Work Text:
Agatha doesn’t clock it all at once.
It comes to her the way weather does, gradually, almost politely, with small changes she might have ignored once. A shift in pressure. A tightening she can feel but not yet name.
The apartment is calm.
Late afternoon light stretches across the living room in wide, honey-colored bands, dust floating lazily in the air. The radiator clicks occasionally, but not loudly enough to be a problem. Outside, traffic hums at a manageable distance. Nothing is blaring. Nothing is wrong.
Agatha sits curled into the corner of the couch with her laptop open, one leg tucked under her, the other draped over the armrest. She’s answering emails slowly, comfortably, half-aware of the familiar sounds of shared space around her.
Rio is at the dining table.
She’s been there for a while.
That, in itself, is not unusual. Rio can sit for hours if she’s focused, shoulders squared, spine straight, attention narrowed to a single thread she refuses to drop. Agatha has watched her do it with puzzles, with planning, with work that demands precision and patience.
But today—
Today, something is off.
Agatha notices the first sign when the fridge clicks on.
It’s a normal sound. A soft mechanical hum, nothing aggressive.
Rio’s shoulders jump.
Not dramatically.
Not enough that anyone else would comment.
But Agatha sees it.
She pauses mid-keystroke, eyes flicking up from the screen without her consciously deciding to look.
Rio doesn’t react outwardly. She doesn’t turn. Doesn’t swear or flinch again. She just stiffens, jaw tightening, pen pressing harder against the paper in front of her.
Agatha watches her breathe.
Too shallow.
She files that away.
A few minutes pass.
Agatha types. Stops. Deletes a sentence. Rewrites it. Her attention drifts again, pulled inexorably toward the table.
Rio’s foot is bouncing.
Not fast.
Not erratic.
Just constant.
Heel lifting, lowering. Lifting. Lowering.
Agatha doesn’t say anything.
She knows better.
She’s learned, over time, that calling attention to the signs too early can feel like interruption instead of support. That it can push Rio further into herself instead of drawing her out.
So she waits.
She listens.
The upstairs neighbor walks across their apartment. Heavy steps, muffled but present.
Rio exhales sharply through her nose.
Agatha’s fingers still on the keyboard.
She feels it in her chest now, that familiar tightening that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with recognition.
This isn’t a crisis.
Not yet.
This is the prelude.
Rio shifts in her chair, dragging it back half an inch without meaning to. The sound scrapes just enough to register.
She freezes immediately afterward, as if bracing for something worse.
Agatha closes her laptop an inch. Not fully. Just enough to stop typing.
She doesn’t look away this time.
Rio rubs at her temple with two fingers, pressure just shy of a headache. She rolls her shoulders once, like she’s trying to physically shake something loose from her body.
Agatha’s mind flicks back—uninvited—to their last fight.
To the moment when Rio’s voice had gone cutting, when she’d snapped instead of asking, when Agatha had felt blindsided not by the overwhelm itself, but by how long Rio had carried it alone before it spilled out sideways.
Agatha swallows.
She will not let it get there again.
But she also knows she can’t drag Rio out of it before Rio is ready.
So she watches.
She adjusts her own breathing, consciously slowing it, grounding herself so she can be steady when Rio isn’t.
Rio flips a page too hard. The paper tears slightly.
She stills.
Her shoulders rise.
Stay there.
Agatha can almost feel the internal math happening in Rio’s head, calculations, thresholds, tolerances being measured and remeasured in real time.
Can I push through this?
How much longer?
Is it bad enough yet to justify stopping?
Agatha hates those questions.
She hates that Rio has learned to frame need as something that requires justification.
Another sound outside, a car horn, brief but sharp.
Rio’s jaw clenches visibly now.
She presses her pen down, knuckles whitening.
Agatha’s heart twists.
She remembers the old version of this moment, the one where she would’ve stayed quiet, waited until the snapping point, unsure whether stepping in would make things worse.
She remembers the fight that taught her otherwise.
The fight that taught Rio something too.
Agatha sets her laptop aside fully now, careful not to make noise. She doesn’t move from the couch. She just reorients herself. Turns her body slightly toward Rio.
