Chapter Text
“Look, I’m sorry, okay! I wasn’t trying to go fast—!”
“Hey, hey—,” he chuckled, lifting his sunglasses up to place on his head, trying to show the teenage badger that he wasn’t intimidating or threatening. “—easy now, kiddo. I’m not trying to scare you.”
The badger closed his mouth, staring wide-eyed at the fox cop who just pulled him over. The fox knew that look all too well; the badger wasn’t convinced.
Damn, every other Central cop must be really shitty for drivers to be acting like this around here. He briefly wondered what category of cop—‘shitty’ or ‘less shitty’—he fell under… Hopefully not the same one as Hoggbottom.
He didn’t make a move, ensuring both of his paws were in view, as he rested them on his duty belt and asked, “You have a name?”
“Um—,” the badger hesitated for a brief second, before sighing in defeat. “Hector.”
The fox waited. The badger didn't make eye contact as he added, “…Sett. Hector Sett.”
“Okay, Hector, nice to meet you.” He held out a paw. “Nick.”
Hector blinked, looking a little confused at the fox. He didn’t take the fox’s paw. Well, never mind that—most mammals didn’t feel inclined to shake a fox’s paw anyway.
“You mind telling me why you blew past that stop sign over there?”
The fox jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at a four-way stop nearby. It was semi-hidden away, almost obscured by the orange clay buildings surrounding it. He wouldn’t have spotted the traffic violation if he didn’t have the eyes for hidden nooks-and-crannies and small details.
A wave of heat brushed past, and Nick resisted the urge to pull at his black tie. Any more, and he might as well not be wearing one. He’d even undone a button or two of his uniform shirt; damn, he really hated receiving an assignment in Sahara Square. The tall palm trees, with its large leaves hanging overhead where he was standing, were decidedly not helping; it shielded the sun but did little for the heat. And this police uniform was dark-colored and stifling.
He could really go for some ice cream.
“I didn’t mean to run it!”
Oh, right. He still had to handle the whole ‘running a stop sign’ violation.
“I can’t go to jail! Please!”
A bit dramatic—but Nick could empathize. As a kit and teenager, he constantly got profiled in parts of the city where there was an equal mix of prey and predator living together. Savannah Downtown, where he was from, was a majority-predator neighborhood, and even then, it still got pretty bad with the cops there, seeing as how he was a fox.
Which begged the question—why did he bother going through hell (also known as the Zootopia Police Academy) the second time around to become one of these shitty officers?
Pettiness or pride—pick one.
Because if the world was only going to see a fox as shifty and untrustworthy, then he was going to live as spitefully as he could.
“—I only ran the stop sign because I was trying to go home! My mom broke her arm, so I have to cook dinner, but I had to get groceries and—!”
“Calm down—you’re not going to go to jail,” Nick said. He made sure the badger could see his paws were off anything that could be deemed a weapon before resting an arm on the younger mammal’s car door. “…If you can think of a way to make the Weather Walls around here run a little cooler. I know I’m a fox, and we can live anywhere, but c’mon. This weather’s making me feel arctic!”
He laughed at his own joke. Hector didn’t.
Hm. Tough crowd.
“It’s so hot, in fact, that an officer could get a hallucination—,” he continued, examining his claws. He should probably trim them down. “—making him think he saw a teensy little traffic violation that never happened.”
Now that got the teen badger’s attention. His eyes widened even more, a pleasantly surprised expression on his face as he regarded the fox. “R-really? Oh, thank you, Officer! Thank you so much!”
“Just make sure you watch where you’re going, and follow traffic rules, Hector. Oh, and don’t speed.”
“Y-yes, sir!”
The fox placed his sunglasses back over his eyes. He shoved a paw in his pants pocket, giving a two-finger farewell salute with the other one as Hector drove off. And fortunately, the badger was smart enough to not speed off after being stopped by an officer—somehow, Nick had seen that happen one too many times.
The fox stood there on the street, glanced around, and sighed. He pulled at his ears in frustration.
