Chapter Text
His rage was like a hard pit in his gut. He was so full of anger and resentment and pain all the time, sometimes he felt like all he could see was red. It didn’t let up-it was years of mistreatment built up and combined with everyone he had tentatively relied on turning away from him, turning on him. It was everything he had ever had-precious little-being taken away from him. His home, though it hadn’t been much of a home, his mother, not much of a mother, his girlfriend-his stomach twisted-any sense of security from day to day. He hadn’t eaten since a stolen slim jim the afternoon before. He was cold at night, hot during the day, and filthy, and shame curdled in his stomach at the way he looked, the way he smelled. His clothes hadn’t been washed since he got out of juvie.
There was nobody to even express his troubles to, but in a way that was a comfort. He couldn’t cry or focus on the pain beneath the anger, if he could never express it. He could let the rage just swallow up all the other, more vulnerable emotions and make him powerful and hard instead. His brain just played a jumbled repeat of every time he had been struck down, discarded, betrayed, blamed, attacked. Rejected. His breaths came short and hard.
Even thinking about his father made him feel sick. Sick with anger-and pain. But he focused on the anger. And his father’s replacement son, well, he avoided thinking about him. He hated him almost as much as his father, but yet.. There was a mess of something close to regret, even a bit of lingering shock mixed with the hatred. Yet another feeling he was happy enough to stuff down deep as it could go. Fuck that kid, he’d still happily mop the floor with him, he had it coming.
He regretted nothing. The world had never given him one inch, and he was done trying. In fact, he pictured his face as he beat his knuckled bloody against the punching bag he was currently taking out his feelings on.
Later that night he wandered the streets, not really caring where he ended up or if he was out until morning. All he had at this point was a cold floor to sleep on and he wasn’t exactly dying to get back to it. That night’s dinner was a couple bruised apples and bread fished out of a dumpster (he tore the moldy part off). He ended up walking for hours, until he was on a hilltop somewhat overlooking the city. He sat down on the dirt and watched the city lights twinkling morosely. He rolled himself a joint (stolen from a Cobra Kai’s backpack quite easily) and smoked the whole thing. The world seemed to be spinning. He may have sat there for minutes or hours, until his head slumped forward onto his chest and he fell asleep, just sitting like that.
He woke up on his side, face pressed into the dirt, and groaned, wiping his face on his shirt, which wasn’t much cleaner. His stomach was clenching painfully on its own emptiness. He pissed into the bushes, not really caring if a passing car saw him. He started the long, tiring walk back. The sun rose above him in the sky, and he knew his face was burning but there was nothing he could do about it, he had nowhere to take shelter, nothing to protect him from the elements.
Checking the dumpsters was a futile pursuit that morning, there was nothing but rotting zucchini, raw meat souring under the California sun, and a whole lot of trash. When he started to feel the urge to puke, he knew he really needed to eat. He hit up the nearest convenience store, shuffling down the isles nonchalantly as the cashier glared at him.
He was stuffing a third protein bar into his pocket when another person came around the other side of the aisle, and stopped short. It was Miguel, wearing clean clothes, looking healthy and well fed.
A jolt of adrenaline instantly ran through him. He was ready to fight in a split second, his heart rate speeding up, his hands balling into fists. The other boy’s reaction was the opposite; he froze where he was, his body stiff, his face was completely blank, his eyes wide and surprised and unreadable. Robby fought through the violent urges in his mind, and stalked past the other boy, clipping him with his shoulder, with a muttered “get the fuck outta my way”.
“Hey! You gotta pay for that!” Shouted the cashier hoarsely, and Robby realized he was still just holding the protein bar in his hand. He ran for the doors, and apparently the floor had been waxed, because he was suddenly sliding across the linoleum floor, falling hard onto one knee. In a second he had jumped back up to his feet, but the cashier’s hand was closing around his upper arm. On instinct he hit him with a spinning elbow to the face, and the man dropped his arm, gasping and cursing, and Robby was gone, tearing out the door and down the street incredibly fast.
He was at least two miles away before he stopped, ducking into an alleyway, panting. His heart was almost jumping out of his chest. The threat of being caught shoplifting and being locked up again had made him panic completely.
The rest of the day passed much the same as all his days did now, just a hazy and painful struggle to even get through it. Taking out his anger on the punching bags again. Trying to wash himself with an automatic faucet and cheap hand soap in a public restroom. Around the time he knew the Cobra Kai students would start to arrive, he came to a sudden decision. He wasn’t going to stick around here another day. He’d done just as well sleeping in the dirt as he had this place. He was vaguely grateful for the advice that had saved his ass somewhat in juvie, but not that grateful. He was done with all this juvenile shit. And he didn’t plan on placing his trust in another adult any time soon. Ever, actually. He grabbed his duffle bag and slipped out the back, unseen.
He stole a practically untouched skateboard from some middle class looking fourteen year old decked out in all new Santa Cruz and Volcom. He felt bad about it, skaters usually followed an honor code about this kind of thing, but the truth was that kid’s mom would probably buy him a new board and Robby found no point in listening to his conscience at all by now. Nobody else ever seemed to when it came to him. Skating was almost as good as punching things. And he could at least get around faster with a board. The board was narrower and the wheels were harder than he preferred, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
He ended up sleeping in some woods behind a strip mall that no other homeless people seemed to frequent, and he kicked some old trash and broken bottles out of the way and made himself a pile of leaves for a mattress. He rolled a T-shirt up for a pillow and eventually dozed off to the sound of traffic on the freeway.
Unfortunately it rained that night, a rare occurrence in California and just his luck, and he was woken up by cold drops hitting his face. He got up, cursing, and tried to take shelter under the trees, but they were too scraggly and bare to protect him, and he ended up just sitting there getting drenched with nowhere to go. For hours, until he was so miserable he almost wanted to die. And added to that, his knee had been throbbing ever since he’d slipped on that convenience store floor. He didn’t even bother to look at it, because what could he possibly do even if it was seriously hurt?
Eventually morning came, the sky fading from navy to greyish and the red sun peeking up over the horizon of industrial buildings and overpasses. He still sat there shivering even though the temperature had risen considerably, and the warm sun shone down on him, drying his ragged clothes to be merely damp instead of sopping wet. His stomach ached. His knee throbbed. His head was pounding. It took a long time for him to coax himself into getting up, stiff from sitting against a tree for hours, and limp his way back out of the little woods and onto the sidewalk. He fantasized about a hot shower as he walked down the sidewalk in the early morning chill, feeling like he’d never wanted anything as much. Except maybe a cooked meal, he’d take anything at this point, but his thoughts mostly revolved around breakfast food, because he could smell the delicious aroma of coffee and egg McMuffins coming from a McDonalds he passed.
Without really realizing it, his feet had taken him towards his dad’s apartment. He stopped in his tracks when he realized where he’d been going, unsure what his goal had been. He was so tired and hungry that it was hard to get his thoughts straight. All at once a familiar shitty minivan caught his attention in a diner parking lot he was passing. He stopped and narrowed his eyes, ducking away from the big front windows of the diner, and creeping around the side of the building to discreetly peer inside.
Sure enough there was his dad and his prized student eating inside, and his blood boiled.