Available.
Present.
Rio hasn’t noticed yet.
She’s staring at the page in front of her like it personally betrayed her.
Her foot stops bouncing.
That’s worse.
Agatha’s pulse picks up.
When Rio stops stimming without replacing it with something else, it usually means she’s trying to clamp everything down instead of letting it move through her.
Agatha waits another thirty seconds.
Then another.
The radiator clicks again.
Rio flinches, this time she doesn’t fully hide it.
Her breath stutters.
That’s the moment Agatha knows.
This is no longer just building.
This is teetering.
She doesn’t speak yet.
She shifts on the couch, deliberately, letting the movement register without being abrupt. The cushion sighs softly beneath her weight.
Rio’s head lifts immediately.
Their eyes meet across the room.
For a split second, Rio looks caught, like a child discovered standing too close to the edge of something.
Agatha keeps her voice low, neutral.
“Hey,” she says gently. “How’s it going over there?”
Rio opens her mouth.
Closes it.
Her throat works as she swallows.
Agatha doesn’t push.
She just stays where she is, hands resting loosely in her lap, posture open.
“I’m fine,” Rio says automatically.
Agatha nods, like she accepts that answer.
She doesn’t challenge it.
She doesn’t agree either.
She waits.
Rio’s gaze drops back to the table, but her shoulders don’t relax.
Agatha can almost hear the internal tug-of-war.
And for the first time, instead of bracing for the fallout, Agatha feels something else bloom in her chest:
Hope.
Because this time, the warning signs didn’t go unnoticed.
And this time, there is still space—small, fragile, precious space—for Rio to choose something different.
To ask.
Before it gets loud.
Rio knows before she admits it to herself.
She always does.
The awareness arrives early, not as panic, not as collapse, but as a subtle distortion in the way the room feels. Like the edges of things have sharpened without permission. Like the air itself has become something she has to move through instead of breathe.
She tells herself she’s fine.
She tells herself this automatically, reflexively, the way she’s told herself for most of her life. The phrase doesn’t even feel like a lie anymore. It feels like a setting. A default.
I am fine.
This is manageable.
Just finish this.
She stares at the paper in front of her, eyes tracking the same line for the third time without actually processing it. The words are familiar, she knows this material, knows what she’s supposed to be doing, but the meaning keeps slipping sideways, refusing to settle.
Her jaw tightens.
She presses the pen harder against the page, grounding herself in the pressure. The cool of the table beneath her palms helps. The chair is solid. The floor is steady. These are facts. These are anchors.
Across the room, Agatha shifts on the couch.
Rio hears it immediately, the change in the room, the slight sigh of the cushion, the whisper of fabric. Her body reacts before her brain can contextualize it.
Her shoulders jump.
She hates that.
Not because it’s dramatic, because it’s visible. Because it feels like a betrayal of control.
She forces her shoulders down, breath shallow and measured.
It’s just a sound, she tells herself.
Nothing is wrong.
But everything feels slightly too loud anyway.
The fridge hums again. The upstairs footsteps pass overhead. The radiator clicks like it’s considering misbehavior.
Each sound lands in her body separately instead of blending together the way they usually do. She has to register them one by one, and the mental effort of doing so starts to stack.
Rio flips the page.
The paper catches and tears just a little.
She freezes.
Her chest tightens, not fear, exactly. More like irritation layered over fatigue layered over the creeping awareness that she is running out of tolerance faster than she’d planned.
It’s fine, she thinks again, more insistently now.
You’ve handled worse.
She has. That’s the problem.
She’s handled worse by ignoring it. By clamping down. By forcing herself through until the overwhelm finds another exit, usually sharp words, a snapped tone, or complete withdrawal.
She thinks, unwillingly, of the last time.
Of Agatha’s face going still.
Of the way her own voice had sounded, too loud, too cutting, not what she’d meant at all.
Of the aftermath: the quiet, the apology, the ache of realizing she’d hurt someone she loves because she didn’t ask for help soon enough.
Her throat tightens.
She doesn’t want that again.
But the alternative—asking—still feels wrong in her body.
Asking means stopping.
