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Judy had a date.
And she was completely terrified.
“Could you stay still, Carrots?”
Judy ignored the usual yelling from her neighbors as she rummaged through her closet once again, ready to change outfits all over again, but her paws were stopped before she could make an even bigger mess of what was already her tiny apartment.
“Carrots, you need to calm down. It’s just a date.”
Nick gently held her paws in his larger ones with surprising care while Judy clenched the purple dress between her fingers, looking ready to tear it in half.
“I know, it’s just… well…” she stared at the hands Nick was holding as though she had never seen them before. They were big, at least they looked that way holding hers.
She refused to look at him, but beneath her grayish fur a faint reddish color began to appear.
“Don’t tell me this is your first date, Carrots.”
Judy lowered her ears to hide the crimson tint inside them and slipped out of Nick’s grasp, hiding her paws behind her back.
“I wasn’t exactly popular in Bunnyburrow.”
“That’s hard to believe,” he teased, and she punched his arm, though there wasn’t much force behind it.
“I’m serious!” she complained. “They really didn’t like me. A bunny who wanted to be a cop instead of the mother of a huge litter isn’t exactly attractive to a rural rabbit.”
Nick smiled and placed his hands on her shoulders. Judy was no longer surprised by how comfortable he seemed with physical contact around her, or by how natural it felt.
“Judy, you’re Zootopia’s hero, the mayor’s favorite. That rabbit should be the nervous one tonight, not you.”
When his words reached her ears, Judy couldn’t help lifting her face to look at him. There was a surprising warmth in his green eyes as he smiled at her—not like a hustler, but like her friend; the one who had saved her in more ways than one, just like he was doing right now, holding her up not only with his paws on her shoulders, but with his words too.
“Thanks, Nick.”
“No problem, Carrots. Now, the blue dress looks good on you, so don’t change again, and stop running around before you drive the whole building crazy.”
“Thanks, fox,” someone shouted from the other side of the overly thin wall.
Judy had met this rabbit while he was delivering packages to the precinct. She had run into him a few times making deliveries for Clawhauser before he finally worked up the courage to ask for her number. It had taken Judy embarrassingly long to realize he was flirting with her until she eventually received a direct invitation to dinner. Nick had teased her relentlessly for being so slow, and all she could do was blush and hit him hard enough to make him complain.
“Are you staying in my apartment?” she asked without looking at him while smoothing out her dress one more time in front of her mirror, which was really just a frameless piece of glass but perfectly functional, something Nick had gotten for her from the warehouse he used to share with Finnick before changing jobs, homes, and lives.
“I’ll just read a few pages of your diary and leave.”
“I don’t have a diary, Nick,” she finally said, leaving her outfit alone. “I think I’m ready.”
She grabbed her purse, which still held her badge and her taser.
Being on a date didn’t mean she was completely off duty.
Yeah, she knew it—she was a workaholic. She really hoped that rabbit would be okay with that side of her.
Just as she grabbed the doorknob of her way-too-small apartment, she heard her partner’s voice behind her.
“Judy… if you need anything, I’m one call away.”
His tone had changed ever so slightly, not enough for a normal mammal to notice, but enough for her to.
The mask had tilted, just a little, slightly enough for the hustler to let the worried friend show through; the friend she knew would always be there, only a step away.
“I know,” she replied with a smile, “but it won’t be necessary. It’s just a date. What could possibly go wrong?”
Judy left Nick behind with the soft click of the door, but her statement lingered behind her like a curse
...
“Nick… can you come pick me up?”
Judy felt the raindrops hitting the back of her head as she wrapped her arms around herself. It felt like being inside a Kurosawa movie.
She lowered her ears to soften the tiny impacts of the rain, which seemed determined to make sure she wouldn’t forget just how miserable she felt.
She had waited exactly two hours for the rabbit to show up.
He never did.
After the restaurant emptied out and her toes started going numb, she finally understood that her date wasn’t coming.
That realization had come after the first hour, but something had kept her rooted to the spot anyway—a pathetic kind of hope, maybe even an act of self-punishment.
