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Turns out, Gary’s anti-venom pen to the heart isn’t a one-and-done total cure.
After the adrenaline of both finding the original patent and the anecdote start to leave her system, Judy feels awful. It puts her through such a bed-ridden, nearly comatose state that she ignores her phone, which lead to Nick knocking incessantly at her door, which leads to Nick breaking into her apartment, which leads to a very fun hospital admission in which she gets more pain medication than she thought could ever be prescribed to a rabbit.
“It’s my fault,” Nick fusses idly, eyes focused on the thin scratchy blankets that make up her hospital bed for the evening. “I should have taken better care of you. Dragged you here sooner.”
“You always take good care of me,” Judy says plainly. “But this one might have been my fault."
He (finally) stops fussing with the blankets and begins patting down his pockets. "Where's that carrot pen when I need it…”
From her place on the bed, she’s close enough to tug on his ears for a change. He fakes a wince, but he doesn’t pull away.
One day turns into two, then three. By the fourth, she’s bored out of her mind, and the Clawmark channel has already started the reruns of the romantic comedies she’s only half-interested in. Nick swings by after work every day with a box of donuts to bribe the nurses into letting him stay past visiting hours, but Judy shoos him away around ten every night with the excuse that they both need to be resting.
“I can bring you books. What do you like to read?” Nick tells her after his twenty-minute attempt at explaining the rules of Hoofball so they can watch the semi-finals that night fails. “Wait, don’t tell me: Victorian-aged erotica?”
Truthfully, she doesn’t mind those. She tells him as much, and he lets out one of his belly-laughs that has him slapping his knee like an old man. “I still have pretty bad brain fog,” Judy admits, which sobers him rather quickly. “I don’t think I can concentrate enough right now to read.”
He recovers well enough. “Not even Pretty Vixen?”
She huffs out a laugh, though it’s lost in the scrunch of her nose as she adjusts her oxygen cannula and tugs uselessly at the collar of her hospital gown to get it further from the still-tender wound on her neck.
Nick’s paw does his own adjusting, reaching down along her neckline just enough to feel for a tag that might need to be moved, or an itchy thread that he could snag off. “I’ll bring some of your clothes tomorrow.” He smooths his arm down one sleeve. “One-hundred percent cotton. But in the meantime…”
He reaches into the bag he’s been bringing every day and drops a shirt into her lap.
He’s already snickering before Judy finishes unfolding the never-before-seen shirt and reading the graphic hastily ironed on the front. “I Got Narcanned At The TundraTown Weather Wall,” she reads aloud. “You think you’re real cute, huh?”
There’s a manic glint in his eye to match his shit-eating grin. “Carrots, the C word?”
“I was not narcanned,” Judy stressed, because even though this is all just a classic Nick Wilde bit, she’s Judy Hopps, which means she’s going to make sure the truth is still known. “I was…anti-venomed.”
“Sure, but I couldn’t fit that on a t-shirt.”
“It’s two more letters.”
“Yeah, two more letters and a dash. That I could not fit onto a bunny-sized t-shirt.”
Judy unfolds the shirt again and takes another look. “Looks more fox-sized.”
He shrugs. “Wasn’t exactly banking on you wearing it in public. I, on the other hand, adore a graphic tee, so when you aren’t snoozing or lounging in it, I shall wear it with comedic pride.”
She slouches again with another sigh, but it must make her look more pathetic than she feels, because Nick doesn’t keep up with the jokes. Instead, he carefully takes the shirt out of her lap, one paw coming to smooth back her ears. “Hey,” he says softly. “I don’t think I’ve mentioned it, but I’m really glad you’re okay.”
Her smile comes easy with his words, head tilting to better look at him. He’s all…extra-soft, from the freshly combed fur on his face to the warm glow in his eyes. “Thank god for Narcan.”
His smile twitches before he reaches down and tugs at her hospital gown. “You want to change?”
“Into this?”
“It’s one-hundred percent cotton.”
It’s tempting, if only for the comfort. But it would also mean wearing the damn thing. She grimaces, and her mental turmoil must be obvious, because Nick tries really hard not to laugh at her.
“I already showed the nurses,” Nick admits. “They think it’s hilarious.”
“You keep bringing them donuts. Your feedback is compromised.”
Nick opens his mouth like he’s going to argue, but then he clamps it shut, eyes momentarily blank. “Regardless,” he moves on. “You’ll be more comfortable.”
Even though they took her off the intravenous medications this morning and switched to pills, Judy can admit to herself that she’s still in pain. It’s an annoying, distracting kind of pain which makes things like the scratchiness of her hospital gown unbearable.
She eyes the t-shirt like it might attack her. “If you take a picture of me in this shirt, I’ll get you fired.”
It’s hard to move her limbs, which Nick knows, so he wordlessly puts a paw to her back to lean her forward while he reaches behind to untie the strings in the back.
Once he’s pulled the gown off her by the arms, Judy’s brain fog clears up long enough for her to remember that she doesn’t exactly have much else on underneath. Part of her knows she should be embarrassed, but a bigger part of her is just so tired that she ends up not really caring.
“Arms up, sweetheart,” Nick says softly.
One arm is currently stronger than the other for whatever reason - Nick ends up having to manhandle her right one into the sleeve. It’s her dominant arm, and even though the doctors said the muscle weakness was temporary, she’s still fighting back a twinge of fear that she’ll never be back to normal.
