new year's day
OH MY GOD IT'S FINALLY FUCKING DONE!! 💀
10 months and nearly 12k words later, part 2 of the New Year's professors AU is here!! It's basically nothing but Agatha being miserable and Rio trying to help (and being horny about it)
CW for referenced child abuse in Agatha's past related to being sick. Also some light contagion. (Rio's not sick quite yet, but she's not being careful about it)
part one ❄️ fic masterlist
Rio spent the first few hours of the new year drifting in and out of sleep while Agatha remained dead to the world beside her.
She’d fallen asleep with one hand curled up under her chin, the other wrapped tightly in the corner of the sheet and pressed against the bottom of her nose like a makeshift handkerchief—a necessary one by the looks of the dark spot blooming on the light blue fabric. Despite not being able to physically assault it in hours, Agatha’s nose was still an angry shade of pink that matched the fever flush that had settled in her cheeks.
Agatha always had a tendency to run a little warm, but this was definitely above her norm. There were little flyaways stuck to her hairline with sweat, and when Rio finally worked up the nerve to press the back of her hand to Agatha’s forehead, she found it far warmer than she would have liked. Not dangerously so, but enough that she’d feel better keeping an eye on it.
Agatha, for her part, was still mostly unconscious, but when Rio started to pull her hand away, a soft moan slipped past her lips, and she shifted to press more of her overheated face against Rio’s cool hand. Rio scooted a little closer so that she could cup her flushed cheek, and Agatha sighed.
Or rather, she tried to sigh; her breath caught halfway through and she coughed, curling in on herself and pressing her blanket-covered hand to her mouth to muffle the sound. She finished with a grimace and a little whine that made Rio’s heart squeeze before she settled back to a calmer state of sleep again.
Rio kept her hand on Agatha’s cheek, letting the pad of her thumb brush across her warm skin. She always loved watching Agatha sleep—loved tracing the soft lines of her face, memorizing the constellations of her freckles, listening to the little sounds and sighs she made when she was dreaming—but seeing her this vulnerable was a rare privilage and Rio wasn’t taking it lightly.
She let her hand move just a little bit lower and let her thumb pass lightly over the dry reddened skin around Agatha’s nose. Every inch of it seemed irritated and inflamed from the curve of her upper lip to the scatter of freckles across the bridge. Rios thumb ventured even lower to trace the raw edges of her nostrils with the tip of her nail, but she quickly pulled back when Agatha let out a pitiful little squeak of a whine at the contact.
Rio thought for a moment she must have hurt her, but then Agatha’s brow furrowed as she cupped the hand that was currently acting as her makeshift blanket-handkerchief around her nose to shield it from Rio’s teasing touch. She tried to sniffle, but her congestion made that nearly impossible, so she settled for just wrinkling her nose and pressing it hard against her palm. It was cuter than it had any right to be, and though Rio hadn’t meant to set her off, she couldn’t help the devilish smile that tugged at her lips as she watched Agatha squeeze her eyes shut tighter and rub clumsily at her nose. It was clearly too little too late, though.
“hHIH’hiiTtshoo!”The first sneeze was breathy—sleepy, almost—and Agatha curled in on herself and managed to bury her face in the blankets before the second one came hot on its heels. “Hh’EHhshoo!”
“Bless you,” Rio said, gently brushing a loose strand of hair behind Agatha’s ear. It took a moment for Agatha to reluctantly open her eyes, and she frowned up at Rio without moving her hand away from her nose.
“Good morning, Sneezing Beauty,” Rio said with a teasing grin.
Agatha—still far too out of it to enjoy Rio’s excellent joke—blinked blearily up at her and squinted like she was trying to focus her eyes on something. Or like she still needed to—“HHP’TSSHh!”
Agatha rolled onto her stomach and buried her face in her pillow just in time to muffle the sneeze. Rio began rubbing soothing little circles between her shoulder blades as Agatha lifted her face just enough to get a breath in before smothering one final sneeze against the pillow with a groan.
“Bless you, baby,” Rio said gently. She slid her hand a little further up to scratch lightly at Agatha’s sweaty scalp, drawing a congested moan out of her that nearly made Rio melt. “How’re you feeling?”
“Bad,” Agatha croaked against the pillow. She turned her head and pressed her blanket-hand up to her nose again, sniffling against it with a grimace. “Just leave be here to die.” Even muffled against her hand, her voice was low and raspy and positively wrecked in a way that managed to sound both incredibly pathetic and impossibly sexy at the same time.
“Sorry,” Rio lied. She draped her arm casually across the small of Agatha’s back. “Your bed’s too comfy. I’m not going anywhere.” She curled her fingers so could rake her nails teasingly against the little patch of bare skin on her side where her shirt had ridden up. It drew a wheezy little giggle out of Agatha, and she squirmed closer to Rio to try to get away. In the next breath, though, the laugh started edging dangerously close to a cough, and Rio took pity on her, stilling her hand as she kissed the side of Agatha’s head.
Once her breath evened out again, Agatha rolled back onto her side, and Rio got her first real look at her. Her bright blue eyes were irritated and watery and glassy with fever. Her nose looked even redder now, and she covered it with the hand still wrapped in the blanket to sniffle as discreetly as she could when they were this close. Rio pressed her tongue into her cheek to try to fend off a smile, but Agatha still caught it and glared at her.
“You should be ndicer to me,” she grumbled, “I’mb sick.”
Rio raised an amused eyebrow. “So I gathered. Feel like I could have told you that last night, but I’m glad we’re finally on the same page.”
“Let the record show I did’t feel ndearly this bad before we got there.” It was hard to sound properly affronted with a stuffy nose and a barely-there voice. Hard, but not impossible, and Agatha was giving it her all. “I mbead, I blambe Lilia hodestly. She lit sub candle or sombthi’g for hh-her stupid tarot c-cards an-hah…and I hih…hH’ITSHhoo!”
"You sure did," Rio said. "If I'm remembering right, you did a lot of that. Bless you, by the way."
"F-fuuh-HH’TCHh! Fuck off.”
"Bless you again."
"You're ndot tired of that yet?"
"Absolutely not. It’s cute when you get all huffy about it,” Rio said with a grin. She traced a finger down the bridge of Agatha's nose, relishing the way she wrinkled it reflexively before she remembered to swat Rio’s hand away.
“It does’d feel very cute.” Agatha sniffled and pinched the bridge of her nose, dragging her fingers up and down in vain attempt to shift some of the congestion. The pressure didn’t do much besides force a couple of stray tears to slip down her cheeks, and she wiped them away with a huff before rolling back onto her stomach and burying her face in the pillow. “Ugh! Fucki’g hate this.”
Rio almost wanted to push back against that first part—she’d be the arbiter of how cute Agatha was at any given time, thank you very much—but decided to let it go. Instead she just snuggled up even closer and pressed a kiss to her overheated shoulder.
“I can think of a few things that might make you feel a little better.”
Agatha turned her head and seemed to consider Rio’s meaning, even started to hum her approval, but it quickly morphed into a deep cough that it took a few breaths to recover from. Her cheeks were flushed even redder now, and she closed her eyes again like if she wasn’t looking at Rio then Rio wouldn’t see her.
