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Johnny considers it a consequence of hanging out with Rosa Diaz too much.
She's a pretty cool lady, even with the language barrier between them. Most of the time, she putters around the house doing her own thing, mumbling in Spanish about something or other and floating in and out of rooms, folding laundry or helping Carmen make dinner. But in the times that Johnny’s actually spent with her, he’s found her to be chill and laid back, easy going in a way that most of the older women and moms in Johnny’s life haven’t been. And she likes him, laughing at all of his stupid jokes around the dinner table like he’s the evening’s entertainment. Doting on him from time to time. Whenever he's a little hungover or he's feeling sorry for himself (often the same thing), she's got a reheated plate of leftovers and a soft pobrecito at the ready.
Diaz family dinners are so different from the stuffy affairs at the country club and icy stares around a too-large and imposing dining table that Johnny grew up with. Even with things not working out between him and Carmen, an amicable end that they worked better as friends and a little "good sensei/bad sensei" when it came to Miguel, dinners at the Diaz house have remained a part of Johnny's routine life that he looks forward to. A little family time he can actually enjoy with a family he can be himself around. It's been good for him.
Plus, Rosa's cool.
So when one night after dinner she offers Johnny a joint outside, he doesn't refuse.
It's been awhile since the last time Johnny's indulged. The smoke hits heavy in his lungs on the first hit and he sputters a spitty cough that he's tried his best to hold in. Face red, mouth wide open as he hacks into his elbow. Rosa laughs all high pitched in hysterics.
"¿No fumas, Johnny?”
"No. No fumas mucho," Johnny says, accent and grammar be damned.
Rosa takes the joint back and inhales, chest ballooning up before letting go in one long, smooth exhalation of smoke. One eyebrow raised just slightly as she dangles it in front of Johnny between her fingertips.
Okay fuck it. Fine.
It's easier on the second inhale and Johnny refuses to be outdone by the old lady. The smoke hits him in the chest but the impact is less than the first hit now that he can prepare for it and he holds it in for a very long 5. 4. 3. 2. 1. Exhale. Rosa laughs again and she claps a friendly hand on Johnny's shoulder and gives it a shake of support and Johnny's laughing too now and he takes one more hit because yeah man this is some good shit and hey Rosa where do you get this stuff anyway and what? El dispen— you mean dispensary? I thought that was just for medical stuff and oh no that's right I knew that and hey you'll have to take me some time.
They walk back into the house and they were either outside for a few minutes or several hours but it doesn't matter because Johnny's feeling better than he has in years. The tension that always lives in his lower back has melted away as he sinks into what's become his dining room chair at the Diaz table. He's got that light, airy feeling. The vast emptiness of his brain that allows thoughts to simply drift through like clouds on a summer day: loosely strung together, unimportant, and a beautiful reprieve from the constant pressurized worry that lives in the back of his mind at all times.
Carmen looks between her mother and Johnny and hangs her head with a sigh. Johnny can catch the upturned quirk of her lips in her attempt to hide a smile and he cracks, Rosa laughing beside him. The pair of them erupting into a fit of the giggles at the dinner table.
Miguel has no idea what's going on. He thinks.
Walking into the dispensary feels a little. Wrong? Illegal? Johnny used to get his pot from Dutch's cousin and that had never felt like anything less than a drug deal (granted, it was, but Dutch's cousin was always way sketchier about it than he needed to be). There's a big guy at the entrance who scans Johnny's ID and he feels like a teenager with a fake trying to get into a bar for the first time.
"Medical or recreational?" the bouncer asks.
"Uhm, recreational?"
His ID gets scanned and he's waved on in. He doesn't know what he expected — maybe for it to look a little more like a head shop with tapestries on the wall surrounded by hippies in tie-dye that smell like patchouli and too much musk — but it's not this. The place looks kind of clinical. No merchandise to really peruse or pick up, just a long counter filled with employees wearing nerdy-looking name badges like the guys who man the dork station at Best Buy, complete with standing iPads in front of them. There are advertisements for brands on the walls instead of trippy posters or tapestries and the walls are painted a calming light green
An elderly gentleman is being assisted by a woman with purple hair and a kind smile. A blonde soccer mom leans over the counter to pay for her items from an unassuming guy with a buzzcut.
