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thelonelylake2024-05-08 08:39 am
fiachairecht) wrote in thelonelylake2024-05-08 08:39 am
this is a gift (all elite wrestling | julia/skye, willow, aubrey)
this is a gift. all elite wrestling, julia/skye, willow, aubrey. skye and the process of becoming. 1.7k words, rated m. for the femslashfete challenge 'origin'.
Whatever Julia spat in her eyes isn't washing out.
Skye leans closer to the mirror, so far over the sink edge that the porcelain digging into her abs starts to verge on painful where it presses into the bruises left over from tonight. The mist has solidified against her skin to a paste that doesn't do much more than shimmer as she scrubs harder with the washcloth.
It can't actually be dangerous, she reasons, hissing as a particularly vicious swipe with the cloth sends her nails dragging against her bare cheek. The ringside staff had let her go as soon as she could see again, and that had to mean something.
The paste is slick against her, foundation after too much sweat or mascara that's been cried into raccoon rings around eyes that look closer to black than anything else under the locker room lights. The cloth is the same crisp white it was when she grabbed it, hardly discoloured even by the water, much less whatever the mist has turned into.
She flings it into the hamper with more force than necessary, rocking back on her heels to see if distance improves anything, gingerly pressing a finger against the black. Absent the barrier of the washcloth, her fingertip sinks half an inch into what has to be, can't be her own body. Gaze fixed on herself in the mirror, Skye imagines blood spewing from the puncture, bites down on nothing and imagines the click of teeth on teeth to be the scrape of nail on cheekbone. Deeper and deeper she presses in, and in the mirror, her finger simply bends until it rests flat against what for all the world looks like simple facepaint.
Just an exceptionally bad makeup job, says the mirror, and Skye pulls her finger free with the sick sound of something being yanked out of a mud puddle. Like the washcloth, it, too, is unmarked.
"Fuck you, Julia."
Her voice echoes off the tile, each repetition fading further and further until it just sounds like Julia's laughter.
*
The digital clock reads 3:24 when Skye opens her eyes to darkness. Regular darkness, hotel room at night darkness, but she scans the room anyway, half expecting to see Julia there, stained teeth open in a banshee shriek.
She'd been there in her dream, Skye thinks, as she surfaces slowly into wakefulness, into memories. Julia had been perched on her stomach, knees tucked right up under Skye's ribs, and she'd been trapped there, or maybe they both had been.
Julia had had a grip on her hair — Skye reaches up, presses against her scalp and feels the oddly tender skin slide over her skull, loose like something half-formed — and then Julia had had a hand between her legs, under her tights but above her skin, and she hadn't been smiling, neither of them had.
Skye shifts her hips, trying to shake free of the memory, but now that the dream has come back full force she can't not be aware of how wet she is, damp arousal gathering in her sleep shorts so thickly she already knows they'll stain.
She had shifted under Julia in the dream, too, struggled to dislodge her even though her limbs were so heavy as to be useless with all of her blood pounding in her ears, in her cunt.
"House Rules," Julia had said. Skye slips a tentative hand under her waistband and her hips jerk up immediately, smooth skin already sensitive nearly to the point of pain. "No rope breaks."
One. Two. Even holding her hips and hand perfectly still, Skye knows she's not going to make it to twenty. Had she made it to twenty?
"Dealer's choice," Julia had said. Three. Four. Five. "Talk to me."
There's no Julia in the room to hear the wail that rips itself free of Skye's throat when she comes before she can even get her fingers inside herself. Her vision clouds over — true black, Julia black — and Skye's laughing as she comes down, laughing, or something close enough that she can't tell the difference.
"Dealer's choice," she says aloud. "My turn next."
*
"Mine came off easy," Willow shrugs when Skye finally gets up the courage to ask her about recovering from the mist. "Like the ... whatever that shitty spray paint Saraya and her gang used. Hurts like a motherfucker when it first lands on you, but then ..."
She trails off, peering more closely at Skye's face, and Skye squirms under the scrutiny, barely manages to stop herself from flinching back when Willow's thumb lands on her skin. It's not like that, she wants to say, this is magic, this is old, but have Willow's hands always been so warm?
"Then again," Willow says slowly, like she's considering something. "I heard Julia wore an eyepatch for months after Malakai Black misted her. Maybe she likes you."
