The Fall of Icarus

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/22583233.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandoms: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Relationship: Miguel Diaz (Cobra Kai)/Robby Keene
Characters: Miguel Diaz (Cobra Kai), Robby Keene
Additional Tags: Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, Underage Drinking,
Post Season 2, Angst
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2020-02-06 Words: 3,271 Chapters: 1/1
 The Fall of Icarus
by flowersforflorence

Summary

Miguel was at a party, surrounded by friends and teammates, and here he was sitting in a
bathroom with Robby Keene. The last time he’d seen Robby he’d been falling back over the
balcony railing.
What had the world come to?

In which unlikely bonds are formed over alcohol, and bathtubs are made out to be much more
comfortable than they actually are.

Notes

I'm back with another one! I finally managed to write something from Miguel's POV and it
got a lot angstier than I expected. I think somewhere along the line I read Hamlet too many
times and forgot how to write anything but melodramatic interior monologues.
Miguel had been bruised, had bled, had been broken and put back together. He had fought
hard to be where he was now, had burnt his old self to the ground and risen from the ashes.
He had looked death in the eye and emerged triumphant.

The others saw him as a champion, a saviour, a martyr. They cheered at the sight of him, as if
his survival was a clever strategic move rather than just dumb luck. His very existence was
considered a victory over the enemy, a symbol of strength and fortitude.

He just felt brittle, on the brink of falling apart. As if part of him had been left behind when
he was rebuilt, leaving a gaping hole inside.

He looked around the party, full of the familiar faces of those who had fought alongside him,
and felt as if he was standing in a crowd of strangers. He didn’t know when he’d stopped
wanting to be the hero and started wishing to be invisible again.

Taking a deep breath, Miguel leaned back against the wall, shoving his hands in his pockets
to hide their trembling. A year ago, he would have loved this. He would have killed to be the
star of the party, the one everyone was talking about. But now everything was confusing and
wrong, he felt like an imposter in his own body. An uproar of cheers drew his eyes to the
front door and his stomach dropped.

Hawk.

Part of him ached to go stand by his best friend, to embrace his role as leader of Cobra Kai.
But since the fight, since the fall, something had been off. It was as if the world had tilted
ever so slightly on its axis. Not enough so to send everything into chaos, but it was enough to
make him feel sick every time he looked at his fellow teammates. There was something hard
and fiery in their eyes, an anger that had no place in those young faces. Every time they
spoke to him, the conversations were heavy with unspoken words.

Retribution. Vengeance. No mercy.

Rivalries had become battlefields and his teammates wouldn’t be happy until blood was shed.

But hadn’t enough been spilled already?

The sound of laughter drew Miguel back to the present, and he looked up to see Hawk and
his crew heading in his direction. Shit. He couldn’t deal with them like this. He couldn’t force
a smile, play the leader, not when he felt like one touch would shatter him. This was all
wrong.

Running a shaking hand through his hair, Miguel slipped through the nearest doorway,
avoiding eye contact. Looking around, he glimpsed his salvation. The bathroom. Past Miguel
would probably kill him for blowing off a party in his honour to hide in the bathroom, but
honestly Miguel was desperate. Taking a steadying breath, he forced himself to walk casually
towards the room, despite his whole body screaming for him to run. When had things gotten
this bad? When had interacting with his own friends started to feel like drowning?
Swinging the door open he ducked inside, slamming it shut behind him. As soon as he’d
locked it, Miguel slid to the ground, burying his head in his hands.

Fuck.

Now what was he meant to do? Moon’s bathroom was big, but it wasn’t like he could spend
the whole night here. Struggling to breathe evenly, he resisted the urge to scream with
frustration. What the fuck was wrong with him that he couldn’t even handle a party?

“Well. This is awkward.”

Miguel jerked upright, looking around for the source of the voice.
The shower curtain slid across and Miguel’s brain blanked for a moment, logic struggling to
comprehend the vision before him.
Robby Keene. In a bathtub. With a bottle of whisky. What the fuck.
Raising the bottle, Robby smirked.

“Want a drink?”

Miguel was at a party, surrounded by friends and teammates, and here he was sitting in a
bathroom with Robby Keene. The last time he’d seen Robby he’d been falling back over the
balcony railing. What had the world come to?
While he continued to stare at Robby, his brain was frantically calculating. Doing the mental
maths of the situation, determining the best outcome. Behind him lay friends. Allies. People
who were meant to be on his side. So why didn’t it feel that way?

