hi loves! welcome to my usuk story, Lovely As You Are.

s/o to Ben Howard for the title idea. Thanks Ben.

usuk holds a very special place in my heart. this may sound dramatic, but Alfred helped me be more patriotic and love my country despite its flaws. His relationship with Arthur seems to me complex, full of problems and also full of beauty. Their emotional connection to each other is deep and passionate and I have a lot of feels about it.

trigger warning: discussions about eating disorders. take care of yourself, love.

also, one last important thing: I'd like to dedicate this story to Muhammad Ali, who was such an inspiration to me and I'm sure to little Alfred Jones. He paved the road for people like me to feel proud of their heritage and throw the punches we love to throw.

enjoy the story, fight on, I love you (:

1

The last time Ivan the Terrible had been challenged, a few months ago, he had knocked his opponent unconscious in less than thirty seconds and with a single punch.

"You need more accuracy. I want every single punch to be absolutely perfect, you hear?"

It was a wonder he had even been challenged at all in the past year. His journey to the top had left his hands covered in blood.

"Don't sacrifice power for speed. Concentrate, Al. I want power, speed, and accuracy."

He'd earned his title because five years ago, before he'd been able to call himself the champion, he had beaten a fighter so hard that he'd left him in a coma. From which he had never woken up.

"There you go, on your toes. Your shoulders should be killing you."

And in a few weeks, Alfred 'The Hero' Jones, the young American fighter who had been making his name in the world of MMA more quickly than anyone could have imagined, would challenge him. The world featherweight champion. Ivan Braginsky—Ivan the Terrible.

"Range, Al! Range! You can punch further than that."

And Alfred, for the first time in his life, was terrified.

Those were the thoughts rushing through Alfred's head, making it spin, as he punched at the bag swinging before him. He felt the pressure of the bag against his wrapped knuckles and his bare shins, watched it swing away from him only to throw another punch as soon as it circled back around. He could see the puddle of sweat gathering at his toes. But he kept moving, spurred by the bellows of his coach standing beside him. He tried to imagine Ivan Braginsky instead of the punching bag. It seemed to be making his punches weaker. He didn't notice.

One of Alfred's unsung talents was that of convincing himself that he wasn't afraid. He wasn't sure when it had happened but at some point in the course of his life, he had managed to say "I don't know what fear means" enough times that he actually believed it.

"Stop, stop, this isn't working."

He had trouble catching his breath, trouble keeping his balance with his shaky limbs, when Coach stepped between him and the punching bag. Alfred felt that his heart was skipping beats, that his knees were about to buckle and send him crashing to the floor, that his body was starting to abandon him. Coach's deep red eyes stared into his, and then scoured his entire body. Eyebrows raised, lips pursed, sigh heavy, Coach put his hands on his hips.

"I've never seen you train like this," he said. "You couldn't knock out my grandmother with those punches."

"C'mon, that's a bit harsh, don't you think, boss?" Alfred's voice was hoarse. It startled even him. He was so accustomed to seeing Coach's broad smile, hearing Coach's loud, snarky laugh, that his expression of absolute seriousness was jarring.

"We're taking a break. Get a drink of water, champ."

Alfred's hand was trembling when he brought his water bottle to his lips. He only noticed when he felt the water dripping down his chin. His entire body was off-balance, his mind jumbled. He grabbed a towel and buried his face in it and tried to breathe. In the darkness he saw Ivan Braginsky's face.

"Sit down, Al."

He sat down beside Coach, on the edge of a practice ring. They were the lasts ones left in the gym—it was at least ten-thirty, and Coach had tried insisting that Alfred go home and rest. But Alfred had refused. He wanted to get in as much training as possible in the next few weeks. He wanted to feel that he was as strong as he could be, and that he hadn't wasted a single minute, a single second, a single breath, on anything else. As he sat next to him, Coach draped his arm around Alfred's sweaty shoulders.

