DISCLAIMER: I had my bid to own Zootopia written. I really did. But Abu stole it thinking it was lunch. So I still don't own Zootopia.

As always, this chapter was edited by my good friend Daee17, with a final edit done by TheoreticallyEva. Round of applause for both of them!


"I can't believe you're moving out, bunny."

"Dude! Her name is Judy!"

"I know that! Shut up! Where are you moving, bunny?"

"You shut up! So, where you going?"

"You shut up!"

"You shut up!"

Judy sighed in exasperation. One thing she wouldn't miss about her old place was… the neighbors. While they'd been a mainstay of her time in the city, they needed to learn to quiet down. Especially in a building with paper thin walls like this one.

"You two had enough? I can still run you in for disturbing the peace, you know."

"Nah, we're good, bunny. Take care of that foxy toy, ya hear?"

The doe growled softly to herself at the idea that Nick was just a mere "toy." The canid in question was leaning on the door frame with his arms crossed, staring with an amused expression at the wall separating them from the current targets of the doe's wrath.

"You know, Fluff, I doubt I'd have lasted as long as you did with the Bucky and Pronk Show playing 24/7 next door. I don't know how you managed it."

The doe walked over to him and dumped a bag full of clothes into his arms. "Shut up, you dumb fox, and help me carry this stuff." She grabbed two bags for herself and ushered the fox into the hall, closing and locking the door. Skipping down the hall, she stopped at Dharma Armadillo's flat, handing over her key, remarking that she hadn't lost it, before continuing on her way out the door.

The two wandered down the street to the Banyan subway station, boarded the train, and headed for Nick's apartment. The rest of the week had been fairly quiet. The lab had been hard at work processing the evidence from the Tundratown raid, as well as that of the assassination attempt at Precinct One, but nothing was ready yet. Mammal interviews were ongoing, handled at other precincts, and security had been beefed up as well.

As much as she didn't like the idea, it did feel good to get away for a day and take care of things outside the job. Like moving into her fox's apartment. Part of her was still excited about that, and another part was nervous. She couldn't really put a finger on why, though. After all, they'd been sleeping in the same room on a daily basis since they'd gone to Bunnyburrow, so it wasn't like this was something totally new. She even had her own bedroom and bed if she needed it for some reason, heaven forbid.

Lately, ever since the news article had run, the fox and doe had found themselves the targets of unwanted attention, mostly looks of disgust and vitriol, though some looked intrigued, and one or two had looks that almost seemed hopeful. She couldn't figure those ones out.

Today, though, the ride in the subway was thankfully without incident or questionable looks, and the two made their way through the streets again, finally arriving at Nick's place just after ten o'clock in the morning. The doe spent the next half hour unpacking what little she didn't have at Nick's place already, all the while thinking that this was so much better. They'd be able to share expenses, and she wouldn't have to worry about her fox as much. No one was going to hurt him while she was around.

Judy was just finishing up her task, having organized all her clothes into the small dresser and hung her uniforms in the closet, when a thought occurred to her. It had been getting chilly lately, and she'd been thinking of all the winters they'd had at home. One thing that she'd loved doing was skating on the frozen ponds in the fields of her family farm. Maybe Nick would enjoy that?

She pulled out her phone and tapped away in the search bar. A few seconds later, she found what she wanted—a public skating pond in the heart of Tundratown. The skate shack nearby also offered rentals, which was perfect, since her own skates were back home. Smiling to herself, she finished up with the task at hand and left the room.

Nick was in the kitchen finishing up a glass of juice when she walked by.

"Come on, Slick," Judy said. "We're going out." She as she grabbed his paw and pulled him to the door.

The fox spluttered, scrambling to put his glass in the sink as he was towed forcibly away from his little sanctuary. "Out? Out where?"

Judy smiled. "We're going skating, Slick."

Nick couldn't help but feel a little perplexed. Skating? What brought this on?he wondered. He hadn't been roller skating in years, only learning to do so once for a hustle, and never doing it again. He was certain, though, that he could at least perform decently enough to impress the doe. He hoped.


It was not to be.