She wasn’t entirely sure why.
Even when she was blocking pedestrians and the hostess kept glaring at her for very obviously standing in the way of the entrance, she stayed there.
And when the first drops of rain began to fall and people hurried away from the sidewalk, Judy still remained in place like some pathetic statue made of rainwater and nerves frozen stiff by the cold air soaking deeper into her fur.
That was when her phone vibrated in her paw.
She grabbed it quickly, still hoping the rabbit was finally apologizing for standing her up on her first date, even though he had been the one to ask her out in the first place.
She hoped he’d tell her he’d been hospitalized after the most ridiculous accident imaginable, or maybe he’d been rescuing an old lady from danger.
Anything.
Anything that would make her feel less pathetic.
But when the lock screen lit up, it wasn’t the rabbit’s contact that appeared.
"Hey, Carrots. Don’t forget to order the most expensive thing on the menu, and make sure he pays. Good way to test character."
She couldn’t stop it.
Tears spilled from her eyes, turning her vision blurry.
Even with the rain pouring over her head, she could tell with absolute certainty that it was her own tears soaking her face.
She didn’t think before selecting the contact labeled Sly Fox and calling.
The phone hadn’t even finished the first ring before a voice both warm and achingly familiar reached her frozen ears.
“Judy? What happened?”
Her voice didn’t come right away.
It took several shaky breaths before a single word finally escaped her tightened throat.
“Nick…”
She didn’t need to say anything else.
“I’m on my way.”
He understood her better than she understood herself.
Nick arrived exactly eight minutes later.
The drive from the precinct to the restaurant usually took around twenty minutes.
Judy didn’t have the energy to wonder whether Nick had turned on the patrol car siren or simply found a way to run every red light in the city without totaling the cruiser.
Nick stepped out of the car, and the rain immediately drenched him too.
Still, his eyes stayed fixed on her, scanning her from head to toe as though searching for injuries, bruises, any sign that someone had hurt her.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Judy cut him off by throwing herself at him.
Nick stumbled back a step, startled by the force of the hug.
“Judy? What happened?”
She pressed her face into his chest when she answered.
“He stood me up,” she said, her voice cracking. “He never came.”
She felt his muscles tense beneath her grip the moment the words left her mouth.
Felt the controlled rise and fall of his chest as he took a few measured breaths before finally speaking.
Then, without warning, he pulled back just enough to take off his horrible pink shirt and drape it over her ears, shielding them from the rain.
“Come on, Carrots. There’s a new movie on Zooflix that’s supposedly just as terrible as the synopsis sounds. We can grab burgers and one of those awful carrot milkshakes you love so much, huh? Sounds way better than some awful date at a pretentious restaurant.”
Judy pulled her face away from his chest to look at him.
The relief she felt knowing he was there for her nearly made her start crying all over again.
“Let’s go,” she whispered, letting him guide her back to the patrol car.
The next day, Nick surprised everyone at the precinct by volunteering for parking enforcement duty.
What surprised them even more was when he returned having broken a brand-new record, every single ticket written for the exact same car.
He had also somehow managed to place five separate wheel clamps on it.
Including one on the spare tire.
It was a delivery vehicle.
...
John was a hare Judy had been dating for three weeks.
The whole thing had been arranged by her mother, apparently, because Bonnie knew John’s mother, who had mentioned that her son would be moving to Zootopia from Bunnyburrow and needed someone to show him around.
Of course it had all been planned.
Judy only realized it by her third date with John, who, fortunately, had not left her standing in the rain for two hours.
Nick made fun of her for being slow yet again.
And she punched him again too, though with a little less force this time.
Judy decided it was as good a time as any for Nick and her first boyfriend to meet.
She had already told John about her partner at the ZPD, and he’d seemed happy to meet him—although maybe happy wasn’t exactly the right word. He definitely hadn’t refused. If anything, he’d seemed intrigued.
Maybe Judy should have mentioned that her partner was a fox before John went pale at the sight of Nick stepping out of the patrol car.
