deercountry | wolves in the middle of town

Common sense was something that Johnny lacked for the most point. He trained fairly regularly at the beach so it wasn't exactly a stretch to find Paul there even if it was much further along than he'd normally go. He didn't really let the signs to the cave sway him either. He wasn't a pussy. He'd go where he wants to.

And what he really wanted to do at the moment was reach out to one of the most important people he knew here. Someone he had been more than a little neglectful to when his biological son and LaRusso showed up.

So despite all the fire and goth as attitude Johnny didn't stop in his approach. He did however hold up a six pack of beer.

"Yeah. Not happening, kid." His voice was a little blunt and nonchalant. He'd take his chances with whatever Paul might do here. Worst comes to worse he was down for a week. He had done that before.

"Why don't you come here and tell me what's going on? Or we can kick the shit out of each other until you get this shit out of your system."

"Sensei-" Paul's voice cracks in the middle, a fractured, ugly, unhappy noise of longing that comes with a shivering pulse through the fire clinging to him. He takes a step back, even though it barely increases the space between them. It's exactly the opposite of what he wants to do, what his hands ache for: to close the gap between them and hide his miserable face in Johnny's shoulder in the relief of seeing him still come to Paul's side.

"You can be here," he relents, too quickly, "But you can't try to touch me. I'll hurt you. If you promise you won't do that - you can stay, but you have to say it. You have to tell me that."

Johnny catches the crack in Paul's voice and it gives him pause in his approach. It tore him up inside to his student like this but- Johnny didn't know if there was much for he could do for him in this case. He raises his hands up in a placating sort of way.

"If that's what you want. I'll do it. I wont touch you, kid." As if to signal he wouldn't come any closer he went and plopped himself down the ground.

"But you have to start talking, what's going on?"

Paul's shoulders slump when Johnny hits the cave floor, followed shortly by the rest of Paul as he follows him into sitting. Unlike with most others, Paul doesn't attempt to keep his back straight or his expression uplifted with Johnny. He hugs his knees to his chest and looks out at him over them, his glowing blue eyes wide and weary.

"Those dreams I was having," he says, in a murmured tumble, "In the summer. When you brought me - when you brought all of us to the dojo. I thought that I'd made it stop."

Flame reflects off the water at the lip of the cave, reflects more dully off the stone around them. Paul doesn't look at it. He doesn't have to.

"I hurt Kaworu." An abrupt confession, like yanking a knife from a wound. "I burned him. I burned Gideon, too."

Johnny doesn't exactly realize just how vulnerable Paul lets himself be around him. As far as he knows his student is about the same way with all of the people he's close with. But Johnny doesn't quite realize that he's the same way, he's more willing to open up and be honest with Paul than just about anyone else here. His own son included.

He doesn't say anything at first and just lets Paul get out what he needs to. He needs to do that so the words sink into his thick skull properly. So he can actually help the way a sensei needs to.

"You've been through a lot, Paul." It's a simple truth, but it's a truth none the less. "You can expect yourself to be a hundred percent just because you're out of the frying pan."

There's a pause and he looks down at the water and the way the fire reflects off it. There's a flash of a memory and he looks back to his student.

"Hell. I still have dreams about some shit that happened to me when I was your age. And I don't think it's half as bad as what you've had to go through." Was Johnny admitting that he might not be right about some of his deep seated issues.

"You're going to hurt people in life. It sucks but it's the truth. But you can't stop just because something shitty happened."

Paul looks at Johnny with the disbelief of one half-drowned seeing a ship approach, the wild, unsure hope of the not quite saved. He looks like someone who wants to be saved, and that hasn't always been true of him.

"I know I can't stop," he says, hushed, tugging his knees closer, "But I don't know how to keep going."

He'd sat across from Johnny almost like this not so long ago, talking about how they always got back up. He can nearly reach out and touch what that felt like, but only nearly. The feeling of the flame in his palm, the way that Kiriona had looked at him - how Kaworu had looked at him - stand between him and the memory.

"How do you do it?" He asks, with a vulnerable hunger. "How do you keep going, if the dreams don't go away? How do I make it right?"

These are questions that demand too much. Questions without answers, or whose answers lie with other people, questions Paul imagines that Johnny asks himself whenever his mistakes come too close. The questions that make him sink into chemical oblivion and constructed confidence. But he asks them anyway, because Johnny is right. He can't stop.

Johnny didn't quite understand Paul's expression when he looked at it. Mostly because the only person he knew who made that face was himself- And he didn't often look in the mirror when he was doing it.

The tone he recognizes a bit better and there's a part of him that deflates just a little, because he didn't have a good answer on how to fix it.

