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Robby’s gone through a cycle of at least six different emotions, all variations of anger and disappointment and embarrassment and anger again, then disappointment again, and finally settling in sadness. Or something similar to that. It’s not like Robby ever really knows what he’s feeling, he cycles through a combination of feelings and never seems to know what any of them are, so he ignores them and they usually go away and then everything’s fine.
It’s not like that today, though. It’s worse, actually, because the only reason Robby’s even thinking of feelings is because Johnny failed to show up again. And Robby knows he should be used to it, Johnny’s failed to show up more times than he cares to count, just constant disappointment after disappointment, and Robby should just accept his dad’s never gonna change, but…
Well, he supposes all kids want their parents to love them. Even when the parent’s a screwed up piece of shit who’d rather get drunk in the bar across the street whilst their son’s being born rather than, you know, actually being there. (Maybe it says a lot about Robby’s fate, that his dad failed him even before he took his first breath).
“He’s not coming,” He says to the priest (dad’s friend, Bobby, who Robby has a sneaking suspicion he was named after), though the words are mostly to himself, to confirm that he’s not some dumb, wide-eyed kid who’s heartbroken that his dad didn’t show up, again. “I knew it.” Bobby’s looking at him with sad eyes, something empathetic, and tries to reassure him that something awful must’ve happened for Johnny to not show up. Robby huffs out some semblance of a laugh, “I doubt it.” Johnny’s never needed an excuse before.
You see, Robby’s entire childhood consisted of failures and second chances that resulted in failures. It’s all shitty birthday cards, empty reserved seats, empty six packs, insults at a man who wasn’t there to care at all. For a long time, an old VHS of Bloodsport was the only proof Robby had that he’d had a father once, that he even existed. (Well, that and a polaroid at the beach from the 80s. Of a happier time, he thinks, because his dad’s at least smiling). (Has Robby ever seen his dad smile? He can’t recall).
But Robby did have hope, once. He didn’t truly learn that parents don’t always act like parents until he was five, in the middle of the first semester of kindergarten (it’s a sad age to learn something like that, huh?). He remembers a teacher asking that everyone bring at least one parent to class the following week so they can talk about their jobs or whatever. Robby’s mom won’t do it (“Don’t have a job, kid,” Shannon had shrugged, eyes red at the edges and two empty bottles at her feet. “Would just waste my time.”), so Robby asked his dad, who promised he’d be there. He wasn’t, and Robby had cried in the bathroom because he saw all the other parents show up for their kids. How all his classmates beamed at the presence of their parents. How all the parents showed up except Robby’s own.
Then he realized the whole semi-shared custody thing wasn’t working. Not like it ever did, or ever would. Johnny didn’t pay child support, Shannon got mad. Shannon got drunk, Johnny grumbled and cursed and complained about having to pick Robby up from school. Johnny didn’t show up, Robby cried and Shannon screamed. Johnny and Shannon glanced at each other and screamed every insult under the sun at each other. They never got a judge involved despite how Robby spent hours researching child support laws in the school library so he could hopefully help his parents fix things. (Mom was so angry, going red in the face as she screamed, and Robby regretted ever opening his mouth).
They often forgot whose turn it was to pick Robby up, leaving him waiting in the school parking lot for hours. Whenever he got home late and told them, it led to new fights. Robby just wanted a family, so he started walking home whenever one of his parents was an hour late. He didn’t tell them about walking home alone, he didn’t ask where they’d been, didn’t make a fuss when they forgot about him or his birthday or about driving him to school or buying school supplies for a project.
He does his best to keep the peace, but sometimes it hurts too much. Sometimes, he can’t keep smiling when he arrives at an empty home. Sometimes, his teacher asks if he’s brought cupcakes for everyone since it’s his birthday and Robby can’t help but cry because she’s the only one who remembered. He makes father’s day cards and finds them in the trash just a day later. Invites his dad to soccer competitions and walks home disappointed after not seeing him, despite how he promised he’d be there.
“You forgot, right?” He says as he stands at his dad’s doorstep. He’s eleven years old and mom’s brought a guy home, some fucking creep who keeps staring at Robby in a way that makes his skin crawl (plus he kept trying to touch Robby— constantly laying hands on his shoulder and the back of his neck and his knee and thigh— fuck, what a creep). If mom noticed, she didn’t say anything. Though she most likely didn’t notice, given she was high out of her mind. Dad was supposed to pick Robby up so they could watch the new Spiderman movie together, but he clearly forgot by getting drunk again. (Robby’s gotten pretty good at recognizing the signs of intoxication in a person).
