Chapter Text
Wukong gets better at the arcade game. He thinks. Every time he gets even halfway to winning a round, Macaque pulls a new combo or trick or game mechanic that throws him off too badly to do anything. And then he gets demolished .
After every loss, Wukong really hams up the anger and frustration. It's the easiest thing he can think of to mask the pride in his chest that blooms unbidden whenever his old friend claims a real victory against him.
Sometimes, in his "rage", he'll say something so dumb that it rips from his opponent a laugh so real it brightens his eyes and curves his face to an achingly familiar shape Wukong remembers exclusively from their youth. And that thing blooming in Wukong's chest blossoms fully.
It scares him, so he lets it slip that Macaque has been getting the bad controller this whole time. But the ensuing argument does nothing to squish that dumb little whatever that's cultivating around a tangible ache. It seems like it's gonna grow whether or not he nurses it, and he knows the safest thing would be to cut it out at the root.
And yet he keeps the front door open, and never brings up the dojo.
Sunlight pours in through the window. The lingering chill is enough that it's still closed, and the warmth provides a long, bright square across a good amount of the living room. The wood floor is objectively the best place to be seated. Especially for a groom.
His fingers twitch, but other than that, he sits still. Maybe unnaturally so. Live long enough, and you forget how obvious mortals notice silly behaviors in each other like breathing. Remembering it's an option sparks an urge to take a deep breath. He ignores it. It'd probably be weird.
He's accepted that this whole thing was already pretty weird. But it was doubly so for the fact that Macaque had been the one to initiate the activity today. In broad daylight. Right by the windows, where anyone or anything could happen by.
Wukong flinches at a quick but undoubtedly deliberate tug against his scalp, but refuses to turn around even to glare.
"Hey! Just because I don't bruise easy doesn't mean you have to try," Wukong gripes, grasping at the easiest thing to say. Macaque gives him a flat look over his shoulder, and Wukong promptly turns forward again, shying away from how close their faces just were. He nearly knocks over the shallow bowl of water and dish soap at their side. Mac's technique. It's an admittedly handy disposal method for Wukong's specific… issue.
"Oh, boo-hoo . You want these bugs out or you just wanna whine about 'em?" Macaque grouses.
"I'm telling you, I already got them all, " Wukong doesn't whine.
"You sure about that . " It's not a question. The half dozen or so fleas already in the bowl silently beg to differ.
"...Just hurry up."
"You're not the boss of me."
"No, but I am the king -- Ow! "
"Whoops."
" Jerk."
Macaque just snickers behind him, but he keeps going. The weird tension in the air eases under the comfortable familiarity of their overt animosity. Wukong doesn't quite relax, but annoyed impatience is actually an improvement on his nerves. There's a clear alternative here, of course: sit back and enjoy the experience. Tilt his head back into safe hands, take a nice, deep breath, and let himself be pampered.
Yeah, no. That's off the table. He was not about to let his guard down for a second. He had to have his shirt off for this whole ordeal as it was, and that already felt weirdly more vulnerable than it had any right to.
It's not that he doesn't trust Macaque. In a broad sense, he can trust nearly anyone with access to his physical form, can't he? There's so little anyone could do to truly hurt him.
(Not as far as his body is concerned, anyway. The careful claws threading through his fur was a sensation he'd be more than happy to dwell on, otherwise. It's so rare that he's treated with any gentleness. He can't blame anyone for that; no reason to get too precious about handling something as hard as stone.)
(So the fact that Macaque is handling him in a way that can only be described as gentle is--)
It doesn't take long at all for his mind to wander, but he finds very little in the moment he wants it lingering on. Not trusting his mind, he instead lets his eyes drift.
It's nice seeing the place look so bright again. The dull grey days were starting to weigh on him a little, if he was being honest with himself. Some half-formed instinct that the bears and bugs got the extreme end of bids him to curl up and sleep the gloom away. There were some years when he'd tried that, actually. He'd lived so long that a season shouldn't be too long a time frame for a nap, relatively. But he was just a touch too restless to take it that far.
