Judy had heard Nick long before she'd seen him, blurting out Gazelle singles from somewhere up the road leading to the house. She wanted to be angry - She'd explained to him explicitly that she hadn't wanted him going anywhere near alcohol before they'd left for Bunnyburrows - but his drunk rendition of 'Try Everything' was too stupid not to laugh at.

As Nick and her mother were trading goodnights downstairs, Judy was trying her hardest to work herself up into a righteous fury. She'd cautioned him to stay sober, and not only had he tossed her advice into the fire, but he'd invited her mother to join him in pissing on the ashes, as well. It was an affront to her authority in their relationship, an insult to her pride and to be perfectly honest she should've seen it coming from a mile away.

It was no secret that Mom liked to take the odd night or two off to drink away stress, and it was more or less common knowledge around the ZPD that Nick used to frequent... Less than savoury... Establishments. Leaving the two of them together with time to kill was like leaving a stick of dynamite next to a roaring fire; Complain all you want about the aftermath, at the end of the day you really should've had more foresight.

She was still angry though. She wanted to be angry. It helped her ignore the slow, creeping worry snowballing at the back of her mind.

Mom was a talkative drunk. A very talkative drunk. And what would a mother to nigh-on three hundred talk about if not her children? There were things that bunny knew that could very well give Nick all the ammo he needed to tease and torment Judy all the way to the looney bin. Beginning to end her childhood had been packed with embarrassing little stories, and Mom could recite every last one of them down to a tee, from that time she hospitalised herself trying to stuff all those crayons up her nose to that one time she tried to get her name legally changed to-

"Nightshade, you're awake!" exclaimed Nick, swaying through the bedroom door on wobbling legs, lips pinned up in a drunken leer.

shit.

"Nick!" growled Judy, more in horror than anger. "If you ever use that nickname again I swear I'll-"

"Peirce my ears, stud my nose and dress me up in fishnets?" finished Nick with an innocent flutter of his eyelids. She tossed her pillow at him, bullseyeing him in the face. It bounced off of his muzzle without so much as denting his smug expression. That was the face of a fox who'd struck gold and knew it. To Nick teasing was an art form, and he was a master. Putting information like this in the paws of a mammal like him was like slapping a flamethrower into the paws of an arsonist and telling them to go to town. She tried all she could to look furious, all the while reeling with panic on the inside.

"How much did she tell you?" asked Judy, bracing herself for hell on earth and still expecting worse.

"Let's see..." said Nick, listing off the facts on his fingers as he went trough them. "You smoked and drank in school, you dressed like Ozzy Ozbear, your favourite band was a toss up between Led Zoopelin and Black Sabeaver, you're the reason the family car has so many dents in it - the thought of you driving a police cruiser scares the dickens out of your mother, by the way - And finally -" he leaned over and brought his face up close to hers. Close enough for her to smell the thick tang of alcohol clinging to his breath. "- you are, by far, the most adorable goth I've ever seen."

"I-it was the style back then, seriously!" defended Judy, trying to come off as offended but only managing to sound more nervous. Wonderful, he'd seen photographs.

"Easy there, Carrots, I'm not complaining," he said, his voice bubbling into a perpetual giggle. "In fact, I think you should try dressing up more often; you look great in black."

"Just... Ugh. I'll pay you money to never talk about this again."

"Trying to bribe an officer of the law? That's a serious offence, Judes."

"Nick!" growled Judy in a tone which made it perfectly clear that she'd had it up to here with the snarkiness.

"Alright, alright! I'll keep the ribbing at a respectable level - limit myself to the odd joke or three. Would that make you happy?"

"It's a start," huffed Judy, knowing with a bitter certainty that Nick would stretch 'respectable level' to as far as it could possibly go. "But if you call me 'Nightshade' again I'm hauling you back to Zootopia by your tail."

