To say that the roads were busy at the moment would have been quite the understatement.
Cars and trucks of all different sizes and colors sat motionless, snaking their way up the streets of Zootopia that seemed to go on forever. It was practically four lanes of idleness, the occasional honk sounding off from a vehicle that was probably in a hurry to get wherever they needed to be.
Sitting at the driver seat, Judy sighed heavily. She and Nick both had plans regarding where they were going at this particular time of day, and they would have to be postponed if they didn't find a way out of the miniature portion of hell known as rush-hour traffic.
Traffic would creep forward slowly, but end up standing still in just a few short seconds. Nick placed a paw against the glass of his passenger seat window. Although he was a mammal who lived by a personal philosophy of not letting things get to him, the fox was pretty sure that anybody would be feeling a slight amount of irritation if placed under these circumstances.
"Dang," he breathed despondently, looking away from the window and over to Judy. "Hate this traffic."
"Hating it isn't gonna make it go any faster, Slick," Judy replied.
The doe at the driver's seat placed a paw over the radio, turning the knob so the volume would be a little louder. Perhaps putting on some of the most recent hit tunes in Zootopia would bring some ease. However, the song that was just playing when she turned the radio up came to a close, replacing it with another tune that Judy had already heard about a million times before.
"Didn't they already play this?" she asked out loud.
As she reached for the knob that changed the station, Nick placed a paw on the button that made the radio perform a scan. The signal started to change, and with that the radio went through just about every genre that it could play.
It started with a station that provided hip-hop with a hypnotizing beat, replacing a few moments later with a groovy tune that the two of them were unfamiliar with. A few shifts in genre later, the radio landed on a channel that didn't exactly bring any enjoyment to Judy. Her ears drooped upon hearing an assault of electric guitar riffs and the fierce hitting of drums, complete with loud vocals that rattled from a screaming vocalist. Nick, being the uncontrollable jokester that he was, moved his paws around as he pretended that he was shredding on the electric guitar that was being played to the song. The radio changed again, and finally Judy came across a station that was playing something pleasant to her ears.
"Again, whose idea was it to leave during rush hour?" Nick nagged.
"That was your bright idea, Nick," Judy replied, bringing the vulpine down to earth. "I said the traffic was gonna be bad, but you said that it was gonna be alright and that we needed to just wait to go until now."
The vulpine shrugged his shoulders. "They outta change the phrase 'rush hour' to somethin' else. I mean, why would you use the word 'rush' to describe a time where nothing moves?" He noticed no response coming from the doe on the other side of him; she was obviously not enthused by his witty remark at the current moment. The fox paused for a short while, right before an idea suddenly came to mind. "Ya up for a joke, Fluff?"
The doe rolled her eyes and chuckled under her breath, her eyes still fixated on the busy roads in front of her and her paws gripping the steering wheel.
Nick looked at her quizzically. "What's wrong with jokes? Don't they always say that laughter is the best medicine?"
"Not when you're telling the jokes, Slick. Whenever you roll out the puns, nine out of ten times they end up being pretty cheesy."
"You wound me, Carrots. I'll have you know that, as a fox, I am an expert in clever jokes."
"Oh, yeah? Then get right ahead and tell me your 'clever' joke."
"Alright, Fluff. Just don't be too surprised when I knock you off your paws with laughter."
"I'll try to contain my enthusiasm."
"Okay," Nick began, quickly thinking of a good pun in his head that he thought was certain to get his companion to laugh. "What did the mother buffalo say to her child when he left for the academy?"
Judy thought about a quick moment, hoping to surprise Nick at knowing where the joke would lead before he even threw the punch line at her. "I don't know, Nick," she admitted after a short pause. "What did she say to him?"
"Bison!"
There was an awkward delay in between when Nick finished the joke and when Judy's brain fully understood the pun. Once her brain got the joke, Judy went into a round of snickering that soon enough broke out into a pure fit of uncontrollable laughter.
"Score one for the sly fox," Nick remarked in between the innocent, twinkling sound of Judy's heartfelt laughter.
"Alright, I'll admit that was a pretty good one," Judy said, blinking away a tear out of her eye that came to her from chuckling so hard.
"Yeah," the vulpine replied. "Just don't go spreading that one around when we get back to work, Carrots. Chief Buffalo Butt would probably be on our tails about that if he heard us repeating that one around the ZPD. With it being a buffalo joke and all."
Judy smirked, took a quick look at her partner, and turned her attention back to the cars that were in front of her. Within those few brief moments of conversation between the two of them, traffic slowly started to get back into motion. It was still very much delayed, but the fox and rabbit were both grateful just to move forward, even if the distance they proceeded was quite minimal.
As the car unhurriedly went forward before braking again, Nick put his window down to feel the nice weather outside and peaked his head out slightly. A smile creeping forward, the vulpine looked at a very particular building that was currently within view. The establishment, which seemed to be busy with a fair amount of customers at the moment, was none other than Jumbeaux's Café.
The doe happened to turn her head to the other side, looking at the café that was the fox was looking out at. Seeing the building and thinking back to the first time she was there, Judy couldn't help but smile. After all, it was there that she stumbled upon the sly, cunning Nicholas Wilde for the very first time.
"It feels just like yesterday that I stepped into that shop," the doe murmured. "You know, when I first saw you in line there and bought you that Jumbo Pop."
"Yeah," Nick replied. "Guess you could say that's how it all started for us."
"How? With the crossing of paths in the most unlikely of places?"
"No, with a Jumbo Pop, of course."
Judy laughed at the vulpine's observations. Then, as if there was a miracle with Nick and Judy's names on it, traffic managed to get less backed up and back to its normal speed once again. After getting out of the specific area where things were being held up, the fox and rabbit smiled as they proceeded down the road and took a turn in and order to get to their destination.
"Hallelujah!" Nick loudly proclaimed. With that, the fox exhaled heavily and jokingly imitated the act of fainting back in his seat, a paw brushing over his eyes with a ridiculous amount of bravado.
Judy shook her head at the vulpine's dramatic little display of enthusiasm. "Gosh, you're such a drama king," she muttered.
After an exchange of pleasant smiles to each other, the car drove on as the two of them made their way down the streets of the city.