After a long day teaching, and the under the influence of Van Halen and sake, Daniel and Johnny hit the mat. Daniel's POV third person limited.
Disclaimer: I don't own The Karate Kid or Cobra Kai. I'm not making money from this. I'm just a fan.
o - o - o - o - o
I get up, and nothing gets me down
You got it tough, I've seen the toughest around
And I know, baby, just how you feel
You've got to roll with the punches and get to what's real
– Jump, Van Halen
Chapter Six:
Roll with the Punches
"This is boring." The scrawny kid sighs deeply and throws himself on the floor on his back. His glasses fall askew and Daniel tightens his fist, attempting to restrain himself from exploding at a ten-year-old, if that. He has no idea how Johnny Lawrence, of all people, managed to keep this kid's attention. He has about the worst case of ADD Daniel's ever seen. Daniel's been teaching him for a little over a week, and each lesson the kid acts out more. He's worse than Anthony, and that's saying something.
The six other kids in the class are staring at him, their flow interrupted. Four of them are Daniel's and two are Cobra Kai, and while it's only been a week and their rivalries are still pretty strong, it looks like they're united on being extremely annoyed with the youngest, smallest student in the class.
"It's not boring, it's kata," Daniel says, the effort of restraint scarcely hidden behind the calm. "Now get back at the end of the mat so we can start the form over."
"How are you ever gonna beat anybody up if you go slow like that?" he argues, jumping to his feet and sulking with his arms crossed over his chest.
"Karate's not about beating people up. It's about never having to."
"That's lame. Sensei LaRusso, can we do some real karate?" Bert demonstrates with a poorly executed roundhouse kick. "Kiai!" he bellows out, actually quite deep for a boy his size.
"Bert!" Johnny comes in from the other room, barking the boy's name. In a split second, Bert stops his nonsense and stands at military attention.
"Yes, Sensei!" he shouts, voice pip-squeak high, little body quivering with effort.
"Are you giving Mr. LaRusso a hard time?"
"Yes, Sensei!"
"Good job," he teases and catches Daniel's frown. "But stop."
"But Sensei, it's so boring–"
"Quiet!" Bert pinches his lips together to hide his smile. Daniel can't believe it, but the little twerp is loving being shouted at. Go figure.
"So you're bored?" Johnny asks, a little smug.
Bert nods enthusiastically.
"All right, come on," Johnny says. "Strike me."
The other kids are staring, suddenly intensely interested.
Bert bites down on his lower lip and nods, serious. He deepens his stance and realigns his hands, eyes his sensei up and down, as if he actually had any chance of defeating him. Bert darts out an arm to land a punch, but Johnny blocks it with nonchalance. Only Johnny doesn't stop there. He grabs the kid's forearm as he ends the block, twists it behind his back, and forward flips him so he lands smack on his back on the mat. Bert tries to scramble to his feet, but Johnny sweeps his ankle and he slams down again, this time one his side.
Daniel winces. Of course he spars with his students, but that was pretty rough. One kid hollers out a woo-hoo! and the class erupts into applause.
When Bert turns around his glasses are in his hands. The wire frame bridge is snapped in half. "You broke my glasses!"
"Then don't wear glasses to class, four eyes," Johnny chides. "This is a contact sport. What do you expect?" Bert nods, accepting Johnny's answer without hesitation. "And if you'd been paying attention to Sensei LaRusso, maybe you could've stepped out of that twist before I had a chance to bring you to the floor. Yeah, kata's all boring when you're doing it, but those movements build the coordination and muscle strength you suck at. Karate's not all kicks and punches. Sometimes, a simple side-step can make or break a fight. You have sloppy form, twerp. Do you think I accept sloppy form?"
"No Sensei," Bert mumbles.
"Then show respect to Sensei LaRusso and pay attention to what he's teaching you."
"Yes Sensei."
"Now bow out. We've gone overtime." Bert bows to him deeply at the waist.
"Not to me," Johnny says, in the tone of you idiot.
Bert turns to Daniel and bows, just as deeply. The rest of the class follows suit. As the students pile out the door, Johnny playfully shoves Bert with his shoulder and Bert grins up at him in complete worship, as if he were the luckiest kid in the whole world.
o - o - o - o - o
"I know Bert doesn't look like much," Johnny says, chugging back a beer, "but he's got a lot of need to give him a hard time or else he gets discouraged. You know, he always behaves for me."
