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Wile had what some people would deem an obsession for talking about the runner.
He didn't know the guy's name— had never gotten close enough to read it off anything, he had never caught him long enough to ask, and asking around the neighborhood felt like admitting defeat in a way he wasn't prepared for; so he'd developed a whole vocabulary of signs and mocking imitations instead. Plus a very specific expression that communicated, without words, you know exactly who I'm talking about, the one with the long hair, runs all day like he's being paid for it, looks like he's never had a bad day in his life.
Bugs had gotten fluent in this vocabulary over the past several months, mostly because Wile kept using it.
"The runner," Bugs said, leaning against the front counter with the easy comfort of someone who had decided this was his shop now. "Again."
Wile, crouched beside a busted alternator with grease up to his elbows, pointed at him. Correct. Then mimed, mockingly and with great feeling, someone jogging past him on the sidewalk and giving him a very deliberate look and sticking out their tongue before speeding up.
"He looked at you."
Another point. But this one carried nuance. It was a he looked at me in a specific way point.
"Oh, the horror. The audacity. He looked at you in a rude way. How could he." Bugs sighed.
Wile stood up, unable to catch the sarcasm in his friend's voice, and spread his hands like: finally, yes, thank you.
From the waiting area, where he had been sitting with his feet up and a takeaway coffee going cold in his hand, Daffy said, without looking up from his phone: "He looks at everyone on purpose. He's got very intense eyes."
Wile turned to give him the look that this comment deserved. Daffy remained completely unbothered, scrolling through something with his thumb.
"So, let me get this straight, you mentioned he steals small things sometimes and now you're saying he… Jaywalked?" Bugs said, which was less of a question and more of a gentle confirmation that he was keeping up.
Wile held up three fingers. Then pointed at the floor, meaning: here, this week, all three times within two blocks of this shop. Then he shook his head and pointed toward the street with the practiced frustration of a man who had been having this conversation, in various forms, for six months.
"Three times. And you couldn't get a photo."
"Not once." Wile signed, with increasing exasperation.
"Because he's fast."
"Not fast. Unusually, supernaturally, maliciously fast."
"And good-looking," Daffy added, still not looking up. "Objectively. If you're into that."
Wile threw a rag at him. It didn't reach Daffy, who took a sip of his coffee like this wasn't any of his business (it really wasn't).
"I'm just saying what everyone's thinking," he said. "He's charming. It's not a character flaw, I would know better than anyone."
Wile signed, sharp and irritated: "This is not about his charm!"
"Sure..." said Daffy.
Bugs was smiling now, which Wile didn't like. He had a smile that suggested he was arranging information in ways that weren't going to be useful to anyone.
"You said he's been doing this for months," Bugs said.
Wile nodded, already turning back to the alternator.
"Always bothering you near your shop."
Another nod. He crouched back down.
"Always looks right at you and smiles and waves in what you say is a mocking way."
Wile reached for the wrench.
"And then he runs away before you can get his name."
Silence. It was self explanatory.
"Wile."
He paused. Looked up.
"He's flirting. In some strange way, but flirting."
The wrench slipped. He caught it. Set it down very carefully. Stood up very slowly. Turned to look at Bugs with an expression that said, without any ambiguity, that this was the single most incorrect sentence he had ever heard in his life. Absolutely outrageous, even.
He made a gesture. A flat, definitive one. No.
"I'm serious—"
He made it again, with more emphasis:
No.
"The repeated proximity, the eye contact, the—"
Wile held up a hand and then signed, with great patience: He jaywalks in front of me and he steals fruit from shops when I'm around because he knows I can't catch him and it gives him some sort of sick, evil satisfaction. That is not flirting. That's a crime. I keep thinking about it.
"You keep thinking about it…" Bugs repeated, looking smug.
Wile nodded. Then, reading Bugs's expression, frowned and signed: Not like that!
"Sure," said Daffy, again, from the waiting area.
Wile signed at him: "You stay out of this!" Daffy raised his coffee cup in a small salute and went back to his phone.
Why was Daffy even here? He had no idea.
