Work Text:
It's obvious, sometimes, how she's this do gooder from a place not plagued by carbon monoxide pollution, grand scale crime and sky scraping construction work. The little lilt on her vowels when she says his full name - Nich'las Wilde, the starchness of the pride with which she upholds her lower back from settling into her hips, scaling into the practiced slouch with which he can fully admit to working on perfecting like a lower inner district art form. Judy Hopps, valedictorian at life; enchanté.
He knows her morning routine like perfunctory clockwork. Morning traffic is sleepy at five forty seven, when she gets into the car. Driving crosstown takes her thirteen minutes, give or take a few, generally depending on how much gas she's planning on saving this morning. It says something about his partner that she's quite ready to just about check off every tick in the surely-existing Be A Good Person 101: Your Guide To Keeping Nick Wilde Down And Firmly On The Bad End Of The Spectrum.
It doesn't bother him, per se. He's there, at six oh one - because it takes Judes two minutes to wriggle her and the vehicle's way down the narrow, shoddy alley to finally pit a moaning stop outside of his apartment complex - partly because he's taught himself to learn the ways of habitual residence, and partly because you don't deal to the same trail of lemmings for the better part of the life of a business, without picking up a few notions.
Partly because Judy smiles toothily at him when she meets his gaze through the darkly tinted windows, the shift of her smile more and more comfortably in place, as though she's now worrying down into the crevices and settling in the notion of him always expecting her there, and he's got a tough time figuring out the hows and whys of that. Clever fox stumped by the workings of a bunny. Fancy that.
Nick shoves his aviators down over his eyes, nurses the cup of coffee tighter to his chest; the uniform draws slightly tight over his shoulders still. He hasn't quite managed to work out the kinks of the fabric, or how to move beneath it, yet. She draws up tight to where he's standing, half slanted in the sun, shaded by the creeping shadow of the car.
"Looking chipper there, officer," Judy says as he slams the door, perhaps a bit unnecessarily.
Nick mutters, more a machination of sounds emitting from deep in his throat, than anything comprehensive. He straps the belt across himself, and measures his breathing. One, two, three. He pokes the shades up a bit over his eyes, and strains forth a smile at Judy. "Now, we can't all be having the same stellar mornings as you do, Carrots. Sometimes, the sun doesn't shine all so bright on the rest of us."
Judy rolls her eyes, quite clearly not feeling him. "Technically," she intones, "The sun shines precisely as bright on you as it does on me, Slick. Especially given our current proximity."
"I get tingles when you're being all technical and patronizing, Judes." He gulps at his coffee, draining the cup in halves. He can feel the weight of her staring at him at every timely interval, at every red light, when she's tapping her foot either agitatedly, or distractedly. Sometimes, he's having a hard time placing the beats and inconsistencies of her moods, mostly because the shifts are subtler than he'd give her often heightened emotional state credit for.
"Are you okay, Nick?" she asks, after some time. She always takes the first step. It could be because he's too cowardly, and because she's the very antithesis of what he is. Not biologically, even. Just psychologically. Her workings are so different from his, it still manages to click, somewhere deep down, that that is how she has managed to dig herself a cavity so firm into his life that he hasn't a lick of a chance of getting her out without damaging something - irreversibly.
He sighs, a deep shift in his ribs. "'M fine, Hopps; you keep on driving as safely and responsibly as you do."
She hums in response, and he thinks that he can read, through how the length of her foot taps when she shifts it off either of the pedals, that she's not satisfied with leaving it at that, but that she also chooses to channel it internally, rather than externally.
He's not sure of whether she's picked that up from him. And if it is, whether that should add to the weight and drop of his stomach at the little twists and turns that already automatically fold themselves in there, sinking, sinking, at the realization that she's being honed into something a little more sharp, a little less of the Judes that dragged him onto her speeding express of do good-naïvety and achingly sincere smiles.
*
He doubts his entire way through the academy. Through late night studying, with Judy one district and a half away physically, so physical that he can feel it sometimes, a hard weight on him as he crawls his way through the obstacle course drenched in sand, in the whip of icicles and in the humid mouth of the cultivated jungle pit. Through cross examinations, and such personal psychological tests that he can feel, gut deep, the build of anger buzz the world out in white hot sears, prickling across his back and jangling through him like bells. Through examinations he tears his hair about.
"I'm not sure I'm cut out for this," he shares, honestly, into the speaker, when he collapses on the bed after a four hour stint in the gut of the lecture hall. He closes his eyes, and feels the onslaught of migraine that usually accompanies cramming sessions, and the aftermath of an exam.
"Don't be a quitter, Slick," Judy sing songs, and then, a little quieter, a little soothing, pale coloring on the flares of agitation, says, "I know you've got it in you, even if you don't think so yourself."
