Chapter Text
“It’s y-y-your turn”, Porky said. He frowned in confusion when there was no answer. “Ah… Bugs?”
“I’ll roll for him”, Daffy replied instead and reached for the dice. “Oh no… what a shame. A one.” Daffy moved Bugs' piece. “Oh no! It says you have to go back to the start, Bugs.”
“You shouldn’t roll for others”, Speedy said, shaking his head. “You bring bad luck.”
“Bad luck?”, Daffy protested. “One of my pieces is already two steps from the finish line!”
"One of four", Speedy noted.
Porky was up next. He rolled a six and took out Daffy's piece in the process.
“No!”, Daffy howled, angrily glaring at Porky. “You’ll pay for that! I’ll have my revenge, I’ll make you suffer for the rest of your life!”
“I-I’d rather you didn’t”, Porky answered, before glancing back at Bugs. “Bugs, a-are you okay?”
There was no response.
“It’s Bugs' turn again”, Daffy said, after Speedy had played, and he himself had rolled another one. “No worries, I’ll role for him.”
Speedy grabbed the dice before he could go through with his threat.
“This i-is worrying me a little”, Porky mumbled. He tried calling Bugs' name again, but without success.
Bugs just kept on staring at his quickly cooling slice of pizza with a frighteningly empty gaze. They were silent for a while, everybody looking at Bugs, waiting for a word or a movement that didn’t come.
“Does anybody want to drink something?”, Speedy then suddenly asked, looking around expectantly. “Because I think I need something to drink.”
They had gathered around a table in his restaurant after closing to spend some time with each other, eat, drink and play board games. Bugs had seemed fine earlier in the evening, though quieter then usual, but ever since they sat down to play…
“Bugs d-didn’t even finish h-his!”, Porky exclaimed, pointing at Bugs' glass.
“Oh, right!”, Daffy replied, his eyes brightening. He leaned over to Bugs. “Then, I guess, he is not going to mind if I take this.” He grabbed the glass and emptied it in one gulp.
“Daffy!” Porky threw him an accusatory glance.
Daffy raised his eyebrows. “What?”
“That belonged to Bugs!” Porky angrily put his hands on his hips. “I thought you bettered yourself!”
Daffy shrugged. “I did. Where it counts at least. Also…” Daffy waved his hand in front of Bugs' empty face. “He didn’t even notice, see?”
“T-that justifies nothing! It only p-proves that something i-is wrong with him!”, Porky insisted.
“I am just going to get us all something to drink, yes? Yes”, Speedy concluded and jumped of the table.
“Oh… that.” Daffy played around with the dice, resting his chin in his hand. He rolled a one. “That’s just because of Lola. Sometimes he is fine, other times he paces around in his room for hours, other times he just blankly stares at a wall like that. I decided to give him time.”
“L-lola?” Porky looked confused. “What about her could h-have caused that?”
“He isn’t sure if they broke up or not.”
Porky's eyes widened. “Bugs and Lola broke up?”
“Hm…” Daffy laughed. “I don’t know! If I knew, I would have asked you for the money you owed me already.”
Porky was still in shock, wildly turning his head from Daffy to Bugs, and from Bugs to Daffy. “Bugs, is that true?”, he finally asked. “Did you and Lola break up?”
Bugs sighed, finally showing a reaction. He lowered his head and reached for his glass. “I don’t know…” He raised the glass to his lips to drink and paused in puzzlement when he realized that it was empty.
“Why don’t you know?”, Porky continued to inquiry. “What happened?”
“Ah, well, because…” Bugs put the glass down again. “I mean… to break up… you have to have been together before in the first place, right? You need to have had a relationship! And then, when you had a relationship, and you break up, you should know, that it was a break-up, right? You’re sure of what you’re doing. You are making. A. Decision”, Bugs said, making sure to accentuate each word.
Porky blinked. “Ah… what?”
“You see?” Daffy took the cold piece of pizza from Bugs' plate. “He’s been talking like that since yesterday evening. I don’t understand it. I think he doesn’t understand what he's trying to say either.”