One of the employees, a young kid with frizzy hair, spots Johnny from behind the counter and greets with him an overly friendly customer service smile and a wave.
"I can help you over here!"
Huh, alright. That's also not what he expected.
"What can I help you find today?" the kid asks. His name tag proclaims his name is Todd.
Johnny leans in, elbows on the counter and answers with a low voice. "I'm looking to score some weed."
Todd blinks at him a few times, stone-faced. Johnny flushes under the scrutiny. Maybe this was a bad idea.
"Oh-kay," Todd says, not wavering in the face of Johnny's ignorance. "What do you usually like?"
"Uhm. Weed?" Jeez, what kind of question is that?
"Right. Uhm, okay do you like edibles? Flower? Cannabis drinks? Vapes? Pre-rolls?"
"What are you asking me, man?" Johnny asks, maybe a little too defensively. "I just want to smoke a joint."
"Okay got it!" And he sounds so cheery that Johnny has to fight the eye roll that's coming. "So do you like to roll your own or do you want one already rolled for you?"
Johnny thinks back to the last time he rolled his own joint. Had to have been high school and he can admit he wasn't really good at it back then. They'd always end up too loose and he'd get bits of bud in his mouth or too tight and he'd have to pull too hard to get a hit.
"I'll take an already rolled one."
Todd nods dutifully and turns the iPad screen towards himself, typing and scrolling, and Johnny's patience is wearing a little thin. He thinks he might prefer meeting Dutch’s cousin in an empty parking lot.
"What kind of high do you want to be?" Todd asks.
"Just. High? Regular high?"
Todd doesn't press on, just nods and scrolls. He heads to the back room and emerges seconds later with what looks like a cigarette pack in black packaging and slides it over to Johnny.
"Give this a try. It's not too mellow but the THC content isn't so high that you lose a whole day on the couch after a few hits."
Okay, now the guy is making sense. "Alright, cool. I'll take one of these then."
Todd asks for Johnny's ID (again?) and rings him up for the joints with that same customer service smile that hasn't left his face. He puts the pack in a branded paper bag, gives Johnny some overly friendly well wishes, and sends him on his way.
Todd is a liar.
Johnny gets home and immediately rips the pack open on his couch. He sets up a makeshift ashtray from a roll of tinfoil on his coffee table and sparks up the joint. Like the one he shared with Rosa, this one hits his lungs with too much punch and he nearly hacks up a lung in his living room, eyes tearing as he chokes on smoke. He has one terrifying moment that this was a bad idea but then he has the genius idea to take another hit and then another hit.
And then, he loses a whole day on the couch.
It’s not a bad way to spend a day in all honesty.
His back doesn’t hurt. He’s a pool of liquid Johnny on his couch and the cushions have never felt so comfortable. He puts on Iron Eagle again, because why not, and before he knows it he’s marathoning all of his favorites by himself and it’s the best day he’s had in a long time. Minus the cotton mouth. He forgot about that.
Miguel knocks on Johnny’s door to invite him over for dinner and he takes in the bright red eyes and sluggish movements with a raised eyebrow.
“You doing okay, Sensei?”
Johnny licks his very dry lips and nods, probably too slowly. “Mmhm, doing just fine. Just fine. Tired.”
Miguel smirks. “Sure. Well, if you’re hungry, Mom and Yaya made dinner.”
Johnny clears his plate. Two of them.
It’s the best meal he’s ever had.
It doesn’t become a regular thing but it does become a little bit of a thing. An irregular thing.
He finishes the pack in a couple of weeks (he’s learned to pace himself until his tolerance increases) and heads back to the dispensary, looking for Todd but finding the girl with the purple hair instead. Bouncer Guy nods and scans his ID upon entry and Johnny brings the empty package with him to get the same brand but she suggests something else entirely so Johnny tells her to ring that up to.
He smokes at night, something to take the edge off before bed, and finds he sleeps like a baby and wakes up well-rested. No nightmares that replay the horrors of his past or the conjuring of scenarios relating to the unending karate war he’s wrapped up in.