Sometimes, there's an inception of a thought that begins with why would you - until he pries his mind off of its tail and digs a deep enough proverbial hole for it to not rear its head unexpectedly like that again.
*
It's worth it, when she buzzes for his flat, and he stumbles out of his door, bleary eyed in the face of dawn, coffee and shades protectively in the curl of one arm, for the first day of actual work. Actual post-graduate work.
Judy smiles at him, soft around the edges, and he thinks he's turning a little to the side of crazy. He smiles back, attempts to crack something that actually rivals her anything.
"Officer," he greets, taking care to shut the door behind him, juggle the seat belt, and not spill coffee over the two of them simultaneously.
"Officer," Judy replies, and does a once over of him, "Want me to hold on to any of that for you?"
Nick Wilde, smooth talker, vying for the position of smooth doer: does not go all that well.
"Your pity at a poor man's struggles, if you could, Hopps," he says, and raises an eyebrow. Judy laughs, sliding the wheel smoothly beneath her one paw, navigating between heaps of cardboard boxes damp with rain, past misplaced dumpsters, past graffiti sprayed walls doing nothing to convince anyone of that they're not in the worse parts of the district. She doesn't seem to notice - or mind.
His breath jangles stuck at some pathetic junction between his one lung and his throat. He's well past attempting to convince himself of that being the effect of purely natural, unrelated causes.
*
Chief looks perpetually unamused with him, as Nick trudges his way after Judy into the morning coincide. "Wilde," he barks, "I prefer my officers awake and alert when they arrive in the morning. Did something keep you, from receiving that particular notion?"
"Only my nocturnal dreams about you, sir," he returns. There are scatters of ill-concealed chuckles rising around them. Chief raises a single eyebrow at him, and Judy kicks him non-subtly beneath the table. He can feel that she's plotting on using her Dark Stare and her Reprimanding Voice as soon as they get dismissed. It's not something to look forward to, but it makes something subtly ease within him, to know what to expect from Judy.
Chief mutters something about insubordinate mammals, but chooses to ignore further action taken for the comment. A blessing in disguise, though he knows that there's a hellish assignment waiting on the other side of that proverbial door - alone.
"What's gotten into you, Wilde?" Judy snaps, as soon as they're dismissed, and safely out of Chief's range. Nick's last name is either used as a playful dig, or as a whip, lashing when Judy means business.
He shrugs. "You have to admit it was a wide open shot, Carrots. Can't let an opportunity like that pass, can I?"
She frowns, but refrains from commenting. One of her ears twitch, the more prominent whiskers on her left hand side shudder. Something flicks past in her eyes. Nick waits, something like building, sickly trepidation in his gut -
"You are slow today, though. Come on, canvassing isn't anything that goes by rote and does itself, you know."
It passes, momentum abating, when Judy allows for it to slide, and twists to the left, turning towards the front desk and exit. Nick watches, really should be used to seeing something of his own doing crackle, anticipate the way that schemes of his fail to produce any adequate results.
*
He's a bit slow on the uptake, admittedly. Never minding your own buildings, your own nicks and falls, will do that to you. He's so unaware that it catches him smack in the sternum, a kick to the spleen - there is something in the proud curve of Judy's shoulders, the vigilance of her gaze, the quickness of her wit.
She's helping elderly rhinos with smaller arthritic cases across the street, or she's bending the rules to suit her in a case of a stringent of robberies hitting the central bank offices. Judy looks up from beneath the glare of a shock blanket, a streak of blood and raw flesh peaking up across her forehead after a perp chase goes south, and something drops in him so quickly he's sucking for air to clear the nausea out.
Nick is smacked with the realization that, by Mother Marion, cross his sickly little heart; he's in love. It's like a freight train of realization. He's in love, and he desperately, desperately, can't be.
*
Thing is, there's no part of Judy Hopps that's going to make it easy for him to pretend he's not, and Nick's not very good at wishing one way or another.
*
He compartmentalizes his issues, forcing himself down from whatever negative he's peaking on, and promises himself to be good. It's not Judes' fault; she's, for lack of more graceful wording, too damn good for him. It's what's got him scrambling for the hills and trekking through the proverbial down growth of his own terrible moods. He can't allow for it to affect her, because by that extension, he'll have made it her issue. And she's too clever - to adept at picking out an entire canvas through a shard, a trail from a whiff of scent.
The drive across to Sahara Central that day is silent, bar the top 50's trilling in the background. Judy drives with snaps of her wrist at the gear stick, harsh knuckles on her paws peaking up from beneath the fur.
"Hey, Judes - " he starts, but has no idea what to say next.
