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2 April 2014 Troian Bellisario vs Natalie Dormer

Page history last edited by Vassago 9 years, 9 months ago

AHW: THE SACK OF TROY

Posted by Rampant Fighting on April 2, 2014, 8:36 am

The crack of Troian Bellisario’s palm turned her head, but not as violently as some of the earlier slaps had done. Troian’s eyes were red and ran with tears; she had become less accurate since she started to cry. Both of them had.

Natalie dragged the back of her forearm across her nose. Troian’s image slid and distorted and seemed almost to become consumed by the overhead light. The left side of her face was a red blotch, as though a ball of paint had exploded on her cheek. Natalie hit her there, catching her cleanly, sending her stutter-stepping out to her right. She had taken to running her tongue along the corner of her lower lip after each slap. She did it again now.

‘A break?’ she said.

They each kept their left hand on the peg. Rachel Bilson gave Natalie a towel to wipe her eyes and a handful of tissues to blow her nose and Lucy Hale did the same for Troian on the other side of the table. Now that her vision was clearer she could see that there was blood on Troian’s lip, but there was blood on her own towel, too, and when she touched her finger to her mouth there was a red smear on the tip. Troian was cleaning the sweat off her peg with her towel, keeping her palm pressed against the top of it while she cleaned, punctilious about observing the rules of the contest. Lucy held a damp cloth against her friend’s swollen cheek as she pushed loose strands of dark hair back from off her forehead. When the time came for the fight to restart, she ducked under Troian’s outstretched arms and gave her a hug.

‘Don’t worry. That’s not part of your job description,’ Natalie said, as she balled up the towel and handed it back to Rachel. ‘Now hit me Troian, you overbearing piece of shit.’

****

The table was made from cheap looking pine. The veneer was chipped, specked with the dark spots of her tears; each one a different shade, dependent on the length of time since it had fallen. She squeezed her eyes shut as the count ascended, and only when it reached nine did she wrap both of her hands around the peg and so commit herself to taking another slap.

Troian trapped her own hand between her thighs; after six consecutive goes her palm must have felt like it was burning. Her face was a blur; the white of her smile trembled as though it were liquid. She drew her arm back, but she halted mid-swing, and Natalie realised that her own arms were held up in front of her face to protect herself.

‘Game over, I think.’ Troian seemed to glow with her triumph, backlit, the heat of her body tangible as she moved closer. ‘You’re lucky. If my hand didn’t feel like someone had flayed it I’d spank you until your cheeks matched. Still, perhaps we can save that for another time. But you’re collecting so many losses I feel like you deserve a loyalty card. Five gets you a free coffee, you know the idea?’

‘#### you.’

‘If you’re worrying about how this will be reported you needn’t do. I’ll make sure it’s clear you were competitive. Up to a point.’ She lifted her hand and let Natalie’s hair fall through the spaces between her fingers. Her voice was made strange by her swollen face. ‘What I wouldn’t have given to have been the one who shaved you,’ she said.

****

‘Morning Katie. Isn’t it a beautiful day? I do love your shirt.’

Natalie walked quickly through reception, pushing the swing door open and letting it clatter back and forth, smiling at the sound of heeled footsteps hurrying on the tiles.

‘Er, we didn’t expect that you’d be here today.’

‘No. I’m meeting Rachel for coffee across the road and thought I’d pop in.’

‘It’s just that…’ She got in front of Natalie and stopped. The tops of her breasts were blotched with make-up, as though she was covering up bruises. There was a panicked expression on her face.

‘I know that it’s Emily’s day. Probably by now she’s partway through one of her legendary workouts. Fifty miles into her run, perhaps, or lifting a dozen small children with each arm.’ Natalie touched the receptionist’s sleeve. ‘Don’t worry. I can be civil. Come and watch if you like. It might be fun.’

The gym was empty except for Emily. She had her back to them, wearing powder blue spandex shorts and sports bra, white ear buds trailing wire to her pocket as she ran.

‘Her butt is incredible,’ Katie whispered.

When she saw them she stopped the treadmill and stepped off it. She took out the ear buds and put her hands on her hips.

‘You know that you aren’t supposed to be here today?’

‘Hello Emily. You look sexy when you sweat. Hard work suits you.’

Typically when Natalie spoke to her in that manner she would express her disapproval either through her body language or by making a physical gesture, pursing her lips or shaking her head, but this time she smiled and drummed her fingers against her thigh.

‘Does it? You can sweet talk me all you like, but if you keep coming home smelling of Troian I’m afraid this relationship will be over. I’m not sharing you with her, Natalie. I mean it.’ Her laughter burst from behind her smile like water from a broken dam. She started to turn back to her workout when Natalie grabbed her wrist. The skin was slippery and hot and soft, the fine hairs there slicked flat.

‘Don’t worry Ems, I promise, nothing will ever come between us. Troian is a ruthless b###h and she’s a fun little winter fling, but what we have is special.’

She could hear the beat of the music coming from Emily’s ear buds, a buzzing drone like the noise of an insect. She wiped off the sweat on her hand with a towel.

****

‘They really do care about one another, don’t they?’

‘I should take a picture of your face. Is friendship honestly that hard to understand?’

Rachel pushed her chair back from the table until their server had finished wiping the drink she had spilt. There was amusement in her expression as she took out her phone and pretended to frame a photo. Natalie wafted her hand in Rachel’s direction.

‘You know that woman is in the sparring database as a Jessica Alba type? Tell me, have you ever seen Jessica Alba move as gracelessly as that? Her feet looked tied together.’

‘She was nervous. She brought you coffee and you stared at her like you wanted to yank her hair out. That isn’t how the exchange of goods and services works. And yes, Lucy and Troian and Benson and Shay, all of them are friends. It’s bullshit, but I’ve spent months trying to pry them apart and nothing.’

