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The first time Nick asks Judy to marry him, she laughs.
“And how exactly is that a solution to mitigate the cost of rent?” she asks as she bites back the laughter and turns their cruiser down Pack Street.
“Just think about it,” he replies and taps his finger to his head. “This city is damn expensive to live in as a single mammal. Rent, electricity, phone, transportation. You have two mature, perfectly capable mammals living apart on their own, paying all that separately, it’s a small fortune. But the second they declare the same address and file jointly on their taxes, boom!”
He makes an explosion with his paws as Judy parks at the deli they agreed on for lunch. She shakes her head, a leftover smile tugging at her lips.
“I’m just saying,” he goes on, face now sporting his signature smug smirk. “It makes a ton of sense from a financial perspective.”
“So, marriage as a tax hustle is the ideal living arrangement?”
“Second best way for a no-name mammal to dodge taxes besides having no reportable income.”
He winks at her. Judy rolls her eyes and turns off the ignition.
“I think you’re forgetting a couple of specific conditions that should ideally be met in order to be married,” she says.
“Now, I’m not suggesting that just any two random mammals tie the knot, Carrots.” They hop out of the cruiser and head toward the door. “I just don’t see why more good friends don’t cash in on what is obviously a super sweet gig.”
They reach the door and Nick holds it open as Judy strolls through. They step up to the end of the line and stare at the day’s menu behind the counter. Nick nudges Judy’s shoulder.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Judy nudges him back. “Think you can hustle me, Slick Nick?”
“Perish the thought.” He smiles. “Can’t blame a broke fox for trying to keep more of his paycheck in his pocket.”
Judy snickers in spite of herself. “Dumb fox.”
“Your dumb fox.” Nick tussles her ears. “You love me, admit it.”
“I will do no such thing in public.”
Her cheeky retort catches Nick off guard and he barks a laugh that makes him choke back tears. He steps out of line to rein it in as a smug Judy comes up to the counter to order their meals.
The second time Nick asks Judy to marry him, she sighs.
“You don’t have to try and make me feel better,” she sulks, and nurses the tiny glass tumbler between her paws. The bar patrons eddy in and out of her peripheral vision, taking their drink orders from the counter and twirling off again. “It was a bad match from the get-go. At least he showed his true colors early.”
“Guy’s a complete imbecile, if you ask me.” Nick wrinkles his muzzle in obvious distaste and takes a swig of his own drink. “What kind of dipstick goes in for a kiss on the second date?”
“Second date, fourth date, fiftieth date… the timing of it doesn’t really matter.” Judy runs her finger along the lip of the glass. Her voice dips lower, as though what she is saying should be considered classified. “I wouldn’t… I mean, I don’t really get that whole PDA thing. It just… would make my skin crawl.”
“Because it was him doing the kissing?” he asks. “Or just being kissed by anyone in general?”
The subtle haze shifts into sharp focus, blood rushing to her face and her ears. They bolt upright as she turns to him with her nose twitching and a strangled kind of grimace dragging the corners of her lips down.
“It’s not hard to see why that might be,” he continues nonchalantly. His voice is so casual, his face so very blasé, he may as well have just asked her how the weather was outside. “I was in the Mystic Springs Oasis with you, remember? I saw that face you made.”
She tears her eyes away from his and pulls the rest of her drink. “I think it’s time I headed out.”
His ears flag. “Something I said?”
“No, no, just…” Her tongue is numb, stumbling. But it’s Nick and she’s always been able to tell him anything so why is this any different?
Well, because it just is. Because it always has been, since the glib little remarks from well-meaning Auntie Johanna what a heartbreaker Judy would be someday, and high-school crushes who always moved too fast (though just the right speed for other does, of course), and her mother’s pointed commentary that she shouldn’t make them wait too long for grand-kits. It’s different, because she’s different, and always was. Always will be.
“I don’t know why it’s always been that way,” she eventually commits to saying, though it turns her stomach inside out. “Everything up to that point is great, but as soon as it gets time for, like… getting intimate, that’s when it all falls apart and I flake. You’d think for a rabbit it would be the most natural thing in the world, right? But nope… not for me.”
“Ah.” Nick swishes the ice in his drink around and it clinks against the glass cheerfully. “You could always put that out there up front.”
Judy scoffs. “Yeah, because I definitely want to kill any chance of a relationship from the very beginning.” She heaves a sigh. “I don’t want to be alone for the rest of my life, I just… can’t get past that singular point of failure. I’ve tried, and it’s like claws running over a blackboard. It hurts to think about.”
