Zootopia is property of Disney.

A quick thanks to sarcasmIsOurStrength for the help with editing, as well as the title.

For Nick Wilde, things really couldn't be going any better right now.

After years of hustling mammals in the city of Zootopia, the crimson vulpine was finally making something of his life. Something good, for a change.

He joined the Zootopia Police Department, despite his shady past. The police academy had been difficult, and not just physically. There were so many different rules and regulations he had to know by heart that it made his head spin.

In the end, however, he pulled through. After years of discrimination and hard living, he was finally going to be a part of something - part of a pack.

He'd spent three months being officially employed by the ZPD, and he already had everything he could ever want.

He had the best partner on the force. She was smart, perceptive, and a joy to be around.

He had a quality roommate who always payed their half of the rent on time, kept the noise down, and enjoyed watching movies on Saturday nights.

Best of all though he had an incredible girlfriend, who was funny, beautiful, and without a doubt the most incredible mammal he'd ever met.

All of this and more was one Judy Hopps.

When he first met her, he thought of her as nothing more than a dumb, naive bunny who would go hopping back to whatever little Podunk burrow she crawled out of the second she figured out what she really was; a blindly optimistic and over-zealous little fluff-ball who was overdue for a major crash-and-burn.

But instead of letting the truth of the world drag her down like it had done to him, she shocked him by pulling him out of the void instead. That crazy gray rabbit was able to show him that he was more than just some shifty hustler. She taught him that it didn't matter what other mammals thought of him, the only thing that mattered was what he thought of himself.

After the fiasco that had been the missing mammals case turned crime drama, he realized that he didn't like the kind of work he was doing.

Sure, he made good money as a hustler. Making two hundred bucks a day for twenty years had certainly made his bank account larger than he would ever need it to be, but the issue was that he embodied the sly fox stereotype, making everyone else think of him as dangerous and untrustworthy. That was the original point though, since back then he saw no reason in trying to singlehandedly change the world's prejudices.

But she made him think differently. For the past three months, he's been nothing but a model cop, though still earning the occasional sideways look from some of the more bigoted onlookers. But none of that mattered to him. He knew what he was and wanted to be; a good cop.

Though Judy was definitely a better one. She was more driven, since this was her childhood dream and all. Currently, said rabbit was sitting in the passenger seat of their cruiser, going over all of the stops they had made during their patrol on the cruiser's laptop. Nick was driving, keeping his eyes on the road as they headed back to the precinct, only taking the occasional quick glance at his partner.

'God, she's so cute when she's concentrating hard like that.' Nick thought to himself. The way her nose twitched as she browsed the screen was absolutely adorable. Before her, he'd never been able to find members of a different species attractive, except for maybe the occasional wolf or coyote if they had the right features. Though at first, he had to admit that she was at least cute, but he had chalked that up to just being a "bunny thing."

Now, however, he was downright astounded at how gorgeous she was. Her violet eyes were shining bright thanks to the laptop screen, and her mouth twitched into a small smile every now and again. He fell in love with her mind first, and as time went on, her body followed.

"Hey Nick?" she said, her eyes glued on the laptop.

"What's up, Carrots?" he replied, still keeping his eyes on the road.

"That zebra we pulled over around noon seemed a little jittery, don't you think?"

Nick quickly recalled the striped equine they'd pulled over earlier that day. He certainly had been a bit more twitchy around them than the average driver they stopped. Nick didn't think anything of it at the time, so it was strange to hear her talking about it now.

"Yeah, I guess. Why? You pull up anything interesting on him?"

"No, the guy has a clean record, just found it a little odd. You have any idea what the reason could be?" she asked, turning to face him.

While Judy knew every rule in the book like the back of her paw, Nick occasionally needed to refresh himself on certain rules and regulations, as he could never remember them all. He made up for this though with his many years of experience living on the opposite side of the law. It's part of what made the two of them such an effective team. She had the book smarts, while he had the street smarts.

"He didn't seem very off to me." He said with a shake of his head. "I didn't smell anything on him, so he definitely wasn't a junkie. Probably just nervous. After all, you said he had a clean record, so it was probably the first time he'd been pulled over."

Judy just nodded, and turned her attention back to the laptop screen. It really was an odd question to ask this late in the day, but that was just the kind of mammal she was. She always wanted to enforce the law to the best of her ability, whenever and wherever she could. That also meant tracking down a zebra she thought was suspicious several hours after they'd met, if it came down to it.

"So, you have any plans for the night?" Nick asked as he stopped at a red light and turned to face her.

"Get home and crawl into bed. It's been a long shift, and I might have to lay in bed our entire day off tomorrow." she groaned. She wasn't wrong. Doing nothing but patrolling the streets all day with no real excitement would bore anyone to death.

