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leetoltreatexnot when it's her. all elite wrestling, julia + julia/kris, julia/aubrey, julia/skye. ascension is a process (and a slightly less literal version of apotheosis than i intended). 1.6k words, rated m. for flowersforgraves.
Julia learns early on that she doesn't bruise easily. Other girls pick themselves black and blue up off the gym mats, compare their marks with a warrior's pride and Julia watches with envy — thumbprints peeking up above the socks of girls who stood in the middle of pyramids, galaxies encircling jammed elbows, paintbrush strokes across the palms after tumbling runs.
In the mirror, her own unmarked skin seems like an accusation of something she can't name, something that the howling thing in her chest is reaching for anyway. She wants to be the best, and if nothing can touch her — what then? What else to rise above?
She collects two championships that don't come close to sating her hunger. Magic and boredom twist round each other in her gut, she rolls ribbons of power over and around the blank canvas of her body waiting for something to appear and — nothing. Until she starts to wrestle, and, at long last, finds people powerful enough to make colours bloom.
Wrestling is also the first time she's seen, really seen, pinned beneath Kris Statlander's bodyweight and the heat of at least ten of her eyes because it's 2021, and it's Dark, and if a little more work for some of the editors is the price the company has to pay for their talent not losing it in a permanently damaging way, they'll do it happily.
"You're a convincing fake," Kris says. Drags fingertips tipped with nails long enough to mark along Julia's inner thigh where her skirt's flipped up, and Julia dips her own hand down to grab it, just in time. If she cranes her neck, she can see Aubrey moving just subtly enough to block a full shot of their hands.
"Really?" The question comes out more breathless than Julia wants to admit. "You're not even human, what do you think you know?"
Kris shifts above her, presses her thigh tight between Julia's legs, and Julia hisses as her body involuntarily rises to meet the pressure. "Cute. You're not human either, little girl."
Julia flicks her gaze away from the new eyes opening along Kris' collarbones, finds Aubrey watching them still. Fingers against her mouth doing nothing to hide her smile, and it's rage, too, rising in Julia's throat along with her magic.
Kris rolls away before she can do anything about it though, stands up and makes a production out of booping Aubrey's nose before letting her hand be raised. Which is fine. Good, even. It keeps the attention off Julia as she arches her back into something that no longer exists and screams as quietly as she can.
*
"Julia."
Aubrey's hand is on her wrist, painted nails violent against the skin that Julia is only now starting to remember is hers.
"Julia, let her go, it's over."
There's a woman's neck trapped under the join of her hands, muscles straining against the nonexistent gaps between her interlinked fingers.
"Julia, she tapped, come on."
The point of an elbow is digging in to her inner thigh and she leans into the pressure, blood rushing in her ears as she contorts the body in her lap.
"Julia, that's enough, one, two, three fo—"
Her hands fall apart, somehow, knuckles relaxing as her wrists flex backwards of their own volition. She hadn't meant to let go, and as the pressure on her forearm shifts, she realises Aubrey's prised them apart.
And then, too, she realises: it's Anna, bodies untangling. Anna Jay, who half the division had called a magician; Anna Jay, who had wanted to be her friend.
Anna Jay, who was a beautiful showman with nothing to show for anything she'd ever done. Magic, Julia's magic, could have done something for her, if she'd cared enough to learn.
"Fuck you," she murmurs, dipping her head as Aubrey hauls her to her feet, hair swinging forwards to shield her mouth from the cameras. "Fuck you, I would've—"
"No," Aubrey says. Her nails are digging into Julia's wrist, carving little half-moons between the tendons as she raises Julia's hand. "No, I know you wouldn't. Not when it's her."
Lens in her face, Julia can't answer aloud. But she stares down the camera, the glare she's perfect ever since Malakai named her the princess of the Black Throne, and imagines herself a blade. Imagines digging under the woman's skin, excavating whatever core of power made her able to bend Julia Hart in a way no other official could come close to.
Her skin is dented, red and aching.
Aubrey's hand is on hers. Aubrey's hand will always be on hers.
*
Aubrey might be close to untouchable in the ring, at least unless Julia wants to take risks she really shouldn't be taking yet, but in the locker room she's surprisingly easy to pin against a wall. Almost like she wants it, Julia thinks, and crushes the thought as soon as it occurs.