Either way, he'd sorely missed the warm glow of late morning. Sunlight suited him. It once suited Macaque, too, and the thought hits him like a truck when his eyes slide to the window and hone in on the glass. Not on the scenery behind it, but the reflections on its surface. Their reflections.
He gets an eyeful of himself sat close to the glass, turned toward it at a slight angle where he's seated. Some strange, tired expression is plain on his own face, heavy bags darkening the pink of his mask right under his eyes a ruddy red. It almost looks like he'd been crying. The sight surprises him, but it's not where his attention stays.
He has a full view of Macaque sitting up on his knees behind him, fussing through his mane. The simple concentration on his face. He finds he can catch every detail with Macaque bathed in sunlight like this, the gentle highlight it leaves on the line of his nose, his cheeks. Black fur suffused with this deep, warm brown at the very edges where the sunshine halos it. It still suits him. Macaque probably disagrees. It softens his edges, and he's worked real hard on honing those.
Wukong's little subjects generally had a short range of lighter fur between them, save for the occasional mutation. It was an adaptation for a life of foraging grasses and fruits they must gather away from the safety of the trees, allowing them to blend in a way many predators might have a hard time noticing. Lighter browns and beiges and even oranges were common in nature for a reason. The tigers were especially deadly to the prey and competition they threatened, nearly invisible in the brush for their stripes. (Most critters out there are at least somewhat colorblind. Wukong figures all the fruit he and his subjects gotta eat might be why they're exempt from that.)
The buffalo he'd seen in his travels, with their striking dark hides, sat out in the open in large herds. They did not adapt to hide. Their visibility was a warning; a naturally occurring display of power to anything that might see a creature so large and be tempted by all that meat. Maybe it'd be worth it if something could catch one alone. So naturally, they were never alone.
Macaque didn't have a troop for protection. But he stood out in the same way anyway, when he once laid comfortably in the meadows and took his favorite kind of nap in the warm sun. The philosophy was the same, Wukong thought. He had such frightful strength and power at his fingertips, and thus no need to blend in. Even if he preferred his shadows, and the near invisibility they offered him.
Plus, back then, it was both of them in the sun. The buffalo often relied on herds at least a dozen strong for their defense. But Macaque had him. No other creature on the planet could possibly be better protected than the one at the side of the king. He would sleep so peacefully there, bold and dark against the flowers, a treasure too rare to conceal.
Macaque catches him staring through the reflection. His face first twists into a familiar sneer, but it falters a little. There's no denying the scene they're both seeing reflected back at them, after all.
Wukong forces his attention past it, to the dormant mountain.
"Surprised you're doing this here," he feels compelled to speak.
"Easier to see what I'm doing," Macaque explains, reasonably.
Wukong grunts. "Yeah. You 'n half the mountain."
Macaque's hands still on his fur, and Wukong regrets opening his mouth.
But miraculously, Macaque keeps going, deft fingers moving down the nape of his neck and parting the soft fur there. When he speaks again, it's with an airy malice.
"Hm. It's just so humiliating, right? The idea of being caught dead with your back turned to me." Of course he has to make it sound like a threat.
"What would all your little worshippers say. Hah. What would the kid say?" he taunts, a claw grazing the side of Wukong's throat. The king has to fight a shudder at the contact, and burns with what he's going to call embarrassment.
"Who cares? We used to do this all the time," he snaps back, rising to the bait so easily. He regrets the words before they've even left his mouth. But there's small solace in Macaque's beat of silence, because maybe he regrets starting it. Or maybe Wukong just surprised him.
"That's not relevant anymore." Macaque's answer is so quiet, nearly a growl. A warning.
Wukong has always been bad at heeding those.
"Isn't it?"
Macaque stops entirely. Wukong chances a look back at the reflection. He finds Macaque staring at where his hands are stopped at Wukong's neck, and wonders if he's considering strangling him. Macaque's expression is stormy.
