#peachpig

It was... kind of embarrassing that he hadn't figured it out on his own.

Though to be fair, It wasn't like he had ‘magic truth seeing eyes’ like His part-... His ex-...His hus-... Like Sun Wukong did. And this world was kind of… made to throw him off balance, and with that everything else followed.

Waking up in the middle of the night to a knocking on his door wasn’t...something he was particularly used to of course, But it wasn’t wholly unfamiliar. Of course with the rain pounding down in sheets (Did the weather machine break again? That thing was so damn buggy what was the point in having it?) he couldn’t hear any telltale noises from the other side of the door other than the insistent knocking itself.

He was expecting Xiaotian, maybe Xiaojiao. At Most Strange, Red Son. Mystic Monkey Business, Panic attacks, ‘I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go’ He’d seen a fair amount of the kids on his doorstep before with a fair amount of reasons for their presence. And you know… he figured it would probably be easier to take care of one of the kids right now than to deal with his own emotional garbage anyway.

And then he opened the door and his entire thought process derailed with Sun Wukong standing there, in his true form (the same as his casual form but at least a head shorter than him) fur soaked and heavy from the rainfall, and very visibly choking back tears.

“Wukong…” he’d curse the tremble in his voice but his brain wasn’t quite working right now, so consumed with shock he couldn’t do much else but stand there. Wukong was trembling, from emotion (As surely he’d handled far colder weather) and as the Monkey King took a deep breath as if to steady himself, Pigsy wanted nothing more than to kiss the misery right off of him.

But that wouldn’t be welcome right now, would it?

“Pigsy… Can we talk?” His voice cracked with emotion and Pigsy felt he was helpless to do anything but stand aside and let the Monkey in.

“Are you alright?” what a stupid question. Wukong laughed bitterly in response.

“Not really…” He sniffed and Pigsy wanted again to comfort him, but, again, confronted that he’d probably make it worse. “Look, all of this stuff… it’s been a lot and my head’s been all over the place this whole time but I can’t play the denial game anymore just because I want to be miserable.” Wukong scrubbed at his eyes. “And we need to talk, like WOW do we need to talk. But honestly?” He shrugged, helplessly. “I just miss you.”

And.. this honestly felt like some moment at the end of a cheesy romance movie, and yeah they really did need to talk about everything. But in that moment, now that he knew he could, All Pigsy was interested in, was giving in to the urge and kissing the misery right off of Wukong’s face.

And after that they did talk, extensively, the fact that a fair bit of it involved the two of them clinging to each other and sharing far softer kisses on the couch as the rain continued to pelt against the windows was beside the point. Wukong stayed in his smaller form, Pigsy only asked about it briefly and Wukong only responded that he’d just really prefer to be held over doing the holding right now.

It was… odd at first, Wukong seemed to be under the impression that he needed to make the majority of the apologies, that somehow the whole ‘Being Zhu Baije’ Stuff was more important than Wukong knowing the initial purpouse of their relationship (before Pigsy had realized, before he’d known better) and playing along anyway; but he also seemed to easily accept it when Pigsy began to trade his own apologies.

They both had stuff to apologize for, and he was just glad he was finally given a chance to.

Then for a time they’d simply cuddled, allowed the wounds to heal in eachother’s presence. Pigsy had nodded off again at some point, but by the time he woke up it was still dark out, the rain still pelting the windows. He was alone on the couch but he could hear a familiar rummaging coming from the kitchen. Though it was probably late enough that there was no point in trying to sleep again, he figured he should just start the day properly by now.

It seemed like Wukong was of a similar mind because just as he’d properly sat up and stretched the monkey returned from the kitchen with a few cut up peaches, the bowl sat between the two of them as a simple breakfast.

“What time is it?”

“Early.”

They ate in silence, sweet, blessed, comfortable silence. He hadn’t wanted to fantasize about it from how much he’d been afraid it would never happen again but now that it was back, he found himself positively basking in it. When Wukong leaned to the side just enough to rest his head on Pigsy’s shoulder it was more than he’d expected would ever happen again.

This whole thing must have started earlier than he thought because just as he was starting to get restless the sun was no closer to creeping over the horizon. And it seemed like Wukong was getting restless at about the same time too.

