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Agatha can still remember her first crush. The year before her mother pulled her to be a homeschooled witch, she’d been studying at the local coven house when a girl from the neighboring village, Brooke, had been giving her weird looks for a couple of weeks. Agatha had no idea why. She was quiet compared to the other eleven year olds in the class, only speaking when spoken to: the mantra her mother had drilled into her since she was old enough to comprehend language.
They were out in the grassy clearing near the schoolhouse for a small meal break when Brooke had taken Agatha’s lunch pail and flipped it over so everything fell out.
“Freak,” Brooke had hissed, and she’d pushed Agatha into the dew-stained grass.
It’s been centuries, so Agatha can’t remember exactly what she’d planned on eating that day, but she can still remember the way her guts clenched, not at disappointment for the loss of her food, but something deeper, something she’d been too young to put her finger on, caterpillars spinning their silk cocoons to one day morph into butterflies.
It’s the same feeling she gets close to a decade later when the cloaked figure departing the souls of her coven sees her tied to a stake and, removing its hood, reveals to Agatha the hottest woman she’s ever seen.
“This your work?” the hot cloaked woman asks. “Nice job.”
Agatha’s brain is frazzled, phrases like hothothot and I want her spinning around in her head like a windstorm. Keeping her cool, she says, “Oh, you know, all in a day’s work. Help me out of this?”
Rio, the name of the hottie, she later learns, takes her time untying Agatha from the stake, letting her fingers linger on the tender flesh of Agatha’s wrists, pink and puffy from being bound. Agatha has to do her best not to breathe in too deeply, to look too affected. She thinks she’s doing a pretty good job of acting like she wouldn’t snort a line of Lady Death’s scent if given the chance, twilight and dirt and rotten apricots. She’s actually incredibly normal about this.
Her muscles have been screaming on the pole she’d been bound to before she’d inadvertently drained her coven. Now, she’s thrumming with energy, and the way this woman is barely touching her practically makes her mad. Even though her body feels strong, her knees still get a little week when the woman whispers, “ Te veo, mi hermosa ,” in the sensitive shell of her ear before melding into the shadows.
Their first kiss is when Agatha sacrifices a deer to get her attention a few months later; Rio tastes like fire and brimstone and unadulterated heat, and she tuts at her for her actions.
“You don’t need to kill things for me to show up,” she says. “You only need to say my name.”
“Rio,” says Agatha, admittedly a little breathless, and Rio responds by kissing her again, harder, teeth playing with Agatha’s bottom lip. Agatha’s moan finds itself swallowed by the flames.
Rio’s Lady Death persona, though, is something Agatha rarely gets to see. She’d seen a glimpse of it the night of their first meeting. Lust had coiled around her heart like a snake; she can remember the staccato it had made in her chest. The black eyes, the wide smile. The outfit was incredibly hot, too, and every once in a while it’d show up in her dreams. Maybe she was fucked up—scratch that, she definitely was, in many ways—so the way she felt about Rio Vidal was no different.
This isn’t to say she doesn’t love Rio’s more human-friendly form: the way her lips form into a smirk, the way her hair falls on her shoulders, the way her fingers curl when inside Agatha. But Agatha was born to toe the line of moral and corrupt, given a natural skill that would pervert even the most innocent of magic-born users. And hadn’t she been exactly that, once upon a time? It was in her nature to crave darkness, to revel in what others shy away from.
The year is 1848, and, as Rio explains it to her, Hungary is fighting to split itself from the Austrian empire. Agatha is always a fan of rebellions, so she hopes it’s successful. But it means Rio is busy, and she doesn’t get to see the other woman as often.
Rio must be tired one night (or, at least tired in the way an immortal being may be) because when Agatha looks up from her book to see the other woman walk in, Rio’s in her Lady Death persona when she walks into their Concord cottage. When she sees Agatha is still wide awake and waiting for her, Rio shakes it off, returning to the form Agatha is more familiar with.
“Do you hate how you look?” Agatha asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I rarely see you like that,” Agatha says. “Your more death-y look.”
Rio purses her lips. “I just assumed you wouldn’t want to look at it.”
