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Sylvester had been told it was a casual dinner. Just come over, Bugs had said, I'm making something, bring nothing, Bugs had said.
Easy, right?
He had accepted, because spending his days locked in his room trying to ignore his sister got exhausting after a while.
Now he sat at Bugs's kitchen table as he cooked, and Wile sat across from him, arms folded loosely over his chest, occasionally glancing toward the stove with a small smile. He had a coffee and the expression of a man completely at home. Neither of them had much to say, mostly because Sylvester didn't have a good understanding of ASL, but he didn't mind. It was actually nice.
Bugs stood at the stove, humming quietly to himself as he stirred something in a saucepan. Every so often, he'd reach for something without looking and somehow find it exactly where he'd left it.
The kitchen was big and comfortable. There were dishes stacked beside the sink, a dish towel hanging crookedly from the oven handle, and a few grocery bags sitting on the counter that Bugs hadn't gotten around to putting away.
From the living room came the low murmur of the television. Sylvester glanced toward the doorway, and found Daffy was sprawled across the couch, completely absorbed in whatever he was watching. One arm was thrown over the backrest, his feet were planted on the coffee table, and the volume was just high enough to make having a conversation in the kitchen slightly difficult.
Bugs didn't seem bothered… Yet. He stirred the sauce again and sighed.
"How's school?" he asked Sylvester, who shrugged in response.
"Fine, I guess."
Bugs glanced over his shoulder.
"Mm… Fine fine, or stop asking fine?"
Sylvester gave him a look.
"Fine."
Bugs smiled.
"Gotcha."
He turned back to the stove.
A few seconds passed.
Then he looked over again.
"Are you still going to Wile's shop after school?"
Sylvester nodded. Wile reached for a napkin, wrote something quickly and slid it across the table.
[Tell him almost every day.]
Sylvester read it and snorted.
"Yeah, I go almost everyday, but he would get bored otherwise so..."
Wile raised an eyebrow. Sylvester grinned.
Bugs laughed under his breath.
"You two get along pretty well, huh?"
Sylvester looked at Wile, and Wile sipped his coffee.
"Yes. I think we do."
Wile always let him talk.
It didn't matter what he was complaining about. School, Tweety, Granny, the neighbors, Tweety, whatever stupid thing had happened that week, Tweety. Wile never told him he was being dramatic. He never gave him that look adults sometimes gave him when they had already decided that whatever he was saying couldn't possibly be that serious.
He just listened, sometimes writing something in a notebook in reply and sometimes knowing Sylvester didn't need an answer, just a nod or a smile.
Bugs turned off the stove and started searching through a cupboard. "I see... So what happened with that teacher you mentioned?"
Sylvester blinked.
"What? You… Remember that?"
Bugs looked back at him. "Of course I do!"
Sylvester looked down at the table. He started explaining, and Bugs listened while he moved around the kitchen, occasionally asking another question. Not too many, just enough to keep Sylvester talking, which was usually difficult for people he didn't know. Sylvester realized, somewhat belatedly, that he was enjoying himself.
It was nice.
Really nice.
For a kid who technically had family, Sylvester didn't have many adults who asked about him just because they wanted to know. There was Granny, obviously.
She cared, he knew she did.
But Granny worried about everything. Homework, chores, whether he'd eaten, whether he'd gotten enough sleep, whether he'd remembered his jacket. Not to mention she would always take Tweety's side when something happened. Sometimes it felt like she had an entire checklist in her head labeled Things Sylvester Could Potentially Do Wrong and most of the items in that list were "make his sister upset".
Wile was different, he worried quietly. And Bugs, on the other hand, seemed to worry casually, without making anything a big deal. Sylvester wasn't sure which one he liked more. Probably both, he thought. It was embarrassing to even think about it, but he always thought he wouldn't mind if the two of them started dating. That way, these moments would become more frequent.
He was halfway through explaining something when the TV went slightly louder in the living room, and Bugs suddenly inhaled deeply through his nose.
He set down the wooden spoon, picked up the kitchen rag from the counter, put it over his shoulder, and walked out of the kitchen with both hands on his hips.
Sylvester turned in his chair.
Bugs was standing in the living room doorway looking at Daffy with the expression of a man who had been saving something up and had decided now was the time. "Daffy. Turn it down."
Daffy, who had not looked up from the TV, replied: "I can barely hear it."
"I don't care if you're going deaf. I'm trying to have a conversation with Sylvester in here."
"So have it."
"I can't hear myself think—"
"Then think louder, I don't know."
Bugs made a sound. It was a short sound. It communicated several things efficiently. He pointed the rag at his friend, threateningly.
"Turn. It. Down."
Daffy picked up the remote with the air of someone doing a tremendous favor and turned it down by one. Possibly two. The difference was not perceptible to any human ear.
"Thank you," Bugs said, in a tone that did not mean thank you.
"Whatever the princess wants," Daffy said, "since apparently this is a monarchy.”