…And yet again, his assigned partner left him to his own devices. Grizzoli must be in pursuit of a speeder or something, and he didn’t even bother to wait for the fox to finish citing a traffic violation before taking on another—if only to avoid having to deal with the only fox on the force.
That wolf had been grumbling about being assigned with the fox today, forcing Nick to make sarcastic quips and smart comments in retaliation, rather than allow Grizzoli to force him to stew in resentment. Nick didn’t know who had a worse time in the cruiser—him or Grizzoli. It did end with the wolf cussing him out a couple times, though. So, the fox called it his win; nothing was added to the swear jar from him as of this current shift.
Nick had only been working on the force for a couple weeks, but as expected, not many took too kindly to having a fox as a ‘trusted’ colleague. After all, the idea of a fox cop was supposedly oxymoronic. The stereotype of a fox was an extreme contrast to the whole “Integrity. Honesty. Bravery.” bullshit the ZPD and its officers were supposed to abide by.
Why was he even still doing this stupid job?
His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he took it out, feeling his brows unfurrow.
It was a text from Mom, thanking him for the money he sent. He could see the three dots as she typed. It was taking a while—probably a paragraph where she would be telling him to use his earnings for his own expenses and that he didn’t need to send money at all.
Yeah, right. Like he would stop now—he’s just gotten started. His mother had the tendency to feel bad for taking favors and money, but it was something he felt obligated to give back, starting with a generous portion of his first paycheck.
He simply texted back, “It’s fine.”
That got the three dots to stop—only for a bit—before they started up again. He could imagine her typing more furiously now.
He shut off his phone, shoving it back into his pocket. He’d deal with her many worries later. If luck would have it, maybe there was an ice cream parlor within walking distance to serve as his refuge from this heat. He wouldn’t even bother radioing Grizzoli right now; it would just put him in a worse mood than the heat already was.
Well, time was of the essence—if he walked slow enough, he’d be able to waste away some of the work day before he could find an air-conditioned joint to hang out in for lunch. The fox shoved his paws into his pants pockets, starting on his leisurely stroll.
He pulled at his tie even more, considering whether or not he would risk ruining what little he had of a professional image if he undid another button. He felt like he was already pushing it by rolling up his sleeves.
“—And that is two hundred!”
Some paces away, a bunny in a meter maid uniform grinned at a parking meter and a parked car. She took off her meter maid hat and shook her head, letting her ears spring free. They were up and energetic. She tucked her hat under her arm before hastily typing details into the citation printing device in her paws. She jumped, waving it in the air like a victory—as if she wasn’t about to ruin some mammal’s day because she chose to ticket them for going over a couple minutes past the valid parking time.
Nick let out an exasperated sigh and found himself heading over to where she was. She didn’t even see nor hear him come up from behind. She was still holding the printing device up, about to press the ‘print’ button, when he yanked it out of her paw, examining the details she’d inputted.
Yep. She was just about to print a citation for a couple minutes past noon when the parking validation had ended.
He felt her ears hit his chest as she snapped her head up, and he looked down, meeting wide violet eyes. He almost smirked when he saw her nose twitching violently. He’d give the bunny some credit, though; she didn’t look shocked for very long as her eyes narrowed. She turned around and backed away from him, clutching onto her hat, footpaw going straight to thumping rapidly on the ground.
“Officer Wilde,” she said in that forced professional tone she took that kind of irked him.
“Officer Hopps,” he said, forcing a cheery tone because he knew it really irked her.
He watched her eyes go from his face down to his uniform, knowing that she was taking note of his disheveled appearance—the opened buttons, rolled up sleeves, and loosened tie—from the disapproving look on her face. She also seemed to dislike it when he wore his sunglasses on the regular, which added to that careless appearance—he was intentional on what kind of shades to wear. He knew these ones, which especially spelled ‘asshole cop’, irked her the most. That made him smirk.
“This isn’t your jurisdiction,” she snapped, jumping up to grab the device out of his paw. He yanked it away before her paw could find purchase with it.