"...I think, for once, I should just tell you that you might wanna shut up," he answers, still quiet, but even and toneless.
Wukong hates it. The force with which he hates it catches him off guard.
"Why should I? What's gonna happen?" He blurts, and maybe it's meant to sound threatening, but he feels jittery.
"You said it yourself. I should be more worried about the stuff that's not gonna wait to get me, right?"
Macaque's brow furrows. "...Meaning?"
Gods, he's not even sure himself. He wonders if maybe he just can't shut up now that he's been told to. Just like before. He used to be so easy to goad, back when Macaque knew him.
"Well, I know you're all talk," he taunts, watching Macaque bristle.
"But you aside, there's not a single thing out there I couldn't handle if I needed to. So. Yeah. Let may what come, or whatever."
"...Let come what may," Macaque corrects him.
"Whuh?"
"The saying. That's the saying. What you just said was gibberish."
" Whatever, same difference," Wukong waves him off, forcing down the smile threatening to creep up on him when he sees Macaque struggling to bite down his own. That stupid thing in his chest flaps its fragile little wings.
"...What I mean is. I don't care. Y'know. About what's out there." Macaque could wrap himself around Wukong out in the field, in broad view of everyone, for all he cared. But that's a pipe dream.
Macaque scoffs, and there's an idle, mechanical movement to his fingers now that tells Wukong he's probably not even noticed he's still going.
"S'that so?"
"Promise," Wukong tells him. Too quiet to be casual, too gentle to be a joke.
He meets Macaque's eye through the glass. And watches with a twinge of dread as his expression twists into a sneer.
"Come on now, let's not pretend your word is worth anything," he answers, like he doesn't know how deeply that cuts.
"I have never lied to you."
Macaque stills. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
"Not once," Wukong barely doesn't shout. He has no idea how the both of them are keeping their volume level. He hasn't even turned around, eyes trained instead on the ghostly face in the glass, as if that gives him some barrier between him and its baffled rage. Macaque meets his eyes through the glass.
"Okay, so, like, did I imagine you falling to the emperor and screwing off to be a delivery boy for some priest?"
"I didn't abandon you guys. I just--" He's floundering.
"You what, Wukong? You gave up? You failed?"
"They won . You were there. What was I supposed to do?"
" Anything! I don't know!" Macaque bursts out, hands shooting up helplessly. "You can do anything! And you just-- you just let them take you away!"
"...Is that-- Macaque, you were there, " he repeats helplessly, desperately searching the expression on the windowpane for-- he's not even sure what.
"Don't you remember how many there were? What they did? Erlang, and the emperor himself? We lost , b-- Macaque. I didn't leave. I failed ."
"You didn't fail. You saw we weren't on the winning team anymore, and you switched sides," Macaque shoots back without missing a beat, with the kind of speed and conviction someone has when they know they're right.
It was Wukong's turn to be baffled. Or maybe horrified. Macaque had been there. Right there, at his side, like always. They'd fought their hardest, tried their best, together. Had he been wrong about that?
Wukong wants to face him. But that enmity on his old friend's face is already a lot to bear right now, even with a pane of glass between them.
"That's not what happened! You can't seriously think--"
" 'It's the two of us! Monkey bros' getting into some mischief, like always!' " Macaque interrupts him in a goofy voice, flapping a hand like a sock puppet, then spits. "Gods, you're delusional!"
"You really think I chose this," Wukong realizes, dumbfounded. "You seriously, genuinely think I chose to get-- broiled alive and trapped under a mountain for what I did, and I'm the delusional one?"
Welp, there went the volume control. Macaque matches him readily, hands braced to the ground. He's prepared to stand and make a fight out of it.
"You went without a fight! You could have fought! And you never even went looking for us!"
"I couldn't!"
"Bullshit. You forgot me." Macaque's eyes are wild with hurt, or with hate. He has this way of making them look the same.
" You forgot me!" Wukong shouts, turning to face him straight on. Macaque flinches back, wide-eyed.
