Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“.. Noodle Boy?” Red Son glanced from side to side, wondering where the rest of the usual entourage was, and why MK would be stupid enough to walk up to him in the middle of a mediocre café. “The hell are you doing here?”

He watched as MK snickered, rubbing his hands together before pulling out a strip of crumpled paper and writing a string of numbers on it. Seemingly to himself, MK murmured quietly, “ I am going to be so mad at me when I find out about this. ” Red Son could feel his hair sparking, small embers fizzling against the shop’s linoleum floors, but MK looked up at him before Red Son could really lose it. “Here you go!”

Red Son looked down at the paper that had been thrust into his hands. It read:

‘ MK’s Contact Info! 

XXX-XXX-XXXX 

In case you want to talk :D ’

Red Son decided, as he felt his hair fully ignite, that MK was an idiot.

An idiot who at least was a clone and not actually physically present in front of an enemy who wanted him dead, as evidenced by the eruption of hair when Red Son attempted to cremate him, but an irredeemable idiot nonetheless.

He chose not to think about the fact that his hands stayed notably absent from fire and the paper remained unburnt.

------

To be clear, Red Son never actually intended on using the number. 

He kept it, obviously, and hid it from his parents for reasons he could not even explain to himself, but he never really thought he would use it. 

Then, a week or so later, walking down the street, he saw a TV in a store window playing the news, and MK was being thrown into a wall by some demon or other, falling ass over teakettle, and Red Son laughed so hard he found himself pulling out his phone to take a picture of the TV screen. Then, as he closed out of the camera app, his eyes strayed to his messages, followed by his thumbs as they tapped on the app icon.

[Idiot Noodle Boy]

Me: This you? (image)

Me: HAHAHAAH

Me: HAHAHAHAHAHA

Me: Fucking wipeout

He watched on the TV as MK pulled out his phone, still in the rubble, that idiot, and turned an angry red, yelling inaudibly down at it.

Through his own laughter, Red Son barely caught the way he fumbled with the device, tossing it to the side to catch his staff just before the demon attacked again.

A few hours later, when Red Son was sat in his room scheming, his phone buzzed, startling him enough that his hair sparked angrily. 

[Idiot Noodle Boy]

Idiot Noodle Boy: SHUT UP

Idiot Noodle Boy: WHO EVEN ARE U??

He snorted.

Me: Don’t you remember giving me your number?

Idiot Noodle Boy: ?????????

Me: … It’s Red Son, you idiot. Your idiot clone gave me ur number.

Idiot Noodle Boy: .. What. . THE HELL ????

Me: Ur fault AHAHA

Idiot Noodle Boy: FUCK OFF

Idiot Noodle Boy: I’MGOING TO BLOCK U

Me: oh , lord forbid

Idiot Noodle Boy: :(( 

Me: Laugh Out Loud

------

They didn’t text for a few days, after that—not until his little friend Mei suddenly came into possession of an ancient sword that with immense powers and something or other that Princess Iron Fan wanted, and she wouldn’t stop making passive aggressive comments about it whenever Red Son walked into the room, as if he was the one she assigned to retrieve it.

[Idiot Noodle Boy]

Me: Give me your sword.

Idiot Noodle Boy: ??????

Me: the green one. Give it to me.

Idiot Noodle Boy: It’s not mine???

Me: JUST FUKCIGN GIVE IT TO ME

Idiot Noodle Boy: ???? ITS NOT MINE??????

Me: Fine.

Me: meet me at the gas station near that one actually decent not-super-rigged arcade R! N!

Red Son swept out of his father’s lair, for once moving pretty quietly, no grand exit, and rushed to hide in a shadow before MK would show up, not even bothering to check his texts to see if MK would show up .

No matter what anyone may have thought, Red Son was not just using it as an excuse to leave the lair.

It didn’t matter anyway. MK did show up, of course, and it was very funny to watch the idiot glancing about, looking for Red Son like he’d been stood up.

MK kicked at a rock on the ground, the neon lights of the gas station the only thing illuminating the area in the dark of the night. He scowled down at the pebbled dirt. “Where on earth is that annoying guy?” 

Red Son emerged from his little hiding spot, hands stuck into his pockets as he walked forward with a shit-eating grin. “Annoying, am I?”

“ Holy–! ” MK leapt up, staff flipping into existence in his hand, and turned to face him. Eyes wide, a hand pressed to his heaving chest, MK glared up at Red Son. “What is wrong with you? You can’t just sneak up on a guy like that!”

Red Son snickered. “I just did, Noodle Boy.” Stretching his hands above his head, eyes closing on a yawn, Red Son listened as MK growled at the blatant disregard.

“Why did you even want to talk to me?” 

“Boredom?” Red Son hummed. “Maybe I thought I’d try my luck with a fight, now that I can just text you a location instead of having to scheme ways to get you places.” He pointed at MK and laughed. “And you just showed up! Idiot.”

MK’s hand clenched tighter around his staff, one foot shifting back slightly into a more ready stance. “I, uh… I’m really banking on that maybe, right now.”

Red Son sighed, letting his hand drop back into his pockets. “Yeah.” He shook his head. “I’m bored and you just make it so easy.”

MK scowled, but couldn’t seem to think of a response, so Red Son just waved a hand in the vague direction of the gas station and started walking.

“Come along, now, idiot.”

“Fuck off.” Despite that, like an idiot, MK followed, still grumbling. “You’re an asshole.” 

—------

They bought slushies, both red because they had taste, and ended up huddled in the shadows at the back door of the arcade, hidden away in the alley, only the flickering red light above the back door letting them see one another. Red Son figured he could have lit a fire, but also figured MK would prefer he didn’t cause property damage, and he wasn’t actually trying to pick a fight.

They sat together in near silence, uncomfortably close for two bitter enemies, shoulders and knees brushing together, elbows bumping whenever they sipped at their slushies. The quiet was thick, tension nearly overbearing. The low buzz of the red light at the backdoor seemed to grow louder, gradually, until it was nearly deafening, swallowed only momentarily by the grating sound of them drinking their slushies.

MK fidgeted next to him, setting down his drink and cracking his knuckles. Red Son glanced sideways at the Monkie Kid. 

“What the hell are you doing, idiot?” He punctuated his question with a deafening sip of his slushy. MK grunted in response, very intelligently, and Red Son rolled his eyes. “What’s your deal, Noodle Boy?”

MK grunted, again, somehow less intelligently, and said, “Shut up, will you?”

Oh?

He said it out loud, too.

“Oh?”

Slowly, Red Son set his own drink down, turning to look at MK. “What could I possibly have done to piss you off? Actually, what?”

MK raised an eyebrow at him. “You mean, aside from constantly calling me stupid?”

“Not exactly an insult if it’s the truth.” Red Son snorted.

MK growled, pushing away from him enough to stand. “You’re such an asshole.”

“I’m the son of the Demon Bull King. It’s my birthright.”

Drawing his staff from his ear with a snarl, MK lunged at Red Son, knocking him flat on his back.  Red Son hit the ground with a thud—wheezing at the sudden impact—and ignited his hair, sending MK reeling backwards with a burn on his cheek. 

“What is your deal , Noodle Boy?” Red Son felt at his chest, glaring down at MK, who was gingerly tapping the shiny pink skin on his face. “Fucking…”

“What’s my deal?” MK shouted, shoving to his feet and leaning against the opposite wall. “You burned my face !”

“Yeah, because you attacked me !”

“Only because you only called me out here to make fun of me!”

“What, did you think we were going to sing kum-bay-fucking-ah?” Red Son glared down at his rival. “Come on ! We’re enemies, Noodle Boy. Don’t fucking forget it.”

He blew fire in MK’s face, heard him let out a pained grunt, and was promptly punched in the face. Red Son grabbed MK’s wrist as he tried to draw it back, unbalancing the both of them and sending them to the ground. 

The ground, where the half-finished slushies were.

They teetered, nearly tipping over, and settled.

MK and Red Son froze in place, staring at each other with wide eyes, and then at their drinks.

“Truce?” MK whispered, as though speaking at a normal volume would be the end and the slushies would fall over.

Red Son agreed. “Truce.”

They picked up their drinks, got to their feet, stared at one another uncomfortably.

“I’m going to go home.”

“I must return to the lair.”

A moment of silence. 

“Good night.”

“Die in your sleep.” 

They parted with that heartfelt goodbye, or would have, if not for a small detail they had failed to consider.

They ended up having a very awkward walk home after they were all covered in burns and bruises, MK’s apartment in the same direction as the lair.

It did not become a pattern.

------

Three times was not a pattern.

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.

Chapter Text

[Idiot Noodle Boy]

Me: hey

Me: idiot

Me: idiot??

Me: HEY

Me: ARE YOU ACTUAKLY IGNORING ME????

Me: no fuckung way

Me: come to the station tonight

Even if he didn't reply, Red Son knew MK would come. That was just how it worked.

Red Son arrived early, earlier than usual, and the girl working the counter raised an eyebrow at him when he walked in alone to buy two slushies.

He waited in the employees' parking lot until the sun was starting to rise again.

MK never showed up at the gas station that night, and Red Son was left standing in the dark by himself, a slushie in each hand.

He refused to let himself feel disappointed.

He left one of the slushies on the ground by the back door. Just in case.

—------

Red Son usually waited for MK to break the silence, once they were out in the parking lot. Sometimes, it took a while, and the only sound around them would be the comings and goings of cars from nearby roads, the muffled music from the store, and their own obnoxious slurping.

He always got there eventually, though. So even if it was weird and unexpected whenever MK let that quiet run over them like a curtain, Red Son didn't push, and didn't bother breaking the silence himself. He sorely doubted MK would enjoy hearing about his escapades.

One night, when the clouds were heavy and gray with rain that would not fall, MK was pretty quiet. Red Son remembered hearing, a couple days before, that he'd been missing for hours and hours, remembered that he'd failed to reply to Red Son's messages or show up at their spot.

That he'd been... off... when he'd finally shown up at their spot.

"Red!" He heard MK yell, and it was not only an abhorrent shortening of his name, but incredibly jarring.

It was midday.

Red Son was only at the gas station to get, predictably, gasoline.

(MK hadn't shown up the night before.)

MK shouldn't have been there.

Red Son whirled around, a snarl on his face and fire sparking off his ponytail. "What did you just call me, Noo—"

His breath caught in his throat. The Monkie Kid looked awful. Beat up and disheveled. Something disgusting like naked relief in his eyes when he saw Red Son.

"Red..." MK repeated himself, softer, blinking as if only just gaining awareness of his surroundings. In the window of the gas station, Red Son could see the pink-haired night-shift girl watching them curiously. Did she ever sleep? "It's... you, right?"

Red Son sneered at him, angling his body away from the excitable, probably concussed hero. "What the hell are you on about, idiot?"

MK mouthed the word idiot to himself, breathed a sigh of relief. Then, he turned around, drew his staff, and leapt away across the rooftops.

Seconds later, Red Son's phone buzzed.

[Idiot Noodle Boy]

Idiot Noodle Boy: sorry about that!!! 

Idiot Noodle Boy: needed to check!!

Idiot Noodle Boy: missed u!

Idiot Noodle Boy: c u 2nite

Ridiculous. 

Off, like he'd been through something. Off, like he'd been entirely unaware of his surroundings. Off, like Red Son was someone he actually cared about.

That night, Red Son had hardly been able to get MK to shut up, had resorted to buying the guy a second slushie just for a reprieve from his incessant prattle.

Now, MK was silent.

Red Son wasn't so sure he thought it was an improvement.

When he finally spoke, it was to ask: "Have you ever heard of the calabash?"

The fucking what?

Red Son gaped at him. Hair sparking just a bit, he burst out: "How the fuck did you hear about the calabash?"

"I was in one?" MK hesitated, then, like there was something else he wanted to say, but held back. His next sentence came out lamely, unplanned. "I...guess?"

"And you got out?"

"Obviously."

"How?"

MK looked away. He was silent for the rest of the night.

—------

One night, the pink-haired girl watching the counter wouldn't even accept their money.

"You're, like, the only entertainment I get all night," she said, popping a mint in her mouth and offering them the tin, not looking particularly put off when they both shook their heads. "You're like a couple of cats. It's hilarious. Just take the slushies free tonight, it's not like I won't see you tomorrow anyway."

MK thanked her, smiling brightly as he moved over to the neon machine of spinning slush, but Red Son stood frozen, staring at her. She cocked an eyebrow at him.

"You... You do know who I am, right?"

The girl laughed. "Hard not to, yeah?" She pointed up at the small TV screen just behind her counter. A news story of MK and Red Son fighting, very easily recognizable, was playing on it. "Long as you don't blow this place up and get me fired, you're both cool in my book." Then, as a wicked grin crossed her face: "Besides, I like feeling like the only one who knows you two are doing a little live drama rehearsal whenever I see you on TV."

Red Son stared at her. MK, who had frozen to eavesdrop, empty cup in hand, turned back to the machine with a smile. The pink-haired girl huffed a small laugh at whatever dumbfounded expression was on Red Son's face and turned back to her phone.

His throat felt dry. 

It took a couple of tries to clear it.

"...Thank you," he finally said. She didn't reply, just popped another mint into her mouth without bothering to close the tin.

Red Son could take a hint. 

He made his slushie and followed MK to the parking lot.

He really needed to learn that girl's name.

—------

A few nights later, MK opened his mouth before the back door even closed behind him.

"It was you," he said, apropos to absolutely fucking nothing.

Red Son furrowed his brows. "What was me, idiot?"

MK laughed, softly, like being called an idiot was something endearing. "The calabash. You're the reason I escaped."

Silence.

MK pressed forward. "We meet up almost every night. We text each other all the time. I knew something was off because I was going through my contacts and you weren't in there. I knew something was off because I went to the station and you weren't there, Eunice wasn't there, the red slushies—"

"Her name is Eunice?" Red Son interrupted, hands shaking with a need to bring something under his own control. The girl's name would have to be good enough.

"Yes!" MK laughed, and it was shaky but real, and he just kept talking. "Yes, Eunice, and you, and all our texts, and they didn't even have the red slushies, and—and— I missed you!"

The girl's name was not even close to being good enough. Red Son couldn't imagine anything, in that moment, that could possibly ever have been good enough.

Red Son's slushie fell out of his grip. MK made an aborted motion like he was trying to catch it, but knew he wouldn't make it.

The lid popped off, and the drink exploded across both their pants.

"You..."

"It's ridiculous, right?"

Completely. Utterly. If his parents knew how he spent his nights... 

What would DBK think of his son, knowing that he barely even saw the Monkie Kid as an enemy anymore?

"What... what the hell have we even been doing here?"

"Huh?"

"What even is this, Noodle Boy?" He took in a fortifying breath, but it shuddered its way through his lungs. "What is this?"

MK was quiet. Their legs were getting sticky and cold.

Red Son didn't think MK knew the answer either.

Without responding, the Monkie Kid slid down the wall, unbothered by the cloying mess on the ground, and pulled Red Son down beside him.

Then he held out his own slushie, and they shared it in silence.

Until dawn, as usual, because that was how it went.

—------

The pattern broke.

Chapter Text

MK didn’t reach out for… a while.

About a week and a half, not that Red Son was counting.

He didn’t reach out, and he didn’t reply to Red Son’s texts, and Red Son didn’t even try to ask to meet up because what if MK didn’t show up .

He didn’t miss MK.

He really didn’t.

Red Son was not upset that his sworn enemy (the successor of his father’s sworn enemy?) would not talk to him.

He wasn’t.

—------

“We could live forever!” Red Son smiled, a bit feral, a bit manic, fists clenched. Then he looked up at his parents, who appeared to be staunchly ignoring him. “Are you two even listening ?”

His mother rolled her eyes, glancing up from where she’d been studying her nails. “Hm... something about… peaches ?” There was a look of disdain on her face, and something dismissive in her body language, perhaps the set of her shoulders, as she rose to her feet. “Look, your schemes are quaint but I never much cared for… stone fruit.”

Red Son got the idea that she had not been planning on saying ‘stone fruit’ there. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she was going to say.

He moved past her, stepping closer incredulously, a sparking hand hastily hidden behind his back. “But... the peaches are powerful!” Wasn’t power all they cared about these days?

Princess Iron Fan laughed in his face. Red Son clenched his fist behind his back, letting the flames extinguish into ash against his palm. 

“Like the Weather Station was powerful?” Red Son took a step back, wincing, but quickly recentered himself as she kept going. “Why don't you just run along, hmm?” A small puff of smoke from his hair, though he kept the indignant rage from his face. “Can't you see mommy and daddy have important business with an ancient power source?” Princess Iron Fan turned away, dismissive and clearly finding her role of watching peasants dig more important than her son’s ideas.

He snarled, felt his hair ignite as he whirled to face the door before the hurt could show on his face. He should’ve been used to it by then, or at least a better actor.

“Fine! You two stay here in your hole digging your mysterious power source ,” Red Son rolled his eyes, flinging the doors open and spreading his hands mockingly. “ I am going to win the race, and when I get that peach , I'm not sharing!”

God , he wanted to text MK. 

Ridiculous. Red Son was ridiculous. 

Fraternizing with the enemy like that… he needed to not see that idiot for a good long while.

—------

He saw the idiot barely an hour later. At the race. Where he hadn’t told Red Son he’d be, after not texting Red Son for a week and a half.

Of course.

MK didn’t even look at him—seemed determined not to, actually. The moment Red Son showed up, he’d turned to his little green friend with what looked like a panicked wince.

He wouldn’t respond to a word Red Son yelled at him.

Then his parents showed up, and it all really went to shit.

Red Son decided, very pointedly, that he hated his life and everyone in it.

—------

Red Son knew his parents only showed up because he was there, and he’d issued a challenge. They were there to crush him, and for no other reason, because they didn’t give a flying fuck about the stone fruit—the goddamn peach of immortality . They just wanted to beat him in something he cared about.

So, when he tried to dig up even a teensy weensy iota of guilt for cursing them out on the track and enraging his father until the demon drove straight into (through?) a mountain, he wasn’t exactly surprised when he could find none.

Instead, he laughed and laughed and laughed, and kept driving.

—------

MK was really, shockingly bad at driving. He was a delivery boy. For noodles. Noodles with broth. It was his job to be good at this.

He wiped out so early. 

Mei and Red Son both laughed at him, and really, he deserved it.

Then MK wiped out Mei, too, because he was so bad at driving.

And Red Son was in the lead. He would finally prove himself to his parents.

—------

A microphone on the track picked up MK and Mei’s argument, and subsequent makeup, because they were annoying and forgiving of each other.

Then, MK’s voice, laced with genuine annoyance: “Is Red Son seriously going to win, though?” Which… Red Son didn’t know how he felt about that. Not great, for sure.

—------

Red Son lost.

He stood, alone, at the finish line.

MK and Mei cheered together from atop the pedestal, holding the stone fruit above their heads.

It… 

MK bit into the trophy, broke half his teeth, and Red Son couldn’t even find it in himself to find a vindictive sort of amusement in it. 

He just…

Mei laughed at them from her place on the pedestal. MK stared down at the peach in his hands, eyes widening even as his shoulders slumped.

“Oh,” he said. “The peach was a metaphor… ”

Red Son straightened up, drawing his flames around him as he turned away.

He was going home.

—------

Three nights later, when Red Son couldn’t sleep, he finally reached for his phone to text the Monkie Kid. 

[Idiot Noodle Boy]

Me: get your ass to the gas station

Me: I do not care if you are tired wake the HELL up

Me: and get to the gas station

Screw his parents and their stupid fucking ancient power source. 

Red Son needed to fraternize with the enemy.

—------

Red Son hated how a knot in his chest seemed to loosen when MK was actually there, looking wary and tense and like he was about to draw his staff.

His teeth looked fine. Red Son didn’t question it.

Instead, he grabbed the Monkie Kid by the arm when he made to enter the gas station and pulled him away. “Not here.”

MK yanked his arm out of his grip, glaring up at Red Son. “Where, then?”

“Follow.”

Despite the look of defiance on MK’s face, he did follow.

Red Son pretended that show of trust didn’t mean anything to him.

—------

They ended up in an abandoned warehouse. Or, what once had been an abandoned warehouse.

Red Son had found it a few years back, made his own little demon lair out of it for whenever his mother got… touchy. He hadn’t been back since his father’s return, but it looked the same as it had the last time he’d left it.

He pretended that bringing MK there at all, showing him the hidden entrance to his little space, wasn’t a show of trust at all.

MK didn’t seem to take it as one, anyway. He just cocked his eyebrow, not even bothering to look around, and glared. “So? Why did you bring me here?”

“ Why did I— ” Red Son stepped forward, incredulous. “The race? The fact that you’ve been avoiding me? How about how your stupid ass cheated and you’re mad at me for no reason?” He felt his lip curl into a sneer, brows furrowing as MK met his eyes. “Take your fucking pick.”

“We couldn’t have talked at the gas station?”

“Eunice said we can’t fight at the gas station.”

“We’re gonna fight?”

“Haven’t decided yet.”

MK rolled his eyes, and his voice sounded fond when he spoke. “You’re so dramatic.” Then he shook his head, like he was reorienting himself. “I haven’t been avoiding you, and I’m not mad !”

Red Son raised an eyebrow at him. “You haven’t? Just ignoring me, then?”

“I thought ,” he said, “you didn’t want to be close with the enemy!”

“And you couldn’t let me make that decision by myself?”

“Maybe I didn’t want to be close with the enemy!”

“ As if I did !”

“Then why are you upset ?”

Red Son froze, staring at MK. MK stared back at him, and his mouth slowly curved into a smile, mocking, ill-fitting on MK’s face.

“What, did you want a goodbye ?”

Red Son swallowed. Yes. Yes, he had wanted a goodbye. 

He wanted that look off of MK’s face.

He… He…

Fuck, he was going to have to be vulnerable , wasn’t he?

“Yes,” Red Son replied, voice soft and gaze holding MK’s. “Yes, I did.”

MK’s glare softened, his mocking sneer falling into something more open. “Red…”

That dumb nickname again. That stupid, annoying, idiotic nickname…

“I missed you,” he whispered. Then, clenching his fists and shutting his eyes tight, he swore. “Fuck! Fuck, I missed you.” A laugh that might have been a little hysterical fought its way past his chest.

MK was close enough that Red Son could feel his breath on his chin. “I…”

Red Son took a deep breath, stepping back. “No…”

“What?”

He forcibly reminded himself that there was more he came for than just his own betrayal of his parents. “No, I’m still fucking pissed at you.”

“What the— what ?”

“ Why can’t you ever just let me win ?” He wrenched his eyes open to glare down at MK.

MK stared up at him, lost and incredulous. “What do you mean ?”

“The race !” Red Son cried, arms thrown up in disbelief. “You cheated just because you couldn’t stand the idea of me winning .”

“I didn’t cheat!” MK shouted, then winced, because… yeah, maybe teaming up with your friend mid-race and creating a whole new race car after totaling hers and your own wasn’t exactly the most fair. “Or at least… that wasn’t the reason.”

“Is Red Son seriously gonna win this, though?” Red Son repeated MK’s own words back at him. “Yeah, no, you’re right, I was ridiculous for taking that personally.”

“No, no, I’m serious!” He cried, stepping closer, arms raised in a pleading gesture. “I… I’m sorry for saying it like that! I didn’t win because I wanted to beat you.”

“Then, why ?” Red Son was horrified to hear his voice crack as he stared down at MK. “Why can’t you ever just let me win ?”

“It’s—” MK frowned, stepping close and grabbing Red Son’s wrist in a loose grip. “I’m sorry, Red, but we’re still enemies. Can’t you see I’d be letting them all down?”

Red Son laughed at him, but it was sharp, lacking amusement. “Yeah? Well, join the fucking club . Can’t you see you let me down?”

MK flinched, but rallied quickly, grip tightening on Red Son’s wrist. “How? How did I possibly let you down? You’re a demon ! What do you need a peach of immortality for?”

“I don’t care about the stupid peach!” He snarled. “I was finally going to prove myself to my parents, and you —” Red Son took a deep breath. “You just couldn’t let me win.”

“Your parents?” MK repeated, eyebrows raised, eyes wide with surprise. His grip loosened again. “Red Son, I’m sorry, I— I didn’t know.”

“How could you?” Red Son rolled his eyes, feeling his anger slowly sliding off of him at MK’s apology. It wasn’t even a good one. “You were avoiding me.”

“I’m sorry… but there’s not really anything I can do about it now.”

“No. There isn’t.”

“I— Is there any way I can help you with DBK and Princess Iron Fan? Or at all?”

“No, leave them to me. You can help me by paying for my slushie.”

“Your—” MK smiled, relieved, and Red Son turned away. “Your slushie?”

“Come on, Noodle Boy, we only have until dawn.”

“Does this mean we’re okay?”

“ Come on, idiot !”

—------

This time, when MK tripped and dropped his slushie two steps out the back door of the gas station, Red Son was there to catch it before it hit the ground.

He stopped keeping track of the pattern.

It wasn't needed, anymore.

—------

“What would… what are they, your family? What would they think of this?”

MK laughed in his face. “What even is this?”

“Something stupid, certainly,” Red Son glanced sideways at MK. “Must be your influence, idiot.”

“Asshole.”

“Still just the truth.”

A pause.

MK glanced over.

Red Son was very visibly biting back a grin.

“Idiot.”

There it was.

—------

“Are you still pretending we aren’t friends?”

“I am an unwilling victim of your companionship.”

“Eunice would say we’re friends.”

“Don’t bring Eunice into this.”

—------

“Hey, idiot.”

“Yeah?”

“I just wanted to say thank you.”

“For what?”

“Being my friend.”

Chapter Text

One night, before Red Son even got a chance to hand MK his slushie, he was punched in the shoulder.

“What the hell?” Red Son demanded, turning to glare at MK even as he held out the other man’s slushie. 

“I have to ask you something!”

“Are you serious?” Red Son raised an eyebrow at MK, incredulous. “We make it this far without coming to blows, and your own curiosity is what’s gonna put an end to it?” MK just smiled back, sheepishly, and Red Son sighed. “Fine, whatever, what’s your question?”

The Monkie Kid balked, as if he’d expected Red Son to just let go of it barely two seconds later. “It’s not really that important, actually…”

“I, to be completely honest with you, do not care. You punched me over it, so ask.”

“Okay, okay!” MK hesitated, visibly, biting at his lip and being overly precise in putting his straw in his slushie. “Just… am I dumb?”

Red Son’s response was so immediate it was almost entirely subconscious. “Yes.” MK punched him in the shoulder again.

“ No , like, actually. Am I dumb?”

He sighed. “Okay, when you say actually , how nuanced are we talking?”

“ Nuanced… it’s like you swallowed a dictionary or something.” MK snorted, taking an obnoxiously loud sip of his slushie. Red Son glared.

“... So do you want the answer to that ‘dumb’ question, or…?”

“Oh, shut up.”

—------

MK was of the opinion that, maybe, focus was overrated, and everyone needed to lay off, because he was trying his best. How could he be expected to focus, when the entire world was against him, and the only person he really talked to about his problems was, like, doubly against him and no one was allowed to know?

It was, really, an unfair bar to hold him to.

Not that Pigsy and Monkey King knew any of that, of course—MK had never needed to lie so much in his life, but he never once caught himself thinking his friendship with Red wasn’t worth it.

So, really, MK could totally focus. He focused all the time! He was, no matter what Monkey King said, the King of Focus. He was practically known for it. 

He just didn’t focus on what other people wanted him to focus on, was all.

—------

“Distraction,” Pigsy berated, a glower darkening his face in a notably menacing manner. “ That’s your greatest weakness, MK. You need to follow through on the task at hand.”

Then there was the next question: what was the task at hand? Was MK expected to know? Did MK care? Was there a reason for MK to care? 

Honestly, Pigsy’s technique wasn’t half-bad. Getting fired was a pretty terrific motivator.

“I can do better!” 

Better than what , really?

And then, on his way out, MK heard Pigsy muttering through the door. “ He delivers noodles literally every day. How is this suddenly…?”

Hurtful, really. 

MK would rather he hadn’t heard it, to be quite honest.

—------

[RED !!!!!]

RED !!!!!: hey idiot

Me: ??? kinda busy

RED !!!!!: since when ? u never do anything HAHAAH

Me: I’M AT WORK

RED !!!!!: and????? 

Me: literally leave me alone

—------

Being stranded in a creepy forest was not… precisely MK’s idea of a good time.

Skeletons, glowing trees with horrifying faces, things that should not be real, the fact that he was going to miss his delivery , and, to cap it all off—

His phone rang.

Pigsy, of course. Why would it not be Pigsy?

Most of that conversation was, honestly, a blur—he was a bit too busy trying to keep every horrifying thing in front of him…well, in front of him. He was pretty sure Pigsy noticed, if the concerned questioning ( “Hey, kid, you alright?” ) was anything to go by. 

He hung up.

And lied, because that was apparently what he did, now.

Honestly, he almost gave up but… that wasn’t what he wanted to do, and according to Wukong, that was what mattered. 

“Choose what you want to do. Then, do it.”

Like it was that simple.

As it turned out, it was that simple.

The forest turned out to be… not creepy at all. MK would rather he never had to think about it ever again.

—------

He was handed a suspicious magical key to the city upon his return by a man who may or may not have been the mayor. 

—------

[Idiot Noodle Boy]

Me: I kind of really need a favor from you?

No reply. 

Red Son swore under his breath, looking up at his father’s back as the man glared down at his mother.

Princess Iron Fan stared back, calm, soothing , and walked to test the door herself.

It needed a key.

Red Son already knew that.

He also already knew who had the key.

And that was something he couldn’t get away with keeping to himself.

—------

A few nights earlier, Red Son had brought the topic of MK’s stupidity up again..

