Summary:
Judy gets a clean bill of health at the clinic, but as Lance takes them home, his migraine gets worse. Judy tries to help him find his medication, but she's unsuccesful. So she accepts help for another gym mammal, Benny the Hippo, who gives her something special for the big rhino. She leaves Lance to sleep it off while she goes off to a shoot. The big Black Rhino never makes it to his bed.
Notes:
To all my dedicated fans, I'm sorry that this has taken so long to get done. At first I got hit with family time and holidays, and I didn't have time to write. And then getting back into the writing was difficult because after one hundred and sixty six thousand words, I hit burnout. The writers block was fierce, and I couldn't get through this chapter. It must have been rewritten at least five times, and I couldn't make progress. But thanks to the gentle encouragement from some of my fellow authors, I pushed through it, and started to write again. So here is the next chapter. I hope you enjoy it.
Flashback: 4 years earlier in Angels City
Lance sat quietly in his chair as he waited in the reproductive clinic's waiting room. He tried to focus his attention on the large print magazine held in front of him, but he was having difficulty focusing on the words. He squinted and strained, but he couldn't make sense of the type, and the eye strain was making his headache worse by the minute. He sighed as he rubbed his forehead with a beefy paw. He dropped his paw as the scent of angry bunny doe wafted over to him from across the room. Judy was done with her appointment with the docs and was stalking up to him.
"So, what did the doc say?" The big black rhino leaned over and quietly dropped the magazine he was reading back on the over-sized corner table next to his chair. He turned back to gaze down at the angry black and crimson striped bunny at his feet, her arms crossed over her pink bodycon tube dress as she impatiently thumped her foot. God, she's adorable, he thought, like a little black raging storm cloud all dressed in hot pink.
Judy scowled up at Lance. "Well, on the bright side of fucking life, as of today I am officially STD free. No more God-damn stupid gonorrhea. I can finally go back to work now." He stood up and stretched, as she huffed and puffed. "That's the good news, anyway. But the shitty news is since I didn't notice anything for like almost two months, the PID ended up spreading into my uterus and Fallopian tubes, and now they're all full of scar tissue. The doc doubts I could conceive even if I wanted to. Not without a whole lot of medical help, anyway." She stalked after him as he strode from the waiting room.
Lance held the clinic door open for her as they walked out into the sunlight. Judy muttered, "Damn asshole dingo and his stupid gonzo shitty porn. I should never have worked with him." She shook her head, "I mean, it's not like I even care about ever getting pregnant or anything; it's just that I could have done with out all that fucking pain." She glanced up at him, and saw his grimace. "Hey, it's no big deal, Lance. The antibiotics did their job, and I'm healed up now. No more pain." she tried to reassure him.
He slowly shook his head, "That's not it." He fished out his sunglasses, and slide them over his face, "It's the damn sun. It's just too bright." He stood for a moment as he massaged his temple with a big hoof.
She placed her paw on his leg, "Lance, are you having another migraine?"
"Yeah," he groaned. "It started this morning. It wasn't bad in the waiting room, since it was so peaceful and quiet, but out here in the sun it's just getting worse. Shit... I hate this. Let's just get home." He grabbed the grips of his chopper and slid his massive leg over his seat as Judy bounded up behind him, jumped up, and settled down into her place in the rear saddlebag. With a single kick from Lance, the giant iron beast rumbled and roared to life.
After a few minutes dodging Angel City street traffic, they rolled to a stop in front of his stucco clad apartment building. Lance winced as he slid off the chopper, and he quickly strode into the dark lobby as Judy hopped off the bike and scurried in behind him. Sighing with relief to be free of the bright afternoon light, he stood in the middle of the lobby with his eyes closed.
Judy lost sight of him momentarily while her eyes struggled to adjust to the dark chamber, his black crocodile motorcycle leathers and his natural dark gray skin causing him to disappear into the void. She smelled him before she bumped into him, his powerful masculine scent mixed with the scent of leather and motor oil. She stopped for a moment at his knee, her small lapine form dwarfed by his muscular leg. She quietly laid a tender paw on his thigh.
"Hurts?" she asked him quietly.
"Yeah," He responded just as quietly. "I really hate this shit." He rubbed his brows, "Come on." He invited her to walk with him as he made his way down the ground floor hallway to his apartment. He unlocked the door, and lead them into the apartment. Judy struggled to shut the door behind her as Lance strode quickly down the hall to his bathroom."
