Chapter Text
Sun Wukong has been made very aware of his failings, time and time again. For all the impossible things he can do, all the enemies he’s vanquished, all the heavenly guards and attendants he’s left in his dust, all the treasures and tales he’s acquired over his many years as The Monkey King, he is still flawed. Not that he’ll admit it to anyone.
He is brash, bold in ways that make him shine as much as bruise wherever he bursts into, causing a commotion in every interaction. He has greedy hands and glutenous pockets, filling them with all the things he passes like when he was a cub, taking every shiny pebble and cool leaf he’d come across, now magical artifacts and immortal sorts of things.
But for all his faults, Wukong thinks there’s plenty about him to be liked. He’s just very ambitious, as all his ambitions have led to being the best of them. And funny, considering how all his brothers howl with laughter at his stories, his tribe leaned in on all he shares from the mainland. For all the things others curse him for, he is always guaranteed approval in his own home.
“You’re a fool.”
Well, almost always.
“You don’t mean that,” Wukong laughs off, a little stilted at Macaques glower. Oh, maybe he does.
“I do,” Macaque confirms, much to Wukong’s dismay. He’s even doing that thing he does when he’s so mad at Wukong, he’s jerking his arms in half-finished gestures, like he isn’t sure whether to scold, slap or strangle him. Perhaps all three. “I mean it so much right now. You are such a fool for even considering this hapless plan of Azures. I mean- Heaven?! And the Jade Emperor at that! Of all the- you’re already on their hit list, and you can’t cross your name out of that like in the underworld.”
Wukong mutters something like, “Bet I could,” before Macaque steps closer, looking to be closer to slapping him for the sass.
“This isn’t a joke, My King,” Macaque hisses, fur fluffing and making him appear bigger. It’s usually something he does to appear more threatening, more instinctual than anything, and on the rarer occasion when he’s very flustered by Wukong’s flirtations. Wukong resists the urge to smooth it done, or ruffle it into a bigger mess. Now is very much not the time.
“Well, I’m not joking,” Wukong states firmly, fixing his stance to something straighter, more in line with a king’s stance, as Macaque doesn’t seem all that convinced. “I am serious about this, Macaque.”
At the use of name (not his name name) he freezes, reassessing the other. It’s a thing they have; while Macaque will lean onto more formal terms such as ‘Monkey King’ or ‘My King’ to distance himself from the other, Wukong will pull on his more common name. Wukong adores nicknames, and has collected a plethora of them for his mate, enough that’d it gets hard to remember them all, honestly. And he will call Macaque by his name in company, as has been requested after one too many ‘peaches’ called out across the table, but when they’re alone as they are now, it’s always anything but.
At Macaques pensive look, pinched with obvious upset that Wukong wants to come up and swipe his thumb over the others creased brow, Wukong settles for taking his hovering hands into his own. He squeezes smaller, tan paws in bigger, peach fuzzed ones.
“Look, I understand your ire,” he soothes, gently tugging Macaque forward, stumbling a step into his hold so he can slide clever hands up to settle on tense shoulders, massaging them to loosen the knotted muscles. “But it’s just an offer, right now, and a malleable one at that. There’s still plenty to consider, and plenty more to plan. That’s plenty of time to think things over.”
“Okay,” Macaque agrees, and after three seconds of silence, he states, “Thought about it. You’re not doing it.”
“Wha- oh come on!” And yeah, maybe Wukong may seem whiney, but really, Macaque could put a bit more thought into this, and he says as much. “You could at least put a little more thought into it!”
“Oh, I’ve spent plenty of my time thinking over this sort of foolishness of yours,” Macaque nearly snarls, words growing sharp and tangled like thorny vines. “I think about it every time you leave me and the troop, off on another grand adventure! I think about it every time you stay gone, stuck in another mess of your making, with no allies to hear of. I think about it every time you come home, whenever you come home, knowing that I could do nothing about it.”
By this point, the hands at Macaque’s shoulders move to pull him in, sensing the heat coming from his mate and working to smother it before it grows too much. But for all his immortal strength, Wukong has never managed to contain the fury of Macaque, not when he’s found a spark with feeding into.
