Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You got us the intern?”

Flipping through a fashion magazine, Agatha’s smile widens smugly at Rio’s frantic whisper-yell. One of the screens in the waiting room displays a slideshow of all the staff members and their bio on repeat.

An older, straight couple is sitting across from them, and Rio prays to whoever will listen that the woman won’t realize Agatha is mimicking her way of handling the magazine. She shakes it to straighten it, to keep it from flopping back— and when Agatha does the same, Rio anxiously digs her nails into her own thigh.

“It’s our five year anniversary, honey,” Agatha says mockingly, dog-earing a page she will never, ever get back to. “We deserve a little treat.”

“You wanna see how fast we can break him?” Rio asks incredulously, straining to keep her voice down. Agatha looks up from the magazine, and as soon as her eyes meet Rio’s, she shrugs slowly. Her grin turns wicked. 

“That’s evil. Even for you.” 

“Okay, maybe not break him,” Agatha contemplates out loud. The woman across from them licks the pad of her thumb before flipping a page. Agatha gags, but copies her, jovially flipping the page as if she's revealing a new car. “It’d be good for him. If he wants to grow up and become a real therapist, we’re the ultimate case study before he graduates.”

Rio can’t do anything but laugh and shake her head. But just as she’s about to tell her roommate that they should probably go easy on him—

“Mrs. and Mrs. Harkness?” 

Rio shoots Agatha a glance— really? Harkness? It was your turn to be Vidal!— but gets up from her chair to greet the young therapist-to-be with a firm handshake.

“Rio,” she introduces herself sweetly, and swings her thumb to the woman behind her. “And that’s my wife, Agatha.” 

Agatha carelessly tosses the magazine back onto the coffee table, stating that “there is some great fashion advice for geriatric women on page 46!” to no one in particular.

“Hello doctor, I’m Agatha,” she says with a bright smile, popping up next to Rio.

“Oh, I’m no doctor— not yet, at least,” the boy in front of them nervously chuckles and dismisses the title with a wave of his hand. “You can call me Billy. Will you please follow me to my office?” 

As soon as he turns around, Agatha looks at Rio and mouths ‘gay!’, pointing at the boy a few steps ahead of them.

‘Shut up!’ Rio mouths back, but fails to suppress a smirk. She invitingly reaches out her hand to Agatha; palm up, fingers splayed. Agatha returns her smile and loudly smacks her own hand against Rio’s, weaving their fingers together and giving her a short but firm squeeze.

“Merry Christmas, my wife,” Agatha whispers, bringing both of their hands up to her mouth to plant a kiss on the back of Rio’s.

Rio snorts softly. “Merry Christmas,” she says, despite it being neither Christmas nor is she her wife. The idea alone is reprehensible; to be married to her roommate of eight years.

Still, the whispered words makes sense: after having shared three Christmasses, all of their furniture, household items, and basically entire wardrobes with each other, they had quickly run out of gift ideas.

Until one Christmas Eve, five years ago, when Agatha’s only gift for Rio had been an envelope. ‘Voucher for couples therapy’, it had said. Rio had laughed in her face, but when Agatha had explained the jig—they would pretend to be dating to see how quickly the therapist would see through them—she had agreed. Reluctantly at first, but when both of them realized how easy it was to fool the therapist, they had started to have a little bit of fun with it.

Their sessions had quickly become a yearly tradition. As a couple, for the first year and the year after that, but ever since the third year they had pretended to be married. “It lays on the drama,” Agatha had said, and who was Rio to argue with that?

“Can I get you something to drink?” Billy asks when he opens the door to his office for the couple and lets them enter first.

“I’ll have a chai latte, soy, half-sweet, extra cinnamon,” Agatha says without hesitation, batting her lashes at him.

“We— have tea, black coffee, and water.”

“Water is fine,” Rio quickly says, before Agatha can make another ridiculous request. She lets go of her roommates hand and enters the office. “For my wife as well.”

Making her way to the velvet green sofa in the middle of the room, clearly meant for them, she hears a dramatic sigh behind her.

“You always do this, Rio,” Agatha’s whiney voice fills the room. “You always decide what I want. I am my own person, I can make my own decisions, how many times do I have to tell you?!”

Rio bites her bottom lip to keep herself from smiling before she takes a seat on the far end of the sofa— here we go— and turns around.

“Let’s not do this here, Agatha,” she pleads. “Before we left, you promised me you wouldn’t try to blame me for everything. We’re not even two seconds in, and—”

“Okay, um, ladies,” Billy clears his throat and shuts the door behind him after Agatha has walked in. “Let’s all have a seat first and introduce ourselves before we dive in, okay?” He walks to the sink in the corner of the office and takes out two glasses from the cupboard. “Water is okay? For you too, Agatha?”

“Fine,” she bristles, flopping herself down all the way at the other end of the sofa. While Billy fills their two glasses with water, Agatha kicks out her leg at Rio, sticks out her tongue and winks when she has her attention.

Rio feels that now familiar nervous tickle in her stomach she gets before they put on their act, and she blows Agatha a kiss. Break a leg.

“Here you go,” Billy says, putting their glasses on a coaster on a small glass table in front of them. He walks around it, scrunches up his trousers at the thighs and sits down, leaning forward on his legs. “How about I’ll start by telling you a little bit about myself—”

“That won’t be necessary, Teen,” Agatha says, haughtily crossing her legs. “We’ve paid you for an hour. Every minute spent on your formative years, I expect to see right back in my bank account.”

“That is— alright, I suppose. So let’s go straight to your introductions,” Billy shuffles uncomfortably in his seat before he gestures in their general direction. “Agatha?”

“Agatha Harkness,” she immediately provides, slapping her knees as if she had been waiting for her moment. Which, Rio muses, she probably has.

“Thirty-nine—”

Liar, Rio thinks. You’re forty-one.

“—I teach music at Westview High—”

Another lie.

“—I’m a Scorpio—”

Okay, that one is true.

“—and I nurse stray kittens back to health in my free time.”

Rio expertly turns a laugh into a cough, and takes a sip of her water with her hand held up in an apologetic gesture.

“And I do not feel like my wife takes my hobbies— no, my passion for charity work seriously,” Agatha adds in earnest.

“Okay, let’s hold that thought for the time being,” Billy nods in understanding. “Thank you, Agatha. Rio?”

Rio smiles and puts her glass back on the coaster. “I’m thirty-five,” which is true, “I work as a marine biologist,” which earns her an impressed curve of Agatha’s mouth, “I speak three languages, and not a single word in either of those describes the eardrum ripping volume of my wife’s snoring—”

“Hey, now listen up—”

“Don’t say it’s not true, I recorded you—”

“That’s just psychopathic behavior—”

“Hold that thought!” Billy raises his hands to try and calm both ladies down, which they eventually do with their arms crossed, each staring stoically in a different direction.

“Now…” Billy takes a deep, controlled breath. “I would like to ask you why you’re seeking help from a couples counselor, but I think I have an—”

“It’s because she doesn’t see me for who I truly am.”

“That’s because you’re never home.” 

“Because you’re not exactly a ray of sunshine!”

“I can hardly be a ray of sunshine if there’s a thundercloud walking around the house—”

“I’m only a thundercloud because you don’t treat me like I’m worth your time anymore—”

“Well you don’t look at me anymore like you did when we started dating—”

“Alright… Alright!” Billy claps in his hands, trying to get the women’s attention. “Let’s take that one and backtrack a little bit. What was it like when you started dating? How did you meet?” 

The two women look at each other, their eyes sparkling behind their nearly identical scowls.

“You tell it,” Agatha says noncommittally.

“No, you tell it,” Rio jumps in, and maybe that’s because she didn’t put any serious effort into their backstory this year. “The way you tell it is seriously funny.”

Agatha laughs cordially. “No, Rio, you tell it.”

“You tell it!”

“We’ll tell it together!” Agatha sighs, throwing her hands up in defeat. She leans forward, purses her lips in thought and leans back again. When she starts talking to Billy, she clearly keeps Rio in her peripherals.

“Alright… it happened eight years ago. It was Halloween, a stormy and rainy night, so everyone who knew what was good for them stayed inside… Except for this idiot, who rang my doorbell at 11pm. I opened the front door, and there she was, in a—”

“—very tasteful witch costume, custom tailored by a professional—”

“—are you sure, Rio? I remember that slutty nurse outfit that barely covered the necessities.”

What happened to ‘yes, and’, Agatha? Number one rule in improv?

“Oh that’s right, it was the nurse,” Rio admits with a clenched jaw. “Witch-year must’ve been the year after that.”