“There you go,” Nick announces after he’s fussed with the sleeves and collar of this shirt, too.
He’s still all soft-looking, without an ounce of embarrassment or flush to his face. They’ve had a few awkward moments like this - a paw to her ass to keep her from falling, an arm slapped against her chest to keep her head from meeting the windshield when the cruiser brakes too hard, a pull into his lap to keep her from getting trampled. Whether she recognizes the awkwardness immediately or hours later, Judy’s pretty certain it doesn’t register as awkward to him at all.
To him, he’s simply taking care of her.
“Feel better?” He asks when it’s too silent for his liking.
It’s probably the ugliest, most awful shirt she’s ever seen in her life - even if it is the color of her family’s blueberries.
And it’s the most comfortable she’s been all week.
“Much.”
They put Nick on the night shift.
Bogo says it isn’t a punishment, but it sure feels like it. Prior to coming back to work, Judy knew she was going to practically be handcuffed to her desk doing boring administrative work until she could retake her fitness test and go back on patrols. She had made a pros and cons list which was ... .basically just a dozen cons and Nick’s name underlined four times in blue as the only listed pro.
Now? She’s got no pro.
“That’s not true,” Nick argues. “You have immediate access to the good espresso machine.”
Begrudgingly, she does write espresso machine in teeny tiny letters under Nick’s name.
She ends up putting it into good use at the end of her shifts, rather than the beginning. Before she leaves, she makes herself a double shot with the intention of helping her stay awake way past her usual hour so she can keep texting and bothering Nick while he’s on his shift.
It lasts about three days before he threatens to hide the good espresso machine.
She finishes texting him at 2:54 in the morning when he calls her, getting straight to the point when she picks up.
“You need to rest.”
Currently, Judy’s staring at the ceiling trying to count how many rotations her fan makes in a minute.
“I am resting.”
He snorts, but the words that follow don’t have the usual snark. “Staying up late and crashing from all this caffeine isn’t going to help your brain fog.”
Her brain fog is getting better. She would know. She just counted 90 ceiling fan rotations. She tells him this (minus the ceiling fan part).
“It’s okay if it isn’t.”
She doesn’t say anything back for a long, long time.
“I’m hoping you’ve fallen asleep,” Nick finally whispers on the other end. “But I’m pretty sure you haven’t.”
She could hang up, explain to him tomorrow that she really did nod off, that the call got disconnected in some sort of half-awake haze. But she doesn’t. She stays on the line.
Even though she doesn’t say anything.
“I love you,” he tells her plainly. “And your impatience has its endearing qualities. But you can’t always heal on your schedule. Take a note out of this old fox’s book and slow down a little, yeah? Enjoy the paperwork gig for what it is - a break. Go to work, push some pencils around, and then go home and go to sleep.”
“So you admit you’re old.”
“That’s what you took from that?”
She laughs, a loud thing for three in the morning. It wakes her neighbors, who shout back and let her know. “I just want to talk to you.” The paw she has resting lazily across her stomach curls into a fist, clutching the sleep shirt she’s wearing; the word Narcanned is bundled up in her paw. She hasn’t admitted that she’s worn it nearly every night since he gave it to her, but a part of her also thinks he probably already knows. “I miss seeing you at work.”
There’s more noise in the background, and Judy’s pretty sure she hears the faint sound of a siren in the distance. “I miss you, too. Tell you what. When I get off my shift, I’ll come pick you up for breakfast and then I’ll drop you off at the precinct.”
Maybe it’s because she’s the furthest thing from nocturnal, but she can’t imagine trying to deal with coffee shops and late morning traffic after a night shift. “You need to rest, too.”
“I’ll get decaf. Now go to bed.”
“Okay, okay, I will.”
She doesn’t hang up. But, neither does he.
“Yes, dear?” Nick finally says after a long bout of silence.
“Did you know my ceiling fan rotates at 90 RPMs?”
“Oh my god,” he grumbles before he finally is the one to hang up.
Nick’s advice about having to go against her schedule becomes a bit of an omen.
For one thing, three weeks after she’s discharged from the hospital, Judy retakes and promptly fails her fitness test. The proctor assures her that it’s only by a very, very small margin and has no qualms about her retaking the test in another two weeks.
To his credit, Nick doesn’t say I told you so. But it might be pretty difficult due to the fact that he doesn’t see her before her shift because she’s too busy doing exactly what her doctor told her not to do and getting an extra workout in before she’s supposed to head home for the evening.
Her arms hurt. Her legs hurt. Her tail hurts. If she didn’t have eyes, she would have assumed that all her limbs had shriveled up and fallen off. To top it all off, her chest hurts, a faint comment from a doctor saying she might have had permanent heart damage floating around in her brain.
She’s fighting for her life on the train home, holding onto the pole with all the strength of a limp lettuce leaf when she shoots Nick a text message and tells him she’s breaking into his apartment and borrowing his bathtub so she can soak until she’s a prune.
Preparing for a shift, she gets nothing but a quick thumbs up in return.
She hates his apartment, somewhat due to the mess, but mostly due to the lack of light. His living room is in shambles, but his room and bathroom are pretty clean. He’s shameless about his own love of a bubble bath, evident by the three candles and half a dozen soaps for her to choose from.