“Hey, idiot,” he called, holding out a carton of rice and sitting down on the roof of the warehouse, for a change.

MK didn’t even look up from his phone, feet dangling over the side of the building and one hand blindly snapping at the rice with a pair of chopsticks. “Yeah?”

“Why do you think you’re dumb?”

MK turned his head, slowly, an eyebrow raised. “You literally just called me an idiot.”

“Oh, come on …” Red Son sighed.

The Monkie Kid laughed at him. “You said, and I quote, ‘ hey, idiot. Why do you think you’re dumb? ’ Like, it’s just mixed signals a little bit, you know?”

“Are you really going to make me say it?”

“Say what?”

“Oh, for the love of…” Red Son glared down at MK. “You really are.”

“Say what ?”

“I don’t think you’re actually an idiot!” He burst out, grimacing. “Ugh, you’re annoying. Gross .”

Red Son didn’t look in his direction, but the way MK seemed to relax at that said… a lot. 

Red Son… didn’t think he wanted to look closely into that.

—------

MK’s apartment was disgusting .

There was garbage on the floor, clothes all over the place, the TV was still on, and, perhaps worst of all, MK was home with the green girl on the balcony .

And Red Son really, really needed that key.

“... had this much fun in… forever !” MK’s voice trickled in through the window, his bright laughter mingling with that of the dragon’s. 

Red Son blasted the both of them off the roof. Idiots. All of them. 

—------

“Your house is depressing !” Red Son cackled, pointing down at MK and the girl. “I almost feel bad taking things from you!”

MK’s eyes narrowed on Red Son.

Red Son tried to pretend that stare didn’t make him feel like a traitor.

“ But … I’m gonna need that key!”

He stole it and ran.

Screw that confrontation, honestly.

—------

[Idiot Noodle Boy]

Idiot Noodle Boy: WTF?????????

Idiot Noodle Boy: RED???????

Me: MAYBE CHECK YOUR FUCKIGN TEXTS NEXT TIME

There was probably something to be said about texting and driving.

To be fair, it was hardly the worst traffic laws he was breaking right there.

Then, the green one showed up, taunting and attacking like the nuisance she was, and really—

“Can’t you and your idiot little friend just let me plot in peace?”

She ignored the entirety of the question, because that was who Red Son was beginning to realize she was. “Doesn’t it get boring? Us beating you all the time?”

Low blow, really. 

Two against one were hardly fair odds.

They beat him again, of course, and there was his mother, as always, right there to witness it.

—------

At least they got the key.

His father was so focused on that ridiculous key when they got home that he didn’t even ask for details.

Red Son’s phone buzzed in his pocket. 

[Idiot Noodle Boy]

Idiot Noodle Boy: so about that key

Idiot Noodle Boy: why do you need it

Idiot Noodle Boy: like FR why

Idiot Noodle Boy: redddd

Idiot Noodle Boy: RED SON

Me: BUSY

Idiot Noodle Boy: HELLO ?????

A strong wind blasted outwards from the horrifically glowing door, knocking Red Son to the ground as it slowly opened.

He stood front and center, first to enter the ominously illuminated crypt, the tomb of bones and ash and weird blue luminescent ooze that latched onto his foot.

It whispered, quiet, barely audible, “ Freedom…”

The blue flooded his father, who welcomed the intrusion.

“ Freedom…”

His father roared.

Red Son decided he needed to get the hell out of the house for the night.

—------

Unsurprisingly, he ended up on the roof with MK, sharing a carton of rice and drinking their slushies underneath the stars.

“I think Monkey King wants to do a, like, training getaway with me?” MK broke the silence that night, as usual.

Red Son glanced at him. “Yeah? When?”

MK sighed, “Tomorrow?” 

“What?”

“Yeah, it’s kinda last minute, right?” MK laughed, scratching at the back of his neck. “You know the Monkey King, though!”

Red Son was quiet, for a moment. “I don’t think I do, really. Not recently, at least.”

“Hm?”

“I beat him up once. Long time ago.”

“You what ?”

“I was… It was different back then, I probably couldn’t do it now. He snitched, though. Hold that over his head.”

MK laughed, which was the goal, relaxing and leaning against Red Son’s shoulder. The silence slowly creeped back in as they stared at the stars. Then:

“What do your parents even want?” MK asked, and Red Son felt his whole body tense against MK, fingers spasming around his slushie, nearly dropping it off the roof if not for MK, who caught it and handed it back to him. 

Red Son didn’t reply for a while. How could he? How could he unpack all the shit his parents would throw at him, the loneliness and fear and desperation that permeated their home? That ever-present feeling of unfulfillment and aimless rage that hung in his parents’ eyes, lurked in their shadows, desperate for release?

Demon Bull King’s centuries spent sealed away weren't just… weren’t just… 

Through the crack in the door, he could sometimes hear his parents talking to each other.

“I left and there was only one of you, I came back and there are two,” DBK would murmur, sometimes, when he was in one of his better moods. “He’s so much like you. I missed so much.”

“The time flew by,” his mother would then lie, “so don’t even bother. He’s like you too. I see it, sometimes.”

“I missed so much…”

It was that… that yearning, that unfulfilled, unattainable longing. Red Son knew what MK thought of his father, knew that he was certainly justified, but… Red Son’s parents loved him, loved each other , and they spent long enough apart he almost forgot the sound of his fathers voice.

“What do your parents even want?”

What an impossible question. What a simple , predictable fucking question .

Time? A chance to make up all that they’d lost without interference? A way to fill that unceasing emptiness that pursued them? A better chance, a stronger son, an easier life, a kinder world?

Impossible, all of it.

And his parents knew it too.

So, “Vengeance, I suppose,” was what Red Son finally said. “Monkey King sealed my father away for 500 years. And they want back at the person who caused that.”

And MK, predictably, leapt to the dumb monkey’s defense. “Well, to be fair, wasn’t DBK, like, kind of a terrible–”

“I really don’t care,” Red Son laughed, though it lacked any real amusement. “Honestly. I couldn’t care less if it was the right call for anyone else, Noodles.” His smile dropped, and he stared down into the bowl of rice. “I know what you think of him, but… I lost my dad.”

My dad. How childish.

“Red…”

“I know, alright, I know he’s distant, and sometimes cruel, but he’s my father , and I…” He sighed. “It fell through, but I just wanted us to be a family again.”

MK was silent, for a few moments. Red Son ate another bite of rice.

Finally, “I don’t want to argue with you tonight.”

“Then don’t.”

“I don’t want to agree with you either.”

“Then don’t.”

“And I… don’t want us to leave on a sore note, tonight.”

“... Then stay.”

Until dawn, like always.

And in the morning, MK would leave to train with the demon who tore Red Son’s family apart.

That was just the way it had to be.

Chapter Text

[RED !!!!!]

Me: okay i’m on this again

Me: do you think i’m unfocused

RED !!!!!: do you want the honest answer or the one you’re hoping for

Me: ..the nice one?

"I am ready for some awesome !" MK beamed up at his mentor, who blinked at him once, twice, and burst out laughing.

"Look, bud," Monkey King chuckled. "You can't rush this stuff! Don't even stress, you'll get there! You just need practice!"

MK stared back at Monkey King, hand clenching around the tool the King had given him. Was he serious? "But this isn't practice!"

His phone buzzed in his pocket. 

RED !!!!!: well now i have to do the honest one, i hate being nice to you

Me: asshole

RED !!!!!: noodle boy, i may not think you’re dumb, and i hate that that is immortalized in text form, but you are so unfocused i think you’ve caused more property damage driving than fighting demons

Me: fuck you

"Hey, kid," Wukong sighed, walking closer to rest a hand on MK's shoulder. "I'm never gonna teach you something you do not need to know, okay?"

It was just… What the hell was the use in destroying a priceless mural with a sledgehammer? Honestly. 

Tang would lose his shit if he knew. MK was pretty sure that, even at odds like they were right then, Tang never finding out was one thing Monkey King and him were in agreement about.

RED !!!!!: don’t ask next time, idiot

Screw Red Son, actually. MK put his phone away in his pocket.

Wukong was still talking, as if MK had been listening.

"...and remember. Step into the strike!"

His phone rang. Again. It was Mei that time.

MK left to fight the monster of the week.

—------

[RED !!!!!]

Me: hey i have some free time

Me: roof?

RED !!!!!: how are you gonna beat me if you won’t take this seriously?

Me: what are tyou even on about

Me: are we fighting rn ??

RED !!!!!: YOURE SUPPOSED TO BE TRAINING IDIOT

RED !!!!!: i’ll meet u at the gas station

Me: I knew you missed eunice

RED !!!!!: i hope u die while training

—------

He very nearly did, actually.

Against a strange shadow demon that he couldn’t do anything against—a strange demon monkey who looked suspiciously like Monkey King had to save him.

Embarrassing.

He said his name was Macaque. 

—------

Red Son broke the silence for once. Hand outstretched, he pushed MK’s slushie into his hands. “Aren’t you supposed to be on Flower Fruit Mountain?”

MK laughed, glancing away. “He’s being annoying… besides, this guy who helped me out recently said he would teach me a few things!” 

“‘ This guy ’…” Red Son scowled at MK. “Has no one ever taught you about stranger danger? Who is it?”

“I’m an adult , you ass,” MK rolled his eyes, taking a sip of his slushie. He continued, though. “They guy said his name’s Macaque. He’s, like, crazy strong!”

Red Son stared down into his own slushie, brows furrowed. “Macaque… sounds familiar, but I can’t remember why.” He growled, hands clenching around his cup until the lid popped off and a bit of red ice spilled onto his hand. He fixed the lid, quickly, and wiped his hand on MK’s white pants. “Just watch yourself, idiot.”

The ‘ be careful ’ went unsaid, but it was understood all the same.

MK nodded, entirely disregarding the new stain on his pants that would not wash out, as he’d later discover. “I will.”

—------

" No , I… I can do better!" MK huffed out a breath, pushing himself up from his place on the floor, his knees scraped and palms chafed and red.

Macaque snorted, looking down at him with an eyebrow raised. "'Kay. Maybe show me next time."

Asshole . He was such a fucking…

At least he was actually teaching MK, though.

—------

"Patience and focus," Wukong called out, waving an absent hand in MK’s direction. "And remember—"

Macaque's voice, bitter and honeyed and grating, skimmed across the edge of his thoughts. " Stop trying to be nice…They are holding you back! You don't use a weapon— "

"Step into the strike!"

" —You are the weapon! "

MK shattered the wall.

Wukong, justifiably, accused him of meeting with another mentor.

And MK… MK was just tired . "Patience and focus. Isn't that what you said?"

"Look, kid," Wukong's brows were furrowed, eyes scanning over his face as if he could understand what the hell was happening with his successor. "Using that much power… your body can't handle it."

" You just don't like that there's someone who's actually teaching me what I need to know."

He left, never noticing the faint glow of purple on the graphic on the back of his hoodie.

Monkey King, though.

Sun Wukong suddenly understood too well .

—------

“Are you sure you should be spending this much time away from the mountain?” Red Son, again, broke the silence, not even giving MK a chance to speak.

The Monkie Kid laughed. “Ah, it’s fine ! Macaque is teaching me a lot!”

“Noodles…” Red Son sighed. “Be careful.”

There was a visible scrape on MK’s cheek, and deep bags under his eyes. MK waved away Red Son’s uncharacteristic concern.

“Don’t even worry about it! Seriously!” He laughed. "What's up with you, anyway? Showing concern for me."

“I know you’re just joking, but…” Red Son winced, glancing away and taking an obnoxiously loud sip of his slushie. "Remember that key?"

MK side-eyed him, an eyebrow raised in confusion. "... It's been, like, a week. Yes , I remember the key."

"Great, that's... good."

Silence fell over them.

MK lost his patience.

"What's the deal with the key , Red Son?"

Red Son took a deep breath. "I think we might've made a mistake?"

" We ?" As if MK had any actual involvement in whatever the Demon Bull Family did with that stupid ass key.

"My father's… not acting like himself," Red Son frowned.

MK snorted. "What, he's being nice to you for once?"

Silence, again. 

MK winced.

"Sorry, what's wrong?"

"I'm not… sure yet,” said Red Son, grimacing. “I don't think I like it, though."

The moment stretched, quickly growing awkward. MK let out a quick breath of air. "Shit, well… keep me posted?"

"Yeah… Yeah, I will."

Quiet fell over them once more.

Red Son smacked MK’s thieving little hand away from his slushie.

"Hand me the fucking rice, you hog."

"Fuck you."

MK handed Red Son the rice.

He left before dawn, that night, to return to Flower Fruit Mountain.

Alone, Red Son stayed as late as he dared, unwilling to return home.

—------

Macaque shoved MK towards the horrifying shadow demon, nearly knocking the Monkie Kid to the ground. "Come on!"

"What–" MK stumbled, pulling his sweater out of Macaque's grasp and wheeling around to face the monkey. "Last time I couldn't even hit it!"

Macaque laughed, disdainful. "Totally… but this time you've had me teaching you! You're stronger now!" He grinned, all teeth and sharp edges, predatory. "Don't you feel stronger?"

No. No, he didn't. He felt worse, actually. Finally, belatedly, the faintest sense of unease trickled through him.

—------

Macaque betrayed him.

He probably should've seen it coming.

"You really are a good kid!" The monkey cackled. "Super…nice!"

MK grimaced.

"There really isn't anything special about you. You're just… some kid with a heavy stick!"

Then Wukong showed up, and honestly?

MK kind of felt like he was intruding on something, watching that.

—------

"You did it, bud," Wukong sighed, walking to MK. "You remembered what I told you."

It was undeserved. Unearned. MK felt his spine stiffen against the praise, and he shook his head in refusal.

When he spoke, his voice was hardly even a murmur. "I'm… I'm sorry."

Monkey King snorted. "Oh, you totally should be! I can't believe you two-timed me on your training!"

"I just…" Wukong looked down at his successor, an eyebrow raised. "I just wanted to be good enough."

"Kid—"

"Like you ."

Monkey King froze, staring at MK. Then, abruptly, Wukong sat down beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. "Hey, your heart's in the right place, kid. We can work on the rest."

They had time.

—------

[RED !!!!!]

RED !!!!!: u said to keep u posted

RED !!!!!: do u think u could get away from the mountain

RED !!!!!: kinda fucked up over here

Me: i don;t think monkey king would let me? training trip

RED !!!!!: noodle brain

Me: what would i tell him, red

Me: seriously

Me: how would i explain that

RED !!!!!: fuck

RED !!!!!: FUCK

RED !!!!!: tell him ?

RED !!!!!: no dont fucking tell him

RED !!!!!: . fuck.

Me: what’s going on over there

RED !!!!!: what fucking isnt

Not for the first time, but perhaps most significantly, MK really wished he didn’t have to keep Red Son a secret.

Wukong would never let him leave the mountain on Red’s request, especially not after Macaque.

It wasn’t until noon the next day that he got the call from Mei, demanding his return to the city.

—————

[Idiot Noodle Boy]

Idiot Noodle Boy: i’m on my way

Idiot Noodle Boy: dont be dead?? idk

Comforting.

Red Son braced himself to reenter the throne room.

The knowledge that his nemesis was on his way was not a relief.

His friend, on the other hand…

Red Son let himself relax, just a little bit.

Embarrassing .

Chapter Text

MK returned to a city in crisis, controlled by the Demon Bull King.

His friends were happy to see him, but all he could see were the scuffs on their faces and the scrapes and bruises on their skin. And he couldn’t help but think, looking at them, that if he and Red could be friends out in the open, he’d have been there sooner. He couldn’t help but curse the unfairness of it all, because he’d known something was wrong and he was stuck on a mountain when he could’ve— 

He could’ve…

He could’ve protected them.

But to the rest of the world, Red Son was a villain and a scoundrel who wanted nothing more than power and chaos… but to MK, Red was a prickly asshole who loved his family. 

Red was his friend . And no one was allowed to know.

“MK…” Tang met his eyes, then, expression solemn. “He’s conquered everything.” Which… that didn’t make sense, because… Why did Red Son ask MK to return ?

If the Demon Bull King had won, had conquered the city… 

Shouldn’t he be celebrating ?

Sandy heaved a deep sigh, staring up at the Demon Bull King’s mountain, his face lined with worry.  “There’s… pretty scary noises coming from the mountain.”

MK felt his face fall, drooping with something like concern before he could school his features.

Red Son asked him to come back for a reason. That , he knew for certain.

—------

The lair was lit up with a soft light, faint and blue and pulsing, emanating ominously from the illuminated canisters strapped to his father’s back.

Red Son swallowed, gruesomely aware of the faint sound of unintelligible whispers that grew louder as he approached his father. “Father…” He cleared his throat, forcing himself to make eye contact despite how he wanted to back away. “Let me go up there and destroy those—”

“ You ?” The Demon Bull King laughed—a booming, full-bellied thing—and looked down at his son. “Why would I trust you ?” 

There was something distinctly mocking, borderline incredulous in his tone, and Red Son couldn’t stop himself from jerking back, eyes wide with shock and hands shaking.

His father continued, glaring down at Red Son, a cruel grin curling on his face and his eyes lit up in the blue of the canisters. “ You have brought me nothing but failure ! Time and time again, nothing but disappointment !”

Red Son clenched his fists to hide how they quivered, turning his gaze to the ground and biting his lip. Behind him, his mother watched on in silence. The whispers intensified, but he still couldn’t make out what was being said.

Then, “Traitor?” The Demon Bull King cocked an eyebrow, staring down at his son consideringly, and Red Son choked, eyes jerking back up to stare at his father. 

What? How did he… Did he know about…

There was no feasible way his father could know about MK. Besides, Red Son wasn’t a traitor, he wasn’t… he…

Red Son had told MK to return to the city.

His father surely couldn’t have known any of that, though.

“No, father—”

The Demon Bull King clenched his fists, snarling down at Red Son. “You thought you could deceive me?” Spittle hit Red Son’s forehead, but he stood frozen, staring with horror at his father. “Stand against me?”

Red Son stood, still as a deer caught in headlights, arms half-raised in self-defense but as uselessly still as the rest of him.

Did he know ? Had his father truly discovered the extent of his sins, the ways in which Red Son had lied in order to fraternize with the Monkie Kid? Had it been worth it, anyway, to have a friend for once in his life?

Disgusted with himself, Red Son decided it had been.

No matter the consequences.

Red Son did not move as his father went to punch him. 

Finally, at the last second as ever, Princess Iron Fan stepped in to intervene, no longer a bystander. 

Red Son was almost surprised she was on his side.

—------

Mei and MK nearly fell to their deaths in the giant ditch that served as the lair’s entrance, but they didn’t! Which was great, really, except…

Seemingly every single Bull Clone on the face of the planet lined the walls of that cavern—and they were all waking up.

And Mei and MK were dangling from a sword jammed into a wall.

Really, there was only one logical thing to do in that situation; MK built the Monkey Mech. 

Without hesitation, Mei violently ejected him from its rear end, leaving him to plummet to his possible demise.

—------

Red Son’s back hit hard against the wall of the lair, dust rising around him. In front of him, his mother stood protectively as his father charged. Red Son scrambled to his feet, rushing to get into a battle-ready stance that was only…mildly unsteady.

Not that it really ended up mattering, anyway.

MK fell from the sky, yelling.

Entirely involuntarily, Red Son felt his shoulders relax ever so slightly in relief. “Idiot?” On the ground, MK was groaning, pushing to his feet with his staff, but his head whipped around in shock at Red Son’s voice.

DBK snarled, eyes narrowed and pupils visible through the blue glow. “The little thief .”

“Ugh…give me a minute,” MK ignored the Demon Bull King, stretching his arms above his head and sneaking glances at Red Son around DBK’s bulk. Then, with a grin that appeared a tad manic, “Ah, okay, think I’m ready to fight now! Let’s go!”

Red Son watched as his father blinked hard, listened as the volume of the whispers grew and the glowing blue light of the canisters pulsated. When the Demon Bull King’s eyes opened, his pupils were once more overtaken by the light, and Red Son took a step back. His father growled, low and rumbling.

“Sun Wukong! Come to lock me away again?”

Red Son winced, couldn’t bring himself to move as his father attacked the Monkie Kid. His mother, though…

Princess Iron Fan rescued the Monkie Kid with no hesitation, swooping him back to safety and outlining a plan of attack, and MK pushed himself up, slowly, using his staff for leverage and barely blinking as sweat and dirt dripped into a cut bleeding on his cheek.

Staring at MK’s back, at the way that this idiot was planning on restoring the safety of Red Son’s father , a demon who genuinely wanted him dead, and expected to do it alone… Red Son’s body moved without conscious thought.

“ No ,” Red Son stood in front of MK, a hand outstretched in front of the idiot protectively. He glanced back, and saw confusion in MK’s eyes. He was so… “This time…” A smile slowly grew on MK’s face, and Red Son turned away, narrowing his eyes on his father. “We fight with you.”

Red Son attacked the Demon Bull King.

—------

Panting on the ground, staring up at MK as he was squished in DBK’s fist, and the idiot had the audacity to meet Red Son’s eyes and wink as he burst into an explosion of brown hair.

—------

The idiot won.

He destroyed the canisters, and the light… scattered, rushing away, audible murmurs (“ Freedom…Freedom…Freedom… ”) brushing past Red Son’s ears. 

His mother cupped his father’s face in both hands and, tears in her eyes, she whispered, “You came back to me.”

Not us.

Red Son looked past them, and saw MK, alone, watching them with a small smile, and their eyes locked overtop of his parents’ heads.

MK grinned at him, teasing, like nothing at all had happened, and mimed holding a phone to his ear, and Red Son couldn’t stop himself from laughing , muffled in his palms as the adrenaline started to wear out.

—------

Despite how he tried his best to ignore it, to push it down, a traitorous thought still flitted across his mind, unbidden.

I don't want to fight you anymore.

His face dropped. 

MK’s eyes narrowed, tilting his head with something like concern on his face.

Red Son drew his fire around himself, and teleported away.

—------

That night, even though Red Son was pretty sure he was in so far deep the only way to fix anything would be to entirely cut MK off, they both snuck away and met up at the gas station.

Despite all odds, Eunice appeared entirely unfazed by them, despite the very public and intense battle they had participated in. She offered them mints and didn’t blink when they turned her down, and she didn’t let them pay for their slushies.

“You two saved the city, yeah?” On the news screen behind her, Bull Clones set fire to a corner store. Red Son couldn’t help but stare at her, because… she couldn’t be serious. 

Eunice grinned over at them, popping a mint into her mouth. “Gas station’s standing, I’m employed… all good here!” She turned to her cellphone, still smiling as she set about typing and scrolling.

And MK and Red Son, well… again, they could take a hint.

They made their slushies and left.

—------

A few nights later, they were on the roof of the warehouse, and Red Son was the one to break the silence, unprompted.

“I’m opening up a food stall soon,” he said. 

MK furrowed his brows, side-eyeing him. “...What?”

“I’m going to be opening up a food stall,” Red Son repeated. “With my father.”

“The Demon Bull King ?”

“Yes.”

“You...and DBK...are going to run a food stall.”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask why ?”

“Mother has been encouraging…” He rolled his eyes. “...bonding, and quality time. I like cooking.”

“You…like cooking.”

“Yes.”

“I have been so confused for… actually, like, all of this conversation.”

Red Son sighed. “My mother told my father and I to spend time together, so we’re going to run a food stall, because I like cooking. Understand , idiot?”

“Not even a little, but cool!” MK took a prolonged sip of his slushie. “Why’d you bring it up?”

Red Son turned away to pull out a small container of fried chicken. “I want you to taste test.”

“You– what?”

“Try it. So I can know if it’s good.”

“Fine.” Heaving a sigh, MK reached over to take a bite, humming consideringly as he chewed. “Yeah, it’s…” Suddenly, he froze, jaw hanging open slightly. “Red.”

“Yes?”

“What the hell is this?”

“It’s my recipe.”
“Red, I’m gonna- I’m gonna cry. What did you put in this?”

Red Son laughed . 

“Red, I’m gonna throw up —”

It was his spiciest recipe. 

—---------

Red Son leaned his head on MK’s shoulder, legs dangling over the edge of the roof.

MK’s head rested on top of Red Son’s, one arm around his shoulders and the other holding his slushie.

Behind them, an empty carton of rice. 

Together, they sat in silence, only interrupted by sips of their slushies, staring out over the glowing neon lights of the city at night.

To dawn, as always.

They watched the sun rise, and as the oranges and reds and golds faded to a uniform blue, they parted.

As always.

Chapter Text

“Give me your hand.”

“What?”

“Your hand. Give it to me.”

“What the hell are you on about?”

“Just give me your hand!”

“Fine.”

“Neat.”

“...”

“...”

“Was there a point to this?”

“I just wanted to hold your hand.”

“...”

“...”

“You’re so annoying…”

Red Son did not take his hand back, though.

—------

When Sun Wukong invited MK to sit and watch the fireworks with him, there was a look on his face like he expected disappointment. Like he knew MK would rather be with his family, like he expected rejection and loneliness the moment he stopped being actively helpful to others.

Looking at his face, filled with a quiet sort of hope, not quite suppressed, MK hesitated, even as his body was still poised to leave. When Monkey King turned away, a lazy grin spreading across his face, wiping away all that open desire for companionship with the practiced resignation of someone used to such a response, MK’s body moved almost before he could think about it.

He stepped forward, towards the edge of the cliff. “Sure,” MK sighed, settling down next to Wukong, who turned to him, smile wide and genuine.

When they both turned to watch the sunset, Wukong’s tail was waving behind him.

—------

Something messed with the fireworks. 

That something , being a large horde of spider… creatures… aiming to destroy the city, on New Year’s !

At some point, it was really just inconsiderate. Not even villainous.

Wukong and MK both rushed to save the city.

Wukong left MK behind.

—------

Red Son thought the food stall was, all things considered, a pretty solid success.

He shared his recipes, his mother wasn’t angry with him, his father grunted and snarled at rude customers… and no one even died! That was a pretty high bar for Demon Bull Family events, in Red Son’s opinion.

His father… did not seem to agree.

“Oh, come on ,” Red Son groaned up at his father, elbows resting on the counter as he slouched over it. “This is our chance at something great !”

“ Great ?” DBK snarled, glaring down at Red Son. “ I am the Demon Bull King! What would you have me be… the King of Street Food ?”

“Well… yes?” Red Son flushed, looking away from his father, sputtering. He just… “I mean, after your recent humiliating defeat, I thought a fresh start was exactly what we needed!”

The Demon Bull King raised an eyebrow, unimpressed, and Red Son rushed on.

“Just you and me, working together, father and son!” He hopped up on the counter, trying to get tall enough for real eye contact. “No evil plans, no… talking bones—!”

His father growled. Red Son hopped down off the counter as DBK raged, spitting and shouting, voice gravely with insult.

Luckily for Red Son, or perhaps extremely unluckily , his father was interrupted… and then kidnapped.

And all Red Son could do, in that crucial moment, was stand frozen, watching as his father was taken down brutally , and turn and run, barely having the presence of mind to snatch up a canister of venom left behind by the spiders.

—------

MK’s friends were utterly surrounded when he finally found them. 

Two of the Spider Queen’s new lackeys, hundreds of those little guys of hers, and no way out until Sandy’s ship arrived. 

MK did his best to hold them all off, pretty successfully but he was whirling almost faster than he could think, pushing away spider after spider after goddamn spider . Despite the fast-paced action around him, every time he stopped to take a breath his thoughts leapt to Red Son. Was he okay? Where was he? 

Was he… was his family helping the Spider Queen?

Sandy’s ship arrived, finally. 

MK chose to push aside all thoughts of Red Son in order to have a crisis.

—------

Spider Queen took the Monkey King and MK was useless.

What fucking hope did he have?

—------

MK barely got a chance to recenter himself before Red Son fell from the sky.

He looked… rough, to put it gently. He was scuffed and covered in dust, and there was something almost weak in the way he held himself, glaring up at them from the ground, clenching his shoulder. 

MK wanted to ask. He really, really wanted to ask—but they weren’t alone, on their rooftop. They were surrounded by MK’s family.

So instead, he planted himself in front of Red where he’d been pinned down and put a snarl on his face. “What are you doing here, Red Son ?”

“Yeah, spill!” Mei crowed, glaring down at Red. “You one of the Spider Queen’s henchmen now, huh?”

Red Son’s mouth gaped open, just a bit, as he stared up at the both of them. Then, hair lighting up with a brilliant heat: “ Henchmen ?” He threw back everyone pinning him, blasting them away with heat. 

Almost unintentionally, in MK’s opinion, Red Son’s gaze turned to him, and stayed there, something fragile in him, some desperate emotion that MK just couldn’t put a name to.

Around him, MK’s family stood in battle ready stances, glaring and snarling at the vulnerable, beaten down version of MK’s friends. MK, in front of them, stood with his staff at his side, posture relaxed, and maintained eye contact with Red as the demon took a deep, calming breath.

He looked like he needed a friendly face.

 “Not that any of you would care ,” Red Son gritted out, hands shaking, voice quivering, gaze unflinching on MK’s face, “but my father was captured by that… eight-legged freak !”

Standing in front of them the way he was, none of the rest could see the way MK mouthed Red Son’s name, but MK could see how Red relaxed, just slightly, shoulders dropping. 

“Now,” he continued, noticeably steadier. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll just steal this ship and be on my way.”

MK recoiled, jolting away on instinct. “Wait, what ?”

—------

Red Son’s ship-stealing negotiations went poorly, to say the least.

He did have one thing of interest, though—the venom of the Spider Queen, which could be used to create an antidote. He just needed a ship to get to the Celestial Realm. 

The others were against it.

The others didn’t really know Red Son.

MK took a deep breath, grip tightening on his staff. “So… if you get to the Celestial Realm… you could fix all of this?”

