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In the months following Nick and Judy’s rediscovery of Reptile Ravine, the duo had made a habit of spending more time together outside of work. After having been apart for so long during Nick’s academy days, it was nice to finally enjoy each other’s company in a context other than life-threatening, protocol-shattering criminal investigations.
Judy had teased that Nick’s studio would need to be fumigated before she stepped foot in it again, so they usually gravitated towards her place instead. Sometimes they would binge a mindless reality show, sometimes they would attempt a recipe from her 99 Marvelous Microwave Meals cookbook, and it wasn’t uncommon that they’d go back-and-forth sparring in some fighting game until the early morning. She had grown up with a naturally competitive spirit and hundreds of siblings to practice against, and he had spent most of his adult life as a bachelor with no other hobbies, which meant the two of them were pretty evenly matched in Bleat Fighter.
Visits like these had become increasingly frequent, and by now it was assumed by the both of them that, several nights a week, he would show up at her complex with cheap takeout and they’d spend a good few hours doing nothing of importance across from the tiny TV she set up on her desk.
So really, it was only a matter of time before Nick ran into Judy’s neighbors.
The midwinter sun had just begun to set when it first happened. He was standing outside her door with a pizza box in one paw, just about to knock with the other one, when a spiral-horned head popped out of the next apartment over.
“Is that my ZuberEats?”
Immediately, another voice projected from further inside the apartment. “No, you idiot, I just put in the order. It won’t be here for another twenty minutes.”
“Oh.” The antelope deflated before turning back to Nick, hungry and grumpy and looking to start a confrontation. “Then what are you here for? Just to tempt me with pizza?”
Nick pointed weakly at Judy’s door.
Her neighbor gasped. “Pronk, get over here! The rabbit has a gentleman caller!” Despite Judy’s many efforts to make friendly acquaintance with her floormates, they had staunchly refused to learn her name.
Three bounds later, a second head appeared right above the first. “Ugh, finally,” it said. “Maybe messing around with a boytoy will help her lighten up a bit.” It turned to Nick. “Sometimes she’ll come home from a shift and listen to true crime podcasts. Isn’t she supposed to be a cop? What kind of a work-life balance is that!? I get stressed out just living next to her.”
“Ooh, can you take her on a spa date?” asked Antelope #1. “Please tell me you’ll take her on a spa date. Valentine’s Day is coming up, you should do it then. I know a cheap masseuse. Although most of his clients are rhinos so I’m not sure if-”
Nick had heard enough to know that things would get out of hand very soon if he didn’t interject. “Thanks for the advice, fellas, but I’m just her, ah, friend. Partner. At work.” He held up the pizza box. “We’re gonna watch a movie or something. No masseuse-ery involved.”
They froze, a flicker of recognition registering as they heard him speak for the first time.
“You’re the love recording guy!” said Antelope #2 (Pronk, presumably).
“Beg your pardon?”
“You’re the guy who says, ‘Luv ya, partner.’” The other oryx went comically low in imitation of Nick’s baritone timbre.
He blinked. “…I didn’t realize that was public knowledge.”
“Don’t you know how thin these walls are? I bet half the floor could pick your voice out of a lineup.”
“She listens to that thing all the time,” added Pronk. “I’ve been hearing it in my nightmares.”
Just then, the door to Judy’s apartment swung open. Despite the relatively early hour, she had already changed out of uniform into purple pajama pants and a loose-fitting sleep shirt. Nick could make out the faint, upbeat sounds of the latest Gazelle album as she plucked out a pair of earbuds, having apparently missed the commotion in the hallway.
“Oh. I was wondering where you were.” Her eyes lit up when she took in the scene. “You met Bucky and Pronk!”
“Yes, we’ve been having quite an enlightening chat.”
The neighbors chimed in. “The love recording guy was your coworker this whole time!?”
“You were pining over him so hard we thought he must’ve been fighting overseas or something!”