She doesn't reply, but the frown that creases the softness of her face into something unapproachable - so unlike Judy, sort of begets any response she could make.
"I'm sorry," he tries, because while he is, there is always something that precedes closure, and it's usually the particular admission, for him.
He can see, in the beat of a heart, in between breaths, how she relaxes. It's minutely, barely there, but something in her posture, in the way she handles the car, smooths out, becomes less about taking jagged, swift corners, and more about the final deliverance of her driving them.
"This isn't about a bad nights' sleep," Judy says.
"No," Nick agrees.
"You can talk to me, Nick, you know that."
"I - I do know, that, it's just - "
Judy brings the car twisting about a roundabout, and she smiles; a small, sage crescent at the road ahead, that Nick could never have hoped to be on the receiving end on - and says, "Then you tell me, when you've decided that you can."
He breathes out the mouthful of air he hadn't realized had been kept in his throat. "Thanks, Carrots," he murmurs.
*
Nothing changes. They share a desk space, clutter it with Judy's post-its, and Nick's minimality, stacks of reports, manilas of case files and pending half-finished cases, half foot ahead into a trial, awaiting the DA's office, old takeout mugs from Beans & Greens neatly stacked by the computer's glossy monitor. The half wall of the cubicle behind the desk is starting to slowly, surely, build treks of photos, snaps of old and of recent, dictating those who step in through the series of events leading them up to the present.
Nothing changes - at work.
"Officer Hopps!" Chief snaps, at a debriefing, "Stakeout, joining officers Fangmire and Wolford, South Tundratown."
Judy doesn't miss a beat, because she never does, and there's a tasteless joke in there that Nick could make, but he sees the way she barely glances in his leftover, backwards direction, and something pulls at him. By all the saints, Nicholas, get a grip, he reprimands, but somehow, his own sternness tastes alien, and almost comical, in his mouth. Acrid. Funny it should be like that.
"Officer Wilde," Bogo says, a little lower, given that most of the officers beneath his direction have filed out, "You'll be joining officer Del Gato on the nightshift, here, District One. That way, you'll get a feeling for the lay of the land, also during the darker hours."
"Is that a crack at us nocturnal and crepuscular for defying a natural call, sir?" he cracks.
Bogo serves him with a deadpan stare. "Perhaps contrary to your beliefs, Wilde, I'm not inclined to listen to your incessant blabber all day. Dismissed, officers," he says.
He's about to text Judy, a small voice worrying at the back of his conscious, but he's immediately assaulted by one of the sergeants, a wide smile she's taken to wearing whenever she spots one of his (a newly minted officer, that is) out and about, and drops a mound of paperwork into his arms.
"Thank you in advance, officer," she says, and the flecked cheetah tail flicks amusedly behind her as she twists on her heel.
He pores over the work, contrary to everyone else's belief - foxes do not slack off and worm their way out of tasks at hand - and by the time he's finished with part two out of three, it's five PM and way past any time table he'd set up for himself. It's also thirteen ways past when him and Judy would've walked off precinct grounds to get to go-lunch. His shift begins in three hours. He checks his phone, ignoring the cramp in his right paw, and the pulling crick in his neck.
No texts, or missed calls. No nothing, the phone hasn't chirped simply because no one's bothered with him.
Nick considers - his life, his decisions, before thumbing off a quick "are u okay? by msrmnts, how many of u can wolford fit in the span of his arms' reach?" and sending it before he thinks better of it. It's ridiculous that he is like this, that he's impeding a potentially not non-good relationship because he can't check himself in. You've managed yourself carefully for the past twenty years, Nicholas, he thinks, It's a damn shame you can't seem to do it now, when it counts.
In the end, he parks himself more firmly at his - and Judy's - desk, ignores the ache of his emptied out stomach, and gets to writing off the final sections on the clearance reports.
*
Del Gato is enormous, by even Nick's predatory standards - at least 600 lbs worth of cat sized pred is waiting for him next to their patrol car, his ankles crossed, large paws blanketing parts of his equally enormous forearms.
He grunts his greeting. "Fox," he says, levelly.
"How's it going there, Tiger," Nick throws back, and rounds the car, opting automatically for shotgun.
Del Gato doesn't say anything to the quip, but Nick can't sense any immediate hostility, so he assumes they're sort of on neutral ground here, male and predator between themselves.
The male and predator becomes apparent, as soon as they shutter themselves in the car. Their task is mainly creeping along the inner district streets, waiting for potential radio, keeping eyes on the streets and the diverging alleys along the main roads. Del Gato switches off the radio, and says nothing, but the silence doesn't become oppressive. It's simply quiet. A night shift isn't exciting, nor meant to be - it's dirt work, mainly given to the suitable new cadets for educational purposes. And Nick's not been hustling pool and streets for the better part of his life not to realize when he's being tested, sized up, by a dominant part. Bogo's wanting to know the size of his bulk, and how well he works with - anyone but Judy.