Asking means admitting she misjudged her limits.
Asking means saying I can’t do this alone, and that sentence still scrapes against something old and ingrained inside her.
She bounces her foot, then stops herself.
Too much movement.
She folds her hands together instead, fingers interlacing tightly, nails pressing into skin. The pressure helps, but only marginally.
Her breathing is shallow now. She knows it. She knows she should slow it down. She knows all the techniques.
She just doesn’t want to use them yet.
Because using them means acknowledging that this is real.
She hears Agatha’s voice gently asking how it’s going.
Rio’s answer comes out automatically.
“I’m fine.”
The words are smooth. Practiced. They slide into place without resistance.
Agatha doesn’t challenge her.
That’s both a relief and a complication.
Because Rio knows Agatha knows.
She can feel the weight of Agatha’s attention from across the room, not invasive, just there. Available. Waiting.
That awareness prickles at her skin.
It would be easier if Agatha didn’t notice. If she could disappear into the work and ride this out the way she used to.
But she can’t unlearn what they’ve already learned together.
She stares at the page again.
The words blur.
Her foot starts bouncing again without her permission.
She clenches her jaw hard enough that it aches.
Just get through this section, she tells herself.
Five more minutes.
But her body isn’t listening anymore.
The radiator clicks again, louder this time.
Rio flinches fully now, shoulders lifting, breath catching sharply in her throat.
That’s when she knows she’s crossed the threshold.
This isn’t manageable anymore.
This is the part where, in the past, she would’ve kept going anyway.
She would’ve forced herself through until something snapped, a harsh word, a sharp tone, an accusation that wasn’t really about what she said it was about.
She doesn’t want to be that person again.
Her hands tremble once, violently enough that she has to grip the edge of the table to steady them.
Her chest feels tight, breath shallow and uneven.
The room feels closer.
Too close.
She thinks of Agatha again, not as a solution, but as a person. Someone who was hurt the last time Rio chose endurance over honesty.
Her stomach twists.
I don’t want to repeat that, she thinks.
The realization is quiet but decisive.
She doesn’t want to power through this at the cost of them.
She exhales shakily and lets the pen drop from her fingers.
The sound of it hitting the table is louder than she expects.
She winces.
Her throat tightens, panic flickering at the edges now, not full-blown, but close enough that she can feel the slope steepening.
This is the moment.
The moment where she either keeps going and loses control later or stops now and does the harder thing.
Her pulse pounds in her ears.
Asking feels terrifying.
But not asking feels worse.
She stands.
Her legs feel unsteady, like they’ve forgotten what they’re supposed to do. She pauses for a second, grounding herself, then crosses the space toward the couch.
Agatha looks up immediately.
Their eyes meet.
Rio opens her mouth.
Nothing comes out.
Her jaw tightens, breath hitching as the words tangle somewhere behind her teeth. Her hands curl into loose fists at her sides, not aggressive, bracing.
Asking is harder than she thought.
But she’s already here.
Already not pretending.
Already choosing something different.
She swallows hard, forces herself to stay in place, and tries again.
Rio stands there longer than she means to.
The space between her and Agatha isn’t large, just a few steps, the width of the rug, but it feels cavernous now, stretched thin with everything she hasn’t said yet.
Agatha is sitting on the couch, body angled toward her, laptop already closed and forgotten. Her hands rest loosely in her lap. Her posture is open, attentive, deliberately unthreatening.
She is not looming.
She is not reaching.
She is not asking what’s wrong in that way that feels like pressure.
She is just there.
Waiting.
Rio’s chest tightens.
She can feel her heart pounding too fast, each beat loud enough that it feels like Agatha must be able to hear it. Her hands tremble at her sides, fingers twitching with the urge to do something, pace, leave, clamp down.
She forces herself to stay still.
You’re already here, she tells herself.
Don’t run now.
Agatha speaks softly, careful not to break the moment.
“Hey,” she says. “You don’t have to rush.”
That nearly does it.
The kindness of it, the lack of urgency, hits Rio harder than any demand would have. Her throat tightens painfully, breath catching as the words she’s been rehearsing internally scatter like startled birds.
She opens her mouth.