"And just when I was starting to get comfortable with the family..." he sighed, trudging past her towards the bed. As he went his footfalls seemed to get heavier, and by the time he'd reached the bedside he was practically dragging himself across the floor. It was a well kept secret that Nick was nowhere near as energetic as he acted. Beneath prying eyes he was brimming with life from sunrise to sunset, but the moment he ferreted himself away behind closed doors the hardships of the day would all fall upon his shoulders at once and he'd have to fight to keep himself awake long enough to reach the bedroom. Lazily he unbuttoned his shirt and dragged it from his shoulders, weary enough to make the simple act of undressing look exhausting. He began to pull down his pants, and Judy decided to save him the trouble and yank them off herself.

Nick giggled to himself, crossing his legs seductively and propping himself up on an elbow, posing as if he belonged on the front page of a nudie mag. "Couldn't wait to get me in the nude, big girl?" he wooed teasingly.

"Oh har har," Said Judy with a roll of her eyes, secretly hoping that Nick hadn't noticed the lustful glance she'd spared between his legs. At this point in their relationship she'd seen Nick stripped down to his birthday suit on an almost daily basis, yet somehow the hungry flame that'd been lit between her thighs the first time she'd seen him shirtless still managed to stoke itself time and time again whenever she caught so much as a glance at the fox's slender yet masculine frame. Nick, and his sleek sex appeal, aroused her now just as it had the first time.

Perhaps even more, now that she knew what he could do with that heavenly tongue of his...

She clambered into bed next to him, sighing contently as he gathered her in his arms and held her to the warm brazier of his chest. She sensed his thudding heartbeat soften as she snuggled deeper into his embrace; felt his hot breath, scented with alcohol, fall into a calm rhythm. His damp nose made its home between her ears, and she bit back a giggle as it tickled against her fur, taking comfort in the reassuring presence of his scent the same way he took comfort in hers. Nick's playful bullying, and her mother's loose tongue, faded away into the background. Here, bundled between Nick's arms, Judy liked to think herself at peace. Come bedtime, Nick became Judy's very own little Shangri-La built of limber muscles and glossy, orange fur.

"Comfy there, Judes?" said Nick, voice heavy with weariness. "Want me to sing you a little nighty-night song?"

She elbowed him softly in the ribs. "I think I've heard enough of your singing for one night already, choirboy; you were wailing so loud outside that I could hear you from in here. Sounded like someone was murdering a cat. You'd make a terrible Gazelle..."

"I'd make a fantastic Gazelle. Just dress me up in a trampy sequin-dress, throw a couple of pretty-boy tigers my way and put me on a stage. Nobody would be able to tell the difference."

"Uhuh," muttered Judy, trying all she could to fall asleep. Unfortunately, the mental image of Nick scantily clad in a fiery red sequin-dress and dancing around on stage in that goofy 70's Disco Night Fever style of his kept her awake through sheer comedic value alone.

"You know I used to date her, right?"

"Gazelle? Yeah, I heard that one before," she said with a roll of her eyes.

"Hey, I'm serious."

"Sure you are. I hear con-artists are all the rage amongst world famous singers nowadays."

"What? Am I not charming enough to bag myself a pop-star?" he asked, paw gliding from her waist down to her hips and squeezing lightly. The angry beast that was her arousal stirred awake, rising to the promise of sex. Sparks danced between her thighs - tickling at the lips of her womanhood. Were they going to - Was he...? Now? The suddenness had caught her off guard, but she welcomed it all the same.

"Oh you're plenty charming, alright," agreed Judy, laying a palm across his roaming paw and guiding gradually to the rim of her underwear. "Plenty charming..."

"I'm a fox. It's in my nature..." hummed Nick as he pushed his paw down the length of her belly, agonisingly slow and devilishly teasing. Gently he pushed his fingers beneath the cloth barrier of her underwear and drew them tantalisingly along the lips of her womanhood. She shivered in primal delight, anticipation coursing through her veins, thick and hot like magma. She bit back a squeal of delight, squeezing at the paw affectionately. Nick Gradually brought her arousal revving to life, fingers gliding tantalisingly across the surface of her sex.

"Mmph... Oh, Nic-" she cut herself off with a gasp as Nick pushed inside of her. She felt herself go stiff, nerves shot through with hard, electric excitement. Then, with a throaty, rumbling chuckle, Nick began to rub, and she melted into bedsheets with a wet, approving groan.