She didn't take him to a rollerdrome. Nowhere near one. Instead, she'd taken him to Tundratown. He supposed he should have clued in when she had grabbed his winter coat and given it to him that she had something else up the sleeve of her own fuzzy winter attire.

Instead of a nice warm indoor roller skating rink, they were now seated on a log at the side of a frozen pond in Tundratown, strapping on the blades that the doe had rented for them.

They weren't the only mammals here. Far from it. In fact, there were dozens out enjoying the sunshine and the cold, gliding along the smooth surface. Some were clearly accomplished in the ability, either through winter sports or simple practice. Others balanced themselves with traffic cones, large egg crates, or anything else that they could find, just to stay upright. Almost all of them were cold weather mammals that could usually be found around the district: Polar bears, wolves, deer, elk, moose, and even arctic foxes, among others.

But they were the only red fox and rabbit there.

"So, Carrots… When you said we were going skating, I assumed you meant roller skating," the fox commented as he laced up the blades, his bunny beside him doing the same.

"Why?" The doe's curious tone made him look over. "Worried you'll slip and fall or something?"

The fox scoffed, pulling his pant leg down where he'd finished up lacing up. "I happen to be an expert skater fox, Fluff Butt. Ice skating can't be that different from roller skating."

Judy couldn't help the eyeroll at Nick's comment, as she got to her feet and pushed off, gliding effortlessly across the ice. "OK, Slick Nick. Let's see if your skating skills are as smooth as your talking skills." The doe picked up speed and skated a lap around the pond, stopping short of the log, where Nick was just getting to his feet. The slight wobble in his legs told her everything she needed to know

Skating backwards, using her ears and sensitive hearing to keep track of where everyone else was, Judy watched as Nick made his way toward her.

The fox shoved his paws in his pockets. "Try not to be too smitten, Toot-toot. My moves will be like nothing you've ever seen."

Judy grinned and continued backward. "Skating on ice is different than skating on roller skates, Nick. But I'll do my best to contain my excitement."

Nick shook his head, that confident smirk still plastered on his muzzle. "It's no different than roller skating. In fact, I bet I can—" Whatever he was going to say next, it never came out. At that moment, his skates decided to go in two different directions. With a yelp, the fox went down, face planting into the ice. He slid to a stop at his doe's feet, his tail arched over his back, and resting on his head.

"You were saying?" Judy quipped, standing there with a smirk on her muzzle and her arms behind her back. Nick knew that smirk all too well.

"I feel as though you hustled me somehow."

The smirk grew wider. "Well… You're not wrong." She pushed off, gliding away from the fox as Nick struggled to get to his feet, swearing that the little ball of gray and white fluff was going to be the end of him someday.

He didn't get very far. The moment he was back on the skates, the left one decided to take a sudden excursion, and he twisted to the right, landing hard on his hip. And shoulder. That's gonna bruise. Again, he struggled to get up. Looking over at his bunny, he wasn't surprised to see her fighting giggles as she glided effortlessly around him. It was almost like she was born on skates, though he knew she hadn't been.

I'll show that crazy bunny. Of course, so far, his showing her had ended in disaster. Maybe he'd have more luck if he…

He finally got to his feet again, and pushed off with one foot, trying to mimic the rabbit's actions. Unfortunately, going forward is one thing. Stopping is something else. He'd pushed himself off in the direction of a snowbank. The snowbank did all the work of stopping him as he flipped forward to land head down in the powder.

Suppressing a growl, he lay there for a moment before digging his way out of the cursed substance, and scrambling first to his knees, then back to his feet. In his mind's eye, he could see an old cartoon of a talking duck screaming out in a rage after being subjected to the same humiliation.

Shaking his head, he pushed off again, moving in the direction of his gray doe, standing a few feet away, seemingly wanting to say something. Unfortunately, when he tried to move in her direction, the skates had other ideas. They went a different direction. Stumbling, wind-milling, he was barely able to regain his balance in time to see a light pole coming at him with no chance to avoid it. He just had enough time to turn his head to the side before impact, which left him lying on the ice, a little stunned.

Staring up at the midday sky, he promised himself he would never go skating again.

