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“OMPHF!”
Nick may have had a permanent fur coat on him all his life, but he always hated the cold.
And being smashed into the barrier wall’s freezing cold metal rooftop? While it was spitting out freezing cold ice just 20 feet beside him? With a lynx now stabbing wildly at him with a venom injector? Oh yeah, could this day just get any better?
“Stop! Fighting!” the feline stranger spat as he swung wildly at him.
Nick was no brawler - Judy was always the one he needed to jump in with a nasty bunny-kick-to-the-jaw when things got rough - but if this sideburned feline had actually laid a hand on her?? Then even Mr. Big’s shrew skin would crawl over what Nick would do to this guy!
The needles whistled past his ears with every barely timed dodge, he jerked side to side with as much energy his adrenaline had left to give him… but he had no chance against a mammal twice his size with a homefield advantage. His only hope in situations this dire was to stall enough for his partner to come save him with one of her annoyingly perfect last-minute rescues but… she was… she was gone.
“THE ANTIVENOM!!”
Nick managed to dart his eyes down to the earth. The blue snake from the gala! He was being dragged back into the wall’s service center by the ZPD?? What the hell was he doing-
“WE CAN SAVE HER WITH THE ANTIVENOM! THROW ME THE BAG!” He cried up to him again, just as the serpent was yanked back inside, the swishing of his tail showing in his coils:
“JUDY!!!” Nick screamed.
He barely managed to dodge another stab of the syringe. *SHE WAS ALIVE.* She was alright! …But only barely!
His eyes frantically went to the red fanny pack strapped to his assailant’s back - the baby blue safety needle barely sticking out!
And the only chance to save her was right there! Nick prayed to whatever deity might be listening to bless him with strength and kicked his feet square into the feline’s gut. The lynx went one way, the fanny pack went in the other: right to the edge of the drop off.
“No no no no!” He scrambled after it, his city claws skittering uselessly off the iced over film of the steel rooftop - but they found purchase at the edge of the industrial piece of machinery and launched himself onto the overhang of ice for the bag! He threw both hands out for it!
“STOP!” Something furry grabbed his ankle, he hit the ground - Nick’s head snapped around to see the lynx’s frantic form anchoring him to the splitting ground “You’re gonna kill us both! Stop! It’s not worth it! It’s not worth dying for!”
The ice they were on split again with a crack like thunder. His stomach dropped as he could feel the entire ground beneath him heave and sag another angle. The slightest movement made a second violent snap of their platform explode out. The howling wind coming from below beckoned as a grim omen… it had to be at least 200 feet down to the pavement… This was a one-way trip.
He’d die.
“Y-Yeah… W-Well…” he strained as he twisted out of the lynx’s grasp.
Sure. This case wasn’t worth dying for.
“AGREE… TO….”
But she was.
“DISAGREE!”
**POW!**
Nick struck his heel into the cat’s face and dove for Judy’s only salvation. His paper-thin shirt didn’t protect him from the freezing cold as he slid on his belly, scrambling for the bag. His frost-nipped fingers fiddled for the antivenom “HERE!” hollering as loud as his voice could allow before chucking it down below.
The ice he was on split like an earthquake, the entire platform dropped another 10 degrees steeper. The realization that he’d passed the point of no return hit him with a religious terror he’d never experienced before… but a warmth of relief washed over him as he saw his pitch made it’s target. The blue snake had caught it.
Judy would be safe.
She would survive…
“IDIOT!” roared the same voice from beside him.
“HNNGGHHH!!!” Nick seized up. He wanted to cry out a blood curdling shriek. Something bit him. An agony that was both white hot, yet freezing cold all at the same time flooded from his ribcage. His muscles lost all their strength and he collapsed paralyzed to the frozen floor. Just barely, he could make out the image of the lynx now sinking something into his side and pulling away - the venom injector. Nick would have cursed his last had he been able to speak.
