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Morning sunlight spilled across the kitchen like gold, painting warmth onto every familiar edge — the chipped mug by the sink, the half-open window letting in a breath of sea salt, the band posters that clung to the wall like faded echoes of adolescence.
This apartment was Rhea’s quiet refuge in Oz — close enough to the beach that she could hear the waves when the city hushed, close enough to her family that Sunday mornings smelled like toast and eucalyptus, close enough to the girl she used to be that she could almost remember what peace felt like before the world roared her name.
Or, that was usually the case.
Every other break from wrestling, she’d savored the stillness — the ritual of returning home, resetting her bones, finding herself again in the lull between flights and fights. But this morning felt different.
The air held a hum she couldn’t shake, a restless pull toward a ring half a world away. As Raw blared live from the States, the apartment’s stillness turned to static.
Some hungry part of her ached to be there, shoulder to shoulder with the roar, to make good on every promise of retribution. To finally bring the Kabuki Warriors to justice.
But that wasn’t her only unfinished business.
Iyo Sky - her rival, tag partner, and recently, something more, but undefined. The one person who could make the ring feel like home and heartbreak in the same breath.
They weren't together, per se. After Dom, she had sworn she would never throw her heart into the ring again. Instead, they shared stolen kisses away from the camera, heated moments when the locker room was empty, long nights together when the roar of the crowd got to be too much...
No… Whatever was going on between her and Iyo, it meant nothing. Iyo just needed a distraction from what had been going on with Asuka and Kairi, and Rhea was more than happy to give it.
It really, truly didn't mean anything. But the ache in her chest as she watched Iyo and Kairi’s match certainly wasn’t nothing.
The match began cautiously, the tension wound too tight to unravel. Iyo, as usual, moved like quicksilver — sharp, fluid, impossible to catch — and Kairi met her with equal grace. The two of them fell into rhythm, old ghosts of synchronicity flickering through each motion. For a heartbeat, it wasn’t combat but choreography: two memories circling each other, searching for the boundary between betrayal and repair.
Then Asuka’s voice cut through the illusion — a command sharp enough to slice air. “Ike!”
Her commands echoed from ringside, sharp as glass. Rhea didn’t need to understand Japanese to know they carried the edge of cruelty.
Kairi hesitated — only for a second — before striking. Her face wavered between focus and apology.
Rhea leaned forward, heart hammering. “Don’t do it, Kairi…”
Ringside, Kairi picked Iyo up, slamming her - neck first - into the edge of the apron.
Rhea felt her stomach drop. Brutality ran in her veins, but this was fucked up.
The match raged on, balanced yet savage, each woman too familiar with the other’s rhythm to break it. Rhea knew that if not for Kairi’s foresight — or Asuka’s venomous presence at ringside — Iyo would have ended it long ago.
Iyo climbed the ropes - her natural habitat in the clouds - ready to end it. But Asuka pulled her down like an anchor, like she had been doing week after week after fucking week for the last few months.
Something in Iyo snapped, forgetting who her true enemy was as she turned to land blow after blow on her old mentor, forgetful of Kairi’s shadow at her back.
‘Hold it together, Iyo,’ Rhea urged, jaw tight.
But Iyo couldn’t hear her.
Kairi struck, pinning Iyo lost in her haze of anger. Asuka completed the combination, pulling Kairi’s hands just as she pulled her strings.
The bell rang. The Warriors had their tainted victory, and that - Rhea prayed - should have been enough. Would have been enough, if Asuka didn’t have pure venom running through her veins.
The tainted Empress pulled Iyo up from her defeated slump, beckoning Kairi to hurt her, to truly finish her. It wasn’t enough to win - Asuka wanted complete decimation.
By the time they were done, Iyo lay motionless, discarded — a fallen sister beneath the empire that once claimed to protect her. Asuka draped an arm around Kairi’s shoulders, her grip possessive, serpentine.
Rhea watched the screen fade to black, and the denial finally caught in her throat.
She stood frozen, one hand pressed to the counter, the other gripping her phone as she watched Iyo writhe in the ring. She wanted to call — needed to — but she knew how it worked. Phones stayed off in the locker room. Protocols, trainers, debriefs. No one wanted outside voices in those moments, especially not hers.
So she waited.
Rhea stared at her untouched coffee until it went cold. The sunlight in the kitchen had shifted from gold to white, harsh and clinical.
She tried scrolling her phone, then abandoned it. Tried stretching, then pacing, then nothing at all. Every tick of the clock on the wall sounded like mockery.
