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Rio—blood-drenched, teeth bared, snarling—remains tense like a coiled spring until Agatha moves into her line of sight and closer to her position.
Alice tries to reach for Agatha to pull her back and the rumbling growl that Rio lets out upon seeing it is so low and loud the vibrations can be felt in every bone of Agatha’s ribcage with each careful, slow breath she takes; the sound of it certainly more than sufficient to warn Alice off before the touch ever lands. Agatha’s needs to will Rio back to calm. Everything she can do to display the fact that she's calm and safe herself will help, from forcibly keeping her breathing slow and even and body language loose and relaxed to stepping carefully away from the others and closer to Rio.
Agatha pays no heed to the scattered body parts and drained corpses leaving bloody trails across the floor beneath her boots, nor the way she treads through a pool of viscera to get closer. Her whole attention is fixed on Rio, noting the way the black has overtaken Rio’s eyes until there’s barely any white sclera visible; noting the way they remain shimmering, dark voids she could easily lose herself in, the way they do not return to human form.
Agatha raises a palm up and out slowly as she finally reaches Rio, and some corner of her mind appreciates the fact that it does not tremble. Rio is breathing so shallow and rapidly it looks like panting, leaving her seemingly scenting the air. Agatha blinks and Rio is gone, vanished from her kneeling position on the floor before her.
Before she can even process the thought to whirl around and look behind her, Agatha feels a pair of hands lift her—firmly but gently—off her feet and into the air towards the far wall. It happens so quickly Agatha only has time to be afraid she’s about to be smashed into it, only to feel herself whirled around at dizzying pace until her back is pressed against it, and with it comes the hot heat of Rio’s feverish skin shoving her back until Rio’s back is molded against her.
Rio is vibrating with a growl so low Agatha can more feel it than hear it. With black-taloned claws out, head swiveling in a back and forth scan, Rio has apparently decided there’s still threats she needs to defend against and does not trust Agatha to stay put if that occurs, instead choosing to use the weight and press of her whole body as both a method of safety and of being absolutely certain of where Agatha is by touch alone.
It is clear that Rio cannot will herself out of her current headspace without help. Agatha thinks for a moment, and tries very hard to ignore how she can feel the heat Rio radiates in this state through her chest every time she takes a deeper breath in.
“I’m okay, mi vida. Let me send them away. We’re okay.”
There’s a slight shiver that goes down Rio’s spine at the feel of Agatha’s breath on her neck and ear as she leans to speak the words to Rio. Agatha feels it ripple out from Rio straight into her, electrifying her nerves into hypersensitivity. She has to swallow before she speaks her next words; the way Rio has reacted has made her mouth water reflexively.
“I’m fine,” she calls to the others. “We’re fine,” she repeats, at Teen and Billy’s disbelieving looks. “Rio is just trying to keep me safe, and she doesn’t really know any of you. We’d appreciate it if you all stepped away for a while. We’ll catch up with you later.”
“Are you sure?” Alice calls.
The huff of Rio’s breath tells Agatha that if she had fur right now, Agatha would be able to see it spiked by aggravation.
“I’m sure. See you in a few.”
Hours, Agatha means, but they can take that however they like.
The relief that flows through Agatha when the rest of the coven finish their hushed conversing and finally move off back down the trail until they’ve disappeared amongst the trees is so abruptly intense she suspects her weakened knees would leave her stumbling were it not for Rio essentially holding her up.
Rio does not shift her position until, presumably, the sound of the others’ presence has faded from even her hyper-acute hearing.
For a long moment, Agatha wonders if Rio will simply step away and let her drop to the ground, and the oddness of the way she’s anticipating and already mourning the loss of Rio’s body heat before it’s even gone hits her hard.
She hasn’t let herself miss Rio that way in decades, and yet Agatha’s body has betrayed her before her mind really has time to process it all.
Instead, Rio turns inhumanly swiftly to dig a knee between Agatha’s thigh and press their bodies back together, chest to chest. The abrupt shift in weight and position tears a gasp from Agatha, and she cannot take her eyes away from the glistening fangs that are now that much closer to her throat.