Judy’s face fell just as quickly as it had brightened, a creeping sense of dread painting her features as she watched Nick’s smile grow wider.
“What did they tell you about that recording?”
He gave her a cloying, faux-innocent expression. “Oh, not much… Only that you’ve been making very liberal use of it.”
She whirled around to face them. “Why would you bring that up!?”
“We have every right to bring it up! We’re the ones who are stuck listening to it every day!”
Bucky brought a hoof up next to his mouth and stage-whispered to Nick. “I’m telling you, she plays this thing so often we can usually predict when it’s coming.”
Her ears, now colored by a rapidly-darkening blush, fell flat against her back. “Nick doesn’t want to hear about all of that,” she said skittishly as her anger was replaced with barely-concealed panic.
“No, I think I definitely do.” He countered, enjoying how flustered Judy was getting. She shot him a dirty look for his treachery.
“Pretty much anytime a love song starts on her radio, I know we’re about to hear your voice a few seconds later.”
“Or whenever she finishes watching a rom-com.”
“Or after bad days at work.”
“Or after good days at work.”
Knowing from experience that trying to speak over the Oryx-Antlersons was impossible, Judy grabbed Nick’s arm instead and began dragging him into her room while they continued to embarrass her.
“First thing in the morning.”
“Right before bed.”
She forcibly sat him down on her mattress before retreating towards the entrance of the apartment.
“Oh, you know when she always plays it? Immediately after getting off the phone with you.”
Judy slammed the door hard enough that they took the hint and finally shut up. For the first time since Nick had arrived, there was silence. Like a death row convict facing the gallows, she made the few small steps back into her studio, only to see him holding up the carrot-shaped pen he’d just stolen from her windowsill.
“So… right before bed, huh?”
Her face flushed an improbable shade of fuchsia. “Sometimes I have trouble sleeping…” she mumbled as she snatched the pen away and returned it to its dedicated stand.
“Sounds like this recording’s getting lots of airplay. Should I be charging royalties?”
She sat on the desk chair opposite her bed and glared at him. “Drop it.”
And he did drop it, sort of, because he knew where it was going.
Over the past few months, it had become clear to Nick that he and his partner were circling a label beyond friendship. Evidence of this fact was not difficult to come by. Exhibit A was the fact that he’d completely transformed his life in the span of a year, swapping out under-the-table schemes for above-the-board employment, willful deceit for a regular beat, just so that he could see Judy every day.
Exhibit B was his growing desire to be known by her. To share with her all the good, the bad, and the ugly of his past. He had never wanted that before. A lifetime of streetwise instincts screamed at him that it was a liability to show his hand, that it was like giving away his only bargaining chip. Those instincts were winning out for now, but it was a perpetual struggle to stop himself from breaking down and baring his soul at the end of one of their late-night hangouts.
And the final smoking gun was the photo that his coworkers had teased him about for most of last month. A PR snapshot of Judy handing out police badge stickers at a goodwill event. She was crouching on one knee to match the eye level of a young piglet, most likely reciting some aphorism about how ‘change starts with all of us.’ In the background, Nick was cleaning his sunglasses on the hem of his shirt, leaving his face uncharacteristically unguarded; he stood watching her with a look of sheer adoration, as though she alone was his hope for the future.
It was a candid moment of longing, one that he had unsuccessfully lobbied to have taken down from the ZPD socials. To any outside observer seeing the picture, though, it was as concrete a confirmation as anything that something explosive was brewing between the visibly-smitten fox and the as-yet-oblivious bunny.
There was plenty of evidence on her end as well. Like the time he caught her using that same photo of them as her phone’s lock screen (she made a big show of changing it then and there, but he spotted her with it again the next day) or the way she always became noticeably more touchy-feely with him anytime he was accosted by some hyper-flirtatious vixen during patrol (a surprisingly common occurrence – what was that old saying about a mammal in uniform?). And this new revelation that she had apparently been listening to his declaration of love at odd hours of the day certainly qualified.
