Chapter Text
Judy wouldn’t say she’s got the nose of a wolf; She can’t smell someone from miles away, but she can however pick up on the smallest of scents. Like when Nick’s tracked some grass into her room even if it’s just a couple of blades, or when Clawhauser’s brought in a new row of coffee and she’s in the interrogation room.
Or say, when Nick comes in late to work one morning, looking particularly groggy with his fur in an absolute mess, his sunglasses skewed a little on his snout and the scent of hot and heavy musk clinging to every part of him.
It’s actually a pretty difficult smell to miss. The mammals around him don’t take much notice (though she has a feeling that has to do somewhat with the fact that more than ninety percent of the officers in the ZPD are male and Francine’s got her trunk in a slushie cup) but it turns Judy’s head sharply when he walks past her, just faintly brushing her hind legs with the mess of his tail, and goes straight for the coffee machine.
She also takes notice that he makes a careful effort to avoid her - he sits on the other end of the room besides Fangmeyer, even takes up Parking Duty willingly over a hot new case of a drug bust. It’s uncharacteristic, and the overachiever within her demands that she get him to just admit to it and stop avoiding her like he’s still a cub.
Plan A executes itself as such; It’s lunch hour and she’s actually taking her break - Torren doesn’t comment, but he does raise a suspicious eyebrow her way when she hops off the minute he announces it’s chow time - going as far as to bring a box of salad into the office, along with an additional carry on of mollusks in a bag. Typically she’d avoid the latter, given the fact that watching them crawl around before they die puts a sick feeling in her tummy, but being in proximity with Nick puts a worse one in it’s place. Or maybe a better one. She hasn’t quite decided yet.
She deposits it on his table, drags a chair over and struggles to sit it in backwards before digging out her salad and busying herself with prying open the plastic container.
Nick manages to startle a little, which is a rarity in itself before he glances over at her from the top of his shades. “By golly is it me or is our district workaholic actually making use of her lunch hour? Sound the alarms, call up the ZTV, this is history in the making,” He manages to snark, his lips curling up into a faint smirk but she doesn’t miss the way he folds his arms a little tighter, or scoots backwards into his seat some.
“I think history in the making is that you came in here with your fur so rustled I could’ve mistaken you for a pile of autumn leaves, you telling me a narcissist such as yourself couldn’t take a comb to even a single ear?” She hums back, poking at a piece of lettuce with her fork before popping it into her mouth. Her eyes stay trained on him and she tries not to look smug, really she does but the effort is too much and she smirks back anyway. For a few seconds the only thing she can hear is the crunch of the lettuce in her mouth.
“I had a rough night,” Is the only explanation he gives before he drags his box of snails, mollusks, slimy things over to his lap and stares down at them sullenly. “Didn’t realize my appearance made such an impact on you Hopps, or that you paid such attention to my every detail,” The words might’ve been more effective had he actually looked at her, and not said everything in a half mumble, half sulk to his food before ravaging the box as a way to keep quiet.
“It’s kind of hard to miss when you come in here looking like you decided to throw yourself into the washing machine instead of your clothes,” She snorts. It’s not like she’s wrong, the others have all been giving him inquisitive looks. “Not to mention, dragging your feet, looking like you might collapse any second, how rough was this rough night?” There; The questions out. Perhaps not as explicit as what might warrant a response, but it’s subtle, if he’s been careful to catch onto it.
He chokes on a a bite, splutters, turns towards the trash and coughs it out just when she actually gets off and moves towards him with a brief flash of concern. He holds a hand out, signaling for her not to bother, scoots further away until he’s backed into the corner of his cubicle and finishes the rest of his food in peace with Judy standing there watching him with her eyebrows furrowed.
“Jeez, save the interrogation for the actual criminals would you? I know I’ve got a dark past carrots but I figured we were past that by now,” He wheezes, trying to bring some humor into the situation. She doesn’t budge. “I’m fine, seriously, just caught the case of a bad cold. Tundratown doesn’t do me well, I’ve been sneezing all night, my nose is all jammed up,”
She resists the urge to say ‘Mine too’ and instead reluctantly retreats back into her seat. “Are you sure it’s nothing I can’t help you with? I can bring some soup over- carrots are amazing for your immune system, not to mention the lack of greens you have in your diet is probably an attribute to your health, I mean, aren’t foxes omnivorous? I’ve got a load of stuff leftover from my parent’s care—“
“Judy,” He rasps, a little more serious. She shuts up. “I’m. Fine. I’ve gotten by all these years on my own, I think I can handle a measly flu,”
It’s as unconvincing as ever - which is pretty ironic, considering his conman past. But she resigns anyway. There’s no point pushing it, even if he’s being stupid, and some part of her really really wants to help. “Alright, if you say so. Just… don’t be afraid to tell me if there’s more to it than just that,” She finally sighs, getting rid of the remainder of her food before dumping it. If she looks closely, she can swear that his skin tinges underneath his fur.