Oh God, the things he could do with those fingers. The fox was blessed, blessed, she swore. Her hips spasmed erratically as a fierce, angry bolt of excitement scrambled up her spine. Nick's breath was fire against the back of her neck and his voice came out lathered with drunken seduction. "You know, I bet you'd still make a pretty hot goth..."

"Oh, shut up about the- nnnngh!" Judy cut herself off with an ecstatic whine; Nick had brushed her clitoris with the velvety soft pad of his thumb, sending a fresh wave of elation through the currents of her loins in a jittery, tingling heat. She buried her head in the pillow and moaned. She felt Nick's smile as he brought his mouth to her shoulder and peppered it with kisses. He followed up to her neck, and then her cheek, and then finally her ear, fingers still thrusting at her groin, dragging her ever closer to orgasm.

Almost...

Her paws clenched at fistfuls of bedsheets, shivering under the weight of her arousal. The fire between her legs had exploded into an inferno, mercilessly hot and getting hotter with every push of Nick's fingers. She simmered out a low whine, voice dripping with desperation.

Almost...

Her breath caught in her throat, clasped by excitement. There were butterflies in her belly, riled up into a frenzy, panicked by the erratic thundering of her heart. Nick's free paw curled gently around her chin, guiding her head to meet his waiting mouth. He went to plant a kiss on her, but Judy beat him to the punch, thrusting her lips onto his.

ALMOST...

If it hadn't been muffled by Nick's mouth, her scream would've woken up the entire house. Her orgasm tore through her in a storm of ecstasy so powerful that she had to wrap her arms around Nick for purchase, lest the tempest sweep her away completely. Stars twinkled at the corners of her eyes, as if dancing to the tune of her quivering moans and Nick's deep, masculine hum of satisfaction. The storm gradually calmed into a warm, comfortable afterglow, and she sank into the warm and inviting pillow of Nick's chest as the tension drained away from her.

She tensed as the final tremor of her orgasm rumbled between her legs, and then sighed as the satisfaction breezed across her.

She felt... Limber. Relieved. There'd been a weight pressing down on her she'd gotten so used to that she hadn't even realised it was there until Nick had lifted it from her shoulders. "Wow," she said, snuggling into her fox-bed. "That was... Just wow..." Nick chuckled proudly, coiling an arm around her waist. "Since when are you so..." Her mind, wandering amidst the afterglow, struggled to find the right word. "Spontaneous?"

"Spontaneous? There anything wrong with me wanting to show my little cottontail a good time?" he asked smoothly - too smoothly. If he were talking to anybody else it would've flown far and high over their heads, but after all the time the two of them had spent together, Judy's ability to pick up on the subtle chinks in the fox's emotional armour had been honed to a fine, precise point.

With considerable effort, Judy lifted herself from her little haven upon Nick's chest and propped herself up on an elbow, looking down on him with budding concern. "Nick, what's wrong?" she asked with a disarming caress of his cheek - it was as if she'd brushed away a mask. His cocksure smile sank into a troubled frown, and those confidently shining eyes she'd fallen in love with darkened into uncertainty. Judy found herself taken aback (and perhaps a little bit worried) by the sudden change in Nick's demeanour. Partly because Nick wasn't the sort of guy to ever come off as uncertain, and partly because of how fast he'd gone from cocky, loveable prick to unsettled and stressed boyfriend. Nick had his fair share of quirks, but mood-swings weren't one of them.

"It's... It's something for another time, Carrots, don't worry about it," huffed Nick in a sad sort of way which made Judy worry all the more. His eyes sank to the floor, heavy with something pitiful - perhaps shame. "Just do me a solid and leave it until morning, mm'kay?"

"Orrrr you could stop being so elusive and tell me now," offered Judy - although the stern edge to her voice made it more of an order than an offer. Nick had shaped her into something of a grizzled veteran of situations such as this, and if she'd learned anything from her experience with mopey, tight-lipped foxes, it was that the gentle, here-if-you-need-me approach never worked. If you wanted answers from Nick you'd have to wring them out of him, and more often than not he'd feel better after you did.

