her own. Her big brown eyes were searching for something, and Agatha had no interest in helping her find it.

"I can slip it under your door if you're not going to take it," Agatha waved her other hand flippantly. "Or would you prefer I read it out loud to you? I'm certain I could do it from my couch, and you'd be able to hear it through the wall."

Rio said nothing, but took a step out in the hallway, just barely invading Agatha's personal space. Her eyes continued their onslaught on Agatha's as she delicately took the letter, her fingers brushing over the back of Agatha's hand before she stepped back into her apartment.

She grabbed the side of her door but didn't move to close it.

"So," Agatha started, unable to stop herself from filling the silence. Deeply unlike her. She blamed the hour. And the hoodie. Mostly the hoodie. God, couldn't she have at least zipped it up for fuck's sake. "Are you going to read it?"

"I'll see you, Agatha." Was the only response she got before the door closed and Agatha was left in the hall alone.

She took a deep breath and straightened her shirt as she walked back to her apartment. She was fine. She was in control. She could handle this. She was a big girl, who had a big girl job, and big girl legal friends, and a big girl bank account, and she wasn't going to be affected by some random woman who she just happened to share a wall with.

The moans resumed as soon as Agatha took her seat on the couch again. She didn't immediately reach for the headphones. She opened her laptop and hoped the firm wasn't tapped into her microphone and listening to the happenings of her apartment.

The sounds seemed even louder now, and her eyes closed in frustration when the rhythmic pounding started, though this just created a blank canvas for her imagination to run wild - filling in the gaps of what she was hearing.

Rio was probably still in the hoodie, the sleeves rolled up as she hovered over the nameless - and in Agatha's mind, now faceless - woman. She was using a strap, as that surely was the only way such force could be exerted against the wall. And she was staring at the woman, her brown eyes low and dark, looking straight into her eyes - Agatha's eyes - as she thrust her hips and bit her lip and-

The ping of a Slack notification made her eyes shoot open, breaking the reverie but not taking away the warm feeling that had spread throughout her body. Her hand burned from where Rio had grazed it earlier.

She needed to get laid. Or more than that, she needed to get this distraction out of her building.

-

"I think of the cases I've sent you so far, the verdict in Williamson vs Perseus Industries is the most likely to be relevant to..." Billy droned on and Agatha stopped listening as she spun lightly in her chair.

She wondered if Rio had read the letter yet. Agatha pictured Rio reading it this morning at a coffee table while drinking a tea in her black robe. Or maybe she'd read it last night after fucking that woman. Or maybe she'd read it while fucking that woman, reading out the words as if they were dirty talk.

Agatha had asked Billy for the copy this morning, so she could assess the content. He attached it along with the fifty pages of actual work he completed yesterday.

He wrote it well. Big and scary with a lot of jargon that a layman would struggle to understand.

Rio was probably a layman. Laywoman. Agatha would like to be a laidwoman at Rio's hand.

She shook her head. That didn't make sense. God she was struggling. This had to end.

Billy had stopped talking, and was looking down at Agatha, fingers nervously fidgeting against his open computer. "...Do you disagree?"

"Disagree about what?"

"I don't know, you were just shaking your head like I said something wrong."

"I have a new task for you," she started, ignoring his issue since she had no explanation for it. "I need you to write a letter to my HOA. Similar to the one to the neighbor, but pepper in some New York city noise violation ordinance information. It doesn't need to be real, it just needs to sound real. Make them think there might be some sort of ramifications if the issue continues."

Billy furrowed his brow. "You want me to do this instead of case analysis?"

"I want you to do both."

"But I don't know what I'm talking about with noise ordinances."

"You're a smart kid," she motioned to his red turtleneck, adorned with small flowers stitched into the knitting around his collar. "Just use the same creativity that helped you pick that outfit."

"Thanks," he replied with an earnest smile.

She shook her head slowly, and returned only a quiet, pity laced "no."

-

She needed to pee again. Why did she keep needing to do that? Maybe she should stop drinking water. Probably meant she should stop drinking coffee too. But that was unthinkable.

She looked at the clock. Just after noon. She didn't have any meetings until one. She could justify an early lunch. Stretch her legs. Find a different bathroom to use.

There weren't too many inspiring lunch offerings in midtown. The standard fast casual fare. Very few with public toilets, particularly public toilets that Agatha trusted would be clean enough for her standards.

She settled on an old school Italian restaurant, white table clothes and all, and moved her one o'clock meeting to two from her phone as she dug into her bolognese.

This was a very normal thing to do. A lot of people took solo, formal, sit down lunches in the middle of a busy work day just so they could avoid using an office restroom. Agatha wasn't wrong for doing it. And if she really thought about it, she was coming out ahead. A better lunch and some time away from the computer meant she could really be hyper focused when she returned to work.

And if the walk back was annoying and loud, then it would just bring her all the more appreciation for her corner office, fifty two floors removed from the busy streets of Manhattan.

There was a time in her life when she loved this noise. When she sought it out. But now the whoosh of cars and blare of horns and incessant buzz of the masses of anonymous people just crowded her head.

New York was a young person's city. A city for people with energy and hope.

"Agatha?"

And for people with far less baggage.

She closed her eyes hoping it was a trick of the mind. That the voice - her voice - was a figment of her imagination. Brought up from the stress of the intersection she'd just crossed.

"Agatha Harkness, is that really you?"

Alas. Another issue with New York was that - despite being the biggest city in the United States - it had a terrible habit of being really, impossibly, infuriatingly small.

"Wanda Maximoff," she put on her most convincing smile and turned around. "If that is still your last name?"

The redhead was a few feet away from where Agatha had stopped walking. She was wearing a black pantsuit and holding the soft burgundy briefcase Agatha had gifted her all those years ago. It was holding up well. Wanda probably cared for it. Oiled the leather. Didn't put it in harms way. Looked after it in the way that Wanda always looked after things. The sentiment of this hypothetical annoyed Agatha.

"If I wasn't going to change my last name for you, do you really think I'd change it for someone else?"

"People change a lot of things," Agatha shrugged.

"You haven't," Wanda motioned to Agatha with a reverence that felt good. It shouldn't feel good. "You look great." She paused and focused her eyes on Agatha's. "How long have you been in town?"

There was so much loaded in that question. Agatha wasn't prepared for this yet. "A few days. Work."

Wanda nodded. "Are you here long?"

"I didn't think you'd want to see me." This wasn't a lie. They hadn't exactly parted on amicable terms, assuming the plate that Wanda had thrown at Agatha's head was fully indicative of her feelings.

Wanda hummed at this. "That might be fair."

Agatha took Wanda in for a moment. Her red hair was parted down the middle and fell elegantly past her shoulders, and her green eyes (accentuated against the light rose of her eyeshadow) bore into Agatha's.

She looked good. She always looked good. But it didn't spark anything for Agatha anymore. She didn't think about Wanda while she was out of New York. In fact, she didn't think about Wanda when was in New York - at least not enough for her ex girlfriend's taste. That was part of the whole problem. Part of the ex of it all.

"Are you still at the same firm?"

"Switched to a pro-bono, charity only firm actually," Agatha deadpanned. "For the children."

Wanda looked away, a hint of a laugh mixed with a slight head shake. She waited a moment longer than her usual cadence before returning her attention to the conversation. "The world would spin backwards before Agatha Harkness went out of her way to do something nice for someone. Unless there was something in it for her of course."

"You caught me," Agatha raised her palms up to signify guilt. "It's a front for the cartel."

"So still at the same firm, then. And still at that same cute apartment?"

There was so much innocence in Wanda's eyes. Despite her tragic childhood. Despite her cutthroat job. Despite the pain that she'd incurred at Agatha's hands. She still had retained so much... What was it, eactly? Vulnerability. And kindness. It was almost nauseating.

"Yes, though I have a new neighbor who is making it hard to imagine staying long."

"Oh?"

"She's..." Agatha considered her word choice. "Loud."

"Music?"

"If only."

Wanda frowned. "What then?"

"She has an exuberant and prolific sex life," Agatha sighed. "And she doesn't seem particularly interested in acquiescing to my polite requests to quiet down." Off Wanda's non response, Agatha continued. "I'm trying to get her kicked out. And if that fails I'm going to try and buy her out."

"Why don't you just sleep with her and break her heart?" Wanda asked, the tension of the subtext palpable. "I'm sure you can create a toxic enough environment to make her want to leave."

"That's one strategy for sure," Agatha tried her best to ignore the feelings she could hear in Wanda's voice, and looked down at the sidewalk. "I've got to get going to my next meeting, but..." She trailed off, hoping the other woman would finish the sentiment on her behalf.

"It was good to see you." Wanda said, and it was unclear how sincerely. "Don't be a stranger."

Agatha nodded before leaving.

Next time she'd just use the bathroom in the office's ground floor lobby.

-

Agatha kept her headphones off as she worked from her couch that evening, waiting for the moans to start. She'd changed into her most revealing loungewear the second she arrived home. A fitted, white v-neck she wore without a bra, and a pair of high waisted athletic shorts that just barely covered her ass.

It was an outfit meant for a much younger woman, but it was comfortable, and that provided her with some much needed plausible deniability.

There were no moans that night. But there was a delicate thumping. It started at nine this time. Early. And it was much, much softer than the prior encounters.

Whomever Rio was fucking must have been a bad lay, and Agatha idly wondered which one of them would answer the door as she knocked on it.

She only needed to knock once this time before Rio appeared. She was - devastatingly - fully dressed in black overalls with a green crop top underneath.

Agatha opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it, before starting again. "The noise is back."

"And so are you."

"Yes, well..." Agatha trailed off, and looked at Rio.

She didn't seem like she was in the middle of a passionate tryst. She was wearing socks, and rings, and her hair was down. Her cheeks weren't flushed, and her lips looked less swollen than they had the nights before.

Agatha furrowed her brow. "Is anyone in there with you?"

"No, I was just testing something," Rio responded, simply and crossed her arms as she leaned against the door frame. "You're a bit of a freak aren't you?"

"What because I like my peace undisturbed?" Agatha bristled.

A freak. Her. How dare she... What right did she have? It's not like she was the one faking sex noises to lure her neighbor over. And so what if she had been day dreaming of seeing a half naked Rio for the last five hours? That was normal. That was fine.

Rio didn't respond and the silence was getting too loud in Agatha's head. "Did you read the letter?"

"No."

"No?"

"I didn't read it."

"Can you read?"

"I can read a room." Rio nodded her head at Agatha as she put a hand on her door. "More than can be said for you."

"Har har," Agatha wasn't ready for the conversation to end so she said the first thing that popped into her head. "What happened to Mrs. Hart? Did you eat her?"

"I eat a lot of women, you're going to have to be more specific."

"Nice old lady. Tried to give me plants before she realized I'm a serial killer." Rio raised an eyebrow, and Agatha clarified: "Of plants."

"You murdered your plants?" Rio stood up straighter and took her hand away from the door to cross her arms again.

"Negligent homicided them - I have a bit of a black thumb." Agatha raised her hand, as if Rio would be able to see a charcoal coating.

Rio chuckled to herself, and looked back inside her apartment before returning her attention to Agatha. "Her name was Sharon Davis."

"Who?"

"The nice old lady. And she died."

"Oh. Well." Agatha coughed. "Rest in peace Mrs. Har- Davis. R.I.P Mrs. Davis." There was a long beat of silence, and Agatha tried not to stare at the strip of torso that was visible between the dip of the overalls and the edge of Rio's shirt. "So, what does that mean you're just a squatter then?"

"Can I help you with something?"

Agatha was too on the back foot to bring up anything new. She couldn't spring the idea of buying the unit from her right now. Not with Rio firmly holding the upper hand.

"Keep it down," she said, before adding as an after thought: "please."

"I'm very quiet."

"Your guests aren't."

"I'll tell them to keep it down the next time I have one over."

"That didn't work the last two times."

"I didn't ask nicely." Rio ran a tongue along her teeth before it settled in her cheek. She looked Agatha up and down, and the older woman suddenly felt very self conscious about the outfit she'd so carefully curated for this exact scenario. "I can be very persuasive."

A new tension filled the air and Wanda's words rang through her head. Just sleep with her and break her heart.

Just sleep with her.

Yes, that sounded appealing.

The heartbreak part too. It wold be nice to turn the tables on Rio - to reestablish the power dynamic and get this vexingly arrogant woman to submit to her. Get her to leave.

Agatha crossed her arms under her breasts, lifting them ever so slightly. She saw Rio's eyes dart down before they returned to Agatha's face. "So no one is with you tonight."

Rio offered a sympathetic smile. "Just me and the ghost of Mrs. Davis."

"Kinky."

"If that's all..." Rio's hand returned to the edge of the door.

Agatha didn't want it to be all, but she didn't have anything else that cold keep her there, and she needed to maintain as much dignity as she could. "You're the one who wanted me to come over, aren't you?" Off of Rio's raised brow, Agatha continued. "With your test."

Rio said nothing. Just tilted her head.

"For future reference, you can just knock on my door. No need to go through all the extra effort."

"Noted."

"Right, well." Agatha took a deep breath. "I hope you have a very peaceful and quiet evening, then."

"Good night, Agatha."

Agatha nodded, then turned around and began the short walk back to her apartment before Rio could close the door on her.

Chapter Text

Ch. 3

Agatha spent most of the following work day thinking about Rio.

Every time she blinked Rio appeared. She could recall the sight of her so vividly - in her robe, in her overalls, in that fucking unzipped hoodie. She tried not to picture her out of those things, at least not too much.

Agatha heard her too, when things quieted down in the office. Heard her voice. Heard the sounds her guests made. Heard the sounds Agatha wanted her to make, and preferably make them at Agatha's hand.

Rio had baited her last night. And it had worked. She knew that Agatha would come over. She knew she had her wrapped around her finger.

God, how Agatha wanted to be wrapped around her finger.

Lilia commented on Agatha's flush during a meeting and asked if she was feverish.

Agatha considered responding honestly - telling the assembled masses that the flush was caused by the image of her incorrigible neighbor's fingers inside of her - but instead she just said "perimenopause."

This proved as an effective deflection, as Lilia was then sidetracked into a fifteen minute long spiel that Agatha probably would have found beneficial if she were listening. But she wasn't. She was in her too-strong-imagination again, dreaming of scenarios that involved Rio's hands clenched around her thighs, and her tongue licking more than just the inside of her own cheek, and - fuck.

She needed to get laid.

-

There were only so many lesbian bars in the world, and it wasn't a coincidence that Agatha lived a few blocks away from one of them.

When she had purchased the apartment, she was she closer to the average age of the clientele of Mon Cheri. But now, at the ripe old age of none-of-your-business-thank-you-very-much, when she walked through the bead-draped archway that demarcated the entrance from the lounge, she felt like she was there to babysit.

She scanned for an empty seat at the bar that was populated by what Agatha was sure were children. The bouncer had checked her ID at the door. Was that just a curtesy, ego thing? These women couldn't be over twenty one, let alone over eighteen.

"This is my first night off since I started residency," an androgynous person with short black hair wearing scrubs and a Patagonia vest said to their assembled peers as Agatha walked by. They were just letting high schoolers be residents now? Agatha made a mental note to avoid the hospitals in the area.

She found a section at the end of the row that had a few unclaimed barstools, and took her spot at the last one before settling in and assessing the bar's decor.

Not much had changed since Agatha's last visit years ago. They hadn't updated the dark, scratched wooden counters which remained illuminated in purples and reds by a hidden LED light strip.

The vinyl covered stools were still sticky, and the music was still too loud. The chalkboard behind the counter still had a drawn on heart and the day's special cocktail (today's was the "Gin-der Euphoria" apparently).

