Chapter Text
Things were weird. They didn't talk about it.
The world was nearly made barren, but it recovered. But the scars left on people were less easily paved over than they were on cold earth. Recovery took time. Like the weeds that grew over low-priority soil, stubbornly rooting in and working it back into some semblance of fertility in the background of louder endeavors. People rebuilding, lives being corralled back into some definition of normal, whether new or disinterred from the wreckage.
Macaque was coming by again. The first time had been at night, so soon after they'd both been freed that the ground around them was still littered with jagged ice stalagmites, now inert. They were already melting. They would be gone on their own eventually.
Wukong watched him pummel one into slush.
After a minute, he wordlessly stepped out and helped crush them to puddles with their bare hands. The extent of her influence left the two of them working for the better part of an hour before they could no longer see any on the horizon. Their work done, Macaque had slunk back into the shadows.
But he came back. Again, at night. He kept to the trees, nosing into his scarf and whiling the night away reclined and stealing whatever fruit grew at hand. He didn't sleep. Wukong would have been a hypocrite to bring it up. He was gone again come morning, always seeming to slip away when Wukong had his eyes off him.
Night five of that, and Wukong left the shack door ajar.
Night seven, and Macaque came inside.
He tossed Wukong a pilfered banana from a plant outside, and made himself at home lying wrong-ways in a chair. Wukong noted that his position kept him in clear sight of the windows, and of anything beyond them.
The extra vigilance might have been enough to help him sleep, had it been from anyone else. He played some video games instead, or something. He doesn't remember. That was like a month ago, now.
Macaque didn't come by every night, but his presence was melting in with Wukong's (semblance of a) routine. The days were spent lounging, or sorting through his hoard, or training the kid. The nights were spent in unbearable quiet, agitatedly busying himself with some random hobby or just pacing or patrolling the mountain. Anything to keep him occupied while the winter post-calamity kept the air deathly still.
Except for the nights that Macaque was over.
He'd caught Wukong pacing exactly one time, and had all but laughed at him.
"How's all that inner peace going, bud?"
Wukong had said, "It'd go better if you'd stop letting the draft in. Close the door , you jerk," and that'd spiraled into an argument about how Macaque hadn't even been the one to open it. He doesn't need to use the door. Wukong deflected long after he realized he was in the wrong, just to watch Macaque's eye twitch.
He'd eventually tired of their bickering, turned away from Wukong, and fallen asleep for a while. Wukong found himself rubbing his own eyes, and then looking down at his hands once he'd realized.
He napped for an hour, dreamless.
Macaque kept coming around.
They'd always find something to gripe about, but it never evolved into a real fight. That'd require too much energy. Or for either of them to say anything of substance.
When it was too quiet out, Wukong would turn on a show-- deliberately finding one that starred a fictional version of himself-- and put the volume on obnoxiously loud until Macaque's ears would twitch. Then they'd argue about it. Maybe someone would start throwing things. And then eventually, someone would storm into another room to sleep.
Sometimes, Macaque would be the one to break the heavy silence.
He'd sauntered in one night and plopped sideways in his favored seat, this time with a stolen plum in hand.
"Saw your lesson today. Not bad at all, Monkey King."
Wukong squinted. "...Really?"
"I'm joking," Macaque deadpanned immediately. "Yeah, no, everything out of your mouth was horseshit."
"Hey!" Not everything.
"I get that you're winging it, 'cos that's what you do, but man, I'm really starting to feel for the kid," Macaque hummed, tossing the fruit from hand to hand. "At this rate, he's never gonna get anywhere."
Wukong sat straight, tail puffed up. "That's not even a good lie. You've seen for yourself how far he's come. 'Specially since that time you were dumb enough to try and take us on."
Macaque just shrugged, and Wukong went on.
"He could take you all on his own, now. Admit it," he boasted, watching his guest scratch idly at a spot under his eye.
"Hey, maybe I'll test that theory. Kid could use some reflex training. Nothing builds those up like a good ambush, right?"
The mirth slid from Wukong's face. "Don't you dare." Not now. Not so soon.
Macaque just laughed in response, a short, gruff sound.
