fredbassett

Title : Fight Night, Part 4 of 7
Author : fredbassett
Fandom : Primeval
Rating : 18
Characters : Fiver
Disclaimer : Not mine (except Fiver and other OCs), no money made, don’t sue.
Word Count : 15,100 in 7 parts.
Spoilers : None
Summary : Fiver is down on his luck after being slung out of the army, but gets an offer he can’t refuse.
A/N : 1) Written for Soldiers Week as part of 52 Weeks of Primeval on

primeval_denial 2) Part of my Stephen/Ryan series

In his first fortnight on the job, boredom was Fiver’s main problem.

There was only so much porn you could watch without getting bored silly, and he’d never been one for shoot ‘em up games. Not when he’d played them for real. He did a couple of hours here and there, just to keep his reactions up to speed, but beyond that, he mainly worked out in his room or used the treadmill he’d persuaded Speight to bring into the lodging house. He’d wanted a punchbag, but there was nowhere to fix it. Not without bringing a ceiling down. His request to visit a local gym hadn’t been met with much enthusiasm. Speight liked to know where his assets were, and that meant being confined to barracks most of the time. The couple of times Fiver had been outside by himself, it hadn’t been hard to spot the tails and he could have left them behind any time he’d wanted, but there didn’t seem much point in causing trouble.

He had a job to do, he wasn’t kipping in doorways or under bridges, and the money was mounting up.

He’d fought four bouts. Lost two, won two. The whole lot had been staged, and Fiver knew that he was nothing but the warm up act. It was what happened in the next stage that interested him. Gazza and the other lads he’d talked to had been cagey about what else went on, but there was clearly more to the racket than a few fairly tame kickabouts. The Champagne Charlies he’d seen in the audience would want more for their money than a few split lips, black eyes and faked kicks to the nadgers. Actually, not all of them had been faked, not everyone was as good at pulling the punches as his mate Gazza.

One of the guys he’d been up against a couple of times – a ferrety little fucker with bleached blond hair – seemed to enjoy getting a few sneaky kicks in. Sure, he apologised later, but that cut no ice with Fiver. Next time up, he’d give the little git a taste of his own medicine.

Speight had hinted a couple of times that Fiver was wasted on the warm-up stuff and seemed to be angling to find out how far he was willing to go. He’d just laughed and told Speight to bring it on.

The venues had been different every time, presumably to stop the Feds getting a handle on what was going on, but each of the set-ups had looked pretty professional, with staging in place every time, but that sort of stuff wasn’t hard to put up and take down. Fiver had moonlighted a couple of times doing security at Glastonbury, so he knew how fast it could all be put together. Not all the places had showers and stuff, and on a couple of occasions, he’d been sent out to wait in the back of the van with a couple of the other lads, still sweating like pigs and stinking the place out.

He was still no nearer knowing where the bouts were being held, but his best guess was Essex and Suffolk. He didn’t know the area well, but the uniform flatness was a bit of a fucking giveaway.

By the fourth week, he was itching for some more action. He’d flattened Ferret-face on his last outing, much to Gazza’s amusement, and Speight hadn’t seemed too fussed, so when they got to their destination on Friday night, he wasn’t surprised to be told he wasn’t on warm-up duty any more.

“So what gives?” Fiver asked.

“You go out there and you win.”

“Just like that?”

Speight shrugged. “Yeah, just like that. You’re not up against our lads now, so get stuck in. Reckon you can do it?”

“I can do it.”

The farmyard they were in stank of pigs, and Fiver could hear them rootling around in a big barn to one side of the yard. Some screens had been put up and he was told to do his warm ups out of sight. He couldn’t see the punters arriving, but he could hear the cars pulling in and parking. The warm-up acts lasted about half an hour, then Fiver arrived to take him in through a door at the rear of the barn.

As ever, the lights were dazzling after the darkness of the yard, but Fiver’s eyes adjusted in the time it took a bloke in a suit to come out with the usual crap, bigging up each of the fighters, while Fiver and the other bloke took the opportunity to size each other up.

His opponent in his first real bout was a mixed-race lad who looked to be in his middle 30s. His nose had been broken several times and reset badly at least once. His hair was close-cropped and he seemed to have more hair on his chest and his arms than he did on his head. He had a couple of inches on Fiver and a longer reach, but they probably weighed about the same.

Fiver stayed out of reach as they circled each other like wary dogs. In the warm-up bouts it had been all about the theatre, but this was for real, and he had no intention of taking a beating.

