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Ever since moving into the neighborhood, Ray had started choosing a route that took him past the farmer's market two times a week. He knew most of the vendors by now the way he knew most of the neighborhood. They treated him with kindness by default, as most people did, and he would often finish his walk through the stalls with different gifts from the vendors at the market.
He had stopped this morning because the bread looked good and because he had time, as he usually did once he was done training. He would later go on another run just for fun, past his beloved mechanic's shop.
He bought a loaf of bread, tucked it into the small fabric bag he carried with him when he went shopping, and was standing at the edge of the honey stall deciding whether he needed honey when he saw Bugs.
He was at a produce stall two rows over, examining something with the specific attention of someone who didn't actually have anything better to do either, really. Him and Ray kept bumping into each other because they had too much free time in their hands.
He hadn't seen Ray yet. He was turning a tomato over in his hand with the grave focus of a man making an important decision.
Ray looked at him for a moment.
He hadn't stopped thinking about the incident at Wile's shop. About how Bugs had the absolute lack of shame to try and steal his man in broad daylight. It was absolutely unacceptable. He was not proud of the physical confrontation! But he felt like he had reacted accordingly, he didn't have any other choice.
He had hoped, at the moment of the fight, that he had made himself very clear. But as it turns out, that wasn't the end of it. He should have known, Bugs had a reputation for being what Ray would —very accurately, in his mind— describe as a bit of… Well. A slut. There was no sugarcoating it.
It's not that anyone had ever called him that, not really, but Ray was smart enough to come to conclusions without external help. He had lived in the neighborhood for maybe eight months, that was more than enough to know what that guy was all about. Besides, what else do you call a person that tries to get with a man that is clearly already claimed? His relationship with Wile hadn't even started officially yet; he wasn't about to let some idiot with a big ego and a taste for any man that had a shadow try to take what was his while he was just in the process of flirting back and forth with his future partner.
Well, as Ray had accurately predicted, Bugs had gone back to Wile's shop. Not once but twice, according to what he had observed. Possibly more times that he hadn't seen as well, if he hadn't been running that particular route on that particular day. And he did not have his car with him, so why else would he be at the shop if not to try and take what belonged to someone else?
If a physical confrontation hadn't worked, maybe a very stern chat would.
Oh Ray was about to have a chat, alright.
He bought some honey with a smile. Put it in his bag. Walked over to the produce stall.
Bugs looked up from the tomato. He looked at Ray with the expression of someone who had been expecting something like this eventually and found the timing mildly amusing. He coughed twice, trying to stifle a laugh.
He did not look intimidated, nor did he look scared.
"Hey," he said pleasantly. "What's up, doc?"
Ray smiled. The neighborhood smile— easy, warm, the one that made people hold doors open. The vendor had conveniently gotten a call, so nobody was looking at them. It was the perfect moment to say what he had to say.
He set his bag down on the edge of the stall and his hands moved.
"I was hoping to run into you, actually."
Bugs looked mildly interested. "Were you now..."
Ray squinted for a second, and then signed: "I wanted to have a conversation. Properly. Without the previous context."
"So, without the choking?" Bugs said, helpfully, with a smile. He seemed unbothered.
Ray's expression didn't flicker. He took a deep breath and signed: "I want to be clear about something. About the mechanic."
Something shifted in Bugs's face. It was not defensiveness, it was more like a door opening, a particular quality of attention, like someone was about to tell him a really good joke. He put the tomato down. "Alright."
"He's not available."
"Is that right?"
Ray felt his blood boiling. Bugs was testing him because he knew he would not cause a scene in front of the entire neighborhood. But, unlike others, he could control himself.
"Well I made myself very clear last time, didn't I? I said I didn't want to repeat myself."
A beat of silence.
Bugs looked back at the tomatoes for a second.
“So?”
Ray raised an eyebrow. He was not a rude person, he was extremely kind and patient, everyone told him so. But talking to this graveyard of braincells was really a test on his ability to be nice. Was it really that hard to understand? Was he being dense on purpose? He had no idea.
His eye twitched. Exasperated, he signed again, faster this time:
"My point is whatever you think you're doing when you go to that shop, he's not available for it. He's taken."
Bugs looked at him with the expression of someone choosing their next words very carefully, which was unusual for him. He was choosing carefully now because he had already assessed Ray once, in a mechanic shop under considerably more chaotic circumstances, after being choked and dragged, and he had clocked some things that were useful to him right now.
"Taken?" he repeated.
Ray nodded.
"Oh, I see. By you."
"Are you even paying attention? Yes." Ray signed, frowning. He immediately fixed his face afterwards.
