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It’s not that Ava doesn’t understand the appeal.
She is certain that to someone this whole situation is very appealing . There’s something about it, the overcrowded auditorium, the cluster of people too close together for comfort and without nearly enough deodorant, and the ring in the center of it all and she gets it.
Kinda, sorta, in theory.
A part of her wishes she had taken Nora up on her offer to come with her. At least then there would have been two of them sticking out like sore thumbs and looking completely out of place. Ava in her peach sweater and skinny jeans doesn’t fit in with the crowd at all. Everyone else is dressed in too tight clothing that are bedazzled too much, or cowboy boots despite this being a normal respectable city.
She scans the crowd looking for someone , anyone, familiar.
When Sara had invited her, insisting that she would only be able to see her after the match, she had made the assertion that Ava wouldn’t be alone. That Mick, Charlie, and John would be there (Ava was only proximally aware of Mick and Charlie, and couldn’t stand John at all, so not the best choices) but despite the fact that she had texted both of them, she’d yet to see either of them.
Ava had never been one for sports, to begin with. Missing out on the appeal of both Softball and Women’s Soccer, the usual sports that she probably should have at least paid some attention to. But this was a whole different realm.
Fighting.
Ava hadn’t even been aware that mixed martial arts were even a thing for women until Sara had turned up at one of John’s house parties (one that Ava had only been dragged to by Nora in the first place), with a black eye and a smirk that just did things to Ava.
Still, they were friends.
Nothing more.
But when Sara had texted her spur of the moment on Thursday asking if she was busy this weekend, Ava had replied too quickly thinking that just maybe she was finally going to be asked out on a date. Instead, she was here at Octagon Valor Supreme ™ feeling completely like a fish out of water.
She’s in the middle of shooting a frantic text to Sara but doesn’t want to worry her so she ends up settling on a hey I’m here but I can’t find our mutual(?) friends , when the devil himself , John Constantine appears, “You know, pet, I wasn’t sure you’d actually come.”
“Don’t call me that,” Ava says back automatically with well-practiced ease.
John shrugs and just proceeds to lead her over to where Charlie and Mick are sitting in the bleachers. The whole place is overcrowded and smells like overpriced fake cheese, and she’s pressed a little bit too close to comfort into Charlie’s side, but it’s that or some stranger and really at least she sort of knows Charlie.
“No, Nora,” Charlie asks.
“That the tiny angry one,” Mick asks, pausing in the middle of eating what Ava thinks is supposed to be a corn dog but she cannot be entirely sure, and either way it was definitely overpriced.
“She had plans,” Ava replies.
Which isn’t true at all.
And John lets out a huff of laughter not believing her, but at least too classy to say something.
Mick, on the other hand, is not, “You planning on taking Blondie home after this?”
Ava stares at the ring so that her face doesn’t betray her.
Her voice is small when she replies, “Maybe.”
She knows that she has a habit of becoming flustered a bit too easily, and it’s not as if Ava hadn’t thought about how nice it would be to celebrate Sara’s victory with her once she won.
Because she’s going to win.
Sara had promised her as much when Ava had expressed mild hesitation over-coming to the whole event. For all that Ava was into serial killers (she ran a podcast about them with Gary and Nora) and enjoyed horror movies (and was the self-proclaimed number one Swamp Thaaang enthusiast) the idea of watching someone that she may like as more than a… friend? (close acquaintance?) getting beaten bloody wasn’t very high on Ava’s todo list.
But even as they sit here waiting for Sara’s match watching a number of other matches in the meantime, Charlie insists repeatedly that Sara is better than any of the others that they have seen and John points out that she hasn’t lost a match in years.
Ava gets it.
Being here among a crowd that is pressed too close, feeling out of place, and a little too warm, she gets it. The thrill. The excitement. The reason people come out to these things.
But she can’t help it, the way her heart speeds up a little too fast when the announcer calls out for the start of the next match by announcing the name “Sara ‘ White Canary’ Lance” in a booming voice that causes the audience to burst out into cheers.
Ava stands up with the crowd, cheers a little too loudly, and completely misses the name of Sara’s opponent because she can’t bring herself to tear her eyes away from Sara.