She lights one candle, then a second, before she dumps way too many lavender scented soaps into the nearly boiling hot water. She’s soon enveloped in a blessed heat, her nose assaulted with the scent of slightly burned Eucalyptus, and tells herself she’ll just close her eyes for a minute, two tops.
The next thing she knows, she’s being shook awake, paws tucked underneath her armpits to prop her up in the icy cold water.
“Shit, Judy,” Nick admonishes, leaning over to blow out the candles on the counter.
“What happened?” She murmurs, vaguely aware she’s being manhandled, one of his arms under her arm to keep her propped up, the other stretched for a clean towel on the rack.
“You fell asleep.”
She’s awake now. “It’s morning!?”
He gently, but firmly, presses her against the porcelain tub to keep her from jumping straight out of the water. “No. It’s almost midnight.”
She’s not awake enough for this. “Aren’t you - aren’t you supposed to be on shift?”
“I am. But you weren’t answering my texts. So this is technically going on the books as a wellness check from Officer Wilde.”
A few more blinks, and Judy becomes acutely aware that she’s cold and she’s naked. When she tilts her head to look up at Nick, he’s all business as he uses the towel to squeeze dry at her ears. “I didn’t text back so you assumed I was asleep in the tub?”
“I was hoping for the couch or my bed, but I knew how tired you were and I…had a feeling.” He trails off, mouth is a tight line. "You’re freezing, baby.”
“Sorry,” she says, teeth starting to chatter. “I didn’t mean to.”
“You need help out of the tub?”
“No,” she mumbles. “I’ll be fine.” The muscles in her arms burn when she plants them on the edges of the tub and tries to lift herself up. It doesn’t go so well, judging by how she slumps back down, tepid water sloshing around her. “Or not.”
“C’mon,” Nick says gently. “I gotcha.”
It really does feel like an assist from Officer Wilde instead of Nick. He’s the epitome of professionalism as he helps her out of the tub before wrapping her up in the towel like it’s some trauma blanket. He makes sure she’s seated on the edge of his bed before he goes rummaging through his things so she has something to wear.
Another fox-sized graphic t-shirt ends up in her lap, this one firetruck red with the words Ask Me About How I Survived The Marsh Market Red Line stretched across the front.
“When do you have time to make these?” She grumbles as she struggles to get the shirt on over her ears. Nick ends up helping her do most of it.
“Nibbles made me that one,” he says, a ghost of a smile on his lips before it vanishes, his eyes meeting hers with concern. “You feelin’ okay?”
She shrugs, bowing her head, not really trusting how another I’m fine will sound rolling off her tongue. “Don’t you have to go back to work?”
“Mmm,” he hums, paw moving to stroke once, twice at her cheek. “I’m working right now. Wellness check, remember?”
Her mind is catching up, half-formed thoughts about how he can spin the fact on how he found a twenty-something year old rabbit unconscious in a bathtub not sound like her when he crouches in front of her, a paw on her knee.
“Hey.”
When she looks back up, he’s frowning, eyes almost a little shiny.
“Something like this can’t happen again.”
It isn’t said unkindly - quite the opposite in fact. He’s pleading with her, voice nearly a shake, such a quiet thing that it’s a good thing her large ears are still in working order.
A part of her wants to take a page out of his book, mumble out a joke about how it's severely unlikely she’ll ever come close to accidentally drowning in the bath, but he’s trying to wear his heart on his sleeve for her. The least she can do is not brush it off so carelessly.
“I’m sorry,” Judy manages to choke out. “It was an accident, I didn’t mean to -”
“Whoa, hey.” Suddenly she’s being wrapped up in his arms, cheek pressed to his chest. One of her ears brushes against the cold edges of his badge. “I’m not mad, Carrots.” Nick soothes. “I’m worried. You aren't really looking after yourself the way you should be."
Judy doesn’t have much grounds for a rebuttal. “I guess…” and he pulls back when she hesitates. “I don’t know how."
He tilts his head, ears turning. “Brain fog?”
There's an argument that maybe this whole pushing herself beyond her limits started way before the whole toxin situation, but the brain fog definitely isn’t helping. She settles for a middle ground. “Sorta.” She tugs at one of her sleeves, a nervous tick that Nick picks up on immediately. “I know I haven’t always been the poster child for self-preservation, but I’m also not used to my thoughts just…falling out of my head. Or, you know. Getting lost. Nodding off on the train. Or in today’s case, the bathtub.”
“Getting lost?” His brows draw together, confused, and Judy fights a roll of her eyes because of course that’s what he fixates on. “When did you get lost?”
Busted. “Yesterday,” she admits hastily. “I was trying to run to the store and then all of sudden I didn’t even recognize what street I was on and..” He bristles. “Look, it’s fine, I called Clawhouser, he picked me up and -”
“Clawhouser?” Nick whines. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“It was around noon. You were sleeping.”
“So wake me up. I would have come and gotten you.”
“I can’t call you for every little thing, Nick. That’s not sustainable, either.”
She can practically see him choosing his words carefully. “True,” he finally agrees. “You’re right. You did the right thing by calling Clawhouser.”
“Hard time getting that one out, huh?”