For a while he didn't say anything. He simply stared up at the ceiling whilst the gears cranked in his head and the anxiousness began to nibble at the corners of Judy's mind. Usually he'd have caved in by now and would be halfway through pouring his heart out whilst she held his paw and played therapist. Seeing Nick like this, wound up in some internal conflict with himself, scared her. He was hesitating, warring with himself on whether or not he should spill whatever it was he was keeping bottled up in that troubled little mind of his.

"Nick?" she said, now genuinely worried. She lay a paw on his chest and shook him gently, as if rousing him from a dream. "Nick c'mon, talk to me..."

Finally the warring voices in his head came to a ceasefire, and he broke his silence with a long, tired sigh of resignation.

"I guess I'm just uncomfortable, is all." he said, leaning back into his pillow with a weary huff.

"Uncomfortable how?" asked Judy, although she reckoned she already knew the answer. The culture-shock and all the radical changes in scenery were getting to him already, weren't they? Dammit, she knew something like this would happen. Ever since she'd caught that nervous look of his as he'd watched Zootopia disappear over the horizon on the train ride here, she'd been reluctantly waiting for the moment Nick's faux-nonchalant demeanour would crack and all the little insecurities and doubts he had would come bubbling to the surface.

"I dunno... About stuff. Everybody here looks at me like I'm from Mars. Your Dad thinks I'm Ultra-Satan and wants to hang my head over the fireplace. I've spent my whole life surrounded by concrete and falling asleep to the sound of traffic, and now when I look out the window there's nothing but trees, farmland and forests for miles and it's bugging me way more than I thought it would... Take your pick, Carrots."

"My Dad doesn't want to hang your head over a fireplace," scolded Judy. A fox pelt rug, on the other hand, wouldn't have been out of the question, but Nick didn't need to know that. "He's just... defensive when it comes to his kids, is all." She cozied into his side, providing some much-needed comfort. "Trust me, let him get to know you and by the time we leave he'll be begging you to stay."

"Yeah, sure." said Nick flatly with a doubtful roll of his eyes.

"Oh come on, don't be like that. Things aren't nearly as bad as you think they are. I mean, you and Mom go together like peas and carrots, and just between you and me, I think you made a really good impression this morning, cooking everybody breakfast and all. You just need to... I dunno, loosen up, I guess. Be yourself."

"Yeah, but I'm an asshole."

"A loveable asshole." corrected Judy, planting a kiss on his cheek. "Trust me, I know you like the back of my paw, and you're a lot nicer than you think, Mister Wilde."

"I appreciate the kind words, Miss Hopps." Nick eased back into the mattress with a lofty, pent-up hum of satisfaction. Judy felt along the surface of his belly, sleekly defined muscles hardening beneath her fingers like warm, furry cobblestones. She nosed her head under his chin and laid another kiss on his neck, eliciting a soft, throaty purr of appreciation.

Without thinking, her paw inched downwards, drifting gradually towards the more... suggestive parts of Nick's body, guided by that same relentless lust that'd driven her to him countless times before. It stirred inside her, unsatisfied and unwilling to make do with what little Nick had fed it. It was hungry, Nick was willing, and the night was still very, very young.

If Nick was on the brink of sleep before then he was wide awake now. He propped himself up on his elbows, hiding his excitement behind an aroused smirk. "Judes, If this is your idea of helping me unwind, I wholeheartedly approve."

"What can I say? you're irresistible. Besides, It's not like you're the only one who had a long day; whilst you were sitting on your ass and getting drunk with my Mom, I was helping Dad drag furniture around our neighbour's house. I need to blow off some steam." she replied matter-of-factly as she hooked her fingers around the rim of his underwear and dragged them down to his knees.

"I'll have you know there was karaoke and dancing as well."

"Please, I feel sorry enough for Mom as it is, don't tell me that she had to sit through your God-awful singing and dancing, too."

