Chapter Text
Deviation from the not-a-pattern happened a few weeks later, late one night when the buzzing of his phone woke Red Son up from a dreamless sleep.
[Idiot Noodle Boy]
Idiot Noodle Boy: heyyyy
Idiot Noodle Boy: u awkae?????
Me: i am NOW you fuckigng
Idiot Noodle Boy: great !!!!!
Idiot Noodle Boy: come to the gas station rn !!!
Idiot Noodle Boy: now !!!!!!!
Idiot Noodle Boy: PLEASEE!!!!!!!
Me: you just WOKE ME UP why the hell should I do anything for you
Me: It’s like 3 in the morning idiot
Idiot Noodle Boy: get! Over! HERE !!!
Me: . stupid.
He still went, though, because that was how it worked.
—------
MK was there before him, for once. He was pacing back and forth in the gas station parking lot, the purple and blue flashing ads and neon lights barely glowing enough for his silhouette to be visible.
Weird. Not that Red Son was concerned, of course.
“Hey, Noodle Boy!” He called, walking closer. MK kept pacing, as though he couldn’t even hear Red Son calling for him.
And that— that was concerning. What kind of idiot would arrange a meeting with an enemy and then get so lost in their own head they couldn’t hear the enemy’s arrival?
For reasons he knew would never be forgiven by his parents, ones he barely even knew himself, Red Son didn’t take the opportunity to attack. He stepped closer, and called again.
“Idiot! Pay attention!”
MK yelped, whirled around, hand raised to his ear and staff half-drawn within the blink of an eye.
Red Son stared back at him. “Jumpy, much?”
“What the fuck , Red Son?” MK pressed a hand to his chest, taking a deep breath. “I’ve told you not to sneak up on me like that.”
“I literally didn’t,” he rolled his eyes, hands on his hips. Then, jutting out a finger to point at the Monkie Kid, “ you just weren’t paying attention. It’s not my fault you’re zoned to hear your potential murderer when he’s actively yelling your name.”
“You know, believe it or not, ‘ idiot ’ is not my name.”
“It’s just that it’s more accurate than that stupid… What, Monkie Kid? As if.”
MK winced, visibly, like Red Son had struck a nerve, a new vulnerability, and he disgusted himself by discovering he had an urge to apologize . He violently squashed it down. Absolutely not.
“Let’s just go,” MK said, pointing with his thumb at the crummy gas station behind him. “We’ve only got ‘til dawn.”
“Yeah, whatever. I’ve been waiting on you.”
—------
They got red slushies again, as they did every time. At this point, the bored teen working the counter, all pink hair and different color lipstick every night, had grown numb to the novelty of the son of the Demon Bull King and the successor of the Monkey King walking into the gas station at three in the morning to buy red slushies, and just offered them a lazy wave.
Red Son should probably learn her name. MK probably knew it.
Leaving out the backdoor like usual, MK barely made it two steps before he tripped over what could only have been air and dropped his slushie. They both stopped, stared down as the drink slowly fell, the red juice separating from the ice and spilling like blood across the ground.
MK was silent, and when Red Son glanced up to say something, though he wasn’t entirely sure what, he saw the Monkie Kid’s hands were shaking.
“Fuck,” MK muttered. Then, louder, punching the wall hard enough to make his knuckles bleed, “Fuck!” Red Son jumped, couldn’t stop himself from staring.
“It…” Red Son swallowed, staring down at his enemy (Rival? Nighttime snack partner?) as MK stared down, in turn, at his own shaking, clenched, fists and raw knuckles. “It’s just a slushie, you idiot, you can get a new—”
“ Shut up !” MK shouted, eyes clenched shut and a shudder passing through him. “Just shut up !”
“M—”
MK’s fist clipped his jaw, smearing his own blood across Red Son’s face, but when Red Son turned back to face him, his eyes were still closed tight, and his whole body was shaking. Even as he drew back his other fist to punch Red Son again, something in Red Son could tell that there was something off .
He didn’t even know MK well—but he knew how MK looked when he was really fighting.
His staff wasn’t drawn. He didn’t even really look angry or determined. Just scared, and desperate, and like he was one missed breath from hyperventilating.
Red Son caught MK’s next punch and spun MK to press him against the wall of the gas station. It was easy. A fleeting thought, one that Red Son tried very quickly to crush, crossed his mind.
‘Would he even fight if I lit my hands right now?’
He shook it away, instead leaning into MK’s space.
“What’s your deal tonight?” He scoffed, and MK refused to make eye contact with him. “What, are you brooding? Why’d you even ask me to come out here?”
“I’m not brooding,” MK scowled, but the effect was notably lessened by how he still wouldn’t look up and his voice was wobbling. “Asshole.”
Red Son laughed at him, saw a small bit of spit land on his cheek, to which MK scrunched up his face in disgust. “Yeah? What do you call this, then? Depressing introspection? Casual self-condemnation? What’s the real reason you wanted me here, idiot?”