"Easy, easy. Do better, and I won't feel like I gotta throw my hat in the ring. Poor kid could really use a teacher with a plan, is all."
"I'm a great teacher," Wukong shot back, feeling the familiar old sneer creep onto his face. (Like riding a bike.) "And he wouldn't learn anything from someone so easy to beat down, anyway."
Macaque peered over at him. His grin went saber-sharp and knowing. The look of a predator who knows the value of agitating the competition, and how exactly to do it.
Wukong was surprised. Macaque could hold his own, sure, but he wasn't usually the one to throw himself into a fight. That was more Wukong's thing.
"Ohoh, someone's feeling cocky." Macaque swung his legs over the armrest and back down, sitting up with his chin resting on a fist. Staring down Wukong with a barely concealed energy visible in the tension down his back, and a smile that promised violence.
"Prove it, king," he spat it like an insult. Wukong promptly decided whatever his deal was didn't matter.
They went outside to spar. And despite all their animosity, neither would do the other the insult of holding back. So that meant a lot of fighting evasively on one end, and a lot of chasing on the other. Macaque was a slippery bastard, and he fought dirty, and he knew how Wukong moved. The combination almost made him dangerous.
But it did make him a good workout.
An hour later, Wukong sauntered back into the shack thoroughly winded, and crashed right into bed. He drifted off with the sensation of fading adrenaline, pulse slowing to a thrum, and the phantom ache of cool hands clutched hard against his own. He slept for hours.
Macaque had followed in with a slight limp in his gait and a few new bruises, and curled up on the chair just as quickly.
They'd called it a draw.
Some sort of dam had broken. Maybe it was the sparring. Of course they kept doing it after that-- not every night Macaque was over, but often enough.
Or maybe it was something else. There was a burgeoning familiarity between them that neither of them wanted to address. It was easier to fight, to channel that frustration into pretext for violence or pointless bickering.
But the bickering part was happening less, sort of. When Wukong would put a movie on, Macaque would complain about the volume or subject without fail. But something odd started to happen after that.
"Even you have got to be bored of this one by now," Macaque groaned at the blaring synth intro to one of the Monkey Cop sequels. Wukong just rolled his eyes and tossed the remote back onto the table.
"Why? It's a classic."
"Not even. It's the third movie. Didn't this come out like, ten years later? The original wasn't even good."
"Fuck you, the first one was great. And ten years isn't that long," Wukong defended automatically.
"It is for mortals. Like the ones who made this?" Macaque squinted at the opening credits. "None of the original writers came back. No wonder the plot's all over the place."
"Are you reading the credits? Weirdo."
Macaque stared at him, disgusted.
"Right, there's no arguing with you and it's stupid of me to try."
"Ha, yeah it is-- hey, the hell?" Wukong sprang forward, a second too late to swipe the remote out of Macaque's hands before he leapt back over the couch and changed the channel to something with deep string music.
A fang poking out of a smarmy grin was all Wukong got in warning before Macaque tossed the remote into a portal, hiding it within the shadows.
"I was watching that," he griped, and was dodged again when he tried to swat at gnarled black hair in retribution.
"And now you're watching this. Time moves in mysterious ways or whatever," Macaque mocked him, then swung back around to sit on the armrest.
Wukong considered throwing him out the window, but a sharp percussion on the screen caught his attention. Some mortal with a sword stood in a thunderstorm, presumably about to strike at another mortal with an even cooler sword standing ten feet away. Wukong squinted.
"...What even is this?"
"An actual classic. Shut up for a second," Macaque waved him off, and Wukong was about to mouth off at him before lightning crashed onscreen and the mortals flew at each other. The way they moved suggested wires instead of CGI. But also, no camera cuts. They actually did sorta know how to fight.
"...Huh," Wukong hummed, and sat down. Just for a bit.
It wasn't until the movie was done and Macaque was giving him this smug look , like he just won something, that Wukong had even realized what happened.
He hummed, noncommittal, and pretended to pick at his nails.
"Monkey Cop 3 was better."
And that set the subject for their nightly squabbling until long after Wukong started having to fight back his yawning. But watching Macaque's face fall into this look of baffled horror was totally worth it.
