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There's a knife piercing his chest.
It's welded together by the vague dark silhouettes that the moon shaped in his room, the wielder bares his teeth at Wukong. The shadows of the night perched on his shoulders make him look larger, hungrier. He looks like a predator.
Wukong does not bleed.
The wielder smiles at Wukong. The teeth look like they're stained with blood but when he blinks the red is gone.
Must've been a trick of the light.
Wukong's breath gets stuck in his throat, one of his hands clutching the bed sheets beneath him. What a way to wake up, huh?
He growls and pushes Macaque off him, tearing the blade from his chest. It evaporates as soon as he touches it.
"Did you have to break in this late?" Irritation clings to his voice as he leaps out of his bed, narrowly avoiding Macaque lunging at him.
Macaque laughs. It feels demeaning.
"Of course! Hit 'em when they least expect it, right?"
Wukong rolls his eyes, Dodging a punch from the other monkey, "You and your sneaky tactics..." He grumbles, eye twitching.
He tries to sweep Macaque's feet from under him but the other practically dances away from his sweeping leg, his cape swishing behind him.
Macaque summons his staff and jabs at Wukong's stomach, who grunts and yanks the staff from Macaque and twirls it before he jumps at the other monkey. Macaque growls and the staff disintegrates into swirling shadows. They twirl to his hand like ribbons and shape themselves back into the spiked cudgel.
Wukong scoffs and yanks one of Macaque's arms to pull him towards himself, using the proximity to knee him in the stomach. Macaque yelps, slamming the cudgel on his head and pushing him away.
Disoriented, Wukong lands on the floor, his head suffering another blow when it gets hit against the bed on his way down. He grits his teeth. The floorboards in his vision melt together.
Strong arms grab his sides. When he looks up, Macaque looks slightly blurry.
Suddenly, he's soaring through the air and crashing through his window, his stomach feeling weightless. He lands on the ground roughly, rolling a few times till the momentum stops, one of his hands clutching his chest, struggling to bring air back into his lungs.
Macaque is on him in seconds, grasping his shoulders and slamming him further into the ground.
Wukong gasps, his brows furrowing into a glare, "This is getting old, Macaque." He grits out.
Macaque just smirks, "You're getting old."
On the ground, Wukong makes an affronted noise, sitting up quickly enough to make his head spin and pushing Macaque away, "You're older than me!"
"Psh," Macaque tries to punch him but Wukong rolls out the way, "Only by a few decades, give or take."
"Exactly!" Wukong dodges a kick, standing with a little difficulty, but still manages to get a good hit in.
The other monkey punches his face. The fight carries on, punches and kicks and pushing and scratching blurring together into a deadly song and dance they've memorized by heart.
Macaque, at some point, managed to knock Wukong down and slammed a knee on his gut, knocking the air out of him. They grapple, hands intertwined and pushing against each other with enough force to shatter mountains in a single blow. The trees look as though they're bending down to meet Macaque, creating a halo of black sky around his dark hair. The moon shines down on him. It's sickening.
He looks delighted. At this point, they've been brawling for who knows how long and Wukong is tired. Tonight was one of the few nights his insomnia wasn't a problem and Macaque interrupted that. He feels exhausted. He can feel the repressed anger in his chest uncoil slowly, like a venomous snake. Of course Macaque just had to ruin one of the few good things that came to him.
He snarls, headbutting Macaque. He hisses as he's thrown back, one hand coming up to nurse his head. Wukong pounces on Macaque, claws digging into his shoulders.
He can only guess how angry his expression was because when Macaque opens his eyes, they widen, all struggle ceases for a second before he starts to squirm in Wukong's hold. All that can be heard is Macaque's rasp gasping. The other monkey is clawing at his arms, the color draining from his face rapidly. He won't stop staring at Wukong's eyes but he's not really looking at Wukong. Or maybe he is, but right now, it looks like he's staring into the void. A very terrifying void, given the haunted and panicked look in his face. Distantly, Wukong wonders if the void looks like him.
Shame rolls in his gut. Guilt, too. Enough to induce nausea. Enough to make him want to vomit. Enough to make the back of his eyes sting, sting more than the constant smoke burns that plague his eyes.