Nothing.
Her jaw locks.
The silence stretches, not awkward, but heavy, expectant in a way that makes her skin prickle.
She hates this part.
Hates how asking feels like trying to translate something that doesn’t exist in her native language. Hates how her body reacts like she’s about to confess a failure instead of a need.
Agatha doesn’t fill the silence.
She waits.
Rio swallows hard, forcing air back into her lungs.
“I—” she starts, then stops, frustrated by how thin her voice sounds. She clears her throat and tries again. “I think I’m—”
Her hands curl into fists, nails pressing into her palms.
The word overwhelmed sticks stubbornly in her throat.
Saying it out loud feels like crossing a line she’s spent years guarding.
Agatha shifts slightly, not closer, not away, just enough to signal she’s listening, fully.
Rio squeezes her eyes shut for half a second, then opens them again.
“I think I’m getting overwhelmed,” she says finally.
The words land in the room like something fragile set down carefully between them.
Agatha doesn’t flinch.
She doesn’t react like this is a crisis.
She nods once, slow and grounding.
“Okay,” she says gently. “Thank you for telling me.”
Rio’s breath stutters.
The lack of judgment almost knocks her sideways.
She hadn’t realized how much she’d been bracing for something, disappointment, irritation, the subtle shift in tone that means this is inconvenient.
None of that comes.
Agatha’s voice stays warm. Steady.
And somehow, that makes the next part harder.
Rio’s hands shake again, more noticeably now. She tucks them behind her back instinctively, like she can hide the evidence of how much this is costing her.
There’s a second ask coming.
She knows it.
She hates it.
She also knows, with a clarity that surprises her, that if she doesn’t say it now, she won’t say it later. She’ll push through, snap, shut down, and wake up afterward with the sick realization that she did it again.
That she waited too long.
Her jaw tightens.
She forces herself to meet Agatha’s eyes.
“I—” Her voice cracks. She stops, inhales shakily, then continues more quietly. “I need help.”
The sentence is small.
Three words.
They feel enormous.
Her shoulders tense, bracing for impact.
Agatha’s response is immediate, instinctive.
“I’ve got you,” she says. No hesitation. No qualifiers. “What do you need?”
Something in Rio breaks open at that.
Not in a catastrophic way, not a collapse, but in a quiet, internal loosening. Like a muscle that’s been clenched for too long finally releasing.
Her eyes burn unexpectedly.
She looks away, ashamed of the reaction even as it happens.
“I don’t… fully know,” she admits. “I just know I can’t—” She gestures vaguely back toward the table. “I can’t keep going like this.”
Agatha stands then.
Slowly. Predictably. Giving Rio time to adjust.
She doesn’t crowd her. She doesn’t touch her yet.
“That’s okay,” Agatha says softly. “You don’t have to know exactly what you need to ask for. We can figure it out together.”
Rio lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding.
Her hands come back into view, fingers twisting together now, the need to stim finally breaking through her attempt at control.
Agatha notices.
She doesn’t comment.
She steps just close enough that Rio can feel her presence without being overwhelmed by it.
“Thank you for asking for help before it got worse,” Agatha adds quietly. “I know that wasn’t easy.”
Rio nods, eyes fixed on a spot over Agatha’s shoulder.
“I didn’t want to repeat… last time,” she says, voice barely above a whisper.
Agatha’s expression softens even further.
“You didn’t,” she says firmly. “You changed it.”
That lands somewhere deep.
Rio’s chest tightens again, but this time the feeling isn’t panic, it’s relief, threaded through with something like pride she doesn’t quite know how to hold.
She risked asking.
And Agatha didn’t disappear.
Didn’t harden.
Didn’t make it about herself.
She stayed.
Rio’s knees feel weak suddenly, the adrenaline draining out of her body all at once.
Agatha notices that too.
“Come sit,” she says gently. “We’ll take it from there.”
Rio hesitates for just a beat, the old instinct to keep standing, to keep control, then nods.
She lets Agatha guide her toward the couch, her steps careful but no longer rigid.
As she sits, the full weight of what she’s just done settles over her.
She asked.
Out loud.