The pride flags might have been updated with a few ones Agatha didn't recognize nor particularly care to learn, and she was certain there had never been sports paraphernalia hanging on the walls before (though she was less certain that the triangular pennant with a cartoonish mascot in a basketball jersey was actually sports related, or just something from a show that the youth of today watched).

The main change to Agatha's experience here was Agatha herself. She recalled long, hazy nights courting lovers and avoiding exes. She'd had no fear of approaching women, or getting rejected by them.

Not that she harbored that fear now, and she knew anywhere she went she'd be able to find younger women with some flavor of mommy issues who would flock towards her, seek her approval, and get heartbroken when Agatha forgot their name thirty minutes after she'd made them scream hers.

But she didn't feel that sense of belonging she once had. The sense of place. This was no longer her haunt or her stopping grounds. It was a destination. She was a tourist, or an anthropologist, or a voyeur. Or maybe some confusing mix of the three.

Instead of musing on the discomfiting notion of the transience of being, Agatha instead focused on the patrons. She wasn't here to reminisce. She was here to get fucked.

Her eyes focused on the other side of the bar first, settling first on a dark skinned woman with a shaved head. No, she looked too much like Jen, and the thought of spending any non-work time with Jen made Agatha want to gag.

Her attention shifted down the line, past a few couples, and to a thirty-something blonde woman sitting alone, looking around nervously.

She had a dark, smokey eyeshadow, and intentionally wavy hair, and Agatha was pretty sure she was either waiting for a first date or trying to act on her bisexual fantasies for the first time, and neither option particularly interested Agatha at this moment.

She didn't want nervous or inexperienced. She wanted someone confident. Someone self-assured. Maybe if she happened to have Bambi sized brown eyes and a gap between her front teeth that wouldn't be the end of the world either.

The blonde was tapped on the shoulder by an approaching guest. Slender and athletic and precise in her motions, Agatha assessed this new woman from the back as she watched the blonde woman's eyes light up.

Dark hair. Familiar, dark hair. And as she turned, Agatha caught her profile. The side of her cupid's bow lips and cat-eye make up and oh fuck, the voice.

Agatha was hallucinating. She might have willed this into reality. Were delusions a perimenopausal symptom? She really should have listened to Lilia instead of daydreaming about the woman who was currently only ten yards away from her, taking a seat next to the blonde.

Agatha waved down an approaching bartender. "I'd like to buy a drink for that woman in the black jacket."

The bartender raised an eyebrow and looked across the room for the subject of Agatha's generosity. "Oh." She said upon realization, then refocused her attention on Agatha with a furrowed brow. "Are you sure?"

Agatha frowned back. "Do you not want to take my money?"

"I think she's on a date."

"Trust me, we'll be ending the night at the same place."

"She's just, um... You should know that she has a bit of a reputation around here." The woman behind the counter searched for words. "She's a regular."

"Good news, I'm irregular too," Agatha produced a force smile. "Could you make it two drinks, actually? And give them both to me."

Two minutes and thirty dollars later, Agatha carried the tumblers towards Rio, whose attention was exclusively on the giggling blonde woman.

Agatha took a deep breath, and settled on a character before plastering on a fake smile and leaning in.

"Hi darling," she announced with a deep southern drawl as she saddled up behind Rio, placing one of the drinks on the counter and sliding it softly to her.

Rio's head whipped up as she turned around to face Agatha. Her mouth was parted in questioning for a moment, until recognition dawned on her, and she stifled a smile by pressing her tongue against the inside of her own cheek.

"Sorry I'm late," Agatha continued, placing a hand on Rio's shoulder, and leaning down to quickly kiss her cheek. Her lips tingled as she stood back upright. "You know, they say Manhattan is a grid, but these village streets just have me going right in circles, I'll tell you what."

Agatha's smile widened as she took in the shocked look of the woman sitting next to Rio.

"But I see you've already made a friend," Agatha took her hand off her neighbor's shoulder to extend it to the blonde. "I'm Agatha, Rio's fiancée - it's a pleasure to meet you."

"Dottie," The woman swallowed as she extended her own, and then looked to Rio, blush rising on her cheeks. "And I think I should probably go."

Rio - who Agatha now noticed hadn't stopped staring at her since her arrival - slowly turned to Dottie, and offered her a closed mouth, sympathetic smile.

Dottie's seat was quickly emptied, and then in turn quickly filled by Agatha.

"Well that wasn't very nice," Rio's eyes narrowed at Agatha, before moving to the drink that had been placed before her.

"Call it self preservation," Agatha waved Rio's comment away. "I didn't want to hear whatever feral cat noises that woman was going to make tonight on the other side of my living room wall."

"I'm pretty sure the feral cat noises were your accent." Rio picked up her drink and took a slow sip.

"Excus-eh-moi? I'll have you know I received rave reviews for that accent when I played Scarlett O'Hara in middle school theater."

Rio didn't respond to this, and instead took another long sip as she locked her eyes onto Agatha's.

Not to be outdone, Agatha took an even longer sip, and internally vowed to not break the eye contact first. It wouldn't be that hard. She hadn't really been this close to Rio yet. There were so many unexpected shades of brown in her eyes, that were only just visible in the low light of the bar.

"What are you doing here, Agatha?" Rio finally asked, not altering her gaze.

Agatha swallowed. "Same thing you are, Rio."

"And what is that, exactly?"

"Looking for someone to go home with tonight," Agatha swirled her drink.

She was feeling buoyed by this new development. Finally she'd caught Rio on the back foot. Maybe she wasn't a tourist in this bar after all. Maybe this was still her territory.

"You know," Agatha continued, in a moment of bravery. "We could solve both of our problems the same way."

Rio's nostrils flared. "Could we?"

"Call a truce?" Agatha put her drink down, and tilted her head lower so she was looking up at Rio's eyes. "Let this bar be like Switzerland, and just..."

Agatha finally dropped her gaze, but with intention and only to Rio's lips. She caught her taking a deep breath before returning to meet her eye line again.

"Could be fun, right?" Agatha grinned, and Rio's eyes shot down to her lips before darting back up.

Got her.

Rio looked away after a long moment. Agatha's breathing was stopped. Rio's was measured, but her chest was rising and falling more substantially than it had been prior. Not that Agatha was paying special attention to Rio's chest, only slightly hidden under a black jacket, and plunging shirt that surely wasn't hiding a bra given the amount of side cleavage visible.

Agatha's face flushed at the thought. She was going to have her hands under that shirt. Her lips. Her tongue. It was going to be a matter of minutes. She'd already closed the tab, and it was three blocks from their apartment.

Hell, Agatha (and countless other enterprising gays before her, no doubt including Rio) had hooked up in the Mon Cheri bathroom. Would be fun to run that back for old time's sake.

Just as she was getting ready to suggest the idea, Rio opened her mouth to provide a devastatingly worse one. "I don't think we should."

"What do you mean?"

"It's messy."

Agatha, not done with the pitch, put her hand on Rio's denim covered thigh. "You strike me as the type of woman who prefers a mess."

"Not at my house."

"Fine, we'll do it at mine then," Agatha replied, with a coy smile.

Rio returned a sympathetic smirk. "Agatha."

"Rio."

Rio sighed, and picked up Agatha's hand and removed it from her leg. "I don't want to have a complicated relationship right next door."

"Oh, but that's exactly what I want," Agatha overdid the sarcastic intonation to hide the honesty behind it. "Make a situation so toxic one or both of us has to leave." She bit her lip. "Doesn't that sound hot?"

Rio stifled a chuckle as she shook her head and looked away. When she finally looked back, it was with rolled eyes, and straightened shoulders.

"Why don't you tell me about yourself?"

"Ew, why?" Agatha responded instinctually.

"I'm being neighborly."

"Oh so you'll get to know me but you won't fuck me?"

"I think that's how most neighbors operate."

"Pshh." The rejection was setting in, and Agatha finished her drink in the next sip before looking for the bartender. She wasn't sure if she wanted to leave or drink the place dry.

Not only was she impossibly horny, but the woman she was horny over explicitly denied her advances, no doubt in favor of finding some other hot young piece to take home and keep the three of them awake with tonight.

"Come on," Rio lightly nudged Agatha's leg with her own. Agatha pretended the contact didn't send electricity through her entire core. "I've had an empty unit next to me since I moved in last year. It's weird that it's occupied now, and this is an opportunity to learn more about the person occupying it."

"Fine." Agatha turned her attention from the exceptionally busy bartender back to Rio. "What do you want to know?"

"Whatever you want to share."

Agatha shared only an scornful look.

"Where are you from?" Rio offered.

"Pass."

"Did you have a happy childhood?"

"Hard pass." Agatha shook her head.

"Why are you like this?" Rio asked with a teasing grin.

Agatha closed her eyes and grabbed the bridge of her nose. "Make it stop."

"Wow, you're really bad at this - do you need an example?" Rio laughed. "I'll go first. I'm from upstate, but I bounced around a lot as a kid. I've lived in the city for eleven years now, but only in this apartment for the last thirteen months."

Agatha looked back at her blankly. "Enthralling."

"When I was in school, I worked part time at the plant nursery Mrs. Davis owned," Rio continued, undeterred. "And since she had no children, when she passed she left both the shop and the apartment to me."

"Ah, so you're a nepo baby."

"That's not even remotely correct," Rio shook her head, "and you're too old to use that phrase."

"You're too old to tell me I'm too old to use certain phrases."

"Okay, so I've shared." Rio ignored her again. "Now's the part where you do the same."

"Well," Agatha cleared her throat, before putting on the same southern accent she'd affected before. "I was born and raised in Georgia as a good southern belle, but my daddy wanted a boy and just-"

"Okay." Rio held up a hand. "So you're not big on sharing."

"I would've shared my bed with you tonight."

"And I would've too," Rio started. "If we didn't share a wall."

Rio had no idea how apt that statement was. How between fantasies of fucking Rio on every surface in her apartment, Agatha had fantasies of what she would do if that wall was taken down and she had double the square footage. This was where she let her mind drift again, when Rio excused herself to use the bathroom.

Agatha wasn't in the mood to find another woman to take home that night, and instead decided to leave the bar without saying goodbye.

-

The next morning, as she left for work, Agatha tripped over a large potted plant resting on her doormat. Green leaves were spilling over the sides of it, and she could just see that it was resting on a piece of paper.

She moved the plant to the side and picked up the stationery. On one side, there were handwritten instructions - something about watering and light level.

On the other side, there was Agatha's firm's letterhead, and the letter that Billy had typed out so meticulously.

Agatha wouldn't have been able to explain why she was smiling to herself as she brought both items inside.

Chapter Text

Ch. 4

Agatha only spent two hours in the office that Friday before returning to the couch in her apartment. She did better work there. She could focus.

It was better for her team too. From her couch, her irritability was only evident via the tone of her emails and messages, where as in person she could create quite the hostile work environment, given the right conditions.

And the combination of her first week full week back in the building in four years, plus the aggravation of inept subordinates, plus the immense sexual frustration she was experiencing were indeed the right conditions, and meant that Agatha was in no mood to suffer through typical office mores and pleasantries.

With no one around to annoy her, she was able to truly get lost in her work. Enter flow state. Find contentment.

Her mother (may she never rest in a moment of peace) was always so shocked that Agatha had become a lawyer. But that was because her mother (which really was a generous term) didn't know Agatha.

Sure, she was a bit of a scofflaw. Had a penchant for finding loopholes and gray areas. But these were the qualities that big law firms salivated over. Someone who could bend the rules to fit her whim while simultaneously being studious - always so so studious.

Agatha discovered at a young age that she was - quite frankly - much smarter than everyone else in her class. And if she read and researched and investigated enough, she could be smarter than her teachers too.

This manifested itself as an anti-authority streak, particularly in high school. She found herself in trouble at school, from constantly showing up her teachers in class, ridiculing their ignorance and correcting their lectures. She also found herself in hot water interpersonally, as she was blamed for the basketball team's state championship loss, since she seduced the girlfriends of three different starters the week before.

But what made Agatha different was that she survived these scandals - she could always use her knowledge to get out of situations. Find the argument, the explanation, the one technicality that she could exploit to get her way.

For Agatha, knowledge was power. And she really, really liked power.

Her mother was less enamored with Agatha's hijinks (horrified might cover it more succinctly).

And Agatha had never been able to understand why.

It wasn't just the homophobia, and the believing her child was a sinful abomination, and the overall regret of bearing Agatha in the first place.

It was that she didn't believe in her daughter's ability, despite all the evidence of Agatha not just surviving but thriving - persevering and using her own self reliance to get through any situation she found herself in (whether that was self-inflicted or otherwise).

Until the day she died, Evanora Harkness was just waiting for the penny to drop - for the moment that everyone would find out how broken her daughter really was, and how the entire life Agatha created for herself would crumble into ruins.

So when Agatha glanced at the clock on her computer and saw it was past ten pm, she felt a vindictive satisfaction. Every page she scrolled through was one more reminder of how tenacious and successful she was, one more "fuck you" to the woman who never believed in her.

She didn't need her mom's faith. She just needed herself.

She scrolled through another page.

"Mmm."

Agatha stiffened. She knew that sound. What had become an all too familiar nighttime refrain from the wall behind her head.

She sat quietly, waiting for the next moan. She wondered if this was the woman from the night before - Debbie or something? Or was it one of the prior women? Or was it a new one entirely?

She sat for thirty seconds, ears piqued and breathing stilled. But no more moaning came.

She was imagining it. Rio had permeated her subconsciousness so much that she was now hearing things and-

"Oh, fuck."

That one wasn't imagined. She didn't recognize the voice, and it was slightly muffled through the drywall. She closed her eyes and listened.

"Mmmmm," a longer moan came this time. Agatha tried to imagine what was happening. There was no thumping through the wall - not yet anyway. So this was probably just the start.

What did foreplay with Rio look like? It wouldn't be soft and tender, that she was confident of. Hickeys and nails and hands gripping hair to better expose necks...

Agatha felt a flush creep over her face and her heartbeat quickened.

"Oooohohmmmm," that moan sounded like it had been suppressed in the middle of it.

Rio probably stifled it. She probably had a hand over the anonymous woman's mouth. Maybe her fingers were spreading her lips. Maybe her other hand was spreading different lips.

Agatha's breath caught at the picture, and she rewound the video in her head, back to the thought of Rio's hands working their way down a torso and undoing the button of a pair of trousers (and if those happened to look like Agatha's favorite work chinos, that was just a coincidence).

Agatha closed her laptop and set it on the couch beside her. She never knew what corporate IT goon could be hacking into her microphone, after all. This wasn't a show meant for anyone but Agatha.

Well, it probably wasn't a show meant for Agatha either but she was forced to endure it all the same.

Forced to.

That's the word that struck her as she heard a loud gasp come from behind her, and she felt warmth radiate from her lower abdomen.

This was forced upon her. She wasn't enjoying it.

When she pictured Rio's long fingers at the hem of her panties, gently pulling the fabric down her legs, it was involuntary.

She had no choice but to envision her neighbor's face as she watched herself run her hands up inner thighs.

It was compulsory. It was mandatory.

It was so so so very hot.

"I'm gonna come," the woman practically sang, and finally she heard Rio's voice deliver a low and firm:

"Not yet."

Agatha truly could not stop herself as her hand slid to her pajama bottoms. She slowly rubbed over the fabric, going down to her center and shuddered at the contact.

Another muffled moan, but this one could've been from Agatha, as she rubbed her middle finger lightly over the spot where her clit sat beneath two layers of cloth.

A jolt of pleasure shot through her, and she dropped the finger lower. Even with light pressure she could feel how little resistance there was - how the fabric was gliding through her slit.

She hadn't been this turned on in years.

"Oh right there, yes, yeshhmmmm," the words were again muffled halfway through, and Agatha saw Rio covering the other woman's mouth with her own this time.

Her tongue was no doubt licking the other woman's teeth - well practiced from all the time Rio spent licking her own.

