Chapter Text
Wile E. Coyote isn't exactly a fan of company.
It's one of the many reasons he's made the desert his home, really. Between the vast area to test his contraptions, the lack of humans and toons alike to bother him, and of course, his preferred prey's habitat, the sandy dunes and unforgiving sun were most welcome to someone like himself.
That's why he stares at the burrow that simply sprung to life near the mesa from one day to another.
It's too big for something like a lizard or insect to make, too small for a human, but too elaborate in its placement to be just something done absentmindedly. It sticks to the shade in a perfect circle, low humming coming from it as if someone were making it's way up, it's…
Like a toon's doing.
Someone springs to life, sleek and slippery and without a care in the world. Wile blinks at the unexpected presence, tail puffed up, ears perked at attention as a somewhat familiar shape becomes visible.
The Rabbit.
No, scratch that. Not a rabbit or even a hare, but a bunny. Domestic and fully enjoying the luxuries of city life more often than not. Wile stares at the un-flippant shape of Bugs Bunny for a moment, surprise turning to an unimpressed stare as he glares down at the newcomer.
Bugs doesn't leaves the burrow right away, lazily stretching as if waking from a nap, scratching one of his ears before leaving fully. He reaches for a carrot behind him, taking a bite without a single care in the world before adressing the coyote towering over him.
"Huh, guess I took the wrong turn near Albuquerque," He munches, "Sup, doc?"
Wile is NOT doing this again.
He turns around swiftly, a prick of annoyance hitting at the back of his head. Bugs Bunny is a headache waiting to happen, and he's already had enough of a chase trying to capture The Roadrunner all day long. Prey or not, Wile has no desire to deal with the bunny, even if he'd make a decent meal on his plate, it is just not worth the annoying buzz on his brain.
"Friendly guy, isn't he?" Bugs says to someone he can't see. Wile ignores him, kicks a small pebble out of frustration and trips in the process.
It's daytime again, and Wile is hungry.
Well, he's never NOT hungry. Not fully sated at best and starved at constant worst. Desert critters can only fill so much on his plate after all, and lizards and snakes have began to be sneakier than usual for him to catch anything worth more than a bite.
Chasing the Roadrunner in the morning is routine as it is a proper hunt. There's birdseed already eaten, the road scattered with tacks somehow skillfully avoided, dynamite tied to cacti exploded a few second too late to do anything worth the plan they were scribbled for.
And Wile, for all his problems, gets a cheeky smile from the bird. A loud, happy beeping that's both a taunt and a cheer towards the coyote and a raspberry blown in his general direction. The Coyote frowns despite the pain, several cacti sticking to his body, either whole or exploded or just needles without their fruit. There's needles on his tongue he spits out alongside a tooth.
The Roadrunner beeps happily again, taking a few seconds to look at him fully before turning around and leaving in less than a blinks time. A cloud of sand and detritus is left in his wake, lose feathers left behind for Wile to pick up. The hunt will continue once Wile recovers, as he always does.
"Talk about a prickly exterior, eh doc?"
Wile turns around quickly, scattering loose needles around him, ears twitching painfully for a moment.
Bugs bunny sits on top of a rock as if it were the most normal place for him to be. Looking content while snacking on an apparently never ending carrot, soaking morning sun as if he weren't talking to a toon capable of making a meal out of him.
"For all it's worth, I think you got rather close that time with the tacks. Terrible luck with the dynamite though. This Roadrunner fella is pretty athletic to skip 'em all like that."
Wile glares at Bugs, ignoring the many needles sticking to his body like a bad attempt at a porcupine costume and points a clawed finger at him as if to silence him.
"I'm just saying!"
Wile growls, annoyance giving way to pain as he continues to carefully pick out cacti and needles from his fur.
There's a sharp tug on his back, quick and sudden and still painful. Wile yips in pain, turning around to glare at the bunny's direction, bearing his fangs in clear warning he will make rabbit stew out of him in seconds.
Bugs, for his part, has a careful hold on a perfectly ripe prickly pear cactus. Almost nonchalantly picking needles out and throwing them behind his back without second thought, the carrot he was munching on nowhere to be seen for once.
"What," Wile starts, voice rough from disuse," do you think you're doing?"
"Picking needles," Bugs shrugs, an amused smile on his mouth, "Y'know, I know the whole talking thing isn't your gig. Don't gotta force it out."
"I do what I want," Comes a sign instead, "I'll make a rabbit stew out of you."
"You tried it last time, remember?"
Oh yes, Wile remembers. It's kind of the reason he doesn't wants to bother with the rabbit too much. Too much effort for a prey barely worth the meat.
Removing an entire cactus from his leg and several small squashed bits of cacti and needles from his arms, Wile is more or less needle-free when his stomach rumbles. The coyote stills for a moment, familiar hunger making itself present once again and making him think of yet another strategy for his chase and hunt, another blueprint to look over, another trap to lay.
For a split second, he thinks of the bunny next to him. Maybe just chomp his neck right there and there and make a rabbit cacciatore, to spice things up. Or a rabbit pie. He's not too terribly picky and a fairly decent cook.
Bugs, without a single worry, begins to peel the cactus like one would do any fruit. Strip by strip, needle free for once. "Had breakfast yet?"
"I'm about to," Wile thinks, a grin stretching on his face and showing rows of sharp teeth.
"Here ya go,"
Wile only stares as Bugs shoves the clean fruit into his hands.
"Well, gotta run! Might as well make most of the detour here, I've heard desert carrots are a delicacy."
And with that, Bugs jumps back into the earth as if it were a water, making a burrow right there and then for him to move underground freely.
Wile stares for a moment, and keeps staring. His stomach rumbles again and gnaws with hunger, and against his better judgment he considers the prickly pear on his claws.