Time seemed to slow down. The sheet finally exploded from beneath them into a shower of ice and snow. His tie and shirt floated above his shoulders. He began that mortal plummet to the ground below.
“NICK!”
But just as gravity took control of him, a familiar paw grasped his wrist. His ears, that were rapidly going deaf, could barely make out the one voice that could make his heart leap. Judy yanked him up and onto the wall again, rolling over onto his back and staring straight up into the blinding white of the snowy sky.
He felt like he was burning alive from the inside out.
0000oooo0000oooo0000
“NICK! Nick!” she pleaded.
She caught the back of his head when she rolled him onto his backside, her other hand upon his sternum. He was frozen. His body jostled like his muscles couldn’t decide between going stiff into a board or convulsing into a fetal shiver.
Her silent prayer of denial hoped he’d just been spooked from the near-death-fall, but that hope was dashed. Nick’s gullet pulsed like he was about to vomit. His eyes were wide with shrinking pupils that couldn’t even acknowledge her presence. His whole body quaked like he was slipping into hypothermia all while his brow was becoming thick with sweat. He’d been injected.
The antivenom. She had to get the antivenom!
She snapped her hand around “GARY!” she screamed to the opened hatchway.
Her eyes were back on Nick in an instant, her tone dropping to whatever semblance of calm she could muster “You’re okay. Y-You’re okay. Nick, you’ve been injected with snake venom. We have the antivenom with us. You’re gonna be okay. Son of a- GARY!!!”
Scales zipped up the stairwell and slithered out into the open. Gary’s out of breath and terrified expression didn’t even get a chance to rattle off a sentence before:
“T-The antivenom!” Judy desperately snapped a hand out to him expectantly “Quick!”
His blue face managed to lose a shade of color “W-What? I don’t - It’s down back in the control room!”
“GO! HURRY!”
She held his head more firmly, her other hand came up to grip his collar “H-Hang in there, partner. We’ve got you.”
He was shivering like mad in her arms, not a bit of it because of the frozen infinity they were up on.
“Nick…” she pleaded, touching his face. Those deep emerald eyes of his were shrunken black dots. That trademarked calm and cool expression of his was a thing of the past - the usual, effortless confidence he radiated with his lidded gazes were now replaced with the vacant dread of a 1,000 yard stare.
“C-Carr-o-o.” his right paw quivered up off his chest.
It was grasped by her immediately “Don’t talk. Don’t move.” she urged, tightly gripping it.
How could this have happened?? This wasn’t how it was supposed to go! He shouldn’t have even been here! SHE had been the one who pushed him to go to that stupid gala and put this in motion! SHE was the one who made them fugitives and pushed him to come on this wild goose chase! SHE was the one who led him up that mountain and got them separated… And SHE is the one that abandoned him to the ZPD and ran after the case!
And now he was fading in her arms.
The wind howled against his beautiful, amber fur. This couldn’t be happening! Not him. Not her rock. Not the one person in the whole world who actually made her feel safe. Not the single fox who anchored her down in this crazy, upside down life! Not him.
Not her Nick.
“S-Stay with me Nick. Stay with me, alright? You’re okay. You’re okay.”
His shivers became spasms. The venom was just too much. Even the smallest nip of the injection had paralyzed her instantly. An accidental injection from just one of Gary’s fangs had put Bogo, a beast of pure muscle 20x Nick’s size, down in a split second. And Pawbert had dumped every drop of the venom he had left into Nick’s body. And once that reached his heart…
“No no no no no.” Judy choked “No. Nick. P-Please. Please keep breathing.”
His struggles for air became hollow wheezes
“No! Fight it! You have to fight it! You h-” she snapped her head to the door and screamed bloody murder “GARY!!!!!!!” her shriek echoed across every direction of the wall.
Nick’s fading thrashes became weaker with every pulse.
“NICK!” she sobbed, holding his face.
She did this. All of this was her fault. None of this would have happened had she just listened. She had dragged him across the entire city and not once did he leave her side… but she had left him so readily back at the honeymoon lodge…
“P-Please… D-Don’t leave me!”
