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There are many situations where Macaque would rather hop into shadow to avoid. A common theme between them is the presence of a certain stone monkey, through a flashed smile or remark that points sharply in his direction. That also happens to encompass most of their time spent around each other at friend's gatherings.
MK’s “mandatory meetings”, as Macaque calls them, are usually by a cliffside on Flower Fruit Mountain, or Sandy's boat, or in Pigsy's restaurant with the "Closed" sign hung below the window. Macaque is perfectly fine with disappointing some people by not showing up, but he owes it to MK to pay his attendance.
He will, however, disappoint Wukong all night by ignoring his jabs and glares. Macaque has so much free time by not responding, in fact, that he can tally the number of looks Wukong shoots his way when he strays from the conversation and wants to find a way to blame Macaque for something. It's thirty-seven. They've barely been inside the cramped room of Pigsy's, half-filled bowls in everyone's hands, and Wukong has glared at him thirty-seven times. Sometimes, Wukong even forgets to add the usual disdain to his look, and ends up just glancing over, maybe even hoping for some kind of eye contact. Macaque is happy to disappoint.
Mei smacks the table with vigor. "Come on, MK. There's gotta be a favorite mentor! It's like when you see two frogs and one is obviously a little cuter!" She exclaims. There is a collection of sighs from the people in the room who have been wrung through this conversation already. Wukong and Macaque are among them.
Wukong says between a mouthful of noodles, "That's too obvious of a question. One of us has not tried to kill him."
Macaque, unlike him, knows when to keep his mouth shut, so he does not voice his contradiction to Wukong's statement. He has moved on from being an asshole on purpose to being a begrudging grump. "You clearly can't handle not being the cute frog. Come on, a toad has its own charm." The three kids, affectionately named the traffic light trio, hold in their laughter. Wukong harrumphs. Another glare gets passed his way, golden eyes scrunched up in more amusement than actual anger. That makes another for the tally.
MK, who manages to notice and blame himself for every grievance the pair has against each other, nervously laughs. He shrinks back while sitting on his bar stool and nearly falls off. "Why would I have a favorite? You guys have totally different teaching styles. It's like apples to oranges... or peaches to mangos? Yeah."
Macaque nods in agreement. Wukong begrudgingly does the same, hiding his face in the bowl to slurp the broth. Macaque keeps waiting for another glance to come his way, like a hidden message between them, but it doesn't come. He looks down at the scratches on the table.
Macaque was the last to arrive. and there was only one spot left, a seat at a booth. Wukong is seated at a table with direct line of sight to him. The proximity feels intentional, judging by the hopeful glances radiating from MK whenever there's a peaceful moment. As if the kid thinks that the two coexisting is a battle won. It would help his efforts if he got Wukong to try to read Macaque for once. Wukong is just that obtuse.
Macaque takes a sip from his bowl while the conversation changes tune around him. The broth has the warm flavors of a stock that Macaque can remember from centuries ago, strolling along the then-quiet town, pulled into a cozy restaurant by its inviting smell. He was with someone at the time. Someone he cared for.
Wukong doesn't look at him again, but he still finds room for a bitter feeling to rise like bile. Maybe Wukong has his own running tally of how many times Macaque falls into a faraway time while staring at him.
Mo, the cat who had tagged along and spent the time by peering out of the shuttered blinds, peers up at him from the wooden floor. Macaque tries to look disinterested, but that exacerbates the problem, as Mo leaps onto the wooden bench beside him. Macaque ignores the problem as the problem looks pleased to have his reluctant attention. The cat bats at Macaque's tail.
The pinpricks of claws are more distracting than painful. Macaque sets his bowl down with a clink, his hand tracing Mo’s back, and he freezes. Cats would slink away from him when he tried to pet them with his freezing hands, a “perk” of being resurrected. Making people on edge using his shadows is a form of control that was ripped away from him twice, once by death and the other by its ally. His cold touch is just another way to take control from him. He used to love cats.
Mo nudges his hand with a very articulate paw. Technically, a paw in paw, Macaque thinks as a bolt of astonishment shocks him. Mo slinks under his hand in a faux attempt at a pet. Macaque obliges and continues to stroke the fur on his back, a silky blue pattern.
Wukong notices the cat by his side eventually. Macaque smirks at him, and the jealous pout on Wukong’s face is satisfying enough.
Moonlight creeps through the shutters and mixes with the neon blob of lights casted by the door. The warm lights inside and drowsy faces blur in a melting pot of reminiscence. Despite Macaque calling it a mandatory meeting, he doesn’t find a bad time when he goes, even with the addition of Wukong. Tonight, Wukong seems complacent to leave that as it is.
