Chapter Text
Macaque didn’t always love Sun Wukong.
Well, actually that’s a lie, he didn’t always know he loved the Monkey King.
For a long time, Macaque believed that what he felt was just how friends felt around each other. He believed that the tightness in his chest and the butterflies in his stomach when Wukong was near were normal. He felt this way around Wukong for centuries before he got even the slightest hint of what his true feeling may be.
It wasn’t until Macaque had sunk off in the night disguised as a human to watch a play that he began to understand.
The play was about one-sided love between an average and plain maiden and her handsome, loved-by-all, childhood friend. The play showed the maiden trying and failing to gain his attention, she had nothing to offer him, she wasn’t a beauty and her skills were okay at best. Towards the end the maiden confessed her feelings, describing the things he made her feel, yet he turned her down saying he saw her as nothing more than a sister.
The play ended with the childhood friend leaving their town without even a goodbye and the maiden spending the rest of her life heartbroken and alone.
When Macaque returned back to Flower Fruit Mountian he couldn’t get his mind off of the story. What struck him first was the feelings she told the friend about, how when he was near she choked on her words and found it hard to breathe, how butterflies took flight in her stomach and heat exploded in her cheeks, and how no matter what he did he always seemed to draw her eyes in.
Macaque refused to believe that just because he and the maiden felt the same way toward their respective friends that it could mean he was in love , so he tried to forget it.
Yet, as the days went by he found himself staring at Wukong and imagining them together; and he found himself liking it.
Macaque liked to imagine him confessing to Wukong when he was alone. Now that he’d gotten over his initial anxiety he seriously considered it, it’s not like Wukong would abandon him even if he didn’t feel the same.
Unfortunately in his distracted state, he let his hearing stretch in hopes of hearing Wukong from wherever he is. Instead, he got snippets of the future. He could tell immediately that the voice he was hearing was not his current Wukong, especially since this Wukong was speaking a version of Chinese that did not exist yet.
He listened to what sounded like Wukong telling someone to stay away from him. Wukong was talking about how he was a distrustful scheming bastard. Macaque could barely believe what he was hearing, Wukong had never talked about him so coldly before.
Suddenly all the courage he had been building up was washed away in a tidal wave of despair. Even if Sun somehow loved him back now, how could he in the future if he hated Mac so much?
When Wukong returned from his little adventure a few hours later Macaque had to force himself to look at him.
How could someone so great ever love him back? Despite also being a celestial monkey like Wukong, Macaque was barely stronger than the demon monkeys on the mountain, compared to the King he was nothing. Macaque was just a weak monkey with ugly permanently black dyed fur.
That night and every night after while he and Wukong were cuddling and waiting for sleep to claim them, Macaque would whisper his love to Wukong in languages his King could never and would never know.
For years he'd spill his heart out right in front of the one he loved without ever getting a reply. Sometimes after Wukong fell asleep Macaque would let himself cry and listen to the things the future Wukong had to say about him.