Skin against skin, she's tracing fire across Skye's cheekbones and Skye wonders what she sees. If she knows about the tendrils of hard black blood winding their way through Skye's veins, if the map is written over her skin for anyone to follow.
"She's got a funny way of showing it," Skye murmurs, but the thought wedges its way inside her, anyway, a chip of ice caught in her throat. Being liked by Julia Hart, wouldn't that be something?
"You look totally fine, though," Willow says. She steps back, hand dropping to her side, and Skye feels like she can breathe again. "Like, no one would ever know anything happened fine."
Then what did I see in the mirror this morning? Skye wonders. Twists her lips into something Willow must read as a smile, says, "Thanks, I think."
*
Aubrey catches her backstage later — a week, two weeks, Skye can't keep track anymore. All she knows is training, and flights, and the glare of stadium lights over the ring, and Julia's ghost hanging always at the edges of her vision, upside down on the ropes and smiling.
And now: Aubrey's hand. Cold at her elbow, like they're friends, and it's the first time Skye's felt real since her vision went black.
"I heard about your run-in with Julia," she says. "Are you — you seem like you're handling it well."
"Yeah," Skye says, cautiously, because she is, isn't she? Training. Winning. Showing up in the ring after Julia's matches sometimes, just to prove she's nothing special. Her body is solidifying, strengthening in unfamiliar ways, and it's easier now to push herself into and past aggression without thinking.
Aubrey tilts her head, trying to put something together. She's dressed for the ring already, and between the lighting, the drapes, and the amount of black she wears she seems to have been swallowed up by the shadows, only the impossibly thin white stripes of her shirt to hold up her too-pale face. Skye thinks about pulling her arm back before she gets swallowed up as well.
She doesn't move. Aubrey's nails are digging into her bicep, no less painful for how blunt they are.
"Your eyes?" Aubrey finally asks. "The makeup isn't covering everything today."
Now Skye does step back, resisting the urge to reach up and feel for herself. Her eyes, that Willow had said were more than fine. Her eyes, that no one else had commented on for weeks.
Her eyes, that spill fine black tendrils down her cheeks every day. Her eyes, that she covers up with the most violent blues she can find.
Skye blinks, willing something in Aubrey to crack, to smile. "Like you said." Her voice wavers less than she'd expected it to. "I'm handling it."
Less a crack, more of a ripple: light shivers over Aubrey, catching the subtle glitter in her ring makeup, and Skye's reminded once more of the sheen of the solidified mist glinting at her in the mirror.
"It could turn into Julia handling you," Aubrey says, "And I can't protect you outside the ring." She almost sounds sorry, Skye thinks, but there's something — at her edges, something about the way her eyeshadow sweeps in purples and greys nearly to her temples. With her mascara thick and her lipstick the kind of matte that Julia's been favouring lately, she looks like she's been bruised beautiful, and in that moment Skye hates her even more than she hates Julia.
She remembers Aubrey holding Julia's hand aloft over Willow's body on Dynamite, remembers her rolling out of the ring without even a gesture towards the bell as Julia locked Willow into a post-match Heartless. She thinks, I don't think you'd protect me inside, either, and isn't stupid enough to say it.
She knows what it's like to be held in the entirety of Julia's eyes, after all.
*
"It's a gift," Julia says on her voicemail. It doesn't sound like any sort of gift Skye's used to, not when it's delivered in the same sing-song taunt she used to use to lure Stat down the ramp. "It would be one thing if you rejected it like Willow, but no, you don't even have the courtesy to tell me no to my face. You use it up and let it burn and pretend I have nothing to do with it at all, and I'm tired of it, Skye."
Skye loses track of how many times she plays the message. When she loses to Stat, when she loses to Ruby and Saraya, when her feet pound so loudly on the hotel gym treadmill that she can barely hear the words, even though she's long since memorised them. They echo every time she watches Julia fight, every time Willow refuses to meet her eyes or Aubrey holds her gaze a moment too long.
This is a gift.
It's all she can think of at Full Gear even as Julia pins her, and in the heartbeats between the count she almost thinks she imagines Julia saying "Skye, Skye, wouldn't it be so easy to say yes?"
Nothing's ever easy, when it comes to Julia.
It feels just as hard to catch her breath now in bed as it did on the mat, Julia's music filling the arena. The house always wins. This is a gift.
Her turn to say it, slipping paper and keycard into Julia's gym bag. She wants Julia. Doesn't want what it means, doesn't want to know if the desire is hers or part of the gift, but she knows that soon enough that part won't matter anymore.