Agatha nods with a satisfied smile. “Anyway, there she was, scarcely clothed, soaked and chilled to the bone. Told me some story about how her phone battery had died, asked me if she could charge it inside—”

“—but Agatha had spent the night drinking wine by herself, she was so drunk she could barely string a sentence together,” Rio adds. “Which must’ve been the reason she let a complete stranger in.”

“And Rio was high as a kite, because why else would she go trick-or-treating in the pouring rain as a twenty-seven year old?” Agatha’s voice gets a little louder, not wanting to get one-upped by Rio.

Unfortunately for her, Rio’s creative engine has started running. “So she lets me inside, walks me to the living room, and imagine my shock when I realized there was an adult movie playing on her 50” screen!”

Rio basks in the side-eye Agatha gives her, and she reaches to the side to slap her thigh for emphasis. “You dirty dog, huh?!”

“It was a very sophisticated movie and the actors were well paid,” Agatha makes sure to tell Billy, who looks like he wants nothing more than to turn into a bug and fly out one of the open windows.

“Which is what she told me, too,” Rio agrees with a mischievous grin. “But that was right before I noticed the still buzzing vibrator on the sofa.”

“That happened to be there because… because it was broken and I had just fixed it.”

“And I’ll let you guess why it was broken in the first place,” Rio finesses expertly, sticking her tongue to the back of her front teeth as she lifts a cheeky eyebrow at Billy.

“Long story short,” Agatha slightly raises her voice once again, “Rio got so captivated by what she saw on the screen, she simply couldn’t contain herself. Before I knew it, she was tearing my clothes off—”

“—an easy job, since she was wearing only a robe, and nothing underneath—”

“—and she begged me to make sweet, sweet love to her. After about two weeks, she moved in, and the rest is history.”

Rio watches Agatha finish up the story and can’t help but snicker at the mental image it provides. But sure, even if all of this had been true it would make sense for her to laugh, so she doesn’t try to hide it. The idea of actually unrobing her roommate to find out that she is naked underneath, only to beg her to fuck her… Yeah, that’s fucking hilarious.

She looks back at Billy and when she sees the way his jaw hangs open just a tad, another chuckle escapes her. The poor boy is living through torture.

“Alright, that is a— wonderful and deeply unique story,” is what he goes with after collecting himself.

“You should hear the story of how she proposed!” Agatha cackles loudly, to which both Billy’s and Rio’s ears turn slightly pink.

“That is— we’ll hold that thought for later,” Billy presses urgently, trying to stay polite.

“Is that in the couples counseling handbook?” Agatha torments him further. “If you lose control over the conversation, tell the client to ‘hold that thought’?”

Her words make Billy swallow thickly and reach for his mug. As he seems to be looking for an answer inside at the bottom of it, Rio quietly shakes her head at Agatha. ‘Too much,’ she mouths.

Agatha rolls her eyes and eloquently grumbles ‘bluh-bluh-bluh’, which in turn makes Rio giggle again.

After Billy has taken a good couple of sips from his mug and cleared his throat, two, and then three times, he nods and rubs his palms together.

“Good, okay, so what I’m hearing is that there was a healthy start of the physical intimacy part of your relationship,” he says, only to immediately visibly regret his own words. Rightfully so, because Agatha, with the subtlety of a neon colored dump truck on fire, takes the offered opportunity with both hands.

“If this is the nail—” she says, lifting a finger from her left hand, “—and this the hammer—” she lifts her right hand balled into a fist, “—this is you, Teen.” She smacks her fist on top of her pointed finger. “Nail on the head.”

Billy’s eyes light up in cautious optimistic surprise, before Agatha says: “Because that is the issue here. Our sex life just— isn’t what it used to be anymore.”

His face drops. Rio admires Billy’s courage when he, despite being terrified, inquires: “What does that entail for you, in the current phase of your relationship?” His eyes flick to Rio, a silent plea for her to take over from her wife.

Agatha apparently notices it too, takes pity on him, motioning for Rio to explain.

“Well—” Rio starts, looking over at her roommate on the other side of the couch, quickly trying to imagine what the problem in their sex life could be. “Well, our— our libido doesn’t match. Our cycles haven’t synced and when one of us is ovulating, the other has her period, and vice versa.” 

She watches Agatha nod along with a serious expression on her face, and feels a sense of pride.

“So how often have you been intimate in the last… let’s say, month?”

A flash of heat wraps itself around Rio like a scorching blanket, not prepared to answer the question. No idea, Billy, how often do my platonic roommate and I hypothetically have fake, non-existent, scam sex?

Fortunately, Agatha backs her up.

“We happened to have a very interesting drive over. And in the parking lot,” Agatha says with a casual nod to the window.

Okay. Not so fortunately.

Looking at Billy, who is now fighting for his life right in front of them, Rio knows she has to make a decision. She can either sit here and stammer her way through their hour… or she can double down, and have some actual fun with it.  

One glance at her roommate, who carries such a self-satisfied and evil grin on her face that Rio’s sure she must in retrospect have been the inspiration for the snake in the bible— though she wouldn’t be surprised if the bible catches on fire when Agatha walks past—and her decision is made.

“So, actually, the quantity is not the problem,” Rio says, straightening her spine. “We’re not twenty anymore, neither of us is expecting sex, like, five times a week. It’s the quality that’s the issue here. Look—”

Rio holds out a hand in Agatha’s direction, her two middle fingers spread out; the universal gesture for a pair of scissors.

“If this is me…” She motions for Agatha to copy her, which she gleefully does, reaching out her own hand in the shape of scissors. “...and that is my wife, we have a little bit of a logistical problem. Because I am usually on top, and she is usually on the bottom, but…”

Any social anxiety flies out the window when she hooks their fingers together, approaching Agatha’s fingers from all angles she can think of. She keeps frowning as she clashes them against each other, frowning even harder when she, from the corner of her eye, sees how much effort it takes Agatha to keep herself from laughing.

“...it just… doesn’t… feel… right!” Rio calls out, grunting for effect. “Because if we’re like this, I’m not really on top, am I? But if we go like this, half of my body is still on the bottom.”

The next time she looks up at Billy, he looks bright red and about ready to quit his studies on the spot. 

“I’m… I am not sure this is my area of expertise,” he stammers, tugging his collar, sweating like an otter.

“Is it because you’re gay?” Agatha blurts out. She raises his eyebrows at him, and makes another few suggestive gestures with her fingers against Rio’s.

“Agatha!” Rio screeches, shocked at her roommate’s boldness. It takes about one second for her to realize that she really shouldn’t be the one to judge, and she bursts out laughing.

“If you want to be good at your job, you need to do your research on lesbians too, Teen,” Agatha berates him through Rio’s laughter. “If the fingers aren’t clear enough of an image for you, we can show you where we get stuck for real?”

Agatha, without any regard for Billy’s blood pressure—or Rio’s for that matter—shoots up from the couch and turns toward Rio.

“Honey, put your leg up.”

When Rio looks up and sees the glimmer in Agatha’s eyes, who looks down at her and weirdly convincing in her demand, Rio immediately stops laughing. Her breath hitches as she takes in Agatha’s challenging expression, and she imagines what would happen if she were to actually lift her leg, so Agatha could—

“Enough!” Billy barks, sliding his hands in his hair, tugging at his unruly dark curls in despair. “I don’t think— I don’t think I am the right fit for you,” he says as he starts pacing through the office, not able to look at either of them.

“And that’s completely on me, it’s my lack of experience, it has nothing, nothing to do with you. But I’m going to have to transfer you to one of my more senior coworkers.”

Eventually he looks up at them, lifts a hand, and says. “I will check their earliest availability right away. Please wait here.” 

Their howling when he has all but launched himself out of his own office can be heard throughout the entire building.

And when they end their yearly tradition that night on the sofa of their shared living room—Agatha with her legs outstretched on the L-piece, Rio leaning against her side with her legs perpendicular to Agatha’s, throwing popcorn in the air for her roommate to catch with her mouth—they high five each other before pressing play on a Netflix romcom on their TV.

“I can’t believe they keep falling for it,” Agatha chuckles, wiping tears from her eyes at the new memory they created.

“Crazy, right?” Rio agrees, shoulders still occasionally shaking. “How they keep believing you and I are an actual couple, is beyond me.”  

“Absolutely outrageous.”

“The funniest thing ever.”

“But actually. ”

“Can’t wait for next year.”

“Me neither. My wife. ”

“Ha! My wife! ” 

Chapter Text

One year later


Palms together, fingers intertwined, giddy and mischievous chuckles shared between the two of them.

It had been Rio’s turn to book a consultation. She had decided to up the stakes and get an appointment with an experienced professional, degree and everything, just to see how far they’d be able to take it.