"Five. Hundred years under that fucking mountain. And no one came for me. Not once," Wukong continues, quiet, voice only warbling towards the end. "I thought Erlang killed you too. I thought you were dead."
Macaque stares at him, looking caught. Looking lost. It's sickening. Wukong scoffs.
"But you know what? Looking back, I think that was a blessing. If I believed in you guys half as much as you believed in The Monkey King," Wukong wiggles his fingers here for effect, "I'd probably be pissed about being alone down there for so long. Don't you dare talk to me about being deserted, or whatever, when you all turned tail and abandoned me."
Macaque gawks at him with these big, stupid eyes. Glamored to hell and back for his vanity. Wukong hates that he can relate at all.
"You never even considered that, did you?" he snorts, shaking his head minutely. "Unbelievable. Unbelievable!"
"No, you-- The way Azure and the others were talking, what else was I supposed to believe?" Macaque is on defense now, hand out accusing some vague spot out in the world where that wishy-washy old cat might be lurking. Wukong gives a sardonic chuckle, feeling half present.
"That they captured me? That the Jade Court wanted me tortured for embarrassing them? They've done worse for less," he recalls, a phantom sting in his eyes and nostrils. Memory only, of course.
" I came back for you," Mac is eyeing him like he's waiting to get bitten.
"Yeah, centuries later when I was already--" Wukong chokes on a word he doesn't want to say.
"Already what, Wukong? With your new family?"
"Being disciplined," he finishes sourly.
A harsh laugh cuts through the thick air. It damn near snaps him right back into his body. Macaque has that mean grin on. The one he likes to wear when he wants someone hurt.
" That's the word you're using? You're talking about the filet, aren't you."
" Don't, " Wukong warns. He's met with hard eyes, and a dismissive click of the tongue.
"No, fuck you, you don't get to use that. I tried, Wukong. I gave you an out."
"Ohoh, no. No, no, you're not gonna act like you did that for me. You were way out of line."
"I showed up, and I see this worthless mortal pissant--"
"--Shut up--"
"--treating you like a servant. Do you know what I thought? You know what I was stupid enough to worry about?" Macaque spits. Wukong's hands are trembling. He can't do anything about it.
"I don't want to talk about this."
"Big surprise! He talked about you like you're nothing, you know that? I didn't know yet that I was in the same boat. Ha!
"At least that part's funny. Tell me, how's it feel to know you deserted me for someone who thought just as little about you as you did about--"
"Stop acting like you just know what I feel! You're not this-- this expert that you think you are. You haven't known a damn thing about me for centuries." Wukong erupts, throwing his arms wide. Macaque flinches gratifyingly at the motion.
"Who's fault is that?" he doesn't back down.
"Exc-- Seriously? I wasn't gonna just-- I dunno, take you with me on my sentence ." Wukong reminds him, feeling crazy that he has to say it. "It's not like any of you would have followed me there . "
…
Macaque goes this deep shade of red. Wukong doesn't know what to make of that, or of their argument in the pregnant silence that follows, and he sort of has to rehash everything he just said in his head to figure out why--
Oh.
Macaque says, "It's not like you ever asked."
Oh, no.
Wukong has been choking down that cancerous thing inside him for as long as he could, and in his humble opinion, doing a piss poor job of it. Now it sets him on fire from within. The burn comes with a whole slew of wonderful, terrible, horrified feelings moving too fast for him to discern, all warring to make some sense of the situation for him. All he can do is shake his head slowly, probably gaping like a fish.
"Oh… aw, Mac, no. No-- fuck, that would have been bad," he watches helplessly as something in Macaque's expression shatters and hardens, and Wukong scrambles to salvage it.
"When they took me down-- You remember what it was like to be someone's weapon. And, fuck, the Bone Demon was just one spirit." He runs claws through his (regrettably, still itching) scalp.
"Yeah, no, it would have been bad," he laughs again, strained, "She was her own kind of awful. But when the goddess of mercy and everyone above her decide you'd be too useful to kill, then a tool's all you are."