“Saying that was like swallowing nails,” he grumbles, and when he laughs it pulls the first smile she’s seen from him since he stormed into the bathroom. “Okay. Compromise? I will stop hovering if, you promise to lean more on our other coworkers to help you out while you heal. Capiche?”
“Gesundheit.”
“Oh, the rabbit has jokes, does she?”
She bats her lashes at him, and he snickers.
“Alright,” Nick grunts, standing up straight with a groan and a few pops of his joints. It’s really tempting to call him old. “The wellness has been checked.”
“Prognosis?”
“Ain’t lookin’ too good, babe. But I’ll be sure to write up just how pretty the bunny in distress I saved was in my report.”
She must be pouting, because he leans down and smacks a kiss to one of her cheeks, which is new - he usually sticks to the space between her ears. “Off to bed you go. I’ll bring you breakfast when I get off, okay?”
“Blueberry turnovers,” Judy says as she crawls under Nick’s blankets.
“I don’t take requests.”
“Not even for me?”
“Well. Maybe for you.”
After the bathtub incident, Judy makes a considerable effort to not give Nick a heart attack.
With a little more time, she ends up passing her fitness test. Bogo is ready to sign off on her mental status as well, but after an uncharacteristically vulnerable moment from herself where she admits that while improving, her brain is still a little fuzzy and she’s not sure she should be out on patrol without a few patrol shifts with a supervisor first.
So, while Nick is finally back on day shift, the Hopps-Wilde reunion date is still TBD. Bogo temporarily pairs Nick with Fangmyer while Judy…well.
Bogo’s her supervisor.
The beginning of the shift is quiet, far quieter than she’s used to, but Nick’s Judy senses must be tingling because she only suffers in suffocating silence for about an hour before the radio hisses to life in the shop.
“Hey, Hopps, switch to channel 13.”
She’s already got her paw on the radio, eyeing Bogo in the driver’s seat. He seems unbothered, so she switches the channels. “Hey, Nick. What’s up?”
“Got a question for you guys.” That’s Fangmeyer. “My sister’s roommate brought her boyfriend over, said he was going to stay the weekend.”
“Um.” Judy blinks. “And the question…is?”
“That was six weeks ago.”
“Oh, hell no.” That’s one of the zebros. Judy just isn’t sure which one. “Sister needs to kick that dude out.”
“Well, hold on.” That’s Francine. “He offer to pay any rent? Utilities?”
“Hah! Of course not.”
Judy figures now’s a good time to jump in. “It doesn’t always have to be about rent money, right?” When there’s not an immediate response, she scrambles. “What I mean is, does he do the cleaning? Cook? Maybe buy the groceries -“
Nick’s voice crackles in the channel.“Is he easy on the eyes?”
“Nicholas.”
“It’s an important factor, Carrots. There’s a specific formula for this kinda thing.”
“He’s not wrong, Hopps,” Hogsbottom says. “That’s a very good reason to keep a moocher around.”
“Let’s find out. What’s this tiger’s name?”
“Hold on…lemme look….Frank Stripes.”
“His name is Frank? There’s no way he’s hot. No one named Frank has ever been hot.”
“What about that doctor from that show, Fangdon something-“
“-okay one guy named Frank has been hot.”
“His name is Stripes? I thought you said he was a tiger.”
“Zebras aren’t the only ones with stripes, dipshits.”
Judy resists pulling out her phone to play along since Bogo is being unnervingly quiet. She’ll have to wait until the others do their social media deep dive.
Then, Nick’s voice comes back over the radio.
“Damn!”
Francine actually trumpets over the comms. Judy’s ears twitch. “He’s one of Gazelle’s dancers.”
“Clearly. Obviously. I mean look at his face.”
“And his ass. Oh my god, he’s the underwear model from the billboard!”
“…From downtown?”
“Yes!”
“Oh my god. I need that ad on a t-shirt.”
“Careful what you wish for,” Nick says.
Judy caves, fishing out her phone and doing a quick search to find that, yes, Frank Stripes is the name of a backup dancer of Gazelle, as well as being the centerpiece of the giant billboard downtown.
Beside her, Bogo gives out the shortest of grunts, which is as close to him playing along as she’s gonna get. She flips her phone so can see, watching as his brows slant up.
“Not bad,” he mumbles, and Judy can’t help herself.
“Fangmeyer?” Judy says over the radio. “Bogo thinks your sister should let Frank stay as long as he’d like.”
“Screw that,” Nick says. “Tell your sister to kick him out, send him my way.”
“You couldn’t handle all that, Wilde.”
“Oh honey, you got no idea what I could handle.”
That seems to be the line for Bogo. Even though his face is hard, his movements are gentle as he takes the walkie from. “Stop using backup channels to gossip.”
He’s promptly ignored. “Yo Chief,” Hogsbottom says. “How’d your wife like the reservation at The Palm?”
Bogo seems to hesitate, hand still on the walkie before he caves, rolling his eyes. “You were right, the vegetable medley was delicious.”
“Now hold on,” Nick says. “What’s the missus’ name? I still got out my phone…”
“Wilde!”
Nick will always be her favorite partner. But she likes working with the others, too. Especially when it's not all big crime and life-or-death stuations and they can just be.
Especially, when they all agree to wear the godawful t-shirts Nick ends up making on a Friday, just to piss the chief off.
The day Judy sees herself finally fit to return to patrol without the looming presence of a supervisor, Nick is temporarily back on the graveyard shift working a case.
