Chapter Text
July 27th, 2000
Despite what you may read in the pages of International Sophisticate or L.A. Style, the key to achieving the perfect look this summer wasn’t a Pucci print bikini or new Rolex. It wasn’t a facelift either, despite all the advertisements in the glossy folds of Daffy’s magazine. The one he’d paused on was particularly assertive in its promise to slice and dice even the ugliest puss into one that was higher, tighter, and fifteen years younger.
Younger, ha! Daffy could feel a faint bitterness curling around his thoughts as he turned the page to reveal a familiar set of whiskers posed for the paparazzi. Now that’s rich.
“Refill for you, Mr. Duck?” The sudden appearance of his waiter was enough to make Daffy squawk out an expletive and hurl the magazine to the table, taking out his empty glass in the process. To the young server’s credit, he seemed entirely unfazed by the overreaction. Daffy was a regular, after all.
“Ah, yesth—yes.” He enunciated crisply, waving a feathery finger at the mess. “Do this again, and make it two. I’ve got a guestht arriving post hate.” A pause. “Er, haste. Post haste.”
The server nodded as he cleaned up the glass and spilled ice, smiling in that obliging way that Daffy once might’ve taken for flirtation but now only telegraphed the kid’s desire for a big fat tip. He’ll have earned it by the time this lunch is over, Daffy mused to himself, collecting his now soggy magazine and waiting until the waiter had left before reopening it to same page as before.
The photo was starting to warp around the edges from his spilled drink, but the subject remained unmistakable: Bugs Bunny, celebrating the passing of yet another successful decade. Daffy muttered something unknown even to himself as he took in the portrait, eyes lingering on those long, tapered ears. They were flopped coquettishly forward in some parody of modesty, as expressive as eyebrows or hands or—or even his voice, really. It was one of a thousand things the rabbit had going for him, and one of a thousand things Daffy couldn’t help resenting and admiring in equal measure. Some people had all the luck.
“Oooh, wouldja look at that mug.” A very familiar (and very smug) voice piped up behind him, dancing a gloved hand across Daffy’s immediately tense shoulders. “Now that’s a face that’s goin’ places.”
“Hardy har har.”
Bugs didn’t sit so much as ooze into the seat opposite Daffy, arm draped comfortably across the back. Right on cue, a waiter swanned by with a drink and crudité of fresh carrots. It wasn’t the waiter from before or the drink he’d ordered for him, but neither were the least bit surprising to Daffy. People rolled out the red carpet for the Bugs even if it meant tugging the rug out from underneath someone else. Not that Daffy knew anything about that.
“So…”
“Keep your catchphrases to yourself, rabbit.”
Without missing a beat, Bugs finished his carrot, swallowing it along with the rest of whatever he’d been about to say. Leaning back, he fixed his gaze back on the splayed magazine in front of his lunch companion.
“Didja read it yet?” He accepted the second drink from the first waiter, tossing the star-struck kid a wink that made Daffy want to gag. “’Cuz I say some awfully nice things aboutcha.”
“Oh yeah?” Daffy took his own glass, voice distinctly sourer than before the rabbit’s arrival. “Which part, the bit where you call me a ‘dear old pal’? Or was it ‘longtime costar’? I’ll have it cross-sthtitched on a pillow so I have something to scream into.”
“Didn’t get that far, huh.” Bugs didn’t sound surprised, he sounded pleased. Much worse. “Page forty-two. Bottom of the second column.”
“I’ll get to it.”
“Sure ya will.” Bugs plucked another carrot from the tray, settling deeper into this chair. “Take yer time, doc. I’ll wait.”
That was the problem with Bugs Bunny, Daffy thought: he would wait. He’d wait all afternoon if he had to, lounging in that chair like it had no place to be, and the waiters would keep coming, and the carrots would keep coming, and eventually Daffy would crack because Daffy always cracked. Patience was a very unfair quality to find in a rival. It made you look hysterical by comparison, even when you were being perfectly reasonable.
Which, of course, Daffy always was.
So he did not turn to page forty-two. He looked back down at the photograph instead (because the photograph couldn’t look back), only to find his eyes once again drifting to the ears. Old habit.