Before it got loud inside her.
And even though her hands are still shaking, even though the overwhelm hasn’t vanished yet, Rio knows, with quiet certainty, that something important has already shifted.
She didn’t wait until it hurt them both.
She chose something different.
And Agatha is right there with her, ready to help her finish what she started.
Rio sits on the edge of the couch like she’s not sure she’s allowed to take up the space yet.
Her posture is stiff, shoulders still lifted, knees pulled in just a little too tightly. Her hands hover uncertainly in her lap, fingers twitching with the unfinished impulse to do something, to move, to pace, to escape the sensation crawling under her skin.
Agatha notices all of it.
She doesn’t comment.
She sits beside Rio slowly, deliberately, leaving a small gap between them at first. Not distance, choice. She wants Rio to feel the option of closeness instead of the pressure of it.
“Okay,” Agatha says quietly. Her voice is low, even, pitched carefully beneath the hum of the apartment. “Let’s take this one step at a time.”
Rio nods once, sharp and quick, then stills again like she’s bracing.
Agatha lets a few seconds pass.
She grounds herself first, planting her feet firmly on the floor, resting her hands loosely on her thighs. She slows her own breathing intentionally, exaggerates the exhale just enough that Rio can hear it if she’s listening.
Not instruction.
Invitation.
After a few moments, Rio’s breathing begins to mirror hers, not perfectly, not immediately, but close enough to matter.
Agatha turns her head slightly.
“Can I check a couple of things?” she asks softly.
Rio swallows, nods again. “Yes.”
Agatha keeps her gaze gentle, non-demanding.
“Lights,” she says. “Too much or okay?”
Rio closes her eyes briefly, tuning inward. When she opens them, she shakes her head. “Too bright.”
Agatha reaches for the lamp without standing, dimming it until the room softens. She leaves one low light on in the corner, enough to keep the space defined without glaring.
The apartment exhales with them.
Rio’s shoulders drop a fraction.
“Sound?” Agatha asks.
Rio listens again. The refrigerator hums. A car passes outside. The radiator clicks, once.
“Lower,” she says quietly.
Agatha turns off the background music completely. The silence that follows is intentional, thick but not oppressive.
“Better?” Agatha murmurs.
Rio nods. “Yes.”
Agatha waits another beat, then gestures gently between them.
“Touch?” she asks. “Or no touch?”
Rio hesitates, this is always the hardest one. Her body wants contact; her nervous system is still suspicious of it.
“Light,” she says finally. “If… if that’s okay.”
Agatha’s chest tightens with something warm and careful.
“Always okay,” she says.
She moves slowly, telegraphing every shift. She drapes her arm along the back of the couch behind Rio first, letting the warmth register without contact. When Rio doesn’t flinch, Agatha lets her hand rest against Rio’s upper arm, fingers barely there.
Rio exhales shakily.
Agatha stays exactly where she is.
Minutes pass.
Not dramatic minutes.
Just quiet ones.
Rio’s hands continue to tremble, but less violently now. Her fingers find the hem of her sleeve, rolling the fabric back and forth, grounding herself in texture. Her breathing evens out, shallow but no longer panicked.
Agatha watches without staring.
She knows this part.
The moment after the ask, when the adrenaline crashes and the body realizes it’s allowed to stop fighting.
“I’m here,” Agatha says quietly, not because Rio needs reminding, but because sometimes hearing it anchors things in place.
Rio nods without looking at her.
“I didn’t want to get… sharp,” Rio says after a while. Her voice is rough, scraped thin by effort. “I could feel it starting.”
Agatha’s thumb shifts slightly, a small, reassuring movement.
“I know,” she says. “And you caught it.”
Rio swallows. “It felt like standing on the edge of something.”
Agatha doesn’t interrupt.
“And asking,” Rio continues, voice barely above a whisper, “felt like stepping off.”
Agatha leans her head gently against Rio’s, careful not to crowd.
“Sometimes stepping off is the safer choice,” she murmurs.
Rio lets out a shaky breath that almost sounds like a laugh. “It didn’t feel safer.”
Agatha smiles faintly. “No. It usually doesn’t.”