"When I have the answer to that, I'll let you know. I just go from day to day with it, really. Some days are better than others." There's an uncertainty in his tone that's honest, candid and a little nervous. But eventually his eyes go back to meet Paul's.

"But the days where I'm watching you, and the other kids. When we're training or getting into it. Those are the days that I don't think about it at all." He starts to make a fist.

"And I know you probably feel the same way when you're with him. And with the Broccoli kid. When you're out there doing what you do best, it wont hurt as bad as it does."

Johnny may not think he has the right words, but it's evident from the first that Paul disagrees. He clings to every one like the life rope it is, eyes glinting in flares of blue-green and silver that passes as swiftly as they come. He leans forward over his knees like it might help him hear better, the halo of flame all about him dimming ever so slightly.

It's not only the manner in which Johnny describes how Paul might be saved. It's how he talks about what saves him. Them, his students: the good that he puts out into the world, watching those people thrive on it. The things that Johnny builds that take him further and further from the thing that dogs his heels.

Paul swallows like he's brought a cupped handful of warm oasis water to his lips, nodding, even when the reminder of his beloveds sends a ribbon of flickering agony through the palefire. He won't linger on that. He'll think of something better. A day on the lawn, tumbling fearlessly through the air, knowing they'd catch him, because they always catch him.

"What do you dream about?" He asks, which should be somewhere far down on his list of questions too, but here they still are, and Paul intuits the importance of this. There is something he can almost, but not quite, touch inside of it.

Johnny dips his head a little. He hasn't quite caught onto how Paul is hanging onto his every word. As much as he knows seeing the changes in the people around him have been good for him, he doesn't always notice the full effect he has them.

He considers the question briefly. One foot kicking out a little as he contemplates how best to explain what he sees.

"The biggest fight of my life... And how I blew it.

Back when I was your age. My sensei- He was a real hard ass. But he was closest thing to a dad I ever had. He took all the tenants to Cobra Kai to a whole new level.

...When I lost. He broke my second place trophy and choked me out in front of my friends. Almost killed me." There's a pause. He gazes at the ground for a long moment but he eventually brings his eyes up to meet Paul's.

"It really fucked me up for a long time. And- I still don't think I'll ever forget it."

When Johnny ducks his head and kicks out his foot, Paul is startled by the echo that comes through the lines of his body, the unburied ghost of someone younger shining out of him as he speaks of his memories.

If he lets his eyes unfocus, and thinks of Robby, he feels like he can almost see the Johnny his age, stung by defeat and betrayal from someone he should have been able to trust.

"But he was your sensei," Paul says, bewildered in a way he should be too old and too wise to be bewildered, after everything that brought him to this point. He knows that some teachers cannot be relied on to do what's right by their pupils, but-

"You came in second." There's tightness in his chest for the sake of someone else, and he welcomes it. "He should have been proud of you."

Johnny did his best not to think about that day and more often than not failed. But it was different actually talking about it, and to someone he knew he could trust and would understand.

He's a little surprised by the response Paul gives. He thought- With how he acted most of the time it was more obvious why he had turned out the way he had. He wondered if maybe that wasn't exactly the case.

He feels a small, more hollow smile play up on his lips. Paul knew the exact sort of bitterness that he felt.

"That's what I told him- I told him I did my best. I gave it my all." Right before he got attacked.

"He told me I was nothing. I lost. I was a loser." And... He continued to be a loser for years upon years.

"It held me back for years until I finally met Miguel... Until I met you, and all of the other kids I've helped train." There's a pause before he adds in.

"And- It's why I'm doing my best train you right. To try and guide you down a path different than what I had to go down."

Sometimes uncanny insight set aside, Paul is seventeen, and prone to blind spots. What might be obvious from an objective perspective is obscured from his, looking up at the slight but real pedestal he's set Johnny on from the position of having never, for everything that's happened, having been told he was a disappointment to anyone.

He listens intently, heart swelling lightly to be included in the ranks of people who had made a difference to Johnny after that. The fire dies further, unnoticed, a thin pall of strange light cowling him.

"You're not a loser, sensei." Paul is resolute on that point, first and foremost. Whether or not Johnny speaks in the past tense, Paul needs him to know that Paul doesn't believe it, not in the slightest.

"And I'm glad you're my teacher." His voice is thick with feeling; he's glad of the shine of light over the shine of salt that might cling to his eyes. "You stood by me when I was wrong. You still do. So - to hell with him. What did he know about anything? You're ten times the sensei he was. A hundred times."

wolves in the middle of town | october catch-all

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