#cksecretsanta2020

He remembers his first Christmas with Ali. The party, the people, Ali's red dress that she hated but her grandmother wanted her wear (she was beautiful and he hadn't even told her). His mother's laugh and how she kissed his cheek and said that they were such a beautiful couple. Sid saying "You are doing good, kid", maybe for the first time of their life together as family, and "Merry Christmas."

He doesn't remember Robby's first Christmas. He wasn't there. Shannon has sent him a Christmas card, a photo of her and Robby smiling together with some silly hats and "prick" scribbled over the big tree.

He wonders if Robby remembers the Christmas when he was there or it was too late.

He never thinks about the Christmas after the All Valley Tournament. He dreams about it sometimes. Kreese's hands on his neck, LaRusso's face disfigured with pain after Johnny hit him in the leg, the trophy, Bobby's phone calls that he kept not answering and all the "Johnny, open the door" of his mother, the Christmas eve at the beach alone.

It's not that he hates Christmas. He just doesn't care about it.

He doesn't buy chocolate. Damn most of the time he even forgets to buy real food, let alone chocolate (less often than in the past, to be honest. Maybe because Robby sleeps at his house a couple of nights a week, maybe because he's getting old and he can't live only drinking beers, maybe because LaRusso sends him stupid text from the supermarket reminding him to buy green stuff as if they were in a comedy from the 1950s). Anyway. He doesn't buy chocolate that is the main reason why now he's been sitting in his office at Cobra Kai in front of a bag of chocolates for half an hour without knowing what to do. He lifts them up, studies them a bit as if he suddenly could tell if they are poisoned. He googles them too, because now he's the kind of nerd who uses the internet. He writes "scams chocolates" but finds nothing.

He hears a key in the lock and footsteps.

"Diaz!"

Miguel overlooks at the door. His footsteps are still uncertain every now and then but in the last year he has made so much progress that if Johnny celebrated his thanksgiving day his first thank you would be for that kid.

"Yes, Sensei?"

Johnny points to the chocolates.

"Are these yours?"

Diaz looks puzzled. "Er ... no?"

"No, are you sure?" He says. Like a good teacher, like someone ready to listen to his students and not yell at them. "You can tell me."

Diaz looks even more puzzled. "Still no, sorry." He thinks for a second "Why should I have put some chocolates in your office?"

"What the fuck do I know? Why should I put them here?"

"Because it's your office?"

Johnny shrugs. "They're not mine."

Miguel walks over to him and checks the desk as if he were a fucking detective. "Was there nothing attached? No note? A receipt? Nothing?"

"Of course there was nothing attached, Mr. Diaz! I would have noticed it!" he says waving the bag that in that exact moment drops a small piece of paper. They both watch it as it gently flutters across the desk and if someone walks in at that moment and sees them he will immediately think they are father and son. Which is the truth even if it isn't.

"It's a one!" Miguel screams as if he has solved the mystery.

"I know dummy, I can read. Why is there a piece of paper with a one written on it?"

"Oh." He says, sadly "I don't know."

They stare at the chocolates and the paper for a few seconds.

Miguel takes the bag in his hand. "They look good, fancy. Not something you'll find at the store, mh?"

"How long is it until the next lesson, Diaz?" He asks him.

"At least half an hour."

"Do you want a chocolate?"

The next day in front of Cobra Kai's door there is a bottle of rum with a bow, a number two written on a card and a pretentious brochure explaining how to pair chocolate with rum. He looks around and when he doesn't see anyone that could reclaim it he takes it in his office and then at home. He doesn't have any chocolate left because the self restrain is not his best attribute but the rum tastes quite good anyway. He is freezing and it makes him feel warm.

He talks about it with LaRusso the next saturday. Until that day he received an Anthrax t-shirt and a pack of artisanal mini pizzas.