They sit like that for a long time.
Agatha resists the urge to do more. She knows the instinct, to soothe, to reassure, to fix, is strong. But she also knows that too much input right now would undo what they’re building.
Instead, she stays predictable.
Her breathing steady.
Her hand warm and still.
Her presence constant.
Eventually, Rio shifts, leaning into Agatha’s side without asking, head tipping slightly until it rests against her shoulder.
Agatha adjusts instinctively, wrapping her arm fully around Rio now, firm but gentle.
Rio lets out a long, uneven breath.
The worst of it is passing.
Agatha feels it in the way Rio’s muscles soften, in the way the tension drains from her spine, in the way her weight settles fully instead of hovering.
“I hate that this is still hard,” Rio says quietly.
Agatha presses a kiss into Rio’s hair.
“It’s hard because it matters,” she replies. “And because you learned a long time ago that needing help wasn’t safe.”
Rio nods, eyes closed.
“But it is now,” Agatha continues. “And you proved that today.”
Rio’s fingers curl into Agatha’s shirt.
“I didn’t want to lose control,” she admits.
“You didn’t,” Agatha says. “You changed the outcome.”
They sit in silence again.
This time, it’s softer.
Later, when Rio’s breathing has evened fully and her hands have stopped shaking, Agatha speaks again.
“How does your body feel now?” she asks gently.
Rio checks in with herself, slow and careful.
“Tired,” she says. “But… okay.”
Agatha nods. “That makes sense.”
She doesn’t say good job. She doesn’t frame it like an achievement.
She treats it like what it is: a necessary, human process.
“Do you want to stay here a bit longer,” Agatha asks, “or move somewhere else?”
Rio considers. “Here is good.”
Agatha squeezes her once, a steady, affirming pressure.
They stay.
The apartment holds them in its quiet, the earlier tension now just a memory under the surface, a reminder, not a threat.
Rio didn’t power through.
She didn’t snap.
She didn’t withdraw.
She didn’t wait until it hurt them both.
She asked.
And Agatha stayed exactly where she was.
Together, they let the moment finish unfolding, slowly, safely, without urgency.
The quiet that follows is different from the quiet that came before.
It isn’t tight.
It isn’t waiting to snap.
It’s loose and heavy, settling into the room like dusk.
Agatha can feel the exact moment Rio’s nervous system finally gives up the fight, the way her body sags just a little more fully into Agatha’s side, the way her breathing drops into a deeper rhythm that doesn’t hitch at the edges anymore.
Relief, Agatha knows, often comes with exhaustion.
She adjusts her hold carefully, shifting her weight so Rio can lean without strain. She doesn’t move them away from the couch yet, the couch has become a kind of anchor now, the place where everything slowed down enough to be survivable.
Rio’s head rests against Agatha’s shoulder. Her hair brushes Agatha’s neck with every breath.
Agatha stays still.
She has learned that stillness can be a form of care.
After a while, long enough that Agatha is certain Rio is no longer hovering on the edge, she speaks again.
“Can I check in?” she asks quietly.
Rio nods against her shoulder.
Agatha keeps her voice low, gentle, like she’s narrating something fragile into existence.
“How does your body feel now?”
Rio doesn’t answer immediately. She takes the question seriously, turning it inward instead of reflexively responding.
Agatha waits.
“Tired,” Rio says eventually. “Heavy. But… not bad.”
Agatha smiles faintly. “That sounds like a body that worked hard.”
Rio hums. “It feels like I ran a marathon I didn’t train for.”
“That tracks.”
Another stretch of silence settles in.
Agatha lets it.
She resists the urge to frame what just happened as progress out loud, resists the temptation to praise, to label, to mark it with significance too sharply. She knows Rio doesn’t need it framed as a milestone.
What Rio needs right now is to feel normal again.
Eventually, Rio speaks first.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly.
Agatha’s chest tightens, but she doesn’t interrupt.
“For needing you like that,” Rio continues. “I know it wasn’t—”
Agatha turns slightly, just enough that Rio has to feel the movement.
“Hey,” she says softly. “No.”
Rio stills.
Agatha keeps her voice calm, steady.