“Why would you think that?” Agatha walks over to Rio, brushes her dark hair behind her shoulder so Agatha can cup her jaw. “I’m interested in all of you, even the macabre bits. Well, to be honest, especially those.”
Rio’s whiskey eyes glitter. “Noted.”
However, it’s a few decades before Agatha is really able to test out that certain side of Rio. A baby boy born in the depths of winter in 1852 and gone by the summer of 1859 means that when Rio refuses to bring him back, Agatha forces her out. (The fucking audacity, to be the literal Grim Reaper and not bend a small rule to bring an innocent boy back. If Rio had really loved her, Agatha figured, she would’ve done it for her.)
So now, the year is 1911, and Agatha, from a side alley a block or two down, is watching a clothing factory burn. Not because of her decisions, of course, but because of the greed of those who like to stuff their pockets with cash. Agatha understands greed, admittedly craves power and does an excellent job of attaining it, but doing this for whatever piece of paper happens to be the currency of the decade? It’s ridiculous.
However, Agatha knows that with this much death at once, Rio will be here soon. She’d spent too much time with the woman-slash-immortal-being and could see the telltale signs of tragedy, of mass death, and she figures she might as well tailor those skills to her advantage.
Flames are beautiful, Agatha realizes. Maybe people should be grateful Fate had given her natural siphoning abilities instead of arson. However, when a chill runs up Agatha’s spine even in the sweltering heat, she knows exactly which direction to turn her head. She’d recognize that magic anywhere.
“Hey, babe,” is Agatha’s greeting.
“Don’t tell me this is your handiwork,” Rio says back.
“C’mon, you know this isn’t my M.O.” Agatha playfully swipes at the tip of Rio’s nose. A little boop, if you will. “I don’t really play with mortals like this.”
“Then why are you here? I’ve got souls to attend to.”
“I missed you?” Agatha blinks her eyes in an innocent manner. Rio rolls her own in response. “And also, I had a lead and wanted to ask about the—”
“Oh my fucking god, if you followed a death event just to ask me about the Darkhold, I will find a way to kill you myself.”
“Ah ah, you know Death can’t interfere with the natural course of things. And,” with this, Agatha puts a finger on Rio’s sternum, “don’t tell me you forgot the blood pact.”
“A pity,” Rio growls, “that I can’t pull a good ole’ Henry and invent a religion just so I can divorce you.”
“I think you’re just jealous that I want to hone my power,” Agatha snaps. “Upset a mortal could become a magical equal?”
“More like upset you’re messing with the laws of the universe that are irreversible,” Rio says. “Death is finite. And you know how much I loved—”
“Don’t you dare say his fucking name.” Agatha’s fingers find their way around Rio’s throat. “You wouldn’t even bring him back.”
“Because I can’t!”
“Because you can’t love at all.”
“How dare you.” Rio’s voice grows raspy and she loses her vocal chords, as the cartilage on her face disappears and her humanoid mask slips. “I don’t get to love because a lifetime to humans is the blink of an eye to me. But you… god, you’ve been here for two centuries and I still get to see you, still get to feel your heart beating. Is there any other way I could feel about you?”
Rio easily shoves Agatha’s arm from her, her clawed hand around Agatha’s throat as Rio backs the other witch against the alley wall. She lifts Agatha just high enough that the woman has to stand on her tiptoes. “You are playing with forces that will ultimately kill you. And when I’m here to collect you, looking like this, what will you do?”
Agatha is silent. Rio is fully transformed into her true self now— the morbid face Agatha has been aching to see for over a century now. And if it’s wrong how quickly Agatha’s anger turns to desire, how quickly her eyes turn dark, how quickly molten lava slips from her stomach to her groin, she’s thankful she’s not the type to ever be right.
“You sick fuck.” Rio’s now-airy voice sounds like the twinkling of wind chimes before a tornado sweeps through the fields. “You’re into this, aren’t you?”
“I hate you,” Agatha says hoarsely.
“You wish.” Rio takes the hand not on Agatha’s throat and cups her over her slacks. “Just what I thought. Pure heat.”
Agatha moans, a low whine. “And what are you going to do about it, exactly?”
