#samobby

She and Robby hardly have moments alone anymore, mostly because Sam felt it would be wrong, that even spending any one-on-one time with him would be like cheating on her boyfriend. But that’s bullshit and she knows it, and she doesn’t want to give in to that patriarchal way of thinking even if it is a self-imposed punishment she’s convinced herself she deserves—oh, all of this is so irrelevant right now, she needs to find her headband.

It’s not anywhere in plain sight, so Sam prays it’s on the unoccupied bed. She takes the blankets and ruffles them up and down, looking over and under to no avail.

“Are you looking for Miguel?” Robby asks.

That makes her pause. With a furrowed brow and a tone that might come off a little rude, she responds, “No. Miguel’s not here, remember?”

Robby blinks. “Oh. Right. Um, any word from him or my dad?”

“Not yet.” Sam lets go of the blankets and frowns, noting that he’s wearing the same clothes he was yesterday. “Are you okay? How drunk did you get last night?”

A fearful sort of shadow passes over her fellow captain’s face, and yet he still doesn’t get up, still lying stiffly on the bed. “I don’t know. How drunk did I get?”

Maybe he’s still drunk. She wouldn’t know, she’s never seen a drunk Robby Keene, nor has anyone else. Maybe he was just a little dumber after he had a few shots in him.

“I don’t know,” she repeats his words back to him, lips quirking in a thin line, “I left, remember?”

Robby swallows, visibly. “You left?”

“Yeah. Didn’t wanna be in the same place as the Cobras. Not that it mattered, a few of them caught up with me anyway.”

He sits up, suddenly more lively than he’s been since she walked in. “Did they hurt you?”

“No, they were drunk too. Just spouting off some nonsense.” Besides, even if they had tried to attack, she was almost certain her and Axel could’ve taken them (though she cringes at the thought of Axel translating it to some kind of power couple moment). “Robby, did you hit your head last night or something?”

It’s meant as a joke, albeit a serious one, but he doesn’t laugh. He only runs a hand through his hair, like he’s not quite sure where he is and he’s trying to come back to reality.

“I…don’t remember much,” he confesses quietly. “I remember the Cobras coming in and talking to me. Just trying to start shit, same as they did with you,” he reassures her when she steps forward with wide, concerned eyes. “I couldn’t find Eli or Demetri. Couldn’t find you. And then Zara…”

“Zara?” Had Zara been there? What were the odds of all of them going to the same bar? Barcelona couldn’t possibly be this small.

“Zara…” Robby runs his fingers through his hair again, clearly stressed out and trying to give himself some comfort. Sam feels a bit of sadness—she knows Johnny had to go see Carmen, but had he even said goodbye to his son? She couldn’t imagine her dad leaving the country without at least hugging her, and telling her to be safe.

“Zara came up to me,” he continues, snapping her out of her thoughts. “And I don’t remember anything after that. But…I woke up in her bed today.”

Sam’s veins turn to ice. 

“What?”

There’s a falter in Robby’s expression as their eyes meet, and he winces lightly. “Yeah, I know I fucked up, sleeping with the competition and all.”

There’s a buzzing in her head that is begging for Robby to be playing a practical joke on her. She doesn’t want to acknowledge what he’s saying. They’d all been there at the bar—Hawk, Demetri—she’d been sure one of them would be Robby’s designated driver, or walker, in this scenario. One of them must have seen…one of them must have noticed…

“Robby, you…” Sam swallows, a queasy feeling rising in her throat. “You don’t remember going to her room?”

“No.” His eyes are dim, and he looks down at the bed as though he’s talking about a sparring match he lost. “It was a stupid mistake, okay? You don’t have to tell me.”

Her heart feels like it’s in her throat. “No, Robby, that’s not what I’m saying.” Finally, her feet move, and she sits on the bed in front of him, eyes searching his face in an urgent worry. “You two had sex?”

He bristles. “Apparently. Like I said, I don’t remember. She said she did, though. I didn’t even ask her anything, I just felt weird so I came back here and I’ve been doing nothing.”

Voice cracking, she says his name as softly as she can. “Robby.”

The ends of his brows meet as he furrows them, his body shrinking under her scrutiny. Sam wants to ease up, wants to back off and allow him her space, but she feels like she can’t breathe.

Zara didn’t. Zara couldn’t have.