“Needing me isn’t something you have to apologize for.”
Rio exhales slowly. “I know that logically.”
Agatha nods. “I know.”
She lets that be enough for now.
After a moment, Rio adds, quieter, “It still feels… vulnerable.”
Agatha’s arm tightens around her in a silent acknowledgment.
“It was,” she says. “You let me see something before it turned sharp. That takes trust.”
Rio’s fingers curl lightly into Agatha’s sleeve.
“I didn’t want to hurt you again,” she admits.
The honesty of it lands heavy in Agatha’s chest.
She presses a kiss into Rio’s hair, slow and grounding.
“You didn’t,” she says firmly. “And you didn’t just avoid hurting me, you took care of us.”
Rio’s breath catches slightly.
Agatha continues, voice warm but unflinching.
“You didn’t wait until it overflowed. You didn’t make me guess. You asked.”
She pauses.
“That matters.”
Rio doesn’t respond right away.
Agatha can almost hear the gears turning, the way Rio always processes meaning slowly, carefully, like she doesn’t want to drop it or break it.
Eventually, Rio shifts just enough to look up at her.
Her eyes are tired, but clear.
“I’m afraid,” she says simply.
Agatha doesn’t ask of what. She already knows.
“Of asking again,” Rio continues. “Of it becoming… a pattern where I always need help.”
Agatha considers this before responding. She wants to get it right.
“There’s a difference,” she says slowly, “between needing help and never trying to carry anything yourself.”
Rio watches her closely.
“You do the second one,” Agatha adds gently. “You carry so much on your own.”
Rio huffs a tired breath. “Too much.”
“Exactly,” Agatha says. “Asking me to help doesn’t erase your strength. It shows me where you’re choosing not to be alone.”
Rio leans back into her again, absorbing that.
They sit like that for a while longer, the apartment wrapped in low light and steady quiet. Agatha rubs slow, absent circles into Rio’s back, not for regulation anymore, just comfort.
Eventually, Rio shifts again.
“Can we… do something normal?” she asks.
Agatha smiles. “Yeah. What do you want?”
Rio thinks. “Tea. And maybe… sitting in different places. I think I need a reset.”
Agatha nods. “Perfect plan.”
She moves carefully, giving Rio time to adjust before standing. She offers a hand.
Rio takes it without hesitation.
That alone makes Agatha’s throat tighten.
In the kitchen, Agatha puts the kettle on. The sound is familiar, grounding. She keeps the lights dim, movements slow. Rio leans against the counter, watching without pressure, body still tired but no longer brittle.
They don’t talk much while the water heats.
They don’t need to.
When they return to the living room, mugs in hand, Rio chooses the armchair instead of the couch. Agatha takes the opposite end of the couch, close enough to feel connected without crowding.
This, too, is aftercare.
Letting space exist again without fear.
Rio curls her hands around the mug, breathing in the steam.
“Thank you,” she says again. Not apologetic this time. Just sincere.
Agatha meets her gaze. “Anytime.”
They drink quietly.
Agatha watches Rio’s shoulders relax further, the last of the adrenaline bleeding out of her system. She feels something settle inside herself too, a quiet certainty, a trust reinforced instead of tested.
After a while, Rio speaks again.
“I don’t want us to repeat that fight,” she says. “The one where I didn’t ask.”
Agatha nods. “Me neither.”
“I don’t know if I’ll always catch it this early,” Rio admits. “But I want to try.”
Agatha smiles softly.
“That’s all I’m asking for,” she says. “Trying together.”
Rio nods, satisfied with that.
They sit in companionable quiet as the evening stretches on, the earlier intensity fading into something manageable, integrated.
Later, when Rio finally stands to go back to her work, slower, more deliberate now, Agatha watches her with quiet pride.
Rio pauses and glances back.
“I’m glad I asked,” she says.
Agatha smiles, warmth blooming in her chest.
“So am I.”
And as Rio returns to the table, not overwhelmed now, just tired, Agatha knows something important has shifted.
Not because everything will be easy from here on out.
But because this time, when it started to get loud inside Rio’s head—
She didn’t face it alone.
And neither did Agatha.