He rummage around in his medicine cabinet for a moment before calling out in a surprisingly gentle voice, "J.J., babe? Have you seen my Tramadol lying around? I can't find the bottle."
Judy's ears perked up as she heard him speak. She quickly skipped down the hall to his side, "No, I haven't. It's not up there?"
She watched as he poked around the large cabinet, the size of her wardrobe back at her place. "No, it's not. Shit, I must have left it laying somewhere. I just don't remember where."
She grimaced as she racked her brain, trying to remember where she last saw the trash sized container. She had a thought though, "Did Rudolf take off with it?"
He turned and squinted at her, as a ghost of a smile leaked through the pain lines on his snout, "You know he hates that nickname, lil rabbit."
She snorted back up at him, "Yeah, well if he didn't keep getting smacked in the nose and knocked out, I'd call the dumb moose something else."
Lance grabbed a couple of over sized naproxen tablets from another pail. "Hey, Hey… I know you don't like him, but he's okay, J.J. He really is. He's a great roommate, better than most of my previous ones." He quickly washed the tablets down with a cup of water.
Judy frowned before answering, "Well, he's an ex-addict and juicer. I don't trust him."
Lance lead the way back out of bathroom to his couch before easing himself down and replying, "Well, he's clean now. And he's gotta stay that way, if he wants to compete in his weight class at the gym."
Judy cocked her head as she had an idea, "Gym? Wait a minute, did you leave the bottle in your gym locker?" she asked him.
He groaned as he laid his head back, "Uhhhh… I don't know? Maybe?"
She quickly hopped up on the couch next to him, and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, "Wait here. I'll run down there and take a look. I'll be back in a jiffy!"
"Babe, no… You don't need to do that…" The only reply was silence. He looked up and realized that he was alone in the room.
She was gone.
Judy stood in the gym's hallway to the changing rooms, staring up at the over-sized blue lockers that lined the wall in bewilderment. It was one thing to tell her rhino that she was going to do something, and quite another to appreciate the scale of the problem at paw. She was simply too short to reach the six combo dial on Lance's locker, and there were no paw holds she could jump up to grab onto safely on the door. She need something to boost herself up another three feet.
She looked back down the hall, but there weren't any chairs she could drag over, just the benches lining the wall and they were bolted to the naked concrete floor. Maybe some cardboard boxes? As she walked down the hallway toward the janitorial closet, the shower room door swished open and an organic solution presented itself.
"Yo, Chica! Whatcha up to?" the freshly showered lobo asked her, a towel draped over his broad shoulders and clean red gym shorts hugging his muscular legs.
"Carlos! Carlos, please! I need some help!" She turned back to him, and held her paws out in entreaty.
"Okay?" the suddenly wary wolf asked her. "Whatcha need?"
Judy turned and pointed a black paw at Lance's locker, "I need to get into Lance's locker, cause I think he might have left his migraine meds in there, but I can't reach the dial. Could you please give me a boost?"
"Sure!" The wolf turned affable, secretly relieved that she didn't want go a round or two in the ring with him. The rabbit had a mean round house kick, and he wasn't really in the mood to have his jaw dislocated today. He wandered over to the locker, and cupped his paws together to give her a boost up onto his shoulders.
She scrambled into his paws and up his chest to stand on his shoulders over his head. She reached up to the six inch wide dial with both paws, and slowly started turning it, click by click.
"You know his combo?" Carlos asked from below.
Judy paused for a moment as she started turning the dial the other direction, "Yeah."
"How do you do it? I don't understand." He asked her in confusion.
"What? Unlock a locker?" Now she was confused.
"No, I mean Lance. You come down in a panic, looking for his meds, like you really care about him."
Judy pushed back from the locker for a moment as she gazed down at the wolf between her feet, and met his eyes, "I do care about him."
"Yeah, but like you love him or something, not just as a friend. I know you two look like you date and all, but I always thought that was just an act for the cameras. Not anything real or nothing."
Judy smiled down at her friend, confusion evident on his muzzle, ""Yes, I love him. And we really do date." She patted her paw on the side of his nose, before returning her attention to the dial.
"Yeah, but how? How do you that? I mean, he's fucking huge, and you're this itty-bitty rabbit. Like, how do you even have sex?"
