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Squinting, Judy leaned over the steering wheel. "Does that look like a light on in the apartment to you?"
Nick shook his head. "Moon reflection."
Judy let out a harsh breath and sat back. She looked at the clock and rolled her eyes, seeing only a minute had gone by since she last looked. She groaned and tapped her foot.
Nick sighed. He felt it, too. “So, what do you do in situations like this, fluff?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, surely, there’s more to this than staring at doors and windows, hoping for a little movement to break up the scenery. More than stale carrot fries and separated blueberry fizz soda in melted ice.” He gestured at their console, his lip turning up.
“This is a stakeout, Nick. We stake out the territory, try and catch the bad guys.” Her tone was defensive, the words tired, because they’d had this discussion. Argument. Thing. Hours ago.
“Yeah. The bad guys aren’t here, is the thing.”
“Oh, you know that for a fact, then. You’re so tuned in to the bad guys in Zootopia you can sense their presence or lack thereof from a distance. Well, I’ll be darned.”
Nick sniffed and Judy sighed, and they stopped talking, tired of banter that had soured some time ago. Neither had really been prepared for a twelve-hour shift together, in the cab of a non-descript squad vehicle, waiting on a possible drug buy in the Canal District. They'd mostly seen action in the daylight hours, running the night shift at the precinct offices because Bogo was still skittish about letting smaller mammals do night patrols, though he never admitted that aloud. On top of that, they'd swapped shifts the day before with Fangmeyer and Delgado, and were now operating on about six hours' sleep.
Nick could handle it a little better than Judy - but only just. He squinted, his night-accustomed eyesight showing signs of strain. It was nearly dawn, this was nearly over, and he’d go home and sleep it off and pretend to ignore Judy’s texts for a few hours. He smirked, thinking about how he'd had to extend his data plan to handle her idea of "moderate communication."
Their partnership was a novelty in the precinct; fox and bunny, a predator-prey dynamic that few could understand. There hadn’t even been a wolf-sheep pairing in quite awhile. Most of their coworkers were waiting for them to fail and be paired off with others. There was even a betting pool on how long it would last.
A small contingent of those, that Nick was painfully aware of and Judy was oblivious to, included a side bet on whether this partnership would dissolve because of sex. Baldly proclaimed, it was also a point on which the betting parties sniggered derisively.
Nick hoped Judy was oblivious, anyway. He wasn’t sure how she’d react. He still looked at her sometimes and saw the little Bunnyburrow starry-eyed dreamer he’d encountered. The one, he was very much aware, who was still trying to prove herself, and who hated to be the object of teasing and suggestive winking. The bunny, he knew, he was kind of falling for, and who sometimes looked at him in a way that told him she might feel the same, but didn't think he knew about it.
He wouldn’t let her know about that, either, he thought, looking over at her profile and wondering what it would be like to just rub his paw over her cheek.
Well. No one said it was a total sucker bet.
-
The sky was at its darkest, and Judy felt it weigh on her, like a blanket. She was ready for sleep. She was convinced this was a dead end anyway. The perp's pattern suggested, to Judy, that he’d be hiding in Tundratown, or even the Rainforest District, not the Canal. And neither Nick nor Judy had extensive experience here. But what did she know, anyway, it wasn’t like she’d set new standards for investigative training at the Academy or solved the Nighthowler case without department resources.
A kick of guilt roused her a bit. She’d had help on the Nighthowler thing and he was sitting next to her. Neither of them had done any real, in-the-field investigating since; their partnership so far was a trail of traffic violations, petty theft, nickel-and-dime stuff. Judy had considered the idea that this assignment was as much about building their partnership as it was actually looking to catch the guy; after all, they’d been given the position least likely to turn up anything.
Judy had wanted Nick as a partner. She'd told him so, but she'd had to fight for him, and she wasn't sure he knew about it. There'd been a long meeting with Bogo, in which the chief had fought and failed to keep condescension from his tone as he suggested to Judy that a fox may not be the best partner for a bunny. Judy'd stared him down and reminded her boss how she'd solved the Nighthowler case, in patient detail, and Bogo told her, maybe. On Nick's first day, Bogo had pulled Judy aside early and told her there would be a trial period.