“Don’t forget to act like you’re in love with me,” Agatha helpfully reminds her, walking up the stone steps to the front door of the clinic. “We need counseling, but we also need to convince her that we still want to be together.”

Rio huffs, squeezes Agatha’s hand to get her to look at her, bats her lashes, and says: “Of course I’m in love with you, my sweetest cupcake.”

She laughs along with Agatha, the kind of laughter she was hoping for, but the words feel strange when they leave her mouth.

They had told each other ‘love you’ countless times; leaving for work, hanging up the phone, before going to bed. But to say that she is in love with Agatha almost sounds like a mispronunciation, despite being aware of her own joke. 

“Ready?” Agatha asks, hovering her finger in front of the doorbell.

Rio rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, and nods.

The doorbell rings silently, and a minute later they’re greeted by a tall, intimidating, beautiful woman. Her face breaks into a warm smile that accentuates her features when she sees the two ladies.

“Vidal?” she asks, to which Agatha nods and extends her hand. “Agatha Vidal—” she says proudly, and that’s coincidentally the moment there’s an air bubble stuck in Rio’s windpipe. “—the charming half of the two of us. This is my wife, Rio.”

“How nice to meet you,” the woman says, shaking Rio’s hand too. “My name is Jennifer, please come in.”

“Thank you for meeting with us,” Rio says as they walk down a hallway, showcasing various paintings on both sides of the wall, the majority of them with a piece of fruit on display.

“Of course!” Jennifer looks over her shoulder. “When there’s two women in need of some guidance, I always make sure to bump them up the waiting list.”

In a not too unfamiliar fashion, Agatha tugs on Rio’s sleeve and mouths ‘gay!’

Upon entering a large space with lots of light and plants, they’re greeted by another woman, standing up as soon as they approach her.

“Good morning, you both! My name is Alice.”

“Alice is the on-call psychiatrist of my clinic.” Jennifer watches Rio and Agatha exchange a look and provides: “Now don’t panic— she’s only here to observe me. We’re about to do a research project on sexuality in female couples, so she shadows a few of my sessions, if that’s alright with you.”

“Of course,” Rio immediately says to not raise any suspicion, right as Agatha turns her back to the two women and coughs "gay!"

Jennifer closes the door behind them and motions for them to take a seat. Her office is so large that it fits two sofas, perpendicular to each other. Agatha takes place on one of them, and Rio, after careful consideration, on the other.

“So you’ll back me up if I say my wife’s ready for the looney bin, doc?” Agatha jokes as Alice silently sits down in a chair next to Agatha’s sofa.

Alice—whose appearance wouldn’t be the first photo you’d see after the word psychiatrist in the dictionary, but rather looks like a rock star or a motor gang member—gives her a humorless smile. Agatha throws her hands up in defense, eyes wide, and faces forward with her hands on her knees; acting like the prime example of etiquette.

Rio bites her lip to stifle a laugh. Leave it to Agatha to antagonize a psychiatrist in under 60 seconds.

“Alright,” Jennifer says, sitting down elegantly in a chair across from them, “I’d like to invite you to start by introducing each other. A little bit about their background, their passion… and why you are here.”

“Wait— we introduce each other?” Rio repeats in surprise. That’s not how this is supposed to go. As opposed to last year, she had prepared a whole sob story as a background for herself.

“Yes,” Jennifer smiles. “I’d like to meet you through each other’s eyes.”

Okay. Poetic. Damn.

When Rio’s eyes dart toward Agatha, she notices her roommate is already taking her in with a contemplating expression, pursing her lips in thought.

Come on, Agatha, Rio tries to tell her telepathically. We’ve known each other for years. We can do this.

“Agatha, would you like to start telling me a little bit about Rio?”

It takes about a second longer than a regular silence would’ve taken, before Agatha says “Yes. Yes, of course,” and shakes out her hair by raking her fingers through it; her telltale sign of nervousness.

“Rio is…” Agatha swallows. “Rio is thirty-six, she likes reptiles, sleeping in, and a little bit of coffee in her sugary milk.”

As Jennifer chuckles, Rio feels her heart warm at her roommate’s selection of traits to mention.

“She hates shopping for jeans, she collects crystals—”

And Agatha lets her put them all over the house, which Rio really appreciates.

“—and she’s a professional juggler.” 

What the hell?

“Oh, really?” Jennifer says excitedly. “Like, as an acrobat?”

Rio opens her mouth to intervene, but Agatha is faster. “A clown, actually. She’s with the circus, she travels a lot.”

“She must be a real jokester!”

There is one jokester here, Rio thinks, and if she keeps this up, she gets punched in the eye socket until she is the one looking like a clown. 

“Oh, she is,” Agatha assures Jennifer, leaning forward to lovingly squeeze Rio’s knee. Rio’s smile is venomous.

“And what do you like the most about her?”

Again, Agatha is silent for a moment, caught off-guard by the question. She takes Rio in from head to toe, toe to head— and is met with a challenging eyebrow.

Tell her. Say something nice about me.

Another few seconds of anticipation, and then—

“I think I fell for the way she views the world. Looking at the smaller things in life through her lens is the closest to happiness I’ll ever get.”

Rio’s ears start ringing, a kick to the gut, a whack in the neck: Agatha’s small voice and weirdly genuine tone make her head spin. Since when the fuck are they—

“But what I like about her the most, is her lack of any self consciousness. She’ll start singing loudly in the street, wear the craziest color combinations, play the bagpipes on the train if she feels like it.”

Rio is well on her way to a whiplash.

“And of course, I’m irresistible, so she’ll try to kiss me anywhere and anytime while we’re in public.”

The more enamored Jennifer and Alice look, the grumpier Rio feels. Kiss her in public? She might hurl up her breakfast.

“You sound like a quirky, lovely person, Rio,” Jennifer concludes, but Rio isn’t really listening— she’s already digging around in her brain to come up with the most insane stuff for Agatha’s introduction.

“What can you tell me about Agatha?”

“Agatha is your typical, perfect housewife,” Rio declares proudly, not sparing a glance for her roommate. While this may not sound like the perfect comeback, she knows this is Agatha’s worst case scenario.

“She always busies herself in the kitchen, or with the neighborhood watch, or organizing community events— and she bakes cakes, the whole street loves her.”

Rio feels Agatha calmly start to seethe, and looks over. Luckily, there’s a layer of amusement beneath her mask. Rio sighs lovingly and adds: “She makes sure my dinner is cooked, my laundry is washed and ironed, and the house is sparkling clean.”

She watches Agatha smile through her pain and her lips form the shape of an F, which might stand for for sure or fantastic description or probably fuck you.

“Lovely, and what is it you like most about her?”

Time to shine.

“I love how independent she is. When I’m away— on tour,” she adds with an emphasizing glare at Agatha, “she doesn’t require anything from me. No money, no time, no physical affection. No, she’ll get that from anyone and anything with a warm body and a vagina. Tinder hates to see her coming. The neighbors love to see her coming. Apparently.”

Jennifer and Alice exchange a look now, before Alice starts hastily taking notes.

“Okay, thank you Rio— is it possible that I sense a little bit of resentment in your description of your wife?”

“Resentment?” Rio laughs. “Because she’ll sleep around when I’m away, making money to provide for the both of us?”

Agatha slams the seat of the couch with her fist. “Oh, I’m the one sleeping around? Like you don’t know what the inside walls of all of your colleagues feel like!”

This is Rio’s favorite part, usually, mostly, the part where they bicker until their therapist desperately tries to interfere. She knows Agatha likes it too, and yet. And yet…

Their bond hasn’t changed much during the past year. They’re roommates, but friends most of all. They’re comfortable around each other; mentally and physically, they share a living room, a household, a life.

Rio would come home in the middle of the night and find Agatha dozed away on the couch, half a bottle of red on the coffee table, waiting for Rio to discuss the day. Other times, Rio’s bedroom door would creak open and the soft padding of Agatha’s bare feet would sound against the hardwood floor, followed by a grumpy command to move over so Agatha could press her back and cold feet against Rio’s warm body.

If Agatha’s neck was sore, Rio would massage the knots away. If Agatha felt down, Rio would cheer her up by telling her the most horrific dad jokes until she couldn’t help but crack a smile, pushing Rio’s self satisfied face away with the palm of her hand.

If Rio needed to vent about someone at work, Agatha would be her biggest cheerleader. And if Rio went down one of her philosophical tangents, Agatha would discuss the meaning of life with her until the sun came up.