"Are you sure they're for you? Maybe someone got the wrong address and you're stealing some Christmas presents!" LaRusso suddenly comes alive and starts hopping like he always does when he's excited about something (it's not that he really hops, he just moves faster. Not that Johnny pays any attention to it. Because he doesn't.) "Maybe you're the Grinch of a family that lives near Cobra kai! "

"LaRusso the chocolates were inside my office, a bit too much for a wrong address don't you think?" and then "Who the fuck is the Grinch?"

From LaRusso's scandalized expression, this is not the right thing to say. What a surprise.

"Okay, no wrong addresses. Did you ask Robby? Maybe he ordered them on amazon?"

"Hey we don't do these things in our house, that dark web shit."

"What?!"

"Anyway, why are we here?" They are walking through home improvement stores. Near them only mothers with children, families, people who laugh and joke and talk and Johnny hates them all.

"You know why we are here. We are here because, as I wrote you, I have to buy a Christmas tree." (and I didn't want to go alone, he is about to say. But he doesn't say that. And I wanted to go with you, he thinks. But he doesn't say that either.)

"And you didn't go with Amanda ... why?"

"Because you don't go with your ex-wife to buy a Christmas tree for your new bachelor flat. We're not that civilized."

"I don't understand why you need a Christmas tree anyway." Daniel shows him a tree topper full of ribbons and ruffles and things that shouldn't be in any straight person's apartment. Or in general. "Put that thing down or am I going to have to kick you."

"Mh, and who knows how it would end ..." but he is smiling and there is a tone of complicity in his voice. "I don't want Sam and Anthony to come to my house for the holidays and see a bachelor loft, I want them to see a tree and some presents and decorations. They're already going through divorce and everything, I want at least my home to be normal, cozy." Then a sigh. "Besides, I like Christmas."

"Why? Christmas is just people who don't like each other together and presents that you'll not like."

Daniel bursts out laughing and throws a punch at him. Johnny tries to see nothing in that gesture, in that intimacy. "Oh my god, you really are the fucking Grinch, Johnny Lawrence. I just don't know. I just like it. Maybe because I'm a father and when they were little Christmas was the most magical time of the year for the kids. I don't know...I like waiting for presents, I like lights, I like people, I like the warmth."

"Pffff. If you say so."

"How about this?" LaRusso indicates a tree, not too big, not too naked(Johnny is convinced that in reality in LaRusso hates all the minimalist things he buys, all the apartments with dove gray walls and gray furniture and just pretend because  c'mon, just think about how he dressed as a kid there is nothing beige in that man).

"Looks ok." He thinks about it for a moment. "Now do you also want me to help you find some mistletoe to hang around the house or are we finally ready to go?"

"Considering that the only person who walks through the door of my house, apart from my children, is you, should I take that as a suggestion?"

And Johnny nearly risks a head-on against a Christmas tree.

LaRusso is still laughing as they walk out of the shop with bags full of Christmas baubles.

(It wasn't a suggestion, of course. Why would he suggest something like that? They don't have that kind of relationship. There would be no reason to kiss under the mistletoe. Or kissing in general. Obviously. Fuck it. He doesn't think about anything else all night. Fuck it.)

In the end it's Hawk that explains everything.

Miguel and the other students are outside Cobra Kai sharing a couple of beers that Johnny is pretty sure they shouldn't drink but since he found them at the door fuck it. They are triple malt, from a microbrewery and the cap does not even unscrew but they don't really suck.

Hawk lifts one of the bottles, looks at the number on it and then as if it were the most natural thing in the world he asks. "Sensei, did you buy yourself a craft beer advent calendar?"

"Huh?" Says Johnny.

"An advent calendar."

"Huh?" Miguel asks.

"How is it possible that the boy with the Jewish grandparents has to explain to you what an advent calendar is?" And since they don't seem to understand, he continues. "On this bottle there is the number seven, today is December 7th. Were there another six bottles of beer?"

"No." Miguel replies sadly.

"No?"

