Who: Sebastian & Nell What: A chance encounter Where: Local underground fight club When: Recently Warnings/Rating: A little bit of blood and violence.
The night after that disastrous conversation with Nell, Sebastian found himself at his second fight in a row. The previous night had been simple, a win that felt more set-up than anything, but he wasn't going to turn his nose up at the wad of cash that was shoved at him when the crowd had finally departed. The money wasn't like it had been when he still had the Aria, but it was his money, earned by him and him alone, and even if it wasn't the most legal of paths to be walking, he still took pride in it. The second night, however, wasn't as easy, and the moment Sebastian heard the name of his opponent, he knew it wouldn't be him walking away with the money this time. But he didn't back down, never said no when he was offered an opportunity, even when he knew the odds were highly against him.
But he was better now than he had been in the beginning. Working out at the gym had brought definition to his upper body that he hadn't had before. The disapproving voice of Oliver in his head helped him get better bit by bit. No, it wasn't as good as a professional trainer, but it was what he had to work with, and someone who was there with him even in the ring. Duck here, dodge there, swing there. He needed less and less instruction as time went on, and each time, things were a little bit easier.
That night, however, was bad. The guy he was facing off against with was shorter than him, but likely outweighed him by a good fifty pounds, and all of that pure muscle. Sebastian felt like a joke standing in front of him, weak in comparison, but he wasn't going to go running out of the room. The crowd that had gathered was loud, the room hot with the press of the gathered spectators, the sounds they made roaring in his ear as they danced around one another. It was Sebastian who threw the first punch, and from that point forward, he moved on instinct rather than thought, and everything was a blur.
When it was finally over, Sebastian was laying face down on the hard mat, his focus on simply breathing and staying conscious as the crowd around them roared. No one came over to help him up, even as the crowd started to depart, and that was nothing new either. This wasn't some high-class group of people, these were down and dirty fighters who were in it for the money and little else.
Looking back, she wouldn't have been able to say exactly how she ended up at the underground fight ring. Nell had taken to splitting her free time between entertaining Anton and taking long walks, as keeping busy was the only way she knew how not to dwell. Her communications with her friends had been minimal at best, but she knew that all conversations would eventually lead to how she was doing, and she still didn't want to talk about it. At least solitary walks meant she was left undisturbed. She would walk until she was almost worn out, maybe ducking in some place to people watch, and then go home exhausted. Tomorrow, she would do it all again.
She was lost in her own thoughts (this time about Anton's refusal to do anything more proactive than wait for another heart) when a loud cheer cut through the mental noise. Looking around, Nell noticed that she was in a relatively dark street, one that hardly qualified as more than an alley. She would have been convinced she had hallucinated the sounds, if not for the bored looking man leaning against the wall besides an iron barred door.
Curiosity took her inside, but it was a sudden upsurge of anger that made her stay.
It didn't take her long to make her way towards the front of the viewing area (people tended to be very facilitating when you were a young blonde traveling alone), and see who was in the ring. At first, the shorter, bulkier man was facing her, and it was clear that the taller, lankier man was completely outmatched. Blow after blow landed, and she wished (for the poor guy's sake) for the fight to be over. Then she saw his face. It was bloody and bruised, but it was Sebastian.
Blood pounded in her ears over the roar of the crowd as he went down on the mat, and before she could really register what she was doing, she had worked her way to the front of the crowd, where makeshift bookies were paying out bets.
"That last guy. How do I get in the ring with him?"
It wasn't humiliation that pulled at him as he started to push himself up from where he lay, but something along the lines of regret. Sebastian wasn't entirely sure what it was he was regretting, but it was there, a bitter taste on the back of his tongue as he swiped a hand at the blood that was running from the busted skin beneath his eye. "Fuck," he cursed in Italian, and no sooner did the word come out of his mouth that he caught sight of an all too familiar blonde.
He didn't say anything, didn't move even a muscle from where he was half-laying on the mat, the aches and pains from the fight replaced with the aches and pains of emotions. "Nell," he said quietly, surprise in his voice. "Nell." He pushed himself up then, pulled on by a certain urgency as he looked this way and that. "What are you doing here? You shouldn't - it's dangerous here."
Her face was flushed when she turned to look at him, with a mix of anger and something else. She chose not to reply to him, unwilling to trust what she might stay in this state. Instead she focused on the man next to her who was giving her instructions and warnings, and making her sign enough waivers to give Anton a whole new heart attack. She didn't care. Nothing mattered. All she knew is that she needed to do this. She'd reflect on the how and why of it when she was done.