He had, just this week, told them both it was official. Judy wanted to go out and celebrate. Maybe tomorrow night, she thought, and she stole a look across the cab. Nick rubbed his eyes and sighed as he looked out the window. It was endearing, she thought in surprise. When he rubbed his eyes like that, she could imagine him as a cub.
Her heart skipped a beat and she opened her mouth to say...something....
“All units, report. Repeat, all units report.”
They both jumped, the sound breaking mutual reverie. Judy reached for the radio. “Do we have anything new to say?”
“Unless you can find a new way to say ‘dead end,’ fluff, no.”
Judy let out a sardonic "ha!" in response and clicked the button.
Before she said a word, a shot rang out in the night.
-
“Shots fired!” she yelled into the radio, and dropped it as Nick pushed her head down. A second shot shattered their windshield.
“Judy, stay down!” Nick yelled, as she struggled against him. She was trying to reach the receiver, and finally grabbed it with the tip of her paw. Clawhauser’s voice was already issuing from it.
“Hopps, Wilde, report! All units, reported shots fired in Canal District, officers at the scene. All units, all units….”
Judy cut in. “We have multiple shots fired. Vehicle damaged. Send back-up.”
The night had gone quiet again, but it was different. Tense. Nick and Judy remained on the floor of their car. Nick reached for his weapon, pressing a finger to his lips. Judy nodded, and reached to turn the radio down as Clawhauser issued the back-up call.
Nick pointed to himself, then at the door. Judy’s eyes went wide, but she nodded again, and pointed at herself to indicate she would cover him.
Nick climbed out of the car, and immediately another shot rang out. This one ricocheted off the street; whoever was shooting wasn’t aiming well. Judy climbed out behind Nick, and peeking around the door, aimed her weapon at the building and fired.
They couldn’t see well, and it was hard to tell exactly where the shots had come from so far. Judy was breathing hard, adrenaline coursing through her. Was it the suspect they’d been seeking, or someone else who recognized them? Or nothing of the sort, just random violence?
Her ears were standing straight up, as all her senses were alive. She watched Nick go around the front of their car, inching forward quietly, trying to get a better sense of who was shooting and from where. Light came from a window in the complex, and now the moon was set she knew it wasn’t that.
The light flashed once, twice. Another shot.
Judy only heard Nick scream her name.
-
Their first week as partners – their first actual day as partners, as it happened – Nick had casually thrown out “you know you love me,” and his breath caught when she bantered back that in fact, she did.
He’d meant it as a joke, and surely she did as well. It was just that, he wondered.
A month later, they’d been at The Surly Goat, celebrating Francine’s promotion. Everyone had a little too much that night, even the usually straitlaced and sober Judy Hopps. She’d laughed too hard at his sarcasm, seemed to find every excuse imaginable to put her paws on his. Nick took her home, though he was hardly more sober than she, and at her door Judy had pulled on his shirt until he leaned down. She kissed him, so briefly he may have imagined it. They didn’t speak of it afterwards.
He’d gotten so used to her company he couldn’t imagine a night where he couldn’t tell her goodbye. He noticed one night he could smell her on him, or imagined he did, and couldn’t sleep for thinking about her.
Nick Wilde suspected he was in love with his partner.
As a bullet struck and knocked her down, the panicked scream of her name that caught in his throat would have confirmed it to any who heard it.
-
Fangmeyer and Delgado were the first to arrive on scene, maybe two or three minutes after Judy had radioed for back-up. They’d seen her go down, Nick fly to her side, and were there in time to see the shooter set up to have another go at the pair.
Fangmeyer shot back, and the suspect went down. The wolf ran to ensure he’d gotten his man. Delgado radioed Clawhauser to tell any units en route to stand down.
An ambulance followed not long after, protocol anticipating the need. Judy was unconscious and bleeding, but breathing, and Nick wouldn’t let her go. Delgado had to coax him away long enough for the EMS rams on duty to assess Judy’s condition. "We need to take her to St. Francis'; her injuries aren't critical but they'll need to admit her."
This all fell on seemingly deaf ears, and Delgado, not unsympathetic to the look on his colleague's face, got Nick's attention and repeated what the ram had said.
"The hospital," Nick breathed out. "Yeah. Okay."
Fangmeyer called out that he needed a second ambulance, and the call was made. "It's him," Fangmeyer shouted. "It's him, Delgado, the same guy."
