Kelly Kilpatrick thinks I'm gay and you're my secret wife, so we have to spend the weekend pretending to be lesbian lovers so I can get that Carol Burnett jumpsuit. What?
Agatha/Rio, pre-Nicky, witchy holiday of some kind (Yule, Beltane, Samhain, etc)
Agatha/Wanda - For one reason or another (maybe she loses a bet? Up to you!) Agatha has to spend a whole day doing whatever Wanda wants and can't complain
hell yeah brotherrrr, we're goin with the wagatha one here! (very well may do the agathario witchy holiday in the future tho!)
A bead of sweat slips down the tip of Wanda’s nose; she jerks an equally-sweaty arm across her face, flicking the droplet away from the bubbling cauldron. If her latest attempt at this godforsaken potion is ruined by her own perspiration, she might kill someone. (And considering the severe limitations on her current social life, the someone in question would most likely be – )
“Focus up, buttercup,” Agatha says, slouched over their couch with her hands behind her head. One foot taps at the floor, the other kicked up over the couch’s back. Precisely none of the many positions that Agatha pretzels herself into look remotely comfortable. “I see that mind wandering. If you turn that pot to sludge for a seventh time, you’re gonna be wandering out back to find us some fresh ingredients. Our cabinets runneth dry.”
“I’m aware.” Wanda peels the wings from a dead dragonfly, adding them to the cauldron exactly four seconds apart. A powerful wave of steam flays her reddening forearms. “Can you get me some water?”
“Ugh, so you can sweat even more?” Tipping her head backwards over the side of the couch, an upside-down Agatha gives her a scathing look. “I hope the great and mighty World-Ender can fit a long, hot shower into her plans for galactic domination. Otherwise, she can go ahead and sleep in her own bed tonight.”
“Mhm,” Wanda says, wiping another errant sweat drop from her face. Every time she storms off to sleep in her own bed (usually at the tail end of a screaming match), she wakes up freezing next to an Agatha-shaped bundle of pillows and blankets.
Agatha’s eyes narrow. With the way she’s flipped, her hair looks like a troll doll. “‘Mhm’ what, missy? You don’t think it’s possible to have standards higher than ‘anything with a pulse’?” She lifts her hair up in great frizzy bunches, letting the strands fall through her fingers. “With you, I guess the ‘pulse’ part is optional.”
“You’re one to talk,” Wanda says before she can stop herself.
Agatha pauses, her hands curled into claws above her forehead. “How’s that, now?”
The thing about letting Agatha out of Agnes jail: lifting the spell had required Wanda to essentially dunk her head into Agatha’s psyche. While submerged beneath those scary waters, she’d caught a few blush-inducing glimpses of a very pretty zombie. Or a god. Wanda couldn’t tell. The black-haired woman cracked the sky in half with sizzling green lightning, appearing at Agatha’s front door with the flesh of her face half-gone.
“Can we call it a day?” Wanda says, crumbling the dragonfly’s dried head over the cauldron. “I feel like I’m gonna pass out.”
“There’s that famous work ethic.” Squinting at Wanda’s hand, Agatha spins herself upright. “The head goes in last. Last.”
“Right,” Wanda says, hiding her smirk. A witchcraft fuckup is a foolproof way to shepherd Agatha’s mind away from whatever Wanda doesn’t feel like talking about. (At least for a minute or two.)
“You could still salvage it,” Agatha says, standing to peer into the seething soup of bug parts. “I’d rather you did, if I’m being honest. It’d save us the chore of another round. Watching you turn into a Sweaty Betty is a real boner-killer.”
“If I’m being honest,” Wanda mutters. The potion belches up a bubble of foul liquid, splattering Wanda’s front. “Are you ever honest?”
“I just told you I don’t super feel like fucking you when you’re gross. And that was very real and brave and vulnerable of me.” Agatha whirls a silk handkerchief from her pocket, dabbing at the potion splatters on Wanda’s forearm. “C’mon. Give ‘er the ol’ college try.”
“What do I get if I do?” Wanda says, choking on a puff of steam before she can get out her snide little You gonna give me a sticker chart?
