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Judy yawned and rolled over, stretching her limbs until her joints popped. She loved being a cop, but too many hours in those terrible precinct chairs always left her stiff. Her arm brushed something warm and soft.
Slick Nick.
She rolled the other way, gracefully belly-flopping on top of him. He was… an even better pillow than her actual pillow.
She poked his side. “We should get up before my alarm goes off. My sister Loxley has a band—the Weepin’ Will-Lows. She calls it Folktronica Sadcore. Whatever that means. Check that: it means terrible music. Kill-plants terrible—but great for getting out of bed.”
Silence.
She squeezed him and opened her eyes, smiling at the pointed ears, angular muzzle, and glossy plastic eyes. She flicked Slick Nick’s nose. “You’re not quite the real thing. He’s taller. Funnier. Green eyes instead of brown. But you don’t talk like him, which is nice… he can be a lot.”
She scratched behind his ears. “Sometimes he’s not much at all. Like he’s hiding. From me. Which is crazy. We don’t do that. We’re… good together. He just needs to get over all his Nick-ness and actually be… happy. He deserves it.”
She pushed herself up and poked the plush between his judgy, little eyes. “Don’t even say Nick and happiness are mutually exclusive. He can be happy. Or he is. When he’s with me.”
That was a dangerous line of thought, but thankfully the first discordant bars of “My Heart is Buffering and Your Love is DRM” blasted out of her phone. She squawked and tumbled out of bed, heart pounding.
That killed any stray thoughts—and probably any lice that had survived the last spraying.
Her neighbors immediately pounded on the wall.
“Bunny! Turn off that music!”
Pronk, probably.
“Please!” Bucky wailed. “We’ll stop making jokes about your love life!”
“Or your lack of one—”
Judy kicked the wall. “Serves you right! One more crack and I’ll put on her studio sessions. They’re somehow worse, it’s like she recorded them using a vacuum cleaner sucking up loose change!”
“We’ll be good! We promise!”
She nodded at the wall and set her shoulders. Today was the day.
After a soothing ten hours of chasing dangerous criminals through the city, she’d drag Nick off to her favorite Carrot-yo-ke bar. They’d eat. They’d laugh. She’d drink two beers and then ask Nick out on a date before she got violently sick.
It was the perfect plan.
She was going to murder Nick Wilde.
NO.
No.
Death was too good for him.
“Since Wilde took a personal day,” Bogo rumbled, “I needed to shuffle assignments…”
She was going to shave him.
Then weave a rug from his fur.
Then make him sit through Loxley’s band. And to really make him suffer, she’d tie him up and force him to sit through Flora’s improv troupe, the Floro-maniacs.
It would break him.
“Higgins needs someone to help him prep for court,” Bogo added, jerking his head toward the hippo currently shoving great wads of kelp into his mouth. Higgins was kelp-intolerant and everyone knew it—except, apparently, Higgins.
Nick would look up at her and shout, “Save me!”
And she would whisper back no…
Bogo droned on. “You could split front desk duty with Clawhauser—”
Clawhauser waved from where he was setting up a tripod to stream his unboxing of the latest Gazelle fanclub package.
“Or patrol with Wolford and Fangmeyer—”
In the squad car that smelled like two mammals who were very definitely making out in it. Constantly.
Bogo scratched his chin. “I suppose they could always use another paw down at—”
“I’ll take it,” Judy said, paw shooting into the air.
Bogo blinked. “Are you sure, Hopps? It’s not very—”
She held up a paw. “Chief, what would you take? Smelling like Higgins’ lunch after he’s turned it into methane, doing a livestream with DoNUTs4Gazelle, or getting hotboxed by the two least subtle mammals on the planet?”
Bogo looked from Higgins to Clawhauser to Wolford and Fangmeyer, who were already slinking toward an unoccupied interview room.
He handed her the final file. “Excellent choice, Hopps.”
She spotted him as she rounded the corner to her building. He was staring at his phone, and for once he’d ditched those ridiculous plastic pink shutter shades for a pair of actually stylish Bray-Bans.
His shirt, however… was an affront to fashion.
Her muzzle curved before she could stop it. He still had on the floral tie she’d given him. She’d found it on a clearance rack, the sales-mammal had been so surprised anyone had willing grabbed it she'd given it to Judy. Judy had given it to Nick as gag.