Agatha let herself picture that tongue - let herself imagine she was the other woman. That Rio's lips were on hers, and the hand Agatha was now slipping under her waistband was Rio's and not her own.

She inhaled sharply as she felt herself and the wetness that had accumulated in her folds. She was drenched. Soaked.

"Mmmmm - mmmmm - coming oh - mmmmm," the cry was so loud Agatha felt like she was sharing the bed with them. She didn't know this woman, or care to imagine her, but the visual slipped in without Agatha's consent.

Rio probably had her fingers inside of her, and was hovering over the woman as she came undone beneath her. She pictured Rio fucking her through it, swallowing her moan with her mouth and pumping in and out at whatever pace she'd set.

Strands of Rio's hair would be coming out of her ponytail, some stuck to her face. Her eyes would be open and narrowed and watching the woman as she succumbed to the pleasure Rio had deftly crafted.

Agatha slipped a finger inside herself, before taking it back out to run the wetness over her swollen clit. She tried not to moan and out herself as she began rolling the pads of her fingers in small circles right at her most sensitive spot.

"What did I say about being quiet, baby?" Rio's very real voice came through.

Agatha's stomach clenched at the feeling her own ministrations. Hearing Rio's voice had her close already.

And what had she said? She'd asked the woman to be quiet?

There still wasn't any pounding of the bed against their shared wall, and she was trying to stop the woman from moaning and... Was Rio doing this for Agatha?

Was she thinking about Agatha right now?

Agatha bit her lip to prevent herself from groaning.

She didn't care what context it was in, Rio was thinking about Agatha as she was making another woman come.

Agatha's fingers sped up instinctually, and her legs stiffened as she worked hurriedly towards an orgasm that already felt like it was only a matter of seconds away.

The sounds from next door were gone, but Agatha didn't need them. She had nothing on her mind but Rio. Rio's eyes, Rio's lips, Rio's tongue, Rio's neck, Rio's chest, Rio's tattoo, Rio's hands, Rio's-

Oh fuck, Rio.

Agatha prayed to a god she didn't believe in that she hadn't said that out loud. But the first wave of her climax was just starting to crest and she had very little control of anything but her fingers as her body began to spasm.

Her thighs clenched around her own hand as the waves crashed again and again. Her lips were tingling and her face was flushed and she felt the sensation wash over every part of her, riding out the high until it settled into a warm glow.

Her hand steadied and minutes after so did her breathing.

Fuck that was hot.

And pathetic.

And the best orgasm she'd had in years.

And a new low.

And she could probably go for a round two if she heard Rio say anything else, so instead she went to take a shower, and then didn't pause as she walked through the living room on her way to bed.

-

Agatha was at Mon Cheri for a grand total of thirty seven minutes on Saturday night. She hadn't seen Rio there, and as much as she was secretly hoping her neighbor would show up, it was definitely for the best. Rio wasn't the goal.

The goal was to find anyone else.

And it took her thirteen minutes to accomplish that. A lanky woman who bore only passing resemblance to Agatha's neighbor. She was taller, and had smaller eyes, and her hair was shorter, but she was pretty enough and most importantly, willing.

After ten minutes of banal conversation, ten more minutes of suggestive conversation, and four minutes of closing out the tab, Agatha and the woman who's name she'd already forgotten (or perhaps more accurately hadn't bothered to learn) were on their way back to her place.

She happily noted there was a strip of light creeping out from underneath the door to unit 34 as she opened the door to unit 33.

-

"Are you sure we can't move to the bed?" The woman asked as she let Agatha's earlobe out of her mouth, knees straddling either side of her.

"I like the couch," Agatha returned, and emphasized the point with a curl of her fingers inside the woman, which made her moan and place a steadying hand on the wall behind Agatha's head. "Does that feel good?"

"Yessss," the woman hissed and Agatha frowned. Rio certainly wouldn't be able to hear a hiss.

Agatha redoubled her efforts with her fingers. "Say it again."

"Yes it feels good," she gasped. "Don't stop."

"Louder."

"Don't stop," the woman groaned, volume raised. "Oh please don't stop, oh please oh please oh-" She was practically screaming by the end.

Agatha smiled as the woman finished around her fingers, clenching and grinding and moaning and wet. Those things she didn't care so much about. But the noise. The show.

That would do nicely.

"Get on your back," Agatha said, lightly pushing the still trembling woman off of her to go on top. "I want an encore."

-

She was successfully able to get the woman out of her apartment and on her merry walk of shame before eight the following morning.

She didn't like sharing her bed with strangers but at least this stranger had listened to instructions. Had moaned, and yelled, and pounded on the wall as Agatha relentlessly fucked her.

Agatha's pleasure - for the first time in recent memory - was an afterthought. The joy she was taking came primarily from the thought of Rio hearing everything.

The walls were thin. That went both ways.

Agatha took the rest of her morning to restock her groceries, and then finished up some weekend work that would set her up for an easier Monday.

Around one pm, as she opened up a pre-packaged salad, she heard loud knocking in the hallway, which she ignored.

The knocking happened again thirty seconds later. This time it didn't stop, and it became even louder, accentuated with an "open up!"

Not her monkey, not her circus, but this was her hallway, so Agatha got off her couch and walked to her door.

She popped her head out and looked to Rio's apartment, where a woman was pounding on the wood with the broad side of a closed fist.

"Oi," Agatha called, and the woman turned around to reveal her mascara stained cheeks. "I don't think that door is going to open for you."

"It fucking better," she choked out, but stopped her knocking and used the hand to brush away the bangs that had collected over her eyes. "The bitch that lives here stole my girlfriend."

Agatha sighed. While Rio most likely deserved whatever comeuppance this scorned lover had in mind, Agatha didn't need this happening on what had been a perfectly calm Sunday afternoon.

"The bitch that lives there doesn't live there anymore," Agatha put on a sympathetic smile. "I bought out her unit, so..."

"What do you mean?" The woman sniffled, undercutting her affect of intimidation.

"I mean she's not going to answer the door because she's not there."

"Where is she?"

"I'm not sure. Mentioned something about Arkansas maybe? Regardless, she moved out yesterday, so you just missed her." Agatha snapped with a feigned regret. "Darn."

The woman stilled, then looked Agatha up and down. "You're lying," she said, without conviction.

"Am I?" Agatha raised an eyebrow. "You can keep knocking all day, but that door isn't going to open for you, toots."

There was a prolonged beat. The woman sniffled again. She looked to the closed door of unit 34 and then back to Agatha, who just blinked at her.

With a huff, she shook her head and turned away, walking towards the exit.

"I'll see you out," Agatha hurried out of her apartment to lead the woman on her way out of their building - hopefully forever.

"If she comes back, tell her Marnie's girlfriend is looking for." She said, wiping her bangs away yet again as Agatha held the wide door open for her to exit from.

"Will be sure to let her know," Agatha responded and then quickly let the door close behind Marnie's girlfriend, making a mental note to email the HOA about finally changing the entry code.

Agatha waited for about a minute by the door to confirm that she was really gone before slowly walking back to her apartment.

"You didn't have to do that," Rio's voice echoed in the hall as Agatha approached her own entryway.

She looked up to see her neighbor leaning against the doorframe of the furthest unit, assessing Agatha with a curious smile and holding a mug in her hand.

"But thank you," she continued, motioning to her door. "I was worried she was going to take an axe to this thing."

"She might be going out to get one right now," Agatha returned as she stopped walking to straighten out her sweater and right her posture.

Rio peered her head to look beyond Agatha all the way to the entrance, before returning her focus. "You better come inside then, in case she comes back." Off Agatha's clear confusion, "since you bought this place."

"Oh," Agatha forgot that's what she'd claimed in the heat of the moment. Fitting. "Right."

Without pausing to consider the potential ramifications, Agatha walked beyond her own door and towards Rio's. She hesitated at the threshold though, even as Rio moved herself to the side and ushered her in.

This felt substantial. She'd imagined Rio's apartment before. Or at least parts of Rio's apartment. Mostly she'd just imagined Rio. But still, a lot of recent mental real estate had been devoted to hypothetical happenings behind this door.

She took a breath and stepped through.

It was different than she imagined. Open and bright. As the corner unit, it had an extra wall for windows.

The walls that weren't exposed brick were painted in a muted sage with dark wooden trim. The parquet floors were adorned with well-worn rugs in the entry way and living area. Bookshelves lined the wall next to the front door.

"Hmm," Agatha mused, taking in the myriad of tomes. "So you can read."

"Those are just for decoration," Rio deadpanned as she closed the door behind them.

Agatha stepped further inside, and ran a hand along one of the antique barstools Rio had pushed up against her kitchen island. Plants of various sizes and colorings were scattered throughout the apartment.

It was set up as a studio, so as Agatha stopped in the middle of the living space she could see Rio's bed pushed against their shared wall. Its frame was made from black, iron wrought and the comforter was a deep forest green.

There was so much green in the space. The plants, the upholstery, the lamp covers...

Agatha swallowed. She didn't have plans to have another late-night-fantasy-driven-self-love session, but if she did... She could at least fill in some of the mental gaps.

Agatha looked towards the far wall with a bay window with yet another bookshelf built into the bottom of it. Next to it was a half wood, half metal hutch. Agatha walked closer. It was the size of a small dresser, painted black, with black metal caging. Agatha looked inside to see straw lining the floor of it and - was that a bunny?

Who kept a pet bunny in New York?

"Do you want a coffee?"

Agatha's head whipped back to Rio, who was in the kitchen, holding an empty mug. "Oh, sure."

Agatha walked back towards the barstools, sneaking another glance at the bed. She tried not to blush as she noticed the points where the iron frame made contact with the wall behind it. It would be humiliating if Rio ever had an iota of an idea what Agatha had been up to behind that wall.

She needed to distract herself from the thought. "So do you make a habit of stealing girlfriends?"

Rio laughed as she measured out beans into a grinder. "I don't go out of my way to do it, no."

"But if the opportunity presents itself..." Agatha debated pulling up one of the barstools, but that felt too close. She settled for a seat on the small craftsman style loveseat that was situated on wall next to the bed.

"I don't ask about people's business," Rio still didn't look up. She pressed a button on the grinder and their conversation was paused while she waited for the beans to finish their conversion to grounds. A full thirty seconds elapsed before she could continue. "I tell them I'm only looking for something casual, and what they tell me is up to them."

Agatha watched as Rio poured the grounds into a conical filter that she then placed in a pour over stand where the empty mug from before sat beneath it. She moved slowly, with focus. Her hands steady. Agatha paid special attention to those hands as she replied. "Sounds ethical."

"You're certainly one to talk about ethics," Rio finally looked up and caught Agatha's gaze. "What with your work defending all those poor, impoverished corporations."

Agatha didn't respond, just tilted her head as she watched Rio resume her work. The younger woman walked to the stove top where a tea kettle was steaming. She took it off the stove and shuffled back to the coffee grounds.

"Agatha Harkness, senior partner specializing in intellectual property claims at Mephisto LLC," Rio blew out a faux impressed breath. "Must be a real minefield of ethical quandaries every day."

"I manage," Agatha narrowed her gaze as Rio poured a slow stream over the filter. "Are you a big fan of my work then?"

"I Googled you."

"So you're obsessed with me."

"You weren't particularly forthcoming the other night," Rio shrugged, as she stopped pouring and put the kettle back on the stove top. "Had to take matters into my own hands."

"You'll spend time pulling a background check on your neighbor but won't bother to ask if the woman you're about to sleep with has a partner?"

"Well one, it wasn't a background check, and two, unlike my neighbors," Rio carefully pulled the mug out from under the pour over stand, and walked it towards Agatha. "I usually don't see these women again."

"Oh sure," Agatha accepted the cup, "unless they come back, beating at your door about how you've ruined their life."

"That wasn't the woman, that was her girlfriend," Rio corrected, as she went to the kitchen grab her own mug, but paused on the way back "do you want anything for the coffee, by the way?"

Agatha was tempted to ask for a pile of sugar and cream to annoy the clear aficionado, but it smelled good so instead she just shook her head.

"Sounds like quite the web you've spun yourself into." Agatha took a sip and regretted it instantly as it burned her tongue. She swallowed, trying to not make her pain obvious as Rio returned and sat next to her on the couch. "And you don't struggle with the ethics of these romantic entanglements?"

"No," Rio shook her head, simply.

"No?"

Rio thought about this for a moment as she took a sip of her own. "You know how you said you have a black thumb? Well, maybe I have a black heart."

"Edgy." Agatha laughed. "What do you mean by that exactly?"

"I don't know," Rio swirled what was left of her coffee slowly in her mug as she considered her words. "Love just doesn't make a lot of sense to me."

"I think that's what poems are for," Agatha motioned to her bookcases. "Surely you have something in there to help."

"Have you ever been in love?" Rio's eyes were suddenly squarely on Agatha's.

"Yes, of course," Agatha didn't look away. "Haven't you?"

Rio shook her head, still maintaining eye contact. "No."

"Why?"

"I haven't wanted to be."

Agatha broke their mutual gaze first and chuckled sadly into her coffee. "In my experience it's not really much of a choice."

Rio shrugged. "It is for me."

"Why?" Agatha asked again.

"Love only leads to pain."

Agatha considered this. It was hard for her to disagree, but still she found the words leaving her mouth before she could think about them, "that sounds like an empty way to live though."

Rio shrugged again.

Love only leads to pain.

Who had Agatha loved in her life, really? Her mother (huge mistake). Her camp counselor when she was in seventh grade (love might be a stretch). Her college girlfriend (who fizzled after graduation). And Wanda. Definitely Wanda.

She thought of how it ended with Wanda in this very building just over four years ago. She had broken the hard news without tears, delivering the terrible secret in hopes that it would patch up their rocky month. Wanda cried instead. Then asked why she'd hidden it.

She'd had to. It wasn't something she could just blab about to anyone. Her mother hadn't even known. She'd considered telling her on her death bed. The hospice nurse had assured Agatha that her mother was non-responsive. The death rattle was the only sound she could make. There could be no judgement or reproach. There could be no love or care. There could be nothing.

So Agatha had said nothing in turn.

Needing a subject change before the sadness of that situation took hold, Agatha announced: "the plant you gave me is already dying, by the way."

In truth, Agatha hadn't looked at it since she put it on her coffee table the day it was left. But it was a safe assumption.

"It's not."

"How do you know that?"

"Because unless you drowned it in a bleach bath, it'll be fine for a month."

"I was't supposed to do that?" Agatha let out a theatrical gasp. "That wasn't on the instructions."

Rio ignored this. "Did you put it in indirect light?"

"I think so."

"Then it won't need water for at least a week," Rio put her mug down and grabbed a nearby potted plant from the side table next to her to demonstrate. "Here, a quick way to tell if it's thirsty or not is just to stick your finger in about an inch and see if it's wet."

Agatha's mouth fell open as she watched Rio's finger bury itself in the dirt. "Is that a pick up line?"

Rio frowned. "Did it sound like a pick up line?"

"Everything you say sounds like a pick up line."

"Maybe only to a receptive audience," Rio rolled her eyes.

"Yes, and if you'll recall, I am," Agatha grabbed Rio's hand and removed it from the soil. "And you're not, so please stop fingering your house plants in front of me."

"I promise it's not personal," Rio said, hand still in Agatha's.

"It feels personal."

Rio sighed, and used her other hand to lightly grab Agatha's shoulder. "It's not you, it's the apartment."

"I don't understand," she lied, cheeks burning at all the contact happening between them. Agatha even moved her knee a little closer to knock against Rio's.

"I don't want anything like what went down earlier to happen with a neighbor. I can't afford rent in the tristate area let alone the West Village on the money the shop makes. But this place is paid off, close to my job, close to the queer bars, close to the park, close to-"

"You don't have to tell me how great it is," Agatha cut her off. "I bought here for a reason."