He came back the next night with the rest of his favored series in hand, dead set on proving his point. They watched all of it, chattering away through the movies, arguing their merits and generally trying to annoy each other.
Thereafter, Wukong pretended not to notice when Macaque commandeered the remote for a night, accepting that it was his turn to grouse about what was on TV.
It was weird. They didn't talk about it.
Flower-Fruit Mountain was a blessed place. It had to be, in order to birth a creature like Wukong and keep itself inseparably in his heart. His own work in repairing it later on had only solidified its status as a paradise on earth.
Even still, and especially after all the rot that had spread, the dead of winter finally sunk its claws in. Those were rare, here, but they happened. And the Bone Demon's magic had truly taken its toll. It appeared even this place needed some time to rest.
Macaque trudged in a couple hours after dusk, sluggish with the cold. He'd always done poorly in it.
He stopped in front of his chair with a furrow in his brow, just staring down at it like an idiot when he found it occupied by a foreign object.
He didn't ask, just glanced back at Wukong on the other side of the room. Wukong slurped loudly at his takeout, only meeting Macaque's eye for a split second. He decided the noodles were more interesting.
"Nothing's growing right now," he grumbled through his mouthful. Just a complaint. At least the little ones knew well enough to keep a supply of grasses and nuts stored. But Wukong had access to mortals and their internet, so he had other options. Options with extra sauce.
He could feel Macaque's stare on him for another second before he finally heard the rustling of the plastic bag being picked up off the chair.
His guest sat heavily and picked open the box inside, still with that crease in his brow. But he did help himself.
"...You get these spicy?" The ungrateful lout huffed, scrunching his nose.
"Don't be a baby," Wukong called through an even bigger mouthful, just for his own amusement at Macaque's disgust. He wasn't dignified with a response, as Macaque dismissed him in favor of digging in.
Wukong felt some kind of tight weight dissipate from his gut, and let his shoulders relax. They ate in silence.
Macaque was the next one that week to bring dinner from the city. Some place with too-sweet dumplings, but good sauce.
They continue to not talk about it.
In his dreams, he can still feel her crawling beneath his skin.
It's a writhing like grave worms, akin to the cold terror that wriggled between small bones of his wrists. It pulses out from spots King Yama's messengers had dug their claws in, that night they'd grabbed him to drag him down.
He escapes them again, but this time, he must dig his way up through the mantle of hot soil, scrabbling and feeling it burn under his fingernails, getting inside him through his nose and skin. The spirits beat at his back like a drum, forcing their way through and in like water seeping through paper. As if he was no thicker than paper, no fuller than a jade teacup in the hand of an orchard maid stood frozen mid shriek.
The soil only gets denser, heavier, not the comforting cool weight of a waterfall, a stone egg, but the suffocating, unrelenting pressure of a furnace. There is nothing to crawl under, now, no choice between flame or smoke. All of it closes in on him, and even if he could, he cannot breathe without her say so.
She keeps him still, scraping and squirming around in the thin wrapping of his warped stone flesh, as he is distilled fully and ground down into grave dirt.
Wukong is awoken by the soft crunch of something plastic hitting his head, and he jumps up with a start. His vision is briefly overwhelmed with gold, adrenaline pushing his true sight to take in more than his brain can handle.
He wills it away, and himself closer to normal, so he can take the object in hand and make it out inches away from squinting eyes.
A bag of peach chips. He blinks at it.
Another one hits him, and he peers over the side of the couch at Macaque. Rummaging through his pantry.
His panic is washed away by annoyance in an instant.
"What do you think you're doing?"
Macaque glances over his shoulder, absolutely nothing in his expression to convey any remorse. Or even surprise.
"Making room," he says simply, glaring at a bag of chips in his hand. "Do you eat anything other than this junk?"
He tosses it back, and that gets Wukong on his feet.
"Quit it! What do you mean making room?" He demands, and Macaque looks back with this glint in his eye.
He wordlessly holds up a couple of six packs. Wine coolers, in assorted fruit flavors.
Wukong opens his mouth. Closes it.
