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They are sitting together, watching the stars. Red Son used to come here alone, when the weight of having to free his father became too much, or after that, when being around him was too much, and he needed some time away. Now he is sitting here with MK, their hands intertwined. They look upon the stars, constellations that speak of love and hope and forever.
It’s so much nicer looking at the stars when there is someone right next to him. He has cried to these stars so many times and prayed to join them, he hopes that they are happy that he is smiling to them now.
MK squeezes his hand, and he squeezes back. There are a million words you can say by just holding hands. Red Son lets his head fall onto MK’s shoulder.
“Red.” MK says, it sounds like he’s about to say something important.
“Yes?” He responds. He knows what he is about to say. He can feel it in the air, the stars understand it too. He can already feel his heart begin to race and a smile grow bright on his face.
He hears MK take a deep breath. The anticipation burns him, he wants to hear it like it will kill him if he doesn't. He begins to speak, “I—”
Before any more can be said, Red Son wakes up.
He sits up in his bed and buries his face in his hands. Tears gather in his eyes, and fall upon his palms.
Every night he has a nightmare just like this and every night he wakes up and wishes it was real. He wishes that MK would just finish his sentence and tell him all he has wanted to hear. He wishes and he hopes and he dreams but all he gets are nightmares every time he closes his eyes. But they never last, there are no stars, the darkness speaks of loneliness and sadness and shame.
He feels so much shame. The Noodle Boy does not want him, they’re enemies. Any dreams he should have of him should be defeating him, of dragging his face through the mud and laughing at his bloodied form. But they are not. Any laugh he lets out in his nightmares is soft, uttered into the moonlight.
If his parents were to know about this, they would surely be more disappointed in him than they already are. His mum would probably shake her head and gather him up in her arms, a false comfort, her words would be like daggers, chastising him for such a foolish miscoming. His father would huff and turn away. Words are not worth his time.
He tries to keep his sobs silent. There is fear that they might be heard, and if they are heard, he must explain why they are there. He doesn’t want to do that. He thinks saying it will make it worse, will only make his feelings seem all the more real. Something that is outside the confines of a nightmare.
There is a place he goes when he is upset. That place, of course, is the alcove onlooking the stars. The alcove in his dream. Going there will do nothing to quell his misery, but he has no other comfort, nowhere else to turn.
The only thing that can relieve him of his sorrow is the very thing that keeps causing it. How ironic.
Despite that, he gets up from his bed, slowly, because sadness does much to impede one's ability to do basic things such as move. He does not bother to change out of his pyjamas, he barely feels the cold, and a spring nighttime is far from the temperature that would make him so much as shiver.
So he slips on his slippers and whisks himself away in his fire, to his alcove onlooking the stars.
He appears there in a flash, scaring off a bird that had perched just beyond the alcove, where there was no roof. Smoke dissipates around him as he settles himself down on the stone. He does not look at the stars.They will mock him, he’s sure.
As he sobs, hugging his knees, he feels a peck on his slipper. He turns his head ever so slightly to look. There is a bird looking at him, its head turned to the side curiously. It’s a beautiful bird with brown feathers and a gold coloured belly and face. Its hair spikes up like it has been gelled, and has a red stripe that looks akin to a headband.
“What do you want?” Red Son croaks. He can’t believe he’s speaking to a bird right now.
The bird, of course, does not give an answer. Red sighs and looks at the bird. He’s never seen one like it before, it’s a strange colouration. It steps forward then lets out a chirp. After a moment it flies up to rest on Red’s arm.
“I’m not a perch you know.”
The bird gives a defiant squawk, and it’s almost like it’s sticking its tongue out at him.
Red huffs. “Fine. Just don’t attack me when I decide to move.” The bird isn’t going to listen to that. It’s a bird. It doesn’t understand human speech.
It lets out a chirp of satisfaction and sits down, looking quite proud of itself.
Atleast this bird has given him a distraction, his tears have stopped freely flowing at this point. The strange nature of the bird has lifted his mood a little. This close, its eyes look quite a bit more human than they should.
The bird stares at him. Red begins to divert his gaze, looking up, to the left, to the right, down and back to the bird again. Every time he looks back at it, it is still staring. Does it blink while he’s looking away, or does it just not blink at all? Either way, it’s weird. It’s like it's waiting for something.
“What?” Red questions. He let it perch on him, what else does it want? A treat? “I don’t have any food.” He says, not that would make any sense to a bird.
The bird continues to stare, and then steps forward to peck once at his face, where a tear streak is.
“You— you want me to… talk about… why I was crying?” He guesses.
The bird nods and squawks in confirmation. This was either a very smart bird, or Red was just going crazy and pretending like anything this bird did was some sort of conversation.
“I…I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. You’re just a bird. It could… help. I suppose.” There is no reason as to why Red is as scared as he is to vent his love troubles to a bird. Absolutely none. The bird can’t talk, it can’t tell anyone about it. It’s just a bird.
