Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead.

I plan to write six Rose/Dimitri one-shots based on the books.

Fight

Dimitri looked down at her, the tall features of his face towering over her petite face. Rose looked up slowly, breathless.

"What did you just way?"

"I said I'm done, Roza. I'm done with this charade, pretending I don't care about you. I'm tired of the lies."

Rose's brain worked at 1000 miles per hour, her heart straining. "So, what is the truth?" she said, as she inched her face closer towards him

"The truth is I look at you from afar everyday, when you run, when you fight. I think about you every day." Dimitri's lips came closer. "You're the first thought in my head every morning. The first thing I think about when I wake up and my alarm goes beep, beep, beep, beep, beep

"Oh, no, no, no, no" Rose whined, shutting her eyes tighter, trying to go back to her dream. With a sigh, she opened her eyes, sat up, swinging her legs across the bed and threw her alarm clock against her closet.

"Stupid, useless, machine…" she said, "Why did I even set my alarm for today? Isn't it Sunday….or…shit, I'm late!"

She quickly scrambled up her belongings, most of which were strewn across the room in a careless fashion. Grabbing a rubber band from her dresser, she ran out, zipping her jacket. She had forgotten that she had extra training early in the morning with Dimitri this Sunday. Putting her head up in a ponytail as she ran, she finally remembered the dream she'd been having.

It was weird. She'd noticed Dimitris' obvious hotness, of course. She'd even admitted to herself she was crushing on her way older mentor, but she'd never had a dream like that…she didn't know what to think about it. Obviously she'd been peeved to wake up, but that was just because it had been a nice dream. When you spend your waking hours training until your whole body is sore, preparing for an imminent future of fight against evil, soulless, much stronger and faster vampires, any niceties of thought are welcome.

Regardless of what she felt about Dimitri, she'd never stopped to think about what he thought about her. She remembered when she'd been caught with Jesse by Dimitri, the way he had looked at her….

"Mr. Zeklos, do you have permission to be in this part of the dorm."

"No, sir."

"Do you know the rules about male and female interactions around here."

"Yes, sir."

"Then I suggest you get out of here as fast as you can before I turn you over to someone who will punish you accordingly, if I ever see you like this again."-Dimitri pointed to where I cowered, half-dressed, on the couch-"I will be the one to punish you. And it will hurt. A lot. Do you understand?"

That was the whole reason she had extra practice now. Dimitri has made her realized she needed to be better, stronger, more focused for Lissa. If she ever wanted to be the guardian Lissa deserved, she couldn't waste her time fooling around with pretentious royals.

I thought about it, about him, and about Lissa. "It doesn't matter. If you tell me to do it, I'll do it."

He studies me hard, like he was trying to decide if he could believe me. Finally satisfied, he gave me a sharp nod. We'll start tomorrow."

She stepped inside the gym, Dimitri was already there, sitting in a chair and looking into nowhere with a deep expression in his face. He instantly looked her way.

"Glad you could show up."

"Sorry" responded Rose, flustered, my alarm…malfunctioned."

"Sure…"

"So, what's the plan for today? New fighting techniques? Do I get to use weapons this time." Rose forgot about the dream momentarily and started getting genuinely excited. She'd agreed to extra practices not only because she wanted to protect Lissa, btu also because she loved fighting. She loved the rush of it, the adrenaline of knowing you could be stronger than your opponent, the power.

"Sort of, you know that stuff I mentioned about Strigoi having advantages over you."

"Yeah"

"We're going to work on that, and I figured, since you're so midgety, you should learn to fight people taller than you."

"Hey!!" Rose said, outraged, "I'm not a midget, and my size isn't a problem!"

"Oh, really?"

In a second, he took Rose's arm, swung her around and somehow wrapped one arm around both her arms and another one around her neck.

"I think you need to pay more attention to my life lessons, Rose."

Rose wanted to spit back a witty comment, but couldn't conjure up anything. Suddenly her dream sprang back to her, she breathed in Dimitri's smell and instead of trying to pry him away, found herself growing weak in the knees.

"All right, teach me how to fend off freakishly tall people."

Dimitri grinned. Well, the first thing you have to know is that if you're approaching someone taller than you. They will always have the advantage if you're afar. However, once you get closer to them, they lose than advantage and become clumsy. What you need to do is figure out how to be fast, agile. You need to dodge their initial punches and then get close to them, use your own height as an advantage, almost placing your face lower than their torso, and once you are close, try to get in a good punch.

"I see, so you're talking about something like this..?" Rose walked closer to Dimitri, closing in the foot of distance between them. Straying out of the safe are, into his personal boundaries. She held up both her fists in a fighting stance and crouched slightly, looking up at his face.

"Just bend your hip a little bit" he said as he placed his hand on her hip and moved her body to the left. "Yes, like that, but it's more difficult to achieve that position when you're avoiding punches and running at someone. Let's try it."

Rose walked away and then turned around, she tried to close the distance between then as fast as she could, but Dimitri was faster. He swung a punch at her, which she barely dodged, and which caused her to jump back. He swung a lower one, and she spun around, barely avoiding another one to her side.

They began dancing, him throwing punches and her jumping back. Soon, she realized he was right. It was hard to simply dodge the punches of someone constantly trying to punch you, and it was harder to get close to them. Soon, however, she got the hang of it. She became faster, and learned that he usually came at her from the right rather than the left. She tried to use this to her advantage, and began to see him falter.

One punch from the right, she feinted, and came in at him from the left. She almost collided against him, crouching like he taught her as she shoved up her first hard up, towards his chin. There was too much force in her punch and it him his jaw hard, making him slip and take her down with him.

"Aw…." He said, once in the ground. He moved his head up, looking at Rose, which how lay on top of him, looking at his face with concern. He didn't look hurt anymore, though. "Good job." He said quietly.

Suddenly she was very aware of their position, this had happened before, the day she realized she was crushing on him. Only this time it was her keeping him from standing up, and she wasn't sure if she wanted to. Dimitris' eyes darkened, and he stared at her silently. She scrutinized his face very carefully, remembering her dream, wondering what Dimitri…how Dimitri felt about her, if he felt anything at all. His lips parted.

An idea entered her head, and she had to act quickly if she wanted an answer.

"So" Rose said, inching her face closer to his, "you think I can learn to use my height to my advantage."

Dimitri was taken aback, a look of mixed surprise with a hint of fear on his face. Rose suddenly could feel the electricity between them, and just for a second, she thought she saw desire in his eyes. Almost violently, he pushed her aside and stood up very fast, facing away from her."

"I think you'll do just fine."

Rose had her answer. She wasn't sure what to think of her, it was inconvenient, but…

She liked it.