She looks good… Way too fucking good to be about to fight someone else. For one thing, her abs are on display and while Ava was one hundred percent confident that Sara has abs, seeing them all out in the open is a whole different feeling.
Ava forces herself to focus on Sara’s face instead. Her blonde hair is pulled back from her face so that Ava can clearly see the passion in her eyes and the confident smirk that finds its way onto her face when their eyes meet. Sara kissing the top of her glove before waving it in her general direction, a part of Ava wants to ask Sara’s friends if that’s normal for her, but another part of her wants to believe that it is special, just for her.
It’s then that the second fighter comes out. She looks as though she is twice Sara’s size and despite the loose explanation that Ava had gotten before that they were split up into weight categories, it simply doesn’t make any sense that Sara and this girl are meant to compete. Still, Sara stands there smiling cocksure of herself, and Ava can’t help the way her heart beats frantic in her chest.
Nervousness, surely it’s just that, nervousness for Sara.
The referee confers with the two of them down in the ring, and then after a minute, they step apart. A woman holds up a sign with the number one on it, and then Sara and her opponent touch gloves before moving apart from each other.
The fight begins quickly. Her opponent immediately starts attacking hard, but Sara avoids her punches easily, moving about the ring light on her feet, before returning a few of her own. When her opponent charges at her, Sara counters with a high kick to the side of her head. They’re about evenly matched, as far as Ava can tell, which makes it interesting to watch.
Terrifying and thrilling all at once.
Hard to watch, but at the same time, she can’t bring herself to look away.
Try as she might, it’s hard to reconcile the woman that Ava had met at that party with the woman currently talking another to the ground, throwing short punches and elbows at each other as the fight continues.
Her opponent manages to get away and jumps back, then they’re back to squaring off again until Sara sends out a kick that knocks her opponent off balance. Of course, her opponent counters with punches of her own. It’s all kind of violent and intimidating, but also… Maybe just maybe Ava can see the thrill behind it all.
She doesn’t realize she had been holding her breath until the first round is called, and finally, she sucks in a large breath.
“Enjoying yourself, Sharpie,” John asks her during the lull between rounds.
“Something like that.”
“Don’t worry too much, she always wins these things.”
The break ends soon enough, Sara and her opponent back to facing each other. Sara starts out on the attack this time, but somehow in spite of that, her opponent remains standing. Then Sara switches it up delivering a ferocious kick directly to the side of her opponent’s head. Her opponent stumbles back off balance, landing down hard on her tailbone, and the crowd roars with excitement.
“Come on, Sara, keep it up,” Ava calls out. Even though there is no way Sara could hear her down on the mat.
Sara tries to capitalize on her opponent's fall, but it’s not as successful as it could be, because her opponent manages to tangle Sara up on the ground so that she can’t get in a clean punch. They grapple with each other again, but this time when they both manage to get back on their feet, Sara sways just a little.
But if it’s noticeable to Ava, then surely there’s no way her opponent had missed it.
The match is close, too close for Ava’s liking, and she can’t help the gasp that spills from her lips when Sara’s opponent manages to grapple her way behind Sara and grab her in what sort of looks like a bear hug but is anything, but that. The other woman leaps backward, taking Sara with her, and slamming Sara’s head back onto the mat.
The crowd's cheers are so much longer than they had been when her opponent fell earlier, loud enough that they drown out Aav’s terrified gasp.
But those cheers turn into an unnatural hush from the crowd when Sara doesn’t get up, unexpected, and as the referee starts to count Sara doesn’t get back up.
Ava swears her heart stops beating in her chest.
The panic rising, almost overwhelming, and somewhere over the fog in her head she hears the match being called, the referee helping Sara back up to her feet, even if she seems to sway in place a little.
Charlie is saying something angrily beside her about a foul or something else, but Ava cannot focus on it.
She can only focus on the way Sara looks, disappointed in herself, eyes downcast, body stuff, rubbing her glove over a split lip and smearing blood across her cheek and - Ava starts to move without thinking about it, only stopping when Charlie’s hand is on her elbow holding her back.
“She’s not gonna want to see us after that,” Charlie says, “If you want to wait by our cars, she’ll eventually come out.”