Judy came sliding up next to him. "Oh, my God, Nick, are you OK?"

He grunted an affirmative, shooting a glare at the doe.

"Ice skating's a little bit different than roller skating, isn't it, Nick?"

The fox sighed and nodded.

"Come on, Nick." She extended her paw out to him. After a moment, he took it, and she helped pull him back upright. How she managed to do that without losing her balance herself, he couldn't understand.

As soon as he was on his feet again, she took his other paw, and started skating backward. "I'll show you how to skate, Slick. Just let me do all the work."

She pulled him slowly around the edge of the pond. The few times Nick stumbled, she tightened her grip on his paws and let him use her for balance. She showed him how to move forward, pushing off with first one foot, then the other.

Stopping, though, was another matter, and it took multiple tries with him flopping forward into Judy's arms to get the hang of what she called the pizza stop. "Because you point your toes inward, like a slice of pizza," she explained.

As he suspected, turning was harder. She left him standing in one spot for a moment to show him. She would lean in the direction she wanted to go, staggering her feet, so that one was in front of the other. For faster turns, she would lean more or kick her outer foot out, pushing her in the direction she wanted to go.

It took most of the afternoon, but the fox began feeling more comfortable on the metal blades. He supposed that may have had more to do with the bunny that never strayed more than ten feet from his side. Even now, when he felt like he could at least hold his own, she still held his paws, guiding him around the pond.

Maybe ice skating isn't so bad after all. It even felt like they were dancing. As the minutes wore on, they slowly found themselves moving closer and closer together.

"So, Carrots, where did you learn to skate?" Nick asked as the doe led them around the pond again.

Judy got a bit of a far off look in her eyes. "We have a few ponds in the north fields on the farm. They froze over every winter, and we'd set up a few logs for benches around the pond and turn it into a family ice rink. We even have an ice resurfacer that some of the mechanics in the family built to hook to one of the smaller tractors. Nothing like you would see in the Olympics or in a hockey league, but it did the job, and it was fun to drive."

Nick chuckled, holding on to his bunny's paws. "Did you ever drive it?"

The doe shook her head. "Not much. Usually, when I went out to go skating, it was after school and before homework, and later, when I got old enough, I was either in one of the gyms, reading everything I could about the job of a police officer, or volunteering at the sheriff's office."

A smile graced the fox's features. "I remember you telling me about that."

Judy's smile mirrored Nick's own. "Anyway, there wasn't any way mom and dad could afford to send all 300 or so of us to all the after-school activities we wanted. We got some skating lessons in school, but that was just an hour every couple of weeks for a season. Those of us that did learn, we learned from some of the more accomplished ones in the older litters. My brother Alan plays hockey in the Tri-Borough League, and my sister Ashlyn is a figure skater in the local club, but besides that, most of us just skate for fun."

Nick cocked his head. "So, you didn't do much skating when you got older?"

Judy shrugged. "Not much. Always did some each winter, usually because the kits wanted to, and they needed supervision."

The fox nodded. "I remember you were on the caregiver team."

The doe shuddered. "Those 'field trips' to the ponds were organized chaos. If you weren't lacing up someone's skates, you were breaking up fights or prying your brother's paws from your sister's ears while she was trying to skate away. It was like that with playground visits, too. Minus the ice and snow."

"So, if you had such a bad experience skating when you were younger, why bring us here?"

The doe paused. "I wanted to do something with you and thought maybe this could be a way for us to make some happy memories."

Nick's grin turned to a heartwarming smile. "I think we already made some happy memories here, Fluff."

The doe smiled, drawing the fox's arms around her back, and then reaching out to wrap her own around his waist. "I agree."

The two glided around the pond, gazing into each other's eyes.


Elsewhere in the city, Damian Hornby watched in satisfaction as the two kit foxes in the cage began tearing at each other, yelping and growling, doing whatever they could to win the fight at the cost of their mate's life.

It seemed as though the latest modifications to the formula had been a success. By amping up the fear and aggression components, lacing the formula with some street drugs – Rage and Psyche – they'd hoped to bypass the mammal's mate instincts.

