Chapter Text
If there was one thing about Nicholas Piberius Wilde, it was that he was self aware. And being a self aware mammal at his age was—he thought—an impressive feat.
And it was because he’s self aware that he knew exactly what it took to get under another mammal’s skin. Or on their last nerve. Jokes, ‘smart’ comments, quips—it was always a show to let others know he didn’t take anything too seriously, that he didn’t care.
That he was as non-threatening as they came, and he’d be tolerable enough for those mammals to slip some coin into his pocket, and he’d have a successful hustle for the week.
And then he made Judy Hopps laugh, and he did it again. And again. Saying anything he could to hear that familiar sound and feel the giddiness rise in his chest at the sight of her shiny eyes, at the flash of her buck teeth, at the shaking of her small shoulders.
The fox was self aware enough to know he was utterly screwed by the time he finally realized that he would say just about anything at this point to get a positive reaction from her. Or just a reaction.
“Went zero for five on trying to make Bogo crack a smile today,” he said, pulling out his desk chair as soon as he reached his cubicle and plopping unceremoniously onto it. He used his leg to kick off his desk, rolling his way over to Judy’s cubicle, his head turned toward her, noting the way her ears twitched slightly to indicate she was listening to him. Once he came to a stop, he spun the chair to sit backwards on it, resting his arms on top of its back.
It was his fourth day on the job, and he had just finished up a progress meeting with the chief about his settling into the job, as well as ‘Hopps’ and Wilde’s PR Cleanup Plan’ after the disastrous third day mess when they’d accidentally trashed a Yak family’s smoothie joint during an on-paw pursuit. In said meeting, he had nothing but good-natured comments and productive quips to add to the conversation. The chief cut the meeting twenty minutes short.
“And you say I’m the one who doesn’t know when to give up,” the bunny said, tilting her head toward him.
From where Nick was (right behind her chair), he had a clear view of her computer screen. She had a very wordy document pulled up with each paragraph bulleted off neatly into organized sections where there were additional bullet points under those bullet points to organize them. There had to be at least four tiers of bullet points. Nick noted the file name, ‘Big_Apology_to_Yaksons’.
He said the c-word in his head as his eyes drifted to the back of the bunny’s head. Judy turned to look at him. And under the pressure of those bright and very purple eyes, he quickly averted his gaze back to the screen.
“You’re proving my point, Carrots,” he said, pointing to her screen, to the needlessly long document.
The two of them had been placed on penalty for the time being and tasked with preparing some ideas on how to fix their mess so the ZPD didn’t look bad, amongst other boring things, like clearing old records and finishing up some reports for Judy’s cases she’d been doing before Nick arrived. Nick’s ideas had to be two or three words scrawled on a post-it he left somewhere on his desk.
The whole idea of having to come up with ideas to mediate the reputation of the ZPD was hilarious to him; seriously, shouldn’t that be the work of the HR mammals? But apparently, as Judy emphasized, there are more facets to being a cop, and one of which was being a community member. Or striving to be. Nevertheless, he thought it was futile; when has the ZPD ever not looked bad?
Judy shook her head, turning back to her screen to continue typing up a storm. “Whatever. At least what I’m doing is actually doable. I’ve never seen the chief laugh at anything. Trust me, Nick. It’s a lost cause.”
The fox gasped, giving her a mock offended look. “You think I can’t do it.”
The bunny turned her head just to give him a smirk. “Do I think that? Yes. Yes I do.”
“No,” Nick suddenly said. He made himself sound serious. It was enough to get Judy’s full attention back on him. “No, this won’t do it.”
Judy’s brow raised as she regarded her partner. She leaned back on her chair and angled her face more toward the fox, who forced himself to wheel back a little before they could touch noses.
“Oh yeah, Slick?” She said, a corner of her mouth turning up. “Maybe Bogo just doesn’t think you’re funny, there’s really no need to force it.”
Nick schooled himself into that well-rehearsed grin—the one that he’d plastered on his snout every single day since before he’d even met his bunny.
Judy’s smirk fell. “Oh no. Oh no you don’t.”
“What?” Nick asked, feeling his tail shift under his chair, a wondrous feeling bubbling up in his chest that he kept from showing in his body language.
“You’re doing that thing with your face,” Judy said, narrowing her eyes. “Like you’re looking for a good hustle.”
“Say that again to the fox, why don’t you?” He said, but nothing could wipe the smirk off of him.
“Ugh, you know what I mean,” Judy said, pressing a paw on her cheek and shaking her head. To Nick’s amusement, the insides of her ears tinged red, but she still refused to let the previous topic go. “Okay, spill. What’s it you're planning?”
“Carrots, I’d like to propose a bet.”
“Denied.”
His grin widened. “You didn’t even hear my proposal.”
“Any bet made with you is one I’d immediately lose.”
“So you admit defeat? Is that the Hopps I know? The giver-upper?”
Her eyes widened, and she gasped. “You are goading me!”
“Is it working?”
Oh, if he could have those eyes on him for an entire lifetime, he wouldn’t need water anymore to be replenished. The bunny stared at him, her resolve slowly breaking as curiosity got the better of her, just like he knew it would.
Finally, she gave in. “Depends. Start talking, Wilde.”