“Or...,” Rio started, taking the hint, but still kissing Agatha’s shoulder again for good measure, “I could go make us some breakfast, maybe get you some meds so you can whine a little more clearly, or—”
She stopped when she noticed a stormy look settling over Agatha’s face. To her surprise, Agatha rolled abruptly onto her right side so her back was to Rio as she pulled the blankets back up to her shoulders.
“You can do whatever you want,” she muttered sharply. “I’b goi’g back to sleep.”
“Wait, what’s wrong? What did I say?”
“Ndothing, it’s fide,” Agatha snapped. She tried to sniffle, but only managed a squeaky little tease of a breath that just served to irritate her more. She scrubbed at her nose again, and Rio could hear the congestion shifting, but it didn’t seem to actually be helping. Judging by Agatha’s wavering breath, it actually seemed to be doing quite the opposite. It took a second, but finally the sneeze managed to work its way forward and Agatha stifled it into her pillow with a soft “hHP’CHh!”
“Bless you,” Rio said automatically.
“Eat a dick,” Agatha shot back, voice muffled by the pillow and trembling like she was fighting off another sneeze.
“I was more thinking pancakes, but whatever you want I guess.” Rio meant it to diffuse the tension, and it seemed to work in the sense that it at least didn’t make Agatha any angrier, but that might also have been because she was otherwise occupied at the moment.
Agatha lifted her head off the pillow, eyes still closed, lips parted, nearly panting with the effort, but then her breath caught on the inhale and she wrinkled her nose, and Rio understood. She found herself holding her own breath as Agatha waited for the sneeze to work its way out, but after a long, torturous moment, it became clear it wasn’t coming, and she let her face fall back into the pillow with a groan.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get it next time,” Rio said, poking her tongue into her cheek to keep her expression and her voice neutral; she had a feeling open amusement wouldn’t be very well-received right now. Instead she just leaned over and pressed a light kiss to Agatha’s overheated shoulder. “Get some rest. I’ll be back soon.”
She rolled out of bed and tried to ignore Agatha’s pitiful little whine at the loss of contact. As much as she would have loved to stay in bed and spend all day memorizing every detail of Agatha’s poor, sick face, her body was rapidly reminding her of the fact that she hadn’t eaten much more than finger foods at the party last night. Plus she could really something to drink; the dry winter heat from the old radiators was starting to make her throat feel scratchy.
She slipped out of the bedroom and eased the door shut behind her, but not before she heard a sharp inhale from Agatha as the lost sneeze struck back with a vengeance, scrapping its way out of Agatha’s throat even though the actual outburst was muffled like she couldn’t even be bothered to lift her head from the pillow. Poor thing sounded like she needed all the rest she could get.
She could have gotten a head start on that last night, but Rio wasn’t planning on rubbing it in. At least not until Agatha was feeling a little better.
~**~
It was nearly noon before Rio made it back upstairs.
She’d found Agatha’s kitchen in a state of even more chaos than she’d grown to expect, with little tells that Agatha had been valiantly fighting a losing battle with this cold for longer than she’d been letting on. There were a few days’ worth of dirty dishes in the sink, multiple mugs that had been abandoned with various levels of coffee still in them, a tissue box on its side on the island with evidence of its use crumpled at the top of the trash can, and—bingo—a thermometer next to a discarded pair of reading glasses like the number it had shown had pissed Agatha off enough that she didn’t even want to look at it.
When Rio had picked it up and turned it on, she could see why. The screen blinked to life before displaying the last recorded reading: 99.8 degrees. The background even flashed yellow just in case the numbers alone weren’t enough to convey that that was definitely edging into fever territory.
It wasn’t that she was all that surprised that Agatha would push herself when she knew damn well she should have stayed home, but seeing the proof before her still made something ache deep within her chest.
She didn’t have very long to dwell on it, though. By the time she’d righted the kitchen and gotten a load of dishes going, she heard footsteps thumping down the stairs, and she turned around just in time to see Nicky skid to a stop in the doorway. Rio had maybe a second to brace herself before he processed who exactly he was looking at and slammed into her with a giddy shriek.
“Whoa, good morning to you too!”
Rio steadied herself with a hand on the counter behind her as she ruffled Nicky’s sleep-mussed hair with the other.
She’d always liked kids well enough, but there was something special about Nicky. He was a sweet, precocious kid, never venturing far from Agatha’s side the first few times she’d met him, but a weekend of canceled flights and weather delays that had left Agatha stranded in Chicago after a conference and completely out of non-Rio-related childcare options was all it had taken for them to become thick as thieves.
“Mama never said you were coming over!”
“Yeah, well it was kind of a surprise,” Rio said. “Your mom’s not feeling well, so you’re stuck with me today, and I was thinking we should make something special for breakfast. How do you feel about pancakes?”
“With chocolate chips?” Nicky asked with a conspiratorial grin.
“I like the way you think, kid,” Rio said, wagging a finger at him. “Wanna help?”
“Yes, please!”
A process that would normally be over and done within thirty minutes, give or take, quickly turned into a much longer affair.
Between how sluggish she was still feeling, and her six-year-old sous chef who insisted on doing almost everything himself, it took nearly twice as long as usual to even get batter on the griddle, and even longer before they were both fed and the kitchen had been mostly cleaned up again.
Finally, though, she was able to leave Nicky occupied at the dining room table with a pack of construction paper and his plastic tote of art supplies to make a get well card for Agatha, and judging by the concentration on his face—his brows furrowed and lips pursed in a way that made him look so much like his mother it was adorable—he was taking it very seriously.
Rio felt an affectionate smile tug at her lips as she finally turned her focus back to her sick girlfriend.
Agatha wasn't much of a breakfast person on a normal day, so Rio didn't bother making her a plate that was probably only going to go cold. She did start the coffeemaker, though, but not before swapping out the grounds for the half-caf blend hidden in the back of the cabinet that Agatha kept for the rare occasions that she knew more caffeine was a bad idea, but still refused to take "the coward's way out" that was full decaf. It wasn’t quite tea, but it was a step in the right direction.
This was, after all, still uncharted territory. Over the last year and a half, Rio had seen Agatha in a number of vulnerable states. She’d seen her tired, stressed, drowning in work; she’d seen her fighting allergies and migraines and tears, but none of that felt as chillingly intimate as seeing her down with what was shaping up to be one nasty cold. Between Agatha’s natural tendency to isolate like a wounded animal, and Rio’s own lack of experience in the whole ‘taking care of people’ department, she was…nervous would be putting it lightly.
And then there was the inconvenient fact that Rio had nearly soaked through her underwear just listening to Agatha sniffle and sneeze her way through the party last night, but that was a whole other issue.
It wasn’t that she was hiding her interest per se—there were even times that she thought Agatha might suspect it, but it just...never came up at the right time. Their sex life was plenty active and thrillingly satisfying on its own, and the times when it was relevant—when Agatha’s allergies were acting up beyond what the world’s most basic over-the-counter antihistamines could handle, or that night in the dusty old library stacks, or, well, now—it felt like saying anything would just add insult to injury.
Agatha didn’t handle vulnerability well in general. Just getting to this point had felt at times like pulling teeth to earn Agatha's trust, but it was worth it, and the last thing Rio wanted was for her to feel like Rio was kicking her when she was already down.
Which was fine. Rio was a big girl. She was more than capable of keeping it in her pants if it meant she had earned the trust and intimacy of getting to take care of Agatha.