"Right. And now you're back." Rio took a breath, and looked at her hand, still held by Agatha's. She slowly removed it, and removed the hand on the older woman's shoulder as well. "Why are you back?"

Agatha could tell Rio wanted to be talking about anything but them fucking. Devastating. Even worse, it felt like she was trying to get to know her again.

Agatha didn't want Rio to get to know her as person, she wanted Rio to want to get to know her as an object, built for their mutual pleasure. Why couldn't she just care about what was on the outside, like she seemed to with all her other conquests? Couldn't Agatha merely be a body to her?

And sure, if Agatha's goal was to create a scene like the one that happened earlier so Rio would be forced to leave, that was Agatha's business.

But Rio didn't know that was the motive and still she didn't want to sleep with her.

"Or I guess a better question would be why did you leave in the first place?" Rio continued, after the period of pronounced silence.

Agatha took the final, long sip of her coffee as she thought on the answer. She considered her options. She couldn't be fully honest - that was out of the question. But she wasn't willing to joke about it. She could deflect, or divert, or change the subject. But ultimately, she decided to just provide a half truth.

"Blame it on my black thumb."

With a sad smile, she put the mug down on the table and stood up.

"Thank you for that - it was genuinely delicious," she said, and then began walking to the door. With her hand on the handle, she continued: "Oh, and quick tip, since you're looking to keep your mess out of the building, you should probably stop giving all those women our door code."

Rio laughed, and offered a quick two fingered salute as Agatha turned the handle and walked out of the unit.

Chapter Text

Ch. 5

Agatha wasn't paying attention in the Tuesday partner sync. She never did. Weekly meetings that could be emails full of people who needed to feel like their voice was the most important. Their points the most impressive. Their dicks the biggest.

Agatha's was the biggest and she didn't need to whip it out prove that to anyone. It was evident by all the hoops the firm had jumped through just to keep her under their employ the last four years.

Most people weren't allowed to run depositions from Turks and Caicos, but somehow Lilia and the others had always found a way to turn a blind eye.

"Well, you'll notice all my associates are on track for their billable targets," Jen crossed her arms, glaring across the table at one of the other partners. "So if there's an issue in our forecast, don't come to my people."

Agatha felt a pain in her stomach at Jen's tone. So defensive and un-team-spirited. Usually, this wouldn't phase Agatha in the slightest, but for whatever reason today it sat poorly.

"Or mine," Alice raised her hand. "Even the ones that aren't on track - our busy season always hits in the next month."

This also made Agatha's stomach hurt. Was it because Alice was defending the incompetence of some of their staff? That would be more in character for Agatha to be annoyed by.

But it felt different.

She shook her head and refocused her attention to her laptop, instead of the meeting taking place live in front of her. There was work to be done, and nothing useful was happening in the room and-

There was the pain again. Not her stomach. Lower.

Not just any pain. A cramp.

Shit.

Her tracker hadn't alerted her. This was at least three days early.

Deeply unlike her. Was this a perimenopausal symptom? Wasn't she supposed to stop getting periods entirely soon anyway?

The pain intensified, and Agatha sighed, closing her laptop and standing up.

The sudden lack of talking alerted Agatha to all the eyes in the room on her.

"Bathroom," was all she said before walking out as slowly as she could to give off the illusion of calm.

She felt the familiar sensation of the first drop of something settle into her underwear, and tried to recollect if the lobby bathroom kept tampons and pads out and available like her firm's did.

Another drop, as she closed the clear glass door behind her. She looked down at her tan pants.

The one day she didn't opt for something dark. Christ.

She sensed the collective eyes of the office on her, and casually walked to the firm's bathroom. It was fine. She was fine. Did someone say she wasn't fine, because Agatha Harkness most certainly was absolutely one hundred percent fine and in control of her memories and her emotions and also her breathing.

Yes, breathing. That was a good idea and she should remember to do that.

She grasped the long, vertical handle and pushed it inwards, before stepping beyond the threshold and resisting the urge to shut her eyes.

The stalls all had floor to ceiling doors - a small solace - and all were open. The wood grain of them was too familiar. Had it not had a revamp in four years? Wasn't it overdo?

She felt another cramp hit her stomach, but it didn't hit her the same way as the ones she was having in the meeting room. It was worse. This one stayed, and sat, and clenched, and it wasn't actually her current cramp, it was the ghost of the one she'd had four years ago.

She kept her head down as she walked by the sinks, spotting the feminine hygiene products in her periphery. She reached for one and came back with a handful, but that would be fine.

Her palms were sweating, and one of the tampons she'd grabbed slipped out as she entered the furthest stall.

The same stall. Why had she done that?

She could hear her heartbeat in her ears and her breathing echoed through the small room as she closed the door behind her.

It was just her period. It was just a bathroom.

She'd had a thousand periods since the last time she was here. Well, maybe not a thousand. But she was too distracted to do the math. And she'd been in countless restrooms as well. Some so similar to this very one.

The tile was a generic marbled white and gray - shiny and sanitary and soulless.

But familiar.

The memory of her last visit came back to her as she closed her eyes. The pain and the anxiety and how she'd known exactly what to expect when she pulled down everything, but was shellshocked by it all the same.

She opened her eyes again, willing that thought away. She knew what to expect today too, and it was different.

She didn't look until she was already sitting. A drop, maybe two. But it was the same shade of red, and the feeling, and the scenery, and the pain all felt palpable and dizzying.

Agatha tried to ignore the memories as they regurgitated themselves back into her consciousness - she could block the images but she couldn't dull the emotions. They were as fresh as they had been on the day. Her stomach sank with that nauseating pang she'd felt upon realization. The fear she'd felt prior. The devastation she'd felt after.

But it wasn't real.

Not this time.

She dropped four of the remaining five tampons that were in her hand and didn't stop to take a breath as she opened one and quickly inserted it.

She was out of the stall four seconds later, not bothering to pick up any of the trash she'd left behind. She heard the automated flush as she buttoned her trousers on her way to the sink.

She was stronger than this. It was just her period. It was just a bathroom. It was just a reliving of the time her hopes and dreams had been summarily crushed on a random Thursday four years ago.

The cold water hit her hands but it didn't abate the feeling that she might pass out or vomit or both, and while the bathroom would be a good spot for at least the latter, Agatha couldn't bear to spend another minute in this stupid fucking space.

She still wasn't breathing as she looked up at her reflection, pallid and sickly. Somehow unfamiliar. She blinked. The color didn't come back, but the recognition of herself did.

She was real.

It wasn't real.

The memory was real.

The moment had passed.

It wasn't real.

It hadn't been real then either. Not in the way she wanted. She should've known better.

Agatha left the bathroom, anxiety lessened but the pit in her stomach fresh. The walk back to the meeting room was slow and she wasn't aware of any of it.

"Are you okay?" Someone's voice called out to her from a thousand miles away.

"Yes," she replied, as she took her seat and opened her laptop.

"Are you sure?" A hand was on her shoulder, and she didn't even have the energy to push it off.

"No," she closed her laptop without thinking. She didn't make eye contact with anyone as she picked it up, and stood to leave. "I'm not feeling well. I'll be online when I get home."

She walked on autopilot. To the door, to her office, to her bag, to the elevator, to the street.

She kept walking on the sidewalk, unsure of her plan, just with a direction. South. It would be a straight enough line down the nearest avenue. She'd figure out the rest eventually.

She made it a block before the heel of her boot got caught in a subway grate. It took a moment to tug herself loose, and she spotted the stairs leading down to the station at the next street corner.

She couldn't take a cab right now. She needed to be underground. She needed to be surrounded. She couldn't be alone.

Her clothes were too fancy for the subway. This was her primary thought as she grabbed onto the bar next to the doors that slid shut behind her.

If she had other thoughts for the rest of her journey, they didn't register. It was a small miracle she made it out at the correct station.

Maybe it was habit. Muscle memory from the time when she was younger and still took the train. Younger, and still had excitement about her job and her home. Younger and still had hope.

It was a three block walk from the station to her apartment, and she could hear her thoughts a bit more clearly with the fresh air.

She was going to move, if it had worked. She was going to buy a place in Connecticut. There were better schools up there. She would've had a back yard. They would've had a back yard.

They would've kept the apartment too, of course. The little pied-à-terre.

Pied-à-terre. "Foot on the ground" in its literal, French translation. It could mean running away. It could mean staying grounded. Agatha liked having the option for it to be both.

She liked the idea of having both. She liked the idea of having everything.

She almost did have everything at one point.

Almost.

"Agatha," a voice called out to her.

Agatha stopped and looked around the street. There were people everywhere - it was midday in Manhattan, after all - but no one who was paying her any mind.

"Hey, Agatha," the voice called again, and she was able to locate it better. It came from her right, from behind the iron wrought barrier that separated a small park from the sidewalk.

Rio waved a gloved hand, as she stood up from where she'd been kneeling down, presumably working in the bushes that butted against the fence. Agatha opened her mouth to respond, but couldn't find any words.

"Are you alright?" Rio's words filled in the lapse, and then she disappeared from view, and then she was in front of Agatha, stuffing her dirt covered gloves into the front pocket of her overalls. "Agatha?"

Rio's brow was furrowed in concern, and Agatha's brain was finally catching up to the events happening in front of her. Agatha just choked out a quiet "yeah?"

Rio bit her lip and reached her hand out, "come sit."

Agatha looked down at the hand, extended and waiting in the space between them, and watched as she took it with her own.

Rio led them through the garden gate and towards a bench that was bracketed by two ginkgo trees, their leaves just starting to yellow with the autumnal shift.

Rio sat down, and lightly tugged Agatha's hand to have her join, before she let go. "What's happening?"

Agatha didn't open her mouth this time. She wasn't sure what words she would say but she was pretty sure she would cry if she tried to find them.

"Okay hey, here, feel this." Rio reached above her and pulled a leaf off the tree, rubbing it between her own fingers briefly before placing it gently in Agatha's palm.

Agatha closed her fist around it, and felt the fibers of the delicate thing snap and crush under her grip.

"And this," Rio continued, opening Agatha's other hand and placing a piece of a different plant between her fingers.

Agatha didn't close around this one. She looked at it. Green and needly. Rosemary, maybe? Or was it pine?

"Smell it," Rio's said, and Agatha did so, confirming it as rosemary. "Breathe."

Agatha let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding before taking another.

Rio bent over the side of the bench and grabbed a fistful of dirt. "Pick up some soil."

Without thought Agatha did that too, holding it in her palm as she looked up at Rio for further instructions. "Smell it."

Agatha didn't immediately follow this time. "Smell the soil?"

Rio nodded, lowering her face into the small piled she'd scooped up for herself, and coming away with a spot of dirt on the tip of her nose.

Agatha let out an involuntary laugh, and Rio smiled, before raising her pile of dirt to Agatha's nose. "It smells nice, I promise."

Agatha laughed again as she turned her head away, and grabbed Rio's wrist to stop her efforts. "I believe you."

Rio laughed too, before gracefully returning the soil she'd collected to the spot she'd taken it from. "It's grounding."

"It's ground." Agatha held her hand over the side of the bench and the dirt slide unceremoniously from it.

Agatha swallowed as she returned her full attention to Rio, who was looking back at her with patient, wide eyes. Before she had time to think better of it, Agatha spoke without hesitation or emotion.

"I had a miscarriage."

Rio's eyes went even wider for a beat before quickly narrowing in concern. She looked around the park, before assessing Agatha. "Do you need to go to the hospital?"

Agatha shook her head, raising a hand to still Rio's anxiety, before looking away aimlessly at the green expanse in front of her.

"Four years ago. I had a miscarriage at work. I was eleven weeks pregnant, and so close..." Agatha trailed off, unable to finish the sentiment. She let the silence sit as she took several steadying breaths before eventually turning back to Rio. "No one knew."

"Oh," Rio said, and looked away the same green expanse Agatha had. "Even the dad?"

"There was no dad - there was a donor, and there was a girlfriend, and neither of them knew either." Agatha sighed, and closed her eyes.

She felt Rio's hand cover her own, and while she didn't move to grab it, the steadying heat buoyed her enough to keep talking, even though there had been no prompt to do so.

"I never wanted to be a mom, until suddenly I really wanted to be a mom, if that makes sense." She swallowed, and opened her eyes to find Rio's staring right back at her. "I don't know if it was the idea of raising a kid, or just biology."

Rio's thumb moved over the back of Agatha's hand, and Agatha watched the motion.

"I did so many rounds of IVF over the years. The last two were when I was with my ex, but I couldn't tell her. I couldn't tell anyone. Because I didn't want to be wrong." Agatha shook her head, correcting herself. "I didn't want her to be right."

"Your ex?" Rio's voice was quiet, her thumb still tracing patterns into Agatha's skin.

"My mother." Agatha used her free hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "She never believed I could do anything good - told me I was broken and evil and sinful, and said she was happy the world would never have to endure the horrors of my offspring."

Off Rio's shock, Agatha held up a soothing hand.

"I know, trust me, I know." Agatha took a deep breath. "So naturally I wanted to prove her wrong, and create something beautiful and raise it well and show it love in a way that I never was."

Rio's thumb stilled, waiting for the sad punchline - the final devastating blow. She already knew the ending, after all. But Agatha couldn't speak the words yet. Tears were pooling at her lashes, and she was willing them not to fall.

"I named it," Agatha smiled sadly, looking at her shoes. "It was going to be my last round of IVF, and this one stuck beyond a few weeks. Came in the nick of time, so I called it Nicky. Nicholas for a boy, Nichole for a girl. The second I named it..." A single tear fell down Agatha's cheek, which she hurriedly wiped away. "It's just what happens. I'm toxic. Born broken and I kill everything around me." Agatha let out a wet, wry laugh. "Maybe you're right not to get too close."

The tears were flowing too fast for Agatha to wipe away, and she removed her hand from Rio's tightening grasp. Needing a reason to have done that, she bent down to pick up some of the soil, and put a scoop of it to her nose to sniff.

After a beat, and continued tears, "I think this dirt is broken."

Rio reached for Agatha's hand again, letting the soil fall between them. "It's not broken, and neither are you."

"You don't even know me." Agatha forced down a sob as she shook her head. "And don't bring up Google again."

"No one is born broken, Agatha."

"I know," Agatha said, without a trace conviction. "I just... I don't know. Everything I care about ends up..." She searched for the right word before settling on "...ending."

Rio thought on this for a moment. "Everything ends."

"Right, I forgot." Agatha wiped at her tears, hoping her mascara wasn't all over her face. "You and your black heart."

"It's the natural order of all things. Life, death, rebirth." Rio paused. "All things die, you know?"

"Intrinsically," Agatha was getting a better handle on her emotions as she watched Rio get lost in her own head. "Do you spend a lot of your life musing on mortality, or just when consoling your grieving neighbors?"

"Well, when you spend enough time in an old church garden, you start to pick up on certain themes."

"A church?" Agatha sniffed and blinked through her blurry eyes to properly take in their surroundings beyond the featureless, verdant void she'd been existing in. "What are you doing here?"

"Weeding," Rio motioned to the bag of gardening supplies sitting on the pathway a few yards away.

"At a church?" Agatha let her mouth hang open. "Pretty sure our kind are still burned at the stake in these circles."

"I'm not religious I just volunteer here."

Agatha waited for an explanation that didn't come so she provided her own. "To try and trick your way into heaven?"

"No, because it's a nice garden near our building." Rio chuckled, before thinking on it further. "And also, it's interesting being near spirituality, even if I don't subscribe to a defined set of beliefs."

"That's how they get you."

Rio ignored this, and motioned to the large brick building on the other end of the garden, its steeple plainly visible to Agatha now. "I don't go in, I just like watching when there are events."