She shrugged off her jacket and entered the fight ring, wrapping the roll of tape someone had handed her over her knuckles and palms. Her tank top and jeans were far from appropriate fighting attire, but she was confident it wouldn't matter. Once inside, her eyes sought out Sebastian's against her will, spotting his worried face easily in the crowd that was gathering again. A part of her wanted to tell him that he didn't need to worry, that she had been training to fight her entire life, and that she needed to make the short guy pay. Another part of her, a crueler, colder part, was just looking for a fight and didn't really care if she won or lost.
Things happened so quickly that it was hard to track what was going on. One moment, he was laying on the mat, his ears ringing, the next Nell was there. As she was signing this form and that form, all the waivers that relieved them of responsibility, he was ushered out, and maybe it was a sign of how hurt he was that he didn't argue. At least, not until she started wrapping the tape around her knuckles and palms. "Stop!" he yelled, his face rapidly going from worried to angry, pushing forward until he was at the edge of the ring, the guy who had just beat him grinning in the corner, all-too eager for another go. "Nell, stop!" he yelled again, pressing his hands against the edge of the mat, ready to haul himself up to stop her if he had to. Hands pulled him back, rough voices that cautioned him against interfering, leaving him only able to watch.
The loud crowd receded to a dull din when the man stepped back into the ring, and Nell could barely make out Sebastian's voice over the rest. Her world focused in on the man in front of her as it always did, eyes quickly surveying the bruises that were beginning to bloom where Sebastian had managed to connect, and the way the man was slightly favoring his left side. She had the advantage of having seen him fight just moments before, one that she rarely had on the street, and it was obvious to her before the fight was even called what she needed to do. She ignored the sneer the man gave her, and barely registered the standard pre-fight taunts he was lobbing at her. Nell was used to being underestimated because of the way she looked. In fact, she counted on it. Men seemed unable to contemplate the idea that they could get their ass kicked by a girl. An average sized blonde? Out of the question.
Oh, how she enjoyed proving them wrong.
The fight was called and the man stepped towards her, drawing back at the last second to laugh at her. She raised her brows at him, and waited. Realizing he couldn't bait her into hitting first, he threw a tentative jab at her, which she immediately blocked and followed with a swift strike. She could feel the shock of the crowd as she landed her hit, but she was looking closely at the man in front of her, waiting for that specific look in his eyes. The dawning realization that the girl in front of him was very much a threat, and that he couldn't go easy on her just because of her age or size. The look that was Nell's favorite part of any fight.
After that, the fight was over in less than two minutes.
Sebastian had known there were things about Nell that he wasn't wholly aware of, that she had skills he didn't know a lot about, but seeing her in action, taking down the man who had felled him in just a few moments, was something else altogether. The crowd had dispersed, but Sebastian didn't follow the crowds out of the room, instead staring after her as she moved towards the locker rooms, or what served for locker rooms in the questionable space these events took place in. Without a word, he trailed after her, quick steps catching her only moments later. The dullness from the fight had faded, and while he didn't have all of his wits about him yet, he wasn't dazed and confused. "Nell," he started, reaching out to grab her arm, to spin her around towards him. If it had been anyone else, he might have gone off on how she could have been seriously hurt, even killed, but he knew that wasn't necessarily the case with her, especially not after seeing the way she had moved. "What are you doing here?" Sebastian settled with instead, a lame question that didn't have the bite he wanted.
It was easy to be mad at her, to be angry at the entire situation they found themselves in, at least it was when he wasn't looking at her. He hadn't seen her since he had walked out of the apartment some weeks prior, had done his best not to even think of her, but when she was standing there in front of him, it was impossible to deny the ache in his heart, the way he felt despite it all.
Adrenaline had joined the anger coursing through her body, and when Sebastian spun her towards him, she was ready for another fight. They had never yelled at each other, not when they were together, and not when they broke up. Their relationship had been marked by a high tide of emotional ups and downs, but it had always been quiet. In that moment, however, Nell couldn't be quiet. Her dad was still dying, a friend of hers was dead, her best friend had lost her baby and fallen off the wagon, and another friend had just die, and she had just watched the man she still loved get his ass kicked in front of her eyes. Calmness was out of the question.
"What am I doing here? What the hell are you doing here, Sebastian?"
He could see it in her eyes, the way the adrenaline still soared through her, and, perhaps wisely, Sebastian released her arm as he took a step back. There were no good explanations as to what he was doing there, no reasons that would make sense to anyone but him. "It's what I do now, Nell," he finally said, folding his arms over his chest, his posture defensive, closed off. "I bring in a little money this way. Supplements the work I can get elsewhere." There was a lift of his chin, a motion that might have been more threatening had the side of his face, his neck, and the collar of his shirt not been soaked in his own blood. "What does it matter to you? Or did you just feel like humiliating me by kicking his ass after he kicked mine?" The words were harsh and full of acid, though he was forcing them out as though they were the things he had to say.