Nick had a sense about these sorts of things. He knew when they were headed towards a precipice – when they were about to broach a conversation that would irreversibly change the shape of their relationship. It was thrilling, being near that precipice, but it was also dangerous. There were no guarantees about what awaited them after jumping off. So whenever they were getting close to the edge (and they seemed to get close to it more and more often now), he did everything in his power to gently bring them back. To leave the unnamed thing between them unnamed. The first method, of course, was to joke it away.
“You know,” he started. “If you really want to hear me say ‘I love you’ that badly, you could always just ask.”
She squinted suspiciously. “I thought you said that was only once per decade.”
“That’s with your current subscription package. If you’d like to upgrade, I’d be happy to tell you more about our premium plans.”
The worried crease in her forehead disappeared. This sort of banter was cozy, familiar, safe. She smirked back at him. “Oh, please do. I’m actually in the market for a more affectionate partner.”
“Well, the Gold Package includes three ‘I love you’s a year. That one’ll run you about one blueberry pie per month. Then there’s the Deluxe Bundle. That’s twelve ‘I love you’s and two other positive affirmations of your choice. For the low, low price of a hazelnut macchiato at the start of every shift.”
“Every shift!? Who’s subscribing to that?”
“You’d be surprised, Carrots. The Deluxe Bundle isn’t even the highest tier.”
“What comes with the highest tier?”
He grinned. “When I say ‘I love you,’ I’ll try to sound like I mean it.”
Judy vaulted off her chair and punched him hard in the arm. He fell backwards onto the bed, laughing all the way down.
“What’s that supposed to mean!? You were faking it before!?” Her façade of indignation was betrayed by an adorable twitch of the nose.
“Hey, don’t blame me, it’s just supply and demand. I’ve only got so much love to give, I can’t be dishing it out for free.”
“Even to your very favorite colleague-slash-accomplice?”
“Sorry, darlin’, no discounts. That’s the number one rule of economics: sincerity costs extra.”
She snorted. “I think that’s just a you rule.”
Nick knew her well enough to recognize that, this time, the bitterness in her tone was genuine. “What do you mean?”
“The only time you ever open up is after a near-death experience. Like after Mr. Manchas, or on the weather wall with-”
“Yeah, I remember.” He cut her off. Those big emotions felt shameful in the unfiltered daylight, crude and dingy like the room he was sitting in.
“Sincerity doesn’t have to be this huge thing, Nick. It doesn’t have to cost extra. You know-” She climbed up next to him on the bed. “You know you can talk to me, right? About… anything. About work, or about when you were younger… About us.” She looked up at him then, and it was all he could do to keep his face neutral. “I hope- I want you to be comfortable telling me how you feel.”
They were back at the edge again, approaching the point of no return. Nick felt himself being pulled in by its gravity.
‘You want me to tell you how I feel? I feel like I’ve fallen in love with my best friend and it terrifies me because she’s the only good thing in my life I haven’t managed to ruin yet.’
Bad idea. He dug in his heels.
Plan B was less gentle than the first one: change the subject completely. Give her an out. Put the onus on her to make the leap of faith. Because it had always been the case that wherever Officer Hopps led, Officer Wilde would follow, and if she was really going to make that jump, he wanted to be sure that it was entirely her choice.
“Thanks, Fluff. I know.” He took a deep breath. “So, what were you thinking for tonight? Ready to get crushed in Bleat Fighter again? Or, wait, I think there’s a new episode of The Trough out.”
For a moment, it seemed like Judy would resist. Violent violet energy flared up behind her eyes, the same way it did when she was inches away from making a breakthrough on a case.
But it fizzled out soon afterwards, leaving her with a dull, defeated expression. She looked down. She took the out.
“Yeah, The Trough is fine.”
Several seconds passed.
“Great,” Nick said belatedly. “I was wondering who’d get eliminated this week. My vote is for that Bradley kid. There’s no way it’s just a coincidence that he’s always at the center of the drama, I think he’s gotta be masterminding it.”