And maybe this time she’d remember to bring up the sneezing thing at a later time. One where Agatha could have a little more control over the situation, and Rio didn’t feel a twinge of survivor’s guilt every time Agatha’s sneezing went right to her clit.
So it was armed with Agatha’s coffee, the thermometer, and the half-used tissue box, and with her nerves freshly-steeled that Rio climbed the two flights of stairs back up to Agatha's bedroom.
Light from the hallway spilled in as Rio eased the door open, illuminating Agatha who was still asleep, but restless now.
She’d managed to kick off most of the covers, and she was hugging a pillow from Rio's side of the bed to her chest, the lower half of her face pressed into it now that she’d lost her blanket-handkerchief. She wasn’t snoring as much, but Rio could still hear her breath whistling through her nose and rattling in her chest.
For a moment, Rio debated just leaving the coffee and the tissues and letting her sleep, but then Agatha rolled fully over and Rio noticed just how fast her eyes were moving beneath her lids, the deep furrow in her brow, the downward curve of her lips that were moving soundlessly as she slept.
Oh, right. Fever dreams.
Fuck.
Rio stood frozen for a moment, not entirely sure what she was supposed to do, but then Agatha’s grip on the pillow shifted as she hugged it tighter to her chest, giving Rio a better look at the bottom half of her face. More specifically, Rio could see her chin, which was quivering like it only did when she was trying not to cry.
Another attempt at a squeaky inhale through her nose, and Agatha let out a soft whimper that might have been “No,” or maybe “Don’t,” or even something else entirely—it was hard to tell with the congestion—but it was enough to make Rio’s decision for her.
She set the mug and the rest of her haul on the nightstand and swept over to the edge of the bed, squeezing a hand lightly against Agatha’s shoulder.
Agatha’s eyes flew open with a sudden gasp, and she scrambled halfway to upright, pressing her back to the headboard and pulling her knees in close to her chest. Before Rio could even react, Agatha’s nose twitched once and she pinched it hard, stifling a pair of sneezes into little more than a strained exhale before scrubbing roughly at her nose to try to eradicate the rest of the tickle that Rio knew she must still be feeling.
Ordinarily, Rio would chastise her for stifling so aggressively, but the move seemed so instinctual, and Agatha so fragile that she couldn’t find it in herself to comment on it. Instead, she waited through another vicious stifle, and then another before Agatha finally managed to beat the itch back long enough to get in a full, albeit shaky breath.
When her gaze finally flickered to Rio, it seemed to take a moment for it to register, but then Rio saw a flash of recognition in those glassy blue eyes.
“Rio?” Agatha croaked. She eased up on her nose and lowered her hand just a little bit, keeping it cupped and ready just in case.
“I’m here,” Rio said gently. She sat down on the edge of the bed, close enough to be reassuring, but far enough away to give Agatha space if that’s what she needed. Sometimes it could be hard to tell after a bad nightmare, and Rio didn’t want to risk making any wrong moves, especially with a fever in play.
“hH’TCHh!”
The sneeze came on so suddenly that Agatha wasn’t even able to get her hand up in time, but even without it, it was a soft little thing—a rush of air through a clenched jaw that made her whole body tense and had Rio wincing in sympathy as she squeezed Agatha’s calf with one hand and leaned over to grab the tissue box with the other.
“Bless you times however many that was.”
Agatha rolled her watery eyes as she reached for the tissues, but the corner of her lips twitched upwards, which seemed like a good sign. She blew her nose—well, she tried to; it didn’t sound like it was doing all that much good—and finished with a crackle of a cough that she aimed at the inside of her wrist.
“How are you feeling?” Rio asked once Agatha had a chance to catch her breath.
Agatha huffed out a weak laugh that stopped just short of turning into another cough. Instead of answering right away, she just crumpled her tissue in her fist and grabbed the steaming mug off the nightstand.
She sniffed it skeptically at first. Or rather, she tried to sniff it, but her cheeks reddened when she realized she couldn’t smell much of anything at the moment. She settled on taking a tentative sip, shooting Rio a suspicious look over the rim of the mug.
“Coffee?”
“I...yeah, of course. I mean it’s half-caf, but yeah.” Rio scanned Agatha’s face, searching for any flicker of expression that might clue her in to whatever it was she was missing. “Why, is there something wrong with it?”
Agatha shook her head as she took another sip and sniffled. It was more of a crackling sound this time, and there was a little bit of wetness gathering at the rim of her nostrils. She swiped absently at her nose with the damp tissue still clutched in her left hand.
“Ndo, it’s fide.” Agatha shrugged. “Just figured you’d try to mbake mbe drink subthi’g all gross and healthy.”
Her tone was as lighthearted as she could manage with her voice little more than a gravelly rasp—which was, for the record, far hotter than it had any right to be—but Rio could hear the underlying question in her voice, that unspoken fear of vulnerability that made Rio’s heart squeeze in her chest.
“Ok, first of all,” Rio started, ticking her points off on her fingers as she spoke, “I would never make you drink anything. Second: I like to think I’d at least try to make it taste good if I offered you something like that, and third: you’re dodging the question.”
“What question?” Agatha’s brow furrowed adorably, and Rio had to fight the urge to lean over and kiss it.
“How are you feeling?” Rio repeated. She’d originally meant it about the nightmare, but she’d take any answer Agatha felt up to giving.
“Bad,” Agatha grumbled. “Worse, I guess.” She sniffled and took another long sip of her coffee, wincing as she swallowed before setting the mug back on the nightstand. “Thought sleeping was supposed to mbake you feel better.”
“I think its gonna take a little more sleep than a mid-morning nap for a cold this bad,” Rio said gently. She didn’t bother to add that what little sleep Agatha had managed to get during said nap seemed to have been far from restful.
Agatha scowled and flopped down onto her back with a heavy sigh.
“I hate this.”
“I know, love.” Rio tapped Agatha’s hip to get her to scoot over a little before lying down next to her. Agatha immediately cuddled up to her like a magnet to iron, burying her warm—very warm—face in the curve of Rio’s neck with a miserable sniffle.
“You want to talk about it?” Rio asked after a quiet moment.
“Mm-mm.”
The barely-voiced nasal response as Agatha shook her head came out stilted and squeaky, the air fighting its way through the wall of congestion that only sounded worse now that she was horizontal again. Poor thing sounded more miserable than Rio had ever heard her before, and while she couldn’t fix it, she could at least give her as much comfort as she needed right now.
Rio kissed Agatha’s clammy forehead again and thought about the thermometer on the nightstand. It was so close. All she’d have to do was roll over and grab it, but Agatha was already snuggled up so close to her, her face pressed against Rio’s neck so Rio could feel every congested little breath, every flutter of her eyelashes as she settled, every—oh, good—every hitchy inhale before Agatha brought her cupped hands up to her nose between them.
She tried to scrub the tickle away not by actually itching at her nose, but rather by nodding her head lazily so that she could keep her hands while still trying to bully her nose into submission.
And, presumably, to kill Rio because holy shit.
Her whole body suddenly felt like a live wire. Her hands stilled in Agatha’s hair and she pressed her thighs together to try to relieve some of the inconvenient heat between them. So much for playing it cool.
Agatha, for her part, was far too preoccupied with her own nose to even notice. After a few more useless rubs, she lowered her hands and settled her head in the notch of Rio’s shoulder.