The sun was hot against the back of Natalie’s neck. She rubbed her hand across it, shifted her position slightly. She wished that she had chosen a seat away from the window.

‘Troian has been blanking me, not returning my calls. I thought I might jump Lucy, rough her up a little bit. I wondered if you’d like to help?’

‘You’re serious? You are insane. That slapping contest you two had is meant to be, like, a diversion to blow off steam on-set, and you turned it into something that would get banned at Guantanamo. I think you should take a break from each other, Nat.’

‘I wasn’t asking for your advice. The girl is your bête noire, is she not? I expected that you’d jump at the chance.’

‘Well I’m not. I’ve had enough tramps do that shit to me and it sucks. Do your own cheap beat downs.’

****

The evening smelled of rain and wet leaves and the ventilated air from a Vietnamese restaurant next door. Lucy had stopped in the doorway of the gym and half-turned to speak to someone inside. The pink and green neon lighting of a sign in the window colored the left side of her face. She smiled and shouted bye and pressed a button on her keys and across the street lights flashed momentarily on a white SUV.

It took less than a minute after that.

She cried out when Natalie kneed her in the belly and threw her down sprawling against the side panel of the SUV, but it sounded muted and quiet in the empty street. Natalie kicked her twice in the ribs as she was on all fours, then knelt down on her outstretched arm and lifted her head up by the hair. Her breath was uneven. There was mud and small twigs and part of a candy wrapper on her forehead.

‘Tell Troian to start picking up her phone. I miss her.’

****

She knew that if Troian was a woman who posted Instagram selfie’s wearing a bikini in a hotel bathroom, or left the house with the back of her thong visible above the waistband of her pants, or put on a sheer top and smiled guilelessly while walking the carpet at an event flickering with flash photography, then the way that they fought would be different. There would be little pleasure to be had from pulling down her bra just enough to expose her nipple, pinching her so that the resulting mark resembled a hickey, tugging her panties until they disappeared between her buttocks like they’d been commanded to hide.

‘You’re such a put together young thing. I do love dirtying you up.’

At one point their limbs had become so entangled and their position so awkward that Natalie had almost elbowed her own knee, mistaking it for Troian’s as she looked down at their intertwined bodies. The room was poorly lit; the lamps at either side of the bed had low wattage bulbs and when they had fought standing up against the dresser it had been in semi-darkness.

‘You shouldn’t have done that to Lucy.’

‘You shouldn’t have been born with that face.’

The first time Natalie had straddled her, Troian had turned her head to one side and bitten Natalie’s thigh; the oval shaped bruise she had left there was purple and looked like a brand. Now Natalie twisted her hand in the damp tangle of Troian’s hair, holding her head flat against the mattress. All of the bedding except for a pillow was on the carpet, and the material of the bare mattress felt rough against Natalie’s knees.

She thought of the hot weight of Troian’s bum on her face, a half dozen different times. She muscled Troian up the bed until her upper body was centered in the two pools of light from the table lamps. Her eyes were still unfocused from Natalie’s knee striking the side of her head. A bubble of spit had formed over her mouth as she mumbled.

‘You know, I read the Iliad when I was at school. I know how hard it was for the Greeks to conquer Troy. I know what it cost them.’ With her index finger Natalie popped the bubble on Troian’s lips. She ran her finger down Troian’s torso; between her breasts, down her tummy and across her bellybutton, letting it catch in the waistband of her panties. ‘And I know that ultimately, force did not work. It was only when they were able to slip inside Troy, under the pretext of providing the city with a pleasurable gift, that the Greeks were finally able to sack her.’ She waited for the comprehension to come into Troian’s face before pulling off her panties and wadding them into a ball and throwing them onto the floor. ‘There will always be places you aren’t prepared to go. But I am.’

Troian groaned and tried to sit up, but Natalie’s left hand closed around her throat and held her down. She bucked her hips and kicked her legs against the mattress and repeated the word cunt like a chant.

‘Call me whatever name you like. But think about this. The hand that you’re ####ing yourself onto like a whore? It’s the same hand I used to beat up your friend.’

Her body undulated. Her face was clammy and flushed as a drunk’s. She grunted and moaned, her mouth a moist pout, greedy seeming somehow, her breath seeping out in pants. Sweat gathered in the concave slope of her tummy, holding the light captive there. Natalie let go of her throat and gripped her breast and pulled on it roughly. She cried out and bit down on her lower lip so hard that the skin around her tooth was white and it seemed like she would break the skin. She reached up and grabbed Natalie’s hair and yanked it until their heads were close together. She smelled of sweat and mint and a perfume that was like herbs. She screamed.

There was a water bottle on the table at the other side of the bed. Natalie sprawled across Troian to get at it, smiling as she felt Troian squirm underneath her and lift a shoulder up off the mattress, because with their torsos parallel the position mimicked that of a pin. She left her weight there for a minute, their nipples touching, their heartbeats thumping a brief illusion of intimacy before she sat upright on Troian’s belly. Her grip had left red blotches on the pale skin of Troian’s breasts. She wiped her fingers there, tilted her head back and closed her eyes and laughed.

‘You know, you look like a cheap, used up slut.’ Water dripped lukewarm from her chin as she drank. ‘If I’ve given you unrealistic expectations for your future sexual encounters then I apologize, but you can always come back and beg for me to give you a hand again. I’m leaving now. Presumably you will want your knickers? I think that they’re somewhere down on the floor.’

(And they said studying Classics was pointless! I know this is veering quite a long way off course from the FCBA but I did enjoy writing it - hopefully people don't mind too much?)