She got up to retrieve the remote out of her minuscule desk drawer and he was conscious of the distance between them when she sat back down on the bed. Personal space had never been a big concern of theirs in the past – Judy was pretty excitable while playing video games and would often dive in and out of Nick’s lap, instinctively mimicking her character on the screen – but now she was almost at the other end of the mattress.
With thoughts of how wrong it all felt still bouncing around in his head, she pressed play, and they settled further into the restless, murky night.
After the show ended, Nick put on a movie. Some mid-budget action schlock. He tried a few times to make fun of the ridiculous, overexpository dialogue, but gave up after Judy’s third monosyllabic response.
He glanced over at her, still several feet away. Absentmindedly picking at her second slice of pizza. She could usually eat four. He wondered if she was thinking the same thing he was. He wondered if she was imagining how the conversation would have gone if she’d pushed harder.
With no excuses left, what would he have done? Asked her out, probably, as casually as possible. Or, if he was in an especially self-sabotaging mood, he might’ve let slip the depth of his devotion to her, how earning her approval had been his driving motivation since the week they’d first met. Past that, the vision got hazy. There was a decent possibility that she’d laugh and hug him around the waist and say she’d been waiting for him to catch on for months, a greater possibility that she'd give a sad, fond smile, let him down easy, and assure him that they’d still always be inseparable partners. After all, they’d survived much worse than a few inconvenient, unrequited feelings.
You didn’t make it far in Nick’s former line of work without preparing for worst-case scenarios, though. And the worst-case scenario here was that, somehow, his reluctant confession would cause an impassable rift to form between them and he’d lose her forever. No matter how slim the odds were, that wasn’t a gamble he was eager to make, hence his persistent attempts to withdraw from anything resembling a heart-to-heart.
He could say he was doing it to protect her from potentially unwanted advances, but the reality was that he was doing it to protect himself. Because if that pivotal, irreversible conversation was bound to happen eventually, then the best thing to do would be to let her pull the trigger on her own. If it really did blow everything up, then at least he wouldn’t be the one holding the detonator when he stood in the ashes of their relationship. One grim consolation in his own personal nightmare. But if he encouraged her to take that final step or, even worse, if he took it on his own, then he’d have no one else to blame when it all came crashing down. He’d truly never be able to forgive himself for scaring off the one mammal who had ever seen him as someone greater than the sum of his broken, cynical parts. It would be the final nail in his coffin of self-hate.
So yes, it was cowardly of him to run away from his imagined problems. And maybe it was even a bit selfish. But when reflecting on this latest strategic retreat, Nick knew that he’d done the right thing. He’d saved the night, and their friendship, and his ability to look in a mirror without wanting to put his fist through it.
‘I did the right thing.’
That was the mantra he kept repeating to himself, even as the growing silence from the bunny on the other side of the bed tried very stubbornly to convince him otherwise.
With the credits rolling over a thrashy nu-metal song, they fell into their typical wind-down routine. Judy snapped out of her listlessness enough to move the flatscreen back to the floor – her desk was too small to fit both it and her laptop at the same time. Nick gathered up the greasy napkins and paper plates and dumped them in the rusted trash chute at the end of the hall. Upon his return, the usual goodbyes were exchanged. They were polite, if somewhat strained, the obvious anticlimax still lingering in the air.
‘Better than the alternative, at least,’ Nick thought wryly as he made to leave. It was a shame how awkwardly everything had ended, but he figured they’d return to normalcy tomorrow.
“Hey Nick?”
He paused at the door.
“How much is the highest tier? The sincere one?”
All at once, he realized how much the ambience had changed over the past hour. The sky outside had grown dark, the wilting desk lamp had begun to flicker, and they’d spent the entire back half of the movie alone with their respective thoughts.
Conditions were perfect for an irreversible conversation.