Aubrey's eyeshadow gleams in the harsh fluorescence, and she doesn't move as Julia spreads her hand across her throat - a promise she hasn't decided if she wants to keep. She presses down, barely enough to feel Aubrey's pulse surprisingly slow, and earns herself the slightest laugh.
"You have something," she says. "Or you want something. You have to, there's no other reason why it should always be you."
Aubrey shrugs one shoulder, and the motion ripples through Julia — ripples through her magic, hungry, like it's being met with something that could almost match it.
Again: no. She's the one in control, Aubrey held in her palm.
Aubrey, who's biting her lip, saying, "Maybe I just like watching pretty girls fight." Almost innocent, and probably ninety-nine percent truth, Julia thinks, a hundred if she'd drop the just. She can't shake the feeling Aubrey would love watching anything she did, but — why?
"I wanna get you in the ring," she murmurs, watching the breath catch in Aubrey's chest. "I wanna see what you're like when you have to do more than watch. Because you're never just watching me, are you?"
Aubrey's certainly watching now, staring down at Julia through half-lidded eyes, and Julia's once again struck by the certainty that she's seeing something even Julia herself can't, not yet.
"You have no idea," Aubrey says, and Julia's magic screams inside her like a living thing, screams louder as Aubrey dips her head, lips close enough to tease.
Behind Julia, the door swings open, but neither of them move. She should move, but Julia can't quite say why, not when her pulse is throbbing so insistently between her legs.
"Currying favour?" Skye's voice echoes off the tile.
Julia's fingers tense, release, do nothing to wipe the smile off Aubrey's face. "Reminding her how to count to three." She steps back, rolling her shoulders, and Aubrey relaxes just a fraction.
"Pin for three if you want me to count three," she says, and she sounds — normal, infuriatingly so, after Julia was so close to figuring out what she is, so close to the edge of something.
One more step back, and she meets the solidity of Skye's chest. Skye's hand trails up, flickers over Julia's breast. For a moment she holds herself still, just long enough to see Aubrey's mouth curve wide and slow, still fucking watching; just long enough for Skye to pinch down, not even hard enough to hurt.
And then she forces herself to break the moment. To push past Skye, whose makeup is winding blue-black all the way down her cheeks, and let the door slam behind her.
*
Skye's easier after that, after the mist takes hold, after the House lets her in. She gets rid of the fuckboy baseball cap — and if it makes her look less like Aubrey, so much the better — and starts letting Julia dress her; lifts Julia up to the ropes and settles between her legs, and she might not be magic but she's — edible, in her power, something Julia can get her teeth into and, more, something she doesn't mind getting its teeth in her.
"You're a fucking god, you know that?" Skye murmurs one night. She'd amused herself sucking bruises into Julia's thighs for a good half hour, now, just flickers her tongue over the mess between Julia's legs waiting to see when she'll be told to stop.
If she'll be told to stop, and the louder the void howling in Julia's chest gets the surer Julia is she that she'll never say no. She could feed on this — on the threads of power she feeds into Skye getting reflected back at her tenfold — forever.
She gets better in the ring, too, even with Aubrey there. Especially with Aubrey watching, it seems sometimes, because there's a mischievous edge to the way she haunts the perimeter of the ring, a new sort of hunger in the way her nails clamp down on Julia every time she raises her hand.
She doesn't ask why, anymore, doesn't want to admit that in this alone she can still be destabilised, but Aubrey doesn't push, and Julia finds herself missing it.
Until — bloodsoaked after a street fight, arm locked so tightly around Skye's waist she's not sure she remembers how to pry her fingers away from sweat-slick skin, even to take the TBS title back from Aubrey. She, too, looks the worse for wear, curls spilling free from a destroyed ponytail and thumbtack pricks littering her palms. Julia's never seen her happier.
Skye's heartbeat is throbbing in Julia's neck, Aubrey's fingertips pressing down on her wrist, drawing all that blood — all their blood — up to the surface to join what's already been spilled.
"There you are," Aubrey says. Her earpiece is out, glinting somewhere in her hair, her voice just audible over the noise of the crowd and Julia's music. "I wondered how long it would take you to figure it out."
Julia steps up to the middle rope, framed between them, and the thing in her chest grows ever louder.
This isn't new, not really.