He slips his phone out of his pocket, thumbs the screen on, there and gone in seconds. Nothing.
They stop at an intersection, busy for a late Wednesday, when Del Gato says, "You're like a lovesick cub, Wilde; quit it."
Nick startles, palm sliding from where he's been palming his phone absently through his pants, again. He twists his head, and manages, in the second, to squash his glare down and replace it with a vaguely unimpressed stare. "Bite me," he says, and turns back towards the road.
Del Gato snorts. Their light greens. "Like it or not," the tiger says, and turns a right, "Partnerships don't last forever. Officer Hopps is placed wherever Chief sees fit to put her."
"Who says it's about Hopps?" Nick says.
"You're telling me it's not?" Del Gato says.
"Am I? I don't know; I didn't think I was telling you anything."
"Hmm, rhetorical, are you?"
Nick gnashes his teeth. "One of my many skills."
"I'm sure. For one of yours, you've got a surprisingly bad poker face, though," Del Gato glances from the road, "Personal relations are easy to unearth, Wilde; keep them closer to your chest, if you want for them to survive."
Nick laughs, a short, wobbly sound, without meaning to. Point to the big cat, he supposes, for nailing that one on its ugly head. "For being one of mine, I do appreciate the advice," he bites out, before schooling himself polite, by proverbially pulling himself in his own shirttails, up and above, "I'll think about that."
*
Three weeks into the job, he's allowed to join Judy, as her junior officer, on a stealth op in a bar three blocks off his apartment complex. He'd cleaned up decently the night before, and suggests they use his place as their spot x. Judy agrees, and switches off the main city centre road, to take a left towards Nick's parts of town.
She slips into his hallway bathroom to change out of her work gear, and no sooner announces herself in dye jeans and a black tank. Her tags are just obscured by the low neckline, the silver ball chain spool gleaming in the low light of his bad dimmer construction. Nick scratches at his arm, not entirely sure of what to make of this, despite the fact that he's seen her down and injured, first thing in the morning, in gear, out of gear; he feels suddenly inadequate in his slacks and elbow-roll sleeves, top button unhinged.
"You ready to go?" Judy asks, and slants a hip, grin stretching her face cockily, "Bet I can take you in pool."
Nick snorts, and finally manages to rid himself of the worming in his gut, "In your dreams, Carrots. Have you played pool? That game was invented solely for gentlemen like me; clever eye, deft hands. You won't know what hit you."
"Bah!" Judy exclaims, and throws his keys at him - the ring of it which he hadn't even noticed she'd acquired - with the dawning sun half striking across her face, letting herself out the door. "Big words, Slick. You've got the pressure on you now."
Nick smiles sweetly at her as he catches up to her - his breath, in the yawn of the rickety elevator. "Oh honey," he says, "You better hustle as hard as you hate, or you won't be standing one teensy bit of a chance."
The bar - Jack's, is seedy and run down, with a chipped cherry wood counter and blaring a noisy, off canter drum line loudly through old filters. Nick orders himself ale on tap, and nothing for Judy, since he's never, actually - seen her drink.
She's been to the bathroom and back, no doubt canvassing the place - Nick noted her penchant for recreating, quite eidetically, places she'd seen once, minute detail sticking to her like a fly trap, quite early on. She memorized numbers after thrice repeating them, could recreate floor plans after glancing at them - could remember her steps' worth of distance between point A and B, and calculate the same for someone of a larger statue, after having walked across the room once.
She raises an eyebrow at him when she gets back, looking between the tall mug of ale, and his face. Nick shrugs, helplessly.
Judy climbs to bar height via a chair, and leans across the counter to order. Once she's received it - lager, a chunk of lime pressed down its neck, she hops down, immediately vying for one of the pool tables across the room.
"Alright, partner," she intones, her ears twitching, foot tapping out a stressed rhythm, as she comes back from unearthing two cues from the wall to the right of the table, "Let's see your hustle."
Nick grins, earnest, gladly, and catches the cue she throws at him with quick snap reflexes.
"Carrots, that'll be the last time you disrespect my hustle," he says, and spins the eight-ball.
*
She doesn't try especially hard to make him fall so hard, harsh, mercilessly.
