Judy's eyes opened, and she immediately regretted it.
Figuring out why took a considerable amount of time. Picking apart the melange of pain and discomfort she was buried in took a great deal of mental fortitude. Eventually, she identified the throbbing sensation as being located in her head region, various clammy sensations over much of her lower body, deeply unpleasant cold nipping at the tip of one ear, and an acute discomfort in the small of her back. Interpreting these sensations and trying to figure out how to stop them took even longer.
She managed to grope in a vaguely upwards direction with a paw - the second one she tried, as the first wasn't responding to her instructions - until she snagged her ear and pulled it against her body, and back inside the covers that she realized she was still draped in. Then she managed to rock her body back and forth a bit until she managed to roll completely over, causing the empty wine bottle she had been lying on to roll away into some distant corner of the blanket cavern she inhabited. Her entire lower half was entirely bare and the fur was completely matted, and on some level she understood that that can of worms could wait. Which left the throbbing. Of course. A hangover.
Her instinctive response when faced with a problem of that magnitude was to hunt for her partner. It wasn't that difficult a hunt, because the hand that had refused to cooperate in recovering her ear had turned out to be grasping the end of a familiar-looking tail. Summoning her strength, she crawled up it's length until she reached an equally familiar butt, then followed it up a torso until she reached the limit of the blankets. Peeking out, she saw a light brighter than anything she'd ever experienced, and could just make out the silhouette of Nick's head sticking out of the covers, his tongue lolling out. Unable to venture out of the warmth of the blankets, she butted at his torso with her head a few times until she got the desired reaction.
Judy saw Nick's eyes flicker open and take in the world, before they slammed shut again and he let out a extended moan that trailed off into a pained whimper. After a long delay while he tallied his own list of woes, his cracked and hoarse voice said, "Hopps, please arrest the sun for me. It's assaulting an officer."
Judy considered rolling her eyes, then decided it would take more effort than she was capable of. Instead, she continued to butt her head against Nick's chest, though it quickly devolved into more of an extended nuzzling as she remembered the fantastically comfortable qualities of that part of him, as she wordlessly tried to communicate her earnest desire for him to fix everything for her.
There was no reaction for what felt like two or three lifetimes, yet her hopes remained undimmed, and when Nick's arm finally lifted and started roaming about the bed, she felt sure he was about to fix everything for her. So when what he produced was the half-full wine-bottle they'd not quite finished off the night before, she took it on faith that it would make everything better, and after managing to sink her teeth into the cork and pull it free, she balanced the bottle on Nick's chest and lapped at the wine that trickled forth. As Nick's paw clumsily but softly found it's way to her head and started stroking her ears, the world almost seemed alright again. And when, an eternity later, Nick's other paw recovered the bottle and Nick guzzled the rest - out of Judy's sight, but she could hear him drinking since she'd buried her head back into his chest fur - she felt almost ready to face the day.
Almost being the operative word. It was almost an hour later when the two of them started to wriggle free of the blankets, the sun having warmed the room up to where the cold was merely mildly unpleasant instead of pure suffering. Judy looked down at her bare lower half, matted with what hazy (but thoroughly pleasant) memory told her was mostly saliva, and then looked to the matching pattern of tangled fur covering Nick's muzzle, and blushed hotly.
"So, about last night-"
"Hopps, I am so sorry. I was completely out of line. I should never have used the word 'bunnilingus'."
Judy snorted, and immediately regretted it as it sent a fresh throb of pain through her head, but a smile spread across her face anyway. "I think you did it wrong, Wilde. I was supposed to regret it in the morning." Nick's answering smile almost made the hangover worth it, and the two of them just sat there smiling at each other in what some thoroughly ignored part of Judy's brain was telling her was a sickeningly twee fashion.
