Elena leans over the metal barrier, cold rail biting into her palms as she cups her hands around her mouth and screams his name into the fog of lights and smoke.
Her voice disappears into the roar, swallowed by bass, chants, and the hiss of the announcer hyping the main event. For a second she's sure he can't hear her at all. Then, down in the corridor washed in blue and purple, the Fighter's head tilts up like he's been tugged by a string.
He sees her.
Even from this distance she recognizes the stupid, lopsided grin. The one he wore at twelve when he first wrapped his hands with cheap tape and announced he'd be "someone" one day. Rhinestones on his gloves glitter under the moving lights, a little ridiculous, a little beautiful. He lifts one fist and throws a playful punch in her direction, a shadow‑hook aimed straight at her section.
Elena laughs, some knot in her chest loosening. Next to her, Raul nearly spills his beer.
Down below, cameras chase him. The entrance music—sugary pop with too much synth and a chorus built for TikTok—crashes through the arena. Purists have complained about it online, in comment sections and angry thinkpieces, but none of that matters here. Here, thousands of people are on their feet and they are not booing. They're singing along.
The chant climbs in waves, rolling over the seats, vibrating up through the soles of Elena's boots. She feels it in her ribs, in the thin scar on her wrist, in the place behind her sternum that still doesn't quite believe they ended up here, together, alive.
He walks like the ring is the only place that's ever made sense. Shoulders loose, chin up, robe swishing around his calves with every step. He pauses for selfies, signs a program thrust between the bars, lets someone smear glitter on his cheek with a trembling hand. The security guard at his side keeps urging him on, but he drags it out, milking every second of contact like it's air he's been waiting to breathe.
Of course he does, Elena thinks. The proof is right there—in the bounce of his walk, in the way he taps his gloved fists together like a kid about to jump into a lake, in the real smile that breaks over his face when a little boy in the front row lifts a homemade sign. The cardboard is almost bigger than the child: GLITTER HAS TEETH scrawled in crooked marker, stars dotting the edges.
The Fighter points at the sign, then at his own chest.
She crumples her betting slip between sweating fingers, feeling the printed odds dig into her skin. She's gone for three rounds, not two. Not because she doubts him, but because she knows how much he loves to drag it out when he's happy—how he'll dance around an opponent, test angles, feel the weight of his own body moving exactly the way he taught it to move.
He reaches the end of the corridor now, where the floor tilts up into the bright square of the entrance. Smoke machines spit white fog. From this angle Elena glimpses him from the side, just for a moment, as he stops in front of the curtain.
There's a mirror there, tucked into the concrete like an afterthought for last checks—wrinkled trunks, crooked logos, mouthguard clamped tight. The camera above doesn't catch this part. The audience doesn't see him lean in, forehead nearly brushing the glass as he looks at himself.
Elena does.
On the hanging screens, all they get is silhouette: the outline of his shoulders, the curve of his neck, the glitter on his wraps when he lifts his fists. In the flesh, she can see the tiny details. The way his chest rises and falls, once, twice. The way he presses his tongue briefly against the inside of his cheek, as if tasting the moment. No fear. No hesitation. Just a quiet, private spark that curls his mouth.
He was made for this, she thinks—not by managers or marketing teams, but by every invisible fight that came before. By the mornings he dragged himself up with bruised ribs and still laced his shoes. By the nights his body finally felt like it matched the way his mind had been screaming to move.
The music crashes into the chorus. That's his cue.
He snaps the robe closed, rolls his shoulders once, steps forward. When he bursts through the curtain, the light swallows him and then spits him back out transformed: the Fighter, capital F, framed in gold and violet, glitter exploding from the cannons at his sides.
The arena detonates.
Elena doesn't realize she's screaming until her throat burns. Everyone around her is on their feet—strangers pressed shoulder to shoulder, perfume and sweat and cheap beer mixing in the air. Some of them know his real name. Most don't. They don't know where he came from, what he left behind, how many times he had to fight just to exist. They just know the show in front of them: the boy in rhinestoned gloves who dances to pop music and makes brutality look like art.
He plays to them shamelessly. Spins at center stage, stretches his arms to the rafters, lets the cameras drink in his smudged eyeliner and painted nails. He blows a kiss to the nosebleeds, another toward the row where he knows Elena and Raul are standing even if he can't see them through the glare.
She tries to sound blasé, but the truth is her heart is pounding so hard it hurts. Every time he climbs through those ropes she clips an extra worry to the line already tangled inside her. And yet, sitting at home would be worse. At least here, she can see him. She can measure his joy and his exhaustion with her own eyes. She can tell when the smile is real and when it's stapled on.
Tonight, it's real. That's the part that sets something warm and quiet humming through her, despite the chaos.
The referee calls them to the center. The opponent is solid, shoulders like boulders, gaze fixed and furious. On the big screens his record flashes—enough wins to make things interesting. Enough knockouts to make the crowd lean forward.
The Fighter bounces on his toes, loose as a song.
They touch gloves. Some ritual exchange passes between them, words lost under the roar. The ref steps back.
The opponent nods once, jaw wired tight.
The Fighter answers with a grin that shows his mouthguard, faint crack along the left side. Elena knows exactly where that crack comes from. She glued that piece back in the night before his first amateur fight, trembling fingers sticky with superglue and cheap coffee.
She presses a hand to her chest now, over the memory.
The bell rings.
Sound erupts like a storm breaking. The first step he takes is light, almost playful, a sideways slide that sends a flicker of movement through his whole frame. He's not just entering a fight. He's entering a conversation his body has been waiting to have all week.
Down below, he moves forward, and the ring becomes what it always is to him: not a cage, not a trap, but a stage he chose. A place where, for a few minutes, under too-bright lights and screaming strangers, he is allowed to be exactly and entirely himself.