Nick’s haggard gasps went silent.
“JUDY!” Gary cried halfway through the hatch. The antivenom pen was flung through the air. Judy’s fingers snatched it from the sky ‘Stab me straight into the heart!’ went out over the voicebox.
She speared it into his sternum. The effects were immediate. Officer Nicholas P. Wilde sucked in air. He curled up briefly, before his loosened limbs finally collapsed onto the ground. His chest heaved up and down as his lungs sucked down good, deep inhales of sweet oxygen. Judy wanted to cry from sheer relief, but now was not the time. She pulled the pen away and cupped his head - she wasn’t sure he was out of the woods yet.
His initial heaves steadied into solid breathing. His shuddering disciplined itself with a strong exhale from his mouth. His eyes opened up and those beautiful irises of forest green she knew so well now locked onto her “J-Judy?”
“O-Oh my God!” she wept. Relief washed over her; she collapsed into him and snapped her arms around him with zero intention of ever letting go again. Immediately, she was cocooned by the saffron arms that gifted her with a warmth no fire could ever give. “N-Nick.”
“I thought that you were-” Nick choked into her ears as he squeezed her with all his might “He told me you were… that you were…”
Her mind refused to think of any coherent sentence. Her tears turned his pink shirt damp. She just tucked herself even more firmly into his arms and buried her face into his chest as if she had every intention of living there. Nick wrapped his arms around her so tightly, she thought he might crack a rib - it was a problem she didn’t care about in the slightest.
“I-I’m sorry.” Nick begged for forgiveness “I’m so sorry.”
Now his hands grasped the back of her head. Every word stumbled over one another “I should have been there. I should have been with you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
She managed to find a way to sink even further into him, clutching his shirt. The familiar smell of his cheap cologne, the leftover scent of the hazelnut brew coffee he drank, all the low-down things she’d come to adore at a level words couldn’t even describe. All the things that gave her comfort. She had been seconds away from all of that disappearing forever “N-i-iick…”
Nick gulped back air and Judy only released her vice grip when his hands grasped her shoulders to pull her back into his line of sight.
“O-O-Okay I-I don’t, I-I don’t CARE… that we’re different.” He swallowed back another gulp and inhaled “Y’know? And I know I shouldn’t have told you I didn’t care about the case, but I don’t! What I care about…” he took in a breath as shaky as his hands waving in front of him “...is YOU. I care about you! Alright? You’re what I care about.”
The fox managed to wrestle control over his words “And I didn’t say it… I shoulda said it. But it’s because… Because it scares me. Because I’m scared about becoming so attached to something that’s just too good to be true. I’m an mentally stunted, immature, emotionally unavailable jerk. And to cover up the fact that you are THE BEST THING that has ever happened to me… I-I make jokes!” He laughed with a throwing up of his hands “About your ears! A-And I tell you that you try too hard! And I-I try to make fun of everything about you that makes me love being around you! Because the truth of the matter is… No one in the world matters to me more than you”
Tense silence was held for a second. Then Judy’s words burst out like she had been holding her breath for half an hour “I-I do try too hard because deep down I’m afraid I am what everyone thinks that I am and I suppress my discomfort because I’m worried it will make me look weak and I want to be strong. And I think I’m feeling all the time” her lips moving faster than her bunny foot when it tapped “And I only take what you say personally, because you’re the only one in my life who believed in me, even when I DIDN’T believe in myself. And I would be an absolute emotional wreck unable to make decisions if I didn’t have you right there.”
Nick intercepted “And I didn’t join the ZPD because I wanted to be a cop, I joined because I wanted to be with you - every hour of every day if I could. And I hold you back and try to stop you from doing dangerous things because… because the thought of losing you scares me. Because if I ever lost you… I-I’d lose EVERYTHING. Because you’re the most important thing to ever come into my life-”
“When I see you, I know everything is going to be okay.” Judy’s voice cracked “And I should have told you that you are the only partner I would EVER want b-because… you’re my HOME. Okay? Because whenever I’m with you? Wherever we go? THAT’S home! And I should have told you that! NO ONE ELSE in the entire WORLD!” she swiped her hand through the air “-Matters to me more than you do!”