Blood began to fly. It seemed likely that, given enough time, the two filth would fight until one or both of them were dead.

The Texas longhorn sat back and watched. Felicity Stang had called him late yesterday, saying she wouldn't be available for a few days, as she had sick family in her hometown of Podunk to visit. So much the better. She hadn't toed the line since he'd told her about his wife and son, but she didn't need to be involved in the planning of the second public test.

The longhorn had recruited the mustang mare when he'd found her at an anti-predator rally. A few cups of coffee, and he'd learned that she was a neurologist at Zootopia General who had been fired for discrimination against predators, just because she refused to see or treat them. Digging a little deeper, he'd found out she'd held a dislike for predators as long as she could remember, but couldn't really explain why, passing it off as their being built to murder.

She was right, of course. They were built only to murder. And that made them monsters and not mammals.

The noises from the two foxes died out, with one the victor over the other, if only by a narrow margin. The male of the pair was clearly bleeding from a lacerated artery in his neck. He staggered a few steps away from his victim and collapsed, his breathing slowly coming to a halt.

Perfect. Now they just needed to find a way to block the street drugs from affecting the emotions of prey mammals.


It was late in the evening when Nick and Judy finally decided to call it a day. Having turned in their skates, earning a glare and a muttered comment about predophiles and prey chasers from the shopkeeper, the two had made their way down Athabasca Avenue, not in any particular rush to get home.

The two only had one day off this week, and both of them thought it had been well spent, though Judy wouldn't have minded a little forward progress on their case, either. She knew they couldn't rush things, not if they wanted to catch Wolford's killer without having the case dropped on some technicality, but the slow forward pace was certainly frustrating.

They'd be back at work tomorrow, though, and hopefully, they'd be able to start following up on the evidence gathered in Tundratown. In the meantime, nothing said she couldn't have a little fun with her fox.

Speaking of fun, the doe thought as she paused for a second as Nick kept walking. Keeping an eye on him, she quickly scooped up some snow and packed it into a ball, hiding it behind her back just as the fox turned to see where she'd gone.

The two walked in companionable silence for a while, Nick enjoying the presence of his doe and Judy waiting for the opportune moment to strike. Something must have caught the fox's eye, though, because he looked over at Judy with a curious expression.

"What do you have behind your back, Carrots?"

"Nothing." Her response was as nonchalant and deadpan as possible.

Nick regarded her for a long moment, debating on what to say next before something else caught his eye. "Hey, look, Carrots! It's snowing!"

The fox's look towards the sky was the perfect opportunity. "Why, yes, Nick. Yes, it is." She flipped the snowball in the air once.

She had to give the fox credit. He had a great reaction time. Just not fast enough. And rather than try and grab the snowball from the rabbit, he scrambled off to the side, desperate to put some distance between him and the projectile.

It didn't work. The doe heaved the snowball with the practice and accuracy of 15 years of snowball fights on the farm, the cold, frozen weapon splattering all over the back of the fox's head. He lost his balance and toppled muzzle first into the snowbank at the edge of the sidewalk.

The doe whooped at her wildly successful first attack, unable to hold back the laughter at the fox so ingloriously sprawled out in the snowbank. For his part, Nick was picking himself out of the snow, and an evil smile crossed his muzzle. A quick glance over his shoulder, and he saw Judy nearly doubling over. He took a second to sculpt his own weapon, turned, and threw it at her.

The laughter stopped as soon as the weapon hit her shoulder and exploded, showering the right side of her face in snow. The doe blinked her purple eyes owlishly for a moment, seemingly stunned.

"Hah! Gotcha back, Carrots!"

Maybe that was the wrong thing to say, or maybe Nick should have pressed the attack while he had the advantage. The doe squinted at the fox, a fire in her amethysts. Uh-oh

The fox backpedaled a few steps as the rabbit bent to scoop up some more snow of her own, packing and shaping it, as her eyes drilled holes in the canid. Nick began backing away, slowly, turning to run at the last second, only to feel the cold, stinging smack of the projectile finding its target. The snow began to seep through under his collar to his fur, and he shuddered at the slightly uncomfortable sensation.

