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The only clouds on Flower Fruit Mountain lie in its ruler's pout.
Some of them, darkened and sleep-inducing, match in the dourness of his warrior, seated beside him. But their expressions are more overcast than stormy—a natural forecast, portended by their finished talk about Macaque's disappearance. About their last, major fight. About how, with the threat of Chaos lurking in Macaque's power and Wukong's passed down staff, too much of their respective memories fell out of step with one another.
Someone sent Macaque to the Underworld. And it hadn't been Wukong.
Wukong cuts his sigh short, but it thuds through the summery air, too dense for it to hold. Too much irony, confusion, and outright mortification besieges him—because for all the pain that eviscerated him from Macaque's account, a genuine relief washed through, too. That Macaque never left him for so long of his own accord. That what had kept him from Wukong had literally been death.
Then again, he needs few guesses as to what Macaque felt, realising Wukong wasn't his killer. Considerably more than guesses are needed, though, to process how Macaque was already helping and sacrificing himself for who he thought was his killer apparent—a devotion too rich for any of a king's coffers or a god's temples to house properly.
One of the longest talks of Wukong's life, with one of the people that matters most to him in the realms, and the both of them now reel from its aftermath here—under the tree on the beach of Flower Fruit Mountain.
The day is too ripe for the tree to give them any shade. The sunshine sizzles full frontal and Wukong may go numb where he sits, staring out at the horizon shouldered by the dappled-white sea. A sleepless night takes no real toll on either him or Macaque, but for the hours spent pouring their hearts out, at least just as long ticks away for some feeling to pump back into the cored, bled out things.
Macaque in particular, since their exchange of revelations, has been silent while sitting so close. As a shadow does—in a way that, vaguely, deep down, unnerves Wukong. No smart remarks or firm scolding his warrior usually waylays him with. Like the king, for the past few hours, he's not spoken. Nor moved a muscle.
Until he holds out a peach to his face.
Wukong blinks. From this close, the smell is radiant. The fuzz of the immortality-laden, sweet skin shines in the sun, the leaf by the stem a succulent green, the shape itself perfect and plump.
Brows arced, Wukong's tail curls at the end as he glances at Macaque. Then, seeing him focusing on the peach, stares back at it.
"Bud, I—" Wukong scoffs, but the sound trips the way a rowboat does over a sudden wave. "You know I can get these myself, like, anytime."
Wukong sneaks him abortive glances. Each glimmers an opportunity for Macaque to retort or rescind the offer as a joke. As the silly ribbing it has to be.
But Macaque only hums. Just gives the stone fruit a light shake.
At this distance, he could feed Wukong by hand. That possibility, this tantalisingly close, flushes Wukong pinker than his mask.
"You really gonna leave me hanging?"
Macaque's murmur is a static shock, the nudge of his shoulder a poker. Fur fluffed by the jolt, Wukong promptly takes the peach. Keeps his eyes fixed firmly on it. His lips purse. His heart thuds.
"Um…" Wukong's trousers almost catch on the tree's gnarled bark from his shifting. Hot in the face, he mumbles. "Thanks."
He bites into the peach. Soft flesh and sweet juice flood his mouth. Macaque, in his periphery, only tilts his cheek onto his fist. He almost looks close to dozing off, were his gaze not fixed straight onto Wukong's face.
Wukong works the peach in his hand, his blush worsening. "Staring awful hard there."
Macaque's ears flick. Just a couple on one side, all six soft-cooking in the sun. But otherwise, he stays unmoving.
In a huff, Wukong digs into his peach like it's soft soil he can bury his head in. Away from Macaque's calm, undying attention.
The water scintillates. With the unabashed, white sun, jewels of light lap along along the golden shoreline. The peach paints a rich coat of syrup over Wukong's tongue, bits and fibre plush in his cheeks, immortality melting through his mouth.
He makes sure to eat it through. Normally, he would strew a ring of peaches around him, a bite or two taken out of each, only the honey-yellowed flesh eaten and the barest part of the pit peeking out. But this single peach, Wukong carves at with his teeth like a sculptor working with poverty. Even the redder, bitter parts that grow like tougher hair off the scalp of the pit, he whittles down with his teeth, wipes with his tongue, till the seed itself is excised of juice.
In the midst of his thorough eating—after Wukong picks out a stubborn strand tucked by a gum before committing to another bite—Macaque leans his head on his shoulder.
With cheeks full of peach, Wukong nearly coughs.
Macaque's fur—always far thicker than his, every tuft a dark copse home to the denizens of at least an hour-long groom—brushes coarse against his cheek and neck. Interlaces without tangling into his own, orange-gold fluff.
Nothing can touch Wukong but Macaque turns his head, nuzzling his bare face into his hanfu. The king's tail transcends his transformation magic, jumping to a lightning rod. The give of his cheek burns through Wukong's layers, down to his core, and he can't squeeze the poor, one-of-a-kind peach in his hand—he hasn't finished it yet and it's so succulent. One, errant twitch of Wukong's claw could bruise it. The threat slows his spiking heart rate and, around the bitten peach, calcifies his claw.
The waves lap at the shore of Flower Fruit Mountain. Wukong, after the pile of peach flesh leaches of taste in his mouth, finally gulps.
For a second, Macaque noses into his scarf.