Perhaps that's why it happens quicker, more relentlessly. Judy spends her time being her agreeable self to the world that she doesn't have time to not drop her guard before him. Nick wants her, guard down, shoulders slumping, as much - more, than he wants her with her eyes widened by a case, shoulders squared for the tint of dull gold light over her chest to reflect on her services. It burrows (ha) into him so bad it aches, and when he attempts to turn on it, shape it into something not diamond hard and hexagonal and sharp, it won't budge.
*
He receives naught but radio silence from Judy for all of seventy two hours.
He reorganizes their slightly cluttered office space. Throws away the old takeaway mugs, makes straight lines out of their office supplies, tidies up their computer desktop. Chief sticks him with larger stacks of paper, content to see him struggle, Nick's sure - and gives him the silent treatment over his increasingly obvious attempts at gathering intel on the Tundratown op.
It works, mostly because he's intent on gritting his teeth and trusting her to - gee, function without him. As though he's a respiratory part of her, which he's not. Never will be. He's going to make that abundantly clear to himself, one day. One day, that isn't this particular day, on which he is stuck behind a desk, reorganized, reshaped, when a SWAT team files out of the bullpen, strapped in to their dark kevlar gear, faces shut down and battle ready. He recognizes the eyes, easily coming to him, having dabbled in the proverbial beds of most criminal syndicates for lighter jobs.
These are the faces of people going out to face the ugly truth.
Nick stops breathing. Feels it lodge, tight and wound and pitch black, starch against the wilder, wilder, beat of his heart.
Seventy two hours.
Bogo sees him follow the team over his wall. He shakes his head, the stern look he reserves for Nick during debriefing hardens into something jaded, something harsh, the longer Nick holds his eye across the room here.
Keep your personal relations closer, Wilde, flashes picturesque, across his mind.
He throws himself out of his chair, unreserved and loping across the floor, flashing between cubicles. Bogo's face pulls back into a glare, his mouth sets. "Wilde," he warns, as soon as Nick comes within hearing distance, "Go back to your post."
"Sir," he says, "Where are you headed? Is it the Tundratown case?"
"None of your damn business, officer," Bogo snarls, and towers up and above him, "Go back. To your post. Now. We'll be back."
"With all due respect, - sir - "
"It's an order, Wilde, and you are damn well going to follow it as an officer under my command! If you'd rather not get fired for gross insubordination, you will go back to your post, continue with what you were previously assigned to, and wait it out."
The Chief marches past him without waiting for the struggle he's currently battling out with his vocal chords. They're bunching, and he's struggling a bit to breathe, but remembers that when the edges of his vision blackens, he's to stumble back to the cubicle, and count down, slowly, backwards, deep breathes, remember anything - anything at all - Judes' talking about her two hundred and seventy five siblings - that's right, two hundred and seventy four -
Nick collapses right next to the desk, and worms his arms around the closest leg on it, and rests his forehead against it, counting - Isabel, two hundred and seven, Iseline, two hundred and six, Ingmar, two hundred and five -
He can't think of the possibility of their final interaction possibly having been a terse drive through town, followed by a few dumb texts left unanswered, shifting from vague what-if into shapely fact.
*
Judy drops the cue to rest at her feet, against the table, halfway into their fifth game. Nick is a slow drinker, into his third beer, and Judy has kept herself to two, as something catches her attention at the far end of the establishment, scurrying out of the door. She barely nods in the direction of the exit, but he takes in the changes in her face; the ear flicking, alert, the minutely widening of her gaze, the worrying of her lower lip between her teeth.
She slips out in the small yawn created between the door and the casing, and Nick immediately assumes a role, should things go south. He's not quite sure it's the proper - right, thing, to do, but his mind is resting a finger on the trigger and firing, admonishing himself afterwards of the consequences. He thinks quickly enough to not cause fatal injury - fox, but doesn't heed warnings to sometimes avoid flesh wounds.
He'd read their profile. The honey badger they're tailing is dwarfed next to a reasonably sized bear, standing in the shade of the lamplight, just at the corner.
He makes a finger trigger decision, and snaps out for Judy's wrist, coming out just at her shoulder. He gently tugs her toward him, hoping that she's as quick as he thinks she is, and steers her into the wall to their immediate left. The badger and his rendezvous haven't moved, but Nick hears enough to notice their conversation fading just slightly, in volume and exchange.
"What are you - " Judy hisses, before her eyes widen sizably, and she snaps her jaw shut.
Nick nods shortly, and pulls a deep breath into his mouth, and presses himself flat against her.
She smells vaguely of citrus and of malt, of the blonde wood and violet body wash she uses, which sounds disgusting, but which dries down on her - which has become her scent, to him. He tilts his head towards her, aware, desperately, of that he's violating codes one through fifty of personal space boundaries, stepping through some or other workplace ethics rule, and doing a myriad of things - about to step across someplace he won't be able to come back from.
