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« Last post by underdogKu on March 01, 2026, 10:13:57 AM »
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Fighters:
Zara: 5'7", 26 years old, 165lbs
Francesca: 5'4", 32 years old, 155lbs
The bedroom smelled of beeswax and something older. Want, maybe. Or war.
Zara had counted twelve candles before she stopped counting and started talking, and now the words were out and could not be taken back and Francesca was looking at her with that expression - the one that felt like being studied, like being known - and Zara's hands were already curling at her sides.
She wore black. She'd put it on that morning without understanding why, and now she did: black lace bralette, the cups barely there, straps thin over her tanned shoulders. Black high-cut underwear, lace trim. She looked like a threat and she knew it and she needed that right now.
Francesca looked like something worse. Ivory satin, barely structured, soft against her pale skin in the amber light. Champagne trim on the bralette, smooth fabric catching every candle's flicker. She looked unhurried. Unnervingly so.
That was the part Zara couldn't stand.
"You did it again," Zara said.
"I know what you think I did." Without even gracing Zara with a glance.
"Don't." Zara stepped forward. "Don't manage me."
Francesca tilted her head. Didn't move. "I'm not managing you."
"You looked at her for twenty seconds, Frankie. Twenty seconds, and I-" Her voice cracked on the edge of the word and she swallowed it back. "You knew what it would do to me."
"Yes." Francesca said it simply. No apology wrapped around it. Just the word, clean and terrible.
The sound Zara made was almost a laugh. She crossed the room in three steps and got both hands on Francesca's shoulders - hard, hard enough to matter - and shoved her back a step. Francesca went with it rather than against it, which somehow made it worse.
"Yes?" Zara said. "That's it?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to-" Zara shoved her again, and this time Francesca caught her wrists, not to stop her, just to hold - that infuriating patient hold, like Zara was a fire Francesca had already mapped the edges of. "Let go of me."
"No."
Zara wrenched her wrists free and grabbed the front of the ivory bralette - not to tear it, just to grip, to close the distance, to make Francesca be here with her instead of somewhere measured and cool behind her own eyes. "Look at me," she said.
"I am looking at you." And she was. Fully. Those grey eyes fixed on Zara's face like she was the only thing in the room, the only thing in the world, and Zara hated how that felt and couldn't stop needing it.
"Then fight with me," Zara said, her voice breaking open on the last word. "Stop being so calm and just-"
Francesca moved.
Not away - into her. A pivot and a push, economical and precise, using Zara's own forward lean against her. Zara stumbled, caught the dresser with one hand, spun off it. The candles along the top trembled and held.
Zara found her feet and came back fast. Her palm caught Francesca across the cheek - open-handed, sharp, the sound of it swallowed by the thick air of the room.
Francesca's head turned with it. Stayed turned for a moment.
Then she looked back, and her eyes had changed.
"There you are," Zara said.
Francesca crossed the distance in two steps and slapped her back - harder, precise, with the particular control of someone who'd been waiting for permission. Zara's cheek flared hot. She grabbed for Francesca's arm, missed, caught a fistful of that dark auburn hair instead and pulled - dragging Francesca's head to the side, forcing her off balance.
Francesca didn't cry out. She hissed through her teeth and drove forward anyway, getting both hands into Zara's dark hair, nails scraping scalp, and for a moment they were locked like that - both pulling, both hurting, faces inches apart and breathing the same scorched air.
Zara got a knee up between them, not vicious but deliberate, forcing space. Francesca released her. They separated, both breathing hard, and circled the foot of the bed.
Zara's cheek burned. She could feel the shape of Francesca's hand on it. Francesca’s hand almost maternal in nature. Something that characterized their relationship; Francesca being the measured, guiding hand. While Zara was the infant who needed to be disciplined.
Zara feinted left and went right, getting behind Francesca, locking an arm across her collarbone and pulling her back against her. Francesca reached up and back, nails finding Zara's forearm, dragging four bright lines across the inside of her wrist. Zara sucked air through her teeth but held. Francesca dropped her weight suddenly, twisted out of the hold, spun around.