He's just out of it enough to not quite recall how they get from that point to watching the original Monkey Cop movie on the couch, a pack of coolers sitting unassumingly between them, shared freely.
"Why here?" Wukong asks once he has a better sense of himself.
"Cold enough that you can just keep 'em anywhere," was the answer, given easily as though the question were expected. "S'not like that in the city."
Wukong vaguely files away " doesn't own a fridge" in a mental list of things he knows about Macaque. He didn't realize he had a list. He chases away the thought with a swig.
The movie's good. Not one of his favorites, but he's fought on that hill way too hard to be able to admit that now . But the familiar white noise of cheap special effects is comforting, and the booze isn't hurting.
Being kind of a lightweight has its perks, even if that's another thing he won't say out loud.
They get halfway through the movie and most of the way through the six pack. Wukong gets the lion's share, and if his guest wants to complain, he'll cite something about a storage fee or whatever.
But Macaque never says anything. Wukong chalks it up to how he's always been pickier. Still, between the two of them, they polish off quite a few.
He's grateful either way. The sugar on his tongue and the silly action on the screen do a great job at chasing away the… gunk of his last attempt at a full night's sleep.
But at a certain point, he finds his attention shifting to the side. He doesn't mean to stare. There's not much to look at.
Except that this is the fourth time Macaque's scratched at his scalp in the last couple of minutes.
"What?" Macaque barks unexpectedly, which, fair. Wukong isn't about to start pretending at subtlety.
"Do you have fleas or something?" He blurts.
" Excuse me?"
"You keep-- you keep itching," Wukong vaguely waves a hand around his general head area, bottle sloshing dangerously. Macaque scowls.
"Mind your business."
Wukong squints. Macaque stares forward in pouty silence. His tail thumps once against the armrest.
"...You'd better not get fleas in my couch."
"I don't have fleas," Macaque snaps, and maybe it's a trick of the TV light, but Wukong could swear he can see the tip of the ear facing him going pink. (It's not a bad color on him. Wukong privately thinks it could be six times nicer. …Wait. Three times? He has two right now. Yeah, three sounds right. Maybe. He's a king. And a monkey. He's pretty sure at least one of those two things doesn't have to do math.)
Wukong purses his mouth. The gears are chugging along valiantly in his head.
"...It's the middle of winter. How'd you even get--"
Macaque punches him hard in the shoulder, nearly missing, and retreats back as far as he can into the couch cushions.
"Fuck off. S'just a tick or something, I dunno," he grumbles, scratching in earnest now.
"That's worse," Wukong balks, setting his drink down. The little ones are pretty proactive with their hygiene, but those bugs can be nasty when they latch. "You und-- unnersta-- you get how that's worse, right?"
"How would you know? Your head's too thick for anything to--"
Macaque halts in his tracks when Wukong reaches over, jostling the empty bottles, intending to search his mane. Macaque grabs his wrist with truly impressive reflexes, eyes wide.
Wukong tries to wiggle his arm free.
"Dude," he says, with all the grave solemnity a guy drunk on sodas with little cartoon fruits on the bottle can muster, "You got ticks."
Macaque stares at him. It's kind of amazing watching his eyes cycle through all that junk in his head. And even more amazing that Wukong remembers how to decipher some of it. First it's confusion, then a second of that yell-y kind of anger, but it fades quick into something Wukong can't actually read. But it doesn't look yell-y. It's softer. Kinda tired. Kinda like he's searching for something on Wukong's face.
He lets go of Wukong's hand, and nods almost imperceptibly. He keeps his eyes on the TV, and sits still.
Weird, but it definitely makes the groom easier. Especially in the low light and with slightly tilting vision. It's fiiine.
Wukong has to scooch a little closer onto his knees to get a better look, but it only takes a couple seconds to find something. A few somethings. They're really tangled in there, but upon realizing what they are, Wukong snickers.
"Burrs!" He tisks, combing one smoothly out to show him. "You got burrs in here! Sheesh, were you rolling around in the grass?"
Macaque knocks the offending seed out of Wukong's hand, and is silent for just long enough that Wukong forgets he asked a question.