"I dance like a butterfly, Carrots,"

"You dance like a bull in a china store, and don't pretend like you don't know bad your singing is," she said between kisses. Her lips worked against his, tongues tangling together in playful dance as she pawed at his stiffening manhood. A soft rumble of laughter passed from his mouth into hers, and she felt his lips pull into a cocksure smile as she kissed them.

"Yeah I know," he said, paws laying their warm palms upon her shoulders and sliding down the length of her body, leaving hot, jittering excitement in their wake. "But don't pretend you don't like it anyways."

In a heartbeat Nick's paws went from sweet caresses to a gentle yet firm grip round her hips, and the laughter that'd been mumbling at the back of his throat roared into a deep rumble of bare, primal lust. She could feel the hackles along his back prickle beneath her paw as they rose to attention, see the change in his eyes as the stirring mystery and allure that filled them caught on the spark of some deep-rooted, animalistic urge and come alight with savage hunger. She watched, fascinated, as the phantom of some base, unevolved predator from a hundred thousand years ago reared its head within Nick and sized her up as prey.

Was it weird that it turned her on as much as it did?

"You've got that look in your eye..." breathed Judy as fear spiced her arousal. 'Dangerous', warned he voice at the back of her head, yet somehow that drew her to him all the more. Here he was beneath her paws, something deemed off-limits by nature, and here she was taking him anyways. Scandalous. "That look I like..."

Gradually he aligned her hips with his, manhood twitching beneath her eagerly. Judy braced herself with anticipation, and when they finally came together she wasn't able to tell if it was him who pushed himself into her, or her who'd thrust down onto him.

"Nick!" she'd cried. The pleasure was sudden and fierce, a thunderbolt of affection striking up from between her thighs and scrambling across her nerves. Balling her paws into fists of iron around the fur of his chest, she raised her hips from his manhood and rammed herself back down with a soft moan. Nick jerked beneath her as if in shock, a wet whimper of approval simmering from between his lips.

"S-somebody's excite-oh!" he squawked as she cocked her hips and powered into him once again. If the lust she'd felt moments before had been like a flame, then what she was experiencing now was nothing short of a fully-fledged forest fire.

She went to cry out in ecstasy, but clapped a paw to her mouth before it escaped her lips, mindful of her parents two rooms over. The walls between their rooms were thick, but then again, bunnies weren't known for being deaf. She rose herself from Nick, only to gradually edge her way back down, savouring the sparks of pleasure and tickles of excitement which swarmed her as she took him inside of her. Nick's paws groped at her shoulders and pulled her down into a lasting kiss, their tongues fencing as her hips worked him to a climax.

He moaned into her mouth, spasming as if on the cusp of exploding. She pushed her body to his - wound herself into him, and rode him for all she was worth. His moans became higher, his paws shook harder and his heart was a non-stop battering ram against his ribs. She could feel him twitching inside her as he tried all he could to stave off the inevitable, and it made forcing him over the edge all the more satisfying. She broke the seal between their lips to breathe, and Nick managed a submissive whine of pleasure before she locked her mouth with his once again.

He whined again - desperately - as his manhood's pulsing reached its crescendo. Their lips came apart once again, this time long enough for Nick to pant "Oh God, Judy! Judy I love you!" before she brought his face into her chest and held him there in a loving embrace as he came.

She pushed herself down to his hilt and kept him there, her second orgasm of the night racing towards her as Nick emptied himself inside her. It struck her with all the force of a freight train, so hard and so powerful she didn't even have time to scream before it overcame and devoured her. Euphoria swallowed her up, and she collapsed forwards onto the pillow of Nick's chest, barely managing to stay conscious as she rode the waves of her climax. "L-love you too, Nick..." she sighed, not even trying to fight off the crushing exhaustion that piled atop of her as her excitement simmered away and she plunged into the enticing, fuzzy warmth of the afterglow. gently she fell asleep, sheathed between Nick and the mattress.

"Love you more..." said Nick cockily, winding her up in his arms. For a fraction of a moment, something sad passed across his face, and Nick sighed the sorrowful, resigned sigh of a guilty man.