Agatha's frown deepened. "Like mixers?"

"Like baptisms, weddings, and funerals." Rio looked back at Agatha. "I don't really think life means anything, so it's interesting to see the ways people ascribe meaning to it."

Agatha studied Rio. Not her body or her lips or her hands or the things Agatha had cared so much about previously. She looked at her eyes and wondered what all was happening behind them. Wondered what had happened in the past to make her the way that she was.

Rio had been a fascinating combination of curious and compassionate and callous since Agatha had met her - since this conversation had started, even. She'd been so quick to soothe Agatha, and now that she was soothed, she was so quick to point out the pointlessness of life.

Maybe Agatha should've gotten to know her. Or maybe she should've offered her the money already.

Rio moved her hand and Agatha belatedly realized that she was still holding onto it. She let it go, and retracted her own quickly, burying the empty feeling spreading to her fingertips into her coat pocket.

"What happened there?" Agatha said, trying to quickly change the subject as she motioned to a bandage she was just now seeing on Rio's upper arm.

"New tattoo," Rio rotated, and rolled up the rest of her cuffed sleeve to show Agatha the design behind the clear wrapping. A simple and singular flower in black ink, only an inch or so tall.

"What does it mean?"

Rio shrugged. "Nothing, really."

"What's the significance?"

"It looked pretty."

Agatha's mouth dropped. "And that was enough to make you pay money to put that on your body permanently?"

Rio shrugged again, this time with a smile. "Why not?"

"A thousand reasons."

"Do you have any?"

"Reasons? Yes, a thousand."

"Tattoos."

"No," Agatha shook her head softly. "But that's because I make good choices."

"Ah," Rio pressed her tongue against the inside of her cheek as she smirked. This was the familiar Rio. The dynamic they were much more accustomed to. "Forgive me for thinking you might do something fun or spontaneous."

Agatha feigned a bow. "You're forgiven."

They sat there in a comfortable silence for a few beats, before Agatha felt another small cramp.

"I need to change my tampon," she said without realizing.

Rio nodded. "Don't let me keep you."

Agatha stood up, and straightened out her coat before grabbing her bag from the bench. Rio stayed seated, looking up at her with an unreadable expression.

"But hey, Agatha," she started and reached for Agatha's hand once more, letting their gazes meet before starting again. "I am truly sorry about Nicky."

Agatha was stunned for a moment. She'd never heard Nicky's name spoken out loud by anyone else before. She expected to be winded - devastated all anew. But the sadness didn't come.

If anything she felt... Warm?

Agatha couldn't say anything, so she nodded and squeezed Rio's hand before letting go and walking the short block and a half to their building.

She put down her bag on the coffee table, and took a moment to collect herself. It was a hard day. But she was here. She was home.

She looked down at her bag, and at the plant that was sitting next to it, its dark green vines draping over the edge.

It was still alive.

Agatha put her finger in the soil. She wasn't sure exactly what she was supposed to be feeling for. Wetness, if she recalled correctly. But how wet exactly?

She fought the urge to lean down and smell it, and made a mental note to ask Rio for more specific instructions later.

Chapter Text

Ch. 6

Agatha had never been to an HOA meeting before, but the circumstances around this one demanded her attendance. Billy had sent in the complaint about Rio's late night noisiness on her behalf the prior week, and she needed to finally put a face to her unit number.

Plus, when she did inevitably get Rio to leave the building, she needed to know the players - the people she'd have to get approvals from for combining the apartments and undergoing such a substantial amount of construction work. What was the HOA president like? And more importantly, what did they like and how much would she need to bribe? She did all of her previous small renovations without any approvals, but taking out a potentially load bearing wall would be harder to hide.

The meeting was held Saturday afternoon in the unit of the HOA president on the second floor. Agatha, despite having the building be her permanent residence for the better part of a decade, had never actually gone upstairs.

The unit itself was just as small as hers, though somehow even more cluttered. There were a handful of people in there when she arrived with a light knock on the open door.

"Yoohoo," she announced in a sing-songy voice as she took in the crew. Middle aged or elderly faces she vaguely recognized from the hallways since her return.  She extended her hand to the nearest neighbor, putting on a fake smile. "Agatha Harkness, unit 33."

There were raised eyebrows and knowing looks amongst the residents at her presence, but she ignored it and settled in with idle chitchat about the weather. She opted to lean against a wall, rather than take the only remaining open seat on a grease stained and lumpy leather couch.

"We have a bit of a backlog to go through," the president started. What was his name again? She'd seen in on the email. Herb something.

Agatha took a deep breath bracing herself for what was sure to be the most boring half hour of her life when there was another knock on the open door.

"Heard you were having a party," Rio grinned as she walked in, nodding at the collected group in the room.

"Yes, welcome miss Vidal - quite the showing today."

Agatha bit her lip to hold her jaw up. Rio was in a black cropped sweatshirt and black joggers. A vine of tattooed leaves were just visible under the hem of her top, and Agatha forced her vision to go back to Herb as she sensed Rio catching her line of sight.

They hadn't had any interaction since Tuesday, when Agatha broke down in the park. Agatha hadn't let herself dwell on it. She worked hard to avoid vulnerabilities and she'd let Rio in further than intended. But it hadn't felt scary or wrong in the moment, and Rio had shown no indication of any of it phasing her at the time.

She certainly didn't want to dwell on it now.

"Didn't take you for an HOA meeting kinda gal," Rio mumbled as she sidled up next to Agatha against the back wall.

"There are building issues that concern me," Agatha turned to face her, and leaned in close to whisper directly in her ear, "miss Vidal."

Rio stiffened for a moment, and then pressed her tongue against the side of her cheek to stop her grin from spreading. "Like what?"

The room was too small for them to carry a conversation without being noticed. Herb cleared his throat and continued on a spiel about roof leaks that Agatha didn't care about - the roof was so many floors above her, after all.

"Well, the security concerns for starters. We haven't changed the door code since I bought the place."

"Mmm, sounds like we need our tenants to be more discerning with who they give it out to." Rio continued in a hushed tone. "Like perhaps certain residents don't need to get all their groceries delivered to their doorstep when there's a bodega half a block away."

"Perhaps certain residents have standards that bodegas can't meet."

"Perhaps certain residents should instruct drivers to leave it on the stoop then."

"Perhaps certain residents should-"

"Ahem." Herb's next throat clear was less of a throat clear and more of a pointed remark at the pair in the back.

Agatha raised her palms in innocence. Rio did nothing.

Herb resumed his musings, and Agatha shifted next to Rio, their shoulders brushing. She barely moved her lips as she muttered "a preview of what's to come."

Rio turned to Agatha with a questioning eyebrow.

"So much noise in your unit - I think the neighbors are starting to take notice."

Rio shook her head and chuckled to herself. "Didn't take you for a narc."

"You didn't take me at all," Agatha returned, before nodding and raising a "hush" finger at a nearby attendee who was shooting them a withering look.

They settled into silence for a minute, only an inch or so between their hips as they both stood against the wall. Agatha could feel the heat radiating off Rio. Or maybe that was just the heat she was feeling at being so close.

Herb instructed the residents to raise their hands to vote on the best course of action for the roof: temporary patch or replace or tar or feather or something - Agatha wasn't really listening, and as the mass of her neighbors devolved into a heated argument over their preferred solve, Agatha took the opportunity to nudge Rio.

"Though I suppose it has been awfully quiet at your place this week," Agatha offered, as she reflected on the noises she was going to detail to the group once her complaint was brought up. "Off your A-game?"

Rio simply shrugged. "I've been busy."

"Mmm, sure, busy. Lotta plant emergencies this time of year?"

"You'd be surprised."

"Yes, I clearly would be." Agatha paused to consider. "Though, I haven't watered mine yet, so it's likely on the precipice of its demise."

"It's probably not, but I can check on it, if you'd like."

Agatha opened her mouth to respond with something witty, but then stopped herself. Rio was essentially inviting herself into her home. Rio in her residence. She could offer Rio a drink. Rio could sit on her couch. Agatha could show her the wall where she heard all the noises and Agatha could mimic them and then-

"That'd be great," Agatha finally replied, feeling the weight of the prolonged beat she'd spent thinking. "Thanks."

"But you should know that I charge a fee."

Agatha guffawed. "For one plant? Not very neighborly."

"Neither is sending in a complaint to the HOA."

"Excuse me," Herb announced, forgoing the feigned cough entirely this time. "If you two have personal matters to discuss you can do so outside of this meeting."

"Oh, you know what that's a great idea," Agatha turned to Rio and grasped her hand. "We do have urgent plant business to attend to."

Agatha began walking to the door, expecting Rio's hand to drop from hers with the movement. Much to her surprise, she felt Rio's fingers tighten as the woman followed her out.

Agatha let Rio's hand go as she stepped into the hallway and promptly adjusted her hair. Rio crossed her arms, and tilted her head with a quizzical expression.

"What," Agatha said, off the silence. "Like you were having such a great time in there?"

"Weren't you the one who wanted to attend? Something about safety concerns?"

"My concerns changed as soon as Herb started talking," Agatha began down the stairs now assuming Rio would follow. She did.  "And why were you there anyway?"

"I saw you going," Rio said simply.

"Wow." Agatha grabbed the hand rail so she wouldn't tumble down the rest of the way at this bit of information. "So you are obsessed with me."

"I find you... Interesting." Agatha didn't turn around as they descended the rest of the steps, but she could still hear the smile in Rio's tone. "Plus Herb forwarded me your email with the noise complaint."

"Ah." Agatha considered her response. "Well did you read that one?"

"Was it even written by you?"

"It was written by a proxy of me."

"So that's a no," Rio replied as Agatha walked from the landing straight to her front door, unlocking it and stepping through. Rio stopped in the doorway and continued, "I think we can find a solution without going through the HOA, Agatha."

Agatha put her hands on her hips and looked at the younger woman who was leaning against the wood of her door. She could offer her the money right now. Everyone could be bought, and Agatha had a lot of capital with which to buy.

But something told her not to. She had a suspicion that Rio wouldn't say yes. At least not right away. And it was also somehow just... Unfulfilling? That probably wasn't the right term, but Agatha couldn't find a better word for it at the moment.

"Like, what if we both put some soundproofing up?" Rio spoke through Agatha's silence, and stepped into the room, walking towards their shared wall. "Dampening foam or something."

Agatha huffed. "Have you considered just fucking at other people's apartments?"

"Sounds like a lot of effort."

"And soundproofing doesn't?"

Rio ignored this. "One of my clients does podcasts from his studio - I can ask him about what he used for his recording booth."

Agatha, hands still on her hips and unmoved from the spot in the middle of her living room narrowed her eyes as Rio looked at her hopefully. "Why are you trying this hard?"

Rio's eyes left Agatha's as she thought on her answer. She took a moment before replying, still keeping her gaze averted, "I want to have a good relationship with you."

"Do you have a good relationship with the other tenants?"

"Sure," she said, finally looking back at Agatha. "We're cordial."

"Are we cordial?"

"You're a special case."

"Why, because I'm interesting?" Agatha parroted Rio's word choice back to her.

Rio opened her mouth to respond before stopping herself. Agatha might have been imagining it, but she thought she saw a slight blush rise on her cheeks. Wishful thinking, no doubt, and it only took a second for Rio to regain her composure. She rolled her eyes, and walked by Agatha, making a point to avoid physical contact as she slid around her.

"Let me see this plant."

"How much is it going to cost me?" Agatha pivoted and crossed her arms as she watched Rio pick up the pot from the coffee table.

"How much can I ask for?"

"Nothing for the gardening services, but I'm happy to pay you to never bring a woman home again."

"Guess this one is on the house then..." Rio muttered, as she inspected the soil and a few of the trailing leaves. She nodded, and placed it back down before brushing the dirt on her fingers off on her pants.

"Oi, no dirt on the rug you heathen." Agatha reached for Rio's hand before she could finish the job. "I don't have a vacuum here."

She waited for Rio to make fun of her for her lack of cleaning supplies, or her indignation, or really her anything, but instead there was just silence.

Agatha looked up to find Rio staring at their hands. Her eyes were dark, her lips slightly parted, and there was no mistaking the blush this time. A definite flush of pink had appeared on Rio's cheeks.

Just as Rio's gaze moved to meet Agatha's, the older woman continued, not wanting to break the spell of the moment. "When will it need water?"

Rio removed her hand from Agatha's and fidgeted her fingers as she returned her attention to the plant. "Maybe a few days."

"Should you be here for that?" Agatha dropped her tone and took a hesitant step towards Rio. She ducked her chin and looked up at her, batting her eyelashes and biting her lip.

Fuck it. Might as well go all in with the hard press.

If Rio was blushing at their contact, and if she was in Agatha's house, and if she had only gone to the HOA meeting because Agatha was there then, well... It didn't take a fortune teller to read those tea leaves.

Right?

"I don't want to mess it up," Agatha continued, now almost in a whisper as she reached for Rio's wrist again. Rio let her grab it. She stood wooden as Agatha's fingers worked delicately up and down her forearm in a loose grip. "And I'd love to see you in action."

It was heavy handed, and clunky, and felt a bit like a bad nineties porno, but it seemed to be working. Rio's eyes were still dark, and they were trained on Agatha's. That is until they darted down to Agatha's lips. Agatha parted them slightly, and slid her hand down Rio's arm to intertwine their fingers.

"So," she was whispering now. "What do you say?"

Rio swallowed. Her chest was rising and falling visibly with every breath. Agatha wasn't breathing at all.

Finally, Rio looked away and let go of Agatha's hand. "Your plant is very healthy," Rio took a step away, moving to the side of Agatha and starting towards the exit. "So I'd say you're doing a great job on your own."

Agatha sighed to herself and didn't turn around to watch Rio walk out the door.

-

She didn't see Rio again for the next several days. She didn't hear her either. She tried not to think on the idea that Rio had taken Agatha's advice, and started fucking the women at their apartments instead.

Even though that was what she wanted. "What she wanted" with a giant fucking asterisk.

A few of the partners at her firm had an outing that Friday. Celebratory drinks for one of Jen's cases that closed. Huge win for the firm. Fucked over a start up or something. Agatha didn't really pay attention to her coworkers as they went over the details, nor was she particularly interested in having to pay attention to her coworkers outside of the office.

Agatha had suggested a bar in the West Village as their destination. Less of a suggestion, more of a requirement for her attendance. It wasn't the lesbian bar Rio seemed to frequent, but it was both queer enough and close enough that Agatha held out a small bit of hope that she'd run into her neighbor there too.

Agatha had also dragged Billy along. He wasn't expected to attend, nor was he encouraged to by anyone but Agatha. Another requirement for her attendance, she'd said. She wasn't sure why she wanted him there, and ultimately rued the decision as he got shit faced on the company dime.

"Where does he live?" Jen asked, as Alice draped one of Billy's arms over her shoulders.

"Bushwick!" Billy slurred excitedly, his eyes essentially closed as he walked with Alice towards the bar's exit.

Jen rolled her eyes, "of course."

"We can't send him across the river like this," Alice shook her head and looked to Agatha. "Should we call Lilia - get him a hotel?"

"Take the ferry," Billy said, which everyone ignored.

"Lilia will hear nothing of this," Agatha pushed the door open and begrudgingly held it open for the trio to walk through. "Understood?"

"Sounds like he's your problem to take care of then, Harkness," Jen laughed, and walked out onto the sidewalk, keeping her eyes down the street as she raised her arm to wave down a taxi. "Good luck."

Agatha frowned and turned to Alice, who only shrugged. "He is your associate."

Agatha's frown deepened.

-

"Now's your last chance to vomit," Agatha announced, as she typed in the front door code and turned the handle. "Once we're in my apartment, everything in your stomach needs to stay there."