Agatha smiles toothily, dragging the handkerchief over the most sensitive part of Wanda’s inner wrist. “What would you like?”
Interesting. Wanda crumbles the rest of the dragonfly between her palms, thinking.
“A day off,” she says.
Agatha’s smile slips; she’s getting bored. Which usually leads to bonus coursework.
“Doing whatever I want,” Wanda adds, lowering her voice enough so Agatha needs to lean forward. “With you. To you.”
The smile perks back up. “See, that’s how you pitch a – ”
“And you can’t spend the whole day bitching about it,” Wanda says, dumping the dragonfly bits into her unappetizing stew. She thinks about the mental toll of constantly wondering whether Agatha’s scraps of kindness are part of her ongoing ploy to swipe her magic back. Not the most fun way to spend a day free from witch lessons. “Actually, you know what? I want twenty-four hours of honesty. If you don’t have something nice to say, you can keep your mouth shut.”
“If I’m keeping my mouth shut, something’s catastrophically wrong.” Agatha sniffs the potion, giving a tiny nod of approval. “You’d think the ability to rip through reality like so much tissue paper would make you a tad more creative, but whatever. Sure. Twenty-four honest hours, Scout’s honor.”
Wanda would bet money that Agatha’s crossing every finger and toe that she’s got. No matter – to guarantee a pleasant day off, she’ll be relying on more than Agatha’s questionable sense of honor.
“How’d I do?” she asks once the cauldron burbles down to a simmer. Behind her back, she casts a quick, wordless spell.
“Better than you should’ve, all things considered,” Agatha says, dipping a pinkie into the potion and bringing it to her lips. “It’s fucking infuriating, the way your power paves over your mistakes. One grueling afternoon gets you a purer brew than I bottled in my first fifty years. Eats me up inside.”
Agatha freezes, her pinkie pressing an indent into her lower lip. Her eyes fall to Wanda’s hands, which are still glittering with residual red sparks from the hex that’s temporarily bound Agatha’s tongue to Boy Scout-level honesty.
“Ooh, I’m gonna do whatever I want to you, Agatha,” she mimics in an accent that’s several lightyears away from Sokovian, rapping her fingers against her cheek. “Word of advice: Normal people usually say that shit with the intention of squeaking some bedsprings.”
“Yeah, well,” Wanda says, thinking of the skull-faced woman from Agatha’s past. “I don’t get the sense that you’re the biggest fan of normal people.”
*************
For the record, it’s not like Wanda has zero intention of squeaking some bedsprings. She just wants to do a little relaxing first.
“Someone could stick a shiv in the side of your neck right now and you wouldn’t even see it coming,” Agatha says conversationally.
Wanda sighs, lifting the cucumbers from her eyes. So far, the relaxing’s not going great. “Is that a threat?”
Agatha shrugs her fluffy-bathrobed shoulders. “It’s an observation. You’ve compelled me to speak my truth; this is my truth. If I happened to be the FBI’s Most Wanted Witch, I wouldn’t sit around obscuring my peepers with nature’s worst vegetable.” She wrinkles her nose. “Mm – second worst. Kale’s the worst.”
Wanda shakes her head, shuffling the cucumber slices between her hands. “A shiv. Not even a regular knife. We’re at a spa – a very expensive one, by the way – and you’re thinking about prison.”
“Funny how that works when you’re a prisoner,” Agatha says lightly.
Wanda’s thumb accidentally punches through the meat of one of her cucumber slices. For the next twenty hours or so, Agatha’s incapable of saying anything she doesn’t mean. “You think you’re a prisoner?”
Another fluffy shrug. “You’ve got my tongue locked up, don’t you? Just like you had my brain locked up for a minute there.”
Wanda’s heart sinks. “That’s not the same – I’m not keeping you from – ”
“Yeah?” Agatha says, plucking the unpunctured cucumber slice from Wanda’s right hand. “If I wanted to pack up my powerless behind and leave, you’d let me and all my bibbity-bobbity-black magic expertise waltz out the door?”
She wouldn’t. The fact of it clobbers Wanda over the head as heavily as if she were the one with her tongue cross-stitched to the truth. Watching her closely, Agatha pops the cucumber slice into her mouth.
