Back & Blessed

“Hah’ESSCHHhuh! Hhh…heh…EHH’iKTSCHHIEW!”

“Buen día to you, too.”

One bleary, itchy eye opens. As if Agnes’ day couldn’t get any worse, Rio fucking Vidal is leaning against the door frame of her office wearing the knowing little smirk Agnes has wanted to slap off her face in at least four states and kiss off in exactly two.

Today she is decidedly in a slapping kind of mood.

“Oh, come on,” Agnes mutters, slumping back in her desk chair. She swipes beneath her raw, angry nose with the back of her hand and crosses her arms defensively. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Rio steps inside, entirely unbothered by the abrasive non-greeting. If anything, she looks pleased by it. Agnes’ jaw clenches as she takes in the sight of her in a black suit, badge clipped at her waist. 

“The van used to move your victim crossed the Pennsylvania line at approximately two-thirteen this morning,” Rio announces, tossing a folder on Agnes' desk. "That makes him ours.”

“Approximately two-thirteen?” Agnes scoffs. “That’s an awfully specific estimate, Agent.”

Rio shrugs, and steps closer just as Agnes reaches for another tissue from the box that’s occupied the place of honor at the center of her desk for the last several hours. She yanks out three and blows her nose into them louder than entirely necessary.

“Don’t come any closer,” she snaps, her voice muffled from behind the tissues. She forces a cough. “I’m sick.”

Rio hesitates. Her head tips slowly to one side as she gives Agnes a thoughtful once-over. She bites her lip briefly and Agnes can’t help flicking her gaze down at her mouth before she catches herself, cheeks burning as she forces herself to look away.

“No you’re not,” Rio replies matter-of-factly. “That’s your allergy voice.”

Agnes’ grip tightens angrily around the bundle of tissues.

“I don’t have a—”

“—You’ve been out in the field since seven,” Rio continues, sauntering further into the office. “No doubt barking orders at the search team while the pollen count in Westview crept higher and higher. And let me guess, you skipped your allergy medication because it makes you...foggy.”

Rio pauses and clicks her tongue, the sound soft, disapproving, and much too familiar. “You still haven’t learned, have you?”

Seething and caught, Agnes lowers the tissues and fixes Rio with damp, murderous eyes. 

“And you still think being observational passes for being charming.”

“Observation is work,” Rio tosses back. “The charm is purely recreational.”

Agnes opens her mouth, but the sharp retort forming on her tongue never makes it out. The prickling in her nose sharpens without warning – spreading hot, feathery and ferociously until it reaches somewhere deep and inevitable. Her upper lip twitches, and she crushes a fist beneath her nostrils in an attempt to bully the sensation back into submission.

It’s no use.

Rio looms over her, watching openly, infuriatingly calm, as Agnes’ breath hitches once, twice—

“Hihh-heh—! HEh’ISSCHiue!—HUH’ihhSCHHHiuh!” 

Both sneezes wrench through her in unreasonably rapid succession, folding her over her desk. Agnes stays there, eyes squeezed shut, fist pressed beneath her aching nose.

“Just the two?” Rio tuts. “Bless you, Detective.”

“I—” Agnes gasps, uncurling with a thick, damp sniffle. "Fuck you."

“We’re working a case together. That would be highly inappropriate....Detective.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Agnes scowls. “That was an insult, not an invitation.”

“I remember the difference. Do you?”

“—HAH’EIKSSCHHiue!”

Rio’s smirk only widens. 

“I thought that might be your answer.” 

🔮Salem-era Agatha🔮

3 things I like about her:

Her hunger for knowledge. Like, if you think about it, she was almost killed for basically just reading above grade level. She's a nerd whose self-preservation instincts are rivaled only by her curiosity and it makes her such an interesting character.

Speaking of self-preservation, I love that she's resilient and scrappy and always looking out for herself for better or worse (usually worse lol).

Is it too much of a cop-out to say just look at her?

Like she's already so gorgeous and I am not immune to a good period costume 🤤🫠

a few more than 3 snz-related headcanons:

She does own proper handkerchiefs, she swears, but she can’t really be bothered with them most of the time. Especially when she’s busy with her spellwork or engrossed in a new book, it’s much easier to just use her hand or sleeve or even the hem of a skirt or cloak to catch an errant sneeze, or try to scrub a runny nose or watery eyes into submission.

She gets so self-conscious about the way she sounds when she’s really congested. She hates not sounding like herself and not being able to pronounce words correctly (especially when it messes with her spellwork) and goes out of her way to try to avoid ‘m’s and ‘n’s at all costs (until she starts getting too tired or feeling too miserable. this is sometimes as close as she will get to admitting that she's sick.)