From the stance the guy adopted, Fiver was expecting him to lead with his fists, but instead he was on the receiving end of a vicious foot strike. He saw it coming at the last minute and side-stepped, taking no more than a glancing kick on his side. He grabbed the bloke’s ankle and yanked him off balance. That was the problem with fancy moves. If they went wrong, you looked a right twat.

The crowd roared its approval.

Fiver slammed his foot into his opponent’s exposed guts. No pulling the punch this time.

Vomit spewed out of the man’s mouth.

He got another couple of kicks in for good measure, then stepped back to let the bloke stagger to his feet.

As soon as he was upright, Fiver laid him out with a textbook left to the jaw. He heard a nasty pop and knew it had dislocated. That was going to need a trip to A&E.

The crowd went crazy.

The bloke scrabbled to his feet, eyes glazed with pain, and a bulge on the side of his face that shouldn’t have been there, but he was a tough bastard and came back at Fiver hard, fists flying. The movements were wild and easily avoided, but the crowd were impressed by the naked ferocity and were roaring their approval. Fiver knew he could take the bloke, but there was no harm in going for a bit of theatre.

He threw up his left arm and blocked a hard strike, then followed up the block with a straight-armed jab to the kidneys that would have his opponent pissing blood for a week. It earned him a roar of pain. The crowd went fucking crazy. Fiver stepped in close and hammered in a few more body blows. The guy tried hard to disengage and regroup, but Fiver stayed with him, hammering his fists home with every swing of his arms.

The hardest thing about this stage of the fight was avoiding the mess of puke and blood on the floor. He had the upper hand, but ending up flat on the floor on his arse wouldn’t look good in front of the punters. He’d been told to win this one, and that was exactly what he intended to do.

His opponent had lost all coordination now, pain from the dislocated jaw and the hammering dished out by Fiver’s fists overwhelming any sense of strategy or tactics. All he could do was flail and hope to get in a lucky strike. There was sod all finesse left. The crowd were roaring approval. They were getting what they’d paid good money for, the sick fucks. Clamping down hard on his feeling of disgust, Fiver slammed his fist up under the man’s chin. His jaw broke with a sickening crack and he went down like a sack of coal.

Fiver took a step backwards, facing the crowd, his arms lifted in victory.

The crowd were on their feet, yelling.

Something fluttered onto the stage. A fifty quid note. More followed.

Two men came onto the stage and dragged the other bloke off by his feet. Fiver heard the thump of his opponent’s head on the wooden steps as he was hauled off the platform.

Speight jumped up on the stage, grabbing one of Fiver’s hands and lifting it in the air again.

“Don’t worry about the dosh,” he muttered, just loud enough to be heard. “It’ll get picked up. Nice fight. Now give ‘em a bow, we’re outta here.”

Fiver did as he’d been ordered, then followed Speight off the stage. A lanky lad no older than about 16, with the worst acne Fiver had ever seen, handed him a bottle of iced water and a towel. Outside in the yard, Fiver leaned against the wall of the enormous corrugated iron building, glad of the cool air. He was sweating like a pig from the lights rather than any exertion. The bloke hadn’t been good enough to have worked up a sweat on. He looked around the yard, wondering where his former opponent had been dragged off to. The bloke was going to need patching up by a proper doctor. Fiver presumed the fight ring had someone on string for that, although he hadn’t seen any evidence of a bent quack, and he’d not needed anything more than a few painkillers and some butterfly strips, so couldn’t speak for the medical arrangements, if any existed.

On the other side of the yard he could hear the snuffles and squeals of the pigs in the pen. Something had got them worked up – probably the stench of blood and sweat in the air.

Speight clapped him on the shoulder. “They liked you.” He shoved a wad of notes into Fiver’s pocket. “Call it a bonus.”

“Take your cut, did you?”

“This is just beer money, mate. Stick with this and you’ll make far more than a few quid on the side, trust me.”

“Yeah, like you keep saying. Are we done, or am I up again tonight?”

“We’re done. Gotta let someone else get a look in, but you’re a hard act to follow, Fiver lad. Leave ‘em wanting more and they’ll be even keener to see you perform next time.”

Fiver shrugged. “Suits me. Now how about that beer you mentioned?”

*****

Three weeks, three more fights.

He won each bout, although the last one had been more by luck than judgement. He’d been up against a 6’4” bodybuilder with the fancy footwork of a boxer, the hands of a karate expert and a better line in insults than his last drill sergeant. The bloke was also a sadistic fucker who liked playing with his food. And Fiver was the food.

