The crowd roared like they were part of the fight themselves—sweat, beer, and blood hanging thick in the underground air, each shout bouncing off cement walls and caged lights. Bennet spit out blood onto the concrete floor, grinned wide with teeth stained red, and shook the sting out of his knuckles. The other guy—some hotshot from uptown trying to prove he could play dirty—was already down. Chest heaving. Eyes fluttering like he was trying to wake up from a dream that had turned on him too fast.

"Better luck next time, pretty boy," Bennet muttered, voice rough and cocky as ever, even with his lip split and a gash blooming just above his brow.

He raised his fists in a lazy victory salute, the ref barely getting in between him and the barely-breathing body on the floor. Another win. Another envelope of cash handed off in a rush, full of dirty bills and promises. He didn't count it—never did right after a fight. There'd be time for that later. Right now, he was more interested in whether he could still walk in a straight line.

His ribs ached like a sonofabitch. That last hit had caught him clean—right beneath the guard. Might be bruised, cracked, or worse, but he kept his shoulders rolled back and chin up, swaggering through the mess of people parting for him like a tide. They all knew him. They knew better than to get in Bennet's way when he was bleeding and pissed off and still grinning.

Down the hallway, past the smell of smoke and sweat, past the place where the fight high started to die off, was a door. Metal. No sign. But everybody in this part of the circuit knew what it was.

The "infirmary," if you wanted to be fancy. But it was really just a cramped room with a table, some bandages, and one person who made it all seem less shitty by just existing.

Bennet pushed the door open without knocking. "Doc," he drawled, voice rough but cocky, the vowels lazy, stretched out like he had all the time in the world. "You miss me?" He stepped further into the room, his gait loose but with a barely-hidden hitch. "Got a little love tap, here," he said, gesturing to his ribs, then wiping a smear of blood off his cheek with the back of his taped-up hand. "Figured I'd let your pretty hands poke at it. Professional curiosity, yeah?"