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It's not like he's expecting a roll-out of the welcome wagon, or a song and dance number, or for Tamatoa to welcome him with eight open arms, even--but still, he'd been expecting something a little more civil than a harsh "What are you doing here?"
The crab is glaring at him, upside-down, because he's still stuck on his back. Maui doesn't have a chance to respond before Tamatoa is barreling on. "Come to laugh, haven't you? To gloat? Well, fine! Here I am, Tamatoa, laughingstock of Lalotai! Take it in--tattoo it on yourself, even! It'll last longer!"
"I'm not here to laugh, crab cake," Maui says, holding up a hand. "Well, not much. Actually, I--"
Tamatoa lunges at him with one snapping claw, and Maui easily jumps to the side to avoid it. Tamatoa snarls in frustration.
"Bro," Maui says, "first of all, rude. Second of all, really? You're trying to claw in half the only guy around who might be willing to give you a push?"
"Might be worth it," Tamatoa growls, eyes narrowed to slits. "It's cruel even for you to tease like that. You don't have any intention of helping me, demi-clod, so why don't you just leave me be?"
Another, more halfhearted, snap with a claw. Maui doesn't even have to move fast to dodge it. He settles down just outside Tamatoa's reach, sitting there on the ground with his legs folded criss-cross. Tamatoa gives another, even more pitiful snap before he lets out a huge breath and his claws flop onto the sand.
"Alright," Maui says. "You done?"
Tamatoa's eyes slide over to meet Maui's for a moment before he looks away again, his big mouth twisting. The fact that he doesn't say a word is worrying.
"Aw, come on, crab cake. Don't look at me like that."
"How about I look at you differently after you give me a push?"
"And after I do, will you try to slice me in half again?"
Tamatoa hesitates and rolls the idea around in his head for a split second too long. Maui's pretty sure it would have been imperceptible if he didn't know Tamatoa so well. "Of course I won't," the monster purrs out in his very best seductive tone, his eyes half-lidded.
Maui knows that voice. It's a fraction off from Tamatoa's genuine seductive voice, which is just a little less practiced and smooth and a little more awkward. A subtle difference, but even after centuries Maui still knows it like he knows which way north is.
"That's the same voice you used before you cracked the Kakamora's last leader like an egg. Nice try."
"For the love of--!" Tamatoa's too-friendly demeanor shatters; he snarls and rocks fruitlessly on his back for a moment before giving up once again. It's absolutely pathetic.
"Poor guy," Maui says cheerily. "This is just depressing."
Tamatoa clamps his eyes shut, his eyestalks scrunching and mouth twisting as he tenses for a second, apparently deep in thought, weighing his options, before he lets out a sigh and relaxes. "Fine," he says quietly, one eye shifting to look at Maui. "I suppose I can stop trying to kill you. I mean it. Swear it on my hoard."
Maui grins. Finally, some sincerity. Rare from Tamatoa. Rare to find in Lalotai at all. "Well, there we go," he says brightly, "now hold still!"
"Hold--?"
He darts under Tamatoa's cephalothorax and with a loud cheehoo! transforms briefly into a large whale. The change in size pushes upward hard and quick on Tamatoa's cephalothorax and shell.
"Augh!" The crab screeches and scrambles with his many legs for purchase as he rolls back onto his front with a thump. He looks stunned when he finally hits the ground with all his legs, stock still. Maui transforms back into human shape, gripping his hook tightly in case he needs to transform into, say, a flea to become small enough to escape a flailing claw.
There's no need, in the end.
"I wasn't expecting that," Tamatoa says slowly after a long moment, only his jointed antennules twitching.
"You're welcome."
"No, really, why?! Why did you--" Tamatoa takes a few shuffling steps back, as though he sees Maui as a danger to him. "Why did you do that?"
"...You complaining?"
"Don't you have better things to be doing than--helping me? I did try to eat you, you know! This is borderline suicidal, you being here," Tamatoa says. "Absolutely ridiculous! What do you want from me?!"
Tamatoa looks suspicious and concerned and almost frightened, and something inside Maui twists painfully.
"Lalotai would fall out of balance if you stayed out of commission," Maui blurts out. "There would be mass chaos. Serious trouble here wrecks things up there. Tsunami, storms..."
It's true, but it isn't the whole truth.
"Ah," Tamatoa's lip curls; he relaxes and rolls his eyes. "Protecting the little humans, as usual."
"And," Maui adds, "I kinda missed ya."
Tamatoa freezes, his constantly-moving antennules almost screeching to a halt. "Missed me," he finally says.
"If you make me say it again I'm leaving."
"You missed me."
"C'mon, man, a thousand years on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere alone is enough to make you miss anyone."
"Well, I certainly didn't miss you!"
"Yeah," Maui says, "that's definitely why you kept my hook safe and sound on your actual body for ten centuries even though it doesn't fit your brand at all. There's not a speck of gold on it."
Tamatoa sneers. "Do you not understand the concept of a war trophy?"
"Whatever. Call it what you want." Maui's pretty sure that mini-Maui is laughing at him. He ignores the little spirit and looks up at the wrecked entrance to Tamatoa's cave. "Guess I should leave, then. Looks like you've got some cleaning up to do." He doesn't get more than a few steps away before Tamatoa is blocking his exit with a claw.
"And where do you suppose you're going?! You caused all this damage! The least you could do is help fix it."
"Pretty sure the least I could do was flip you onto your front again, which I did," Maui says with a raised eyebrow, and Tamatoa gives a frustrated clicking noise with his claws.
"Don't make me regret not crushing you," Tamatoa growls, "it's not too late for me to change my mind."
"I'd say I'd love to see you try, but I've already seen that and honestly I wasn't impressed. So in the interest of avoiding another embarrassment for you, I guess I could stick around for, like...a little while."
