Chapter Text
PART I: R E D
Does she know that we bleed the same?
Red.
Johnny saw red the first time he was on the beach a few weeks after Ali broke up with him. He discovered there was something else behind that red hood and then he saw his knuckles covered in blood. Something he couldn't even fathom.
When Johnny felt the slimy liquid slide down from his nose to his chin he knew right away that boy on the sand was going to be a pain in the ass for the rest of the year.
And it was.
Seeing him next to Ali laughing like he once did was hard to take in. So every time his fists paled inside his pockets, he thought about the night, the fucking night he met Daniel LaRusso.
Sensei Kreese noticed all that anger and asked him what he was waiting for. Then he laughed when he saw him falling down the small hill, but for some reason it tasted to him like an unexpectedly bitter excitement.
No, John Lawrence had no mercy. He wasn't the same weak 8-year-old who cried every night in his bed over something Sid had said to him or the brat who trembled in the corner of the dojo while doing knuckle push-ups. He had learned to be strong and strike first. He didn't feel sorry for anyone and he wasn't going to feel bad about what he did to that worm.
Daniel LaRusso deserved no mercy.
Not even when his body slumped against the railing and he saw the blood sliding down his temples.
That night Johnny was sure of one thing and that was to finish the little bastard off right there. But then his eyes looked at him like a deer looks at its hunter before being devoured and something inside Johnny made him hesitate.
What am I doing?
The second time he saw him inside the dojo he was no longer alone. The old man looked at him and spoke to the sensei, but Johnny only focused on LaRusso's black eye.
He also stared.
"Tournament."
The old man's voice was determined. Johnny sketched a victory-laden smile just because the other Cobras did, but he only felt worried.
Why?
A few days later, when he got home, he went up to his room before Sid saw him and started yelling at him why he was so late. He heard his mother calling him to look at his wounds and apply the same ointment to them. He only agreed because she was helping him, but he didn't feel like talking to her or anyone else.
Laura smiled at him and gently stroked his cheek. She let her slender fingers slide down his face and then kissed him on the forehead. He wasn't going to accept it, but he loved it when she did. It was like going back to a time when it was just his mother, him and no one else. When she did that, Johnny thought they might have made it through their problems together, without Sid's help. A part of him still couldn't forgive Laura.
"This one wasn't there yesterday, what did you do?"
Johnny shrugged and released the woman's grip. He didn't know either.
"We had a fight today," he said later, when Laura started to look behind her blue eyes. "It's probably because of the block I made when Dutch kicked me."
Laura twisted her mouth, but kept silent waiting for her son to say something more than that empty explanation. One that never came and a few seconds later she smiled back.
"You remember what Auntie Marcia was telling you about those marks on your arm?"
The blond lowered his gaze and touched right where his mother had looked with concern.
"No."
Actually, yes, he remembered.
He listened to every one of his neighbor's stories as a child until the day came when they went to the Valley. Auntie Marcia was nothing more than an old drunk who would make up anything to get attention so she wouldn't feel so lonely in her cold trailer. In spite of everything, Johnny liked her and thought of her every time he decided to look at his arm looking for her words to come true.
There was never anything.
"Well," Laura continued, still smiling "maybe this time it’s true."
Johnny ignored her and locked himself in his room. He went into the bathroom to take a shower and once he was naked in front of the mirror, he saw the bruises that were disappearing from his torso, getting smaller and greenish. They no longer hurt, but it was still a little hard to breathe. It was then that the vague memory of LaRusso being beaten by the five of them assaulted him, surprising him that he had enough strength to get up the next day and show up at the dojo almost as if nothing had happened.
He raised his right arm, looking at it closely. There was a long reddish mark, too thin to be a bruise. Laura had realized that he had lied when he mentioned the blockage to her. There was no way a kick would leave such a mark.
"Hear me out. Sooner or later, you or your person will get one of your names on it. But if you get to have it yourself, don't tell them 'I got your fucking name on my arm'. That's not romantic."
"Maybe this time it's true."
If it was, he hoped the girl had big tits.