“That’s your partner?” John asked, staring at Nick like it was his first day of school and he’d just been assigned the least-liked teacher in the entire building.
Judy smiled, completely oblivious to his distress until Nick explained it to her hours later.
“Yep, that’s Nick. I’ve told you about him.” Judy hurried over and grabbed Nick by the arm, dragging him toward them. Nick, far too used to rabbit energy by now, let himself be hauled all the way over to the hare.
“You must be John, right?” Nick introduced himself first, holding out a hand. John looked at the fox’s paw—orange fur, visibly larger, sharper claws than his own—and still managed to give him a firm handshake.
“And you must be Nick.”
“Great! Let’s go inside,” Judy announced, shoving both of them toward the pizza place entrance.
They took seats at a booth near the back. The hostess, an elegant lemur, recognized them immediately.
“Your usual table?”
Judy rushed to correct her.
“No, uh… there’s three of us now.”
The lemur finally noticed the rabbit sitting beside the ZPD’s first bunny officer.
“Right this way, then.”
“You come here a lot?” John asked Judy once they were seated at the round table by the window.
Judy straightened, ready to answer, but Nick spoke first.
“It’s an excellent pizza place. The slices are thin and portable enough that we can finish them in one bite or toss them in the trunk if we have to stop a robbery mid-snack, right, Carrots?”
Judy smiled and nodded before popping one of the complimentary bread rolls into her mouth.
Finally, the waitress appeared in front of them, notepad in hand.
“Ready to order?”
“I think I wanna try the mozzarella sticks,” John said, setting his menu down on the table. It was sized for medium mammals, so it had covered almost his entire face despite his tall ears. “Same for you, Judy?”
“Actually, I don’t—”
Judy stopped herself, suddenly unsure how to explain to the guy she was dating that eating that much cheese would leave her trapped in the bathroom for the next two hours.
“Actually,” Nick cut in smoothly, “Carrots prefers the vegan eggplant burger.”
He didn’t even glance at the menu.
He lightly elbowed John in the shoulder like they were sharing some private joke.
“You’ll have to keep an eye on her. She’s ridiculously picky about food.”
John rubbed his shoulder with quiet discomfort.
After that dinner, things in their relationship only went downhill.
“You spend too much time with that fox.”
“His name is Nick, and he’s my partner. You know that.”
They were in John’s apartment.
Nick had just sent her a video of a bunny dressed as a fox for Halloween.
Ideas, the message had been titled, and Judy couldn’t help laughing.
Suddenly, John went very quiet.
She turned her phone face-down on the table.
“Sorry. We were supposed to spend the afternoon together and I’m on my phone. I won’t look at it anymore.”
John seemed to recover a little at her words.
“Good,” he said with a smile. His prominent hare teeth made him look cute and slightly ridiculous as he straightened up from his chair. “Let’s watch a movie.”
Judy nodded eagerly as they settled onto the massive pullout couch in the living room.
Unlike Judy, who had started from scratch in what was basically a shoebox apartment, John had moved into a fully furnished two-story place his older brother had left behind before moving back to Bunnyburrow.
The couch was huge for two rabbits, and the television covered nearly the entire wall—nothing like Judy’s tiny apartment or Nick’s dark basement apartment beneath the elephant gym.
And yet.
As John scrolled through movies and pulled her against his side, Judy couldn’t stop thinking about movie nights with Nick.
The windowless apartment filled with the mixed smell of cheap microwave popcorn, burnt caramel, and the faint musky scent of fox fur.
The way he always left the same blanket folded on her side of the couch because he knew sitting still for too long made her paws cold.
The couch itself was tiny and uncomfortable for a rabbit, let alone a fox, but Nick would always drag over another cushion and place it on the coffee table so she could prop her feet up comfortably.
She always fell asleep halfway through the movie because she was absurdly bad at staying up late and woke up at ungodly hours anyway.
When she woke up, Nick would place a cup of coffee in her paw before going back to sleep because he already knew she’d go running before heading home to get ready for roll call.