Bugs, meanwhile, had migrated further around the counter and was now leaning against the edge of it in a way that was closer than it needed to be. Wile noticed this with the delayed awareness of someone whose brain was still processing the flirting comment and hadn't fully rebooted.
"You've got grease on your face," Bugs said pleasantly.
Wile wiped his cheek with the back of his wrist, which helped nothing. He was aware, in a distant and unhelpful way, that he looked like he'd been dragged through an engine bay, because he had been working all day, he was absolutely exhausted, and Bugs and Daffy had shown up unannounced at four in the afternoon for reasons that had not yet been fully explained. Daffy had even left to get coffee and a bagel and came back.
"It's not a bad look," Bugs said, winking playfully.
Wile looked at him, squinting.
What?
"On you. Specifically."
A long pause. In the waiting area, Daffy coughed loudly and then said nothing. A car went by outside. The overhead light hummed.
Wile's brain caught up with the situation approximately three seconds after it should have, which was about his average. He looked at Bugs —at the way he was leaning, the particular angle of his smile— and understood, with a sort of dull surprise, that Bugs was flirting with him.
His brain short circuited.
He knew Bugs... Got around, for lack of a better term. Everyone knew Bugs got around. Bugs could probably flirt with the traffic light on the corner and get a positive response. It didn't mean anything. It was just how he was.
Still. Wile was covered in grease and hadn't eaten since this morning and was standing in his own shop in front of a car that needed four more hours of work, and Bugs was telling him it wasn't a bad look. Something about that was doing something to his brain that he didn't have the processing power to examine right now.
He cleared his throat. Turned back toward the car and kneeled down to keep working.
"You know," Bugs said, not moving, "you should go out more often. I know a few places we could go to together, if you'd like."
Wile signed with one hand, not even looking at Bugs: I'm working.
"You're always working."
He made a gesture with the wrench that communicated, fairly clearly, yes, because I own a business, this is how that works.
"Daffyyy..." Bugs said, raising his voice slightly, "tell him he should let someone take him to dinner!"
Something in his tone had changed. It was higher pitched, more playful; Wile wasn't sure he was understanding correctly… He assumed he was, it felt very on the nose. But why would anyone look at him? It made no sense.
"Leave me out of this," Daffy said.
Bugs turned back, and kneeled down next to Wile. He had migrated further into his space, which Wile registered in the abstract way of someone trying very hard to focus on doing his job. But this young man was very close. And he smelled like something expensive.
"Come on..." Bugs said, voice dropping to something warmer, more direct. "One dinner. I know a place. We could go to my house afterwards, Daffy won't be home on Friday night, we would be alone."
Wile turned to look at him. Really look at him. He was right there, watching him with that easy confidence that suggested he didn't really expect to be turned down, and the thing was that he probably hadn't been turned down by any sane man before. He was Bugs. He was charming and young and well-dressed and so beautiful. He was everything Wile was not currently, covered in motor oil at six in the afternoon.
He was trying to figure out what to do with his face when the bell above the door chimed.
Ray was in his running clothes when he ran past Wile's shop. Of course he was. Pale blue crop top, small dark shorts, white sneakers that had no business being that clean given how much ground he covered daily. His wavy blue hair was up in a ponytail, a few strands loose around his face, and he had the look of someone mid-route; not winded, never winded, just passing through.
He glanced in through the shop window as he went past.
He stopped.
Wile did not see this happen. Wile was still looking at Bugs, in the middle of deciding something.
But Ray had looked in through the glass and seen Bugs, dangerously close to Wile’s face, close enough that it meant something, wearing the expression he wore when he was about to get his way, and Ray had fully stopped moving for the first time since Wile had known him.
He stood on the sidewalk for a moment. Perfectly still.
Then he walked back to the door and pushed it open.
The bell chimed, and everyone looked up.
Ray stood in the doorway and took in the scene with the same quiet efficiency he did everything. Bugs's posture, his facial expression. The exact distance between them. Wile's face, which was doing something complicated that Ray clocked and filed away in approximately one second.