Billy nodded, the short walk home in cold air seemingly sobered him up enough to understand the gravity of his boss's tone. They entered, Billy's arm slung around Agatha's shoulders, and took a few steps into the hallway before Agatha stopped at the sound of a familiar voice.

"I didn't think he was your type." Billy and Agatha both looked up to see Rio approaching them. She was dressed in a white tank top with black leather pants and doc martens, and held an army green jacket against her torso. "Bit young for you as well."

"I'm twentyfive," Billy said softly.

Agatha either didn't hear him or didn't care. "Well, I couldn't exactly leave a drunk, gay teenager unsupervised in the village."

"I'm twentyfive," he repeated. "Also how did you know I'm gay?"

"How did anyone ever not know?" Agatha returned.

"Wait - wait. Oh my god, Agatha is this her?" His attention shifted back to Rio, who had settled a few feet away from Agatha's door as they resumed their slow walk. "This is the neighbor?"

"The neighbor?" A smirk broke out on Rio's face as she looked from Billy to Agatha and then back. "Do go on."

Billy jaw dropped. "Oh my god, no offense but you're so hot."

"None taken." Rio's smirk widened.

"No wonder she won't shut up about you."

"Okay, that's enough from you for the night." Agatha extracted herself from Billy's arm and gently propped him against the wall before searching for her house key in her bag. "Please ignore my pet here, he can't hold his cosmos."

"Okay wow, yeah this is cozy," he mused as the door swung open to reveal Agatha's unit. "I can see why you want to ex-"

He was cut off from finishing the thought as Agatha shoved him inside and closed the door behind him, leaving just her and Rio in the hall.

"Okay rude," he said, muffled from behind the door, and Agatha took that to mean no lasting damage was done.

"Sorry about him," she started, straightening her shoulders to emotionally prepare herself to face Rio again. She was a little tipsy, and couldn't be trusted to not make a fool of herself.  "I mean, to be clear, I do think you're hot." Off to a bad start. "But obviously I understand that you're incapable of dealing with any level of complexity.

Rio shook her head, and her tongue did that stupid thing it always did where it lodged itself into the side of her own mouth and it made Agatha burn with want.

"It doesn't have to be hard, you know." Jesus, how tipsy was she? She couldn't stop herself from continuing, "it doesn't have to be complicated or emotional."

Agatha took a step towards Rio who didn't move away.

"You don't have to fall in love with me," Agatha leaned in, smelling Rio's woody cologne and tried not to close her eyes. She moved her lips closer to Rio's ear and continued quietly, "I just want your fingers inside of me."

Rio stayed impossibly still, but Agatha heard her breath quicken.

"I just want you to fuck me on your impossibly noisy bed," Agatha did close her eyes now, as the images of all the things she wanted to do filled her vision. "I want to taste you as you come on my tongue, and I-"

She stopped as she felt a hand grip her shoulder. Agatha took a half step back and opened her eyes to find Rio's burning into hers. Rio said nothing, so Agatha began again.

"But I guess it doesn't matter what I want. Because you want peace and order and a complication free life." Agatha reached up, and grabbed Rio's forearm as she kept her gaze on the other woman's. "And I think that makes you a coward."

Rio bit her tongue and worked her jaw. Her eyes were dark, lids low, and Agatha could see her chest rise and fall in her periphery.

"And I think you're drunk." She finally spoke.

"And right," Agatha grinned. "Being drunk does not preclude me from being right."

Rio took a half step forward now, and leaned in. She let her lips brush against Agatha's ear, and Agatha saw spots in her vision.

"Do you know the kind of things I want to do you?" Rio's voice was lower than Agatha had ever heard. "Do you know what goes through my head every time I hear your heels walk down our hall?"

Rio's grip on Agatha's shoulder tightened, and she placed her other hand on Agatha's hip before pushing her softly against the wall. Agatha could've moaned, but she didn't want Rio to stop talking.

"The fantasies I have? The positions I put you in? The amount I would make you beg for just a little bit more?" Rio shook her head, and Agatha felt the loose tendrils of her hair brush against her cheek. "Do you know how incredibly capable I am of absolutely ruining your life in a single night?"

Agatha had an idea of that. She felt ruined right now. She was a puddle. She was burning up. She was floating away.

"I think you have that backwards." But she also had an argument to make. And nothing kept Agatha Harkness grounded like an argument. "I think you're scared that it wouldn't be you ruining my life, but me ruining yours."

Agatha watched as Rio leaned back, their eyes meeting again.

She waited a beat, letting the tension sit before she finished her thought in a teasing whisper. "I think you don't want to upset your precious balance."

Rio painted her tongue over her teeth. Her eyes were daggers. Her nostrils flared. She looked at Agatha's lips and then looked away.

Rio let go of Agatha and took a step back. Agatha stumbled at the lack of contact and Rio breathed out heavily, "maybe you should focus on your own balance before talking about mine."

Rio turned on her heel and headed for the building's front door. Agatha watched her leave.

-

The following night Agatha was awoken at two in the morning by the sound of aggressive moaning in Rio's apartment.

She opened her laptop and penned an email to Herb, letting him know that she would like to have a discussion about combining units 33 and 34, as there would soon be a buyout.

Chapter Text

Ch. 7

"It'll pass in five minutes," these were the first words Agatha spoke to Rio after the incident in the hallway. It was the first time they'd seen each other since that night.

Had Rio intentionally been avoiding her? Hard to say. It had only been three days, and three days wasn't really a lot, in the grand scheme. It had essentially only been a weekend.

There hadn't been another woman since the night after. Agatha had heard nary a sound from the neighboring unit.

But there was tension in the air. It sat stagnant and filled Agatha's lungs every time she opened her front door and walked to the exit. Every time she returned and saw the strip of light sneaking through the threshold of Rio's apartment.

Like she was expecting her to come out again. To see her. To scowl or maybe worse yet, to lick her lips. To pin her up against the wall and remind her of all the things she wanted to do. God, how Agatha wished Rio would pin her against a wall again.

Agatha tried not to linger on this thought, as the tension felt all the more palpable now.

Agatha hadn't looked up at Rio before speaking. She'd heard her door open, the sound of her rubber soled boots as they approached the exit. Felt the soft movement of air as Rio walked by her to reach for the handle and open the door just as a particularly large streak of lightning illuminated the sky, and a few drops of the torrential downpour outside splashed their way onto the hallway floor.

Agatha, leaning against the railing of the stair case, turned her phone to Rio, who looked back at her. She examined the screen - a doppler radar of the current weather, showing a particularly vicious storm hovering over Manhattan.

"The worst of it, at any rate," Agatha finished.

"I have an umbrella," Rio said, though she let the door to the street close softly behind her.

Agatha didn't reply, but merely looked at the small, dollar-store collection of metal and nylon in Rio's hand with a raised eyebrow.

The ensuing crack of thunder served to emphasize her unspoken point.

Agatha returned her attention to her phone. She was going to be late for work. Not that she cared. She'd already moved her morning meetings. Her only pressing obligation of the day was happening that night and it was happening at this building.

Rio huffed, and leaned against the wall by the door, a few feet away from Agatha. They said nothing. The tension crackled. Agatha didn't look up.

In her periphery, she could see her though. Rio's eyes kept glancing at her. Darting from the floor, to the Agatha. From the wall to Agatha. From the door to Agatha.

This was new. A shift in the dynamic, perhaps?

Agatha could test this.

She looked up at the younger woman. Rio's gaze met hers for a short moment before looking away.

Agatha kept her focus on Rio's face. She was biting her lip, moving her tongue, looking at the ground.

Oh. This was a dynamic shift alright.

Rio snuck a glance at Agatha again, who was still staring. Rio closed her eyes and rolled her neck, no doubt trying to usher away whatever unwanted thoughts were in her head.

God how Agatha wanted to know what unpleasant thoughts were in her head.

The charge in the air was reaching a new peak - the next bolt of lightning was sure to strike in the hallway between them.

"I'm not scared," Rio announced, unprompted. Her eyes opened to meet Agatha's. There was the lightning bolt. Agatha tried not to jump back at the spark she felt burning from Rio's wide eyes.

"Of thunderstorms?"

"Of you."

They let the silence hang. The empty air between them could've been inches. Agatha could hear Rio's breath, even over the deluge of rain outside, and the whipping wind knocking tree branches into the building's windows.

"I'm flattered, I think?" Agatha said, after a too-long moment.

"You're not going to ruin my life." Rio shook her head. "I've faced worse things than Agatha Harkness."

This dynamic shift was even bigger than Agatha could've expected. She was under her skin. She had the power. It would be so easy now - the wheels in motion - to get her to leave the building. She was going to be so resolute and unbending. That was going to be her downfall. Agatha had seen this so many times before in her work.

And yet...

"I don't want to ruin your life," Agatha returned. Was that a lie? She wasn't sure. Buying her out of her apartment wouldn't really be ruining her life, after all. Just changing it. She'd pay a fair sum. Market value. No realtors needed.

She could make the offer now. Rio would say no. But the seed would be planted. The foot would be in the door.

And yet...

Agatha wanted to go with the other plan. The one that involved getting pushed down on Rio's bed, and making their shared wall shake.

So Agatha said nothing and it was Rio that broke the pronounced silence this time. "So what do you want from me?"

Agatha resisted the urge to step closer. To push her neighbor against the wall and respond to the question without her words - to show her exactly what she wanted, and how much she wanted it.

"I think I told you the other night."

"And why do you want it so bad?" Rio had almost a pained expression on her face as she looked anywhere but Agatha.

Agatha let out a derisive laugh. "Oh fuck off."

"That's not an answer."

"Well I don't want to pander to your false humility." Agatha rolled her eyes. "I mean Jesus, Rio. Look at yourself. Have you ever been turned down before? You're unthinkably attractive. You've got the most ridiculous body I've ever seen. You work with your hands all day, and you move your tongue around your mouth for everyone to see all the fucking time and I don't know, you're also weird as fuck but it's somehow kind of endearing." Agatha caught herself as her monologue was verging into a dangerous stream of subconsciousness. "In a superficially hot way, obviously."

Rio's eyes met Agatha's once again. This time she didn't look away. But she also didn't say anything. So Agatha continued.

"But you have made it abundantly clear that this isn't happening, so I'm not going to keep trying." This was probably a lie, but it felt like the proper thing to both say and do. "Don't worry. Your life will stay un-ruined."

Rio was still looking at her. The intensity of her gaze was making Agatha's skin feel hot. She wanted to pull at the collar of her shirt. Instead she held out for another few moments before glancing down at her phone, and the doppler radar still on it.

"Only another two minutes, I think." Agatha glanced back up. "Can you handle it?"

Rio's eyes jumped from Agatha's to the front door. She reached out a hand and turned the knob.

The rain was still heavy, and the wind was taking it sideways. Agatha shivered with the cold draft of air as it entered the hallway.

"I'll be fine."

And with that, Rio stepped outside, opening her umbrella as the front door swung shut behind her. Agatha stared at the spot for a while, her brain fried by all the electricity in the air.

-

Agatha put the tote on her coffee table, next to the bottle of wine she'd already opened and the empty glasses. Of course it was a New Yorker tote. Of course that was what Wanda had left at her house years ago, and of course that's what years ago Agatha had chosen to store her ex's favorite bra and miscellaneous face creams in.

Agatha hadn't remembered keeping any of Wanda's belongings after the breakup - she'd found the bag this past weekend, tucked in a drawer she clearly hadn't opened in years. Knowing herself, Agatha would likely have kept her things hostage with no intent of returning them until it would serve her - when she could use them as some form of coercion down the line.

And, well, her instincts were good. This was the leverage she needed tonight.

She'd texted Wanda right when she found it, still stewing on what felt like the twentieth rejection from Rio that night in the hall. This seemed like as good an excuse as any to get the red head to her house. Back to the place where they'd spent so much time together.

So sue her. She was lonely. And not the kind of lonely that a tryst in the bathroom of a bar could solve.

She looked at the two empty wine glasses, illuminated only by the large, soft-toned lamp that was nestled by her couch. Two glasses and mood lighting was too much. Too desperate.

And desperate for something that Agatha still couldn't define. What was her goal, really? Sex? Reconnection? It was unclear, and she wasn't about to critically self examine. She just needed something, and this was the closest solve she had available to her.

Agatha hesitated, then picked up the second wine glass, and took it back to the kitchen cabinet just as there was a knock at her door.

She waited. Couldn't seem too desperate, after all. She walked back to the coffee table and poured herself a healthy splash of the pinot, taking a sip as her guest knocked a second time.

She ran a hand through her hair, disheveling it in the way she remembered her ex liked so much, and then walked to the door to open it.

"Hi," she said, voice low, before taking another small sip of wine.

Wanda was standing in front of her, still in her work apparel and hair frizzy from the lingering humidity of the storm.

"Hey," she returned voice bright.

Agatha moved to the side and held the door open with her free hand as she ushered Wanda inside. Wanda hesitated for a moment, but ultimately nodded and walked in with careful steps.

She looked around the room, eyes wide. Her gaze went to the bedroom, and Agatha watched as she chewed on her bottom lip. An old nervous tic she clearly hadn't moved past since she was last here.

"Can I get you a glass of wine?" Agatha offered, staying by the kitchen cabinets.

"This is weird," Wanda said with a wry chuckle, motioning to the space. "Being back here."

"It's just an apartment." Agatha offered, and Wanda shot her a look. Not wanting to but a ticket for that train of thought just yet, Agatha motioned to the couch. "Here, sit. Long journey from mid-town I'm sure."

Wanda did as instructed, sitting at the couch as she eyed the contents of her old tote bag. "Oh funny, this one was discontinued years ago," she marveled, pulling one of the creams out. "Great moisturizer."

"Well you haven't needed it - you look the same as you did back then." Wanda shot Agatha yet another look, and Agatha winked in response, sitting down on the other end of the couch. "Better even."

"And so the Agatha Harkness charm offensive begins."

"I'm just stating facts."

Wanda shook her head in feigned annoyance. "I saw your neighbor in the hallway, by the way."

"Oh," this caught Agatha off guard, and she tried to sound casual. "Which one?"

"Dark hair, brooding affect."

"You've just described ninety percent of this city."

"I recognize her," Wanda was doing little to conceal her smirk. "Rio, right?"

Jesus, how many of the lesbians in this town had her neighbor fucked? Agatha ignored the sinking feeling in her stomach as she replied. "You've been acquainted?"

Blessedly, Wanda shook her head. "Not officially. She's slept with half of my exes though." Wanda raised an inquisitive eyebrow at Agatha. "Or maybe more?"

Agatha poured herself a little more wine, and tried to put on a very false tone of nonchalance as she said, "not to my knowledge."

"Ah. Well I hear you're missing out."

"She's missing out," Agatha mumbled, before taking a longer sip.

Wanda nodded to herself, seemingly coming to a conclusion that remained a mystery to Agatha. This conversation was getting away from her. She quickly swallowed before continuing.

"We're not here to talk about her though - tell me, how have you been? How's work, how's the family? And are you..." Agatha paused, tilting her head as she eyed Wanda curiously. "Seeing anyone?"

"Not currently, no," Wanda hummed, picking at a cuticle with great interest. "But you should know, my therapist made me change your name in my phone to 'no talking.'"

Agatha grinned. "And yet, here you are."

Wanda kept her attention on her hands, folding them neatly on her lap. "And yet here I am."

They sat in contemplative silence for a moment. Agatha grabbed the stem of her wine glass, and slowly spun it between her finger tips. "So, should I pour you one?"

Wanda finally looked up at Agatha again, her eyes shining. There was another long pause, the tension thick. Agahta held Wanda's gaze for as long as the other woman could manage. She broke first, green eyes searching the apartment that had once almost been her home. Wanda took a deep breath before returning her focus to her ex, and placed a hand on Agatha's knee. With a light squeeze she sighed, "not tonight."