(Nor her mind away from the firm press of Rio’s thighs between and beside hers. If Agatha drops just slightly, her core will reach Rio’s flexed knee and the strength of the temptation to let herself relax down into it is so strong it leaves her nearly quivering with the strength it takes to resist the impulse.)
Rio, like this, is indescribably dangerous.
She has become a creature operating almost wholly on instinct, one that can rarely be reasoned with and is easily triggered to action. If Agatha moves wrong, those vicious fangs could tear out her throat in the same instant as those black talons gutted her to leave her intestines a messy pile of steaming ropes across the already bloodied ground.
“Darling, I’m okay. We’re safe. You saved us, mi amor,” Agatha murmurs reassuringly, almost inaudibly. Rio will feel her intentions and mood far more clearly than she will understand the words in this state, but it has often helped for her to hear the cadence and tone of her words regardless. Speaking them aloud also helps Agatha to feel and sell the reality that the threat they had just faced has been firmly eviscerated by Rio, and all they need to deal with now is the slow thud of Agatha’s pulse that they have both become acutely attuned to.
She is becoming aware of the way the beat of her heart pulses through to the tips of her fingers as they wrap around Rio’s waist. Feels it thud in her core, in her chest, and in her neck as Rio leans in to breathe in the scent of Agatha’s skin.
The warm wash of Rio’s exhaled breath below Agatha’s jaw sends electrified sparks across her skin until it is prickling with nearly painful anticipation, waiting for the press of a kiss or the puncture of fangs as Rio bites down.
The worst part about all of it is admitting to herself that in that moment, Agatha would give in to either option.
(That she wants either option).
Here, trapped by a bloodied, scenting, feral Rio, Agatha knows the best way to bring them both back down to earth safely is not to fight, but to embrace it. She has no magic, and no weapons. No blessed knives nor sanctified peach wood stake to drive into Rio’s black heart.
Rio has, somehow, pressed even closer, as though she wants to climb right under Agatha’s skin, and Agatha has the passing half hysterical thought that that would be a pointless endeavor because Rio had already found a way there long ago. The way the radiating heat of her envelopes Agatha is almost too much and yet Agatha wants more of it, finding she’d willingly burn up with the same fever.
She’s already lost in the way Rio smells of the metallic copper of blood and the remnants of her typical underlying hints of cedar wood and forest soil, for the combination is a heady mix pressing so close.
Agatha wants to press both down and up all at once; up would drive her closer to Rio’s hovering mouth. It’s driving her mad the way Rio is nuzzling at her jaw and breathing and snuffling all around her collar and under her ear like a particularly large, affectionate cat; half as though to replace Agatha’s scent with her own, half as if preparing to devour her, and never once pressing those lips or those fangs down upon her willing flesh.
Until, at last, the brush of a full lip presses butterfly-light upon the skin where her carotid pulse is thudding wildly. Agatha nearly swoons with relief; had she not been so hopelessly turned on and alert to it in that moment, the kiss is so light she’d hardly have felt it otherwise.
“Need you,” Rio slurs into her skin, voice hoarse and rumbling, the words made barely coherent by a mouth full of too-sharp teeth and the way she has her lips resting where Agatha can feel them.
“Then have me,” Agatha replies quickly, feeling the way their shared need has amplified between them until she is beginning to get aggravated by the fact that Rio hasn’t torn her clothes off from collar to hips in a swipe of her claws already.
Agatha finally feels the sharp prick of fangs scrape against her neck and the way Rio’s firm body tenses up against her with the control it takes not to immediately plunge, nearly trembling with the effort.
One clawed hand lifts from where Rio had driven gouges into the wall to blindly touch the opposite side of Agatha’s face in a slow, careful caress along her jaw, as though to wordlessly underline the fact that Rio was waiting for Agatha’s express permission to take exactly what she she was asking for in that moment.
“Oh my fucking - yes, hurry up,” Agatha snaps, before becoming just as lost to heat and need and instinct as Rio herself.