"Carrots," he whispers, against the shell of her closest ear, "Quickfire decision." He mouths, I'm sorry, as a tack on at the end. Because he is. Personal reasons or no, he always begins with the admission itself.
She huffs, quite loudly, and, whilst he feels her ear twitch in stress, and her face heat against his sternum, she says, "I'm down here," pointedly, and wraps a leg around his calf; intent to play the part.
Nick crowds her closer to himself, takes care to breathe, and hitches her up to eye height. He's careful to let her balance herself on his hips, and rests his palms as lightly as he can beneath her lower thighs, as close to her knees as he can come without unbalancing her. Judy has her arms wound around his neck, and breathes quietly into the side of his neck. He shivers, and attempts to mask it as something natural, a bodily shudder in response to the bland late spring warmth.
He hears their subject shuffling a bit off site, but still within vicinity for Judy, Nick'd hazard, by the amount of facial activity she is discreetly emitting against the hollow of his throat. He remains still as can possibly be, and moves in accordance only to what's expected of him whenever the conversation on their far end quietens. It's a delicate tilting of his head as to not brush against Judy's cheek, and he's curling his paw into a balled fist beneath Judy's thigh, and slowly, slowly, he's going to go insane -
He hears car doors slam, the conversation abruptly silenced, before an old, battered three cylinder revs, coughs, and moans, and they appear to drive off.
Nick gently lets Judy down, avoids her eyes, lucking out with the darkness of post-twilight going blue and impenetrable. He's not sure he'd be able to look at her now, at the confusion mounting in her face, the clearing of the throat, awkward moment impending.
Judy is still standing almost on his toes, breathing quietly into his chest, her arms receding down her sides, down his.
Nick bites his bottom lip, and pushes gently back from her. Something is lodged in his throat, too thick to clear it, and Judy opens her mouth, "Nick - "
Nick shakes his head, "Carrots - don't," he murmurs, "Just - don't. Please."
It's the first time, that he's noticed since they met, too many months ago, that she's leaving an issue unbeaten, words unspoken, ceasing in her mouth.
*
Clawhauser is the one to first appear above the wall to his cubicle, features a little pale beneath his yellow fur, whiskers drooping, and says, "Nick - I've been asked to inform you that the extraction team were successful in their mission today. They - " his lower lip trembles, left pointed canine peeking out and digging into the flesh. He takes a deep, wobbly breath, and continues, "Mission was a success. Officer Hopps suffered minor injuries during an altercation, and was taken to Central General, but will - "
Nick's heart claws its way up his throat, and he's off the chair, scraping metal screeching against the checkered floor tiles, before Clawhauser has a chance to finish what he'd been saying.
He's not too good a driver, not sure he ever made it to a driver's license, and breaks limits and traffic laws, crashing out into lanes he's not supposed to go into without warning and blinking, but the sirens do their part too, and he's skidding to a ceremonial halt just outside of the ER entrance, throwing himself out of the driver's seat, barely twisting the key out of the ignition and stuffing them down his front pocket.
The receptionist intercepts him with a, "Sir, all due respect, you're not helping anybody by rushing in here, ready to fire," and a dismayed expression.
Nick pulls on air he's not sure can be taken up by his respiratory system, and shows his identification with barely trembling wrists. "Officer Judy Hopps, I - she was admitted not too long ago," he says, and tries to take of some civil courage and a little from his ram rod shoulders, to nullify some of the not quite not panic in his voice. He's expecting - he's not sure what he's expecting. Internal damage, a surgery, a head wound, irreparable damage to the front, back lobe, spinal injuries, nerve chords -
The receptionist lays a large maw of a palm over his on the counter, where he's slammed his badge and glossy ID down to show to her, but hasn't managed to slide his paw off of it. "Officer," she says, and glances down on the card, his social security number and name peeking up between his fingers, "Wilde. Please, if you would. Take a couple of deep breaths for me. I'll have you escorted to where Officer Hopps is currently resting on one condition: that you do not cause a scene. Your partner came in with a few minor lacerations, and a mild concussion. She'll be kept overnight per the doctor's recommendations, simply for observation. Okay? So, deep breaths for me, down into your stomach - "
He catches barely half of what she's saying, and - "We're not - I mean, she's not my - But I guess - "
The receptionist tilts her head. Nick snaps his jaw shut. "Thank you, ma'am," he manages.
Judy sits up in the lagomorph sized bed she's been put in once he finally makes it to the patient room, still dwarfed by the pale green gown, the subtly patterned, starchly ironed sheets. Her head's bandaged, and gauze wraps up around her left biceps, her right wrist. But she doesn't appear to have received the good treatment, the IV stuck in her arm steadily pumping fluids which don't seem to affect how she pipes up when Nick worms his way through the thinly cracked door.
