Chapter 3: The Dojo After Dark
The call came through two days later, from a blocked number. Johnny was under a sink in Reseda, his shoulder aching as he tightened a fitting. He answered with a grunt, the phone pinned between his ear and shoulder.
“Yeah?”
“Is this John?” A woman’s voice, older, raspy from cigarettes.
“Who’s asking?”
“I hear you’re looking for a discreet mechanic for a European model. No paperwork.” The code was clumsy, but clear. Johnny’s contact had come through.
He slid out from under the cabinet, sitting up on the linoleum. “Yeah. That’s me.”
“Thursday. Ten PM. 2815 East Elk Avenue. Unit B. Bring cash. Two thousand for the initial inspection.” The line went dead.
He texted Daniel the address and time with one instruction: > Don’t be followed.
The dojo was supposed to be a neutral zone. Johnny had gone there to think, to swing his fists at the heavy bag until his mind went quiet. The single, flickering bulb cast a stuttering light, making the shadows of the chain jump and twitch. He’d been at it for an hour, his knuckles raw through the worn wraps, his tank top soaked through, when the side door groaned open.
Daniel stood silhouetted against the streetlight, then let the door fall shut. He was dressed down in a dark hoodie and jeans, but he still looked out of place. He didn’t say anything, just watched as Johnny delivered a final, punishing series of blows to the bag, the thuds echoing off the concrete walls.
Johnny stopped, chest heaving, and turned. “You’re early.”
“I couldn’t sit in the house.” Daniel’s voice was tight. “Amanda asked if I was coming down with something. I told her I ate bad shrimp.” He ventured further into the room, his sneakers whispering on the floor. “Did you really find someone?”
“Thursday. Two grand, just to look.”
Daniel nodded, his eyes tracing the faded Cobra Kai banner on the wall. “Good. That’s good.” He didn’t sound relieved. He sounded terrified.
The air between them was charged with everything unsaid—the plastic tests, the word ‘pregnant,’ the impossible future. It was a live wire. Johnny saw it in the tense line of Daniel’s jaw, in the way his hands kept flexing at his sides. He felt it in his own coiled muscles, the adrenaline from the bag with nowhere to go.
“This is fucked,” Johnny said, not as a judgment, just a fact.
A wild, humorless smile touched Daniel’s lips. “You’re just now figuring that out?” He took another step closer. The dim light hollowed his cheeks. “I keep touching my stomach, waiting to feel different. It just feels like me.”
Without thinking, Johnny closed the distance. He didn’t go to hug him. He grabbed a fistful of the hoodie at Daniel’s chest, his other hand cupping the side of his neck. It was possessive, rough. A grounding.
Daniel’s breath hitched. His hands came up, not to shove Johnny away, but to grip his wrists. His eyes were black in the low light. “What are you doing?”
“Shut up,” Johnny muttered, and kissed him.
It was nothing like the frantic, angry kisses in his apartment. This was deep and searching, a brutal kind of comfort. Daniel melted into it instantly, a low groan vibrating from his throat into Johnny’s mouth. He surrendered to the hold, his body going pliant even as his fingers dug into Johnny’s arms.
They stumbled backward, Johnny driving him until Daniel’s shoulders hit the cool, unforgiving surface of the long mirror. The glass shuddered in its frame. Their breath fogged the reflection into a blur.
Johnny yanked the hoodie up and over Daniel’s head, tossed it aside. His hands roamed under the thin t-shirt beneath, feeling the heat of his skin, the frantic beat of his heart. He kissed down Daniel’s throat, biting at the tendon, earning a sharp gasp.
“Here,” Daniel panted, his head back against the mirror. “Do it here.”
There was no finesse. Johnny spun him around, face towards the blurred mirror, and shoved his jeans down. He fumbled with his own fly. Spit was the only concession. He pressed in, and Daniel arched back with a choked cry, his palms slapping flat against the glass for balance.
The rhythm was brutal, a physical argument against fate. Each thrust was a punctuation mark against the insanity of their situation. Pregnant. Thrust. Impossible. Thrust. Ours.
Daniel’s eyes were open, staring at their murky reflection—at Johnny’s face, fierce and concentrated behind him, at his own expression of shattered ecstasy. “Harder,” he gritted out, the word a demand. “Don’t you dare be gentle.”
