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Johnny stumbles into Daniel’s room some time after midnight, stinking of cheap beer, the stale smoke of other people’s cigarettes. And Daniel wasn’t even sleeping—he couldn’t, knowing Johnny wasn’t back yet—but he startles anyway, sitting bolt upright in his bed as Johnny hits the wall, cursing. “Fuck,” he slurs, stumbling back and nearly capsizing over.
It was one of Mr. Miyagi’s conditions of Johnny getting to stay at his house over the summer: that he didn’t use his fake ID at bars. Of course, Mr. Miyagi is in Okinawa now, so Johnny can technically do whatever he wants without real consequence. He doesn't seem to give a shit that Daniel disapproves, that Daniel will rat on him the first chance he gets. He goes out anyway. This is the second night in a row, and frankly, Daniel has had enough.
“Hey,” he snaps, hauling himself out of bed, bare feet hitting the hardwood as he stalks through the dark toward Johnny’s still tottering frame. “Are you kidding me?! Man, you’re in my bedroom, you know, or are you too drunk to tell? When Mr. Miyagi gets back—”
But as Johnny rounds on him with his gaze unsteady and wet in the dark, Daniel’s voice dies immediately. There, above his eye, is a nasty bruise, swollen and shining. Daniel’s eyes skitter lower, and he notices there are also trails of blood crusted under his nose, black in the night. The irritation drains right out of him, replaced sharp and sudden with worry. “Shit, what happened?” he asks, reaching for Johnny’s face instinctively.
His fingers skim tender skin, but Johnny flinches away. “I got in a fight,” he mumbles, sinking to sit on the foot of the bed, which bows under his weight. “And I know I’m in your fucking room, LaRusso. I’m not that drunk.”
“Okay,” Daniel says, voice shaky, face stinging in sympathy as he flicks on the light before bending over to study the damage. There’s more blood than he realized—it darkens Johnny’s mouth and is streaked through the blond of his hair, which has hardened into a coppery crust in places. He wants to reach out and touch, but he knows Johnny will just slap him away, so instead he crosses his arms, tucks his hands up into his pits to keep from doing anything crazy, or stupid. “You want me to get you an ice pack or something?” he asks, already backing away toward the door, anxious for somewhere to go, something to do. Anything to save him from having to stand here awkwardly, sucking in the metallic bite of Johnny Lawrence’s blood in the dark, eyes locked on the places his skin has broken open.
“Wait, no,” Johnny says, lunging toward him, making him freeze. For a second, Daniel thinks he’s gonna hit him, but instead Johnny’s eyes flash like he's just realized what he’s done, how it looks, so he steps back, measured and careful, hands up in the air to signal surrender. “Just. Don't leave me alone, okay?” he forces out then, and Jesus, his voice has never sounded so small and desperate. It actually sort of scares Daniel, the way it’s shaking like that, so he doesn’t move.
“Okay, okay. I won’t,” he murmurs. And then, after a weird moment where he just stands there, staring at Johnny Lawrence sitting and bleeding on his bed, he clears his throat. “You know, it’s not a big deal, man. I’ve had my fair share of black eyes, actually, thanks to you. So, like. I’m basically an expert on this sort of thing, and I can promise you, it looks way worse than it feels, it'll go away in a week, and you’ll be fine.”
And he’s just trying to be reassuring, he doesn't mean anything by dredging up the past, but Johnny’s mouth forms a tight little line the second Daniel mentions their ugly history, lips downturned at the sides, his eyes flashing in hurt.
“The fights, last year—that’s why I came here,” he forces out. “I wanted to—,” then he cuts himself off, rubbing his unswollen eye with the heel of his hand. The bruised one looks wet, close to spilling over, and fear lurches in Daniel’s chest at the realization. He doesn’t want to see Johnny Lawrence cry—he can’t see Johnny Lawrence cry. It will melt away the last vestige of his mistrust, and they’ll be friends after that. He’s not sure what will follow if they end up friends. Daniel reels back in alarm, to tell Johnny hey, hey that’s enough, now, don't get emotional on me, okay, but instead. Johnny coughs, shakes his head, takes a deep breath, and does the fucking unthinkable: “I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he mumbles. “It seemed important, in the moment, when I was getting my ass kicked…that I tell you that. To, uh, apologize for last year. I was a fucking asshole, and you didn't deserve it, and uh. Yeah. I’m just sorry.”
“Oh,” Daniel says, tongue passing nervously over his lips, heart thudding so noisily in his chest that he’s certain Johnny can hear it. He doesn’t know what to do with this information—the thought of Johnny remembering him mid-fight makes his stomach twist in some confused, unnamed emotion, and he's afraid to press too hard on that. “Well, yeah. You were. You sort of still are, but I, um, appreciate the apology, I guess.”
Johnny licks his thumb, dabs at the blood above his upper lip. “It was my fault. You didn’t even do anything, it was my problem, my shit I was dealing with, ” he says, more to himself than Daniel, who’s still standing there staring, eyes wide. “It’s just. It’s all fucked up.”
He sounds miserable, and in spite of himself, Daniel wants to fix it. He wants to lay a hand on Johnny’s knee, above the rip in his jeans, and tell him hey, no hard feelings, even though there are hard feelings. There’s the defense, still, and the hurt, coiled up tight in his chest like a snake. Instead of lying, though, he chews his lip and blurts, “Look, whatever it is, m’not mad anymore. I tried to be, and I don’t trust you yet or anything like that…but the thing is, you’re really not so bad after all, okay? So. We can drop it, water under the bridge.”
“You don’t know,” Johnny grinds out then, so fucking serious. “I messed with you for the same reason those guys messed with me, tonight,” he says then, sniffling, blinking his swollen eye.
“Why, because you made a move on one of their girls? Or, wait on one of their ex-girls?” Daniel quips.
He absolutely thinks he’s making a joke. Lightening the mood. So it hits him like a fucking blow to the face when Johnny’s gaze lifts to hold his, cold and blue and defiant as he forces out, “No. Because I’m a fag.”