“I - I need to -” She stops, knowing rationally that Charlie is probably right. That she would know Sara better. But Ava can’t help it, the need to confirm with her own two eyes that Sara is alright.
And well… Before all of this Ava had promised Sara that she would meet her in the changing room after the match.
Though they had both been planning for that to be under very different circumstances.
“Bathroom,” Ava says, pulling her arm away from Charlie, even though they both know that isn’t true.
But Charlie doesn’t stop her, so Ava goes.
There’s another match, another rush of the crowd standing up but Ava weaves her way through it all, sending off a quick text to Sara certainly not expecting a reply before she finds herself outside of where she had been told the changing room doors were.
It’s weird but for a second she lingers.
Charlie’s words echoing in her head, and maybe she’s right, maybe Ava would be better off leaving Sara be. But there’s this part of her that is still worried, that needs to see that Sara is a living and breathing being with her own two eyes even if she knows that Sara must be because she had seen her walk out of the ring with that disappointment set to her body.
Ava pushes the door open before she can second guess herself again.
It doesn’t take long to find Sara, most everyone else clears out between their matches, the victor probably off somewhere already celebrating but Sara…. Sara is just sitting there, a bag of ice pressed to her cheek and that same disappointed look on her face.
She’s holding her phone in her hands like maybe she had been about to reply to Ava after all.
Maybe she hadn’t been able to find the right words either.
But Sara looks up at the sound of the door opening and their eyes meet and Ava feels something that isn’t like panic anymore. The concern is still there, but there’s also something else a swooping feeling in her stomach, the same sort of feeling she’d felt at the party when she’d first met Sara and…
“Fuck, Ava, I wish you hadn’t had to see that.”
There’s regret heavy in her tone, but something else, a touch softer.
And Ava doesn’t have to think before crossing the space between them and sitting on the bench across from Sara.
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Ava replies, “As long as you’re okay.”
Sara shrugs.
She’s pretty banged up, most certainly going to get a black eye and a number of other bruises. Her knuckles and lips are split, and there’s redness around her eyes that Ava was sure Sara would refuse to admit but is so clearly a sign that she had been crying before.
“I’ve been better.”
“For what it’s worth, Charlie said your opponent cheated.”
Sara lets out a half-laugh at that. “They always say that when a match is too close… Or when I lose… Though that hasn’t happened in so long, I mean, not before today.”
Right.
Ava knew that.
And it’s hard not to bring up the clear weight that is heavy on Sara’s shoulders.
Or the guilt that stirs up in Ava’s chest when Sara says, “I really wanted to win for you.”
“I’m sorry,” Ava says softly.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I just - I worried that I might have been a distraction, which is dumb, maybe but-”
“Oh hey,” Sara says, reaching out to grab Ava’s hand, even if she winces when doing so. “None of that. If you were a distraction, the fuck it, I’m glad to have been distracted.”
“Sara-”
“No I’m serious,” she insists. “And next time, I won’t be distracted, I’ll win for you.”
“Next time?”
This time, it’s Sara’s turn to look hesitant, “I mean… If you wanted to come back again, it’s totally chill if you don’t, but you know, if you did want to come back. That would be even more chill.”
“When’s your next match?”
“Same time, next month.”
“I’ll be there,” Ava says. No hesitation, because as weird and maybe kinda cool this was, it’s more than that… It’s Sara .
Sara, who is smiling at her as if nothing else matters in the world.
Sara, who sticks her pinky out between them.
“Pinky promise, that you’ll be here, and that I’ll win for you.”
It all feels a bit middle school, but it’s charming and Ava can’t help the way a smile finds its way onto her face when she takes Sara’s pinky in her own.
“Promise.”
She’s not sure who moves first, not sure it really matters, but suddenly the space between them becomes nothing and Ava is doing what she’s wanted to do since she first saw Sara at that dumb party. The kiss is soft and sweet and there’s no real heat in it, even though Ava is sure that under other circumstances there would be heat.
It’s a first.
Of many to come.
And sure when Sara pulls back it’s with a wince as her smile pulls at her lip that has only just begun to heal, but it’s good and perfect, and Ava couldn’t imagine anything better.
That is until Sara says, “Hey, wanna go get pancakes with me?”
“Like a date?”
“Obviously.”