It's surreal.

Judy's just there, sitting next to him on his couch.

A movie is playing but Nick can barely pay attention to it.

He missed this so much.

He almost let himself die just because he thought he would never have it again.

Is this what love is? Sitting on the couch together just because you can't stand to be apart? Nick doesn't even need the physical contact to be satisfied with this new arrangement.

Since Judy got kicked out of her apartment for devouring her landlady, she had to move in with him. She didn't have much to bring over, and Nick has plenty of empty space in his own apartment.

Plus, he got to spend actual time with her now, especially since she doesn't have work today .

With his own job put on hold for the time being, it's mostly up to Judy to bring home the bacon.

Well, not bacon, but fish.

Turns out fish is all the rage now, since mammal meat is becoming so scarce. And surprise surprise, the thing to fill that role is actually something that Nick can stomach himself. He quite enjoys it!

So does Judy, if her cute little nommy sounds are anything to go by. They can eat the same food consistently now, even if he much prefers his portion cooked. He had fish every so often before the fall of the city, as had most larger predators. But since it's the main food source now, it's much cheaper and Judy can pretty much afford anything she feels like trying out.

Nick is flat broke from being unable to go to work. But the bunny sitting next to him, the one splattering him with flying chunks of salmon, is more than happy to cover his share for the time being.

He gives her a few sideways glances, noticing that she doesn't look quite as grey as she used to. Her ears are more perky now, too.

"So how's work actually been, Fluff?" Nick asks through a mouthful of baked salmon filet. The zombunny takes a few more savage bites at her raw fish before wiping her mouth and face with a towel.

"Urp!-'Scuse me! S'good. Oh, it's fine. No more recent turnings. Seems that anyone not already infected is either deep in hiding or is way outside of the city by now," Judy explains. Nick gives her a soft but cautious glance.

"Any news on your family…?"

Judy turns her head down towards the floor and lets out a pained sigh.

"No, nothing yet. I think they may have evacuated and left their phones behind by accident or something."

The fox reaches a paw over and rubs her head gently, as to not tear any of the delicate skin. To his surprise, the skin seems stronger now than it was before.

"Don't worry, Carrots. I'm sure you'll hear from them soon enough."

Judy keeps her gaze to the floor, but manages to reach a paw up to place on his. The room is silent for a while after that, with the two taking time to contemplate the world around them and their places in it.

"Bogo wants to know when you'll be coming back to work. He says your sick leave is running out," Judy pipes up suddenly, her sarcastic tone betraying her.

Nick scoffs.

"Don't you mean my 'healthy' leave?" Nick jokes, his eyes half lidded and his face falling back into his trademark smirk.

"Can it, mister. Your jokes have been awful lately. I guess your sense of humor died when the world did," Judy groans with a paw over her face. Nick places a paw over his chest and acts uncharacteristically offended.

"I am uncharacteristically offended, madam! I'll have you know that my jokes are funny enough to raise the dead!"

Judy glares harder, giving him a low growl and a flash of her chipped zombie teeth. Nick's laughter quiets down until it's nothing more than a nervous chuckle.

"That's what I thought," Judy smirks.

"Yeah, yeah…don't need to threaten me, though…"

"Don't I though? I AM one of the hopping dead. Consider yourself privileged to even be breathing with me in the room!" Judy smiles widely. Nick's eyes twinkle playfully.

"Being around you is always a privilege."

Judy's eyes open wide and her smile falls, replaced by a fierce pout.

"Nick! None of that! None!" she whines, her paws flailing and hitting him in the shoulder like little fluffy drumsticks. The fox laughs along through the assault, letting himself be defeated by the rabid bun. By the time she calms down, she's leaning over him. He's laying all the way back, having tried to escape into the couch cushions to avoid her flurry of strikes.

They both suddenly notice what kind of position they're in, but neither of them move right away. She feels her ears flop over her eyes in a subconscious effort to hide the warmth growing in her cheeks.

"Huh?" she mumbles to herself. Nick is too busy cherishing the sight of her to notice anything amiss, but she's quick to slap him awake.

"Huh huh what?!" he stutters up at his fuzzy undead assailant. She slaps him again, too distracted to notice that he's paying attention. "Oof! Judy, quit it!"

"Nick! Nick, feel!" Judy demands as she grabs one of his paws and pulls it to her face. He doesn't know what she means at first. But the cheek quickly warms his hand and he's instantly at a loss for words.