The only yearly hitch in their symbiosis would occur for a few weeks during the winter, coincidentally right after their fake therapy sessions. Agatha would be slightly more distant than usual, would not seek Rio out or wait for her with two glasses of wine and a listening ear, but would instead spend a lot of time with the women she occasionally brought home and to her bedroom.
Rio had always figured something like winter depression caused Agatha to need more intimate physical contact; the only thing her roommate couldn’t give her. The thing they couldn’t give each other.

So while their very fake fight was very fake, it isn’t hard to pull inspiration from reality at this moment. To draw from the slight irritation Rio would feel whenever another unfamiliar face sneaked out Agatha’s bedroom door, down the stairs and out of the house. Agatha could do whatever and whoever she wanted of course, but maybe a heads up would be nice?!

“You can hardly convince me that it wasn’t you who started bringing other women into our house,” Rio says, fueled by the memories, taking the brakes off any feelings she has around the subject. For the sake of their act.

“And you aren’t exactly subtle about it, because your moaning goes through the sound barrier!”

“Maybe I didn’t have to sleep around so much if you had more attention for me. If you spent more time with me!” Agatha responds, expertly throwing a gallon of fuel on the fire.

“Hey, ladies, let’s bring it back into this room for a moment,” Jennifer says, making accompanying hand gestures. “I understand part of the problem is infidelity? Let’s unpack that.”

Sure, let’s unpack that. Give me more reason to drag Agatha through the mud.

Because this is fun. That’s why they’re here. Oh, Rio is having so much fucking fun.

“Puh-lease,” Agatha spits, “like I can’t hear you masturbating to the sounds. Did you know you sound like a barn owl when you come?”

Rio’s jaw drops open and lays it on even thicker. “Excuse me? Weren’t you the one who begged me to be louder, Rio?”

“Louder, yeah, not pitchier. I have to fake my orgasms when you shriek like that. It makes me dry the fuck up!”

“At least there is something to dry up. You never even get me wet with that weird mating dance you insist on doing before we’re having sex!”

Agatha bursts out in laughter, but manages to make it sound like mocking. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you complain once I’m inside of you,” she sneers, but smiles as she crosses her arms.

“I’m the breadwinner in this house, and I don’t make enough money to keep buying the amounts of lube we need!”

“If you wanna buy less, then maybe leave your job at work, honey. Juggling with our dildos is a huge turn off for me.”

This time it’s Rio who has to hide her genuine amusement. “You said you liked the role play. You said the clothes and the makeup made you, and I quote: ‘feel like the luckiest bitch on earth’.”

Agatha scoffs. “I only said that to make you feel less bad about the— about the—” She turns to Jennifer, who is now looking at her with an unimpressed expression on her face. “Doc, do you think it’s normal for a partner to request they wear goggles in bed in order for them to be able to orgasm?”

Rio gasps. “You promised me you would never, ever say that to someone!”

From the corner of her eye, she watches Alice close her notebook with a sigh and a meaningful look at Jennifer.

Then, it happens fast.

Rio clocks the way Jennifer and Alice seem to be onto them, and widens her eyes at Agatha in warning. Jennifer inhales deeply to call them out and Rio’s eye twitches involuntary as she reminds herself that they hadn’t discussed their emergency protocol this year.

Agatha, with her mind going a thousand miles per hour behind her eyes, gives Rio the tiniest, reassuring nod, and deploys one anyway. 

She stands up, takes a deep breath and a step forward, brings her hands to the sides of Rio’s face and locks on.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she whines so convincingly it sounds almost like a transatlantic Hollywood accent. “You drive me crazy when we fight! I want you so badly!”

And before Rio can process those words coming out of her roommate’s mouth, Agatha leans down and kisses her on the lips, hard and slightly painful. 

What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck.

When they break apart, Rio looks at her in shock, trying to read her game plan off her face— which apparently consists of knocking her backward on the couch with her entire body weight, going in for another sloppy, noisy kiss.

Rio is between giggling, yelling, and moaning. The assault on her mouth is laughably bad; the slurping noises coming from Agatha’s mouth, the clanking of their teeth, and the groaning and sighing Agatha does— it’s all equally ridiculous.

Still, she can’t help but be aware of the fact that Agatha is kissing her, albeit hair curlingly bad, but her body on top of Rio’s feels like a pheromone infested weighted blanket.

“I think you fixed us!” Agatha moans between kisses, glancing up at Jennifer. She roughly licks at Rio’s mouth, grazing her lips and teeth with her tongue, and Rio can’t stop the fit of laughter coming from her throat.

She presses her palm against Agatha’s chest to keep her from diving in again, and looks to the two by now grouchy women who are witnessing their act.

It would be so unwise to say something to make their situation even worse. They’ve clearly been caught, there is no way Jennifer and Alice don’t realize what is going on.

They should just get up and leave.

They should not say something stupid.

“Hey… so we really dig your vibe,” Rio beams at the snort she hears in her ear, “would you like to come with us for a drink?” 

Jennifer and Alice did, needless to say, not like to go home with them for a drink. In fact, Agatha and Rio had been politely ushered toward the exit, and requested to never book a consultation with Jennifer’s clinic again.

Which, to their credit, was fair enough.

“Do you think the goggles were a bit much?” Rio muses that night on their couch, legs spread, Agatha on the floor in between them.

“I think you blew it when you tried to convince them I require a mating dance before sex,” Agatha chuckles, followed by a hiss when Rio works out a particularly nasty knot out of the right sight of her neck.

“I can’t believe they bought that I work as a clown,” Rio says with a shake of her head.

“I can,” Agatha grins. “I can’t believe they saw me as a housewife.”

“I can’t believe you held it together when I told them you bake cakes.”

“I can’t believe you let me kiss you.”

“I can’t believe you kissed me!”

During the silence that follows, Rio digs her thumb forcefully into the tense muscle of Agatha’s neck.

“If that’s how you kiss, I can see why you only have one night stands,” she tries to break the tension.

Agatha turns around, a hurt and shocked expression on her face. Rio’s hands still.

“You’d believe that’s how I kiss?!”

Rio shrugs. “I don’t really have a reference, do I? Don’t worry, it was memorable to say the least. I think that was the worst fucking kiss of my life.”

“Woah, woah,” Agatha says, plucking Rio’s hand from her neck.

“I hope you know I’d do a better job than that, if it was for real.”

Rio raises an amused eyebrow, ignoring the thrill she feels in her stomach. “I’m sure,” she says with a wave of her hand. “I don’t envy your actual future wife.”

“So you’re not actually my wife?” Agatha says, hand to her heart, pretending to be stunned.

“Not if you kiss like that,” Rio laughs, and she reels at the way Agatha stares at her.

All thoughts leave her brain however, when Agatha crawls up from the floor and leans forward on her hands on the seat of the sofa, on either side of Rio’s legs. Her roommate’s gaze has lost all humor, gained a little bit of intention.

Before she knows it, Agatha’s eyes flicker to her lips, once, twice, and she leans in to press the softest kiss to Rio’s lips; so soft Rio wonders whether their lips actually touch; so soft she leans in to be able to feel it better.

Rio’s breath hitches, and then she exhales— her shoulders slacken, her stomach relaxes, her eyes close.

And then it’s over.

“I do not,” Agatha says, before pushing herself upright, “kiss like that.” A vague sheen of regret casts over her face, and she turns around to grab the bag of popcorn from the coffee table.

As Rio hears the stairs creak under Agatha’s heavy footfalls, the confusion settles in.

Someone throw me off a cliff if either of us brings this up again.

Oh well.

She has a year.

A whole year to not bring this up again.

Chapter Text

One year later 

Rio has managed to not think about their previous session for a whole year.

She hasn’t thought about it late at night. Not when she and Agatha had been snuggled up on the sofa. Not on her way to work, not in her dreams, not randomly on the weekends.

But a year goes by quick, and it is Agatha’s turn again, and somehow they are not at all where Rio had thought they were going to be.

“Not that I don’t trust your expertise, but what are we doing at the fair?”

“You’ll see,” Agatha had said mysteriously, before dragging Rio along.

It had taken three rotations on the ferris wheel, two roller coaster rides, and a helping of shaved ice each for Rio to give in to Agatha’s conspiracies and just relax into it.

Not because sugar and adrenaline calm her down, obviously. But because she had watched Agatha lose all and any composure once their cabin had taken off, and that had become a memory now forever scorched into her retinas, ready to pull up if Agatha ever uses her intimidating voice for something Rio did or didn’t do in the household again.

"You dragged me here!” Rio had said, stifling a bubble of laughter as she had watched Agatha’s knuckles go white around the metal railing.