Not that the ears were really the point. He’d lied to himself about that for years, back when lying to himself was his full-time job (with benefits). Anybody could notice the ears, and most everybody did. Good luck finding a rag that would print a Bugs Bunny snapshot without ‘em in frame. Beyond that, everything else was quite standardized — a carrot, a grin, an obnoxious lean. But not once in sixty years had Daffy ever seen a tabloid capture the way Bugs looked at you when he was about to let you win.
It didn’t happen that often. Maybe once a decade, if you were lucky and very, very loud. But every once in a while, Bugs would get this look on his face — eyes half-lidded, one corner of his mouth pulled up with a barely restrained twitch of the whiskers — and then step right on the rake. Or he’d drop the cane. Or he’d let the anvil land on his head for once, and he’d lie there flattened and grinning, and Daffy would stand over him feeling ten feet tall and entirely too warm under the collar.
It had taken Daffy an embarrassingly long time to understand that Bugs did it on purpose. It had taken him even longer to understand why.
“You’re doin’ that thing,” Bugs said.
“I’m not doing any thing.”
“You’re doin’ that thing where you stare at a picture of me instead of readin’ the real article.” Bugs leaned forward and rested his chin on one gloved fist, clever eyes alight with the anticipation of a joke. “Real article’s right here, doll. Same price.”
Daffy felt the feathers around his neck ruffle for at least five different reasons, looking up and instantly regretting it. Much the way he’d regretted it for the last thirty years.
Sixty didn’t look like much on the rabbit, really. The gray had softened a little over the years; gone lighter and grainier, like a TV without signal. You’d only notice if you were close enough to see it, though Daffy usually was. Then there were the creases at the corners of his eyes, somehow never present in photos despite Daffy considering them one of the better parts of an already pretty incredible face. They were the kind of lines you only got from laughing, and seeing as Daffy had been responsible for a significant percentage of them, he felt he was owed partial credit.
“The real article,” Daffy said with disdain. “Is eating all the grub.”
Bugs pushed the tray across the table. There was exactly one carrot left, and it was the good one too. Fat, with the greens still attached. Daffy didn’t even like carrots, which (of course) Bugs knew — not that it stopped him from taking it.
This was the other thing, if Daffy was making a list, which he wasn’t: Bugs showed up. He’d shown up at every premiere for every show Daffy so much as cameoed in, sitting in the back row in dark glasses and pretending nobody recognized him (and they always did). He’d shown up at the hospital after that thing with the dynamite, and that other thing with the dynamite, and that thing that was technically a cannon but everyone agreed was spiritually dynamite. He’d shown up when Daffy’s contract got cut and when it got un-cut and over and over again for pretty much the whole of the 80s. He’d shown up today, fashionably late and wearing the tie Daffy had picked out for him that morning and which both of them seemed determined not to mention.
Daffy turned to page forty-two.
The interviewer had asked what the secret was; to sixty years in the business, to staying on top, to looking this good at an age when most stars of their era were doing dinner theater in Branson. Bugs’s answer took up two lines at the bottom of the column, and Daffy read them three times before he trusted himself to look up again without making a fool of himself.
Find somebody who’ll argue with ya, mac. Keeps ya on your toes. Thirty years ago I got the best birthday present of my life, and he still won’t let me win a single fight.
“You’re a dang liar.” Daffy said hoarsely. “I let you win constantly.”
“Name one time.”
“The—“ Daffy flapped a hand. “Tuesday. With the thermostat.”
“Ya didn’t let me win that, I just got up earlier than you.”
The waiter chose that moment to return, balancing a slice of carrot cake that was frankly obscene in its proportions. Two candles were stuck in the frosting, a three and a zero, because Daffy had called ahead and specified. Not a six. A six would’ve been the rabbit’s number, and today hadn’t belonged only to the rabbit for a long time.
The kid set it down between them, glanced from one face to the other, and for the first time all afternoon looked genuinely surprised. Daffy decided to double his tip.
Bugs reached across the table, gold band catching the patio light. They only saw each other in these once a year, but the sight never failed to make Daffy’s voice thicken with something akin to pride, frustration, and, well…
“Happy birthday, rabbit.”
“Happy anniversary, duck.”
So much for International Sophisticate. That summer’s perfect look, Daffy could’ve told them, was one from somebody who’d had thirty years to get bored of the view and had simply never gotten around to it.
He blew out both candles before Bugs could, to prove a point. And, just this once, Bugs let him.