If he says anything after that, Daniel misses it, because his ears are ringing too loudly. He tries hard not to react, but there’s only so much a guy can do when he’s been hit with a bomb like that. His gut lurches, his expression flickers, and he tries his hardest to school his face back to blank, unassuming placidity, but it only half-works. “Oh,” he says stupidly instead.
“Yeah,” Johnny spits out, wiping his mouth on his forearm, leaving a sticky red streak of blood as he reopens some wound with the motion. “Bet you don’t want me sitting on your bed now, huh?”
And no, that wasn't what Daniel was thinking at all. He frowns. “Uh,” he says, hands on his hips. “I was actually thinking, what assholes, jumping a guy for something stupid like that,” he says, because that’s the truth. But he was also wondering what Johnny did to let them know. Did he tell them? Did he kiss a guy at a bar? Hell, was he at a gay club? Daniel’s heard that there are some of those in Hollywood, so maybe that’s where Johnny was, just walking outside after last call when some douchebags saw him and— “Must’ve been some real lowlifes,” Daniel murmurs.
“I dunno,” Johnny shrugs, voice thick with doubt, with self-deprecation. “Doesn’t matter. I just—m’sorry. Sucks to be ganged up on.”
Daniel does reach out and touch his knee then—to prove that he can, that he's not freaked out. Johnny’s skin is warm even through the denim of his jeans, and he flinches, but he doesn't shake Daniel off, so maybe that’s something. Maybe they are friends, and he doesn’t have to be mad about it. “Yeah, but I bet you held your own. Gave ‘em a run for their money.”
Johnny shakes his head. “They won, in the end.”
“Maybe,” Daniel mumbles, and the word hangs in the quiet of the air, which still smells like blood, like booze. “You should clean that,” Daniel says then, gesturing to Johnny’s lip, desperate to break the silence. “And ice the shiner. I told you, m’an expert. The more ice, the better. Otherwise, you won’t be able to see out of it in the morning.”
“I just wanna go to bed,” Johnny grumbles. He sounds profoundly tired.
And it’s a stupid thing to say, a fucking crazy thing, but Daniel is stupid and crazy, apparently, because it just comes out so easy, like drips from a leaky faucet, like blood from a busted lip. “Well, I can clean it for you,” he offers. “C’mon.”
Johnny regards him with his good eye, gently prodding the swollen skin around the other, touch prudent and uncertain, like he’s weighing his options, testing the severity of his injury. But Daniel doesn't want him to overthink it and wiggle his way out—he just wants him to give in. To let him into this stupid, crazy thing. So he grabs Johnny’s forearm in both hands and hauls him to his feet. “Don’t be a hero,” he scolds, and it shouldn’t work, but it does.
Johnny follows him, head bent as he sniffles.
And just like that, they're standing in the bathroom together, the air humid around them, smelling sharp and organic with fear-sweat and hydrogen peroxide. Johnny’s face fizzes as Daniel carefully dabs at it with soaked cotton balls, his blood coming away in rust-brown smudges. Daniel holds his breath, tries not to wonder too much about his own motivations. “Does it hurt?” he asks, pasting a bandage over the worst abrasion, which cuts diagonally through Johnny’s eyebrow. “Looks pretty rough.”
“It’s not too bad,” Johnny mumbles, without looking up. “You touching it hurts.”
“Well, suck it up. M’almost done.”
The silence stretches between them, and for the first time since Mr. Miyagi left for Okinawa, it really hits Daniel that they’re alone together here—the summer a broad, uncharted thing, stretching ahead of them like a shimmery horizon. Things could get lost, melt together, become sun-bleached beyond recognition. It’s dizzying to think about, so he shakes his head, stops himself from going in too deep.
“LaRusso?” Johnny mumbles then, cheeks flushing, pulse quickening visibly in the hollow of his throat.
“Yeah?” Daniel asks, trying his hardest to sound casual. Like his own heart isn’t speeding ahead, terrified, elated, stupid, crazy.
“Thanks for not being mad,” he says quietly. “Or, like. Punching me. You could have just punched me. I thought you might.”
Daniel shakes his head, fingers still lingering on the Band-Aid, pretending to smooth it out, the wing of Johnny’s soft blond hair laying over the back of his hair like cornsilk. “M’not that sort of guy,” he admits. “Ah, uh. I know it’s late, but if you’re too worked up to sleep, or something, we can hang out. I dunno. Until the ibuprofen kicks in.”
Johnny’s throat clicks as he swallows, and a beat of silence lingers between then. Then it passes. “Okay,” he mumbles.
—-
It becomes a daily ritual, and Daniel hates to admit it, but even Johnny’s company beats being lonely.
In the morning, they do kata together before it gets too hot, and then during the burn of the afternoon, they retreat inside to the air conditioning. Before, they’d stay in separate rooms, but now, Johnny wanders into Daniel’s more often than not, picking stuff up, getting his fingerprints everywhere, demanding attention. Daniel pretends to hate it, but the thing is, he doesn’t. It’s almost nice, to laugh with someone, even if it’s only under the guise of laughing at each other.
They play cards, mostly, using a beat-up deck of Johnny’s that’s got ‘70s Playboy pinups on it for the suit of hearts. The first time Daniel deals a game of go fish, he furrows his brow at them, surprised at the thick bushes, the endless tan legs, the phony smiles. “Hey, I thought you were…,” he ventures, trailing off before he gets to the word gay because Johnny hasn’t brought it up since that night, and even then, he’s never called himself that specifically. Daniel thinks of the word he did use, sometimes. Lets it echo in his head like a gunshot.
Johnny frowns without looking up, arranging his hand of cards, eyes downcast beneath the wing of his hair. He’s still got the black eye, though it's faded somewhat, and it hurts Daniel to behold at the same time he can’t stop looking, staring, wondering exactly what happened, how badly it still hurts. “I dunno,” Johnny says eventually. “Maybe I am. But I don’t have to act like it.”
And Daniel doesn’t really know what that means, so he doesn’t ask again.
But later in the game, when he forks over the queen of hearts, Johnny grins down at her. “This one’s my favorite. Love a big-tit blonde.” Daniel doesn’t say anything, but he must make a face because Johnny glares at him then, the sun shining in the blond of his hair, sweat beading on his temple. “What? I can still appreciate a hot babe, okay?”