Now, sitting slightly tilted against John’s side, with his sweaty paw resting awkwardly on her shoulder and her legs numb from the position, Judy watched an entire movie from beginning to end for the very first time.
Nick would probably be proud of her, she thought.
...
Judy was the one who broke things off with John.
The hare’s reaction left her slightly confused. He didn’t seem upset as he sipped his apple soda in the same pizza place where Nick had first met him.
“I don’t really think I’m your type anyway, Judy.”
They never spoke again after that.
...
She met Lucas at a coffee shop.
He was a hare bartender and owner of the tiny café, friendly and slightly clumsy. Judy saw him so often that he eventually memorized her order… and Nick’s too.
Nick and Lucas got along surprisingly well from the start. If Judy stopped to watch them, she noticed they were similar in certain ways: the humor, the gestures, even the way they mocked customers with absurdly long, pretentious drink orders.
“I swear, Lucas,” Nick would say, “coffee, caramel, and cotton candy should never coexist in the same cup.”
They both laughed, until Lucas’s laughter dissolved into an awkward cough. Then he turned toward Judy and handed her her usual coffee.
It took her a second to realize the cup didn’t have her name written on it.
It had a number.
“I, uh…” Lucas scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “I thought maybe you’d wanna go out sometime. To the movies or something.”
Judy looked at Nick.
She didn’t really know why, but there was something comforting about having him nearby whenever life caught her off guard.
Nick, however, seemed suddenly fascinated by whatever was happening outside the café window.
“Sure…” Judy said. “I’m free this Friday.”
Lucas gave a tiny hop of excitement.
“Perfect. Then Friday it is.”
The drive back in the patrol car was quiet.
“Nick…”
Nothing.
“Nick, you’re being really quiet. And that’s concerning coming from you.”
He answered without looking at her.
“I was just thinking you’re becoming a very popular bunny these days. I’m considering asking for your autograph so I can resell it online.”
Judy lightly punched his shoulder.
“I’m driving, Carrots. Don’t distract the driver.”
The smell of coffee filled the patrol car.
Judy let the moment bury itself in silence.
...
Lucas was speciesist.
It took Judy two dates to realize it.
It wasn’t anything obvious at first, just a collection of little details.
At the movie theater, when an otter and a raccoon asked for two seats together, Judy noticed the look of disgust on Lucas’s face. The way he took her hand and pulled her closer to him, as though contact with either of them might somehow contaminate her.
Then later, during dinner, he insisted on changing tables when a family of wolves sat down behind them.
The confirmation came in Central Park while they waited for a live orchestral performance of the opera panda movie soundtrack.
“How do you handle working with a fox every day?” Lucas asked.
“Nick trusts me with his life,” Judy answered, not fully understanding where the question was coming from. “And I trust him with mine.”
Lucas shrugged.
“Okay. I was just asking.” He smiled casually, brushing it off like it meant nothing.
But after that, Judy started noticing more things.
The way he always left Nick’s coffee on the counter instead of handing it to him directly. The wary sideways glances he gave the fox whenever he thought nobody was paying attention.
Lucas was studying for a postgraduate degree in business administration, and when graduation day came, he invited her.
When Judy suggested bringing Nick along, Lucas explained that predators weren’t allowed on campus.
When she told Nick about it later, he only smiled.
“It’s okay, Carrots. Just don’t forget to bring flowers. They’re always a good idea at graduations and funerals alike.”
That subject got buried too.
...
For the first time in her life, Judy made it to one full month in a relationship before it happened.
They were at the apartment Lucas shared with another graduate student. His roommate was out, and Lucas had offered to teach her how to play poker.
Judy thought—not for the first time—that maybe this had been the real reason he invited her over to an empty apartment.
Nick would absolutely have mocked her for how slow she was.
But when Lucas set the cards aside and pulled her in for a kiss, Judy froze.
Completely.
Lucas pulled away when she didn’t respond. There was unmistakable anger on his face.
“Is there a problem?”
Judy swallowed hard. Not because his irritation intimidated her, but because she felt so utterly lost that one thought forced its way into her mind without permission.