She'd secretly hoped he wouldn’t find anything that would match it and he’d have to put on a normal shirt to wear it to work.
But Nick Wilde was made of sterner, color-blind stuff. He’d shown up the next day in a shirt so loud she wanted to give him a citation for pollution.
It had made her smile so wide that it had made her cheeks hurt. It still did.
Stop that, Judy. He's a bad fox. No smiles for him.
She guessed that one of the benefits of having no shame and enough confidence for ten mammals was the ability to make garish look good.
He must have caught her scent on the evening breeze because his nose twitched into the air and he swiveled to look at her, lips splitting into a cocky half-smile as he straightened.
Her pace faltered for a beat then she steadied herself and strode through a gale-force blast of Nick’s charm. Her heart started to drum faster than was strictly professional for two partners meeting on the street. Traitor.
Don’t fall for it, Judy. You’re mad at him. It doesn’t matter how cute he looks.
“I’m not talking to you,” she said, brushing past Nick before he could get a word in edgewise. “I had a very long day. I’m hungry, annoyed, and apparently I smell enough that you could pick me out half a block away.”
Nick had a paw raised and it wilted as she ran through her litany, pausing when she reached the door to her building.
Nick Wilde at a loss for words. She needed to mark this down. Future generations would tell of this moment and there would be great rejoicing.
“Well—aren’t you going to say something?” she shook her head as Nick blinked at her.
“I thought you weren’t talking to me…”
“Excellent point. Good night, Nick.” She reached for the handle—
—and he shot to the bottom of the steps.
“Wait, wait,” he begged, “don’t go, just give me a second.”
She crossed her arms, and when her paw started to thump on the ground she didn’t even bother trying to stop it.
“I had a good reason for not being at work today,” Nick started.
“You’d better, slick,” she fired back. “I had to work in IT today. The only call I responded to was when Records ran out of toner. Then I had to issue warnings to mammals who don’t know what’s appropriate for work computers. I’ve seen terrible things…”
“Uh, I wasn’t at work today because of you,” he said, and immediately slapped a paw over his eyes. “I didn’t mean it that way. Sorry. I’m bad at this.”
“Yes, absolutely,” Judy nodded her head, “you’re awful at whatever this is… Remember that funny story I was telling you where I was tired, hungry, and completely done with everything?”
“Well, I can help with that,” Nick took another step toward her, “at least the hungry part.”
He pointed at the very tired-looking scooter she’d originally mistaken for a pile of scrap someone had dumped on the street.
“Are we going to eat that?” she snorted. “I think we could. It looks like the only thing holding it together is the paint job.”
"I think there's some tape in there somewhere…"
A thought occurred to her, and she gasped. “Did you ride that thing here?”
He nodded with a pained smile. "What it lacks in power, agility, and looks it makes up in…"
He scratched his chin. "Give me a second, I had something for this."
“It looks like a death trap,” Judy accused.
“Oh, it is. Not safe in the least.” He dashed over to what was technically a vehicle and grabbed a pair of helmets—hers was clearly a larger mammal’s child size, covered in stickers. “What do you say? I know a food truck; they do these sandwiches with pickled vegetables, and there’s a park and mammals are always out there playing instruments…”
He patted the seat and gave her a very good smile. Nick foxing Wilde was trying to sell her.
The scooter sagged under the extra attention.
“Nick,” she said slowly, “did you hit your head?”
His face fell. Then he let his eyes get wide and tried to look pathetic. She bit the inside of her cheek and willed herself not to coo at him.
She set her shoulders. “Nick, none of this makes sense. You miss work. You don’t call. Then you show up with that thing—” she waved at the scooter, and it seemed to shrink in on itself, “and your pitch is: come get in an accident with me, but the upside is—there’s pickles!”
Nick weathered the storm of common sense and vehicular safety without so much as batting an eye. “Yes, that is accurate.”
He sensed he wasn't winning the argument. "They are very good pickles."
This was it. He was trying to kill her.
“And why would I ever agree to anything like that?”
“Carr—Judy, I’m trying to take you on a date,” he said, and gave the embarrassing helmet a waggle.
Oh.
OH.
A part of her brain screamed and ran out of the room. The part that told her to be wary of mammals with pretty green eyes, sultry smiles, and apparently no fear of an impending vehicle fire.
“Give me five minutes.”