“Okay! Okay, I’m not judging, or anything, just. Trying to understand, I guess.”
Johnny looks back down to his cards, then, to his piles of pairs. He’s winning, and by a long shot, but only because Daniel is sort of letting him. He feels like he’s got to, or, like, he should. Like his life has gotta become a series of equal losses and victories where Johnny Lawrence is concerned, so that he doesn’t tip the scales too much in any one direction and fuck up their new, delicate balance. “You don’t need to understand,” Johnny tells him then, shrugging, and well. He's right about that. It’s none of Daniel’s business, really, and the fact that he wants to know so badly can’t mean anything good. So he shrugs and tells himself to quit fucking digging, to stop picking at that scab above Johnny’s eye.
He loses the game, and Johnny smiles as he arranges his winning pairs into rows: one row of regular cards, one row of hearts. So many thick bushes, tan legs, phony smiles.
Daniel throws down his hand. “Okay then,” he says. “How about a real card game?”
“What, poker?” Johnny asks, lifting his undamaged brow.
“My own personal card game, invented by me and my cousin on a long, boring car ride from Jersey to Texas,” Daniel explains, shuffling the deck. “Little bit of poker, little bit of black jack, some speed, and a bunch of rules we made up. It’s complicated, but it’s fun, I promise.”
“This should be good,” Johnny deadpans, scratching around the scabs above his eye as he rolls onto his back. He’s wearing one of those tank-tops that used to be a t-shirt until he hacked the sleeves out of it, and Daniel can see the sides of his ribcage, the muscle pulled taut and sweat-shiny, the dark blond thatch of hair matted down in his underarms. It makes his stomach turn over to witness something so intimate, which is weird because Johnny has been wearing these shirts all summer, and they didn’t bother Daniel until recently. Until he cleaned his wounds. Until they started spending time together on purpose, instead of awkwardly bumping into each other in the kitchen and exchanging glares. Now, he’s smelled Johnny’s blood—he knows what brought it to the surface.
It turns out Daniel can hardly remember the rules, so he and Johnny patch together new ones, inventing stuff on the spot, filling in the gaps. Johnny rolls his eyes a lot and pretends to think it’s stupid at first, but then he softens alongside the idea, gets into it. The two of them spend days hashing out the details of gameplay and writing it all down in a battered notebook: if you draw a brunette, you have to discard every club in your hand. If you have the ten of spades in your hand for two turns, you lose a turn. You can’t play a blonde on a blonde. You get extra points for the one ginger in the deck. (She’s not a real ginger, Johnny says, head cocked, mouth twisted into a conspiratorial half-smile. Curtains don’t match the drapes. And Daniel had wanted to ask, oh, are you a natural blond, then? but he didn’t, because, well. It was an insane thing to even think.)
Once they play it a few times with the new, deck-specific rules to iron out the kinks, it's all they do. They play for hours, sweating in front of the fan until the sun goes down, and sometimes Daniel forgets that this is Johnny Lawrence—Johnny who he’s supposed to hate, Johnny who he didn’t want to forgive, Johnny whose fists he still remembers the stinging impact of. But when it comes down to it, Johnny is just another kid like him. Bored for the summer. Into karate. Lonely and confused and half-heartbroken over Ali Mills, even though they haven't talked about that yet, and Daniel’s not even sure how it fits into the whole—well. What Johnny told him. He doesn’t want to ruin things because Johnny is actually easy to get along with, if they don’t talk about the past, and instead just keep shuffling, and dealing. So that's what they do.
Johnny is gone sometimes when Daniel wakes up, and Daniel is antsy about it every time. Paces Mr. Miyagi’s house, polishes the cars out in the glare of the sun even though it burns his eyes because at least, then, he can see when Johnny rumbles up on his bike. “Hey, the prodigal son returns,” he always jokes, wiping sweat from his brow with his forearm. “Out with your other cobras?”
“They’re not cobras anymore,” Johnny admits at some point in late June, cheeks flushed, bruise faded to a tint that’s nearly green. It itches a lot now—Daniel can tell from the way Johnny’s always rubbing at it. “I…we all quit.” And then, after a quiet, uncertain beat: “You were right. My sensei was crazy.”
Daniel can tell it hurts him to say it, and there’s a reflexive, human part of him that wants to do something about it, so without thinking he steps toward Johnny, throws his arms around him, and crushes him into a hug. Congratulations and welcome to the light, he almost says, but Johnny freezes, locks up so tight that Daniel lets go and stumbles away like he’s been burnt. “Shit, sorry. I didn't mean to—”
“It’s fine,” Johnny mumbles, averting his eyes, turning back to his bike with his shoulders hunched like he’s guarding his heart. And Daniel’s palms sting because, fuck—he wants to reach out and lay a hand on him, turn him back around, apologize. Not for anything he’s done, really, but for the world. For Kreese, who Daniel saw try to kill Johnny only a few months ago out in the parking lot after the tournament. No fucking wonder Johnny showed up here to train under Mr. Miyagi. Daniel had been mad about it, jealous, even, when it first happened, but now that he knows Johnny, it makes perfect sense. The knowledge curls up wounded and hurt in his chest, like a kicked dog.
“Hey,” he says gently, linking his fingers behind his neck and stretching, so he doesn’t touch anything he’s not supposed to. “You wanna play cards?”
“Yeah,” Johnny mumbles after a few seconds, taking a deep, sharp breath before he turns around, eyes glistening, wet. Daniel pretends not to notice. “M’gonna kick your ass, LaRusso.”
—-
One day, he comes back with a whole TV and rabbit ears. Daniel is convinced it won’t work—it can’t, how can it—but Johnny fiddles with it all goddamned afternoon, cobbling wires together with electrical tape and adjusting things until, finally, he makes a triumphant sound in his throat, and it buzzes to life.
“Holy shit,” Daniel mumbles, squatting down beside him to peer at the static on the screen. He can smell the salty, organic spice of Johnny’s sweat, and he sucks it in subconsciously before catching himself and forcing the breath out through his mouth. “She lives.”
“Told you I could make it work,” Johnny says smugly, elbowing Daniel in the side. “Now—just gotta mess with these until something comes through.”
