Chapter 16
Rio didn’t sleep.
Alcohol coursed through her veins, she could still taste Agatha on her tongue, her whole body felt alive with something she couldn’t name.
She was the one who had suggested they stop. She was a fucking idiot. She would’ve been more than happy to continue, to let Agatha take her right there in their living room, but she didn’t want to overstep. She had already initiated the entire thing; she didn’t want to push her wife to go to a place she wasn’t ready for.
Agatha hadn’t even tried to kiss her for god sake.
Walking away from Agatha in the living room last night was probably one of the hardest things she’d ever done, and that was saying a lot.
All night she fought the urge to barge into Agatha’s room and continue where they left off. Now she’d had a taste of Agatha, Rio knew she was hooked, that she’d crave her every time she was in her presence.
This was going to be a big fucking problem.
Her phone buzzed on her bedside table, and she groaned before reaching over to grab it.
Alice: meet me at our old café in an hour. dude we’ve got so much to talk about.
They really had.
But was that a good idea? If Agatha woke up and found Rio gone, she would assume she’d run away again. Rio wasn’t running, not this time. She had been chained to the ground; she wouldn’t be going anywhere now unless she was forcibly removed.
She’d send a text. She needed to see Alice and they could probably use some space before they spoke about whatever the fuck just happened.
Rio showered, changed into baggy jeans and a faded Brooklyn Nets crewneck jumper she’d had since she was seventeen, some UGGs and sunglasses to hide her hangover before she left the house. She texted Agatha as she made her way towards the subway.
***
Rio hadn’t been back to this café since she joined The Smith’s Programme. It had been two blocks down from her Abuela’s plant shop/their apartment, and on the last Friday of every month, she and Alice would go to this café before school. Rio could only afford to go once a month, and Alice never judged her for it.
She would visit more frequently once she moved back to Brooklyn after she finished college. She now had the money to. It was always a comfort, especially after long missions where she’d been away from home for so long.
The café had large windows so you could people watch, booths which were dark green, and spinney chairs if you wanted to sit at the breakfast bar.
Alice was already there. She had two coffees in front of her and two croissants. She smiled when she saw Rio.
“Morning.”
“Morning,” Rio grumbled.
“Rough night?” Alice quirked an eyebrow.
“Yes and no,” Rio replied, reaching to pick up her coffee. She sighed as the hot liquid coated her throat and heated her insides. “Thank you for this. How much do I owe you?”
“You’re good,” Alice said. “You’ll get it next time.”
The fact that Alice was suggesting there would be a next time warmed Rio’s insides further.
“You get that message from Hihi?” Alice asked, ripping a piece of her croissant and putting it in her mouth.
“Mhm. Mission failed.”
Alice nodded and Rio’s next question popped into Rio’s head.
“Have you and Jen ever failed a mission?”
Alice shook her head. “No. I mean I guess there was this one time we didn’t complete a mission but that wasn’t our fault. We were supposed to move this mission subject from a safe house, but he died before we got there. Nobody knew how.”
Rio almost choked on her coffee. “Erm…”
“You, okay?”
“Yeah. What was his name?”
“Peter Johnson…I think? I can’t remember it was over a month ago now.”
Rio took another sip of her coffee.
“Okay, so how long have you been in the programme then?” Alice asked.
“A month and two weeks?”
Alice’s eyes widened. “Only?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Almost a year now.”
It was Rio’s turn to widen her eyes. “What?”
“Yeah,” Alice laughed bashfully.
Rio bit into her croissant. “And you’re happy?”
Alice smiled. “Extremely.”
Rio returned it. “And are you…like…keeping it professional?”
Alice furrowed her eyebrows before her face smoothed out in realisation. “You mean are we fucking?”
Rio kicked her under the table.
“What?” Alice laughed. “We’re all adults here.”
“She’s not,” Rio pointed at the woman holding a toddler.
“She’s like two,” Alice replied. “She doesn't know what we’re saying. Why are you being weird about this? The Rio I remember didn’t care about talking about sex in public.”
The Rio I remember.
Rio hadn’t felt known in such a long time that she’d almost forgotten what it was like for someone to know when you were acting out of character.
“It’s my old age,” Rio quipped.
“Dude we’re thirty-two,” Alice laughed. “And yes, we are, it’s like the first thing we did.”
Rio nodded.
“What about you and Agatha? When did you?”
Rio sipped her coffee slowly. “We haven’t…fucked…yet.”
“What?” Alice yelled.
Everyone in the café turned to look at them. Rio’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment.
“Shush!”