The desperate look in Red’s eyes had coalesced, deepened into a soul-deep fear, but he stood with his hands behind his back, stiff as though awaiting judgment. His posture had slipped into a slouch, almost, expectant resignation clear on his face.

“He’s Red Boy !” Mei yelled, incredulous.

“He’s literally a demon!”

He looked exhausted . He looked convinced that MK would kick him off their ship, turn him away, tie him up and leave him to call out directions from between the floorboards.

MK scratched at the back of his neck, finally looking away from Red Son. “Well…” He glared down at the deck, clenching his staff in both fists.

(“Not that any of you would care!” Red Son had yelled, and MK wanted to shake him. Wanted to grab him by the shoulders and make sure he knew , make sure he understood . 

“Of course I do!” He wanted to say. He couldn’t, and didn’t, but he wanted to. “I care about you !”)

Drawing in a deep breath, MK glanced back up at Red, who was staring at him, and offered a tiny nod. It said I trust you, I care about you, I have you .

He looked at his friends, battle-ready and alert in the face of this weary, resigned shadow of who Red Son was, and said: “Let’s help him.”

—------

“You like me,” Red Son had once said into the silence of night, carefully not making eye contact with MK. “You care about me, you’re willing to work with me, but…”

MK stared over at Red Son, eyes wide in the face of this uncharacteristic vulnerability. “Red?”

Red Son scoffed, staring down at the city lit in neon lights below them. He threw a hand out, lazily, in the vague direction of Pigsy’s noodle shop. “ They will never trust me.”

“They?”

“Your family.”

—------

There was a notable gap between Red Son and the rest of MK’s family as the demon set up the portal, but neither party seemed very inclined to say anything about it. They watched from afar as Red Son worked, and Red Son watched as MK looked from side to side, a quietly devastated look on his face as he observed the space between them all.

Did he really think his friends would ever accept Red Son? It was a nice dream, but that was all it was.

A dream.

He scoffed, looking away from MK, lighting up the portal and only half-heartedly responding to the concerns of the mortals who’d insisted on accompanying him.

“I warned you it’d melt your brains ,” Red Son rolled his eyes, and had to smother a smile when he saw MK scowl at him out of habit, only to be thoroughly taken in by the beautiful image the celestial realm painted.

Then they asked for instructions Red Son didn’t have, which he felt should have been obvious, really. He was a demon ! Of course he’d never been to the celestial realm!

—------

Tang took over the directions, which was…moderately annoying, actually.

If he knew all that, why had he left Red Son to flounder before jumping in? Asshole.

MK took the opportunity, while the others were thoroughly occupied by the scholar’s ornate storytelling, to ask, quietly: “Why does it matter that you’re a demon? You clearly know the way in.”

“What?” Red Son glanced over, an eyebrow raised, voice a low whisper.

“The celestial realm. You know the way in, why does it matter that you’re a demon? Why haven’t you been here before?”

Red Son hesitated, a moment, glancing away to look over the ship’s railing at the grand courtyard and palace. “It’s, uh… let’s just hope you don’t have to find out right here, yeah?”

“Red, what ?” MK turned to face him more fully, and Red Son shoved him none-too-gently to get him to face Tang once again. “What do you mean?”

Red Son ignored him, like a mature person would, and MK let out a scoff.

“Fine. Now I’ll just worry.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Asshole.”

—------

The green dragon-horse girl latched onto Red Son like a leech the moment he moved to try and get a peach, because she apparently lacked faith in her best friend’s judgment and placement of trust.

Hand gripped around his arm like a vice, she didn’t let him wander far as they approached the gardens the stone fruit was held in.

“So…” she started, and Red Son was already groaning, half-heartedly reaching up to cover his ears. “Heard you helped MK beat your dad!”

He whirled around to face her, dislodging her grip on his arm as he shoved a finger in her face. “That was one time !” She giggled, and Red Son snarled, stepping away from her. “My father, the great Demon Bull King was…” 

The smile dropped off her face as he hesitated, glancing away. She looked like she was about to open her mouth to say something, maybe an apology or something equally gag-worthy , so Red Son forced himself to continue.

“...not himself…” Then, shaking himself, embers sparking off his hair and forcing her back, leaving little round specks of ash on the cobblestones below them, he grimaced. “ But in no other instance would I ever assist that sorry excuse for a hero!”

Even as he said it, his words rang untrue to himself. 

Red Son dreaded the next time he saw MK in danger—would he feel an urge to help ?

“But… You are a hero!” Mei was saying, and Red Son was pretty sure he’d missed some kind of context along the line there, because…

“ Huh ?”

She ignored him, because that was who she was, crowing on and on about Red Son’s newfound heroism and culinary prowess, his prominent moral compass and unquestionable code of ethics, even going so far as to start a livestream , as if they weren’t in the middle of a severely important quest that, really, a livestream could maybe make the Spider Queen aware of.

She was almost more of an idiot than MK, Red Son was pretty certain.

—------

They got the peach and got out, mostly unscathed, if not for the irritating spider lackey that showed up to take them hostage, or something.

Red Son really wasn’t sure what they wanted, he just knew he did not like the idea of anyone thinking Mei was his girlfriend.

She didn’t seem to like it either, honestly. 

Beating that guy up together might have been the only real bonding moment they had in the entirety of that mission.

—------

MK, alone, fell into a furnace, and nearly lost his mind.

Was he trapped? Would it turn on? Would the others come for him?

How much time had passed? Had he failed?

Had he failed Wukong?

Red Son?

His own image appeared to talk to him, force him out of his slump, and he snarled at the mirror.

“Oh, perfect! Perfect ! Just who I need! Useless MK !”

And the mirror replied, “Uh… that’s not how mirrors work.” 

MK, frozen, stared at his own image in the mirror, which had just moved and spoken on its own.

“What the fuck.”

—------

He got out of the furnace, chased by dogs all the way back, relishing in a newfound sense of peace.

(“Well,” MK spat, “I’m not the Monkey King, okay?”

“You’re right,” the mirror had smiled, but MK didn’t look up from the floor. “You’re the Monkie Kid! You gotta figure out your own way to win.”

MK glanced up at his staff, then back over to the mirror, which grinned encouragingly.

“So do it!”)

He climbed onto the ship, the last one back, and reunited with his family.

And then they booked it the hell out of there, spiders on their tail.

—------

“Ugh,” Red Son groaned, watching from above as MK beamed at his friends. “You’re back to your disgustingly enthusiastic self. What happened?”

MK grinned up at him, as if he was an idiot who forgot they weren’t friends in public. “I got a new power!” Despite himself, Red Son couldn’t help leaning in, interested. “The power… of self-reflection.”

Red Son gagged, slumping back against the wall. “God, you’re such an idiot. You make me sick.”

MK laughed, eyes and nose scrunching up, and neither of them noticed the considering looks Mei sent between them.

—------

The antidote was successful—despite MK’s best efforts at sabotage.

The plan was successful—despite how… awful, actually, it was.

Red Son was disgusted by how well he was able to work with MK’s silly little group of friends—and MK cackled . 

Red Son may have been rubbing off on him a bit.

—------

They were going to win. They were so, so close to winning .

The Spider Mech powered up.

And they were obliterated .

Tied up, at the Mercy of the Spider Queen, trapped in her nasty, sticky webs as she praised herself above them, looming over MK specifically, gloating and issuing threats in turns.

Red Son couldn’t hold back his own shout as the Spider Queen lifted a leg, poised to impale MK on her limb like he was the disgusting bug in that scenario.

She was only stopped by her own Mech powering down, followed by his father’s familiar gravelly voice, hollering and filled with rage as he leapt to them from the ship.

“ I am no one’s slave !” DBK shouted, flinging the Spider Queen away from MK—sending relief rushing through Red Son’s chest like the air he needed to live—and freeing Red Son in an easy moment.

When Red Son had been so… useless.

Utterly helpless as he watched his only friend be killed right in front of him.

Pathetic .

Red Son met his father’s eyes, gleaming purple as they were meant to, and watched them soften at the sight of him for the first time since he’d been freed from the mountain.

“Father,” he breathed, and DBK huffed out a small breath that seemed uncertain, turning away, back in the direction in which he’d thrown the Spider Queen. Sparing half a breath to free the dragon girl, Red Son followed his father’s lead.

MK stayed tied up behind him.

Red Son could only be so helpful when his father was around.

—------

On her last leg, desperately clinging to the last vestiges of power and glory she’d acquired for just that night, Spider Queen gritted her teeth.

“All of you together can’t beat me! I… am the Queen !”

From the sky, another familiar voice, lilting and casual. “Oh, yeah?”

Sun Wukong was walking down the wall MK was stuck to with a grin, something malicious and edged to it, and he tore his staff from the wall and freed his successor, MK falling to the ground beside him. “Well, I’m the King .”

He crouched down to MK, offering him the staff with a softer smile. “Turns out I’m not so good with spiders, either,” he said in lieu of an apology, and MK grinned up at him, because he was too forgiving.

Red Son didn’t even know what had happened, but if Sun Wukong was apologizing…

MK grabbed the staff, and together, Monkey King and Monkie Kid attacked, leaving the rest of them to… watch, really. 

Nothing they could actually do to help, there.

—------

They win by blowing up the Mech, which has minor side effects… such as a massive explosion of light and heat aimed right at MK’s family.

His body moving without real thought, Red Son shoved his way to the front of the group and took the blast for them, taking on the heat that would have killed anyone else, curving the flame around them for no reason beyond protecting them.

His only saving grace, perhaps, was that his father had left to save MK.

Which was, actually, a mind-melting sentence to process.

—------

Snickers dying down, Wukong turned to his successor with a wide, genuine smile. “You did really good today, bud.”

MK bit his lip, not acknowledging the praise. “Are you okay? After…”

Wukong put a hand out to cut him off, and though he glared at it, MK followed the unspoken cue. “It’s fine, bud,” he reassured. “It’s dealt with.”

MK had the damndest feeling that it was definitely maybe absolutely fucking not dealt with.

—------

“Father, let’s…never tell Mother anything that happened today?”

Behind the group, as Mei flounced back to the rest, snickering, DBK glanced away from Red Son, stoic. “Agreed. Come along… son .” Red Son very nearly tripped over his own feet in shock.

“ S-Son ?” Red Son beamed , staring up at him with wide eyes. He tried to push down the sudden hook that seemed to pull right beneath his ribs.

—---

“Red…” MK had said, that night Red Son wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Red Son, you’re my family.”

—---

Red Son scrambled after his father’s retreating back, and tried not to feel anything about how it took so much just for his father to recognize him as his son.

—------

Up on their rooftop, staring up at the twinkling night sky, Red Son let out a rough sigh.“This has gone too far, hasn’t it?”

“In what way?”

“It just… has, you know?”

“I know.”

“Then why are you making me say it?”

“I want to know if you’re ready to face it.”

“I just… have to admit it, huh?”

“If you can.”

“Of course I can!”

“Then say it. In what way has this gone too far?”

“...”

“...”

“Fuck, I can’t…”

“It’s okay. I didn’t think you would.”

—------

“I don’t… I don’t want to fight you anymore,” Red Son finally breathed, nights later, almost inaudibly, staring down into the recesses of a nearly empty carton of rice. Then, with a sharp-edged inhale, voice wavering just slightly: “And I’m sick of being stuck always scrambling after scraps of recognition from my parents !”

MK stared over at him, slowly settling down his own slushie in order to grab Red Son’s hands in his own, gently forcing the demon to loosen the fists his hands had balled into. He stared at Red Son, silently, but the other man didn’t look up, instead taking in another unsteady breath.

“I just—I’m their son ! It’s in my name!” He was whispering, like the words were a private blasphemy he’d never let himself utter before. “I shouldn’t have to try so hard for them to see me as their son. Or at least as more than a– a pathetic burden on their shoulders!”

He sniffled, and MK flinched, eyes wide, before pulling Red Son closer to himself, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Still, MK didn’t speak.

“I thought I’d be so happy when I finally earned my father’s recognition. And I was! But now all I can think is why should I have had to !” He swallowed roughly. “This is all your fault. You made me realize I shouldn’t have to earn it.”

MK laughed, softly, non-judgmentally, and said, “How?”

“I sure as fuck didn’t earn it with you, did I? And yet…” Red Son’s voice steadied, slightly, taking on an odd note almost like suspicion. “You see me. You just gave me your recognition.”

“Of course I did,” MK sighed, a small smile on his face, which grew as Red Son finally looked up at the rice to glare at him.

“Why?”

“Well, I don’t know, you just… you didn’t have to earn it,” MK shrugged, jostling Red Son slightly, reaching up with his free hand to wipe away the few tears the demon had let fall. “You deserve to be seen, Red.”

Red Son stared up at him, eyes wide, like he’d never been told anything like that before. Like maybe he thought that kind of thing didn’t apply to him. 

Then, “Fuck,” whispered Red Son. Louder, he eloquently repeated himself. “Fuck!”

It startled a laugh out of MK who leaned away to cover his mouth, shocked. “What?”

“I do not want to fight you anymore.”

Then, hysterical, Red Son burst into a fit of giggles, only interrupting himself to swear viciously at the wind.

Through it all, MK held him close and steady.

—------

“Hey, Red?”

“Yeah?”

“About your parents and… well, about us…” MK took in a deep breath, then smiled over at his friend. “Choose what you want to do.”

“What?” Red Son laughed, a little fake to MK, but he let it slide.

“Then do it .”

There was a long silence between them as Red Son took in that advice.

Finally, Red Son snorted, clearly forced, and offered MK a half smile. “What, you’ve got proverbs now? Psalms?”

MK breathed out a small laugh. “Oh, shut up.”

A peaceful quiet settled over them, as they ate rice and drank their slushies.

MK took a moment to mush up the ice back with the juice that was trying to separate, and glanced over at his friend.

“For what it’s worth, Red?”

Red looked over, a large scoopful of rice in his mouth, chopsticks poised as though he’d just shoved the whole thing in his mouth in a rush.

Smiling fondly, MK bumped his shoulder against Red Son’s. “I don't want to fight you either.”

They stayed to watch the sunrise, that night, and then a bit longer, until MK’s shift at Pigsy’s noodle shop was about to start.

It was nice.

It was almost like being friends in the day.

—------

Chapter Text

“Okay, but like, it’s inconsiderate, right?”

Red Son was only half listening, admittedly, as MK angrily marched into the gas station, gesturing passionately. He followed behind MK at a significantly more casual stance, offering a shrug to a concerned-looking Eunice, and pushed past his friend to grab a slushie.

“Like, you think I’d get more warning than this, is all, wouldn’t you?” MK turned from where he was grabbing a carton of sushi from the fridge. “Red, back me up here!”

“I haven’t been listening.”

MK placed the sushi down on a nearby counter, twisting his whole body to face Red Son with an impressively flat expression. “Are you serious?”

“Why would I lie?”

“I’ve been talking for, like, 10 minutes.”

Red Son shrugged, pulling the lever on the red slushie machine. “It’s like a white noise machine. I hear that monkey’s name and I clock out.”

“Have you processed a single word I’ve said?”

“Something about something being inconsiderate and you wanting more of a warning?” Red Son shrugged, again, capping his own slushie and reaching for another cup for MK. “It’s the Monkey King , idiot, no one has ever really described him as considerate.”

“One day, I am going to find out what your beef is with Monkey King.” MK grimaced, turning back to the fridge, putting back the carton of sushi he’d taken out. “I can’t believe I was gonna go with your favorite flavor. We’re getting California rolls now.”

Red Son scoffed, rolling his eyes as he capped off MK’s slushie. “You’re so immature. Following in your mentor’s footsteps, are you?”

“You don’t get to talk about ‘immature’ right now!” Despite himself, MK was starting to snicker, anger simmering down as Red Son kept egging him on. “You just ignored me for 10 minutes straight!”

“And what a blissful 10 minutes they were,” Red Son sighed, walking around to the cash register with a small money purse in hand, only to be cut off by Eunice locking the register, glaring at Red Son’s money. He blinked at her from across the counter, confused. “What?”

“You’re not paying tonight.” Very pointedly, she shut off the neon signs. “We’re closed.”

“You’re a 24-hour gas station.”

“I’m actually kicking you out right now. No time for people who saved the city from a swarm of spiders to pay for their… what, slushies and a single cartoon of sushi? How unfortunate.”

Behind Red Son, MK snickered, a hand over his mouth as if that stopped the sound from traveling, and Red Son whipped around to glare at him. “Really?”

“Are you saying you want to pay for your snacks?” MK asked, a shit-eating grin on his face, and Red Son scoffed in response, sneering.

“What, did you get ‘inconsiderate’ from your mentor as well? I’m not going to take advantage!” 

“I’m actively begging you to leave, actually.” Eunice sighed, turning the neon lights back on with the flick of a switch, and MK laughed, reaching out to tug Red Son out of the back door of the station, shouting a hasty goodbye to Eunice as he hauled an unwilling demon through the parking lot, letting the door swing shut behind them.

As they veered towards a fire escape to reach the roofs they would travel across to reach their warehouse, MK teasingly jabbed Red Son in the side. “Goody two shoes.”

Red Son shook his head, failing to smother a small snicker before it could slip. “Eat shit and die.”

—------

Cloaked beneath the dark of night, pressed together shoulder-to-shoulder under the new moon and scattered constellations, MK barely let Red Son get comfortable on the old mattress they’d set up on the rooftop before breaking the silence with a near-violent slurp of his slushie. 

“Can you listen to me now?” He pressed, letting himself fall until his upper body rested in Red Son’s lap. The demon stared down at him, a long-suffering sigh leaving his mouth.

“Fine.”

“Great, because I was really about to start talking either way,” MK laughed, awkwardly craning his neck to sip at his drink without spilling it all over himself, instead of just sitting up straight . “He’s inconsiderate!”

“Yeah.”

“Like, super, to an enormous degree, inconsiderate!”

“I’ll agree with you there.”

“You know what he did?”

“No.”

“He went on vacation!”

Red Son almost choked on his slushie at the laughter that bubbled up in his chest at that. “What?”

“He just fucking left!”

“He left ?”

“ Yes !”

“Why?” Red Son cackled, nearly dislodging MK from his lap, but he caught the other man by the shoulder and pulled him back into place with hardly a thought. “Was he bored ?”

“Hell if I know!” MK raised his slushie up to the moonless sky, like he was toasting or some shit, and sagged against Red Son, defeated. “He said something about how I’m, like, ready to handle things alone?”

“That’s bullshit.” Red Son scoffed, grip tightening around MK’s shoulder in a way he’d forever deny could be called protective. “He’s barely started training you.”

“I know , and I just—” MK swore, wriggling out of Red Son’s grip until he could sit up enough to rest his forehead against Red Son’s shoulder. “I don’t want to talk about this. Can you just pass me the sushi?” 

With a snort, Red Son picked up a piece with the wooden chopsticks MK had nearly shattered earlier, trying to rip them apart, and held it to his friend’s mouth. “Weren’t you just begging to talk about this?”

“I was begging to complain about it.” MK frowned, cheeks bulging with the roll of sushi he’d chosen to eat in a single bite, pressing his forehead more firmly into Red Son’s shoulder. “Not to talk it through. There’s a difference.”

“Oh, is there?”

“Yes. Now agree with me so we can move on and I can feel validated.”

Red Son turned his head slightly, pressing an amused grin into MK’s hair, unseen. “Fine, fine. Sun Wukong is very inconsiderate and he should have given you more warning. I can keep going, honestly. Want me to ad-lib?”

“No!” MK snorted, flicking Red Son’s arm. “Seriously, what’s your problem with Monkey King?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“ Yes !”

—------

“Red Son!” Princess Iron Fan’s voice cut sharply across the throne room, and Red Son froze in place at the sound of her call, one foot out the door of the throne room, a lump in his throat that he’d been trying to swallow for the past half-hour. 

Slowly, he turned, straightening his posture as he marched himself back over to the thrones his mother and father sat in, poised above him. Hands clenched together at the small of his back, Red Son met his mother’s eyes, neck craning back as he looked upwards. Swallowing around the lump in his throat, Red Son just hoped his voice wouldn’t waver. “Yes, mother?”

The thing was… Well, Red Son knew he seemed pretty cool and collected, or he hoped so, but the tension in the room pressed down on something deep and long-forgotten in his gut, something that craved the closeness he’d had with his parents before Sun Wukong had sealed his father, that remembered how it felt to trust his parents to actually have his best interests at heart, and sometimes…

Sometimes, he looked up at his mother, and it was hard to even recognize her. Then he’d turn to his father, and it was like he’d never met the man in his life. 

He’d spent centuries with only his mother for company. Both of them, together, longing after the presence of his father. He’d practically wasted away over his workbench, trying to find a way to remove the Monkey King’s staff from the mountain and free his father. 

Yet the moment he’d succeeded…

The moment he was no longer needed…

“We need your help,” Demon Bull King intoned very seriously, staring intently down at Red Son. “Are you up to this?”

Honestly, Red Son was so tired . Tired and done and sick of working until he made himself drop , only for his efforts to be trivialized and degraded, but he knew how this worked, by now. He wasn’t really looking for an answer.

DBK was looking for his son to have a use . 

So, Red Son scoffed, rolling his eyes so hard they hurt in their sockets, and crossed his arms across his chest. “Am I up to it? Obviously , I’m up to it. Honestly.”

“Hmm…” His mother peered down at him, something judgemental in the look that had Red Son bristling, and he had to focus hard to keep his shoulders relaxed. Finally, she nodded, and Red Son resented the warmth in his chest that bloomed at even that bland fascimile of approval. “Good. In that case…”

—-------

The mission was embarrassingly easy.

Red Son almost thought they just wanted to get rid of him, get him out of the lair. 

The only interesting thing he saw, on his way back to the lair, was an… oddly familiar flood of water consuming a flaming meteor of a dumpling, and, as he passed by a television poised in a nearby store window, saw MK fall on his ass live on the local news channel.

He took a picture of it, of course, and opened his messages with MK.

[Idiot Noodle Boy]

Me: this u? (image attached)

MK replied immediately, which meant Red Son got to watch on the TV as he checked his phone, and he got to see the exact moment MK’s face fell.

Idiot Noodle Boy: Do you rlly have to do this every time you see me on the news

Me: you didn’t let me finish…

Idiot Noodle Boy: what..

Me: fuckin wipeout

Me: LMFAO

Idiot Noodle Boy: I hate you

Despite the harsh words, Red Son saw him break into a full-belly laugh on the TV screen, and figured he didn’t really mean it.

He returned to the lair to drop off the material his parents had asked him to retrieve… and then he took one look at their faces, unimpressed as ever even though he’d done exactly as they’d asked, and…

Red Son shoved his resentment and disappointment deep beneath a pool of practiced indifference, and he turned on his heel before they could speak.

Red Son left the lair, and went home.

—------

Before the warehouse was where MK and Red Son would sit curled together beneath the stars, it was Red Son’s escape. Before DBK had been unsealed, when his mother was losing hope, growing more and more restless and desperate and when the pressure would become unbearable, he’d run away to the abandoned warehouse he’d spent years turning into a proper, cozy home and say:

“This is it. This time I’ll say something to her. Once I get back home, I’ll be calm, and she’ll get it.”

Then, he would return home laden with apologies and get to work so his mother could be happy again and he could make his father proud.

Before he even collapsed, face down, over the back of the beat-up old couch he’d stolen a few years back, he knew this time would be the same, mostly. 

This time, he knew, he wouldn’t be returning home. He was returning to a cage, to a generous stranger’s guest bedroom, to a life he was sick of leading.

The warehouse had always been a hideaway of sorts, a safe space for Red Son, but somewhere along the way…

Somewhere along the way, MK had made his space a home.

—------

Later that night, MK stepped into the warehouse with a red slushie in each hand and a bag full of rice and spicy chicken hanging down from between his clenched teeth, and found Red Son sprawled belly-up on the couch, absently trailing a small flame in the air above him with his index finger.

He didn’t look up when MK walked in.

“Red?” MK tried to ask, voice muffled and distorted by the plastic bag in his mouth, which he hastily placed on a nearby table, face scrunched up in distaste. Red Son glanced over at MK, sat up when he saw the slushie in the other man’s hand, and MK slid onto the couch next to him, wrapping an arm around Red’s shoulders and tugging him close. 

He pressed Red Son’s slushie into his hand, and watched his friend take a sip. Tightening his grip on Red’s shoulders, MK spoke: “You weren’t at the station.” Red Son hummed in response, lightly shrugging, avoiding eye contact, and MK pressed, eyeing Red intently. “Is there something wrong?”

Red Son nodded, which was… kind of unexpected, actually, and threw MK off a bit.

“Oh, shit," MK swallowed, and he heard Red Son snort softly. He scowled down at the demon without any real heat. " Rude . Do you want to talk about it?”

Red Son flicked MK’s forehead in lieu of a response—MK knew , even if he couldn't see it, that he rolled his eyes—then pressed his own forehead into the crook of MK’s neck.

“Okay,” MK sighed, “cool.” He reached out for the bag of rice and chicken, tugging the food closer. “We’ll just have a quiet night in here, then.”

Tension dropped from Red Son’s shoulders, though MK’s grip did not, and MK let himself smile.

And though they did not watch the stars, that night, they still sat together in their warehouse, sipping obnoxiously at slushies and squabbling over the carton of rice, and when MK left at dawn, Red Son smiled and said, quietly:

"Goodbye," and quieter, "thank you."

MK grinned back at him, one foot on the fire escape, and said, "See you tonight."

Red Son watched him leave, and did not return to the lair.

Chapter Text

“I love my parents,” Red Son stated firmly, staring out over the neon lights shining in the city’s skyline one night. “And my parents love me.”

MK glanced over at him, trying to read his face, but Red Son had turned his head away. Lamely, MK said, “Okay…”

“I just think they maybe wouldn’t have minded if I was the one the Monkey King had sealed away.”

“What the fuck do you mean by that?” MK turned fully, blinking hard, setting down his slushie on the edge of the roof. Red Son’s posture was perfect in a way it never was when they were alone together, and MK reached out to grab his chin and make the demon face MK head-on. “Wild fucking start, Red. Explain that.”

His face was almost entirely blank, but he was biting down on his bottom lip in a way MK knew had to hurt. “I just think… that they don’t need me as much as they need each other, is all. My mother would have been fine if she’d had my father with her during those centuries instead of me.”

“Red Son, your parents love you,” MK glared at his friend, refusing to soften his grip on Red Son’s chin even as something seemed to crack open in his face. “They’re shit to you, and I hate them, and I think you cut them way too much slack, but they love you so much . They would’ve been torn apart if you were sealed away.”

“Maybe.”

“ Definitely . The Celestial Realm would be ravaged by the rampage they’d go on. You’re their son .”

“I just—”

“Red.”

Red Son fell silent, and MK watched as his Adam's apple bobbed around a heavy swallow.

“ They love you .”

Red Son’s face crumpled, and MK finally released his chin in order to catch the demon when he collapsed against MK’s chest, and if he felt a wet patch forming on his shirt… Well, he had enough tact to go without mentioning it.

—------

“Classic MK,” Pigsy sneered down at his employee. “Can’t listen to basic instructions, and screws around all day.”

MK winced, blind and covered in dust on the ground behind Mei, listening as Pigsy’s footsteps got further and further away from him. 

Like…ouch?

MK knew he had a lot of flaws, absolutely no shortage of shortcomings, really, but… he didn’t think Pigsy would rag on him for something that wasn’t even his fault.

MK laid on the ground, and all he could really think was that he wouldn’t be bringing it up to Red Son. 

His friend had enough to deal with.

—------

“Monkey King is not using me as an errand boy!” MK rolled his eyes, sprawled across their mattress on the rooftop. “You’re being ridiculous!”

Red Son smirked over at him, punctuating his decision to be an asshole with a pointedly obnoxious slurp of his slushie. “Am I? He had you use that dumb vase to suck of the dumpling, then that weird box thing he sent you…? I’m willing to beat him up for you.”

“You said you’d lose if you fought him now,” MK snorted, “and, besides, how’d you even know about that vase? It wasn’t on the news feed.”

“I’d recognize that stupid piece of enchanted pottery anywhere. Sun Wukong doesn’t play fair.”

MK let out a confused laugh, eyebrows furrowing as he tried to parse Red Son’s meaning. “What?”

“He used it to beat me? That time I beat him up and I told you he snitched?”

“ What ?”

“When…when he went to the goddess… and she flooded my mountain for him so I couldn’t use fire?”

“Holy shit ,” MK sat up, wide-eyed, staring over at Red Son. “You’re the demon Tang couldn’t remember the name of.”

“Huh?”

“Tang told me that story! When we went looking for the vase!” MK laughed, a wide grin on his face, hands raised to gesticulate excitedly. “He said he didn’t remember the name of the demon in the story!”

Red Son snorted, rolling his eyes. “And how’d he tell it?”

“Well,” MK glanced away, but his smile only grew. “He didn’t include the part where you beat Monkey King up.”

“They always exclude the best part.”

—------

“You were acting weird around Red Son,” Mei said in lieu of any kind of greeting, just yanking down MK’s headphones and getting right to the point, and MK nearly choked. He turned to her, slowly, blinking hard. 

“...What?”

She pressed on, undeterred. “On the ship. With the Spider Queen? You were weird around him.”

“No, I wasn’t,” MK laughed, nervously, reaching up to settle his headphones around his neck. “What do you mean?”

“You guys just seemed, like, I don’t know…you had chemistry? Ugh, I don’t know how to describe it.”

“We had chemistry ?” MK scrunched up his face in distaste, mopping the floor a tad more aggressively than was strictly necessary. “What’s next, you think I have a crush on him?”

Mei grinned, teasing, and swooned dramatically into him. “Well, do you?”