Rio drops Agatha and she yelps, only to find herself landing rather awkwardly on… her bed? In her bedroom? The devil on her shoulder tells Agatha that this should fuel her ego; and so it does.
“Aw, you know where I live?” Agatha smirks. “I have the hottest stalker ever.”
“Get naked, you whore.”
Agatha’s brain is pudding. She barely registers her own hands ripping her clothes off and can only think about how it’s going to feel when Rio finally touches her. Even just the hypothetical overwhelms her, and she breathes heavily.
“You’re so pathetic.” Rio laughs, a howl of wind. “So desperate. Hands and knees, on the bed.”
Agatha’s body moves of its own accord, as if Rio’s words commanded it, and soon she’s on all fours, back arched and bared to Lady Death herself.
“Rio,” Agatha whines.
“Did I say you could speak?” Rio hisses. She drags her long nails across Agatha’s back, creating angry red lines. Agatha moans, the sting of her skin mixing with the throbbing of her core. Rio moves on to Agatha’s ass, giving it a hard slap, and Agatha finds herself biting into one of her pillows.
Rio crawls onto the bed to hover over her, still fully clothed. “You need me to fuck you so bad it’s pitiful.”
Agatha whimpers, the vulgarity reminding her of what she could be experiencing right now, and she not so subtly grinds her ass against Rio’s body now pressed against her.
“Poor girl,” Rio coos. “Would you like to watch?”
Agatha turns her neck to look at Rio as best she can. Lady Death waves a hand and the full length mirror that’s nailed to Agatha’s wall, lets it float in just the right spot so Agatha can see how Rio’s body is curled possessively over her while Agatha kneels, naked and waiting. And when Rio takes a hand under her and rakes her nails from Agatha’s stomach to the trimmed hair on her mons pubis, stopping right before where Agatha craves her the most, Agatha gets to see her own body crumple as she lets out a noisy whine in protest.
“What,” Rio says, “pussycat got your tongue?”
Agatha whimpers, but says nothing.
She can see, through the mirror, Rio roll her eyes. In this form, they’re even darker, the color of molasses. “You can tell me.”
“Rio, I—” Agatha pants. “Lady Death, please, I’m so empty without you.”
Rio growls, though, in her Lady Death form, it sounds like the beginnings of a thunderstorm. Agatha gets the privilege of watching as Rio wraps one hand around Agatha’s throat and the other hand barely cups Agatha’s heat before slipping two fingers into her needy cunt without any warning. Agatha yelps in both surprise and relief and lets herself get lost in the feeling of Rio’s fingers inside her.
“I didn’t even have to touch you,” Rio says, “and you take me like it’s nothing. What a good girl.”
The praise is like a lightning strike to Agatha’s swollen and untouched clitoris, but the way Rio has her fingers curled inside Agatha is stimulating her in a way no other is able to. There are times where Agatha wonders if Rio knows her body more than she does, and this is one of those moments. The way Rio touches her sends her atoms into a type of frenzy that can’t be experienced elsewhere, and seven hells, if Rio was a planet, Agatha was the asteroid belt circling around her begging to be a set of planetary rings.
And while she’d usually rather be dead and let Rio know that, she’s sure the way she cries out at Rio’s persistent fingerfucking sends enough of a message. Rio’s nails in this form are slightly longer, not enough to make her a bloody warzone down there but enough to toe the line between pain and pleasure: just how the both of them like it.
Rio lets go of Agatha’s throat, and Agatha lets out a noise of disappointment.
“Don’t worry,” Rio says, and suddenly Agatha sees thick vines shoot out from beyond the mirror’s visible scope to wrap around her neck with the same amount of pressure Rio’s hand had been giving her. This time, though, the vines have just enough thornes to tease a prick at the fragile skin of Agatha’s neck. She can already feel them break it, creating superficial wounds and razor-thin droplets of blood start to slide their way down Agatha’s neck and onto her, goddammit, extremely nice silk bed sheets.
Even that doesn’t snap her out of the haze of Rio on top of her, though. All she knows is that she wants more, and that her hips are grinding pathetically into Rio’s fingers.
So she begs. “More. Lady Death, more.”
