Fic, Fight Night, Part 6 of 7, Fiver, 18
Sep. 8th, 2017 08:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredbassettTitle : Fight Night, Part 6 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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
primeval_denial 2) Part of my Stephen/Ryan series
The brightly-plumaged bird-thing was staring at them like a cat focussed on a mouse, just about to pounce.
“Work your way around the edge of the cage,” Fiver instructed. His voice low and urgent. “I’ll distract it. See if you can kick the door in.”
“The bloke on the other side’s got a gun.”
“Good. He’ll need it if we can get that fuck-faced thing back through it.” Fiver took a step forward, his arms outstretched. “Oi, you! Big Bird!”
The creature turned to him and titled its head to one side.
The noise from the crowd died down to an anticipatory hush. There was a sharp tang of sweat on the air and something else… a musky smell, like an animal on heat.
Fiver flapped his arms again.
The bird struck out with its beak, neck extended.
Fiver jumped sideways, making no attempt to engage. He was seriously outclassed and he knew it.
The bird jumped at him, faster than any fucking thing had any right to be able to move. He swayed sideways fast, but not fast enough. The yellow beak laid his forearm open to the bone. Red-hot pain lanced through his body, forging a pathway to his brain through every nerve ending on the way. The adrenaline surge took over, nature’s own anaesthetic, blanketing the pain, letting him shuffle crab-wise around the edge of the cage, his back to the bars of the cage, preventing him being outflanked.
The sound of Gazza’s boot striking the door reverberated around the cage.
The bird swung around, attracted by the noise.
Fiver powered forward at a run, kicking out at where he thought the creature’s knee would be. He hit taut skin and sinew and for a fraction of a second, the bird wobbled, but then it pivoted nimbly and lashed out with its beak, following that up with a leap from a standing start that would have gone down well at the Olympics. Fiver threw himself sideways; no time for finesse. He hit the boards floor and rolled, coming up onto the balls of his feet and kicking out again. The blow connected, but not with enough force to make a difference.
The sickle claw flashed again, catching Fiver a glancing blow to his left thigh, ripping through the material of his trousers and scoring a long red line in his flesh. Blood welled up instantly. The adrenaline in his system was shielding him from the pain but he knew it wouldn’t last.
A second kick to the door at the back of the stage reverberated through the wooden doors of the stage, but the bolts held it firmly in place. Gazza swore loudly and launched into another strike, his whole body behind the kick. The door didn’t budge.
A fast strike from the advancing creature claimed all of Fiver’s attention. He threw himself sideways, narrowly avoiding a disembowelling blow from the wickedly curved hindclaw. He landed on his side on the stage and rolled, coming up onto his feet and kicking out again. He caught the bird behind the knee joint this time and it stumbled. That was all the opening Fiver needed. He kicked out again, hard, this time taking the creature under the beak and snapping its head back with the power behind the kick.
He swung away, but it recovered faster than he would have believed possible, its yellow beak flashing in the bright lights illuminating the arena. Fiver twisted away, but the pain from his arm and leg were dulling his reactions, slowing him down by crucial seconds. The beak raked his side, ripping his teeshirt. He has no idea if it had ripped flesh or just bruised and there was no respite for him to take stock of his injuries.
“Fuck off, you fucker!” Gazza had abandoned his onslaught on the door and had run forward trying to distract the creature.
“Gazza, no!”
Fiver’s friend was slow, too slow. The bird-thing slashed with one leg, bringing the powerful claw into play. Five launched himself forward, arms outstretched. He managed to knock Gazza off-balance and out of the way of the deadly talon.
Gazza hit the floor hard, but was still able to roll away.
The claw gouged a long furrow across the wooden floor.
The spectators went wild, screaming and yelling. Some for the creature, some on the side of Fiver and Gazza. They were getting their entertainment now and were enjoying every minute of it. Fiver had no idea how much longer he and Gazza could hold out. He drew in a deep breath and jumped for the cage bars above his head, gripping hold with his hands and swinging his legs up. He felt hot pain ripping through his injured arm, but forced himself to work through it, kicking out with his feet at the feathered head. At least like this the blood was running back down his arm to his shoulder and wasn’t fouling his grip. His boots connected and the creature staggered away, shaking its head and squawking in annoyance.