“I hope you’re thirsty!”, Speedy announced himself, hopping back on the table, while balancing a tray of drinks on one hand.
Daffy, who had just finished the pizza, nodded eagerly. “I am literally dying of thirst right now!”
“No, he is behind you, behind you!”, Daffy screamed at TV. “Turn around! Oh, I can’t believe it, are you deaf?!”
Disappointed, Daffy slumped back into his armchair. “Sometimes I think the characters in horror movies don’t have eyes. Or ears. Or brains. The killer could probably knock over every single piece of furniture and they wouldn’t notice a single thing. Bugs. Bugs, are you listening to me?”
Daffy turned around to see Bugs, still sitting at the kitchen table and staring at a crossword puzzle. Daffy hadn’t seen him move that pencil he was holding once in the last two hours.
“While we’re talking about it, should I start to throw around some furniture for you to notice me?”, Daffy asked.
No reaction. Oh, not this again.
“You know, if this was a horror movie, you would be totally dead by now.”
Nothing.
Daffy sighed and turned off the TV. “Okay, that’s enough.” He quickly got up and marched over to the kitchen. “You had your time to sit and brood.” He sat down on a chair across from him. “So, what are the results? Break up, yes, or no? Should I get some ice cream?”
“That’s what you do, if you feel sad after a break up, right?”, Bugs asked, in an absent tone of voice. “Eat ice cream?”
Daffy nodded. “So goes the ritual! Also, it would be great if you could try to look at me. Hello? Bugs? I am right here? Bugs!”
Bugs' eyes very slowly moved in his direction. “Yes?”
“Are you finally going to tell me what exactly happened? I’ll tell you if it was a break-up or not. You know, I don’t want to brag or anything, but I am somewhat of a break-up expert.”
Bugs blinked, then looked at the table, before finally putting his pencil down. He pushed the cross-word puzzle away. “I… I didn’t say anything.”
“You… what now?”, Daffy asked, blankly. “What do you mean by that?”
“I didn’t say it.” Bugs glanced up at him, with a pained look on his face. “She asked me if I loved her and I didn’t say anything.”
“Oh. Oh, wow.” Daffy crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t want to stand here and tell you I told you so, but… I told you so.”
“You don’t understand!” Bugs sounded a little desperate now. That was… rather unusual.
“It’s not just her!”, Bugs continued. “I think I’ve never… never loved someone…”, Bugs explained. “Not… at least not… in the right way. Not the way that I am supposed to.”
Daffy was understanding even less then before now. But it sounded serious. “Okay”, he therefore announced, decisively jumping up from his chair again. He should have an old notepad upstairs, and a pair for glasses, that he had worn before he had switched to contacts. “Lay down on the sofa!”, he instructed Bugs. “We need to talk!”
“So”, Daffy asked him from his armchair. “Are you comfortable?”
Bugs stretched himself on the couch. “Rather comfortable, yes.”
“Good.” Daffy nodded and wrote something on his notepad. Bugs was honestly wondering what that could be.
“And how are you feeling?”, Daffy then asked.
“Bad”, Bugs replied, dryly.
“Ah!” Daffy kept on scribbling on his notepad. “And why…” He looked at him over the rim of his glasses, “… is that so, do you think?”
Bugs thought that Daffy looked good with glasses. He should wear them more often.
“Eh”, he answered. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on Bugs, work with me here! You have to think about it! When you think back to that moment with Lola, what feelings come up?”
Bugs shrugged helplessly. “Confusion. An overwhelming feeling of… being overwhelmed.”
“Good, good”, Daffy nodded. “That’s a start. And what exactly is overwhelming you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think, Bugs!”, Daffy insisted. “You have to think!”
“Would you please stop yelling at me to think?!” Frustrated, Bugs grabbed a pillow and pulled it over his head.
“But you have to think! I can’t help you if you don’t think!” Daffy paused. “Huh. So that’s what it feels like to be on this side of the conversation. I must have been one hell of a difficult client…”
“Yes, but…” Bugs pulled the pillow away again. “Do we have to do it like this?” He gestured towards Daffy and his notepad. “Can’t we just normally talk about it? You know, like friends?”