Coach Gilbert was a middle-aged man with the vigor of an eighteen year-old college student and the alcohol tolerance of an eighty year-old war veteran. He owned this New York City gym and had been Alfred's trainer for the past five years, ever since he'd discovered him fighting off muggers in the alley near his house with the wild, inexperienced punches of a high schooler. He was pale and German and had white hair despite his forty-something age, and his punches could still make even Alfred dizzy. His demanding presence and explosive confidence, along with his respected name in the world of MMA, gave him the best chances of keeping Alfred in line—though Alfred's arrogance would never allow him to yield completely. At the very least, Gilbert Beilschmidt was the only person who was fit to train a fighter like Alfred.

"Listen to me, Al," he said. Alfred wasn't sure why he was talking so quietly. They were the only ones in the gym, after all. "If you're going to half-ass this shit, then you might as well go home and rest."

"I'm not half-assing it," Alfred protested. "I thought I was doing fine."

"Then you're either delusional, or too tired for this anyway." He looked into Alfred's eyes again, as if he were searching for something there. Alfred blinked, tried to offer what he could of his soul, until Coach tore his gaze away.

"Coach, the fight is in a few weeks. If there's something I need to work on, then I need to work on it now."

"Your techniques are fine. Stamina could use work."

"Then let's do stamina."

"But I think your mental state is what needs the most work at this point."

"What? Are you kidding?" Alfred let out a burst of laughter and hopped to his feet. He flashed his toothy smile, the same that was famous for wooing fans all over the world. "My mental state is the strongest thing about me! I'm ready to take on anyone. Even Ivan Braginsky."

"I know. That's the problem."

"You say it all the time. If you don't believe that you're awesome, then you will never be awesome."

Alfred was waiting for Coach's joyful, rich laugh to fill the gym as it always did. But the seriousness on his face remained, and it had been so prolonged by this point that Alfred felt uneasy. He shifted his weight and fidgeted with his towel and couldn't look at Coach's face for more than few moments before feeling uncomfortable.

"How about this. Go take a shower. You're spending the night at my house tonight—I don't want you walking back to your apartment this late. And we're gonna have ourselves a little chat."

"Aw, come on, boss, I'm not a little kid."

"Would you just do what I say, punk?" Coach sighed. But, finally, he was smiling. He stood up and ruffled Alfred's hair. "I'm the coach and you're the coachee. So you do what I say."

"I don't think coachee is a word. At least, not in English."

"Shut up, you smell like the inside of a sock."

Forty-five minutes later, Alfred was sitting on Coach's couch with a protein shake and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He'd asked for hot cocoa, but Coach had refused, claiming stubbornly that protein shakes were the best way to stay sharp and motivated. Coach sat down with his own cup of hot cocoa—to spite Alfred, of course—and put his feet up on the table. His small, yellow bird was chirping in its cage.

"Lemme ask you something, Al. Do you honestly feel ready to fight Ivan the Terrible?"

"What kind of question is that? I wouldn't be challenging him if I didn't."

"Fair enough. You think your style of fighting can win?"

"Sure I do. I move better than he does. I'm faster than he is. I can throw kicks, and I've never seen him once lift his leg off the ground."

"Your styles are practically polar opposites," Coach scoffed, "except for the fact that you can both knock someone out with one punch."

"Exactly. I can totally take him. Pull a Rocky IV on his Russian ass."

Coach sat up straighter and his seriousness returned and Alfred hated that. He sipped his protein shake anxiously.

"I want you to be serious. Listen, really listen when I tell you this."

Alfred heard his own voice grow quieter.

"All right, all right. I'm listening."

"You haven't lost a fight at all in the past two years, and you haven't won a fight by anything other than a knockout. You're on a roll." He paused. "But I don't want you to get cocky. I don't want you to go into this fight thinking that you have it in the bag. You've seen Braginsky fight. You know what he's capable of."