And Robby can’t be referring to it as a mistake. Least of all his mistake.

Her heart cracks seeing his dazed but nervous eyes, kind green eyes that had never been good at seeing the injustices dealt to him. How is she meant to say this? How is she meant to tell him?

Robby, you were assaulted.

“Um, if you were drunk,” she starts, biting her lip, “it doesn’t sound like you, um…it doesn’t sound like you consented to it.”

Something flickers in his gaze, and Robby leans back, shaking his head. As if to say no, that’s not possible. “I must have at some point last night. I probably said yes.”

“You were drunk,” Sam whispers, her nails digging into her palms, “Robby, that’s not consent. Was…was she drunk too?”

From just the look he’s giving her, she knows what the answer is. She knows what Zara must have done. The unimaginable. 

And suddenly she’s fantasizing about knocking the girl’s phone out of her hand before proceeding to give her the beatdown of a lifetime. Sam feels her blood run hot, as Robby shakes his head again, saying she remembered everything again. And this isn’t any particular desire to beat her on the mat, oh no. Right now, her current fantasy is kicking the shit out of Zara after she’s expelled from the competition entirely.

How dare she. How dare she, how dare she, how dare she. How dare she do it at all, and how dare she do it to one of her friends.

“We have to tell someone,” Sam chokes out, barely keeping a hold on her anger, “we have to tell my dad, your dad—”

“No!” Robby says, raising his voice for the first time, his eyes wide. “Don’t tell them anything, Sam. I mean it.”

A hopeless sort of feeling blooms in her chest and she responds in a weak voice. “What? Robby, what she did isn’t okay, we can’t let her just do that and walk off scott free! Someone needs to do something! Oh my God, if Tory finds out what she did—” And Sam leaps up, her heart pounding out of its chest from rage, concern, fear, she doesn’t know what at this point. Her feet are moving on their own, almost like she could just walk up to Tory’s room right now to tell her exactly what the fuck Zara did so that the two of them can kill her together.

But before she can take a step, Robby is up on his feet too, grabbing her hand in a panic. “Don’t tell Tory.” His voice cracks. “Please.”

The little tremble that follows is what calms her down just enough to look at him. To really look at him. Not just his disheveled, confused, hurt state, but. All of it. Robby has been a mess since they got here, and since maybe before that. Wracked with guilt for what happened with Kenny, devastated at having to watch his almost stepbrother get to go to college while he himself would never even apply, faced with fighting against his girlfriend in the biggest tournament in the world. 

She thinks back to a few days ago when she’d given him grief for not telling them about Kreese, and Sam hates herself a little.

Robby’s shaking, still holding on her hand in such a light grip that it doesn’t really seem like he’s trying to stop her, but rather trying to ground himself. She breathes his name and raises both their hands up, along with her other one, to rest on his cheeks. It’s not a good look, to cup her ex-boyfriend’s face when her actual boyfriend is in a whole other country, but right now, she couldn’t care less.

He leans into her touch, shutting his eyes. There’s a lump in Sam’s throat and she feels tears spring to her eyes, tears that she commands with all her willpower not to fall. He just…he looks so beat up, despite a lack of bruises or cuts, and she’s seen Robby look hurt, angry, upset, but she’s never seen him look so defeated.

Slowly, without being sure who moves first, Sam is hugging him. His own hands rest weakly on her back, and he, Jesus Christ, still smells like alcohol. Oh, Robby. She wants to scream, wants to cry, but wills herself to try and be rational, or at least as rational as she’s supposed to be after learning one of her teammates, one of her friends, was taken advantage of in such a horrible way.

“I should never have drunk anything,” comes his quiet voice, and even as she shakes her head to try and tell him not to even think about blaming himself for this, he keeps going. “Of course someone did something to me. I was so stupid.”

“Don’t say that,” she pleads, pulling him closer, hoping that her hands that are constantly training and fighting might still have some comfort or compassion in them. “Robby, this wasn’t your fault. You can’t think that.”

“I’m the one who got drunk.”

“Everyone there was drunk. I—fuck.” Sam pulls back and Robby automatically stumbles back and sits without the support of her arms, so she follows suit and sits too. It’s uncharacteristic of her to swear, or at least to swear out loud, but the horrible feeling in her chest has spread down to her stomach. “I should never have left. I was sober, I should have kept an eye on you instead of leaving it to Demetri and Hawk.”

