I Don't Play [open]

[GABRIEL BLAZEK]

It was the fifth time Gabriel had been to the Alleyway, and he felt better.

Better, better. The roaring of the blood in his ears made the voices quiet, made the shadows stop shifting because he could not see them in the rush of the battle. It was peaceful. Taking punches and kicks was peaceful. Bleeding from the nose was peaceful.

He was squaring off against a man who was once again nearly twice his size, as most of the men here were. Though the Czech citizen was diminutive, he was not mocked for it as regularly as he had been the first time -- he had shown to the fighters at the Alleyway that he was capable of holding his own, regardless of his height or how little English he spoke. He had not yet won a fight, but he had put up a good battle in the six he'd participated in already.

It made him feel good, to fight. He would come into work with a black eye the next day and come up with shy excuses for his boss, that he had fallen down the stairs or tripped and hit his head on the counter. The man believed him every time. Why shouldn't he? What were the actual chances that little Gabriel Blazek, insignificant number cruncher, was going out and intentionally getting in fights?

It was magical.

His opponent swung a fist at him, and he ducked, weaving out of the way and to the side. He stuck out a foot, tripping him. He could feel his heart pounding in his head, and oh, what a roar, what a roar. It filled up his head with something else, something foreign, something besides his own thoughts, and how nice, how nice, how nice it was to just fight. How nice it was to just do and not think of a single thing except survival.

It was as if he were in his element.

A fist cracked against his cheekbone and he flew sideways, a terrific ache exploding in his face. It made him smile. Pain cancelled out other feelings -- it demanded to be felt before anything else had a chance, overwhelming his mind with screaming nerves. It was almost intentional self-harm, putting himself in these situations. But he didn't care.

The fight lasted twenty minutes. Gabriel lost again, but he didn't care. His nose was bleeding, but he didn't care. His entire body screamed, but he didn't care. He was happy.

He sat down at the bar in the farthest reaches of the Alleyway and squeezed his bleeding nose with a napkin.

[LUCAS CARTWRIGHT]

When Marlena Cartwright was not by his side, every second was an eternity. When her winsome voice could not be heard, every gentle tap of the clock inspired madness. When her sweet smell evaded him, his deprived nose ached; when Marlee herself, so ravishing as she was, was nowhere in sight, his blue eyes stung. When Marlena was not by Lucas' side, his faculties faltered, his heart stopped, his very soul disintegrated, until he as a whole temporarily ceased to exist. She was his sine qua non, without which there was nothing, without which Lucas himself was nothing.

That night, amid the blood and the sweat that adorned the Alleyway, Lucas was nothing.

Where was she? Where was Marlena? She was not at home, as she should have been. She was surely not at the University, not at this late an hour. Where was she? He could not be sure. As was only reasonable, Marlena likely wanted a night of privacy, away from her overbearing brother and out, free, amongst her peers at some college party or another. To Lucas, this realization, the realization that Marlena was free– "free"– was akin to the realization that he himself was dying. Or, he imagined it was, at least– Lucas had not actually died, not yet. On nights like these, when Marlena was out, surely mingling with the vagabonds that she called friends, Lucas could only wish that he were dead, if it meant his sister would be home, safe, where she could stay for all eternity, safe, without having to deal with the aforementioned vagabonds or any similar monsters.

Shuffling awkwardly around the makeshift coliseum, a place of intoxication and barbarity and not much else, Lucas stared up at the ceiling, as if there (somewhere beyond the smoke that had collected), he would find some sort of answer. Where was he? Perhaps that, at the moment, was the most important question to ask. Perhaps. But then again, perhaps he was right where he needed to be, given the horrible, horrible circumstances. Maybe a fight club was exactly what Lucas Cartwright needed, the only thing that he needed (disregarding, of course, Marlena herself) when his sister was out, possibly drinking and possibly smoking and possibly having sex and possibly even being raped. There were many possibilities, and as he observed savage combat from the shadows, Lucas organized them in his mind, quietly calculating the likelihood that, at that very moment, Marlena was not at a college party, but dead. Or, possibly, dead at a college party.

Maybe they would find her body, one day, rolling lifeless alongside the fish that rode the waves of the ocean. Maybe, when he finally left this beautiful hellhole, he himself would step out onto the harbor, glance impassively at the ocean beyond, only to find there the cadaver of his beautiful sister. This thought ate him to the very core, and he was briefly tempted to leave the Alleyway and flee to the ocean, dive in, search the black waters for Marlena, wonderful Marlena, beloved Marlena, dead Marlena. Then, fortunately, Lucas decided that Marlee was not dead. She couldn't be. She wouldn't do that to him. God, wherever the hell he was, God wouldn't do that to him. Right?

Lucas looked up, breaking free from macabre reverie to witness the conclusion of the battle ahead of him. Unsurprisingly, the larger man had won, though the small one, who now let blood drip from his nose to a napkin, had put up a decent fight. A good fight, even. Lucas wondered how he would fare, up there, but fighting was not his thing. Did he have a thing? No, he didn't suppose he did, very much, but fighting wasn't it. Marlena was his thing. He would fight for Marlena. He would fight all the Julian Sorensen's in the world, for Marlena. And for himself, partly. Mostly.

The small man, the loser with the bleeding nose, sat down at the bar, and, despite himself, Lucas took a step closer, and another, and another, until he said something, surprising himself. Lucas rarely went to the trouble of initiating conversations, not with others than Marlena and especially not with small bleeding men in fight clubs. But, less surprising, Lucas had wasted no time with pleasantries, said only what had been partly on his mind since entering. "Does it hurt?" The question sounded stupid, after he had said it, but Lucas felt and showed no embarrassment. Of course it had hurt– Lucas supposed he had meant to ask if the pain was worth it, worth the thrill or whatever it was that propelled men to participate in such madness. But he didn't bother correcting himself, only waited quietly for an answer, overtly eying the man's bloody nose all the while.

NOTES

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