“Okay I’m getting bored of being tired and sad.” He finally stated, standing up and stretching. “Lets do something nice, we haven’t done something nice since any of this started.”

“What do you have in mind?” Wukong thought for a second before grinning at Pigsy, a proper, happy grin that, after so much sad had just transpired, made his gut flip in and his face feel hot. He rushed over to Pigsy’s media setup and fiddled with things there until soft music began to play.

Wukong shook his head twice and with a puff of golden smoke went back to his preferred taller size, most likely so while Pigsy was still sat on the couch he could look suave as he offered a hand and grinned down at him. “Dance with me?”

And you know, maybe if they hadn’t just gotten back together he would deny how well that actually worked, tease him for being a cheesy dork. But as it was he just accepted.

The rain had made Wukong smell a little different, not by much but… different. And he wasn’t necessarily sure if it was a good change or not, but he felt the same, the soft caramel fur had long since dried and was gentle against his skin, he felt his tail coil its way around his hips and had practically encircled Pigsy in his warmth.

It was sad that things had to go over the way they did, but he supposed if they hadn’t then this wouldn’t feel quite as good. The ache had finally given way, Zhu Baije was quieting down in his head now that things were as they were supposed to be again.

It was, for lack of a better word,

a perfect morning.

And then there was a shake, a crack like a splinter of wood a blinding light-

"Dadsy! Are you alright? I'm gonna KILL those two idiots..."

-and it was gone.

--

Ever since he had met Sun Wukong, Pigsy had found himself…concerned.

Not with Qi Xiaotian’s safety or anything like that, no. The monkey king had proven that he hated the idea of putting Xiaotian in danger throughout the quest to fetch the Samadhi fire. Yes, he had lied about the rings. Yes, he had lied about his plan.

But Wukong had admitted he had screwed up there. He had thought he was doing what he could with weakened powers and several people breathing down their necks to protect them all. That wasn’t enough for Pigsy’s entire forgiveness.

But Wukong had earned the rest of it through his actions. He had talked with Heaven about helping Xiaojiao free herself from the fire. He had been working to be more honest with Xiaotian about stuff. He had even been responding to invites and coming over more often.

That was when Pigsy began to notice…things.

Wukong preferred peaches over any other food, which made sense, but Pigsy rarely saw him eat those. Instead, there were a lot of peach chips…except those weren’t real. One time, Xiaojiao had startled the monkey and he had squeezed the bag so hard that it had exploded into hairs. Based off of Xiaotian’s face, that was not the first time he had caught his mentor eating hair.

His grins were fake. Pigsy had done research after Xiaotian began to train with Sun Wukong and found that monkeys bared teeth as signs of warning or aggression. Wukong had admitted that he had picked up the habit after spending so much time with humans, but not even those smiles were real.

Occasionally, Wukong had pain. One night, after carrying Xiaotian around on piggyback for a while, Pigsy had seen him rub the back of his shoulder, clearly fighting back a grimace of pain. Whenever someone raised their voice a touch too loud or frowned, Wukong would rub the back of his head. After careful watching, Pigsy realized he seemed to be tracing a spot, as if expecting some kind of band there.

The worst one was when Pigsy fell in love. At Lunar New Year, when the fireworks began, Wukong had loudly gasped “FIREWORKS!” His tone had completely switched into a child-like, gleeful tone that fell like the layers had fallen away, revealing true joy on Wukong’s face. Pigsy’s heart had gone boom even as it hit him that was the first time Wukong seemed to have lost the mask.

All those little details had built up and up.

All signs pointed to the fact that Wukong was unwell. And his isolation at Flower Fruit Mountain, even with the little visits he made, wasn’t helping. So Pigsy had to take things into his own hands.

Which led to now.

He winced at a knee in his gut. “Stop it. You're only making this worse for yourself.” There was an angry muffled growl from the monkey slung over his shoulder, tied with the diamond snare Nezha had been more than happy to provide. Pigsy rolled his eyes and continued to march down to the boat.

Thankfully, Sandy hadn’t questioned Pigsy’s need to borrow the boat too much. By the time anyone had questions, Wukong would be happily settled in his apartment.