But it is forever.
flowersforgraves.Julia learns early on that she doesn't bruise easily. Other girls pick themselves black and blue up off the gym mats, compare their marks with a warrior's pride and Julia watches with envy — thumbprints peeking up above the socks of girls who stood in the middle of pyramids, galaxies encircling jammed elbows, paintbrush strokes across the palms after tumbling runs.
In the mirror, her own unmarked skin seems like an accusation of something she can't name, something that the howling thing in her chest is reaching for anyway. She wants to be the best, and if nothing can touch her — what then? What else to rise above?
She collects two championships that don't come close to sating her hunger. Magic and boredom twist round each other in her gut, she rolls ribbons of power over and around the blank canvas of her body waiting for something to appear and — nothing. Until she starts to wrestle, and, at long last, finds people powerful enough to make colours bloom.
Wrestling is also the first time she's seen, really seen, pinned beneath Kris Statlander's bodyweight and the heat of at least ten of her eyes because it's 2021, and it's Dark, and if a little more work for some of the editors is the price the company has to pay for their talent not losing it in a permanently damaging way, they'll do it happily.
"You're a convincing fake," Kris says. Drags fingertips tipped with nails long enough to mark along Julia's inner thigh where her skirt's flipped up, and Julia dips her own hand down to grab it, just in time. If she cranes her neck, she can see Aubrey moving just subtly enough to block a full shot of their hands.
"Really?" The question comes out more breathless than Julia wants to admit. "You're not even human, what do you think you know?"
Kris shifts above her, presses her thigh tight between Julia's legs, and Julia hisses as her body involuntarily rises to meet the pressure. "Cute. You're not human either, little girl."
Julia flicks her gaze away from the new eyes opening along Kris' collarbones, finds Aubrey watching them still. Fingers against her mouth doing nothing to hide her smile, and it's rage, too, rising in Julia's throat along with her magic.
Kris rolls away before she can do anything about it though, stands up and makes a production out of booping Aubrey's nose before letting her hand be raised. Which is fine. Good, even. It keeps the attention off Julia as she arches her back into something that no longer exists and screams as quietly as she can.
"Julia."
Aubrey's hand is on her wrist, painted nails violent against the skin that Julia is only now starting to remember is hers.
"Julia, let her go, it's over."
There's a woman's neck trapped under the join of her hands, muscles straining against the nonexistent gaps between her interlinked fingers.
"Julia, she tapped, come on."
The point of an elbow is digging in to her inner thigh and she leans into the pressure, blood rushing in her ears as she contorts the body in her lap.
"Julia, that's enough, one, two, three fo—"
Her hands fall apart, somehow, knuckles relaxing as her wrists flex backwards of their own volition. She hadn't meant to let go, and as the pressure on her forearm shifts, she realises Aubrey's prised them apart.
And then, too, she realises: it's Anna, bodies untangling. Anna Jay, who half the division had called a magician; Anna Jay, who had wanted to be her friend.
Anna Jay, who was a beautiful showman with nothing to show for anything she'd ever done. Magic, Julia's magic, could have done something for her, if she'd cared enough to learn.
"Fuck you," she murmurs, dipping her head as Aubrey hauls her to her feet, hair swinging forwards to shield her mouth from the cameras. "Fuck you, I would've—"
"No," Aubrey says. Her nails are digging into Julia's wrist, carving little half-moons between the tendons as she raises Julia's hand. "No, I know you wouldn't. Not when it's her."
Lens in her face, Julia can't answer aloud. But she stares down the camera, the glare she's perfect ever since Malakai named her the princess of the Black Throne, and imagines herself a blade. Imagines digging under the woman's skin, excavating whatever core of power made her able to bend Julia Hart in a way no other official could come close to.
Her skin is dented, red and aching.
Aubrey's hand is on hers. Aubrey's hand will always be on hers.
Aubrey might be close to untouchable in the ring, at least unless Julia wants to take risks she really shouldn't be taking yet, but in the locker room she's surprisingly easy to pin against a wall. Almost like she wants it, Julia thinks, and crushes the thought as soon as it occurs.
Aubrey's eyeshadow gleams in the harsh fluorescence, and she doesn't move as Julia spreads her hand across her throat - a promise she hasn't decided if she wants to keep. She presses down, barely enough to feel Aubrey's pulse surprisingly slow, and earns herself the slightest laugh.
