Work Text:
She was leaning against the counter staring at her phone when Mei saw what happened. Red Son was sitting in a booth reading a book with MK sitting across from him, glaring. When MK agreed to give Red a chance, the rest of the group made him responsible for their old nemesis. So now he was glaring daggers.
Eventually, Red clearly had enough and he stood up suddenly with hands slamming the table and a push of fire coming from his head. “Stop your glaring, Peasant! I can not believe I have to go to the restroom to rid myself of you for only a few moments!”
MK looked up at Red, looking as innocent as ever. “Huh? Well, of course I have to keep an eye on you. Didn’t you agree to that?”
Red’s hair flamed up once again as he made a loud grunt in frustration before stomping away towards the restroom. Mei and MK both watched him go and what they both noticed made her laugh.
She walked over to the booth MK was sitting in and sat herself on top of its table. “Should I go in and tell him that’s the girls room?”
“I… don’t think so.” Oh no. Mei knew that look. MK was thinking about something. Or, more like contemplating something. She kicked her feet a few times before humming and asking her friend straight up.
“What’s bothering you about that?”
MK glanced over at her for a second before turning his gaze back to the bathroom door Red Son had pushed himself through. “I’m just not so sure it wasn’t on purpose. Or, maybe it was an instinct?”
Now that was an interesting thought. Could Red Son be like MK? Is that why he was so quick to accept it when he finally came out to him? Told him about being born a different gender?
“He said something strange to me that night I came out to him.”
“Oh yeah?” That comment forced her to put her phone in her jacket pocket and turn to MK head on.
“He said ‘Why should that matter?’. It was as if he couldn’t understand why I felt like I had to tell him that I wasn’t born a guy.” MK groaned and laid his head on the table, hiding his face in his arms. “I don’t know. I’m probably overthinking it. You should probably go tell him.”
“I’m not so sure you are overthinking it…” Mei looked up at the ceiling. Maybe they could try to judge his reactions? But if it is true and he’s trans, then simply using “she/her” about him wouldn’t be very cool or fun. That would just be cruel. Mei knew how awful that sort of thing would make MK feel and, especially since he’s supposed to be their friend now, she couldn’t do that to Red Son. And if he didn’t want to come out to them yet then there was no reason to pressure him. So Mei just let out a loud sigh.
Once Red left the bathroom and walked back to the booth, he sat in his spot, picked up the book he was reading earlier and then glared up at Mei.
“Why are you sitting up there?! People eat there!”
Mei stuck her tongue out at him. “No one’s eating right now, are they? Mr. ‘I’m-gonna-accidentally-go-to-the-women’s-restroom-and-just-hope-no-one-notices.’ Oh, by the way, we noticed.” When she felt MK tense next to her she had to quickly reevaluate her methods. Maybe this wasn’t the right way to go about it. She supposed the idea was to see his reaction or to try and push the point that they both saw him as male.
Which included Mei teasing him about a sort of mistake like that.
Only, it didn’t seem to have an effect beyond a small eyebrow raise.
“Did I?”
MK and Mei shared a glance. They knew that they had to make a split-second decision and split-second decisions were what Mei exceled at and MK failed at.
“Uh, yeah, you did.” She said in a purposefully mocking tone. “Did you really not notice?”
Red shook his head and then returned to his book as if none of it mattered. MK finally found his voice after that.
“Wait, what? Don’t you care? What if someone saw you?”
“It’s a one-stall bathroom, Noodle Boy.” Red turned the page. “There’s no reason anyone would care because no one else would have been in there with me.”
“But what if…” MK trailed off so Mei took it upon herself to finish the thought.
“What if someone saw you go in, or leave, and then they thought you were a girl! And started saying things like “Oh, look, it’s Red DAUGHTER come to steal more limited edition shoes!”
Red tensed and slammed his book shut, standing up and letting his hair light up in fire again. “That is not my name, peasant!”
Now it was Mei’s turn to tense. Right. That’s what they wanted to avoid. Maybe it was too-close to home? An actual dead name, perhaps?
“Sorry, Red.” Mei tried her hardest to sound as genuine as possible. Because she really was sorry. “I didn’t mean to actually misgender you or anything. I was just having fun.”
The flames of Red’s ire went away and once more, there was that raised eyebrow. “What are you talking about? You did no such thing.”