MK gagged, genuinely, not even for the sake of the joke, and lightly shoved her away. “Gross, Mei. You know I’m not for that.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she giggled, “sorry.”

“Really?” He snorted, dunking the mop into the soapy water he was using to clean the floor. “The laughing really helped your apology sound genuine.”

“You want a dissertation?”

“No. Mostly because I don’t know what that is.”

“Good,” Mei snickered, “because I was not about to write you one.”

Fondly, MK sighed. “Jerk.”

—------

“I think… I miss them.”

“What?”

“My parents. They’re right there, but…” Red Son swallowed, staring down at his clenched fists, one hand gripped tightly around a pair of chopsticks. “I miss them.”

“Red…”

“That doesn’t make sense, right? How could I miss them?”

“It makes sense.”

“ How ?” Red Son pleaded, voice edged with something helpless MK had never heard from him before, and MK tapped his knee against the demon's.

“You love them, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“And how do they treat you?”

Red Son fell silent, eyes downcast as he tugged the rice closer to himself, and MK took a long, long moment to study him.

The quiet night blanketed them for several long minutes, and MK watched as Red Son slouched further and further into himself, crumpling under the weight of his own thoughts until he couldn’t bear to watch Red Son agonizing like that any longer.

“You need to stand up to them, Red.” MK frowned over at his friend’s slumped form, taking in the despondent look on his face as he picked at their rice carton with his chopsticks. “Seriously.”

Red Son hummed, more in acknowledgement than any sort of agreement, and his lips twisted into a harsh frown. “How?”

“What do you want to say to them?”

“What don’t I want to say to them? It’s - there’s too much. I can’t even begin to put it into words.”

“Try.”

Red Son was silent for a long while. Then, quietly, “I love my parents, Noodles.”

“I never said you don’t.”

“I can’t do this to them.”

“Red Son.” MK waited until Red Son turned to look at him, then wrapped an arm around his shoulders to pull him close. “I know you love them, and it’s hard, but you need to think about what they’re doing to you .”

Desperately, Red Son let himself sag into MK’s grip. “They’re my parents… ”

“Yeah, they are,” MK grimaced, unseen as Red Son hid his face in MK’s shoulder, and continued. “And you all love each other—but they’re hurting you, Red. It can’t go on.”

“But…”

“Sometimes you need to stand up to the people you love.”

—-----

“Fuck, marry, kill.”

“None of them. Kill all.”

“I didn’t even say who yet.”

“Doesn’t matter. Kill all.”

“What if all three are me?”

“I’ll give a really nice speech at your funeral.”

“You will be in prison.”

“You think I’d get caught?”

“I think you’d be very loud about having killed me.”

“Fair.”

—------

“Have you actually tried Pigsy’s noodles before?” MK asked, one night, and Red Son raised an eyebrow at him.

“I think Pigsy would wring me out like a dishrag if I stepped within two blocks of his shop.”

MK snorted. “He wouldn’t! Especially not now , our families are hardly even fighting anymore. It’s…weird.”

“I’ll say,” Red Son grimaced. “I don’t…I’m not sure where we stand in all of this, now.”

“Think we could get away with being friends now?”

“Would I be expected to sit with your annoying little group?”

“Obviously.”

“Then no, gods no, we’d be burned at the stake if we tried to be friends in public.”

MK laughed, shoving Red Son’s shoulder slightly. “Asshole.”

“It’s my charm, and my birthright, as the son of the Demon Bull King,” Red Son replied reflexively, then winced, and MK decided to let it slide.

“You’re not charming.” MK rolled his eyes.

“I’m incredibly charming. It’s part of my charm.”

“Oh my gods,” MK cackled. “Shut up! You’re so annoying!”

“Of course I’m annoying.” Red Son rolled his eyes, a shit-eating grin on his face, and MK bumped his shoulder, eyes narrowed suspiciously..

“If you say it’s part—”

“It’s part of my charm .”

“I’m gonna kill you !”

Red Son cackled, bright and cheery and genuine in a way it rarely was anymore under the light of the stars, and MK beamed back at him, more than happy to help his friend forget about the lonely lair he’d need to return to in the morning.

—------

Red Son hid his shaking fists behind his back, kept his gaze downturned as his mother glared down at him from her throne. At her side, he could feel his father’s gaze burning into him, and he really just longed for home.

That clawing, pleading thing in him longed for the ability to feel at home in the lair with his parents, but knew better, standing before them weak-willed and stiff as a board in what should have been his real safe space. 

He knew better than to let that little desperate feeling in his chest get a hold on him, especially when his parents were glaring disapprovingly over some miniscule error in a job that didn’t even matter, really. It was unreasonable. They were unreasonable.

They were unreasonable, and unfair , and Red Son was so sick and tired of it all—but they were still his parents, and he still loved them.

His mother finally broke the silence. “What happened , Red Son?” she asked, and before he could even try to answer, his father snorted loudly.

“Clearly, it was too much for our foolish offspring,” he mocked, and Red Son felt that weeping little desperate feeling in his chest crack .

He glared down at the floor, a feeling of numb rage consuming him. He was their son . They loved him. He loved them. He was not their errand boy , or a demon bull clone . 

He was their son.

His chest still bubbled with that endless well of disappointment and yearning he’d felt for centuries and learned to ignore, over time, that now overflowed into his lungs and threatened to choke him on every breath. 

His mother seemed to get closure when Red Son had freed his father from his imprisonment, but Red Son had never felt further away from his parents than when he had them both right beside him. 

Unbidden, a thought he could only blame on MK flitted through the forefront of his mind. Fuck this. Fuck them and fuck this.

Red Son swallowed heavily, wrenched his head up to glare at his parents, scowling. “Why don’t you do it yourself, then?”

Princess Iron Fan looked taken aback by his outburst. “Excuse me?”

“Do it yourself!” His hands shook as he shouted, and he could hear the waver in his voice, but he forced himself to stand his ground. “I’m not your fucking servant ! I am your son !”

Demon Bull King growled, glaring right back at Red Son, who was, frankly, too hysterical to care. “You insolent —”

“Insolent what ?” Red Son laughed, mirthless and manic, throwing his hands up in the air. “I’m your son ! It’s in my name ! Did you call me ‘offspring’ when I freed you from the mountain? Am I only your son when you need me for something?” He laughed, incredulous, pale and shaking, and turned on his heel, walking out. “I’m so done with this. See you tomorrow, maybe.”

—------

He wound up in the warehouse, quivering with nervous energy and feeling like that weepy longing yearning thing in his chest had cracked open, overflowing with no outlet.

MK was nowhere to be seen, which made sense. Red Son hadn’t texted him, or anything.

He sat down on the couch, staring at the wall, and decided it was for the best.

This was something he’d have to deal with on his own.

At dawn, Red Son would return to the lair.

Until then, he just sat on the couch, and breathed.

Chapter Text

The first thing out of Princess Iron Fan’s mouth when Red Son returned the next morning, barely even a breath, was his name, tinged with a soul-deep relief that had Red Son shrinking back in the doorway, flinching into that parasitic desire that burned through his chest. Beside her, the Demon Bull King stared at him, solemn, and all Red Son could really think about was the fact that neither of them were in their thrones, that they stood before him on equal ground rather than lording their status over him.

He swallowed, heavily, and crossed his arms in front of his chest in a minuscule mockery of comfort. “Mother,” he murmured, “Father.” He didn’t quite make eye contact with either, staring at a small spot on their cheeks instead. His heartbeat felt loud in his ears underneath their scrutinization. 

“Red Son,” Princess Iron Fan repeated, her voice desperate with the same kind of unanticipated loss he was sure his own had been blistering with the night before. “What brought all of this on?”

“I…” Red Son took a deep breath, turning his gaze downwards and tightening his grip on his arms, like that would do anything to hold him together. 

For years , for centuries , Red Son had known how the world worked. He had learned to carve a space out of his chest and turn it into a lockbox, move it to his head and make it a filter, force any and all unwanted, unnecessary , emotions into their place or, failing that, mold them into something that could be used.

Something like anger .

Something that raged and smoldered and blistered like the fire he’d been blessed with at birth, until he could no longer separate himself from the heat and fire and adrenaline of inhaling oxygen and exhaling devastation .

Then, he met MK, and he realized his life didn’t have to be spent as nothing more than kindling and ozone and ash. 

As if the lockbox had suddenly burst open, and all those centuries of isolation and betrayal and depression and insolent rage were flooding out. Irritation he’d never allowed himself to feel, disappointment and expectations and a sense of fairness and justice he had never been able to entertain. 

“What brought all of this on?” What fucking hadn’t?

And Red Son scowled down at the floor of the lair, thought of how easy it must be to be a hero, with a real family, and snapped. “Really? Are you really asking that?”

“She is just trying to understand,” Demon Bull King interjected, and the tone of his voice was, of all things, disappointed . “As am I.”

“Oh, are you?” Red Son asked incredulously. He stepped closer, hands getting flung up into the air as he jerked his gaze up to glare at his parents. “Well, I’m trying to find out what the fuck you want from me!”

“Son, please —”

“What, now I’m ‘son’ ? Did you need something from me?” He laughed, a bit hysterical, and reached back to tighten his ponytail. “A new gadget? A new son ?”

“Red Son, do not be ridiculous!” Princess Iron Fan shouted, eyebrows furrowed, stepping closer until she held his elbow in her grasp. “You are our son and we love you!”

Red Son snorted, wrenching his elbow out of her grip. “Sure, yeah, whatever. I know that . I’m just finding it hard to believe you care about me.”

“Of course we care about you,” Demon Bull King drew near as well, something helpless and ill-fitting in his voice, and Red Son swallowed harshly.

“When you want to, yeah. And in the meantime, you have all these expectations of me that you don’t feel the need to inform me of until I’ve failed to perform the way you wished me to. So tell me , please, what you want .”

“There is nothing we want—”

“Alright, I can fill in the blanks , then,” Red Son snarled, hands shaking and vision blurring with tears he refused to let fall. “Let’s see… intelligence, more than I have, or a different kind than what I have? Competence, because you seem to believe I am utterly incapable of taking care of myself?”

He stepped away from them, biting roughly at his lower lip. Turning his head away from his parents, Red Son tugged his glasses off his face and cleaned them just to have something to do with his hands. “Is it that you wish your son was stronger ? More powerful, because this child you’re stuck with is little more than a pathetic fire spirit, just like all the rest? Tell me, please, is it that you still expect me to have that destructive power you sealed away from me ? Because, really, it’s more yours than it is mine at this point.”

Red Son stared pointedly at the golden ring hanging from his father’s nose, and pressed on before he could be interrupted, choking back the lump in his throat, swallowing tears he hadn’t even noticed falling down his face as he shifted his gaze back to the ground, arms wrapping tightly around himself once more. “You both destroyed me, and you didn’t even care to see it. Be honest. Would you have come after me if I had been the one sealed in the mountain? Because I can’t say for sure you would.”

Silence filled the room, all three participants staring at each other wide-eyed in the backlash of that statement.

Red Son reached up, hurriedly wiping tears from his face. He hadn’t meant to say that .

—------

MK stumbled back, eyes clenched shut and head splitting as the Lady Bone Demon carved a space for herself within his mind, vision tinged blue and flat whenever he could pry his eyelids open even a sliver. Breathy chuckles rang all around, like an echo throughout the chamber, but it was all contained within MK's own head. He doubled over, clenching his hair in both fists, the heels of his palms pressing hard into his temples fruitlessly, failing to ease the ache even a sliver.

“Ah, I see…” The Lady Bone Demon chuckled, her jarringly young voice sounding directly into MK’s thoughts, tearing through his head with no hope for mercy. “You have begun to suspect what he already knows.”

His head felt as though it would split open, but that pain was somehow secondary to the one bubbling down his spine and freezing over his throat.

Lady Bone Demon smiled, and it felt like an impression of maniacal, sadistic joy imprinting itself across his brain. “That he made the wrong choice,” she continued viciously, “ picked the wrong successor.” She ripped herself from his head, and MK fell to the ground, panting and shivering.

She no longer possessed him, but he felt anything but free of her. He felt a stain on his soul, a mark on his mind where she had taken him and reformed him on a whim .

“You were right, you know.” She giggled, staring down at him, a mocking frown spreading across her face. “ It’s scary being alone .”

Laying on the ground, panting, tiny and alone after running away from her, MK’s thoughts did not stray to Sun Wukong.

He laid on the floor, feeling broken and shaken and terrified, and thought: I need to see Red .

It was scary being alone.

—------

One night, earlier, before everything started falling apart, MK had cleared his throat, oddly self-conscious as he re-mixed the separating ice and juice in his slushie. “So… remember when I asked if you think I’m dumb?” The moon was high in the sky, maybe starting on its way down, and they'd been sitting in silence for nearly an hour at that point.

Red Son turned to look at him, an eyebrow raised. “Yeah?”

“And you said I’m not an idiot?”

“I don’t think I remember that part.”

"I'm being serious!"

"So am I."

“Well, it happened," MK huffed. "So… why do you not think I’m dumb?”

Red Son hummed, taking a moment to study his friend, to really look at him—and, letting out a soft sigh, he decided to be genuine. “I don’t know… you’re quick on your feet?" Red Son shrugged, offering MK a small smirk as he continued. "I think you are dumb because you are so bad at planning ahead or relying on your people and resources. You’re not stupid , though. Just, like… common sense.”

“Oh…" MK hummed, grinning over at Red Son. "That was, like, really nice for you?”

Red Son scowled, leaning away from the Monkie Kid, who laughed, tugging Red Son closer. “Shut the fuck up. I never said any of that.”

“I’m cherishing this memory.”

“I’m giving you brain damage in our next fight.”

“Eunice would be so proud of you right now.”

“Stop bringing Eunice into things!”

—------

In the throne room, Red Son found himself quickly surrounded by his parents before he could even finish processing what the hell he had just said to them.

“My son, you cannot really think that,” Princess Iron Fan pleaded, clutching Red Son’s shoulder tightly in one hand, and her husband’s hand in the other. 

Red Son stared back at her, still stuck on the fact that he’d said that to them at all, and could not bring himself to reply. He’d meant it, anyway.

“Red Son…” Demon Bull King grasped Red Son’s wrist gently, and tugged his son closer to the pair. “ My son, there is no universe in which I would not have torn down the very stars in the sky to save you from such a fate.”

“You are our son. ”

Red Son shook in their grip, shivering as all the fight drained out of him, and he let the tears roll down his cheeks. Finally, he said: “Prove it.” With blurred vision, he stared up at them, his posture hunched and desperation on display. “I don’t trust you. Prove it.”

And instead of condemning him for his insolence, and unneeded displays of emotion, his parents nodded with the solemnity of crafting a sacred oath, and said, “We will.”

Red Son nodded, and he felt like he was in a shocked daze. “Good.” With the last of his composure, he extricated himself from their grasp and moved to the door, wiping ineffectually at the tears still staining his cheeks and glimmering on his lashes. “Because I can’t stay here until you do.”

Without waiting for a response, Red Son teleported to the gas station, and pulled out his phone.

It was ten in the morning.

—------

Forehead planted painfully against the counter of Pigsy’s noodle shop, MK opened his messages with Red Son.

—------

Idiot Noodle Boy: hey,, i know it’s like way too early but .. gas station??

RED !!!!!: Hey I think i just ran away from home wanna get a slushie 

Idiot Noodle Boy: .

RED !!!!!: …

Idiot Noodle Boy: you first

RED !!!!!: i think i explained myself pretty aptly

RED !!!!!: what the Fuck happened to you??

Idiot Noodle Boy: bad day

Idiot Noodle Boy: talk later, maybe, idk

Idiot Noodle Boy: slushies & roof?

RED !!!!!: .

RED !!!!!: ..yeah

—------

“Okay, Red, please explain to me what the fuck you meant by that text?”

Sitting on the roof with slushies during the midday turned out to be a terrible, nerve-wracking experience that neither of them enjoyed, so they moved inside to the couch after several minutes of mutual silent suffering.

Red Son bristled, huffing indignantly at MK. “I stood up to my parents, like you told me to!” He felt like maybe he was in shock, like he'd fall apart later once he'd had a real chance to process things.

“I did not tell you to run away from home!” MK laughed, slinging an arm around Red Son’s shoulders and pulling the demon close, more for his own comfort than Red’s, honestly.

“I didn’t mean to!”

“Red, how the hell do you accidentally run away from home?”

“I was sensitive!” Cracking jokes kind of felt like the thing that a person who was maybe in shock would do, probably. He was... Red Son was just wondering when the other shoe would drop. 

MK snorted, reaching up to swipe up at the dried tear tracks on Red Son’s cheeks that had dried an odd violet color. “Yeah, I can tell.” He groped across the table for the baby wipes they kept there since they started crying on each other on a consistent basis, and handed one to his friend. “Here, clean yourself up.”

“Asshole,” Red Son grumbled, wiping at his cheeks until the wipe was stained purple and his face was mostly clear, if still a bit drawn and pale. “I was trying to prove a point, and I think I might have proven it a little too well.”

“Yeah? You might’ve?”

“Shut up,” Red Son shoved MK, gently. “Jerk. What happened to you today?” Immediately, MK’s smile dropped off his face.

“...Bad day.”

Red Son raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “...Elaborate?”

“I learned to shrink myself?” MK winced, glancing away when he saw the unimpressed look on Red Son’s face. “Look, I really don’t want to talk about it right now… let’s just move on. Have a lazy day here, and go visit Eunice tonight and, like, not talk about our problems.”

Red Son frowned up at his friend, but he knew when MK was going to dig in his heels, so he let it lie. “Okay, sure, but just… I’m worried for you.”

“I know , I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

—------

“Do you think that the gods and stuff in the Celestial Realm listen in on us and laugh?”

Red Son rolled his eyes, staring up at the stars. “Do you think at all?”

“You’re so mean to me.” MK frowned, leaning his full weight onto Red Son’s arm and making him drop the piece of sushi he was holding with chopsticks into his lap. “For, like, literally no reason.”

“I think it’s my duty, honestly.”

“ Why ?”

“Somebody had to make fun of you,” Red Son sighed, gazing forlornly at his soy-sauce-covered pants. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”

“You say that like you won our first fight.”

“Oh, but didn’t I?” Red Son wrapped his arm around MK’s shoulders, grinning down at his friend. “What’s worse, a small bruise to my pride, or the large amount of blackmail material your first attempts at using Wukong’s power gave me?”

“...Fuck.”

“What’s that?”

“I fucking lost !”

“Yeah… you did.”

—------

Dawn came and went, but they did not leave.

As the sun rose, they moved inside.

Together.

And it wasn't anything like hanging out in the light of day, but it was something.

It was what they had.

They were what they had.

Chapter Text

“Oh, fuck.” Red Son stared down at his phone, vibrating incessantly on the nearby coffee table. 

MK didn’t even glance up from his own phone, where he was half-heartedly playing some idle clicker game. “What is it?” 

When Red Son didn’t respond, only tensing until he was a firm wall against MK’s side, MK turned to look at him, an eyebrow raised. “Red?”

“Do you think it’s them?” He still didn’t reach out to grab his phone, and MK rolled his eyes, sitting up slowly, arms reaching up above his head as he cracked his shoulders and back. 

He leaned over to the table for Red Son’s phone, smiling reassuringly at Red Son when his friend turned to stare at him, next. “One way to find out, yeah?” MK glanced down at the phone, still buzzing loudly, and couldn’t hold back the immediate wince at the sight of the notifications.

17 Missed Calls. 5 Unread Messages.

The numbers blinked up at him, bright and unceasing, and each one was captioned with one of two names. Mother or Father . MK stared down at the phone, wide eyed, and quietly cleared all the missed calls before turning the phone to Red Son. 

“Yeah, I…” MK swallowed, watching Red Son’s face as he gazed, frozen, at the glowing screen of the phone. “I think it might be them.” The phone started buzzing again, another call. Red Son barely even reacted, and MK took the initiative to hit ‘ignore’ for him. “...Red?”

The demon swallowed, visibly, and slowly reached out to take his phone, holding it in his lap and hunching over it as MK slung a heavy arm over his shoulders. “I…” Red Son stopped, opening the Messages app, stopping short of pressing the group chat he shared with his parents. 

“Yeah?”

“I think it just hit me,” Red Son finally said haltingly, “that I ran away from home. And…yelled at my parents.”

“Oh, hell , I’m sorry.” MK pulled Red Son a bit closer. 

“Not your fault, idiot.”

“I know, I know,” MK sighed softly, resting his cheek on the top of Red Son’s head. “What do you want to do about this?”

Red Son laughed, softly, hysterically. “Pretend I did none of that and go back home?”

“Red…”

“Why the fuck did I do that?” Red Son clenched his phone a bit tighter in his grip, the words on the screen blurring, and he couldn’t tell whether he was crying or if he’d just been staring for too long. Or both. “I’m so stupid —”

“Stop that,” MK admonished. “You did that because you had to. You know you were right.”

“...Yeah.”

“And you know it’s too late to pretend it didn’t happen, and that you shouldn’t anyway, right?”

“ Yes .”

“And you know why you did all this?”

“ Yes, I fucking know why , Noodles.”

“Great.” MK grinned, pressed against Red Son’s hair, and gave his shoulder a soft squeeze. “So what do you want to do about this?”

Red Son scowled down at his phone, blinking hard and watching the purple tears slide down from his phone screen and dry crystalline on his pants. “Oh, fuck you, Noodle Brain.”

He opened his messages, and accepted his parents’ pleading request for his presence at dinner.

—------

MK was not stressing out over his little surprise meeting with the Lady Bone Demon. He thought he was actually coping pretty darn well with the whole ordeal, and anyone who said otherwise was just a no-good lying naysayer who needed to check their facts, seriously.

This very good and extremely uncontested coping was precisely why MK was tearing up his mentor’s house at ass o’clock with two friends he was…moderately certain the Monkey King would not necessarily be pleased about finding in his house. 

It was cool, though. Sandy and Mei were cool. 

Monkey King would get over it, probably, and if he didn’t… MK wasn’t entirely certain he could actually bring himself to care, at the moment, because really?

Monkey King wasn’t here .

He was somewhere , on vacation , and MK was falling apart and he couldn’t even ask his mentor for some mentoring because he could hardly even get ahold of the guy, and MK really wanted to respect him, and he did, because of course he did , but sometimes he looked at all the Monkey King merch in his room and really wanted to destroy some of it.

What had happened to all the time Wukong had said they would have together? When they had fought that Macaque guy, and his mentor had reassured him, and promised they’d have time to work on what he needed to work on? 

That month or so before he went on vacation was more than enough time, obviously. Not that MK was bitter, or anything.

No, MK was grateful for everything the Monkey King had done for him, had given him. Without the Monkey King, he wouldn’t be the Monkie Kid at all . He’d just be a struggling artist working as a delivery boy at the age of 23 , and as much as he loved Pigsy, loved working for Pigsy… it wasn’t exactly the dream job for him.

He just, maybe, wished for a bit more… hands on instruction. Like, not from old scrolls and useless tips of “ Believe in yourself, bud, and you can do anything!” every time MK managed to reach him. 

So, he sat on Monkey King’s couch, and played the video game the old monkey had made, hunting desperately for any tidbits of advice and lessons he could take from it, because even if that stupid Lady Bone Demon had been right, and Monkey King did regret his choice, they were all kind of stuck with him, weren’t they? They were all stuck with useless MK, the successor of the Monkey King, and he needed to pick up his slack.

Especially if the Monkey King wasn’t going to help him.

—------

“You’re going to that dinner tomorrow night, right?” MK took a loud sip of his slushie, cherry red as ever, and poked Red Son with his chopstick. 

Red Son looked over at him, lazily rolling his head back against MK’s shoulder as he shoved his friend’s chopstick away from himself. “Quit that!” he snapped. “And yes, I am. Why?”

“I’m just wondering!” MK quickly defended, grinning down at Red Son, who only cocked an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. “...Wondering if you need some support from your coolest and bestest buddy?”

Red Son laughed, cracking a small grin at MK. “Why would I need Eunice? She doesn’t know my parents.”

“ Asshole ! You know I meant me!”

“ Did you?” Red Son hummed, mirth clear in his voice. “Well, one of you has been hounding me about this for two nights straight, and the other hasn’t… someone’s getting demoted, I think.”

“Jerk.” MK rolled his eyes, pressing onward. “Well, I think it’ll be good! You’ve been cooped up in here for, like, a week .”

“It’s been two days.”

“Exactly! Forever .” MK sighed. “Besides, you’ve been needing to talk to your parents, right?”

“Yeah, yeah… reminds me of something, actually.”

“What?”

Red Son shifted, slightly, just enough to meet MK’s eyes. “When was the last time you spoke with that dumb monkey? You haven’t complained about his useless advice in at least a week.”

“Ah…” MK glanced away, scratching at his cheek. “It’s…been a while, maybe, but it’s fine! I’m doing fine.”

“Your eyebags could be used to make dumplings.”

“And I’m sure they’d be delicious!”

“ Idiot ,” Red Son hissed, settling back down against MK’s shoulder. “You know you can talk to me, right? And you don’t have to be funny about it?”

MK fell silent, a moment, staring up at the night sky as he waited for the sudden tightening of his throat to pass. “...Yeah. I know.”

Red Son let it lie there, nodding softly as they both sipped at their slushies, a carton of rice lying empty behind them.

“Good.”

—------

Dinner with his parents was… 

Interesting , was definitely a word for it.

It was blatantly clear to Red Son that his parents were walking on fucking eggshells around him, terrified of saying something to drive him off again, as if he could every really have stayed away longer than a couple of days without at least reaching out to them.

He was pretty sure there was very little they could actually say to him that would drive him away forever , but they didn’t seem aware of that, and their disgustingly stilted dinner conversation was the unfortunate victim of that misunderstanding.

“Red Son,” his mother started, wiping some kind of juice from her lips with a napkin, voice even but tentative in a way Red Son was pretty sure he hadn’t heard since he was a toddler. “I’m glad you accepted our invitation tonight.”

Invitation was a generous word for the texts in Red Son’s phone. They had sent a less than symbol followed by a three . They’d practically been begging .

“Of course,” Red Son said, because he had enough tact not to be an asshole while extending (accepting?) an olive branch. “I’m… glad you invited me.”

He watched as a grimace passed across his father’s face, and the Demon Bull King settled his utensils down on his empty plate. With what appeared to be great difficulty, his father cleared his throat and made eye contact with his son. “May we ask why you agreed?”

Which was… it was a loaded question, honestly, but it was also one Red Son had been ready for, because really…

It was his choice to keep his parents in his life. He loved them, and he meant that. His family was so… integral to who he was, Red Son wasn’t sure he would have been able to say who he was without them, a year ago, but now?

He knew what he wanted; and if he wanted his parents in his life, Red Son knew they couldn’t be the only ones working for it.

It was a good reason. Honestly, Red Son wished that was why he had agreed to the dinner—but it wasn’t.

Really , though, in truth ?

“I barely even thought about it. Whether I would come was never in question.”

Sure, he’d been scared, but his parents had requested his presence, and he didn’t care if it was just out of guilt or pity or whatever.

He’d always come when his parents called. Even if he was a bit more aware of it, now.

—------

“Hey, idiot,” Red Son poked MK with his chopsticks. “You talk to the monkey yet?”

MK snorted, casting him a disbelieving eyebrow. “Do I look like I have?” The bags under his eyes had only deepened, and they made Red Son feel tired just looking at them.

“No, honestly, but talking to that stupid monkey certainly makes me feel tired, so, really, it was a toss up in my opinion.”

MK let out a half-hearted laugh, leaning tiredly against Red Son’s shoulder, staring up at the stars. They’d met earlier, that night, so the moon was only just reaching its peak. Red Son stared at him, silent for the moment, before reaching over and tugging MK close.

“Go to sleep,” he murmured softly, “I’ll keep watch for the night. You’re gonna drive yourself to collapse.”

MK tried to protest, but really…there was no fight to put up. He let himself fall asleep under the light of the stars, Red Son’s arm around his shoulder and keeping him safe. 

He woke up maybe five hours later, and Red Son was still awake, as promised, playing the idle clicker game MK had deleted from his own phone a few days prior, softly illuminated by the orange and red glow of the slowly rising sun. Gods , MK was so lucky.

MK stared at Red Son, a soft smile on his face as he watched the demon get really into his game, and couldn’t stop himself from interrupting. “Hey, Red?”

Red Son jolted, blinking hard as he processed the interruption, and turned to face MK. “Hm?”

MK just looked at him, for a moment, and he couldn’t stop himself from laughing softly, mostly in embarrassment, as he really didn’t interrupt Red Son for any real reason; he just wanted to talk to him. Scratching at his cheek nervously, glancing away, MK laughed again, catching sight of his partner’s phone. “Is that the game I was playing the other day? The one you said looked stupid?”

Red Son flushed, as MK had known he would. “...Yes, well, I can hardly judge something without taking the time to…” he hesitated, his fingers still tapping at the little creature on the screen, “... experience it.” Red Son’s brows furrowed as he took in the look on MK’s face, and MK knew he must have had that dumb smile on his face again, but he couldn’t bring himself to care, honestly. 

“Oh, really?” MK grinned a bit, grabbing Red Son’s wrist and pulling his arm across his own shoulders. “It’s not just because you love me?”

“Gross,” the demon deadpanned. “Good to know you wake up as disgusting as you always are.”

MK grinned wider, snatching his partner’s phone out of his hands. “You’re so mean to me!” he crowed, clicking through the app on Red Son’s phone until he reached the screen labeled ‘ Upgrades ’. “You know you said yes when I asked you out, right?”

“I’m regretting it.”

“Oh, come on.” MK laughed, handing back Red Son’s phone. “Fuck, marry, kill redo?”

“I’ll still kill you.”

“Asshole!”

“You regretting it yet?” Red Son snickered, and MK just laughed again, leaning further against his side.

