From where he was sitting on the mats in the back room of the dojo, Miguel leaned forward, stretching his hands out to grab his right ankle, holding the position for thirty seconds. Sensei Lawrence had said stretching after practice was just as important as loosening up the muscles beforehand, since you didn't want to end up with pulled ligaments, and while Miguel wasn't always good about it, that night he remembered the post-exercise wind down. He wasn't sure exactly what he had accomplished, going to Cobra Kai that evening, besides an extra workout. Perhaps he'd just needed some more time to clear his head.

He just hadn't been able to get Sam out of it, not even after he'd left the restaurant he and the other Cobras had been hanging out in earlier that day. Miguel had come to the dojo in the hopes that Sensei Lawrence might be able to give him some advice about how he could go all-in with regards to winning Sam back, since Tory had shot down his photoshop video as too desperate. But his Sensei hadn't been there. Sensei Kreese was the one manning the fort that night. And Miguel still didn't feel entirely comfortable being alone with him, even knowing he was just sitting in the office. He couldn't place the source of his discomfort. It just felt weird, like the feeling you get when you're alone in a dark hallway and the hairs on the back of your neck suddenly stand up.

The whole night honestly felt like a waste. Shaking his head, Miguel thought to himself that he should've taken Tory up on her offer to spend some time in her company, to get his mind off Sam. He should've struck first. Instead of ending the night getting to know the new girl who'd handed his ass to him, all he had to show for his time was sweat stains on his faded white gi. God, he couldn't have been more obvious how desperate he was to get his girlfriend back, could he?

The sound of muffled voices knocked Miguel out of his thoughts. Standing to his feet, he walked to the hallway, and his brows pinched when he saw Hawk and Moon talking outside the dojo. He couldn't make out the words through the window, but judging from Moon's gesticulations, things looked pretty heated. Then, suddenly, she was walking away, and Hawk was yanking off his shirt, calling something out to her. Rubbing the back of his neck, Miguel turned around and walked back into the room he'd been in, to give them some privacy.

He needn't have bothered. Not five minutes later, Hawk came storming into the back room with a stony glower on his face. He brushed right past Miguel, like he didn't even see him at all, and launched himself furiously at the standing punching bag. Miguel watched as his friend absolutely whaled into it, throwing punch after angry punch, the scowl on his mouth deepening with each hit he made. Miguel had never seen Hawk so mad.

That probably meant only one thing. Moon must have just dumped him. And, not willing to just stand there awkwardly, Miguel broke the silence between them. "You okay?" he asked simply. What else was he supposed to say?

Hawk stopped hitting the bag for a moment, to catch his breath, but he didn't turn around to look at Miguel. He rolled back his bare shoulders once to loosen his muscles, giving the impression that the raptor tattooed on his back was flapping its wings. Then he said, "I got into a fight. With Miyagi-Do." With a frown, he recommenced attacking the punching bag in front of him with renewed vigor.

"What?!" asked Miguel, his face contorted in confusion. That wasn't the answer he had been expecting to hear. He had assumed Hawk would admit that his girlfriend had just broken things off; the signs were pretty obvious, after all. But that news caught him off-guard. "Why did you fight Miyagi-Do?" When the hell did this happen? Was that the reason Hawk had suddenly left the restaurant, taking along the new Cobras with him?

The frantic punches stopped again, but Hawk still didn't turn around. "Demetri joined Miyagi-Do. He insulted our dojo and our Sensei on Yelp." He struck the punching bag again, jabbing his knuckles hard against it over and over. Taking another couple deep breaths, he added, "I tried to put him in his place. But then Robby and Sam butted in. We lost the fight." Another firm hit to the bag followed that statement.

Miguel could hardly believe what he was hearing, and he tried to piece together the story from what fragments Hawk was giving him. Demetri had joined Miyagi-Do? He'd insulted Cobra Kai online? And Hawk had gotten into a fight with him and the others at Miyagi-Do over it? "Why would you get into a fight over that?" he asked, walking around to the other side of the punching bag, since it seemed that Hawk wasn't going to bother looking him in the face.

That got Hawk to stop hitting the bag, and Miguel could see the tell-tale bruise on his left cheekbone that stood as the testament to his fight earlier that day. That, combined with his new red mohawk he'd started sporting gave him a legitimately threatening air that Miguel didn't think suited him; God, he barely looked like the old Eli at all anymore. Hawk met his eyes briefly, then looked away, the frown never leaving his face. "Demetri betrayed us," he explained, like that was all that needed to be said.

Standing there, catching his breath from his sudden burst of furious energy, Hawk didn't expect Miguel to understand. Just like Moon didn't understand. Nobody did, because Hawk never could explain things very well. He wasn't articulate enough. His English class teachers were always getting on his back about that. Speak the fuck up, Lip. He saw the way Miguel just shook his head in disbelief, giving him the same look that Moon had given him outside. That was just what he needed that night, back-to-back chew-outs by the two people whose opinions he valued the most.