"But there were six other gifts, each with a number attached to it." Johnny corrects him.

"One a day!" Adds Miguel.

"So it's an advent calendar. One surprise a day until Christmas."

Oh.

"Except if he didn't buy it himself, some chick must have bought it for him. Not bad for an old man, Sensei!"

The kids start speculating about who might have given it to him and looking at all possible advent calendars on their smartphones.

Johnny walks away as a high-pitched voice speaks of "Merry cheesemas". When he gets home he throws the remaining beers in the garbage and turns off the television when the usual Christmas movie appears.

"I think it's a trap" He says to LaRusso the next monday.

"What?" LaRusso looks lost. He is wearing a big scarf but his nose is still a bit red and he looks, Johnny would rather die than say it out loud, cute.

"The gifts with the numbers on it."

"The Advent Calendar?"

Why everyone knows what an advent calendar is?

Johnny nods.

"Is the advent calendar a trap?"

Now Johnny seems like an idiot. Which is not. Definitely.

"These ones?"

LaRusso shakes his head as Johnny points to some plant shears. He hands him an even bigger pair.

"These are more suitable for outdoor bonsai. They won't rust if you don't dry them well after disinfecting them. They are slightly more expensive but last a lifetime." His eyes sparkle when he talks about his stupid plants. Johnny hates him a little.

"A little more expensive?" He looks at the price tag. "I could buy him a real tree with the price, not these miniature trees that you short people like."

LaRusso snorts "But Robby doesn't want a tree for Christmas." He stops for a second lost in his thoughts "If they're too expensive I can contribute, I'd love to." And even if it costs him to admit it, Johnny knows that he is sincere in this. LaRusso is an asshole, a hothead, he believes himself better than others and he can never shut up but he is generous, he really likes to do things for others. Johnny hates him a little.

"Give them to me." He takes the scissors and puts them in the basket. "Anyway, yes the advent calendar. I think it's a scam or a trap. Someone is trying to fuck with me."

"Giving you gifts?" When LaRusso's voice rises an octave he seems to be still sixteen. "Why?"

"What the fuck do I know? Why do people do things? Maybe it's one of your mortal enemies who wants to screw me. Maybe it's Terry Silver."

"We're not talking about Terry Silver." It is true. But they talked about him. One evening in that confused space of time when everything was going to hell, in which while Johnny's life, the Cobra Kai and LaRusso's marriage were falling apart, they found a way of their own to communicate. They found their own dimension.

"Maybe someone you pissed off." He replies.

"Someone that I pissed off? And why would someone I pissed off try to screw you? By giving you gifts by the way? Besides, I think you piss off enough people on your own."

"Pfff. In any case, I threw everything in the garbage. Nobody can fool me like that."

They keep walking into the plant shop.

"Johnny, have you ever thought that maybe someone is simply giving you gifts? Like to make you happy?"

That night when he gets home he takes the panettone and the Zebra bootleg out of the garbage. They are both pretty good.

On Thursday in the advent calendar, he gave up and decided to call it that, he found a small radio. It's the miniature version, with a USB port (Miguel tells him), of the Ali's one that he broke on the beach. Even the songs included are the same ones he listened to at that time. That evening when a Christmas movie is being shown on television, he waits ten minutes before changing the channel.

"I think it's Ali." He tells LaRusso when they meet up the next day for a couple of beers and some Chinese food (for Johnny, LaRusso insists on eating that awful raw fish that costs more than cooked fish and tastes like sea).

"What?"

"I think Ali made the advent calendar for me." and then because LaRusso doesn't seem to understand he tells him about the Zebra bootleg, about how most of the surprises seem to come from someone who knows him well and obviously about the radio like the one Ali had.

LaRusso doesn't seem so sure. He stretches on the sofa, where they sat to watch The Grinch because according to Daniel it was not acceptable that Johnny had never seen him, and ventures "Johnny are you talking to Ali lately?"