The tentative peace lasted for all of about thirty seconds before Rio felt Agatha wrinkle her nose again. There was a sudden sharp intake of breath, and then…”hhiHT—hhuh...ugh!”
The sneeze sputtered out like a dying engine, and Agatha’s frustrated growl morphed into a desperate whimper as she raked her nails clumsily down the length of her nose as though she were trying to claw it off her face.
Rio, for her part, was very nearly lightheaded, but she managed to squeak out a soft, “Bless you.”
"For what? That was'nd evend a real sndeeze," Agatha whined, giving her nose one last angry rub for good measure.
Rio swallowed to try to clear the sudden dryness in her throat. "Yeah, well, you still get an A for effort.”
Agatha scoffed as she finally lowered her hands and nestled her face further into Rio’s neck with a self-pitying sniffle.
“I think I’d prefer my sndeezes pass/fail,” she grumbled. “Ebphasis on the ‘pass.’”
Rio didn’t trust her voice to stay steady, so she settled for biting her lip and humming a noncommittal response. She was half-expecting another sneeze to swoop in and finish what that teasing false start had been edging towards, but after a few quiet minutes, she felt Agatha’s breathing even out and her body relax.
Rio’s own eyes were starting to grow heavier too, and the last thought she was conscious of was that surely it would be alright if she just rested them for a minute.
~**~
Rio wasn’t sure when exactly she’d fallen asleep, but the next thing she knew, she was waking up to Agatha’s hand on her shoulder gently shaking her back to consciousness.
Or at least, that’s what she thought was happening until she heard Agatha suck in a breath, and her eyes flew open just in time to see Agatha pinch her nose and aim a strangled, breathy stifle into the space between them. Her hand tightened on Rio’s shoulder, nails digging into her skin as the force of the sneeze rocked through them both.
Rio’s mouth was suddenly bone dry, but she managed to squeak out a soft, “Salud,” that had Agatha flushing red all the way to her chest.
“Sorry,” she muttered, releasing her nose with a wet sniffle, but not daring to move her hand too far. “I was’d tryi’g to wake you.”
“S’okay,” Rio mumbled. She yawned and disentangled her arms from Agatha so she could stretch out like a cat before sweeping a lock of sweaty hair off Agatha’s forehead. “How—”
“Shitty,” Agatha said flatly, anticipating Rio’s question. She rolled onto her back and ground the heels of her palms against her eyes. “Udtil further ndotice it’s safe to assume I just feel shitty.” She let her hands fall to her sides and looked at Rio with the biggest, wateriest blue eyes and the softest little pout on her face. “And I think I have a fever.”
“Oh, you think so, huh?”
Agatha narrowed her eyes. They were so wet the mere act forced a couple of tears onto her lashes, but she wiped them away with a frustrated sniff. “What’s that supposed to mead?”
“Depends. Are we counting last night or not?”
“I did’d have a fever last ndight,” Agatha protested.
Rio sat up, pausing to stretch as her back and shoulders protested having been curled up the way she was before she crawled over Agatha’s legs to grab the thermometer on the nightstand, next to the clock that told her they’d thankfully been asleep for less than an hour.
Rio wordlessly let the thermometer beep to life and turned it around just as the screen flashed yellow.
“What do you call this then?”
Agatha shrugged and scratched lightly at the side of her nose. “I run hot. It’s ndot a fever unless I’m over a hu’dred.”
“That’s not…” Rio sighed. It was fifty-fifty whether Agatha genuinely believed that or if she was just trying to get a rise out of her, but arguing the point definitely wasn’t going to solve anything. “Sure, whatever you say, babe. Now open up.”
She brought the thermometer to Agatha’s lips, but she was stopped with a rheumy glare and a clammy hand on her wrist.
“I’b sick, ndot a toddler,” Agatha grumbled. She snatched the device out of Rio’s hand and stuck it in her own mouth, crossing her arms petulantly, which wasn’t helping her case. Rio bit her lip to try to keep her expression in check.
That became even harder to do when Agatha sniffled and wrinkled her nose, screwing up her face like a bunny to try to stave off the tickle. Her left hand started to drift upwards almost reflexively, but she thankfully stopped short of actually touching her nose, which was so sensitive it probably would have just set her off again.
“Hang in there, baby, just a few more seconds,” Rio murmured just as much to herself as to Agatha. It turned out watching her try to desperately fight off a sneeze measured damn near the real thing as far as Rio’s libido was concerned.
Finally, the thermometer beeped and even from her vantage point, Rio could see the screen flash red as Agatha released both it and an unused lungful of air from her mouth, scowling as the teasing tickle beat a sudden and hasty retreat.
She squinted at the thermometer, trying to bring the numbers into focus, but the mere act of scrunching her facial muscles was enough to irritate her sinuses again. She pressed the side of her hand to the underside of her nose as it began to run, and she practically threw the thermometer back at Rio.
102 on the dot. No wonder Agatha was so miserable.
“What’s th-hh-the verdict?”
“Hundred and two.”
“Oh.” Agatha sniffled through a couple of shaky inhales before lowering her wrist as she sank back against the pillows with a deflated, but emphatic, “Fuck.”
It almost seemed like the shock of the number had been enough to scare the pesky sneeze away a second time, but then her expression crumpled all at once, and she pitched forward into cupped hands.
“hh-hETSHhu—ET’TSHh! Hh-hHUH’ETSHhoo!”
The sneezes almost seemed to trip over themselves in their haste, and Agatha finished with a weary sigh that sent sparks swirling in Rio’s lower belly and made her heart ache with sympathy.
“Bless you, love.”
“Thagks,” Agatha muttered, voice muffled behind the hand still covering her nose and mouth. “Could you…?” She gestured towards the tissue box that was still just out of reach on the nightstand.
“Oh shit, yeah.” Rio squeezed Agatha’s leg with one hand to keep her balance as she lunged for the box.
Agatha snatched a couple—the last two in the box, Rio noted—and blew her nose aggressively, finishing off with a little shake of her head as she pinched her nose to rid herself of the last of the mess. When she finished, she crumpled the tissues in her fist and looked up at Rio. Between her frizzy, unbrushed hair, those blue eyes brimming with involuntary tears, and the bright, miserably-red hue of her nose, she looked so soft and helpless it nearly made Rio melt.
“What do we do?” Agatha asked in a small voice.
It took all of Rio’s willpower not to just curl back up with her right then and there, rest of the world be damned, and hold her and kiss her until she was back to herself again, but alas, that was impractical, so instead she just leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to Agatha’s forehead.
“Well for starters, you are going to keep resting, and I’m going to run to the CVS down the block to get some more tissues and stuff so that we can take it easy and get you feeling better as soon as possible.”
Another kiss a little lower down this time on the spot right between her eyebrows, and Rio finally tore herself away from the bed and wandered over to the closet.
“Can I borrow a shirt?” she asked over her shoulder.
When Agatha didn’t answer right away, Rio turned around to find her poised in a state of pre-sneeze limbo with her lashes fluttering, her breath shivering, her hand raised and cupped at the ready, but after an impossibly long moment, Agatha exhaled with a frustrated growl.
“Goddambit!”
“Something wrong?” Rio asked nonchalantly, already flicking through the clothes in Agatha’s closet to distract herself from the heat rising in her cheeks.