This is a gift.
The lock clicks over. Skye breathes.
femslashfete challenge 'origin'.Whatever Julia spat in her eyes isn't washing out.
Skye leans closer to the mirror, so far over the sink edge that the porcelain digging into her abs starts to verge on painful where it presses into the bruises left over from tonight. The mist has solidified against her skin to a paste that doesn't do much more than shimmer as she scrubs harder with the washcloth.
It can't actually be dangerous, she reasons, hissing as a particularly vicious swipe with the cloth sends her nails dragging against her bare cheek. The ringside staff had let her go as soon as she could see again, and that had to mean something.
The paste is slick against her, foundation after too much sweat or mascara that's been cried into raccoon rings around eyes that look closer to black than anything else under the locker room lights. The cloth is the same crisp white it was when she grabbed it, hardly discoloured even by the water, much less whatever the mist has turned into.
She flings it into the hamper with more force than necessary, rocking back on her heels to see if distance improves anything, gingerly pressing a finger against the black. Absent the barrier of the washcloth, her fingertip sinks half an inch into what has to be, can't be her own body. Gaze fixed on herself in the mirror, Skye imagines blood spewing from the puncture, bites down on nothing and imagines the click of teeth on teeth to be the scrape of nail on cheekbone. Deeper and deeper she presses in, and in the mirror, her finger simply bends until it rests flat against what for all the world looks like simple facepaint.
Just an exceptionally bad makeup job, says the mirror, and Skye pulls her finger free with the sick sound of something being yanked out of a mud puddle. Like the washcloth, it, too, is unmarked.
"Fuck you, Julia."
Her voice echoes off the tile, each repetition fading further and further until it just sounds like Julia's laughter.
The digital clock reads 3:24 when Skye opens her eyes to darkness. Regular darkness, hotel room at night darkness, but she scans the room anyway, half expecting to see Julia there, stained teeth open in a banshee shriek.
She'd been there in her dream, Skye thinks, as she surfaces slowly into wakefulness, into memories. Julia had been perched on her stomach, knees tucked right up under Skye's ribs, and she'd been trapped there, or maybe they both had been.
Julia had had a grip on her hair — Skye reaches up, presses against her scalp and feels the oddly tender skin slide over her skull, loose like something half-formed — and then Julia had had a hand between her legs, under her tights but above her skin, and she hadn't been smiling, neither of them had.
Skye shifts her hips, trying to shake free of the memory, but now that the dream has come back full force she can't not be aware of how wet she is, damp arousal gathering in her sleep shorts so thickly she already knows they'll stain.
She had shifted under Julia in the dream, too, struggled to dislodge her even though her limbs were so heavy as to be useless with all of her blood pounding in her ears, in her cunt.
"House Rules," Julia had said. Skye slips a tentative hand under her waistband and her hips jerk up immediately, smooth skin already sensitive nearly to the point of pain. "No rope breaks."
One. Two. Even holding her hips and hand perfectly still, Skye knows she's not going to make it to twenty. Had she made it to twenty?
"Dealer's choice," Julia had said. Three. Four. Five. "Talk to me."
There's no Julia in the room to hear the wail that rips itself free of Skye's throat when she comes before she can even get her fingers inside herself. Her vision clouds over — true black, Julia black — and Skye's laughing as she comes down, laughing, or something close enough that she can't tell the difference.
"Dealer's choice," she says aloud. "My turn next."
"Mine came off easy," Willow shrugs when Skye finally gets up the courage to ask her about recovering from the mist. "Like the ... whatever that shitty spray paint Saraya and her gang used. Hurts like a motherfucker when it first lands on you, but then ..."
She trails off, peering more closely at Skye's face, and Skye squirms under the scrutiny, barely manages to stop herself from flinching back when Willow's thumb lands on her skin. It's not like that, she wants to say, this is magic, this is old, but have Willow's hands always been so warm?
"Then again," Willow says slowly, like she's considering something. "I heard Julia wore an eyepatch for months after Malakai Black misted her. Maybe she likes you."
Skin against skin, she's tracing fire across Skye's cheekbones and Skye wonders what she sees. If she knows about the tendrils of hard black blood winding their way through Skye's veins, if the map is written over her skin for anyone to follow.