He sniffs it, carefully, and takes one small, delicate bite.
Once nothing explodes in his face, deflates, or turns out to be rocky and inedible, Wile swallows the whole thing with a single bite. It's sweet and juicy and cool, and while he'd prefer the red meat of a roadrunner or poultry in general, it's…nice. He's not entirely a fan of cacti, but it fills his stomach all the same better than scorpions do.
He takes a step towards his way home, to think yet another plan for The Roadrunner, and steps on a discarded needle. Wile yelps, lifts his foot off the ground and jumps in surprise and pain until he loses his balance.
Racing the Roadrunner is generally a bad idea. Roadrunners are fast, insanely so, leaving everyone else in the dust with a mere second or less than.
But Wile is, surprisingly, almost as fast and twice as resilient. Chasing his blue feathered prey is an everyday routine he knows by heart know. The dunes, the mesa, the oasis and cacti farms, he can tell where everything is exactly at all times while on the chase, growing closer and closer with each step and turn. So close, he can almost touch soft feathers with his claws if he stretches just an inch more.
So Wile runs, and runs and activates traps and keeps running. His foot gets crushed by a boulder, he overshoots his jump via catapult and while it makes him overtake The Roadrunner, it also makes him crash flat onto the mesa headfirst.
Someone snorts in the distance.
It's a sound so faint only because he's a coyote and a toon Wile is able to hear it. Its a choked laugh, full of mirth and something warm.
Wile unsticks himself from the mesa, ears flicking slightly, and he can kind of see the vague shape of something with long ears watching in the distance.
So the bunny is now watching his chase? What is this, some sort of TV show?
The Roadrunner beeps somewhere in the distance, not as far away as Wile thought he'd be by now, almost as if slowing down or waiting for the chase to continue. Is it another taunt?
Faster than sound can travel, The Roadrunner reappears in a cloud of dust on the top of the mesa Wile has been squashed against. The bird looks down at him with wide eyes and a happy smile like always, fluffing up his plumage and cocking his head to the side in curiosity.
"What are you doing?" He seems to ask, "What are you waiting for?"
And then The Roadrunner's eyes turn slightly, head cocked still before arranging his feathers. He looks at the same spot Wile did, and seems to notice the same as Wile's.
The Roadrunner taps the ground with his claws once, twice, as if deciding something, then looks at Wile again with the same friendly expression. Both ignore the scratches left on the warm rock.
"Beep beep!" He chirps at him, a little louder than usual, a little firmer, and blasts off to a different direction way past the mesa. Almost too far from the mesa.
Not wanting his hunt to end, his chance to be over, Wile gets up in record time and runs off after The Roadrunner, leaving the mesa behind as someone watches.
And the hunting becomes a little…intense.
Not the they never were. Wile has made sure of that with every trap and ACME product used trying to catch The Roadrunner. There is, however, a stark difference between the hunt in itself being intense, and the feeling outside of the hunt being intense.
The Roadrunner is a little…not skittish. No. But maybe a little more eager to run away, pulling faster and further away from the usual hunting spots their chases would take place at. A little past the cacti farm, a little near the railroads, a little too close to the city borders to the point they can see the buildings from the desert dunes.
The flaunting continues, because of course it does. The Roadrunner isn't shy to gloating every time the traps fail: A happy chirp, a raspberry blown too close, a quick peck to his forehead that sometimes is too gentle to be a proper taunt, almost like a nuzzle.
Wile gets caught in his own trap, rope twisting around himself and holding him mid air and twisting in knots. The Roadrunner stands in front of him at a breath's distance, closer than ever and unmoving and Wile can't catch him for the life of him.
Meat, so close and so far away its frustrating.
The Roadrunner doesn't care for his predicament, or simply doesn't think about it too much. He circles Wile in happy skips, chirping what Wile is sure is a taunt, and stops right in front of Wile's face, beeping and clicking before a pink tongue shoots from his beak.
Wile flinches in surprise, a tiny, gentle lick against his nose making him short-circuit for a moment before he huffs an angry growl. The gesture is as gentle and soft and affectionate Wile can't help but be put off with it. Personal space! Taunts should be done from within a distance!
But The Roadrunner beeps again, talons clicking on the ground in a happy dance before he speeds off, once again leaving feathers behind for Wile to collect.
The next time Wile sees Bugs Bunny, he gets a reminder of why he doesn't particularly likes to interact with him too much.
He tries to hunt the bunny once, hunger being too great to ignore the possibility of a nice, warm and meat-based dinner. The dynamite stick explodes successfully in too much of a short notice, leaving his fur singed and burnt and smoking rather pitifully.
Bugs presses his thumb to his tongue, his thumb and index fingers pressing together against the lit dynamite stick Wile is still holding and de-actives the explosive with a rather soft hiss as the flame dies.
"I thought I was the one who was gonna get cooked," Bugs says with good humor, "smells like coyote BBQ,"
Wile coughs a puff of smoke as reply.
Bugs hoist the burnt coyote on his shoulder, and Wile, still in a daze, allows it to happen before he can think about it. Bugs sits him down and dusts him off from soot and gunpowder with a few flickers of his hand, blowing charcoal away from the tip of his ears. He grabs the dynamite Wile is still holding and carelessly throws it behind himself. Somehow, until and dormant, the stick still explodes.
ACME products.
"Ay ay ay, stay out of the sun, will ya doc?"
He's half prepared for the mockery of last time, for the nonsensical comments and the (Blegh!) mocking affection the toon is known for.
Instead, Bugs looks at him, circling him for a few seconds. Wile growls, sound cut off as soon as Bugs grabs his face, both hands holding his furry cheeks as the bunny hums thoughtfully.
"You're a funny one, Wile E. Coyote."
And Bugs Bunny smiles before disappearing back into a just-made burrow under his feet.