“Not at all.”

Chapter Text

MK left the theater for less than ten minutes, he was pretty sure.

Maybe he took a short detour after hallucinating his mentor’s shadow, and threw open the theater’s emergency doors to stare very expectantly into an empty alleyway, but it was a quick detour, and that was what mattered.

There was no reason why, when MK returned, arms laden with snacks that he would deliver to his family in exchange for them not asking about anything , that their seats should have been empty. 

The only people left in the theater were the creepy ass mayor, and the man performing his shadow play behind the screen.

MK was…alone. 

—------

It was with a sinking bitterness in his mouth that he admitted to himself that he was pretty sure he was getting used to it.

—------

MK couldn’t help staring at the screen, entranced, fully drawn into the story being painted so vividly in shades of black and violet before him. Ensconced in the darkness of the theater, alone but for the ever-smiling man who may have been the Mayor, MK let his shoulders fall and bit deep into his lip as the play ended with a final, chilling line. 

“In the darkness, the warrior is forgotten by the hero.”

Swallowing harshly, MK wrestled with the pocket of his jacket as he swiftly walked outside to the alley, dialing Mei’s number as he went. Her phone rang and rang right through to the dial-tone, and for a moment he thought she picked up, only to be greeted by the voicemail box. 

He was greeted by the same treatment when he called Tang and Pigsy, and he didn’t even bother dialing Sandy or Red Son, terrified they wouldn’t answer. 

Alone on the sidewalk, walking home, MK let himself consider that bitter, sacrilegious little feeling he hid deep down inside, and didn’t even consider trying to call the Monkey King. 

He knew his mentor wouldn’t pick up. Not for him.

—------

[RED !!!!!]

RED !!!!!: Hey idiot

RED !!!!!: meet tonight?

(Delivered)

—------

He couldn’t stop thinking of the shadow play. It was like it was haunting him.

MK found himself going back to the theater, even though he’d already seen the show—once, twice, probably ten times . Despite himself, he couldn’t help feeling…drawn to it. And the thing was—MK knew .

He knew it was probably unhealthy, that he was, like, projecting onto this stupid play and taking too much meaning out of it, that he should be proactively trying to get his friends to care about him again, or whatever. MK knew better than to sit in this stupid theater every night, eyes glued to a play that hit him right in the wound Sun Wukong had left him and the Lady Bone Demon had infected. 

Every word the performer spoke felt aimed right at MK, was the issue. Like he was twisting the knife left in MK’s chest with every line, every skilled change of scenery behind the screen, until all MK could do was sit there and let him , night after night. 

He was in deep, he knew. Knowing was almost worse, really, because with knowing came that irritating little urge to go fix things, better himself, prove himself—and he didn’t want to. At least, he was pretty sure he didn’t. 

He was pretty sure he just wanted to go to sleep, and wake up the day after his mentor had helped him fight the Spider Queen, back when everything was fine , because nothing was fine now. 

—------

[RED !!!!!]

RED !!!!!: noodles?

RED !!!!!: seriously what’s going on

RED !!!!!: you didn’t show up last night??

RED !!!!!: that’s not how this works

(Delivered)

—------

One day, MK found himself talking to the monkeys on Flower Fruit Mountain, which was a low he wasn’t particularly proud of. 

He wasn’t sure why he still bothered going all the way up there anyway.

No one was waiting for him.

—------

[RED !!!!!]

RED !!!!!: ??? where have you been

RED !!!!!: I haven’t seen you in days.

RED !!!!!: at least tell me when you won’t come?

(Delivered)

—------

[RED !!!!!]

RED !!!!!: fine. 

RED !!!!!: if that’s how you want to play it, mini king.

(Delivered)

—------

Okay, so, maybe MK had been ignoring his Messages app, a little bit. It was harmless, really. Or, at least, MK already knew it wasn’t exactly great, so there was no point lecturing him about it. 

He just…didn’t think anyone would particularly care if he went radio silent for a bit. 

MK definitely didn’t expect to be grabbed around the wrist and pulled into an empty side-street one night on his way home from the theater. He pulled hard against the grip on his arm, eyes flying open as he was shoved against a nearby wall, the hand holding his wrist releasing without putting up much of a fight. It hadn’t even been a hard shove, really, just enough to make MK stumble into the stone behind him.

He jerked his gaze up, and met Red Son’s furious eyes. 

“...Ah,” MK said, very intelligently. Red Son’s eyes narrowed, already-pursed lips thinning into a properly irritated-looking line. “Hey.”

He watched as Red Son swallowed, hands reaching up to tighten his ponytail and looking like he was really trying to force down some anger, and finally focusing back on MK. With a tight voice MK hadn’t heard since they’d first started meeting one another, he asked, “Is that really all you have to say?”

MK glanced away from his partner’s face, and Red Son let him, but he could still feel the demon’s burning gaze on him. Fuck, MK hadn’t expected Red Son to, like, miss him. Wishing desperately for a glass of water, or anything to wet his mouth a bit, MK cleared his throat. “Long time no see?”

“ No ,” Red Son growled, and his hand grasped MK’s wrist again, tugging the Monkie Kid behind him as he maneuvered them through some familiar side streets in the direction of the warehouse. “You’re not doing this tonight.”

“Doing what ?”

“ Pretending .”

—------

One night, the performer approached MK at the end of the show, before he could rush out the doors, and MK couldn't stop himself from asking the question that had been burning on his mind.

“What happened to him?” He stared up at the narrator. “The warrior?”

The narrator gave MK a long, considering look, and though MK couldn’t see his eyes, he got the feeling the man’s eyebrows raised. “What would you like to hear?” he asked caustically. “The hero suddenly remembered his beloved friend, the warrior? That they lived happily ever after?”

And MK was quick to deny that, maybe too quick, and he caught himself oversharing, dumping all this personal nonsense on the performer who probably didn’t care and had just been looking for a quick bit of feedback on his show, and it was with desperate eyes that he looked away from the man towards the floor and, in a low voice, murmured, “What if– What if he knows he chose wrong? Chose the wrong successor?”

At a familiar voice, his eyes flew back up to meet the bored, half-lidded gaze of Sun Wukong.

“And?” the Monkey King asked, voice flat and uninterested, a single eyebrow raised. “What if he did?”

—------

At the warehouse, Red Son pulled two half-melted slushies out of the beaten up fridge he’d fit in there, shoved one at MK, and shuffled them both up to their rooftop mattress. 

“You’re talking,” he demanded, eyes hard with determination, but something softer like concern in the way he kept tugging at his ponytail and picking at the loose threads in the blankets around them. “I’ve let this go on way too long.”

MK swallowed, staring at the demon, fingers slowly loosening and tightening around his slushie, and took a seat down next to him. “I don’t…exactly know where to start.” He laughed, but it came out flat and fake in a way Red Son rarely heard, and he felt his gaze soften as he stared at his partner. 

“How about the beginning?” Red Son prompted, shifting to sit shoulder-to shoulder rather than face-to face. “That’s generally a good spot.”

“I don’t…” MK trailed off, biting his lip, running his tongue along the back of his teeth, and he knew he’d cut himself off because he’d been about to lie, and he didn’t want to lie to Red. He wanted to talk about it, and unload all the shit Sun Wu- fucking -Kong had left him with, because it was a lot and he was so, so tired of holding it all alone. So he took a deep breath, swallowed the spit in his mouth and chased it down with some cherry-red melted slush, and let himself talk.

MK could handle his mentor hating him, really, kind of. He could deal with it, at least, without falling apart. It hurt, yeah, a bit, but it was fine , and MK would be fine, because he was always fine. Sure, maybe, sometimes , he felt like Monkey King had stabbed him in the side and left him for dead, but that was fine, because, hey, maybe he’d learn something from it. 

Without Sun Wukong, MK wasn’t really any worse off than he had been before the Monkey King came into his life. MK was 23, he didn’t need the Monkey King. He had his friends, after all, and they were more than enough.

He could even deal with the goddamn Lady Bone Demon . Okay, yeah , it kinda felt like she’d taken out the knife Wukong had left in his side and let him bleed until he caught disease, the wound thoroughly infected and festering, but he could handle it! He could!

MK knew his limits. He didn’t have to talk to anyone, because he knew what he could handle, and he knew his friends were always right beside him if he did want to talk.

Except, of course, now they weren’t and MK was stuck and alone and his mentor hated him.

“And you know,” MK laughed at the end of his pathetic monologue, humorless again, this time in a way that had Red Son grabbing his wrist in a loose hold, just a soft pressure against his arm. “It’s just been tough, ‘cause… Monkey King leaving… like he’s got better things to do than… train me, or whatever.” Then, with wide eyes and a smile Red Son knew was fake, he waved his free hand in the air in front of him, like he was trying to erase everything he’d just said.

“Jeez, that does feel good to get off my chest to someone who can actually respond!” MK joked, changing the tone so swiftly Red Son almost flinched away from him. “I’ve been yapping to the monkeys!”

And Red Son didn’t laugh, would not let MK try to lessen the severity of Wukong’s absence and the impact it had on him. He stared at MK, eyes soft with something like understanding, and said, “Don’t be an idiot.”

He said, “You’re worried about the Lady Bone Demon? I’d bet he is too.”

Pulling MK close, tugging at him until the Monkie Kid met his eyes, Red Son said, “Of course that stupid monkey cares about you. You know, my father would not shut up about how annoying Wukong was when the two of them were taken captive by the Spider Queen. He was worried about you .”

MK stared at Red Son, eyes wide, and whispered, “But that doesn’t solve the rest of it.”

“I’m your partner, not a miracle worker,” Red Son replied drily. “Talk to him. Actually yell at him. He deserves it. You deserve better .”

“I can’t yell at Monkey King !” MK exclaimed, eyes somehow widening further. “He’s done so much for me!”

“Noodles.” Red Son’s voice was soft, gentle in a way MK was certain he’d never heard, and he murmured, “He’s hurting you. What’d we just learn with my parents?”

“I…”

“He deserves it.”

—------

MK knew that the image of Wukong he saw in the theater wasn’t really there, wasn’t actually in front of him, but it was like something just snapped in him when his mentor was finally there, and was just being useless and laughing when MK tried to talk to him.

Enraged, MK snarled. “If you’re not gonna help , just leave me alone !” He lunged at the Monkey King with a punch, and the monkey that caught his fist wasn’t the one he’d been expecting.

Fucking Macaque .

—------

In the end, MK got all his friends back, and learned more about his mentor’s past with Macaque than he was entirely certain he wanted to know. 

He felt uncomfortably like he was intruding on something, again.

He also had a sinking feeling in his chest, as he watched the dark-furred monkey leave the alleyway, that he’d lost, somehow. 

And that , of everything, was what stuck with him.

—------

Several nights after he’d fought Macaque, more verbally than physically, for once, MK joined Red Son on the roof and took the initiative to break the silence.

“I…” MK swallowed thickly, staring up at the constellations in the night sky and wrapping his arms around his middle like that’d be any kind of comfort. “I don’t think I’m okay.” 

And Red Son snorted, because of course he did, and said, “I know you’re not, but guess what?”

MK glanced up, and Red Son had a teasing little grin on his face, wrapping an arm around MK’s waist and pulling him closer. “Yeah?”

“You will be.” With a small squeeze, Red Son continued, adopting a smug look that he knew MK found funny. “And if you’re not, you can always set me on that monkey again. I doubt he’d snitch again.”

MK snorted, a smile reluctantly tugging at his lips. “Didn’t you say you’d lose to him this time?”

“I’m only offering because I know you won’t actually ask me to fight him.”

“Seriously?” MK laughed, a little watery and unsteady, but real, and Red Son let a bit of his own relief out in his own laugh.

“I’m not suicidal . Who the fuck fights Sun Wukong willingly?”

“Macaque.”

“He’s stupid.”

“I thought you said that you haven’t met him.”

“He chooses to fight the Monkey King?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s all I need to know. He’s stupid.”

Chapter Text

“So,” Red Son opened casually, staring up at the stars and not even glancing at MK as he took an obnoxious sip of his slushie. “Are you over that world ending case of hiccups?”

MK, leaning up against Red Son’s shoulder, pulled his own gaze away from the glimmering stars to glower over at the demon. “Why does that sound like you’re mocking me?”

Red Son snorted, and though he still didn’t turn his head, MK could see the corners of his lips twitch upwards into a teasing grin. “I can’t imagine why it would.”

“You’re mocking me!”

“You must be delusional,” Red Son replied, his face impressively straight even as his voice shook with constrained mirth. “I would never do that.”

“And now you’re lying to my face!”

“No, I wouldn’t,” he snickered. “I prefer the terms belittling and misleading .”

MK let out a soft laugh, leaning more heavily against his partner. “Well, then, you are deliberately belittling and misleading me!”

“Yeah,” Red Son grinned proudly, his smile edged with something smug and irritating in a way MK had, reluctantly, started to find endearing. “I am.”

“ Gods , you’re annoying.” MK rolled his eyes, and Red Son finally looked away from the night sky to raise an eyebrow at his partner, taking another abhorrently loud sip of his slushie as he did so.

“Bringing the gods into this?” Red Son asked with a smirk. “Really?”

“You drive me to blasphemy.”

“Good sentence. I’m stealing it.”

—------

Red Son wasn’t really sure what was making him so wary of his parents, honestly. He had been going back to the lair fairly regularly after the stilted dinner they’d shared, and it had been… so much better than he could ever have expected.

They listened when he spoke, like the things he had to say actually mattered to them. Before, every time Red Son opened his mouth, his tongue would feel leaden, too heavy to lift, his teeth aching and weak and feeling like rotten wood, a sensation almost like ash scorching his throat in a way that would burn him irreparably were he not immune to fire. 

It was a gag of his own making, or perhaps that had been trained into him, this instinct to keep in opinions and thoughts and ideas close to his chest when speaking with Princess Iron Fan and the Demon Bull King.

They would look down at him from high up on their thrones, tell him of their ideas and goals and desires, and Red Son’s lips would feel as though he’d dipped them in a vat of cement, sealed shut as he nodded heavily, swallowing thickly around the resin-like feeling of the saliva pooling in his mouth.

Yes, Mother. Yes, Father . Red Son would always come when his parents called. 

Now, though, he was a bit less passive about it.

Now, when Red Son would turn to face his father as they sat before a television together, watching Chang’e’s cooking show, and he would take a deep breath and open his mouth as if to say something, only to hesitate for far too long  and let his lips seal themselves shut once more, the Demon Bull King would turn and, gently, nudge him, head tilted as if in question, or perhaps invitation.

And it was like a permission of some sort, like a dam breaking, a leak sprung in the concrete, unpatchable and spilling over, endlessly, as Red Son provided his own running commentary of the show they were watching, and on the chair across the room, Princess Iron Fan watched him with a fond smile.

It was odd, really, the looks they’d give him. Red Son was used to passivity, indifference, a hostile sort of affection, a disappointment borne of unrealistic expectations, reluctant pride every now and again. Their expressions these days consisted more of fondness, a bone-deep guilt and self-condemnation whenever they thought he wasn’t looking, a hope Red Son couldn’t possibly even begin to parse the meaning of.

Maybe it wasn’t that the looks they gave him were odd.

Maybe it was just that Red Son didn’t know where he stood, anymore. He hated it, before, he really did, and he knew things were improving, but he couldn’t help but miss it, a little bit. Their lack of care had stung , like nothing else ever quite had, but at least he knew . He knew what they wanted from him.

And now, he didn’t; and that was odd.

—------

Sandy vomited at the sight of MK’s attempt to learn Monkey King’s 72 transformations, and the fucking neon sign was dragged into the fucking sewers, because of course it was! 

Why should MK be allowed to just train and learn the dumb stupid transformations his dumb stupid mentor wanted him to learn?

Why should MK be allowed to have just one fucking day off ?

Pigsy’s neon sign was broken off its pole and pulled into the sewers, and MK knew better than to trust his luck.

At least he wasn’t too shocked or disappointed when he found the beat up sign in the middle of the Spider Queen’s lair.

—------

“How come you still live here?” MK asked one night, apropos to absolutely fucking nothing, and Red Son leaned into the worn-in arm of his couch as he turned to give his partner a look . 

“What?”

MK rolled his eyes. “Here. The warehouse. Why do you still live here?”

“Where the hell else would I live?” Red Son snorted, raising a confused eyebrow at the Monkie Kid, who rolled his eyes again .

“With your parents?” He replied, like it was obvious, and Red Son tensed, just slightly, against his side. “You said they’re getting better, yeah? Why do you still live here , and not at the lair? ”

Red Son swallowed harshly, his shoulders hunching inwards without him necessarily wanting them to. “I can’t live there.”

“Why not, though?” MK stared down at Red Son, an eyebrow raised. “I just don’t…”

He trailed off, staring down at his partner.

Red Son turned away, jaw clenched and teeth gritted, his arms coming up to cross against is chest.

“Hey, Red, I…” MK swallowed, leaning around to get a better look at Red Son’s face, but the demon turned his head further. “I’m sorry for pressing, you don’t have to—”

In a whisper, barely audible over the electronic whirrs of the overheating electronics Red Son built in and brought to the warehouse, Red Son said, “I ruined our family.”

“Red, what ?” MK jerked back, just slightly, jostling his partner just a bit as he did so. “You don’t really—”

“ Obviously , I know that’s not true, Noodle Brain !” Red Son scoffed, vitriolic in a way he hadn’t been since they’d first admitted they were really friends, and MK couldn’t hold back his own flinch of surprise. “I’m not an idiot .”

Then, as if all the bravado just drained out of him in an instant, Red Son swallowed audibly, turning back to face MK, but still refusing to meet his eyes. “I just… It sounds stupid.”

“I’m sure it’s not,” MK murmured, staring down at Red Son. “You’re never stupid. I want to hear it if you want to say it.”

Silence fell between them, and MK watched as Red Son got himself under control, as he put his thoughts in some kind of order that could be considered comprehensible.

Finally, he took in a deep breath, staring down at the floor.

“It's just this feeling of… shame, almost.” Red Son swallowed roughly, pulling away from MK’s arm around his shoulder. With a desperate sort of raw edge to his voice, he turned to stare at MK’s face. “Do you understand? I never hear you talk about your parents. Do you get it? The way that I know I’m in the right, that I’m doing what’s best for me—what’s best for the whole family , really, but…”

Red Son trailed off, eyes moving down to his lap, where his hands twisted anxiously. Beside him, MK made a soft noise, and Red Son murmured, “I don’t know how to…”

“Say it however you need to,” MK replied, his voice barely a whisper, hands twitching in his own lap like he was trying not to reach out, and Red Son swallowed.

“Yeah, fine, it just… feels ridiculous,” he sighed, took a deep breath, clenched his hands into fists. “There’s this…this little weight just lingers like a tumor. Maybe like a parasite, I don't know . It moves, though, from my chest to my stomach to my gut, and when I finally think I'm used to it, that I've defeated it, it slithers its way up to my head.” He glanced up at MK, just to see if he was still listening, if he understood , and accidentally met his partner’s eyes, and something about them just… “You know what I mean?”

In a whisper, MK replied, “Yeah,” and Red Son let a sad little smile come to his face. When MK reached for his hand, Red Son let him grip tight.

“It's like…” Red Son hesitated, thinking of the words, of how to put the mess in his head into words. “Like I escaped their bindings, like I made myself a whole new person, but it’s still there. This instinct not to trust them, not to go to them first, followed by this guilt because—”

He laughed, choked and unsteady, voice shaking and raw. 

“ Haven’t they done so much for me? Aren’t I being ungrateful? Sure , they’re harsh , but they love me so much , don’t they?” Red Son swallowed. “ Don’t they? ”

“They do, Red,” MK murmured, and Red Son tightened his grip on MK’s hand, tugging him just slightly closer.

“I know they do!” He burst out. “And it’s awful because I know they do, is the thing, we all know they love me, and maybe I can believe they care about me, but now I’m the whiny idiot who threw a tantrum because they were a little bit mean to me, and they look at me with…” 

Red Son leaned his head back against the back of the ugly orange couch, staring up at the dusty warehouse rafters, considering. 

“It’s not disappointment, in their eyes. It’s not . Or at least, not towards me . They look at me like all they’re seeing is they’re own failures, like I'm just a reminder of where they went wrong.”

—------

“Do you think Monkey King made a mistake, choosing me?”

Red Son snorted, turning to face MK. “I think you’re an idiot,” the demon answered, voice entirely flat. “But I think that just comes with the job. You’re a good Monkie Kid.”

“...Do you think Monkey King regrets it, though?”

“He’d be stupid to.”

“You did just imply he’s an idiot.”

“There’s a difference,” Red insisted. “You’re an idiot, but you’re not stupid . You’re a great successor, Noodles, everyone can see it. He can see it.”

Red Son tugged at MK's arm until he relaxed it, just enough that Red Son could pull it over his own shoulder, reaching up with his other hand to, gently, press MK's face into his shoulder. 

"It'll be okay," Red Son said, and it sounded a little bit like a lie, but MK didn't mind letting him tell it. He tightened his arm around Red's shoulder, pressed his face into the crook of his neck, and let himself pretend his problems didn't exist for as long as Red Son would let him.

—------

MK pulled Red Son closer, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and Red Son fell into him.

“They’re better, really.”

MK made a noncommittal noise, staring skeptically down at Red Son, who hurried to cut him off before MK could even think of saying anything.

“They are , and it’s great, but I can't look them in the eyes!” 

“I just think ‘how long will this last? when will you stop feeling guilty?’ and I’m living in this constant paranoia of them reverting, of them being callous and cold and unwilling to show that they actually care, and it’s driving me to the brink !” 

Red Son laughed, again, and appreciated MK for having the decency not to mention how he sounded like he was falling apart.

“You asked me why I haven't moved back home, if things are so much better?” Red Son swallowed, again, swiped MK’s half-finished slushie from the floor next to the pair of them and took a long, loud sip. “Because…because things are better, but I’m fucking not. I’m stuck with this dumb fucking paranoia towards my own parents and I’m sick of it but I can’t sleep there. I tried, you know. The other night, when you stayed with the dumb king for training, I tried to sleep there and I had to run away back here.” 

The implied ‘I failed’ went unsaid, but Red Son knew in the gentle pinch to his side that MK heard it loud and clear, and did not approve. He ignored MK’s disapproval, though. Red Son was allowed to be self-deprecating while monologuing, they’d agreed on it way back when they still thought they hated each other. 

“Every moment I'm in there it’s like I've developed claustrophobia and the walls are caving in and my parents are in there with me, loving and concerned and smiling, and I am just waiting for the roof to fall down on my head .” 

He paused, took in a deep breath, and he spoke so calmly when he opened his mouth again that MK almost thought he was reciting a well-rehearsed speech. 

“I am always just waiting for the other shoe to drop, because, honestly , Noodles? The other shoe always fucking drops.”

—------

“ Monkey boy? ” Spider Queen snarls incredulously, lip curled up in a sneer. “You’re the reason I’m in this mess ! Oh, I’m gonna tear you apart !”

MK jumped, desperately trying to transform into something, anything , useful. Anything at all. He, of course, failed miserably, because that seemed to be all he could do recently. Useless MK, helpless without the great Monkey King holding his hand.

He stammered out something stupid, slipping away with his staff clutched precariously in his arms and his pride resting somewhere below his knees.

—------

A long scream echoed through the pipes.

MK tried not to notice that he didn’t see the rest of the spiders next time he saw the Spider Queen.

—------

“I was meant to rule,” snarled the Spider Queen. “I was– I would’ve been a good queen!”

Finally staring down at her, looking her in the eyes as she craned her neck to meet his gaze, MK was almost willing to believe her.

Almost.

Because when they looked at each other now, roles swapped as MK stood above her, he found himself thinking that she looked desperate, helpless, and aware of it.

Unbidden, the word he was looking for came to the forefront of his mind. Small . She looked small .

If MK understood one thing, it was feeling small, insignificant, beaten down .

“I was just a pawn in the game!” She cried, inhaling roughly, and MK admired her for not letting a single tear roll down her cheek. “Like you !”

Fuck.

MK glanced away from her, sighing as he found himself relating, connecting with the Spider Queen of all people. “It’s not too late,” he said. “You can run.”

Spider Queen scoffed derisively. “Haven’t you figured it out? There’s no running from what she is!” And before MK could even begin to parse what the hell that meant, the Lady Bone Demon’s voice rang out around them, as though she’d been waiting for a cue.

“ Spider Queen is right,” she called, voice high and smug and mocking. “Destiny will always catch up.”

—------

“Do you believe in destiny?” MK asked one night, staring up at the stars, Red Son’s hand warm gripping his own. The demon didn’t turn to look at MK, but he could tell from Red’s voice when he spoke that he’d raised an eyebrow.

“Do I believe in destiny ?” Red Son repeated, voice just a bit incredulous, fingers flexing around MK’s grip. “Since when do you care about that?”

“Whatever, can you just answer the question?” MK rolled his eyes. “Since now , come on , Red.”

“Fine, fine!” scoffed Red Son. Despite his apparent agreement, the silence between them grew longer, and with every passing second, it was as if the tension in the room thickened exponentially. MK tightened his grip on Red Son’s hand.

“Hey, you don’t have to answer if—”

“Shut up, Noodles,” Red Son sighed. “I’ll answer.”

“...Okay.”

The silence grew between them once again, only their steady breaths breaking into the air above them. Their slushies were long-finished, plastic cups lying empty on the floor next to their roof-mattress.

Just as MK was about to give up on ever getting a response from Red Son, the demon let out a sharp breath.

“I do,” he said, grip tight around MK’s hand. Swallowing audibly, Red Son said, “I want to believe we all have our own role.”

MK turned to stare at his partner, but Red Son kept his gaze fixed on the sky above.

“I want to believe that everything happens because it was meant to,” the demon went on. “Destiny means there’s a plan, a goal. I don’t know who I am without those.”

—------

MK stared up at the Lady Bone Demon, and for just a moment, the noise in his ears was replaced by a deafening static, the edges of his vision going an odd gray color.

Just for a moment.

Everything…

Then, he heard the enraged voice of the Spider Queen. “...stepped foot in my lair! Boy,” she turned to MK, a severe look on her face. “ Run !”

—------

The Spider Queen didn’t make it out of the lair.

—------

“MK, what happened?” From where he’d been examining the stupid neon sign that had started MK’s shitty day, Sandy straightened up, hands balled into fists against his hips. “Is everything alright?”

MK twitched, just slightly, before pushing himself up with a smile that felt wobbly on his face. “Uh, yeah! I just…”

The Spider Queen didn’t make it out of the lair.

Destiny will always catch up.

He whipped around to face his family, smiling wider and stronger and faker than before. “Hey, do you guys maybe want to train more? You know, try and be ready for the next, uh…” MK wilted, staring down at his hands. “...challenge.”

And though his family all gathered around him, agreed to help him train and grow stronger, MK couldn't help but think that they just didn't get it .

It was MK’s own fault too—how could they get it if he refused to tell them anything? More importantly, how could MK possibly justify telling them everything? Burdening them with the knowledge of the Lady Bone Demon? MK was the Monkie Kid, it made sense that he should know.

We all have our role.

MK would protect his family. That was his role in this whole mess.

—------

“Do you think the gods have, like, super petty arguments with each other?”

“Oh, I know they do.”

“Really? How?”

“...You realize I’m significantly older than you, right, Noodles?”

“Well, yeah, but, like, you hadn’t been to the Celestial Realm until we all went together that one time, so…”

“Fine, fine. You’ve met that Six-Eared Macaque guy and obviously you know the dumb king, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Imagine those two, but it’s an entire council of them.”

“...”

“Noodle Brain?”

“Holy shit."

Red Son laughed, taking a long sip from his slushie and reaching with his chopsticks to steal some of MK’s rice with the Monkie Kid was distracted.

“The gods are petty gossips.”

“Yeah.”

“Holy shit .”

MK’s chopsticks darted out to smack Red Son’s before the rice could reach his mouth, and they both watched with dismay as the rice grains fell to the mattress.

“That’s never getting cleaned, you know.”

“Don’t steal my food next time, then.”

“Who paid for that rice, huh?”

“What— me !”

—------

“I think Mei thinks we’re up to something.”

“We?”

“Well, me. She said I look tired.”

“You can sleep, you know.”

“We only talk at night, thought.”

“You need rest more than you need to talk to me every night.”

“Don’t be stupid. Besides, that’s not the point.”

“What, then?”

“Mei suspects something !”

“Hm…okay.”

“ Okay ? That’s all? What if she finds out we’re, like pals.”

Red Son laughed. “Damn, get in a queerplatonic relationship with a guy and he just says you’re pals.”

“Oh, shut up ! You still don’t even call me MK! You’re really not worried about this?”

“I… no, not really. It wouldn’t change much, would it?”

“What?”

“Our families are hardly enemies at this point. We only really keep it secret out of habit, don’t we?”

“I…”

“What would it change?”

“...I don’t know.”

—------

Everything happens because it was meant to.

Chapter Text

"Should we tell everyone we're friends?"

Red Son snorts. "Would there be a point? Either they find out or they don't."

"So…we just let them discover us? Or… not discover us?"

"Yeah?" Red Son rolled his eyes. "Again, it really doesn't change anything, Noodles. Whether they know it or not, we're on good terms."

A grin crept up MK's face. "Just good?"

"Worse with every word you say."

MK shoved his partner, gently, then leaned his full weight against the demon's arm. "Hurtful! Why are you so mean to me?"

"Someone has to keep you humble," Red Son teased. "The great successor of the Monkey King? I can't let you get a big head."

"It's really, really disgusting to hear you talking about anyone else's ego."

Red Son raised an eyebrow, leaning away from MK's deadweight and leaving him to slump further into the couch. "And what do you mean by that?"