"Noted," Daniel says, a little ironically.
They're in the dojo, after hours. The last class of the night has just ended and it's only him and Johnny. Daniel came straight from the autoshop and taught back-to-back kata, conditioning, and advanced sparring sessions.
The two dojos weren't combining as fluidly as he'd hoped and it was especially apparent among the older kids, who turned everything into a competition. Not that fighting isn't inherently competitive, but when you're teaching drills and the kids act like it's a life-or-death street fight…it gets pretty exhausting.
These past two weeks have been the weirdest of his life. It's weird enough teaching together, but at least the fighting aspect of it is consistent with their old interactions. Nothing tops the bizarreness of last week, when they'd worked out inanities like scheduling and pricing and interior decorating before combining their dojos. Johnny'd said Miyagi-do looked like a spa in Chinatown that offered happy endings, and the remark almost escalated into a fistfight. It ended with Daniel agreeing to add pops of red, black, and yellow to the color scheme.
Since when did they turn into old ladies? And who would ever have guessed Daniel would be arguing about where to display their karate trophies with his high school bully? By choice?
"Also, we need to work on his stage fright," Johnny says. "We've gotta continuously pair him against older, bigger kids. Not that he had a chance at the tournament, but I don't want him freezing up like that again, no matter how huge his opponent is. Kid went down without a single move. We can't let that happen in real life. He has it hard at school 'cause he's such a weirdo."
Daniel hates to admit it, but Johnny's actually a pretty good teacher. Excluding how earlier today he floored a kid wearing glasses and managed to break them, which could have cut the boy's eye, sent him to the hospital, potentially permanently blinded him, and landed them with a fat lawsuit.
"You're good with him," Daniel admits. But he doesn't extend the compliment to the other students. Daniel does a lot better with the quiet artistic types, who Johnny can't seem to handle whatsoever. Christ, he made Courtney cry. You can't tell a teenage girl that her pink hair-dye makes her acne look worse. Even if it's true. That's Teaching 101.
"Man, I'm exhausted," Johnny says, vocalizing his own feelings.
Daniel gives him a hard look, taking the dark circles that only seem to highlight Johnny's blue eyes, the weary, sad look surrounding them, the light age lines that Daniel's somehow managed to mostly avoid, despite being in his fifties. He would never have expected life to be so hard on golden boy Johnny Lawrence, and it's humbling. You never know when the rug's going to be pulled out from under you, you never realize how much your success is the gift of someone looking out for you until that person is gone.
"Has Kreese given you any more trouble?" Daniel asks.
"Nah." Johnny shakes his head. "You know, sometimes I wonder if this wasn't too extreme. Maybe I should've worked it out with him."
"No way," Daniel says. "I saw Miguel. I know what that man can do." His tone is forceful, even harsh, but Johnny needs to hear his complete certainty. When the guy talks about Kreese, he almost sounds like a battered housewife. Johnny can get combative about the least little insignificant crap, but Daniel's starting to notice that whenever it comes to something important, he's filled with doubt.
So yeah, another way they're eerily alike.
"Yeah," Johnny says eventually. He crushes his empty beer can – a cheap brand that was cool with the frat kids when they were young, Coors Banquet – and opens the fridge to grab another. "You want anything?" Johnny asks.
Daniel has kept silent about the fact that Johnny's filled the instructors' office refrigerator with beer. As long as he doesn't drink on the job, it's not his business. "No thanks."
"Come on. Loosen up, LaRusso. You're not going to leave me drinking alone, are you?"
The fact that Johnny probably spends a lot of time drinking alone softens him a little. "Fine. But I'm not having any of that crap."
He kneels down in front of a bamboo cabinet that belonged to Mr. Miyagi. Everything he's inherited from his mentor is meaningful to him, connects them together, even an ordinary piece of furniture. Daniel takes out a bottle of fine sake and two ochoko, painted ceramic cups he brought back from his first trip to Okinawa in 1984.
Daniel pours the sake and hands a cup to Johnny.