-
Maui hasn't transformed into something with eight legs in a long time, but a giant spider is exactly what's required to glue bits of Tamatoa's cave back into place, so he gets used to it fast and doesn't stay in it long. It's not the prettiest repair job, but it'll do in the short term, most of the big pieces jammed back in place with a healthy heap of spider silk to keep them put.
He transforms back into human shape and drops back to the ground, dusts his hands off and looks up at the repair job. "Looks good," he praises himself.
Tamatoa gives it a critical once-over. "It'll do," he says on a long-suffering sigh before he scuttles through and into his very, very shiny cave. "For now."
"It'll--" Maui groans and follows him. "You're welcome, by the way."
Tamatoa's gait isn't as smooth as it used to be, not with his leg still missing. He's still disconcertingly quick and agile, especially for a monster so large, but he's definitely a little lopsided. He's already working inside the cave now, smoothing sand and rocks over the giant hole he dug with his claws while searching for the decoy Heart of Te Fiti.
"So, meant to ask," Maui says, "why haven't you regrown your leg?"
Tamatoa pauses briefly in his work, then gives a derisive little snort and keeps going. "I can't grow it back."
"Sure you can! You lost a whole claw once and grew it back, remember? Back when we were--"
"I remember." The monster's voice is sharp, annoyed. "And surely you remember that regenerating a limb involves a full molt."
"Well, yeah. It's been, what, fifteen hundred years since your last one? I'd say you're overdue."
Tamatoa stares at him for a long few seconds before he gives an unhappy bark of laughter. "Hah! You want me to go squishy and vulnerable for three solid months here in the realm of monsters? Yes, nothing could possibly go wrong there," he says bitterly, "it's not as if I'm a high-profile crab here, top of the pecking order, not as if dozens of monsters would like to see me dead, yes, wonderful idea, Maui, absolutely brilliant."
Maui feels as if he's been struck.
Of course Tamatoa hasn't been able to molt. When Maui had torn his leg off during their last knock-down-drag-out fight before he left to take the Heart, he'd thought it nothing more than a painful but ultimately temporary inconvenience; but it's been over a thousand years and the leg is still gone and of course it is.
No wonder Tamatoa's more than a little bitter. Maui would be too.
The crab goes back to diligently patching the hole he made during the search for the fake Heart, arranging various sparkly things to hide egregious claw marks.
"I could...watch over you, if you molt," Maui supplies after a long minute. “Just like old times.”
Tamatoa laughs again, incredulous. "Be real, man, you'd leave the second I got my shell off. No thank you."
"You trust me that little?"
"I trust you even less than you can imagine."
Maui was expecting that but it still stings. "You trusted me when we were kids."
"We aren't kids anymore."
Maui decides to let it go.
"No kidding," he says instead, lightly. "You've grown a little since then."
Tamatoa gives a little laugh at the understatement and Maui smiles. He's almost forgotten what Tamatoa's real laugh sounded like. Almost.
Finally the crab seems happy with his work patching up his home and he steps back, turns again to face Maui and settles down, neatly folding his legs beneath himself. "Now you may go," he says imperiously, "and count yourself lucky you didn't find yourself skewered by one of my extremely powerful and elegant legs."
-
Maui shows back up a week or so later but this time he has ammunition.
"A peace offering," he says, and holds out an extremely sparkly rock of some sort that he found on some island or other. It's an orangey yellow and Maui figures maybe it's citrine, or topaz, or amber, or... actually, he doesn't know a single thing about rocks, and it could be anything, but it's definitely nice to look at.
Tamatoa eyes the rock closely; he opens his mouth and looks like he wants to say take your rock and cram it, but apparently the shine wins out; he gives a defeated sigh. "Fine. Put it somewhere."
Cheehoo! Maui grins and scrambles up onto Tamatoa's shell. He nestles the rock between a golden crown and an ornate mother-of-pearl carving. "Nice," he says, admiring the arrangement for a moment before he settles down among some tumbled-smooth pieces of gold.
"Hey!" Tamatoa's eyes swivel to look back at Maui. "Who told you you could just lie down on my shell like that?!"
"I'm Maui, I don't need permission for things," Maui teases.
Tamatoa growls and with a quick movement he's bounced Maui into the air; instinctively Maui swings his hook and feels around for his hawk form; he finds it easily, gets ready to summon it on the downswing, and--
The downswing doesn't come; Tamatoa catches him with a claw before he reaches the top of the bounce's arc and lowers him safely to the ground. Tamatoa must see Maui's shock; a smug little grin plays across his face.
"That was rude," Maui says when Tamatoa lets him go. "That was extremely rude. You could have just asked me to move."
"You wouldn't have."
"No, I wouldn't have! But you could have asked!"
"I could have, but I didn't," he says airily. "Now. What are you doing here in the realm of monsters, bringing me pretties, hm? Don't you have a little girl you should be busy being a nuisance to?" A tiny pause. "How is she, anyway?"
"Okay, first of all, her name is Moana, and secondly, why do you care how she is? You tried to eat her."
"I tried to eat you too, that hardly means anything," Tamatoa says with a wave of his claw. "Where is she?"
"She's doing the whole Chief-ing thing. Leading her people, voyaging, trying to keep her chicken alive, yadda yadda. Busy lady."
He's so proud of her that he tries not to think about it too hard because it makes him feel like he might actually cry, and that's pathetic. He drops in on her sometimes but she really is always occupied and she doesn't need him hanging around and keeping her attention away from her people.
"Of course." Tamatoa's intelligent eyes glint, his voice taking on a sardonic purr. "Too busy to pay any attention to little old you, I suppose."
Maui's blood runs cold for a split second; he tenses, automatically defensive. This isn't going anywhere good. "Hey, now--"
"Poor little Maui," the monster coos, a cruel mockery of a comforting tone; his eyes narrow and he rests his chin on his claws as he smirks. "You must be very lonely if you're coming to your ex."
Ten different denials spring to Maui's mind and he opens his mouth to issue one of them at random and then he falls short.