Rhea told herself it was just habit — muscle memory from months of sharing a ring. But the ache in her chest didn’t feel professional. It felt personal, reckless. Like she’d let the wrong part of herself get involved.
She hated that it mattered this much. It wasn’t supposed to. It was never supposed to. Rhea had sworn she’d never blur the lines again.
But here she was, watching the clock and waiting for her phone to light up like salvation.
It was almost two hours before her phone burst to life with the little international icon beside Iyo’s name. The relief hit her so hard it was almost painful. She answered on the first ring.
Ok, Rhea, play this cool.
“Moshi moshi?” came that voice — softer, tired, but still composed. In the background, Rhea could hear the faint crunch of melting ice as it pressed to her skin, and her internal will to play it cool just broke.
“Iyo, God, finally. I’ve been dying to hear your voice.”
A faint laugh. “You worry too much, Rhea.”
“I’m serious,” Rhea said, pacing again despite herself. “They crossed the line.”
“This is nothing new,” Iyo sighed. “Please, Rhea, I'm fine. We'll get them back in Perth, ne.”
Rhea's fevered march around the kitchen slowed a little, the knot in her chest loosening with Iyo's affirmations. “We've got this,” she promised. “Kairi looked like she didn’t even want to do it. Asuka was running that whole thing.”
“Un, sou,” Iyo agreed. “Kairi’s heart isn’t in the fight anymore. She just follows.”
“Then we’ll break Asuka’s hold on her Saturday.”
There was a pause. “I am not sure we can. Kairi needs to decide for herself. And, besides… I am learning who my true family is.” Her tone was soft, deliberate.
The words lingered, heavier than Rhea expected — not about the fight, but about belonging. For a moment, the kitchen felt too small for everything she wanted to say. She was a panther locked in a cage, its walls too close, too stifling for the ferocity within.
“You’re pacing again, aren’t you?”
Rhea blinked. “…Maybe.”
“Always pacing,” Iyo teased. “Sit. Or, better — lie down. Somewhere comfortable.”
Rhea gave a disbelieving laugh. “You’re bossing me around from across the world?”
“Mm. Because you like it.”
“Oh, do I?” She did. Iyo laughed, the sound softer than a cloud.
“Stop fighting for two minutes. Many enemies, but I am not one of them.”
Rhea stretched out on the couch, eyes tracing the sunlight bleeding across the ceiling. The world narrowed to the warmth of the phone in her hand and the sound of Iyo’s breathing through the speaker.
“Better,” Iyo murmured. “Now, breathe… You can’t always protect me,” Iyo said softly. “But you can be with me here, in the moment. That’s enough.”
Rhea’s jaw loosened, her pulse slowed. She tried to focus on the soft breathing of the older woman, half a planet away.
She stood at the edge of calm, on the same fine line that defined her and Iyo's relationship. They walked it like a tightrope. One moment rivals, then allies the next. Competitors and partners. Calm and storm.
Friends, or something more.
The eradicator smiled faintly, suppressing the thought. “You really don’t know what you do to me.”
Iyo chuckled, voice dipping low. “Sou ne. Or you, me.”
Iyo’s voice stayed steady, that soft hush Rhea could feel in her bones. A conspiratorial part of her brain imagined the feeling of Iyo's breath on her skin.
“Are you alone?” Rhea asked.
“Mm, alone,” Iyo affirmed. “The beds in American hotels feel too big.”
“Not if I were there,” Rhea countered, testing the water.
“No, maybe not.” A pause. Rhea could almost hear Iyo grin on the other end of the line, and her heart fluttered as she imagined Iyo in bed, smiling as resplendent as the sun, lips full and begging to be taken. “You're still breathing a little hard. Are you not relaxed yet, mami?” Iyo said, a lilt of innocence permeating her words.
Rhea inhaled, caught again on that odd line that characterised their relationship. Mere minutes ago, she had wanted to get on the first flight out to Texas to dispel some sweet vengeance. Now, she was caught aching with want, imagining being in bed with the older woman, kissing her silly.
“Well, Rhea chan?”
“I don't think the breathing exercises are working, chipmunk. I'm definitely not feeling calm,” Rhea murmured.
“Sou ne,” Iyo hummed. “Well, what do you usually do to relax?”
Her silken words were punctuated by hitched breath. Rhea’s hands snaked their way beneath the thin fabric of her sports bra, squeezing gently.
“Think about you,” Rhea admitted, her voice barely a breath.
“Oh? How?”
“How when I see you, I'm gonna make you feel so, so good.”
