Chapter 2: The Morning a month after
The call came on a Tuesday. Johnny’s phone buzzed across the chipped formica of his kitchen table, rattling against an empty can of Coors Banquet. He eyed it, saw the name—LaRusso—and let it go to voicemail. The ringtone cut off, leaving only the erratic hum of his failing refrigerator.It buzzed again.A text this time.> We need to meet.
Johnny wiped his hands on his grease-stained jeans. He’d been trying to fix a leak under the sink, a job he’d been putting off for weeks.His knuckles were skinned. He picked up the phone.> No.The response was immediate.> It’s important.
> Everything’s important with you.I’m busy.> Now, Johnny.He stared at the words. The demand in them. A month of radio silence, of throwing himself into shitty handyman jobs and barking at his few remaining students, and now this.A command. His thumb hovered over the screen. He felt a low, familiar heat in his gut—resentment, and beneath it, something else.A pull.He typed back.> My place.One hour. Don’t park out front.
An hour gave him time to scrub the grime from his hands, to toss the empties into a garbage bag, to wipe down the sticky counters. It wasn’t about impressing Daniel.It was about not looking like a complete disaster zone. He didn’t change his clothes.The gray tank top and worn jeans were who he was. The apartment, with its sagging second-hand sofa and the perpetual smell of takeout and motor oil, was what he had.
At fifty-eight minutes past, a soft knock sounded at the door. Not the main entrance downstairs, but the private side door that led up the creaking back stairs.Johnny opened it.
Daniel stood there, dressed in a charcoal cashmere sweater and dark slacks. He looked like he’d stepped out of a magazine ad for something expensive and sad. His eyes darted past Johnny, scanning the cramped kitchen with a swift, assessing glance. “Nice place.”
“Shut up and get in,” Johnny grumbled, stepping aside.Daniel moved past him, his shoulder brushing Johnny’s chest. The scent of him—clean, some subtle citrus cologne—was an invasion in the musk of the apartment.He stopped in the middle of the kitchen, seeming unsure where to go. There was no clean space.“You want a beer?” Johnny asked, already heading to the fridge.
“It’s two in the afternoon.”
“So that’s a no.” Johnny popped the top on a can for himself, took a long swallow, and leaned against the counter. “Talk.”
Daniel turned to face him.The confident veneer was there, but Johnny saw the cracks. A tightness around his mouth.A faint tremor in his hands, which he shoved into his pockets. “I can’t stop thinking about it,” he said, the words coming out in a rush, blunt and stripped of polish.
Johnny’s heart kicked against his ribs.He kept his face neutral. “About what?”
“Don’t,” Daniel warned, his eyes flashing.“Don’t play dumb. You know.The dojo.”
“That was a mistake. You said so.”
“I lied.” Daniel took a step closer.The space between them crackled.“It’s all I think about. In meetings.At dinner. In my own fucking bed.” He spat the last word out like it was poison.“It’s driving me insane.”
Johnny set his beer down. The clink against the formica was too loud.“So what?You want a repeat? Another quick fuck on the floor to clear your head?” He meant it to sound harsh, dismissive, but his voice was low, thick.“No.” Daniel closed the final distance. He was right there, his heat mingling with Johnny’s. “I don’t want it quick.”
He reached out, his fingers hooking into the belt loops of Johnny’s jeans, and pulled him forward.It wasn’t gentle.It was a claim. Their bodies collided, and the past month dissolved into the scent of cashmere and sweat.
This kiss was nothing like the ones in the dojo.There was no slow discovery, no tender hesitation.It was pure, distilled need. Daniel’s mouth was hungry, desperate, his tongue pushing past Johnny’s lips with a frantic urgency. Johnny grabbed a fistful of that expensive sweater, feeling the soft fibers crush under his grip, and pulled him tighter. He bit Daniel’s lower lip, and Daniel groaned into his mouth, the sound vibrating through both of them.They stumbled back against the kitchen table. An empty can clattered to the floor. Daniel’s hands were everywhere—pulling at Johnny’s tank top, raking through his hair, mapping the hard planes of his back like a man memorizing a map for the last time. Johnny shoved a hand between them, palming Daniel through the fine wool of his slacks, feeling him hard and straining. Daniel broke the kiss, gasping, his forehead falling against Johnny’s shoulder.“See?” Daniel muttered, his breath hot against Johnny’s neck. “Insane.”