“Nick.”
The name slipped out senselessly, without context. It wasn’t that she’d confused Lucas with Nick—good grief, they looked nothing alike. That wasn’t it.
It was just that whenever she felt truly lost or scared, it was the predator’s name that came to mind first. And the memory of his crooked grin brought her an entirely inappropriate sense of comfort.
She should have realized it right then.
But she was slow.
“Nick?” Lucas repeated. “What does he have to do with anything?”
The easygoing, friendly rabbit from the coffee shop disappeared the second he slammed a hand against the table, knocking the cards to the floor and making Judy jump.
“It’s always Nick this, Nick that!” he snapped. “He’s a damn fox!”
Lucas barely had time to double over before Judy’s punch knocked the air out of him.
Her paw had moved on its own. Even she looked startled by it.
“Don’t you dare talk about him like that.”
The hare looked up at her with reddened eyes, still hunched over himself.
“Get out of my house.”
So she did.
Her wrist hurt, and she felt more confused than angry.
And the very first thing she did afterward was knock on the door of the only place she had ever started thinking of as home.
“Judy?”
She didn’t answer. Her hands were shaking.
Nick scanned her with immediate concern before stepping aside to let her in.
Judy climbed onto the couch and wrapped herself in the hideous green-and-orange blanket he always lent her. Nick disappeared into the kitchen without a word and came back with hot coffee and an obscenely over-glazed donut.
She smiled while eating curled beneath the blanket, an absolute crime against color coordination.
Nick sat beside her with his own diabetic nightmare of a donut and a coffee twice the size of hers.
The silence stretched for a long time.
“I broke up with Lucas,” she finally said.
“Okay.”
That was it.
No questions. No judgment. Just Nick beside her.
Like always.
Judy should have realized it then.
But she was still slow.
Two weeks later, she found out the coffee shop where Lucas worked had been shut down by health inspectors, and his university was under investigation for species discrimination.
...
It happened during winter break.
Bogo had forced them to use the rest of their accumulated vacation days before the end of the year. Coincidentally, they happened to fall on the same dates Nick still had saved up, mostly because he never took time off without her.
Her parents already knew him well. Nick even had favorites among her more than three hundred siblings.
With one bunny hanging from each arm, Nick crossed the burrow’s dining room beside Judy.
That was when her father introduced him.
Vincent.
A full-fledged farm rabbit. If Judy were being honest, he looked like a younger version of her father.
And if she were being even more honest… that was slightly unsettling.
“So you’re the famous Judy Hopps.”
She shook his hand nervously.
“That’s me.”
Behind her, Nick cleared his throat with all the subtlety of an elephant in a tutu.
“Oh, right. This is Nick. My partner at the ZPD.”
Vincent greeted him politely.
After dinner, Stu dragged Nick outside to help load firewood into the truck. Judy scolded her father for making Nick work during his vacation, but Nick waved the complaint away dismissively, leaving Judy and Vincent alone together.
Vincent turned out to be a genuinely wonderful rabbit: kind, sweet, and surprisingly self-aware. He seemed sincerely upset when Judy shared stories about times Nick had been reduced to nothing more than his species.
Judy was surprised to learn Vincent organized signature drives for inclusion workshops in Bunnyburrow elementary schools.
Judy loved her hometown, but it was years behind the rest of the world in some ways, especially since most rabbits there had almost no contact with predators at all. The fact that a bunny who looked like the living stereotype of a farm rabbit cared so deeply about broadening Bunnyburrow’s perspective was, at the very least, wonderful.
It was already late by the time Vincent headed back to his parents’ farm, and Judy went looking for Nick.
She found him easily in the backyard, staring up at the stars. A fox always stood out in a rabbit burrow.
“Nick.”
“Hey, Carrots. How’s the surprise date going?”
“Date? I literally just met him.”
“Well… that’s usually how dates start.”
She thought about it for a second.
“Then you and I have been on a lot of dates.”
Nick went completely rigid.
