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Finding Agatha crouched under her shop's counter was not on her to-do list. Discovering Rio in the opposing corner, balled up in a way that should not have been humanly possible, was also not high on that list.
"Hiya Jen!" Agatha chirped.
"It's four thirty in the morning— you both realize that?" Jen, clad in her pajamas and matching sleep mask, propped a hand on her hip. The baseball bat in the other dropped lamely to the ground.
At the very least, Agatha was looking at her. Rio simply shrugged, more interested in her dagger than anything, or anyone, else in the shop.
"You couldn't have called ahead of time?" Jen asked weakly, hands gesturing to the front door. "I thought someone had broken in!"
A beat.
"But it's just you."
Agatha stood up in an instant. "Just us?! I'll have you know that B&E was a hobby of mine back in the twenties."
"It's a fact, it was." Rio stabbed her dagger into the floor, much to Jen's dismay, and in one fluid motion, pulled herself up. "She was brilliant, too." She purred.
Jen didn't understand, how Agatha, let alone Lilia, overlooked Rio's antics… She was relatively fond of her personal space. It just so happened that Rio was also fond of Jen's personal space.
"Can you come get your witch, Agatha?"
The siphon barked out a laugh. "You afraid she's gonna bite?" She asked.
"If she does, I'm calling animal control." Jen stated flatly. "Why are you in my shop, again?"
"Lilia." Agatha leaned against the counter, head flopping back.
Jen raised a brow. "What's wrong with Lilia?"
"She wants to teach Agatha how to read Tarot." Amusement filtered off of Rio in waves. "And Agatha," She flung her arm around her partner's waist, "Doesn't want to admit that she's bad at something."
"We can't all be know-it-all's," Jen looked between the two, "But I'm sure that just eats you alive, doesn't it?"
A middle finger raised her way.
"Still doesn't explain why you're in my shop this damn early." She concluded.
Agatha's gaze snapped Jen's way, "Well excuse me for being proactive and trying to get a head start with my evasion tactics."
"Go home Agatha."
"I can't just say you invited me over?" The woman played a weak bargain— she'd already proven useful with potions, but was far from surpassing her skill of getting under Jen's skin…
With every. Single. Word.
"And use me as an alibi? Get me involved with your affairs? Absolutely not." Jen crossed her arms. "Just talk to her."
Rio shrugged. "That's the easy route. We don't take those."
"Talk to Lilia. Go home." Jen insisted, marching over to the door to let them out. Agatha scoffed, but slunk over to her.
"You're a spoil sport, you know that?"
Jen nodded, a smirk playing at her lips. "For you? Always." But her hand stopped at Agatha's shoulder as the woman passed. "Tell me how it goes, though, alright?" She said earnestly.
Begrudgingly, Jen had a coven now.
And against every ounce of judgment telling her otherwise, she still gave a damn about them.
Even Rio.
"Can you stop stabbing my stuff?" Jen shooed the witch from her shop.
Death gave a mock salute, sprouting a flower at Jen's feet, before disappearing from view.
It was too early for this shit, Jen decided… but at least the bloom was pretty. She closed up shop, drawing the blinds for good measure.
<><><><><><><>
Lilia was waiting for them when they walked through the front door.
The woman said nothing.
Agatha didn't either.
How could she— with the tired way Lilia was hunched over the kitchen table, glasses half-falling from her nose?
"Jen called." Lilia murmured, pushing her frames up with a finger.
"What did she want? Doesn't she know what time it is?" Agatha plopped down on the couch with an artificial yawn, pulling Rio down on top of her. "I'm sorry she woke you."
"She didn't."
Rio chuckled knowingly, "I told you she was gonna hear you on the steps." She spoke into Agatha's neck, leaving barely-there kisses in her wake. "Busted." She cooed.
Lilia settled at their feet.
"I know when something's wrong, Agatha. You're not subtle."
Fingers ran along Agatha's calves as a hush fell over the room. It wasn't tense, Hell, with Lilia, silence never felt suffocating, like something was going to snap at any moment.
Never did with Rio either, until Nicky died.
But unlike Rio, who spoke more with her body, Lilia spoke with words. Like everything that had to be said ordered itself in her brain months before she needed to say it.
Maybe it did.
It was their love language.
But Agatha was inadequate compared to that.
Her language boiled down to sarcastic quips in the face of tough conversation, and running away in the face of the physical… the slow and careful, meaningful physical.
Maybe she'd simply never been good with people.
"Do you have any books on Tarot we can start with instead?"
Agatha's eyes slowly connected with Lilia's— a spark of recognition shimmered in the older's eyes, her gaze softening.
"Is that what this is about?" She asked.
Jaw locking in protest, every last word died at the back of Agatha's throat. No response— not even an inkling.
Agatha could feel Rio's eyes on her.
"Agatha." Death's hand swept across her cheek. "It's just us. Just me and Lilia. That's it."
Teeth worried against her lip, "So I'm not good at Tarot, so what?" Agatha scoffed, looking away from both of her partners.
The fingers against her leg paused.
"I ever tell you that I sucked at tea leaves?" Lilia murmured. "Hated them entirely. The feeling was mutual, you better believe." Her hand came to rest over the top of Agatha's foot. "Though truthfully, how was someone meant to read a big pile of mush in the bottom of a cup?"
Agatha's lips twitched.
"Seriously, it's no better than a family of four yammering over the shape of a cloud; Whether it was a horse or a truck when it was clearly a damn starfish." Lilia punctuated her statement with a light tap against Agatha's foot.
"Clouds are deceiving." Rio piped up, wiggling her way to the siphon's side.
"So are tea leaves." Lilia agreed bitterly, before her tone shifted to something much softer. "If you didn't want to try Tarot, Agatha, it wouldn't hurt my feelings any."
"You just seemed so determined to teach me."
"Only if you wanted to be taught."
Agatha nodded slowly, a second yawn spilling free from her lips. Real this time— bringing reflexive tears to her eyes.
"Even if you wanted to sit at the table and tell me how you'd interpret the cards, regardless of what they actually were, that'd be fine too, I suppose." Lilia added, head tilted. "See what the Harkness line really thinks of them."
"Oh, they'll never know. I'll badmouth them after the lesson." Agatha quipped.
Lilia snorted at that. "Just as long as you don't go waking Jen up over it next time, then I'll take it."
"She needs to find a harder lock to pick." Rio muttered.
"I'll put her on speaker next time she calls." Lilia's hand shifted upward, resting once again on Agatha's calf. "You can relay the message."
A beat.
"But wake me up next time."