Johnny didn’t answer with words. He spun Daniel around, bending him over the sticky table.He yanked the slacks and boxer briefs down in one rough motion. Daniel braced himself, his palms flat on the formica, his knuckles white. He didn’t protest, didn’t ask for slow.He pushed back, an implicit demand.
There was no preparation, just spit and brutal intent. Johnny drove into him, and Daniel cried out, a sharp, choked sound that was swallowed by the hum of the appliances. It was harsh, almost painful, a desperate scrabbling against the void that had opened in both their lives since that night.
The table legs screeched against the cheap laminate with each thrust.A stack of mail slid to the floor. Johnny gripped Daniel’s hips, fingers digging into the skin, holding him in place as he fucked him with a ragged, relentless rhythm.This wasn’t about winning.It was about existence. Proving that the fire was still there, that it hadn’t been a one-time spark in the dark.Daniel was silent now, save for the ragged pulls of his breath. He pushed back to meet every drive, his body accepting the punishment, welcoming it. His earlier polish was utterly gone, sanded away by pure, physical need. When he came, it was with a shuddering, silent intensity, his body clenching tight around Johnny.
Johnny followed, his vision whiting out at the edges as he spilled into him, collapsing over Daniel’s back, his face buried in the sweat-damp cashmere. They stayed like that, tangled and spent, the only sound their heaving breaths and the relentless hum of the fridge.Slowly, Johnny softened and slipped out. He straightened up, his own knees feeling weak. Daniel didn’t move, still bent over the table, his head hanging.“Okay,” Johnny said, his voice wrecked.“You proved your point. You’re still insane.”
Daniel pushed himself upright with effort. He turned, leaning against the table’s edge, his clothes in disarray, his hair mussed. He looked utterly debauched, and something in Johnny’s chest twisted at the sight.
“That’s not the point,” Daniel said, his voice hoarse. He looked at Johnny, really looked at him, and the raw hunger was still there, but it was mixed with something else.Something like fear. “The point is… I don’t want to stop.”
The words hung in the stagnant kitchen air. They were a confession far more dangerous than any physical act.
Johnny walked to the sink, ran the cold water, splashed his face.He grabbed a dirty dish towel and tossed it to Daniel. “Clean yourself up. Your fancy pants are gonna stain.”
Daniel caught the towel, a faint, tired smirk on his lips. “Always the romantic.”
“You knew what you were getting into.” Johnny watched as Daniel cleaned up, as he tucked himself back in, as he tried to smooth the ruined sweater. The ritual was intimate in a different way.“So what now, LaRusso? You gonna start showing up here every time you have a bad day at the dealership?”
Daniel finished, balling up the towel and dropping it on the table. He met Johnny’s gaze, the fear still there, but overshadowed now by a stubborn, fierce resolve.“I don’t know what now. But… I’m not done.”
He stepped forward, kissed Johnny once more, soft and slow. A seal on a promise neither of them understood. Then he walked to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob. “I’ll use the back stairs.”
And then he was gone, leaving Johnny alone with the hum of the fridge, the smell of sex, and the terrifying, exhilarating certainty that nothing was over. It had only just begun.
It had only just begun.