He chuckled, feeling more amused because he knew it grated on her nerves. She tossed him a more heated glare, dropping her hat to the ground and jumping up higher. She was making quite the valiant effort to grab the device from him. He should be grateful that Officer Fluff over here was a supposed and adamant do-gooder. She could very well land a good kick to his head. However, she wouldn’t risk getting on Chief Beef’s bad side in her first month at the ZPD, if it came out that she used violence against a fellow colleague—even if it happened to be the fox.
“Oh, please,” he scoffed as he yanked the device away from her reach at the last minute. “Don’t thank me yet for saving you from becoming a corrupt cop. Seriously, Hopps, you couldn’t give the guy another three minutes to come back and get his car?”
“It’s still a parking violation!” She shouted.
The smart comment on his lips died when she reached out and grabbed his tie, yanking it and pulling him forward. His eyes widened as his snout brushed against one of her ears lightly before he backed off quickly. He’d loosened the tie way too much in this Sahara heat; it came undone immediately and slipped off his neck. His paw shot up to his empty collar before he could grasp his tie.
She breathed heavily, backing up as she gripped his tie in her paw, holding it away from him.
“Hopps,” he said, his voice taking on a more serious tone. “Give it back.”
That tie was a gift from his mother, after he jokingly complained that the fabric of the one provided with the uniform felt cheap and itchy, because seeing her so emotional when he graduated from the police academy, finally making her proud, was something he was not yet comfortable dealing with. Feelings and sentiments were not the norm for foxes, who chose to show love by simply just being there for each other.
Hopps wouldn’t know that, of course. She didn’t seem to know anything at all—what with that naive, small-town mentality of hers. He knew from the start what she was all about—a callow country bunny from some podunk who fancied herself something better than a modest life as a carrot farmer.
And she saw that opportunity with the Mammal Inclusion Initiative that got her this job, as it did the same for him.
Overeager, persistent, and annoying… That was how the rest of Precinct One viewed her. Nick wasn’t sure who got more eye rolls and annoyed sighs from the police chief—him or this bunny.
“You’ve got something of mine too, Wilde.”
Good grief.
If he was still in the mood for smart comments, he would’ve waved the device in front of her face and said something like, “Oh no, I’m afraid this is government property, Hopps”.
Instead, he eyed the way she was gripping that tie, feeling his ears heat up. She was crushing and wrinkling it.
“I’m not playing games with you, Hopps.”
“You started it. Officer Wilde, might I remind you who has seniority? Are you going to go against a senior officer’s request?”
Again, he wasn’t in the mood anymore to make a quip like, “Adding yet another point to your ‘corrupt cop’ roster, Hopps”.
“By a week,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Might I remind you who’s the meter maid, and who’s the patrol officer?”
Oh. That must’ve hit a nerve. She gnashed her teeth, flashing those buck ones. If possible, her footpaw was thumping even faster.
“I’m a real cop,” she said tightly, as she’d said before. Repeatedly.
“Yeah, yeah,” he sighed out in exasperation. “You, me, and everyone else in the precinct, sweetheart.”
He held out a paw, and she gazed down at it, her nose twitching violently. He couldn’t quite thoroughly examine that look on her face before she dropped it to glance back up, giving him a blank stare.
Disgust, probably. She must be wondering why a sleazy fox was showing her his paw, probably also wondering why he was reaching out.
Probably also dreading that he might touch her.
His eyes dropped to her duty belt. Sure enough, the fox repellent was there, and she had the audacity to give him a smile the first time they met, holding out a paw and loudly introducing herself with that spray strapped to her belt.
“Tie,” he simply said.
“My device,” she simply replied, folding her arms and raising an eyebrow.
Nick looked up, making eye contact with the pig who owned the car she was about to ticket; he was sitting in it, not bothering to leave. The pig was clearly nosy enough to stay and watch the two cops go at it. Upon realizing Nick had noticed him, he immediately started his car and drove off.
Hopps’ ears perked, and she hastily turned around, watching the pig get away with a parking violation. She tried scurrying after, but gave up halfway, probably realizing that it was to no avail. She was never going to catch up to a car on foot or in that meter maid vehicle.