"Not a word for thirty-something years."

"Then why should she send you an advent calendar? She doesn't even live in the same city as us."

Johnny sighs like he's dealing with an idiot. Which is fair. "Women can never forget someone like me."

"She left you! She hated you!" and then with his annoying voice "Oh don't get distracted this scene is particularly funny!" (it isn't)

Johnny ignores him. "She probably wanted to apologize to me in some way with that radio."

"But it was you who broke it!" and then in a low voice convinced that Johnny can't hear him "My God this guy is really an asshole."

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with being a little jealous. The fact that she didn't send you an advent calendar doesn't mean Ali didn't care about you, she just can't forget me. Try this guy once..."

Daniel throws candy canes in his face.

"Hey ... do you want to stay over?" LaRusso asks him when the film ends. "It's quite late and I don't know how much you've been drinking."

It's not particularly late and Johnny hasn't drunk more than on a normal day of the week. LaRusso's sofa bed isn't even particularly comfortable, even though the sheets always smell good and the pancakes he makes don't really suck (and he's even stopped insisting that Johnny try some kind of tea that tastes like pureed grass). There are Christmas on the front door, which he hates. He really has no reason to stay.

Johnny fakes a yawn. He stays.

The next morning he writes a message to Ali to thank her for the advent calendar on facebook.

He writes to LaRusso "To be honest the Grinch never hated the Christmas, he hated the people, which is fair."

Ali replies "Johnny, what are you talking about? Why should I give you a gift?"

LaRusso replies "You are such an ass. Do you want to help me decorate the tree tonight? "

"Of course I don't want it. Why? Are you too short to put the baubles on it?" He texts back.

"I have beers and we can try the new pizzeria around the corner."

He replies ""Okay but if you're going to put on that ridiculous sweater with the deer and the lights again, I'll have to fight you to get it off."

"It's a reindeer not a deer, for God's sake. And you have a funny way to try to undress your dates, Lawrence."

It's a joke of course. A lame one. It's not that he really wants to see LaRusso naked. Or that LaRusso is his date. (fuck fuck fuck)

He helps LaRusso with the Christmas tree. He doesn't even hate too much.

He doesn't text back to Ali.

After three more days of surprises in the advent calendar, he confronts Carmen.

She listens to him without saying a word but then her doubtful expression melts into a smile. It's a smile that Carmen reserves only for him and in which Johnny initially saw a lot of potential. He saw going out, a lot of sex, even a little romance. Now that the months have passed, including those in which Carmen didn't even speak to him at all, he has learned to see what is really behind that smile, that sweetness: family. They will never be in love but they will always be a family in some way.

"Johnny, my love these days I don't even have time to breathe at work, let alone prepare an advent calendar for someone." And then "Have you ever thought that there is someone else besides us who wants to make you happy?"

Johnny grumbles, replies by making silly allusions to some girl he's met and stuff like that. In front of Carmen's door, he finds himself thinking for the first time in months about his mother, about the way she always took care of him.

Carmen continues talking. "I heard that Robby will probably spend Christmas with his mom. We won't be home celebrating... Do you have someone to spend Christmas with? Otherwise we can try to organize something, I'm sure Miggy would like it."

Johnny thinks of the billionth text that LaRusso sent him to remind him to pack the gift for Robby.

"I'm okay." He replies.