"You know what? Yeah," he ends up blurting out instead, and once he starts talking it's as if a dam breaks inside his chest and he can't stop. "I spent a thousand years on an island the size of a clam shell. A thousand years! Everybody, every single person I was ever anywhere near friendly with has been dead. For centuries." He gestures vaguely at the mountain of crab before him. "Every person except you. So yeah, laugh it up, big guy! I'm lonely!"
Tamatoa looks struck speechless, eyes wide and focused on him.
"Well," the monster says after a long moment. "Took the wind right out of my sails, there."
Maui can feel his raised hackles lowering.
"You weren't supposed to agree," Tamatoa complains more, "you were supposed to argue with me, and then I was supposed to win the battle of wits as I always do, and--it's no fun if you just agree with me right off the bat."
Something's changed, though, in the crab's body language, or the way he's looking at Maui, maybe--softer, Maui thinks, less hostile, a little less tense. It feels like a ghost of thousands of years ago, when they were kids, young and stupid and inseparable. Maui shoves those memories away before they can coalesce properly, before they can hurt.
"You gonna stop giving me shit about coming around to see you?"
"Yeah," Tamatoa says, "I'm benevolent like that."
-
It's easier to just transform into hawk form to eat fish than it is to actually cook it. If Maui were around humans, he'd definitely properly clean and cook the fish Tamatoa just offered him, because humans tend to be weirded out when you eat a fish whole, go figure--but Tamatoa doesn't care, and whole raw fish taste great when you’re a hawk.
"Do you feel particularly comfortable in one form over another?" Tamatoa asks idly, watching as Maui cleans his beak off on a rock and preens some feathers back into place.
He transforms into human form with a lightning crackle. "I used to," he says. "Now, not so much. Human form is... convenient, I guess." He holds up his hands, wiggles his thumbs. "Opposable. Useful."
"Show-off," Tamatoa huffs.
-
"You don't have to leave," Tamatoa says the fifth time Maui visits him.
It's getting late and Maui knows that leaving Lalotai at night is harder than during the day; he's readying to go for the evening back to his canoe when Tamatoa speaks. "What?"
"Look, it's the full moon, it's going to be crawling with all sorts of nasty types out there." Tamatoa shifts from side to side, legs shuffling just a little. "You'd be an idiot to try and make your way back up right now. There'll be monsters blocking the geysers."
Maui grins. "Are you inviting me to sleep over?"
"I changed my mind, piss off."
"No, no! I'm totally sleeping over, too late, you already offered, no takebacks!"
"No takebacks--are you twelve?"
He scrambles up onto Tamatoa's shell and searches for somewhere to settle down. He may have to transform into something smaller in order to find a comfortable place to curl up. "Hey," Tamatoa warns, "what did I tell you about climbing all over my shell?"
"You gonna bounce me off after inviting me to sleep over?! That's just rude."
Tamatoa lets out a ragged sigh. "There's some smooth gold panels on my left side," he says, as if long-suffering, "try not to drool on them."
Sure enough. Still warmed from being in the sun all day and smooth as can be, large tumbled pieces of gold that almost feel soft when Maui slips into the form of a cat and settles there.
-
"C'mon, crab cake, it's been centuries."
"I'm not molting."
"You need your leg back!"
"I'm getting along perfectly fine without it."
"You're growing too big for your shell, I know you have to be."
“My shell fits me fine.”
“Tamatoa, really, just—“
Tamatoa shakes his head, antennae twitching. "Absolutely not."
"Do you really think I'd just leave you to die?"
"Yeah," Tamatoa says after pretending to think about it for a second.
Maui groans, runs a hand over his face. "You're ridiculous. As if I'd kill my oldest friend."
"We're not—“
"Oh, yes we are. Why else would I be hanging around? Sleeping over? Bringing you stuff? Man, I just want you to have your leg back."
"Because you feel so bad about tearing it off."
"Well, I didn't at the time because you were being a jerk, but knowing that after all this time it's still not grown back--"
"I wasn't being a jerk, we'd planned to share the stupid Heart, you'd planned to give it to me! And then you change your mind and give it to the humans--"
"That hadn't been the pl--"
"I was heartbroken, Maui! It was a bad breakup!"
"We weren't dating!"
"Right," Tamatoa sneers, "because all the sex we were having was normal friend activity--"
"Wait--"
"--And all the tender kisses and promises and--"
"All right, so we were dating a little! You're still the one that broke up with me over the dumb Heart!"
"It wasn't about the Heart, moron! It was about you always seeking adulation from all the little humans because I wasn't enough for you!"
"Oh, boo hoo! I didn't exactly feel loved when you tried to kill me over it!"
A long pause. Tamatoa spends a moment fastidiously grooming his antennules.
"So I was in a bad place, mentally," he finally huffs.
"You could have tried yoga."
"You're doing a terrible job of convincing me to molt."
Maui takes a very deep breath and centers himself, mentally.
"I just think you should stop being stubborn and grow your stupid leg back."
"I'm not molting. And that's that."
Maui doesn't like losing. He paces back and forth for a few seconds, thinking furiously.
"Okay," he finally says, "so you need assurance that I won't leave you high and dry. Or low and wet, I guess. How about I give you my hook as collateral?"
Tamatoa's constantly twitching antennules freeze in place. "What?"
"Well, I can't run off if you have my hook. You dig a big hole when you molt, right? Just put my hook down there before you climb in."
"You're joking," Tamatoa says flatly.
"I'm really not." Maui shrugs. "Think about it, buddy. I'm serious."
-
When he returns the next afternoon, there's a giant hole in the middle of Tamatoa's cave, and two eye stalks poking up out of it.
Maui blinks and then gives a shocked, overjoyed laugh. "Are you really gonna do this?! Thank the gods and all their friends!"
Tamatoa's face pokes up from the hole as well. "You're not going to back out of watching me, are you? This is your last chance for that," he says, dubiously.
"Nah, nah, I'm in it for the long haul!" Maui bounces on the balls of his feet, still grinning. "You need any help? Here, my hook!" He holds it out to Tamatoa handle first.
