Dear Nick,
I went to see your father today. I brought him those purple petunias he used to love and propped them up against his grave and I just couldn't find it in myself to cry like I used to. I used to spend ours sobbing over that bastard's tombstone and now I can't so much as muster up a tear. I'm just so tired of crying. Tired and fed up with it. You and I were the only ones who cried at that ghost town of a funeral and then you left me all alone to cry by myself. One fox only has so many tears, I suppose.
Why don't you ever visit your father, Nick? I don't know why, but I'm always expecting to drop by the graveyard one morning and find a heap of bouquets mounded over his grave and a letter with your name on it. I wake up some mornings thinking 'maybe he'll have left something there today', and I'm always left disappointed. I know you and him never got on and I know he was never an honest fox, but he was good to me and he loved you. He loved you like a father should and it'd break his heart to see you following in his footsteps.
Please, don't be following in his footsteps... He wanted you to do better. He had dreams for you. Aspirations. He wanted you to be a doctor, or a mechanic or a rocket scientist; hell, a goddamned magician - anything other than him. The last thing he wanted was for you to be like your Dad. And I have to be the one who sits in front of his tombstone and tell him that's exactly the way you turned out.
I always want to cry, but I'm just so tired of it all.
Love,
Mom
Nick collapsed face-first onto the bed, feeling how the dead ought to feel. The bumps from their rough car ride had blossomed into uncomfortable bruises, and he couldn't so much as move without awakening one of the dozens of aches littered across his body. Silvery moonlight glowered through the window, stabbing through wisps of cloud. The afternoon had been a slog, wading through countless 'hello's and 'how-do-you-do's as Bonnie and Stu introduced him to the rest of the family.
It was a big family.
The Hopps family estate was a large old place, and he'd be damned if nigh on every square inch wasn't occupied. By the time he'd gone through the arduous process of greeting everyone, his paw had been shaken numb. There'd been twenty three in total, ranging from five year old kits to sixteen year old teens to young twentysomethings on the cusp of adulthood.
All of them had been overjoyed to meet him, all of them had wanted to talk to him, and all of them had made damned sure that he knew their names. Don't believe him? Alright: Elizabeth, Julia, Gary, Timothy, Anna, Christopher, Horton, Sally, Gilbert, Daniel, Stan, Rhianna, Jessica, Gordon, Michelle, Peter, Billy-ray, Lucy, Damien, Frankie, Lauren, Richard... And Bob.
Then, after hours of greetings and getting to know what amounted to roughly a tenth or so of Judy's immediate family (apparently she had countless brothers and sisters living elsewhere), they'd sat down to dinner, and Nick found out first-hand that Bonnie was nowhere near as good a cook as she claimed to be. Dinner had amounted to a crude carrot stew that'd been drenched with pepper and near lethal amounts of salt. He'd never been able to grasp why Judy loved those shitty microwave meals, but now he was starting to get the idea. After what he'd just eaten, the cheap microwave crap that Judy tended to eat would've seemed like gourmet.
He would've loved to have called it a night there and then; the scarce helping of sleep he'd had on the train and the time he'd spent crammed into the backseat of that used-up old pickup truck had left him dead on his feet. So naturally, Bonnie had wanted to give him the grand tour of the farmhouse, and naturally, she used that cute little smile that was impossible to say no to.
Fun fact: Bunnies didn't lose their cuteness as they got older; they just learned to use it more effectively.
And so, he'd let the excited old bunny drag him around the house from room to room, warbling on ceaselessly about the history of every goddamned stick of furniture she happened to come across. The tour had ended at the door of Judy's old bedroom, where apparently he'd be bunking with Judy. With a final 'goodnight', she'd shepherded him through the door and left him alone so that he might finally get some rest.
He buried his face into the pillow, a thankful, exhausted sigh escaping him. The mattress was hard, the pillow was lumpy and the bed was so small that his feet hung over the end, but Nick couldn't find it in himself to care. Right now it felt like heaven.
Then Judy stormed into the room, slamming the door angrily behind her, and Nick kissed heaven goodbye.
"Nicholas Piberius Wilde," she snapped with all the condemnation of a guillotine hanging readily over his neck. "I am NOT a happy bunny."
Nick winced, seizing up in horrible anticipation like a fox caught in front of a speeding semi. She was using his full name - she only did that when she was getting ready to crucify his ass. He hazarded a glance in Judy's direction and immediately regretted it, his skin knotting up into gooseflesh.
Most mammals thought bunnies couldn't look intimidating.
Most mammals had never met Judy Hopps on a bad day.
She was practically bristling with anger - so much so that he swore that he could almost feel the heat of her rage beating against him. Her paws were balled up into fists and her mouth was set into a hard, damning frown. Her ears twitched with righteous fury, and if Nick looked close enough, he could just about see the vein popping out on her forehead.
"H-hey Carrots..." he stuttered, his smooth demeanour faltering.
If she'd heard him, she didn't give any indication of it. Instead she began her slow, inevitable march towards him, her eyes a pair of smouldering braziers, loaming with a white-hot lust for vengeance. Nick rolled off the bed, backing himself into a corner and holding out his paws disarmingly. "Now look, I know you're pissed - I'd be pissed - but if you just let me explain..." the words sped off his tongue in a futile attempt to set up some sort of defence against Judy's warpath, and she trampled them underfoot carelessly. She was hungry for retribution, and she looked about ready to drag him kicking and screaming to the gates of Hades in order to get it.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. This must've been how sinners felt on their way to hell...