“Fine!” His scowl deepened, but did not become any more effective. “Fuck!”
Silence, for a few moments.
Finally, “Well? I’m waiting.”
MK mumbled something, quick and low, and Red Son couldn’t catch it.
“Yeah, try again.”
“It’s because you’re… someone I can’t disappoint.” Then he winced, like he was reminiscing on the thoroughly disappointing events of the night. “Or, like, I can disappoint without really caring because you hate me anyway.”
“You’re using me… as a therapist?”
“I…”
“You know there are people who literally get paid for that, right? Like, ones who care, or at least pretend to?”
MK glowered, finally looking up at him. “As if you’ve been to a therapist.”
“Have you?”
“Fuck off.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. What’s your deal, then?”
MK seemed to hesitate, for a second, but he’d come for a reason. “...Have you… heard of the Spider Queen?”
Red Son furrowed his brows, thrown off, but nodded. “Of course. I’ve been around for a while, you know.”
“Cool, cool,” MK nodded, absentminded, looking a little bit lost, a little too contemplative, and Red Son gave him a small shake. “Right, uh, so… she, like, kidnapped my friends?” He glanced away, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “To use them against me?”
Oh.
Oh, shit.
Red Son was playing therapist to an idiot hero’s origin story.
It could not have been a worse joke if he’d tried.
“Ah,” was what he ended up saying. “Yes. That… does happen…” He was so unqualified for this.
“Is that— it’s normal? Like, just because I’m the Monkie Kid, people I— my family— ”
“Yeah,” Red Son cut him off. “They’re gonna be used against you.”
He thought of the plans he’d heard his parents making some nights, when they thought he was asleep, because they figured he was too weak-willed, too spineless and too dramatic to agree to the plans they made in the dark. Kidnapping of family and friends was probably among the… more kind plans they’d mentioned.
Looking down at the overwrought Monkie Kid he had pinned to a wall for the man’s own safety , so horrified by the thought of causing his family harm that he could hardly handle it, Red Son almost thought they may be right about his constitution.
Then he ignored that thought, because he had to.
“You’re the Monkie Kid, if you haven’t noticed. The Monkey King’s great successor. How many friends does that annoying monkey have, again?”
MK didn’t respond. That was fine, though.
“You have power. You’re inexperienced. You have attachments. People who want you out of the way are going to take advantage of whatever they can.”
He still didn't answer for awhile, until Red Son was almost starting to think about apologizing for being so blunt.
“ I can’t— ” he finally gasped. “ I can’t let them get hurt. ”
“Then don’t.” Like it was that simple.
“ I can’t let them–him– down like that. ”
“Then don’t.” When he knew it wasn’t that simple, when he knew he went home every day and his parents lost just that little bit more faith in him.
MK was silent for a few more breaths, letting himself slowly come down from his little breakdown. Then, “I can’t go back to them like this.”
Red Son rolled his eyes. “Then stay here for a bit, idiot. ‘Til dawn, right?”
A small smile crossed MK’s face, and it looked shaky and fake, but it was there. “Right.” Then he shoved his way out of Red Son’s grip, which had slackened over time, and grabbed Red Son’s slushie right out of his hand and took a sip. “Thanks.”
“Fuck off.”
They slid down the wall, shared the remaining slushie until the syrup was all gone and it was just crushed ice in there colored a vague shade of pink and the moon started to go down.
By daybreak, the only evidence of their presence in that parking lot was the sticky, cloying red of a spilled slushie.
—------
It did become a pattern, that time.
Nights and nights and nights, barely outside the back door of the gas station, enclosed in the dark employees’ parking lot with two red slushies and a growing problem.
Did they even want to fight anymore?
—------
“Hey… how come that weird mech arm thingy you made worked to lift the staff when we first met?”
“I’d hardly call that a first meeting, idiot.”
“Oh, shut up, asshole. Just answer the question?”
“It worked because I made it. Stupid question.”
“You are so pretentious.”
—------
“Was there… a reason you were chosen?”
“Huh?”
“As the Monkie Kid.” The title was said very mockingly. “How’d you even prove yourself?”
“I just… picked it up?” A small shrug. “I could lift the staff, so he trained me? That was all there really was, I think.”
“For real?”
“...Yeah.”
“I really hate that monkey.”
MK laughed at him.
—------
“I will give you, like… a considerable sum of money if you can lift my staff right now.”
“Really, noodle arms? What if I pick it up really easily and just bring it back to my parents?”
“Then I guess I won’t give you the money?”
“You’re such an idiot.” Red Son sighed.
“So… you’re not taking the bet, then?”
“I’m taking the fucking bet!”
He dislocated his shoulder, and he didn’t even manage to pick up the stupid staff.
It was worth it, though. MK felt bad enough to offer to pay for his slushie the following night.