Chapter Text
Robby wakes up to two loud voices. He can’t place them at first; he’s still hovering between dream and waking. His head hurts like someone’s dropped a whole building on it.
Did he fall off his skateboard? What the hell happened?
„… and if you hadn’t been so distracted by the divorce, maybe you would have noticed!“
That’s his dad. Robby doesn’t see him a lot, but his voice is more than memorable.
Why is his dad here?
„He’s been your son for seventeen years, I‘ve barely known him for one. But yes, of course. I’m the one to blame. As always.”
He doesn’t recognize the other voice. Odd. Because it sounds like the man knows Robby. He blinks slowly, but can’t quite get his eyes to open.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, Johnny, except you always do this. Nothing is your fault. Nothing is your responsibility.“
Finally, the picture in front of him becomes clear. His dad, his shirt just as crinkled as his face, stands opposite a man in a dark grey suit holding a get-well card.
Robby blinks lazily, not entirely sure what’s going on.
„I’m not letting you lecture me on responsibility! I know I’m a shit father. But I’m the one who’s been here for sixteen hours and you just marched in with your—“
“Because you didn’t bother to tell me which hospital you were in!”
“Sorry for not sending Sensei Hypocrite a taxi! Who taught Robby to almost shove a kid over a railing and send him flying two stories, huh? That’s what I want to know! You’re fucking lucky Miguel dodged that, let me tell you that!”
“Dad?” Robby croaks.
“ROBBY!”
His dad is by his bedside in an instant, on his knees, and he looks wrecked, absolutely fucking destroyed, and Robby is so confused he looks up to the other man as if he might be able to provide an explanation.
“I’m so glad you woke up, Robby!” the man says. “How do you feel?”
He has big, earnest brown eyes. Robby nervously licks his lips.
“I’m, uh. I’m good.”
The man doesn’t look like a doctor at all, and he probably isn’t, considering that he just spent a considerable amount of time fighting with his dad (his dad who never calls him, his dad who is currently burying his face in the sheets like he’s trying very hard not to cry; what the actual fuck is going on).
He reminds Robby of somebody, but he can’t put his finger on it.
“Are you with the hospital?” Robby says quietly — he already knows that’s wrong, but he doesn’t know what else to say.
The man looks crestfallen.
Robby bites his lip and looks away to his father.
Dad looks like he’s going to pass out.
*
He can hear them talking in the hallway. The nurse is doing it out of his earshot, but it’s not exactly a secret what’s happening. Something’s wrong with his memory. He’s supposed to be remembering stuff that he isn’t remembering. The man, for example. Whoever he is.
And he’s probably supposed to remember what landed him in the hospital. From what his dad said, it sounds like Robby’s been in a fight. Some other guy seemed to have been involved, too. Not that that explains anything.
But what fucks with his brain the most is that his dad is here. Sixteen hours, he can hear him say. He looks like he’s been here sixteen hours. Like he has worried about him all night – barely slept, living off shitty cafeteria sandwiches.
Why does his dad care about him all of a sudden? That’s not normal.
The nurse asked him a few questions about dates and times, made him draw a clock, made him write down his address and a bunch of other stuff. Asked him who the president is and if he can remember his birthday. Now they’re out there assessing how bad it is, and Robby can’t even hear. Ridiculous.
Finally, they all shuffle back in. A doctor, a nurse, his dad and the stranger. They all look at him with pity and worry. Robby almost gets out of bed and tells them to fuck themselves.
But something about the way that man in the suit looks at him, like he knows exactly what Robby’s thinking, glues him in place and makes him look down at his hands.
“So? What’s the damage?”
“Well.” The doctor settles down on a chair next to his bed. She looks too old to be a doctor, like she should be retired or something, but her eyes are kind. “We’ll have to run some more tests and scans to exclude further brain damage, but so far it looks like you have some memory issues.”
“Okay,” Robby says, even though this is definitely the opposite of okay.
“Last you remember, you were still living with your mother, and going to school regularly. That’s how we could pinpoint that your last memories seem to come from about a year ago. During summer.”
“Do I not go to school anymore?” It’s an odd detail to focus on, but in all fairness it’s a very odd thing for her to say. He’d rather think about school absences than the fact that he’s missed a whole year of his life. Jumped from summer to summer like there’s nothing but air in between.
“You tried to drop out for a bit,” his dad says with a lopsided smile. “Wouldn’t listen to me. You’re back in now.”
He throws a glance over at the man in the suit, who promptly looks down to his shoes. Robby frowns.
“Okay.” He doesn’t know why he keeps saying okay. “Where’s mom?”
“Rehab.”
“What?”