Alfred didn't say anything. For once, he couldn't think of anything to say.

"I hate to tell you, champ, but you can't knock him out. You can't knock him out and he'll definitely outlast you. Don't get me wrong. Your left hook is fucking terrifying. But someone like Braginsky won't go down like most people. His...well, his everything is terrifying. You can't use the same strategy with him that you use with everyone else. Getting in a few good punches isn't going to do it."

When Alfred looked away, down at the ground, Coach put his cup of cocoa on the table. Then he reached up and put his hands on Alfred's cheeks and jerked his head up, forced him to look into his eyes.

"I think you can win it, Al. I really do. But you need to be careful."

Coach's words were starting to bring Alfred's subconscious, hidden fears to the forefront of his mind. He was starting to tremble again, if so slightly that even he couldn't notice.

"You need to be really, really careful. Braginsky is just as terrible as they say. He'll chew you up and spit you out and leave you there until you bleed out. I know you like your showy moves and your stupid little jumps, but I want to nip that in the bud right now. I want none of that, you hear?"

"I hear."

"You know what happened five years ago, don't you?"

"Yeah, I know."

"He didn't just take away someone's career, Al. He took away someone's life. Get your recklessness in check." He lightly slapped Alfred's cheeks and ruffled his hair again. "And that means no more training sessions at ten-thirty. You're psyching yourself out. Train the way you always do and you'll be fine."

Alfred leaned back against the couch, sipped his protein shake, stared at the blank screen of the television.

"I hate it when you're this serious, boss," he finally said.

"Oh, stop it with the pouts. You know it's just because I care."

"I hate it when you're this mushy, too."

"Fuck off, will ya, punk?"

Alfred smiled, and Coach smiled back. But then the smile disappeared and he said, "You know, Alfred. It's okay to be scared."

Scared? Me?

Please.

Heroes don't get scared.

As Alfred slept, he dreamed of his previous fights. He felt the rush of the adrenaline as if he really were fighting, moving around the ring with his haughty smile and clenched fists. He relived the moments of ducking under reckless punches and shoving his fist up against his opponent's liver—of slipping past a punch, or catching a kick, and returning the favor with a clean hook to the jaw. He relived what it had been like to stand over a fallen opponent over and over again and hear the referee call out his name as champion and hear the stadium erupt with chants of "Hero, Hero, Hero!" In his dreams, he saw Ivan Braginsky, vacant face bloodied and eerie smile wiped clean, at his feet. He wanted to be the champion. Until his name was in lights and people in every corner of the world knew his face, Alfred Jones wouldn't be satisfied. Not at all.

Alfred Jones was known for his well-roundedness in the ring. The combination of his fluidity, accuracy, and power was terrifying to most opponents, who couldn't really handle one thing as well as the other. Nobody could switch stances at will the way Alfred did, and nobody could throw a moving punch as strong as Alfred did. His talents lay in both messing with the minds of his opponents with his seemingly random, haphazard movements, and also overwhelming them with the unbelievable and unfair power in his fists. A clean, strong hook—from either is left or his right—almost always meant a knockout. Early in his career, people had enjoyed speculating that he was on steroids, or other drugs, or perhaps a mutant. Such was the immensity of his talent in the ring. And worse than all of that was the fact that he looked beautiful, looked quick, looked natural, when he was in the ring. Nobody had seen him lose.

Ivan the Terrible was a fighter of a different breed, though some might argue that the two were actually frighteningly similar in power and intensity.

Braginsky was a bit bigger than Alfred. His height was 5'11, an inch taller, and his muscles were bulkier and more evident than Alfred's leaner, sculpted ones. His body type overall was larger. More intimidating somehow.

But his body wasn't the most intimidating part about him.

His fighting style was more power-based. Which was not to say that Alfred was not powerful. He was stronger than most of the guys in the game. But when he fought, he tended to delegate his strengths to different areas, and he was able to remain nimble, agile, and strategic. He moved a lot during fights. Switched stances. Moved his hands and stayed on his toes as a means of defense and intimidation. He used his power when he needed it.