"Warm," he whispers in awe.

"Warm!"

"Warm!"

"Why warm?!"

"Don't know why warm!"

"How warm?!"

"Warm how?!"

"WARM!" they shriek at each other.

"Dead?"

Judy places a paw over her chest and is crestfallen to find that her heart is still not beating. In a sudden moment of hope, she had allowed herself to believe that she might have actually come back to life, despite all of the evidence pointing to that being impossible. But in a world where the dead can rise, who is to say for sure that they can't live again?

Nick watches as his bunny goes through a myriad of emotions, the dominant one being disappointment. He gives her a sympathetic smile and reaches up, pushing her ears out of the way of her eyes.

Another thing he notices improving are her eyes. They were bloodshot and dilated when he first saw her, but they've since gained back much of their natural color. Overall, she's looking less like a corpse and more like a silly bunny with zombie makeup.

Something strange is definitely happening.

Judy sits back up, forcing a slight whine to rumble from Nick's throat. He liked that position. Why did she have to leave?

"Nick…" Judy mumbles darkly as she slides back to her own side of the couch, away from her fox.

"Hm?"

"What you said back on the roof…" she starts. Nick's heart picks up speed and his vision zooms in on his deceased bunny. "Did you mean it?"

"Yes."

Judy flinches back, having not expected him to be so willing to answer. She had anticipated him trying to at least dance around it, but instead he went for the throat.

"Really?"

"Mhm."

"But...how can you mean it?" she asks, trying to hide behind her ears again. Nick is having none of that and sits up so that he can tuck those ears away once and for all.

"Sorry if it doesn't make sense to you. It didn't to me either until I was looking down off of the roof, waiting to die. When Bellwether asked, it was so obvious to me, and since I thought I was doomed anyway, I figured I had no reason to lie to myself anymore. You really do see things a lot clearer when you're faced with your death."

"I don't know, Slick. When I died, everything was just a blur," Judy jokes weakly. He gives her a soft bop on the head and pulls his paw back just as she playfully bites at it.

"You silly bun, that's cause you were getting the stuffing shaken out of you by a massive tiger. Didn't you, awwww poor baaaybeee~," he taunts back.

"Dumb fox," Judy sighs. "But seriously, Nick. How can you feel anything towards me? After what I became? What I am?"

"Because now I know that you're still you. You're not what the infection wants you to be anymore. I was so scared that it had tainted who you were forever...but nope. Just Judy. With some stinky breath."

"It's not that bad anymore! I've been brushing!" she squeals as she assaults him with another barrage of bunny bops.

"I've noticed. You used my toothbrush by accident, Carrots," Nick teases. Judy immediately goes frigid and gives him a wide-eyed expression.

"No…I...oh, Nick! I'm…I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to, I swear! Please don't think-!"

Nick waves his paws in front of her twitching nose to stop her meltdown.

"Woah, woah! I didn't use it! It was covered with gunk, Judes," Nick quickly assures her. She stares into his eyes for a few seconds to make absolutely sure he's telling the truth.

She sees nothing but the emerald green eyes of her favorite fox and lets out a massive sigh of relief.

"See...that's what I mean, Nick! I might be able to control myself now, but I can still infect you if we're not one hundred percent careful!"

Nick nibbles on his lip, mulling over what she's telling him. In truth, he knows the risk. All it would take to kill him would be one accidental lapse of judgement. One little drop of her sludge blood falling into his mouth or getting in his eyes and it's game over for ol' foxy.

Even still…

"I know," he states firmly. Judy can only stare at him.

"After everything you went through the stay alive...why are you acting like dying wouldn't be that big of a deal?" she asks, though her tone is less accusatory and more concerned.

"To tell you the truth...I was strongly considering letting you turn me before," he tells her in no uncertain terms. "The main thing I was held up on was thinking that I would lose control over myself. I didn't like the idea that I would just be a passenger in my own body."

Judy nods, the feeling very familiar to her.

"But seeing how you overcame the infection just by denying its influence...it kind of shot those fears down. Now all that's left holding me back is…"

"...Is what?"

"...I'm still scared," he says, averting his gaze from her. He doesn't want to show any weakness or emotion to her, even if he knows she wouldn't judge him for it.

"Scared of what, though? I'd think being the only one with a heartbeat in a city full of the undead would be scarier…" Judy mumbles.