“I know,” her roommate had responded, her voice thinner than Rio had ever heard it, “and I always tell myself heights are not that big of a deal. I always regret putting that to the test.”

Rio had considered whether it’d be helpful to replace the railing with her hand for Agatha to hold on to, but figured that if Agatha needed it, she would ask.

She hadn’t asked. And when Rio had realized that she probably had needed it, but had been too embarrassed to ask, their cabin had already made its way back to the ground and they’d been ushered out by the grumpy ride operator.

Agatha hadn’t said a word until after she’d finished the can of Heineken she’d sneaked into her purse. 

“Ta-da,” Agatha eventually says, after crushing the can against her forehead in an attempt to reclaim some of her lost composure.

They’re standing in front of a red-and-white striped tent; a neon sign of a crystal ball flickering on and off on a stool near the entrance.

“For lucky number seven, we’re seeing a fortune teller,” she clarifies, after seeing Rio’s confused look. “Let’s see if our future is bright, my wife.”

“You’re insane,” Rio decides.

“You like it.”

And sue her, maybe she does.

Hooking their arms together in practiced ease, Agatha lifts up the piece of canvas to make them shuffle through the opening of the tent.

“Ah!” The old lady sitting behind a round table, sporting an impressive grey, curly updo and covered in multiple differently colored cardigans, immediately looks up at them. “If it isn’t the ladies Harkness.”

“Oh! She’s good,” Rio says, impressed.

“Please," Agatha rolls her eyes. "I made an appointment.”

The lady gestures for them to sit down across from her. Rio takes a seat and immediately gets distracted by the tassels hanging from the table cloth. She contemplates how insane Agatha actually is for making them look into a crystal ball instead of seeing a therapist this year— but it also amuses her.

“Welcome to Lilia’s Fortune, I’m Lilia. What brings you in today? You have thirty minutes.”

Lilia pointedly winds up a timer and places it right in front of them.

“Well,” Agatha drawls in a sudden southern accent. She places her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand. “My wife and I are finding ourselves in a little bit of a tizzy when it comes to our marriage, lately. So we were wondering if you would perhaps be so kind as to give us some advice.”

The way Rio’s stomach squeezes in on itself upon hearing the accent is not a piece of information someone would ever be able to waterboard out of her. That is between her and the pink-orange-white table cloth tassels.

“Ah, yes. A question for the soul,” Lilia nods, carefully placing her palms on the table, fingers spread. “And you would like me to do a reading for you?”

“That’d be great, actually,” Rio pipes up, having settled on a heavy Boston accent. “I’d be eternally grateful if you could tell my wife to knock it off with the Tarzan and Jane role play. My love for her would increase tenfold.”

Agatha’s jaw drops in surprise, her hand flies to her chest. “You said you liiiiked it!”

Rio clenches her jaw to keep it together at her Tennessee drawl. They’ve barely sat down and their backstory is already spiraling into something deeply unhinged.

Lilia looks them both up and down, before taking a deep, dramatic breath. “Do you mind if I pull a card for you?” 

“Please!” Agatha says, the urgency clear in her voice. For some unknown reason, her hand lands on Rio’s knee while Lilia’s eyes close and her hands hover over the cards spread out on the table.

As soon as Lilia starts humming in a, what sounds like otherworldly frequency, Rio understands. Agatha’s fingers dig into her knee as the both of them try to keep it together. From the corner of her eye, Rio watches Agatha turn her head away to look anywhere but in Rio’s direction, but the corner of her mouth twitches.

A soft cough escapes Rio’s throat, and she quickly looks in the opposite direction, trying to remove Agatha’s face from her peripherals completely. That’s the exact moment Lilia chooses to get even more creative with her pitch, and Agatha’s grasp on Rio’s knee becomes borderline painful.

Through the faint screeches across from them, Rio can hear Agatha’s breath starting to hitch, after which an audible snort sounds through the tent, causing Agatha to smack herself in the face with her other hand, eventually covering het mouth in earnest.

If Lilia doesn’t stop chanting soon, Rio might die right here on this chair.

And those tassels better not be the last thing she sees.

No, if she had a choice, it’d be Agatha’s—

“Ah!” Lilia exclaims, and her eyes fly open, right when Rio catches herself looking over at her roommate who is actively fighting for her life as well.

“This one!” Lilia’s hand shapes itself into a pointing gesture, and she drops her finger on a seemingly random card.

As she flips it over, her expression changes from wispy to deeply, deeply concerned.

Agatha lifts a suspicious eyebrow before dropping back into her role. “Tell me, miss Calderu, are we gonna die?” Agatha asks in a stage-whisper.

Lilia’s eyes flick up; she stares at the both of them for a few seconds, before dropping her gaze back to the card.

“Seven of swords,” she mumbles.

“Well I’ll be!” Agatha exclaims, swatting Rio against the bicep. “Not the seven of swords! I told you, my love, anything but the seven of swords!”

And as Rio knows for a fact that Agatha has no clue what she’s talking about, she leans forward and whispers to Lilia: “Remind me what the seven of swords stands for?”

Lilia takes another moment to take them in. Rio feels weirdly exposed.

“I will, in due time. Could you please remind me what brought you two together in the first place?” Lilia says, stacking all other cards before placing her palm on top of the seven of swords.

Rio exchanges glances with her wife. She can tell Agatha is brooding, so she answers instead.

“To be honest, ma’am, sometimes I don’t even know anymore,” Rio says, choosing to lean deeply into the dramatics. “We used to be two peas in a pod, my wife and I. Always by each other’s side. But now… I often wonder why I haven’t left her yet. And I would, if—”

“If not for the baby ,” Agatha pitches in helpfully, her hand gracefully moving from Rio’s knee to her own belly. Rio’s neck hairs immediately stand on end, but she strains to keep a straight face.

A baby?! 

Of course her insane roommate, friend, fake wife, would come up with something like a baby.

“The baby,” Lilia nods, like she’d expected Agatha to mention it. “How far along are you?”

Agatha swallows; Rio is aware that her friend knows fuck all about babies, and proves it when she replies in all seriousness: “Forty seven weeks.”

Rio laughs and looks over, assuming Agatha is joking. She very clearly isn’t. 

“Days,” Rio corrects her. “Forty-seven days.”

“Pregnancy hormones,” Agatha nods, blinking lovingly at Rio.

“That’s… Specific,” Lilia remarks. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks, doll,” Agatha says, looking down at her own stomach. Rio goes nearly blind at the tension she feels in her eyes when she imagines a baby in there… A baby that would be theirs.

“So, the seven of swords,” Lilia clears her throat and taps the card in front of her. “My advice would be…”

A dramatic pause, which Agatha nor Rio can’t help but fill in.

“—to have more sex?”

“—to plan a romantic dinner?”

“I think you should start seeing other people. I think you two are beyond help.”

Another silence follows; an astonished one this time.

Rio is the first one to find her voice. “I’m… I’m sorry?”

“I’m sorry, ladies. I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for you. Your relationship is doomed.”

“But…” Rio’s mouth opens and closes uselessly. “But… the baby?”

“I could give you the number of a great divorce lawyer—”

“What the fuck?!” Agatha bursts out, her accent suddenly forgotten. “What’s that supposed to mean? What kind of fortune teller are you? Are you just out here telling people bullshit about their relationships and cash in on it? Do you get off on emotionally destroying people?!”

The chair topples over when Agatha rises and huffs like a bull. Rio looks up at her, slightly confused— her reaction seems genuine, but a little bit… extreme?

“Fucking charlatan,” Agatha spits, and taps Rio on the shoulder. “Come on Rio, we’re leaving.”

“Eh— you have twenty-two minutes left,” Lilia tries to stop her, tapping the timer on the table with her eyebrows raised in expectation.

“Oh, do we?” Agatha snarls like a rabid dog, grabs the timer off the table and winds it all the way up to one hour. “And now it’s like we were never here. Goodbye.”

Not really giving Rio a choice, Agatha lifts her up by the collar and drags her off the chair. Rio shoots one last apologetic look at Lilia, hastily shoving her hands in her pockets in search of some change, but comes back with nothing. Before Lilia can say anything else, they’re outside again.

“Well!” Agatha calls out, weirdly cheerily after what had just transpired. “That was a mistake! Funny mistake. Right? It was funny.” She forces out a laugh as she walks in a seemingly random direction. Rio has to run-skip-walk to keep up with her. 

“Hilarious,” Rio deadpans, still trying to figure out what is going on. Agatha paces right past a few stands and rides, flipping off a cotton candy vendor and spitting on the floor at the feet of a guy holding a giant stuffed unicorn trying to lure them in to play a shooting game.