Daffy blinked at him in visible discomfort. “Ah, you know, to be honest, I like it better this way?”
Bugs sat up and hugged the pillow to his chest. “Please?”
Daffy pressed his beak shut. His face scrunched up. You could see that he was currently having a rather heated debate inside his head. “Arg! Fine.” He finally put away the notepad and took off the glasses. “Let’s do it your way.”
“Thanks.” Bugs took a deep, relieved breath. This was much better. “I could use some friendly support, right now, you know?”, he said,
“Well then.” Daffy got seated a little more comfortably on his armchair. “Let’s go, buddy. Tell me everything. What’s bothering you?”
“I think…” Bugs frowned. “I think… more than the things that I am feeling, it’s the feeling that I… don’t… feel.”
“Huh?”
“Well, I am not sad”, Bugs tried to explain. “I mean, I am a little bit but not for the reasons I should be. I mean, I am sad because I fear that I might have lost Lola as a friend. But…”
“Oh, but that’s not really surprising, is it?”, Daffy commented unperturbed. “If you never truly loved her, it only makes sense that you’re not too sad about your relationship ending.”
“Yes but, you should have seen her face!”, Bugs argued, desperation rising in him again. “She looked devasted! It made me feel like a monster! But at the same time, I couldn’t just keep lying to her, because that would have made me feel even worse! We’ve been together for so long now and I never stopped to think… I feel like such an imposter you have no idea.” Bugs buried his face in the pillow. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like this one bit. He hadn’t ever hurt a person like that before. Just because he wasn’t able to love them the right way.
“There, there”, Daffy awkwardly tried to comfort him. “It’s over and done with now, isn’t it? You told her. You did the right thing. And breaking up with someone hasn’t made anyone a monster yet, so calm down. Now, you can both take your time, get over it, and move on.”
He wished it was that easy. Bugs sighed. “It’s… you don’t get it, it’s more complicated than that.”
“Why? What else is there?”
“The thing is… I mean, I already tried to explain it but…” Bugs had difficulties putting it into words.
He had been laying awake in bed all night and thought about it. He had combed through his memories for answers, searched his heart when that didn’t produce any results, and still found nothing. He had pulled a dozen of different romance novels from his shelf that he had read before but never truly understood. Once you read one of them, you had read all of them, Bugs tended to think, but kept reading them anyway, because they were popular and Bugs liked to do popular things. Once the novelty of the concept wore of though, Bugs had stopped enjoying them and they had started to bore him instead. He thought about the films that he had watched. He thought of all these different couples, of love at first sight.
When he had met Lola, he had thought that it had to be what everyone was talking about. Love. Love at first sight. But maybe he had been wrong? He had been going through his books again, looking for symptoms of love as one might be looking for the symptoms of the flu. The heart beating faster, butterflies in the stomach, euphoria, a sudden overwhelming desire for closeness, possessiveness, longing, nervousness… Bugs was confused. He had looked at Lola and he had known that he found her beautiful. Oh, he had thought, so that's what love feels like. Except…
“I think I never felt it”, Bugs said, repeating his terrifying realisation from before. “I think I have never, not once in my whole life, been… in love. With someone.”
Daffy didn't look like he believed him. “Never, really? Never, never?”
Bugs shrugged miserably. “No… never.”
“No childhood crushes?”
“No.”
“No high-school crushes?”
“I didn’t go to high-school.”
“Right. No celebrity crushes?”
“No.”
“And no Lola.”
Bugs slowly shook his head. “No.”
Both of them were silent for a while.
Daffy thought for a moment. “Maybe your expectations are just too high”, he suggested. “What are your expectations?”
“I… don’t think I quite understand”, Bugs replied.
Daffy rolled his eyes. “What. Is. Your. Type?”, he asked, slower this time.
Now, it was Bugs who had to think a little. “I don’t know. You mean, in person, or looks?”
Daffy shrugged. “Both is good. Just imagine a person, the perfect person in your head, that would make you heart beat faster.”