That was followed quickly by another smack, and another. Nick bolted, running down the street as more snowballs hit him in the back or went flying past his head. The sound of laughter from Judy rang in the air, and mammals turned to take in the decidedly odd spectacle of a bunny chasing a fox down the boulevard, scooping up snow and winging it at the hapless canid.

Spying a copse of trees, the fox veered off the sidewalk, barrelling through them and disappearing from the bunny's sight. He hoped that the darker cover of the trees combined with the fact that he was downwind would cause her to lose track of him, if only for a moment.

It did. The doe slowed to a stop, glancing left, right, as she cautiously made her way into the trees. Her ears twitched, straining to hear every sound, any sound that he might make. He held his breath, and slowly moved behind the bunny, moving as quietly as he—

Snap.

Not quietly enough. The twig he'd stepped on gave way, and the bunny's ears immediately snapped around, followed by her head, and an instant later, her snowy weapon. The snowball exploded all over his muzzle, blinding him for a second. Realizing she was at a disadvantage, the doe took off, trying to put some distance between them. Growling playfully, Nick gave chase, running on all fours after the fleeing, laughing rabbit.

She didn't get very far.

With a leap, the fox pounced, catching the rabbit around the waist and sending them both tumbling. When they finally rolled to a halt, Nick was on top, with Judy somehow on her back beneath him. She grinned up at him, mischief in her eyes.

"You caught me, Officer Slick. Now what are you going to do to this poor, innocent bunny?"

The fox smirked. "Miss Hopps, I'm placing you under arrest for assault of a police officer with snow, resisting arrest, and illegal possession of a snow weapon."

Judy feigned a horrified look. "Oh, please, no, officer, don't arrest me!"

Nick's smirk returned, and he lowered his nose so it was almost touching Judy's. The doe reached up to touch his muzzle with one paw and his shoulder with the other. "Then I think your bail is one kiss, Miss Hopps."

He closed the distance between the two, capturing her mouth with his. The gentle pressure of her lips on his gave way to a more passionate kiss, the doe grabbing his coats lapels and pulling him closer, her tiny tongue expertly exploring his mouth, teasing his fangs.

Nick was about to reciprocate, when a voice caught his attention. "Oh, my God, that's disgusting!"

The two broke their kiss and looked over. They spotted a female Siberian musk deer standing there, pointing at them. Judy scrambled up, standing tall and facing the deer down, ears swept back. "Something the matter, ma'am?"

The musk deer looked a little green. "I'm not sure which I find more disgusting—that that fox was taking advantage of you, or that you seemed to be enjoying it!"

Judy snorted. "Was I enjoying it? Yes, yes, I was. Was I being taken advantage of?" She grinned. "Most certainly. In all of the best ways."

Nick's ears went flat about the same time the musk deer's eyes flew open wide. The female ungulate spluttered. "You… you…"

"—don't care that he's a fox and not a rabbit? Darn straight. He's my best friend, and I love him. Is that what you find disturbing? That the one I love just happens to not be a rabbit? That right?"

A nod from the musk deer was her only answer. The doe cocked her head.

"Is that how you feel about mammals who are homosexual, too? Or transgender mammals? Do you treat them with the same disdain?"

Another spluttered response from the musk deer. "That's… It's…"

"—no different. What I have with my fox is no different than those who love a mammal of the same gender. So, unless you are that closed-minded, you might want to think things over next time. Have a nice night." Judy marched over to Nick, who was still seated in the snow, and offered out her paw, pulling him to his feet, despite her smaller stature. She then made a point to wrap her arm around his, holding it close to her chest as she walked away from that deer, who was still trying to form a coherent sentence.

Nick nudged the bunny. "That was pretty harsh, sly bunny."

Judy scoffed, pulling Nick's arm even tighter to her chest. "That deer was small-minded. Besides, her opinion doesn't matter to me." She rubbed her cheek against his sleeve. "Your opinion is the one that matters to me."

"Awww, you're gonna make me blush, Fluff Butt!"

The doe elbowed the fox. "Just telling the truth, Slick."