"I don't want that piece of garbage,” Tamatoa sniffs. "Like you said, it's not my brand. Besides, you might need it, if something nasty comes along."
He doesn't want it? He trusts Maui even without the hook as collateral? He trusts Maui, with his life. Something in Maui's skull brightens, warms; they've obviously taken a big step toward repairing what was broken between them so many centuries ago. "You're right, it'll be handy to have this around if I have to protect you," he says. "Well, whenever you're ready, crab cake!"
"This isn't exactly a quick process, you haven't forgotten that, have you?" Tamatoa props his claws on the edge of the burrow he's dug, rests his head atop them. "Shedding an entire exoskeleton isn't instant."
"Yeah, I know, I remember!" Maui firmly pats Tamatoa's claw. "Now sit back, relax, and think molt-y thoughts."
"I wonder how much I'll grow this time," Tamatoa muses, "hopefully not much, I'd hate to have to scout for new real estate. The market down here is a real killer."
Maui snickers. "I bet it's..."
"Don't."
"...monstrous!"
"Augh!" Tamatoa groans loudly at the horrific pun, and Maui just cackles louder, victorious. "And with that," Tamatoa says, "I'll be going! Goodbye, don't follow me!"
He retreats down into his burrow.
"Hey!" Maui calls. "Wait a second!"
Four antennae poke up from the hole. "Yes, I'm very busy, make it snappy, babe."
"I, uh..." He runs a hand through his hair, scratches the back of his head. "I just wanted to say, uh..." Say what? Thanks for trusting me? I won't leave you? "See you on the flipside," he finally says, lamely.
There's a pause, and then one of those jerky antennules darts out to pat Maui awkwardly on the head before they disappear beneath the ground and Tamatoa slips from view. Maui looks into the burrow; there's only shifting sand and darkness visible.
Maui lets out a sigh and settles down on the sand outside the burrow. It's going to be a long three months.
-
"Can I bring you anything?" Maui calls down into the hole the next morning.
He hears a shuffling noise. "No," Tamatoa's voice comes up in return, muffled and strained.
"I could get you some fish?" Maui prompts.
"I can't eat it right now," Tamatoa grits out.
"Are you okay?"
"I'm wonderful." Tamatoa's voice is weak and labored and Maui hates it. He knows how this goes, though; this is the most painful part of a molt, for Tamatoa. He has to crack open his carapace, and he does that by building up hydrostatic pressure inside of his own exoskeleton to burst it open from the inside. The more pressure builds, the more painful it is, but the moment the carapace actually breaks, pressure is released and the pain goes away.
Tamatoa's a good bit bigger now than he was for his last molt, though, and he's put off this one for so long that his current exoskeleton is going to be thicker, tougher; it will take much more pressure to break it than last time. The pain is going to get much worse before it gets better, Maui fears.
He wishes there was something he could do to help, but there's not. Still he calls down to the crab. "Let me know if you need anything!"
-
It's two days later before Maui hears anything from Tamatoa, and when he does, it's a tiny, subdued "Maui, man?"
"Yes?" Maui scrambles over to the entrance to Tamatoa's burrow. The crab's antennae and antennules are sticking out, as well as his eyes; they rest, tiredly, on the sand outside the hole. It's awful. "What do you need, buddy?"
Tamatoa's eyes close. "I don't know," the crab rasps. "Talk to me."
"About what?"
"Anything."
He needs to be distracted from the pain, Maui realizes. Gods, it must be very bad if proud, independent Tamatoa is asking him for help. Maui's own heart twists with painful empathy. If Tamatoa needs to be distracted, Maui can do that. He's good at storytelling.
"Okay, so Moana, for some reason she decided to bring her pet chicken along on her voyage across the sea. And this chicken is the dumbest creature to ever live. Instead of a brain there's just feathers and sand in there. Anyway--"
Tamatoa listens as Maui tells the story of how he and Moana fought the Kakamora, his eyes still closed. The only thing that shows he's still alive is his breathing. Maui goes on, animatedly relaying the events, trying to bring it to life with his words to be as distracting as possible to the poor crab.
"Wait," Tamatoa finally interrupts him, giving a weak, wheezy laugh, "the bird ate the Heart of Te Fiti?"
"Swallowed it, straight down the hatch," Maui confirms, and Tamatoa laughs again, faintly. "So then of course the Kakamora grab him, and Moana, she goes nuts..."
He continues the story and when he gets to the end--the defeat of the Kakamora and the recovery of the Heart, finishing off with the blow dart to Maui's butt--Tamatoa's laughing again, quietly.
"Thanks," he manages. "I think... maybe I can... sleep through this, now. I'm going to try."
"Okay, big guy," Maui says. "Let me know if there's anything I can do."
Tamatoa makes an affirmative noise then pulls his eyes and antennae back into the burrow and out of sight once more.
It is getting late. Maui can't see any more rays of moonlight through the skylight in the roof of Tamatoa's cave, no more fish schooling in the water above. Everything is quiet and peaceful. Maui yawns and settles down on the soft sand in front of Tamatoa's burrow. He'll wake up immediately if anything with bad intentions comes near, Mini-Maui will make sure of that.
A demigod, and Maui is still powerless to help in any real way.
All he can do is close his eyes and pray to gods older than him, beg them for help. Pray for them to ease his oldest friend's pain.
-
A harsh crack ricochets off the walls of the cave and Maui is awake in a terrifying instant, white-knuckling his hook and springing to his feet.
Tamatoa. That was the noise. His exoskeleton finally split. Maui's heart rate begins to slow and he lets out a relieved breath. Thank the gods above.
He calls down into the burrow. "You feeling better?"
"Much!" Tamatoa calls back, sounding positively giddy, though tired. "I can finally move!" He surfaces, poking his head and a claw above the edge of the pit, nudges Maui with an antennule. "You look miserable."
"Nah, I'm fine."
"You've been worried about me!" He pokes Maui a little harder. "Hah!"