“Sorry I brought it up then.” He reaches over and puts a gentle paw on her shoulder. “Are you gonna be okay, Fluff?”
She nods and drops a few bills on the bar. “I think I’m fine now. Thanks for having a drink with me.”
“Anytime.” He maneuvers his gaze around to catch hers. “Seriously. Next time you want someone to buy you dinner, you can always just call me.”
She gives him an impish smile. “Yeah? And what would you buy me dinner with? The whole eighteen dollars in your bank account?”
“Hey, low blow.” His forehead tightens, trying to hold back a frown. “I meant what I asked, though.”
She waves him off. “Don’t be silly. We’re not even dating.”
“I mean, we might as well be.” Nick cocks his head and a sincere smile replaces the impending frown. “There’s no one I’d rather spend time with than you.”
“Well, maybe it’s time you started trying to find someone.” Judy jumps off the barstool and shoves her arm through her jacket sleeve, suddenly in a hurry to get gone. “You don’t want to be alone for the rest of your life either, I’d wager. Best get on that.”
She zig-zags around multiple mammal legs toward the exit, donning her jacket as she goes. Nick watches her leave and then turns his attention back to his drink.
“I already have.”
The third time Nick asks Judy to marry him, she flinches.
His voice sounds so loud against the stillness of the sanitized private hospital room; it makes her ears press back against her skull.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I know exactly what I’m saying.”
He’s pacing the room now, movement without purpose, which is so uncharacteristic of her usually reserved partner. She takes a deep breath, even though it hurts her chest. There’s an urgent beeping from one of the machines on the pole beside the bed. She lets the breath out slowly and it stops.
“I’m sorry you had to be the one to take care of all this, Nick,” she says, and she means it. It’s not something he should have to deal with; he just happened to be there when things got dicey at the protest. She was glad he was the one who brought her to the hospital at first, but now… now she wishes it had been anyone else. “I understand why it’s got you all worked up—”
“I couldn’t do anything, Carrots.” He stops pacing. When his eyes lock on hers, they’re enormous. “I couldn’t make any decisions for what might happen in there, for what I knew you would want. I had to wait. For next of kin. For your parents. And if everything had gone south… I wouldn’t have even gotten to decide where to bury you.”
Nick scrunches his muzzle like just saying that makes him want to vomit. Judy clutches at the blankets, heart pounding. His shoulders sag and it looks like he’s deflating. She wishes she could get up, could go to him, to hug him and say it would all be okay. But his words are still hanging in the air like an uncrossable veil and the cast on her leg is so very heavy.
“I get it," she says instead. "If it were you in this bed, I’d be just as upset. You got scared and it’s making you say things you don’t mean.”
“I meant every word.”
His eyes are too intense on hers and she turns away from them. “You should talk to the station counselor,” she murmurs, face half buried in the too thin pillow. “Get back to a proper state of mind.”
“A therapy session isn’t going to change how I feel about this, Fluff.”
“You’ll come back to your senses once you can talk it through with someone. I don’t want you to do or say something you’re sure to regret just because I did a dumb and got stepped on.”
Nick is about to respond when the door opens behind him. Whatever it is he wants to say gets swallowed as the wombat nurse rolls a cart into the room. She smiles an automatic and saccharine smile at him.
“Visitor’s hours are ending for today, I’m afraid,” she says, and continues to roll the cart over to the bed. “You can come back tomorrow morning at nine.”
His eyes are steeped in sadness as Judy meets his gaze again, but if there’s anything that Nick Wilde knows it’s how not to let mammals see that they’ve gotten to him. In a blink his smug mask is back, softening the hard lines that had sprung up on his muzzle. He spreads his arms and asks, “Is it okay if I squeeze in a hug before I go?
“Long as you keep it light and don’t pop those stitches,” the nurse says, her attention on the chart between her paws.
Of course, his question wasn’t meant for her, and Nick’s eyes never leave Judy’s. She lifts her arms in silent consent and he closes the gap between them at last. He does little more than wrap his arms around her back, but she squeezes his neck so tight her claws cut through his fur straight down to the skin. He holds on until she lets him go. With a small wave goodbye, Nick shoves his paws in his pockets and strolls out the door.
“Alright, Judy,” the nurse says once he’s gone, “we’re just going to check on those stitches and get you some clean wraps before you eat your dinner, okay?”
Judy nods and sits up a little straighter as the wombat comes around the side of the bed. Her practiced paws are quick, impersonal, and clinical as she cuts off the bloodied gauze around Judy’s shaven chest, pokes and prods at the enflamed skin that was torn open from the hoof that came down on her that afternoon. So much physical contact around intimate, vulnerable areas. She grazes the now misshapen nipple that the stitches run through, but it is a touch devoid of any desire for intimacy, cold and uninterested, so Judy doesn’t squirm so much as wince from the pain. Eventually, the new bandages are wrapped around her torso once more.