"Oh, I don't think I'd mind if we wasted the whole day in bed." he said, now looking at her with a sly grin. She turned away from the laptop, looking at him with an annoyed expression.

"Nick, we talked about this. We have to be serious when we're on duty."

When they first revealed their feelings to each other, they were a bit stressed out on what the situation at work would be regarding their partnership. There weren't any rules against officers dating each other, but it often times lead to them being placed in different departments, or even entire precincts. It didn't help that having two partners dating was almost unheard of. To make sure they continued to work together, they told Chief Bogo about it first thing in the morning. The cape buffalo was a bit surprised to find two of his best officers entering into a relationship, but none the less allowed it to happen. The only condition was that they maintained a serious attitude on duty, and wouldn't let anything that happens in their personal lives interfere with their professional ones.

That of course meant no flirting on duty.

"Well, if you'll look at the time, Carrots, you'll find that our shift ended five minutes ago." he said, his smirk growing.

She looked over at the clock to see that the time was now 11:05. When she turned back to him with her own sly grin, his heart started racing, and his tail began wagging slightly.

"In that case, I think we could afford to relax on our day off." she said smoothly, leaning in towards him.

"Oh yeah? What about tonight though?" he said, starting to close the distance between them.

To his massive disappointment, she lost her playful expression, replacing it with a woeful, tired one as she leaned back in her seat. He always hated it when she played with him like this, but considering the amount of times he's done it to her, he should expect her to retaliate every now and again.

"I'm afraid I'm just too tired tonight, Slick. Wouldn't be surprised if I keeled over the second we walk in the door." Judy exagerated with a small smirk. He gave her an annoyed look, like the one she'd given him earlier, and he gave off a light grunt.

"Oh, and the light's green now." she stated, pointing to the road ahead of them.

He snapped his neck forward, seeing that the light was in fact telling him to move along. He was lucky the roads were as empty as they were right now, otherwise he would've definitely gotten honked at, and he absolutely hated it when that happened. He'd lived in the city all his life, and still he was never fully used to the traffic.

"Thanks." he grumbled, and she responded with a light chuckle.

"Anytime."

They were only around twenty minutes out from Precinct One now, and while crime in this area was lower than in any other part of the city, it certainly wasn't non-existent. Being technically off duty didn't relieve them of responding to any crimes they saw themselves, but lucky for them, the streets seemed to be fairly empty tonight.

"I heard Ben let our little secret slip out again. Who'd he tell this time?" Nick asked after a few minutes of silence.

"Francine apparently. They were talking down in Records and he 'accidentally' mentioned us as a couple." she said, making air quotes with her fingers.

Nick let out a sigh. How that cheetah found out about the two of them, he would never know. After they had first finished talking with Bogo about their relationship, they'd found Clawhauser practically bouncing up and down as he told the news to Fangmeyer. Luckily, he was the only one the cheetah told, and Judy was able to get them to both swear not to tell anyone.

Of course, what with Clawhauser being Clawhauser, he sometimes couldn't keep the dirty little secrets he knew to himself, and ended up blabbering to someone. So far he'd managed to let it slip to Wolford, McHorn, and now Francine.

"Did he at least tell her to keep it a secret?" Nick asked. If news of them out to the precinct, or even worse, the news, they would never hear the end of it.

Interspecies relationships weren't looked favorably upon by everyone in Zootopia. The majority of mammals didn't seem to mind it, but there was a very vocal minority that constantly spoke out against anything or anyone related to it. The last thing they wanted was to be harassed by mammals who saw them dating as "impure" or "unnatural" or whatever else they called them. Just because something doesn't occur in nature doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing.

Take Judy for instance. Bunnies weren't exactly the most intimidating animals alive, so many back in her hometown thought of her wanting to be a cop as unnatural. But just look at her now. She was practically the face of the ZPD, along with a certain fox partner of hers. Some people even saw their partnership as going against nature. Back in ancient times, the rabbit was one of the favorite meals of the fox, but now of course the two species lived in relative harmony. Nick and Judy had their differences sure, but they made it work fantastically, with each of them balancing out the others weaknesses.

"That's what McHorn told me. At least everyone else knows how to keep their mouths shut." she huffed as she closed the laptop.

They stayed quiet for any couple of minutes. Nick occasional peeked over at Judy, who was watching the streetlights go past as they drove down the road. Just like he'd thought earlier, she looked stunning.

"Nick?" she eventually said.

"Yeah, Fluff?" he responded.

"I want to tell my parents about us soon."