"I mean , you're an asshole and yet you always think you're justified."

"Of course I'm always justified. It's, quite literally, my birthright."

"Oh, you're back to that? How was dinner last night?"

Red Son barked out a shocked laugh. "Bringing my parents into this!"

"You started it!"

“And, as we established, I should be absolved of that, since it was justified.”

MK laughed, straightening up and tugging at Red Son until the demon slumped against MK’s side and he could throw an arm across his partner’s shoulders. “Asshole.”

“You wouldn’t want me to be nice to you anyway.”

“No,” MK quickly denied, pulling a face. “No, absolutely not, that’d be scary.”

“Cruel. I’m very kind.”

MK snickered. “It’s okay, Red, don’t worry!”

“I’m incredibly worried. Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.”

“I like you just the way you are!”

Red Son fell silent, face flushing just a bit where it was pressed…a little uncomfortably against MK’s collarbone.

“I hate you.”

“I’m sure .” 

—------

Red Son cleared his throat, uncrossing and uncrossing his legs underneath the dining table. 

His parents glanced his way. Red Son turned his gaze to his plate. He stabbed at the chicken on his plate, mechanically lifted the fork to his mouth.

He heard his mother clear his throat.

He ate the food off the fork.

“What do you think?” Princess Iron Fan asked, breaking the silence that had loomed over the dinner table since they sat down and no longer had the social niceties of greeting and settling in pushing them forward.

Red Son looked up at his mother, forced himself to actually taste the chicken as he chewed. 

His eyes snapped to his father at the flavor of the sauce. “What—Is this—?”

The Demon Bull King turned away as if embarrassed, gaze seeking out the television in the other room. When Red Son turned to look at it, Chang’e was on. “What?”

“This is my recipe ,” Red Son breathed. He turned back towards his father. “From—from that—”

“I supposed to be… King of Street Food wouldn’t be… too terrible,” he said, like it was nothing, like Red Son wasn’t considering that he was hallucinating. “Not if the alternative is… well, you know.”

Not if the alternative is you leaving our lives .

Red Son took a deep breath, speared another bit of chicken. He hid a smile behind his hand, and when he looked up at his mother, she just looked…happy.

None of the guilt that always hung around her like a ghost, none of the regret he was so used to seeing. 

Just…happiness.

It was almost a foreign expression, one he could hardly remember seeing, something from a time long-past, a time in which Sun Wukong and the Demon Bull King had been sworn-brothers. 

He didn’t remember how to respond to it. 

Red Son took another bite of food.

His parents peered around him to see the TV, and Red Son had the honor of watching their faces drop . He whipped around to see the screen blaring red, blocky white text cycling through, spelling out a crisis.

BREAKING NEWS

CHANNEL WILL BE CHANGED UNTIL THE END OF THIS BROADCAST

Red became a hauntingly familiar blue, and a figure Red Son would recognize anywhere took up residence at the center of the screen.

—------

A resounding crash blared out across the sand, sending MK stumbling backwards into Mei.

Staring out across the desert, Mei swallowed the bite of sandwich she’d been eating to regain strength for training. “That’s… probably not good.”

A… familiar mech clawed its way out of the sand, clanking loudly, sending a haunting blue light across the land, painting everything it touched in its glow.

MK took a step back, instinctively, flexing his grip against his staff, voice dying in his throat, vision fizzling with gray static around the edges, gaze fixed on her .

(She no longer possessed him, but he felt anything but free of her. He felt a stain on his soul, a mark on his mind where she had taken him and reformed him on a whim. “You were right, you know. It’s scary being alone.”)

(“Spider Queen is right. Destiny will always catch up.”)

(The Spider Queen didn’t make it out of the lair.)

Mei leaned over his shoulder, eyes narrowing at the arachnid shaped mech MK knew the Spider Queen could not be piloting. “Spider Queen?” she asked, and MK barely had time to process the flash of guilt that bolted through him at having kept all the information to himself before he gripped tight to his staff and balanced himself on the railing.

“No.” He swallowed roughly. “It’s something worse .” 

MK leapt to intercept the Lady Bone Demon.

—------

“I just don’t see how this will ever be useful to me, is all.”

“Have you considered therapy at all?”

MK let out a shocked little laugh, leaning forward, away from Red Son, only to turn his whole body to face the demon. “What? What does that have to do with this?”

Red Son cracked a small, wry grin as he looked down his nose at MK. “Answer the question and I’ll tell you.”

“Yes, then,” MK replied. “I have considered therapy.”

“Oh, interesting wording,” Red Son mocked him, reaching one hand up to tug gently at MK’s bangs. “And what conclusion did you consideration lead you to?”

“...This isn’t a fair question.”

“Do you want me to guess? Are you a toddler?”

“No!” MK let out a put-upon sigh, leaning back into the couch. “My consideration led me to the conclusion that there is no amount of money I could pay a therapist to make dealing with the whole, like, Monkie Kid nonsense worth it.”

“That’s what I thought,” Red Son nodded, a smug little smile curling the edges of his lips. He didn’t acknowledge his partner’s disgruntled expression, or the swat to his arm. “And that is why meditation will be useful to you!”

“What?”

The demon sighed, slumping down against MK’s shoulder. “You have, like, no coping mechanisms.”

“Hurtful.”

“Yet true,” snorted Red Son, earning himself another gentle swat to the arm. “I don’t know, I’ve been around for a…while. Longer than therapy, and aside from that, I’m a demon who helped an attempt at world domination. No therapist is going to see me. I’ve always had meditation, though. It calms me down, helps me when I just want to… explode and burn people .”

MK threw an arm over Red Son’s shoulders, though it was closer to his neck, really, almost a chokehold because of the way the demon had practically gone limp at MK’s side. With a teasing grin, MK pinched Red Son’s cheek. “And you call me the noodle?”

“It’s your dumb noodle brain ,” he grumbled. Then, “and don’t deflect. I think this could help you.”

MK gave in, eventually, but it was with a loud groan to really drive home to his partner that he was not happy about it.

—------

MK blasted the Lady Bone Demon’s mech away, and readied himself for another round.

Not enough, though.

Never fucking enough .

MK fell to the ground in a dazed, confused heap. He failed to land a hit on her, because of course he did, and when the mech shot away and came plummeting down on him, he was too slow activating his powers to save himself, only surviving because he was lucky .

Yeah. Here comes Monkie Kid , or…whatever.

Caged beneath the rubble, somehow hardly injured at all aside from a couple of scrapes, MK forced himself to take a deep breath, then another, and another, and one more for good measure. 

Outside, he could hear his family’s shouts—he tuned them out. MK knew Red thought he didn’t care at all when the demon went on his rants about meditation and all that other fire-anger-control stuff, but he listened. MK focused inwards, blocking out the voices of his family, the gloating cries of the Lady Bone Demon, and scraped for the small, flickering flame of what remained of his power.

He unleashed his abilities in a shine of brilliant golden light, blasting the mech away from himself, resigning himself to what he knew would happen as the mech practically crackled with the energy he had, basically, fed it .

The Lady Bone Demon laughed, low and loud and mocking. 

MK wished he’d paid just a little more attention to Red’s meditation rants.

Maybe he’d be able to block her out too.

—------

MK’s family, unsurprisingly, caught on pretty quickly to his… history with the Lady Bone Demon, and, like, it wasn’t as if there was much point in pretending he hadn’t lied to them for ages about a potentially world-ending threat anymore, so he didn’t bother denying it. 

She was…

MK swallowed, staring up at her.

She was like an amplifier.

Back then, when she’d possessed Red’s dad, he’d been… different. MK didn’t know much about the Demon Bull King, most of what he knew was through his partner, but… even MK could tell he had been off. Wrong.

And just after that whole mess, when the Spider Queen had attacked the city… hadn’t she been stronger? Hadn’t she been more of a threat than anyone could have imagined her being before? MK swallowed heavily, thinking of how weak she had appeared in front of him last he’d seen her.

With barely a flicker, in a fraction of a second, she appeared behind MK and threw his family into a nearby wall.

“You’ve done well, MK,” she greeted in that lilting tone of voice that always made her sound sarcastic, cruel. “Mastered so many powers. It seems you're ready to meet your destiny and—”

Pigsy cut her off, and was forced further into the wall and MK could do nothing but stare , horrified.

“ That was part of the plan,” the Lady Bone Demon smiled, staring down at MK. “I do apologize for what comes next.”

—------

Good news: MK did manage to destroy the mech.

Considerably worse news: The Lady Bone Demon’s mech reformed itself, even bigger and more terrifying , because MK wasn’t allowed to have a good day, ever.

—------

Red Son watched, frozen and more than a bit lost, the television lit up with a brilliant light blue as the newscast that the channel he’d been watching with his parents overtook his every thought. He didn’t process a single word the news crew was saying, gaze fixed on the video being displayed on the screen.

Was… Was that…

-

Swathed in blue light, sweating and panting and wild-eyed, MK collapsed out of the Monkey Mech, arms straining against the weight of his staff.

-

The… weight of his staff…?

"Red Son," Princess Iron Fan called his name, a hand outstretched behind her as she moved to join her husband. 

On the screen behind her, Red Son could still see MK resisting the girl covered in bones and glowing the light blue Red Son saw in the terrifying corners of his nightmares. 

MK was fighting the Lady Bone Demon.

MK was fighting the Lady Bone Demon, and MK was losing .

Red Son turned to look at his parents, and he knew every single emotion he'd ever tried to hide from them was on his face.

"Come, Red Son," Demon Bull King implored. "We must go."

"She got the best of us once already," Princess Iron Fan weighed in, her fist clenched tight around her fan. "It won't happen again."

Frozen, Red Son glanced between the screen and his parents. "I…"

-

MK struggled against the grip of the Lady Bone Demon’s power, teeth gritted as he pulled at the red staff standing starkly out against the sand.

-

Red Son's parents beckoned him closer, called him to safety and freedom.

"I…" Red Son looked up, met his father's eyes without particularly meaning to. "Father…"

The Demon Bull King stared down at his son, and Red Son saw something in him soften. Or, maybe that wasn't quite right. Something in the Demon Bull King gave in .

He turned to stare at the screen that had his son so…indecisive. 

-

The Monkie Kid cried out, appearing to beg inaudibly as bone crept up his staff, his legs, threatening to freeze him permanently within its confines.

-

Out of the corner of his eye, the Demon Bull King saw Red Son's fists clench, and he sighed.

"Caring for the enemy, my foolish son?"

Red Son winced, and before he could compose himself before his father, the Demon Bull King let out a heavy breath.

"Go."

"Father?"

"If you were going to come with us, you would have," the Demon Bull King splayed a hand against his wife's back, and while Princess Iron Fan appeared reluctant, she didn't urge Red Son closer.

(“About your parents and… well, about us…” MK took in a deep breath, then smiled over at his friend. “Choose what you want to do.”

“What?” Red Son laughed, a little fake to MK, but he let it slide.

“Then do it.”)

A wind just strong enough to make him stumble pushed Red Son towards the entrance of the lair, and when he faced his mother, she inclined her head towards the television.

"Your father is right," she said. "Go."

And Red Son…went.

—------

With a harsh laugh, one that echoed and billowed across the sand that had become their battlefield, Lady Bone Demon smiled down at him. “You can rest, knowing you’ve served your purpose. Destiny has found you.”

And MK…he wouldn’t say he gave up . He pulled at the staff, he screamed in horror, but really, actually , what was MK without the Monkey King’s powers?

He didn’t give up. He just accepted his fate.

Eyes clenched shut as bone crept higher up his body, as he really recognized his oncoming doom, MK missed his mentor’s entrance.

The battlefield was quiet, for just a moment, and MK opened his eyes, just a sliver.

The Monkey King stood in front of him, his ragged panting cutting through the air, his fur patchy and disheveled, his clothes torn and frayed.

The Monkey King stood in front of him, an arm outstretched to protect MK, as if he’d been there before, like he hadn’t left MK. 

“Monkey King?” MK asked, and he knew his voice sounded a little too incredulous, not quite relieved enough, but he couldn’t exactly help that. “You’re really here?”

His question went ignored as the Lady Bone Demon focused her gaze on this new contender.

“Destiny cannot be undone, Sun Wukong!” She cried, a superior grin cutting a cruel line across her face, and MK knew that Monkey King saw the staff. The Monkey King paused, turned to stare at MK, and he didn’t even know what his mentor saw in his face but it must have been pathetic. 

It must have been, because he didn’t even mention it. He just turned back around to face the goddamn Lady Bone Demon , a smile plastered on his fake that MK knew, by now, wasn’t exactly the realest thing in the world.

“Let’s test that theory.” The Monkey King smirked, settling into a battle stance…only to grab the back of MK’s jacket, summon the weakest cloud MK had ever seen , and zip away in retreat.

As he was pulled towards the ship, MK turned to stare as his city, the one he was supposed to protect , was encased in bone.

Just before they collapsed onto the ship, MK could’ve sworn he saw a red light in the distance, rapidly approaching . 

—------

Red Son couldn’t stop himself from slowing down as he passed by the gas station, darting over to peer in through the windows. 

None of the station’s usual neon lights and glowing signs were on. 

It looked… wrong .

A young woman with pink hair sat frozen, encased in bone behind the register, one hand gripping the back of her chair and the other entirely still in front of her, clutched as though she’d been pulling her arm closer to her chest—body angled like she was trying to run.

Red Son swallowed heavily, backing away. 

(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.)

("Long as you don't blow this place up and get me fired, you're both cool in my book."

…

"...Thank you.”)

He turned away from the only civilian to see him as good and disappeared into his flames, chasing after his partner once more, desperate to see that… idiot safe.

—------

MK was immediately jumped on by his family, tugged into a group hug the likes of which he had never before experienced, but he couldn’t help but stare over at his mentor.

Sun Wukong laid on the ground, for just a moment, shoulders trembling ever so slightly and claws digging into the wooden floorboards of the ship.

Then, springing up with a charismatic grin, the one he used when he was trying to act casual, the Monkey King turned to MK.

“Hey bud. Miss me?”

Miss me?

MK felt his mouth drop open, just a bit.

—------

“Useless MK,” MK muttered, one night when thoughts of his mentor plagued him and kept him awake, waiting for Red Son to show up outside the gas station. He kicked a pebble across the parking lot, scuffed his shoe against the pavement as he paced back and forth. “ Useless .”

“What are you on about now , idiot?” 

MK turned to face Red Son, but he didn’t jump. It was…a little bit expected, really, for Red to sneak up on him.

Red thought it was worrying, how unaware he was of his surroundings.

MK didn’t think he really cared, actually.

“Waiting for you,” replied MK, and Red Son looked him up and down with a suspicious glare to him, but let it slide, nodding to the gas station.

“Well,” he said, “I’m here. Let’s go.”

MK wondered how long Red Son had waited for MK to show up, waited in the shadows for a chance to surprise him, as if it ever even worked anymore.

They got the slushies, and the rice, and sat on their ragged mattress on the roof. 

Red Son was the one to cut through the silence hanging about them. “You called yourself useless.” His voice was entirely flat, and he punctuated the statement with a loud sip of his slushie.

MK’s gaze slid over to look at his partner, and he wanted his voice to sound hesitant, damn it , but it came out entirely devoid of inflection. Matter-of-fact. “Yeah.”

“Why?” 

Red Son didn’t turn to look at him, poking idly at the rice carton, digging through it for the peppers MK didn’t like.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” MK let out a humorless little laugh. “Without the Monkey King?”

“That dumb king is useless,” Red Son grumbled. 

MK didn’t reply, and after a couple minutes of silence, Red Son turned to face him.

“You’re not. You’re… good .”

MK didn’t…really believe him, and he knew that Red Son knew that, but the demon was nice enough not to press the issue.

—------

MK’s fists clenched at his sides, even as they were trapped by the weight of his family on either side.

“Where were you?” He shouted, these months of pent up anger over how he’d just been left behind by his mentor pouring out of him. “You could’ve stopped this! We could’ve— We have to go back! We have to take her down !”

And Sun Wukong… he didn’t even flinch . He just watched MK, this sad, resigned kind of look to him, and spoke through gritted teeth. “We can’t.”

MK shook his head, wildly, like he was trying to bat the words out of the air by sheer force of will. “ No ! I’m going back! I’m gonna get my staff , and finish this!”

“The staff is gone, bud,” replied the Monkey King, voice resigned and low—almost regretful, maybe. MK wasn’t sure if he’d heard that one before. “And… I’m in no shape to face her. Neither of us are.” Then, muttering as though he didn’t want anyone to hear it: “I didn’t get back in time.”

He…didn’t get back in time?

MK stared at the Monkey King, unable to think of a single thing to say. It almost felt like tunnel vision, the way he just…focused on his mentor. Vaguely, he was aware of Pigsy leaping to his defense, and though he could hardly process a word being said, something in him grew warm at that. At being protected. 

He watched, transfixed, as Sun Wukong finally winced, stumbling back a step, tail flicking agitatedly behind himself as Pigsy continued his tirade. He watched as the Monkey King’s hands clenched into fists, fists he quickly hid behind his own back, fists that must have hurt because didn’t he have claws ? He watched as his mentor froze, staring at…Sandy, probably, with wide eyes before curling his lips into a nervous grin.

“Alright alright,” the Monkey King let out a small, reluctant sigh. “I was never on vacation. During the battle with spider queen, i found out lady bone demon was back. She’s bad news. I needed something to fight her, something so powerful even she wouldn’t be able to win. A weapon.”

A weapon. Okay. MK could get on board with a weapon. Weapons were, objectively, pretty useful, and MK said as much, only to be shut down, which…

“Wait what?” MK met his mentor’s eyes, tried not to look too desperate. “You chose me! I can help. We all can!”

Please.

(“I’m not the Monkey King, okay?”)

Let me figure out my own way to win.

Trust me.

“Yeah, so, here’s the problem,” Wukong started, hands out in front of him like he was calming a wild animal. “ You guys have this thing called mortality, so…”

Please.

Mei coughed, clearing her throat. “You’re not looking so immortal yourself, Mr. King.”

“We can do this!” MK pleaded, ignoring Mei, even though he probably would’ve laughed in any other circumstance. “We’re stronger together !”

Please .

Monkey King sighed, looking reluctant. “Fine. But it's not gonna be easy.” A small, sly little grin grew on his face as he met each of their eyes in turn. “In fact , it's going to be really, really dangerous.”

Pigsy scoffed, rolling his eyes with a shrug. “Okay, so, where are we headed?”

With a little laugh, Wukong tossed MK’s little group an old map in…surprisingly good condition, one that nearly had Tang salivating as they rolled it open to see…unclear directions, and three red symbols that looked strangely like the design on the back of Red Son’s jacket.

“Well…” Monkey King wheedled. “I guess we’re going on a journey… to the west !”

And then, as though waiting for a cue, the glowing red flash MK had seen rapidly approaching from the distant city just minutes prior crash-landed on the deck of the ship, and from a large flare of heat and smoke stood Red Son, calmly brushing ash off of his jacket.

His gaze fixed on MK, and the Monkie Kid was staring right back at him, mouth agape where he stood in the confines of his family’s arms. Swallowing, Red Son tore his gaze away, locking onto Sun Wukong. 

“ That ,” he said shakily, a hand clenched at his side and a sharp-edged, mocking grin tugging at his lips, “was, quite possibly, one of the most irritating things I’ve ever heard leave your mouth, dumb king.”

It wasn’t… convincing , or maybe just not to MK, maybe MK just saw it because this was… 

Swallowing roughly, MK stood from the huddle of his family’s arms. “Red…”

Red Son blinked, hard , eyes snapping to his partner, and MK watched as all the fight just drained out of him. In a murmur, he said, “ Fuck ,” and it seemed like it came from the heart, but when the demon met MK’s eyes, it was like he was only then understanding , finally processing what he was seeing, and…

“ MK… ” he breathed, voice hoarse and relieved like a man spotting an oasis in a desert, “ you’re okay. ”

(“I don’t think I’m okay.” 

“I know you’re not, but guess what?”

“Yeah?”

“You will be.”)

The sun rose, dragging a new day in behind it. 

Red Son and MK stood, exposed, together , as dawn brightened the sky around them.

Chapter Text

MK stepped towards Red Son, gaze fixed on the demon, flitting over his disheveled hair, bits sticking out of the tight ponytail he kept it in, his casual clothes, like he’d been at home, which… yeah, he had told MK he would have dinner with his parents.

“Yeah,” MK finally said. “I’m okay.”

Then, not even caring about his family staring at his back, about the Monkey King glancing incredulously between MK and the fire demon, he leapt towards Red Son, tacking him in a hug which, to Red Son’s credit, only made him stumble back a step before he found his footing and buried his face in MK’s hair, arms wrapping tight around his back.

“We’re both okay.”

MK heard Red Son swallow. “Yeah. We are.”

“Uh…” Mei’s voice cut through their moment, confused and irritated and— MK winced —a bit hurt. “ Are we? MK, what’s Red Boy doing here?”

“It’s Red Son ,” Red Son broke in, and MK rolled his eyes, reluctantly separating from Red Son just in time to see Mei rolling her eyes. 

“Um,” MK started eloquently, and he elbowed Red Son in the side when he heard his partner snicker. “We’re friends?”

“ Friends ,” snorted Red Son, and Pigsy cast the pair of them a look from where he stood between Mei and Tang.

“Well, that’s convincing,” Pigsy snarked. “So are you not really friends, then?”

Red Son raised his eyebrow at Pigsy, turning his head to make sure everyone in the area received the patently unimpressed expression on his face. MK tried not to laugh, but he knew Red Son could tell when he felt a pinch to his side. “No, we are. We—”

Pigsy turned on the Monkey King before Red Son could finish, which MK almost found himself glad for. “See what happens when you’re gone? He goes and befriends the bad influence!”

Under his breath, MK could hear Red Son mutter offendedly, “ The bad influence? Is that how I’m known across the land?”

MK snickered, taking advantage of everyone’s distraction to whisper back to him. “So much for ‘If they find out, they find out’ , huh?”

“Shut up ,” Red Son groaned, not nearly quiet enough, and everyone’s gazes snapped to the pair of them where they stood, snickering, in the middle of the group. Their mirth…probably did little to help their case. Red Son stiffened where he stood next to MK, and—

(He was scuffed and covered in dust, and there was something almost weak in the way he held himself, glaring up at them from the ground, clenching his shoulder. 

MK wanted to ask. He really, really wanted to ask—but they weren’t alone, on their rooftop. They were surrounded by MK’s family.

So instead, he planted himself in front of Red where he’d been pinned down and put a snarl on his face. “What are you doing here, Red Son ?”)

They weren’t alone, on the lumpy mattress on their rooftop, on the horribly blinding orange couch in the warehouse, in the gas station arguing over snacks and learning each other under the neon lights of the employees’ parking lot.

They were surrounded by MK’s family, and there was no need to hide anymore.

So, MK shoved Red Son behind him and glared at his family, hand on his hips and staring them down, even the Monkey King. “It’s not Monkey King’s fault. We’ve been meeting each other for a year, now. Way before he left.”

“A year ?” Tang yelped, and Monkey King was staring at the pair of them with wide, confused eyes. “We’ve only had a truce for six months!”

Behind him, quieter, his voice filled with something like awe, Red Son murmured, “It’s been a year?”

“Yeah,” MK said, in answer to both, really, though he didn’t turn back to acknowledge Red Son’s quiet crisis or whatever he was going through. “I mean, we’ve only been friends for, like, nine months.”

Mei stared at the pair of them, incredulously. “Why did you keep meeting up if it took you three months to become friends?” 

“Well,” MK paused, and he felt Red Son stiffen behind him as they both contemplated that question. “I’d say we were friends after, like, one month, but he doesn’t agree. That’s why I kept going.”

Red Son grumbled something unintelligible behind him, and MK turned, an eyebrow raised. “What, you’re not going to argue? We were totally friends after that first Spider Queen fight.”

Reluctantly, Red Son rolled his eyes. “Fine, whatever. I still say it was after that stupid race, but you can be delusional.”

“Yeah? Then why’d you keep showing up?”

“Free slushies.”

“Asshole.”

“What the fuck am I watching right now?” Monkey King finally exclaimed, gesturing wildly between the pair of them, and Red Son snorted.

“Does it matter?” He deadpanned, stepping around MK’s very assertive and intimidating stance to lean on his partner, wrist resting on MK’s shoulder and laughing when the Monkie Kid stumbled, just a bit. “We’re friends, whatever, feels like we could catch up later , maybe? In case you forgot, we are fleeing right now.”

A loud thud sounded to their left, and MK turned just in time to see Sandy clumsily hustling his way to the ship’s cockpit, calling over his shoulder on the way. “I did forget, actually!”

—------

They moved on, reluctantly, or at least stopped bombarding Red Son and MK with questions, and they finally got a chance to talk while Tang was working on his most recent speech about MK’s failures and their hopeless, hopeless situation.

“Weren’t you at dinner with your parents?” MK asked, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Red Son at the hull of the ship. “What happened there?”

Red Son didn’t reply for a moment, staring out over the clouds, before he glanced down at the deck of the ship. “They… let me go. Practically forced me out the door, really.”

MK stared at the side of his partner’s head. “ Really ?”

“Yeah,” Red Son laughed humorlessly. “Funny that them telling me to go is what finally makes me feel a little homesick, huh?”

“Red…”

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter now.” Red Son shook his head, quickly, and MK pretended not to notice the way his gaze kept drifting towards the city. “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

MK blinked, hard, at the abrupt subject change. “I—what?”

“Good news first?” Red Son asked, though he barreled on without waiting for a reply. “From what I saw, the people in the city don’t look like they’re dead. They’re encased in some nasty bone-like nonsense. Bad news is, uh, Eunice has been… well, she’s among the newly mummified, to put it gently.”

“That’s you putting it gently ?” MK exclaimed, staring wide-eyed at his partner. Then, drooping, “Oh, man. That’s awful.”

“Yeah…” Red Son paused, glancing about the deck at the rest of MK’s family nervously before draping an arm across MK’s shoulders, pulling him close. “Feels weird to talk to you without a slushie. Maybe this trip will be good for my bank account now that I’m not buying a slushie every night.”

“We hardly ever paid anyway,” MK laughed, more than willing to let the heavier stuff pass by as he leaned his head on Red Son’s shoulder. “And it came out of my paycheck more than yours, to boot.”

“I don’t get a paycheck, Noodles.”

“Yeah, exactly, leech,” he snickered, then flicked Red Son’s chin so the demon would look down at him. “And don’t think I didn’t hear you say my name earlier! You’ve never said my name before, asshole, and now you’re back to nicknames?”

“I wasn’t in a good headspace.” Red Son smirked down at his partner. “Nothing I did under that sort of stress could really be considered viable. Sorry, Noodle Brain .”

Fond despite himself, MK flicked him again just to see that look of offense on his face and laughed. “Asshole.”

“Birthright.”

Gods. MK had terrible taste.

—------

They were interrupted, eventually, by Monkey King gathering everyone to sit in a circle around some map he had clearly gone through some shit to get, and it looked… familiar, to MK. The symbols on it, at least. 

To his right, Red Son was staring at the map with a sort-of blank stare, looking a little like he was actively rebooting, but no one else had even glanced at the demon since they’d all sat down, and MK… well, he wasn’t going to draw attention to his partner’s rather polarizing presence if he didn’t have to.

“So,” Monkey King opened, very diplomatically, in MK’s extremely unbiased opinion. “I know what happened back there kinda sucked—”

Almost immediately, Mei interrupted him. “Mega sucked.”

“ Mega sucked,” he corrected himself. “But the old Great Sage had a trick or two up his sleeve!”

As if they were harmonizing, Pigsy and Red Son let out matching noises of doubt on either side of MK, and Monkey King opened his mouth to defend himself, looking deeply offended, when the ship jolted hard and abruptly tilted . 

Everyone was flung about, the map nearly flying away on a sharp breeze if not for MK scrambling after it and catching it. They put a crowbar on the map, because, obviously, there was nothing else at all that could have made a viable paperweight.

“Yeah, so…” MK cleared his throat, leaning into Red Son’s side. The demon put an arm around his shoulders without even glancing at him, and MK pretended not to notice the raised eyebrows from the rest of the group. “You said you were looking for…a weapon?”

The Monkey King nodded proudly, hands planted resolutely upon his hips. “Yep!” 

“And?” Pigsy cast him a stink-eye. “Did you find it?”

The Monkey King, far too cheerfully, responded in the negative, but barreled on before anyone could question him. “ But this map is going to help us track it down! It’s called…the Samadhi Fire—”

MK felt Red’s grip around his shoulder tighten as the demon jolted, hard. When he spoke, his voice came out a growling snarl. “ The Samadhi Fire ?”

…Well, MK supposed, at least he didn’t look hollow anymore.

“The Samadhi Fire!” Tang proclaimed at nearly the same moment, practically vibrating with excitement, before glancing around the group, his gaze finally landing on Red Son.

The Monkey King laughed nervously, this look to him like he’d been caught mopping up blood at a crime scene, and carefully avoided looking at Red, whose palms were growing warm enough that MK tapped at his arm until the demon retracted it from around his shoulders. “...Yeah. That. The most powerful force I’ve ever seen.”

Red Son hissed air passed his gritted teeth, and MK was mildly alarmed but ultimately unsurprised to see small streams of steam rising in the air. That was the thing about using breathing techniques to calm down, MK guessed—the dehydration would get you before anything else.

“I knew I recognized that fucking map,” Red Son growled, visibly, at least to MK, trying to keep his fire under control even as embers sparked off his hair.

MK glanced nervously between his mentor and his partner. “But… what is it? Powerful enough to destroy the Lady Bone Demon?”

The Monkey King nodded confidently, casting MK a tight little smile, while MK felt Red Son flinch against his side.

