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The thing about Daniel, inasmuch as he can be captured in words, is that he’s really, really stupid.
That’s not even Johnny being mean. That’s pure, scientific fact. Johnny’s run many tests. He’s been trying to court the idiot for months, done everything from flowers to yanking him up the social ladder to just plain old quality time. Of course it’s fine if Daniel needs to take things slow; Johnny just needs him to say that instead of keeping him in this horrible will-they won’t-they purgatory. Full moons are uncomfortable enough without the fun bonus of aching for someone so intensely that he feels it in his bones—it’s getting more and more difficult to climb out the window in the morning instead of letting Daniel finally see that his weird stray dog is actually one sore and overemotional Johnny Lawrence.
And, okay, sure, maybe his attempts at socially acceptable romance have been a little… outlandish. There are probably people out there who don’t consider small palo verde branches in a vase to be romantic type flowers. But if he’d just gone and bought roses, Daniel might have thought it was stupid. No one wants to be woken up at midnight for roses. That’s why Johnny left the vase on the doormat.
He’s overheard Ali and Susan teasing Daniel for his secret admirer. It makes him roll his eyes every time, because really, if anyone should be able to recognize wolfish courting habits, it’s Ali. She bravely suffered through Johnny’s love-bombing and possessive nature for ages before deciding that his human side is kind of a dick. That’s fair. Johnny knows he’s kind of a dick. He’s not unaware of the way he comes off to others. Given everything, his uncharacteristic behavior toward Daniel should be the most obvious clue of all.
But he’s just not getting it.
“Kill me,” Johnny whines, tossing his head back into the grass.
Dutch laughs at him. “Sure, Lawrence. Can I have your bike?”
“You already have one.”
“Maybe I want two.”
“Incoming!” Jimmy calls, and Dutch barely gets turned around fast enough to catch the football careening at him. Jimmy hightails it across the field and Dutch gives chase. Johnny watches with mild interest until the blaze of the sun makes him throw his arm over his eyes. It’s warm today: the smell of mud and of green things growing has made all of them antsy the last few weeks. The summer will bring a slew of work-shaped problems, but at least most of the Cobras will have more free time for things like this.
“Uh oh,” Tommy says. “Here comes trouble.”
Johnny doesn’t even bother lifting his arm. Ali’s hair product is identifiable from a mile away, especially the amount she uses to combat the heat. And where there’s Ali, there’s Daniel.
“Susan’s not there,” Bobby says.
Tommy hums around the lollipop in his mouth. “She’s got gymnastics on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” Then, at the looks he gets from them, makes a little rumbling sound in his chest. “What? I dated her for a few weeks last year, remember?”
Johnny remembers. He’d been pretty wrapped up in Ali at the time, so most of the things his pack were doing weren’t on his mind, but he remembers the odd double date where the girls would spend the entire time talking to each other and he and Tommy would wait awkwardly for ten o’clock to roll around. Junior year, man.
Bobby says, “LaRusso’s wearing the shirt you got him,” with a tone like that’s normal and fine and doesn’t completely shatter Johnny’s brain.
“He’s fucking what?”
It’s true. Even at this distance, Johnny can see the white base and most of the red dragon climbing up the front and back. It’s one of the snakelike Japanese ones he’s seen accompanying Daniel’s style of karate, all that flow and energy and focus. Kreese wasn’t so much about the meditating or whatever, but he liked the dragons. Side effect of being the one to teach Encino’s next generation of wolves to be real apex predators.
Not much of this is on Johnny’s mind, though. His train of thought keeps getting stuck on the image of Daniel in his clothes—and yes, it took all of Johnny’s rationality and willpower not to rub his cheeks all over that damn shirt before he gift-wrapped it. That’s not how the game is played. If Johnny’s going to get Daniel in clothes that smell like him, he’s going to do it for real.
“I wonder if we should get letterman jackets,” he says, and Tommy snorts.
“You just want to see him in something that says ‘LAWRENCE’ in big letters.”
“How fucking dare you-”
“He’s right, though,” Bobby says. “You’re down bad. You could just ask him out, you know.”
“Nooo,” Johnny whines, putting his arm back over his eyes, well aware that he sounds like a toddler, yet unable to care enough to stop. He has every right to be dramatic. “What if he says no? What if-”
“What if it goes fine?” Bobby says.
Tommy counters, “What if, hear me out, he doesn’t actually know who’s been courting him because the world’s biggest dumbass here hasn’t put his name on anything?”
Johnny splutters for a moment before he manages to get any words in order. “But- but who else would it be? The shirt was in white paper with a black string! Like his kimono and belt! No one else in the world gives a shit about his tournament color scheme.”
“It was printer paper and a shoelace,” Tommy says. “Not your best work, man.”
Johnny muffles his despairing groan into his elbow. Tommy laughs at him because Tommy is the worst. Bobby, who’s at least a little bit sympathetic, makes a comforting noise and pats his sweaty hair. Johnny wants the ground to open and swallow him whole.