“All set,” the nurse says as she updates Judy’s chart. “We’ll have to do one more of those tomorrow, I’m afraid. The doctor will be in later to discuss your recovery plan and when you can expect to be discharged.”
“That’s fine,” Judy says, and eases back against the pillow even more.
The nurse sets a tray of food on the little side table. “Enjoy your dinner and have a good night, then.”
She wheels the cart out and Judy stares at the tray. Her appetite is gone, replaced with a sadness and a longing inside that won’t be sated by anything in this little hospital room. She picks up her cell phone and taps open her contacts. She eventually manages to fall asleep to a face and a name she would call if she could.
The last time Nick asks Judy to marry him, she cries.
“Why?” Her ears wilt and the tears stream down her cheeks. Judy shakes her head, the fleeting memory of her neighbors slamming the door a few hours earlier rising to the forefront of her mind. She’s grateful they aren’t home to hear this. “I don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand?” Nick asks. “You already know I love you.”
“You know what I mean!” She backs as far into the corner of her bed that she can. “Why do you keep asking me that? Why are you still asking me after all this time when I’ve never said yes?”
“You never told me no, either.”
Judy wishes she could melt into the wall. Nick sits on the very edge of her bed, so close yet so far away.
“Tell me. If you really don’t want to, then say it and I’ll never ask again.”
The words that would end this dig into her throat like barbed wire. They don’t get anywhere near her tongue and she is furious with herself.
“I can’t… I wouldn’t be any rutting good for you, don’t you get it? Are you going to make me spell it out?” Her voice becomes shrill and her lips quiver. She sniffles hard; her chest heaves. “What I want… doesn’t matter. I couldn’t… I couldn’t do that to you. You deserve better.”
“I deserve better than my literal best friend?” His voice is so firm yet so soft in her ears. “Who I love and trust and respect more than anyone else I’ve ever met in my life? Who I want to stand beside from now until the day I die? There is no one better than that. There is no one better than you, Judy. No one.”
“God Nick, please… I don’t want to break your heart. You… you know how much I care about you. As much… as much love as I have to give, you have it, but I…” She hugs her arms around herself. “I’ll only ever love you the most I can, and that’s not enough. You deserve more than what I have to offer. You deserve the kind of love I can’t give you, that’s… all kisses and trysts and midnight romps in a big bed. All that… you should have that with someone. That someone is not me.”
His face softens even more and he inches just a tiny bit closer to her. “Those things aren’t important to me.”
“Of course they are. They’re important to everyone.”
“They’re not more important to me than you are.” He shakes his head. “I don’t care if we never do anything other than hug. I love your hugs. I love being with you and I don’t want to ever live my life without you. You and me, Carrots, us… we’re bonded, through and through. We’re family in every way except on paper. That’s all I want to change. Everything else is perfect just as it is.”
She blinks, a tiny hope sprouting way down deep within the darkness inside. “That’s not what a normal marriage looks like, though.”
“Says who? Woolywood?” Nick makes an exaggerated yuck face and Judy can’t help but snerk a little laugh. He smiles at her improved disposition and continues. “All any healthy relationship needs to have is love. And love is love, whatever form it takes. Who gives a fig what kind of love a marriage is built on? As long as it’s shared and it’s honest and it’s strong, that’s what matters. And that’s all that matters to me.”
Judy inches out of the corner and swipes her sleeves over her eyes. Nick’s smile deepens and he pats the spot on the bed next to him. Ear twisting between her paws, she scoots over beside him and lets her feet dangle. After a few seconds she leans her head against his shoulder.
“You won’t change your mind later, will you? I don’t think I could handle that.”
He shakes his head and puts his arm around her. “No. If things ever change for you, we’ll talk about it. Until then, I know where you stand, and I stand with you.”
“You mean it?”
“Every single syllable.” Nick gives her a little squeeze and then stands up from the mattress. He turns to face her, takes her paw, and takes a knee. “So, what do you say, Carrots? Think I could get an answer to my question now?”
She quirks her eyebrows to form the classic dumb bunny face. “Gosh, I can’t remember what you asked. Can you repeat it for me one more time?”
“Sly bunny, you’re too much.” Nick chuckles. “Will you marry me?”
“Will I marry you?” Judy smiles and squeezes his paw. She leans over and presses her forehead against his. “Yes. Yes, I will.”