The back of her hand caught Zara across the jaw - not quite a slap, not quite a strike. Something in between.
Zara tasted copper, bright and metallic beneath the waxy drag of her crimson lipstick - and couldn't have said, in that moment, which red was which.
She grabbed Francesca's wrist before she could pull it back, used it as a lever, stepped in and swept Francesca's ankle out from under her. They went down together - not gracefully - catching the edge of the bed, bouncing off it, landing in a tangle against the sheets. Neither let go. They rolled. Zara got on top and Francesca bucked her off. Francesca got on top and Zara got a knee under her and reversed it. Hair tangled and pulled. Nails found bare skin. The amber light heaved across the ceiling as the candles shook from the movement on the bed.
Then it stopped.
Francesca had Zara's wrists pinned above her head. Zara's chest was heaving. She'd tried twice to bridge free and couldn't. The grip wasn't brutal - it didn't have to be. It was just absolute.
Zara strained once more, jaw tight, tendons standing in her neck.
Didn't move.
The room was very quiet. One candle popped softly in its pool of wax.
Francesca looked down at her. Not with anger. Worse than anger - with patience. The particular patience of someone who has all the time in the world and knows it.
"Are you finished?" she asked.
Zara's jaw tightened. She said nothing.
"I asked you a question."
"Don't-"
"Zara." Just the name. Quiet as a closed door. "Are. You. Finished."
The silence stretched. Zara's chest rose and fell. Her wrists flexed once against Francesca's grip and found it unchanged.
"Yes," she said finally. The word came out smaller than she intended.
"Yes what?"
Zara closed her eyes. "Yes, I'm finished."
Francesca didn't move. Didn't release her. She let the stillness sit until it had weight, until Zara could feel it pressing down on her the way Francesca's body did - deliberate, immovable, unhurried.
"You made a mess," Francesca said softly, almost conversationally, her eyes moving briefly to the disordered sheets, the guttered candle, the nail marks on Zara's own forearm that Zara had inflicted on herself in the struggle. "Look at what you did."
"Frankie-"
"Look."
Zara looked. Her lip was bleeding faintly into the smear of her crimson lipstick. Her hair was chaos. She had scratches on her own skin and Francesca's hand-print warming her cheek and nothing, nothing to show for any of it.
"All of that," Francesca said, bringing her gaze back, holding it there, "because you couldn't use your words."
Zara made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost something else entirely. "That's not-"
The slap came without warning. Not hard - precisely hard. Measured. The same cheek as before, still warm from the fight, and the sound of it in the quiet room was very loud.
Zara's breath left her in a rush.
"It is exactly," Francesca continued, as though nothing had interrupted her. "Next time you feel like that - that storm you were carrying all evening - you come to me. You say it." She released one of Zara's wrists, cupped her jaw, tilted it up. "You don't perform it. You don't break things to make me react." Her thumb traced the corner of Zara's mouth, the smudged red there, almost tender. "Now. What do you say to me."
Zara's eyes were bright and furious and struggling. "I-"
"Say it."
"I should have-" The words stuck. Her free hand came up toward Francesca's wrist instinctively.
Francesca caught it. Pinned it back. And slapped her again - the other cheek this time, a backhand, deliberate, completing something. "Again."
Zara's chin trembled once, just once. When she spoke her voice was stripped of everything but the truth of it.
"I should have come to you," she said. "I should have just - said it. Instead of all of-" She stopped. Swallowed. "I'm sorry."
Francesca studied her for a long moment, reading every line of her face.
Then she released Zara's wrists - not abruptly, but the way you set something fragile down - and moved her hand to Zara's hair, smoothing it back from her face with slow, deliberate strokes. Once. Twice. The same hand that had pulled it minutes ago, now gentle, now sure, now unambiguous in what it was saying.
There. That's better. Good girl.
She didn't say the words. She didn't have to.
Zara's breath shook on the way out. She didn't argue.
The candles kept burning, bearing faithful witness, as Francesca stayed exactly where she was - above, unhurried, sure - and made certain Zara understood who this bedroom belonged to.
Both of them did.