The next day he finds an Atari console with Popeye on it in the advent calendar and it's a trip down memory lane. He liked video games when he was a kid, when he wasn't the popular guy at school yet. He liked listening to music, playing video games and forgetting Sid's remarks, the absence of a father, the lack of friends. Before, in a world where there was no karate, Kreese and Cobra Kai to get lost in. He had almost forgotten about those years, about that Johnny. He wonders what would happen to his life if he stayed that Johnny. Would Ali have stayed? (Or even more than that: would Ali notice and date someone like that Johnny?) Would the friends of the Cobra Kai want him? Would he have been a failure as a father? Would he and Daniel become friends? (he imagines: making lesson with Mr. Miyagi, play video games together, teach him to surf and stay to chill on the beach, listening some music with only one walkman, close, with legs touching)

When on December 18th he finds a portable mini golf (like the ones you see in B-movies, in the offices of successful managers) he invites LaRusso to his apartment to play with it only because he is unable to play something without turning it into a competition , in a fight. Not because he likes to see him. Daniel goes all "Oh" and "Thanks" when he sees that Johnny has put in the fridge all he needs for a martini cocktail and opens his giant brown doe eyes and Johnny doesn't know whether to feel like a shitty person or a fifteen year old on a first date. The only thing he's sure of is that he doesn't know what to do with these feelings. If he could he would kick them, fight them back to their corner because he's not sure he knows how to ignore them now that they're out. He is so angry. With himself, with LaRusso, with that stupid advent calendar and with Christmas too.

He kicks LaRusso's butt at portable mini golf and when it starts getting late he yawns and says he'll have to get up early the next day for some commitments. He doesn't offer LaRusso another drink, he doesn't ask him if he's too tired to stay. He falls asleep on the couch alone.

He goes out two nights in a row. At the bar a woman flirts with him. She is a hot babe, the kind of woman who might not listen to what she says (and who wouldn't listen to what Johnny says) but whose boobs he would surely remember. The kind of woman to have a drink and have a fuck with without either of them looking for more. It would be so easy, he thinks.

Miguel asks "Are you not going out with Mr.LaRusso tonight?" as if he was used to doing it every Sunday, after Daniel saw his kids.

In the advent calendar he finds a small cobra (a fake one, not a real cobra because it would be scary and...deadly probably) with a headband. Seeing the band on the cobra's head doesn't make him think of Ali for the first time in thirty-five years.

Daniel texts him. "Are you all right? Have you become the Grinch?"

He doesn't reply.

On the phone, a delivery boy asks for confirmation of the address to deliver the shopping for Christmas dinner with Robby. Dinner he obviously wouldn't have ordered had it been for him.

Daniel texts him "Remember to take the food out of the fridge two hours before the dinner."

He doesn't reply.

Daniel texts him. "Asshole." (Is he? Probably. Maybe he should have texted him "coward" it suited him more.)

Strike first strike first strike first.

The thing is: Johnny isn't an idiot. Of course he is an idiot in some way, but it's not really the point. He knows with every fiber of his body that this is probably the closest thing he will get to a relationship. Even to be in love. The problem is that everything Johnny knows about love is what he lived in a two-year relationship with a girl, with which he didn't even get along very well, when he was sixteen. After that nothing, he got stuck.

And then he doesn't know what to do with these feelings, he doesn't know how to match his idea of love (that of a sixteen year old with too many hormones, always too angry and so lost) with this sense of intimacy, with this warmth. He doesn't know how to explain  to the sixteen year old Johnny who came home angry and wanted to kick LaRusso's butt who maybe, maybe they could be in love with that ridiculous man in the deer sweaters who drives them crazy, makes them question all the choices of their lives and reminds them to buy tree scissors for their son and looks at them with those giant doe eyes that make their knees tremble.

Not to mention the tiny detail that that love may very well not be reciprocated because LaRusso is an idiot.

It would be so easy to strike first. Buy that girl a drink in the pub, turn off the phone, have a good fuck. It would be so easy.

Robby says "Thanks dad, they are great" when he opens the scissors.  Robby chews his food and says "It tastes amazing, a lot better than when you try to cook!" And then smiles, like a kid, like a young man ready to conquer the world, to open up to the world and not as a boy with whom his parents have failed many times, who has months of juvie behind him and a lot of therapy sessions to deal with. Johnny looks at him and he's so happy and he feels so bad that he doesn't deserve it that he just wants to punch something. Or drink too many beers and fall into a coma.

