Chapter 5: The Dojo Confrontation
The dojo was always cold, a concrete box that held the chill of night long into the evening. Johnny flicked the switch by the door; the old fluorescent strip over the main floor buzzed, flickered, and spat a sickly yellow light onto the mats. The place looked pathetic in the gloom—peeling posters of tournaments from the eighties, a forgotten Cobra Kai banner stained with something dark, the cracked mirror along the far wall reflecting the emptiness back at them.
Daniel shut the door behind them, the click echoing. He’d changed back into his own clothes, the crisp jacket and slacks looking absurdly out of place here. He stood just inside the threshold, as if waiting for permission.
“No one’s here after seven,” Johnny said, his voice too loud in the hollow space. He tossed his keys onto a wooden bench. “Kid’s classes are done. Kreese is… elsewhere.” He didn’t specify where. The old man’s absence was a blessing.
“It smells the same,” Daniel said quietly. He took a few steps forward, his dress shoes silent on the concrete before he stepped onto the edge of the mat. “Sweat and cheap floor cleaner. And failure.”
“Speak for yourself, LaRusso.” Johnny moved to the center of the floor, feeling the familiar give of the worn mat under his boots. This was his territory. The only territory he had left. “Your trophy’s probably in a box somewhere.”
“Attic,” Daniel confirmed. He finally took his shoes off, placing them neatly side-by-side. He walked onto the mat in his socks, his gaze sweeping the room, avoiding the mirror. “Amanda called again. Twice.”
“You answer?”
“No. Sent a text. Said I needed a few days. That I was safe.” He let out a short, humorless laugh. “Safe.”
The word hung between them. The fluorescent light buzzed like an agitated insect. All the raw, desperate clarity from the kitchen that morning had curdled into a jittery, unspoken dread. The phantom wasn’t between them now; it was inside Daniel, a silent, growing fact. And it filled the room.
Johnny couldn’t stand it. The talking, the thinking, the terrifying future looming in Daniel’s tired eyes. He needed the language they both understood better than words.
He moved without warning, a quick, aggressive step into Daniel’s space. Daniel’s eyes widened, his body automatically squaring up, hands coming up in a defensive stance—muscle memory from a lifetime ago. Johnny didn’t throw a punch. He grabbed a fistful of Daniel’s expensive jacket and yanked him forward, crushing their mouths together.
It was all teeth and anger and panic. Daniel made a muffled sound against his lips, then gave it back, his hands coming up to claw at Johnny’s shoulders, his neck. It was a fight. It was a confession. Johnny walked him backward, driving him toward the mirrored wall. The back of Daniel’s head connected with the glass with a soft thunk. A web of cracks in the old mirror lengthened slightly behind his dark hair.
“Here,” Johnny growled against his mouth, his hands rough on Daniel’s belt. “Right here. Where you beat me.”
Daniel’s breath hitched. He didn’t resist. He helped, shoving his own pants and briefs down just enough, his eyes black in the dim light. “You let me win,” he gasped, as Johnny spit into his own palm, the preparation swift and brutally utilitarian.
“Bullshit.” Johnny pushed into him, a single, merciless thrust. The mirror rattled in its frame. Daniel cried out, a sharp, fractured sound that echoed off the high ceiling. His hands slapped flat against the glass on either side of his head, fingers splayed.
There was no tenderness, no careful rhythm. It was a punishment and a plea. Johnny drove into him with a focused, grinding fury, each movement slamming Daniel’s body against the unyielding surface. The cracked reflection shuddered and danced—a grotesque, fragmented portrait of the two of them, locked together in this awful, sacred place.
Daniel took it. His head was thrown back, baring the taut line of his throat. Every exhale was a sharp, punched-out grunt. Then he began pushing back, meeting Johnny’s force with a desperate, rolling defiance of his own. His hands left the mirror and grabbed Johnny’s hips, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, pulling him deeper, setting a punishing counter-rhythm.
“Is this—?” Johnny snarled, the words ripped from him. “Is this what you wanted? This mess?”
“Yes,” Daniel hissed, his eyes screwed shut. “God, yes. It’s real.”