"Well, Carrots, it's still death. Dying isn't fun, as I'm sure you know. What was the last thought that went through your mind when that tiger was mauling you?"

Judy tilts her head in thought, her ears flopping over to the side and warming Nick's heart just a little more.

"...Weeeee?" she offers with an innocent smile. Nick returns her joke with a grumpy frown. "Okay! Fine! I think...it was about everyone I love being sad about me. I didn't want to hurt them by leaving. Also how short my life was. I've only been a cop for a couple years now, Nick. I always thought I'd at least make it to my fifties before taking a bullet for someone."

Nick rubs his arm, not entirely sure what to say to her in the face of such an intimate reveal. Sure, he asked for it, but he didn't know how deep she was willing to go.

"I thought about you, mostly."

Nick's head shoots back up. Did he just hear her correctly?

"I saw the look on your face right before it all went black. That...was the most painful part, I think. You were trying so hard to get to me but the crowd wouldn't let you through. And being my usual dumb bunny self, I got into trouble again because I left you behind. The last thing that went through my mind was...Nick's going to think it's his fault. But it wasn't. It was mine."

Nick is barely keeping himself held together, the traumatizing memory of that moment playing on loop through his mind.

"I'm sorry, partner."

"It's...thank you...thank you for coming back and keeping me company...even if you spent a lot of time trying to eat me like a carrot," Nick sniffles l, trying to hide his emotions with his usual humor. Judy doesn't buy it for a second.

"So what do you want to do?" Judy asks. The fox tries desperately to pull his emotional wreck-of-a-self together before attempting to answer.

"I...think I want to try. Just keep going on until something happens. And if...well, when it does, then I'll have you there to show me the way...right?" he asks, part of his mask crumbling away to show the vulnerable tod underneath.

Judy feels her cheek get warm again...somehow.

"...Of course, Nick."

"Well, then I guess that just leaves your final answer, then," Nick states, trying to hide the nervousness in his voice.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, like...what I said on the roof. But it's not a one-sided thing. And I didn't want to get my hopes up, just in case…but…" Nick points down to his tail, which is wagging back and forth rapidly against the side of the couch cushion. Judy blinks down at the appendage. Then she looks back up into the hopeful expression of the fox.

Her fox.

"My fox," she says out loud. Nick's hopeful expression widens and his tail wags even harder.

"Wait...I'm your fox?"

"Always have been," she affirms, feeling another surge of heat in her body. But this time, it comes from her chest. She doesn't bother checking to see if her heart has started beating this time. It doesn't matter to her. She has her mind and she has Nick. For night now, that's plenty.

Nick springs forward onto his knees and throws his arms around his undead bun. He doesn't cry, but he does let out a series of emotional yips and barks at her as he smothers her in affection.

"HEHEHEHEHEHEHEH!" he chatters noisily. Judy just has to let herself take in the sheer adorability of her fox's behavior. Never in a million years did she imagine she would get to see him act this way. Nick is lost in the moment, doing everything he can to cover her in his scent. It's a bit of a losing battle, since her dead animal aroma is slightly more powerful than his foxy fragrance.

He finally settles down, and starts to realize that she had been watching him act like a love struck kit for well over twenty minutes.

"Eh-hem...yes...well…" he mumbles into his paw, trying to hide his flicking ears.

She just smirks.

Her smirk is knocked away by the fox's tail, the bushy weapon flailing at the speed of sound. Nick tries to stop it, but is obviously powerless at this point.

Okay, her fox has been humiliated enough. Time to share the embarrassment.

Judy suddenly hops to her feet and spins around, waving her bunny booty at Nick. The fox, in turn, freezes solid and stares at what he's being shown.

Her tail is flicking back and forth just as fast as his.

"Gasp! No way! We match!" she giggles back at him. She sneaks a peek at her fox and sees that he is justifiably transfixed by the show she's giving him. Even though she's dead and he's alive, even though they're different species, teasing still works just as-

Plop

Judy's body locks up and a massive chill runs down her spine.

Nick sucks in an unhealthy amount of air.

That didn't happen.

That didn't just happen.

There's no way the universe is cruel enough…

"...Nick?" she asks faintly.

"...Yeah…?"

"Did my tail just fall off…?"

Silence.

"...Kinda…"

"...Thought so…"

"..."

"..."

"I'll get the stapler."

"Thank you, Nick."

"...I love you."

"Love you too, you dumb fox. Please get the stapler."