Judy had asked him what was wrong, and he'd given her a half-answer. Stu's scorn and the shock of going from bustling city to bumpkin town in the space of a day was one thing, but there was something far more pressing on his mind.

He laid his head back on his pillow, and thought of his mother.

Bonnie laid in bed, tired to the point of exhaustion but not quite convinced she should go to sleep just yet. Outside the night was a foreboding sort of dreary, sky scabbed over with clouds as black as smoke and wind howling with the lilt of imminent rain. One of those moody sort of nights she found irresistibly easy to fall asleep to. But when she closed her eyes and burrowed herself deeper into the blankets, the sleep refused to come. She willed it, but nothing came.

A nameless kind of anticipation had seized hold of her when she was making her way to her bedroom, and so far it'd refused to let her go, no matter how hard she willed it to. Her fur prickled with excitement, her belly a bag of giddy butterflies. She breathed in, breathed out, and tried all she could to still her hammering heart.

Stu was beside her, mouth half-open and tongue lolling out in that dopey, adorable way it did whenever he slept. His snore was a soft wheeze, one that'd lulled her to sleep countless times before. She reached out, and brushed his ears back behind his head. She laid herself on her side and looked at her husband in all his clumsy, loveable glory.

He wasn't a handsome rabbit, by any means, but there was a simple sort of innocence to his face that charmed her better than any sharp chin or pretty smile ever could've. His paws were bulky, like a pair of oven mitts, their fur patchy and the skin beneath calloused and rough from work. Nearly twenty-eight years she'd spent married to Stu, and she still couldn't understand how paws so rough could have a touch so soft...

The anticipation coiled inside her like an adder stirred from sleep, and all of a sudden Bonnie could think of nothing else other than the touch of those warm, clumsy paws.

'"How many kids do you have?"'

Nick had asked her that back at the Bouncing Bunny, and she realised only now that it'd been on her mind for the entirety of the night, like gum glued to the heel of a shoe. He'd been questioning why she'd found the sight of him and Judy... doing things together so distressing, and now that she had the time to sit back and mull it over, she found herself questioning it, too. After all, she was no stranger to... to...

'Oh for the love of carrots, just come out with it!'

Sex. She was no stranger to sex. Why, back in the early days of their marriage, it hadn't been uncommon for them to go at it two, maybe three times a night! Sometimes more if she was in the mood! Back in the day the two of them had fit the stereotype of 'horny little bunny' down to a tee, and sweet cheese and crackers, hadn't they been horny... All those lustful nights spent in each others arms, all those scandalous little five-minute quickies that'd ended up lasting for hours, countless moments where they'd taken one another just because they'd wanted to...

... All those precious little respites from the world where they'd cuddled together in the afterglow and told each other how much they loved them...

Out of all their passionate vices, she missed that one the most. That brief moment of bliss as the dust of their lovemaking settled and Stu kissed along her neck and told her without so much as a hint of sarcasm that she was the best thing to ever happen to him. And she'd rest easy knowing that whatever tomorrow would bring, she could handle it because she had the love of good man on her side and a family at her back.

And then, overnight, it'd all stopped.

After the latest in her long line of litters, her womb had, for lack of a better term, packed it in and called it a night. Her paw slipped beneath the bedsheets, brushing against the heavy scar across her belly from where the doctors had cut her children from her. She could remember it as if she'd just woken up on the hospital bed the day after. Pushing through the pain of childbirth, Stu standing diligently at her side, giving her strength, the dawning horror as she felt something twist and snap inside her and the mind-breaking agony that followed, the doctors pushing Stu aside and strapping a mask over her face, the glint of their scalpels under the white surgery lights...

And then she'd woken up, and found four beautiful, baby bunnies sleeping soundly in her arms.

Whatever cost those four little bunnies had came at, it'd been worth it. She would never birth another child, the scar across her belly would look horrendous and the painkillers she'd had to take over the next three months would do nothing to mask the lingering pain of her caesarean births but when she looked at those newborn kits none of that seemed to matter.