The pattern became a fever dream.Daniel’s texts were terse, never sweet. > Now.> Your place.> Back door. Johnny would grumble, toss the empty cans in the sink, and wait. Each time, Daniel arrived looking like he’d walked off a billboard, his eyes already dark with a hunger that stripped away all pretense. They didn’t talk about his wife, or the dealership, or the weather. They crashed into each other against the fridge, on the linoleum floor, once painfully against the narrow doorframe of Johnny’s bedroom.It was never gentle. It was teeth and sweat and grabbing, a physical argument they kept having. Daniel would leave always just a little more disheveled than he arrived, a thread loose on his sleeve, his hair refusing to lie flat. Johnny would stand in the silent wreckage of his apartment afterwards, feeling gutted and alive in equal measure.He stopped cleaning up beforehand. The mess was part of it now.A proof.Then, for three weeks, nothing. Radio silence.Johnny’s phone was a dead weight in his pocket. He threw himself into manual jobs, roofing a house in the valley sun until his shoulders burned and his mind blanked. It was better than wondering.He told himself it was over, that Daniel had gotten it out of his system. The knot in his gut disagreed.The call, when it came, shattered a Tuesday afternoon. Johnny was sanding a deck, the grating whine of the orbital sander filling his skull. His phone vibrated in his back pocket.He shut the tool off, the sudden quiet ringing in his ears. He didn’t recognize the number. “Yeah?”
“Johnny.” It was Daniel’s voice, but wrong.Tinny, strained, stripped of all its polished confidence.It sounded thin.
“You got a new number?”
“I’m at a payphone.” The words rushed out.“I need to see you. Right now.”
Johnny wiped sweat from his brow with his forearm.The old defensiveness rose. “What, you lost your taste for my luxurious accommodations?”
“This isn’t a joke.” Daniel’s breath hitched audibly over the line. It was the sound of panic, carefully controlled but leaking out at the seams.“Please. I’m… I’m freaking out here.”
That word—‘please’—did it. Daniel LaRusso didn’t plead.Johnny’s spine straightened. “Where?”
“Your place.Now. I’m already driving.”
Johnny didn’t bother with pretense this time.He just waited.When the quiet knock came, he opened the door. Daniel looked like hell.Not disheveled from passion, but hollowed out. His skin was pale, his eyes wide and shot with red.He smelled like stale coffee and fear. He pushed past Johnny into the kitchen and just stood there, trembling.
“You sick?” Johnny asked, closing the door.The apartment felt too small suddenly, charged with a new kind of tension.
Daniel shook his head.He wrapped his arms around himself, a self-soothing gesture that was entirely foreign on him. He stared at the stained floor, his jaw working. “I’ve missed two periods.”
The words didn’t compute at first.They hung in the greasy air, meaningless.Johnny blinked. “What?”
“Two.Periods.” Daniel’s voice was a dry rasp. He finally looked up, his gaze locking onto Johnny’s, desperate and terrifyingly clear. “I’m never late.Not like this.I took a test. Three of them.”
A cold wave, sharp and final, washed from Johnny’s scalp down to his feet.The world tilted. The buzzing of the fridge grew deafening.He heard his own voice, flat and distant. “What did they say?”
Daniel didn’t answer.He didn’t need to. The raw, unvarnished terror in his face was the answer.It was impossible. It was a joke.But Daniel wasn’t joking. He was crumbling right there in the middle of Johnny’s shitty kitchen.“They said yes,” Daniel whispered, the words cracking. “I’m pregnant.”
Silence.Not the comfortable kind from the dojo, or the charged quiet after sex. This was a vacuum.It sucked the air, the sound, the sense out of everything. Johnny gripped the edge of the counter.The Formica was cool and solid under his fingers. A lifeline. “How?”
“How the fuck do you think?” Daniel’s composure shattered, his voice spiking.“It happens! It’s not a one-in-a-million thing, Johnny, it’s biology!”
“You’re a man.” The statement was stupid, obvious.
“Yeah, no shit!” Daniel ran both hands through his hair, pulling at it. “Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I haven’t been over every second of the last two months trying to find a different explanation?” He was pacing now, three frantic steps in one direction, three back.“It’s impossible. But the tests… the tests are in my glove compartment.With the receipts from the drugstore. I bought them in different towns.”
Johnny watched him pace, a trapped animal. The reality began to seep in, cold and slow like poisoned sap.“What are you going to do?”
Daniel stopped dead. He looked at Johnny as if seeing him for the first time. “What am I going to do?” He let out a choked, humorless laugh.“We’re in this.You understand that, right? This isn’t just my problem.”