It was the wrong answer and the only one. Johnny bit down on the juncture of Daniel’s shoulder, tasting fabric and skin and salt. The coil of tension in his gut wound tighter, a spring about to snap. He could feel Daniel tightening around him, his body strung like a bow. The frantic slap of skin, the shudder of the glass, the ragged symphony of their breathing—it was all too much.
Daniel came first, silent but for a choked, seismic shudder that racked his entire frame. The clenching heat of him pushed Johnny over the edge. His release was a white-hot collapse, a void of thought where only feeling remained—the sweat-slick skin under his hands, the cold glass under his forehead where he’d slumped against it next to Daniel’s head.
They stayed like that, pinned, breathing in ragged, synced gulps of the cold, dusty air. Gradually, the world seeped back in. The buzz of the light. The distant sound of traffic on the boulevard. The aching chill from the concrete wall leaching into their bones.
Johnny pulled away. The loss of contact was physically painful. He turned, his back against the mirror now, and slid down it to sit heavily on the mat. Daniel followed, sinking down beside him, their shoulders touching. They stared across the empty dojo at the opposite wall, at the faded Cobra Kai snake.
After a long time, Daniel spoke, his voice shot and quiet. “I have a doctor’s appointment. Thursday.”
The words were like a stone dropped into still water. Johnny watched the ripples move through him. “Okay.”
“It’s the first real one. Since the… garage.” Daniel pulled his knees up, wrapping his arms around them. He looked small, sitting there in his rumpled Armani. “They’ll do tests. Pictures. A real due date.”
Johnny nodded. His mind supplied the image from his toolbox, the grainy bean. It would look more like a baby now. Something with shape. “You want me there?”
Daniel didn’t answer immediately. He rested his chin on his knees. “I don’t know what I want. I want to not be scared. I want to not have slept in my car. I want to not have just gotten railed against a mirror in a piss-stink dojo by my high school rival.” He let out a shaky breath. “But since I can’t have any of that… yeah. I think I want you there.”
The admission cost him. Johnny could hear the price in his voice. “I’ll be there,” he said, same as he had in the kitchen. It was becoming a mantra. A promise he had no idea how to keep.
“What if they hear the heartbeat?” Daniel asked, the question barely a whisper. He was staring straight ahead, unblinking. “What do we do then?”
Johnny had no answer. The phantom had a heartbeat. It would have a sound. A rhythmic, undeniable proof of life that would make all of this—the secrecy, the fucking, the fear—permanent.
He reached over, his big hand covering both of Daniel’s where they were clasped around his shins. He didn’t say anything. He just held on. Daniel’s hands were cold. Slowly, one of Daniel’s hands turned over, their fingers lacing together in the dark space between their bodies on the mat.
They sat in the dojo’s silent, grimy cathedral until the fluorescent light finally died with a pathetic fizzle, plunging them into a darkness that felt, for a moment, like a respite.
They sat in the dojo’s silent, grimy cathedral until the fluorescent light finally died with a pathetic fizzle, plunging them into a darkness that felt, for a moment, like a respite.
Three months later, Johnny wakes up very nauseous.
The sensation is a low, greasy roll deep in his gut, a wrongness that pulls him from a thick sleep. Morning light, harsh and unkind, cuts through the gap in his bedroom curtain. He swallows, his mouth tasting of copper and stale beer. He hasn’t been hungover like this in years, not since his worst stretches after the divorce, but he’d only had two bottles last night while Daniel talked about cribs and prenatal vitamins with a frantic, quiet intensity.
He stumbles to the bathroom, bracing himself on the cool sink. The face in the mirror is pale, stubble darker against the wan skin. He breathes through his nose, waiting for the wave to pass. It doesn’t crest, just sits there, a queasy anchor.
“You look like hell,” Daniel says from the doorway. He’s already showered and dressed in dark jeans and a soft grey henley, a outfit that somehow managed to look both casual and expensive. He held two mugs. The rich, bitter scent of French roast hit Johnny’s nostrils.
It was the smell that did it.
The greasy roll became a violent pitch. Johnny shoved past him, one hand clamped over his mouth, and made it to the toilet just in time. He heaved, empty and painful, his body convulsing with a violence that left him shaky and damp with sweat. Behind him, he heard the soft click of mugs being set on the tile floor.