For the first few days, they catch each other in the breakroom or by the lockers at shift change. Nick’s always far more awake even though he’s at the end of the shift than Judy is for supposedly being fresh and ready to go for the day. The insecure part of her brain says it’s the new normal from the toxin. The bigger, more incessantly annoying part of her brain says she’s just out of practice.
The first time she tries to surprise him with a coffee to get him home, she gets his order wrong. His nose picks up on the smell of pecan before he gets a taste and passes it wordlessly to Clawhouser, which kinda-sorta hurts her feelings until she remembers halfway through her shift that he’s allergic to pecans.
She gets it right the next day - splash of cream, no sugar, no flavor, no pecan - but he’s not around the breakroom for her to bother. Instead, she finds him in the lobby talking to Clawhouser
With a baby.
Well, she’s not quite a baby. Judy thinks she’s probably seven or eight, but she’s only confident with that guess because the baby in question is a rabbit, and Judy has seen plenty of those. The kid’s almost too big to be on Nick’s hip, but it doesn’t seem awkward in the least for him as he shifts his weight, swaying her back and forth in an attempt to keep her calm.
“Who do we have here?” Judy asks sweetly, jumping up to set the coffee cup on the counter.
“This,” Nick says brightly, but very quietly, “Is my new friend, Opal.”
Judy catches sight of her eyes - violet like her own - as she pulls her face out of Nick’s long enough to acknowledge her. “Hi.”
“Hi, Opal!” Judy chirps, channeling the voices she used on her tiniest siblings. “I’m Judy. It’s so nice to meet you!”
“See? I told you she was nice,” Nick says, dipping his head so his nose just brushes against one of the girl’s chocolate brown ears. It must tickle because she flinches and lets out a small giggle before she wraps her arms a little more snuggly around Nick’s neck. “Me and Opie here were just headed over to school for the morning.” He hoists her up a little higher. “She’s got a spelling test to ace while I am going to sign her in as quickly as possible so that old fart of a principal doesn’t have time to follow up on that threat to make me repeat the third grade.”
“You failed the third grade?” Clawhouser asks, face all contorted in skepticism.
“I almost failed the third grade. On a technicality.”
Ah. “Played hooky one too many times, huh, Wilde?”
He blinks, face blank while his lashes flutter. “No,” he says blandly. “I never skipped class. Skipping class would be bad,” he says slowly and deliberately, for Opal’s sake. “Don’t skip school, babygirl.”
Opal, however, is really taking a shine to hiding her face in Nick’s shoulder. “I like school.”
“I bet you do,” Nick says, not unkindly. “Smart girl like you is probably at the top of her class.” That gets a giggle out of her, and Clawhouser tries and fails to let out one of his squeals. “We’re just going to finish stealing one of these -” And he motions for Clawhouser to cough up one of the donuts from the box atop his desk. “And be on our way. Carrots, you comin’?”
She gets the hint. She shoots Officer Rose a text that she’s running behind before she grabs another one of Clawhouser’s donuts, much to his dismay.
When they get in the cruiser, she and Nick have one of their creepy telepathy moments where they both silently agree that Opal shouldn’t be subjected to sitting in the back of the cruiser like some arrested mammal. Judy lets Nick tease her relentlessly about her new criminal look when she sits in the back, leaving Opal to sit up front.
“I can take her inside,” Judy tells him when Nicks pulls up to the school, double-parking in an asshole move he always teases the Zebros about. Opal managed to eat most of her donut, though there’s a bit of chocolate and a single sprinkle in the corner of her mouth. “Check her in.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” Nick says as he loosens his tie and tosses it behind him to land on one of her ears.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying not to look like a stiff. Don’t want the kid losing any cool points with her peers.” He unpins his police badge and nametag before he sticks them in his pocket. “But this might be the best I can do. Alright,” he grunts, leaning over the passenger seat for the door. “Guess we oughta-“
His eyes do a quick check over Opal before he suddenly leans back, eyes like lasers on Judy. His once over on her is far longer. “Where’s your jacket?”
Judy pats down her uniform with a frown. “It’s warm. I don’t know why you have yours.”
He’s already shrugging out of it. “Gimme your shirt.”
She’s having a stroke. A very delayed stroke from the venom. It’s the only explanation for what she’s heard. “Give you my - what?”
“Your shirt,” he stresses again. “I need it. She's breaking dress code. My jacket won’t fit her. Your shirt at least stands a chance.”
Judy vaguely noted that Opal’s shirt was pretty big on her when she met her, but poor police work didn’t have her investigating what the shirt she had on said.
With a second look, she realizes it is a familiar blueberry color.
I Got Narcanned at the Tundratown Weatherwall
“Oh-my-god,” Judy hisses through her teeth, punching at his arm with every word. “What is wrong with you?”
Her punches must pack more of a punch than usual because he’s actually flinching, not just pretending. “There was a call last night, I had to take her and she needed something clean and it’s all I had-“
“You made more than one. Why did you make more than one-“
“It was cheaper to buy the shirts in bulk.”
“How much bulk.”
“...Twenty-five. But-“
“You made twenty-five I Got Narcanned in -”
Opal’s tiny voice asks, “What’s narcanned?”
“Let's say it’s something that happens if you skip school. But if it comes up on your spelling test remember: N-A-R-C -”
“Nick.”