“I ndeed to sdeeze but mby fucking ndose won’t let me,” Agatha snapped in a huff.
Rio chanced a quick glance back across the room to see Agatha with a hazy frown on her face and her left hand at the ready as she wrinkled her nose, trying desperately to find just the right combination of hitching and twitching to rid herself of the itch that was clearly driving both her and Rio crazy in wildly different ways.
If Rio watched much longer, she was pretty sure she was going to spontaneously combust, so she forced her eyes back to the clothes in front of her until she noticed a flash of seafoam green out of the corner of her eye. All thoughts of Agatha and her stupid, sexy nose immediately disappeared as she rescued her beloved New York Liberty sweatshirt from a pile of other clothes crumpled in the corner.
"Oh my god, Agatha, I've been looking everywhere for this!"
"Codgrats,” Agatha said dryly, pressing her knuckle to the side of her nose and sniffling hard. “You fou'd it.”
“And I’m taking it back.” Rio slipped the sweatshirt over her head, catching a whiff of Agatha’s fruity shampoo as the fabric rubbed past her nose.
“Wh-whuhh-whudever,” Agatha grumbled. She clearly wanted to put up more of a fight, but the battle of wills she was still engaged in against her own nose was still hogging the lion’s share of her attention. “If you wadda walk arou’d with a-hahh. Ndew York teamb splashed across your tits be by guest.”
“Ignoring that because you have a fever and you have to sneeze and because I know you’re just mad it doesn’t smell like me anymore.”
“Like I could smbell adythi’g right ndow adyway,” Agatha grumbled, which was hardly a denial. She tried to sniffle again, but all she managed was a dull squeak. It barely even sounded like congestion anymore; it was just how inflamed every bit of her nasal passages were. It was just enough to finally coax some movement out of that stubborn sneeze, though, and Agatha frantically grabbed one of the least-crumpled tissues off the nightstand before she inhaled sharply and pitched forward with a sudden “HIH’IISHhyu!”
“Bless you!” Rio said as she wiggled into yesterday’s jeans. The seam between her legs was decidedly not helping her situation, but she forced herself to ignore it. “And look at it this way: by the time you can smell again, I’ll have gotten it all ready for you steal again.”
“Ndot steali’g if I’mb savi’g you frob yourself,” Agatha grumbled. She was already starting to lose whatever steam her second nap of the day had given her, and wrestling that sneeze hadn’t helped. She was blinking slowly, clearly fighting to stay awake, and she was starting to shiver. Rio couldn't help her sympathetic smile as she crossed the room and pulled the duvet back up over Agatha's legs before leaning down to kiss her forehead again.
“Get some rest, mi amor,” she said gently. “I’ll be back soon.”
Agatha let out a little sigh that bordered on a whimper, but she didn’t protest as Rio guided her back down onto the pillow. Her eyes were closed before she even reached it, and she was already snoring by the time Rio slipped out of the room.
~**~
It had snowed at some point overnight. Not enough to cause much trouble, but enough to make the cobbled brick sidewalks sparkle as Rio and Nicky trekked to the pharmacy, their boots crunching on the rock salt, and their breath hanging in little clouds in the air before them. The city was always so stupidly pretty right after it snowed, and on any other occasion, Rio would take the time to savor the winter wonderland of it all, even if it was a little cold for her tastes, but today she was on a mission.
Armed with a notes app list, a couple of reusable shopping bags still stiff with disuse that she’d found in the back of the hall closet, and an energetic first-grader who was having the time of his life knocking snow off of every bush and lamppost they passed, Rio managed to make it in and out of the empty pharmacy in record time. And not a moment too soon as far as she was concerned; the florescent lights in the store were starting to give her a headache.
Once back at the house, Nicky raced off to work on one of the Lego sets he’d gotten for Christmas while Rio spread her haul out on the dining room table to take stock of everything. She’d gotten plenty of tissues and a bunch of different kinds of tea, plus some canned soup and orange juice because that seemed like something sick people drank. She’d never seen Agatha drink it, but she’d rather be over prepared just in case.
And then there was the medicine haul. She wasn’t sure what Agatha’s preferences were, so she’d grabbed a little bit of everything just in case. Even if Agatha didn’t take it now, it probably wouldn’t hurt to bulk up her medicine cabinets a little more.
Once she’d gotten everything sorted, Rio headed upstairs to check on her patient.
All she meant to do was slip in and leave a fresh tissue box, some crackers, and a glass of water on the nightstand—in and out before Agatha even knew she was there—but the door creaked traitorously as she nudged it open, and Rio cringed as she heard Agatha stir.
“Rio?”
Agatha’s voice was barely a whisper and even rougher than earlier like she’d spent the last few hours smoking thirty years worth of cigarettes.
“Hey.” Rio shouldered the door the rest of the way open. Light from the hallway spilled in behind her, and Agatha squinted and pressed her face into her pillow as she let out what might have been a cough or maybe a muffled sneeze scraping against her raw throat. Either way, it made Agatha whine, and Rio quickly set the tissues and crackers on the crowded nightstand and sat down on the edge of the bed, rubbing small circles between Agatha’s shoulder blades until she was finally ready to lift her head from the pillow.
“I hate this,” she muttered.
“So I’ve gathered,” Rio replied. “Water?”
Agatha nodded and lifted herself up on her elbows enough to grab the glass from Rio. Her unruly hair was stuck to the side of her face, and she tried to shake it away a couple of times until Rio took mercy on her and gently brushed it behind her ear so she could drink. Once she was done, Rio set the empty glass on the nightstand while Agatha flopped back down on her stomach with a groan.
“Want me to get this out of your way?” Rio asked, one hand still running through Agatha’s mane.
“As log as I don’t have to mbove.”
“Nope, you can stay right where you are. Just give me a second.” Rio got up to grab the hairbrush and a couple of elastics off the dresser before returning to the bed, crawling up on her knees so that she could straddle Agatha’s hips. It wasn’t exactly an ideal position, but it would do. Agatha crossed her arms on her pillow so she could rest her forehead on them and still breathe while Rio set to work with the brush.
Thankfully nothing was too terribly tangled, but Rio still took her time brushing from the ends to the roots, working every last snarl out, and relishing every little moan and contented sigh she drew out in return. She didn’t get to do this often—Agatha’s hair, much like the woman herself, had a mind of its own and tended to turn into a frizzy mess when it was brushed dry—so she was savoring every second of it now.
Once she was done with the brush, she ran her nails lightly along Agatha’s scalp.
“Want me to braid it?”
Agatha almost never wore her hair up, and even when she did it was usually just thrown into a ponytail or a floppy bun for the sake of getting it out of her face. She never had the patience for anything more involved, but on rare occasions when Rio asked nicely or Agatha was feeling especially clingy—both of which were true right now—she’d let Rio have a little fun with it.
When she didn’t get an answer right away, she almost thought Agatha had fallen asleep again, but then she heard a fluttery intake of breath, and suddenly Agatha’s whole body shuddered as she muffled a pair of sneezes into the pillow.
“hH’HMPCHh! HP’CHish!”
“Bless you!”
“Sorry,” Agatha murmured. “I swear I don’t usually sndeeze this much when I’b sick. It usually just goes straight to mby chest.”
“Oh, so this little performance is all for my benefit?”
The words were out of Rio’s mouth before she could even register what she was saying, and on levels except physical, she was already flinging herself into the Charles.