Even now, with everything that’s happened and the fact that he’s the one who got hurt, he still gazes at her with those kind green eyes (even when he was in Cobra Kai, Robby’s eyes never had the look—he didn’t really have the killer instinct, and she wonders if anyone else noticed that) and he reaches out and touches her hand. 

Robby, Robby who’d cut her off at Moon’s party which feels like forever ago, Robby who’d let her lean on him the entire walk to the car, Robby who’d taken her to his dad’s place despite hating him then just to keep her from getting in trouble. Robby who she should’ve taken care of the same way yesterday. 

“This was not your fault,” the same Robby says, firmly sounding more sure about that than anything else he’s said the past few minutes, “it wasn’t.”

He’s not touching her just to reassure her, Sam realizes, it’s because he’s desperately trying to get some kind of contact, some kind of comfort. So she turns her palm and lets him hold it without any kind of hesitation.

And she doesn’t believe him, but this isn’t about making Robby soothe her own conscience, so she drops the topic. For now.

“Are you okay?” she asks first, immediately cringing at how stupid it sounds. “Sorry, I mean, just, how do you feel right now? Shitty, I know, but—”

“I’m okay,” he mumbles, in a decidedly not-okay way.

“Can I ask…can I ask why you don’t want to tell anyone?”

Robby looks away, a wary, hazy expression on his face. “I just. I’m already letting everyone down, Sam. Don’t say it’s not true,” he cuts off her protest, “the first round, you and Miguel were still going strong, and I let myself get distracted and forced us out. And I just, keep fucking doing it. I got captain and I’ve done nothing to actually earn it. Both our dads are disappointed in me. I’m letting the team down. I’m letting myself down. I wanted to win. I wanted to win,” he repeats in distress, and she can only squeeze his hand intently, “and all I’ve done is lose. Last thing I need is for them to realize that I’ve done something even more pathetic.”

She wants to argue. Wants to say that none of this matters, that the team and their fathers wouldn’t ever blame him for this, but how can she say that? How can she say for sure? In the most horrible corner of her mind’s eye, she can almost see Demetri shrugging. At least she’s hot. She can see her father making an awkward face, trying to make things sound better than they are. We don’t want to make a scene and jeopardize our place here. She can see Johnny…can she see Johnny? Has she even seen Johnny talk to his son one-on-one since they’ve been here? Would there be anyone on the team who would wholeheartedly support Robby right now?

Miguel would, she thinks, because she’ll go insane if she doesn’t. If Miguel was here, he’d be right next to Sam, comforting his brother. He’d know what to do. He’s much more rational than she is, ironically the Miyagi Do-esque stopper on her Cobra Kai-esque tendencies. 

But everyone else on the team, Sam can’t say. She hates it. She doesn’t want to believe the worst of them, but can’t believe the best either.

So all she says is, softly, “And Tory?”

Robby shudders, shutting his eyes for a second. “You don’t think if I tell Tory she won’t try and commit murder? Tory needs this win. She can’t get kicked out of the competition. I can’t do that to her.”

That’s true. Tory would fly off the rails. Sam’s been the target of that insane rage once before. A very vengeful part of her wants to see Zara be the next target. Wants to assist. Maybe to ringlead.

But if Robby doesn’t want her to say anything to anyone, how can she go behind his back to do that?

Sam’s face twists into something painful, a grimace that always makes itself visible when she loses something. “That’s not fair. It’s not fair that you’re trying to spare everyone’s feelings but your own. Zara deserves to get kicked out of the competition, at least. I know there’s no way of reporting it without letting the senseis find out, but…Robby, it’s not fair,” she says again, as though he’s not completely aware of how unfair it is. “That’s not—it’s not—you didn’t deserve that. No one deserves that. I don’t…I want to help you. Tell me how I can help you,” she pleads.

Above everything, Sam hates feeling helpless.

He looks down, staring at their joined hands with his messy hair sticking out in different ways. It shatters her heart completely, thinking of him coming back to this room in the morning, completely out of it, and then being alone. It reminds her of how she’d cried the first time she found out he’d been living without electricity and all by himself at his apartment. Alone then, too.

But fuck that, she thinks spitefully, she’d made sure he had food and water and a home then, and she’ll make sure he always has at least one person on his side now. Even if it means not getting to beat the shit out of Zara, even if it means snapping at her teammates if they badmouth the other captain. Robby’s been through enough. She doesn’t care about winning this much.