Agatha took a sip from her glass to prevent herself from betraying any emotions. "Rain check, then."

Wanda nodded, and took another wistful look around the living room. No words were exchanged as Agatha put down her wine, and Wanda stood up from the couch, grabbed her tote bag of items, and walked to the door. With her hand on the knob, she turned to take in Agatha, who was still on the loveseat.

After a prolonged beat, she smiled softly. "It's good to have you back in the city."

"It's good to be back," Agatha returned, certain that she didn't care to reflect on if that was accurate or not.

Wanda opened the door and left, shutting it quietly behind her. Agatha closed her eyes and rubbed her temples.

What the fuck was she doing? She didn't really just try and fail to reopen that pandoras box, did she? Was she that desperate for another fuck? Or worse, was she that desperate for affection, that she'd accept the echoes of what once was as a temporary salve? She was smart enough to know how that would end.

But still. The idea of rekindling something had been nice. Sure, she didn't feel any sparks in the two minutes her ex spent inside her apartment just now but that didn't mean that their relationship wasn't all bad. Maybe echoes were okay to explore - just something to keep them both occupied while they looked for something different.

The different thing Agatha wanted happened to be plainly obvious. But much like with Wanda, Rio had rejected Agatha's advances as well.

Christ, had time really been so unkind to her once undeniable beauty? Maybe she should've kept those face creams.

Agatha stood up to go examine her wrinkles in the bathroom mirror when there was another knock at the door. She frowned, only furthering the wrinkles that were no doubt her undoing. Did Wanda leave her phone or something?

Agatha opened the door to find Rio standing on the welcome mat, hand raised and ready to knock again.

She was wearing a black tank top and gray joggers with no shoes on. Her hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, curling slightly at the ends.

Neither of them said anything for a moment. Agatha blinked, and finished the glass of wine that was still in her hand.

"Want any?" She asked finally, motioning to the bottle on the coffee table.

Rio nodded, and walked inside. She didn't get very far, choosing to lean against the bar counter that jutted out slightly from the kitchen, right in the walkway from the door to the living room. Agatha picked out the same glass she'd put away minutes ago, and felt keenly aware of Rio's eyes on her as she retrieved the bottle from the coffee table, and returned to the counter to pour them both a drink.

Once full, Agatha raised her glass and clinked it against her neighbor's. "Cheers."

Rio nodded, and took a large sip, eyes still focused on Agatha as she did so. They were both illuminated only by the warm light of the living room lamp, and the soft glow made Rio look even more ethereally beautiful. It was offensive, honestly, to look so good.

Agatha took a deep breath, waiting for Rio to break the silence. Rio did so the second she swallowed her sip. "Do you have a new girlfriend?"

"I wouldn't say new," Agatha tried to hide her smirk by bringing her glass to her lips again. "I thought you didn't ask about girlfriends."

"Different circumstances," was all Rio said.

Their eyes locked onto the other's. The storm had long since passed but the electricity was back. Agatha had the urge to reach out and touch Rio - stroke the newly un-bandaged flower tattoo. Instead she leaned against the counter opposite of her guest, and watched the woman watch her.

"Pray tell, what are the circumstances of your visit tonight, miss Vidal?"

Rio stuck her tongue in her cheek, and broke their eye contact to look aimlessly off to the bathroom door. "I had a legal question."

This surprised Agatha but she could roll with it. "I'm off the clock."

"Are you?" Rio squinted. "I've heard you taking calls at midnight."

"Thin walls," Agatha muttered, mostly to herself. "Fine. Legal question. Shoot."

"The company next door to my shop is suing me - they want to build a road to a parking garage they have, since right now they only have a footpath that goes up against the side of my fence."

"Easement?" Agatha put her glass down, and Rio nodded. "Not my area of expertise."

"Not mine either," Rio offered her a wry smile. "I'll take any help I can get though."

"I can refer you to some wonderful firms."

"How generous."

"Call it a favor for sparing my ears the last few nights."

Rio frowned at this. "What do you mean?"

"You've kept your guests a lot quieter," Agatha studied Rio's reaction to this with great interest, looking for any tell - any emotional giveaway. "I believe I heard you instruct the last woman to 'shut her pretty mouth or put it to work.'"

Rio whistled. "These walls really are thin."

"They really are," Agatha nodded. She watched Rio take another long sip, finishing the glass. Agatha pushed herself away from the counter and reached for the bottle to pour her another.

Just before Agatha's fingers wrapped around the neck of the bottle, Rio's fingers wrapped around Agatha's wrist.

Time stood still in that moment. Agatha's gaze moved from their hands up to Rio's face. Her eyes were dark and full of an unmistakable smolder. Agatha had seen a glimpse of this expression the night in the hall. But this... This was different. This was intense and undeniable and so very, very hot.

"You don't want another?" Agatha asked, releasing a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding.

"I want something else." Rio returned, but didn't move, her eyes searching Agatha's, asking a question that she surely must already have known the answer to.

Inviting Wanda over wasn't a pathetic mistake. It was inspired. It was destiny. It was driving Rio insane and Agatha was going to enjoy every moment of it.

She leaned in, using her free hand to brush away the hair that had escaped Rio's ponytail as she put her lips to the other woman's ear and whispered, "then take it."

Agatha heard Rio's breath catch. But still, no movement. She took a half step back to make eye contact with Rio once more.

"You're sure?" Rio asked, hand still clasped around Agatha's wrist.

"I've heard glowing reviews about your craft." Agatha's eyes darted down to Rio's lips.

Rio's face inched closer to Agatha's. "It will be a one time thing."

"Then we better make it count." And with that, Agatha closed the distance between them.

The kiss was immediate and urgent. Agatha's lips tingled and her face flushed as Rio's hands worked their way across her body. One hand settled on her neck and the other roamed down the side of her, gently squeezing as she reached the curve of Agatha's hip.

Agatha whined as Rio lightly nipped at her lower lip, before using her tongue to lick the sensitive spot.

Agatha felt herself being pushed backwards and let her feet follow the movement as she used her hands to hold Rio's face next to hers, not wanting to break contact even for a moment.

The cool metal of the refrigerator hit her back, and Rio pressed her further against it as she pulled Agatha's hips down onto her thigh.

"Fuck," Agatha groaned involuntarily, the sensation of pressure shooting through her core.

Rio let Agatha roll her hips on her leg for a few seconds longer, as Agatha's breathing sped up and she let out another moaning expletive.

"Does that feel good?" Rio asked before putting her lips on Agatha's neck.

Agatha could only respond with a moan, her eyes shutting at the feeling of the other woman's body pressing into hers, her flexed muscle hitting her center exactly where she wanted it. Even clothed, Agatha felt like it wouldn't take much more of this to get her off.

Just as she had the thought, Rio took a half step back, stilling Agatha's motion. Agatha pulled her head back and pouted.

"Patience," was all Rio said, as she moved her hand to the front of Agatha's waist to begin working on the button of her pants.

"No," Agatha replied, and used her hands to help Rio unzip the chinos and pull them down her thighs. Rio's fingers quickly cupped Agatha's cunt over her underwear, resulting in an involuntary spasm and: "fuck me."

"That's the plan," Rio grinned and her lips returned to meet Agatha's as her fingers worked over the fabric of Agatha's thong, sliding along the already wet folds.

Agatha's hands were frantic, reaching for Rio's head, neck, back, nails digging into the flesh of her upper arms as Rio slowly and methodically rubbed the pads of her fingers around the outside Agatha's still covered clit.

"Please," Agatha breathed out. It would be embarrassing to come like this their first time. Not even being touched properly. But she wasn't sure how much say she would have the in the matter. It was all happening so fast. She felt so needy, as her legs jolted when Rio slid a finger beneath the waist band of her underwear and moved the cloth a few inches down her leg.

Rio's hand returned to Agatha's slit, and Agatha melted against the fridge, slumping back as Rio used her other hand to grab her jaw. Rio lightly turned her head so they were looking at each other head on.

Their eyes met just as Rio touched the live wire that was Agatha's clit. Agatha's eyelids fluttered as she fought the urge to close them properly and lean into the sensation.

She'd pictured this being long and slow - a marathon break of the tension that had been filling their shared address for weeks.

But this was a sprint. A snap. It now felt like this frenetic and haphazard breaking of the tension was inevitable, and Agatha felt her orgasm approaching with a similar inevitability.

She wanted to slow it down but as Rio's eyes dropped to watch the ministrations, Agatha followed her line of sight to see Rio's long fingers speeding up their movements. Quick, circular motions along the top of Agatha's slit.

Agatha felt the first spasm hit her and she looked back up at Rio's face. Their eyes met again. And then it was all over for her.

"Fuck," Agatha moaned long and low, and her eyes involuntarily closed as she threw her head backwards, hitting the fridge. She didn't care. She didn't feel it.

The waves of pleasure rocked through her as she convulsed against the kitchen appliance, Rio's fingers still working against her core. She felt Rio's lips on her collarbone, her neck, her ear, her cheek, and then on her lips.

Agatha could barely kiss back. She let Rio's tongue paint the inside of her mouth as she tried to steady her breath.

"You wanted it that bad, huh?" Rio mumbled, as Agatha finally mustered the energy to move. She grabbed Rio's wrist to still her motions, as she spasmed with sensitivity.

"You have no idea," Agatha shook her head as Rio grinned, before raising her hand to her lips to lick the tools that had just worked their magic.

Agatha watched, transfixed as Rio's tongue ran along the length of her middle finger, before she popped it into her mouth. Agatha groaned and Rio removed the digit before snaking her hand back down Agatha's body, making contact with her clit once more.

Agatha jumped, and grabbed Rio's wrist again.

"Not yet," she started, and used her other hand to push Rio's shoulder, as she walked them away from the fridge and back towards the counter on the other side of the small open air galley kitchen. "My turn."

Agatha's lips returned to Rio's, as the back of the other woman's waist hit the marble counter top. Rio opened her legs and Agatha stood between them as she let her tongue explore Rio's mouth, running over the gap in her front teeth that had been a featured player in so many of her recent fantasies.

Agatha pressed Rio further into the counter, and Rio took a deep breath as their bodies met. Agatha's pants were still only halfway down her thighs, but she didn't want to bother with pulling them down entirely yet. That would mean stepping back, and removing herself from the heat of the other woman.

Rio moaned low into Agatha's ear as she moved her lips to Rio's neck. She gave her a soft nibble, before kissing her way down her clavicle.

She kissed Rio's chest, just above the hem of her tank top, before pulling it down to reveal a thin gray sports bra. Agatha cupped Rio's breast with one hand, and pulled down the offending fabric with the other, before putting her lips on Rio's now exposed nipple.

Rio's breath caught, as Agatha licked her tongue over the hardening surface, sucking it between her lips.

On a different day she'd stay there longer. Pay appropriate reverence to the temple that was Rio's body. But her own body was still thrumming with the energy of the dam breaking and Agatha couldn't help herself as she squatted lower sinking almost to her knees to pull down Rio's joggers.

She took the offending pants off fully, and then reached up to grab Rio's black boy shorts. She paused with her hands under the fabric, glancing up to appreciate the view.

Rio, eyes hooded, lips parted, and cheeks pink was looking down at her. Waiting, expectant, and Agatha could've been imagining it but she thought she saw a hint of nervousness in the heavy gaze that was watching her every movement.

Agatha slowed down a bit as she pulled the underwear down Rio's thighs, making sure to brush her hands along the flesh of her inner legs as she removed the garment.

Rio stepped out of the clothes, and Agatha knelt down as she took in Rio's neatly trimmed curls, glistening with her want. Agatha felt a pain on her kneecaps, and puffed out an annoyed breath before standing up abruptly.

Rio's lips turned down in a small frown, her brow furrowing.

"Up," was Agatha's response to her pout, and she grabbed Rio's hips to help hoist her on the counter. "I want to stay here for a while, and I'm not doing that on the floor."

Agatha watched Rio breathe out, the anxiety dissipating, as she propped herself on the edge of the marble. The angle still wasn't quite right for Agatha, as she took another look at Rio's cunt, resting just above the counter top.

"Here," still with her hands on her hips, Agatha twisted Rio sideways, and pushed her backwards, so she was laying back length wise on the bar counter top. Agatha rotated her own position so she was at the end of the bar, and could more easily lean over Rio's body.

Rio propped herself up on her elbows to watch as Agatha took it all in. This impossibly hot woman half naked in her kitchen, dripping wet and breathing heavily. She hadn't even been touched yet.

"You want it that bad, huh?" Agatha smirked, returning Rio's prior assessment.

Rio didn't dignify this with a response. Just motioned her head at Agatha, prompting her to get to work.

And who was Agatha to deny such a polite request?

Agatha put her hands on either side of Rio's torso as she leaned over her, and placed a featherlight kiss on Rio's clit. Her hips bucked into Agatha's face, who smiled and placed another kiss in the same spot, this one a little firmer.

She placed a series of these kisses around Rio's center, close but never on the spot Rio wanted most. She was squirming with every one, and Agatha watched a bit of her wetness fall to the counter beneath her hips. She wanted to lick it up. She needed to taste her properly now.

Using all her restraint, she moved her head a few inches back, daring Rio to make eye contact with her.

The moment Rio's eyes locked onto hers, Agatha dove back in, maintaining her gaze as she licked up the length of Rio's slit.

Rio's moan reverberated through her body, shaking through her core, and Agatha licked again. Tongue flat, and wide, and lapping up every drop of slick that was in its path.

She tasted even better than Agatha had imagined. She kept licking as she watched Rio writhe above her, fitted tank top riding up with every movement she made.

After a minute of working Rio up, Agatha took Rio's clit between her lips and lightly sucked. Rio made a noise somewhere between a whine and a curse word, so Agatha took that as a cue to continue the action, sucking a little harder each time.

Rio moved one of her hands to Agatha's hair, resting her body weight fully on one arm now. Her fingers tangled through Agatha's wavy curls as Agatha released Rio's clit from her lips, and extended her tongue again.

Rio's hips jolted, and her grip in Agatha's hair tightened, holding her in place. Agatha had no complaints about this, and flattened her tongue against Rio's most sensitive spot, rocking her face side to side.

Her chin was soaked with Rio. She was drinking her in, tasting and savoring and worshipping the wetness that was now covering both her face and the kitchen counter.

Agatha felt Rio's clit throb slightly under her tongue, and noticed the increased swell of it. Agatha redoubled her pressure, moaning as she moved her face side to side with increased vigor.

Rio was now saying a series of words in a what Agatha assumed was Spanish but didn't want to take the time to think about. It was hot. Everything about this was hot. Agatha wanted to take her time, but also wanted to take Rio to the edge right the fuck now. She wanted to live down here. She wanted infinite rounds tonight. She wanted infinite rounds period.

Rio's thighs squeezed around Agatha's head as her feet found purchase on Agatha's back. Her hips raised and fell and raised again, and Agatha's tongue followed her clit everywhere it went.

"Fuck, I'm going to come," Rio breathed out.

Agatha wanted to say so many things in response to that, but she wanted to feel it on her face more. She wanted to taste it. The air was thick with the smell of Rio, and it was hitting something primitive inside of Agatha's brain.

Her tongue swiped again, and Agatha felt Rio crumble beneath her. She used her hands to steady her neighbor's hips as Rio fell apart, her cunt clenching and unclenching beneath Agatha's chin. Her legs straightened and tensed, and Agatha held onto them as Rio rode out her orgasm on Agatha's face.

It took nearly a minute for her to still, and Agatha placed light kisses along her inner thighs, as she let Rio come back down.

Once her breathing was steady, Agatha pulled Rio by the legs so she was sitting on the edge of the counter. Rio slowly propped herself up on both arms.

"Well," Agatha started with a smirk, looking up at the woman who was looking down at her with flushed cheeks and soft eyes. "That was certainly the best thing I've ever eaten on this counter."