“The ‘acting shocked that I kidnapped people’ shtick is getting stale, my dear,” she says, stealing Wanda’s other cucumber. (Hungriest woman alive.)
There’s a gentle knock at the door; an employee shuffles in, warming a dollop of jojoba oil between her hands. After weeks of gathering data on how much Agatha likes having her hair played with, Wanda had asked the spa’s front desk to send someone up for a scalp massage. A treat for her caged bird. She feels sick.
Maybe it’s the Darkhold-induced delusion talking, but most of the time, Wanda really doesn’t remember that she’s technically the one in charge. Unsurprisingly, Agatha’s proven to be an overbearing teacher – she dictates every moment of Wanda’s days, correcting her form and trash-talking her sloppy pronunciation. In the month and a half that they’ve been sleeping together, Wanda only ever takes control when Agatha tells her to. And she’s not even particularly submissive! Agatha’s just eerily good at getting her way.
An inmate chatting up the loneliest guard.
“Do you hate me?” Wanda asks quietly.
Agatha opens one eye, annoyed. “Is that why you truthified me? My god. You’re the most bleeding heart-est bad guy ever.”
“Do you ladies want some space?” the spa employee asks meekly.
Agatha grabs the woman’s hands, pinning them to her head. “Absolutely not, sweetheart. You keep doing what you’re doing.”
For a long minute, the only sounds rising above the spa’s meditative playlist are Agatha’s happy sighs. Wanda twists her fingers together.
“I don’t hate you,” Agatha says. Under her breath, she makes a small huh sound. Maybe her answer was a surprise to both of them.
“Are you…mad at me?”
“Jesus Hecate Christ. Most bleeding heart-est bitch in the game.” Agatha leans back into the employees hands, moaning obscenely. Wanda shifts in her reclined chair. “Yeah, I’m a wee bit peeved. For you, I’m sure the acting out feels like you’re shooting spitballs at the schoolmarm. For me, it’s more ‘chained dog gets a kick.’”
“I do think we want some space, actually,” Wanda says to the employee, swinging her legs over her chair. Agatha groans, piling her oiled-up hair over her face. Once the door swings shut: “I’ll lift the spell. I’m sorry. I never should’ve – ”
“Eh, don’t bother. You’d probably abracadabra my tits off by mistake.” Agatha parts her oily hair curtain. “What’s aggravating as hell, kid – I actually kind of like you. Cackling, white-cat-stroking villainesses happen to be my exact type. Let’s not ruin things with your big fat feelings.”
Once again, Wanda thinks of the pretty god-zombie. She could ask about her, if she wanted to. The honesty spell is still alive and well. Seems like a decently white-cat-stroking villainess sort of move.
“No feelings,” Wanda vows, lathering her blackened hands in oil as she slides onto the spa employee’s stool. Digging her fingers deep into the forest of Agatha’s hair, she rubs in widening circles, making sure her nails scratch gently over the other witch’s scalp.
The sound that tumbles up from Agatha’s chest is more of a growl than a groan. Her hands flex on the arms of her chair; her back arches, the bathrobe slipping off one shoulder. When her eyes flutter open, blissed out and brilliantly blue, she looks up at Wanda like she’s the next cucumber slice doomed to disappear down her gullet.
Not for the first time, Wanda considers that the promise of no feelings might be easier said than done.
*************
The second they get home, the bedspring-squeaking commences. (Metaphorically, anyway. They don’t make it anywhere close to the actual bed, pawing at each other in the house’s foyer.)
“Tell me,” Wanda says between breathless kisses, pulling Agatha in by the chain of her brooch. “What do you – how do you want – ”
Agatha laughs, making quick work of the buttons on Wanda’s shirt. “You think I need to wait for a truth serum to be real about how I like it?”
Maybe; maybe not. As forceful as Agatha is in bed, Wanda’s never been sure whether the dirty words and quick hands are tools to keep her distracted. Case in point – the first few times they ended up tangled beneath a bedsheet, Agatha didn’t let Wanda touch her at all. After Wanda came, sweat-streaked and gasping, Agatha was out of the room before Wanda’s heart had time to stop palpitating. “No offense,” she’d said on her way out, wiping her wet fingers on the pile of Wanda’s discarded clothes, “but something tells me I can flick this bean a lot further than you can. If my room’s a-rockin’, don’t come a-knockin.”