Then reality asserted itself, and Judy took stock of the situation. Apart from the... fluid-related matting, there appeared to be blue stains dotted across both her and Nick's fur from when they'd unwisely tried to 'share' wine while making out, as well as stains from various crushed small fruits dotting Nick's back from when they'd been rolling around. A few minor bruises started to make themselves known, and the bed linens would need to be completely stripped and washed before it was fit to sleep in again, riddled with spilled wine and squashed fruit as it was - and there were still missing wine bottles to recover from the blanket warren, too.
Part of her wanted to just crawl back into that mess of blankets and drag Nick with her and leave all of it for a later Judy to deal with. Then the rest of her decided that it wouldn't hurt anything. So she did exactly that.
Their second attempt at facing the day went quite better. Without a pounding hangover, and comfortably numbed by the wine they had finished off earlier, the two of them crawled happily out of bed and basked in the afternoon sun streaming in through the window.
After a while, Judy reluctantly peeled herself away from the sunbeam for a long, thorough shower - and an annoyingly necessary post-shower combing of her lower regions - and emerged to find Nick had set up a simple meal (breakfast? lunch?) ready to microwave, the power having been restored some time since last night. He ducked into the shower as the timer started, and he emerged just after the microwave beeped, damp but clean, and they sat down to a meal together - one eaten in silence, but with an entire conversation's worth of shared looks and smiles.
After they ate their fill, Judy pushed the empty tub away from her and smiled up at Nick, gathering her thoughts for the conversation they needed to have. "So, Nick... about last night."
"Mmm?" His expression was... well, what he had clearly been going for was a comforting, accepting smile, but Judy had become familiar enough with Nick's ways to recognize the hint of apprehension that lurked below the surface.
"We skipped... a bunch of steps, in this whole whatever-we-are thing. The kissing was fine - more than fine, it was great! But the, um, other thing... and it's not that I didn't enjoy it-" and Judy was blushing again, she was starting to get sick of blushing - "it's just that every step with you has been great. And I don't want to miss any of them by skipping ahead."
"Ah." Nick's expression was calm and understanding, but again, Judy could see below it, and it was all relief. Sometimes her heart wept over how Nick was, on some level, always bracing for disaster, waiting for life to take everything he had away from him. Though life had been kind to him lately, some habits ran so deep they couldn't be easily expunged. Even after all the snuggling they'd done since last night, he'd been expecting a lets-just-be-friends speech. And she couldn't help but feel a little hurt that he still braced for disaster from her, even though he did so with everything he encountered in life. While Judy was occupied with her thoughts, Nick continued to speak; "so we chalk that up to a sneak peek, and dial things back a bit?"
"If you don't mind?" She folded her ears back in concern. "I mean, I know it's not very... fair. I mean, you did THAT for me, but I didn't do anything for you because, well-"
"I want it on the record here and now that it was the wine. That normally never happens to me."
"I don't doubt it- wait, what do you mean, normally?"
"Maybe I should stop putting things on the record."
Judy eyed Nick's poker face with mostly-playful suspicion, before shrugging it off. "Either way, though, are you sure you don't feel... cheated, or something?"
Nick shrugged and smiled. "It's a relationship, not a company. The books don't have to balance at the close of business each day. And besides-" his gaze became a little distant, and he smiled and smacked his lips a little. "I've got a feeling the memories of last night are going to be plenty to keep me satisfied for quite a while."
Judy blushed again, but after a moment's thought, couldn't stop a proud little smile from covering her face as she thought of the mere memory of her having that much impact on Nick. She leaned forward on her chair, then gave up and stood completely up, and just managed to reach his muzzle, and planted a gentle kiss on his lips. It lacked all the crazy spontaneity of the kisses of the night before, but it was heartfelt and sober and entirely sincere and impossible to misconstrue, and for all that it was perfect.
A/N: It's okay to take things slow. It's okay to go fast. It's even okay to do both, or to go backwards. You want to go back to holding hands and sneaking kisses after a bit of drunken oral sex? Then by all means, do so. The key is communication - if you don't communicate, you let cultural mores dictate the rules and pace of your relationship, and cultural mores are rarely one-size-fits-all. Customize your relationship to suit you and your partner, and you'll both be a lot happier for it.