She stood there, her shoulders tensed, before she whirled around, opening her mouth to say something. Those violet eyes were already back to glaring at him. He cut her off by tossing the printing device back to her, and she caught it clumsily, almost dropping it. He slunk past her, grabbing his tie from her paw; she loosened her grip considerably to catch the device.
He didn’t even look at her as he ran his fingers over the tie, trying to smooth out the creases. He grimaced as he felt some, hoping they wouldn't be permanent. He let out an annoyed sigh, placing the tie back around his neck, under his uniform collar, and tied it. He tightened it too—the heat of Sahara Square and this tie constricting his throat were only making him see more red.
“Do better,” he said, his voice coming out cold.
She didn’t say anything, and he didn’t bother watching for her reaction, not finding this amusing anymore, as he walked away.
“I can say the same to you,” she replied, and he didn’t miss the way her voice shook slightly.
Hopps’ footpaw was thumping loudly. Too loudly.
He glared down at it.
So much for good luck from a rabbit’s foot—he was clearly experiencing the worst bout of bad luck right now, and he was muzzled against his will! That stifling experience certainly did feel similar to being stuck in records with her, or maybe he’s just being dramatic because the persistent rhythm of her thumping was increasingly grating on his nerves. Chief Buffalo Butt had to be on a different level of petty to be assigning the two of them at the same time to ‘records duty’ today.
Nick didn’t think the ‘grazing’ joke he made to the chief yesterday was that bad.
Hopps let out a frustrated sigh as she stood and examined some documents near a filing cabinet.
“This is ridiculous.”
“Mm, thump louder, Hopps. I almost couldn’t hear it over your talking.”
“I’m not talking to you.”
He glanced up to give her a blank look. She didn’t bother looking at him as she walked over to a desk chair, hopping onto it. She looked rather comical in it—a small bunny in a desk chair clearly made for a larger mammal. She even had to use her entire leg to kick up the height adjuster.
She sifted through a stack of papers, her nose twitching violently. Currently, she had taken up the only desk in this small space, and it was cluttered with all the paperwork she had to fill out because someone decided to write two-hundred—wait, scratch that—one-hundred and ninety-nine parking citations yesterday. It was a sight, really. She was knees-on-the-desk-chair and arms-deep in paper, moving her pen furiously across the pages. Her violet eyes darted every which way as she tried keeping track of everything going on.
He would laugh if he wasn’t so annoyed right now.
Because he was currently paying for the one traffic violation he didn’t report—seriously, why did a warning need to be reported too? Unbelievable how it could get him stuck with almost as much paperwork as Hopps. Ah, well, he was moving at a much slower pace than her. And because she was taking the only desk in here, he sat on the floor surrounded by bulky manila folders.
“Wow, I’m almost offended that you would prefer talking to yourself than me,” he said sardonically. “I happen to think I’m more pleasant.”
“Shut up; I’m focusing.”
She’d moved to sit fully on the chair, her footpaw thumping irritably against the desk.
“You’re the one who talked first. And if we’re talking about focusing, quit thumping—so the rest of us can think.”
“I don’t think you’d have a problem with that, Wilde, since you refuse to use your brain.”
He didn’t reply to her, sifting through his paperwork, squeezing his eyes shut and opening them again, because he had spent the last couple of hours just looking at words and nothing else. He swore he could even see words with the colons and blank lines to fill out information when he closed his eyes.
Hopps’ scribbling stopped, and he glanced up at her again, noting how she was watching him curiously. She looked away as soon as they made eye contact. Her pen went back to moving.
He smirked. “Sorry, did you want me to say something? I kind of stopped listening after you said ‘I don’t think’, but good on you for finally being self-aware.”
She just let out a frustrated noise, and he chuckled, shaking his head and going back to his work. No more words were exchanged as they both worked to get through the paperwork. He spied one of her filled out forms slipping off a pile and drifting down to the floor in front of him. He picked it up. He’d hate to admit it, but he had to hand it to Officer Fluff.