As Wanda lay in her empty bed, listening to Agatha’s muffled moans through the wall, the subtext was deafening: after puttering around as Agnes O’Connor, Agatha wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to give Wanda control over her body again.
“Do you want this?” Wanda asks, her voice coming out rough and low. “Genuinely?”
Agatha rolls her eyes, dragging a thumb over Wanda’s nipple. “I never should’ve made you go to evil basement therapy. You were way more fun before you started feeling your feelings all the goddamn time.”
Wanda’s hand moves of its own volition, closing around Agatha’s throat. A red spark escapes the tip of her pointer finger, singeing Agatha’s hair.
“Answer me,” she says, buds of magic blooming on her tongue as she speaks.
And then Agatha’s speaking, compelled to speak, the words tumbling out in an unbroken geyser that Wanda feels vibrating against her hand –
“Of course I want this, you needy little thing. I’ve wanted this since you were traipsing around in your black-and-white Bewitched knockoff. You and your guilty fucking conscience. Not quite guilty enough to lay off the dark magic; plenty guilty enough to tapdance on my last nerve every chance you get. How many times do I need to say it? Do you need to hear it in a language that sounds like an old man hacking up a lung? I want you, I wanna feel those pretty thighs tryna pop my head clean open, and guess the fuck what: that doesn’t make you good. That doesn’t make this – I don’t tend to want the good ones, honey. I told you, my type is the worst of the worst. And especially when you pull this kind of nonsense – ” She touches the hand around her throat – “it’s hard not to think about – I fucking hate how much you remind me of – ”
Agatha shoves her own fist in her mouth, bringing the unstoppable sentence to a screeching halt. Wanda drops her hand; drops the spell; drops to her knees, fumbling with the fly of Agatha’s pants. Agatha lets herself be shoved back onto the couch, her breath hitching.
She might not be good, Wanda thinks as she vanishes Agatha’s clothes with a crook of her wrist, nosing over Agatha’s hip. Maybe she never will be. But with the right strokes of her tongue, slow and hard and messy, she can make Agatha say her line: Good, that’s good, what a quick study, what a good girl. Like she’s been doing her entire life, Wanda will squeeze her eyes shut and pretend that the scripted fantasy is real enough to hold. For tiny, too-short moments, it almost feels like it is.
*************
Eventually, they do make it to the bed. In the aftermath, Wanda lies on her back, staring up at the waterstained ceiling; Agatha traces patterns on her stomach, palms her breasts, her hand lazing over Wanda’s body in a perpetual fidgety circuit.
“You said I remind you of someone,” Wanda says.
Agatha grunts unintelligibly, already half-asleep. In a few short hours, the forced honesty will peter out. If Wanda wants any real insight into Agatha’s infuriatingly opaque past, it’s looking like now or never.
So she beams a flash of the pretty god-zombie into Agatha’s head. Agatha’s eyes snap open, her hand tensing over Wanda’s heart.
“Her?” Wanda asks.
Working her jaw, Agatha nods against Wanda’s shoulder.
Way more of a response than she’d hoped for. Wanda decides to push her luck. “Did you love her?”
She braces herself to be cursed out, but no: another small nod. Through the hand pressing firmly on Wanda’s heart, Agatha must be able to feel her heart picking up speed.
“Do you still?” Wanda asks. As the words leave her mouth, she’s suddenly unsure whether she wants to hear the answer.
Turns out she doesn’t need to worry, because Agatha sharply retracts her hand, rolling over to the far side of the bed. Minutes creep past, absent of her usual mean quips. She even stays silent when Wanda’s freezing feet brush her ankle, an offense that typically earns Wanda a litany of curses. For once, Agatha really and truly keeps her mouth shut.
(As she drifts into a fitful sleep, Wanda recalls the implications of her chatty mentor’s silence – something must be catastrophically wrong.)
dailybridgerton
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
