Chapter Text
Nicholas P. Wilde has a secret, and no one - no one - can know about it.
Not his co-workers.
Not his friends.
Not his mother - though chances are, he could tell her and she'd forget as soon as he left the room.
Not Finnick, who he would trust with his life, but not this - though chances are that he'd be fine with it, just laugh it off, slap him on the back, and continue on like it's no big deal.
Not Judy, his friend of three years, his partner of two and a half, and his something-more for a scant month - though chances are, she'd be nothing but supportive, nothing but kind and caring, nothing but as sweet and loving and just generally good as she's been since they first met.
Years of being a conman have taught Nick a thing or two about games of chance, and he knows that even when the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor, if the risk is too high, you back out. And right now, the risk is high. Those years of getting by on quick wit and an easy smile were hard, there's no getting around that, and even if he still gets an itch every now and then - even if he's tempted, once in a blue moon, to say yes when Finnick jokingly asks him along on some harebrained scheme (not that he would ever use that particular word (especially not in front of Judy)) - at the end of the day, he's far happier where he is now than he ever was hustling. He has a good job, a good home, a good group of friends, an incredible more-than-a-friend, and he goes to bed with a full stomach and a full heart more often than not. No matter how good the reward might be, and no matter how good the odds are, if the risk is that any of this might disappear, he's going to stay the hell away.
And in this particular case, if the dice come up snake eyes, all of that goes away in the blink of an eye.
So he keeps his secret. And no one can know about it.
...Yet.
Because - well, he can't stop thinking, what if? What-ifs keep him up at night more often than the things he sees on the job. What if I lose everything, sure - what if it goes bad, what if they hate me - these questions are old friends, by now, but what really keeps him up at night, shivering a little, trying not to wake up Judy as she sleeps next to him, is the big one. What if it doesn't? What if, when this is all said and done, the dice come up perfect, he's dealt a royal flush, he hits twenty-one, square on the nose - what if the odds are in his favor and he can well, not put this behind him so much as get it in front of him? Actually address it? Start moving forward?
What if things turn out for the better?
That's Judy rubbing off on me, he thinks. Judy, with her endless optimism and can-do attitude and - and - not really ambition, that's not quite right, but her... confidence. The unwavering belief in something better, for her, for him, for all of Zootopia and the world beyond. That confidence, the belief that they can all get there if they all just work hard enough - that's where all this... what-if-ing comes from. All this hand-wringing and thinking about the future and junk. Three years ago, he would've been more than happy to slide through life on one con after another, never looking more than week or two ahead, perfectly content (on the surface, at least) with where he was and where his life had taken him, but now...
He's come so far - is it really too much to hope for going just a little bit farther?
Later, though.
Later, later, later.
Nick has been waiting for a very, very long time. He can still remember not waiting for this, not wanting this; he can remember a time when this whole thing didn't even register on his radar, and every now and again - more and more often, these days - he really, sincerely wishes he could travel back in time to when all of this was just a non-issue and he was just a normal kit like everyone else. He can't, though, (not unless some of his building's more eccentric tenants can be believed,) so he continues to wait. Until it's the right time. Until someone starts picking up on the million little hints he drops every day. Until he's ready. Until he thinks Judy's ready (hopefully, all those times he's volunteered them for crowd control during pride events will pay off). Until he's sure that he can let it out without scaring people off, without burning every bridge he's built in the last three years; until there is a guarantee that he can pull this off and still come out shiny on the other side.
Nick has been waiting for this for a very, very long time, and he can wait a little bit longer.
Except -
Well, he's not really young anymore, is he?
He's not really old, no - not even into middle age, that's still nearly a decade off, but his twenties are almost over. He's got less than half a year until the big three-o is here, and... look - life has never really been low-stress for Nick. As a conman, even if work was easy, the threat of the police loomed over his head every day, and living accommodations were, well, transient at best. As a police officer, he finds that the tables have turned - most of his worries and anxieties come from the criminals that he once counted himself among; conmen and hustlers rarely pose a serious threat, but Zootopia isn't always a safe place, and every day is a roll of the dice on whether or not they're making it back to the station unharmed. Even as a kid, things were rough, and they only got rougher the older he got. He's spent the better part of those almost-three decades looking over one shoulder or the other, and it shows.
It does to him, at least. He can see it in the mirror, every morning. Little bags under the eyes. Poor night's sleep still hanging over him. Fur always a little duller, a little droopier, a little rougher. Judy teases him relentlessly about it - "Old Man Wilde" - and for the most part, he doesn't mind the ribbing. She means well, and it the whole age thing doesn't bother him, really. Until, that is, it starts to connect with this Thing inside him that won't sit still and won't go away, and then all the little goofs and jabs start to pile higher and higher until the pressure becomes too much to bear and he just has to say "Not today, Jude" and talk about literally anything that doesn't make him think about his secret.
It feels like a time bomb stitched into his heart.
And even though he knows better (even though he - in the dead of night, in rare moments of solitude - has read countless stories and endless testimony from people who Waited and turned out fine), he can't help but feel the clock count down, one tick closer, every time that he closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep with the words left unsaid.