Her handwriting was sort of a mess but legible, and she filled out as much detail as she could. This had to be for citation number one-hundred and sixty-something, right? And she was still filling out this much. It seemed like she was set to finish all of this paperwork in one sitting, before eventually organizing them into the filing cabinets that surrounded them in this records room.
He moved to stand up, stretching. He’d rolled up his uniform sleeves again, feeling more comfortable doing some paws-on work this way. Seriously, maybe the thirties were catching up. His back was aching from sitting for so long. He glanced down, realizing that Hopps had been watching him. She looked away as soon as they made eye contact again.
Probably wondering why he was getting up, confused how he could finish before she could (he wasn’t even close to finishing).
He’d only known her for a short time, having worked at the ZPD for a couple weeks, while she’d been here for three, but Hopps was meticulous, if not overbearing. He wasn’t immature enough to intentionally let her fill out more paperwork when he knew he could prevent it, anyway. He also wasn’t mature enough to let her know he was being nice, though. He ‘accidentally’ kicked a pen over to where her desk was situated, near one of the piles she’d been forced to place on the floor because there was no more room on the desk.
He casually walked over, crouched down to pick up his pen, and slipped the sheet into the pile near him. He chanced a glance, relieved she didn’t see anything as she focused on the paperwork in front of her. He got up and moved to walk back to his own pile of paperwork.
“You shouldn’t have intervened,” she suddenly said, halting him in his steps. “Now, I’m stuck with more paperwork because of your mess than if I’d just printed out that citation.”
“Sure, blame the fox,” he said, feeling his nerves being grated on again. He turned around, and that feeling only worsened as he saw she wasn’t even looking at him. He would’ve absolutely sunk into the ground from utter mortification if she knew he tried to do something nice for her. “Be a cop, and blame anyone else but yourself—for going over a hundred tickets. No one asked you to do that, Hopps.”
“No one asked you to stop me from giving out the two-hundredth,” she said, stopping her scribbling and turning that heated glare on him.
He let out a frustrated sigh, a paw coming up to loosen his tie.
“Hopps, let me ask you this,” he said. “In your eyes, is any crime justifiable?”
She blinked, her glare diminishing as she stared at him, befuddled. “…If it was justifiable, it wouldn’t be a crime. And if you justify a crime, then that means someone is allowed to be above the law. No one should be.”
“So, what? You’d be willing to hand out fifty-dollar fines to everyone, not even considering that could be someone’s last fifty dollars? And they couldn’t even keep it ‘cause they parked for a minute too long, ‘cause they couldn’t rush over in time before a bunny got her paws on their windshield, calling them a criminal.”
Slam!
Hopps had jumped up, standing on the desk chair. She had slammed her paws forcibly on the desk, her eyes narrowed on him, the heat of her anger renewed as her nose twitched even more violently.
“I’m not calling anyone a criminal!” She snapped. “You don’t know anything!”
“I know more than you,” he said, returning her glare. “Listen, I’ll be nice, and let you know now that you can try all there is, but Bogo’s never going to respect you—it’s the cold, hard truth.”
She flinched at his words, her eyes going wide.
“You can write all those tickets—hell, go to five hundred—if you want,” he continued. “And you can go on and be that ‘asshole cop’ for the rest of us—but that’ll never earn you fieldwork.”
She gaped at him, her brows furrowing. The bunny had a nasty habit of trying to rush in and steal other colleagues’ calls, taking it upon herself to pursue cases that weren’t hers—it had been especially bad for her first two weeks, so this third week served as a penalty. She’d been forced into meter maid duty assignment for the entire week, and yet, her annoying persistence remained.
“Go back to where you came from, Hopps. This place isn’t made for a cute, little bunny.”
“Don’t call me cute.”
Her voice came out low, and he knew she could follow through with the threat it was laced with.
And he didn’t know what was wrong with him, but he couldn’t stop talking.
“Why are you even here?” He asked. “For your own ego? If you want to do fieldwork so badly, I’m sure that podunk you crawled out of would be more than willing to let you stake out on a field and make sure no one steals precious carrots out of the soil.”