A cool hand pressed between his shoulder blades. “Whoa. Easy.” Daniel’s voice was close. “What did you eat? That gas station burrito I told you to throw out?”
Johnny spat, flushing the evidence away. He leaned back on his heels, breathing raggedly. “Wasn’t the burrito,” he muttered, accepting the glass of water Daniel handed him. He rinsed his mouth, the water tasting alarmingly of chemicals. “Just a bug.”
Daniel was quiet for a beat, crouched beside him. He studied Johnny’s profile, his own face thoughtful. He’d filled out a little these past months, a new softness at his jawline, a healthy glow that somehow made Johnny feel even more ragged in comparison.
“A bug,” Daniel repeated, not buying it. He reached out and pressed the back of his hand to Johnny’s forehead. “You don’t feel warm.”
“I’m fine, Larusso.” Johnny pushed himself up, using the sink for support. His reflection was truly wretched now. “Don’t mother-hen me. You’ve got enough on your plate.”
“Seventeen weeks worth,” Daniel said, a flicker of his old humor returning. He placed a hand on the gentle, firm curve of his own lower abdomen, a habit he’d developed. The appointment three months ago had indeed revealed a heartbeat—a rapid, rhythmic swooshing that had pinned them both to the examination table, silent and terrified. The phantom had become utterly, terrifyingly real.
Johnny brushed his teeth to get the taste out, avoiding Daniel’s eyes in the mirror. The nausea was receding, leaving a hollow, trembly feeling in its wake. He caught Daniel’s expression—not concern, but a dawning, curious recognition.
“What?” Johnny grumbled around his toothbrush.
“Morning sickness,” Daniel said, the words careful. “It’s not always just the pregnant one. It can happen to the partner. Sympathetic symptoms. I read about it.”
Johnny spit out a foamy white stream. “That’s bullshit. That’s… chick stuff.”
“It’s psychosomatic. Real physical symptoms from stress,” Daniel said, leaning against the doorjamb. A small, impossible smile played on his lips. “Your body’s just catching up to what’s happening. To us.”
Johnny stared at him. The CVS bag was long gone from his kitchen table. In its place was a stack of parenting books Daniel kept bringing over, a tiny white onesie with a miniature cobra on it that Johnny had secretly bought after a few drinks, and a constant, low-grade terror that felt entirely different from any fear he’d ever known. It was a fear mixed with a possessive, ferocious pride he couldn’t name.
“My body’s fine,” Johnny insisted, but the protest was weak. The tremor in his hands wasn’t from the heaving. He felt, absurdly, exposed. Daniel just watched him, that knowing look in his dark eyes, and for the first time, Johnny understood the queasy roll in his gut wasn’t an ending. It was a beginning, his own treacherous biology making its declaration, binding him to the life growing in the man before him with a visceral, undeniable claim.
The nausea didn't pass. It became a tenant in his body, paying rent in bile and exhaustion. For two weeks, he woke with that metallic taste, his head swimming if he stood up too fast. He blamed bad coffee, stress, the weird organic crap Daniel was now stocking in his fridge.
“You’re losing weight,” Daniel said one evening, his hand pausing over Johnny’s ribs as they lay in the dim bedroom. The touch was clinical, concerned. “Your jeans are hanging off you.”
“Good,” Johnny grunted, turning away. “Need to be lean for the summer classes.” The lie was paper-thin. He was tired in a way that sleep couldn’t touch, a deep marrow fatigue.
Daniel propped himself up on an elbow. The curve under the sheet was more pronounced now. “You’re pale. You threw up again yesterday. I heard you.”
“So I’ve got a bug. It’ll pass.”
“Bugs pass in forty-eight hours. This is something else.” Daniel’s voice was quiet, firm. It was the voice he used at the dealership to close a deal against a client’s weaker judgment. “You’re going to a clinic. The one on Reseda. Tomorrow.”
Johnny scoffed, staring at the water stain on his ceiling. “I’m not going to your fancy OB.”
“No. A walk-in. For a physical. For me.” Daniel’s hand settled on Johnny’s shoulder, fingers pressing into the tight muscle. “If you’re sick, we need to know. For… for the baby’s sake. What if it’s contagious?”