His head tilted to one side.
He smiled.
It was a lovely smile. It was the smile that made people hold doors open for him and offer him their seat on public transit and generally assume the best. Wile had seen it before. He'd never once trusted it.
Daffy looked up from his phone, assessed Ray's smile, and slowly picked up his coffee cup.
"Oh, hey," Bugs said, pleasantly, because Bugs was constitutionally incapable of reading a room when he didn't want to. He got up slowly, dusting off his pants. "We were just talking about you."
The smile didn't move. That was the thing— it stayed perfectly in place, and the only change was in Ray's eyes, which went very, very still.
Then his hands moved, and he signed: "Get away from him. Now. I'm not asking you."
It landed in Wile's brain, but it didn't really register. He assumed he was so distracted that he had misread, or that maybe the signs were directed at him and this guy was asking him to get away from Bugs, for some reason he didn't really comprehend. But he was so busy processing the signs that he almost missed what happened next, which was that Ray crossed the shop in six steps, grabbed Bugs by the front of his jacket with both hands, and the smile finally dropped.
What replaced it was not what anyone would have expected from a face that pretty.
"What— hey—" Bugs laughed nervously.
He got one hand up and pushed, which did nothing. Ray was not large. Ray was not, by any measure, intimidating, he was rather short and had a slender figure. But he had the grip of someone who ran a hundred miles a week and the focused intention of someone who had decided something. He had Bugs by the collar, and his other hand had found a fistful of that perfect hair, and the expression on his face was the total absence of the smile— something raw and sharp, eyes dark, jaw set. With whatever strength he had, he had managed to drag Bugs a few meters away from Wile.
It was the most honest Wile had ever seen him look.
"Are you out of your—" Bugs tried, and then had to redirect his energy toward getting the hand out of his hair, which was not going well.
He didn't get a chance to react; in a matter of seconds, he was on the floor with Ray on top of him and two small hands around his neck.
"Daffy—" Bugs whined, strained.
From the waiting area came a very quiet, deliberate sound. The sound of a phone camera clicking on.
"First contact…" Daffy said, in the tone of a man narrating a nature documentary. "Hair grab. Classic opener."
"Daffy!"
"You're doing great, buddy. This will do numbers, keep it up."
Wile, who had been frozen for approximately four seconds —which was four seconds longer than he should have been, by any measure— finally reacted. He set down the wrench. He got up and took one step toward them. He was going to do something about this. He was going to intervene. He was going to physically step in and stop this, and then he was going to have a chat with Ray about walking into his shop and assaulting a stranger and—
He tripped on his toolbox. The toolbox had been there for years. He used it every single day. He could navigate around it in the dark, had done so twice during a power outage, and somehow today, in broad daylight, at a moment of genuine consequence, his body had simply failed to account for it.
He staggered. Caught himself on the hood of the car. The hood shifted under his weight. He lurched, overcorrected, and he fell.
Everyone flinched except Ray, who did not flinch, who had never flinched at anything in his life.
"—and Wile makes his presence known, this keeps getting better…" Daffy muttered, still recording.
Wile recovered. Straightened. Stepped around the toolbox this time, deliberately, and reached out to grab Ray's shoulder. But the nerves made him miscalculate the distance and his hand found nothing but air. His momentum carried him forward, and he walked directly into the car's side mirror.
He stood there for a moment, hand on his stomach, eyes closed, breathing steadily through his nose. He could hear Bugs still struggling, still making sounds of profound indignation, still failing to get Ray off him.
"I don't even know you," Bugs was saying, breathless, when Ray gave him the chance to speak for a second. "I have never done anything to you, you have me confused with someone—" He yelped in pain when a hand came back to his hair and started yanking with full force. Ray's other hand remained around his neck.
Ray said nothing. He had decided something and was seeing it through.
Wile opened his eyes. Turned around. He was going to try again. He was absolutely going to try again.
He planted his feet, measured the distance, and moved —properly this time, deliberately, no toolboxes, no mirrors, a clear path— and was almost there, was close enough to feel like this was going to work, when his foot landed on the rag he'd thrown at Daffy earlier, and the rag slid on the concrete floor exactly as rags do, and Wile went down sideways.