Johnny obeyed, his hands gripping Daniel’s hips hard enough to bruise, driving into him with a force that made the mirror rattle in its frame. The dojo air, already thick with sweat, filled with the sounds of skin hitting skin, of ragged groans, of the chain on the heavy bag softly clinking in their wake.
This was an escape. In the violent, grasping heat of it, the phantom could be ignored. For these minutes, it was just the two of them and a desperate, pounding need to feel real, to feel alive, to feel anything but the cold fear waiting outside the door.
Daniel came first, his body seizing, a silent scream contorting his reflection. The clenching heat pulled Johnny over the edge after him, a white-hot release that felt more like an exorcism than a pleasure.
They slumped together against the glass, slick with sweat, breathing in shattered unison. The cool surface steamed around them. Johnny rested his forehead between Daniel’s shoulder blades, feeling the tremors still running through him.
Slowly, reality seeped back in. The flickering bulb. The smell of old wood and sex. The weight in the room that had only been pushed aside, not eliminated.
Daniel’s voice was a raw whisper. “Thursday.”
“Yeah.” Johnny withdrew, gently now. He handed Daniel his clothes.
They dressed in silence, not looking at each other. The intimacy felt more exposing than the sex. Daniel pulled his hoodie back on, hiding himself. He looked at the floor. “I should go. Amanda thinks I’m at a late client dinner.”
“You got the cash?”
“In a safe in my office.” Daniel finally looked at him. The fear was back, but it was quieter now, shared. “You’ll be there?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Johnny said, the sarcasm falling flat.
A ghost of a real smile, tired and fragile, touched Daniel’s face. He stepped forward and kissed Johnny, once, softly. A thank you. A promise. A plea.
Then he turned and slipped out the side door, disappearing into the night. Johnny stood alone in the dojo, their blurred imprint slowly fading from the mirror. He reached out and touched the cool glass where Daniel’s hand had been.
Thursday. The inspection. The truth.
He turned off the flickering bulb and left the darkness behind.
He turned off the flickering bulb and left the darkness behind. The next two days were a blur of drywall dust and silencing his own thoughts. By Thursday afternoon, the tight coil in his gut was a physical knot. He showered, pulled on a clean shirt, and counted out his share of the cash from a coffee can in his cupboard—a thousand bucks, everything he had until the next roofing job.
The knock came just after seven, hours too early. Johnny opened the door to a pale, tightly-wound Daniel. “The appointment’s at ten,” Johnny said, blocking the doorway.
“I know.” Daniel brushed past him, his movements jerky. He glanced at the CVS bag still sitting on the table like an accusation. “I couldn’t sit there. I told Amanda the client meeting was running long, then dinner.”
“You’re gonna run out of excuses.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Daniel snapped, spinning to face him. His eyes were wide, vivid with panic. “What’s my excuse going to be in three months? Six? That I’m developing a beer gut?” He laughed, a sharp, ugly sound. “A beer gut that kicks.”
Johnny said nothing. He went to the fridge, got two beers, and handed one over. Daniel took it, his fingers cold against Johnny’s. They drank in silence, the only sound the traffic outside and the refrigerator’s persistent hum.
“I’ve been thinking,” Daniel said, his voice lower now. He set the bottle down with a precise click. “About tonight. About after.”
“What about it?”
“I don’t want to just be the one getting… handled.” Daniel’s gaze was direct, challenging. A flush crept up his neck. “All this time. It’s always been you. I want to try the other way.”
Johnny froze, the bottle halfway to his mouth. He slowly lowered it. “What are you talking about?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” Daniel took a step closer. The fear in his eyes was still there, but it was fused now with a stubborn, fiery resolve. “I want to fuck you, Johnny.”
The words landed in the cramped kitchen, blunt and impossible to misconstrue. Johnny felt a jolt, a sudden heat that had nothing to do with anger. It was a vulnerability he hadn’t offered anyone in years. His first instinct was to deflect, to snarl. He looked at Daniel—really looked—at the tension in his shoulders, the defiant set of his jaw. This wasn’t just about sex. This was about control, about claiming a piece of the chaos.