Nick lowered himself and took her beautiful face in his hands. His thumb ran over her cheek like it was the first time he’d ever truly seen her. How the low sun illuminated the amethyst of eyes with colors he never knew existed “You’re the person… who gives my life meaning. And It’s not because you woke me up from that decade rut I had put myself in. Or because you got my life on track for the first time in… EVER! Or because without you, I’d still be rotting as a shifty, untrustworthy fox instead of helping others… It’s because YOU'RE what gives my life meaning. Because when I’m around you, when I get to be with you, whenever I complain about you dragging out for an extra hour on patrol. Whenever I groan about you leading us on a lead that isn’t there… T-That? That still gives me more purpose than I could make in a LIFETIME by myself!”
Judy gripped his paws with her own… Heaven above, what she would do to just be in them forever. She took mental snapshots of the sensation - how such a rough and rowdy spirit like him could have a touch so soft and tender “Without you, I’d be a wreck… I would have ran back to Bunnyburrow and never come back. And I hate it when people look down on us because that means they’re looking down on YOU! And you’re the greatest man I’ve met or ever will meet - and you don’t deserve that.” She was lost in him. How the sunrays warmed the fiery colors of handsome face with a gentle burn as calm, yet warm as the smouldering flame inside of him. “Because… T-There’s no Judy if there’s no Nick.”
That set off something behind the eyes of the vulpine - something just looked like it cracked. His grasp on the back of her head yanked her against his chest. Her arms snatched around him yet again.
“Judy… O-Oh God, Judy…”
That cool and calm voice collapsed. His slouched and relaxed shoulders were now tense and quaking beyond his control.
Nicholas was crying.
And so she definitely started crying.
He held her, he held her in a way no one else knew how to. The warmth of his fur, the sound of his breathing, the sensation of his fur mingling with hers… she just wanted to sink into him and never have to come out. All this time she saw him as this unbreakable rock that she’d have to be content admiring at face value… but to be let in like this? For him and her to see each other? All she wanted to do was grip his shoulders, bury her tearful eyes into his shoulder, and freeze this moment as it was forever.
“Judy…. Judy…” he ran a shaky hand down her ears, bowing over her like he was worshipping at a church.
“N-Nick…”
They stayed like that for what could have either been a minute or an hour, before Nick pressed his cheek deeper into hers one last time before pulling back “Y-You are… You’re more than just my pack, you’re my everything. And I never told you b-because I didn’t want to ruin it… I was scared the truth would destroy ‘us’ Be-because… Because the truth is..”
Her heart leapt into her throat, her tears stopped for an instant as everything seemed to go silent.
Nick’s eyes were clenched shut, his teeth grinded together as he shook his head “I-I... I love you, Judy.”
His shoulders fell as if he could finally let go of his breath, his eyes were every bit pained as they were terrified - yet he repeated that confession “...I love you.”
His heart froze in place. His lips pursed themselves together about the same moment he forgot how to breathe. Immediately he wanted to stuff the words back into his mouth - to find a way to put the genie back into the bottle. I-I-If he said it too soon? Or at all? It was too early to-
The bunny’s hands on his face snapped his vision back as a sense. They slowly ran up his muzzle in a way that was too divine to be real. One cupped the back of his head-
Then suddenly, her other hand snatched onto her collar and she yanked herself up to him.
She pressed her lips to his.
“MPHF!” Nick’s eyes went wide before they drifted shut. His paw traced up the back of her head to cradle it. Her kiss was so delicate. Her smaller lips were still so plush and so soft against his own. He didn’t care that they were wet with tears or that her little rabbit nose was trembling so much that he could barely keep their lips locked. He was just lost.