He knew what she was doing, asking a question like that. She was pushing him towards the precipice. And she was using his own stupid joke to do it. Nick, who had always been careful about showing his hand. Who had kept himself safe by never giving any more than he got. She was asking him to be the vulnerable one.
‘One last out,’ he promised himself. ‘I’ll give her one last out.’ It was all he could manage.
“Oh, I don’t know if you can afford it, Carrots. Best not to ask.” The words were as light-hearted as always, but he couldn’t quite get the tone to match. It sounded desperate. Pained. He still hadn’t looked at her.
“Name your price.”
He swallowed. A leap of faith.
“When I say I love you, you have to say it back.”
Her eyes widened imperceptibly before narrowing in determination, like the aperture on a camera lens settling into focus. The violet energy returned. She nodded to herself and said quietly but firmly, “I’d like to upgrade to that one.”
Slowly, Nick willed himself to let the mask fall. The sardonic lines that had been carved into his face by years of hustling on city streets, the acerbic eyebrows, the perpetual smirk. They were usually only knocked out of him by force, but now he surrendered them freely. If he was going to give her his heart, he wanted to give the version of it that was scrubbed raw, not the version that was jaded and calloused and crusted over with scar tissue.
He turned to meet her gaze, and the conviction in his voice left no question as to whether or not he meant it.
“I love you, Judy.”
She took a step towards him. They were extremely close now, muzzles only a few inches apart. Her ears were standing tall, tilted ever-so-slightly forward, as though they were trying to close what little distance there was remaining.
“I love you, too, Nick.”
Her words came out as an exhale. The air in the apartment felt thinner somehow, their breaths shallower. She took a beat to steady herself before continuing.
“…What else does my subscription include?”
“…It’s- ah- It’s whatever you want. Build-your-own-plan sort of deal. All the perks and extras.”
“Whatever I want?”
“Mhm.”
They were almost whispering.
“I was thinking it could maybe include a first date.”
Nick’s heartbeat tripped over itself. “Yeah?”
“And maybe more dates after that.” She broke the spell for a fraction of a second, her eyes darting down and then back up. “Is that- Is that alright?”
And in that brief moment of insecurity, he finally saw the whole truth. She wasn’t just pushing him to be vulnerable. She was pushing herself to be vulnerable, too. Making her wishes known. Trying to name the unnamed thing. ‘That’s the cost of sincerity.’ The thought came to Nick as if through a multicolored cloud. ‘I just had to give more than I got.’
Without a response, Judy hastily restarted. “Or- I mean, I can take if off the plan if that’s not-”
“No, it’s- The plan can be- Yes, it’s alright. I- I want that, too.” He clumsily dropped the pretense of their running gag.
“Oh. Good.” The violet energy flared up again, blazing hotter than he’d ever seen it. “Then there’s one more perk I’d like to add.”
“What’s tha-"
And then she was kissing him.
It was over so quickly that he barely realized what had happened. All he felt was the echo of her, very soft and very warm against his mouth, a tentative, hopeful promise of something more to come. Rose-pink ears filled his vision, reminding him that he hadn’t even had time to close his eyes.
Which was why, despite being in a semi-dazed state, he was able to take in Judy’s expression when she pulled away. For as forward as she had been, it seemed like the nerves were finally catching up; Nick watched her resolve melt away in real time as her eyes grew wide, mortified by what she’d just done. Her left foot started thumping involuntarily at machine-gun speed until she physically restrained it by placing a paw on the offending thigh.
“See you tomorrow!” she sputtered out, aggressively loud. Her voice wasn’t quite a squeak but it wasn’t far off, either. In one fluid motion, she pulled open the door behind him, shoved him out into the hallway, and closed it shut again.
After a few seconds of tremulous stillness, he heard a dragging sound from right inside her apartment, and he had a pretty good guess at what it was: Judy, with her back against the door, slowly sliding to the floor as her knees gave out under her.
In his peripheral vision, he caught sight of two antelope heads poking out of the neighboring room.
“So,” said Bucky with an omniscient grin, “how about that spa date?”