That takes forever, too, but Daniel is invested now, so he lies on his bed, kicking the air and sucking on a cherry Otter Pop offering totally unhelpful advice as Johnny wrestles with the rabbit ears. There’s nothing left but too-sweet, throat-stinging sugar syrup in the plastic casing when finally, finally they get a picture. “Knight Rider?!” Daniel barks, before his voice dissolves into coughing. Fuck, Otter Pops always make him cough so much. “You fuck around for an hour, and all you can get is Knight Rider?!”
“What’s the problem with Knight Rider?!” Johnny snaps back as he hops up onto the bed beside Daniel, close enough to feel the heat radiating from his body. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes bright and wild. “Knight Rider is badass,” he insists.
Daniel snorts. “It’s about a talking car.”
“KITT is—,” and then he stops himself, making a face, eyes flashing.
Daniel knows what he’s shied away from, certain of it low and hot in his gut. “Ahhh, I see. You have the hots for David Hasselhoff.”
Johnny’s cheeks color violently, and he shoves Daniel right off the bed, catching him so off guard that he goes willingly, spilling red popsicle juice all over himself in crimson droplets. “I do not,” Johnny says, peering over the edge of the mattress. Then he strips off his shirt in a single motion and drops it right on Daniel’s face.
So suddenly, the world is eclipsed in darkness and cotton and sweat-smell and—Johnny, cologne and gasoline and mint and beer. Daniel bats the shirt away, heart still racing, fingers tingling with the knowledge that it was warm from his skin. “Fine, then, you like the car? You want to fuck a talking car? Damn, you know, I don’t think someone’s, like, sexual preference warrants judgement under most circumstances, but that’s weird, dude. And it would be weird if the car was a girl, too. It’s a car.”
But Johnny is ignoring him, lying on his bed shirtless, eyes locked on the TV. “Are you gonna watch or not?” he asks, without looking at Daniel as he scrambles up beside him.
“I dunno, are you gonna moon over this car?” Daniel fires back.
“I don’t want to fuck the car,” he grumbles, trying not to smile. “It’s just a cool car, okay? Also, by the way, your mouth is stained red. You look like you’re wearing lipstick.”
And why are you looking at my lips, huh? seems like too much, too stupid, too crazy, so instead, Daniel shrugs and mops up the spilled cherry stickiness from his own arm with Johnny’s wadded up shirt, before tossing it right back at him.
They watch in silence, and when the sun sets and it’s dark save for the crackling glow of the TV, Johnny’s knees spread wider, until the press of one digs into the meat of Daniel’s thigh. He’s not sure Johnny even notices—but he presses back a little, ever so slightly, just in case.
—-
And that becomes a ritual, too. Not Knight Rider. Not every time—but sitting together, watching whatever reruns they can find on that shitty little TV as the sun sets, spilling sherbet pink through the windows like something melted. Some nights, they play cards while it crackles in the background, other times they make popcorn, if they manage to get something actually good to come through. Always, Johnny presses closer once it’s dark out, and they’re cloaked in shadow. Sometimes, it’s his shoulder leaning gently against Daniel’s arm, or their thighs brushing together in the center of the bed, soft and mock-casual. Daniel holds his breath with his eyes on the TV all the while—waiting. For what, he’s not sure, but it's fine, he’s a patient guy.
One night, Johnny actually falls asleep in his bed, a fucking miracle all white-blond in the moonlight. Daniel lays next to him, stewing in his own sweat after shutting off the TV, wondering if he should shake him awake, tell him to get in his own bed. But the thing is…he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to tip that delicate balance, for one, but he also doesn’t want Johnny to go anywhere. It’s nice—weird, but nice—to have him here. His soft vulnerable sleep-breaths, his eyes flickering beneath the lids. And it takes a long time, but eventually Daniel falls asleep, too.
He wakes up in an empty bed, and Johnny won’t look at him during kata that morning, but whatever. It’s not Daniel’s fault, he didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t fall asleep on another guy’s sheets and drool on his pillow. He just laid there and witnessed it, this impossible thing like a shooting star, an eclipse. Rare and special.
But that night, it happens again. Or, at least, Daniel thinks it does. Johnny’s eyes are closed and his lips are parted and his exhalations are even and smooth, so. Daniel figures he’s knocked out and drags himself up to flick the TV off. The room is so suddenly silent and dark, and he feels his way back to his bed, tipping clumsily into the tangle of blankets he won’t kick his way under because it's too damn hot for that shit. And he’s not sure if his rustling around is what wakes Johnny up, or if he was just lying there pretending to sleep, but Johnny sucks in a sharp, sudden breath, and says, “You know. You should hate me.”
His voice is quiet and sad in the dark, and Daniel almost wonders if he’s hearing things. “Uh. Maybe,” he murmurs eventually, back prickling with the knowledge that Johnny is right there behind it, breath hot against his neck with every exhalation. “But I don’t.”
“Why not?” Johnny whispers.
“Because…because. Yeah, you’re an asshole, but a lot of it…it was your sensei, not you. And you came here, to Mr. Miyagi to learn something different, you know? Like, it would be stupid for me to hate you when you're trying to change. Plus. You play a good game of cards.”
Johnny is quiet, until he audibly wets his lips, shifts on the mattress so it whines beneath him. Then, “You should hate me,” he says again, like he didn’t hear a single word Daniel said.
—-
Daniel is convinced that whatever odd, tentative peace they’ve laid out between them is only growing more stable, more indelible as the summer stretches on. So, he’s fucking floored when he comes back from a grocery run one afternoon to find Johnny packing up his shit. “What the hell,” he says, dropping a paper bag full of cereal boxes and microwave pizza on the floor with a thump. “What are you doing? Is everything okay?”
Johnny stalks over to him with his hand balled into a fist, and maybe Daniel should be scared he’s gonna hit him, but he’s not. He stands his ground, jaw set tight as he studies the way Johnny’s eyes flash, the way he keeps all his fingers save for the index curled tight to his palm. He prods Daniel’s chest, right over his heart. “I’m leaving,” he spits out. “I should have left a long time ago. I came here to do karate. To train under your sensei, but he’s in fucking Japan. I don’t know why I’ve stayed so long. I don’t know—,” and then he cuts himself off to storm away, carding his hands through his hair, feeling around his eye even though the bruise has faded to nothingness now. It’s like he’s chasing a memory, and Daniel should be pissed, but instead he’s just hurt.