"So now we're taking shots of vodka?" Johnny teases. "That escalated fast."
"It's sake," Daniel says, a little exasperated.
"Whatever." Johnny shrugs and chugs it. "Not bad. I expected it to be way harsher."
"Just because it's not harsh doesn't mean it's not strong," Daniel warns.
Daniel drinks his and then refills the cups. They drink another, and another, and another, as they shoot the shit. Talking about old teachers and old classmates, old music and old movies. Just old, old stuff that kids these days don't even know about, because they're old.
This is probably a bad idea.
"I saw you working with Miguel on drills today," Johnny says, a little too nonchalantly. "Everything going okay with him?"
Daniel nods. "Looks like his injuries are healing well. And he picks up quickly."
"That's not what I meant."
"He's not giving me trouble," Daniel says.
Which is the truth, but it isn't the full truth. Miguel's mistrust of him radiates off like a biohazard warning sign. He's perfectly obedient, perfectly polite. But he steps back when Daniel steps near. His eyes turn to Johnny for confirmation when Daniel corrects him. When Daniel and Johnny speak to each other, Miguel stands at alert, ready to jump in and defend his Sensei. He wonders what the hell Johnny told him to make him so paranoid. Thank God the other Cobras had seen Aisha's trust in him and followed suit.
"How's it going with Robby?" Daniel tries, but Johnny's eyes darken.
"How's it going with Anthony?" Johnny snaps.
For all the kids he's been helping, how is it that he has no idea how to help his own son? Anthony doesn't care about anything but gaming and food. Daniel practically begged on his knees to get Anthony to join Miyagi-do, but it's like talking to a brick wall.
Anthony was born the year Mr. Miyagi died. The year Daniel couldn't bring himself to practice karate anymore. The year he'd gone deep into debt to open his first autoshop, and it looked like it was about to go under. He was six years older than when he'd had Samantha, and he was already an older dad. Anthony was unplanned, a challenging, colicky baby. Every cry was headache-inducing. Every sleepless night was more unbearable than the one before. Every milestone was less exciting than it had been with Sam, because Daniel had little room for anything else but his grief. If Anthony's more attached to his screen than he is to his father, it's Daniel's own damn fault.
He pours them another round.
"I wasn't trying to pry about Robby. I was just being friendly," Daniel says.
"Well, that's new," Johnny mutters, somewhat mollified.
"Yeah," Daniel says, "it is."
"Hey, use your evil robot thing to play some music," Johnny says after a while. "It's too quiet."
"Evil robot thing?" Daniel cocks an eyebrow. He feels a little ashamed for buying an Echo for the dojo, but better that than be technologically illiterate like Johnny.
"You just wait. I'm gonna say I told you so when Skynet takes over."
Daniel shakes his head indulgently. "What do you want to listen to, man?"
"I don't know. Van Halen."
"Alexa," Daniel calls out, "play Van Halen."
The keyboard opening of Jump sounds out over the speakers, and Johnny thrusts a fist into the air. "Hell yeah!"
Daniel may not be shouting it, but he feels it too – pumped up and nostalgic at the same time.
He remembers the badass 1984 album cover, a cherub smoking a cigarette. It came out their senior year of high school, and he must've played that record a thousand times. There was never a greater guitarist than Eddie Van Halen. Hell, he even made out with Ali to it once.
"You know this song was dedicated to –" Daniel begins.
"Benny Urquidex," they finish at the same time.
"Six-time world karate champion. David Lee Roth was a student of his. Of course I know that," Johnny scoffs.
"Man, they don't make music like this anymore," Daniel says with a sigh.
"No kidding." The joy leaves Johnny's face momentarily. "You ever think that the world gets worse and worse every year?"
By the slur of his voice, Daniel knows Johnny's drunk. Which means Daniel, who is shorter and thinner and certainly more of a lightweight than a functioning alcoholic, is most definitely drunker.
"Like, I know old men are always whining about how things were better in their day," Johnny continues. "But what if they're saying it because they're right? Like every generation inherits a shittier and shittier world."
Might as well jump! Might as well jump! Roth is belting, and it feels like an imperative.