“Apparently. I guess mby stu-huhh-stupid ndose wants to hh-hog all the attention,” Agatha grumbled as she scrubbed aggressively at her nose with the side of her hand to try to fight off the sneeze that was already creeping back into her voice.
“Well lucky for both of you, I’ve got more than enough attention to go around.”
And apparently Rio was going to keep happily digging her own grave.
If Agatha heard that part, she didn’t respond to it. Her breath hitched, her muscles worked between Rio’s legs, and one arm shot out premtively to grab a tissue from the fresh box just in time for her sneeze again. “HH’IISHhyoo!”
“Salud, mi amor,” Rio said, leaning down to kiss the crown of Agatha’s head because she was pretty sure she was going to go crazy if she didn’t give her body something to do. “Is that a yes to the braid then?”
“Please,” Agatha mumbled sleepily into her pillow once she’d blown her nose and settled again. “It keeps tickli’g mby dose whed I mbove.”
Rio bit her lip so hard it hurt. Imagining Agatha trying so desperately to get comfortable when she was already this miserable, only for her own to hair to brush across her overly-sensitive nose and set her sneezing again felt akin to holding a lit match over a gas can. Fuck, this woman was going to kill her, and she didn’t even know it.
“You got it baby,” Rio said, proud that her voice only cracked a little bit at the very end. She dragged her fingers down to the very ends of Agatha’s hair, lingering at her shoulders long enough to draw little goosebumps to the surface of her skin before setting to work.
“If I didn’t kndow adybetter I’d say this felt like foreplay,” Agatha said sleepily.
Rio chuckled. She hoped it didn’t sound nervous, but she sure felt that way. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Harkness.”
“Ndot by fault if you’re the onde putti’g it there.” Agatha shifted her hips just enough to jostle Rio and send another electric bolt of heat through her whole body. “You getti’g this indto by hair always mbeads you wandda fuck mbe.”
Rio’s palms felt clammy all of a sudden, and she swallowed to keep her throat from going completely dry.
“Like you could even stay awake that long,” she fired back. “Once you’ve got some energy back, maybe we can talk.”
Agatha hummed, and yawned into her pillow. “I’b holdi’g you to that,” she muttered.
Rio didn’t know what to say to that, so she settled for not saying anything at all as she finished the braid and tied it off. She tapped Agatha’s back gently as she shifted her legs so that she could stand back up at the edge of the bed and stretch and not feel every muscle in Agatha’s body tense for every single sneeze.
“How’s that?” she asked.
Agatha was clearly on the knife-edge of sleep, but she gave a contented little hum as she rolled over to look at Rio.
“Love you,” she murmured.
Her eyes were desperately fighting her as they tried to close, so Rio leaned down to give them a little bit of help. She kissed Agatha’s cheek, lingering just long enough that she was pretty sure they were going to stay closed.
“Love you too,” she said. “Now get some rest.”
Agatha let out a contented little sigh, but just as Rio had expected, she didn’t stir again.
~**~
Rio peeked into Agatha’s room twice more over the course of the afternoon.
Once to leave her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich—Nicky’s idea after Rio made him a fluffernutter for lunch because “Mama likes Fluff too, but she should probably have fruit because she’s sick”—and a fresh glass of water, and the second time a few hours later just to check on her. Both times she found Agatha fast asleep, but the second time she’d changed positions and managed to get herself halfway to upright with a couple of pillows behind her back.
The bedside lamp was on, there was a book open on her lap, her glasses were balancing precariously at the end of her nose, and most of the sandwich was gone. She looked so peaceful that Rio didn’t dare more any closer, but she was pleased to see that Agatha seemed to be inching in a more positive direction. As adorable as she was all helpless and miserable, all Rio wanted was for her to feel better.
A few hours later, after dark had settled and Nicky had talked Rio into ordering pizza for dinner—not that it had taken much (read: any) convincing—Rio found herself climbing the stairs yet again to see how Agatha was doing.
She found her in much the same position as before, save for the fact that her glasses had slipped fully off her nose, and the rest of the sandwich had disappeared. In the warm glow of the lamplight, she looked the most at peace Rio had seen her all day.
There was still time to just back out and let her sleep, but Rio really did want to check her fever again and get her dosed up with whatever she wanted before the pizza came. That headache from the store earlier was starting to creep back in, and Rio was pretty sure that once Nicky went to bed, she wouldn’t be very long for the world herself.
She let the door swing open and the hall light flooded in, which made Agatha groan and squeeze her eyes even more tightly shut, but it wasn’t enough to make her stir. The universe was giving Rio one last chance to abort mission, and she took advantage of it by ignoring it completely and walking up to the side of the bed.
“Hey.” Rio placed a hand gently on Agatha’s shoulder. “Agatha?”
That was finally enough to get Agatha to blink her eyes open, and she frowned up at Rio for just a second before her face fell. She swayed forward, and before she could lift a hand to even attempt to cover, she was sneezing breathlessly in the general direction of her lap.
“hH’ITSHHhu—IHYYTtshoo!”
“Bless you, baby,” Rio said gently.
Agatha didn’t reply at first; she just scrubbed aggressively at her nose with the side of her hand until Rio plucked a tissue from the box to replace it with. “Fuck,” she croaked, more to herself than to Rio, “I ndeed that to stop fucking happeding.” She blew her nose, sniffled a few times, and then gave Rio a bleary-eyed frown. “What tibe is it?”
“Almost seven,” Rio replied. “Nicky and I are just waiting on dinner. You need anything in the meantime?”
In lieu of a proper answer, Agatha just flopped dramatically back down onto the pillows and threw her arm over her eyes.
“Cad you mbake be stop feeling like shit?”
“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news,” Rio said, poking her tongue into her cheek to keep from smiling. “The bad news is I can’t do that, but the good news is that we’ve got a bunch of cold meds downstairs that might be able to help at least for a little while. I’m usually a Nyquil gal, but you can…” A storm cloud suddenly settled over Agatha’s face, and Rio let the rest of her thought trail off entirely. “What’s wrong?”
“Ndothing,” Agatha snapped. “I’m just tired.” She flopped back down and rolled onto her side in a way that was clearly meant to end the discussion, but Rio wasn’t having it. Not this time.
“No, come on, don’t do this again. What did I say?”
“Ndothing!”
“Agatha, please. We don’t have to have a therapy session, but you do need to at least tell me what I’m doing wrong so I can stop randomly pissing you off.”
“You’re ndot pissing me off,” Agatha protested weakly. “I’b tired.”
Rio sighed. This was clearly going nowhere, her headache was starting to make some Tylenol sound really good right now, and the last thing she wanted to do was start a fight when Agatha could barely hold her own. The best thing to do was probably just to give them both space and try again later when emotions weren’t running so high.
“Ok, then I’ll let you get some more rest.”
That was evidently the wrong move. As Rio turned towards the door, she heard the blankets rustle and the bed creak as Agatha shot upright.
“Rio, wait, I d-don’t—huH’TSHhoo!” The sneeze came on so suddenly that Agatha didn’t have time to even try to cover. She pressed the palm of her hand over her mouth and nose as a second sneeze ripped through her, but the dam was already broken. Whatever she’d been planning on saying next was cut off by a shaky gasp of a sob that, god help her, made Rio fold in an instant.