She gets summer colds with frankly insulting regularity. She gets a few weeks of peace after the worst of her spring allergies have tapered off only for a cold to knock her right back down again.

Speaking of getting sick, her favorite blanket when she's feeling unwell is Rio's green cloak. While she usually leaves it hanging by the door as a visual reminder that Rio will be coming back to her, when she's sick, she'll wrap herself up in it in bed, surrounding herself with as much of Rio as she can while wishing she had the real thing with her. +(After everything goes to shit, Agatha will sometimes wake up after a fever dream with that same cloak draped over her. She hates how much it still brings her comfort, and she always leaves it behind when she's feeling well enough to move on, but Rio never stops leaving it for her)

Her seasonal allergies are a recent development and though it pisses her off to no end, she’s still very academic about it. She keeps track of patterns and specific triggers to avoid, even down to which plants really make her sneeze vs ones that just leave her itchy, stuffed up, and unsatisfied (and later on, which ones evoke the best reactions from Rio 😏)

Two words: pregnancy rhinitis. 🤭🔥

3 snzarios/prompts/ideas/whatever:

The first time Agatha gets sick around Rio. Woman who’s literally never had anyone care about her wellbeing before + cosmic entity who’s never taken care of a sick human (which then leads to the inverse where Rio learns that her human form is not entirely immune to things like the common cold, especially when she's basically all over Agatha 24/7 🤭)

When she and Rio are tentatively starting to woo each other (after quite a few instances of wild post-siphoning sex, of course), Rio starts trying to pick up human courting techniques including bringing Agatha bouquets of flowers or even flower crowns she’s made for the solstice or another fair-weather festival. Using flowers that she doesn’t know Agatha’s allergic to. Oops. (Bonus points if Rio has no idea that this could happen and is torn between enjoying it and stressing about how fragile humans are (a sentiment which Agatha would very much like to protest…when she’s not so busy proving Rio’s point.))

 Obligatory ‘accidentally siphoning a cold’ scenario. Just the thought of being perfectly fine one second and then getting bowled over by a sudden onset of, like, day 3 of a nasty cold is so delicious 😈

🌟Peggy Carter🌟 (thank you for this one!! truly one of my most beloveds of all time and i loved having an excuse to think about her again lol 🥰)

3 things I like about her:

Her fighting style. I LOVE that her MO is to grab the heaviest object she can and just hit men with it until they fall over. She’s a brawler, she’s resourceful, she's iconic, and she does it all with jazzy music playing in the background and it's always entertaining to watch.

Her heart. Despite being more than capable of looking after herself and being aware that her work can put the people she loves in harm's way, she never stops loving people (or even puts that much effort into pushing people away; the one "fight" she has with Angie lasts for a single episode before she's apologizing in her own way) Idk if this is making a lot of sense, but I think her character is really nuanced and I love her.

FIRST WLW KISS IN THE MAINLINE MCU!! To quote the pinned post on my main:

❤️ honorable mention to Bésame 1946 Red Velvet lipstick for being a fucking game changer and remaining a staple in my vanity over a decade later

3(ish) snz-related headcanons:

Stress colds!!! 🫠 Any time she pushes herself too hard for too long she’s liable to come down with something the second she has a chance to relax. It’s so predictable that Angie picks up on the pattern after, like, the third time it happens, but somehow Peggy is always very surprised Pikachu face about it.

She's very stiff-upper-lip about being sick. She'll deny as long as she can get away with it (and longer if she's at work or in the field), but even after she reaches the point of honesty, she’ll downplay it as much as she can. She doesn’t like being fussed over, but she enjoys a little bit of gentle caretaking and she will get downright cuddly when she’s feeling miserable enough 🥹

She tends to sneeze in really long, drawn out fits. I don’t think she has a set number, but it’s usually at least 5-7 (more if something’s setting off her allergies) with like 30 seconds to a minute of pure nasal torture in between each one that she will still try to talk or work through even though it’s clearly a lost cause. She always finishes with a rapid-fire double or triple though and a heavy sigh of relief.

After much consideration I am bestowing unto Angie Martinelli a latent sneeze kink that makes itself known when she sees Peggy sneeze for the first time. They’re in the middle of a conversation at the automat bar, and Peggy’s breathy, stuttering voice as she tries to keep up between sneezes is enough to nearly take her lesbian ass out.

3 snzarios/prompts/ideas/whatever:

“Howard [Stark] wanted to create a cure for the common cold. He came up with a compound that brings on intense symptoms in minutes.” - That is a direct quote from episode 2x04 and it has been haunting me for a decade. That’s it, that’s the scenario.

The walls at the Griffith House are thin, and the first time Peggy gets sick there, she’s shocked and a little bit mortified when she finds out Angie can hear her coughing and sneezing the whole time in the next room over.