It was a low blow, weaponizing the very thing that was rewiring both their lives. Johnny felt the trap close. He couldn’t refuse that. Not when Daniel’s brown eyes were wide with a fear that wasn’t just for him anymore.
“Fine,” he muttered, defeat sour in his mouth. “One hour. In and out.”
The clinic was a beige box with fluorescent lights that made everyone look terminally ill. The air smelled of antiseptic and forgotten hope. Johnny filled out the clipboard forms with a grimace, lying about his diet, minimizing the symptoms. Daniel sat in the waiting room, thumbing absently through a six-month-old parenting magazine, a man out of place among the coughing children and weary elderly.
The doctor was a tired-looking man in his fifties with glasses perched on the end of his nose. He asked questions in a monotone, pressing cold metal to Johnny’s chest, shining a light in his eyes.
“Fatigue, nausea, weight loss, sensitivity to smells,” the doctor recited, typing notes into a computer. “Any chance of pregnancy?”
Johnny barked a laugh that echoed in the small room. “Yeah, right. I’m a guy. So, no.”
The doctor didn’t smile. He glanced at the screen. “We ran the standard blood panel from your intake. Your human chorionic gonadotropin levels are elevated. Significantly.”
The words were nonsense syllables. Johnny stared at him. “My what?”
“hCG. It’s a hormone.” The doctor adjusted his glasses, his gaze finally meeting Johnny’s. “It’s produced during pregnancy.”
A cold numbness started in Johnny’s fingertips. “That’s impossible. Run the test again. You mixed up my blood with some lady’s.”
“The sample is coded. It’s yours.” The doctor’s tone was devoid of judgment, just flat, scientific fact. “The levels are consistent with early first trimester. Around eight to ten weeks. We should do an ultrasound to confirm viability and location.”
The room tipped. The poster about handwashing on the wall blurred. Johnny’s own breath roared in his ears, drowning out the hum of the computer. Viability. Location. He felt the ghost of that grainy image from Daniel’s first ultrasound, the tiny, blinking pulse of light.
“You’re saying I’m pregnant.” Johnny’s voice didn’t sound like his own. It was a scraped-out whisper.
“I’m saying your blood work indicates a pregnancy. It is biologically impossible for you to carry a fetus to term. You lack the necessary anatomy.” The doctor spoke slowly, as if to a child. “But the hormonal signature is present. We need to investigate why. Ectopic pregnancy, while theoretically impossible in a male, must be ruled out due to the hormone levels. There are also certain cancers, testicular or otherwise, that can produce hCG.”
Cancer. The word was a bucket of ice water. It should have been a relief—a terrible, but logical, explanation. It wasn’t. A deeper, more primal knowing curdled in his gut, a truth that bypassed reason and settled in his bones with the weight of a prophecy. He thought of the queasy roll that had begun weeks ago, synced almost perfectly with Daniel’s own timeline. He thought of the frantic, impossible night in the garage a lifetime ago, a single, reckless encounter that had defied every rule.
“No cancer test,” Johnny heard himself say. His mouth was desert-dry.
“Mr. Lawrence, with these levels—”
“Do the ultrasound.” The command was pure Johnny, rough and leaving no room. “Now.”
The gel was cold on his lower abdomen. The technician, a young woman with a kind, bored face, moved the wand in small circles. The black-and-white screen on the side wall showed a chaotic landscape of shifting grays—blobs and shadows that meant nothing to him. Johnny watched, his heart hammering against his ribs.
The technician frowned. She pushed the wand deeper, angling it. The grays swirled and resolved. She froze.
There, on the screen, was not a tumor. Not a shadow.
It was a small, oval sac, nestled impossibly within him. And within that sac, a tiny, flickering seed of light.
A heartbeat.
The technician’s professional mask slipped. Her eyes darted from the screen to Johnny’s face, wide with pure, unprofessional shock. “That’s… that’s a gestational sac. And a fetal pole. With cardiac activity.” She swallowed audibly. “You’re… measuring at nine weeks, four days.”
Silence, thick and absolute, swallowed the room. The only sound was the rapid, rhythmic whoosh-whoosh-whoosh pumping from the machine’s speaker. The sound of the tiny light blinking on the screen. His own heartbeat, answering it from somewhere deep in his chest.