It’s a nice afternoon, at least aside from that little misstep. The evening brings them down to the beach to light bottle rockets and splash around in the shallows. It’s the beginning of cricket season but just a little too early for fireflies, so once the sun goes down, the sand and water glow grey under the moon and everything past the treeline is black.
“It’s almost full,” Bobby says quietly.
Johnny looks up at the sky with him. The stars struggle to come through this close to the city, but the moon is bright and round. “A little over a week. You holding up okay?”
Bobby stretches his arms above his head, arches his back off the grass. “Joints hurt a little,” he says, “not too bad yet. Just a little. Hard to focus. You know.”
Johnny does know. It’s different for all of them, but they’ve been together enough years that he’s long since memorized everyone’s usual slew of pre-shift issues. Jimmy gets bursts of energy between long bouts of lethargy that tend to get in the way of homework and karate. Dutch gets snappish, even more than usual, and louder, but it’s because he feels the restlessness down to his marrow and needs to get it out. Tommy’s prone to headaches and sometimes nausea, so Johnny makes a point to steer him away from foods that would be really unpleasant coming back up. Bobby once described his joint problems as feeling like his bones were vibrating, which Johnny gets. He feels the waxing moon in his shoulders and his lower back, and deep in his brainstem where all the stupid lizard thoughts come from.
He doesn’t remember much about his dad, but he knows he got emotional. He remembers getting hug after hug and being confused about the smell of salt afterward. Occasionally, he lets himself go enough to try to replicate the feeling, hugs his mom hard before heading out for the night. She always cries.
“Are you gonna be okay?” Bobby asks, and Johnny frowns.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Bobby’s quiet for an uncomfortable moment, but elaborates. “With the whole… LaRusso thing.”
Johnny feels a growl in his throat and swallows it. “What about it?”
“You want me to spell it out? Fine.” He rolls onto his side to look Johnny in the eye. “You spend every goddamn day making fuck-me eyes at Daniel LaRusso, but they don’t come off as fuck-me eyes, they just look like you want to kill him. The gifts are sweet but they’re not getting him any closer to liking you. Twice a fucking week you shift and track him down and have your wicked, snuggly way with him.”
“I am not snuggly-”
“Yes you are, dude, and you’re going to keep it up because you have the softest fur ever and it’s awesome. Look- what I’m saying is you need to either confess to him or let it go, because you’re driving us crazy, okay? The level of star-crossed longing is absolutely nuts.”
Johnny mutters, “Don’t reference fucking Shakespeare at me,” but it’s half-hearted at best. His mind is busy racing. Yes, he’s been procrastinating any real action and waiting for an ultimatum, but he doesn’t want the ultimatum to come from Bobby.
He gets up. Some combination of the moon and the scrutiny have got him buzzing, and it’s a common enough thing that Bobby just lets him walk off. Johnny knows he’ll tell the others. They won’t wait up on him if he doesn’t want to be found.
Yes, they’re all kind of dicks, but Johnny really loves his friends.
It’s a little colder without the sun up, but he takes his jacket off and ties it around his waist. He’s too warm and he needs to move. He walks for a while, maybe half an hour, in no particular direction. He knows he can still hear the ocean in the distance and he’s not in a rich neighborhood. That’s good—the country club people are much more likely to call the cops on a scowling teenager walking alone. The small houses and apartment complexes here have a layer of white noise: a TV left on, a woman talking to a fussy baby, the hum of a filter in a big fish tank. He can smell the dirt and new grass next to the sidewalk, not drowned out by pesticides and weedkiller like the grass in his yard. There’s a flower box three stories up with petunias.
He’s just barely out of sight behind a truck when a fence gate bangs open. He ducks down, not really sure why he’s doing it—he hasn’t done anything wrong, after all—but he really doesn’t want to have to talk to anyone right now. Not when he’s so deep into his own head that he swears the very air carries stale hints of Daniel.
“Goodnight, Mister Miyagi!”
Oh, fuck.
Johnny bounces rapidly between the urge to check Daniel’s position and the knowledge that standing up any further will make him visible. It’s like paintball, but so much worse, because getting spotted in paintball means he takes a pellet to the chest and getting spotted here means he’s going to dig himself a nice deep grave and hop in. He listens to Daniel’s sneakers ascend the stairs (does he own any other shoes?) and then a door opens and closes. Very faintly, there’s Daniel’s voice and what must be his mother.
He counts to one-hundred and tries to calm his breathing. When he’s done, he deems it safe to keep walking, but can’t help himself from glancing behind to see if his vase of branches has been taken inside. He immediately makes eye contact with the short grandpa who kicked the shit out of him that one time.
Just like always, Miyagi looks polite and unassuming, standing there in the gate with his hands behind his back and some kind of expression on his face. Johnny’s never been great with expressions, nevermind ones from old men who can hone and refine the boatload of frenetic energy that is Daniel.
Miyagi huffs (distaste? laughter?) and tilts his head in an almost-bow. Johnny has absolutely no idea what it means. He nods back and gets the fuck out of Reseda.