Some of the dreams are pretty trippy though.
One in particular that Johnny refuses to think about it in the sober light of day. The one where LaRusso finds him in the bathroom on Halloween night, and Johnny’s face isn’t all painted up but he’s still rolling a joint in the bathroom stall. Instead of being sprayed with the hose, LaRusso opens the door to the stall, still in his ridiculous shower costume, and lets Johnny take his jaw in his hands, open his mouth, exhale smoke into his lungs and—
He keeps waking up before the good part but he can figure out how it ends.
Johnny spends all week meticulously planning his day off and it might be the most effort he’s ever put into planning something that didn’t involve karate.
He’s got a soundtrack picked out for the day (starting with Glass Houses, ending with Hi In-Fidelity), one of those mango-flavored joints he’s surprised he really likes, a mid-afternoon nap, and a fridge full of leftovers from Rosa he plans on eating right out of the Tupperware. There will be minimal movement from the couch except to eat and take a leak when nature calls.
He makes it as far as “Close to the Borderline” before he’s interrupted by a knock on the door.
Daniel stands in the doorway wearing a friendly smile that slowly drops down to a frown the longer he waits there.
“Uh, hi?” Johnny greets through the haze. “What are you doing here?”
Daniel doesn’t answer him, eyes focused behind Johnny’s head on a point somewhere in the living room. He wrinkles his nose, the frown on his face deepening as he side-steps Johnny to let himself in.
Stale, sweet smoke billows out of the now wide open door. The heavy fog he’s created in his apartment this afternoon a stark contrast to the fresh air outside.
“Jesus. It smells like a Grateful Dead concert in here, Johnny.”
Johnny lets out a snort of laughter. “Relax, LaRusso. I’m just enjoying my day off.”
He walks back to his spot on the couch, grabs the joint still burning in the new ashtray he bought, and takes a hit, just a baby one. Daniel’s standing by the door and watching him, waving away tendrils of smoke with a scowl.
“This is how you’re enjoying your day off?” he asks. Johnny shrugs. “Didn’t know you still smoked weed after high school.”
“I didn’t,” Johnny says, voice strained with another lungful of smoke. “But I don’t know why I stopped.”
Without even really thinking, Johnny extends his arm out to offer Daniel the joint. Daniel’s eyes widen comically in abject horror.
“No. Thank you.”
Pussy, Johnny thinks and then it hits him. The little square probably never smoked weed in his life. He probably should. Guy’s so tense and uptight sometimes, it might be nice for him to relax a little bit.
“I am not uptight,” Daniel says, and shit. Johnny said that out loud? “Yes.” Oh. This mango stuff is pretty good.
Johnny circles the air with the joint fastened between his thumb and index finger teasingly, trying to lure Daniel into temptation.
“You really never tried it before?” Johnny asks.
“Once,” he says. “In my cousin Louie’s basement. He had a bunch of neighborhood kids over one day with a baggie of it. I don’t remember anything other than coughing so hard that I thought I was gonna break a rib.”
“That wasn’t weed that was probably like, oregano and leaves or something.”
That gets a little laugh out of Daniel. “Yeah, probably.”
Daniel moves through the fog to take a seat next to Johnny on the couch. “Never really got the appeal, honestly. Amanda did it a few times. She used to take some edibles before my ma would come over, mostly in the early days you know? I could always tell when they hit her because suddenly the two of them weren’t at each other’s throats anymore.”
“It’s…nice,” Johnny says.
Daniel raises an eyebrow at him. “Nice?”
“I don’t know. Yeah? I hadn’t done it in years but Rosa handed me a joint one night after dinner and I just felt. Nice.”
Daniel hums. He’s got his eyes on the joint still smoldering in the ashtray like he’s curious. Maybe a little intrigued.
“I think you would like it. If you tried it,” Johnny says.
Daniel’s face flushes, a deep red burn high across his checks.
“I don’t know, Johnny,” Daniel says. “Thirty-five years of abstinence, why ruin the streak now?”
“Exactly. Thirty-five years, what do you got to lose? It’s pot not acid. I promise you, you’re not going to rip your clothes off and run around proclaiming you’re the Lizard King.”