“Sorry,” Alice apologised. “Why not?” She whisper yelled. “Wait is this some type of kink thing you two have got going on…see how long you can wait until one of you-?”
“What? No!” Rio thought about it, was that what they were doing? “No,” she repeated when she settled on the answer.
“Oh!” Alice snapped her fingers as if she’d figured it out. “Is it because she used to sleep around a lot?”
“What?”
“Well Jen’s told me some…stories…and she’s the whore of St Ives and all.”
“No.”
Alice threw her hands up defeated. “Then what is it, Rio? Because the sexual tension is there. You two couldn’t stop eye fucking each other over dinner last night.”
Rio took another bite of her croissant to buy her some more time. She swallowed. “I was trying to keep it professional.” Technically not a lie.
Alice blinked at her as if to say that was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. “You’re in The Smith’s Programme…and…you’re talking about professionalism?”
Rio nodded.
“Ri! Fuck professionalism. The shit that applies in main operations doesn’t apply to us. They pair us with the people we’re most compatible with so we work well together. We act as married couples, of course, they expect people to fall in love and fuck!”
The entire café was looking at them again, but this time Rio didn’t care. She threw her head back and laughed. They both did.
“So…you love her…Jen?” Rio asked once they’d settled down.
Alice shrunk into herself, and she looked like that shy sixteen-year-old who was once Rio’s favourite person apart from her Abuela.
“I think so…yeah.”
Rio smiled. “Have you told her?”
Alice shook her head, sipping her coffee.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” Alice shrugged. “Waiting for the right time I guess.”
“There is no such thing,” Rio told her.
“Oh, yeah? Like you’re not waiting for the right time to kiss Agatha, to have the talk with her.”
“We have kissed thank you very much,” Rio shot back.
“When?” Alice replied just as fast.
The fight drained from her tone slightly as she whispered, “Last night…technically this morning.”
“Agatha kissed you,” Alice stated as a fact.
Rio shook her head. “I kissed her."
Alice jerked her head back in surprise. “You did? I thought she would be the one to initiate it.”
Rio scoffed. “Me too.”
Alice raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘Good for you,’ before she said:
“We gotta talk about the shitshow of a performance the Nets put on this season.”
Rio groaned ready to dive into this rant she’d wanted to get off her chest since october.
***
Agatha hadn’t slept.
Her every thought was Rio, Rio…and oh, you guessed it, more Rio.
She was surprised her vibrator hadn’t exploded from how much she’d used it since her return to her room last night. She could’ve kept going, she was more than happy to, but Rio had suggested they stop, and she wouldn’t push.
She heard movement down the hall…she wasn’t listening out for Rio…wasn’t waiting for her to barge into her room like she usually did…no, never. Rio’s footsteps seemed to be retreating, and Agatha couldn’t help but frown.
Was Rio running again?
For fucksake this is why she hadn’t wanted to kiss her yet.
She heard the elevator ping, heard the doors closing, heard it dragging her wife away from her.
Agatha pressed her hands to her face and groaned.
She hated everything.
After about five minutes of regretting her life choices, her phone pinged. Agatha glared at it. She was prepared to scream at it if it was another passive-aggressive message from Hihi.
She pulled it off the bedside table and flicked it on.
Rio: good morning, i hope you slept well. i’m going to have breakfast with alice, i’m not running again, promise. see you later 🖤
All the anxiety and dread left Agatha’s body immediately. She smiled, ready to text back her own reply when the doorbell rang.
She furrowed her eyebrows. The only people who knew where she lived now were her wife and…
Oh.
Agatha made her way to the front door, pulled it open, and Jen all but barged in. Two coffees and a bag of food in hand.
“I don’t remember inviting you over.”
“Shut up,” Jen said as she made her way to the kitchen.
Agatha laughed as she shut the front door.
When she entered her kitchen, Jen had laid out two breakfast bagels, two bowls of fruit in plastic bowls alongside their coffees.
Agatha stared at the fruit remembering the way Rio had taken it from her last night, the way she’d purposely let the tips of Agatha’s fingers dip inside her mouth, the way she’d tasted of them, so sweet, so-
“Hey!” Jen said, snapping her fingers in front of Agatha’s face. “Where’d you just go?”
“So sorry was thinking about all the things I want to do to my wife.”
Jen grimaced getting a laugh out of Agatha in response.
“I feel sorry for Rio being married to a horny freak like you,” Jen said, sitting at one of the chairs around the island.
Agatha did the same. She reached for her coffee before she said, “Calm down we haven’t even fucked yet.”
“Ha,” Jen laughed dryly as she took a sip of her own.