Johnny Lawrence stared at the proof glowing in the dark. He saw the cracked mirror in the dojo, felt the cold glass against his skin. He saw the CVS bag, the ghost they’d made real. He saw Daniel’s exhausted, terrified face in his kitchen. One plus one did not equal two. It had created a third. A fourth. An impossible equation blooming in the wrong bodies.
The technician finally remembered herself, snapping pictures, the printer whirring to life. Johnny didn’t move. He watched that blinking light, a separate star now orbiting his own, its rhythm syncing with the terror and awe swelling until it choked him. He had come in for a bug. He was leaving with a universe growing under his own skin. The world had narrowed to the cold gel, the insistent whoosh, and the devastating understanding that nothing, not one damn thing, would ever be simple again.
The whoosh-whoosh-whoosh was a tiny drum, a warbeat against the inside of his skull. The technician’s shocked silence stretched, then snapped.
“I’ll… I’ll get the doctor,” she mumbled, wiping the gel from his stomach with a rough paper towel that scratched his skin. She fled, leaving the printed images scattered on the counter, the machine still emitting that rhythmic, alien sound.
Johnny sat up. The movement was slow, mechanical. He pulled his shirt down over his abdomen, a territory that was no longer just his. He stared at the black-and-white photos. There it was. The proof. Not a tumor. A sac. A pole. A light. The phantom had migrated. It wasn’t just Daniel’s secret anymore; it had woven itself into Johnny’s very flesh, a biological coup.
The doctor returned, his professional detachment visibly fractured. He held the images, his eyes flicking between them and Johnny’s face. “Mr. Lawrence. This is… unprecedented. Medically impossible.”
“Yeah, got that part,” Johnny said, his voice gravel. He swung his legs off the table, the floor feeling unsteady. “What happens now?”
“We need to admit you. Immediately. For a full battery of tests—MRI, more specialized scans, endocrine work-up. We must determine how this is… occurring. The risks of ectopic implantation, even in an anomalous location, are severe. Life-threatening.”
Life-threatening. The words bounced off the numb shield around him. He thought of Daniel, alone in the waiting room, worrying about a contagious bug. He almost laughed, a sharp, painful bite of air in his throat.
“No admission,” Johnny said, standing up. A wave of dizziness washed over him, but he locked his knees. “I’m walking out of here.”
“You can’t! This is a profound medical anomaly. Your safety—”
“My safety is my business.” Johnny snatched the ultrasound images from the doctor’s slack hand. He folded them twice, the creases cutting through the tiny, blinking star, and shoved them into his back pocket. “You got my blood. Write your paper. I’m gone.”
He pushed past the sputtering doctor, out into the fluorescent hallway. The nausea was back, a churning companion, but it was buried under a cacophony of static. He walked past exam rooms, following the exit signs, a man in a daze.
Daniel was pacing by the water cooler when Johnny emerged. He stopped mid-stride. “Well? What’d they say? Is it mono or something?”
Johnny looked at him. Daniel’s face, handsome and worried, his hand unconsciously resting on the gentle curve of his own stomach. The symmetry of it was brutal. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled photos. He didn’t hand them over. He just held them out, his own hand trembling slightly.
Daniel took them. He smoothed the papers, his eyes scanning the medical script, the dates, the measurements. His brow furrowed in confusion. Then he found the image. The sac. The pole. The blinking light.
He made a sound, a soft, punched-out “oh.” All the color drained from his face. His eyes, wide and dark, lifted to meet Johnny’s. They weren’t looking for a lie. They were recognizing a truth too vast for words.
“Nine weeks, four days,” Johnny said, the clinical phrase ash in his mouth.
Daniel’s gaze dropped back to the image. His fingers traced the edge of the photo. “The garage,” he whispered. It wasn’t a question. It was a pinpointing. A single, catastrophic point of origin that explained everything. One plus one had not made two. It had split, multiplied, taken root in both of them.
“The doctor wanted to lock me up. Study me,” Johnny said, leaning against the wall. The cool paint felt good against his neck.
“We need to go. Now.” Daniel’s voice was low, urgent. He took Johnny’s arm, his grip firm. “Before he calls a team of residents or the damn news. Come on.”