Both men smile at him, like it’s not the first time they’ve heard him say this, and Robby is even more clueless than before.
Is that his mom’s new boyfriend? He looks like he has some money, but doesn’t seem stupid and desperate — that’s usually the holy trifecta of Mom’s type. A friend of his dad‘s, then? But why would they be yelling at each other, then? If his dad is pissed at him but he's still allowed to be here, that means he has to be family, right?
The doctor gets up. „We’ll let you rest a bit now. Be with your family. Alright? We’ll be back tomorrow at nine for testing.“
Robby nods at her and the nurse, and suddenly he’s alone with his dad and the stranger. It’s an awkward ten seconds or so, then the stranger sits down in the chair the doctor just gave up. He stretches his hand out and Robby takes it.
“I should probably introduce myself. I’m Daniel LaRusso.”
“Hi.”
Robby doesn’t want to ask how they know each other. Not when the man looked so shaken the first time he asked. Like Robby’s important to him.
Robby‘s math skills are atrocious and he’s failing Spanish, but he’s not an idiot. He can figure this out.
His dad is hovering over by the window, physically as far from Daniel LaRusso as possible.
“I was in a fight?” Robby guesses.
“Yeah,” his dad says slowly. “You, uh, you hit your head on a wall. Pretty hard.”
“Oh,” Robby says, trying not to remember his dad’s anger earlier when he yelled something about Robby trying to shove someone over a railing. He only just got his dad to care about him; he doesn’t need to remind him of reasons why he might want to stop again. Somehow, the question comes out anyway.
“Is the other guy okay?”
LaRusso smiles next to him, and looks up at Johnny as if trying to prove a point. His dad tightens his jaw as if he’s acknowledging the silent comment.
Robby’s mostly just pissed everyone seems to have learned telepathy in the last year without bothering to teach him. He’s already tired of the meaningful glances and he’s barely been awake for an hour.
“Miguel’s okay,” his dad finally says. “And you’ll be okay, too. Sleep. You do your tests tomorrow and then you can go home. I can bring you some of my clothes.”
Robby blinks. “I mean… yeah. Or you could just get me my clothes.”
Dad opens and closes his mouth and looks away. What’s his problem? Robby can’t possibly have locked his room that well. And his dad doesn’t seem like he’d be above punching through a door for a change of socks. Unless his dad doesn’t have any of Robby’s stuff at his place.
He narrows his eyes, confused.
“If I’m not staying with mom, and I’m not staying with you… where am I staying?”
Daniel LaRusso clears his throat. “With me. You’ve been staying with me.”
Robby is still staring at his dad, more for an explanation than anything else, and catches an odd expression on his face. Something between sadness, anger and jealousy. It’s only there for a second, bright and then gone like a strike of lightning. He doesn’t even look at Robby. He looks at LaRusso.
“Wait,” Robby says slowly. “Of course. I know you. You’re that karate guy he's obsessed with. From the billboards. The one who kissed his ex and kicked him in the face. Thinks he can come in from New Jersey all smug and pretty… That’s you, right?”
“Smug and pretty?”
LaRusso laughs, and Robby almost does, too, because this is all too absurd.
He's living with his dad's old karate rival? This has to be a prank. Not only that, but his father didn't seem surprised at all. He knows Robby lives with LaRusso, and he still came and sat here for sixteen hours. Those two facts already seem impossible on their own, but the combination feels like pushing two North Pole magnets together. Like reality could fall apart at any second. None of this makes any damn sense.
"Robby," LaRusso says, leaning forward with a mischievous expression, "I need to know if this is a verbatim quote."
His dad turns away, looking flustered. “I'm not obsessed.”
Bull-fucking-shit. His dad is such a liar. And now he’s making Robby look like a liar just because he's a coward?
“What? You’re literally always talking about him. And you talk to me like twice a year. So…”
His dad doesn’t even flinch from the accusation that he doesn’t call enough. He’s too busy being embarrassed.
And suddenly, everything’s so obvious.
His absolute dumbass of a dad started hooking up with his karate rival -- typical Johnny Lawrence fuck-first-think-later shit -- then he panicked like he always does, and broke up with him and fucked off. Honestly, with how much of Johnny's brain space this high school rivalry seems to occupy, Robby is barely surprised it turned into sex at some point.
No, not just a breakup. A divorce. Robby remembers them talking about divorce when he was just waking up. His dad, who can barely manage two seconds of eye contact with a gas station employee without saying “no homo” got gay married and gay divorced in under a year -- and managed to make Robby get along better with his new stepfather than his own dad. So much so that Robby is now living with him.
Yeah, that sounds more like the Dad he remembers.
And Robby has the privilege of waking up in the middle of this. Fucking fantastic.