Rhea’s confession was the first breaking point in Iyo's thin veneer of composure. Her voice dropped lower, threading through the static. “Tell me more,” she said, almost a whisper. The distance between them became a living thing — a pulse across continents. Rhea’s breath caught; every word felt like a touch, every silence an invitation.
Rhea's fingertips ghosted across her toned stomach, teasing the band of nerves that had jolted to life. “I'd kiss you, hard, right into the pillow,” Rhea says, closing her eyes to remember the last few hungry kisses they had shared. I miss your taste so much.”
“Hai?”
“Mm. Cherry and cocktails and you. Can’t get enough of you on my tongue.”
“Me neither,” Iyo sighed. “Where else do you want to taste, Rhea?”
“Your skin,” Rhea breathed, tracing the elastic of her shorts. “Wanna kiss you all over, down your neck, your tits…”
Iyo moaned on the other end of the line, low and unmistakable. It was a sound that had graced Rhea’s dreams many times since they had started this little thing. Rhea might have been embarrassed how - even across the planet - the sound still went straight to her core. Might have. But when you’ve got Iyo Sky on the other end of the line moaning in her hotel room, there’s little room to think about anything else.
“Are you–” Rhea murmured.
“Hm?”
Rhea’s heart pounded in her chest, hands trembling on the boundary between her exposed stomach and her shorts. “Touching yourself?”
A couple of beats of silence, and Rhea was momentarily terrified she had crossed an invisible line.
“Un,” Iyo eventually replied, the affirmation punctuated with a notification popping up on Rhea’s phone. Rhea tapped it immediately.
Oh. My. God.
The photo loaded quickly. Lights dimmed and looking like a Goddess, Iyo lying on top of the sheets, firm breasts exposed to the sinful evening heat. Completely nude save for small, pink pyjama shorts which barely concealing the outline of Iyo’s hand teasing her folds.
And her face. Fuck, Iyo - her Iyo - usually so innocent, looking straight at the camera with deep chocolate eyes that sang with invitation. Rhea’s brain almost short-circuited as she took it all in, from her incredible body to the way her teeth snagged her lips.
“Oh, Iyo,” Rhea choked, wishing she could commit every pixel to memory.
“I’m so wet, Rhea,” Iyo sighed. Not for the first time that morning, Rhea battled with the urge to drive straight down to the airport, but the aching need in her core had other ideas. Rhea finally crossed the boundary of her waistband, fingers dipping into the slickness that awaited her.
“God, me too,” she whined.
“Sore eroi,” Iyo sighed. “So hot. Now, mami, where were we..?”
Rhea closed her eyes, thinking back to before the room got infinitely warmer. “Kissing you, everywhere,” Rhea answered, settling back into the fantasy. She imagined swirling a tongue around the swollen bud of Iyo’s nips, sinking her teeth into their softness. “Biting your tits just the way you like.”
“Mm, I love the way you look at me when you do that,” Iyo confessed. “You always look so good tasting me.”
“Fuck, and you taste perfect.”
“Sou?” Iyo breathes. “That satisfies you?”
“No,” Rhea growled. She rubbed her swollen clit in gentle circles as she imagined trailing kisses further down Iyo’s body. “I want more,”
“Then come get it,” Iyo said, simply.
Rhea knows she’s so ensnared in this woman’s trap. Whether opposite her in the ring or across the planet, Iyo always had her wrapped around her little finger.
Perhaps Rhea should be embarrassed. To have her whole brand as “the Eradicator” eroded by the older woman she had started sharing the ring, her bed, and now maybe even her heart with.
Rhea suppressed the thought. Don't make it too serious, she steeled herself. It was time to deliver.
“I make my way down your body,” Rhea continued, “kissing, biting - God, your body is fucking perfect - know where I can suck and leave marks where the camera won't see…”
“Sou,” Iyo sighed. “But I'll see, mami. Reminders.”
“Of what?”
“That I'm yours,” Iyo said breathily.
Rhea's heart missed a beat. The room started to get agonisingly hot. “All mine,” Rhea swallowed. “I wanna see you beneath me, take you all in. My perfect little slut.”
Iyo whined something unintelligible in Japanese. Rhea could hear the increasingly fevered sounds of the older woman pleasuring herself.
“That’s right, Iyo, baby,” Rhea purred, “fuck yourself on your fingers for me.” Rhea's own movements got faster in turn, spurred on by Iyo's stuttering breath. Being able to reduce the genius of the sky to a whimpering mess like this was a source of pride matched only by winning her titles.
Her ego wanted more. “How does it feel?”
“Kimochi,” Iyo breathed. ‘So good’. “Wish- wish it was you.”