Wukong takes his hands off Macaque's shoulders and creeps away slowly, his chest constricting. It only gets worse when Macaque curls up and clutches at his face with shaky breaths.
Fuck. His hands shake. Macaque keeps gasping breaths so deeply that it must hurt. His chest hurts. The trees really start to bend down and the ground is eager to meet midway with the trees. He can't feel his heartbeat. He almost laughs. Of course he doesn't, his doesn't pump. It doesn't bleed it doesnt feel it just sits there, uselessly. It can't even sit there and look pretty because his heart is rotten ugly ugly ugly ug—
It takes him a little too long to realize Macaque's whimpering breaths aren't the only ones playing in this tragedy play, but so are Wukong's. His chest heaves. His chest hurts. The trees are still bending down and they're crying and the stars shine too brightly they hurt his eyes and it feels like there's a hole in his chest. It feels hopeless. It feels desperate and pitiful and—
And an arm wraps itself around his shoulders. It feels cold. He still can't breathe. The trees claw at his back.
"You're so selfish." Something —someone?— mutters in a hoarse voice, "I'm the one suffering and you have the gall to have a panic attack. Typical."
Wukong leans into the arm. He chokes down a sob. His chest still hurts. The emotions gather in his throat in an effort to strangle him.
He spends the next several seconds trembling, gulping down air down his lungs. It doesn't work as well as he wishes it did. It does give some clarity to the once warped surroundings. The trees look normal now. The stars aren't exploding anymore. Small mercies. The touch of Macaque's arm hurts, his skin tingles under the bruises.
"I..." He stops, because what is he supposed to say? I'm sorry? I didn't mean to? I don't know what to say because you hurt me but seeing you hurt because of me hurts even more?
Macaque shifts. He can probably deduce all of those hidden sentiments that Wukong will never voice. He's always been good at reading between the lines.
The wind blows, picking up their shattered hearts and long grass. The rustling of the trees sound like sobs. The two figures stay sitting next to each other, leaning against each other. It feels nostalgic, in a way. It feels like reviving old memories of simpler times, when being soft wasn't taboo. Maybe that's why Macaque mutters:
"Do you... Do you still love me, Wukong?" The words make his throat bleed.
He doesn't know. Wukong thinks he did, once. All the memories muddle together like bloodstained water going down a drain.
Macaque is shaking. He looks tired.
Wukong's tired too.
Wukong doesn't look back at him, "I don't know." He mumbles. He doesnt know much these days. How did that even happen? He used to be so sure.
"Okay."
Silence follows. It settles on their shoulders like dead weight, curling its voracious jaws on their necks. Silence isn't supposed to feel like this, is it?
Macaque's eyes slide to him, "I'm not sorry," he croaks out, "I want to fucking kill you."
"I know." He still doesn't look back. If he looks back, Macaque's eyes will be caved in. If he looks back, Macaque will not look like Macaque, he will look like Wukong and that is worse than any other warped horror his mind could come up with.
One of his hands slithers closer to Macaque's. Macaque grabs it. His grip is painful, his nails pierce the flesh. Wukong does not bleed.
Is it wrong, to want to bleed? How sinful. His Master would be disappointed. Would be be punished if he ever voiced such thoughts? Maybe. Maybe it would've taught him a lesson, the circlet never made him bleed, no matter how much it constricted against his head, no matter how it felt like every single nerve ending inside him was scratching and clawing at his skin to escape, Wukong never bled.
His other hand comes up to his chest, tracing edges the hollow gash from the stab wound from earlier. It burns. From out of the corner of his eyes, he can see Macaque stare at him blankly, not an ounce of emotion in his face. His hand gets squeezed harder. There's still no blood.
Macaque growls and tears himself from Wukong, shoving his shoulder. Wukong holds in a sigh of relief, Macaque's touch hurt like a hundred wasps trapped beneath his skin. He almost wishes the other monkey would crawl back to him, though.
The sound of shadow warping echoes through the trees. Macaque is gone. Wukong enters his shack through the broken window.
He does not fall back asleep. All the shadows have eyes. He punches his hand through the walls but the shadows don't disappear.
There's no blood on his knuckles. Only splinters.