"She's got a funny way of showing it," Skye murmurs, but the thought wedges its way inside her, anyway, a chip of ice caught in her throat. Being liked by Julia Hart, wouldn't that be something?
"You look totally fine, though," Willow says. She steps back, hand dropping to her side, and Skye feels like she can breathe again. "Like, no one would ever know anything happened fine."
Then what did I see in the mirror this morning? Skye wonders. Twists her lips into something Willow must read as a smile, says, "Thanks, I think."
Aubrey catches her backstage later — a week, two weeks, Skye can't keep track anymore. All she knows is training, and flights, and the glare of stadium lights over the ring, and Julia's ghost hanging always at the edges of her vision, upside down on the ropes and smiling.
And now: Aubrey's hand. Cold at her elbow, like they're friends, and it's the first time Skye's felt real since her vision went black.
"I heard about your run-in with Julia," she says. "Are you — you seem like you're handling it well."
"Yeah," Skye says, cautiously, because she is, isn't she? Training. Winning. Showing up in the ring after Julia's matches sometimes, just to prove she's nothing special. Her body is solidifying, strengthening in unfamiliar ways, and it's easier now to push herself into and past aggression without thinking.
Aubrey tilts her head, trying to put something together. She's dressed for the ring already, and between the lighting, the drapes, and the amount of black she wears she seems to have been swallowed up by the shadows, only the impossibly thin white stripes of her shirt to hold up her too-pale face. Skye thinks about pulling her arm back before she gets swallowed up as well.
She doesn't move. Aubrey's nails are digging into her bicep, no less painful for how blunt they are.
"Your eyes?" Aubrey finally asks. "The makeup isn't covering everything today."
Now Skye does step back, resisting the urge to reach up and feel for herself. Her eyes, that Willow had said were more than fine. Her eyes, that no one else had commented on for weeks.
Her eyes, that spill fine black tendrils down her cheeks every day. Her eyes, that she covers up with the most violent blues she can find.
Skye blinks, willing something in Aubrey to crack, to smile. "Like you said." Her voice wavers less than she'd expected it to. "I'm handling it."
Less a crack, more of a ripple: light shivers over Aubrey, catching the subtle glitter in her ring makeup, and Skye's reminded once more of the sheen of the solidified mist glinting at her in the mirror.
"It could turn into Julia handling you," Aubrey says, "And I can't protect you outside the ring." She almost sounds sorry, Skye thinks, but there's something — at her edges, something about the way her eyeshadow sweeps in purples and greys nearly to her temples. With her mascara thick and her lipstick the kind of matte that Julia's been favouring lately, she looks like she's been bruised beautiful, and in that moment Skye hates her even more than she hates Julia.
She remembers Aubrey holding Julia's hand aloft over Willow's body on Dynamite, remembers her rolling out of the ring without even a gesture towards the bell as Julia locked Willow into a post-match Heartless. She thinks, I don't think you'd protect me inside, either, and isn't stupid enough to say it.
She knows what it's like to be held in the entirety of Julia's eyes, after all.
"It's a gift," Julia says on her voicemail. It doesn't sound like any sort of gift Skye's used to, not when it's delivered in the same sing-song taunt she used to use to lure Stat down the ramp. "It would be one thing if you rejected it like Willow, but no, you don't even have the courtesy to tell me no to my face. You use it up and let it burn and pretend I have nothing to do with it at all, and I'm tired of it, Skye."
Skye loses track of how many times she plays the message. When she loses to Stat, when she loses to Ruby and Saraya, when her feet pound so loudly on the hotel gym treadmill that she can barely hear the words, even though she's long since memorised them. They echo every time she watches Julia fight, every time Willow refuses to meet her eyes or Aubrey holds her gaze a moment too long.
This is a gift.
It's all she can think of at Full Gear even as Julia pins her, and in the heartbeats between the count she almost thinks she imagines Julia saying "Skye, Skye, wouldn't it be so easy to say yes?"
Nothing's ever easy, when it comes to Julia.
It feels just as hard to catch her breath now in bed as it did on the mat, Julia's music filling the arena. The house always wins. This is a gift.
Her turn to say it, slipping paper and keycard into Julia's gym bag. She wants Julia. Doesn't want what it means, doesn't want to know if the desire is hers or part of the gift, but she knows that soon enough that part won't matter anymore.
This is a gift.
The lock clicks over. Skye breathes.
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(thank you you're welcome etc :3)