Did this mean she-?? D-Did she also-?? Was “Judy and Nick” not just a hopeless dream??
It didn’t matter to him: all he wanted was to hold her. He wanted to protect her, to comfort her, to love her. He wanted to be able to repay a FRACTION of everything she’d given to an ex-con, low-life like him!
His mind nearly whined as she pulled away.
Her lips barely parted, she held them so close that he could even feel her breath against her lips as she tearfully affirmed “I love you too.”
She couldn’t stop herself from going in for a second time. Judy had never been kissed before… but sweet heavens, if that meant Nick was her first? Then it was worth the wait 100 times over! The sheer jitters of the first time were slightly less distracting now. Instead of her mind exploding with epiphanies in real time, she actually could think about how much his lips felt made for her - How everything about him was made for her.
How? How did a guy like him find anything worthwhile in her?? Nick was always so confident, so smooth, so effortless in his ability to just command a room with his charm. How did everything just come so naturally to him while she struggled to keep up? He gave an attitude to everyone else… but for her, she always got the exclusive treatment of unconditional love and support. In a world where no one, not even herself, believed in her - he was the smooth talking fox in scarlet armor.
How could she NOT be head over heels for him?
Their lips finally parted. Emerald and Amethyst eyes locked with one another and yearned to pour out a thousand more words. But instead, Nick could only laugh.
“Heh heh…” a relieved chuckle that was so gentle, that handsome and genuine smile of his that she had fallen in love with.
She exhaled a similar giggle as their foreheads pressed together “That was… overdue.”
Nick held her face and brushed his thumb against her cheek and nuzzled her. He opened his mouth to ask: “So… what does this make us?”
But-
“WOO!” Came a voice next to them “Now that’s what we call, AN OVERSHARE” Nibbles said with a grin “I’m alive, by the way. I made it~!”
She quickly looked past them “HOOOO BOY! And I ain’t the only one!”
All four heads snapped in the direction of Tundratown to see Pawbert speeding off on a snowmobile.
0000oooo0000oooo0000
Nick and Judy slapped the back of the paddy wagon in unison and it rattled down the once abandoned streets of Reptile Ravine.
Emphasis on “ONCE” abandoned. Nick, Judy, Nibbles, and Gary needed a full hour to wade through the flashing cameras and three dozen mics being shoved at them! ZNN’s viewership always went up 10% when they were in a story, after all! But after they FINALLY made it to the relative quiet of the police caravan, and that ever sacred “Police Line - Do Not Cross”
“So I think ‘Water Buffalo’ MIGHT not be splitting us up after all.” She elbowed him playfully.
No clever remark came from Nick. He pulled her behind the tire of an elephant’s cruiser and kissed her on the spot. It earned a surprised: “MPHF!?” from her, but it quickly turned into her wrapping her hands around the back of his neck while his hands so perfectly fit onto her hips.
It was paradise.
Having her in his arms to cherish and adore. Having him embracing her with all the love in the world. Saving the city twice now seemed like such an afterthought... why think of a city when you had your whole world right in front of you?
Their heads tilted as they took their time with this one, intimately exploring what this blossoming adoration was. But suddenly-
*GAAAAAAAAAASSSSP!* a familiar voice sucked in air. Nick and Judy’s lips popped off each other to see their local chubby cheetah’s jaw on the floor. His stunned reaction quickly transformed to him snapping his arms up and shaking his forearms “OHMYGOSH.OHMYGOSH.OHMYGOSH! I-IS THIS? A-ARE YOU TWO-!??!”
Both of them opened their mouths and babbled silently to each other. What WERE they?
Well - it was quite obvious, once they thought about it. Blatantly obvious.
Judy immediately interlocked her fingers with Nick’s.
The fox flashed those pearly whites of his and shrugged proudly “Guess we gotta take a fraternization class back at the precinct. Cause Hopps and Wilde are officially datin’!”