“Soon,” she promised. “God, Iyo, want you as soon as you're off that plane. Take you to the nearest hotel and have you all night.”
“Don't want - hnn - to wait that long,” Iyo strained. “Find somewhere quiet in the airport, fuck me against a wall.”
“God, yeah,” Rhea sighed, eyes screwed shut as she worked on herself. The knot in her core wound tighter as she imagined pressing Iyo to the wall, one hand beneath her shorts, the other pressed against her pretty mouth to suppress all the desperate little sounds she'd make.
“I'm close,” Iyo whined.
“Come, baby,” Rhea said. The cacophony of moans that followed pushed her right to the precipice of release. Iyo’s gentle ‘fuck, Rhea,’ threw her completely off the edge.
For a moment, she just lay there, chest heaving, the room thick with heat and the sound of her own breath.
She felt uncoiled — as though finally released from her cage — but freedom had teeth. Her mind prowled too far, too fast, chasing feelings she wasn’t ready to name.
“Shit, that was amazing,” she said instead, keeping her voice steady, safer in the echo of satisfaction than in the truth beneath it.
“Was needed, ne.”
“Do you feel better?” Rhea asked.
“Probably sore in the morning,” Iyo replied, not solemnly - ‘fragile’ was not a word in her vocab. “But now, on the clouds.” Rhea could practically hear the smile pulling at her lips.
“Speaking of clouds,” Rhea said, “you fly tomorrow, right?”
“It's not like you don't have my flight number memorised,” Iyo teased.
“Hey, if being a caring girlfriend is a crime, I'm guilty as char–”
“Girlfriend, Rhea-chan?”
Rhea's brain 404'd. Ah, fuck.
Heat flooded her face. Idiot. The word hit sharper than any kick.
She’d spent years perfecting control — of her body, her image, her story — and three soft letters had just torn through it like tissue.
You don’t get to want this, she warned herself, not again.
But some conspiritorial part of her - her heart, unbound - decided to take a leap of faith.
“S-sorry, I mean, no. But yes, if... if you wanted to?”
Rhea mentally bashed her head against the wall. The mic felt easy, she could weave words of intimidation and bravado like some kind of terrifying Shakespeare. But without the glare of the spotlight, she felt agonisingly small.
Iyo’s voice came soft, steady — like it always did when Rhea was falling apart. “Yes, I want.”
Rhea blinked. Once. Twice. Her brain short-circuited for the second time that night. Unfiltered joy took the reins, drowning her fears in elation. A laugh-bordering-on-sob ripped from her throat.
“You do?” she managed, tripping over the words. “You're not fucking with me right now?”
Iyo laughed — that quiet, velvet sound that always got her heart doing gymnastics.
Rhea covered her face with one hand, grinning so hard it hurt. “Fuck, you can’t just drop that on me like it’s—like it’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” Iyo said softly. “It’s you. If I had lost Kairi and Asuka any other time, I would be lost. But I could never be lost with you in my life.”
That silenced Rhea. For a heartbeat, all she could hear was the rush of her pulse and Iyo’s steady breathing on the other end of the line.
“God, I can't wait to see you,” Rhea sighed, sinking into the sofa with the biggest smile on her face. “And roll on Saturday. Asuka and Kairi are gonna pay for what they did to my girlfriend.” She couldn't help but relish the way the words felt so good on her tongue.
My girlfriend, my girlfriend, my fucking amazing beautiful ferocious and talented girlfriend.
She’d pay for this tomorrow — in headlines, in whispers backstage — but for once, she didn’t care where the line was drawn.
Iyo chuckled. “Calm, Rhea. Save it for Saturday. And anyway,” she continued, voice low, “there's a part of me that should be thanking them for getting you so riled up, ne.”
“I'll thank them with a riptide,” she grinned. “Anyway, baby, should I let you sleep? It must be, what, 1, 2 over there?”
“Un, 2,” Iyo sighed. “But stay with me, just a few more minutes?”
“You've got me however long you want,”
“Big roaming charges,” Iyo teased, feigning seriousness. “But worth it, deshou. Girlfriend tax.”
They stayed on the line a few minutes longer, Iyo teetering on the edge between sleep and awake. Rhea stayed on the line long after Iyo’s breathing softened into sleep, the hum of the ocean and the dial tone folding into one. The world finally stopped roaring, drifting into a small, peaceful eternity.
Rivals. Tag partners. Lovers. Girlfriends.
The tightrope got thinner, boundaries defined but no less terrifying. She had sworn that she would never throw her heart in the ring again. But she knew with Iyo beside her, the only way to fall was the sky.