“Hey,” he snaps, following Johnny as he stalks back into his room. “No one is making you stay. You can do whatever the fuck you want. You can go back to your fancy house in the hills for all I care. I’m sure the Encino Country Club misses you.”
Johnny shakes his head, wadding up shirts and stuffing them into his duffle. “No I can’t,” he grits out. “I can’t go back home. Sid—my fucking stepdad—he kicked me out.”
And—fuck. It hits Daniel like lightning, paralyzing him, stiffening his legs so that he stumbles. He didn’t know that. Johnny just showed up at the end of the school year, Mr. Miyagi offered him the spare room, and that was that. Daniel always assumed Johnny had somewhere to go, that he was here by choice, rather than necessity. Hearing otherwise sparks something in his chest, makes his cheeks hot as he realizes the reason Johnny ended up here probably had something to do with that black eye—with the thing they haven’t talked about. “Damn. I’m. I'm sorry, Johnny, I didn’t know,” he admits, all the fight drained from his voice.
“It’s fine,” Johnny grumbles, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.
It occurs to Johnny that Mr. Miyagi wouldn’t want Johnny to leave. He’d figure out some magic way to make him stay, the right thing to say, the perfect weird, roundabout metaphor. But Johnny isn’t as old or as wise, and he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, so instead, he just crosses his arms right over his chest and asks, “Where will you go?” in a small voice.
“I don’t know,” Johnny mumbles. “To Dutch or Bobby’s place. I can crash on one of their couches for a few days before I figure something else out. Or, I dunno. Maybe I’ll ride my bike into the Grand Canyon or something. Go up in smoke,” he says before huffing out a humorless laugh, shaking his head. He clearly doesn’t think this option is actually funny, and Daniel doesn’t, either. He takes a careful step closer, studying the shape of Johnny’s back, his broad shoulders and the easy, narrow cut of his waist. He’s like a goddamned yield sign—so fucking triangular—except that he doesn’t yield, not easy. But it’s fine. Daniel is a patient guy.
“Do your other friends…do they know about you?” he asks, knowing full well it might get him socked in the gut. But hopefully not. Maybe, if he doesn't specify, Johnny won’t know what he's talking about, and he can back his way out of it if he rounds on him.
But he doesn’t. He stops packing, takes a deep shuddering breath, and says, “No. I tried to tell them once and chickened out.”
“Oh,” Daniel says. “Then maybe, like—you should stay here. I know m’not a sensei, and I can’t teach you shit, but we can keep training together, and you can keep watching reruns of show and, like, having the hots for a car, and at least know you’re hanging out with someone who won’t judge you. Or tell anyone.”
Time wavers, stands still, and then Johnny sits on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. Daniel gingerly sits next to him and doesn’t say anything when Johnny’s shoulders quake in silent, imperceptible sobs. He thinks about laying a palm on his back, rubbing gently up the curve of his spine, but something about that feels like it might knock the whole world out of its orbit, so he doesn’t. He only thinks about it.
Johnny doesn't leave that night, but he doesn't sleep in Daniel’s bed, either. Daniel decides it's fine, when it comes down to it. You win some, you lose some.
—-
They’re awkward around each other for a few days, but eventually even that fades into the heat, and Daniel almost forgets that Johnny has nowhere to go anymore, not really. He only remembers when the gray of morning burns off into the glare of the afternoon, and he’s hot and exhausted and wants to quit training already, but Johnny presses on and on, shirt soaked through with sweat and clinging to him like a second skin. His cheeks get red, and he screws his face up like he’s crying, but Mr. Miyagi doesn't have punching bags, so he kicks a tree over and over again until the skin on the top of his foot is red and raw and that's when it hits Daniel—he’s hurting, he's scared. He doesn’t know what to do besides hurt, and maybe he thinks that if he hurts himself it’ll feels more manageable, or something, and Daniel sort of knows what it's like to lose control that way, so he lets him do two afternoons in a row and doesn’t say anything about the bruises it leaves, the way his shins are littered in bruises from how many times he misses.
On the third day, the air conditioning breaks, and no amount of fiddling with knobs and dials fixes it. Somehow, this feels like the end of the world. “Great,” Johnny mutters, kicking the vent with his scab-littered foot, spots of red on his cheeks. “This place sucks.” Then he storms outside to kick the tree.
Daniel wants to be mad, on Mr. Miyagi’s behalf, at least. Mad that Johnny insulted the home he should be grateful for, mad that Johnny is kicking his air conditioning and, even worse, his Japanese maple. But he knows that Mr. Miyagi wouldn’t even care, not really, bark is stronger than skin, Daniel-san, he’d tell him. When the heart hurts, the mouth may have unkind words. Mr. Miyagi knew everything, all the time, and it's almost annoying to have internalized his worldview because it makes it impossible to be mad at Johnny. Because Daniel knows what he’s feeling, why he’s acting this way. So even if he sits there crouching on the ground, rolling his eyes, trying to work up fury in his chest, all that happens is the sick, sad lurch of pain that comes from sympathy.
So instead of saying anything, he stands up, sighs, and walks purposefully to the kitchen to make them some instant lemonade so at least he can force Johnny to hydrate.
He watches him fighting the tree through the window, chest aching at the unrelenting raw grunt of his kiai as he kicks himself bloody. Bark is stronger than skin. He does it over and over again, never slowing, even though it’s fucking got to hurt. But when Daniel wanders out with an ice-cold plastic cup of Country Time, finally, finally Johnny stops. “I thought I was gonna have to drag you away from it,” Daniel half-jokes, their fingers brushing as he hands off the cup. “Are you done now? Or are you gonna karate chop the bushes into shape next?”
Johnny wipes sweat from his brow with his forearm and chugs the lemonade down without stopping. Once he’s drained everything but the ice, he collapses next to Daniel on the grass, legs outstretched, chest still heaving. “No,” he says quietly, shaking his head. “M’done.”
