"Here, I stopped by the store and picked you up something before I grabbed lunch."

Miguel accepted the plastic bag Hawk was presenting to him and pulled out the contents: a sketchbook and a pack of pencils. He flashed Hawk a smile of gratitude. "Thanks! But what's this for?"

Popping the cap off a strawberry-flavored Jarritos with his bottle-opener, Hawk said, "To draw in, duh."

Miguel snorted, opening the sketchbook to flip through the blank pages. "No, I mean, why'd you decide to get me a gift?" Sure, Hawk had paid for half of their meals, spotted him some pesos here and there, and had straight up offered to take him to a wrestling match back in Mexico City. But although this gift was smaller in comparison, it felt different. Personal.

"Because I wanted to," Hawk answered matter-of-factly. Then a smirk drew up the side of his face, and he playfully backhanded Miguel. "And I figured you needed something else to help you relax since you're too much of a lightweight for beer. Just try to draw more than a bunch of hearts saying 'Miguel plus Sam', okay?"

"Hey, I make no promises," joked Miguel, backhanding him back before tearing open the pack of pencils.

Miguel couldn't even remember the last time he'd picked up a pencil to draw. He also couldn't recall what had made him stop sketching in the first place, especially when there was once a time he tried drawing his own comics. Probably had gotten caught up with karate. And when he'd been recovering from his fall, he'd been too depressed to do much of anything.

Now was as good a time as any to rekindle the old hobby.

So, Miguel spent the next couple of days familiarizing himself with the old feeling of smudged lead on the sides of his fingers, although it didn't take more than a few practice pages to shake off the rustiness. Except for hands, he never could get hands right.

When Hawk took their dirty clothes to a laundry mat, Miguel parked himself at a table outside the hostel and drew what he saw around him. Speed drawings, the practice of trying to capture passing faces as quickly as he could sketch them on paper before the subjects vanished. It meant they would all remain unfinished works, but they got his creative juices flowing again.

It also attracted the attention of a little girl. She didn't look older than eight, and Miguel recognized her from a nearby tamale truck he and Hawk had passed by a few times since they'd arrived in Tecolutla. Probably the owner's daughter.

"Can you draw me?" she asked in Spanish.

Miguel chuckled at the straightforwardness of her request. "Sure, no problem," he answered back in Spanish, flipping to a blank page. His eyes swept over the street and verified the tamale lady was chatting close by. "What's your name?" he asked, quickly starting the base sketch of her head.

"Rosa," the girl answered.

"Hey, that's my grandma's name, too," Miguel pointed out, making fast strokes with the pencil to capture Rosa's twin braids before he colored in her eyes. She watched him, not keeping quite still enough, but he'd practiced from moving subjects all day, so that wasn't a problem.

For a brief moment, he wondered if he would've had a little sister or brother if his mother and father had stayed together. Did his dad ever remarry? Did he have any step-siblings running around he wasn't aware of?

With the last mark of his pencil, Miguel completed the sketch. When he turned it around for Rosa to see, he judged how well she liked it by the big grin that lit up her face. Tearing the page out of his sketchbook, he handed it to her and said, "Why don't you give it to your mom as a gift?"

The girl did just that, running across the street with the present to offer her mother. Miguel gave a little wave when she looked over his direction after Rosa pointed him out, no doubt explaining how she'd come about getting her portrait made. And when the tamale lady smiled and waved back, Miguel was hit by a pang in his chest, yearning to see his own mother's smile again.

Shortly after, Miguel returned to his room and decided to practice from still photos for a while. He flipped through the pictures on his phone's album, indecisive over who should be his first pick. He tried sketching Sensei Lawrence but gave up halfway through the outline. His heart wasn't into it.

Next, he chose Sam. She proved a better muse. Miguel liked to think he got her eyes and smile right. Her hair was more difficult, however, so thick and wavy and hard to shade in right. But he would've enjoyed hearing her opinion on it all the same.

If Sam ever spoke to him again after he took off before seeing her match against Tory in the girls' championship, and blocking her number along with everyone else's….

Miguel had worked through several sketches of Sam when Hawk returned. Then he switched to a live model again, drawing Eli's face instead while he put the laundry away, and then continued doing so when he lounged in his own bed, messing with his phone.

Miguel thought he'd been subtle about it, distracting Hawk with small talk while he sketched, trying to peek up only at opportune moments. But then Eli asked him, "Are you drawing me?"

The hand holding the pencil paused. "Yeah," answered Miguel, biting his bottom lip for an uneasy second like he'd been caught doing something wrong. "Is that cool? Not too…personal, is it?"

"Dude, I just washed your boxers today, I think the 'too personal' ship has sailed. In fact, I'd say we've really reached a new stage in our relationship," joked Hawk, making his way over to sit beside Miguel on his bed.