Mei blinked. She knew that she didn’t actually do it, but she brought up the idea of someone else doing it.
MK decided to rejoin the conversation, after sitting quietly and listening for so long. Something that was only happening because of what the subject at hand was. “Isn’t that why you’re mad at her? That she called you that?”
“Yes I’m mad at her that she called me that but what does gender have to do with anything? My name is something I am very proud of, as I should be, as it is the name that will be remembered in all of history as being the greaTEST DEMON TO EVER RULE THE EARTHLY PLANE AND TO BRING A NEW AGE OF EVIL AND DARKNESS ONTO THE WORLD!”
With Red clearly fine and going off on one of his relapses into villainy, Mei pulled out her spray bottle and splashed him with water.
Red fell back into the seat that he was then standing on and let out a literal hissing sound like a cat. Mei kept her poker face even as she laughed inwardly. “No. No more villain speeches about taking over the world. We’ve talked about this. No more Bad Red Son. You’re Good Red Son now. Good Red Son doesn't give speeches about plunging the world into darkness.”
Red let out many shouts of anger directed at her, but instead of listening at all, Mei turned her attention back to MK. He was just as confused as she was and neither of them were sure how to go about it from here. MK was more close to the questions they had so it wasn’t her place to ask. But MK was always the type to be terrified of asking people such personal questions.
“Are you two even listening to me?!”
Mei turned and laughed at Red Son. “Nope~! We kinda zoned out!” Red Son grumbled something about peasants and noodles before settling himself in his seat once again, obviously avoiding where the stray splashes of water had landed, and flipped through his book.
As he was searching for his place, he brought the conversation back. “I don’t care. It’s as simple as that. If others do and they want to be called something specific, boy or girl or male or female or anything else, I don’t care. I’ll call them what they want just as I do for you two. If some random person on the street mistakes me for a woman, then I have no reason to correct them. It’s simply not something I can bring myself to offer any of my brain power to. It’s not worth it to me.”
Mei hummed and looked up. “So, it’s a mistake if people call you “ma’am” but you don’t care to correct them?”
Red groaned and closed his book again. He leaned back against the cushion of the booth and crossed his arms. “Not exactly. I might have made my own error in calling it a mistake I do not care to correct. It’s more that I have no feelings on the matter. I do not feel any sort of difference between when someone calls me ‘he’ or ‘she’ and from my experience, others do. The Noodle Boy and yourself, for example. As do my mother and father.”
MK was officially interested in the conversation and seemed to no longer feel awkward about it. He leaned on the table to move closer to Red. “So do you have days where you feel more like a male than others?”
“No. I have no feelings on the subject. That is all there is to it. The gender others perceive me as has no consequence on my life. I simply do not care. To my understanding, even those who feel inclined towards one or the other but still accept both feel a sort of giddiness when referred to as whichever they wish to hear at that moment. And then there are those who identify as neither of the two most commonly accepted genders. There is no mistaking my gender because it means nothing to me and there is no gender in-between that I call myself. I refer to myself as male in most instances because that is what I am accustomed to, not because of some desire to be seen as such.”
“So… the bathroom…”
“Was because I paid no attention to the sign and simply walked into whichever was closest to get me as far away from the Noodle Boy as I could as quickly as possible.”
Mei and MK looked at each other and then started laughing. The fact that they were so scared to ask Red Son about his gender because of which restroom he went to and that the only reason he went to the girls restroom in the first place was because he cared so little that he didn’t pay attention to the signs in the first place was hilarious.
Red figured they were laughing at him and started making threats, which Mei shut up by spraying him with water while MK tried to explain that they were laughing at themselves, not at him. An explanation Red Son paid zero attention to as he continued his threats and his fire grew large enough to set off the sprinkler system. And as the trio left the noodle shop, two of them hooting and hollering and the other working hard to calm himself, Mei couldn’t help but to pull out her phone and stream the whole situation.
During which she referred to Red Son as “she” and “they” and “he” and at no point did he react differently. He simply kept his back turned, sitting in the street with his arms and legs crossed as if he knew if he got involved it would set off another fire.
MK and Mei continued their laughing fits the whole time as they waited for Pigsy and Tang to come back and turn the water off. And when they did, the duo officially made Red Son a member of their trio of chaotic beings with power they probably should use much more wisely than they do.