“I’m being serious.”
Jen stared at her for so long it started to make Agatha feel uncomfortable.
She had to make this less awkward. “You went to Jo’s bagels like we used to every Saturday?”
Jen ignored her question. “You’re serious? You haven’t fucked?”
It was Agatha’s turn to ignore a question. “Did you?”
“Yes, I went to Jo’s bagels, have you or have you not fucked?”
Agatha threw hands up dramatically, “No, we haven’t!”
Jen blinked at her. “Are you trying out celibacy or something? Has your mother wormed her way into your mind and turned you towards god?”
Agatha laughed, a proper laugh that came from her core.
“No.”
“Then what gives?”
“Nothing,” Agatha shrugged.
Jen pulled a face. “Have we entered an alternate reality or something? You plus hot woman equals you railing them immediately.”
Agatha blinked. “You make me sound like some sex demon.”
“Well, aren’t you?” Jen’s smile was wicked.
Agatha deadpanned.
“I’m joking,” Jen said, her smile turning playful. “No but seriously, why haven’t you?”
Agatha popped a grape into her mouth to buy her some time. Wrong move. Images of Rio last night flashed in her mind again and she choked.
“You good?” Jen lifted an eyebrow.
“Yep,” she coughed, sipping her coffee. “I just don’t want to ruin what we have.”
Jen furrowed her brow. “Why would sleeping with her ruin…ohhh…you like her!”
And all of a sudden it felt like they were sixteen again squealing about crushes in Jen’s room.
Agatha twisted her face in faux disgust, “I do not.”
“Shut up, Harkness. There has only been one other time you didn’t rush to sleep with a woman and now you have a kid because of it. When are you going to tell her?”
“I’m not.” She would.
“Don’t be fucking stubborn and stupid, although I know that’s hard for you.”
Agatha threw her hand up at the unnecessary stray she just caught.
“You gotta tell her!”
Agatha was done talking about this.
“So, how’d you end up in The Smith’s Programme?”
Jen narrowed her eyes but allowed the subject change.
“Got bored of main operations.” She took a bite out of her bagel, moaning at how good it tasted.
Agatha realised then she hadn’t had any of her own. Jo’s bagels were the best bagels in New York, the best bagels anywhere, and no she wasn’t prepared to argue about it. She was right and everyone else was wrong.
She sunk her own teeth into her bagel and sighed as the flavours and textures filled her mouth. This would always be the best hangover cure. She thought this may be what heaven tasted like.
Actually no, most definitely not. Heaven tasted like Rio.
“Hold on,” Agatha said around a mouthful of bagel. “You said you would never date another agent.”
Jen nodded. “True, but I was talking to Agent C, and she said that the programme was a good way for more independent agents to connect with humanity again.” Jen shrugged, “She was basically just calling me single and saying I should let the FBI play matchmaker, and I thought, well fuck it.”
Agatha tilted her head in agreement. Leaving main operations after one conversation with a senior agent and boredom seemed like a very Jennifer thing to do.
“And do you regret it?”
Jen smiled. “Not one bit. I love Alice, I really do.”
Agatha returned it. “You’ve told her?”
“Nah. I’ll get round to it at some point though.”
Agatha laughed at Jen talking like confessing her love to her wife was just something she needed to tick off her to-do list.
“I already know how you ended up in the programme.”
“I never told you-”
“Didn’t have to,” Jen cut her off. “After that whole thing where you killed the wrong lawyer.”
“Politician,” Agatha corrected.
Jen ignored her. “And you disappeared for all that time. Oh, yeah. Kinda mad at you for that, you couldn’t even text back, Aggs?” She rolled her eyes. “Anyways, and then you pop out with a whole ass wife after being with Wanda for like seven years, after saying you never wanted to get married…yeah…I knew you joined the programme.”
“Then why was the first thing you did after I introduced you to Rio to tease me about being a slut?”
“Force of habit. And it’s not like I could just blurt out, ‘Hey Aggs are you in The Smith’s Programme?’ could I? I needed to prod, ask the right questions before I was certain.”
Agatha shifted in her seat. “Sorry…for not texting.”
Jen glared at her before her face softened. “It’s fine. You’re clearly alive so what does it matter.”
Agatha smiled. They settled into a comfortable silence, eating their breakfast.
“Aggs?” Jen said after a while.
“Yeah?”
“Be careful with your heart this time around, yeah? With Rio. I know you do everything in your power to protect it, but when you offer it up, it’s no longer yours anymore. I just…I don’t want a repeat of last time. I don’t want this to be another Wanda situation.”