A/N: Full disclosure - I am not planning on updating this story until All I Wanted is finished, but I had an idea and I wanted to get a little tease of this out there. I'll pick this up whenever I finish AIW.
This Damon is going to be a little different from how I've written him in the past. He'll be more aggressive for one thing (hello UFC fighter) and dare I say even MORE broody than normal. My Elena here is going to be a bit similar to AIW, not the same but similar. I love love love writing a strong, sassy, and smart Elena. We'll just have to see where this goes.
Don't worry. I am working on Ch 13 of AIW over the weekend! It's going to be a good one.
Damon stood in the locker room, clad in his black shorts and black tshirt as his head coach, Alaric, wrapped his hands for him. He could hear the crowd cheering inside the area, only adding to the knots in his stomach. He was nervous. For the first time in his UFC career, he was nervous to go out there.
"Stay tight, protect your face and your ribs, hit him with a couple jabs early on so he knows you're serious, but save your energy to take him down in the later rounds. Got it?" Alaric said, clamping a hand onto Damon's shoulder.
Damon focused his vision onto the poster on the wall in front of him. It was a flyer advertising the fight. It had Damon and Kol pitted against each other, each holding their fists up and scowling. Salvatore vs Michaelson.
Analysts were hyping this up to be his big return to the ring, his retribution for the chip he had on his shoulder from Vegas. Kol was the smaller and less deadly version of his older brother Klaus, but he was still a decent enough fighter and he'd still be a challenge to Damon after all of this time away from the sport.
"Hey, are you hearing me?" Alaric said, clapping his hands in front of Damon's face to get his attention.
He shrugged Alaric's hand off of his shoulder. "Yeah Ric, I heard you. It's nothing you haven't said a thousand times before."
"You have this. There is no conceivable scenario where you do not kick his ass, alright?" Ric reassured him as he fitted Damon into his gloves.
Damon nodded his head before standing up. He did a couple jumps, swung his arms back and forth, and moved his neck in a circle to get the blood flowing. He'd thoroughly warmed up with Ric about twenty minutes ago, but he wasn't about to chance losing this fight on account of a lame excuse of cold muscles.
He heard the crowd growing louder, which usually meant that the arena had gone dark to signal that things were about to start. It was almost time to get out into the Octagon and he was as ready as he'd ever be. Ric wrapped Damon in the Italian flag, it was good luck for him to always have that when he made his entrance. They came out of the locker room to find the rest of his team standing there ready to go. There were a few people from his security team there, some assistant coaches, and a couple of his sponsors. His publicist, Rose, stood there with her clipboard in hand. His brother and manager, Stefan, nervously wrung his hands together and looked at Damon expectedly.
"How are you feeling?" Stefan asked him as they started to walk towards their entrance to the arena.
"Your cash cow is just fine. This won't be a repeat of Vegas, if that's what you're worried about," Damon gritted out, eyes still facing forward.
Stefan sighed. "I was asking as a brother, not a manager. If you aren't ready yet, you don't have to force it."
"Damon's going to be just fine," Ric spoke, patting Damon swiftly two times on the back. "Kol doesn't stand a chance against a former middleweight champion."
Eyes focused on the lights and music in front of him, Damon emerged from his entrance to a roaring crowd. The long walk that weaved through the crowd gave Damon some time to think. It was probably as loud as a jet plane engine in there, but he found that the walk to the Octagon was when he did some of his best thinking. It always had been.
He would win this fight. He didn't have much of a choice in the matter. If he didn't win, his career was officially over and all of the grueling training, all of the money his father had poured into him during the course of it would have been for naught. So to him, it wasn't a question of whether he could do this. It was more so a question of how he was going to do this.
They reached the side of the ring and Rose took a moment to give him her own form of encouragement as he took off his shirt and handed it to Ric. "Look good when you win," she said to him, smiling. "Be sure to finish with some finesse."
Damon continued to bounce side to side so he could keep his muscles ready as one of his coaches held up his mouthguard for him. Once it was in place, he gave Ric one last look before the stepping into the Octagon.
He did a little jog around, met with even louder applause and cheers from the audience. Once he settled into his corner, he waited for Kol to arrive.
Elena looked on at all of the pomp and circumstance with disdain. UFC was a needlessly violent sport, if you could even call it a sport. She certainly didn't. The only reason she was even here in the first place was to support Caroline, who had finally gotten her big break as a ring girl tonight. She'd been trying to break into the modeling business for a while now and tonight was her night to shine.
Caroline was practically bouncing up and down when Elena saw her earlier in her red shorts and bikini top. Her blonde hair was perfectly curled. She was buzzing just thinking about the exposure she was about to get. To put it quite simply, Caroline was completely immersed in her element. She shoved a VIP pass at Elena excitedly before hurrying off to finish her makeup. "Make sure you wave at me when I get up there so I don't get nervous!" Caroline had told her, even though Elena knew Caroline never, ever got nervous.
So now here she stood alone, third row back from the ring with a VIP pass hanging around her neck. A man next to her cheered as one of the fighters made his way through the crowd and towards the center of the huge arena. He was so enthused about the prospect of two guys beating each other to a pulp that he even spilled a little of his beer on Elena. Rolling her eyes, she did the best she could to brush off what little of the beer she could manage with her hand. Caroline had better be thankful for her support.
The two fighters settled into their spots in the ring as the music playing over the loud speakers died down. Elena saw Caroline emerge holding a sign with the number 1 printed on it boldly. Caroline slowly circled the outside of the ring, which was actually shaped more like an octagon, while holding the sign up and smiling. Elena made sure to wave to her as she passed by, just in case this was the one time in her life Caroline actually had the jitters. Once she completed her lap, she blew a kiss to a camera as she descended the stairs and took her seat right next to the ring. She'd have to get up and do the same thing again next round.
"Can you believe we're this close to the action?" the drunken guy next to her said, leaning a little close to her. "I mean, this is going to be a good fight. Salvatore's been out of the game for so long and his first fight back is with the younger brother of the fighter who took him out last time? Man, that's some poetic shit."
"Um, yeah," Elena nodded her head. She had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but of course she was sandwiched between a ton of UFC superfans. Who else would spend their hard earned money on seats this expensive? She took a glance up at the fighters. The darker haired one was boring his eyes into the slightly smaller one with lighter brown hair. If looks could kill, the little guy would probably be dead already.
A bell dinged to signal that the fight was starting and Elena found she had to look away once the smaller guy landed a couple of jabs. The brutality of people cheering for someone to hurt another person wasn't sitting well with her. She kept her head down for the rest of that round, choosing to focus on the graphics on her VIP pass instead. It matched the posters she'd seen hanging everywhere as she walked in. From it, she figured out that the darker haired guy was Damon Salvatore and the lighter haired one was Kol Michaelson.
When the first round was done, Elena looked up again so that she could wave to Caroline as promised. She was surprised instead to see Kol Michaelson on the ground knocked out, the referee next to him counting down the seconds until he could declare Damon Salvatore the winner. Damon stood over Kol, sweaty and panting as a little bit of blood dripped from his lip.
Recognizing that Kol wasn't getting back up anytime soon, the referee stood up, grabbed Damon's right hand, and held in the air. The arena cheered loudly, including the guy next to her.
"That's it? Less than five minutes and it's over?" Elena said to the man.
"They don't last long when you're a legend like Salvatore."