“Oh, my love.” She swept over to the bed and squeezed Agatha’s warm shoulder as it shook with the effort it was taking to hold back her tears. This had to be mostly the fever talking, but it still made Rio’s heart ache to see Agatha like this—to not know what was wrong or how to fix it. All she could do was sit there and offer a steady hand until Agatha could calm herself down.
It didn’t take very long. Within minutes, Agatha managed to get in a couple of deep breaths between a drawn out pair of aggravating sneezes that left her pawing at the tissue box. She blew her nose and then started playing with the tissue, balling it up and smoothing it back out over and over just to keep her hands busy.
“The mbeds,” she said finally, voice thick with emotion and congestion. She rolled her teary eyes, clearly frustrated with herself. “Fuck mby fucki’g life, hold ond.”
She sat up a little straighter and blew her nose so aggressively Rio was almost worried she was going to hurt herself. It was effective, though. When she tried again, her voice was still audibly fuzzy around the edges, but nowhere near as bad as it had been.
“My mother…” Agatha trailed off as she added the edge of the sheet into her fidgeting, looking down at her hands to avoid having to meet Rio’s eyes. She didn’t have to elaborate much; they both knew nothing good ever came after those two words. When she got her voice back again, her speech came out all in a rush like if she didn’t get it out in one go it wouldn’t come out at all.
“She hated all the noise whenever I was sick, and I was easier to take care of when I was asleep or too out of it to complain.” She finished with a little shrug and a halfhearted watery smirk like that was a normal thing to say instead of an admission of literal childhood abuse. Her eyes, though, were fully aware of the gravity of the situation, and they were welling with tears again as she desperately searched Rio’s face for a reaction.
Every time Rio thought she couldn’t hate a dead woman more, Evanora Harkness found a way to lower the bar.
It wasn’t a lot of details, but Agatha didn’t need to say anything else for the picture to start coming together in Rio’s mind: Agatha last night, so desperate to either convince Rio she was fine or push her away when she couldn’t sustain the illusion. Agatha ‘joking’ that she thought Rio would make her drink something healthy. The complete lack of any adult medicine stronger than Advil or Tylenol or the world’s least effective antihistamines. No wonder she clamped shut like a bear trap at the mere suggestion of taking something. There was no way Rio could have known, but it still made her feel sick to her stomach for not realizing sooner.
She didn’t trust herself to speak right away, so she settled for lying down next to Agatha and opening her arms, letting Agatha be the one to close the space between them. After a moment of tenuous hesitation, Agatha scooted into the embrace and let Rio hold her.
“Are you angry?” she asked Rio’s chest in a small voice.
“At you?” Rio kissed the top of her head and ran a thumb down her cheek. “Not for a second, my love. That witch of a mother of yours had better watch her back though.”
That got a little laugh out of Agatha that turned into a cough halfway through, and she brought her fist up between their bodies to cover it.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
“Hey, none of that,” Rio said gently. She brushed the tips of her fingers along Agatha’s jaw, gently coaxing Agatha to look up at her. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. I’m not going anywhere. And for the record, I will never ever make you take anything that you don’t want.”
“I’d be easier though.”
“Oh, baby.” Rio pressed her lips against Agatha’s widow’s peak and just held her there for a long moment. Agatha was crying again, sniffling and shuddering in her arms, and Rio felt tears prickling in the backs of her own eyes. “Being sick and having boundaries doesn’t make you difficult. And besides, I don’t love you because you’re easy. I love you because you’re you, ok? I don’t want to change anything about you.”
“I’d cha’ge it so I would’d be sick adymore,” Agatha quipped.
“Even then,” Rio said, kissing her warm forehead again for good measure. “I mean, I wish I could make you feel better, but I do kind of like taking care of you.”
For a second, Agatha looked almost as though she might cry again. Her eyes were slipping out of focus and she sniffed once, her nose wrinkling as she fought to school her expression, and Rio realized a beat too late what was happening.
“hHT’SHIioo!”
Agatha’s head jerked down, and her whole body shook as she sneezed against Rio’s chest. Rio—who had never been more grateful to be wearing a sweatshirt thick enough to hide her traitorous stiffening nipples that hadn’t gotten the memo that she was trying to be normal about this—just murmured a soft “Bless you, baby,” as she reached blindly behind her for a tissue.
She held it out, expecting Agatha to grab it, but Agatha had another idea. Her eyes flickered briefly up to Rio’s with a wicked glint in them before she pressed her face into Rio’s waiting hand and blew her nose against her palm. Her breath started to hitch again halfway through, warm, staccato inhales that almost made Rio feel as though she was going to pass out. Before she could, though, Agatha let out a wordless, frustrated grumble, and ground her nose even harder into Rio’s tissue-covered palm until finally, finally…
“hH’HPCHhioo!”
Rio was too stunned to speak. She felt a spark catch low in her belly, and she squeezed her thighs together, desperately trying to remind her body that this was not a great time as she stammered out a soft, “Bless you.”
“Thanks” Agatha asked, looking up at Rio with a devious little grin. “I think I mbight like you taking care of mbe too.”
She said it casually and softly enough that surely Rio was just reading the double meaning into it, but her cheeks nevertheless flooded with heat.
Luckily she was spared from having to think about it any further when the front doorbell rang, followed almost immediately by Nicky shouting up the stairs.
“Rio! I think the pizza’s here!”
Rio rolled out of bed so fast she nearly hit the floor, and she could hear Agatha snort out a laugh as she got her feet under her again.
“Coming!” she called back before turning back to Agatha. “Do you need anything?”
Agatha shook her head. “I’m ok.”
“Good. I’ll be back in a little bit.” She leaned down with a hand on Agatha’s shoulder to kiss her still-warm forehead. “You’re welcome to join us for pizza and a movie night if you feel up for it.”
Agatha closed her eyes and hummed. “I’ll think about it.”
“You do that.” Another kiss, this time to the top of her head, and Rio finally pulled herself away. She paused in the doorway, though, as a thought crossed her mind, and she turned back to lean into the room.
“Ok, last thing. I know I said we didn’t have to talk about it, but the cold medicine. Are you…” Rio considered her words carefully. “I can take it back to my place later, but will it bother you having it in the house?”
Agatha’s brow furrowed, less like she was upset about the question, and more so that it had never even occurred to her that it was something someone might care enough to ask.
“No,” she said finally. “No, I-I trust you.”
Those three little words hit nearly hard enough to knock Rio back.
Agatha didn’t just trust people. Sure, Rio could pick up the context clues in the day-to-day of their relationship, especially at times like this when she got to see the vulnerable side of Agatha that no one else did, but hearing it said out loud felt entirely different, and god did Rio love it.
She padded downstairs with a giddy smile on her face and lightness in her chest that made her feel full almost to bursting. She paid for the pizza—and left a massive tip for the speedy delivery on a holiday—and it wasn’t until she shut the front door that she realized she’d completely forgotten to check on Agatha’s fever.
~**~
The rest of the evening passed in a hazy blur.
An extra strength dose of Tylenol helped stave off the worst of Rio’s headache, but it did nothing for the bone-deep exhaustion that was rapidly setting in. It took Nicky a few minutes of fierce debate with himself to decide what movie to put on, but eventually he settled on something with dinosaurs and a runtime that was barely an hour. Rio had already forgotten the title, but she was pretty sure it was some kind of Land Before Time spin-off that she might actually have enjoyed if she wasn’t so fucking exhausted.