Looking at Robby, he didn’t know what he felt. His bones still ached after his fall; the pain
like a vice, gripping him securely. It had faded over time, now only a whisper in his ear, soft
and melancholic, but always there. Faintly he realised he was clenching his fists so hard the
knuckles were turning white.
With a sigh he relaxed, letting his head fall back against the door behind him. Looking back
at Robby, he could see the faint nerves in his eyes, stripped bare by the alcohol. There was
something akin to fear there; a fragile hesitance.
Robby’s smile wavered, fingers trembling slightly around the proffered bottle, a tentative
olive branch.

Leaning forward, Miguel took the bottle from Robby, fingers wrapping around the glass still
warm from his grasp. It was a simple motion, but it felt significant. Maybe for one night the
battle could be put on hold, the rivalries set aside, alcohol loosening the bonds that
constrained them. The whisky was smooth and smoky and burned slightly as he swallowed it.
Strangely, the taste soothed him, overwhelming his senses and allowing a few moments of
blessed silence. Robby hadn’t spoken since his first offer, but his finger tapped against the
edge of the tub, as if searching for the words to break the silence. Miguel decided to help him
out.

“Why are you here?”

He winced. It’d come out a little too accusatory, the words weighed down with the memories
of their last encounter.

Robby sighed. “I was hoping for some free drinks, thought I might try and steal some rich
person alcohol.” He grinned wryly. “Then the Cobra crew showed up, so I decided to grab
what I could and hide out until I could make an escape.”

“You did a pretty shit job.”

Robby laughed softly. “I was so distracted cracking open my score that I forgot to lock the
door.”
Taking another swig, Miguel passed the bottle back to him, trying to decide how to proceed
from there. The alcohol was already softening the edges, making it easier to talk to someone
he’d spent so much time and energy hating.

Yet things still felt… out of place. Not wrong exactly, just as if it were a puzzle, waiting for
him to rearrange the pieces and finally see the whole picture. Since the fight, things had been
feeling sort of… fragmented. Everyone expected something of him, expected him to behave
in a certain way, but he was just sort of drifting. Floating along in the wake of the chaos,
blankly aware of it but unable to dredge up any particular feelings on it. Things had been
strange, forced, with his teammates, and even worse with Tory. He’d heard what she’d done
to Sam and he hadn’t been able to look at her, hadn’t been able to smile along with everyone
else when she described the fight. Why did everything have to be black and white? It
certainly didn’t feel that way. He was drowning in the shades of grey, caught desperately
between two sides.

So things with Robby were complicated. He didn’t entirely blame the other boy. He could
remember too well Robby’s cries as Miguel had used his injured shoulder against him.

Still. There was something about Robby’s laugh that unsettled something in Miguel. It made
him feel shaky, but in a different way than dealing with the other Cobras did. Robby didn’t
scare him, but talking with him so casually made Miguel feel unbalanced, lost in a swell of
unknown emotions.

Robby tilted his head back to take a drink from the bottle and Miguel wondered how much
he’d already had. He’d never seen Robby this unguarded and open before, but then again
he’d only ever faced Robby as a threat. Looking back, it all seemed so stupid. So much pain
and anger and suffering over such frivolous things.
When he’d woken up in hospital, his mom had looked at him with tear-stained eyes and
asked

“Why?”.

He’d stared at her, searching for something that could justify his mother almost losing her
only son. Why? Because of a girl? Because of a rivalry?
It all seemed meaningless in comparison.

He’d lay there watching his mother cry and he hadn’t felt like a hero. He’d felt sick.
He wondered how Robby felt.

The next time Robby stretched out his arm to pass Miguel the bottle, Miguel pulled himself
to his feet and slid down into the bathtub alongside him. Robby’s leg was pressed against his
and he seemed frozen in shock, staring at Miguel. With a smile, Miguel reached across him
and grabbed the bottle before leaning back against the end of the tub and stretching out his
legs. The bath may not be the most comfortable, but it was sure better than sitting on the
floor.

