This was also done by funniesandboxes, who wrote a wonderful story! I was asked the same prompt! Check out theirs as well!

Not sure if you had platonic in mind. But… well… i always do. So.



Extra Whip:



Or, When Best Friends save you From Awful Exes

There were days where Judy needed to take a breath and do her very best to be reminded of all the good things on earth. Vegan nachos. Pink rubber bands. The occasional puddle of sunshine on her yoga mat. Some list of Things-That-Make-Judy’s-Day in order to remember that hands were meant for stretching out and not for curling tight and throwing at whatever animal was in closest proximity.

Especially if that animal was her ex.

And if that ex had decided to corner her at Camel’s Coffee and Cocoa on the rainiest day of the week while she’d been trying to get through the last few pages of the updated ZPD sexual harassment manual and doing her very best to not recognize the irony of him snatching that booklet from her hands before planting a kiss on her knuckles.

“Judes, you look stunning as always,” said Burtrum before planting himself down on the seat across from her.



Judy tapped her feet on the floor. Swallowed hard. “Don’t,” she said, all sweet and storm, “call me that. Please?”

Only a few were allowed.



He was not one of those few.



The folded menu between the sugar packets was picked up next and he gave it a look. Summoned a waitress with a flip of his wrist. “So surprised to see you here, really! I didn’t know when I’d get to see you next!”

Judy sipped her chocolate and did a very mature job of hiding her little growl inside the cream. “Oh,” she said when she came up for air. Her tongue flicked out, catching the mustache that had settled. “You know, it’s funny… I thought we’d agreed that we weren’t really… fitting?”

“So did I!” He laughed. Flicked his wrist at the waitress again, who gave him a pleading look, juggling three other menus at once. “But here you are! I always did believe in fate, you know.”

“Mmm,” said Judy, taking another draw of cocoa.

To say that she and Burtrum had gone out would have been like saying she’d practically eased into the ZPD. A woeful exaggeration hiding far too many terrible instances.

The only thing true about the statement, gone out, was the physical act that they had, indeed, gone out. They’d stepped out of her apartment, had partaken in some dinner, and she’d left soon after he’d undertipped the wait staff, insulted a few women, and remarked on her position in her current job as “mundane” and “isn’t that a man’s job?”

She’d politely sent him an email that night with the header “to whom it may concern” and that had been that.

But it hadn’t.

Because here he was again.

Flipping through her sexual harassment handbook and calling the now approaching waitress a doll while she scribbled down his order onto a pad, trying to get away faster.

Judy gave her a look -no! wait! please! take me with you!- but no help was to be found. The deer folded her little pad away. Turned her own miserable expression to face Judy’s. “Is this your date?” Table for two had been requested. Because there was. Supposed to be two. But this was not her two.



NO! she wanted to scream. NUH-UH! NO WAY! NOT ON YOUR APRON! Instead, she said: “Uh-” Which really didn’t do much in her favor. Judy scrubbed the back of her neck. “Well-”

Apparently, she was spoken for.



“For now! Yes!” Burtrum took Judy’s free hand again. “Thank you, doll. And no whip.” He patted his middle. “Gotta stay fit for lovely ladies like you!” The waitress scowled at her feet and shuffled away. The Buck turned back. “Date!” A glimmer of jealousy. Maybe rage. She’d seen it before in interrogations when suspects with too many skeletons in their closet let the first bit of marrow leak. “Judy Hopps has a date?”

“Not really.” She took the sexual harassment handbook off the table and shoved it onto her lap. So much for irony. “I’m meeting with my friend. He’s helping me-”

“Ah ah ah-” the finger waggle to her face prompted another list of Things-That-Make-Judy-Calm (baby ducks, hot showers, no men finger wagging in her face) and reigned in the urge to see how quickly she could rip his damn finger off and shove it where the misogyny don’t shine. “I hear friend and man, and I have to know! Who’s the lucky buck!” The words who isn’t me are so evident that she can see them sprouting out of a cartoonish speech bubble over his head. She twists the booklet.