“Oh, sure ,” Red Son sneered at the Monkey King, leaning forward slightly to glare even harder at him. “And burn the rest of the planet to ash while we’re at it!”

Mei stared at MK, eyes wide, darting between Red Son and the Monkey King before settling back on MK, who could do nothing but shrug, equally wide-eyed and clueless. He would be the first to admit he didn’t know the context behind a lot of things in Red Son’s past—it had felt unfair to look through the old stories, once MK knew he played a role in them. He watched as she swallowed heavily before speaking. “Okay… ominous , and all, but that still doesn’t tell us what it is .”

Tang just about fell over himself hurrying to speak before Red Son or Monkey King could even open their mouths, and MK watched as they both rolled their eyes at the overeager scholar.

“Okay!” Tang cheered, loudly clearing his throat before adopting the voice he always used when telling stories to make himself sound more wise, or something. “Legends speak of a flame so powerful that nothing could put it out. Not even the Great Sage himself.”

“That’s right. The Samadhi Fire burned out of control.” The Monkey King confirmed, heedless of the way Red Son visibly winced at MK’s side. “The only way to contain it was by splitting it into pieces and scattering them so their flames could never be reforged.”

“Yet here we are ,” Red Son griped, and MK chose to ignore him, that time, because he didn’t seem up to explaining anything, and at least someone was actually telling him something for once.

“So..you just tossed around a bunch of fires instead of one?” asked MK, not a little bit judgmentally, and Monkey King let out a long, agonized groan.

“We put the pieces into three rings so they caused no further harm!” He proclaimed, waiting for them to catch on, slumping over with a sigh when they failed to. “Come on, do I gotta spell everything out?”

A telling silence fell over the group, or, in Red Son’s case, accusatory silence, if his intent glare meant anything.

The Monkey King sighed. “Now that the Lady Bone Demon has the staff and your powers, she’s too much for us to handle. If we can’t stop her, she’s going to destroy, well, everything.”

“So you decided we might as well do it ourselves first?” Red Son snarked, and the Monkey King cast him a sullen glare.

MK…kind of supported the Monkey King’s plan. At least, considering Red Son wasn’t explaining anything about his reservations, and Monkey King seemed pretty confident. MK liked confident . MK could lean on confident .

Red shot him a look of pure betrayal when he voiced his support, and MK tried his best not to shrink away from it, even as Monkey King shot up to ruffle his hair. “This is suicide , Noodles!”

“ How is it suicide, Red?” MK burst, flinging his hands out in front of him in exasperation. “You keep saying that and I don’t know what you want me to—”

Something crashed into the ship just as Red Son finally looked like he was going to say something.

Typical.

—------

A few months back, there had been a period of time when they could only meet a couple times a week. Most times it wasn’t even planned, and they’d just walk into the warehouse to find the other already there, hiding from insomnia or sleep or maybe both.

The planned nights were better, though, because those came with snacks. 

One such night was a hot one, and while their slushies of crushed ice and fruity red syrup worked diligently at beating out the heat, it just wasn’t enough. They found themselves on the roof, taking in the fresh night air, MK’s jacket thrown carelessly across the mattress, pinned slightly under Red Son’s leg, and Red Son’s jacket bunched up in a ball on his lap.

Red Son found himself glancing over at his partner, who was scrolling through his phone, texting Mei who, from the looks of the one-sided conversation, wasn’t even awake , and found himself shoving down an entirely unreasonable bitterness.

(Red Son scowled down at the floor of the lair, thought of how easy it must be to be a hero, with a real family—)

Before he could do something perfectly reasonable like sew his own mouth shut, Red Son found himself blurting exactly what he was thinking. “I'm jealous of you a lot , actually.”

MK blinked, baffled by the entirely unprovoked conversation starter, and tore his gaze away from the screen of his phone, even tossing the device behind him. He didn’t ignore the statement, though, because he never let Red Son pretend he didn’t have thoughts and feelings, which was really rather inconsiderate of him. Some hero. “You’re jealous of me?”

“Your... group.” Red Son scowled, stubbornly looking away from MK, who he knew was rolling his eyes. “Your family.”

“You know they're not my, like, real family, right?” MK winced, then, glancing about the rooftop of the warehouse like one of his dumb little friends was going to swoop down from the sky, overflowing with hurt feelings, and Red Son did his best not to roll his eyes as they entered the gross serious discussion part of the night. “No, bad phrasing, they're my real family, absolutely , but, like, y’know, my birth family.”

“I know,” Red Son sighed, letting his exasperation come across that time. Honestly, he’d known MK for 11 months by then, he’d have to be impressively clueless not to have caught onto that. His jealousy was… “It's...dumb.”

“Hm?” MK looked over at him, an eyebrow raised.

“I know it's irrational jealousy, but I can't really help it. It just looks so... effortless. Warm.” Red Son let out a hollow laugh, looking down at the symbol on the back of the jacket he had clenched in his fists. “You'd think I'd be sick of warmth by now.”

And, well, MK was fairly certain he was missing some context there, but that sounded a bit like self-deprecation, and MK only let Red Son do that when he was monologuing.

He took a moment to think, to lean forward and really study his partner. Red Son wasn’t looking at him, but he wasn’t exactly shrinking away or hiding either, so MK tugged at the demon until he fell gracelessly across the mattress, his position forcing him to glare up at MK, who smiled brightly back at him.

He may not have known exactly what was going on, but he still knew how to comfort his partner.

“There's different kinds, I think. I—” MK broke off, for a second, pointing accusingly down at Red Son, who went cross-eyed for a second as he stared at the finger between his eyes. “Don’t you fucking laugh at this! I think heat can feel different all the time. There's rage and there's comfort and safety. For me , there's you.”

MK watched as Red Son smiled softly, an embarrassed little thing that made MK wish he hadn’t dropped his phone somewhere behind him, before snickering quietly, tugging a smirk up onto his lips as if MK couldn’t still see the red on his ears. “That's so fucking corny, Noodles.”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck you.”

A comfortable silence settled over them for a bit, and they stayed just as they were, MK leaning across the mattress to grope unsuccessfully for his phone until Red Son rolled his eyes, reached under the small of his back, and tugged out the device from where it’d been pinned between him and the mattress, because of course the asshole wanted him to look like an idiot before helping.

Why was MK so fond of him, again?

Red Son held out the phone, the smirk on his face edging out into something far softer, something gross and soppy and very un-Red Son . He didn’t let MK take the phone for a second, grip tight as he met his partner’s eyes. “...I think you're warm too. The kind of heat that makes me feel at home.”

Right. That was why.

—------

Macaque attacked the ship, apparently working as some kind of lackey under the Lady Bone Demon.

Red Son supposed the theater couldn’t pay quite so well when the entire city was encased in bone.

“Well, that’s a relief!” Wukong goaded the other monkey, once again endeavoring to kill himself and everyone around him. “I thought it was someone important !”

“ Always the comedian,” Macaque laughed, turning to face MK. “Hey, kiddo! Miss me?”

Red Son couldn’t hold back a snarl, stepping closer to his partner. MK, who had been busy grimacing at the two monkeys with a resigned, long-suffering scowl set on his face, focused on Macaque with a sneer Red Son was proud of. “ No .”

Then, turning to his family with wide eyes, he dropped his voice to a very audible stage whisper, he pleaded with them to, y’know, actually steer the fucking ship . 

Red Son turned his gaze back to the sky, where Macaque was laughing condescendingly, eyeing them like they were a couple cute kids, which… Well, Red Son was pretty sure the monkey was older than him; maybe that really was how they seemed.

The goddamn Monkey King was useless as ever, when MK turned to him for help, and Red Son… didn’t exactly have that world-to-ash fire at his disposal anymore. He stood at MK’s side when his idiot partner and bigger idiot mentor settled into fighting stances, and ignored that little weight at the base of his throat that told him to run . 

The son of the Demon Bull King did not run . 

… Recent incidents not included.

The Monkey King and the Lady Bone Demon’s lackey fought like they were filing for divorce, which was… honestly, a little hilarious to witness, if not for the fact that it was deeply uncomfortable. Red Son cast MK a glance, wide-eyed, suddenly understanding a lot of the complaints his partner had about his encounters with the pair, and MK could only grimace in response, crowbar held loosely at his side. They were distracted, anyway.

Or, rather, they were distracted, until MK leapt between the pair of them, swinging at Macaque with his weapon of choice only to get caught by the throat, held off the deck by Macaque’s first.

Red Son stepped forward, instinctively, only to freeze as he watched the Monkey King get pinned to the deck by a troupe of clones. Macaque’s gaze snapped to him anyway, and Red Son knew embers were painting the deck below him dark with ash, knew he was losing control .

“You?” Macaque laughed, his gaze flitting from Red Son to MK to Wukong before returning. “ You’re helping them ? With this ?”

When Red Son did not respond, focused on breathing deep, on controlling his flame, Macaque made a disapproving click of his tongue. “What would your father say about this?”

“Hey!” MK kicked out at the shadow monkey, glaring down at him as Red Son stood very still, taking very careful breaths. “Leave him out of this, Macaque!”

If nothing else, it brought the monkey’s attention back to his original targets. “The two of you are such a mess ,” he remarked, smirking between the pair of them. “Can’t imagine why the bone demon wants me to bring you back.” 

He turned to MK, a mean smile on his face. “Look at you. You’re all used up .”

MK grunted, clenching his eyes shut as though he was trying to muster up enough energy to do something , only for a green light to cut through the group, glancing right by Red Son’s ear and startling him enough to make him hit the deck, barely able to see as Macaque dropped MK and the clones were shredded, freeing Wukong.

All while Red Son was standing there, useless . 

Mei saved the day, or came very close, and MK told an impressively unfunny joke before destroying the ship, dislodging the wayward Macaque in the process.

—------

“Rock, paper, scissors?”

“Are you being serious?”

“... Yeah?”

“ Why ?”

“Because it’s like one in the morning and for once we don’t have anything to talk about.”

“Have you ever heard of peaceful silence?”

“Not a fan.”

“Now, that’s just a lie.”

“Nah, I wouldn’t lie. I’m not like that.”

“Who are you? Me ? Only one of us is the son of the Demon Bull King, last I checked.”

“Oh, are you proud of that again?”

Red Son choked out a laugh before he could stop it. “Fuck off!”

“...So.”

“ What ?”

“Rock, paper, scissors?”

“Oh my— fine !” 

—------

The ship was flooding.

The ship was flooding , and no one was doing anything, and, well, Red Son’s powers weren’t exactly suited for deep sea diving so he wasn’t really doing anything either. 

MK, for some reason, seemed surprised when the stupid king couldn’t do anything either, as if the guy suddenly had his magic again in the five minutes they were drowning for. Red Son would be impressed if the monkey could even use his gold eyes.

They ended up getting saved by some old guy who Wukong was “old friends” with, which meant, of course, he hated the guy now. Completely understandable, in Red Son’s opinion.

Less understandable was the way the guy, Ao Guang, threw everyone except Mei in jail and put Sandy to work. Typical. Absolutely typical.

—------

“I’m not playing rock, paper, scissors with you again.”

“What? Why?”

“You’re annoying.”

“You’re a sore loser.”

“Yeah, and?”

—------

Sandy and Mei broke them out of their cell, eventually, Sandy somehow having acquired a minivan and Mei wearing… a dress?

MK squinted at her, scanning her up and down as he hopped up into the fan, tugging Red Son up behind him. Tactfully, he blurted: “Where are your clothes?”

Mei didn’t get a chance to respond before the rest of the group turned around making various noises of confusion and appreciation as they finally registered her different outfit.

“Oo, slay Mei!” Tang exclaimed brightly, pointing over at her as if anyone was unsure who he was referring to. “That dress looks fierce!”

“I know!” Mei laughed, scratching her cheek, and MK elbowed Red Son in the side when the demon faked a gag.

Mei’s smile slowly dropped off her face, and MK watched, concerned, as she turned to face Red Son. “Hey, Red Boy…”

“It’s Red Son .”

“What’s that symbol on your jacket for?”

Red Son humphed, looking oddly proud. “I was wondering when one of you would ask. It’s the symbol of the Samadhi Fire. There’s a reason why I’m so against that idiot king’s ridiculous plan. Why?”

“...I just saw something, back there, when I took the map. Reminded me of your jacket.”

Ao Guang tried to stop them, briefly, as they peeled out of the palace, only to be stopped by Macaque and his one helpful deed, however unintentional as it likely was. Before he rushed off to go defend his kingdom against a homicidal, well, macaque , the Great Dragon of the East issued a final warning as to the volatility of the fire.

Eyes fixed on Red Son’s, Ao Guang brushed the back of his hand over his own cheek, prompting the demon to reach up and slap a pawn over his own scarred face. Ao Guang smiled, just slightly, glancing between the rest of the group before nodding back towards Red Son. “He’s familiar, I’m sure.”

—------

They booked it out of there, and as soon as the van breached the ocean’s surface Pigsy was spinning around in his seat to stare the rest of them down.

“So, are we going to talk about that?” He demanded, gesturing rather pointedly at Red Son, who unfroze just enough to cast Pigsy a glare.

“No,” Red Son said. “We are not.”

MK stared, mildly incredulous and increasingly confused as the Monkey King cut in with a nervous chuckle. “I really don’t think that’s necessary.”

MK obviously knew they had some kind of history with each other, some old wounds that left Red hissing and spitting in his presence, something specific to do with the Samadhi Fire, but… the Monkey King was defending Red Son . 

“Oh, so, we’re not going to talk about the demon’s obvious connection to the dangerous magical fire we’re trying to connect? Why’s that symbol on your jacket, Red Son ?”

Red Son visibly hesitated, glancing at the Monkey King, of all people, for help, who stared back equally helpless, and MK wasn’t sure why he was helping the two of them get away with whatever they were up to, but he knew he didn’t like that look on Red Son’s face.

(“They will never trust me.”

“They?”

“Your family.”)

“Come on, guys, lay off a bit!” MK shifted his weight slightly so he was angled more in front of Red Son. The Monkey King was on his own. “We’re all in this together, so let's be nice to each other!”

Silence filled the van for a moment as everyone turned their gazes to MK, who smiled brightly back at them. Finally, Mei stepped forward, leaning into MK’s side to whisper loudly into MK’s ear.

“Are you gonna tell Red Boy that, too? He’s the biggest asshole here.”

MK laughed, shoving Mei away from himself only to grab her wrist and drag her over to Red Son, both of them placing their free hands on Red’s shoulders. “Red. You have to be nice.”

Red Son stared back at them, an eyebrow raised, lifting his chin purely to look down his nose at the pair of them, and spoke perfectly enunciated. “Fuck you.”

“You’re such an asshole,” MK laughed, releasing his grip around Mei’s wrist to lean further into his partner’s side.

“I take pride in that.”

“I know you do.”

“Oh my goodness,” Mei whispered beside them, almost too quiet to be heard, but MK found himself turning to meet her eyes anyway. “You two are disgusting .”

—------

“I can’t believe you’re trying to convince me tea is an adequate substitute for slushies.”

“I like tea!”

“Noodles. This is black tea. At least give me one of those fruit flavors if it's meant to replace the slushies.”

“But I hate the fruit teas!” 

“Sucks for you! I want my nighttime fruit drink! This isn’t even red , Noodles!”

“Does it need to be?”

“You did not just ask me that question.”

“Red. Come on .”

“...”

“Just drink your fucking tea.”

“I will. I just need you to know I’m not happy about it.”

“Trust me, the world knows.”

“...”

“...”

“This is nice.”

“The tea? I told you—”

“No, no, not the fucking— I was worried.”

“Hm?”

“I’m glad we can still meet at night, even if things are… different.”

“...Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad, too.”

Chapter Text

“I’ve accepted that until I get my staff back, I’m not going to be the strong one anymore.”

Red Son glanced over at MK and his family from where he was perched on his bunk, brows furrowing in concern as he finally turned his full attention towards whatever conversation that bunch was having. 

“Which is why… I’m gonna be the smart one!”

Red Son blinked, dumbfounded by his partner’s nonsense as he started listing off basic equations with the backing track of his family’s discouraging murmurs. Slowly, as the scholar in the front seat attempted to draw everyone’s attention back to the map with the images of the Samadhi Fire, Red Son reached down and swatted MK in the back of the head, only to be promptly ignored.

“So,” Tang started, ineffectively smoothing out the curling ends of the map. “This map is—”

“Incomprehensible.” Red Son cut in without turning to face the rest, who had moved to crowd around the ancient sheet of paper. “It’s useless.”

“Don’t say that, Red Boy!” Mei called back, and Red Son twisted around in his bunk to look at her. 

“ Son . And…why not, exactly?”

She smiled back at him, a sly little twist to her lips that he immediately knew he didn’t like. “Just because you couldn’t figure it out—”

Red Son gaped at her, flicking a little spark in her direction and watching with satisfaction as soot stained her white pants. “Excuse you , you little cretin , I was there when it—”

Behind her, and in plain view of MK, Sun Wukong was making very blatant ‘stop what you are doing, oh my gods, shut up’ motions with his hands, and Red Son clamped his mouth shut before he could incriminate himself further. 

“...I would know,” he finished lamely, and Mei stared at him with a triumphant smirk because damn it she’d won the argument and she wasn’t even right . He scowled in the face of her smug superiority. “Shut up.”

—------

It was hot in the van, was the main issue. 

Before they’d made it too far into the desert, Red Son’s presence hadn’t been that big of a deal. Sure, it was a bit tense, but that was hardly a surprise - he’d tried to kill them for months and then went off the grid for a while. To most of them, the last time they’d interacted was when they’d worked together against the Spider Queen, and his initial goal of trying to steal their ship had hardly been a good impression. Not to mention it wasn’t even his first impression, and that had been worse .

They couldn’t exactly be blamed for being a bit wary around Red Son, but they were still civil, and Red Son was more or less left alone by everyone but MK and, annoyingly enough, his Mei.

Red Son figured it was more of a ‘we’re all in this together, and if we’re stuck in this van it’ll be easier if we get along’ thing, but he’d take what he could get. Even if that included a persistent girl with a sword nearly as tall as herself and the most annoying personality he’d ever had the displeasure of encountering.

It was (mostly) peaceful at least.

Then they crossed deeper into the desert, and suddenly Red Son’s immunity to heat meant he was the only one that wasn’t sweating bullets. Considering the Monkey King was off meditating so intently Red Son was kind of angry at his prowess, there was an easy target for all of their dehydrated ire.

Red Son, who laid back on his bunk, perfectly relaxed in the dry heat of the desert.

They were hardly malicious , or anything. They’d make snide little comments, petty passes at his demonic nature, at their past with him—it was, honestly, kind of funny. MK seemed more upset about it all than Red Son was.

(“I just wish they’d be nice to you!”

“Oh, come on, Noodle Brain, we both know better. I’d really rather you laugh.”

“I’d really rather defend my partner.”

“You’re incessant.”

“I’m not going to apologize for wanting my family and my partner to like each other.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“No?”

“I just want you to laugh.”)

MK didn’t laugh, and it was somehow worse, because Red Son had to watch as his partner would grimace and hold back whatever he’d wanted to say in Red Son’s defense, watch the words strain against the seal of his lips until he finally took a deep breath, shrugged, and turned away.

Needless to say, it was almost a relief when the van broke down.

—------

MK gambled away all their lives and worldly possessions in a weird rigged game show in order to prove his intellect, or something, and probably felt very validated in his actions when he managed his gold vision and exposed the fish demon as the cheat he was.

It was a freakishly lucky fluke, and none of them were gonna say it, but they all knew it.

Mei fell to the ground in her relief, clutching tightly to the sword in her arms. Red Son turned to face her, breathing slowly through his own shocked relief, and extended a hand to help her up as he heard MK walking up behind him.

She turned to him and, with a small smile, clasped his hand tightly.

—

Heat, searing and ancient and familiar, an old, nearly-forgotten, all-encompassing flame that burned with desperate rage, billowed with the untempered-emotions of an unready child.

Tears burned to vapor before they could fully form. The cut on his cheek bubbled and cauterized in moments. An unfamiliar young woman screamed as fires ebbed and flowed, crowding around her, within her.

Hunched over, surrounded by fire, they cried in steam and hollered streams of ash and flame, unreachable and alone.

—

Red Son inhaled a sharp breath, stumbling backward into MK and dropping the girl’s hand as she fell back against the ground, hands limp on her sword.

What was that ?

He met her eyes, and she looked just as confused and horrified as him, and she said, “Again?”

—------

MK hovered between the pair of them, tugging Mei to her feet and holding Red Son steady so his own wouldn’t slip out under him. “Hey, hey, what just happened?”

Red Son ignored him, stubbornly pressing down the little burn of guilt in his throat as he did so, and stared intently at Mei. “ Again ? What do you mean ‘again’ ?”

She didn’t reply for a moment, eyes boring into Red Son’s, and MK was glancing frantically between them, eyes flitting about and hands hovering unsurely, like he wasn’t sure if he would have to step in.

“I recognized the symbol on your jacket,” Mei finally said, and it made no goddamn sense at all.

“What?” Red Son snapped, feeling tense and backed into a corner like he never had before, and he wasn’t even sure why , he just knew something was wrong .

“I—I told you!” She cried, throwing her hands up in frustration and brushing MK away when he reached out to steady her. “I saw something when I took the map! Something like that !”

“And you—” Red Son tore his gaze away from her, staring up at the sky as he let out a heavy, long-suffering breath. MK straightened up, recognizing the sigh as one of Red’s ‘everything sucks and I hate my life but will ultimately be okay’ sighs, and continued pretending to understand the conversation at least a little bit. “And you said nothing ?”

“Neither did you!”

“It didn’t happen to me before, you imbecile !”

—------

Red Son refused to apologize for doubting his partner.

“Like I told you before, you’re not stupid , Noodles, but you’re still an idiot . Can hardly blame me if I worry for the idiot part when you bargain with my life and freedom , though, can you?”

“... See, when you put it like that , I get why people were upset with me.”

“I’m mostly upset you didn’t start with trying to sell off that dumb king. He wouldn’t have realized for another century, probably.”

“Somehow that’s worse than him knowing from the start.”

—------

“I can’t do it!”

Red Son watched from the sidelines again as Mei turned to her friend with an upbeat grin and some more useless advice. “It’s okay, MK! You did it before, you’ll do it again!”

“Yeah!” The buff blue guy agreed. “Maybe it’s like Monkey King said! The power will come when you need it most!”

Adrenaline did crazy things, Red Son supposed. Personally, he wouldn’t want to rely on his fight or flight response in order to use his powers, but that was just him.

“But—what use am I if I can’t be sure my powers are gonna work?” MK burst, turning to stare out over the water in front of him. “And gold vision ? That’s like - the baby power!”

“Hey, idiot,” Red Son cut in, eyes narrowed at his partner, who visibly shrunk as though he’d forgotten Red Son was there. “You’re being dumb.” As usual , he tactfully didn’t say, though he was sure MK heard it loud and clear judging by the weak glare the Monkie Kid threw his way.

MK hesitated before he spoke again, glancing around between Mei, Sandy, and Red Son like he wasn’t sure how he wanted to say what was on his mind, and Red Son absently wondered how he edited himself differently for other people. 

After a moment, he turned to face Red Son head on, a stubborn anger that Red Son didn’t believe for a second on his face. “No, I’m right this time! What about all my other powers? Duplication, the 72 Transformations, all those?” MK’s face dropped, all that anger sliding away into a despondent sort of stare that Red Son knew he didn’t like as he turned to face the water once again. “...How am I supposed to fight the Lady Bone Demon?”

Red Son walked over and flicked him on the forehead, sitting himself down next to the Monkie Kid and peering around him at Mei, who settled herself on his other side with a wide, reassuring grin.

“That’s why we’re gonna find those fancy pantsy rings, yo!” she exclaimed brightly, and Red Son carefully forced back his knee jerk reaction at the mention of the rings. He couldn’t stop himself from smirking a bit as she squished MK’s face against her own and poked him until he started laughing. “Light her up with Samadhi Fire! Bing, bang, boom!”

“Besides,” Red Son drawled, leaning more heavily into MK’s side and meeting his eyes in the reflection of the water. “You’ll hardly be fighting her alone, idiot. You’ve got us.” He was sure his embarrassment at saying things of that nature in front of Mei showed, but for once, she was gracious enough not to say anything.

The three of them let silence settle over them, pressing into each other shoulder to shoulder as they stared down at their reflections in the river.

It was quiet, for once, with the bright sun casting their shadows across the water in odd ripples, a soft wind kicking up sand around them.

It was peaceful, and Red Son tried not to think about the fact that he could find any silence he shared with the dragon horse girl comfortable .

—------

The peace was shattered by the sound of Tang calling them all in, followed quickly by the scholar being told off by Pigsy in the distance. MK almost wanted to pretend he hadn’t heard them, wanted to let himself believe there was no tension in the group, that Red and Mei were friends and all of his family was united.

But MK couldn’t do that, he knew. MK was the Monkie Kid, he had responsibilities, so he pushed himself to his feet and extended his hands toward his partner and his best friend, a wide smile on his face that he knew neither of them believed. “Well?” MK said, grinning down at them. “You heard them, time to go.”

Mei squinted up at him, but before she could say anything Red was grabbing his hand and leveraging himself up, briefly using her face to balance when he wobbled and leaving Mei spluttering. MK met his eyes, disapproving but understanding, and bit his lip against the swell of gratitude he felt for his partner, who let him lie about his feelings until he had a chance, a real one, to decompress. 

Maybe that wasn’t totally healthy. Maybe MK loved him for it anyway.

Then he laughed, because Mei was still there, watching, and he pushed lightly at Red’s shoulder. “Don’t be an ass, come on!”

—------

They did their best to make a habit out of sitting on the deck of the ship together at night, before they’d lost it, and when the ship broke and all they had was some soda cans Pigsy had stashed in a cooler that’d been salvaged from the wreck, they took their fizzy fruit punch drinks to the roof of the van and helped each other keep from flying off during the night.

MK wasn’t sure what he would do without Red Son, at this point, and wasn’t sure what he would do when he would have to find out, because Red Son—

Red listened to him. Red cared about what he had to say, and so did everyone else, but it was different with Red, because Red Son had no reason to care about him and all the reasons in the world to hate him. Red Son had no reason to comfort him when he was upset or tell him the world was nicer than it was, not when they met, but he did because Red was good . 

Red didn’t believe MK when he said that he considered the demon a friend since before they'd fought after the race, but MK didn’t know what else he could consider the demon he called a villain that calmed him down and comforted him and gently told him that his family would be in danger but not that he should give them up.

What else could he have been but a friend?

They sat on the roof of the van in calm silence, broken only by occasional sips through silly straws as they stared up at the night sky.

“The stars are different here,” MK smiled up into the darkness. “And there’s more of them, I think.”

Red Son didn’t reply. When MK turned to look at him, he was staring absently at the sky, so he let silence settle back over them for a bit, the hand not holding his soda tugging lightly at the ends of Red’s hair, let down from its usual high ponytail.

When Red Son finally broke the quiet between them, his voice was distant like he’d been zoned out and was finally resurfacing.

“Huh,” Red murmured, and MK glanced over at him to see that there was a furrow between his brows, and he was staring intently at MK.

MK stared back at him, raising an eyebrow and poking at his calf with a sock-covered toe. “What?” 

“I... went to you ,” Red said, and there was something like wonder in his voice, something MK didn’t think he’d ever heard before. 

MK also had… no idea what he was on about.

“...I'm sorry?”

Red laughed, pushing himself to sit straighter. “I thought I'd always listen to my parents when they called me, but I didn't. I came to you. I'm here with you !”

“Yeah?”

“You don't understand.”

“Help me understand, then.”

“When I first left my parents, a few months ago, I realized that first dinner that, if they called me, I would always come.” Red smiled, a bitter line to the curve of his mouth. “Even if I was nervous or didn't really want to.” 

“Red…” MK muttered quietly, and a little disapprovingly, because that was kind of, like, exactly the opposite of what the goal there was.

Red barreled on like he didn’t even hear him. “Then… then you were in danger. And they were scared , but so was I , and they called me to them, to—to run from the Lady Bone Demon, but I had to get to you.” 

He smiled helplessly down at MK, and MK didn’t know what the hell he was meant to say in the face of this, in the depths of the evidence that Red Son saw MK the way MK saw him.

“I was scared for you , and...I didn't come when they called me.” Red leaned back, settling back down beside MK as the Monkie Kid grasped desperately for his voice. He didn’t manage to find it before Red Son whispered his final blow up towards the stars.

“I went to you .”

—------

MK didn’t bother peeking through the curtains once he hopped on the van and settled in with the rest, but he was real tempted when he found himself staring at the map, light from the setting sun streaming through the back window of the car.

MK pressed his cheek against the glass, turning his head to yell towards the front of the van. “Hey, Pigsy? Uh, I’m looking at the map, here, and I think—” He squinted down at the map in his hands. “A—Are we going in the right direction?”

Red and Mei both perked up from where they were sitting in their bunks at that, and Mei hopped down to join MK in staring out at the sunset.

“Yeah, we’re meant to be going towards the sunset, Piggy,” Mei hemmed. “Why are we driving East?” There was no reply. “Piggy?”

MK turned to look at the curtain, but Sandy leaned out of the little alcove he’d been rummaging through, a furrow between his eyebrows. “Mo?” Sandy called. “Where are you, little guy?”

“Uh, something’s…something’s wrong ,” MK muttered. Then, louder, running towards the curtain, “Pigsy? Tang?”

He threw it open. 

No one was there. No Pigsy , no Tang , no Mo. Somehow, the van was driving itself. 

MK felt Mei and Sandy crowd around him as they stared at the two empty front seats of the van, confused and horrified. As Sandy moved to stop the van, he heard Red call out in a trembling voice.

“Hey, guys?” Red Son called. “Where's the Monkey King?”