Seeming to get over his surprise, Robby shuffled along to make room, his hand falling to rest
near Miguel’s ankle.
Miguel struggled to maintain his breathing, the casual contact like touching a live wire. He
tried to ignore it and stay calm, but he remained bizarrely hyper-aware of the feeling of
Robby’s fingertips brushing his ankle, the soft warmth of them making him want to pull his
leg away. He wasn’t scared of Robby. He knew this. So why did something as small as his
touch make it so hard to breathe?

He was brought back to the present by Robby making a small noise of concern, his fingers
lifting from Miguel’s ankle to reach for his knee, but they were pulled back at the last second.
Robby was staring at the scars on Miguel’s leg with something akin to horror, his hand still
frozen in the air above them. Miguel himself still felt queasy thinking about the pins they’d
had to insert to set his fractured bones, but the scars usually didn’t get such a visceral
response.

“I’m sorry.” Robby’s voice sounded wrecked, his fingers still trembling where they were
suspended. “I didn’t… I’m so sorry.”
He jerked his hand away to scrub at his face, turning away from Miguel as if he was bracing
himself. As if he expected Miguel to hit him, to fight him, for what he’d done.

God knows they’d had enough of that already.

“It… doesn’t hurt anymore. Very much.” Wow. Smooth. Miguel thought that Robby looked
even more upset than before. Shit, what was he meant to say?

You made my mum cry but at least I finally realised that everything’s pointless bullshit?
I’m sorry for trying to rip your arm off that one time?

“It’s okay.” That… sort of worked? “I’m sorry things got so out of hand, I didn’t mean to get
in between you and Sam.” The words surprised Miguel even as they came out of his own
mouth. It was strange to suddenly see with such clarity how stupid he was to act as if Sam
had belonged to him.

Robby laughed again, sharp and sad, and Miguel’s heart ached.

“Sam hasn’t spoken to me since the fight. Pretty much no one has.” Robby ran a hand
through his hair, avoiding Miguel’s gaze. “What I did… that was fucked up. You let your
guard down and I turned it on you, almost killed you…” Robby closed his eyes, rubbing at
them with his shaking hands. “I didn’t sleep for a week. I was so scared you weren’t going to
wake up.”
Miguel stared at him, unsure how to deal with this much honesty. Robby was baring himself
to Miguel, showing his weaknesses with a sincerity that Miguel hadn’t known he possessed.
He wanted to reach out to Robby, let him know it would all be okay.
“I saw your mom once. She looked so scared and I couldn’t believe that I’d done that. I’d
caused that much pain.”

“You saw my mom? When?”

Robby shifted, obviously not intending to have revealed that information.

“At the hospital. I went… a few times, but I always tried to avoid your family. I didn’t want
to do that to them.”

Miguel stared at him. “You went to visit me in hospital?” He hadn’t known that Robby had
cared about him enough to do that. He’d expected that the guy might feel a bit guilty, but to
visit multiple times? Even some of his friends hadn’t done that. They’d been too busy
building an army.

Miguel felt an aching exhaustion right down to his very soul, and wasn’t that fucked? He was
young, too young to feel this lost and empty, too young to be scared of his own friends. But
that was it, wasn’t it? He looked at them and he saw himself mirrored in their faces. He saw
what he was, what he could become, and that chilled him down to his very core.

He spent his days waiting for the other shoe to drop, for everything to finally fall apart, be
broken beyond repair. He understood now that look in his mother’s eyes from all those
months ago, that look that now haunted his dreams. The way she’d stared at him and not seen
her son, but seen someone dangerous, someone filled with far too much anger and hatred. It
had been so easy to lean into that feeling, to let the anger wash away all other emotions, to
draw lines in the sand and stand proud, not as a boy or a man, but as a soldier.

Looking at Robby now, he felt a pang of loss for the innocence that had died in that war, the
whisper of what could have been. Maybe it was the alcohol, but for a moment Miguel got lost
in the soft haze of the bathroom light, illuminating Robby in a golden halo. He’d seen Robby
bleed, he’d seen him yell and scream and hit, but in the glow of the bathroom he looked soft,
much more tangible. He was more than the perceived idea of an enemy, more than just
another pawn on an endless chessboard.

Not a soldier, but a boy.