"And you're nothing if not a tool," Macaque retorts unexpectedly. There's no heat behind it. Taking the piss out of his old enemy is a reflex.
It rips a chuckle out of Wukong, and something like relief comes with it. He tricks himself into thinking Macaque's face relaxes by a fraction.
"Can't argue with that. …Yeah. The second they made that call, I wasn't yours anymore. I was heaven's to point where they needed." He shrugs. "Or else."
"...Yeah, well, I didn't have any way of knowing that, Did I?" Macaque intones, looking at him oddly. Wukong wavers a little under the intensity of it.
"You could have found me under the--"
Mac slaps a hand over his eyes, looking completely over this.
"Fuck's sake, You think I didn't ever look for you? Heaven didn't exactly declare to the world where they stashed you."
…Fuck him, that's a good point.
Wukong doesn't want to bring it up. But the wound is already bleeding, and Macaque is already staring right into him through his fingers, red-faced and searching. So,
"...I was their weapon, at that point. But I didn't wanna be pointed at you."
Mac's eyes narrow. "...Is that supposed to make it okay?"
"'Course not. Would anything?" Wukong asks, aware that they both know the answer. He sighs, and condemns himself to finishing up this hole he's digging. Sun Wukong was no quitter.
"I could say whatever you need to hear. What I regret, what I don't. That I'm pissed off at you too. …That I miss you, 'n I don't know what to do with that. That you're wrong about a lot of stuff, but you're right about a lot of other stuff, but all of it matters. I dunno," he steels himself against the growing worry that he's rambling about nothing, and does his level best to meet Macaque's eyes with the same severity he's being met with. "Would any of it make a difference?"
"...Maybe it would have," Macaque sneers, and Wukong feels himself deflate. But the venom, and indeed whatever energy Macaque had left, seems to leave him in a rush of breath.
"...It won't take back what happened. Or all the years after it," he relents, shoving his thumbs in his pockets. " Nothing's gonna do that. Your power does have its limits, eh?"
"Yeah, but don't tell anyone," Wukong quips back on reflex.
He watches Macaque lose his battle with a watery smile, and one bubbles up on his own face before he can do anything to stop it.
He scratches under his pit, and Macaque makes a face.
"You're gross."
"I'm itchy. "
"Just turn around."
He blinks, surprised. He sort of thought--
Well. He's not sure what he thought. That's becoming something of a pattern these days.
"Uh. So, you still wanna--?"
"Wukong," Mac interrupts, "Shut up already."
For once in his (long, long) life, he does. Wukong turns around, grateful for the quick excuse to hide his burning face.
Macaque continues down his back, and Wukong isn't sure if he's imagining that it feels different. Not rougher, or anything, surprisingly. More sure, maybe. The confident touch soothes something in his hindbrain that sometimes equates hesitation with mistrust, and so potential danger. Just another instinct rendered useless by-- admittedly-- an absurd degree of immortality. Still, his shoulders relax, and his tail swishes on the floor behind him once or twice. Behind him, Macaque puffs an amused breath through his nose.
"After this, we're even for you pulling those burrs off me."
Wukong smiles openly, hidden behind his hair. "Sure. …I mean, 'til you gotta come back 'cuz you got crud in your fur again."
"I could just ask the locals," Macaque points out, ever contrary. Wukong decides he doesn't feel like being predictable, and relents.
"They're good company," he agrees.
"...S'not really the same though," Macaque says, his tone carefully aloof. He must not be feeling predictable, either.
"I know," Wukong understands at once. It's something he's thought about a lot. Before, and since everything went down. It was hard not to. A guy can get a lot of time to think, all alone up there on his pedestal.
He speaks up again, "... Do you think there's anything else still out there that's-- y'know, like us?" There had been, at one point. He'd never met them.
Macaque hums, and his derisive grin is audible.
"No. If there were, they would've found you a long time ago."
Wukong chuffs. "Just me?"
"You have this way of attracting trouble," his counterpart jokes, and hey, there's no arguing with that.