They moved through the waiting room, a bizarre procession. Daniel, pale and purposeful, steering a shell-shocked Johnny by the elbow. The bright Los Angeles sun outside was an assault. Johnny squinted, the world too sharp, too loud.
“Your car or mine?” Daniel asked, clicking the fob for his Audi.
“Yours. Mine’s probably got a boot by now.” Johnny slid into the passenger seat, the leather sighing under him. He stared straight ahead as Daniel got in, started the engine, pulled into traffic with a smooth, aggressive confidence.
The silence in the car was thick, charged. The ultrasound photos lay on the center console between them like a live wire.
“So,” Daniel finally said, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “We’re having twins.”
The absurdity of the statement, delivered in Daniel’s deadpan, deal-closing tone, broke something loose in Johnny. A choked, ragged sound escaped him—not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. It hurt his ribs.
“Shut up, LaRusso.”
“I’m serious. Biologically impossible, male-assigned-at-birth fraternal twins. One gestational host each.” Daniel glanced over, his eyes glittering with a kind of hysterical clarity. “We’ve literally never done anything the normal way. Why start now?”
“This isn’t a fucking joke.” Johnny pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, seeing stars. “This is… this is a science fiction nightmare. I’ve got a… a thing. Inside me.”
“A baby, Johnny.” Daniel’s voice softened, frayed at the edges. “You have a baby. Our baby. Same as I do.”
Our baby. The words didn’t fit. They were too small, too domestic, for the seismic reality. Johnny dropped his hands, looking at Daniel’s profile. “What are we supposed to do? Huh? You’re showing. I’m gonna… what? Start showing? Pop one day between teaching kids to punch and fixing garbage disposals?”
“I don’t know!” Daniel snapped, the fear finally cracking through. He hit the steering wheel once with the flat of his hand. “I don’t know any of this! I was just figuring out how to tell my wife I’m pregnant with my high-school rival’s baby, and now you’re pregnant too? There’s no chapter for this in the books, Johnny!”
They drove, the tension a third presence in the car. Daniel turned not towards his sleek Encino neighborhood, but towards Reseda, towards Johnny’s apartment. The place felt like the only possible ground zero.
Inside, the cluttered kitchen seemed different. The chipped microwave, the sticky counters—they were witnesses now. Johnny went straight to the fridge, pulled out a beer, cracked it. He took a long swallow. The cold liquid hit his empty, rolling stomach like a bomb.
“You shouldn’t drink that,” Daniel said quietly, leaning against the doorway.
“Why?” Johnny asked, a dangerous edge in his voice. “You read that in your book? What the pregnant guy shouldn’t do?”
“Johnny.”
“What, Daniel? What do you want me to do?” He put the beer down too hard, suds foaming over the rim. “You want me to sit down? Put my feet up? Start knitting little booties? I’m a handyman with a mullet. I get into bar fights. I don’t do this.”
“You are doing this.” Daniel pushed off the doorframe, crossing the small space until he was right in front of him. He took Johnny’s face in his hands, forcing him to meet his gaze. His palms were warm. “Look at me. You are. We are. However it happened, it’s real. It’s in you. I can see it in your eyes. You’re scared out of your mind. So am I.”
Johnny wanted to pull away, to shove him off. He didn’t. He stood there, trapped in the warmth of Daniel’s hands, in the fierce, terrified certainty of his stare. The static in his head began to coalesce into a single, screaming note of panic. The walls of the kitchen seemed to press in. The hum of the fridge was the whoosh-whoosh of the machine. The scent of old coffee was the smell of antiseptic. The crumpled photos in his pocket were burning a hole through the denim.
His breath started coming in short, sharp pulls. The room tilted on its axis. Daniel’s face swam in his vision.
“Johnny?” Daniel’s thumbs stroked his jaw, his voice laced with new alarm. “Hey. Breathe. Just breathe.”
But he couldn’t. The foundation of everything—who he was, what his body was, what was possible—had just been vaporized. The weight of it, the monstrous, incredible reality, descended on him all at once. It was too heavy. It was a physical pressure on his chest, a sinking in his gut that had nothing to do with nausea.
His knees buckled first. A simple, sheer failure of structure.
JOHNNY COLLAPSES.