Both mammals missed the disgusted look the musk deer continued to shoot their way until they were out of sight.


Chief Bogo was still in his office well past the time when he normally would have gone home. Between the latest evidence reports from Wilde and Hopps, Rivers and Longtooth, and the recent infiltration of the precinct, he was up to his eyeballs in work. At least both of the external investigations had been making some forward progress.

He suspected that the precinct attack may have been related to the fox and rabbit pair's case as well, and Judy had also drawn the same conclusion. For that reason, he'd pulled even more strings and had the evidence for that transferred over to their stewardship earlier today and had assigned them the case. He'd inform them about it tomorrow when they were back on shift.

A knock at his door had him looking up from the report he'd been reading for probably the hundredth time in a row. "Enter."

The door opened, and the large cape buffalo was surprised to see an old friend step into his office. Major Ursula Friedkin closed the door behind her, carrying a pizza box in one paw.

"Ursula, how can I help?"

The polar bear shut the door behind her. "Can't a friend visit once in a while?"

The cape buffalo grunted and nodded. "Sorry. With all that's happening, it's hard to get time away."

Friedkin nodded and sat down on the sofa in the police chief's office, while the large Bovidae gathered a couple of his files and moved to sit next to her. He laid out the papers while the polar bear cracked open the pizza box and grabbed a few of the napkins she'd brought along.

The two ate in silence for a while, skimming over the case files, before Friedkin spoke. "I heard you assigned Wilde and Hopps the case for the attack here."

The nod from the police chief was the only answer she got.

"Kind of against protocol. How come?"

Chief Bogo sighed. Technically, he shouldn't talk about an ongoing case with anyone outside the precinct, but he'd known Friedkin since she was in training and he a rookie. There wasn't anyone outside the precinct that he trusted with police intel more than her.

"It ties in to their existing case. Woolter and Jesse Bighorn were the targets, and both of them were involved in the Night Howler case, and Hopps and Wilde both suspect their involvement in their current case."

Friedkin hummed as she looked over the case file. "And I assume the other precincts were conveniently 'too busy' to pick up the case?"

Bogo shook his head. "Not 'conveniently', they WERE too busy. The anti-pred and pro-pred riots that have been springing up all over the place has us stretched to our limit. Every time we open an investigation into a pred-related vandalism complaint, it means something else gets put on the backburner."

Friedkin thought for a moment. "I have a few cadets whose technical scores are outstanding, but they need practice with the clerical stuff. Maybe I could send them over to you?"

Bogo thought for a moment. "That might help. Records and Deep Archives have been begging for a break since the Grand Palm incident. Even if we just have the cadets digitizing old files, that would free up the senior officers to focus more on the cases at the forefront." One of the things the from which ZPD suffered, along with almost every other police department, was a disconnect between the old paper filing systems and the new computerized ones.

Old cases, solved or not, often got overlooked until a new piece of evidence specifically for that case turned up, or a new case necessitated the review of old ones, in which case some poor mammal had to spend days plugging information into the computer systems. Occasionally, they'd get a double hit when evidence from an old case matched with evidence from new ones, leading to the cases being combined.

Lately, he'd had all the old cases of predator discrimination crimes pulled from deep archive to be reviewed and digitized in hopes of giving his detectives a little more evidence to work with. He'd been stunned by the number of them. Compared to the discriminatory crimes perpetrated against each side of the issue, crimes against predators were the overwhelming majority.

"I read about the new development between your two valedictorians."

The cape buffalo huffed. "I'd suspected something was up for a while, but it never affected their work, so it never gave me cause for concern. That newspaper clipping just threw it all into the spotlight. They owned up to it, I gave them a warning, and let them go. That was after the mayor called me and asked me to do what I could to keep them together."

The polar bear beside him grunted her understanding. She hated political agendas almost as much as Bogo did, and when Hopps had shown up on her proverbial doorstep thanks to Lionheart's Mammal Inclusion Initiative, she had been ready to call the lion up herself and offer him a piece of her mind, certain the rabbit was going to get killed on her first shift… if she made it that far.