To this day, Bonnie stood by her belief that the things she'd lost on that operating table were a small price to pay for her newest litter: Janice, Diego, Roland and Rachel. The doctors had told her of the risks halfway through her pregnancy, how her body was getting older and the last thing she needed at her age were four kits in her belly. The fact that all four of them had come out healthy was lucky, and the fact that she'd survived the surgery involved was nothing short of a miracle. However, she hadn't grasped that the changes within her body would change her relationship with Stu until the day he'd pushed her back home on a wheelchair.

During her long, painful recovery, Stu had effectively treated her as if she were made of glass. He'd warned the kids about playing too rough with her, he'd spent ages arranging pillows on the bed so she'd be sleeping in just the right position, he'd escorted her everywhere apart from the bathroom (and she only had that to herself due to her upmost insistence), he'd checked over every meal she ate and every drink she drank to make sure that she was getting all the vitamins she needed - he'd even tried spoon-feeding her one time, but a hard stare had nipped that right in the bud.

And he'd barely touched her once.

Well, that wasn't exactly true; he'd touched her plenty. Getting from her wheelchair to their bed was a bit of a struggle, considering she rarely had the strength to stand, and Stu was regularly helping her get up and about. What she meant was that he never touched her intimately. When he laid his paws on her, he acted as if he were handling eggshells, and one wrong move would break her in two. He'd still kissed her on occasion, but his lips had been so light and delicate upon hers that it could neer be considered anything other than a quick peck on the mouth. When he hugged her, he hadn't dared to so much as squeeze, lest she somehow crumble to dust in his arms.

Time passed, she'd gotten better, but Stu had never quite lost that nervous edge to his touch. Instead of going back to his fumbling embraces and deep, clumsy kisses, that intricate fear of hurting her had found a nice spot in the back of his mind to hunker down and call home. Or at least, that's what she liked to think. God help her if he found her unattractive - for a middle aged woman who'd gone through countless pregnancies and spent her days looking after hordes of restless children, she reckoned she looked alright.

She reached out, and ran a paw down the side of Stu's face. He came awake gently, with a soft groan under his breath. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he lazily rolled to face her. "What's up, Bon?" he said, yawning.

"Stu... Make love to me..."

She saw the surprise ghost its way across his face before he covered it up with poorly feigned indifference. "What was that, Hon?" he asked, pretending he hadn't heard her. He'd heard her just fine. He might've been old, but those ears of his were still as sharp as ever. Really he was just hoping that she'd change her mind in the heat of the moment; give him a quaint "Oh, nothing dear" so he cold go back to sleep and pretend nothing had happened. It made her feel like a fool, and all of a sudden she regretted waking him, bringing up the subject of sex or even letting it worm its way into her mind to begin with. It wasn't stupid, was it? Asking for sex like that, out of the blue? Dammit, why was she asking herself this now?

She spoke again, clearer. "It's just... It's been a long while since we've... done anything together, and I was wondering if..." she trailed off.

"Oh." Stu said, clearing his throat reluctantly. "Bon... It's been a real long day, and it's not that I don't want to-"

"Right, sorry, it was a stupid idea." she said, ending the conversation there and then. Asking was embarrassing enough, and she paled to think of what having Stu nervously laying out all the reasons as to why they couldn't 'do the deed' tonight would do to her self esteem. Right now She wanted nothing more in the world than for Stu to just roll over, go back to sleep and forget she'd said anything.

"Thankfully, Stu did exactly that. "... Tomorrow night, I promise." he said, Sparing her a guilty glance over his shoulder before effortlessly going back to sleep. There wasn't a doubt in Bonnie's mind that tomorrow he'd say the exact same thing.

She lay her head back into her pillow, closed her eyes and tried once again to sleep.

Only she couldn't. The anticipation was still there, unsatisfied, like a bad itch that bonnie was beginning to think she'd never get a chance to scratch.

Come on, admit it. You thought I was dead.

Sorry about this taking such an ungodly long time. Someone in my family ran into some medical problems and I had to take some time off and I won't bore you with all the minute details. Long story short: I'm back and ready to write.