He takes a deep, shaky breath and speaks. “I keep having this same nightmare. About this boy.” The bird makes a sound very similar to a prying 'ooo.' How does a bird even make a sound like that? “It’s a nightmare. It’s not nice.” Red clarifies, again, for no real reason.
“We’re sitting, here, in this alcove, looking at the stars, and he’s holding my hand. Things change a lot, sometimes it’s day, or we’re on top of the alcove, but we’re always holding hands.”
The bird sounds like it just muttered something under its breath. Red is definitely going crazy by now, because birds certainly cannot do that. He stares at the bird, and the bird looks away, like it had just been caught.
Was it a transformation? Was he actually venting his troubles to a person? Panic rises up in him, that wouldn’t be good.
It can’t be Wukong, because every single one of Wukong’s transformations looks like a peacock, red and blue and greenish and gold. He doesn’t really know of anyone else who can do transformations. Unless… the Noodle Boy is the Monkey King’s successor. So surely he would teach him to do the transformations.
What was previously just panic became pure horror, which must be showing on his face, as the bird moves its head curiously to the side.
“Noodle Boy?” He whispers in pure fear. Maybe the bird will continue looking curiously at him, waiting for him to continue. Maybe it won’t even react to the words. Maybe it’s just a very strange bird.
The bird launches up from his arm flapping away. The area around it is surrounded by gold smoke. Through it Red can just about see the changing of the bird's shape, the retracting of the beak, the wings turning to arms and the talons turning to legs. After a few seconds, from the smoke emerges MK, smiling sheepishly, a bit worriedly.
“Heyy Red Son.” He says awkwardly, one hand rubbing at his neck and the other in a small wave.
Red uncurls from himself to move himself backwards, the shock of very nearly revealing his shameful nightmares to the subject of the nightmares himself very fresh. “What are you doing here?” Red grits.
“Uh well, I just learned how to do the 72 transformations and I wanted to go on a fly, so I did. I got tired so I decided to rest here and then… you arrived. And you were crying, and I wanted to help.” MK moves to join Red on the ground, a small smile still on his face. Almost like an invitation to continue on with what he was speaking about before.
The thought of MK wanting to help him does not make his heart flip. It doesn’t. “Well, thanks for the concern, but I don’t need your help.” This is a lie. He wants to tell MK all about it, so he can get it off his chest, but at the same time, he thinks he’ll die if MK finds out. It’s a difficult situation.
“C’mon, I won’t laugh at you.” MK scoots a little closer, not touching, but close enough.
“Maybe not. But it’d be a bad idea to tell you.”
“I won’t tell anyone else, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“No uh… it’s just that…” Oh to fuck with it, he’s already here. How much face does he have left to lose at this point? “The nightmares are about you.”
Red looks over to him uncertainty, and sees MK’s eyes widen. He doesn’t look angry, or upset, just shocked.
“And these are… nightmares? Even though we are holding hands?”
“Yes.” Red Son confirms. This is the most terrifying experience of his life, he’s decided.
“Is it that bad to even imagine holding hands with me?” If Red didn’t know any better, he’d say MK looks almost, hurt. Or maybe slightly disappointed.
“No! No!” Red rushes, although he’s not sure why. That would be more acceptable he thinks, to have his nightmare be the prospect of him loving MK. Because they're enemies, so surely the idea of loving his enemy would be horrible. But it’s not. “It’s a nightmare because— because every time, you start to say that you love me. And every time the dream ends before you can. That’s why it’s a nightmare. Because you don’t love me back.”
MK’s eyes widen again, and this time, Red thinks he sees the stars in his eyes. The ones that speak of love and hope and forever.
“And that’s—” MK begins to repeat, his voice sounds like his breath had just been taken away. He sounds like he’s just made a great discovery. “That’s why it’s a nightmare? Because I don’t love you back?”
“Yes,” Red nods. He is very close to whipping himself away in a tornado of fire right now. But he can barely bring himself to move. Fear does that to you, sometimes.
“So… If I said I loved you… It would be a dream? It would be good?” MK leans closer to him, looking almost eager, excited.
“I— I suppose so, yes.”
“Red Son,” MK starts, grabbing one of Red’s hands and intertwining it with his own, “I love you.” And there are a million words in just those three. There is forever and there is hope and there is together, eternity, joy, love. All those words lived inside a phrase, three syllables. So simple, so small, but they mean everything, they mean everything and more. MK’s eyes speak all the same words.
“Oh.” Red Son says dumbly. And then he smiles, he smiles like he has never smiled before. He responds. “I love you too.”
It isn't a nightmare, and it isn’t a dream. It's all real. The real MK really loves him and is holding his real hand in this real alcove. He turns to look at the real stars, and he imagines that they are really happy.