"How do they look?" asked Miguel, handing over the sketchbook. He studied his friend's face for his reaction. And when he saw the way Hawk's mouth twitched, how his brows furrowed deep by the bridge of his nose, how his eyes lingered on the pages, that expression twisted Miguel's guts into a pretzel. "I mean, I know it's not my best work. I'm pretty rusty, to be honest, and I should probably—"

Hawk cut him off. "No, they're good. They're really good, it's just…I guess I'm still getting used to seeing myself without the hawk." He glanced up, the shadow of a smile threatening to turn the corner of his lips, but not quite getting there. "Heh, I know that's dumb. It's been, like, two months now."

Miguel wanted to remind him it wasn't dumb when Hawk avoided having to look at his reflection all the time, whether it was from the bathroom mirror or phone selfies. But realizing there was no tactful way to say that, he opted instead to offer, "If you want, I can draw you with one."

He had plenty of pictures of Hawk on his phone. Some with the blue fanned mohawk. Even more with the red liberty spikes. But Miguel hadn't managed to get a pic of the purple hair. Hawk only had it for a day.

"Don't worry about it, it's cool," Hawk assured him, running his hand over his crew cut. "Maybe I'll take you up on a self-portrait later when it grows back, huh? I mean, if I decide to style it that way again."

Having taken it as given that Eli would bring back the mohawk as soon as he could, Miguel frowned at the sudden uncertainty. "You're thinking about not bringing the hawk back?"

Closing the sketchbook, Hawk returned it to Miguel, telling him, "I don't think the others ever liked it. At least not the guys in Miyagi-Do."

"Well, I know you liked it, right?" asked Miguel, setting his sketchbook aside on the bed, turning to face his friend. Since when did Hawk care about what other people thought of his hair? Miguel couldn't even remember a day that had passed when he didn't see Hawk without his hair up, not ever since he'd shown up to the Cobra Kai dojo sporting the mohawk for the first time after Sensei Lawrence told him to flip the script. Ever since that day, it had been like a switch had flipped in Eli, a switch that had flipped back after that evening at the tattoo parlor.

Hawk's eyes fell for a moment, and a red flush colored his cheeks like he was embarrassed, perhaps even ashamed. "Yeah," he admitted with a nod. "I liked it a lot. Maybe too much because I don't think the others ever saw what I saw whenever I styled it in front of the mirror. Whenever they saw my mohawk, it probably just reminded them that I'm the same jerk who was nothing but a total dick to them last year."

"Dude, that had nothing to do with your hair," Miguel retorted, his voice so firm it seemed to catch Hawk off-guard, judging by the way he blinked up at him in surprise. "That was just some bad choices you made. And you've been working on making up for those choices ever since you quit Cobra Kai. The only reason Miyagi-Fang even lasted as long as it did was because you came up with the plan to get everyone to build the sparring deck together. And then you even tried to help save Miyagi-Do at the All-Valley Tournament. That was all you, man."

Shifting on the bed, Eli blushed an even deeper shade of pink, but he conceded, "I guess you're right…."

Miguel let out a soft sigh, reaching out to pat Hawk a couple of times on the shoulder. "If it means anything, though, I know what your mohawk meant to you. And I always liked it."

That got a small, genuine smile out of Hawk. "Thanks," he said. His eyes flitted down again, causing him to look embarrassed in a different way now. Then he stood up, declaring, "Hey, I'm getting pretty hungry. How about you?"

Miguel recognized a segue and granted it to Hawk. Besides, the truth was he was getting pretty hungry himself. And with the rumbling in his stomach beckoning at the thought of food, he recalled back to earlier that day and knew right away what he wanted to eat. "Dinner sounds good to me. Let's try that tamale truck up the street."

They walked out of the hostel together, chatting about their plans for the next day. But while they strolled down the block, Miguel passed a few more glances at Hawk and silently hoped he had taken his words to heart. The mohawk had turned Eli's life around, it had made him happy. And if Hawk wanted it back once his hair regrew, Miguel hoped to see him that happy again.

The tamale truck really must have been a booming business in those parts, judging by the line of people wrapped around the corner. But before they headed towards the back of the line, Hawk whipped out his phone, holding it up to Miguel.

Miguel grinned, giving him a little shove. "Oh right, gotta take a pic in front of the tamale truck first, huh? For posterity?" He joked, but he was glad Hawk was insisting on taking the pictures. Because Hawk had been right, Miguel knew he would want these later, especially whenever he returned home.

Shifting the weight on his legs, Hawk raised his eyebrows. "Actually, you up for taking a selfie together this time?"

Miguel paused for a beat, staring at him. Then his grin widened, reaching all the way to his eyes. "You know it," he said, grabbing Hawk's arm with one hand and tugging him close while the other reached into his back pocket and pulled out his own cell. "You finally gonna let me catch up on photos of you now?"

"Sure, if you want." Rolling his eyes, Hawk wrapped an arm over Miguel's shoulders.

But despite Hawk's feigned air of indifference, when Miguel snapped the selfie, it was crystal clear by the picture how much his friend had suddenly perked up.