“It’s inside you.” The pronoun felt alien, dangerous.“Because of you!” Daniel shouted, the sound raw in the small space. He immediately looked horrified, clapping a hand over his own mouth as if he could shove the words back in.He took a deep, shuddering breath, lowering his hand. His voice dropped to a strained whisper.“Because of us.This… thing.This impossibility. It’s ours.”
The word ‘ours’ echoed. It was bigger than the dojo, bigger than the frantic, hidden meetings.It was a lifetime. Johnny felt the walls of his apartment closing in, the ceiling pressing down.A child.A baby.From Daniel.From them.
He saw his own future flash before him—not the vague, grim one he’d always expected, but a specific, terrifying one.Secrets swelling until they split a life open. Daniel’s life first, then his.The world finding out.The questions, the stares, the violence of disbelief.
Daniel was watching him, waiting for a reaction, for leadership, for anything.Johnny had nothing. He was empty.“I need a drink,” he muttered, turning toward the fridge.
“Johnny.” The name was a plea.Johnny stopped, his hand on the fridge handle. The cool seeped into his skin.He didn’t turn around. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I don’t know either.” Daniel’s voice was small now, defeated. “I just… I couldn’t be alone with it anymore.”
Johnny let his forehead rest against the fridge door.The hum vibrated through his skull. He thought of Daniel bent over his kitchen table, of the desperate, silent rides home to Encino, of the impossible life now taking root inside the man he was supposed to hate. He saw Daniel’s perfect veneer cracking wide open, for good.He finally turned.Daniel looked smaller, collapsed in on himself. “You’re sure?” Johnny asked, his own voice unfamiliar.
“As sure as you can be without seeing a doctor.” Daniel hugged his abdomen, a protective, instinctive gesture that sent a fresh jolt through Johnny.“And I can’t see a doctor. Who would I even tell them the father is?What would I put on the form?”
The practicalities were a nightmare canyon. Johnny walked to the table and sat down heavily.The chair groaned.He gestured to the other one. “Sit.Just… sit down.”
Daniel obeyed, moving stiffly. He sat perched on the edge, as if ready to bolt. They were silent for a long minute, the impossible thing lying on the table between them.“We’ll figure it out,” Johnny said. The words felt hollow, but he forced them out.He didn’t know what they meant.
Daniel just nodded, staring at his own hands.His shoulders were trembling again. “Okay,” he whispered, to no one.To the impossible.To the life they’d somehow made.
Johnny reached across the table.He didn’t take Daniel’s hand. He just laid his own palm flat on the sticky formica, an offering.A bridge over the canyon. After a moment, Daniel’s fingers crept forward and touched the edge of Johnny’s hand. A point of contact.
A point of contact. It was the only solid thing in a room that felt like it was spinning. Johnny’s calloused fingers curled, just slightly, catching Daniel’s.“Okay,” Johnny said again, the word firmer this time. He took a deep breath, pulling the stale kitchen air into his lungs.“Start from the beginning. The tests.”
Daniel nodded, his fingers tightening around Johnny’s.“Three different brands. All from different stores.They all said the same thing.” He laughed, a brittle, broken sound. “The instructions said the false-positive rate is like, point-zero-one percent. I guess we’re the point-zero-one.”
“Lucky us.” Johnny released Daniel’s hand and stood up, the chair legs scraping.He paced to the window, looked out at the rusting fire escape. “Symptoms?”
“Tired.My breasts are… sore. God, that’s weird to say.” Daniel’s voice was muffled.Johnny turned to see him with his face in his hands. “And nauseous. Not throwing up, just this… constant low-grade disgust with everything, especially food.”
Johnny remembered the chipped microwave, the forgotten leftovers. His world was a monument to low-grade disgust. “You need to see a real doctor.”
“And say what?” Daniel dropped his hands, his expression raw. “‘Hi, I’m a thirty-seven-year-old man, please do an ultrasound?’ They’ll commit me. Or worse, they’ll publish me.”
“So we find a discreet one.” Johnny leaned against the sink, crossing his arms. The pose felt absurd, like he was discussing a plumbing job.“There has to be someone.Cash only. No questions.”