The lights in the van went out.

—------

“I’m just saying, we must owe that gas station, like, thousands in slushies. I know we haven’t paid that often.”

“And I’m just saying, what’s your point , Noodle Brain? A free slushie is a free slushie.”

“Okay, but like, the sushi, too? Or the rice or noodles or whatever the hell we get?”

“I still don’t get why you’re so stuck on this.”

“Are we thieves?”

“...”

“What?”

“Noodles, can you just take a second and, maybe, consider my family? Then ask that question again.”

“Oh, fuck you, whatever. Am I a thief?”

“If I say ‘No’, will you let this drop?”

“Maybe.”

“Good enough. No, Noodles, you are not a thief. A thief wouldn’t try to trick the clerk at the register into letting him pay every time she kicks him out without accepting his money. Happy?”

“I feel a little mocked.”

“That was very intentional. Do you feel assured in your moral goodness, or whatever?”

“You know what? Yeah, actually.”

“Great. Please don’t call me at 3am for something this stupid again.”

“...”

“Noodles, please.”

“I just don’t like making promises I can’t keep.”

“Dick.” 

—------

An echoing, achingly familiar laugh rang out around them as they all congregated together in the main body of the van.

Red Son watched, thrown off and horrified as Sandy ran off, chasing a cat who wasn’t there only to be taken by the shadows, then as the shadows zipped around past them all and swept up Mei next, before any of them could react. 

Macaque chuckled, a deep, ringing expression of amusement that had Red Son shifting protectively in front of MK out of pure instinct.

“ Red Son !” He called. “You’re still here? On this quest? You really are a fool like your father, aren’t you?”

Red Son snarled, sparks flashing off his fingertips and embers falling like ash from the tips of his hair. “Don’t talk about my—”

“Step aside, Red Boy.” Macaque cut him off, glaring down at him, at the way he’d angled himself in front of MK. Red Son didn’t reply, stepped closer instead, taking a deep breath to call his fire to him and–

The shadows were cold as Red Son fell into their depths.

—------

MK once told Red Son that, sometimes, he’d consider himself and his role as Monkie Kid and feel like he’d been stranded in a void, or maybe thrown into a bottomless pit.

Red Son had laughed at him, jostled his shoulder because he didn’t really know how to comfort MK yet, and said, “Don’t be dramatic. It’s not like you have big shoes to fill, that Monkey’s, like, a size 7.”

MK laughed, too, with a bit of a raw, tense edge to it that Red Son brushed aside because he didn’t know how to deal with it. “Shut up!” He groaned good-naturedly, leaning into Red Son’s side on the edge of the rooftop, and they’d let the subject drop.

Sinking into the darkness of Macaque’s magic, Red Son realized that he maybe should’ve been more sympathetic back then.

—------

The thing about it, was that for a brief moment, he wasn’t even sure what had happened. He could’ve just fallen asleep, for all he knew–but he could hear, muffled and distant, fading in and out like an ebbing tide, Macaque’s deep timber taunting MK, and MK hardly even getting a chance to fight back.

If he focused his eyes, he could pull himself to the edge of the curtain, see his partner’s distorted silhouette through the vague blur of the shadows just as the Monkie Kid tore himself from the Six-Eared Macaque’s bindings with an enraged yell, only to be brutally pushed back, time and again.

In a vague sort of way, he felt Mei and Sandy crowding next to him, felt Mei grip his arm when Macaque reared back his fist and drove it towards MK, who sat bracing for impact. Felt her rage course through him in a familiar scorch that pulled his own flame to the surface, primed to release and burn .

The shadowy curtain was torn apart under the coursing red flame and crackling green lightning that burst from Red Son and Mei, and Red Son tried not to think about how familiar she felt at his back, how her lightning almost felt as known to him as his own fire, and instead focused on using his flame to pull MK behind the pair of them to where Sandy laid sprawled across the ground.

MK flung himself at Red Son as soon as he managed to steady himself, and turned his head to beam at Mei in front of them.

“Mei!” He crowed. “That was amazing !” 

Mei giggled, hoisting her sword up proudly, but it wasn’t long before their conversation was interrupted by Macaque’s laughter.

“The Lady asked me to bring MK…” Macaque said, an eyebrow raised as he regarded Red Son and the rest. “She didn’t say anything about you three .” 

Then, before their eyes, because they couldn’t catch a break, Macaque’s giant shadow mech took shape around him, and reared back with a punch that had them all bracing for impact… an impact that never came.

Red Son cracked his eyes open as he heard Macaque’s shocked confusion, and he nearly gasped aloud when he saw Sandy standing in front of them all, muscles straining as he held up the mech’s massive fist, looking like some kind of Atlas.

“I don’t wanna fight…” Sandy said through gritted teeth, voice a rasping growl. “But I can’t let you hurt my friends !”

Almost against his will, a thought crossed Red Son’s mind unbidden. Was he including Red Son in that?

Macaque laughed, looking down at him with a sharp-edged grin. “Oh, you can’t, can you?” Red Son was too slow in his aborted movement to grab at Sandy when Macaque reached down and caught him in his fist, Sandy crying for them all to run .

Red Son felt a tug in his gut before he heard Mei’s enraged snarl, and firmly added that to the list of things he was not thinking about as she blasted a hole in the mech, pointless as he healed himself with a laugh and caught her in his fist.

“ What a hero !” Macaque mocked MK, and Red Son watched helplessly from behind as his hands flexed and Macaque tightened his grip. “Two friends about to be crushed and you do nothing ?”

“Let them go!” MK cried, stepping forward. “You can take me, I don’t care, just—let them go !”

Red Son darted up behind him, reaching to grab MK’s shoulder and pulling his partner back against his chest. “Noodles, no , don’t be stupid—”

“Or what ?” Macaque cut him off with a laugh. “You aren’t the Monkie Kid anymore! Your powers are gone. Your staff’s gone! You’re nothing !”

“ No . I am the Monkie Kid.”

Macaque stared judgmentally, and Red Son felt oddly like an intruder in this discussion but refused to loosen his grip as Macaque dug a claw into his ear and peered closely at MK. “What was that now? I couldn’t quite hear you!”

Sandy and Mei were pressed harder into the dirt, and their screams tore into Red Son even though he hardly even cared about them. 

When MK spoke, his voice was cold like Red Son had never heard it before. “I said…” He found himself hastily releasing his partner’s shoulder as MK burst with the golden glow they hadn’t seen in weeks , raising himself to Macaque’s level as Red Son watched uselessly from the ground. 

“I am the Monkie Kid!”

He turned into a bird of some sort, though Red Son was too far away to tell which kind, and careened full force into Macaque’s bad eye, rescuing his friends and whizzing away as the monkey hollered.

Dutifully, Red Son followed in a whirl of flame, and decided not to feel left behind as he fled the scene.

—------

The thing about Macaque having destroyed their van was that it left them with only one mode of transportation: their feet.

Red Son was fine with it, personally. The desert heat was more rejuvenating than anything else, for him, but he stared at MK and worried. He watched as his partner staggered, brushed it off, stumbled again, wiped sweat off his face and panted, desperately, and wished he had a single thing to offer him.

He sidled up to the Monkie Kid’s side, absently noting how far Mei and Sandy were from them before he leaned into MK’s personal space, racing up to gently wipe sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket, free hand resting across MK’s shoulder and carefully pulling his partner to lean on him, just a bit. “Will you be okay?” 

“Yeah,” MK replied, and Red Son knew he didn’t think about the reply because he did this thing where he blinked hard and squinted, like he was checking his answer to ensure it made sense. He stumbled, again, and this time Red Son held him steady even as he let out a heavy, long-suffering sigh. At least there was no slushie for him to drop this time.

“Are you sure?” Red Son narrowed his eyes at his partner, jostling him just slightly to get him to meet Red Son’s eyes before he glanced over at where Mei and Sandy were exhaustedly marching onward behind them. MK followed his gaze, and Red Son watched him swallow roughly around the negligible saliva in his mouth before nodding.

“Yeah,” he repeated. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” And Red Son could do nothing but carry his weight as best he could and occasionally glance back towards Sandy and Mei to see how they were doing, because, really, even if MK had admitted that he was struggling, there was nothing Red Son could do.

He tried not to let that helplessness take over, but it was really hard when he heard a thump just behind him as Sandy collapsed, Mei unconscious on his shoulders, and MK was making a dazed sound of concern against Red Son’s neck and– MK was out.

Red Son stared down at the three of them, unconscious and dehydrated and starving in the middle of a desert, and knew he only had one real option.

“Shit.”

Chapter Text

MK woke up confused, confined beneath soft, unfamiliar bedsheets and blinking up at a ceiling he’d never seen before. Still only half awake, he let out a sleep-heavy murmur and pushed himself to sit up, wrestling against the blankets tucked around him until a familiar calloused hand grabbed the sheet he was fighting and tugged it down off of him. MK glanced over at Red Son, who was leaning over him still, holding the edge of the blanket in his grip as the demon looked him over, relief clear on his face.

“Good, you’re awake.” Red Son smiled down at him before leaning away to hand him a glass of water, which MK accepted on instinct. “Drink before I lose you to heatstroke , of all things.” Far too bewildered to argue against his partner—and, honestly, far too dehydrated—he took a long drink from the glass. 

MK drained the glass of water and set it aside, his throat still feeling gross and sticky but no longer dry. “Hey, Red?”

Red Son glanced over at MK, from where he leaned against the closed door of the bedroom. “Yeah?”

“What’s going on?”

Red paused for a moment, squinting down at MK as if he were a particularly confusing line of code, and MK had to withhold a laugh at the familiar expression. “What do you mean? Do you not remember passing out in the middle of a desert, idiot?”

MK did laugh, that time. “Of course I remember that, you ass! I mean , where are we? And my friends?”

“Situational awareness, much?” Red Son raised a mocking brow, inclining his head towards a pair of beds behind MK, which he found containing his friends. “Wake up in a strange room and you don’t even check your surroundings.”

“Well, you’re here!” MK defended himself, and he thought his reasoning was pretty fair. If Red was there, and seemed pretty calm, he figured he ought to be pretty safe. “You’re watching my back, right?”

MK watched as Red Son’s face froze, going blank for a second before he glanced away, and MK knew Red was flustered, but he didn’t laugh. He was gracious that way. 

“Whatever,” muttered Red Son. “We’re at my parents’ fortress.”

MK froze, suddenly wishing he hadn’t already drained his glass of water. He croaked, “What?”

“I didn’t have any other choice!” Red rushed on, hastening to defend himself, like he thought MK’s shock was an indication of doubt. “You were all dying of thirst , and all I could do was take you somewhere safe, and we were near ! There’s water here, and shelter, and I needed you all safe until you woke up.”

MK swore under his breath, fighting to tamp down the instinctive horror that roiled through him at the idea of finding safety in the home of an enemy, reminded himself of their truce, tentative as it was, and forced himself to calm. “No, no, you’re fine, Red. You probably made the right choice.”

He tamped down, as well, on the burning and familiar righteous anger towards his partner’s parents that burst up as he watched a well-trodden tension ease out of Red’s shoulders at MK’s reassurance.

“We’re safe here?” MK asked, rather than voice any of the conflicting and confusing concerns and emotions that coursed across his thoughts, but he knew Red Son heard them all anyway, could see it in the way the demon glanced over at MK’s family and genuinely pondered the question, brow furrowed before he turned back to MK with a nod.

“You’re all safe here,” he said, and that was somehow a cue for both Mei and Sandy to start waking up, and Red Son hurriedly continued. “I’ll go get you all some more water.”

His partner was slipping out the bedroom door before MK could call him out for not including himself in his assessment of their safety, leaving MK to explain the situation on his own.

—------

The thing about being back in one of his family’s homes was that it felt wrong . He walked down these halls, ones he’d stalked through in so many stages of his life, and he didn’t know if he was welcome, anymore. If he was home , anymore.

Sometimes, Red Son thought of home and all he could picture was a dark, drafty warehouse filled with rundown, garish furniture, rickety appliances he’d built from scrap, blankets that he’d found ripped and sewn together. 

Red Son thought of home and saw a gas station, neon lights in a parking lot at all hours of the night, a bubbly cashier and a couple of cherry slushies, his tongue stained red and mouth curved up into a smile.

Red Son thought of home and saw a rooftop, a lumpy mattress and a warm, faded old quilt, takeout boxes of rice and carefully balanced soy sauce packets, a night sky filled with stars and an optimistic little hero he should never have befriended.

Red Son thought of home and saw—

(“Red Son…” Demon Bull King grasped Red Son’s wrist gently, and tugged his son closer to the pair. “ My son, there is no universe in which I would not have torn down the very stars in the sky to save you from such a fate.”)

He did not see this dark fortress, and he did not see the lair. He saw laughter, and joy, and warmth, and connection. He saw gentle understanding and care and love. He could not remember the last time he’d felt any of those within the fortress; likely back before his father had been imprisoned beneath the mountain.

Red Son scowled down at the stone floor, sidestepping trapped stones and lightly hopping thin wires, nearly tripping into the door and spilling water all over himself when he found himself walking past the open door of his old bedroom.

Carefully nudging the door further open, he peered inside, not quite sure what he expected to find but knowing it wasn’t this . 

There were no clones in the fortress. The last time Red Son had stepped foot within its walls had been decades prior, when his mother was getting desperate and he knew they were far too close to the mountain his father had been buried beneath. Dust settled in a fine layer across every surface he’d come into contact with, the scanner to enter his garage covered particularly heavily. 

Every step he took left a footprint behind as he traversed the halls, and he was certain the kitchen was only clean because his parents actually made use of it. So, basically, there was no reason—absolutely no reason —why his room should have been spotless.

He couldn’t see a speck of dust on any shelf, nothing on his bedsheets and his blueprints were neatly stacked in rolled scrolls against the far wall. Red Son swallowed hard, a rough thing that he chose to ignore as he stumbled back away from his bedroom, fighting to process what he’d seen as he continued to the room he’d left MK and his little goons in.

There were no clones in the fortress—Red Son knew, for a fact, that his parents were the only ones living within its walls, and yet his room was clearly upkept, as though they’d been preparing for his arrival. He took in a slow controlled breath, eyes clenched shut as he walked a well-trodden path through the halls to his partner. 

It was a pathetic way to react to undeniable proof that his parents cared for him.

Red Son opened his eyes as he made it to their room, fumbling to balance the three glasses of water in his hands, endlessly grateful for the fact that the door was shut firmly, blocking MK and that goddamned dragon girl’s view of him. He figured the big guy probably wouldn’t care.

Sighing as he settled the glasses in his grip, he sidled closer to the door, freezing for a moment as he wondered how he could actually… open the thing, only to pause in his tracks as their voices filtered through the crack under the frame.

“MK…” Mei’s voice was saying. “Are you sure we can trust him… We are literally in his dark and evil castle, where he took us the moment we were defenseless.”  

Red son flinched minutely away from the door, panicking as he jostled the glasses in his hands, and he clenched his eyes shut to calm himself, to steady his hands, hating himself for taking her words so personally.

“Of course we can trust him!” MK said in reply, and Red Son could so clearly imagine the scowl that would alight upon his face, and had to stop himself from smiling, just a bit. “He could’ve just left us to die in the desert!”

Then Sandy, in his kind and reluctant and gentle way, murmured to the both of them, though Red Son supposed it was likely aimed more towards Mei. “I won't let him hurt you. You’re my friends.” And…well.

Red Son wanted to pretend that rolled off his back, that the declaration just made sense and that he’d seen it coming, but hurt rolled deep in the basin of his gut, Sandy’s words somehow a betrayal in a way he probably didn’t even have any right to consider them, anyway. Maybe it was because Sandy had protected him, too, back in the desert with Macaque. Maybe it was because he’d thought— hoped —he was included in the muscled river spirit’s umbrella of friends, and not just someone he’d happened to save because the people who really mattered were there too.

Red Son wanted to pretend he hadn’t hoped to be able to include Sandy in his nonexistent list of friends who weren’t MK.

He clenched his jaw against the shattered breath that tried to drive itself from his lungs, beat it down and let it out in a quieter, controlled stream. He knew better than to care about the opinions of others, he’d spent most of his life compartmentalizing, he was better than this—than them . He knew they didn’t like him, would never trust him, hearing them confirm that shouldn’t and didn’t matter. It was just the truth.

Red Son knew that he was very good at dealing with the truth of how people viewed him.

He cursed himself for eavesdropping at all, nudging the door to the room open with his elbow and pretending not to notice when the three of them abruptly leaned away from one another, suddenly quiet. 

“Sorry I didn’t knock,” Red Son drawled, setting the waters down on the bedside table between MK and Sandy, leaving the river spirit to pass Mei’s along to her. “Hands full and all, you see.” He made his way around to MK’s other side, leaning against his partner’s bedframe with his back to the wall and the three of them in front of him.

Something tight and rippling curled within his gut as he realized he’d placed himself so defensively within the room, with people who should have easily been his allies after the time they’d spent in that godforsaken van together. As he stared over at Mei, it was familiar in a way he didn’t like, familiar in a way he remembered silent dinners and disapproving looks.

He wondered what MK would say if Red Son told him that he saw his parents in everyone he should trust but didn’t, if he knew his family had Red Son on edge in a way he’d been beginning to forget.

MK glanced up at Red Son with a furrowed brow, and Red Son studied the concerned lines of his face— safety, safety, safety —as his partner sized him up. When MK’s hand reached out from the blankets and grazed Red Son’s wrist, he put on a smile and looked up at the others, silently shaking his head in a small motion that he knew MK understood, knew it in how his grip entwined with Red Son’s and he turned away without saying a thing in front of his family.

“Come on, guys!” MK snorted once he saw their stiff postures, the way they hadn’t taken a sip of their own glasses of water. Rolling his eyes, MK took one long swig, then followed it up with another. “You guys act like it’s poisoned!”

Watching MK corral his friends into drinking the water, into this small show of trust, the curling thing in his gut loosened, just a bit, even as his grip tightened around his partner’s hand. 

Red Son sat down on the edge of MK’s bed, his smile just a little more real on his face, and was entirely unsurprised when MK’s arm came up around his shoulder to yank him more solidly onto the mattress, and then stayed there, the weight comforting and grounding and— Gods . Red Son knew it didn’t matter if MK’s family trusted him, in the end.

It didn’t matter how they saw him, if they all hated him, if they would ever bother to save him when he needed it or if they’d kill him themselves. They were MK’s , and that would always be enough for him to need to protect them like his own, and he wouldn’t let someone as goddamn insignificant as the big blue friendly giant change his mind.

Not after he’d come so far.

—------

“I’m sorry.”

Red Son didn’t look at MK as he spoke, staring out over the city as the moon started to set, leaving them with maybe an hour before they’d have to go back home to their own beds. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see MK’s smile slip from his face as he looked up from his phone and whatever video Mei had sent him.

“What?” MK asked, brows furrowed as he tried to parse the apology, perhaps, Red Son pondered, wondering if the Demon Bull Family had some oncoming evil scheme Red Son had yet to warn him about. “Why?”

Red Son glanced away, lips pursing around the desire to take his words back. It wasn’t like the idiot would let it slide, anyway. “You…I know you want your family to like me.”

“...Yeah. And?”

“They won’t.” Red Son frowned, his eyes falling on the neon light of Pigsy’s noodle shop in the distance. “And…I don’t know if I would be able to trust them .”

MK hummed, at that, but when Red Son turned to peer at him there was a small frown on his face. “Okay.” And he said it like it really was, was the thing, but Red Son knew how much this meant to him, and he couldn’t stop himself from continuing his point.

“It’s just, like, we’ve been hiding this for so long!” Red Son burst out, whipping his head around to meet MK’s eyes, and he wasn’t understanding . Didn’t he feel it too? “I feel like, every time I come meet you, it’s a whole other life. Outside this warehouse, I’m one person, but I come here, and I’m another. I don’t know which is true. I don’t know how I would act if it all came out. Can you imagine our lives colliding so severely? Your family and mine?”

This time, Red Son knew MK understood—could see it in how his frown twisted and he wrenched his own gaze away from Red Son’s, and he felt a harsh twist of guilt in his gut when MK slowly shook his head.

“No,” MK said quietly, and Red Son slowly, tentatively reached for his hand and tried not to feel too relieved when MK’s grip wrapped tight around his own.

“That’s why I’m sorry.”

“...It’s okay.”

“It’s fine if it’s not.”

“It will be.”

“...Okay.”

—------

“So…” Mei was casting Red Son a suspicious sort of look that made MK want to scowl at her, even though he knew that was unfair. “What, exactly, is the plan here?”

Red Son cleared his throat, a bit awkwardly, actually, and MK turned to him with his eyebrows raised. “You… do have a plan, right, Red?”

“Well,” MK’s partner started, “I was a bit more focused on making sure you three wouldn’t die in a desert , so excuse me for being a bit preoccupied.” Red Son turned away with a huff, in that pretentious high-and-mighty way he was inclined to when he felt outnumbered, and MK stared at him.

Under her breath, but still rather loud in the silent room, Mei muttered, “Oh, so we can just die in your creepy dark fortress, instead. Great .”

“You’re not going to die here!” Red Son glared at her. “Why would I save you just to bring you to your death?”

“Doesn’t the Demon Bull King live here?” Mei leveled him with an unimpressed glower, and Red froze for a second before waving off her concern.

“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes. “As if we’ll actually run into him!”

MK blinked up at his partner. “What do you mean?”

“We’ll just eat early,” He said casually, like they were ridiculous for being worried about Red Son’s objectively terrifying parents. “It’s not like they’ve been hanging around this part of the fortress—there’s dust everywhere .”

“You… seem pretty confident, there, Red Son.” Sandy took a small sip of his water, his voice coming out hesitant and uneasy, and Red Son scoffed. 

“Of course I am,” he replied. “They’re my parents, in case you forgot.”

MK frowned over at Red Son, taking in the stiff tension of his shoulders and the hard line of his back, and tugged his partner a little closer by the grip he had around his shoulders, nearly unbalancing the demon and forcing him to lean against MK, ignoring the vague noise of offense Red spluttered in response. To his left, MK could hear Mei stifling a laugh into her fist at the sight.

“You know what?” Mei broke in, and when MK glanced at her there was an amused little grin on her face. “Fine. I’ll trust you, Red Boy!”

“It’s Red Son ,” the demon grumbled, though he didn’t really seem to care all that much in MK’s opinion, especially considering how he relaxed, just a bit, against MK’s side. 

Mei ignored the demon’s complaint, carrying on cheerily like she hadn’t heard him. “When do we eat?” 

MK snickered, muffling his laugh into Red’s hair and not even blinking when his partner shoved him off with a scowl.

“Soon,” Red Son snapped. “You all need rest, I am not saving you all from heatstroke again.”

“Not even me?” MK asked, a bright grin on his face, and Red Son snorted, shoving his smiling face away.

“ Least of all, you.”

—------

The roof of the van wasn’t nearly as familiar or comfortable as their warehouse, and the view of the desert and the glittering night sky grated, just a bit, a subtle reminder of the mission they were being forced to carry out.

It was beautiful, though, and if Red Son had to be honest, he was just glad that he still had his partner with him, that his parents had let him go. 

Even if the fruit tea didn’t taste anything like the horrifically sweet artificial cherry syrup of his red sushies.

Even if MK was, objectively, an idiot.

“Okay, no, hear me out!” MK was laughing, his own mug of fruit tea sloshing dangerously as he moved his arms in wide gestures, and Red Son absently reached out to take the mug from him. “I’m just saying , it would be cool if water was, like, sour.”

“ What? ” 

“You promised you’d hear me out!”

“I didn’t promise you shit!” Red Son exclaimed, but he was holding back a laugh. Suddenly, he regretted having taken MK’s mug away from him for the man’s own safety, as it meant he couldn’t reach over to shove the guy. “ Sour water? Why?”

“Well, if you would just listen to—”

“I’m not hearing you out on this! Just drink lemonade!”

“But that’s not water! ” MK carried on, sounding like he was whining as he reached out for his tea. “It, like, is less hydrating.”

“Why do you want hydration to hurt ?”

“I’m not saying I want it, I’m just saying it’d be kinda cool!”

“What about it would be cool?” Red Son dragged a hand down his face, trying (and failing) to quell the entertained grin splitting his face. “Literally, in what way would painful water be cool?”

“Shock value?” MK shrugged. “I didn’t think that far ahead.”

That was it.

Red Son burst out laughing, nearly tilting right off the roof of the van in hysterics if not for MK’s sudden strong grip around his shoulders tugging him back to safety.

“You’re an idiot,” Red Son told his partner, and he wasn’t even that embarrassed when it came out all too fond.

—------

MK bounded about the halls enthusiastically, nearly braining himself on a series of traps if not for Red Son's quick reflexes. Red set him back down at the dining table beside Mei and Sandy, pulling at his hair as he sat across from the three of them.

“Would you stop being so annoying ?!” Red Son burst out, gesturing frantically at Sandy, Mei, and MK. “In case you all forgot , we are on a time limit, here! Not to mention , none of us are even supposed to be here, so I’d appreciate if we could just finish up and go on with the stupid plan we were in the middle of before I was forced to save your pathetic, meaningless lives!” 

MK slid out from the seat Red Son had placed him in and slipped into the chair beside his partner, a smile cheery and bright alighting his cheeks as he watched the demon. “ Relax , Red! We’ve got it!” He leaned in closer with a wink. 

Red Son sighed heavily, wiping a hand down his face and slumping against the table. “Why did I decide to bring you morons here, again?”

“Because you care so much about us,” Mei laughed, batting her eyelashes at Red Son, who leaned away with a look of profound disgust. “Also because we passed out looking for the Samadhi—!”

MK watched in real time as Red Son choked on a long drink of water, nearly spewing it across the table as he jumped up from his seat and practically leapt across the table to clap a hand over Mei’s mouth. “Not so loud!”

Mei leveled him with an utterly aghast stare, one which nearly had MK choking on the food he was eating if not for a loud, resounding thunk that echoed throughout the dining hall. Red Son froze, his hand slipping from Mei’s mouth as his face fell and his eyes blew wide. He moved only when MK reached up to tug gently at his shirt, pulling him slowly back to his seat.

Hesitantly, MK followed his partner's gaze to stare at the lava flowing behind the throne at the head of the table. That first thud was followed, assuredly, by the sound of slow, harrowing footsteps until, finally, the Demon Bull King emerged from the fire, a large club of meat thrown over his shoulder, followed closely by the whipping wind which preceded his wife taking her rightful place at the opposite end out the table.

The room froze.

Red Son was staring up at his father, and in the corner of MK’s eye he was able to see Princess Iron Fan’s mouth drop open, just a bit. As MK watched, Red Son swallowed heavily, glanced back at his mother before returning his gaze to his father. Across the table, Sandy and Mei were staring between the four of them with wide eyes.

What was that Red had said about his parents not showing up? 

The Demon Bull King shifted his weight, an unsure look on his face as he opened his mouth and took in a long, deep breath, one which would likely be followed by him addressing his son, and MK panicked.

“Yo! Daddy!” MK blurted, then blanched. The Demon Bull King let out that careful breath he’d been taking in a choking cough, and MK felt Red Son’s hand clamp down hard around his knee. What the fuck had he just said? “Uh—Ah, I mean, Demon Daddy!” That was worse. That was far worse. Everyone at the table was staring at him with wide, horrified eyes, and MK couldn’t even blame them. “ I mean— Mister Bull King, sir! We, uh… We still cool, right?”

“ Are you suicidal? ” Red Son hissed into MK’s ear, and it was deserved, honestly.

Attention fully drawn away from his son, at least, the Demon Bull King slammed his club of meat down on the table between MK and his friends, and Red Son proceeded to make all of MK’s public humiliation for naught by planting himself between MK’s family and the Demon Bull King.

“Father!” Red Son greeted, a wide, strained grin stretching his face. “You’re, uh, you’re back earlier than I expected!”

—------

“Can we get a redo?”

“On what? ”

“Fuck, marry, kill.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My answer’s the same.”

“Seriously?”

“Why would it have changed?”

“We’re in a relationship?”

“And? I would’ve considered our friendship enough of a relationship when we first played? Did you not value our friendship?”

“You’re not turning this around on me.”

“Of course not.”

“Oh my—shut up! You’re literally saying you’d kill me. Or anyone else who shows up in this.”

“Proudly.”

“Ass.”

—------

“So tell me,” Princess Iron Fan said, lounging back in her seat across the table from her husband, and Red Son turned just in time to see her drag her gaze away from himself, knew she was composing herself so she wouldn’t discuss family business in front of these tentative allies. “Why, precisely, have you intruded upon our dinner plans?”

Well. Hm. Regardless of the reason, being called an intruder in his own family fortress didn’t exactly feel great, especially considering he hadn’t seen his parents since the Lady Bone Demon had attacked the city. 

Red Son froze, swallowing heavily. Had it really been so long? Were his parents worried, while he was gone? He looked up at them, glancing from his father’s face to his mother’s, but neither seemed particularly concerned. Except… his father had frozen, when he’d walked in and seen Red Son. Red Son had seen him try to say something before MK had opened his mouth and… Red Son wasn’t even sure how to describe the way his partner had greeted his father. His mother had been staring at him, too, though, before she’d spoken.

He took a deep breath, composed himself, and then swiftly realized he’d chosen the wrong moment to have a crisis, as Mei had opened her mouth while he was distracted.

“We’re looking for the Samadhi Fire!” She answered Princess Iron Fan, and Red Son choked on his own spit before sinking down in his chair, gaze fixed firmly on anything that wasn’t his parents .

He heard them both choke, as well, before his father was shouting. “ What? ” He bellowed, and Red Son saw MK, out of the corner of his eye, stare back at the Demon Bull King, a wide, nervous grin on his face.