The way Braginsky used his power was completely different. He didn't move as much. His methods were more flat-footed, as if he were stomping on the earth beneath him when he stepped. And when he threw his punches, it was as if every ounce of strength in his body flooded into that tight, veined fist. His power was more raw, more uncontrolled, than Alfred's. He punched as if he didn't care what happened to him. And he almost never used his legs. His fighting style was more akin to boxing, whereas Alfred's was closer to kickboxing.

But his fighting style wasn't the most intimidating thing about him, either.

Whenever Alfred (or anyone else, for that matter) watched Braginsky fight, he felt awful uneasiness. With each fight, each interview, each article that he read about the swift rise of Russian MMA fighter Ivan Braginsky, the uneasiness grew. Not because of his mountainous body, not because of his wild and fearless fighting style, but because of his face.

There was always a slight, eerie smile on his lips. It was a smile that seemed disconnected from the other features of his face. But even as he smiled, his eyes were empty. Completely hollow. When he stared straight at the camera, or looked down upon his fallen opponent, the vacant look in his merciless violet eyes sent chills down Alfred's spine.

Ivan the Terrible was terrible not only because he left opponents bedridden and scarred and traumatized.

Ivan the Terrible was terrible because he did it deliberately, and he did it without remorse.

Ivan the Terrible was terrible because he delighted in it.

The camera was right in front of him and it was flashing with each photo it snapped and Arthur felt that he should have been enjoying it, eating it up. But he felt nothing, not a single ounce of emotion, as he changed his pose. Narrowed his eyes at the camera. Tuned out the praise and commands (useless, always) of the photoshoot's director. He wanted to be done with this, wanted to be finished so he could have a cigarette and tell everyone to fuck off. He wasn't in the mood for a shoot today. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been in the mood.

Why am I doing this again?

When the last photo had been snapped, Arthur moved straight to the chair that had been set up for him. He completely ignored the director and photographer, both of whom were speaking to him. Expressing how much of a privilege it was to work with him.

Of course it's a privilege to work with me.

He sat down and he lit his cigarette and he thought about how fucking hungry he was.

"Do I have anything else to do today?" he asked his manager, Kiku. Kiku was a short, soft-spoken Japanese man who had, for one reason or another, found himself in the entertainment labyrinths of the United Kingdom. He was an unbelievably competent manager. He scrolled through his iPad, the means by which he controlled Arthur's life, and shook his head.

"No, nothing. But you have an early shoot tomorrow."

"Marvelous, just what I need."

"Don't forget your trip to New York City next weekend."

"Oh, fucking hell, I almost forgot."

Arthur let the cigarette dangle from his lips and massaged his aching temples. He felt his entire head about to explode. How long had it been, he wondered, since he'd actually enjoyed this? How long ago had he been just starting out, green and earnest and fanciful in his supermodel dreams? How long ago since he'd become this emotionless about it all? And still, even telling himself that he was emotionless was a farce. Of course this was his life, of course he still cared, of course every detail mattered and every word he heard from the directors and the photographers danced around in his skull for days and days.

"Move your arm over there, so that it doesn't look bigger than it needs to."

"Tilt your chin up, love, it's much more charming and makes you look taller."

"Well, Mr. Kirkland, looks like you've been eating plenty!"

"You really should smoke less."

"The camera loves you. Try to love it back."

"Trim your eyebrows, they're a bit bushy, don't you think?"

"Why must you always look so irritable?"

"A salad? That's it? Are you sure? You know you can't be too skinny."

He tilted his head back and watched the smoke leave his puckered lips and reach up for the gray, clouded sky. He watched it float for an eternity before Kiku's voice brought him back to earth.

"Arthur. Are you ready to go?"

"Yes. Fancy some dinner?"

"Sure."