"Are you okay, dad?" Robby asks.

It would be so easy.

"Have you ever thought that there is someone who wants to make you happy?"

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve.

("Asshole")

LaRusso is still in his pajamas pants when he opens the door. Since he and Amanda got divorced he has let his hair grow slightly and now they are all messed up on his head and he looks silly.

"I expected you were already dressed to go to work." Says to him.

LaRusso yawns and snorts. "I expected you to respond to my messages." but then adds with a note of concern in his voice "Are you okay? Did something happen with Robby?"

Johnny waves in front of him the replica of the All Valley tournament trophy, still partially wrapped, with the number 24 sticking out among the paper.

He reads aloud "World's second best sensei. You are such an arrogant prick."

LaRusso stares at him with a smug look and says "Well it takes one to know one." and  "I was referring to Mr. Miyagi, dumbass."

And now he's an asshole.

LaRusso bursts out laughing and Johnny seriously wants to beat him.

"" You ... You are impossible! You are so annoying and you do things like this and I can't stand you! ".

Daniel raises an eye brown. "It looks like you can, instead."

"And you can never shut up, you are unbearable! You get under my skin like some fungus! Nobody makes me feel like that."

Because it is true. He's not sure if he likes it but no one will ever make him feel that way. Nobody before, nobody after. In Johnny's life there will always be a before and after Daniel LaRusso. Not that he'll ever tell that prick who already thinks he's better than everyone else and definitely doesn't need someone to pump his ego even more.

"Hey, hasn't anyone ever taught you just to say thank you when someone gives you a gift?"

"No one has ever taught me a lot of things." And he thinks of Kreese.

LaRusso takes a step in his direction by invading his space and takes his hands (which are still holding the trophy so in reality the scene is more awkward than romantic).

"Yet you have learned so much anyway." He smiles at him, with a smile different from the one of the commercials, more open, more sincere. "And you're teaching a lot of right things to your students too. Under all that No Mercy bullshit you're teaching them a lot. It wasn't a joke, the trophy. I mean it."

Johnny thinks she could almost kiss him. Then he remembers one thing.

"How did you know about the Atari console? I didn't even know you when I was playing video games."

Daniel lights up, like a magician ready to reveal a trick to his audience. "That? Robby told me. Apparently you told him once when you were drunk and sad. He also told me which bootleg you were missing and helped me get some packages. I could have asked Miguel probably but Sam says he can't keep a secret to save his life and I didn't want to risk him revealing my identity. Of course I couldn't think you thought of Ali first than me. He laughs, his eyes shine. "Anyway I could have asked a lot of people. You may not know but there are a lot of people who care about you and would like to make you happy. When you are not busy being an asshole or pushing others away because you are scared it's very easy to care for you, Johnny Lawrence. "

"Have you ever thought that there is someone who wants to make you happy?"

Johnny pins him against the front door and kisses him and for a moment LaRusso freezes and doesn't reciprocate and Johnny thinks he shall punch him because there is no possibility that he has misread this situation. Then Daniel melts into the kiss and kisses him back and it's the opposite of what he imagined when he was sixteen. It's not a battle, it's meeting halfway. It's not a fight, it's peace, it's like coming home and finding a new home at the same time.

Daniel starts laughing in the kiss and Johnny is forced to pull back slightly before he can suffocate and die which wouldn't be a very bright way to start this phase of his life.

"What now?"

LaRusso smiles as if he has discovered some secret and murmurs on his neck "You didn't need the mistletoe at the end."

Johnny sighs because he is an idiot and then kisses him again. He feels giddy, happy.

Daniel budges away from him, without breaking the embrace.

"You know, under these pajamas pants I have some Christmas boxers with a reindeer." He raises an eyebrow "I'm telling you because maybe, maybe you still want to fight me to make me take them off like you did with the sweater."

"Has this atrocious line ever worked with anyone?"

"I don't know, is it working?"