He hit the floor with a sound that echoed.
He lay still for a moment, staring at the car he'd been working on. The ceiling light hummed above him. Somewhere nearby, something was rattling.
"Mechanic down," Daffy said solemnly. "No contact made. Third attempt unsuccessful. Amazing."
Wile wanted to defend himself with whatever dignity he had left, which was not much, but his mind was considerably more occupied with the fact that his friend was getting assaulted.
The sounds of the confrontation shifted. Bugs had apparently decided on a different strategy, because he stopped trying to push Ray away and instead grabbed his wrist with both hands.
"Okay, okay, okay…" Bugs whimpered, his voice thin and wobbly, "Let's just— take a breath and talk, buddy—"
Ray looked at him. Really looked at him, the way he looked at Wile sometimes from across the street, like he was seeing something specific and had made a specific determination about it.
Then, he let go.
Bugs stayed on the floor, with a shaky hand on his neck. His hair was a mess and he knew it and the indignity of that was visible on his face, beneath the careful composure he was reassembling in real time.
"Okay then," he said, to no one in particular.
Ray was not looking at him anymore. He stood up and turned, unhurried, unbothered, and walked past Daffy's chair toward the front desk. He looked at the surface of it with the browsing attention of someone in a gift shop.
His eyes landed on the granola bar sitting beside the register. The one Wile had put there at eleven AM and had been meaning to eat since about noon. Ray picked it up. Turned it over once. Looked at the flavor. Put it in his pocket.
He did this with complete serenity, like it was the most natural conclusion to the last five minutes.
Daffy watched this happen. His eyes tracked from Ray's hand to his pocket to Ray's face. He had not lowered his phone yet, because some instinct told him this was not quite over.
"That was—" he started.
Ray moved faster than his sentence. The phone was gone, and then Ray's thumb had found the video, and then the video was gone, and then the phone was back in Daffy's hand before Daffy had finished processing the guy even walking toward him.
A beat of absolute silence followed.
"My video…" Daffy said, with a lot of emotion.
Ray looked at him.
"Hey you! That was like two minutes of gold, I could have gone viral!" He stood up, and there was something genuinely offended in it, because Daffy had not stood up for Bugs (had not moved at all for Bugs) but this, apparently, was where he drew the line. He opened his mouth. He had things to say.
Ray glared at him, and the silence was loud enough that Daffy closed his mouth. Sat back down. Ray turned.
He walked back across the shop, past the car, past the toolbox, past the rag on the floor, and crouched down beside Wile with the easy balance of someone who did this kind of thing with his body constantly. He was very close. Wile's brain, which had already been through a lot today, produced a completely useless observation about the fact that he smelled nice, like something faintly citrus.
Ray looked at him. His face had settled back into something more familiar; the pretty, composed version, the one the neighborhood knew. But his eyes were still doing something, something that Wile didn't have words for yet.
He stayed very still for a second, just looking at Wile on the floor of his own shop, and something moved through his expression that was… Not the usual smile, not quite. It was warmer.
Then he leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Wile's cheek, quick and light, like punctuation. Like it was nothing. Like it was, in fact, the most natural possible conclusion to all of this.
Wile stopped thinking entirely. This was new. He had experienced a lot in this shop over the years and he had never before experienced a complete and total cessation of thought, but here it was. A great quiet. The inside of his head felt empty.
Ray stood up. Straightened his shorts. Turned to face Bugs, who had been watching all of this with an expression of raw fear.
His hands moved. Slow enough to be clearly readable. Direct enough that there was no possible misinterpretation.
"Who do you think you are? I know your reputation. So I won't repeat myself after this, stay away from him."
Bugs looked at him. Looked at Wile, still on the floor. Looked back at Ray. His mouth opened, but nothing came out.
Ray was already at the door. He paused with his hand on it, and turned back one last time, two fingers at his own eyes, then pointed at Bugs. Slow, deliberate, absolutely serious. The smile was completely gone. He meant every part of it.
