Eli knew what stress was. School could be its own classification. There, stress was: homework; it was long lectures that droned on forever, and pop-quizes that threw routines out the window; it was loud bells ringing on the intercom, and bright fluorescent lights that gave him headaches; it was getting changed for gym class in the bathroom stalls, and all the racket and mayhem of a school cafeteria; it was teachers giving him empty encouragement in one breath, and then suggesting he wasn't trying hard enough with another; it was one kid pinching him in class when the teacher wasn't looking, and another pushing him in the hallway and pretending it wasn't done on purpose; it was feeling eyes on him constantly, and self-consciously hovering his hand over his mouth in hopes that it would make it stop; it was every time his ears heard laughter from the corner, and wondering if he was the butt of someone's joke.
Hawk knew stress, too, but refused to admit it. Because Cobra Kai was supposed to be his safe space, even safer than home, the place he could go to get away from all that shit. Besides, he wasn't a pussy, he refused to let anything get to him: the pressure he felt to never show up to the dojo without his mohawk perfectly styled, in case Sensei would call him names again; the pressure of rarely being able to place Sensei's emotions, since the man had a pissed-off expression on his face ninety-nine percent of the time; the pressure of always scrambling his mind for the right script whenever his friends asked him something, just so he wouldn't risk sounding like a dork; the pressure to not be weird, to not be a walking joke, to instead become a badass, someone to be feared; the pressure to just be Hawk at all.
When stress got too much for Eli to handle, he'd seek some small way to escape from it, all of those overwhelming sensations. Sometimes that meant hiding in the library and shutting his eyes to block everything out. Other times, it meant withdrawing into himself, dissociating in class, but then risking horrible embarrassment when the teacher called on him and not knowing anything they'd just said. Other times still, it was the frantic frame of mind that moved his feet to the nearest bathroom, so he could escape and have a minor meltdown in private, where at least no one could see him cry.
Hawk was too tough for that. He pushed right through it, just like Sensei taught him, he beat down his anxiety with a cocky veneer that let others know he wasn't that sissy pushover anymore. It almost became easy for him to miss that the stress kept building, drop by drop in the bucket, where it went sour and morphed inside him into a curdling rage, into an inner fury that was burning hot to the touch.
So while Hawk refused to acknowledge that stress existed, he did know rage. As time started to pass, he came to know it very well.
It was the slight rise in his blood pressure whenever his reflecting mind would exhume a memory of a time he'd been terrorized by some bully, and how he suddenly would find himself hyper-fixated on it. Dark thoughts would cloud his senses then with fantasies about how he would have handled things differently if he had been fearless, confident Hawk back then, instead of nerdy, soft Eli. Hawk daydreamed about smashing his knuckles into those people's faces, he pictured himself distributing justice with his own two fists and pounding his past enemies into the dirt. And he smiled when he thought about their bloody faces looking up at him, where he would then ask them, "Who's laughing now?"
It was the tunnel vision that overcame him over what probably looked like seemingly minor infractions to people watching from the outside. Maybe that was why Sensei had gotten so mad about him attacking Robby Keene from behind. Sensei just didn't understand. He hadn't felt how Hawk's muscles had tensed when Robby called his haircut stupid, he hadn't known what that meant. He couldn't possibly comprehend why that would be a source of actual physical pain for him, why Hawk would feel the sudden need to unleash his rage and strike his enemy down hard into submission.
It was the lull between outbreaks, when everything must have looked calm on the surface to everyone else. They didn't know the pressure kept boiling inside Hawk all the time as classes continued on as normal over the summer. They couldn't see it until it exploded visibly. Was that the reason why Moon dumped him for attacking Demetri at the mall? Because, to her, it must have seemed like it had come out of nowhere. She couldn't see the dots that connected the line of events. And he lacked the ability to properly articulate them. He wasn't a good talker, especially when it came to describing his emotions, he never was. So when he tried explaining the anguished fury he'd felt when reading Demetri's Yelp review, and how the pang of betrayal had hit him like a wrecking ball when his friend said he'd enlisted with the rival dojo, all that came out was, "He joined Miyagi-Do." He'd expected Moon to understand what he meant by that. She didn't.
It was the anger on top of the already simmering anger he felt when releasing his fury only brought temporary relief. It was the confusion that stuttered his mind both when vandalizing Miyagi-Do and stealing their medal of honor didn't bring him the happiness he had been expecting, and when Miguel got frustrated with him for those very actions. And, once again, he couldn't make Miguel understand why he'd done it; because he himself could barely understand why. They were the enemy. They had to be put in their place. That was reason enough.
Eli had never considered himself a particularly violent person. He'd been taught by his parents and his teachers that anger was a bad emotion. Sensei was the first one who vindicated his rage; at least, until he suddenly didn't, why did things have to be so fucking confusing? Sometimes his own fury even scared him, while other times Hawk became excited by it, like he was suddenly itching for a fight so he could let it out; he wanted to bruise, he wanted to bleed, he wanted to feel pain, even though pain did not exist. As long as he could control it. Either way, there was a dissonance between the him he knew and the boy all the others saw.
Part of Eli hoped that maybe someone would take notice of his situation. His friends were often increasingly confused by his behavior, but they couldn't comprehend the reasons behind it. It felt like Sensei didn't care at all. The only people who suspected something was wrong were his parents. And they were the last people Hawk could unload on, they would pull him from Cobra Kai in a second if they suspected it was the cause of his problems. Hawk couldn't let that happen.
In the mean time, the pressure sores in his overheated brain kept getting worse. And Hawk had the arrogance to keep believing he was immune to stress, because he could no longer recognize it for what it was.