It’s fine (it isn’t), Robby knows the way to his dad’s apartment by memory so he got there with no problem despite it being nine in the afternoon, the sky being dark, and it being the middle of winter. And missing the movie.
“I didn’t,” Johnny says, as if that makes it any better. He sighs, “I did, I’m sorry, kid.”
He always forgot. “It’s okay,” Robby says with a shrug, even if he doesn’t mean it. He’s gotten used to this from his dad by now, but he was really looking forward to the movie. It’s probably his own fault for getting his hopes up.
He steps into the house, taking off his shoes, along with his socks and jacket. It had been raining, so all he wants is some warmth and perhaps some hot chocolate. (Naturally, Johnny has neither).
“Did you walk all the way over here?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Mom was with some guy, he gave me the creeps.”
And it was the wrong thing to say, because Johnny pokes and prods and asks questions (what did he do? did he say something to you? try to give you something? did he touch you? and the answer to all of them is yes). The night ends with him calling Shannon, screaming about letting a man that scared Robby into the house. And then she says he’s the one that forgot to pick Robby up that morning, which is true, and their fight continues and turns into insults and old grievances and Robby locks himself in his room that night, pillow over his head as he tries to block out the screaming.
Robby never understood how two people who hate each other can have a child. He always used to think that parents were supposed to love their children, and only have them when they were ready.
That wasn’t the case with Robby, not with most children as it turns out. But Robby understands that his situation is a little more complicated. He knows that being an addict isn’t easy, that it makes you a shell of yourself. All you want is more and more of the drug until everything else becomes irrelevant. He’s seen it with his parents. But he loves them despite everything, so he forces himself to forgive them even when they aren’t sorry, when they don’t apologize, when they fuck up again and again, when they don’t put in any effort for him despite how he puts it all for them.
Eventually, though, his patience runs out. It should’ve run out sooner, but he supposes he learned to have the patience of a saint as a child, he had to. (He no longer has said patience. He almost got it with Miyagi-do, but— yeah). It happened during his twelfth birthday. He didn’t even ask for anything, just for both his parents to be there for dinner. Two missed calls, sixteen unread messages and a beer later, Robby left one last message to his dad. A simple fuck off and a block, and that was it. Johnny was out of his life, as if he never existed. Maybe that was better, but Robby still cried himself to sleep, and once again the next morning.
Robby was justified, he thinks, because he’d given Johnny endless chances and he never changed, never put in the effort to change. Neither did Shannon, but the difference was she actually wanted him. She cooked and looked after him and drove him to the hospital when he broke his wrist skateboarding and looked over his homework despite not being able to do much to help him. But she tried, which was leagues above anything Johnny had ever done, so Robby’s willing to be more lenient on her.
It’s easy to be more lenient on her when he chooses to ignore how he couldn’t ever tell her anything of substance lest she start asking questions and worrying and getting angry and blaming herself or Johnny or Robby himself for whatever he was doing, how she would be set off by any little thing when she was drunk. How she would bring men home and not consider for even a second that Robby might want them as far from him as possible, how she ignored how they looked at him, how their hands lingered on his knee or thigh if they happened to be sitting close, how he had to stick a chair under the doorknob on his bedroom door or sleep on the staircase until they were gone.
It was also easy to be lenient on her when he thought of how Johnny screwed her over; she gave birth alone, recovered alone, went home alone, raised Robby alone— she never had any support, of course she was constantly struggling. It wasn’t her fault that she had a kid with the worst fucking person on the planet.
But it was her fault that she always made Robby feel like a burden, that she always groaned when he asked for something, that he refused to let her know when he was sick because he didn’t want to burden her any further, that he started smoking at thirteen, that she let him have so much freedom that he didn’t know what to do with it, that he never had a stable figure in his life, that she always thought of herself, of her own wellbeing and happiness and rarely, if ever, considered her own son—
But Robby does have some good memories of his parents, his childhood wasn’t all bad.
Sal’s diner with the ice cream and burgers and milkshakes and, of course, the alcohol. His dad would drink endlessly and Robby would just be too happy to care. He’d eat a burger and endless fries, a different flavored milkshake every visit, and a small ice cream to finish. For a long time, it seemed to be the only place where Johnny could act like a father to Robby; it was the one place where Robby could talk and be listened to, could say whatever he wanted and wouldn’t look stupid awaiting for answers from his dad.
(And the staff… the staff were like family, took to Robby in a kinder light than they did Johnny despite having known him longer. They gave him a free cake for his birthday when he walked in by himself, desperately trying to hide his tears because he’d just turned thirteen and despite his insistence that his mom could go out and he’d rather not talk to his dad, Robby was painfully lonely).