Then he pushed the door open, stepped out, and was gone— down the street in the time it took to blink, sneakers quiet on the pavement, granola bar in his pocket, like gravity had briefly loosened its grip on him.
The bell chimed.
The shop was very quiet.
"Are you okay? That was so scary, I thought I would lose you," Daffy babbled.
"I'm okay. Don't worry, I know it was— oh you're talking to your phone," Bugs said, his voice still weak.
"My video," Daffy added. He looked at his phone with the grief of a man who had lost something irreplaceable. "Oh my precious video…"
Bugs rolled his eyes. He was still where Ray had left him. He looked, for possibly the first time in his adult life, genuinely disheveled. His hair was in a disaster state. He'd fixed his jacket but it had settled slightly wrong. He touched his neck absently again, and stared at the door for a moment.
"Why—I don't… I…" he started. He was at a loss of words, which was rare for him.
Wile put his hand over his face.
"Did he just say you were—"
The hand pressed harder.
"Wile."
He signed: "We may have misread it."
"We didn't misread it… Right?" Bugs mumbled. For once, he sounded genuinely unsure of his words. "I read it too. That was very clear. That's why he attacked me. Isn't it?"
Wile moved his hand from his face. Stared at the floor. He wasn't listening, not really, he thought about a head tilted to one side and a smile that had, just now, finally shown him what was underneath it. He had known he was right, the runner was insane! He had to catch him next time. It was a shame that Daffy had lost the proof.
His cheek felt warm, probably because of the fall. Or the floor was warm, maybe.
"He was so mad..." Bugs said slowly, clearly working through something.
Wile moved his hand back to his face.
"You didn't know he liked you?"
Nothing.
He didn't know because there was nothing to know. Why would a professional athlete, considerably younger and loved by everyone, be into him? It made no sense. The runner was likely into Bugs and had lashed out at him because he was crazy. Maybe the cheek kiss was his attempt at getting back at Bugs?
Whatever. There was nothing to know. End of story. What mattered was that now he knew he had been right all along.
"Wile?"
Wile gave a single gesture, delivered with whatever remained of his dignity. It was not a denial. It was a suggestion that this topic be closed immediately and never opened again. He didn't feel like explaining himself, and especially not when he was not only confused but most likely concussed.
"Right," said Bugs. He stood, straightened his jacket again. Fixed his hair as well as it was going to be fixed. "I'm going to go."
"Good call," said Daffy.
"Daffy, let's go home."
"Give me a minute, I'm seeing if I can recover the—"
"Daffy."
"Okay, selfish, I'm coming." He stood up, pocketed his phone, and picked up his empty coffee cup. He looked down at Wile on the floor with the expression of a man who had a lot to say and had decided, for now, not to share any of it. "Well... See you!"
He followed Bugs out. The bell chimed twice, and then the shop was quiet in a completely different way than it had been before.
Wile sat on the floor of his shop for a while longer. The ceiling light hummed. The car waited patiently with its unfinished brake job. Outside, somewhere, the city went on.
He thought about the granola bar. Gone.
He thought about that runner and his smile and he thought about the kiss.
Then he got up, because the car wasn't going to fix itself, and he was a professional, and he had absolutely no idea what to do with any of what had just happened, and his job was the one thing that still made sense.
After all, that runner had just committed another crime and he had no proof! How would anyone like that brat if they knew he committed seemingly unprompted assault? But Wile had witnesses now. He had a victim. He would catch him one day. He was certain of this, he had always been certain of this, he was a smart man and he would not be defeated by that guy. He picked up his wrench. Got back under the car. Stared up at the brake lines.
His cheek was still warm.
He tightened a bolt that didn't need tightening.
Three blocks away, Ray slowed from a sprint to a jog to a walk. He unwrapped the granola bar and ate half of it. He looked at the other half and put it back in his pocket for later.
He ran home.
He was smiling, and nobody saw it, and that was ok. Some things were just for him.
He hoped he had made that clear enough.
He didn't want to repeat himself, after all.