Work Text:
the discussion, as one can imagine, came up once and again over a period of several days.
the first, over dinner.
after a series of elaborate traps had failed, wile e was at his wit’s end - so he decided, why not resort to something a little more archaic? maybe the issue was that the traps were too elaborate, took too much time to set up; the roadrunner had been known to watch from afar as the coyote prepared his downfall, after all. he could have easily gotten a good enough idea of how to properly evade the trap. so, despite his genius, wile e decided to lower the bar for the next plan.
now, if it had been easy enough to grab the roadrunner’s wife, he would’ve just done that, but on account of them both being ridiculously fast, well…moments later found him covered in indigo and blue feathers, assuming a bird-like stance by the side of the world. of course, he could never look as stupid as one, but he sure as hell tried. big eyes, a dopey smile. and to look like her, of course he put on some mascara, and made sure to flutter his eyelashes…not to flirt with the roadrunner, of course!
but when the man of the hour sped down the road, kicking up dust and beeping all the way down, he didn’t stop until after he barreled into the coyote, sending fake feathers flying into the desert sky. sporting a growing lump on his head, wile e just barely managed to lift his head from the hot asphalt as he watched the object of his desire loop back around holding a sign.
roadrunners run, they don’t stand still, the sign read, the owner sticking out his tongue in wile e’s face.
i’ve seen your wife stand still, wile e held up a sign in return, snout curling in frustration.
the bird cocked his head, seeming a little confused, before beeping and running back down the road. the scattered feathers drifted along behind him, and wile e watched them as they bathed the ground. supposing he better pick them up lest he get fined for littering, he pried himself off the pavement and plucked them one by one - only to get bowled over by the roadrunner again moments later.
the second time? dinner time, once again. in fact, why even make the distinction? every interaction these two have is at dinner time. this time, wile e had managed to scrounge up a few lizards and was roasting them on a spit over a fire. nicely seasoned, but still only lizards, only snacks. nothing compared to what he really wanted. that roadrunner, and only that roadrunner. as he chewed a bite of roasted lizard, he pretended it was the undoubtedly delicious flesh of that bird. succulent. juicy. drool sizzled on the fire as it dripped from his maw.
he was so distracted by his meal that he didn’t notice the roadrunner leaning over his shoulder until he beeped right in his ear and swiped the roasted lizard as it fell from wile e’s surprised hands towards the fire. wile e, unfortunately, wasn’t so lucky, his tail lighting up as he fell backwards into it. he smothered his flaming backside in the sand just in time for the rest of his fur not to catch, although the damage was done to his tail. it crumbled to ash uselessly. the roadrunner watched in amusement - at least, that’s what wile e had to assume - before tossing the lizard in his beak back to him.
thank you, wile e held up a sign, before flipping it around, but i’d prefer it if you just jumped in my arms yourself.
tittering, the bird signed back - with a literal sign - won’t that give the wrong idea?
what does that mean? wile e wondered for a moment before realizing. his face heated up and he waved his hands around before his foe could speed away again with that smirk on his beak. not that way!
why not?
your wife! the coyote gestured over his shoulder, back towards the nest the two roadrunners had together. actually, he didn’t know where it was. why would he know where it was?
the roadrunner’s head tilted in that confused way once again. then he shrugged, swiped the other still-roasting lizard for himself, and hurried off. wile e threw up his hands and collapsed into the sand, flustered. the roadrunner knew exactly what he meant. he was just too cheeky for his own good.
and yet…that did raise a question to wile e. why had he gotten so embarrassed over that question? it wasn’t that typical humbling feeling, like when one of his plans failed. oh no, it was something deeper than that that made his body run hotter than the sun could ever make it. and maybe it was the first time he realized that his obsession with the bird ran a little deeper than an animal’s carnal desire for meat.
but he stuffed that lizard in his mouth anyway and got back up again.
the third and final time wasn’t too long after, and, in fact, was had when wile e got back to his cave and found the cuckoo had beat him there. and was looking at all his blueprints. ugh. how embarrassing to have left an opening for him to get the jump on him. he rushed in front of the roadrunner and began tearing down the blueprints, shoving them in a wastebasket. acme-branded, of course. all the while, the bird just stood there watching, curious but mostly amused as usual at the coyote’s antics. wile e felt even worse. just how intrusive could this bird get? he dug through his own picket signs.
WHY? it asked, in big letters, and he folded his arms and tapped his foot as he waited for his foe to answer.
why do you keep asking about a ‘wife?’ was the roadrunner’s next sign, and wile e was taken aback. did he not have a wife? had he been wrong about their relationship the whole time? roadrunners looked similarly enough, was she just a sister? maybe even a mother? wile e’s tail wagged beside himself, and he grabbed it to stop it. why would he be happy about that? he was about to scold himself for being moderately excited over the prospect of the cuckoo being single when he saw the roadrunner’s next sign. matilda and i parted ways years ago.
that only raised more questions. wile e ran over to the towering bookshelf leaning haphazardly against the wall - almost all of the books were about roadrunners. he skimmed through the ones about how to attract roadrunners, then about their mating habits, and hurried back to show the roadrunner a passage about how roadrunners are monogamous and mate for life, his claw tapping it for emphasis.
you keep books about roadrunner mating habits?
wile e threw up his hands, more frustrated and flustered than ever, the book landing on the floor, open to a random page. YES!
the bird blinked at him, once, twice, thrice, before wile e noticed his tail feathers starting to wag, and the rest of his feathers fluffing up with excitement. at least, that’s what all of wile e’s reading told him that meant. of course, the roadrunner always looked amused in his own way, but now more than ever - and against all the laws of nature, wile e found it cute.
but it still didn’t make sense to his logical mind why a roadrunner, a monogamous animal, would ever leave a partner that way. so he held up the WHY sign once again, and the roadrunner just rolled his eyes and shook his head. apparently he didn’t have a sign prepared, because he started scratching his response into the dusty floor of the cave.
i already had a mate.
wile e was about to ask who it was when his gaze happened to dart down and find the book open to a page specifically about roadrunner courting…and that during courtship, roadrunners race and chase one another for hours at a time. just like they’ve been doing. for years. oh, god. it all started to make sense, then. the roadrunner always accepting his food offerings with a smile on his face. how he would bait him into chasing him. how he would run circles around him. even how he would turn back around and make sure he was okay before running off again.
you had children. wile e remembered the little tikes, three chicks that looked near identical to their parents.
the bird seemed to laugh in another series of beeps. coyotes and roadrunners can’t have children, he scratched out. i thought you were smart.
so his “marriage” had just been to fulfill some biological drive to reproduce? apparently the question didn’t need to be written on a sign for the roadrunner to understand it from the coyote’s expression, because he quickly wrote something else out.
i loved matilda, but it wasn’t right. like you said - roadrunners mate for life.
another beep beep, and out the door the roadrunner ran, kicking the dust back into dust. but the sight of the message still burned in the coyote’s yellow eyes, and he clutched his sign with shaky hands, claws splintering the wood. his chest felt too tight against his pounding heart, trying so desperately to break the confines of his ribcage.
how had he not realized, after all this time, how the roadrunner saw all of this? had his hunger blinded him? worse, had what he thought was hunger this entire time really been something else? something that defied nature more than the bird’s speed itself?
he looked back up at his bookshelf with wide eyes.
he had a lot more reading to do than he thought.