Her eyes narrowed, fists balling. “Why are you even here, Wilde? You don’t even do anything! You cut corners! You freeload off everyone else—you don’t even bother doing the paperwork carefully, so someone always has to clean up after you! Unlike you, some of us want to be here! Maybe you should go back to where you came from—!”
She suddenly gasped, both her paws flying to her muzzle. Her eyes were wide as they regarded him.
And there it was.
He got her.
She always did annoy him. Always pretending to be nice and friendly and sweet to everyone else. He already knew she didn’t give him that same treatment because of that spray on her hip.
He shouldn’t be surprised—prey and predator relations had never been the best, and if he was assigned with anyone on the force, it usually was with another predator, since prey would throw a fit.
It was just his and Hopps’ luck that Chief Beef had it out for them.
Well, them being natural prey and predator—bunny and fox—didn’t help matters either.
Nick shoved his paws in his pants pockets and let out a forced chuckle. Hopps tensed, her ears dropping to her back.
“Wilde, I didn’t—,” she began.
“Save your words, Hopps,” he cut in. “That fox repellent you got on your hip says more than anything you’re going to.”
She glanced at it quickly and tried to hide it, as if he hadn’t already known it was there from the start. She looked guilty, with wide eyes and a twitchy nose, as she opened her mouth to try to say anything. She was rendered speechless.
“Y’know, we were in this room alone together for a while,” he said, walking closer. “I even had to skip lunch.”
She stumbled over her footpaws, tripping and falling back onto the chair; one of her paws clambered onto the desk, hastily trying to find purchase to it. She lifted her head, eyes widening as he came closer. She had collapsed onto her back, nose twitching fast. She yanked her paw away, holding it to her chest, when he placed his on the desk—his claws scraping on the paperwork there.
He hovered above her, narrowing his eyes, and tried to push down that nauseous feeling.
Fear. It was in her eyes. It made him want to hide away.
But he remained, keeping his eyes locked onto hers. She looked like she wasn’t even breathing.
“Are you afraid of me?”
She gaped.
He bared his teeth.
Then—
“Weren’t you thinking that I might eat you?” He jerked slightly forward when he said that.
She yelped, a paw flying up to shield herself as the other snapped open the strap holding the repellent. She blinked, going into full shock as her eyes dropped down to her paw reaching for the spray. She was shaking—it was a sight, seeing the seemingly undeterrable Officer Hopps like this.
“Go on,” Nick said, his voice dropping low. “Do what you wanted to do from the start, Hopps.”
The bunny squeezed her eyes shut, her nose still twitching violently. When she didn’t make a move, he scoffed, taking his paw off the desk and backing away.
He wordlessly moved to pack up his paperwork—unfinished, but he didn’t care. Maybe that was the problem. He continued pushing that nauseating feeling down. He didn’t spare her a glance as he walked past the desk and through the door.
Nicholas Wilde would call himself a lot of things—trust him, he liked to be self-aware.
But he didn’t think a masochist would be one of those things. He was now stuck doing paperwork in his cubicle late into the night. He’d walked out of that records room without the supportive documentation necessary to complete it, and he’d be damned if he had to walk back in there with his tail between his legs to grab them.
And sure, he could have bitten down his pride for the sake of not having to sit here, way past the hour he should have clocked out, in an empty headquarters, just trying to get it done.
But, that feeling kept gnawing at him and prevented him from doing what was best for his work-life balance. At least he was a nocturnal mammal, but it was going to suck trying to get through the early morning. A nasty and bitter black coffee was awaiting him.
And at least in the dark, he could finally allow himself to feel that guilt that gnawed at him after he left that records room.
Hopps deserved it.
No, Hopps didn’t know any better because she was naive and definitely came from a majority-bunny town.
No, Hopps should’ve known better because she lives in Zootopia now, and she’s proven more than once to be intelligent, even when everyone else underestimated her. And she acts all goody and “anyone can be anything”, but she’s really just a bigot.