Wukong's eyes might turn to golden turtle eggs, having the room to roll out and plop into the shore. His claw, now, also shudders, far too rigid around his peach. His forearm might fall off and dent the tree trunk on the way down, tensing to rock. His other claw prickles with an unending heat. Macaque piles on the warmth he radiates, draped along his side.
"Forever's a long time," Macaque murmurs. The shattered silence startles Wukong. "But, this…" His chest swells a sunrise, his inhale a summer wind. "This is something I wanna remember for a long time. The way this feels." With closing eyes, he breathes out. "Being here with you."
The sharp, relentless warmth in Wukong's face—it lassos his chest till his cheeks blare with red.
The sun beats down on them with life and care and Wukong feels so small and watched, where Macaque lays against him. The stack of muscle making up his warrior's body melts to a warm slump, his tail slack where the king's own scrawls out emergency signs in the air.
Wukong purses his lip, warping his chin and cheeks. His free claw will vibrate off his wrist at this point.
So he holds Macaque's claw with it.
Wukong makes sure to turn aside to finish off that peach. It works off the flash-freeze atrophying his jaw for the past five-minute aeon. It also gets him away from where Macaque's stare comes back like a curious critter in the forest, poking at their joined hands with a telling, defibrillating shift of his dense fur.
"…Reinforcement's good. For remembering and learning—any kind of training, really."
Wukong mutters a mile a minute, looking as though the delicious peach Macaque gifted him has wronged him by spitting paint onto his cheeks.
"And. You know, you…or, we…" Wukong turns away further, rolling that peach in his palm, and his other claw, well—it was lacking for something to do, so all it can do at this point is squeeze Macaque's. "We can practise. Whenever you want. I mean, sitting here with a buncha fruit on a sunshiny beach?" He tacks on a scoff, the grin that doesn't reach his darting eyes a wide frame for his snowballing ramble. "Only wish training could be that easy, right? 'Cause that's what it is, really, y'know! All this right here, right now, is just—"
Macaque's tail sneaks along his. Slithers up a warm, firm vine up the tree of his own tail. Making Wukong choke.
"…Easy," Macaque finishes, smiling. "Right?"
His chuckle skates low. Wukong's heart shoots high into his throat.
"R… Right." He swallows. Which does nothing to rein his heart back down. "Right!"
The blockage of air to Wukong's brain won't kill him, obviously. He's worked too hard for that. But it does make the grin on his face sorely stupid.
Good thing Macaque's tail keeps his from dancing around too much.
"We so got this!" Wukong laughs, taking another bite of his peach and—oh, it's done. He nearly tore off a chunk of pit. Keeping on with his grin, he tosses it. "Anything can happen! So long as it's you, me"—Macaque shifts from his shoulder—"MK and the rest by our sides," Wukong turns to beam his way, "there's nothing we can't—!"
Macaque kisses him on the cheek.
The sun burrows in Wukong's fur. An immortal peach lingering on his tongue rests in his belly. Macaque pulls back, a shimmer in his eyes, a smile so trace that it barely curves his small mouth that planted starburst in his cheek, and Wukong's stone heart masters the cloud somersault in the jungle of his body.
"Do together," Macaque finishes again. "Right?"
His eyes crinkle. The lightest folds enter the red of his mask, framing his cheeks, and Wukong's mask might soon match it, and Macaque can't see that. Something so vulnerable and embarrassing. Because he'll make fun of it. Or say something. Or, realms beyond, laugh about it. That really has Wukong's heartbeat roar to the ceilings of his skull. Macaque can't see that and be close to letting out one of his deep, warm chuckles again because Wukong, in all ways but physical, won't survive it.
So Wukong kisses him on the lips.
He has Macaque cupped by the face. His own face scrunches to a firework of wrinkles, all centred above his nose. Macaque's hand and tail jolts against his. A spark of something like victory courses through the very roots of Wukong's fur.
He pulls back to admire his handiwork, his inspired bit of damage prevention to his pride, and Macaque's face has bloomed.
His warrior shines warm in the sun and glimmers bright with a mask-breaching blush, his lips parted and shinier because, that bit of peach, Wukong definitely had some of its juice left on his mouth. Now, Wukong can only grin bright and foolish and free at how silly and off-guard and charming Macaque looks.
"Wow…" Wukong's laugh bursts out of him. "You look great like this!"
The bald truth flies out of Wukong as he dimples. Then he laughs another laugh that quakes bubbles of light through him, his hand and tail curling around Macaque's because it's just so funny, he's just so happy, everything in the world could conspire against them and they would leap and crawl their way back up to the top, again and again, as many times as it would take for them to find their rightful place back in this world—under the tree on the beach of Flower Fruit Mountain.
Then Wukong yips, because Macaque tackles him.
A few spins of the world and the king is winded on his back. Sand crowding his fur, he blinks up at his warrior blocking out the blue day and noon light with his silhouette, his claws wringing at his knotted scarf as his own nearly falls into Wukong's mouth.
"Bud—?"
Wukong stammers, breathless, before Macaque only sinks down over him in another kiss. On the lips. Again. And why it rings so different in the hollow of his bones when Macaque is the one initiating robs him of the brainpower he needs to unravel that mystery.
So he holds on to Macaque by the shoulders and back—keeps those feelings storming him close—to chisel it into his being. Where he can examine and admire those carvings later, learning them inside and out.