Thankfully it seemed the movie had the same effect on Nicky. By the time the end credits were rolling, he was yawning and rubbing at his eyes with the tips of his fingers the same way Agatha did when she was really fighting off a crash. It was funny sometimes how even though Nicky’s features didn’t make him strikingly like Agatha at first glance, there was never any mistaking who his mother was.
“Alright, conejito,” she said, clapping her hands together as she got to her feet, “what do you say we start getting ready for bed?”
“Aw, bedtime already?” Rio and Nicky both turned to see Agatha at the bottom of the stairs with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, tissues visibly poking out of the pocket of her robe, and an almost-sheepish expression on her face.
“Mama!” Nicky must have tapped in to some kind of alternative energy reserve as he scrambled to his feet and raced over to hug her, slamming into her legs with enough force to make her stagger back a step to brace herself against the wall. She wrapped her free arm around his shoulders with a soft smile.
“Hi, baby,” she croaked, a small smile playing at her lips. “Have you been good for Rio today?”
“Oh he’s been an absolute menace,” Rio said dramatically, eyes wide, eyebrows raised, and her hands on her hips for good measure.
“Have not!” Nicky protested through giggles. He wiggled out of Agatha’s arms to grab his card on the coffee table. “I was my best behaved, and I made this for you.” He held up the purple construction paper with a triumphant grin. It was a masterpiece in glitter, crayon, and puffy stickers, and Agatha’s eyes welled with tears as she looked at it.
“It’s beautiful, baby! Thank you. We’ll have to find a good place to hang it up, won’t we?” Nicky nodded around a yawn and then rubbed at his eyes again and Agatha chuckled. “Mbaybe we can do that tomorrow. I think right ndow Rio’s right about bed.”
“Can you read me a story first?”
Agatha seemed to consider it for a moment, tapping her chin and humming noncommittally like there was even a snowball’s chance in hell she wasn’t going to say yes.
“I guess I could do that.”
Nicky squealed excitedly as he hugged her again, and Agatha smiled soflty down at him before pressing the lightest kiss to the top of his head. “Why don’t you go get ready for bed and pick out something good. I’ll be right up,” Agatha said.
Nicky didn’t need to be told twice. He raced up the stairs with more energy than Agatha and Rio of them combined, and once he was safely out of earshot, Agatha deflated as she turned to Rio.
“Sorry,” she muttered, the flush in her cheeks deepening and spilling down her neck. “I wanted to come down earlier, but I fell back to sleep.”
‘’That’s ok, so did he. You didn’t miss much.”
Agatha rolled her eyes and bumped her hip against Rio’s. “I mbissed you.”
“Oh yeah?” Rio wrapped one arm and then the other around Agatha’s waist, pulling her closer with a sly little smirk that had Agatha practically melting against her. She pressed her lips gently to Agatha’s forehead, and she was pleasantly surprised to find that while her flushed skin was still a little warmer than normal, she was no longer the one-woman space heater she’d been cosplaying for most of the day.
“Your fever’s gone down.”
“Hundred point eight,” Agatha said proudly as if she were talking about a perfect exam score instead of a temperature. “I think I’m officially od the mbend.
The congestion creeping back into her voice didn’t seem to support her analysis, nor did the subtle twitch of her nose on her next inhale—a small, involuntary movement that Agatha didn’t even seem to notice—that Rio knew meant her body was slowly working towards a sneeze.
“What?” Agatha stiffened suddenly. A mix of confusion and anxiety flickered across her face, lingering just long enough in the lines between her eyebrows for Rio to realize she’d been quiet for too long.
“Nothing,” Rio said. “I can’t just look at you and think you’re beautiful?”
“F-fuh-fuck off.” Agatha rolled her eyes, but there was no hiding the flush creeping into her cheeks. Before she could come up with anythingi wittier to say, something flashed in her eyes as she suddenly seemed to register the sneeze that Rio had clocked from a mile away.
Agatha tried to shrink away, cupping her right hand around her nose and glaring at Rio over it when the arms around her waist didn’t let her make a full escape.
“Something wrong?” Rio’s voice was dripping with feigned innocence as she leaned in to kiss Agatha’s temple, letting her nails run lightly up and down Agatha’s spine—not enough to tickle or distract her, but just enough to let her know that she was free to pull away if she really needed to. No amount of horniness would make Rio hold her hostage, but holy fucking shit did she want to prolong this as much as she could.
Agatha’s breath was starting to stutter in earnest now, and Rio could hear every fluttery inhale, feel every twitch of her abdominal muscles, and see the exact moment something clicked behind her eyes and she realized that she could play dirty. Another more urgent hitch of her breath, and Agatha hesitantly lowered her hand to reveal her nose bright red and wrinkled, her lips curling into an involuntary sneer, her head tipping back as she took aim for the kill shot.
“hh—hhih’IHTtshoo!”
Agatha’s head snapped forward as she aimed the sneezes in the space between their bodies, spray misting Rio’s neck before she rested her forehead on Rio’s shoulder even as the vocal little gasps and hitches in her breath said that she wasn’t quite done. Rio pressed her cheek to Agatha’s hair and began tracing up her spine again she murmured breathless encouragement through a haze of arousal.
“Salud, mi vida. That’s it. Good girl, don’t fight it.”
The praise worked like a charm. Agatha wrapped her arms around Rio’s waist, anchoring herself to Rio as a particularly sharp inhale escaped the last vestiges of her control.
“hH’EHTtschu!”
Agatha’s whole body tensed, rocking them both with the force of it as Agatha’s knee bent just enough for her thigh to press hard between Rio’s legs.
“hHET’SHhiu—‘ITSHhyoo!”
It took every once of control Rio had not to rut against Agatha’s leg like a bitch in heat, but she still somehow managed to breathe out a soft “Bless you,” as Agatha finally slumped against her side with a congested sigh and a sleeve-covered hand pressed to her runny nose.
“Thagks,” she muttered, followed by an experimental sniffle that didn’t seem to do much good. She pressed her sleeve even harder against her nose until two of Rio’s dazed brain cells managed to generate a thought. She plucked the tissues out of the pocket of Agatha’s robe and offered them up with a little flourish.
“So what were you saying about being on the mend again?”
Agatha just rolled her eyes and blew her nose hard enough to send another little jolt of arousal straight through Rio, but if Agatha even noticed, she was well beyond caring. Her little display had clearly knocked the wind right out of her sails, and Rio was pretty sure that she’d be asleep again the second she got her back into bed.
“Fuck off, I’b sick,” Agatha grumbled even though the corner of her lips were already twitching into a smile.
“Oh, well in that case, I think we should probably get you back in bed, hm?”
Before Agatha could respond, they heard footsteps scampering across the hallway, and then Nicky’s voice from the landing calling, “Ok, Mama, I’m ready!”
“Coming, baby!” Agatha called back loudly enough to trigger a coughing fit that had Rio wincing in sympathy. Maybe this cold hadn’t entirely skipped her chest after all.
It took a moment for her to collect herself again, but once she got her breath back, she turned to Rio and held out her hand. “Once mbore indto the breach?”
Rio took her hand with a grin.
“Vamanos,” she said. “I’ll have the bed nice and warmed up for you when you’re done.”
