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If someone had told Daniel ten years ago that he would be hooking up with Johnny freaking Lawrence on a semi-regular basis he would have had some words for them, none of them nice. But here he was.
Daniel’s cat, who hadn’t gotten the memo that they were not keeping him, was luxuriating in Johnny’s arms like a baby and purring up at him while he cooed at her.
“You are so beautiful,” he said to her. “Such a sweet girl.”
Daniel had had no idea those kinds of words were in Johnny Lawrence for anyone, man or beast. He swallowed and reminded himself firmly: they were just fucking.
Johnny looked up and caught Daniel’s eye and started to laugh.
“Jealous, LaRusso?” he asked.
“She never lets me pick her up,” he said, taking the easy way out.
“You have to let her come to you,” Johnny replied simply and leaned down to drop a kiss on the top of the cat’s head. “She wasn’t interested in me the first few times I came around until she knew I wasn’t going to bother her if she didn’t want. You’re always hassling her when she’s doing her own thing.”
“Gee, I’m a monster,” Daniel replied flatly.
Johnny rolled his eyes, but didn’t bring up the old argument about who had started what back in high school. He tended not to before he’d had a chance to get off. Or after, really, because he rarely stuck around long.
Daniel saw his camera out on the coffee table and picked it up on an impulse. He looked through the viewfinder and, when Johnny looked up, snapped a quick picture. He wasn’t sure why.
“Anyway, so did you want to have sex with me or should I take off for a few and leave you and Buttons alone?” he said, in lieu of explaining himself.
Johnny set the cat gently down on her paws and gave her another few strokes from head to tail.
“Gotta go, sweetheart,” he said. “Your daddy is getting impatient.”
Something in Daniel’s chest twisted as he put the camera down and he grabbed the front of Johnny’s shirt to drag him towards the bedroom.
*
It had started when Johnny came into Mr Miyagi’s Little Trees one day. He’d been scrupulously polite to Mr Miyagi, thanking him for ‘that time in the parking lot when things got a little hairy’ (y’know, the way we all refer to that time in our lives when a trusted mentor tries to kill us in cold blood) and, once Mr Miyagi had stepped into the back, been just enough of a jerk that Daniel hadn’t felt bad messing with him a little.
“Hey, Johnny, I see you pierced your ear,” he’d said. “The right one, huh?”
“Yeah?” Johnny replied.
“I just thought that was the ear gay guys pierced,” he said with a shrug. “I must have been mistaken.”
Johnny looked him in the eyes and said, “No mistake.”
“Oh,” Daniel replied. And then, for no reason he could explain. “Me too.”
Johnny tipped his head to the side and said, “What time do you get off work? Wanna hang out?”
And that was that.
They’d met for a beer when Daniel got off and, half an hour after they sat down, Daniel had been dragging him backwards through his own front door while they made their best attempts to eat each other’s faces.
The sex was good. Better than good. If it weren’t for the complicated emotions that Daniel felt when he saw him loving up on his cat it would be a perfect arrangement, but you can’t have everything.
Afterwards, Johnny pulled on his jeans and shirt and leaned over the bed to peck Daniel briefly on the forehead before heading out.
“You can stay and I’ll feed you if you want?” he called after his back.
“You oughta be careful, LaRusso,” Johnny called back over his shoulder. “If you feed me I’ll come back.”
The door closed and Daniel lay down heavily. From the living room he could hear some ‘pss, pss, pss’ noises and then some, frankly disproportionate, praise directed at his cat before hearing the front door open and close.
“Fuck,” he said to himself.
*
So he was getting soft squishy feelings for his high school bully. That was just… perfect. Daniel let out a groan and accidentally cut into the webbing between his thumb and index finger with his clippers.
“Careful, Daniel-san!” Mr Miyagi took his hand and fussed over the cut. “Something on mind?”
“Yeah,” Daniel replied, wincing as iodine was rubbed onto the cut. “It’s not important.”
Mr Miyagi gave him a look, but thankfully didn’t press him any further.
“Will heal better if you leave alone,” Mr Miyagi said, as though he was six instead of 26.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll be more careful.”
With his clippers and with other things, he thought as he went back to pruning.
*
He didn’t call him for about a week and screened his incoming calls until his machine was full of Johnny Lawrence asking him to call him back.
After a week, he seemed to get the message and didn’t call him anymore. Daniel bought a new tape for the answering machine, not quite able to bear taping over the old one, and immediately felt like an idiot. It wasn’t like he was going to listen back to Johnny saying, “Hey man, missed you again. Call me,” over and over. Even a love sick fool, which he was not, would have standards higher than that when it came to moping.
It was for the best, he told himself. Clean break. No good pining over someone who liked his fucking cat better than he liked him anyway.
*
He left a window open in his room and the cat got out. He had shut the door with her on the other side of it, he was certain, but somehow she had managed to break in with her little paw hooked around the door and slipped out while he was at work.
When he went to make a poster the only picture he could find was that one he’d taken of Johnny holding her. His eyes started watering in the copy shop as he saw print after print roll out of the photocopier in a neat stack.
“Stupid fucking cat,” he said under his breath and tipped his head back to contain his tears.
*
Three days after the cat went missing, he heard a knock at the door and, when he answered it, it was Johnny Lawrence with his arms full of placid calico cat.
“Hey,” Johnny said awkwardly and held his armful out to Daniel, who accepted it mutely.
“Hey,” he replied and then promptly burst into tears.
“Oh, hey, no, shh, it’s okay,” Johnny stepped into the living room, closing the door behind him, and took Daniel into his arms.
The cat squeaked indignantly and jumped onto the couch where she watched them with half lidded eyes.
“It’s okay, she’s safe,” Johnny said into his hair. “My neighbour saw her and thought she was mine. Because of the, uh, poster.”
Words still wouldn’t come, so he just sobbed into Johnny’s shirt and gripped it tight in his left hand. He felt a kiss on the top of his head and then Johnny pulled away suddenly.
“Shit,” he said. “Sorry, I, uh. Instinct. I don’t- I don’t think I’m your knight in shining armour or anything. And. I know we’re not… y’know. Anymore. I was just bringing the cat back.”
“I was such a fucking jerk to you,” Daniel said finally, sniffing loudly. “I got scared that I liked you too much and didn’t even give you the courtesy of a phone call and you still brought my cat back.”
“Well yeah,” Johnny said. “What was I gonna do? Steal her?”
“It used to be so easy to hate you, Johnny,” Daniel went on, as if uninterrupted. “Simple, you know? But you make it so hard now.”
“And do you?” Johnny said. “Hate me?”
“I hate you so fucking much,” Daniel said with a voice that cracked on the last word and Johnny took his face in both hands and kissed him.
“I hate you,” Daniel whispered in between kisses, clinging to his shirt and chasing his lips whenever they moved away. “I fucking hate you.”
“I know, baby,” Johnny said. “It’s okay.”