Shannon was good too, most times. One of her requests to every boyfriend she’d ever had was that they bring a small gift for Robby every two-three visits. Sometimes they left books, movies, games, or just cash, and Shannon and Robby would spend the half hour after the boyfriends were gone to discuss what the gift said about their personality (Robby always took it more seriously than Shannon ever did). One of her boyfriends gave him his first real skateboard, even drove him to the skatepark and got him a milkshake (that guy wasn’t a creep, he was actually kind of cool). Robby spent most weekends with his mom, watching every single Patrick Swayze movie together, a bag of popcorn and a small bottle of soda between them, all the lights in the apartment turned off, like a real cinema. And Shannon always gave him whatever he asked for, even if she had to work an extra shift or con a man or sell something she liked— she often went out of her way if Robby asked her too. (But it made him feel guilty, too, because Shannon didn’t have it easy, and how could Robby ask more of her when she already did so much? Most days, he had a roof, a bed, food and clean water and clothes, how could he ever want more?).
He wishes someone had told him it was okay to want more, that it didn’t make him an awful person, that… that it was okay to want more than the bare minimum. (Even eight years after this initial realization, Robby feels awful when he thinks of it as the bare minimum because, for his mom, the bare minimum was everything ).
But of course, most of what Robby remembers is the bad. He doesn’t mean to, but it’s the parts that always stick out the most. It’s not like he can ever forget them— he has more bad memories than good ones, and they basically shaped his childhood, after all. His mother forgetting him at the grocery store, his dad forgetting to pick him up, getting in a car with his drunk father and getting into an accident so bad it broke Robby’s arm and left him with a concussion, not seeing his dad for days that turned into weeks and then months, his mom growing so tired with him that she gave him pills so he’d fall asleep, his dad not answering his calls or texts, his mom ignoring her boyfriends’ fucking weird behavior towards Robby as if it wasn’t anything too bad, so long as it didn’t happen in her line of sight, so long as they had enough money to keep feeding her addiction—
Robby hates remembering, but he can never forget.
And isn’t that just another scar his parents gave him? The knowledge that he wasn’t good enough or important enough or loved enough for either of them to change, to actually put in the effort to be better people or better parents?
The phone in the rec room is ringing, the guard calls out Robby’s name, and Robby internally prepares himself for another disappointing conversation. S orry, kid, something came up. It was more important, and it’s not like you’re going anywhere, right?
“Hello?”
“Robby—!” Fucking Mr Larusso. “Robby, I’m so glad, I—“
Robby takes all of two seconds to wonder if he really does want to hang up on Mr Larusso. This is the man who fired him, kicked him out twice, then turned him in despite promising he’d be there for Robby. Much like Johnny, huh? Robby gets the extra special, double shitty-father/father figure package in one lifetime. Fun. Fun stuff.
He hangs up, waits two seconds to see if it’ll ring again, and walks away.
He supposes he’s not… not really mad at Mr Larusso, for kicking him out at least. It’s more of grief, and anger because of grief, and it’s so intense it threatens to choke him. Robby’s always hated anything and everything that had to do with his father, rejected anything having to do with him out of principle— so how can he be mad at someone else for doing the same? How can he blame Mr Larusso for wanting everything that had to do with Johnny out of his life, when Robby spent most of his life doing the same?
No, he can’t blame Mr Larusso for it. But he… he’s allowed to feel something about it. He’s allowed to be angry, especially after getting turned in by the man. God, it’s all so fucked up.
Robby checks his email, sees messages from Sam and Mrs Larusso and Mr Larusso and ends up reading over Sam’s most recent one, settles with answering a simple, sorry about not replying sooner, it’s all just gone to shit. And then, I’m okay, don’t worry too much about me. I’ve missed you, hope you’re doing okay. He sends it before he gives himself a chance to overthink and end up deleting it. One of Sam’s older ones, though fairly recent, nearly knocks the wind out of Robby, Miguel woke up, he seems better.
And because Robby’s a masochist, he ends up googling Miguel’s name. Endless articles pop up and he reads every single one. Guesses about Miguel’s health, talk about canceling the All Valley, reports of Robby’s own arrest, how Miguel’s finally woke up— but nothing that can truly let him know if Miguel’s alright or not, if what Robby did to him is—
If it’s permanent or not.
Guilt crawls its way up his throat. He didn’t mean to hurt Miguel like that, didn’t mean to let him fall. He was just so… so angry, about so many things.