His arms are ripped away, gripped tightly into clawed fists, the fabric twisted with the tightness. “You have to know how much it hurts me to say this, but I need you to listen to me. Listen to me.” There’s something desperate in the way Macaque speaks, a reflection to all the times he’s approached Wukong with echoes in his six ears, or when his king drops from his cloud and back onto the shores here, where Macaque always hears him and waits. He looks so earnest in a way that’s soured with grief, and Wukong cannot look away. He stands, stiff as the stone he was molded from, and listens.
Macaque breathes, low and labored. “You are not going to win.” And oh, how Macaque claimed to be the one who would be hurt, when Wukong feels his pride be speared with so few words. His strength is his biggest pride, and to have anyone dishonor it makes him boil over. To hear Macaque of all people say it makes him cold.
“I know you think you are- but you’re not. You will follow your sworn brothers into a war you will not win, and you will not come back. You are immortal, powerful and terribly stubborn, and that will not be enough. If you leave me here to fight them, you will not come back, and I will lose you.” The words were so fierce in their fire, but now they die on his tongue, spoken like soft ash.
He twists his arms to force Wukong’s own close, hands gripping his kings’ wrists and keeping them together. It’s like the pose of prayer, Macaques over his, his lips pressed to Wukong’s jumbled hands conjoined and speaking into the gap, as if sending his plea to the heavens through them. “I will not lose you.”
There’s a fragility to the moment they share; Wukong must be careful what he does next, lest he set the other aflame into an inferno, or have him crumble like a brunt tree. Either consequence has Wukong shiver, feeling far more fragile than he’s used too.
He’s used to Macaque worrying for him. It’s their way of working through things, where Wukong will wander, and Macaque will find him, and lead him home. It’s how things have always been, with Wukong a wild force, be a stead that strays away or a ship lost to the seas, and Macaque his tether.
Macaque likens them to the sun and the moon, and while he agrees it fits them quite well, Wukong always thought himself the waves. Massive in his reach, primal in his power, and kept to the moons pull. The things that his moonlight does to him, how he pushes him down onto his back and pulls him in, the stretch of his body and the bend of his will. It should be scary, what he’d be willing to do to keep that light all for himself, but he finds the moon to love the sea just as much.
He just hadn’t considered the loneliness; to be the moon is to never touch the sea, no matter how strong your pull may be.
Wukong leans in, breaking his hands of prayer to press his lips to mates. Macaque shudders, something wet and worn sounding in his throat before it’s swallowed back, a low moan of want winding tighter with each other’s arms seeking the others back to knot behind. It is not a kiss of passion, or teasing, but of softness. Something to soothe the hurt, but leave the break to be mended for after. Its s not a solution, but it is an answer. An answer that Macaque accepts from him.
Then they part, they stay pressed, chest to chest. Macaque looks annoyed, both at Wukong and himself, for having let them get this far, Wukong is just happy to see him in his arms, right where he belongs.
“I won’t make promises,” Wukong settles on, because Macaque deserves honestly from him. “I promised them nothing but my table and my time, not myself. We are brothers, but you-” He lifts Macaque up and spins them, earning a chirp for his troubles. “-are my mate, my love, as well as my very life! If you’ll have me still?”
Macaque grumbles a mess of words into Wukong’s thick, ginger mane, bent to be tucked into the others shoulder. He thinks they sound like agreements, so Wukong nuzzles back with a low approving growl.
Still, he asks, “What was that? I don’t have six ears to hear with like you.”
With a hissy sputter, Macaque pulls back to say, “I said I will have you. Even though you should not be worth the trouble, I will have you, even when I should throw you off a cliff. Let you sink.”
Wukong coos, and just because he can, spins them again, making Macaque choke at the sudden movement. “Oh! How romantic. You do love me!”
And for all the silliness this moment has devolved into, Macaque admits fondly, “I suppose I do.”
__________
It could have ended there. It should have ended there.
It does not.
In the end, Wukong and his brothers talk. Him and Macaque talk. Him, his brothers and Macaque talk. The productiveness of each conversation is wholly dependent of who is with who when everyone is talking. The least progress is made when Peng and Macaque are in the same room, and Demon Bull King is dependent of how much alcohol is served at the table. The more drink, the less things move onward. Though, that really applies to all of them.