But then, his tone quiets a touch: "...And duh, I found you, and I'm the only one like me. What're the odds of that?"
Astronomical. Moreso if they're truly the only two of their kind. Their meeting had to be literally ordained by something up there, Wukong thought.
Or maybe, without knowing it, they themselves had ordained it. The times, places, and all circumstances of their births all differed greatly, but they were both a noted and unbelievably rare type of celestial. And a monkey does need his troop.
Or maybe it's the same kind of near-impossible coincidence that lets anyone be alive at the same time as anyone else. The same kind that formed the world at just the right spot by the sun to sustain life, and gave it just the right kind of moon to inspire beauty. What were the odds of anything?
"That's not a terrible point."
"Gee, thanks."
"Don't mention it."
They lapse into a brief silence, where Wukong promptly remembers their reflections in the glass. He catches a glimpse of his own dopey expression and neutralizes it, fully abashed, quickly pinning his sight anywhere else in the room. He hears snickering behind him, and wonders if this is anything like how Bull King's boy feels when his sideburns catch fire.
(That laugh will be his doom, he thinks. There's no unlearning what he knows now. That once upon a time, he was at his absolute lowest, worst, and most desperately alone -- back when his careless violence forced the powers that be to act so cruelly and decisively that, eventually, he too would believe himself a monster. Beaten, burned, chained, and only offered redemption once he proved to be of some worth to one of heaven's chosen favorites. He'd once been a king. And then, even for all his raw strength, he'd been worth nothing on his own.
And now he learns that even still, there had once been someone who would have followed him anyway. There's really only one word for that kind of devotion.
What the hell was he supposed to do with that?
All these years, and he didn't even know he had this, too, to grieve. He'd lost so much. They'd lost worlds, the both of them. He didn't know. He never would have known.
And then he killed him, and destroyed the world they could have had, forever.
But maybe, maybe, they may salvage something small from it. Something Wukong now holds prisoner in his ribcage, because it just wouldn't suffocate despite his best efforts.
Or maybe, at the very, very least they just won't have to grieve alone anymore. The pain is already mutual. Wukong is no stranger to taking on and holding burdens for the sake of others. He'd done it thousands of times. He'd do it a thousand more, for someone who would have taken some of his own.
But the kid had been the one to teach him that some burdens, actually, should probably be shared. That maybe when one guy tries to take everything on, it doesn't always end well for the people he cares about. Sometimes it's easier to take on a heavy load together, if it's already affecting the people he's trying to save no matter what he does.
Maybe, that same way, some grief might be easier to deal with. If they share. If his oldest friend is willing to share with him.
He wouldn't mind it.)
He's grabbed by ear, and goes ramrod straight.
"Stop that."
"Wha--Huh?" Wukong sputters.
"Whuh, huh?" Macaque mocks him. "You're wiggling around like a restless toddler."
"Oh."
Wukong catches up after a beat.
"...Am not."
Macaque releases his ear with, Wukong swears, an audible eye roll. But he gets back on task without pressing it.
Wukong glances up at the mirror of himself on the window to confirm some fears.
Yeah. His face has gone fully red.
And Macaque's particularly intense focus on what he's doing is proof enough that he's noticed. And is choosing not to acknowledge it.
Wukong has no idea whether that's a mercy, or if it's just more humiliating than if he'd just been called out for it. But it's for sure humiliating when Macaque's eyes flick up for a second and meet his own in their reflections.
"Oh, for-- if you've got something to say, say it," Mac fumes even as he hurries to look back down.
"Uh," Wukong pipes up, not even sure whether he means to. He does have something to say, is the thing. It's just stupid.
But he might as well cap off all the stupid he'd already spilled.
"So, um… what now?" he finishes lamely.
"I could shave you, and we'd get the fleas off that way," Macaque answers easily. Wukong chokes.
" No?!"
Mac laughs. It's not the mockery it was. Too tired sounding. The sun hits his face when he does in a way that Wukong needs to see again and again, to make up for lost time.