“I—” Judy hurried to explain. “I just mean we spend a lot of time together. We go out to eat, we watch movies, I know what brand of toilet paper you buy. We’re basically an old married couple without the rings.”
Nick somehow looked even more horrified.
Judy wanted the earth to swallow her whole.
But before she could apologize, he spoke first, turning his gaze back to the stars.
“I guess you’re right,” he said. “So you can probably skip the dating part, Carrots. At this point we might as well celebrate our silver anniversary.”
She smiled.
Still watching the stars, Judy rested her head against his shoulder, so relaxed she didn’t even notice the slight tension in the mammal beside her—the one she leaned on for support.
In more ways than one.
...
She finally realized it.
She had stayed in contact with Vincent, though they’d never agreed to anything serious. Even so, he invited her to his family’s cabin just outside Bunnyburrow.
Of course, she talked to Nick about it first.
“A week alone together at a family cabin without the family?” he said, tilting his head. “You know what that means, right?”
Judy’s heart, already beating fast, sped up even more.
“That I should pack a lot of clothes?”
Nick burst out laughing as he sat up from his bed, which somehow looked even smaller with a predator sprawled across it.
“Yeah, that too,” he said with a wink. “It also means the bunny’s hoping to get lucky.”
“Lucky?” Judy repeated blankly.
“Oh, come on, Carrots. I know you’re slow, but not that slow.”
It took her a few seconds to understand.
When she did, the blush spread all the way up to her ears.
“Just because he invited me on vacation doesn’t mean he wants to… do that.”
Nick was suddenly too close.
Leaning over her in a way that abruptly reminded her just how different their sizes really were.
Then he laughed and stepped back again.
“You’re adorable when you blush, Judy.”
“Don’t call me adorable!” she protested. “Besides, I’ve spent entire weeks alone with you and that’s never meant anything.”
Nick grinned mischievously.
“That’s because I’m a gentleman. Though I do lock the bathroom door, just in case. You know what they say about bunnies.”
Judy shot him a murderous glare, though she relaxed a second later.
“As if you’d stand a chance,” she muttered while zipping up her suitcase.
...
Nick’s words stayed with her all the way until the trip.
She accepted the invitation.
She knew what it implied.
And she was terrified.
But wasn’t that what was supposed to happen? She was twenty-four years old. A virgin bunny at her age was about as unlikely as a bunny cop who had saved the city and taken down two mayors.
Vincent’s cabin was peaceful. Dinner was good—better than anything Nick had ever cooked in his life—and yet Judy still found herself missing her partner’s badly cooked fish.
When Vincent dimmed the lights and leaned in to kiss her, she knew where things were headed.
She didn’t panic while he kissed her. He was gentle, a little clumsy.
But once they ended up in the bedroom, still fully dressed, something inside her broke open.
The volcano erupted, the dam shattered, everything she had shoved into the deepest corner of her mind finally gave way and came crashing down on top of her.
Judy started crying.
“What’s wrong?” Vincent asked immediately, alarmed.
“Nothing,” she answered honestly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
It was just that Vincent wasn’t Nick.
Lucas hadn’t been Nick either.
Neither had John, nor any other mammal she had ever tried to love.
Vincent was kind. Incredibly sweet as he brought her a glass of water and a box of tissues.
She asked if she could use the bathroom.
And then she called him.
Nick answered sounding half asleep, but instantly alert.
“Carrots?”
His voice was a warm embrace in the middle of a confusing night. Just hearing him there somehow comforted her so much it made her want to cry all over again until there was nothing left inside her.
“Nick…”
“Where are you? I’m coming to get you.”
Judy couldn’t help laughing through her tears.
He always did that.
No matter what happened, or where it happened, he would run toward her without hesitation.
“No. I’m okay. I just… needed to hear your voice.”
Silence.
“Are you sure?” he asked, fully awake now.
“Yes. It’s just… well… I was with Vincent and I realized something.” She took a shaky breath. “I realized I’m in love with you.”
Silence again.
“Are you drunk?”
Judy laughed harder.
“No. Or maybe a little. But I love you, Nick. And I’ve been too much of a coward to admit it before.”