Daniel thinks of global warming. He thinks of the disappearing middle class. He thinks of online bullying and nukes in North Korea and Iraq and selfies and Israel and Palestine and automation replacing jobs and the fact he can't go on Facebook without watching his relatives erupt into political arguments. He knows Johnny's not thinking of any of these things, but somehow, he aches at the thought that maybe Johnny's right. Maybe, no matter how perfect a nook he carves out for his kids in this big, chaotic, violent sphere in the vast emptiness of space, things will never be as simple and peaceful and meaningful as they were when he was a kid, when Mr. Miyagi and the greatest generation were alive to keep everything safe and sane.
"Well shit, man, you don't have to wax on and on about it," Johnny says, and Daniel realizes he was talking out loud.
Daniel bursts into laughter. "Wax on and on about it," he chokes out between laughs.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing. It's an inside joke."
"Come on, get up," Johnny goads, jumping to his feet. "Enough of this morbid self-pity. Let's fight."
The world's most epic guitar solo begins and Daniel grins, pulling himself to his feet. Mostly. He's kind of wobbly.
"For old time's sake." Johnny deepens his stance, and coils his hands into fists. But the smile on his mouth isn't malicious. It's playful.
"No way," Daniel says. "I'm wasted and out of shape." But he is already standing, already getting into position.
"What, are you afraid?" Johnny taunts. "Come on, Danielle."
Daniel closes off the memory of Dutch all those years ago, threatening him in the locker room before the final fight. "That wasn't funny the first time around."
"Yeah," Johnny admits. "Dutch was nutcase. I heard he was doing time in the '90s for sexual assault."
"I'm not surprised."
Johnny's bouncing on the balls of his feet and Daniel finds himself doing the same. It has to be the music. And the sake. There's no other explanation for why Daniel roundhouse-kicks Johnny's head like it actually is 1984.
His foot makes contact and Johnny stumbles back, but the move is too sloppy to do much damage. Johnny looks like he just won the lottery as he bounces back into the action, spinning to gain momentum before he elbows Daniel in the throat. Daniel miraculously blocks it, although not well, and they're caught up in a series of messy punches and jabs and feints and blocks and twists and staggering, drunken footwork they should probably be ashamed of.
Johnny finally knocks Daniel to the floor with a front kick, but he's so drunk he's thrown off balance and falls down, too. They're laughing their asses off on the floor and Hot for Teacher is playing when Amanda opens the door to the dojo.
"Daniel, are you kidding me?"
She steps inside and shakes her head, furious. "Are you drunk?"
"Um…" Daniel says as he sits up, shamefaced like a little kid caught with the candy jar. The room is spinning around in a way that it hasn't since he was a college freshman on a binge.
Johnny's giving Amanda a look of pure admiration. Daniel doesn't like it a bit.
"Maybe?" Daniel says, sheepish.
"It's two o'clock in the morning on a Wednesday. I've been trying to reach you for an hour. I was worried you were in a car accident. I was checking the sides of the road for your car in a ditch."
"I'm sorry babe." Daniel stumbles to his feet but Johnny's still lying on the floor, snickering to himself at Daniel's scolding.
"Are the kids worried?" Daniel asks.
"Thank God they're asleep."
"I'm really sorry. We lost track of time."
She shakes her head, but this time he can tell the anger and worry is wearing off, and she's actually kind of amused. He's never done this before. In fact, he's pretty straight-laced. Her lips are pursed probably because she's upset, but also because she's trying to stop herself from laughing.
"I'm giving you both five minutes to close up and then I'm taking you home. You too, Johnny."
"That's all right," Johnny says from the floor. "I can drive. I've driven way drunker than this."
"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that." Amanda pivots on her toe and saunters out.
"Does your wife talk to you like that often?" Johnny asks as he gets to his feet.
Daniel tenses. He opens his mouth to defend her when Johnny finishes, "Because she is hot when she's angry."
"Shut up," Daniel says. But there's not much heat to it. Amanda is hot when she's angry.
She's pretty much hot all the time.
On the ride to Johnny's place, Amanda turns on 80s and 8 on Sirius XM, and as they pull up to Johnny's apartment, the three of them are belting out 867-5309 together, completely off key.
All things considered, even if the world is getting worse every year, at least some nights, small things get better.