The rain has flattened Scully’s hair and soaked through every layer of her clothing. Her nose is raw and running, and she can no longer differentiate between rain dripping down her face or the results of the cold she’s been fighting off. Her lungs ache so badly it’s almost a welcome distraction from how sore her throat is. 

Fighting off seems less of an applicable descriptor with every sloshing, miserable step forward.

Over yet another deafening roll of thunder, Scully hears a car approach behind her. She turns, shielding her eyes against the approaching headlights, but it’s just enough to set off the persistent tickle that’s been plaguing her for days now.

“Hh’ahhSCHiew! hh-hih’pTSCHhhiu!”

Scully folds forward into her cupped hands, just as the car passes her and brakes, its tires sluicing through a puddle at the shoulder of the road. Icy water soaks her from head to toe and the shock of it draws a shuddering gasp from her, that immediately breaks into a third sneeze.

“—huhhh’ehtSCHhiuue!”

She straightens, blinking blearily against the glare of the brake lights as someone emerges from the car and approaches at a jogging pace. Reaching instinctively for her firearm, Scully’s trembling fingers fumble against the heavy, wet fabric, panic rising as she struggles to reach it.

“I-I'm a federal agent!” She tries to shout, but her sentence breaks off into a harsh, damp cough and all she can do is stumble backwards, holding one arm out defensively as the figure grows closer. “I’m armed,” she tries again, rainwater spluttering from her lips with another cough. “...P-please, no—”

“Scully? What the hell are you doing out here?” 

Mulder’s face suddenly appears mere inches away from hers, and all at once Scully is relieved and furious in equal measure. Rain drips from her eyelashes and down the sides of her nose, and she wipes at both with the back of one shaking hand. Her teeth are chattering so hard she can hear them over the next clap of thunder, and clenching her jaw does little to help matters.

“You t-took..took the c-car, Mulder.”

“I’m sorry, I got a call, and I thought—”

“—You left me, w-with…without…didn’t…d-didn’t know if you were…were c-coming back.”

“And you thought you’d walk all the way back to the motel?” he exclaims, sounding incredulous. “In this?” He steps forward and touches her still-outstretched arm, forcing her to lower it. “Jesus, Scully. You’re soaked. Come on, get in.” 

He steps closer, shrugging off his jacket, but Scully shakes her head and steps aside. She presses two trembling fingers beneath her nose as her breath begins to hitch again, but the last hour has stripped her of the ability to hold anything back.

“ihh’ngXSHhh!—Hehh’shhiew! hih—?!…Huhhpt’TSSCHiiueew!”

The last sneeze bends her nearly double, and she loses her footing on the muddy shoulder of the road. Mulder catches her by both arms, then settles his coat over her shoulders. Scully wants to protest, wants to pull away, but her lips are numb and she can’t quite find the words. 

“Y-you…you left me,” is all she manages to get out, her small, hoarse voice nearly drowned out by the rain.

She lets him guide her to the car – one hand on the small of her back, the other gripping firmly at her arm.

ᛝ

The motel is only minutes away, but by the time they arrive, the fever, the overheated car, and the suffocating warmth of damp wool have become too much. Scully is still trembling with chills. She is distantly, clinically aware that the physiological contradiction of shivering violently while all at once feeling as though her skin is on fire is, objectively, not good.

She knows the car has stopped and that she ought to move. Instead, she remains curled in the seat, shaking.

Mulder says something she can’t quite make out over the ringing in her ears, his voice somehow both far away and far too loud. Scully winces and closes her eyes, uttering a soft, involuntary groan. 

“...Scully? Are you all right?” “Mhmm…m’just…jus'a little dizzy,” she mumbles. Her voice also seems to be coming from a great distance away, though the vibration of it makes her throat ache, her head throb, her nose tingle again. She swallows hard and sniffles futilely.

Mulder’s palm settles against her forehead before she can stop him, and Scully makes a faint sound of protest. She catches his wrist, weakly trying to push him away with numb fingers as a sudden sneeze suddenly pitches her forward.

“hah’ETSSCHhhi!”

She doesn’t manage to turn her face away in time, her grip tightening helplessly around his wrist as she sneezes openly against his arm. “Oh, God,” Scully blurts out, breathless and hoarse. Her teeth are chattering again, her eyes stinging with the threat of tears, and she sniffles thickly, trying to apologize while fighting off the next sneeze. “I’mb—I’b—hhh—I’mt'SCHhiewwh!…God, m’sorry—”

“—Hey,” Mulder interjects, lowering his hand from her forehead to cup her cheek. His touch is as gentle as his tone of voice, and she closes her eyes again, leaning into both. “None of that,” he continues. “There’s nothing you have to be sorry for. C’mon, Scully. Let’s get you inside.”