"Not on your life," Maui lies.
Tamatoa chuckles. "Now I can finally get out of this thing. Might need a bit of help later on, but--"
"Maybe take a few hours to rest up and recuperate first? It's been a bad few days."
"I think I'll have a nice sleep without any pain, hah! I always forget how nice it is not to be hurting."
"Don't we all, b--"
Tamatoa pokes him again, eyes flicking toward the entrance of the cave. "Heads up, babe."
Maui looks over his shoulder.
At least six pairs of glowing eyes are watching him from the darkness outside.
Obviously Maui isn’t the only being in Lalotai to have heard the terrible noise of Tamatoa’s exoskeleton cracking open. Limbs and claws creep from the darkness. Maui gets the feeling that they aren’t here out of concern.
“Hey, fellas,” Maui says casually, cracks his knuckles, “you lookin’ for someone?”
The creatures hiss and snarl and leap toward him, masses of fur and scale and teeth. Maui grins and within half an instant he’s got plenty of claw and tooth of his own.
-
“I told you that would happen,” Tamatoa says when Maui’s done, every monster now having fled to lick their extensive wounds. His claws and head poke up from the burrow so he can eye Maui critically.
Maui shifts back into human form and rolls his shoulders. “Please, that was nothing.”
“Nothing? I haven’t seen you wear sabertooth since I was the size of one.”
“Well, it was a good excuse to haul it out of storage.”
“You should have killed them, you know,” Tamatoa says idly. “Now all of Lalotai will know you’re here. This story will get around.”
“Let it,” Maui says. “They wanna fight? I’ll fight. I’ll be bigger next time.”
“You almost sound excited for that.”
“When have I ever been afraid of a few monsters?”
“It might not be just a few, you arrogant little man. How big you are won’t matter if a real mob comes for you; there’s still just one Maui and a whole lot of monsters.”
"You of all people should know that one Maui is a lot to handle."
"Me of all people," Tamatoa echoes, "I handled you just fine, babe."
"Are you flirting with me, Tamatoa?"
"What would you do about it if I was?"
"Don't you have a molt to do?"
Tamatoa snickers and withdraws into his nest again.
-
The next few weeks are quiet. Maui knows that Tamatoa is in that pit shedding his exoskeleton, and knows that Tamatoa will be nearly immobile for several weeks, unable to move without a shell firm enough to support him.
Maui minds his own business; sings to himself and makes sand sculptures and tidies up around the cave. Tests out different forms he hasn't taken on recently; a flea, a wolf, a pelican.
Word's gotten around that he's guarding Tamatoa. He had a few more waves of monsters to fight off, but now that's mostly slowed down. It's lonely.
He's used to spending time on his own, and used to keeping himself entertained. He got used to it during his thousand years on that tiny, tiny island.
Once or twice he takes on a form not dissimilar to Tamatoa's, something he'd only done a few times before, when they were both young.
It's a fun form to take on, strong and powerful. A lot of legs to keep track of, but fun.
-
"Maui?"
Maui snaps awake and drops into human form instantly, his heart pounding. "Tamatoa!" He scrambles into a sitting position and peers into the dark burrow. "You okay?"
Twitching antennules poke up out of the hole. "I'm starving," comes the bitter moan from below.
"Got it. How do you open up the vortex up there?"
"You just do it," Tamatoa says, grumpily, like it's somehow self-explanatory.
Maui groans. "Sure. Okay. I'll figure it out."
-
He eventually gets the vortex working by rending a hole in it with his hook every time he wants to open it. It closes on its own, thankfully.
-
Tamatoa spends a lot of the next few weeks sleeping; when he's not sleeping, he's devouring fish by the boatload, bones and all. Makes sense; he has a lot of chitin to replace. Normally a crab eats their old exoskeleton to reabsorb some of that chitin; obviously, that's not an option for Tamatoa. Even if he was willing to eat all his decorations, it would be a little too... crunchy.
On the first day he has enough strength to haul himself up over the side of his burrow, Maui is taking a catnap; he wakes instantly when Tamatoa pokes him with an antennule, barely having dozed off in the first place. "Tamatoa! How're you feeling?"
"Good," the monster replies, a tired smile on his toothy face. Maui looks him over. He's a fresh pink color, uniform across his body. His dark purple patterning will come out as his shell strengthens, but for now it's soft and thin and pink.
"You look amazing," Maui says, truthfully, and Tamatoa snorts.
"Amazingly dreadful, maybe," he huffs, "I'm going to need help re-affixing my collection, you know. It's going to be a monumental task."
"It always was, crab cake. You know I'll help."
Tamatoa's eyes soften. He rests his head on the edge of the burrow, eyes level with Maui's. "Yeah," he agrees. "Alright."
Maui idly reaches out for one of Tamatoa's antennules, measures it against his hand. "Look at that. You definitely went up a size."
"It's not too dramatic, is it?"
"Nah."
The tip of the antennule traces from the base of Maui's palm to the end of his middle finger. Tamatoa has always had shocking dexterity with all of his body, really, but the gentleness and precision with which he can move his antennules is always a little striking to Maui.
"How big was I?" Tamatoa asks. "When we met?"
Maui chuckles. "As if you don't remember."
"Maybe I'm testing to see if you remember."
"You were a little smaller than me."
"Ah, yes. I rescued you from that swarm of giant sand fleas."
"Rescued is a strong word, I--"
"And you fell for me instantly," Tamatoa sighs, "and begged me to travel with you."
"No, no, I'm pretty sure it was the other way around--"
"And you gave me something pretty for my shell. And I thought, might as well."
"We mutually decided to search for treasure together. There was no begging."
Tamatoa's eyes sparkle like obsidian in the light from the vortex above. "Suit yourself, babe." A pause. "Do you remember the boat you built? After my first molt?"
Tamatoa had grown so much during that first molt that it had made Maui realize that if they were going to keep traveling together, they would need more than a canoe. He built a boat, something big enough to contain Tamatoa for several more molts at least. An investment in their future together.