“Can you stay here?” he requests softly, and Sam nods vigorously.

“Yeah. I’ll have room service bring us up some water and food, okay? You haven’t eaten?” He shakes his head. “Okay, I’ll order up some pancakes. And eggs too. And ice cream?”

He shrugs. “Whatever you want.”

It should be whatever he wants. But no one goes through things like this with their appetite as their first priority. So she gets a little bit of everything off the breakfast menu, as Robby lays back down, staring up at the ceiling again. She thanks the host, before hanging up and joining him. They’re both above the blankets, not really looking at each other, wondering what to do. 

This time, Sam takes the initiative and reaches out to hold his hand. He squeezes and she can feel the gratitude.

“You’re, um…” Robby speaks up after a few minutes. “Really knowledgeable about this. I mean, fuck, that’s the wrong word. You just seem like you know what you’re doing.”

There’s a question in there, but she doesn’t know if she wants to talk about the answer. Remembering that hand, trying to touch her, the sinking feeling in her stomach when she’d realized how fucking stupid she’d been.

“We weren’t in the same school then,” Sam begins hesitantly, “but a little bit before we met, I…I was on a date. The guy tried to…score.” She cringes just saying that. “He never got far, I stopped him, but he still tried. And the next day he spread a rumor that we. Y’know. Did stuff. Pretty much everyone believed him.”

There’s no answer, so she turns her head only to realize Robby is all but glaring, not at her, but his brows are pinched so hard that she’d believe he’d invent time travel to prevent it from happening to her in the first place. “Who?”

Any other day, she would say it didn’t matter. Today, because it’s Robby, she answers simply, “Kyler.”

His eyes widen. Sam knows what he’s thinking immediately. He’d hung out with Kyler. Had practically been friends with him. At that time, it hadn’t felt as big a betrayal as him being friends with Tory, because Robby only just learned about Kyler—he’d always known that Tory had attacked her. And if it was anyone else, on any other day, Sam might’ve asked if it would have mattered if he knew about Kyler. If Robby had been so bent on hurting her, would he have really stopped at that boundary?

(And would it have hurt him so much if she had cheated on him with anyone other than the guy who had humiliated him at the All Valley? The guy who his dad had chosen over him? Had she crossed the unimaginable boundary first? Had she deserved what came next?)

She’ll probably never have her answer. But Robby offers a muted, “I’m sorry, Sam,” which makes her need for an answer a little less urgent. “Does Miguel know…?”

“No.” Of course he didn’t. A few months ago, after his campus visit, Miguel had laughed recounting everything to her, saying Kyler’s kinda okay now? and she’d said nothing, only smiling along and pretending that she didn’t resent it. Miguel didn’t know what he’d tried. She’d never spoken about it until now. But he had known about the rumors. Hell, he’d been the one to beat Kyler up for them. For all of Hawk’s snickering about how everyone Kyler had bullied got to beat him up, she’d never had the opportunity. 

Once again, Sam wonders if it would matter. A second later, she reminds herself that this isn’t about her. Not right now.

“It’s okay,” she murmurs, even though it isn’t.

After a few seconds, she asks, “What about Chozen?”

“What about him?”

“Would you tell him? He doesn’t really do the whole disappointed dad act.”

Softly, he snorts. “Yeah, but he overreacts. Besides, word will still get back out to my dad.”

She turns to face him. “So you’re just going to…let her get away with this?” It’s crude of her to say, and a year of competitions and karate gang wars have definitely twisted her mindset into one that only seems to care about winning. And this isn’t just losing. This is an attack, a blow, a sucker punch when someone isn’t looking. 

Robby squeezes her hand again, facing her too, a never-ending, tired fight in his eyes. “What else am I supposed to do, Sam?”

It’s a genuine question. She’s tempted to simply pull him into a hug and hold him close until she was sure Zara was out of the vicinity, the building, the fucking country. She’s tempted for her answer to just be for him to lie low and let her take care of it—and whether taking care of it looks like going to the board and informing them what happened or breaking down Zara’s door then crane kicking her Dad-style in the face, she hasn’t decided yet.

There’s a knock on the door that makes them both flinch, and their shoulders relax at the same time when the person calls out “room service!” Sam stands, going to grab the food.