“Whoa, Agatha, calm down please,” Rio says, because that is exactly what you say when you want to be guaranteed a person will calm down.

Naturally, Agatha responds like she’d been on fire and Rio had tried to douse her with gasoline.

“You calm down,” she rages, still speed walking down the road. “Or maybe go and see other people. Since we’re so beyond help.”

Rio shakes her head in disbelief. “Agatha— you know it was an act, right?”

Agatha stops dead in her tracks, right in front of a haunted house. The neon lighting from a zombie’s eyes casts a halo around her face when she turns to look at Rio.

“Is it? Is it an act, Rio?”

Rio laughs humorlessly. “Of course it’s an act!” She watches Agatha’s jaw clench before clarifying: “You don’t think she can actually see into the future, do you? That Lilia woman is just an actor, paid to say the dumbest shit to people.”

“Oh.” Agatha places her hands on her hips and exhales. Looks down, starts nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. She’s… she was probably acting.” 

“Yeah,” Rio says, in the same tone she’d talk to a shy puppy who is finally brave enough to sniff her hand. “Yeah, exactly. So no need to freak out, right? Why does it make you freak out anyway?”

Rio stares at her while Agatha slowly lifts her head, making eye contact, an unreadable expression on her face. She’s clearly trying to find words, but comes up with nothing.

The zombie behind them starts grunting, its mechanic arms waving up and down. Agatha whirls around and gasps in relief like she’s standing face to face with Jesus himself.

“Let’s go in here!” she says excitedly, her voice uncharacteristically shrieky. Before Rio can protest, Agatha has already stridden toward the vendor and whipped out her phone to purchase two tickets.

Rio sighs— she’ll indulge her, only to keep the mood up, but she’ll put the largest mental pin she can find in her brain in this conversation.

“You go first,” Agatha insists, expertly dancing around Rio so she can shove her through the black leather flaps that mark the entrance of the haunted house. Rio gets slapped in the face with a nasty reeking piece of leather, but any resistance leaves her body, replaced by awkward suspense once it’s suddenly pitch black around her. 

A creepy tune sounds from somewhere in the corner, accompanied by loud screams from other haunted house visitors. The smell of artificial smoke fills her nostrils, and her skin starts tingling at the complete darkness she finds herself in.

“Agatha,” Rio hisses, feeling blindly behind her for her roommate. “Get the fuck in here.”

When not two seconds later a body runs into her from the back and a soft oof leaves her lungs, she can only pray it’s Agatha. 

But when she feels familiar warm hands and long fingers land on her waist, she doesn’t need the confirmation. It's her.

“Agathaaaa,” a deep, dark voice fills the space.

“What the fuck?!” Rio hisses. “How the fuck do they know your name?”

“Because you just said it, you complete and utter idiot,” Agatha hisses back in her ear. Her roommate’s voice, even though she wasn’t saying something nice, comforts her somehow. Or maybe it’s her body pressed up against her back. Her perfume in her nose, overpowering the moldy smell in here.

“Right,” Rio nods, quickly realizing Agatha can’t see her. She places her hands on top of Agatha’s, so they can take baby steps together.

“Agathaaaa,” the voice sounds again, closer this time.

“The fuck do you want?” Agatha calls out randomly, trying her best to sound unimpressed.

“Sacrifiiiiiice… your friennnnnnnd…”

A flashlight clicks on, shining right into their faces. Rio jolts back and crashes into Agatha, who’s luckily sturdy enough to not topple over.

The outline of a figure wearing a dark hood and a white mask is vaguely visible behind the ray of bright light. Rio processes the figure’s demands, and her mouth responds before her brain does. It is their day, after all.

“I’m her wife, you freak.”

The monster, unfazed, tries again: “Sacrifiiiiiiice… your wiiiiiiife…”

Agatha huffs behind her. “You can have her for… how’s one dollar fifty sound?”

“Hey!” Rio says, slapping vaguely behind herself in Agatha’s direction, in the hopes of hitting her. She does, on the ass cheek.

“Sacrifiiiiiiice… your w—”

“Hey, wait a second,” Agatha says, holding out her hand in front of them to interrupt the monster. “You actually believe that she could be my wife?”

Do haunted houses come with trap doors in the floor? Because Rio could really use one right now.

“Your wiiiiiiiife.”

“Yes, you said that, but do you… you’d buy it? That she and I would be in a… relationship together?”

The ray of light gets angled away from their faces, now aiming at the floor. The actor in front of them sighs loudly.

“Why not?” he asks, his voice croaky like a teenager during the height puberty.

“Nothing.” Rio can feel, rather than hear, Agatha smirk behind her.

“Never mind. Thanks. Where do we go?”

The actor carelessly moves the light in a different direction. “That way,” he says, sounding utterly bored.

“Thanks, pal,” Rio snickers, before shuffling in the direction of the light.

“Why did you ask him that?” she continues a little bit softer, after she assumes they’re somewhat out of earshot.

“Because I want the kooky bitch to be wrong,” Agatha murmurs in her ear. Rio wants to ask her why, but her foot gets caught on a cord on the floor and it activates a bunch of lights and sounds; an actor in wires flies toward them with a shriek.

“Hey, question!” Rio shouts at him, now realizing how to cheer Agatha up. “Does this woman behind me look like my wife?”

The suspended scare-actor stops moving, his limbs now loosely hanging from the harness that keeps him in the air. “What is this? LGBTQ propaganda? I’m not falling for this.” 

“But does she?” Rio presses on. “Do we look like we… kiss each other regularly?”

“I don’t want to know what you two do behind closed doors. Please move on.”

“So that’s a yes,” Rio says, her smile brighter than the lights around them. She feels the hands on her waist give her a tight squeeze, followed by a soft hum in her ears. “Thank you, kind sir.”

“Get fucking lost.” The lights go down, and they can hear the wires zip the actor back up. Rio hopes he gets paid decently.

The women shuffle further through the house, the darkness stretching out for a while.

“Why did you ask him that?” Agatha murmurs in her ear. Her voice, her presence, her smell gives Rio the vague sense that something big is going to happen, a considerable shift in her current situation. She just can’t put her finger on what that would be.

“Because you asked him, silly,” Rio answers her, giving the hands on her waist a reassuring stroke with her thumb. 

Her roommate shivers behind her at the small gesture. And to anyone else, it might not mean anything, an insignificant reaction, barely even noticeable.

To Rio—

To Rio, it makes all the loose cogs in her brain shift into place. She almost feels, hears, an audible click when it happens; when Agatha’s body against hers, her hands on her waist, her voice in her ear, her breath against her cheek, her words, her presence, her behavior, her rage, her defensiveness, her unruliness, her devastation, her hope, her feelings, her mind, and her heart suddenly all make sense to her.

“Do you?” Rio asks her in a shaky voice. She knows that whatever she says next might determine the rest of her life. “Do you believe we could be together?”

Agatha inhales, and Rio knows her roommate, knows Agatha so well, she knows exactly what it means. Knows exactly that Agatha now knows, that Rio now knows. 

They had been roommates for ten years.

They had been more than that for a significant portion of that time.

Rio’s heart beats out of her chest. It’s so quiet around them that she’s afraid Agatha might actually hear it.

“How long have you known?” she whispers, slowly coming to a halt in the dark. Her body makes the subconscious decision to lean back against Agatha, whose grip around her waist tightens.

Agatha’s nose presses against her shoulder, and she can feel her relax a little.

“Ever since we watched But I’m a cheerleader together,” Agatha mumbles against her skin, setting Rio on fire when her lips brush over the pulse point in her neck.

Rio huffs in surprise. “But that was—”

“Over eight years ago.”

“What?!”

Rio’s world crashes down right then and there. She whirls around, freeing herself from Agatha’s grip to face her, despite not being able to see her.

Agatha has had feelings for her for over eight years.

And okay, maybe it had been obvious. Maybe Rio could have known, she thinks while her brain provides a flashy montage of all not-very-platonic things Agatha has said and done. And maybe, maybe, Rio hasn’t felt very friendly about her roommate either— but she wasn’t going to touch that with a ten foot stick if Agatha wasn’t going to bring it up.

But it is coming up.

Right here, right now.

And the knowledge of being loved in secret, in silence for so long is flattering, feels warm, feels safe.

The reality of it however, feels like loss, like grief.

Grief for years of having lived in that silence, in oppression of her own feelings. Accepting friendship and proximity as a peace offering for what could’ve been more, something that was sacrificed to the countless of other women coming in and going out of Agatha’s bedroom.

Rio feels her cheeks getting wet before she realizes she is crying. Where the darkness had been inconvenient before, she’s now happy for it obscuring her face.   