The person flashing in Bugs' mind was Daffy. Who was not perfect, not even close. And he was also not making his heart beat faster. But sadly, the picture was stuck there and Bugs could try and pull as hard as he wanted, he could not move it. “I don’t know if I have a type”, Bugs finally replied, because he wasn’t ready to tell Daffy about… that.
“Huh.” Daffy scratched his head. “You know, you’ve done it. I am now just as confused as you are.”
“I think I’m afraid”, Bugs admitted. He hugged the pillow even tighter to his chest. He had never felt a fear like that.
“What are you afraid of?”, Daffy asked. His voice had shifted to a quieter, softer tone. Bugs could see in his eyes that he was worried.
“That I can’t do it”, Bugs continued. “That I will never feel that. What if there is something wrong. With me.”
Daffy opened his mouth, then closed it again. A lot of complicated feelings were flashing across his face right now. He looked down at the carpet. And he was still looking at it when he finally responded, in a quiet, raspy voice: “There is nothing wrong with you. Believe me.”
“But-“ Bugs wanted to protest. But Daffy was quicker.
“Does it bother you?”, he suddenly asked him. “I mean, apart from the fact that you think it’s not normal or something and we know what I think about that… but, in your life. Is it something that bothers you? You seemed to do pretty good until now, didn’t you?”
“It’s unfair to Lola…”, Bugs hesitatingly answered.
“You’re not a couple anymore, correct me if I am wrong?”
Bugs bit his lip. “No, I guess we aren’t.”
Daffy couldn’t supress a chuckle. “I’ll have to remind Porky about that bet tomorrow…”
Bugs sighed. It was time for him to think. To think about it again. It was important to think about things. Just as important as it was to talk about them. But maybe, just maybe Bugs wouldn’t be as scared by what he found as he thought he would be.
Did it bother him? Well, if he couldn’t fall in love, what else couldn’t he have? Could he still have a family? Kids? Oh, but he didn’t really want kids. And even if he did, he was enough of a well put together adult to be able to adopt one. Daffy could even join in on raising the child. He could be the weird uncle. Every child needed a weird uncle. What else? He couldn’t have a wedding. But that didn’t bother him too much. He could do without it.
What else? No handholding anymore. But he didn’t even like handholding that much. Neither did he like kissing a whole lot. He was rather indifferent to it, to be honest. So that was no loss. What about hugs? Oh, but he could still hug Daffy. What about someone he could trust? Someone to be there for him? Oh, but he still had Daffy. Somebody to share his life with? Oh. His grip on the pillow loosened. But he had Daffy.
“No”, he said, surprised. “I don’t think that would bother me.” Not as long as he could still have this. Whatever this was.
“Well then, I think we’re done here”, Daffy replied and smiled smugly. Bugs could tell that he was very proud of how he handled the situation. “It doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t bother me. Everything is fine.”
“Everything is fine”, Bugs agreed, he was still a little dumbfounded. “It’s still not normal though.”
“Oh, stop that! Normal!” Daffy sounded honestly insulted. He hopped from his armchair. “I told you there was no normal! You don’t fall in love with people. Who cares! Actually, I think it gives you an unfair advantage. Spares you all the drama.”
Bugs chuckled. “I wouldn’t say that…”
Well, Bugs concluded in his mind, maybe he wasn’t normal, and maybe he was weird, maybe he was even very, very weird, but also, maybe, there was no normal and Bugs didn’t need to care about it that much. After all, Daffy didn’t. Maybe there were still some things that he could learn from his friend. There had to be some good to being friends with weirdos after all, Bugs thought. They just let you be weird with them.
Daffy walked over to the kitchen and got two pints of ice cream form the freezer. Bugs had no idea when he had bought those. “This calls for a celebration!”, Daffy exclaimed and held them up.
“Hm.” Bugs tilted his head. “What’s the difference between celebration ice cream and break-up ice cream?”, he asked, but he had already gotten up to join Daffy in the kitchen.
Daffy handed him a pint and a spoon. “It doesn’t taste as salty”, he explained. “Less tears.”