Nicholas Piberius Wilde stood in his kitchen triumphantly holding up a small cake, smiling ear to ear despite the horribly messy state of both him and the room. There were splatters of egg on his muzzle and the cabinets, he was sure that his lungs were coated in flour just like the floor, and there were scorch marks on the oven and burns on his paws from when his fourth attempt had somehow burst into flames.

The carrot-cake he had in his paws was the end result of nearly seven hours of failure. And the fox believed it to be absolutely worth the trouble. Because today was his first day back in the main city, and he wanted to celebrate it with a very special rabbit.

Nick set up the cardboard cake box that he had purchased in preparation of the day, and gingerly lowered the cake into it. Now all that was left to do was walk it to Judy's new apartment on the other side of Savannah Central.

After a shower, that was. He couldn't just show up at her door looking the way he was at the moment. Proper foxes didn't go around with frosting in their ears, after all.

Fourteen minutes later, a clean, flour-free Nick started to walk down the short flight stairs from his apartment to the sidewalk with the cake box in his paw.

Four steps from the bottom, he tripped.

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Nick stared up at the sky, possibly as an act of passive defiance to whoever was watching, possibly because his back had made noises that bones shouldn't make on his way down the stairs. Possibly both. He groaned, and picked himself off the ground.

The cake, fortunately, was safe, having been cradled against his chest when his feet had decided to sabotage the rest of his body. He checked to make sure. It was fine. Hopefully it would stay fine.

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Nick stood in front of Judy's new apartment, Room 404, 2016 Magnolia Street. It had been a long but - thankfully - uneventful walk to the bright green and purple building that looked like it had been painted by a mammal who couldn't see colours and wanted to make everyone else suffer. He lay a paw on the door, feeling it warp slightly under his touch. Wow, Nick thought to himself, prodding the material, Hero of the city and all that, but she still can't get a decent door. What is this stuff made of? Cardboard? He shook his head, shelving the topic for later discussion. He didn't want to be distracted, not now. There was too much he wanted to capture in his memory.

With a great big smile, he rapped his knuckles against the door.

"Hey Fluff, how ya doing?"

Silence.

"It's your favorite fox, Carrots," he whined. "Don't tell me that you already forgot about me."

No response. He sniffed the air. He knocked again, a little harder this time. "Carrots, is something burning?"

Still no response. Nick's eyes widened as he noticed a thin tendril of grey smoke curling out of the space under the door.

"Carrots, open the door!" He pounded on the door, causing it to tremble in its flimsy wooden frame.

He heard something crash. There was a muffled shriek.

Judy!

A vision flashed in his mind. A rabbit unconscious on the floor, surrounded by hungry flames. Burning. Dying. Nick threw the cake to the side. He would not lose her to the inferno. He would not let her die. Not today. Not ever. Nick drew his knee upwards, readying himself to kick down the door.

Had he still been a hustler, Nick wouldn't have been strong enough to take the door down. Luckily, he wasn't a hustler anymore. Instead, he was Officer Wilde, fresh out of the Academy, body conditioned through months of physical training. A door as flimsy as Judy's posed no trouble, and when the fox kicked, it was with enough strength to knock the door right out of it's frame.

And that's what would have happened, had the door not opened at the last possible moment, revealing a very confused Judy Hopps wearing a somewhat stained "Nuzzle The Cook" apron.

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Earlier that day

"Aw, crackers," Judy said as she looked at the blackened lumps that were supposed to be muffins. She might have meant it as a curse, or as a description of the "muffins" - both were perfectly valid interpretations. With a sigh, she dropped the "muffins" into the trash, where they made a most disturbing clinking sound.

She'd followed the recipe to a tee, yet the result was always somehow… not what it was supposed to be. The first batch was raw; the second batch - which was just the first batch put back into the oven after she'd realized that muffins weren't supposed to have gooey cores - ended up the pastry equivalent of a M&M - a hard outer shell with an interior that melted in your paws; the third batch... the less said about that, the better.

Deciding that she needed something to occupy herself, Judy took out her iPaw and a pair of earbuds. Nothing like some Gazelle to drown out the sounds of failure.

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I did it! Judy hopped around a little before returning to the stove. She stared at the tray of muffins through the smoke. It was perfect! Sure, they were a little singed around the edges, and one of the muffins was on fire, but that gave it character.

Humming to the tune of Try Everything, she stacked the muffins on a plate. She left the flaming one in the tray, however. It would burn itself out, and hopefully leave something salvageable. That's what she told herself, anyways. It was also very possible that this was a subconscious act of vengeance on muffins as a whole.

There was a thump at the door. Startled, Judy dropped the plate of muffins. She yelped.

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Later

Judy watched the sunset. Behind her, hidden in the trash, was a pile of reject-muffins and ruined baking trays. Her stomach was still tender from having received a foot that hadn't gotten the message that she was not, in fact, a door.

Nick stared at the skyline a little while longer. Somewhere, over in the distance, was an apartment covered in carrot-cake batter and scorch marks. His ankle was still bleeding a little from a number of puncture wounds arranged in a perfect semicircle.

They sat together on the balcony, one with a slightly mushed slice of carrot-cake and the other with a somewhat charred blueberry muffin. The sounds of the city filled the space between them.

"Hey," Nick started. "I'm sorry about today. Like, really sorry."

"I know."

"I thought you were dying."

"I very nearly did." Judy paused, then sagged. "I'm sorry for biting you."

"It's okay." Nick paused. He grinned. "After all, it barely hurt at all. Your teeth are too small and cu-"

"I will push you off."

Nick stopped talking.

"Look," Judy said, gentler this time, "today was weird and possibly a bit less than perfect, but do you know what the weirdest thing is?" She turned to look at Nick, and felt warm, wet pinpricks at the edges of her eyes. "None of that really matters to me. You're back now. I don't think I've been this happy in months."

Nick smiled. "You bunnies. So emotional." He lifted his blueberry muffin into the air. Judy raised her plate of cake. They tapped them together; a little toast to… whatever it was that they were celebrating. They each took a bite.

Judy felt something crunch under her teeth. It was probably eggshell. At least, she hoped it was an eggshell.

Nick felt something crumble in a remarkably un-blueberry-like way. It reminded him of the charcoal pill that a particularly confused rookie paramedic had forced down his throat when he was a kit.

Both of them gingerly placed their respective baked goods to the side. They stared at each other for a moment. Then laughed.

They had each other. And to them, that was enough.