“Two not enough for you? You were always so greedy.” And yet Rio doesn’t hesitate to give Agatha what she wants, to add another finger and stretch Agatha out in a way that gets her that much closer to a release. “Say my title again. It sounds delicious in your mouth.”
“Lady Death,” Agatha whines, “I wanna come.”
“I don’t really give a fuck what you want,” is Lady Death’s reply.
“Please.” Agatha begs again, too wound up to care about how it looks. “I want it to be from you, from Lady Death, please. Lady Death, Lady Death, Lady Death—”
Lady Death, who is certainly not used to hearing her given title in such a wanton tone, moans out another thunderclap and can’t help but take her free hand and immediately slip it under Agatha’s stomach to reach her neglected clit, rubbing it hard and fast. Agatha cries out at the sudden and harsh touch, hips snapping forward, but Lady Death uses her arms to keep Agatha as close to her as possible.
Agatha’s orgasm rushes at her like a bull to a red cape, and she practically screeches as it violently takes her body hostage. It feels like every muscle in her body is in one big, harmonious spasm, and her vision is momentarily blacked out.
As she comes back, her body is still overwhelmed; Rio hasn’t stopped fucking her, hasn’t stopped stimulating her, and Agatha soon finds herself in another orgasm. Her brain is too fuzzy to compare it to her first, to comprehend if it’s harder or longer, but what she does know is that it’s like an earthquake: shake after shake after shake, easy to lose count of, and incredibly fucking destructive. Her knuckles turn white as she fists the bedsheets, and she lets out an entire encyclopedia of different noises, all full of desire and relief and, if someone were to dig deep enough, a four-letter word that, even in her emotional haze, Agatha refuses to think of.
Rio gives Agatha what she begged for until Agatha practically forgets her own name, until Agatha’s reality begins and ends with Death’s weight pressed against her, Death’s fingers inside of her, Death’s voice in her ear.
(At some point, Rio smirks, satisfied with the incoherent and babbling mess Agatha has become, and slips herself out, pulls the vines back, slips her human mask back on.)
Finally, after an indeterminable amount of time, Agatha is able to find her wits again, though her thighs are still shaking. She has just enough strength to turn her body over so she can lay on her back, but after that, her limbs are noodles.
“Oh,” Agatha says, taking in Rio’s now-human form lying beside her. “It’s you again.”
She takes a shaky hand, props it up by the elbow just so, so that she can touch Rio’s nose, trace her eyebrows, brush her fingers over the other woman’s pouty bottom lip.
“It’s always me,” Rio says. “Just like it’s always you.” Her human hand cradles Agatha’s jawline, and her human head bends down to lick at Agatha’s shallow cuts on her neck. Agatha puffs out a soft moan as Rio’s tongue grazes sensitive flesh, her shaky fingers finding enough strength to tug at Rio’s hair.
“I still hate you,” Agatha whispers. It’s weakly post-coital.
“Mm-hmm.” Rio continues to paint Agatha’s body with her tongue, making sure to lap up every bit of blood on her and leaving a trail of saliva and healed skin in its wake. “And I still like the way you taste.” She smacks her lips for dramatic effect before rolling out of bed, standing over Agatha’s naked figure. “You can get me off next time, yeah?”
Those words are the ones that somehow sober her up, and she feels her vision sharpen. She’s suddenly aware of how naked she is, and how naked Rio is not. She feels like a turtle flipped on its back, unable to get rightside up. “If it’s up to me,” Agatha snarks, “there won’t be a next time.”
“Nice try, sweetheart, but your eyes betray you every time,” Rio quips. Agatha wants to look at the mirror, to stare into her own eyes and find what Rio is able to excavate, but she refrains. For now, at least.
“Just watch,” Agatha says. “I’ll get the Darkhold— without your help, by the way— I’ll finally get what you refuse to give back, and I’ll disappear, and you’ll never hear from me again.”
Rio chortles. “That’s not how it works, baby.”
“When have I ever gone by the rules?”
“You can break as many rules as you want, but…” Rio bends down to hover just over Agatha’s ear. “Just remember,” she whispers, “all roads lead back to me.” And she melts into the shadows.
Even if she hadn’t been stupid enough to fall for the personification of Death, Agatha thinks, all of her roads would lead to Rio Vidal, anyhow.