And they’re quiet together for a long moment, nothing but the distant caw of a crow and the ice clinking against the inside of Daniel’s glass cutting through the silence between them. Except—there’s also Johnny’s labored breathing, which Daniel can make out if he listens very hard, so he does. Shuts his eyes and tunes into it, the steady panting, the rush of air in and out of Johnny’s lungs like faraway traffic or maybe the tide, until it resolves into something inaudible. “Want to play cards?” Daniel offers eventually, wobbling like an olive branch in a gale of wind. “Or watch something?”
And Johnny doesn’t answer, but he shrugs, stands, and offers a hand, which is sweat-sticky as Daniel takes it and allows himself to be pulled to his feet with a force that almost feels like a fight. Like Johnny wanted to send him off balance, stumbling, pitching to the ground again in a puzzle of limbs.
Daniel catches himself, though, and they walk to the house, not together, but at least side by side.
Without the A/C, high noon is fucking brutal. The air outside is still and scorching, every lungful heavy and too dry even with a fan plugged in and pointed at them and all the windows of Daniel’s room open. They gave up on cards because it was too sticky to focus, so now they’re just lounging around in sweaty sheets, watching Starsky and Hutch until the episode ends and it's Knight Rider again. Daniel groans. “Oh, no, it's your car boyfriend.”
Johnny chucks a pillow at him, and his reflexes are too slow to successfully bat it away. “Shut up,” he says, with no real venom. “I told you, I don’t wanna fuck the car.”
“Okay, who, then, if not the car and not the Hoff. Like, I’d get the Hoff, he’s a good-looking dude, I’d give that to you,” Daniel mumbles, throat tight because he always gets nervous whenever he brings up stuff like this around Johnny. He can’t stop, though, it’s a compulsion, something akin to the inexplicable drive he has to touch his uncle Louie’s electric stove when it’s hot just to see if it really does burn. There’s no real fire in it, so it seems fake. And that’s how Johnny’s secret is—Daniel wants to know, for sure, since there’s no palpable evidence to prove it to him. He wants to touch it.
Johnny shakes his head, shooting him an unreadable look before muttering, “He’s not my type.” And then, after a long pause during which he visibly chews on the inside of his cheek and heat sizzles like a live thing between them, he adds, “And don’t call him ‘The Hoff.’ You’re so fucking weird.”
“It’s not just me who calls him that, plenty of people do,” Daniel argues, even though he’s not actually sure that’s true. It doesn’t matter, though, that’s not what he's interested in. He’s quiet for a beat, weighing the risk before eventually thinking fuck it and blurting, “Okay, so, like, what actor is your type? You like either of the guys in Starsky and Hutch?”
Johnny wrinkles his nose like he’s appalled at the suggestion. “Ew, no,” he snaps before reaching out and shoving Daniel a little. It’s not hard enough to hurt or even jostle him much, but Daniel flinches anyway, it’s hard not to when his heart is in his throat, when he’s worried that every second they talk about this is hurtling him closer to the possibility of Johnny snapping and hitting him again for real. Or else stomping back outside to kick the maple again. Something.
He swallows a measured swallow, nodding and thinking of all the celebrities he knows that his girl-cousins had posters of, who Ali thought was hot enough to mention. “Tom Cruise? Michael J. Fox?” he ventures, and Johnny just stares at him, hard-eyed, impenetrable until Daniel sighs and deflates. “Okay, I get it, you’ve got a good poker face. But c’mon, man, I won't make fun of you! I just want to know what sort of guy you like.”
The blue of Johnny’s eyes darkens, his mouth wavering. There are spots of color on his cheeks from the heat, a rivulet of sweat from his temple down the long line of his throat. Daniel’s gaze snags along its path, blood speeding. “Why do you care?” Johnny asks quietly then, something angry in his gaze—or maybe not angry, wounded. Daniel realizes it's hard to know, really, which direction the pain is coming from, with Johnny. Then he realizes he really doesn’t want to answer that question.
He shrugs instead, chewing his lip. “I don’t know, I just do. Just trying to make conversation, trying to—,” but then he shuts up, voice cutting off and dying in his throat because Johnny is shifting, rolling over onto his knees, brow knit tight and eyes narrowed like he’s preparing to be struck.
“You really want to know what sort of guy I like? You haven’t figured it out already?” he asks in a low voice, and Daniel barely hears him because the rush of blood in his own ears is deafening. He stares at Johnny’s neck, the sheen of perspiration, the place where his pulse is thudding so fucking fast that he couldn’t count the beats even if he tried. Instead, he imagines pressing his fingers there, trying to slow it, all the while wondering why the fuck Johnny is so fucking close, if he’s gonna hit him, if he’s gonna do something else.
“No,” be breathes, willing himself to stretch out a little, stay casual, even though his body is trying its hardest to curl up into a defensive ball and guard his tenderest spots.
“That’s because you’re stupid,” Johnny says, so fucking soft.
And then he leans down and kisses Daniel, and that’s so fucking soft, too. The smell of him is sweat-salty as he boxes him in and brushes his lips across Daniel’s, lightning-quick and fever-hot.
He wrenches away before Daniel can kiss him back, breath coming out in staggering gales, eyes wild and defiant as his mouth twists into a self-deprecating smirk. “Told you you should hate me.” And then he’s stumbling off the bed, fists up in a home position like he thinks Daniel’s gonna sucker-punch him.
He’s not, though. He grabs Johnny’s wrist and hauls him closer, knocking him off balance so that he tips into the bed, heavy and clumsy and shaking on top of him, tremulous with adrenaline. “Hey,” Daniel forces out, staring at his mouth, the way his lips are bared over his teeth. “You can do it again.”
Johnny stares at him, gaze skittering from his eyes to his mouth and back up again like he’s asking a question, and fuck, the answer is yes, it’s been yes for awhile, and Daniel sort of knew it, deep inside himself and tucked behind card houses stacked to hide it, but yeah, yes, he wants that. He wants it bad, so he nods frantically, eyes locked on Johnny’s lips until they’re too close to focus on anymore and everything goes red-black.
