boxer ⋆ luke hemmings ✔️

09. Hatred.

Sophie was practically buzzing the very second Calum opened the car door for her. She had a certain skip to her step and as she stayed close to her older brother, she had to suppress the urge of running right past him and into the arena.

"Are you okay?" he thought that she looked uneasy, as if she was slowly starting to regret her decision, "You look funny,"

"I'm fine," Sophie brushed his statement off, before flashing him a wide smile and filing into the building behind him.

The place was packed, filled with more people than Sophie had expected. She knew that boxing matches were a big deal, but for an underground one, she expected the crowd to be a little bit more reserved.

She was quite surprised once her and Calum walked straight past the long queue of people waiting to get inside, his main reason to the security guard being, "I'm with Hemmings.". Sophie couldn't help but think in awe about how much low-profile power that guy presumably had; he didn't seem like the type to brag.

They took their seats, which seemed to be right in front of the ring. Unlike last time, they had no front row to block their view, so whatever punch Luke threw, Sophie could see.

Not that she was only there for him, or anything. That was ridiculous. She was genuinely interested in the art of boxing. Yet if anyone asked her what she actually liked about it, she'd just say that the gloves were cute and that the speedbags made her happy.

She bowed her head slightly, grinning to herself at her thoughts. If anyone could hear her now, she'd probably get kicked out; the people in this place were nothing like her.

For one, most of them had tattoos, or leather, or facial piercings. Sophie wasn't sure that the piercings even stopped at the face. The same security guard who let her and Calum through had seven rings in his left ear and an industrial bar looped through the inner skin of his wrist; God only knows what other man-made holes he had on his body.

Second, the people here were loud, unkempt, brutal in what they said. Very different to Sophie, and they seemed to know it. They'd given her some awfully weird looks on the way in, some men even going so far as to stare at her backside with bitten lips and smirks on their faces.

It disgusted her, but she couldn't really expect anything else; anything underground stayed underground for a reason. Some of the people were scum. Others, however, weren't so bad; and this was proved as soon as the bell tolled and the crowd began to cheer again.

Sophie followed suit, standing up alongside Calum and the two friends he'd accumulated along the way; a guy with brightly coloured blue hair, and a girl with the same neon tint, just in red. For a short time, she internally labelled them as siblings. But then she caught sight of how Blue leaned in and smashed his lips against Red's, and she scrapped that thought immediately.

The crowd was wild, hollering and whooping as the first boxer came into view. Sophie's mouth almost dropped open at the sight of him; he was huge.

No, huge wasn't even an acceptable starting point to describe this man. He was built like a rock, every muscle protruding with a new coloured vein that made her swallow the lump in her throat and the crowd cheer even more. He looked angry- not Luke-angry, for Sophie was convinced that Luke had something to be angry about- but dangerous angry.

This was the type of anger that could get his opponent killed. Not because whoever he fought wasn't good enough, but because there was no way in hell that the emotion was going to stay suppressed long enough for them to have a fair fight.

Sophie was right as the man pounded his fists together, nothing but rage evident in his green eyes. She couldn't help but feel sick to her stomach at the thought of the poor soul who had to go against him.