Ironically, it’s when Macaque is not present that things come to a halt, though that does not mean he isn’t part of the problem.
“Out of the question,” Wukong grounds out, stuck to his decision no matter how much his brother seem to want to push him on it.
The conversation had been pretty simple, all things considered; another successful pillage, some scavengers sent aways, and some fine loot taken to be spent to each other. Then, as things often did these days, it led to talk of the inevitable invasion of Heaven, and what would be done. Wukong would head the majority with brute force, followed by Demon Bull King. Peng would have the sky, seeing what enemies came ahead while taking a ranged approach, or be ready to dive incase someone needed aid. Yellow Tusk would be on the defensive, with ample support. And Azure would be commanding in the midst, taking out the strays left in Wukong and Demon Bull King’s wake.
Really, for all he’s helped in their battles so far, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to hear Macaque be mentioned.
“You know, of everyone here, I’d have thought you’d been quick to show off your little warrior,” Peng jeers. “What? Don’t think he can handle himself?”
Wukong huffs at the remark, but doesn’t say anything of it. He doesn’t think he needs to show off Macaque to others, not in this. Macaque has plenty of other times he’s shown just how capable he is. For all the jokes made at him sticking to the shadows, everyone’s acknowledged in their own ways how valuable an ally Macaque can be. It makes Wukong preen at how someone he holds dear being regarded even half as highly as Wukong sees him. He knows Macaque is amazing, and smart, and powerful in ways even Wukong has difficulties with. He’s plenty capable.
He just… doesn’t need to be there. In Heaven. At all.
“I don’t see why you’d coddle the man,” Demon Bull King drawls, more languid with the wine out, but no less aware of the conversation for it. “For all he may be meek, he is not weak, that much is sure.”
“I don’t coddle him,” Wukong defends, cheeks flushed at the accusation. He doesn’t! If anything, Wukong builds him up! They work off each other, in all the romantic ways Macaque describes them as, and having Macaque join him in battle has only made them both stronger!
He can admit, earlier in their relationship he may have been a tad… protective. Macaque would probably call it obstructive, for all the times he’d block him from following after Wukong time and time again. The promise of his return and the implication of a longer stay after usually did the trick, but when he’d been allowed to join in on the preparations for the war, he’d become less content to wait like before. In that span of time, Macaque had gotten over his intense distaste of this war and had become far more proactive. Perhaps a bit too proactive, as he’d come to stick to Wukong like honey, a sweet thing but ultimately hard to get off.
Not that he didn’t love it! He loves Macaque, and having him fight alongside him outside of defending the islands immediate boarders was a whole rush of feelings, but with it came this nagging fear of ‘what if’.
What if something happened? What if, when Wukong wasn’t looking, wasn’t close enough, something happened to Macaque? What if he was hurt, or kidnapped, or Buddha forbid killed and Wukong could do nothing about it?
He used to have these fears about himself, and so Wukong became immortal, then even more than that. Then he’d start having these fears about his troop, but they were left in the safety of his island. But Macaque wasn’t immortal, not as much as him, and he now refused to stay in the one place he’d be safe. Now, the promise of his return isn’t enough. Wukong’s word isn’t enough, and that thought along unsettles him.
It was… a lot to think about. And worry about. And just be plain upset about. He just wishes they weren’t having this conversation today, or at all for that matter.
“I think it would be a waste to not have him,” Yellow Tusk reasons. “He has proven himself well enough, and for all his worries, I doubt he’d be idle to let us go without him.”
When Peng side-eyes Wukong, the king bristles, one of the few times he understands Macaque’s instinctual dislike for the bird. “I’m sure he’d follow his king anywhere.”
With a clap, Azure hollers out, “So it’s decided! We will request of Macaque’s aid in the final war against Heaven, and when he accepts, we’ll form a thorough plan.”
“If he accepts,” Wukong mutters, though no one seems keen to argue with him now.
The next time they all share a table, they ask Macaque.
He accepts.
Wukong doesn’t sleep that night.