"Dude, that sucks that Demetri joined Miyagi-Do, but getting into a fist-fight over it?" Miguel crossed his arms. "That's a bit much, don't you think? Although from the sounds of it, you mustn't have been thinking much at all." Miguel was the only student in the dojo who would have the balls to say that to him, besides maybe Aisha.

"Screw you, man," Hawk snapped coldly.

"Looks like you're the one who got screwed," Miguel parried back irately. He couldn't imagine what must have been going through Hawk's mind at the time to justify going off the rails over something inconsequential like that. "Just, I mean, really, you fought him over a Yelp review? You know we could have just written our own reviews to counter his, right? I could get being mad about it, especially if he was ragging on Sensei, but it wasn't really worth losing your cool over, was it? You should've just left it alone."

Hawk narrowed his eyes meanly and jutted his chin out in defiance. "I'm not soft like that."

Rolling his own eyes, Miguel responded sharply, "I didn't say you were soft."

"You just said you wanted me to be," retorted Hawk. So Miguel was going to be like that, too, huh? As Eli, he'd been bullied for being soft. Now as Hawk, he was being punished for being hard. What the fuck did people want from him? "I did what Sensei told us to do. I made a choice. I went all-in." He had powered forward, with tunnel vision, so worried about what the consequences of Demetri's review would be if the wrong eyes fell on it.

"I'm pretty sure that's not what Sensei meant by that," said Miguel, so assuredly. Jesus, what would Sensei Lawrence say if he heard about this? Did Hawk want to go back to mat-scrubbing duty, because that was probably where he'd be headed if Sensei caught wind of his antics, especially if he learned that Hawk had lost on top of it, too. Bad enough to get in a fight for a stupid reason, but to also make Cobra Kai look bad by losing? Sensei wouldn't like that.

"Then maybe he should've been fucking clear about it!" Hawk bit back. Wasn't that just how things were lately? Sensei would tell them to do something, Hawk would do what he said, and then he'd get chastised for it.

Rapidly beginning to lose his patience with Hawk's misplaced rage, Miguel asked him disbelievingly, "So what, you're gonna blame Sensei now?"

Hawk countered, "I'm the one who defended Sensei! By trying to get Demetri to take down his review. He wouldn't do it. I had to fight him. If Robby and Sam hadn't butted in, I would've made him take it down!" He was getting riled up again. His arms were starting to shake by his sides. He wanted so desperately to start whaling into the punching bag again, to get all of those bad feelings out of him. Instead, he verbally jabbed at Miguel with, "I guess I just care about Cobra Kai more than you."

Miguel really wanted to know how Hawk's mind worked sometimes. Because, in moments like these, his friend came to the most outrageous conclusions. It was like someone asked him what two plus two equaled, and he answered, "Apples." It made no sense to Miguel. And that lack of sense was starting to grate on his own nerves. How could Hawk not understand that what he did was out of line? And how could he accuse him of not caring about Cobra Kai's reputation?

So, against his better inclination, Miguel furrowed his dark brows and attacked back. "I'm guessing Moon didn't agree with any of that, did she?" He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. He ought to have had better control over his own temper if he was going to call out his friend for losing his.

The features on Hawk's face went cold again, and Miguel knew he'd struck a nerve. He shouldn't have been surprised that the next thing out of Hawk's mouth would be more venom. "Tell me again how you and Sam broke up," he spat, curling his scarred upper lip back in distaste. That hit its mark. Hawk watched the way Miguel's face suddenly shifted from self-righteous frustration to self-conscious embarrassment so visibly in the blink of an eye.

Who the hell was Miguel to get on Hawk for getting dumped over losing his temper when he hit his own girlfriend in the heat of a drunken fight against Robby? Talk about doing stupid shit, pot meet kettle.

Taking a deep, calming breath, Miguel decided to be the bigger man and apologize first. "Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that."

But Hawk wasn't having it. "Yeah, you did," he muttered, turning away and walking over to sit down against the nearby wall, where the words "Cobra Kai Never Dies" had been painted in white. He pulled his knees up and rested his arms over them, and began fumbling with his fingers.

Tired of the fighting, Miguel followed suit and sat down beside him. The two sat there in silence for a few long minutes, each enveloped in his own thoughts. "Can you just explain it to me?" asked Miguel, more softly this time. He could understand that Hawk, in his own outrageous way, really did probably think he was doing what Sensei told them by going all-in. But he needed to hear it explained in order to comprehend.

Still staring straight ahead, Hawk asked defensively, "Explain what?"

"Why were you so threatened by a Yelp review?" clarified Miguel. He gave Hawk a little nudge with his elbow, adding, "Only yuppies and hipsters pay attention to Yelp reviews anyway."

Hawk snorted before he could stop himself, but offered for elucidation, "Same reason why Sensei was mad about the 'snake in the grass' dig."

