He confronted me about why I had been ignoring him. I told him to fuck off.

Now I heard from other friends he's bad mouthing me to mutual friends. But it seems those mutual friends recognize his orbiting of another guy's girls/plates/ex's makes the orbiter himself look lame and have said so. It's a conversation/gossip taking place outside of my control...

A friend of mine brought it up to me saying "A few people are talking about you telling the orbiter to fuck off..." Up to this point no one knew about me and the plate...we kept it low key. She was triangulating things by dating my so-called "friends". She always said it was just "friends"....but it was a source of tension and when it became too much, I ghosted.

When friend told me orbiter was bad mouthing me, I just laughed, said it was a private matter and he shouldn't be talking like that about private stuff between guys.

I'm confident I don't need to confront the orbiter again who's demonstrated he's a little bitch. But I was surprised a guy blabbed about a private conversation about a private matter between guys...so a few questions:

1) I value my privacy/keep my various plates low-key, so what should I say if friends bring this up?

2) What if anything should I do if ex plate brings this up? No one knew about us because I wanted to keep things low-key. I've ghosted her for 3 months with total no contact. Blocked and deleted numbers etc.