Daniel laughs, bright and genuine and reminiscent of his teenage self, and Johnny thinks about that dream — how easily Daniel opened up for him and let Johnny breathe out against his mouth.
“I have an idea.”
With clumsy hands, Johnny turns Daniel’s torso inward so they’re both facing each other. Johnny scooches forward an inch or two, their knees awkwardly bumping against each other. This close, Johnny can see the flicker of anxiety behind Daniel’s eyes. The way his throat works as he gulps down a bundle of nerves. Johnny puts his hand on Daniel’s hip, thumb making small circles into the denim.
“Relax,” he says, the smile of anticipation in his voice he can’t keep hidden.
Johnny picks up the joint from the ashtray and takes one long hit. He holds it in and brings a hand to cup Daniel’s jaw gently. Daniel nearly flinches at the touch but takes his own steadying, calming breath. Eyelashes flutter darkly against his cheeks and Johnny’s throat burns with the excess smoke he’s holding and another feeling entirely.
The room is charged, electricity bouncing from Daniel into Johnny with sparks so bright Johnny can almost see them. He frizzles with it, the hair on the back of his neck standing straight and goosebumps covering his arms with the shiver of anticipation. He fights against it, the slippery tension he always feels when he’s close to Daniel, wrestles with it in the haze of his mind but doesn’t stop himself from plowing forward.
With a hand still on his jaw, he guides Daniel towards him. His thumb creeps upward to land against his plush lower lip. He taps it once, twice, and Daniel opens up beneath his palm like a flower blooming in sunlight just as Johnny brings his mouth forward. He doesn’t cover Daniel’s mouth fully, their lips barely brushing as he exhales a steady stream of smoke.
Daniel inhales with a hitch of breath and Johnny doesn’t stop until all the smoke has cleared from his lungs. When he’s finally deflated, he gives the silent instruction with a finger pressed to Daniel’s lips and he closes his mouth obediently. He’s so vulnerable like this, held gently in the palm of Johnny’s hand, eyes wide open and trusting. They’re still so close that Johnny could just lean forward and press his lips against Daniel’s, something soft and light.
But Daniel’s not used to holding the smoke in his lungs and he turns his head into the back of Johnny’s couch and lets loose a heavy wheeze that turns into a wet coughing fit.
Johnny’s hand hangs out in the air over Daniel’s back, unsure if he should maybe pat him through it? It wasn’t that much, was it? He gives Daniel a few pats anyway, some friendly back rubs until the sputtering has subsided and Daniel can sit himself upright again.
He blinks up at Johnny, pupils dilated and lips puffed. The high static energy returns to the room like it never left.
Daniel exhales a beautifully breathy laugh and pairs it with a lopsided grin.
“Oh,” he says. “That was…huh.”
Johnny’s not sure if he means the weed or the method of delivery.
“Nice?” Johnny supplies.
Daniel’s grin widens. “Yeah. Nice.”
They both sink into the couch, skin still buzzing. Daniel surprises Johnny when he takes the dwindled-down roach between his fingers and gives it a try on his own, coughing lightly on the exhale.
“So,” Daniel says, voice slow and thick like molasses. “What do we do now?”
The answer hangs in the air between them and maybe the cure to Johnny’s dry mouth is to have a pliant Daniel LaRusso close by because his mouth waters a bit at just the idea of what they could do next.
“Want to watch Bloodsport?” Johnny asks.
Daniel blinks. “Uhm. Okay.”
Johnny turns the television on and scrolls through his library, eyes drifting over to Daniel as he does so. Just to check. See how he's doing.
He's got his head tipped back, neck bent, long and exposed, eyelids gently closed. Calm, deep breaths coming from his parted lips. The muscles in his face relaxed, tension in his shoulders all but eased. Johnny presses play and settles backwards amongst the cushions.
"You better not fall asleep on me, LaRusso," Johnny warns.
"Won't," Daniel mumbles.
He falls asleep with his head on Johnny's shoulder anyway thirty minutes in and Johnny whispers into his hair, "I told you you would like it" before he passes out himself.