Arching an eyebrow skeptically, Miguel said, "Yeah, but Sensei and Sam's dad already had long-standing beef. Haven't you and Demetri been friends for, like, ever?" Miguel wasn't blind, he saw the tension that had been building between Hawk and Demetri for a while, although he hadn't wanted to interfere; he had his own problems to deal with, after all, trying to win Sam back. He just didn't get what all the hostility was about. Demetri could be a bit of a whiner, sure; okay, a lot of a whiner; but Hawk's reactions seemed totally out of proportion to any perceived wrongdoing.

Hawk's eyes hardened. "All he had to do was come back to Cobra Kai. I told him to, multiple times. But just because Sensei Lawrence tossed him to the mat once and Sensei Kreese gave him a couple stitches, he pussied out. Then he dragged the whole dojo on Yelp." Seeing the way Miguel was shaking his head again from the corner of his vision, he scoffed. "You don't get it. What if my parents saw the review?"

Miguel cracked a grin and tried defusing the situation with a bit more humor. "Are your parents yuppies? Nah, they're probably hipsters, right?"

But Hawk wasn't in the mood for joviality at the moment. "They almost pulled me from Cobra Kai once, you know that? When they read Sensei's rap sheet online. They think he's a crazy drunk and that he's probably gonna get me killed or something."

That sobered things for Miguel a bit. He could relate to that, since his mother did pull him from the dojo after Kyler and his gang had beaten him up at the Halloween dance. She'd also, at the time, thought that Sensei Lawrence was a bad influence and was only going to get him hurt. That, at least, made some sense from Hawk's perspective, even if it was still a gross overreaction to what should have been a minor transgression. If Miguel's mom was that protective, he could only imagine what Hawk's helicopter parents would do if they had any reason to suspect Cobra Kai was dangerous. Miguel had a suspicion, however, that that wasn't everything. "Is that the only reason?" he asked, raising his brows and scooting closer.

Hawk looked down at his fidgeting thumbs and narrowed his eyes, ceasing with the stimming. "I can't go back to the way things were," he said matter-of-factly, expecting Miguel to get what he was saying. "I won't."

But the boy beside him didn't understand what confronting Demetri over his Yelp review had to do with that. "I guess you're right, man," admitted Miguel, "I don't get it."

Finally looking at him, Hawk gave Miguel a sad half-smirk for a brief second, before looking back down. "No, you don't, do you?" He appreciated Miguel's honesty. At least he admitted it. It was one of the reasons he liked Miguel so much. They might not have always seen eye to eye, but at least he didn't play head games with Hawk like other people did. With Miguel, what you saw was what you got. And Miguel didn't deserve to be on the receiving end of his sour mood, Hawk realized, now that he had a little time to cool off.

And with that realization came the super consciousness of how close Miguel was as he sat beside him. Hawk, whose sensations were hypersensitive from being so incensed previously, could feel his friend's body heat, he was sitting so close. It made him tense. What did that mean? "So," Hawk said, switching the topic back around to try and get his mind off it, "you think I didn't get what Sensei meant about going all-in?"

Accepting the offer to relax things between them, Miguel grimaced humorously, trying to be funny again. "Pretty sure this qualifies as a swing and a miss, buddy." This time, Hawk didn't mind his joke as much. In fact, he welcomed it, as he understood what his friend meant by it. He was just trying to help him feel better.

"Oh yeah?" he asked with a more straightforward smile, looking beside him again at Miguel. He couldn't help but notice his cheesy grin, the way it brightened his face. Hawk wanted to chase that good mood of his, to see if maybe it was contagious.

Because his breakup was still very raw. He felt a stabbing pain, right in the area around the tattoo on his collarbone. And Hawk didn't like that feeling of raw pain. It cut too deep. Was it going to be like it had been for Miguel, his breakup? Would he pine for Moon the same way Miguel still did for Sam? Would that ever stop? What if it never did?

And it wasn't just Moon dumping him that hurt. Demetri's actions did, too. All Eli had wanted was for Demetri to do what he did, to let Cobra Kai transform him into something that the world wouldn't hate so much. But Demetri refused to do that, he refused to give up who he was just to make others like him. And it was clear that he looked down on Hawk for doing just that. He could see right through Hawk's bullshit.

Those thoughts scared Hawk. If there was anything Hawk hated more than pain, it was fear. And neither were supposed to exist in that dojo. Fear. Pain. Defeat. None of it existed.

So he didn't think. He acted. Straight on his emotions, even though that had just gotten him in trouble at the mall. He went all-in, hoping this time he got it right. Strike first.

Hawk leaned over and pressed his lips against Miguel's. The contact felt like a light of fire that immediately spread through his body, warming it thoroughly. It tingled, like the feeling he got when holding chilled fingers near an open flame to get the feeling back in them. He didn't linger too long, the whole thing was very brief, worried as he was that the fire would burn him if he stayed too long.

Miguel didn't move. He just sat there, frozen, frigid with surprise. Was he immobilized by fear or by excitement? He couldn't be quite sure himself. When Hawk drew back, Miguel took a long look at his face. Had that just happened? "Oh shit," he breathed, raising his eyebrows high on his forehead.

Hawk agreed, casting his eyes away from Miguel's bewildered stare, whispering back, "Oh shit."