“You… you robbed me,” she says in a restrained whisper, breathlessly, pouring her entire range of emotion into those three words. “You robbed me. You fucking robbed me.”

“What?” Agatha whispers back in honest confusion, and she says it again.

“You robbed me.”

She forcefully shoves Agatha away from her, then immediately regrets it because neither of them can see what she might stumble into— so even before Agatha loses her balance, Rio’s hands fly out to grasp her waist and pull her back in again.

Agatha’s lips are a couple hairs away from her own, and Rio breaks.

“Can I kiss you?” she asks, tripping over her words. “Agatha. Please, can we kiss?”

She receives her consent instantly, when a hand cups the back of her head and a set of lips warmly land on her own. Her heart, her stomach, her brain; they all explode, a complete overload of all of her senses.

She feels her soft roommate in her arms. She smells her perfume, and something that’s just so distinctly her. She can’t see her, but she can definitely hear the soft sigh, and taste the most calming and yet thrilling flavor of home on her lips.

They stay like that for what could be five seconds, maybe a minute, an hour, or a week. Who cares, if everything, everything feels right in that moment?

“You robbed me,” Rio says again when her brain takes over, leaning her forehead against Agatha’s in devastation.

“You keep saying that,” Agatha murmurs. “But what do you mean?” 

“You didn’t say anything. Not a word. For over eight years. We could’ve… we could’ve been… together. Actually together, for over eight years.”

Agatha stiffens in her arms.

“Wait… Rio, wait.”

“Hmm?”

“If you’re saying we could’ve been together for over eight years… you’d be implying that—”

“—that I would’ve said yes if you asked me out? Of fucking course! Agatha, we’d be fucking perfect for each other, if only I had known that—”

“—no, no, no. You don’t get to do that. I might not have said anything, but neither did you! You could’ve asked me!”

Rio laughs. “When would I have done that? In between two different one night stands leaving your room? I think the fuck not.”

“I only started fucking them because I thought I didn’t have a chance with you!”

“You did! You did have a chance! If only you had fucking asked!”

Agatha lets out a frustrated growl, “You drive me insane!”

“You drive me insane!”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck you!”

And when Rio leans forward to kiss her roommate, the love of her fucking life, she giggles against her lips when she realizes Agatha had leaned in at the exact same moment.

Her giggle triggers a chuckle in Agatha, which in turn makes her laugh, making them both laugh, and they laugh until Rio can’t distinguish a snort from a sob anymore.

“I love you. I love you so much,” she says, her chest bursting open at the honest truth of those words.

“You can’t tell me that in a haunted fucking house,” Agatha reprimands her, her smile audible through her words.

“Guess what? I just did.”

“Come here, fucking idiot.”

Their next kiss is more urgent, more passionate. Not less sweet, but definitely less platonic. Definitely deliberately crossing over the boundary of just roommates, just friendship.

Agatha’s tongue slipping into her mouth to find Rio’s ignites a fire in them both that can only be stilled by giving into it, by letting it roar, by exhausting it till it dies from lack of oxygen.

“Definitely a much better kisser than you thought, right?” Agatha husks, reminding Rio of last year’s tragedy.

“Hmm,” Rio pretends to consider her words. “I’m gonna need a lot more proof—” 

“Okay ladies, knock it off.”

The overhead lights flash on, making both Agatha and Rio squint against the sudden harshness. Upon the realization where they are, what they are doing, and how close they are standing to one another, they jump apart.

“I’m gonna have to ask you to please leave through the nearest emergency exit.”

Her vision covered in spots, Rio can’t see who is ushering them out; but she imagines it is one of the scare actors.

“We didn’t do anything illegal!” Agatha calls out, shielding her eyes with her arm. “Since when is kissing a reason to be fucking kicked out?!”

“Ma’am, you’ve been inside for forty-five minutes. It is time to leave.”

A masked man comes into vision, and he nods toward one of the metal doors. Rio suppresses a chuckle, while Agatha lashes out.

“That’s homophobic!” she accuses him, while Rio takes her hand and silently guides her toward the exit. “Did you know one of your employees is a homophobic asshole? It’s the flying one, the one with the weird voice, he hates gays!”

“Alright, come on,” Rio says once her hand finds the doorknob, pushing open the door and exposing them to the cool night air. As soon as she makes Agatha step outside, she visibly calms down.

A gloved hand reaches out to grab the door handle and close it behind them, leaving them both outside in the shadows against the wall of the building, a little breathless, a little thrilled.

When Rio takes Agatha in, she realizes it is the first time she can see her face since their confession.

She is beautiful.

Rio isn’t sure who initiates their kiss, but when her joints start to hurt and her lips start to cramp, it is Agatha who suggests they take it home. The home they have been sharing— no, their home.

Neither of them realizes the pair of content eyes watching them from the inside of a red-and-white striped tent. 

That night is the first time they break their tradition of ending the day on the sofa, watching a movie, snacking on popcorn.

The only tradition that isn’t broken is their snuggling: not in the living room, but in Rio’s bed instead, nice and warm after having made out in the cold for what probably has been more than an hour.

Despite Rio being close to forty now and Agatha well over it, their limbs are tangled under the comforter, and they’re sharing kisses in between giggles and full on belly laughter like two teenagers. Whether it’s Agatha planting kisses all over Rio’s face, or Rio chasing after Agatha’s tongue; they always seek a reason to be close, close, closer to one another. 

“I still can’t believe you robbed me,” Rio says, less hostile than before, softly kissing Agatha’s jaw, drawing circles with her finger on Agatha’s elbow, making her sigh.

“I wish we could go back in time, Rio. I really do. And I still stand by what I said, I think both of us are to blame… But I do regret so many years of not being able to do this.” She kisses Rio’s lips, wriggling in her embrace, pressing every part of her body as close to Rio’s as possible. 

“Let’s do it,” Rio says quickly, before their kiss gets too heated again.

“Let’s do what?”

“Let’s go back in time.”

Agatha leans back to look at Rio, “Oh. Right. Let me go get my time machine.”

Rio rolls her eyes. “Let’s make up for lost time. Let’s not look at how much we lost— let’s consider the fact that we could have fifty more years if we wanted to. Well— thirty-five, with your lifestyle.”

Agatha swats her arm. “You make it sound like we’re actually married.”

Rio laughs. “Even though we both know what that would be like… let’s put being wives on hold for a second.”

“Okay.” Agatha nods and leans in for another kiss. Then, she says something intelligible.

“What was that?”

More indistinguishable consonants.

“I can’t hear you.”

“How about girlfriends instead?” Agatha grumbles reluctantly, immediately burying her face in the crook of Rio’s neck.

“That does sound nice, doesn’t it?” Rio’s hand travels to Agatha’s back and rubs it soothingly. “It sounds weird too. I know you so well. You’ve been my roommate for— Agatha, you’ve been my best friend for so long.”

“Forget I asked,” Agatha says, the sound muffled against her skin.

“Hey, hey, no—” Rio moves away to be able to lock eyes with Agatha, whose cheeks are a fascinating shade of red. “I won’t forget you asked. That would be a rude thing to do… to my girlfriend.”

Agatha’s face breaks out in a smile, and she softly swats Rio against the chest. “I hate you,” she grins, and chases Rio’s mouth for another kiss. A kiss that starts out soft and sweet, but quickly turns demanding and heated, their arousal winning it against the need for their calm stasis. 

Rio feels Agatha’s exploring hands travel down over her arms, finding her way to her waist, pulling her core into Agatha’s thigh which has slipped between her legs.

Her breaths turn into groans, her groans turn into panting, and before she knows it, her entire body is focused on one thing: how badly she needs to feel Agatha. Everywhere.

“You feel so good,” she tells her in between kisses, their mouths and tongues meeting in an increasingly possessive way. Had Rio known another human could taste so amazing, she would’ve made a point to explore it way, way earlier.

Agatha moans in agreement, her hands becoming more and more greedy, clearly putting a lot of effort into only touching Rio over her clothes.

“Rio?” she hums, sucking the other woman’s bottom lip into her mouth. “Baby? Are you— do you want to have sex? Or is that too soon?”

Her words make Rio fall silent. Once more, she pushes herself away from Agatha to look at her. Agatha looks like she’s about to regret asking her again, but that’s when Rio says: “Too soon? Too soon?!”

“Well I thought—”

“If after ten years of living together is too soon, then what do you consider a reasonable moment?”

Agatha shrugs, a cocky expression on her face. “I don’t know… after the wedding, maybe?”

Rio decides to take the bait. “I’m not marrying you until I know what I’m in for. Take off your clothes. And while you’re at it— take off mine.”