Delgado replied, "Finally!" and turned to Nick, who was watching as the rams loaded Judy onto the ambulance.
"Should I...do you need..."
“Go with her, man, we got this.”
"Protocol. She would worry, say....something."
He was dazed, and would do no one any good while Judy was in that condition. So Delgado pushed, and Nick climbed in with her, breaking all the rules.
No rules ever seemed to apply when it came to Judy and Nick.
-
“They caught him, Judy. They got him.”
She remained unconscious during the ambulance ride. Nick held her paw in his and tried not to panic.
-
She would recover, they reassured him, over and over. But he'd still insisted the sheep nurse by her side be replaced, and when he finally fell asleep he'd dreamt about blue slugs of liquidated nighthowlers.
He woke several times, always jumping to check on Judy. He finally crawled up next to her, and let her breathing lull him to sleep.
-
“Was it him?”
Judy’d been in the hospital a week. Her injuries weren’t as bad as everyone, especially Nick, had feared; the bullet had grazed her between the ears, but the damage would be temporary, a concussion and a deep cut that took several stitches. Her recovery was already taking too long, in her opinion, and she bullied every well-wishing coworker for news about the case.
Nick had hardly left her side, but had gone in for the briefing Bogo gave after the suspect – the shooter – had requested an audience with a lawyer and drew up a written confession.
“It was him,” Nick confirmed, and Judy sat back against the pillows with a sigh. “Horace Terwilliger, panda, aged 37, confessed to the charges of drug trafficking, the murder of two females of his species, and the attempted murder of a police officer.”
“How’d he end up in the Canal District?”
“He had to have found out we were tailing him. Bogo said it’ll come out in court.”
“A trial? But he confessed!”
“He’ll have to be sentenced. The district attorney wants this one aired out publicly, he told Bogo and the mayor this morning.”
Judy didn’t ask how Nick knew that; she had come to terms with the notion that her partner was just well-informed.
Nick sat on the edge of Judy’s bed, careful not to touch her. She responded by reaching for his paw, to his very great surprise.
They hadn’t had much time alone since it happened, Nick avoiding being close enough to her to arouse more suspicion. Bogo had dressed him down for the breakdown in protocol after the shooting, and assured Nick that once Judy was recovered, they would both be called in for a personnel hearing. Nothing in Bogo’s demeanor had suggested Nick had reason to worry, but it was still the first time “discipline” had come up for him. It was nerve-wracking enough without worrying he would be separated from Judy.
He looked at the door. Judy saw him, and squeezed his paw. “No one is walking in, Nick. We have some time.”
She waited until he looked her in the eye, and she sighed, a very different sound than any he heard the night of the stakeout. She looked tired, he noticed, and sore; the bandages held her ears up, and she was bruised even beyond where the bandages hid the worst damage.
But her eyes were wet, and shone at him.
“Nick,” she whispered. “I was so scared.”
He scooted closer to her on the bed. “So was I,” he replied softly, feeling a bit daring. “It was like the museum all over again. I was sure you…I panicked. I couldn’t even see where they were coming from.”
Judy pressed his paw. She knew. From the looks Fangmeyer and Delgado had given her and Nick when they visited, from the pieces she could recall from those last frantic moments, Judy knew exactly what Nick was about to say.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” he whispered. He said it so softly, and almost didn’t seem to realize he’d spoken out loud. Judy closed the gap between them and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“You didn’t, you dumb fox.” She nuzzled his cheek.
-
Let it be said now, Nick Wilde was struck dumb for the first time in his life when Judy Hopps told him she’d loved him and couldn’t say exactly when it had happened.
Words failed him, but he kissed her so well, she didn’t mind.
-
There were more stakeouts, more harrowing close calls, and a brief stay at St. Francis’ for Nick when he broke his leg after sliding on a Tundratown glacier chasing a polar bear on speed.
There were also nights at Judy’s, curled around each other, whispered confessions about when and how they’d known, stories about their childhoods.
Nick panicked just one more time, and when he couldn’t get the words out, Judy proposed to him instead.
-
Six months later, at the wedding reception, it was Chief Bogo who cashed in on the outstanding bet.
“What bet?” cried an indignant Judy.
Nick smirked and led her back out to the dance floor.