Fiver swung across the bars. He’d been good at this sort of thing on the assault course, but then the worst he’d risked if he’d fallen would have been a broken bone. Here he risked having his throat ripped out or his guts spilled on the planks.
The bird lunged. Fiver drew his legs up and slammed his feet down, directly at its open beak. The blow connected and snapped the birds head back, the beak clacking shut, cutting off its furious cry. At the same moment, Gazza leaped onto its back, clinging on with both arms and legs, doing his best to unbalance it. Fiver kicked out again, getting in another strike as the creature staggered under Gazza’s weight. For a brief moment, it looked like they might stand a chance, and hope flared in Fiver’s chest as he landed lightly on his feet and he launched himself at their opponent, doing his best to drive it into the bars of the cage, trying to deny it room to manoeuvre.
The heavy feathered legs buckled and Gazza let out whoop of triumph. The crowd surged to their feet to get a better view of the mad scramble for supremacy on the caged stage.
Fiver knew they had to stop the sickle claws being brought into play. The beak was bad enough but the claws would be deadly. The creature bucked and scrabbled for purchase on the wood. The feathers were bulky, but underneath, there wasn’t as much mass as Fiver had first feared. The body was heavier than that of an ostrich – not that Fiver had any experience of rugby-tackling ostriches, but he had been to the zoo as a kid and knew what they looked like, and this bugger was certainly bigger.
The creature was doing its best to turn its head and rip Fiver’s face off, but he had it in a stranglehold and was just about managing to keep the wicked beak from getting hold of his flesh. He pulled back hard, his knee jammed down on its neck as Gazza tried to hold it down while staying out of the way of the flailing talons. The roars of the crowd rose above the noise of their struggle, baying for more blood. Fiver heard his own harsh breathing and Gazza’s pants and muffled curses. He yanked the head back and finally got what he wanted, the sharp crack of breaking bone.
The feathered head went limp in his arms and Fiver collapsed across the creature’s corpse, trying to drag air into his labouring lungs.
The crowd went wild.
He pushed himself up, checking quickly to be sure the bird really was dead. It was. He knew dead when he saw it. He held a hand down to Gazza and hauled him to his feet. Gazza cried out in pain and Fiver realised his stomach was covered in blood that had saturated the front of his trousers.
“Gaz, mate, what the fuck happened?” Fiver was still panting from exertion and his words came out in gasps.
“Fucking claw.” Gazza had his hands clamped to his stomach. His eyes were glazed and unfocussed and he was shaking with pain and shock.
Fiver pulled his teeshirt over his head, wadded it up and pressed it against Gazza’s stomach. “Keep pressing on it!”
Gazza’s breath hissed between his teeth. “Fucking hurts, mate!”
“The more it hurts, the better,” Fiver told him, trying to sound more confident that he felt. The blood was already soaking into the material as fast as the colour was draining from Gazza’s face. “Keep pressing!”
Gazza gritted his teeth and did as he’d been told.
Around them the crowd was yelling and stamping, hundreds of feet pounding the beaten earth of the barn floor. They’d wanted blood and they’d got it, but there had been nowhere near enough. From the yells he could hear, it wasn’t hard to work out that some of the audience felt cheated by the way Fiver and Gazza had teamed up. He presumed they’d been meant to work against each other in the hope of improving their own chances of survival. But that wasn’t the way it worked in Fiver’s world. You never left a man behind.
Through the surround-sound of cat-calls and whoops, Fiver caught the rasp of bolts being pulled back on the other side of the door Gazza had tried – and failed - to kick open. Fiver launched himself forward, crossing the makeshift stage, powering through the pain dragging at his mind and body to pivot on his good leg and kick out as hard as he could at the opening door. The wood slammed back, making someone on the other side come out with language that granny wouldn’t approve of – unless granny happened to work as a docker in her spare time.
Fiver through himself back against the internal wall of the barn, a fraction of a second before a pair of taser wires sailed harmlessly past him. He’d more than half expected a bullet to punch through the air, but the fight organisers clearly didn’t want to risk collateral damage amongst their punters. Fiver was under no illusions, though. The people on the other side of the door were armed and dangerous, and if push came to shove it would be a case of sod the punters.