Bugs nodded slowly, like this was useful information he was filing away. "Does he know that?"
The smile stayed exactly where it was. Not a flicker. Ray's hands moved with the unhurried confidence of someone stating a fact: "We have an understanding."
"An understanding," Bugs said.
Ray nodded, enthusiastically. Of course they had an understanding. The man had been chasing him for months. He had even tried to get a picture a few times, but Ray found it funny to run away right before he did. The teasing was fun for both of them.
"Right, right…" Bugs picked up a different tomato. Turned it over. Set it down. "The thing is," he said, in the tone of someone about to say a thing purely to see what happened. "He's never mentioned you. When I've been at the shop. He hasn't brought you up."
Ray glared at him. The smile dropped. His eye twitched again.
"Not once! Isn't that funny?”
"He doesn't have to mention me. You probably don't even let him communicate, that's why." Ray's hands shook a little as he signed.
"Sure, sure." Bugs's expression was doing something mild and thoughtful. What bothered Ray the most was not his expression specifically, but the fact that he seemed so unbothered. He clearly hadn't learned the lesson. Bugs smiled and continued: "Although now that I think about it he mentioned the jaywalking thing. And some of your other… Well, your habits, you know?"
Ray's hands stilled for just a fraction of a second. Then: "So he talks about me, and you were lying."
"I guess you're technically right."
"What does that mean?"
"It means you're technically right!" Bugs smiled, pleasantly.
Ray felt like his hand was really itching to grab a fistful of that stupidly nice hair and smash that smug smile against the tomatoes. Had the setting been different, he would have already have both his hands around this man's neck for the second time. He picked up his bag. Set it down again. He would not go down without a fight.
"The point is that he's not available. Whatever history you think you have with him, it's history."
"Oh, we don't have history," Bugs muttered, waving a dismissive hand. "Well…”
He let the well sit there.
Ray looked at him, eyes widening. It was completely foreign to him, the feeling of something not going his way. The effortless confidence that usually carried him through life suddenly felt like a thin glass floor that had just shattered. But he would not let it show.
"Barely, you know?" Bugs added, in the tone of someone clarifying something minor.
The expression on Ray's face went through a very fast and very controlled series of adjustments before settling back into something that was technically still a smile. His hands moved: "What does barely mean?"
"It means barely."
"That's not an answer. Answer the question."
"It's the answer I have." Bugs looked serenely at the produce display. "You know he's very dedicated to the shop. Hard to get his attention when he's working. Very focused man… It's just that I've been here for years. You're kind of new to the neighborhood, aren't you?"
Ray bit his tongue. No, that wasn't right, Bugs was clearly lying. He was trying to get a reaction, and now he was changing the topic to avoid accountability. His Wile didn't seem like the type to just be with anyone that came his way. If he was, he would've asked Ray out from the very beginning. He was someone that enjoyed taking things slow.
"I know what he's like."
"Of course you do."
"I know a lot about him, too."
"Sure! He's very skilled with his hands, isn't he?"
Ray looked at him for a long moment. He took a deep breath —a very deep breath—and then exhaled through his nose. Bugs looked back with the calm of someone who had nothing to prove and knew it, which was its own kind of aggravating. The market moved around them, someone buying peppers two stalls down, a teenager and his granny asking about the price of something, the general pleasant Saturday hum of people doing ordinary things… and in the middle of all of it Ray was having an experience he was not accustomed to having, which was the experience of a conversation not going the way he'd intended it to go.
Never, in his 26 years of life, had he experienced something like this. He recalibrated.
"You should redirect your energy," he signed, going back to the original plan, the one that had seemed straightforward twenty minutes ago. "There are plenty of people in this city. You don't have a shortage of options. You never have."
"That's true," Bugs said, shrugging.
"So redirect."
"Mhm."
"You get around with anyone, everyone knows it, there's no shortage of men who would welcome that, so find one of them and leave the mechanic alone."
Bugs blinked, still mostly indifferent and mildly amused. He chuckled.
Clearly the message wasn't getting through. Ray thought that, perhaps, he had to make himself clearer. More direct. Therefore, after looking around to make sure people still weren't looking, he signed, with complete composure:
"I understand it's a first for you for someone to ask you to keep your legs closed just this once since the opposite must usually be asked of you. But it's really not that hard."
Bugs turned to look at him with an expression of mild interest. He did not look upset in the slightest, he actually had the nerve to laugh a little, once again. Then, he cupped his ear playfully. "Come again?" he said.
Ray held his gaze. "You understood, don't play dumb."
