There was a Fox at her favorite table.

It wasn't her table. She knew that. Judy Hopps was not one for claiming things (though in a household of so many, you had to ready your vocal chords more often then not to shout the infamous mine as loud as it could carry), but it was her table.

Positioned at the edge of the cafe, it looked out on the park. At the fountain. Her fountain.

Okay. So she may have been too accustomed to claiming.

The Fox looked over and green met violet. She looked away, quick.

"Ma'am?" the hippo behind the counter tapped her pen on the cash register. "Were you ordering?"

"Oh? Oh. Yeah." She orders, takes her drink from the lion who'd leaned over to hand it to the bunny (winking at her for her troubles) and she walked out. Her spot was taken. She had no place there.

A week later, parking duty finished for the week, she's glad enough to find that the Fox is gone.

Until he's not.

She's nursing a cup of something warm that's an unholly color of orange (pumpkin surprise, they'd written in chalk over the back board) and in the middle of her newest romance novel, when his shadow falls over her. Less falls: skulks.

"So, this is your spot, then?"

"It's a cafe. Anyone can sit here."

He smiles, and it's sharp. "But you sit here. Every day."

"You're following me?"

He throws his head over at another table, now taken over by a group of hyenas and two sloths. "My spot," says the Fox.

And she sort of gets it.

He gestures at the seat across from her. "Can I? I just need to work on a paper-"

"About."

That smile is back, and it reflects off the orange monstrosity in her corporate stamped cardboard cup. "Nosy?"

Judy sniffs. "Fine. If you don't want to tell me, don't. I don't much care anyway." And she buries herself back into her romance novel and does her best not to look at him as he takes out a stack of white pages pigeon scratched red and settles in on his own.

He buys a drink. Writes something. And then, when the sun's still overhead he puts everything away and says; "it was a true honor to share your spot, Carrots."

Her drink is the same name as the name he's bestowed her, and just like the sobriquet she despises it. It makes her mouth burn, and when she dumps it into the bushes, she wishes away the syllables that taste like ash.

He's back next Tuesday. Except he's saved her a seat. It's hers. Her side. Her table. Her view.

Hers. (mine)

"Thought you'd want something," he says, pointing his red pen at the cup on the other side. It's filled orange. She wrinkles her nose.

"I hated it."

He laughs, "I know."

"So-"

"So I decided to save your seat, and the drink you hated seemed a decent placeholder."

Judy sits and sips and watches him.

He's not terrible looking, she thinks. Though her father might have had words if he'd known she'd imagined that. Imagined the Fox before her in his terrible green turtleneck and his douchey poets scarf was anything other than sly. Other than cruel. Other than -

Gideon.

Which isn't fair. Because he's not Gideon. He's:

"Nick." He holds out his hand, taking her silence as punctuation. "Nick Wilde."

"Judy." She reaches over the cup to shake his paw, her paw cutting the orange steam. "Hopps."

"Mind if I call you Carrots?"

"Yes."

"Carrots it is."

And then he goes back to editing.

It turns out he works a payed internship at a community college in the more run down part of town where he lives. Helping other kids, other Predators, who got about the same chance he did. "I was always good with words," he'd tell her one day. "So it turns out, I'm pretty good at telling other people what words to use."

So every Monday, Wednesday, and sometimes Fridays, he went and reviewed papers. Resumes. Took his red pen and took to it. It had started off as a punishment. A job gone wrong had landed him in front of a merciful judge who'd taken pity on a young Fox and he'd been sentenced fifty hours community service -

which had evolved as he'd done the same.

"It's all I can claim," he says, holding aloft his red pen. "I can put my mark on something."

"Hence the red pen."

He nods. "Hence the red pen."

Which makes sense to her. Because her life is full of red pens. Her job. Her fountain. Her table -

Their table.

Nick had favorite kids now. Favorite papers. Favorite stories of love and hope and dreams that hadn't worked out. Had recalled them to her over the sticky coffee table between them, arching his red pen over the air as he explained the complexities of simplicity. Of encouragement. Of watching. Watching them.

And she finds, he's remarkable.

He is also infuriating.

Endlessly awful. A snark and a trickster, and his default mode is sarcastic with a splash of french vanilla that sweetens him just enough to say yes when he hands her his number on a piece of paper. It's in red pen.

"You," she observes from over her table -

(thought now it's really their table by all accounts, since he's always there and he always feels it necessary to buy her the most interesting range of colored drinks)

- "are the oddest Fox I've ever met."

"You've met Foxes before, then?"

"You're editing me, Mr. Wilde." She crossed her arms. "I am not to be red penned."

"Oh, of course not." He tugs at his poets scarf that she hates (and has told him so on too many occasions) and looks out their window. At the park. At the fountain that she's still refused to share. "You're too good for that, Carrots."

He holds the red pen.

But it's Judy that edits him.

It starts with the towels that appear in his apartment. The pictures added to his wall. The encouragements to call his mother more (which he does on some occasions, and then has to explain why he's calling more which then results in him having to tell her about Judy and her technicolor coffee which then results in his mother full on sobbing about it, which is awful and embarrassing).

Her stuff moves in, sneakily, accidentally almost. And one morning when he wakes up and finds her in his living room doing crunches on the floor (one hundred one, one hundred two-) he hadn't even thought to question.

He made coffee. She got the mugs, taking her favorite (mine), her sweetener (mine), her side of the couch (mine), and pressed a fast kiss to his lips.

(mine)

(because he was)

(hers)

(her Fox)

Their table stays theirs though.

And Judy Hopps finds that she does, rather, like to claim things.