He risked a quick glance over his shoulder to see how Gazza was getting on. The answer was badly. He’s sunk to his knees on the wooden boards, the bloodstained teeshirt clamped to his stomach. He head was bowed and he was shaking badly, but he was alive, and that was what mattered.
Fiver stayed to the side of the door. It was a stand-off and both sides knew it. Fiver risked a bullet if he moved into their line of fire, but whoever was behind the door risked being on the wrong end of his boot if they tried to come through it. He could hear the rough rasp of Gazza’s breath coming in short, painful pants and knew the other man was getting weaker. He was bent almost double now, his head bowed to the stage, hands still pressing the wadded-up teeshirt to the wound in his stomach. If he didn’t get medical attention soon, he’d bleed out and there was fucking nothing Fiver would be able to do about it.
The only thing in Fiver’s favour was that Speight and his hired thugs probably wouldn’t risk a stray bullet hitting the punters, but the wasn’t wholly sure he could count on that. He was weighing up his options when he heard Speight’s voice from behind the door.
“One more round, Fiver lad, just one more round…”
“Fuck off! You never said nothin’ about feathered fucking freaks!”
He heard Speight’s exaggerated sigh. “Yeah, life’s a bitch, ain’t it? OK, if you won’t play nice, one more round or I drill some lead through Gazza’s thick head. How does that sound?”
“He’s dying anyway,” Fiver retorted, doing his best to keep his voice low and calm.
“Then you won’t care if I put a few extra holes in him…”
Fiver heard a slide being racked on the other side of the door. He’d seen enough of Speight to know that the fucker didn’t give a toss about anyone else.
“Wait!” he said, letting urgency bleed into his voice. “Leave Gaz alone!”
“Then get back into the ring and fight one more round.”
One last round, more like.
Fiver ignored the jeering crowd and stared at the door, weighing up his chances.
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 seriesThe brightly-plumaged bird-thing was staring at them like a cat focussed on a mouse, just about to pounce.
“Work your way around the edge of the cage,” Fiver instructed. His voice low and urgent. “I’ll distract it. See if you can kick the door in.”
“The bloke on the other side’s got a gun.”
“Good. He’ll need it if we can get that fuck-faced thing back through it.” Fiver took a step forward, his arms outstretched. “Oi, you! Big Bird!”
The creature turned to him and titled its head to one side.
The noise from the crowd died down to an anticipatory hush. There was a sharp tang of sweat on the air and something else… a musky smell, like an animal on heat.
Fiver flapped his arms again.
The bird struck out with its beak, neck extended.
Fiver jumped sideways, making no attempt to engage. He was seriously outclassed and he knew it.
The bird jumped at him, faster than any fucking thing had any right to be able to move. He swayed sideways fast, but not fast enough. The yellow beak laid his forearm open to the bone. Red-hot pain lanced through his body, forging a pathway to his brain through every nerve ending on the way. The adrenaline surge took over, nature’s own anaesthetic, blanketing the pain, letting him shuffle crab-wise around the edge of the cage, his back to the bars of the cage, preventing him being outflanked.
The sound of Gazza’s boot striking the door reverberated around the cage.
The bird swung around, attracted by the noise.
Fiver powered forward at a run, kicking out at where he thought the creature’s knee would be. He hit taut skin and sinew and for a fraction of a second, the bird wobbled, but then it pivoted nimbly and lashed out with its beak, following that up with a leap from a standing start that would have gone down well at the Olympics. Fiver threw himself sideways; no time for finesse. He hit the boards floor and rolled, coming up onto the balls of his feet and kicking out again. The blow connected, but not with enough force to make a difference.
The sickle claw flashed again, catching Fiver a glancing blow to his left thigh, ripping through the material of his trousers and scoring a long red line in his flesh. Blood welled up instantly. The adrenaline in his system was shielding him from the pain but he knew it wouldn’t last.
A second kick to the door at the back of the stage reverberated through the wooden doors of the stage, but the bolts held it firmly in place. Gazza swore loudly and launched into another strike, his whole body behind the kick. The door didn’t budge.