Agatha’s face lights up as if Rio has just presented her with a Christmas present— which, in a way, she has.

And despite so much time having passed, Rio delights in the slow pace Agatha exposes them to one another.

She wriggles herself free from Rio’s embrace to sit on her knees on the bed, taking off her own shirt first, giving her new girlfriend time to look at her— really look at her, even though she’s still wearing a bra.

The longer Rio stares, the less she understands the Rio she was up until a couple of hours ago.

After her hands have tentatively cupped Agatha’s bra for a minute, Agatha leans forward for a kiss before grabbing the hem of Rio’s shirt and helping her out of it. She carelessly throws it behind her and starts peppering kisses all over her torso.

“Can’t believe I get to touch you like this,” she says, and Rio tries to hide the way that makes her breath catch; unsuccessfully so. Agatha notices it and crawls back up, cupping Rio’s face to kiss her until she relaxes under her touch again.

When Agatha takes a moment to catch her breath, Rio starts smirking. “So I’m finally on the receiving end of that mating dance, huh?”

Agatha huffs out a genuine laugh. “You know I’m gonna make your screech like a barn owl,” which, in turn, makes Rio laugh. She pulls the other woman in for more kisses as they keep snickering against each other’s lips.

Her hands explore Agatha’s back, until her fingers get caught in the clasp of her bra. She opens her eyes and lifts her eyebrows in a silent question— Agatha answers by smiling and nodding. With one smooth movement, Rio unhooks the bra, and uses both hands to carefully slide the straps down Agatha’s arms, revealing her breasts like the most precious things on earth.

It’s not the first time she’s seen them. It is, however, the first time she admires them in the way she does now.

“Beautiful,” she murmurs, before reaching up to envelop one of Agatha’s nipples in her mouth, flicking the hard bud with her tongue, suckling softly until she can hear Agatha gasp.

It’s the best sound she’s ever heard.

She keeps exploring every part of Agatha’s skin within reach— with her hands, with her mouth, with her tongue, until her need grows stronger and she uses her hips and legs to flip Agatha over onto her back.

Now straddling Agatha, Rio’s kisses on Agatha’s boobs and stomach get sloppier, wetter. When she reaches the waistband of her slacks, she pauses, looking up at the other woman.

“May I?”

“Please,” Agatha nods, lifting her hips to help Rio take off her slacks. When Rio buries her nose between Agatha’s thighs, kissing the skin there, and the part that’s still covered by her underwear, she is met with the distinct scent of arousal. She can’t help the low growl in her throat before licking a stripe up the gusset of Agatha’s underwear. It makes Agatha cry out softly, her hips buck up, and Rio smiles like she just won the lottery.

“Wait,” Agatha says when Rio’s fingers have just hooked in the waistband of her panties, bringing Rio to a halt by tapping her cheek. Rio immediately takes her hands away and looks up, concerned she’s pushed her too far.

“Do you— do you have protection?” Agatha stammers, and Rio is momentarily thrown off-guard by the question. It’s fair of Agatha to ask; she’s just never actually met a lesbian who’d insist on it.

“I, um— I don’t,” Rio says in earnest, but ready to find the nearest 24h pharmacy, “what kind of protection do you want?”

Agatha’s shy expression turns into a wicked smirk.

“A pair of goggles, of course,” she says, barely able to hold in her laughter, “I’ve heard it heightens your experience.”

Now realizing Agatha is messing with her, Rio scowls, before thinking of the perfect comeback.

“I’m flattered,” she says, not breaking eye contact as she lowers her head to press her lips to Agatha’s panties again, sucking on the fabric for a few seconds, “that you think I’ll make you come so hard I will need a pair of goggles.” 

“Fuck,” Agatha breathes, and helps Rio slide her underwear down, exposing all of her to Rio’s gleeful eyes.

Rio crawls back in between her legs, and while she had wanted to softly work Agatha up earlier, she now wants nothing more than to put her in her place for messing with her like that.

She feels around for Agatha’s hands and intertwines their fingers when she finds them; a gesture of comfort and safety,

Then she lowers her head again and licks softly but confidently up her cunt, her mouth flooding with Agatha’s wetness as soon as she makes contact. The sweet, musky flavor makes her hum, and she ends her lick with a flick of Agatha’s clit, making her cry out. She feels Agatha squeeze their joined hands, and looks up to check in with her.

“Keep going, please,” Agatha says breathlessly, her eyes closing and her mouth opening when Rio goes in for another lick.

“Oh baby, this is crazy, this is fucking crazy,” she starts babbling as Rio gains more confidence and starts exploring her cunt with her tongue, making sure to pay attention to all the spots that make Agatha pant or jolt.

One of Agatha’s hands wriggles itself free from Rio’s grasp, only to find its way into her hair. At Agatha’s sharp tug, Rio feels a shiver of pleasure run through her own body.

“Is this okay?” Agatha asks, looking down in concern. Rio nods and laughs; “More than okay.”

Agatha smiles in relief, closes her eyes, and leans back as Rio eats her out like she’s in love with her.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, Rio. I promise I’ll be honest from now on— fuck. I can’t believe this has taken us— ah— so long. Oh god, yes, right there, Rio, fuck— all that time— all that fucking time— wanna be yours, Rio, fuck, I wanna be yours, wanna be yours, wanna be yours—”

Rio closes her own eyes to stop them from rolling back at the intense wave of arousal those words cause. Yes, this is way overdue, but they’re here now, they’re here now—

“We’ve got so much time left,” Rio whispers against her pussy, before sucking Agatha’s clit into her mouth, releasing it with a pop. “We’ve got a whole future ahead of us, baby. My love. My Agatha.”

And maybe it’s too soon for any of those nicknames, but Rio doesn’t care. She has a gorgeous writhing woman underneath her and there’s nothing she needs more than for that woman to know how much she loves her. How much she’s loved her for years.

“Say that again,” Agatha gasps, her grip in Rio’s hair tightening.

“Baby?” Rio guesses, in between small licks at her clit.

“The other one—”

“My love,” she hums, meaning every letter with her entire soul, reveling in the way Agatha’s thighs start to shake heavily.

“The— the other one…”

Rio wrecks her brain while working Agatha up to her climax, and suddenly remembers what she’d said:

“My Agatha.”

Agatha comes not even ten seconds after Rio dives back in; her entire body tensing up, her face scrunched in pleasure, mouth wide open, a string of gorgeous, broken moans leaving her throat.

She’s a fucking sight to see. Her Agatha.

The second Agatha’s muscles relax, Rio notices her chest starting to rapidly rise and fall, and she quickly crawls back up to make contact with her.

“Hey, hey baby… look at me,” Rio says, lovingly cupping Agatha’s cheek. Her eyes are squeezed shut, but a line of tears visibly pools behind her eyelids. When one of them escapes her right eye, Rio brushes it away with her thumb, and that’s when Agatha opens her eyes.

Rio had expected to see fear, concern, maybe even exhaustion. What she sees however, is nothing but adoration.

“I love you,” Agatha says, a watery chuckle leaving her chest at her own dramatics. Another tear slides down the side of her face, and Rio catches it again, making Agatha once again snort at herself.

“God damnit. I love you. I love you, Rio,” she laugh-cries, wrapping her arms around Rio’s neck to invite her to drop her entire weight on top of Agatha. “My Rio.”

That’s when Rio’s own eyes start to prick, but her face is buried in Agatha’s neck. “My Agatha,” she says again, the sound muffled, and she wraps herself tighter around her girlfriend.

“You’re right,” Agatha whispers against her ear, sighing into the embrace. “We have a whole future ahead of us. If you want it.”

“I do,” Rio says, inhaling Agatha’s scent at her pulse point. “I really do.”

“Save those words for the altar,” Agatha jokes.

Rio pushes herself up to look at her.

“Oh? We are getting married?”

Agatha’s grin lights up the room and she shrugs.

“Not for a while. Though we are skipping the U-haul.”

Rio chuckles at the realization that they are in fact already living together.

“Know what we aren’t skipping?” she asks her girlfriend.

“Hmm?”

“Couples therapy next year. There are still so many we have to work through.”

Agatha bites her lip. “Oh yeah? Think we need it?”

“I don’t,” Rio admits. “But we should go to show them how it’s done.”

“What about Lilia?”

“I’ll send her a card. She clocked your ass and knew the only way for you to open up was to tell you that we were beyond help.”

“What you’re saying is we’re only here because of spite?”

Rio chuckles and plants a kiss on Agatha’s nose, rolls off of her, and grabs her hips to make her roll with her and take her into her arms again.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Then let’s keep proving her wrong.”