"You have something," she says. "Or you want something. You have to, there's no other reason why it should always be you."
Aubrey shrugs one shoulder, and the motion ripples through Julia — ripples through her magic, hungry, like it's being met with something that could almost match it.
Again: no. She's the one in control, Aubrey held in her palm.
Aubrey, who's biting her lip, saying, "Maybe I just like watching pretty girls fight." Almost innocent, and probably ninety-nine percent truth, Julia thinks, a hundred if she'd drop the just. She can't shake the feeling Aubrey would love watching anything she did, but — why?
"I wanna get you in the ring," she murmurs, watching the breath catch in Aubrey's chest. "I wanna see what you're like when you have to do more than watch. Because you're never just watching me, are you?"
Aubrey's certainly watching now, staring down at Julia through half-lidded eyes, and Julia's once again struck by the certainty that she's seeing something even Julia herself can't, not yet.
"You have no idea," Aubrey says, and Julia's magic screams inside her like a living thing, screams louder as Aubrey dips her head, lips close enough to tease.
Behind Julia, the door swings open, but neither of them move. She should move, but Julia can't quite say why, not when her pulse is throbbing so insistently between her legs.
"Currying favour?" Skye's voice echoes off the tile.
Julia's fingers tense, release, do nothing to wipe the smile off Aubrey's face. "Reminding her how to count to three." She steps back, rolling her shoulders, and Aubrey relaxes just a fraction.
"Pin for three if you want me to count three," she says, and she sounds — normal, infuriatingly so, after Julia was so close to figuring out what she is, so close to the edge of something.
One more step back, and she meets the solidity of Skye's chest. Skye's hand trails up, flickers over Julia's breast. For a moment she holds herself still, just long enough to see Aubrey's mouth curve wide and slow, still fucking watching; just long enough for Skye to pinch down, not even hard enough to hurt.
And then she forces herself to break the moment. To push past Skye, whose makeup is winding blue-black all the way down her cheeks, and let the door slam behind her.
Skye's easier after that, after the mist takes hold, after the House lets her in. She gets rid of the fuckboy baseball cap — and if it makes her look less like Aubrey, so much the better — and starts letting Julia dress her; lifts Julia up to the ropes and settles between her legs, and she might not be magic but she's — edible, in her power, something Julia can get her teeth into and, more, something she doesn't mind getting its teeth in her.
"You're a fucking god, you know that?" Skye murmurs one night. She'd amused herself sucking bruises into Julia's thighs for a good half hour, now, just flickers her tongue over the mess between Julia's legs waiting to see when she'll be told to stop.
If she'll be told to stop, and the louder the void howling in Julia's chest gets the surer Julia is she that she'll never say no. She could feed on this — on the threads of power she feeds into Skye getting reflected back at her tenfold — forever.
She gets better in the ring, too, even with Aubrey there. Especially with Aubrey watching, it seems sometimes, because there's a mischievous edge to the way she haunts the perimeter of the ring, a new sort of hunger in the way her nails clamp down on Julia every time she raises her hand.
She doesn't ask why, anymore, doesn't want to admit that in this alone she can still be destabilised, but Aubrey doesn't push, and Julia finds herself missing it.
Until — bloodsoaked after a street fight, arm locked so tightly around Skye's waist she's not sure she remembers how to pry her fingers away from sweat-slick skin, even to take the TBS title back from Aubrey. She, too, looks the worse for wear, curls spilling free from a destroyed ponytail and thumbtack pricks littering her palms. Julia's never seen her happier.
Skye's heartbeat is throbbing in Julia's neck, Aubrey's fingertips pressing down on her wrist, drawing all that blood — all their blood — up to the surface to join what's already been spilled.
"There you are," Aubrey says. Her earpiece is out, glinting somewhere in her hair, her voice just audible over the noise of the crowd and Julia's music. "I wondered how long it would take you to figure it out."
Julia steps up to the middle rope, framed between them, and the thing in her chest grows ever louder.
This isn't new, not really.
But it is forever.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-09 08:55 pm (UTC)AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
[ahem]
I adore the way you write from Julia's point of view. Her perspective is just so... barely slightly to the left, almost? Surreal and grounded at the same time, and it's just. Good. Thank you so much! :D