Title: A Badge of Honor
Fandom: Green Street Hooligans
Pairing: None
Characters: Matt Buckner
Summary: After his first fight, a young American feels like he's found his place in the world.
Rating: G
Word Count: 200, a double drabble
Author's Notes: Green Street Hooligans is an indie film released in 2005 starring Elijah Wood and Charlie Hunnam. Wood plays Matt Buckner, a young American who, after being expelled from his university, goes to England to visit his sister and gets involved with a group of football (soccer to Americans) hooligans led by Pete Dunham (Hunnam), whose zeal for their favorite team leads to brutal fighting between them and groups who favor rival teams.

When Matt Buckner looked in the mirror, he barely recognized himself. He had a split lip, a gash over his right eye, and his left eye sported a shiner from its connection with an elbow, all the result of a joining in a fight with Pete Dunham and his friends. He'd never been involved in so much as a shoving match in his entire life, and today he'd been in the middle of a genuine, bare-knuckle brawl.

He had come to England, unable and unwilling to fight his expulsion from school, and found himself in the middle of an even bigger battle. Pete's mates had thought he was a wimp, a privileged Yank who'd never ever gotten his hands dirty. Then he'd jumped into the fray, slugging it out alongside them, and when it was finished and they saw he'd given as good as he'd gotten, they'd welcomed him into the fold, made him one of them.

Matt touched his bruised eye and smiled. He hoped it wouldn't fade too soon because he planned to wear it proudly. He knew his father and sister wouldn't understand, but to Matt it wasn't just a bruise. It was a badge of honor.