"I'll take you on anytime anywhere."
"Is that right? How about it then? Right here, right now."
"You're on Carrots." The fox smirks as he pushes the couch out of the way towards the coffee table.
Nick's lounge room had been transformed into the ideal wrestling arena.
"You ready?!" Judy asks excitedly.
"More ready than you are, lets get this over with." Nick cracks his knuckles.
"Alright..." Judy smirks, and launches herself at the fox, ready to kick him in the head but Nick reacts quickly, and dodges what might have been a powerful blow.
"Not bad..." He nods approvingly as the bunny skids to a halt behind him. "Let's see how you do with this-" Nick swipes at Judy and thinking quickly, she bounces up and off the wall landing right on top of the unsuspecting fox.
"Ha! I w- Judy starts but soon finds herself back on the ground again as Nick throws her off and attempts to tackle her to the ground, but Judy is slippery. In no time, she has worked her way out of the fox's grip.
Tightly twisting Nick's paw behind his back, she manages to press him firmly against the wall.
"There, I told you I would win!" The bunny announces as she lets him go and takes a step back.
"Only, you're forgetting one thing..." Nick sighs as he turns around and dusts himself off.
"What's that?" Judy asks confused, but Nick doesn't answer, instead he grabs her and tackles her, pressing her head to the ground and leaning his arm against her back to keep her down.
"HEY, THATS NOT FAIR! Nick!" Judy screams.
"There's a three second rule Carrots." Nick begins, tightening his grip slightly. "If you can't get out of the tackle before the three seconds is up, THEN you lose. That gives us a chance at a fair fight. So you think you can get out of this one?"
Judy struggles, determined to get the best of him, but his hold is too strong and she gives up.
"You should never give your opponent the chance to strike back. You taking notes Carrots?"
"No, ugh. I went to cop school Nick. I learnt all this, now let me go!"
Nick starts to release his death grip on the bunny but then he feels something.
"Hold on, what's this?" Nick asks as his paw rubs against something underneath the fur on Judy's cheek.
The fox's grip loosens significantly in surprise and Judy takes this chance to wrench herself away, standing quickly. "Nothing- She starts to object but her friend had already felt it.
"Is that a..." Nick starts but doesn't say it. He couldn't be sure, but to him it feels like a massive-
-scar, yes! It's a scar. But it's from a long time ago, so you don't have to worry." Judy interjects.
A few sarcastic remarks run through Nick's head, but the way Judy was trying to brush it off and the size of the mark were a little worrying. Nick struggles for the right thing to say but settles for- "How did you get it?"
"I got it when I was a kid Nick, I don't think it really matters now..." Judy struggles herself for excuses. She couldn't let Nick find out a fox did it- he's so sensitive about that kind of stuff and she doesn't want to cause any drama.
"Well... It does, if it hurt you..." Nick says slowly. "Let me feel again." Nick reaches out to feel her cheek for a second time and gently runs the pads of his paw over the old scratch marks.
"Come on Nick, you're being too serious. We should start putting the living room back together..."
"Judy, please tell me?"
"But Nick-
"Don't you trust me...?" The fox searches her eyes for the answer.
Oh no. Nick thinks she's refusing to open up to him, after he shared his own past with her.
"No no Nick, it's not like that!"
Nick took in a breath, preparing to say something but quickly closes his mouth again. He doesn't want to relive the last argument they had, so he says nothing.
He had truly been starting to think he and Judy had something going... Apparently he'd gotten too comfortable with her too quick, when she clearly didn't have the same feeling towards him. Had she been uncomfortable when he told her about the muzzle? Was he intruding on her life? Was it that every time he showed such a display of emotions he was scaring her away? These thoughts all come flooding into Nick's mind all at once and though it was something he is familiar with, it was something that hurt worse every time it happened, and for it to happen with Judy...
It happens so quickly that if you saw it you would have thought you imagined it, but tears sprang up in his eyes and he quickly blinked them back, remembering he was trying NOT to scare her off.
Easy as ever from so much practice, Nick straightens up and masks his troubled eyes with his signature smile. "It's fine Carrots, I get it."
Judy is taken aback for a second, confused because she hadn't given him anything to understand, but then a memory comes floating through her mind and the words her friend had uttered the day he shared his past are left ringing in her head...
"Never let them see that they get to you."
"He could be doing that right now!" She realises.
"Wait Nick, it's really not like that..." She starts.
Wilde lets his guard down just a little, surprised that she was still going after he'd given in.
"Listen, I do trust you Nick... I just, there's nothing that I wouldn't share with you if you really wanted to hear, so I'll tell you..." Judy bites her lip nervously. This was a risk but she was kind of stuck. Either keep secrets from her best friend and cause him to feel he's not trusted, or tell him the story about why she was afraid of his kind...
"You don't have to..."
"No Nick, you asked four times and you deserve to know." She takes a deep breath and begins.
"It was one day at the Carrot Festival. There was a fox called Gideon Grey."
"The same Gideon Grey who made that blueberry pie?"
"Yeah! That's him. So as you know I've always wanted to be a police officer and that day I was in a play, so I had a cop outfit on and everything but that doesn't even really matter."
Nick says nothing, but he was smiling a real smile so Judy goes on.
"After the play when I was walking with my parents, I saw him following my friends around, and back then he was a bit of trouble so I went to check it out."
Nick's expression darkens slightly as he realises where this story might be going but let's his friend continue without a word.
"When I caught up with them, I saw Gideon stealing tickets from my friends and being rude, so I went over there and told him to give them back but-" Judy takes a breath. "But he challenged me to make him so I kicked him in the face- not that hard! But he told me I was gonna pay for it, and held me down and told me to remember this moment any time I ever thought I would amount to anything more than a dumb carrot farming bunny!" Judy raises her voice as she lets out the anger she didn't know she was holding.
"Woah Carrots, calm down. It's alright." Nick reassures.
Judy's mind returns to the present, and she is calm and forgiving again.
Nick gives her a moment, before encouraging her to continue. "What happened next?"
"Right, the scar... Gideon said I didn't know when to give up, held me down, and sliced me with his claws..."
A look settles on Nick's face, a full understanding of why she was wary of foxes, why she carried fox repellent, how brave she had been to push all that aside for him when they first met. She was never stereotyping without thinking, she was afraid for a reason and now he understood everything.
"I'm sorry..." Nick apologises.
Judy looks surprised. "For what? It's not your fault."
"No Judy, I'm sorry that happened to you, and because by thinking that you were judging me, I was judging you. You had the right to be scared of me..."
"I'm not scared of you Nick." Judy reassures him. "I trust you. You proved to me for good that you can't ever judge an animal by how they look. You did your kind proud."
"Thanks Carrots." Nick smiles. "I'm glad you told me."
Thank you for reading! If you have something to say about this story or if you liked it or if there's something I need to change, please review! That would be awesome ;)