A slight slip on a patch of blood handed Fiver the only advantage in what was fast becoming an unequal struggle. As his opponent had faltered for a crucial moment, Fiver lashed out with a hard strike straight to the bloke’s throat and followed it up with a kick to the groin with all his force and weight behind it.

The rest of the fight was dirty, brutal and, fortunately, short. Man Mountain finally went down to a succession of dirty tricks garnered from some of the army’s least salubrious battlegrounds. When his opponent stayed down, courtesy of another throat strike that left him writhing and gasping, there was a sudden silence in the arena before it erupted in a heady mixture of cheers and cat-calls and – unless he was much mistaken – at least one pistol shot.

He watched as his opponent was hauled from the stage and then, after the obligatory stage walkabout, he took a final bow and walked off.

One look at Speight’s face told him he hadn’t been intended to win that bout. The bloke looked like a bulldog sucking a piss-soaked nettle. He chucked Fiver a damp towel, muttered ‘well done’ and walked off, leaving Fiver alone in the dingy portacabin behind the barn arena. Speight had recovered some of his usual false bonhomie by the time they’d got back to Fiver’s lodgings but it was obviously an effort.

Fiver knew bloody well that his days were numbered. There would be no move to a new area. That had been nothing but bullshit. Speight had raked in the winnings when the odds had been against Fiver originally, then again when they’d been in his favour, but the smart money had been on his opponent in the last bout. But the results didn’t always follow the money, as Speight had just discovered.

“The next round’s tomorrow night,” Speight said as Fiver chucked his kit back into his room and headed for a cold beer from the kitchen.

“You’ve got to be fucking joking.” Fiver ripped the tab from the can and practically inhaled the alcohol.

“Do I look like I’m fucking joking?” There was a hard edge to Speight’s voice that he normally took more trouble to conceal.

Fiver toyed with telling him he looked like a man who’d just lost a shedload of dosh, but decided against it. “Why so soon?”

“There’s a bunch of city high-rollers who’ll pay good money to see you in action again. They watched tonight on a vid-link. Tomorrow they want to see the real thing. Smell the blood, the sweat and the shit. These are blokes that’ll happily blow 5K on a bottle of bubbly. They pay, you fight, that’s the deal. Got it?”

Fiver drained the rest of the beer and chucked the can at the bin in the corner. “What’s my cut?”

“Two grand, plus any take from the stage.”

“And your punters pay 5K for a bottle of fizzy plonk? Come on, mate, you can do better than that. By my reckoning, you’ve made nigh on 50k from me. Not a bad return on the tenner you gave me under the bridge.” It was almost certainly nearer 100k, but he knew playing dumb was never a bad thing.

“And you’ve made 10k. Not bad for a bridge bum.”

10k that would go straight back into Speight’s pocket when it was Fiver’s turn to be dragged by his feet off a manky stage. But if he did a runner now, he wouldn’t see any return for his efforts either.

“I want to see what I’m owed before I go in the ring again.”

Speight have him a hard look. “Not very trusting, Fiver boy. I thought we were mates.”

Fiver shrugged. “It’s dosh, innit, mate. No good to me in a bank or wherever you’ve got it stowed.”

Speight flashed him a rare thing – a genuine smile. “If you must know, it’s currently getting a damn good wash and a rinse at the bookie’s at the end of the road.

“As long as it’s dry by tomorrow, we’ll be grand.”

“Chill, mate, you’ll get what you’re owed. One more fight and you can take a break, OK? Then we’ll shift areas. There’s a good scene going up in Manchester. You’ll go down a treat up there.”

Fiver pulled a bottle of cheap whisky from one of the cupboards and poured two large shots into a couple of grimy glasses. He raised it in salute. “One more fight.”

Speight clinked the glasses together and downed his quickly. “One more fight,” he echoed, but the smile on his face fell a very long way short of his eyes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

lukadreaming.livejournal.com

Erk! I was reading that through my fingers. Cracking atmosphere.

From:

fredbassett

Excellent! That was the effect I was aiming for, but you never know if it's a hit or miss until any reactions come in.

From:

goldarrow

*cue ominous music*
*gulps*

That was beautiful, in a horrible way. I was squeaking throughout the fights.

6’4” bodybuilder with the fancy footwork of a boxer, the hands of a karate expert and a better line in insults than his last drill sergeant.
Simultaneous *meep* and *giggle*

He had a job to do,
*hint, hint*

Lovely.