Mo purrs quietly at his side while he sets his bowl further in front of him. It's warm enough in the room that he could shut his eyes and nod off, oddly tired despite his persistent insomnia. The clock on the wall ticks to eleven o’clock and the shadows peeking through the shutters swell to fill the front of the restaurant.
Red Son gets up from his barstool to announce his departure at the same time Sandy does, though Sandy is politer about it. “Little buddy?” Sandy calls, looking around the room for blue fur and orange hair.
Mo blinks awake. He meows gratitude as he leaps off of Macaque’s lap, and a chorus of goodbyes follows the three into the busily-lit street. MK and Mei's conversation flows back into place while a drought pauses the two immortals.
Tang and Pigsy are doing their own routine, with Pigsy taking empty bowls, wiping down tables, and preparing the kitchen for the next day as Tang watches in silent appreciation. Macaque feels cast behind the shutters, as if in the shadow around a warm candle. Wukong cycles between fidgeting with a tassel on his armor and memorizing inflections in the floor panels.
Macaque weighs the consequences in his mind for a minute. Wukong is picking lint off of his sleeve, eyes flicking to the door, MK, and back down at himself. A cycle of anxiety that Macaque knows all too well. He sighs and hopes that the consequences really are that worth it. He slides out of the booth.
MK's eyes dart to him, like he expects him to leave, then settle back when he instead grabs a chair from an empty table. Wukong pretends not to notice him until the scraping sound of the metal chair against the floor strikes next to his table, and then, a surprised look shoots his way. Thirty-ninth for the tally. "You were looking lonely,” Macaque says with an insufferable lilt.
"That makes both of us," Wukong shoots back, though he waits without another retort. Macaque makes himself comfortable in his seat. He sits directly across from Wukong, which was the part of his plan that had the least confidence. Head-on confrontation did not do them well. Macaque wanted to try his luck.
"But I did something about it. You, on the other hand?"
"Yeah, okay." Wukong eyes him warily, arms crossing on the table. It occurs to Macaque that they haven't had a normal conversation in centuries. "So, what's up with you? Besides brooding."
"Actually, I don't do a lot of brooding in my free time. Not good for the whole mental health thing." There's a blatant lack of material to supply their conversation. He normally keeps the small talk to a minimum for his own sake, so anything he does say ends up weirdly personal. He bites the bullet and goes for the truth. "I came over 'cause we clearly don't fit in."
"Oh, so just to remind me?"
He scoffs. "No," he says, but a clarification doesn't come. The atmosphere is close knit between people that consider themselves family. Wukong and Macaque were the ones that should be able to stand on their own, yet it doesn't work out that way in practice. It just dragged the tension between them inside. "How is... Flower Fruit Mountain?"
Wukong relaxes. "It's alright," he says tentatively. "There's a lot of chilling. Hanging out." A huff of laughter sounds from outside of their bubble, sprung from another conversation. There is a light bulb directly above them that doesn't help with the attempt to be non-interrogational. "Where do you stay these days?"
Macaque cringes. "That doesn't matter. It's not as good as your precious little cave, so use that ego boost as you will."
Wukong’s tail smacks into his metal chair, one sign of agitation that Macaque has had the pleasure of seeing many times since his return to the mortal plane. "I wouldn't want my mentee training in some dump outside of the city."
"Inside the city, then."
The reply comes as a shot. "So you admit it is a dump?"
He smiles, but it's void of humor. "Better than your cluttered mess of a house."
Wukong sighs. "Whatever game you were playing by coming over here, you win. I didn't come here to fight." Macaque loses his smirk in an instant, back to being disgruntled and sorry that he ever approached him. Wukong looks seconds away from taking his own chair and dragging it helplessly across the room into a corner.
Their normal back and forths can span the length of the earth eight times over. Did he find Wukong in a serious mood?
The disappointment sticks heavily like smog. The air in his lungs leaves with one heavy exhale. "I didn’t, either." He'll be damned if he apologizes, but he wants to catch Wukong before he leaves again. There's not many times that good will brings them together at the same table. The confidence that drove him to speak hangs him out to dry. "Old habits die hard, I guess. Can I start over?"
Wukong narrows his eyes at him, fortieth in his tally, and Macaque doesn’t shy away from it. Many other times, he’s taken the scrutiny as an attack and built a line of defensive remarks, poised to knock down his old friend before he can find a fault. That’s how he’s played his cards and has stayed alive because of it. But lately, Wukong greets him with less vindication and more of a search, looking for clues in Macaque’s demeanor that might give him away. Macaque can still read Wukong like a book with the ink smudged. All the way to the basics, it’s Wukong, and always has been, from every impulse decision, to the new openness that is displayed on his pages.