Miguel took another sip of whisky, savouring the way the burn travelled through him,
lighting him up from the inside. He was tired. He was tired of this bleak hollowness, this
performative excuse for life. When had he let this blankness consume him? When had he
surrendered control of his own existence? He felt adrift, caught in an evolution of his own
being, unmoored from his very self. He’d spent so long trying to fill this hole in his chest, but
the more he tried, the further down he dug.

And honestly, that was how it had felt sometimes with Tory. Just kissing to fill the hole in his
chest.
Which he knew was awful, but looking at it now, sitting in this bathtub, he could see how
empty it was, a way to forget rather than to move on. The burn of the whisky scorched his
throat but it brought a smile to his face as he revelled in the feeling. In the golden light of the
bathroom the hole didn’t feel as deep.

Robby still wasn’t looking at Miguel, turning instead to reach for the bottle of whisky. When
he leant back to drink, Miguel couldn’t help but stare at the lean lines of his body, the smooth
curve of his neck. While he’d been caught in his musings, Robby’s hand had drifted to
Miguel’s ankle and his thumb was now rubbing distracting little circles there. That those
tender calloused hands were the same ones that had broken his body, made him bleed,
seemed nearly impossible.
Yet they were. Robby was softness with hard edges, gentle warmth mingled with raging
wildfires.
Miguel was struck by the strange, unbidden urge to lean closer, to map out every inch of
Robby, to learn everything there was to know about him.

And that. That was a lot.

His eyes remained transfixed by the slow spirals of Robby’s fingers, almost hypnotic in their
movement. Miguel remembered in class when they’d learnt the story of Icarus; the way he’d
listened, enraptured, to the story of his fiery downfall. He could still remember how angry
he’d been at the end of the story, how outraged he was that Icarus has thrown it all away,
dreams of safety and security cast into shadow by the blinding light of the sun. He’d been
obsessed with that image of Icarus, filled with arrogant joy as he flew closer and closer,
oblivious to the steady drip of the wax from his wings.

He couldn’t understand what kind of naivety could coax a person to fly so high, risk so much,
for something so unknown.

He thought he understood now.

Shifting position, he slid closer until he was drowning in the radiating warmth of Robby’s
body, close enough to see the way his cheeks were slightly flushed from the alcohol. Robby’s
eyes widened, his fingers sliding from their position on Miguel’s ankle to hesitantly rest on
the curve of his hip.
Miguel leaned closer, closing the distance between their bodies until they were slotted
together like jigsaw pieces; a little ragged around the edges maybe, but still a perfect fit. He
could feel the burning warmth of Robby’s hand where it rested, the press of his thumb like a
hot poker, consuming his thoughts.

Robby lifted his eyes to meet Miguel’s, and he became painfully aware of each soft
exhalation against his skin, the warmth of Robby’s mouth only inches away.

It seemed only natural to lean in and close the gap.

Robby was frozen for a shocked second before pressing forwards and fully slotting their
mouths together. For the first time all night, Miguel felt like he could breathe, like he was
finally doing something after all this time stuck in stasis. There weren’t any fireworks or
dramatic explosions, but Robby’s warm touch on him was healing, like salve to his aching
body.
Robby kissed just like he existed, soft lips juxtaposed with the scrape of teeth; a wonderful
cacophony.

Miguel pulled back to breathe, lips tingling. Robby’s nose rested on his cheekbone, neither of
them willing to pull away. They stayed like that, foreheads pressed together, breathing the
same air.

A moment of stillness.

Miguel’s hands had made their way up from Robby’s waist and were tangled into his hair,
clinging almost desperately. He leaned in again, capturing Robby’s lips with his. The kiss was
slower this time, a gentle exchange, so different from those kisses he’d shared with Tory. This
kiss wasn’t about forgetting or escaping. It wasn’t fast paced or desperate, fleeting moments
of heat. It felt like an inevitability, a sigh of relief.

Robby’s thumb traced gentle lines against his hip, a quiet unspoken tenderness.

If this was what the fall felt like, then it finally made sense. Because even as Icarus fell, even
as the wind tore at him, he was bathed in the golden glow of the sun. All fear was wiped
away, for the sun wasn’t cruel. It was comforting and kind, embracing his body even in his
final moments.

Miguel was plummeting into the unknown, abandoning all that was familiar, and for the first
time in what felt like months he could breathe.
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