"Nick," Judy - Judes, Gods, says, and Nick can't care - he lopes four steps until he's by her bed, barely halting for the stool parked at the foot end.
"Heya, Carrots," he cracks, sitting down on the stool, and barely manages a smile, "See you got yourself into some fine trouble without me."
She glares, half heartedly. "Don't need your help to cause a ruckus, Slick," she says.
Nick laughs, a short, rap of a joyless sound. "Nah," he says, "I quite figured that already. You don't need me, when did you ever?"
Something shifts in the bed, and Nick's not got his head screwed on tight enough to follow what it is, until he sees that Judy has shifted closer to where he's got his paw twisted in the sheets, her smaller dwarfed on top of his own, where she's putting it gently to rest, a zap of electricity jolting him upwards.
"Hey," Judy murmurs, "It'd be a whole lot easier to do this if you could care to look at me."
Nick swallows, but looks up. Of course he cares to, just -
Judy's tilting her head, her bandaged head and her ears twitching ever so slightly in his direction. "You stupid fox," she says, but it's not accusatory. It's soft, like the flap of a moth's wings, like a confession he can't look in the eye.
"Sly bunny?" he tries, and clears his throat around his ever present issues. Judy's smile flickers briefly deeper into her cheeks.
"That's it, isn't it?" she says, "That's the issue. Nick, I'm your senior officer, they'll want me on higher ranking cases with other teams. That doesn't mean I don't want you on them."
He snorts, tilting his head slightly backwards. "Gee, Carrots, I was beginning to wonder when you'd finally pull the seniority card."
"Shut up," she says, "Your abandonment issues are a mile wide sometimes, mister. Even I can spot a leopard."
"Har har. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner," Nick snarks, but tiredly. He wishes she weren't right about the one thing, because since she is, she'll eventually figure out the next thing.
"How long they keeping you for?" he asks, going for normalcy, like the next best thing, besides blurting something innately idiotic, either the one or the three things currently tailing it around his brain like forks of lightning.
"Just overnight," Judy says, "I argued for my release, but apparently I have to have someone to page, should I begin to feel nauseous or light-headed; which, given my injury, seems normal, but I saw the waiting room - there were many out there who clearly needed this bed more than I do, and - "
"You're an idiot, Carrots, if you're dismayed over the fact that they're treating you, when they're clearly doing it because, oh, I don't know, there was a bomb, and you were in its way, and you could have gotten yourself killed," Nick snaps. Not loudly, not overtly translating the churning of his gut, just - snappish. Judy quietens, clear surprise scrawled across her face. She huffs, but quietly, subsided. "I was lucky," she mutters, "Some of the people out there weren't, for whatever scenario they were involved in. I'm fine."
"If I can have them release you to me, will you quit being a child?" Nick says, and sighs, rubbing the heel of his paw just above his left, beginning to pound, eye, "You can be self sacrificial on my couch for all I care, just don't pout because the medical personnel here are doing what they've gone to school for, and have been taught to do."
"I'm not self sacrificial, Nich'las," Judy says.
"Sure you aren't, Judith," Nick dismisses, "I'll go see to your release papers, you just be a good little bunny and do not crawl out the window in the meantime."
*
It's well past sundown once Nick manages to tuck the car in the pocket between two sedans up the street on which his alley crosses. Judy's been quiet in the passenger seat, stroking a thumb across her wrapped wrist, her right foot worrying on the rubber mat. She looks up, once he twists the ignition, and the car rumbles to a halt. "I didn't know you could drive," she says, a hint of surprise betraying her.
Nick rolls his eyes. "Who'd you think were driving, Carrots? Believe me, you would have noticed if I was borrowing one of Big's limousines. Quite a bit slimmer than this fella."
Judy doesn't deign him a response. She presses her left hand side into the door, and manages to slide it open into the fraction of space she'll need. Nick sees that she's favoring on quite some places, and hurries out to meet her, where she stumbles halfway down, a little bit of grace preceding her state of injury, but not enough to catch herself mid-fall. He takes most of her weight on one forearm, and gently lets her down next to him. "You want me to hold on to any of that for you, officer?" he says, quietly.
Judy tilts her head up to look at him. "Did it take you this long to figure that out, officer?" she asks. "Not especially shrewd, for a fox."
Nick freezes. "You were saying, Hopps?" he asks, quiet, quiet, as they come.
Judy doesn't let him up, stares, defiant, big eyes and clenched paws, from where she's leaning into his side. "I said," she intones, "Did it take you this long to figure out that you should be holding on to this, officer Wilde?" She makes a vague gesture to her stature, waves from her hips and up to her chin.