She might have overdone it, she realizes, when she runs out of hands to hold everything. Eggs, pancakes, bacon, hash browns, waffles, donuts, eclairs, ice cream, small cakes, and more. 

Right as she’s about to request that the delivery guy just leave the cart with them, Robby comes up behind her, taking the rest. He thanks the guy and closes the door, and their eyes meet in bewilderment until a small laugh escapes him. Sam’s heart flutters at the sound, amazed that he even has it in him.

“You really ordered everything, huh? You know we have a limit on how much we can charge on the card?”

“It’s okay.” Sam puts everything in her arms onto the hotel table, sitting on top of it before opening the bags. “I’ll charge it to my card before my dad finds out and gets pissed.”

Robby nods, setting the trays in his hands down as well. They both look down, and her stomach even growls, but neither of them dig in. 

He looks uneasy.

“Hey,” she says softly, “penny for your thoughts?”

Gnawing at his lower lip, Robby sits on the rolling chair in front of her. His expression is pensive, and he makes no motion to touch the food, so Sam doesn’t either. It wouldn’t be fair.

“How am I gonna do the next event?” he whispers hopelessly. “Seeing Tory and Kwon is already messing with me enough. Now Zara? I don’t want to see her. I—I’m getting the feeling that if I do, I’ll be off my game even more. I don’t wanna fuck this up, but I will.”

Sam takes a deep breath. “Robby, can I be honest?” A small nod. “You’re putting way too much importance on the competition. I know it means a lot to you and everyone else to win, and I want to win too, more than anything, but…” She thinks for a second, wondering if she really wants to sue more discourse, but then decides screw it, she may as well. “You’ve been dealt a really shitty hand here. Our dads haven’t been fair to you. Our team hasn’t been fair to you. And I contributed to that when I told everyone about Kreese and Tory, and I’m sorry. I can’t make everyone else change what they think, so I don’t know if this helps you at all, but even if you singlehandedly cost us the next match, I won’t be mad at you. And no one’s gonna say shit to you if I can help it. If you don’t want me to tell anyone what Zara did, fine, I can respect that. I haven’t told anyone about Kyler before either. But I’m also telling you that I’m in your corner whether you end up needing me or not. If you wanna win this thing, let’s eat and go train right now. Somewhere outside, so we don’t have to see Zara, or Kwon, or Tory. If you want to forfeit, I’ll help you figure out how and tell anyone you don’t wanna deliver the news to. If you wanna just stay in here and talk or not talk or order a hundred more things we won’t eat, I’ll do it.” She sets her jaw.  “We’re co-captains. It’s about time we act like it. I don’t care about the competition. You’re my friend. I care about you.”

She’s out of breath by the time she finishes her spiel, and she already knows there’s a million things she forgot to say, and a million more she knows she sounds privileged over—it’s easy for her not to care about the competition when she’s not pinning her entire future on it, of course, and she’s almost about to apologize but stops herself, because Robby Keene has never looked at her the way he is now.

His lips are parted, breathless. His cheeks are tinted red, less in embarrassment and more in astonishment. There’s tears in his eyes, but just like hers earlier, they don’t fall. The two gems shine like emeralds, the same way they do when he gets a point on someone in a match. She always notices them, bad as might sound when she is someone else’s girlfriend, but she can’t help what her mind focuses on.

“You’re in my corner?” Robby repeats, ever so quietly and with a tremor in his voice.

With a small, encouraging smile, she answers, “Always, Keene.” At least, starting now.

“Thank you.” His voice cracks, and Sam thinks it might be okay that she didn’t say all that she wanted to. She thinks Robby gets it. He’s good at that, at knowing what she’s thinking.

 “You wanna train?”

And that’s why it’s hardly surprising that he nods, because she clearly is also good at knowing what he’s thinking. There’s always more fight left in Robby even after life makes it its personal mission to try and beat it out of him. 

And speaking of which…

“I promise not to tell anyone if you don’t want me to.” She reaches over and squeezes his hand just like before. The image of herself in a black gi flashes in her mind’s eye, and for the first time, she isn’t scared of it. “But I also promise that if we advance, and I meet Zara on the mat, I’m going to knock her out so painfully her sponsors will never even put her face on their damn coffee mugs.”

She half expects him to argue, but instead—