Macaque’s life is a smattering of destruction. Torn and scorched pages, chapters rearranged. Wukong looks to him in the same way that Macaque does, but what he sees is a messy collage of a person rebuilt after disaster. It’s no wonder that Wukong can’t read him. Not anymore.
A rare flash of shame prickles his face, overwhelming his earlier notion of being obvious. A jab still hurts outside of battle. A sneer can murder a conversation without even holding a weapon.
“Last chance,” Wukong says, sitting up straight in his chair with crossed arms. The small space of the restaurant closes in on the two of them.
Last chance. That’s funny. He’s heard that once before, a long time ago, and the chance wasn't in his favor.
Macaque consoles his odds of landing on a successful conversation topic. Wukong’s mouth is pressed in the same way it does when his bag of peach chips is half empty, or MK misinterprets his “sagely” advice, or his default greeting for Macaque. If Macaque decided to switch sides at the end of the world again, Wukong would have that same, almost bored look: “Well, bud, I can’t say I’m surprised”. Maybe Wukong gave up trying to think he’s changed, and Macaque wouldn’t blame him for that.
All he can do is prove him wrong. That, he is happy to do.
“I know you don’t trust me around MK and all, but it’s impressive how fast the kid’s developing his powers. Not to discredit his main teacher.” His cunning smile falls back into place, more natural this time.
Wukong blinks. “Yeah. Can’t help but be proud of him. Not to also discredit his side teacher.” The light above them shines like sly crescent moons in his eyes. “He’s learned a lot from you.”
He leans in closer to catch what Wukong has to say. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah… yeah!” His eyebrows shoot down in mock anger. “He kicked me in the face a few training sessions ago! What was that all about?”
Macaque sputters out a laugh, earning a raised eyebrow from Pigsy and a glance from MK that relaxes when he looks over. The room echoes its slightly raspy sound, but it fits snugly into the warm atmosphere. “He should know how to disarm an opponent without using his hands.”
“That’s what external factors are for, knocking ‘em out with boulders!”
“But, to be clear, it did work?”
“I wasn't expecting it,” Wukong argues. Macaque grins at the idea of that, a cheery kind of sour because Wukong used to block his kicks with one hand during their fights, grabbing his shin and yanking him off-balance. He would hit the sun-heated earth with an undignified yelp. It felt like Wukong was always expecting that attack from him. Wukong crosses his arms on top of the table. “It wouldn’t work if you tried it,” he adds with a taunting lilt.
The faded memory jumps up to smack him with the force of being retrieved. “Oh? And why is that?”
“Because I know you.”
Macaque could say the same thing, and if he left it at that, his relationship to Wukong would be a lot simpler. It never has been, and it's not going to start, but there's peace in knowing that they can turn over a new page— if not for the lives they've built around Megapolis, then for each other. Macaque nudges the leg of Wukong’s chair with his boot. “Then I'd say we're evenly matched.”
“Are you two about to fight or something?” MK says with a yawn. The small light of their space is swallowed as the surrounding darkness comes back into focus.
The rest of the room is floured in dim light. Mei has her head on the bar, about to sleep or in its midst, Pigsy is organizing dishware, and MK slouches in his seat. His eyes blearily reflect the lightbulb still on over the two immortal’s heads. Macaque and Wukong match each other with a stare. “Yeah, right in front of the restaurant, too,” Macaque replies easily.
Pigsy finishes shining a bowl. “You better not,” he grunts. Tang, who is leaning on the chef’s shoulder, hums some kind of agreement.
“Some other night, then.” Macaque stands with a scrape of the chair against the floor, waking up his nerves, and does a light stretch. “I’m gonna head out. Get some sleep soon, kid.”
A jumbled goodbye leaves MK’s mouth. Wukong looks up in a flash of surprise, as if what he wanted to say halted to slam into the front of his skull. Macaque believes in ending on a high note, and that constitutes as having the last word, so he smiles at the stunned sputtering of Wukong’s “where’re you going?”.
“Nowhere you should worry about.”
The orange lighting must be playing a trick on his eyes, because Wukong frowns, a dim expression, paired with the scrutinizing glare for a lifetime. Forty-first tally. “Stay out of trouble.”
A small victory, ending the evening without fur flying. “Night, Wukong,” he says, and there isn't vitriol backing it. It's a tired statement without promise. Not like his promises have weight with people anymore, but the definiteness of it has its own merit.
He can promise to be more understanding, or he can try. Next time, he'll bring an open mind, and maybe some conversation topics prepared.
Macaque slips into a shadow. The abyssal space doesn't feel so frigid as the warmth of the restaurant resonates through.