"Then please shut up and lemme finish, so we can move on with our lives."
That was, admittedly, a good plan. And Wukong was sort of relieved that it didn't have to be his own, for once.
He tilts forward obligingly, and thinks it might be nice to follow someone else's lead by choice. Sometimes.
Spring comes, despite it all.
Macaque looks for Wukong on a warm afternoon, or what should be one.
The sun has returned, finally, but it will not yet banish the chill on the wind for days or weeks more. But Macaque will take what he can get. It's just nice to have the option to nap outside again. Shelter from the outdoors is no longer strictly necessary, and he no longer had only that one option for a comfortable night's sleep.
Well, if he's being pedantic, technically the dojo has been rebuilt for weeks. Still in the ever climate-controlled security of the city. But whatever.
Anyway, it'd never hold a candle to the mountain in the spring. No other place could. It's just a fact; it wasn't just called Flower-Fruit Mountain out of convenience. It was a full and deserved descriptor. The mountain was a bounty of beauty and abundance at every peak and valley, all sweet grasses and winds so fragrant they put even the perfumes of the jade palace to shame.
Maybe he was a little biased. No one was immune to nostalgia, not really. And Macaque had spent his best living years here.
Though they were long gone, the mountain remained beautiful. Especially during the springtime. There were finally places to lounge again, properly, in the sun. He won't admit it, but he was always partial to it. And having once been dead permanently chilled something in him, so much so that he deeply felt the necessity of its warmth now.
But even though spring was here and the snow was gone, there was still this chill on the wind. The clouds weren't entirely gone, even now in the afternoon. It was annoying. He was out in the glades looking for a warm place to nap out of sheer stubbornness at this point.
He could slum it on Wukong's couch again. But that wasn't gonna cut it. After such a long, bitter, utterly confusing winter, he needed better comfort than the unnatural mugginess of a space heater and half a dozen too-thin blankets. To be blunt: after the year (century) he's had, he simply longs to sleep under the sun like a kit again.
He nearly trips over an orange lump under a tree, and wonders if maybe he's not the only one feeling that way.
"Watch it! What are you, blind?" The lump in question snipes at him without moving, because it's a lazy asshole.
"Just on the one side," Macaque quips back, because he's a reckless asshole. Half a year ago, the comment might have enraged Wukong, shutting down any further conversation.
But instead he just gives Macaque a flat look, arching an eyebrow.
"Did you follow me out here?"
"Don't flatter yourself, king. I got better things to do," Macaque brushes some nonexistent dust from his clothing, going for nonchalant. Wukong snorts, folding his arms behind his head and stretching a bit on the grass.
"Sure ya do. Like tryna find a good spot for a nap out here?" he guesses.
"Exactly."
"Yeah, well, this would'a been a good one!" Wukong chirps, cheerful as you please for the sake of fucking with him. "Too bad it's taken."
Macaque glances up at the tree a few feet away from Wukong's head. It's providing a dappling of shade over his face, vague shapes that shift with the movement of clouds over the sun. It's an admittedly pretty spot, downwind of the wildflowers.
Also, because Wukong's not the boss of him, he sits down anyway. He notes an irritable flick of the other's tail with silent amusement.
"You don't even look all that comfy," he observes. He's being petty, sure. But it's the genuine truth. Wukong looks tired, as always. Moreso when he frowns.
The leafy shadows sharpen over Wukong's face and torso, but it's through no fault of Macaque's. A glance backward reveals the sun finally peaking out from the clouds, and with it, an immediately noticeable change in temperature.
Wukong considers it with lambent golden eyes, highlighted so starkly in the shade.
"Hope it doesn't get too hot."
Macaque balks.
"You're kidding. This place has been a freezer for the past month."
"It hasn't been that bad."
Macaque wants to give him more shit for this. He likes to act affronted, like Wukong is some freak of nature he'll never understand that he can reliably pick on. It wasn't always how they worked, but it's how they work now.