Daniel stared at him. “You’re talking about a back-alley clinic.”
“I’m talking about not getting you on the news, LaRusso.” Johnny’s voice was low, urgent.“We need facts. How far along, if it’s… healthy.” The word ‘healthy’ stuck in his throat.What did healthy even mean here?
“And then what?” Daniel’s question hung in the air, bigger than the room.
Johnny had no answer.He pushed off the sink and walked back to the table, sitting down heavily. “One thing at a time.First, we find out what’s happening inside you. Then we… we look at the options.”
“Options.” Daniel repeated the word like a foreign term. He looked down at his flat abdomen, covered by the fine wool of his sweater. He splayed a hand over it, a gesture that was becoming familiar. “There’s only one option if this is real, Johnny.It… grows. It gets born.”
The finality of it was a physical blow.Johnny closed his eyes for a second. He saw a faceless child, hidden away, a secret so large it would blot out the sun. He saw Daniel, swollen and scared, trapped in his mansion.He saw his own hands, empty. “It can’t be real.”
“The tests are in my car.” Daniel’s voice was a whisper. “You can see them.”
Johnny shook his head.He didn’t need to see the plastic sticks. He believed Daniel’s terror.It was the most real thing in the room. “Give me your keys.”
“What?”
“Your car keys.You said it’s in the glove box. I’ll get it.” Johnny held out his hand, palm up. “You shouldn’t be… lugging stuff.”
A faint, shocked smile touched Daniel’s lips.“Lugging? It’s a paper bag, Johnny.”
“Just give me the damn keys.”
Daniel pulled them from his pocket and placed them in Johnny’s hand. Their fingers brushed again, a charge of ordinary contact amidst the surreal.Johnny stood and headed for the door.
The interior of Daniel’s Audi smelled of leather and his citrus cologne.Johnny popped the glove compartment. Inside, nestled beside the owner’s manual, was a plain CVS bag. He pulled it out, feeling the weight of the boxes inside.Back in the kitchen, he dumped the contents on the table. Three different pregnancy test boxes, their cheerful, pastel branding a grotesque mockery.Two crumpled receipts. Daniel watched him, motionless.Johnny picked up one of the used tests. The plastic was cool.He turned it over in his hands, seeing the tiny digital screen. Even now, hours later, the word was unmistakable in its stark, block letters: PREGNANT.
He put it down gently, as if it were made of glass. He looked at the other two, both displaying the same verdict.The evidence was irrefutable.A silent, plastic jury.
“Well?” Daniel asked, his voice hollow.
“You’re pregnant.” Johnny said it aloud, the word sounding alien and too big for the cramped kitchen. It was the first time either of them had spoken the diagnosis directly to the other.It made the thing real in a new, terrifying way.
Daniel just nodded, a single, slow dip of his chin.The panic had subsided into a grim acceptance. “So.A doctor.”
“A doctor,” Johnny agreed. He scooped the tests and receipts back into the bag.“I’ll ask around.Discreetly. I know some people from the old days who… didn’t always use hospitals.”
“This feels insane.”
“It is insane.” Johnny ran a hand through his mullet.“But it’s happening. So we deal with it.You don’t tell anyone.Not a soul. You act normal.”
“Normal.” Daniel let out another brittle laugh.“Right. I’ll just go home, kiss Amanda, talk about quarterly sales projections.” He stood up, swaying slightly. “I should go.”
“You shouldn’t drive like this.”
“I’m fine.” Daniel walked to the door, then paused, his hand on the knob.He didn’t turn around. “You’ll call me? When you find someone?”
“Yeah.” Johnny watched the line of his back, the tension in his shoulders. “I’ll call.”
Daniel nodded once more and left, pulling the door shut behind him with a soft click. Johnny was alone again with the humming fridge and the CVS bag on the table.He stared at it.Then he moved. He grabbed his phone from the counter, scrolled through his contacts. He needed a guy who knew a guy, someone from the periphery of his old, messy life where questions weren’t asked.He began to make the calls.
THEY PLAN NEXT.