The words had finally escaped her chest, but the second they did, she realized she had absolutely no idea how Nick felt about her, and there was a horrifying possibility she had just destroyed their relationship forever.
Then Nick answered.
But not with what she expected.
“Send me your location.”
“What? Nick, there aren’t even trains running this late and—”
He hung up.
Judy was completely certain that if she didn’t send her location immediately, he would hack into the ZPD system if necessary just to track her phone.
Hours later, Nick was there.
Sweatshirt, pajama pants, and a rented car.
Judy apologized to Vincent for months afterward for what happened that night. Some part of her would probably always feel guilty for leaving such a sweet guy in the middle of the night just to run into her fox’s arms so he could take her home.
But Vincent only told her to take care of herself and let her go without complaint.
He really was a good guy.
That night, they didn’t talk.
Nick took her back to his apartment, which had slowly become more hers with every passing day. Her usual ugly two-colored blanket. A spare toothbrush in the bathroom sink. A couple of her uniforms hanging in his closet. The fox-ear slippers he had given her for Christmas.
She hadn’t realized just how much she had invaded his apartment.
How used to him she had become.
How comfortable she felt beside him.
How safe she felt with the mammal who had once been her natural predator.
Again there was coffee in her paws, a soft pillow beneath her head, terrible movies on the television. Nick draped his tail across her lap, and Judy curled up beside him until morning.
Two more days passed in the middle of the vacation that had originally belonged to Vincent’s cabin and now belonged entirely to Nick’s apartment before they finally talked about it.
“Nick, about the other night…”
“Do you want the burnt part of the meat or the completely pulverized part?”
She looked at the frying pan full of charred meat and the terrible cook standing in front of her, unable to stop the smile tugging at her face.
“The burnt part, please,” she answered, her voice breaking slightly as her confession lingered there between the ordinary warmth of the kitchen and the shyness of a mammal who always seemed so confident.
She didn’t know how her body still had tears left in it when two more slid down her cheeks.
But this time, they were happy tears.
Nick immediately set the pan down on the cold stove and crossed the kitchen the second he saw her falling apart again. He cupped her smaller face in his larger paws with astonishing tenderness.
“Hey, what’s wrong, Carrots? We can order takeout like always. I just wanted to try something different.”
“I’m really a slow, clueless bunny, aren’t I?” she whispered, nuzzling into his grip without even the slightest fear of his claws or the paws large enough to cover most of her face. “I’ve been searching for something I already had.”
Nick looked confused for a moment.
Then he understood.
“You were always my home.”
Nick’s ears lowered slightly, like he couldn’t fully believe what she was saying. Then something inside him seemed to snap loose too, as though his own carefully built dam had finally collapsed. He pulled her into his arms and wrapped himself around her completely.
“I’ve been slowly losing my mind these past few months, Judy, thinking about all those male rabbits putting their paws on you. When you left with Vincent, I thought my tail was gonna fall off from stress.”
Judy laughed against his chest with barely enough room to breathe. The fox was holding her tightly, and she felt completely safe.
“Sorry. Sometimes I’m just a clueless bunny.”
Nick laughed softly against her ears, making them twitch.
“And I can be a clueless fox. A cowardly one too, because I didn’t have the guts to stop you even though it was killing me not to.”
Judy pulled back just enough to look at him.
“I love you, Nick Wilde. You’re my home. I don’t need to look for another one.”
Nick looked utterly stunned, like he was still trying to process her words.
And Judy finally understood the biggest difference between Nick and every other mammal she had dated.
They had always wanted something from her. Maybe sex, maybe affection, maybe status.
But not Nick.
Never Nick.
The fox expected nothing from Judy except the chance to remain part of her life in whatever way she would allow.
This time, she didn’t hesitate.
She rose onto the tips of her paws as far as she could; Nick met her halfway.
The kiss felt refreshing.
Like taking a breath after holding it in for far too long.
It was relief.
It was confirmation of something both of them had always known deep down.
“I love you too, Judy,” he murmured softly. “I always have.”