She gets home and immediately decides she needs to shower effective immediately. Hopefully in ice.
By two Bogo had decided it was ridiculous that one of his best officers was sluggishly giving out parking tickets, demanded that he trade in his Meter Maid vest, and demanded he get to his actual job. Which included dragging Judy back to the office, giving them a case file, and demanding he get out of his funk or suffer the in the hands of the middle school kids for two weeks.
One time when she reached across from him to grab something and she’d pressed her shoulder to his chest and her head underneath his chin he shivered. Another time, after he decided to stay as far away from her as possible within the same room, she could actually hear his breathing grow more and more ragged which made an awful lot of sense in correlation with his lack of concentration on the task at hand. It was only when he slumped over onto the desk, curled a tail around himself and seemed to have dozed off that she went over, put her hands on his shoulders and tried to shake him up. Having been born and raised in Bunnyburrow, heat wasn’t uncommon. In fact she was used to the pheromones, so when her own heat came, she could anticipate it.
Except Nick wasn’t a rabbit, and the smell he was emitting was enough to make her head go a little dizzy and her knees weak. Her hands on his shoulders jolted him up right, sent him backwards into her and toppled the two of them over in a cacophony of disgruntled groans of pain. Which was a total disaster straight out of a shitty romantic comedy and oh, his irises were so blown and his breath was so hot against her ear.
For a split second they just stayed like that panting at one another, even though all they’d done was fall backwards. In retrospect, it probably looked ridiculous. In the next instant he was scrambling off of her, turning his back to her in a flash and saying that he was pretty sure he wanted to puke and he didn’t want it to get on her in a stuttered mess before bolting out the door. Judy kind of wanted to puke too, so she couldn’t blame him.
Her skin prickled all the way home and the only thing she could think of was his weight on her, and how warm he was and, how good he *smelt*. In fact she was sure that the scent had become permanently embedded in her nostrils. There was no escaping it. She was in fox heat hell and now she had to deal with it alongside him.
Which is why, she’s standing in her bathroom, stripped of her gear and trying not to touch herself accidentally lest she moan and Pronk or Bucky start providing a stream of commentary from the other side. Ten minutes later when she’s doused in water she decides that she just doesn’t care and gets a paw down between her legs anyway.
She slouches down against the wall of the shower, and lets her eyes slide shut before tentatively pressing a paw to her clit. This is wrong this is so so wrong, Nick is her best friend for crying out loud and a little bit of his musk on her shouldn’t be driving her to this state of arousal, this need to touch herself and imagine that his paws are in her place, that his snout is buried in her neck.
She touches herself the same way she’s imagined he would (because admittedly, this isn’t the first time she’s imagined it, what it’d be like if they ever, ever—) which is in soft, ginger strokes, teasing her and drawing out sharp breaths. Her foot unknowingly thumps a little when the rubbing makes her arch off the ground some, a breathless moan following it. She summons the images from the day, his rugged look, his flush, his lidded eyes, the way he breathed all low and husky.
A finger pushes in and she sighs, pumps it slowly before the tempo increases and she pushes in another digit. At this point she’s slicked her fingers up in no time, and the smell of her own arousal mingled with the lingering smell of Nick’s musk makes her whine his name this time. Another paw feels its way up her chest, flicks a sensitive nipple and she moans a little louder, ruts her hips a little harder.
It only takes a couple more minutes and another finger before she’s humping her hand in a frenzy before coming with a harsh cry, and a mangled version of his name that she comes down from the high of her orgasm, panting in spastic breaths and glancing down at the puddle of genetic material between her legs.
So much for that icy cold shower she was planning on taking.
When she curls up in her bed, feeling kind of dirty, especially after getting the full on dictation of what she’d done ( “I can’t believe we just had to listen to you fondle yourself to a fox!” “No one asked you to be listening you perverted shit, what she does in her free time is none of your business!” “It is when she’s practically screaming his name like she’s trying to call him out of his damn burrow!” ) with thoughts of him still plaguing her.