"Carrots," he warns. She looks unimpressed, on first glance, but Nick - notices, the smallest things. The agitated twitch of her nose, the clench of her left hand side jaw, how her paw is bunching in his shirt, creasing its hem and digging her knuckles sharply into his hip. "Judes," he tries, slowly, chewing on her name, swallowing it down, keeping it, "Judy - don't, you can't - "
"Nick," she says, suddenly quietly still, a reaching breath rocking her deeper into the curve of his side, as she sheds her previous tension, "Don't tell me what I can't do. Not if it's what you want me to do."
He thinks of her disappearing from his side, without a word, without a reply, without deserving how he tacks his issues onto her like releasing a tightly coiled snake of anger and regret and insecurities. He thinks of how she knows - how she's probably known, how she's waited for him to out himself, to say something, to come undone -
Nick stares skywards, tries to swallow back on himself. "Don't - I'm warning you now, alright? You deserve better, so much better, and I can't - I mean, we're here, and - " he gestures around, to the tightly packed curb, the graffitied walls, the trash and litter and his dark corner apartment, his issues, the fact that they are predisposed to not function as a unit. Together. Plural. Nick and Judy. Judy and Nick.
He swallows Judy and Nick down along with the other variations on their theme that can't be, and -
He hears Judy grit her teeth, murmuring something like a muffled, PG-converted curse beneath her breath, and snaps up to tug his collar down to her level. Nick's a ghost in the machine against it, trapped in a body which simply does as Judy likes, unable to be anything but static. She's glaring at him, soundly, when he meets her gaze. "For all that is holy, Nicholas Wilde," she snaps, "I'm tired of seeing you wallow in self pity. I want you, and I think you reciprocate that, but if you're not going to do anything about it, you're not allowed to feel sorry for yourself either. Not now, when I've put it out there for your dumb self to see."
Nick - can't be the one to say anything to that. And Nick, is the one who makes a trigger finger decision, and surges forward to kiss her without thought and risk and chance and a mind of consequence preceding it, a little awkwardly, a little hard edged with teeth, finally just off and with Judy steadily holding him in place by his collar, sighing into his mouth.
They break apart when Judy whines a little low, a little in her throat, about needing to breathe, and Nick remembers that he needs to catch his own breath, before they'll need to stretcher both of them straight back to Central General.
He nudges at her until she rests the blunt of her bandaged forehead to his chest, until he can feel her rabbit pulse quit jittering, arrhythmic and out of sync with the racing of his own. Judy's still clenching fists in his shirt, and he slides a wide open palm along her back, soothing himself through it, he thinks. They stand like that, quiet, Nick moving along with the slight movements she makes, tuning himself to how she functions, to how the city encloses them, though they're alone, until Judy chuckles, small and tired, into the side of his ribs, bringing him out of the spell.
"Stupid fox," she murmurs.
"Too clever, bunny," he replies, scratching twisting tales down her spine. She hums.
"In this sense, I think I always was," she says.
"Well, now I think you're extrapolating, Carrots."
"Respect my emotional hustle, Slick."
Nick laughs, and sidles until he hits the side of the car, gently tugging her along with him, twisting them until she is the one pressed to the shine of the lacquer. Judy goes with it, hooking a leg around his calf, until he slides his palms beneath her thighs, and hoists her up to rest her weight on his hips. "You'd be putting me out of business, Hopps, no question," he replies.
Up close, she's a little damaged, a little torn open and bleeding fatigue, but she smiles soft, soft, and reaches out to tug at one of his ears. Nick has never revered anything in his life, but he'd swear by her, in this moment, when she's winding her legs a bit tighter around his waist, and pulls at him until he's resting his cheek to hers. "Oh, Nick," she says, and he's not quite sure of whether she's really saying it to him, so he doesn't respond - doesn't know what to respond.
She pushes gently at his chest after a while, a half smile tugging at her lips. "If I'm not mistaken, I've got monopoly on your couch for the night," she says.
Nick lowers her down and onto the ground again, straightens, and offers the crook of his elbow. "Nah," he says, "You can have monopoly on the bed, if you'd like."
"With, or without you, in it?" Her smile's sharp. Nick has to reach - far - for his shredded common sense.
"That, my lady, is a very good question. It certainly bears discussing."
Judy fishes up his chiming ring of keys out of her own pocket, mischief in every crease in her face, and says, "I think we could certainly discuss it, but do you really have anything to put up against it?"
Nick swipes for the keys, but lets her get away with ducking it, dropping them into her front pocket again. "Do I have anything to put up against it?" he says, "No, no I do not. Would I want to? Not particularly, no."
*