“Honey, your shirt.”
Her exasperated sigh is Nick’s cue to cover Opal’s eyes with his paw. Judy nearly rips the buttons off in her exaggerated, rough motions which is all very necessary because Nick has clearly put a foster bunny in a dress-code breaking t-shirt about drugs and if she doesn’t act mad he’s going to figure out she thinks it’s funny when she can’t stop laughing.
For this third time, Nick stares at her bare upper chest with all the professionalism of a doctor or something. It didn’t bother her at first, maybe even came across as endearing the second, but she finds that this time it’s pissing her off.
She puts a little extra zest in throwing her discarded shirt right into his face.
She’s half naked and he doesn’t even care.
She’s zipping up Nick’s oversized jacket while he takes extra care to remove her badge and nametag, running his paws along the fabric to look for any other pins that might poke the young bunny. “Alright, babygirl. Let’s see if we can’t make you look as cool as me.”
Judy watches as Nick helps slip on the short-sleeved blue uniform over the graphic tee, buttoning it up halfway. The short sleeves of the undershirt are longer than the ones on the police uniform, so Nick swiftly rolls them up and cuffs them. “There.” He playfully pops the collar before he notices the icing on her face and takes the bottom of his own shirt to wipe at her face. “All set.”
Opal, as shy as she seems, doesn’t seem bothered by Nick’s antics; but she does unpop the collar, smoothing Judy’s shirt down her front.
“I’m gonna pick you up from school.” When Opal keeps fussing with her new outfit and deliberately not looking at her, Nick ducks his head until he finds her eyes. “Hey,” he says gently. “I mean it. You don’t have to worry about going with someone else. I’ll be right outside on the steps waiting for you.”
She looks up, eyes a little shiny. “...Promise?”
“Pinky promise. Foxes don’t break those.”
Her head ducks back down, chin almost to her chest. “Okay.”
Nick tosses Judy a wink, mouthing one sec at her before he guides the kid out of the cruiser and up the stairs.
He’s back in fifteen, climbing into the passenger’s side without complaint seeing as Judy commandeered the driver’s seat. He looks far more exhausted than he did when he left, groaning with a pathetic squeak while the heels of his paws rub furiously at his eyes.
“Noise complaint call went to shit last night,” he explains with another groan as Judy pulls out into traffic. “Big complex, off of Sarah Square. Belongs to some badger who has been a go-to for fostering for the last decade or so, but Opal said she hasn’t seen the old lady in three days. She was trying to get the baby red panda to stop crying, but you know. She’s eight.” He sighs, pinching the bridge of his snout. “Poor girl skipped school all week to look after the little guy.”
It’s a little and a lot of information all at once. “Opal’s a foster kid?”
“I know, I thought it was weird, too. But the city doesn’t have any record of aunts, uncles, grandparents - no other rabbit to call for her after her parents died. But,” He sinks further down into his seat with a yawn. “Don’t worry. That’s my mission for this afternoon. Do a little digging.”
“You should be resting. Someone else can do it.”
“Pot, meet kettle.”
She rolls her eyes. “Seriously. Dr. Rose and I can handle it. We’re supposed to do parking duty around noon, but I’m sure the citizens of Zootopia won’t mind a ticketless Wednesday.”
“Are you talking about Officer Rose? The skunk?”
“Yeah,” she says slowly, dragging out the word. “But she is a doctor.”
“Not really. She has a PhD.”
“That’s a doctorate!”
“She studied paintings. I’m not calling her doctor. Hey,” He pokes her arm a few times, excited. “Are the rumors true? Does she really smell like roses?”
“Gardenias,” Judy laughs despite herself. “She wears a lot of perfume, I think you’d sneeze your brains out. But you get used to it.” She shrugs, a small smile still on her face. “I guess you and I aren’t the only ones who have to fight stereotypes at the ZPD.”
“Judy Hopps, always with a kind word. You’re makin’ me look like the bad guy, you know that?
“Oh, you don’t need my help for that.”
He laughs, big and loud, and Judy can’t help her own sunny smile. But the moment wanes quickly, the weight of a wearisome night something Nick can’t shake off for long. “She says she doesn’t have any siblings - biological ones.”
“Opal?”
“Mmm.”
“It’s not common, but some rabbits aren’t born with a litter, it’s just the one. I didn’t have any littermates.”
Nick’s head swivels sharply. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” Judy laughs. “Why do you think my parents are so particularly up my case? I’m their eldest by a long shot. The closest siblings I have in age to me are three years younger.”
“Which in rabbit years is like, what? Ten?”
“Basically. Sometimes I feel more like their aunt than their sister.” Judy snorts. “I’m the only one of my siblings without a littermate.”
“Yeah, but you have siblings. Over two-hundred of them. I’m supposed to believe Opal doesn’t have any?”
“I mean,” Judy struggles to find an answer Nick would like, but the truth is that all the sad facts add up in her head. “Part of the reason families in Bunnyburrow have so many kids is because we’re all farmers. It makes sense with all the land and the work that needs to be done. But Opal’s from the city. If her parents moved here, it’d make sense they didn’t want a bunch of kids like mine did.” She glances at him from the corner of her eye as they come up to a red light.