They'd carved their names into the hull.
Eventually, of course, Tamatoa got simply too large to contain in any boat.
Tamatoa settled down here in Lalotai, and Maui spent a lot of time with him, at first. They did some adventuring here, scouring the land of monsters for treasure, feared and respected by everything fanged and clawed.
Tamatoa would keep watch. Maui would sleep under his cephalothorax, safe, warm.
But Maui couldn't stay in Lalotai all the time. He had humanity to watch over, godly feats to perform.
Over time he came around less and less, taking for granted that Tamatoa would be there waiting for him when he was done topside.
"I remember everything, Tamatoa."
"Yeah." His voice is quiet. Dreamy with remembrance. "So do I."
"Would you do anything differently? Looking back on... everything?"
A pause.
"A few things," Tamatoa says, finally. "Especially near the end."
Maui's heart pounds.
"How about you? Would you do anything differently?" Tamatoa asks.
"I... yeah," he replies, once he finds his voice. "A few things. Especially near the end."
It's as much apology as either of their egos will allow.
Tamatoa's antennule nudges into Maui's hand again.
-
"Maui? Maui, man?"
Tamatoa sounds terrified and Maui scrambles to the edge of the sand nest like his lavalava is on fire. "I'm here! Are you okay?"
"I--I can't move my last two pairs of legs!" Tamatoa hauls himself up over the edge of the pit, his mismatched eyes wild with panic. "I don't know what's wrong!"
Fear lances through Maui's chest. "Okay. Okay, don't freak out, let's--"
"Don't freak out?! Easy for you to say when it's not your limbs at stake! I can't move my legs, Maui!"
"Alright, fair enough. Let me take a look, okay?"
"How are you going to look? I'm still half buried!"
"Well, you're going to have to come out of there."
"Come out of my burrow?!"
"Well, your ears still work."
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut--"
"Sorry. Sorry."
"If you want me out of here you're going to have to give me a hand."
"All right. You got it."
Maui's hook swings and he seizes the form of Tamatoa--or another crab roughly his size. He grasps Tamatoa with strong claws and hauls on him.
"Hey! Gently!" Tamatoa yelps, scrabbling at the sand with the legs he has that are still functional.
When he's out of the burrow, Maui looks him over. He's still so pink. "Alright," he says. "Onto your back so I can take a look."
"It's a little cramped in here with two huge crabs, Maui."
"Ah. Right." Maui snaps back into human form. "Now. Onto your back."
Tamatoa grumbles but obeys, carefully maneuvering himself into position and rocking back onto his shell. Now that he's there, it's near impossible for him to get up again on his own--the same position Maui found him in. Yet another show of trust from Tamatoa, and he didn't even throw a fit about it.
"So. Fourth and fifth sets, right?" Maui clambers up onto Tamatoa's underside.
"Yes. They're frozen solid."
"Alright."
The fourth set, the last visible set, is curled up tight. Maui approaches and runs his hands over the pink carapace.
Tamatoa wheezes.
"You okay?" Maui asks.
"Ticklish," Tamatoa mumbles.
"Heh. Sorry."
The chitin of his exoskeleton has begun to harden and turn purple here, especially at the joints of the legs. Maui investigates, carefully feeling along the seam where plates should glide alongside each other.
"I think your joints are trying to fuse." Maui's mouth twists. "I think we should do a little physical therapy to get them moving again."
"You're going to crack the fused joints apart?" Tamatoa sounds terrified and like he's trying to hide it.
"No, I don't think they're fused yet, they're just--sticky. Okay?"
"Do whatever you need to do."
"Okay." Maui shimmies under where one of the legs is curled, positions himself to push upward on the leg and force it to move. "Okay, on three."
"Three," Tamatoa agrees.
Maui counts down and pushes upward, uncurling the leg by force. There's a small noise as the stuck chitin comes apart, and Tamatoa groans, curling and uncurling the joint.
"Ugh," he says. "That sounded awful."
"Did it hurt?"
"Not badly."
"Alright. Next joint?"
"On your mark."
Maui unsticks all the joints on the one leg and then moves onto the other one in the pair, unsticking each of them in turn.
"I've never had a problem like this before." Tamatoa flexes both legs over and over again, continuing to loosen them up.
"Maybe it's because you hadn't molted in so long."
"Maybe."
A pause.
"Didn't you say, uh, your fifth pair couldn't move either?"
Tamatoa swallows. "Ah. Yes."
Tamatoa's fifth pair of legs is usually kept hidden, tucked away within his carapace. These legs are used to groom his gills, among... other uses. During his molt, he'd apparently let them out to better shed their shells and regenerate new ones. These legs are small and slender and right now they are curled up at the base of Tamatoa's tail.
"Can I, uh... help out?" Maui asks.
"It would be, ah. Appreciated," the reply comes.
These legs are only maybe as tall as Maui is, and maybe as big around as his bicep. Absolutely tiny in comparison to the rest of Tamatoa. Maui works from the claw down.
Dactylus, propodus, carpus.
The chitin is softer here, just a little malleable under Maui's hands. Each joint unsticks and Tamatoa lets Maui work each one carefully back and forth.
Tamatoa is silent, holding his breath.
Merus. Ischium.
Maui can feel his heart pounding. Finally Maui is down to the basis, the point where the leg meets Tamatoa's body, dangerously close to--well. Close to parts he hasn't been around in over a thousand years.
He isn't about to chicken out now. Tamatoa needs his help, and he's gonna deliver.
The second he touches the coxa, the very base of the fifth leg, Tamatoa makes a noise like a strangled cat.
Maui's hands still. "You okay?"
"Fine," Tamatoa replies, "carry on."
He nods and goes back to his task, working the joint in tiny increments, rubbing the soft chitin with his thumbs to loosen up the--
Tamatoa makes another sound like he's hurt, and Maui stops again. "Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yes. Positive."