But maybe that's one of the things that's changing about how they work. Macaque isn't exactly keeping track. All he knows is that, despite it all, he does actually understand. The forge left its mark on Wukong. Death left its mark on Macaque.
And those marks left them here. Vaguely uncomfortable in moderate temperatures, and with glamours over two sets of eyes that really had, at one point, been the same shade of lily yellow.
"You're a real unique brand of stupid, you know that?" Macaque says anyway, testing the waters.
Wukong blinks at him. He remembers his line after a beat.
"Gee, thanks. And you whine too much."
Macaque shrugs. "A man's gotta have his opinions."
"I guess. But also, all of yours are wrong, sooo…"
"Says the idiot lying in damp grass, complaining about the heat in March."
"It's not damp."
Macaque laughs. Of course that's the part Wukong contests.
They lapse into silence. He's more than comfortable with that. But of course he's the only one who is.
"Lots'a new little ones this season, by the way. Watch out," the king warns.
Macaque just hums. He's already noticed. He supposes maybe the families already here must be celebrating their survival. It seems silly, repopulating so soon after having gone through such fear and scarcity.
But still. A whole new generation of little creatures who don't know either of them; who treat them both and their world at large with the same curiosity. Their pretty home's long history of hardships and baggage will be out of their depth for some years. And even then, they'll only judge it all based on whatever they see and learn going forward.
"Doesn't sound all that bad," he answers truthfully.
"They're kinda grabby."
"Yeah, if you're a pushover."
Wukong scoffs, and stretches out on his back, indulgent. Tawny fur rippling gold like a hearth fire in the sun.
"Dunno why I bother."
He leaves an arm open. An invitation, but a passive one. He doesn't reach out, but Macaque was starting to wonder if he'd ever, without the aid of some intoxicant. No matter how much he wanted to.
Once upon a time, there was a boyish king of critters who styled himself as a hero. At his side was a starry-eyed prig who thought himself a warrior, who the hero had no qualms about pouncing or grabbing at whenever he had too much energy or affection to keep to himself.
Neither of those little things were here, now. Their memories would remain as context. But Macaque found himself growing bored of dancing around the shadows of dead children. On e of them, at least, had to be above that.
Or maybe, he was just cold. He'd been just cold on the couch, that one night. It didn't have to be all that different.
He lays down, and wraps himself around the warm offering at his side, shifting about until their legs are tangled and he's comfortable. Wukong, predictably, goes so immobile Macaque considers teasing him for playing dead. Embarrassingly, no words can reach his throat. He tucks his head against Wukongs abdomen instead, and the heartbeat that pounds against a glamored ear is the absolute furthest thing from dead.
Macaque can feel it happen by inches as Wukong relaxes under him. Second by second. The idiot really does run so hot, and even through their clothes the contrast is sort of incredible. It feels the same as the sunshine on his back, and he sighs despite himself.
His ears stay hidden for a reason. The sensitivity of six can make even mundane sensations hard to deal with. But the glamor can't suppress everything. He can still sense the ghost of warmth over the side of his face, inches away. He doesn't need to see the hand hovering over him to imagine the uncertainty on Wukong's face, there because he knows there's a line. Just not where. And Macaque can only conclude that the king is simply not willing to take the risk of approaching it. Absolutely nothing like the rosy-cheeked brat who could easily flounce up to him with a smile and bury his face into his shoulder, laughing and commenting on the smell of wildflowers on dark fur.
Macaque's tail creeps upward, the tip just brushing the cuff of a hovering sleeve. He feels Wukong swallow beneath him.
But he takes the hint, and the hand comes down, resting feather-light on the back of Macaque's head. Slow, overcautious, and painfully meditated.
Macaque doesn't fully know what to do with that level of care, or with the weak, familiar flutter it sets off in his chest with every sun-warmed touch. He shifts his shoulders in a movement that "incidentally" nuzzles his cheek into the fabric, and lets out a sigh through his nose. That muffled pulse against his ear kicks up the pace, a rhythm like wing beats.
He wonders, sleepily, if it'd be weird to talk about it someday.