A fast strike from the advancing creature claimed all of Fiver’s attention. He threw himself sideways, narrowly avoiding a disembowelling blow from the wickedly curved hindclaw. He landed on his side on the stage and rolled, coming up onto his feet and kicking out again. He caught the bird behind the knee joint this time and it stumbled. That was all the opening Fiver needed. He kicked out again, hard, this time taking the creature under the beak and snapping its head back with the power behind the kick.
He swung away, but it recovered faster than he would have believed possible, its yellow beak flashing in the bright lights illuminating the arena. Fiver twisted away, but the pain from his arm and leg were dulling his reactions, slowing him down by crucial seconds. The beak raked his side, ripping his teeshirt. He has no idea if it had ripped flesh or just bruised and there was no respite for him to take stock of his injuries.
“Fuck off, you fucker!” Gazza had abandoned his onslaught on the door and had run forward trying to distract the creature.
“Gazza, no!”
Fiver’s friend was slow, too slow. The bird-thing slashed with one leg, bringing the powerful claw into play. Five launched himself forward, arms outstretched. He managed to knock Gazza off-balance and out of the way of the deadly talon.
Gazza hit the floor hard, but was still able to roll away.
The claw gouged a long furrow across the wooden floor.
The spectators went wild, screaming and yelling. Some for the creature, some on the side of Fiver and Gazza. They were getting their entertainment now and were enjoying every minute of it. Fiver had no idea how much longer he and Gazza could hold out. He drew in a deep breath and jumped for the cage bars above his head, gripping hold with his hands and swinging his legs up. He felt hot pain ripping through his injured arm, but forced himself to work through it, kicking out with his feet at the feathered head. At least like this the blood was running back down his arm to his shoulder and wasn’t fouling his grip. His boots connected and the creature staggered away, shaking its head and squawking in annoyance.
Fiver swung across the bars. He’d been good at this sort of thing on the assault course, but then the worst he’d risked if he’d fallen would have been a broken bone. Here he risked having his throat ripped out or his guts spilled on the planks.
The bird lunged. Fiver drew his legs up and slammed his feet down, directly at its open beak. The blow connected and snapped the birds head back, the beak clacking shut, cutting off its furious cry. At the same moment, Gazza leaped onto its back, clinging on with both arms and legs, doing his best to unbalance it. Fiver kicked out again, getting in another strike as the creature staggered under Gazza’s weight. For a brief moment, it looked like they might stand a chance, and hope flared in Fiver’s chest as he landed lightly on his feet and he launched himself at their opponent, doing his best to drive it into the bars of the cage, trying to deny it room to manoeuvre.
The heavy feathered legs buckled and Gazza let out whoop of triumph. The crowd surged to their feet to get a better view of the mad scramble for supremacy on the caged stage.
Fiver knew they had to stop the sickle claws being brought into play. The beak was bad enough but the claws would be deadly. The creature bucked and scrabbled for purchase on the wood. The feathers were bulky, but underneath, there wasn’t as much mass as Fiver had first feared. The body was heavier than that of an ostrich – not that Fiver had any experience of rugby-tackling ostriches, but he had been to the zoo as a kid and knew what they looked like, and this bugger was certainly bigger.
The creature was doing its best to turn its head and rip Fiver’s face off, but he had it in a stranglehold and was just about managing to keep the wicked beak from getting hold of his flesh. He pulled back hard, his knee jammed down on its neck as Gazza tried to hold it down while staying out of the way of the flailing talons. The roars of the crowd rose above the noise of their struggle, baying for more blood. Fiver heard his own harsh breathing and Gazza’s pants and muffled curses. He yanked the head back and finally got what he wanted, the sharp crack of breaking bone.
The feathered head went limp in his arms and Fiver collapsed across the creature’s corpse, trying to drag air into his labouring lungs.
The crowd went wild.
He pushed himself up, checking quickly to be sure the bird really was dead. It was. He knew dead when he saw it. He held a hand down to Gazza and hauled him to his feet. Gazza cried out in pain and Fiver realised his stomach was covered in blood that had saturated the front of his trousers.
“Gaz, mate, what the fuck happened?” Fiver was still panting from exertion and his words came out in gasps.