"Judes?"
"Nick," said Judy, her voice terrifyingly calm. She came to a halt in front of him, her face inches away from his. From this distance, he swore that he could almost see the little tongues of flame dancing in her pupils. "You have thirty seconds to explain yourself, and if I don't like what I hear, I swear I'm going to destroy you."
"Okay, alright, thirty seconds..." he breathed a sigh of relief. Thirty seconds were all he needed. "So I spilt the beans and told your parents we were fooling around-"
Judy raised her paw, readying a slap that would've turned his face to pulp.
"-dating! I meant to say dating!" he placated. "So I told them we were dating, but isn't it better that they found out now rather than later? I mean, your Dad doesn't like me now. Can you imagine what he'd think of me if he found out that I'd been having it on with his daughter behind his back?" he reasoned, risking a gentle caress of Judy's arm. "Come on, you don't really think we'd have managed to keep it under wraps from everyone, did you? Your Mom knows you like the back of her paw; she would've figured it out in no time."
He saw a shadow of consideration flitter across Judy's features, and decided to push his advantage. Taking a step forwards, he set his paws around the curve of her waist in a light embrace, settling his mouth over her ear to whisper. "Besides... When someone like me gets a girl like you, you can't expect me not to brag a little."
Judy glared up at him, her face scrunched up into an absurd cocktail of strain and fury as she tried to keep the fire of her anger kindled. Finally, with a grumpy huff, she let her rage go, returning his hug begrudgingly. "You got that line from a movie, didn't you?"
"Yep."
Another huff, this time followed by the ghost of a half-hearted giggle. "If you weren't so handsome, I'd break your nose."
"You're not angry?"
"Oh I'm plenty angry," she growled, and for a brief, terrifying moment Nick thought that she might regress back into her 'crush, kill, destroy' mode and tear him limb from limb. "But... I can understand why you did it, and I guess you're... Sort of right." She delivered a fist to his ribs just hard enough to hurt. "Doesn't make you any less of a jerk, though."
Nick barely managed to stop himself from breaking out into a victory dance. He'd been a victim of one of Judy's rare temper tantrums before, and he considered stopping one akin to averting a nuclear crisis.
"Yeah, but I'm your jerk..." he paused, contemplating. "Tell you what, how's about I make this up to you and do you a favour?"
She pulled away from his arms, apprehensively cocking a brow at him. "What kind of favour?"
He smirked, lowering his head down to her level. "Well, anything my little Bun-Bun should ask for..."
"You could start by never calling me that again."
"Aww, but I thought you liked pet names?" he teased.
"Shut up... And if you really want to do me a favour-" she walked over to the bed and tossed the pillow and covers into a careless heap on the floor. "-You can start by sleeping on the floor tonight."
"What!?" yelped Nick, the humour suddenly gone from his voice. After a whole day of being dragged around like an orange ragdoll, he'd been looking forwards to that bed. "B-but-"
"Save it, Nick." she said, casting herself onto the mattress with an emphasised stretch and a satisfied sigh, flaunting the comfort she'd denied him. "Consider it payback. Besides, I'm pretty sure the frame would give way under the weight of that ego of yours..." she yawned.
"If by 'ego' you mean 'healthy amount of self confidence' then-"
"I don't." she said, and the warning tone of finality she used reminded him that she was still a little bit too pissed with him to be swapping banter when they both should've been sleeping. "Oh, and I'm going to need that pillow back; this mattress is a lot harder than I remember."
"Miss Hopps, if you want this pillow then you can pry it from my cold, dead paws." he replied indignantly, bundling both the pillow and blankets up in his arms defensively.
"Don't tempt me..."
"Hey, if you'd just let me stay on the bed you'd be enjoying blankets, a pillow and a super-awesome cuddle-buddy right about now. But hey, I guess petty vengeance means more to you than that," he drawled sarcastically. "Well, I'd best find a place to sleep on the cold, hard floor. Woe is me and all that-'
"If I let you sleep with me, do you promise to shut up?"
He scratched at his chin, pretending to mull it over. "Deal," he said before bounding onto the bed and stealing up Judy in a clumsy, loving hug. The bed was barely big enough for him alone, and it took some manoeuvring which bordered on contortionism to get the two of them on there. Thankfully, Nick was just fine and dandy when it came to squeezing up tight with Judy-
-What could he say? He liked to cuddle.
Judy grumbled in his arms, trying her hardest stay mad at him. He crumbled her resolve with a light, goodnight kiss on the forehead. "Love you, Judes."
"Yeah, yeah... I love you too..." grumbled Judy, admitting defeat.
Fritewag here,
So it was another uneventful chapter. Sorry about that. I needed something to fill the gap between the last chapter and what I've got planned out for the next chapter. Don't worry though - the next one's going to be a big one.
Now, on the subject of sex scenes, something I know you beautiful, randy motherfuckers have been holding out for. From this early on in the story it could go either way: a little sex (a scene at the end, like Sad Judy) or a whole lot peppered throughout. I think it's only right that I let the readers decide. Let me know what you guys want, and I'll try to accommodate, within reason.