"Because I can stop if--"
"Maui. I'm not in pain."
Maui's eyes widen and he looks up across the underside of Tamatoa to meet his eyes. "Oh," he says, dumbly. "I, uh. Thought I was avoiding the... sensitive parts."
"You are, but--Maui, man. I haven't been touched there in centuries, and I just molted. The whole pair is on fire, man."
"I'm s--"
"Don't you apologize for something that feels this good. I think I can take the physical therapy from here if you--don't want to keep going." Tamatoa swallows and visibly searches in himself for some of his usual bravado and swagger. "So either finish the job and we'll talk about it in the morning, or hop off, help me get upright, and we'll never talk about it. Your call."
Tamatoa's pupils are wide, his eyes nervous, his antennules twitching uncontrollably.
He hasn't been touched in so long.
He's so huge, vulnerable on his back, mottled pink and purple; he's got his leg back, the one Maui tore off is back, he's healthy and whole, and--and he's trusting Maui with this, to help him restore mobility in his legs.
And now trusting him with a little more.
He and Maui used to touch each other all time; how could they resist? They were both so captivatingly, entrancingly alien to one another--one with bones on the inside, one with bones on the outside. They reveled in their differences. Learned how to make each other feel good. Solved one another like puzzles.
Of course most coconut crabs don't have faces and mouths and teeth like Tamatoa; most crabs can't speak, aren't a fraction as smart as Tamatoa is. Tamatoa is something wild and magical and monstrous and other. And yet, Tamatoa hasn't seemed alien to Maui for a long, long time.
In fact, right now he seems nothing but beautifully familiar. Something Maui knows like the tattoos on his skin. Something he's coming home to after too long away.
Maui smooths his hand over that final joint again, the coxa, firmly dragging his palm up it. Tamatoa shivers, Maui can feel it through his whole body from where Maui's perched atop him. "Easy, crab cake," he teases. "Don't shake me off, now."
"You'll have to do better than that to make me shake you off," the monster challenges, but his pupils are blown so wide they almost match in size.
"Alright," Maui says, and dips his fingertips lower, right at the base where leg meets thorax, where--
"Ah!"
Maui smirks as he pets over the opening he finds, that tiny gonopore. Well, tiny in comparison to the rest of Tamatoa. Before, when they first started fooling around, he could barely fit anything in there at all--now he could probably dip all four fingertips inside at once, once it opened.
Not that he does, yet. He traces the rim, feeling Tamatoa's breath quicken. "I think you've got your mobility back in this leg," he says, casually, "want me to go to the other, or--"
"Maui," Tamatoa says, labored, "it's been one thousand years."
"So you're saying you missed me too?"
"I wouldn't go that far."
"Oh, well, in that case..."
Maui draws his hand back, and Tamatoa nearly shrieks. "Yes! I missed you! Of course I missed you, I missed you every day, that's why I kept your damned hook all those decades, because if I had it then I knew one day you would have to come back to me!"
The words seem to hang there heavy like fog, but Tamatoa can't un-say them.
Something inside Maui warms intensely. "And when I did come back to you, you tried to kill me," he teases gently, stroking up the leg with one hand, staying at the base with the other. He presses in harder with the heel of his palm; Tamatoa tries not to kick with his leg, Maui can feel it quivering as the gonopore beneath his hand begins to open up.
"We've a-already been through this. My feelings regarding you are complicated," the crab says, weakly. His breathing is getting more uneven as Maui strokes him, grinds his hand down against him. "I'm allowed to have c-complicated feelings about things."
"Yeah," Maui murmurs, slipping his fingers just inside that opening and rubbing in steady, long motions, "I still love you, too."
And maybe it's because he hasn't been touched in a thousand years, or maybe it's the emotional keelhauling of it all, or maybe both; but that's all it takes for Tamatoa. He lets free an ungodly noise, both moaning with his monstrous humanoid voice and chittering low in his throat the way normal coconut crabs do. He shakes and shakes like an earthquake under Maui, sticky packets spilling from both coxal openings. Maui instinctively knows what Tamatoa needs now; he scrambles up Tamatoa's underside toward his face and is immediately met with quivering antennules, reaching out and stroking Maui all over as Maui returns the gesture with his hands--touching Tamatoa's face, his eye stalks, his mouth, the places he would touch with his own antennules if he shared Tamatoa's species.
Tamatoa breathes hard, antennules slowing down as he catches his breath and his eyes refocus on Maui's face. "C'mere, mini-god," he purrs, a huge claw coming up to nudge Maui closer. Antennules slide under his lavalava and then Maui finds himself held down gently by one claw and splayed back across the other as Tamatoa's huge clever tongue follows the path his antennules forged.
It isn't a long time, bucking helplessly against a tongue as big as he is as soft antennules stroke him all over. It's overwhelming, it's wonderful, it's exactly what he hasn't had in so, so long--
Gods, he's needed this as badly as Tamatoa did; not the physical release, but the closeness, the trust, the companionship with someone he's shared so much of his life with.
When he comes, it leaves him as boneless as Tamatoa was freshly molted.
The crab purrs smugly, manipulates Maui as easy as a rag doll to nestle up against his face. "Well, that wasn't very indicative of your godlike stamina," Tamatoa teases him, voice soft.
"Mhhh," Maui protests, "whatever. It's been a thousand years. Cut me some slack."
Tamatoa chuckles, nuzzles his huge cheek against Maui, pets him slowly with his antennules.
Maui will have to get up soon and unstick the other leg in his last pair. Then he'll have to help Tamatoa off his back. The afterglow will be over, and they'll be back in reality.
But not yet.
Not yet.
-
Things change in some ways. In some ways they don't.
Tamatoa doesn't need any more physical therapy; he keeps moving his limbs on his own now that they're unstuck.
However, he invites Maui to examine them, frequently, especially the last pair he had such trouble with. "Just in case," he says.
Maui is more than pleased to oblige.