Nick thunks his head against the back of the seat a few times, eyes closed. “Damn. I was hoping for something better for her.” He lets out a long breath. “But she’s alone. Just like I was.”
He’s mentioned it before, about how he uses his jokes so he doesn’t have to talk about his feelings, but he makes more of an effort these days. Truthfully, Judy’s always been able to see through the jokes - she knows he cares, that his heart could rival an elephant's - but he shows it off more. Wears it more proudly that sometimes, in moments like these, she can practically see it pinned to his sleeve.
“But she’s not alone,” Judy says easily. One eye opens, peers at her from across the console. “She’s got you.”
“Right.”
There’s an…odd lilt to his voice. It doesn’t click until she’s parking the cruiser, and sending a text to Rose that she’s on her way up. “ZPD officers are all registered emergency foster guardians.”
“Correct.”
“Which is why you’re picking up Opal from school.”
“Also correct.”
“And she’s at school because you probably thought it would be good to give her a sense of normalcy while her entire life gets uprooted. Again.”
“Sounds very emotionally intelligent of me, which tracks.”
“While also giving you enough time to look for a more permanent placement for Opal.”
“...Uh-huh.”
There it is.
“Nicholas.”
He groans, tugging on his ears. “I know, I know, just hear me out -” Judy’s already opening her mouth on the defense, but he’s actually got his paws laced together, pleading for some of the patience she so rarely doles out. She gives him some. “She’s just gonna stay with me until I can make sure she doesn’t have any other family. Then, I’m going to personally make sure that she gets put with a good family.”
It’s not his best plan. It’s not even close to the top ten. But maybe she’s been rubbing off on him more than she realizes, because he just sounds so earnest that she doesn’t have the heart to really give him hell for leading with his heart instead of his brain.
“When you get home,” and Nick’s already perking up, tail fluffing, before she's finished. “You need to clean. And not to Nick Wilde’s standards. To my standards.”
“Mop and sweep, got it.”
“Your baseboards better be spotless.”
“I will figure out what a baseboard is and it will be spotless.”
“Oh my god,” Judy grumbles, already reaching for her phone again. She texts Rose to explain that, actually, they may need some reinforcements for a new sort of police task. “We have to go shopping. She’s gonna need more than just that stupid t-shirt you put her in.”
“Well. At least I know where to buy them in bulk.”
“Oh my god.”
The first real case Judy and Nick work on together, she gets hurt again.
It’s a small thing and not at the same time. It’s nothing like the anti-venom fiasco, or even the injury to her leg from the museum when they dealt with Bellweather, but it does involve a small trip to the hospital for a few stitches and an overnight monitoring stay for a concussion protocol.
At first, Nick plays it cool. He brings a handmade card from Opal that says Get Well Soon, as well as clothes so she doesn’t have to wear the itchy hospital gown. She’s expecting the tired and true Narcan shirt, but instead she gets a new one - dark purple - that says Don’t Blame Me, Blame The NightHowlers.
He helps her into this one, and once again, it means he’s seeing her half-naked. Without concern.
“How many times are you going to see me naked before you realize you are seeing me naked?”
“It’s registering,” he says plainly.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Oh, absolutely. And one of these days, if it happens when you aren’t hurt and in need of my help, I’ll consider commenting on it.”
“...I’m not that hurt -”
“Nope.”
“Oh, come on! One review."
“Not happening, Carrots.”
She gets one of the nurses who treated her last time, which means she reminds the doctor overseeing her case to check-up on all her post-venom symptoms. They hook her up to a heart monitor, which beeps like crazy because. Well. Rabbit. They have fast heartbeats.
But then they tell her that it’s not rabbit normal fast and well.
That puts Nick in a bit of a tizzy.
“You’ll pace a hole in the floor,” she mumbles. She’d put a little more oomph in it, but she’s a little flat from the pain meds. And the concussion. But she’s gonna blame it on the pain meds. “Sit down.”
He does, but instead of using the chair next to her bed, he helps himself to the edge of her hospital cot. “You have a heart problem.”
“Abonrmality. Not a problem.” She shrugs. “And I already knew about it.”
“Oh.” He relaxes ever so slightly. “So you’ve always had this?”
“Since I was injected with the venom, yes.”
“Judy.”
She scoffs, throwing up a paw for good measure. It gives Nick a good excuse to reach for it, hold it tight in his own. “It’s not like my heart is going to explode.”
“But mine might.”
On paper, it’s another classic Nick Wilde joke. But in practice, she sees how real it is. Like his heart is hammering against his ribs, bruising him from the inside.
“I’m not going to survive this job if you keep getting hurt.”
Judy’s own heart stutters at his words, a ringing like a doppler effect coming and going in her ears. Nick stares at her, chest heaving like he just ran a mile, or chased after her in the Marsh Market, or pulled her out of the goddamn Red Line.
“...Do you want to quit?”
He gives a wobbly smile. “No. Who’d keep you alive otherwise?”
It’s not a joke.
There’s a tension between them, a rubberband of sorts. Judy’s incessant need to meddle is internally chanting pull pull pull, snap snap snap, but she knows if she’s careless, again, one of them is just gonna get hurt with no real resolution in sight.
So she taps the edge of her cot. “C’mere.”
Nick sits carefully, tail settling across her lap. He doesn’t like it when she messes with it, but he brushes it a few times back and forth, a peace offering. She gently brushes her paw along the end of it.