“Fucking claw.” Gazza had his hands clamped to his stomach. His eyes were glazed and unfocussed and he was shaking with pain and shock.
Fiver pulled his teeshirt over his head, wadded it up and pressed it against Gazza’s stomach. “Keep pressing on it!”
Gazza’s breath hissed between his teeth. “Fucking hurts, mate!”
“The more it hurts, the better,” Fiver told him, trying to sound more confident that he felt. The blood was already soaking into the material as fast as the colour was draining from Gazza’s face. “Keep pressing!”
Gazza gritted his teeth and did as he’d been told.
Around them the crowd was yelling and stamping, hundreds of feet pounding the beaten earth of the barn floor. They’d wanted blood and they’d got it, but there had been nowhere near enough. From the yells he could hear, it wasn’t hard to work out that some of the audience felt cheated by the way Fiver and Gazza had teamed up. He presumed they’d been meant to work against each other in the hope of improving their own chances of survival. But that wasn’t the way it worked in Fiver’s world. You never left a man behind.
Through the surround-sound of cat-calls and whoops, Fiver caught the rasp of bolts being pulled back on the other side of the door Gazza had tried – and failed - to kick open. Fiver launched himself forward, crossing the makeshift stage, powering through the pain dragging at his mind and body to pivot on his good leg and kick out as hard as he could at the opening door. The wood slammed back, making someone on the other side come out with language that granny wouldn’t approve of – unless granny happened to work as a docker in her spare time.
Fiver through himself back against the internal wall of the barn, a fraction of a second before a pair of taser wires sailed harmlessly past him. He’d more than half expected a bullet to punch through the air, but the fight organisers clearly didn’t want to risk collateral damage amongst their punters. Fiver was under no illusions, though. The people on the other side of the door were armed and dangerous, and if push came to shove it would be a case of sod the punters.
He risked a quick glance over his shoulder to see how Gazza was getting on. The answer was badly. He’s sunk to his knees on the wooden boards, the bloodstained teeshirt clamped to his stomach. He head was bowed and he was shaking badly, but he was alive, and that was what mattered.
Fiver stayed to the side of the door. It was a stand-off and both sides knew it. Fiver risked a bullet if he moved into their line of fire, but whoever was behind the door risked being on the wrong end of his boot if they tried to come through it. He could hear the rough rasp of Gazza’s breath coming in short, painful pants and knew the other man was getting weaker. He was bent almost double now, his head bowed to the stage, hands still pressing the wadded-up teeshirt to the wound in his stomach. If he didn’t get medical attention soon, he’d bleed out and there was fucking nothing Fiver would be able to do about it.
The only thing in Fiver’s favour was that Speight and his hired thugs probably wouldn’t risk a stray bullet hitting the punters, but the wasn’t wholly sure he could count on that. He was weighing up his options when he heard Speight’s voice from behind the door.
“One more round, Fiver lad, just one more round…”
“Fuck off! You never said nothin’ about feathered fucking freaks!”
He heard Speight’s exaggerated sigh. “Yeah, life’s a bitch, ain’t it? OK, if you won’t play nice, one more round or I drill some lead through Gazza’s thick head. How does that sound?”
“He’s dying anyway,” Fiver retorted, doing his best to keep his voice low and calm.
“Then you won’t care if I put a few extra holes in him…”
Fiver heard a slide being racked on the other side of the door. He’d seen enough of Speight to know that the fucker didn’t give a toss about anyone else.
“Wait!” he said, letting urgency bleed into his voice. “Leave Gaz alone!”
“Then get back into the ring and fight one more round.”
One last round, more like.
Fiver ignored the jeering crowd and stared at the door, weighing up his chances.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 09:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 09:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 10:19 am (UTC)That was scary, horrifying and amazing.
I was squeaking and actually whimpering no no no.
Fan-fucking-tastic!
no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 11:14 am (UTC)*tries to breathe*
What a nightmare!
no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 02:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-08 09:29 pm (UTC)I'm glad this story is getting a reaction. I'd resigned myself to the thought of it being a real minority interest.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-09 07:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-09 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-09 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-09-09 10:07 pm (UTC)