“Why?” Johnny’s voice was rough.
“Because I need to.” Daniel’s answer was simple, raw. “I feel like my body’s not my own anymore. I need to feel like I’m in charge of something. Even if it’s just this.”
Johnny held his stare for a long moment. He saw the dojo mirror, Daniel surrendering. He saw the plastic tests on the table. He finished his beer. “Fine.”
The word was a gravelly concession. Daniel’s shoulders dropped a fraction, as if he’d been braced for a fight. He closed the final distance between them. This time, his kiss wasn’t desperate. It was deliberate, exploratory. His hands came up to frame Johnny’s face, thumbs brushing the rough stubble on his cheeks. The tenderness was disorienting.
Johnny let himself be guided backwards, through the doorway into the dim bedroom. The thin blanket was rumpled from his sleep. Daniel pushed him down onto it, his movements gaining confidence. He peeled Johnny’s shirt off, his hands mapping the terrain of scars and old muscle. His mouth followed, hot and wet against Johnny’s collarbone, his chest. It was a methodical cataloging.
“You sure about this?” Johnny ground out, as Daniel’s fingers worked open his jeans.
“Shut up,” Daniel murmured, echoing Johnny’s own words from the dojo. There was a new authority in his voice. It was quiet, but absolute.
It was awkward at first. Fumbling. Daniel’s hands shook slightly as he prepared him, his breath coming in short, focused puffs against Johnny’s skin. Johnny stared at the water stain on the ceiling, his body tense, yielding. The sensation was a strange, burning stretch, a complete surrender he’d never allowed. He gasped, his hands fisting in the scratchy blanket.
Then Daniel was inside, and the world narrowed to that single, shocking point of connection. Daniel stilled, his forehead dropping to Johnny’s shoulder. “Okay,” he whispered, to himself. “Okay.”
He began to move. It wasn’t the punishing rhythm Johnny employed. It was deeper, slower, a relentless pressing in that sought a different kind of depth. Johnny’s knuckles were white. A low groan was punched out of him. He turned his head, face buried in the pillow, as Daniel’s pace steadied into something consuming.
Daniel’s hands gripped his hips, holding him in place. His breaths were harsh in Johnny’s ear. There was no mirror here, no blurred reflection. Just the feeling of being filled, of being taken. The power dynamic they’d built was upended, and in its place was this terrifying, equitable intimacy. The phantom between them wasn’t ignored this time. It was enveloped, woven into the act itself.
Johnny came first, shattered by the unfamiliar angle, the overwhelming sense of being claimed. Daniel followed moments after, his cry muffled against Johnny’s back, his body spasming. He collapsed, his weight a solid, anchoring warmth.
For a long time, they just lay there, spent. Daniel’s face was pressed between Johnny’s shoulder blades. Johnny could feel the frantic beat of his heart slowly decelerate against his spine. The streetlight from the window painted a pale stripe across the floor.
Daniel finally shifted, pulling away. The loss of contact was immediate, the air cool on Johnny’s skin. He didn’t turn over. He listened to the sounds of Daniel cleaning up, the soft rustle of clothes.
The bed dipped as Daniel sat on the edge. His hand came to rest on Johnny’s lower back, just above where he’d been inside him. The touch was impossibly gentle. “It’s after nine,” Daniel said, his voice hoarse.
“I know.” Johnny rolled onto his back, looking up at him. Daniel’s hair was messed, his lips swollen. He looked thoroughly undone, but his eyes were clearer than they’d been all week.
“We should go.” Daniel stood, offering a hand.
Johnny looked at it, then took it, letting Daniel pull him up. Their hands stayed linked for a second too long in the dark room. They dressed wordlessly, the casual fabrics a stark contrast to what had just transpired. Johnny pocketed the cash. Daniel checked his phone, the blue light illuminating his face.
“2815 East Elk,” Johnny said, pulling on his boots.
“Unit B,” Daniel finished. He looked at Johnny, a silent question passing between them. The fear was still there, a cold undercurrent. But so was something else—a forged, stubborn solidarity.
Together, they walked out into the neon-lit night, toward the inspection, toward the truth, their shadows merging into one long shape on the pavement.