Rio laughed before she could think better of it. She put her hands over her face to cover her eyes, shaking her head as she chuckled.

Agatha pulled her hands away, holding onto them. Her smile widened as she looked at Rio's. So this is what the woman looked like when she was having a good time. Not broody or aloof. She looked... Happy? Had Agatha not seen Rio look genuinely happy before?

Agatha removed her hands from Rio's, and moved them to cup the younger woman's face. She pulled her head down to hers and ran a thumb along one of her cheek bones before kissing her.

This was softer than their prior kisses. Agatha felt it in her heart this time. A clenching and warm sensation spread through her chest, as she moved her lips lightly against Rio's.

When she pulled back, it was with a dopey smile she couldn't control. "Should we take this to the bed?"

Rio paused. Her happy features suddenly hardening as she took in Agatha's expression. "I should go."

"What?" Agatha reacted with a chuckle, but Rio shook her head, and removed herself from the counter. She grabbed for her underwear and joggers, which were in a pile on the kitchen floor. Agatha took a step away as she tried to make sense of the moment. Her walls going up, she offered another chuckle, this one feigned. "Didn't take you for such a low stamina girl."

"I..." Rio started, as she hastily pulled up her clothes and straightened her shirt, before finishing lamely: "I had fun."

Agatha didn't know how to respond to this sudden shift in energy, so she simply remained silent, pants still halfway down her legs as she watched her neighbor walk to the door and leave, barely sparing her a single look back.

Chapter Text

Ch. 8

Agatha couldn't focus. Well, that wasn't exactly right. She could focus, it was just on the wrong things.

The memories from the night before were on repeat. A constant loop of Rio in Agatha's mind, as she tried in vain to complete her work.

"I had fun." The words kept replaying in her head. Rio had said them as her hand reached for the door, just moments after she'd nearly crushed Agatha's head between her thighs.

Fun.

That was a word for it. To be fair, Agatha certainly had fun, and gun to her head she'd have guessed Rio did too. They both finished quickly - and there was a clear promise of more to come (so to speak). Rio had laughed and smiled and given how infrequently she seemed to either...

Maybe Rio didn't like fun. Maybe that was the problem.

Maybe Rio only liked sex if it was serious and severe and full of bondage or death threats.

Maybe that's what she'd expected when she knocked on Agatha's door.

Because she did. She knocked. She was the one who grabbed Agatha's wrist, and made the first move.

Agatha saw the way Rio looked at her. In the hallway when she pinned her against the wall. By the entryway during the lightning storm. And last night, with her bare legs on Agatha's counter. She'd looked at Agatha with such softness. Such light and happy eyes.

Agatha had thought the dynamic might have shifted in her favor earlier that day. Clearly it had. So was this Rio trying to take it back? If so, this was a level of mind games that Agatha would usually applaud, but the psychological warfare wasn't sitting as well this time.

Agatha sighed and rubbed at her temples.

"Something you care to share with the class, Harkness?"

Agatha looked up to the rest of the room. They were in the middle of a meeting about fuck knows what. Agatha was probably supposed to know what.

"Depends," she started, wondering if she could intuit what was happening in the meeting in the next four milliseconds. She could not. "...Does the class want to hear about the woman I fucked on my kitchen counter last night?"

"Kinda," Alice mused as Jen groaned, and Lilia took a deep breath from her seat at the head of the conference table.

"Wait," Billy's mouth was agape as he stared at Agatha. "Was it her - did you finally hook up with Rio?"

"I did." Agatha's voice was dripping with caginess.

A caginess that Billy clearly did not pick up on. "Oh my God I can't believe you didn't tell us sooner! How was it?"

"It was..." Agatha trailed off, looking out the windows to the skyscrapers and beyond, before finishing with an pointed: "fun."

"Sounds like it," Alice deadpanned.

"It's good we're talking about this at work," Jen also deadpanned. "Would hate to spend this hour billing a client."

Lilia waved a hand. "We're billing the client anyway."

"What happened?" Billy asked, wide eyed and naive and so infuriatingly sincere. "Was it bad?"

"No," Agatha returned too quickly, so she continued without an unnatural lack of pause. "It was good. And to be clear, it was good, so don't start with me Kale. It was just..." Why was she still talking? "It ended sooner than I thought it would."

That was a fair way to put it. Honest.

"What, why, did someone pull a muscle?" Lilia asked, eyes squinting as she assessed Agatha. "Don't laugh, William, this is a thing that happens as you age."

"No, there weren't any injuries," Agatha rolled her eyes.

Jen raised a finger. "Bruised ego counts."

"My ego is better than ever, thank you very much," Agatha lied. She could stop there. Move on. Talk about the weather. The purpose of the meeting. Anything else. But her mouth opened and she continued. "She sort of... left abruptly."

"What do you mean?" Alice frowned.

Agatha shrugged, sealing her lips together to prevent any more information from accidentally passing through.

"Did she leave in the middle of it?" Alice's frown deepened. "Without a reason?"

Agatha shrugged again.

Alice sighed. "Sounds like she's a head case."

"Agatha is a head case." Jen quickly replied.

Lilia hummed. "These energies can often create a perfect pair."

Jen scoffed. "Or blow up."

"Yes," Lilia tapped her fingers against the table absentmindedly as she assessed Agatha. "Or blow up."

"Okay, everyone simmer down please, this woman isn't part of any pair - she's just a roadblock in my way to expanding my apartment. Now..." Agatha straightened her shirt as she sat up in her chair, and looked at the presentation on the room's TV for the first time all meeting. "Where were we?"

-

Agatha left the office later than usual, after hours of willing herself to focus on anything other than Rio. She wasn't sure if she was hoping to see her in the hallway when she arrived or never see her again.

But the choice wasn't up to her, and the answer became clear with her disappointment that there was no sign of the other woman. No light under the door. No noise in the building. Just Agatha's own thoughts bouncing around her head.

There was work that needed to be done. Deadlines needed to be hit. She couldn't keep dwelling on Rio.

She ordered dinner to be delivered. She took a shower. She put on a robe and looked in the mirror, and made a promise to not think about her impossibly hot neighbor for the next two hours while she finished her briefing.

And she succeeded for about fifteen minutes, until her focus was interrupted by a knock on her door.

"You can leave it on the mat," she called out to the delivery driver who clearly didn't read her instructions to not disturb the peace.

Another knock. Agatha sighed, and got up from the couch, tightening her robe as she walked to the door.

"I said-"

"To leave it on the mat." Rio finished, standing in front of her and holding a small potted cactus in one hand, and the brown bag presumably containing Agatha's dinner in the other. "One of these just requires special instructions."

Agatha worked hard to keep her mouth from dropping. Or worse yet, from smiling. "I've never struggled navigating a Cobb salad."

"But I've seen you navigate plants." Rio handed her the bag of food, still holding onto the cactus. "This requires different care than the other."

"Oh?" Agatha didn't move, just watched the younger woman's eyes dart around the space. From Agatha, to the plant, to the food, to the apartment, to the floor.

"It's got... Prickly edges. It needs less water. But it will be fine if you essentially leave it alone." Rio paused, biting her lip, before focusing her gaze on Agatha's own. "Assuming you don't intentionally break it."

Agatha let the subtext hang in the air for a pronounced moment, her brain still catching up to the situation in front of her. She saw Rio swallow heavily, the tension of the moment rising exponentially with each passing second.

"Why would I do such a thing?" Agatha finally responded, head tilting, voice soft.

"People do lots of things."

"They do..." Agatha trailed off, running her thumb along the folded crease of the delivery food as she looked Rio up and down.

Her hair was in a loose low ponytail. She was in faded jeans and a dirt stained white shirt. Clearly fresh from her shop. Agatha eyed her hands, fidgeting against the white ceramic of the pot, before speaking again.

"Is this an apology cactus, or a metaphor cactus, or an excess stock at the shop cactus?"

"Bit of each?"

Agatha took a step backward and placed the bag on her counter before returning her attention to Rio. She held her hand out, and waited for Rio to give her the plant. It took a moment, but Rio took a step forward over the threshold so she could hand Agatha the pot.

"So I should just leave it entirely alone?"

"I mean," Suddenly without anything to hold, Rio slid one of her hands in the front pocket of her jeans and used the other to tuck a loose strand of her hair behind her ear. "Not entirely."

"Well I'm going to need more instructions then," Agatha held up a hand as Rio opened her mouth. "And don't just give me the finger test nonsense."

Rio frowned. "It's not nonsense."

"How much light does it need?"

"As much as you can give it."

"And water?"

"Not too much - don't water it the same way you do the philodendron or it will drown, but don't neglect it either."

"So it sounds like it doesn't just want to be left alone then."

"I can take it back."

"No, it was a gift, I'll cherish it always." Agatha clutched the pot closer to her chest, though being careful to avoid the spiny edge. "Just tell me how to keep it alive. Like where do I put it?"

Agatha reached her free hand beyond Rio to close the door behind her. Rio didn't object, but she didn't move closer in either.

"The window is a good spot."

"I have multiple windows."

Rio squinted and looked past Agatha into her living room. "Do you?"

"Not here." She conceded. "I suppose you never did get to see my bedroom though..."

"Agatha..." Rio shot her a warning glance that seemed more pained than threatening. Agatha took another step backward, lightly bumping into the kitchen island, and Rio watched her hips hit the marble.

"Ah." The older woman placed the cactus on the countertop, and then gave the surface a wistful pat. "Scene of the crime."

She smiled at Rio, who swallowed again. Her pupils were wide, eyes low. Agatha wasn't sure if Rio knew why she'd come over. But Agatha knew. She knew that look.

She'd seen it last night.

"Was it that bad?" Agatha affected a flirtatious tone, voice dropping even lower, head tilting down, eyelashes batting.

"No," Rio shook her head.

"I know, that was rhetorical." Agatha chuckled, taking a small step away from the counter and towards Rio. "Obviously it wasn't bad."

She stopped about a foot away from the other woman. Rio closed her eyes as Agatha reached a hand out to grab her forearm. She didn't remove it, and when her eyes opened they were dark and boring right into Agatha's.

"It was just..." Agatha ran her fingers down the length of Rio's arm, and lightly clasped her hand. "Truncated."

"Truncated?" Rio parroted.

"Short."

"I know what it means, I'm questioning the word choice."

Agatha didn't respond, just moved a half a step closer still as she rubbed her thumb in soft circles on Rio's palm.

Rio sighed, and it came out shaky as her eyes darted down to Agatha's ministrations. "This is why I didn't want to sleep together."

Agatha considered this. "Well we didn't sleep together exactly."

"It's a weird situation now."

"Have you considered that your attitude about the situation might be what's making it weird? Self-fulfilling prophecy, and all?"

Rio shook her head, but inched almost imperceptibly towards Agatha as she did so. Agatha could feel the heat of the other woman as she neared.

"Only it wasn't as fulfilling as it could've been." She whispered.

Rio raised an eyebrow as Agatha shuffled her feet ever so slightly closer.

"Maybe it's weird because we didn't really finish the job. Now we just have half a hook up hanging over our heads."

Rio's eyes closed again. When they opened, they were on Agatha's lips. She paused before offering in a whisper of her own, "should we finish it, then?"

Agatha tried to contain her smile. "I'd love to show you my other windows."

"Only the one more time." Rio's hand moved to Agatha's face, and lightly gripped her jaw.

"Just finishing what we-" Agatha didn't get the chance to end the thought as her lips her quickly covered by Rio's.

She felt the hand on her jaw move to her neck, and another hand grasp at her side. Her feet were being walked back towards the counter.

Agatha didn't want a repeat of the night before, so she grabbed Rio by her shoulders and pushed her back slightly. She took her in. Flushed cheeks, parted lips, smoldering stare.

"Bedroom." Was all she was able to get out before she crashed her lips back on the younger woman's, and guided her through the door. Their lips didn't part until Agatha had her against the bed, and lightly pushed her back onto the comforter covered mattress.

Agatha made sure to take her time before getting Rio off, as she wanted to savor every moment she could in case Rio freaked out and left again. It was a slow build of lips on lips and lips on neck and fingers rubbing over thick denim pants. Rio's frustration was evident, but her moans continued, so Agatha kept the agonizingly slow pace.

It was Rio who ended up unbuttoning her own pants, and shimmied them down her own legs. It was Rio who put Agatha's hand underneath her boyshorts, and it was both Rio and Agatha who gasped when Agatha finally made purchase with her wet folds.

Agatha spent the next few minutes working around them with only her fingers. She took Rio to the edge, pads of her index and middle finger lightly circling her clit, before pulling away just as Rio's legs started to tremble. She repeated the process three more times before Rio held her hand in place and moved her hips against Agatha's hand to get herself off.

Rio, shook off her her post orgasm haze to bite her displeasure with the edging into Agatha's neck, and then her collarbone, before gradually softening her lips as she worked her way down Agatha's body.

She flipped Agatha onto her back, and pulled at the tie of Agatha's robe. Agatha saw Rio's breath catch as the fabric slipped away and her eyes took in the entirety of Agatha's body for the first time.

"Fuck," Rio muttered, and before Agatha had a moment to be self conscious, Rio's lips were on her chest. She took a nipple into her mouth, licking the hardening bud for a moment before switching her attention to the other.

Agatha moaned as she threaded her fingers in Rio's hair, ruining her ponytail.

Rio's head moved down, kissing a trail from under Agatha's left breast to her belly button and to the thin fabric of her underwear.

"You're drenched." Rio sounded reverent.

Agatha could only nod. Rio pulled the fabric to the side and placed a kiss right at the apex of Agatha's center.

Agatha felt her lips go numb before she remembered to breath. Rio spared her the same torture she'd been inflicted, and went straight to work, lips and tongue and fingers all working in tandem to make Agatha come undone. Her orgasm shook through her shortly after Rio started.

...And then she kept going.

She didn't get out of bed. She didn't put on her clothes. She didn't even remove her tongue from Agatha's clit.

Instead she stayed, and worked her neighbor through a quick succession of orgasms that left Agatha melted on top of her own comforter.

Once Agatha tapped out, Rio made a halfhearted move to leave the bed, but she didn't object when Agatha told Rio she wasn't done with her yet, and let the older woman spread her legs once more.

She wasn't sure what the official orgasm count was, nor was she sure how much time had passed by the time they were both too fatigued to continue.

They spent a few minutes in relative silence, the room filled only with the noise of their heavy breathing as they laid sweaty and tangled on top of Agatha's cotton bedding. The ceiling fan was on, lightly tickling their skin with the slow movement of a warm autumn air.

"Okay. So. That was the last time for real," Rio said, once she'd gotten up off the bed, leaving behind a substantial wet spot behind her.

"Okay."

Rio huffed as she pulled up her underwear and pants. "I'm serious."

She wasn't. But Agatha wasn't going to tell her that. "Sure."

Rio looked back at Agatha, still naked and supine on the bed. She felt freshly fucked. She felt better than she had in years. And the way Rio was looking at her... She no doubt looked it too.

"We're not doing this again." Rio was trying to convince herself as she put on her shirt.

Agatha offered her a lazy two finger salute. "Goodnight Rio."

She waited until she heard the front door close behind her neighbor before she let herself smile.

Agatha wondered when Rio would be back. It might take her a while to realize. To get over herself and accept the reality that having mind blowing sex with someone who lived down the hall was actually a huge win for everyone involved.

It was ridiculous it required any time at all. But at least Agatha now felt confident in its inevitability.

Maybe Agatha could expedite the process. Get her over again. Maybe she could initiate another plant emergency - she could even sacrifice the cactus to stage another plant emergency.

Whatever it took. Because, as Agatha thought with her last bit of consciousness before passing out, there was no way either of them were going to let this be the last time that happened.