Males… Judy giggled to herself. "Sex is pretty much impossible for us, and that's okay." She sighed contently, "We're porn stars, ya know? The last thing we want to do after a long day on the set is fuck." One last turn, and it should open… "We're just like everyone else. We want somebody to come home to at night, to hold us when we need comforting, to talk and explore and share a life with. It's really not all different from what you and Olivia, right? She from a wealthy family, but she loves you anyway, even if you're only..."
"A dirty gutter wolf..." He mumbled, his ear reddening slightly in embarrassment.
Judy smiled back down at him, "Exactly, and that don't matter to her. Carlos, I learned long ago that size doesn't matter either. It doesn't matter if you're predator or prey, furry or hide bound, big or small. You love who you love. It's that simple."
Clunk…
"That's it!" Judy exclaimed as she dropped her paws from the dial to the large sliding latch below. She lifted and pulled, and the door popped open. She hopped from his shoulders to the ground, and pulled the door all the way open. It swung out to expose a cavernous expanse to the flickering florescent lights of the hallway, or so it looked to Carlos. Judy was already crawling into the bottom of the locker, searching through the jumble of gloves and headgear piled there. She sat up suddenly and held up a black bag, "I wondered where that went!"
"What is it?" Carlos asked her as he leaned in. It didn't smell too bad, not like other mammals lockers did. Perhaps that was the mark of Lance's professional nature, that he kept his locker neater than most of the other fighters.
"It's my AV swag bag! How did it end up here?" She frowned, before tossing the bag out of the locker and returning to her search. "Hurm… Nothing here that looks a pill bottle. Do you smell anything."
Carlos grunted, "You kidding me? All my nose can smell right now is sweaty rhino." He looked up past the hanging shirts and towels and pointed, "J.J., there looks like there might be some stuff up on the top shelf."
She scrambled out of the bottom, and turned to look up, "Great! That's what, seven feet up there? I can't reach that by standing on your shoulders." She frowned.
"Yeah, and if you try to jump up, you'd probably smash your head on the door frame." He nodded, "Then you'd land on my poor head, and I don't want another concussion this week from you, rabbit." He squinted his eyes as he stared down at the ebony bunny.
"Har, Har." Judy stuck her tongue out at him, "Learn to duck better, and next time we spar I won't land on your head." She stood there with her paws on her hips before she turned to him, "Isn't there a ladder in the store room or something?"
"Yeah, but I don't got a key. Hang on, let me go get one of the big guys to help ya." Carlos jogged down the hall to the gym, leaving Judy to stare at the out of reach shelf in frustration.
It felt like an eternity to her, but only a couple of minutes later she heard heavy footsteps coming towards the hall. She turned to see who the large mammal was. Oh, it's just Benny, the cop wanna-be. She frowned at her sudden dark thought, Stop it Judy! Benny's a nice hippo, and you can't get mad at him just because he wants to become a cop instead of an EMT. Just because you could never be a police officer doesn't mean you should resent those who can and strive to be.
The rotund hippo rolled down the hall, his towel wrapped around his neck and his workout pant cinched at his waist, stained with sweat. "Yo, J.J.! Carlos said you needed some help!" He stopped a few paces from her, and turned his head to the side, taking in her dark mood, "You okay?"
Judy looked up at the rotund mammal and forced a smile onto her muzzle, "Yeah, I'm okay. I'm just worried about Lance. I'm trying to find his pain meds, but I can't get up to the top shelf. Could you please lend me a paw?"
He shrugged and nodded, "Sure, I guess." He walked up to the locker, and peeked into the dark cubby, sticking his paw into feel around. "Nope. I don't see any medication boxes or bottles up here."
She looked up at him, her brow furrowed, "Are you sure?"
"Yeah, pretty sure. There's his jock strap, if you want that, but not much else." He pulled his paw back out.
"Eww… No thank you." Judy shook her head.
Benny slowly closed the locker door, a look of careful consideration crossing over his face, "He run out or something?"
Judy shook her head, "No, he just misplaced it. And since he's started training again for competitions, money's been tight for him, so I don't think he can get any more. But this migraine is just killing him, and I hate to see him in so much pain."
"Humm…" Benny thought for a moment, "Well, I got something he might be able to use, if he's really hurting. It should help him sleep, at least." Benny moved down to his locker, spun the dial and opened the door. He cast a quick look down the hall, before reaching into the bottom and opening his med bag. He pulled out a 10 inch long narrow box and held it out to Judy.