Part of it was Sam, naturally. Robby loved Sam, as something between a friend and a lover, but a friend above all. And Miguel was stuck in the whole first love thing. And there was Johnny, ‘cause it always came back to Johnny. Robby fucked up his father’s life by existing (what other explanation was there for his absence?) and… fuck, Johnny ruined Robby’s life, too. The only difference is Robby spent his entire childhood trying to fix it, but he never could, he was just a kid for fuck’s sake. And his dad just… he never tried.
And… shit, that’s not the only thing Robby’s angry about.
It’s how Miguel kicked Robby’s shoulder, fought dirty, and Johnny just watched. How everyone always liked Miguel better despite how much of an asshole he’d been to Robby, all the time. And yeah, Robby was an asshole too, it’s just that everyone hated him for it, but they never hated Miguel. And… and it was the gi and the stupid hug.
It’s not just the hug— sure, Johnny hasn’t hugged Robby in years and that’s both their faults, Robby’s been hurt too many times to accept any kind of olive branch and Johnny… Johnny stops trying the second things get even slightly difficult.
But the gi… the gi was a promise. Robby was six and had already been disappointed before, but he chose to give his dad another chance. A month had passed and he hadn’t been disappointed again, which was a record time. So he was happy, the happiest he’d been in a while. They were in the garage of Johnny’s old apartment before he moved to Reseda, and there was a box filled with his dad’s old karate things. Medals, small trophies, nunchucks, a pair of sai, his gi and his red Cobra Kai jacket, and Robby said, “Can you teach me karate?” Because he knew it was important to his dad, had been for a long time, and maybe this was what they needed to stay close for longer this time around. And his dad laughed, something along the lines of your mother would kill me for teaching you so young (this was back when things weren’t as bad, so this was just a funny way of putting it and not even close to a real threat). I’ll teach you when you’re older, then the gi’s yours. The jacket, too. But Johnny gave it to Miguel, just like he gave everything to Miguel.
Everything was always about Miguel. Everyone liked him more, trusted him more, cared about him more, judged him less… he didn’t have to fight for scraps of affection from anyone. He had a mother, Robby barely had his. He had friends who genuinely cared about him, Robby didn’t. And then, he took Robby’s father. (Miguel had everything and Robby had nothing, but— Robby never really had his own father, did he? Johnny was always a drifter, before Miguel at least).
It hurt, too much to ever put into words. That Miguel clearly loved Johnny like a father, that Johnny loved him like a son, and that was something Robby and Johnny would never have. That Johnny was probably there for Miguel at the hospital, that he taught him and coached him and gave him the gi and the jacket he promised Robby and— shit, how dare he? How come Johnny could be a good father figure to Miguel, but not a real father to Robby? It took Robby twelve years of constant disappointment until he finally gave up, and Johnny never changed. Miguel knew him for less than a year and Johnny had already done more for him than he ever had for Robby.
Was Robby just not worth changing for?
It’d make sense, he supposes. He already spent most of his life thinking his father’s abandonment and his mom’s fucked up life were his fault. This… this shouldn’t surprise him.
And Robby supposes he can’t blame his dad for not showing up, at least this time. This time he can hate it, but a part of him can forgive him for it. Robby broke his star student and ran, kicked him off a goddamn second floor and fled. He hurt someone that badly and walked away, how was that acceptable? How could he blame his dad for not wanting to see him after what he did?
Little fact about Robby; most of his emotions boil down to anger, when it comes down to it. Anger’s easier than grief, at least. Easier than any of those emotions he doesn’t want, can’t even name.
So when he sees Shawn and his dumbass friends in the rec room, saying something vaguely annoying, it’s easy. Easy to throw a kick at Shawn’s face, a punch at the other guy, a kick to another. To feel the sting of a punch near his eye, a kick to his ribs, to lose himself in violence, to exhaust his body and leave it aching. (Miyagi-do always taught him that it was for defense, but Robby’s been defending himself his entire life and he’s tired of it. If he strikes first, it won’t be Cobra Kai. It’ll be something else).
Robby thinks he blacks out, for a bit. He doesn’t remember being kicked into a wall or punching Shawn in the nose or having the wind knocked out of him with another kick. He does remember being pinned to the floor, the guard’s weight over him; the knee against his back and the hand on the back of his neck, pressing him against the floor as harshly as possible.
He glances at Shawn, sees the rage across his face and feels blood dripping down his eyebrow and Robby grins, tiny chuckles escaping his mouth. He’d missed this; fighting, realizing he wasn’t invincible, that others could hurt him too. That Miguel could’ve fought back, that Miguel wasn’t defenseless, that—
He doesn’t know. But he does know the sting in his ribs, the pain that’ll follow for days onward, is worth it.