This time, it’s not soft. It’s wet and fierce and desperate, kisses like punches, like cobra strikes, and there’s nothing Daniel can do but open up and let Johnny in, tide-huge and messy.
Johnny fucking moans as he licks him apart, a pitiful, reflexive whimper into the slick of Daniel’s mouth, his thumbs pressing beneath the cut of his cheekbones as he cups his face. He doesn't stay there, though. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands—he mauls down Daniel’s sides as he presses him into the mattress, then he drags fingers though his hair, rubs a greedy, tremulous palm up under his shirt, where Daniel’s skin must be sweat-slick because the whole of him is fucking on fire. He kisses Johnny back, giving him his tongue, swallowing his groans, trying to keep up but also just letting him do what he wants, eventually, because it seems stupid to fight him when he’s not even sure how he want this to go—it’s fine like this, being groped and licked and bitten, Johnny all over him, heavy and suffocating and sticky with sweat. It feels good, actually, to just be wanted. To not have to think about it the way he had to think about it with Ali, every motion calculated and careful and painted in mock-suaveness so that she couldn’t see the seams. Johnny can see them alright, he just doesn’t appear to care, he’s too busy digging his fingers into them, ripping them open, sucking the venom out with hungry lips.
At first, Daniel just grips Johnny’s broad shoulders, clutching at him like he might float away if he doesn't stay anchored. But then he realizes Johnny isn’t going anywhere, so he unclasps his fingers to touch, a little. Rub his hands up and down the strong ropes of muscles that frame his back, make fists in his sweat-soaked shirt, thumb over his ribs. And god—he feels so fucking good, solid and real and so hot that his skin burns Daniel’s palms. He splays them over the small of his back, dragging him closer, pulling his hips down, urging him to give him his full weight.
When Johnny does, he can feel immediately that he’s hard, and it makes him choke out an involuntary sound into the spit-wet wreck of their kisses. He’s never had a hard cock rub up against his before, and it’s maddening, he’s never thought about it before in his whole fucking life, but damn, it’s got to be the best idea in the world, it makes perfect sense, it’s cosmic. “Fuck,” he murmurs, grinding into Johnny, pushing their cocks together, the glossy material of his own workout shorts bunching high around his thighs as Johnny drives between them, face buried and searing in the ditch of his neck, breath huffing out in almost-sobs onto his collarbone.
“S’okay? You like that?” he asks, voice choppy and wet as he wipes tears or spit or whatever into Daniel’s pulse before licking over it, mouth a burning thing.
“Yeah, s’perfect. Feels so fucking good,” Daniel promises, and that makes Johnny moan and nip at his throat before affixing his mouth to suck there fiercely, in terrible, stinging pulses.
“You drive me crazy, you—I’ve been going fucking—insane,” Johnny grits out between punishing kisses, their teeth clicking together, his words aborted and syncopated with each jerk of his hips. “Your mouth. Jesus. It’s not fair. It’s not my fault.”
It surges like fire in Daniel’s gut, his cock twitching, the tip of it so suddenly flooded in humiliating wet. “My mouth?” he asks, licking his lips. He doesn’t mean to, but he’s thinking about all the things a guy’s mouth does in gay sex, based on his rudimentary understanding pieced together from locker-room insults and his own curiosity. His stomach plunges at the thought.
“Yeah,” Johnny says darkly, holding Daniel down for a second and staring at him, eyes sweeping over his face, snagging on the wet shape of Daniel’s lips as he parts them, drunk on the sudden unanticipated power of having something to hold over Johnny Lawrence’s head besides a trophy. Johnny thumbs over his lower lip, glaring at him like he’s angry. “You have a cock-sucking mouth. We—the rest of the guys—made fun of you for it, and I hated it every time they’d bring it up because I—because I didn’t want to think about—”
“I'll suck your cock,” Daniel says then, the words muffled in the humidity between them, shame-doused and thick. “I mean, I have no idea what I’m doing, I’ve never done it before, but hell, it can’t be too hard, right?” he jokes, but it doesn't come out a joke, his voice is a thin, reedy thing, and Johnny’s face is devastated, like he cannot believe this is happening to him. That the thing he’s been running from, burying, silencing, drowning, poisoning, surfaced in his sheets, to tell him all this time, it was fine. “It’s fine,” Daniel promises, his own cock throbbing between their bodies, the whole of him raw and wanting and desperate.
Johnny presses their foreheads together, grinding along the anchor point, body shuddering as he bucks, each one firmer, more furious than the last, like he’s punishing Daniel for offering to give him this thing he’s told himself he can’t have. “You would?” he asks, slurring, the words spit-thick.
Daniel nods frantically. He would. He’s never thought about it concretely in his life until this moment, but now it seems like a no-brainer, an obvious end to the stage-play they’ve been conducting for the last year, wheedling out into the heat of the summer and melting into something sticky, messy. “I want to,” he admits, hands in Johnny’s hair, thumbing into the artificial cherry-red flush of his cheeks, clawing at him, dragging him down. “If you want me to.”
Johnny chokes out a wordless sound at that, shaking his head, breath panting in short, ragged bursts. “Can I touch you, too?” he asks, pawing down Daniel’s sides, gripping his shirt in demanding fists.
“Yeah, fuck, yeah,” Daniel promises. Damn, that part hadn’t even occurred to him, but it’s occurring now, his skin hot and tingly as Johnny rucks up under his clothes, grabbing at him so hungry and clumsy, like he’s gotta rush ahead and get his fill before Daniel shoves him off and decides he’s backing out. But he’s not gonna back out—he wants to tell Johnny that, promise hey, whatever you want, man, I’m down for, I'm not scared, but he can’t get words out, not anymore. He’s lifting his hips to rut into the heat of Johnny’s palm, which he’s rubbing over Daniel’s hard cock as he stares down at their bodies, their twined limbs, their clumsy, seismic shifting.
“Fuck,” Daniel wheezes, thinking about how it’s so much better to have your dick touched than it is to touch your own dick, how this is crazy, it’s astounding, it’s heaven-bright and drug-thrilling, and he could stay here all goddamned summer, laid out and breathless beneath the crush of Johnny Lawrence’s weight. “Have you ever—uh, is this the first time? Am I the first guy?” he asks, because some part of him wants to know, even though he already sort of does. Feels sort of lucky and special about it.