“I should be dead,” she tells him, and the fur on his tail prickles, his whole body stiffening. “I don’t know if they told you that.”
He swallows thickly. “They did.”
“Turns out, I’m stubborn as hell.”
“They told me that, too. But I already knew that.”
“I guess I was just waiting for you to finish our hero act.”
His eyes get all shiny. “Carrots…”
“It’s not fair,” Judy whispers. “To put that on you. To make you feel -” She takes a shaky breath. “To make you feel like you always have to worry about me, or save me, but.” She chews on the inside of her cheek. “It was…cold.”
That throws him for a loop. “What was cold?”
“The venom.” She hasn’t told anyone this. Not the doctors, not the therapist, not Gary, not even him. “But it didn’t make it numb. It was so cold, it burned. And I couldn’t - I couldn’t move.”
“Carrots -”
“It couldn't say anthing. It was so quiet,” she whispers. “If I died, it would have been so, so quiet. But it felt so violent.” She grabs his paw, but she doesn’t have the nerve to look him in the eye. “And I would do it a thousand times over if it meant it would never happen to you."
It’s too much for him; he lurches forward, collecting her in a hug of desperation and quickly detaching heart monitor leads. They disconnect, her machines beeping with warnings like she’s crashing, like she’s dead -
Nick holds her like she is.
“Don’t say that,” he whispers. “Please don’t say that.”
“But it’s true,” she laughs helplessly, mouth pressed into his shoulder. “I would have taken the venom for just about anyone. It’s why I joined the force.”
He says nothing, just holds her tighter.
“I should have died,” she says again. “But I didn’t. You saved me. You've always saved me. So I can keep saving others. Maybe my brain gets a little foggy, or my heart beats a little oddly, but for now, I can still do this job. I know you're always gonna worry about me. I just hope it's while you're still my partner. Because I think I only have a chance at doing this if I do it with you."
Nick moves his head, his cheek rubbing against one of her ears before he pulls back entirely, hefting a big sigh. “Sometimes the hero shit you say makes it really hard to stay mad at you.” He flicks at one of her ears.
“I won’t make your heart explode.” Judy tells him. “I promise.”
“I don’t know, sweetheart.” His smile finally returns, a shaky, precious thing. “You’ve got a pretty good grip on it these days.”
“She got straight A’s, you know,” Nick says around a loud sip of coffee. So loud, that if the abandoned diner in Sahara Square had any other patrons in it, they’d be sure to give him dirty looks.
Judy looks up from the file she’s been looking at, which is already covered in coffee rings and crumbs from the countless nights she’s poured over the facts and failed to piece anything together. She’s pretty sure Nick’s about to make her quit for the night. Part of the anti-heart explosion initiative. A personal tangent might buy her some time, though. “Of course she did. Opal’s a literal genius. She’s gonna be the first bunny astronaut.”
Nick bangs the table. “That’s what I’ve been saying!”
She softens a little at that. “You miss her, huh.”
He sniffs, trying and failing to look nonchalant. “The apartment's a little quiet, s’all. But she likes her new foster family.”
Judy remembers the hours upon hours Nick spent looking at all the options. He settled on two elderly otters who wanted nothing but to spoil some adorable kid. “You picked a good one.” She moves some stuff around, pulling out the suspect list. “It helps that she’s literally down the street from you.”
If people thought Judy had Nick wrapped around her finger, it was nothing compared to Opal. “Um, in case they need a babysitter, duh,” he scoffs. “Which reminds me, she wants to join the Ranger Scouts.”
“Oh! That’s….that’s good, isn’t it?”
“As long as they’re nice to her.” Judy bites her lip to keep from outright laughing at him. “I looked up to see the closest troop to her, but they’re all pretty far.”
“Aw. That’s too bad. Well, maybe -”
“So I applied to start a troop.”
“...You did?”
“Oh yeah,” Nick nods. “You’re looking at the brand new leader of Troop 1196.”
Judy looks him up and down.
“What are you looking at?” Nick finally asks, slightly peeved.
“I’m trying to picture you in the uniform…”
He waggles his brow, clearly not peeved anymore. “I look good, don’t I?”
“Mmm. Jury’s out.”
He goes for more coffee, but he’s out - so he takes a swig of hers, pulling a face when he finds just how sweet she ordered it. “I gotta get a camera,” he says, still pulling faces as he scrapes his tongue at the table. Judy throws a balled up napkin at his nose. “If I look good in that uniform, Opal is going to be - pardon my language - the absolute cutest. I’ll need a picture for my desk.”
“I'll let it slide," she says flatly before she rests her elbow on the table, a paw to her cheek. "Aww,” she coos. “Look at you. World’s Greatest Den Mother.”
“You know it. Slap it on a mug,” Nick says, holding up his own. “Or maybe even a t-shirt.”
“Please. You’d never wear it.”
“Try me, baby. Just try me. But first,” he taps the tabletop with his nail. “We got a case to solve.”
She gets him the shirt. And, lo and behold, he wears it - all the time.
One day, she tries stealing it - super soft and oversized, just the way she likes it - but she’s caught completely in the act. Literally.
“You look good.”
“What are you talking about?” She huffs, scrambling to get her head through the neckhole. “I’m not wearing anyth- oh, cheese and crackers.”