They're having fun. Their relationship has shifted yet again, another broken piece repaired. They talk late into the nights, they cuddle. Maui feels alive in a way he hasn't in a long time.
Slowly Tamatoa's new exoskeleton hardens.
It's late evening now, and Maui hums, reaches out to touch Tamatoa's claw. "Your glowing markings are coming back," he says, tracing a stripe.
"Are they?"
"Yeah. Super faint right now, but they're coming back. I can see it."
"Same pattern as before?"
"Hard to tell yet."
Tamatoa nods. There's a pause before he speaks. "So," he says, slowly. "After I'm all hardened up and back in fighting shape. Is that it, then? You'll be back to... whatever it is a demigod does, and I'll be here?"
Maui follows the faint blue stripe with his fingertips. "I hadn't thought about it." He sighs. "I hadn't wanted to. To be honest, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing. I was gone a thousand years and now I'm back in action, and I..." Maui shrugs his shoulders. "I guess I get to decide for myself what the next thousand years look like."
"Mm. Any ideas?"
"You're the main one. I want you around. I don't want to mess things up with you again, crab cake."
"That's a good start." Tamatoa's mismatched eyes glitter and shine in the moonlight from the portal above.
"What if we started adventuring again?"
Tamatoa snorts. "Be real, man."
Maui scrambles into a sitting position, puts both hands on Tamatoa's claw. "Wait, no, we really could. Sure, maybe not topside, but Lalotai is huge. We could wander for centuries. I'm sure a lot has changed since we were last exploring here together. Maui and Tamatoa, back in action!"
The crab smiles for a second, then it melts away. "As romantic a thought as it is... you're too in love with the humans to leave them for so long again. Besides, don't they need your expert guidance?"
"No," Maui says, "they don't. They got along mostly just fine for a thousand years while I sat around on a deserted island."
"Well--"
"And that's fine. That's good! It means they're doing great all on their own."
"Maui."
"I don't need them to need me. Not anymore. I'll visit Moana from time to time, but she doesn't need me. And that's good."
Tamatoa takes an unsteady breath. "You don't belong in the land of monsters, man. You know that."
"I don't think I belong anywhere. I wanna chart my own path." Maui raises a brow. "What do you say, crab cake? For old times' sake?"
-
They're not able to remove the gems and gold and treasures from Tamatoa's old, shed carapace without damaging them. The carapace had grown thick up and around the shinies, partially embedding them over the centuries.
"It's no good," Tamatoa finally says, after several hours of trying just to get one favorite golden trinket free. "It'd take ages to get all this loose. If any of it stays intact by the time we get it off there."
Maui flops back onto his haunches. "I think you're right."
"That's a first."
Maui lamely slaps at his claw. "Well, I guess you can use it as a decoration here in your den."
"But now I'm practically naked," Tamatoa moans. "You can't just leave me like this."
"Nah, you're not naked anymore, you grew a new exoskeleton."
"I said practically, you pedantic little barnacle."
Maui chuckles. "Alright. How do we get you clothed again?"
Tamatoa hums. "I was thinking. About your proposal from earlier regarding... further adventures."
"Yeah?" Maui's heart does somersaults in his chest. "And?"
"Since you're the one who bullied me into molting and losing all my pretties, I think it's only fair that you be the one to accompany me as I search for replacements."
Maui feels as light and bouncy as if he'd transformed into a butterfly. "I could be talked into that," he says, "but--I mean--Lalotai isn't exactly known for a preponderance of gold. Most of your shinies came from topside, remember?"
"We'll just have to go topside."
"Uh," Maui says, "not to be a buzz kill, but you're a little big for that. Unless we can make you float somehow and stick a sail on you."
Tamatoa snorts. "We'll have to figure out a way to shrink me first, obviously." He pauses, looks Maui over. "Your hook can change your size. I just need a little trinket like that to assist me too. No shapeshifting--I like being me. Just a little something to modify my size."
"I--okay," Maui says, slowly, "sure. Just a little something. So what's the plan on how to obtain an artifact crafted by the gods themselves specifically for you?"
"It can't be too hard if you got one."
"Ha, ha. Very funny. Seriously, though, wh--"
"We'll have to do something down here in Lalotai to impress the gods," Tamatoa says, "obviously."
"Obviously," Maui echoes. "What, clean out the panther dens? Make paths for them to come down here for vacations in the winter?"
"I'm not sure exactly what, yet," Tamatoa says, a sly smile curling the corners his mouth as he tips Maui's chin up with an antennule, "but I know that excites you."
Mini-Maui jumps up and down, grins, shakes his inky little hook, pounds his chest.
"C'mon, little semi-god. Haven't you got a couple more wild feats in you?"
Maui pauses, then grins, flexing his hands and cracking his knuckles. "Of course I do. You're on." Anticipation and excitement bubbles in him. "I--you really want this, huh? To go traveling with me again?"
There's a pause, and then Tamatoa speaks.
"As hard as it is to believe..." Tamatoa scoops Maui up in one strong claw, freakishly gentle despite his size and strength, and brings him up to his face. His eyes smile, his antennules twitch and stroke Maui's hair back out of his face. "I've already found the crowning jewel for my new collection," he says, softly, "the thing that shines brightest of all."
"Wow." Maui lays a hand over one of his antennules and speaks tenderly. "You are so full of it."
"Ugh, you're right. That was disgusting. Left a terrible taste in my mouth."
"There, there."
"You know the really disgusting thing?" Tamatoa pulls a face. "I meant it, even."
Mini-Maui blows Tamatoa kisses, and Maui chuckles. "Gross," he agrees,
"All right," Tamatoa concedes. He puckers up, presses a big, silly kiss to Maui's entire upper body. "Now!" He bounces Maui up onto his back, swivels his eye stalks to look back at him there. "Shall we begin? Just a little jaunt to get us started?"
"After you," Maui says, pats the smooth new carapace under him, and Tamatoa quite literally leaps into action, deceptively fast and agile as ever.
Cheehoooooo!