He pulled at his ears, trying to forget her fearful expression. He hated making others feel that way, hated when he was perceived that way, like he was a threat from the get go.
And yet, somehow, he couldn’t help himself when it came to Hopps. Something about her just made him want to push all her buttons until she’s glaring at him furiously, further fueling that desire to turn on the spotlight and let everyone see who she really was.
Stop thinking about her.
He needed to get back to the paperwork. He tried to refocus on the words in front of him. His tail flicked anxiously behind him, adding onto his list of distractions. Well, right now, there’s only one item; it was a mammal, and—
His ears perked.
Fuck. He could even hear her in his head too!
Wait, no. It wasn’t from his head. He tensed, hearing her voice a few cubicles down. Curiosity got the better of him as he quietly stood up and looked around, finding a cubicle with a light source. He had been doing his work in the dark, able to see well due to his night vision, but Hopps—
He moved without thinking, slinking in the darkness, trying to be as quiet as possible as he came a little bit closer, just so he could hear better. He had to be at least two cubicles away from hers, so it’s not like he was being nosy. He was just trying to find his way to a restroom and tripped and fell into—
Uh.
He looked around, trying to find any clues as to who this cubicle belonged to.
—Fangmeyer’s cubicle.
“—fine, Dad. They’ve been treating me really well!” Hopps’ voice was high-pitched and way too chipper. “You don’t have to keep worrying!”
“But what about friends, Jude?” A male voice asked. It had to be her dad.
There was a pause, then—
“Um, there’s Clawhauser,” Hopps said. “He’s really nice.”
“Clawhauser? Is he a pred—?”
“You’re not doing anything too dangerous, right?” A female voice cut in.
Nick placed his paws over his eyes. Damn, he felt like such a creep, but still, he didn’t move, feeling his heart beat too fast. Some paranoid part of him wondered if he tried leaving now, would Hopps be able to hear his heart? Bunnies had acute hearing… but how acute…?
“You keep asking this.”
Hopps sounded considerably less chipper now. She took on that familiar tone she used with him—she sounded annoyed.
“Are you still meter-maiding?” Her dad asked. “Please tell me you are!”
“Look, I need to get back to work,” Hopps said hastily. “I still have so much left to do. I’ll call you guys tomorrow.”
“This late?” That female voice again.
There was a brief pause.
“…I’ve got important things to do now, Mom,” Hopps finally said, though her voice was starting to sound strained. “It’s been three weeks, so I’m bound to get more stuff.”
“They’re not working you too hard, are they?” Her dad asked. “They’re not sending you out anywhere too far?”
“That’s part of the job,” Hopps simply said. “Dad, I really have to go. Goodnight.”
“Wait, but Judy—!”
“We shouldn’t pester her too much, Stu! Goodnight then, bun-bun! Make sure to get plenty of sleep, though! You father and I do worry! And eat plenty! We just dropped off another box for you; I think you should be getting it this weekend!”
“…Yeah. Thanks, Mom.”
“Goodnight, Jude!” Her dad said. “We’ve all missed you so much, y’know!”
A pause, then Hopps said, “…I’ve missed you all too.”
“Bye-bye, hon! Talk to ya tomorrow!” Her mom said.
“Bye! We love you!” Her dad added.
“I love you guys too. Bye.”
The sound of clattering. She must’ve dropped her phone on her desk. There was only silence now. Not even the sound of a pen scribbling or papers being shifted around. Not even her foot thumping.
Just silence.
Nick kept staring at the dying cactus on Fangmeyer’s desk, trying to keep his mind on wondering how one could kill a resilient plant like a cactus and not on the conversation he’d just eavesdropped on. He should leave now; he’d overstayed his welcome—no, he was never welcomed—
His ears perked as a sound broke through the silence. Sniffling, then a small, soft sob. And it didn’t stop at that. She was gasping, as if trying to hold back her tears, but that only made it sound more painful. Hopps finally gave into a louder, strangled sob.
He sat there, not moving an inch. He ignored the pounding of his heart, that feeling that gnawed at him again. He tried to do what he did best—pretended not to care.