"Sure." Bugs looked unbothered, which was its own answer. Actually, if anything, he looked slightly pleased, which was significantly more aggravating. "You know, most people who say things like that to me are at least a little embarrassed about it."
"I'm not embarrassed."
"I noticed."
"I'm being direct."
"You really are." Bugs smiled, genuinely, the good one, the one that meant he was having a better time than anyone else in the vicinity. "It's kind of refreshing, actually, I like that about you."
Ray looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone who had expected this conversation to go a specific way and was recalibrating again. He looked down, then looked away. His smile would occasionally fade throughout the confrontation, but he was quick to put it back on before it was noticeable that he was getting angry.
"You are not upset," He signed at Bugs. The man yawned, and then ran a hand through his hair.
"Not particularly, no. I've been called worse by better," Bugs said pleasantly, "and I've been called better by worse, and honestly neither one does much for me either way. Are we done here, buddy?"
Ray stared at him. This was not— this was not how this was supposed to go. He had a clear picture of how this conversation was supposed to go and Bugs was not… Not like this, not completely unaffected and slightly entertained while Ray was the one recalibrating every thirty seconds.
He signed: "You should take this more seriously."
"Should I?"
"Yes. I'm being very clear with you."
"Crystal," Bugs agreed. "You like him a lot."
Ray's hands paused.
"The mechanic. You really like him." Bugs said it without performance, without the teasing quality of everything else, just— simply. Like a fact being acknowledged. "That's what this is. I understood from the beginning."
A beat. Ray picked up his bag and signed with one hand.
"I already told you. He's mine."
"Right." Something moved through Bugs's expression— not mocking, just knowing. "But does he know that yet?"
Ray looked at him for one long moment, and raised an eyebrow. He was starting to feel like Bugs was sharp as a marble. It was unnecessary to clarify that Wile knew Ray liked him, it was the entire reason Ray teased him and got him to chase him down the street so often. They both enjoyed it. They were flirting every single day, it was obvious to anyone that looked for more than two seconds.
He decided he had had enough of this conversation. It was going nowhere. He would have to find a different approach. So far, physical violence hadn't worked, but direct verbal confrontation hadn't worked either. He would find something else, he was sure of it. But he would not entertain this pointless conversation any longer.
Without anything else to add, he turned, flipping his hair with a huff, and walked away through the market, bag over his shoulder, sneakers quiet on the pavement, with the unhurried confidence of someone who had said what they came to say and was not entirely satisfied with the outcome but he had his bread and his honey and the morning was still good and the mechanic was three blocks away doing something with his hands.
He ran home.
Bugs stood at the produce stall for a moment after Ray left. He looked at the tomatoes. He was not thinking about the tomatoes.
He was thinking about a twenty-something with big eyes and absolutely no poker face about one specific subject, who had just spent ten minutes telling Bugs to stay away from a man he had not actually done anything with, in increasingly direct terms, at a farmer's market, on a Saturday morning, because the alternative —the alternative being having that same conversation with the man himself— apparently hadn't occurred to him yet.
Bugs thought about Wile in his shop, with his oil stained jacket and his tools and the file he had about the minor irrelevant crimes of an athlete and the expression he got sometimes when he thought nobody was watching him. Of course he found the mechanic attractive, he wasn't blind, and he wouldn't back off until Wile asked him to. However, Wile was so oblivious that if this kid really hoped to get together with him… He would need more than a miracle.
He contemplated how these two idiots would get nowhere if they kept acting like this. But it wasn't his place to play matchmaker, so… Why not have fun with it in the meantime?
He picked up a tomato. Put it back. Decided he didn't need tomatoes today.
"Hmmm…" he said, to no one.
He was going to go to the shop on Tuesday. He had a window that needed looking at; a noise, probably nothing. He was going to go and he was going to sit on the counter and he was absolutely not going to mention any of this because it was significantly more interesting as something that arrived on its own.
He walked back through the market toward home, hands in his pockets, thinking about two people who were doing the most elaborate possible dance around something that could be solved in approximately one conversation, and feeling, about this, a warm and genuine and entirely unhelpful fondness.
He was going to tell Daffy about this. Daffy already knew. He always already knew.
He turned the corner toward home and did not look back, because there was nothing to look back at, because by the time he turned around Ray was already gone, around some other corner, moving at the speed he always moved at, back toward a neighborhood that loved him and a city that cleared his path and a mechanic who was going to figure it out eventually.
Probably.
Bugs was patient. He had time. And being involved in this was getting really, really funny.
Even if he had to risk his neck a few times in the process.