" You try finding a good place for a nap out there right now," he mutters, oddly subdued. "Everything's dead."
Wukong hums, singularly focused on his task. Between the low gritty-action-movie light source and the pitch black hair, he's almost completely reliant on touch to pick the burrs out. But that's not a hindrance-- this is what fingernails evolved for, probably-- and it frees him up to look over at the movie every so often. It's as satisfying to pull the spiky seeds free as it must feel to have them out. Who knows how long he must have had them in there, it can't have been comfortable. Especially if he thought it was a bug latching. Wukong opens his mouth to ask how long it's been since he'd groomed, but some tiny voice of self-preservation screams at him from under the boozy marinade it's drowning in.
He's the only one of his kind. So is Wukong, but Wukong has his subjects. Granted, Macaque had once been considered sort of part of that family, but not since--
Surely not. Surely it can't have been that long since someone else had done it. The little ones were friendly, and Macaque hangs around a lot. They must have helped him out once or twice in recent memory, at the very least just out of curiosity. Even the ones old enough to remember him don't mind him hanging around, much to their king's previous chagrin.
But they were very much keeping themselves scarce and sequestered to their troops during the chilliest time of year. It still could have been a good while.
Either way, it's definitely been a very long time since Wukong had done it for him.
…Ah.
Wait. Wait.
This is weird, isn't it. This is weird as hell.
There are some detriments, maybe, to being a lightweight.
He doesn't notice his hands stop until Macaque shifts under them. Wukong can't see what he's looking at from this angle, nor does he want to. He can't recall moving so close that he's almost pressed up to Macaque's side.
…It'd be weirder to stop halfway, right? The screaming voice that feels a lot like a beehive in his gut keeps his mouth shut, and Wukong has enough sense to figure he'll be grateful for that later.
Well.
Never let it be said that Wukong doesn't finish what he starts. He'd still have that thing on his head, otherwise. No, Sun Wukong was no quitter.
Emboldened by pride and the pure, irrefutable logic of his thought process, he continues his work.
…
The hair is so soft between his fingers. He almost forgot. It feels even nicer right now, with the extraneous tingle of alcohol making everything feel like more . He cards a hand through it, checking for more nasty plant matter, but also just to feel how it runs against his skin.
(His stomach flips. He wonders if it's the voice, the booze, or a third thing. It doesn't feel like a vomit-y kind of flip, so he ignores it.)
Something explodes onscreen, and Wukong realizes the movie's epic climax is about to start.
"Ooh, look, this is the best part," he whispers, giddy, and then pauses because he isn't quite sure why he's whispering.
Macaque doesn't answer. Wukong now consciously registers how slow his breathing is, and wonders when "frozen in sheer discomfort" might have turned into "dozing off". Both of these states of being kept him pretty still.
Wukong thanks every god he hasn't offended yet (there's gotta be at least, like, two) that his ex best friend/former mortal enemy/current annoying squatter is more heavily leaning into the couch while he sleeps than on Wukong. So, extracting himself from his side is a painless affair that doesn't wake anyone up or force anyone to say anything awkward.
Painless is the right word, of course. Even though something pangs in his gut again, and leaves it feeling sort of hollow. He almost hopes it's an impending puke bout.
Wukong's hand is the last thing to break contact with Macaque, smoothly pulling away the last burr from the downy hair by his neck. He doesn't stir.
It must have felt really nice to finally get those out, pleasantly tipsy as he must have been. Wukong idly wonders if he'll sleep the whole night, but dismisses the idea. Neither of them ever do. He'd be up and out of here within the hour.
Wukong ends up marathoning the entire Monkey Cop Franchise, and half a series of some old kung-fu movies until dawn's about to break. Macaque hardly stirred that entire time. Most notably, once to curl up against the armrest.
Wukong starts to feel the beginnings of a hangover as a dull ache in his forehead, and finally trudges off to his own bed for a nap. He sleeps maybe half an hour. Just long enough for the sun to come up.
Macaque sleeps in. He grimaces through a stray bag of peach chips for breakfast closer to noon before heading out. They don't talk about it.