"It's what you do now? Seriously?" Her voice rose with incredulity, and for a moment, she had to look away. "You're too good for this Sebastian. This isn't who you are." The words were out of her mouth before she had a chance to think, and she didn't need to look at his face to realize their full effect. Not knowing who Sebastian was was the reason she had left him in the first place, and now… No, she still refused to believe that this is who Sebastian really was. She didn't think him capable of violence and yet, she couldn't deny the mixture of blood and sweat that masked the man in front of her. His words cut her deep, and she drew in a harsh breath, the metallic tang of adrenaline still sharp in her mouth. "I wasn't out there to humiliate you. I was… it was something I had to do."
"Not who I am?" His eyebrows rose at that statement, giving her a long look that was filled with his own mixture of surprise and incredulity. "I'm sorry. Did I miss the memo on who I am and am not? Because last time I checked, I barely knew who I was." His tone was still sharp, paired with an even sharper gaze as he looked hard at her. "I'm sure taking him down was on your list of things to do this evening." Sebastian cut to the side, sliding past her towards the sinks to grab a wad of paper towels from the dispenser, dampening them down before pressing them to the cut below his eye. Who was he, anyways? He wasn't a Price, not any longer. He wasn't anyone important. He had a degree that he felt ashamed of, a past that he couldn't stand to look at most days, and a future that was indeterminate and lacking the stability he had once cherished. He wasn't anyone, so what did it matter what he did, who he fought?
She had nothing to say to that, because he was right. As much pain as the sight of the man in front of her brought to her, she had very little idea of who he really was. Until he figured it out for himself, she never could. "I don't know what you're meant for Sebastian," she said, slightly more calmly, "but this isn't it." She watched him dab at the blood gushing from his cuts, and felt another surge of anger curl her fingers into her palm. A tinge of desperation crept into her voice. "I know these guys, I've fought them my whole life. You're going to get seriously hurt if you don't know what you're doing."
He didn't say anything for a long while, turning around to look at her instead, the wad of towels still pressed against his cheek, pressure against the split skin to encourage it to clot. "There's no guarantee that I'm going to get 'seriously hurt', Nell. I'm getting better each time. I've won a few. I may not be as good as you, but I'm not going to get killed." Of course, there were no guarantees for that, either. But maybe that's why he did this, this dance where he courted death every time he stepped in the ring. It wasn't that he was suicidal, or even reckless, but he felt more alive there than he did in any other aspect of his life.
Nell shook her head. "These men have been doing this for a long time. They come from places where they're used to fighting. Or careers that trained them. You have an MBA. You'll get better but you're not going to get good enough." It was a harsh truth, but that was all she was capable of right now. "Haven't you noticed there aren't any older guys fighting? What do you think, they all retire at 40?"
His lips pressed together in a thin line, listening to the words she said, wanting to just ignore them, but he couldn't do that, as much as he wanted to. "I know what can happen, Nell," Sebastian said quietly, as calmly as he could. "And I knew what could happen with my family, too. I could have died there as well. Just exchanging one risk for another." He looked away from her, turning back to the mirror, the bruises that were already blossoming.
Nell started to say something, but stopped short. She knew she had no right to say any of the things she wanted to. She knew she shouldn't be there, that she shouldn't care, but her brain rarely did the things it should. "Are you really that cavalier about losing your own life?"
His hand paused where he was touching at the cut beneath his eye, gaze flicking to her reflection behind him in the mirror. The question gave him reason to pause, reason to hesitate, before he simply shook his head in the negative. "Why do you care, Nell?" Sebastian finally asked, something rough and hard in his voice as he focused on himself, a new towel wet down to press against the cut, leaning against the sink with his other hand. "You don't have to care about me anymore. That's how breaking up works, isn't it?" Hurt found its way into his voice, seeping through without his permission.
Nell watched his reflection in the mirror in silence. How could she explain to him why she cared? It was like asking her why she loved him. She didn't know why, but she did. She had once imagined herself out of love with him, but one meeting six years later had been enough to prove her wrong. "I care about you, Sebastian. I'll always care about you." She pulled her aways away from the mirror. "Even when I shouldn't." She spotted her jacket that someone had been nice enough to move into the locker room, and she shrugged it on, not caring that her arms were still slick with sweat from the fight. "I'm sorry, I'll leave. I shouldn't even be here." Without a word or look back, she slipped out of the locker room, blinking furiously to keep the tears of frustration at bay.
There was a very large part of him that wanted to chase after her, to stop her from leaving, but something kept him cemented to where he stood in front of the mirror. His jaw was tight with tension, the tendons in his neck standing out as he tossed the bit of paper towel in a nearby trash can, giving his reflection a long, disgusted look. "No, you shouldn't care about me," he muttered as he turned away from the mirror to grab up his own bag with his clothes, not bothering to change out of his blood-stained t-shirt, figuring the dark colour would hide the worst of it.