Bugs turned back toward the kitchen. He got approximately four steps.
"A monarchy," he said, to the floor, to nobody, to the universe. His hands came off his hips long enough to gesture at the general concept and then went back. "I cook. I clean. I do everything in this house and somehow HE is the one living in a monarchy—"
"Nobody asked you to cook—"
"Oh, nobody asked? Guess what, someone has to cook."
"I can cook but—"
"YOU can cook?" Bugs laughed, but his eye twitched. "You CAN'T cook."
"I can cook fine—"
"You can cook fine? THE EGGS, DAFFY. AN ENTIRE CARTON—"
"That was one time, a long time ago and—"
"IT WAS NOT ONE TIME AND IT WAS LAST WEEK, YOU'RE A DISASTER!"
Sylvester turned back to the kitchen table. Wile was looking at him. He had a napkin and a pen and he slid it across the table.
[they do this every day, don't worry.]
Sylvester looked at the napkin, then looked at the doorway where Bugs had reappeared to gesture at Daffy with the kitchen rag. He kept walking back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, and it was a little funny to see.
He looked back at Wile. Wile nodded. Sipped his coffee.
"If you're not going to help, because you can't cook," Bugs was saying, now back in the kitchen, at the stove, stirring something with great agitation, "THEN AT LEAST BE QUIET!"
"I'm watching something, do you mind?" Daffy yelled back.
"I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'RE WATCHING!"
"You told me to wait for dinner, I'm waiting for dinner and now somehow I'm—"
"WAITING. HE'S WAITING." Bugs said this to the pot. The pot did not respond. He turned to Wile and Sylvester with the expression of a man seeking witnesses. "He's waiting. The audacity to… Ugh!" He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, grunting.
Wile looked at his coffee.
Sylvester raised his hand slightly. "I can help with something if you need. I cook at home sometimes when Granny is tired."
"No, Sylvester, sit down, it's fine, you deserve a break—" Bugs turned back to the stove and immediately raised his voice toward the living room: "SOMEONE ELSE IN THIS HOUSE SHOULD BE HELPING SINCE HE LIVES HERE—!"
"I OFFERED LAST WEEK!" Daffy yelled back.
"YOU OFFERED TO MICROWAVE SOMETHING!"
"THAT'S COOKING—!"
“NO, IT'S NOT!”
Sylvester looked at Wile, again, expecting more commentary. Wile had another napkin ready.
[he offered to microwave something, but he has ruined two microwaves recently, so Bugs threw him out of the kitchen before he could.]
Sylvester read this. He looked at Bugs, who was now smacking a cabinet closed with slightly more force than necessary while explaining to the cabinet that he didn't ask for much, just for some acknowledgment, just for someone to notice that dinner didn't make itself.
Wile slid another napkin.
[the cabinet thing is new, usually he just smacks the counter.]
Sylvester pressed his lips together very hard.
From the living room, Daffy said something about how if Bugs wanted help he should ask for help in advance instead of making sounds and expecting people to read his mind, which was, objectively, Sylvester thought, a reasonable point, and which Bugs received by gesturing at the living room wall with a wooden spoon while explaining that he shouldn't have to ask, that after five years of living together a person should be able to notice when—
"WELL WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO," Daffy said, volume escalating, "WHEN YOU WON'T LET ME IN THE KITCHEN—"
"I LET YOU IN THE KITCHEN—"
"YOU THREW ME OUT—"
"BECAUSE YOU WERE MICROWAVING A—"
"THAT'S WHAT MICROWAVES ARE FOR—"
"I TOLD YOU TO STOP MICROWAVING SPOONS!"
Wile slid another napkin.
[three more minutes, maybe four.]
Sylvester mouthed how do you know?
Wile wrote.
[they always run out of things to say around this point, then Bugs finds an unrelated problem and they solve it]
Sylvester looked back at Bugs, who was at the stove again, stirring with focused agitation, the argument still going in the background but losing steam— Daffy's responses getting shorter, Bugs's getting more specific, both of them cycling through the same three grievances with the practiced ease of people who knew exactly where all of this went and were getting there at the usual pace.
Then Bugs opened the cabinet again.
He looked in it for a moment.
He closed it.
"Daffy."
A different tone. Not the argument tone. Just. Normal. Like a switch had been flipped somewhere.
“DAF—”
From the living room: "WHAT?"
"... There's no bread."
A pause. The TV volume went down —actually down, perceptibly— and there was the sound of the couch, and footsteps, and Daffy appeared in the kitchen doorway in his jacket already half on, keys in hand, with the expression of a man who had simply identified a task and was performing it.
"I'll go," he said.
"The one with the seeds," Bugs said, turned back to the stove.
"I know the one."
"And check if they have the—"
"I know, Bugs, I know."
Daffy turned to go. Then he stopped in the doorway. He looked back at Bugs, who was stirring, kitchen rag still on his shoulder, completely calm now, like the last fifteen minutes had simply been weather that had passed.