Johnny stops touching, his rough, experimental squeezes so suddenly gone that Daniel whimpers at the loss of contact. “Yeah. Why? Does it not feel good?” he snaps, and fuck, Daniel chokes out a nervous laugh because that isn’t what he meant.
“No, man, it feels fucking incredible, I was just wondering because—because I dunno. You’re looking at me like you’ve wanted to touch a guy for a long time, and you’re finally getting to, or something.”
Johnny softens, but only a little. Then he frowns and reaches down again, palming over Daniel’s thighs, pushing his silky shorts up to expose more skin, like he knows he’s greedy and doesn’t care about how it looks anymore now that Daniel’s noticed it, told on him. “It’s okay,” Daniel murmurs, taking Johnny’s hand and moving it back to his cock, humping against it, giving permission over and over again with each little jerk of his hips. “Just. You can slow down, if you want. I’m not gonna freak out.” I’m not going anywhere.
Johnny kisses him hard at that, hard enough it tastes metallic and his teeth hurt from the force. “Maybe you won't freak out,” Johnny mumbles into his mouth, shoving a hand down the front of his shorts with fierce determination, curling his fingers around the slick heat of Daniel’s cock. “But I can’t promise I won’t.”
And Daniel will take that, he knew that already, on some level. That even though this was Johnny’s idea, he was still a flight risk, a fight risk. But hell, he’s hard and Johnny’s hand feels so fucking good and he could drown in the copper-spit mess of his kisses, just as long as he’s kissing him. So. He’ll take it. The flight, the fight, whatever. He fucks into Johnny’s palm, sucks his tongue, thinks about sucking his cock, how that will feel, if he lets him. Thinks about the salt of skin and the bitter bite of his own jizz the few times he’s tried it out of curiosity. Thinks about the fact that Johnny has thought about it, thought about his mouth, about him on his knees, thought about—
He comes sudden and lurching, static whiting out his vision as Johnny chokes out a surprised sound and touches him through the aftershocks, stroking him long after it's all over, rubbing his come into his pubes, like he doesn’t want to stop touching, like he can’t. Daniel screws his eyes shut tight and basks in the oversensitivity bordering on pain, thinking that he could probably get hard again if Johnny keeps it up, keeps touching him, marveling at him, breath soft and labored against his throat as he stares at the shape of his own hand still trapped in Daniels shorts. “You don’t have to do anything to me,” Johnny says eventually, voice soft, tattered like a well-worn t-shirt. “If that was a heat-of-the-moment thing, I—”
Daniel snaps his eyes open, struggles to sit up. “No, no, definitely not, I want to. I really want to,” he explains, stomach twisting at the way Johnny looks at him, blue eyes wide and bewildered and—moved, almost. There's the slightest smile on his lips, too, and he’s reminded of the first time he set foot in Kreese’s dojo and made eye contact with Johnny Lawrence, king of the lion’s den, hungry and wild. “I want to,” he repeats, thinking it’s crazy that they ended up here at the same time it makes sense, somehow. Like they were circling each other to pause in this exact place, facing off, not as rivals but as something else.
“Yeah?” Johnny says, settling onto his back, his knees parted and jeans tented obscenely. He unbuttons his pants, and Daniel notices that his hands are shaking. “You want to?”
“I do,” he promises, rolling onto all fours, maneuvering so that he’s on his stomach between Johnny’s thighs. He licks his lips, thinking again of the echo your mouth. He’s never thought of his mouth as a desirable thing, not until today, not until Johnny told him. He watches with wide, stinging eyes as Johnny unzips his fly and takes his cock out. “Wow, okay,” he says,
Johnny’s tentative smile flickers into something complacent. “You like that, LaRusso? You want it?” And he’s talking plenty cocky, but Daniel can hear the waver in his voice, sense that he’s posturing, that he's unsure, scared.
So he’s gotta be bold enough for the both of them. “Yeah, I fucking do, c’mere,” he says then, and without thinking about it too much, he leans in and fits hit lips over the crown.
Salt is his first thought, followed shortly by heat, fuck, so hot, not just about the temperature but about the way Johnny whimpers, the sudden pinched whine of his voice, his eyes blown pupil-wide and disbelieving as Daniel swallows him down.
It’s not so hard, sucking cock. It’s weird, but it’s easy, he gets the hang of the motion right away, listening to the way Johnny bucks and shifts and gasps, head thrown back to expose the ripple of his throat because he gets too close to coming if he looks. Daniel can tell by the way his cock twitches on his tongue, balls tightening against curious knuckles. And he feels so goddamned smug about it, about the fact that all it takes is a few bobs of his head and a lot of spit and some minimal effort to silence his gag reflex to make Johnny Lawrence, Johnny Lawrence, shudder to a messy finish all over the bed. He swallows half of it before it chokes him and he has to pull off, eyes streaming, bleary as he watches the mess of white spill across his sheets. “Damn,” he says. “That was fun.”
Johnny lies there, one hand raised above his head to expose the matted down blond in his underarm. Daniel wants to lick it, and maybe that’s bad, he doesn’t know. He doesn't know the rules yet, to this sort of thing, but he's willing to figure it out. He lies there between Johnny’s legs, sticky palms splayed across denim, eyes fluttering closed, and maybe he could fall asleep here, under the blanket of terrible heat, the saltiest salt on his tongue. Maybe no one has to flee, or fight. They can just stay here until it gets dark and finally cools off, and maybe they can even do it again, hidden in shadow.
But instead, Johnny shoves him off, wiggles out from underneath him. “Hey!” Daniel slurs, feeling drunk, dizzy as he tries to sit. “Where are you going?”
“Out,” Johnny snaps, voice gravel-rough, tear-battered. And just like that, he tucks himself into his jeans and disappears out the door.
Daniel lies there for a long time, sweat and seed on his sheets, wondering what in the fuck happened, if it’s his fault, or if there’s no way to take responsibility for anything falling apart when the other guy kicks his foot bloody benearth the worst of the sun’s burn and won’t stop no matter how bad you want him to.