He tensed up upon hearing this. While he'd already met her parents, and they'd seemed like lovely mammals at the time, he was still worried about telling them that their daughter crawled into bed every night with a fox. Judy had told him that they were the ones that had gotten her that fox repellant, apparently even pushing for her to bring a fox taser along as well. He actually found that part funny, as it seemed unlikely that a taser would effect foxes more than any other mammal close to that size. He knew that they'd come a long way, even starting a little business partnership with a fox back in their hometown, according to Judy. Still, he was nervous about it. He had a better gauge on how his own parents would react. His mom would likely be a bit skeptical, but she had always supported him. He didn't have that great of an idea on how his dad would react though, as any topic related to interspecies couples had never came up when he was around. Nick was pretty sure he was against it though.

"I don't know, Judy. Are you sure they'd be okay with us?" he asked, sending her another quick glance.

"I… really don't know to be honest. I just..." She let out a long sigh. "I don't want us to have to hide this forever. I want to be able to snuggle up to my sly fox in public, not keep him at a respectable distance." she said, placing her left paw on the center console. He moved his right paw to grab hers, stroking it softly with his thumb as he drove.

"And I want to be able to hold my dumb little bunny as close as I can, but I just feel like we need to wait for the right time. We have no idea how they're going to react to all this. It's not like we have a storybook romance after all." he said, giving her paw a light squeeze.

He wasn't wrong about how strange their relationship had been. When they first met, they hated each other's guts, but were forced to work together thanks to Judy's very effective tactic of threatening him with federal tax evasion, if only he'd known back then that she couldn't do squat about that on her own. During that whole Nighthowler fiasco, he'd opened up to her in a way that he hadn't done with anyone, and they each got a deeper understanding about the others lives and experiences. They'd gotten to know each other even better during the six months between the arrest of Bellweather, and Nick joining the academy. It took quite a long time to clear up everything about Nick's past with the ZPD, but he was eventually admitted. Another six months later, and they where partners on the force.

Go forward another month, and you'd find each of them starting to realize that they thought of their partner as more than just a friend. Each of them concealed it in their own way, with Nick just hiding it behind his usually carefree attitude, while Judy did her best to avoid getting into extremely close quarters with the fox.

Jump ahead yet another month, and you'd find the two of them in their apartment, each of them having had a few beers to help loosen their lips. Judy had let her little secret slip first, and thought she was about to die of embarrassment, but to her incredible relief, Nick shared her feelings.

And here they are now, a couple for a little over a month, each of them having no plans to let the other go anywhere else anytime soon.

"I know. It just gets so exhausting, hiding everything we do together. It's hard to even have a normal date night." Judy said, returning his squeeze.

Whenever they went out to dinner, or took a walk in a park, or did anything else where they were in very close proximity to each other, they would always gather a few stares. They never payed that much attention to it, but on rare occasions a mammal would throw them a slur as they walked past.

"Hey, it's alright. We have each other for now. We won't keep them in the dark forever." Nick said, giving her a soft smile and another quick glance, before releasing her paw.

He turned his attention back to the road, starting through an intersection with a light green. He heard the sound of Judy's seatbelt unbuckling, and soon felt a small peck on his right cheek. He glanced over to see Judy, kneeling on her seat, her paws reaching over the center console onto his arm, and a soft, loving smile on her face. She didn't really need to go through the trouble of unbuckling her seatbelt to show him some affection, but he had to admit it was nice having her so close. He wouldn't be able to feel her breath blowing against his muzzle otherwise. He had only been looking at her for a few seconds now, but still her gesture spoke volumes.

She loved him.

And he loved her.

Sadly though, a few seconds is all it takes to change everything.

When she moved back into her seat, reaching for her seatbelt, Nick was still looking at her. Another driver, apparently in such a rush that they forgot that other people use roads too, came speeding through the intersection, trying to beat the red light. Nick saw the headlights only for a fraction of a millisecond, much less than the time he would need to react.

He wasn't exactly sure how it all happened. He remembered the car beginning to spin violently, and as he attempted to regain control, they jerked to a halt. As Nick came to, he was very disoriented, but was able to see that their cruiser had somehow been pinned to a street light. He also notice the lack of windshield on the car now, and the bits of glass scattered around the hood.

'Judy.'

He looked to his right to find the passenger seat empty, the seatbelt still hanging on the side.

"Judy?!" he yelled, looking around to try and find where the small rabbit had gone. He couldn't see anyone in the streets, or anything that even resembled his bunny.

He opened the cruiser's door, taking note of the pang of slight pain in his right leg as he walked. As he limped forward in front of the cruiser, he found her.

Lying still on the ground, a nasty gash on the top of her head, and small pool of blood around her.

His heart sank.