"You're almost out of carrots," Daffy said. "You want me to grab more while I'm out?"
Bugs's hand slowed on the spoon. Just slightly. For just a moment.
"Yes," he said. "Please. But make sure they're not—"
"Not baby carrots, only real carrots, I know." Daffy adjusted his jacket. "Back in ten. Okay?"
"Okay!"
He left. The door closed. The kitchen went quiet.
Bugs stirred, and kept cooking. Outside, a car started.
Sylvester looked at Wile.
Wile was already writing.
[the carrots thing means it's over.]
Sylvester read this. He read it again. He looked at the door. He looked at Bugs, who was humming something very quietly at the stove, completely at ease, the argument apparently filed somewhere neither of them would look at again.
He took the pen from Wile and wrote on the napkin: [thats it???]
Wile took it back.
[that's it, he noticed the carrots thing, that's his apology.]
Sylvester sat with this for a moment.
"Sylvester," Bugs said, without turning around, "stop reading whatever Wile is writing on those napkins."
Sylvester put the napkin down, and covered it with his hand.
Wile folded his hands on the table with the expression of someone who had done nothing wrong.
"I can hear the pen, you two."
Wile looked at Sylvester. Sylvester looked at Wile. They said nothing, which was easy for both of them for different reasons.
Bugs turned around, finally, and looked at them both —Wile with his folded hands and his empty cup and his complete innocence, Sylvester sitting very straight with the napkins in a small pile— and something crossed his face that was approximately the shape of fondness.
"Dinner in fifteen minutes," he said, and turned back to the stove. “I'll keep the heat low, I don't want it to get cold before he comes back.”
Daffy came back in twelve minutes with the bread, the carrots, and something else he'd apparently decided they needed while he was there, which he put on the counter without comment and which Bugs looked at and said nothing about, which meant it was right.
The argument had apparently been forgotten. Or, more accurately, everyone had simply decided it wasn't worth remembering anymore.
Bugs set the dishes on the table while Daffy brought over the bread. They moved around each other without thinking about it, passing behind one another in the kitchen without bumping, reaching for the same things and somehow never getting in each other's way.
Sylvester watched them for a moment.
Twenty minutes ago, they had been arguing over television volume and cooking. Now Bugs was cutting the bread while Daffy was setting down glasses.
Neither of them seemed bothered.
"Sit down," Bugs said. "It's going to get cold."
Daffy pulled out a chair. "You're not the boss of me."
Bugs gave him one look.
Daffy sat down immediately, looking slightly scared.
Dinner was —and Sylvester would think about this later, lying in bed— extremely normal. Daffy complained about something on TV that he'd been watching before the bread situation. Bugs told him he was wrong about it. Wile ate and said nothing and occasionally signed something that made Bugs laugh and translate it for Sylvester. Daffy refilled everyone's water without being asked, which Sylvester clocked and found highly unusual.
At some point Bugs put more food on Daffy's plate without asking. Daffy kept talking about the TV thing. Neither of them mentioned it. He then started talking about something stupid that had happened at the grocery store last week, and Bugs interrupted twice to correct his version of the story. Daffy insisted Bugs had remembered it wrong and Bugs argued that Daffy was the one who had forgotten. This time, neither of them sounded angry.
Sylvester watched Daffy lean back in his chair, smiling despite himself. Bugs caught the smile.
For half a second, they just looked at each other.
Something passed between them that Sylvester couldn't quite understand.
Wile shook his head and smiled into his glass. When Bugs asked what he was smiling about, he only waved a hand dismissively.
The conversation drifted from school to the neighborhood, then to Wile's shop, then back to whatever Daffy had been watching on television. Nobody seemed to notice when the conversation stopped being about anything in particular, they just kept talking. It was strange how ordinary it felt.
Sylvester was used to dinner being quiet at home unless Tweety was doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing. He was used to Granny asking whether he'd finished his homework or cleaned his room. Used to Tweety stealing food off his plate and then acting like she hadn't.
This was different. There was no schedule, no checklist. Nobody was telling him what he should or shouldn't be doing, they were just sitting around a table eating and talking.
Bugs was reaching for the bread, Daffy was complaining about something. For once, Sylvester didn't feel like the odd one out, he just felt like he was having dinner with a family. That was probably the nicest part.
Seventeen years.
Bugs and Daffy's friendship was as old as Sylvester himself. He wondered what someone started noticing after that long, without being asked.
He had spent enough time around Granny to know that adults had a strange way of expressing affection. Some of them asked if you'd eaten, some of them listened to you complain about school.
Apparently, some of them started arguments over the correct television volume and then continued them for twenty minutes.
Maybe that was okay.
He looked at his plate.
Wile, next to him, slid one final napkin across the table without looking up from his food.
[every week, same fight, don't mention it to either of them and they'll invite you again.]
Sylvester folded the napkin carefully and put it in his pocket before Bugs could see.
No. He didn't mention it to either of them.