“He’s actually-”

“He’s got to be better than your, what’s his name again? Your partner?” He snaps his fingers a few time. Snap snap. “Tom?” Snap “Chester?” Snap snap snap.

Judy wonders if it’s possible to die from a heart attack. It’s common in rabbits. So maybe no one would notice if she just… died. Right here. “It’s Nicholas, actually.”

“That’s right” Snap snap. “The little scavenger you’ve been chained to!”

She’d take a rain check on the death, actually.

There were other, less important animals that might be far more worthy of that position.

“Excuse me?”

She wonders if he can hear the sour beneath the saccharine.

He can’t.

What a shock.

“Mmm. I heard about your partnership. Unfortunate, really. Did they put him with you because of size? Or-”

“I chose him.”

Bertrum snorted. Looked over his shoulder for the waitress, who was doing a bang up job avoiding eye contact. “Come on, Judes-”

“Don’t call me that.”

“He’s a fox. You might as well put a padlock on your purse while you’re out doing- what is it again? Meter maid? Traffic?”

“Police work.”

“Mmm.” Snap. ”He stolen something from you yet?”



Yoga mats, she rehearsed in her head. Sunshine. Butterflies. Wobbly newborn deer. Don'tpunchdon'tpunchdon'tpu-

“Ah. Hey there, Buddy. Usually I’d get names and number first. Part of the gig. But you’re kind of in my seat.”

She looks up between the fourth and fifth mantra to find police blues and rusty reds and could have cried. The fox noticed, and his fingers ushered a quick salute. “Hey there, Carrots!”

She hadn’t seen him come in. But like a specter, a ghost, a You-Owe-Me-One Angel, there he was. Standing behind the little cafe chairs and leaning against the table.



Bertrum scowled. His nose crinkled. He looked between the two, nervously twisting in his seat when the Fox drummed his claws on the little wooden table. “Tom, right?”

“Nick, actually.” He turned to Judy. His eyes flashed a look of I-Am-Your-Knight-in-Shining-Armor-Admit-It. Turned his attention back to the Other. He smiled; all sharp teeth and sharper eyes. “And you must be the Bertrum the Bust!”

The rabbit’s eyes popped. Judy flushed primrose. “Nick!”

“What! That’s what we named him!”

“Yeah, but he’s not supposed to know that!”

“You called me that! To a Fox!”

“Nah,” Nick batted his paw around. “Told it to her best friend. That’s what friends do, generally. Friend things. Like talk about boys. And have pillow fights. Friendliest fried things to ever friend, eceteraecetera.”

“We’ve never had a pillow fight, Nicholas.”

“Because you’ve never seen my right hook, Judith.”

Bertrum, looking considerably more put out, glared at the two. “Well,” he spat, “this has been… illuminating.”

“You said it, Buddy.” Nick clocked a thumb over his shoulder. “Now mind moving? She looks like she wants to vent about you, and that’s harder to do while you’re here.”

Bertrum stuttered. Scoffed. But did get up and shuffle away, casting dirty looks to anyone who dared take a peek at the subject of rejection.

Nick snorted and sat down. “Well, that was fun!” He adjusted his dark blue tie, a far cry from his favorite, louder variety. “You sure you don’t wanna give that winner a second chance?”

“Shut up, Nick.”

He laughs. She laughs. It’s comfortable and right and easy. Because that’s what Nick is.

Her mantra, she finds, always includes him in it. Somewhere next to puddles of sunshine and vegan nachos. Nicholas Wilde. The thing that made her chest light and her smile warm.

She nabs the menu from his paws. “Drinks on me,” she declares, her voice tilted with a surge of You’re-The-Reason-Why. “You deserve it! Saving me from the excruciating exes.”

“You went out with him once.”

“Tomato tomato. What do you want? Something loaded with sugar?”

Nick uncuffed his working shirt and rolled up the sleeves. “And extra whip, Judes.”



She wasn’t sure if handling awful exes was allowed on a resume, but she was willing to ask Bogo.