But the rabbit had surprised her. Shocked the hell out of her, actually. When she'd seen the rapid improvement in the doe, her tenacity and never-give-up attitude, not to mention her ability to solve problems on the fly and excel in anything to which she put her mind, the polar bear instructor had been absolutely thrilled.

"When Hopps was in the academy, she had no one to support her. Oh, her parents called, or she called them, but she wasn't always careful about being private. The times I overheard, they seemed to be suggesting she come home. She always refused. When Wilde was in training, Hopps was always the one to call him or visit. Almost every day. His mom didn't come into the picture until later." She paused. "How far back did they say they'd been an item?"

Bogo dropped another page of the file onto the table. "The night of Eric's murder."

The polar bear went silent, as it was a touchy subject with her, too. She'd trained Wolford and had seen him off and on throughout the years. It always hit her hard when one of her trainees died in the line of duty, and every time, she followed up to see how she could train her cadets better. Most of her death calls were, unfortunately, based on real life experience.

"I'd actually suspected something back when Wilde was in training. They always seemed so comfortable around each other when Hopps visited, and Wilde seemed to perk up even more on those days." Friedkin laughed. "When was the last time you saw a rabbit as comfortable around a fox as Hopps is with Wilde?"

Bogo let out a snorting laugh. "Never. If you'd have asked me beforehand, I'd have told you Clawhauser would be more comfortable eating Styrofoam than donuts."

The two continued talking and looking over the cases late into the night.


The door to the apartment opened and Nick and Judy walked in, both with big smiles on their faces. It had been an incredible day, even if the afternoon hadn't started in the fox's favour, and they'd gotten to spend a little time just having fun.

The deer speciesist had been a bit of a downer, but not much.

The two moved to the couch, silently agreeing that a movie night was in order. Nick fired up Pawflix and picked a movie at random. It turned out to be Wrangled, but neither mammal cared. Snuggling up to each other, they watched for a while.

Judy was a little startled when Nick began to make a sighing, purring sound, only then realizing she'd been absentmindedly running her paw through his tail, which he'd draped over her lap.

"I'm sorry, Nick! I didn't mean…" The look of bliss on his face stopped her words, and she cocked her head.

"Judy, if I wanted you to stop, I would have said so."

The doe looked confused.

"Carrots, what is grooming like for rabbits?"

Judy was a bit taken aback by the question, but pushed ahead anyway. "We grow up with large families, so contact and petting and even grooming are fairly common among siblings. Nothing inappropriate, of course, but it isn't uncommon to have your brother or sister brush your back or something."

Nick hummed. "Foxes are a little different, I guess. Typically, a fox allows only three mammals to groom them in his life—his parents and his mate. No one else. I know I told you before that there are foxes who don't adhere to the old traditions…" He looked into Judy's eyes. "But I also told you that I do follow the old traditions."

Before Judy could say anything or apologize further, he gave her a warm smile. "Besides, you didn't hear me complaining, did you?"

The doe sheepishly shook her head. "It's kind of weird that it's taken us this long for the topic to come up. We've been sharing a bed for three weeks now."

Nick chuckled. "Well, are there any other deep topics we should be thinking of and talking about?"

"How about what to have for breakfast tomorrow? We forgot to go grocery shopping."

The fox laughed. "I say we just hit Snarlbucks tomorrow. We can worry about the groceries after work."

Judy nodded and snuggled deeper into Nick's side, sighing as Rapunzel on the screen watched the lanterns start to float up above the kingdom.


FLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUFFFFFFF! How'd you like THAT!

So. News. These past couple weeks, I've been fighting a severe case of depression. Like, "thoughts of suicide" depression. It's not been fun, and I've fallen behind on my writing again. I'm now in counselling, but it's not fun. So yeah.

By the way, if the scenes in this chapter sound familiar, it's because I had TheWinterBunny create a comic of it! Look up Let's Go Skating on her DeviantArt!

Can anyone find the references in this chapter? I'll give you a hint: Disney.

Coming up on January 25: Putting Puzzle Pieces Together!

Questions? Critiques? Is Jack Sparrow insisting that you call him Captain Jack Sparrow? Leave a comment!