"Here. It expired last month, so I can't use if on my patients, but it's still good."
"You sure this will work for him?" Judy cradled the box in her arms as she tried to read the over-sized letters on the label, Etorphine Auto Injector - 2 milli-grams. "Two milligrams isn't much."
"Trust me, it will put him right out." Benny laughed. "They make the stuff for large mammal paramedics, so they can control patients who get out of control and try to fight them. The auto-injector just means they don't have to worry about dosage. Just punch and go."
"Oh." Judy remarked, "Kind of like the XAK tranq guns the cops use."
"XAK? That's a little hard core, even for Angel City cops. Nah, the docs use that shit in surgery. I don't know of any police force that does that hard core stuff." He shook his head. "You can't believe everything that you see on TV, lil' bunny." He shook his finger at her, "You be careful with that, okay? It ain't no a toy."
"Okay..." Judy shook her head as she struggled to remember, I thought that XAK was the drug what we used for our tranq guns in Zootopia. I'm sure of it. Wasn't it? She looked back up at him, "What, are you worried I might try to use it?" She smirked back up at him.
He laughed, "No, not really. Hell, if by some chance you could even press hard enough to get the auto-injector to fire for you, the needle alone would punch straight through you. It's mean to go through elephant hide, not bunny skin. And if by some chance you live through that and don't bleed out on the floor, the two milligrams in the injection solution there is more than enough to kill you instantly. Ain't nothing you would want to fuck with, lil' bunny. That's for large mammals only, like Lance, ya hear?"
She nodded back at him gravely, as she slipped the box into her swag bag and slung it over her back, "Thank you!" She waved goodbye and turn and ran down the hallway.
Benny stood by his locker with a smirk on his face as he quietly replied, "You're welcome."
"Lance, baby, you okay?" Judy crooned as she pushed open the over-sized door. It hadn't latched behind her when she left, which meant that Lance hadn't followed after her to make sure it was shut. He was always careful about that, and if he didn't check he must really be out of it. She was really starting to get worried about the big lunk.
She padded quietly into the living room, and sighed with relief. Lance was right where she had left him, lying on the couch, his arm thrown across his forehead, his chest slowly rising and falling as he breathed. She placed the bag on his lap, and climbed up next him. He pulled down his arm at her touch, and beerily looked down at her.
"I couldn't find your Tramadol, honey. I looked in your locker, and I even got some of the other mammals there to help, but they couldn't find it either. So I asked Benny for help, and he gave me this." She reached over to the bag, and pulled out the box. He took it from her, and tried to read it.
She explained to him, "Benny said it should knock you out if you have problems sleeping." She put a paw on his shoulder, "I've got a shoot this afternoon with Herbivore Honeys, but if you need me to stay, I can reschedule." She gazed up at him, worry etched on her features.
In spite of his pain, he smiled down at the little bunny. She was always so good to him, so considerate of his needs. Not like the other porn starlets he had dated, "Nah. It's okay. You've been out of work for a couple of weeks, and you need to get back to it. Besides, it's just a migraine, not brain cancer. It's just pain, and I can handle pain." He nodded at her, "Go, I'll be fine."
She cocked her head at him, "Are you sure?"
"Yeah," he sighed, "I'm sure. I'm gonna just sleep this off." He added, "Tell ya what, if I do need ya, I'll call. Does that work for you?"
She nodded, and then stood on her tip-toes to kiss him on the snout. She jumped back down off the couch, turned briefly to wave good bye to him. He held up his massive paw, and twisted it slightly before letting it fall back to his lap. With a last glance at his face, Judy turned and left the room.
Lance listened to the padding of her feet as she slipped out the room before he turned his attention to the box held in his paw. Frowning through the pain, he opened it and dumped the injector into his other paw. He glared at the long thin cylinder before slipping it back into it's box. S weet Cheese and Crackers, J.J.! he scowled, You know I hate needles! I love you, but I'm not gonna take this shit, and certainly not from Benny's greasy paw! I trust that hippo only as far as I can throw him! Who knows what he really gave you! No, a nap, that's all I need right! The Naproxen has to kick in soon, and then I can sleep this screaming migraine off!
He struggled to his feet, almost blacking out in the process. He stood for a moment, holding on to the side of the couch, his vision reduced to a narrow spot as the pain made him cry. He lurched out of the living room into the hall, holding on to the wall as he put one foot before the other, trying to make it to his bedroom.
He never got there.