He pressed his palms together and pointed them at her. “If I get a laugh out of Bogo, I win.”
Judy snorted, shaking her head. “I don’t know why I got worried there for a second.”
“You’re that confident?” Nick asked, tilting his head. He knew he was baiting, goading her into doing what he knew he could get her to do if he’d just press a little more. “Guaranteed—one of my jokes will get him to burst into tears within the month. You’re going to be eating your words, Carrots.”
“Har, har,” Judy said, rolling her eyes. “You know what, I’m so confident that I’ll do you one better.” And there it was. He felt his grin deepen. He got her. “If you get a chuckle out of him, I’ll do whatever you want.”
Nick eyed the bunny, scanning for any signs of uncertainty, but no. She really didn’t think he could get Bogo to laugh within the month. To tell the truth, he didn’t even know why he made that bet. Maybe it was just the way they were going with the conversation, how he loved to talk to her because she just got him, could pick apart his words and fire back until he had no choice but to keep trying to catch up until it ultimately landed on a bet he’d likely lose.
And he didn’t mind at all.
He’s self aware enough to know that was probably not something you should be thinking about when it was about your work partner and worse, your closest friend.
Get your head straight, Wilde.
He had been trying to shake off feeling this way ever since he’d met up with her in person again. The first time he’d hopped off the train back to the city during a break from the police academy, he’d spent it with her, and it was like he was seeing a whole new mammal. Or maybe it was him who’d changed. Either way, his breath hitched as the bunny slammed into him, arms wrapped around his torso tightly to greet him at the train station.
And then he found he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Because it had to be that she just looked different… but not different at the same time. Maybe it was because he was just used to seeing her face over Muzzletime for the few times he’d been allowed to use his phone. Her voice sounded different but the same too—that light, cheery lilt that made his ears subconsciously perk. She sounded better in person than through those decades-old speakers of the payphones stationed in the academy’s cafeteria, that’s for sure.
He went straight back to the academy after that week-long break with his tail between his legs, trying to justify that it had been a fluke, and it was probably because he was back in the city and back to familiarity. That he was somehow associating all of that with Judy, and he was just feeling the newfound appreciation of having someone in his corner.
Then, he graduated, and everything that she’d been hyping up to him, everything he’d been through at the academy, and the first initial shock that he felt when she asked him to be her partner had all become a reality.
And he still couldn’t believe he was seeing her like it was the first time again, but this time, she didn’t have to hug him so tightly for his breath to catch. Just the mere sight of her for the first time, each time, for each day, and he couldn’t believe any of it was real.
Nick liked to think of himself as an introspective mammal; to know one’s flaws led to understanding the strangers around you. His diagnosis for this feeling—he probably hadn’t had a friend like this in a long while.
Sure, there was Finnick, but he and Finnick go out for beers, have ‘business’ discussions and play cards. They do not make frivolous bets and bicker over the phone about niche topics, like ‘Carrots, what do you mean you like folding laundry?’ and ‘You sleep on your back only, Nick?’. So yeah, it made sense why a fox like him would get attached. Solitary animals, remember?
So, he pushed that feeling down because Nick Wilde did not get overly excited over something as silly as the fact that Judy Hopps was willing to do anything for him, even if what it took for her to do that was to win a stupid bet.
“Whatever I want?” He repeated, a show of surprise on his face. “Should I ask you to give me that in writing?”
“Just for you—sure,” Judy replied, placing a paw on the side of his face and patting. He blinked at the sudden touch, involuntarily swallowing. Before he knew it, she was turning back to her desk, flipping through the pages of a filled-out notebook. Her handwriting was a scrawling mess he couldn’t be bothered to read at first, but Nick Wilde had a strange fascination with everything Judy Hopps, so he could tell right away that the words matched the ones on the digital document she had blasted on her computer.
Before he could make a snarky comment about that, Judy shifted her notebook to the side, lifted it and placed it back down.
“Cheese and crackers, where did my pen go?” She muttered to herself. She scanned her desk, shifting around documents and even an entire manila folder thick with packets. Still no pen. It was no wonder she couldn’t find it. Judy usually kept her station neat, entering the work day with an organized setup and cleaning up after herself before the shift ended. However, when you caught her in the middle of the work day, when she was deep in the zone, everything was scattered—an organized mess only she could decipher. Except for finding a pen, apparently.
She sighed. “Oh, whatever.”
Then, she brought her legs up on the chair, so that she was on her knees and leaned her entire body over to the far right side of her desk, where her pencil holder was situated.
Nick resisted the urge to wheel away as fast as he could and stare down at his desk for the rest of the day if only to quell the muddled mush his brain just became because his eyes had landed on Judy’s tail, watching it shift from side to side before he had to avert his eyes away as soon as he realized they were drifting down.
His heart was beating rapidly in his chest at the near-cataclysmic mistake that could have just happened. Being interested in the emotional sense with another mammal could be justified as simply being a friend, a close confidante, a shoulder to lean on. Nothing more.
When interest became physical—
No, it’s not physical. It’s not even forming. It’s barely a thought! A mere abstract concept! There’s no way—
“Alright, Slick, there you have it.” A piece of lined paper that was neatly torn from Judy’s notebook appeared in front of his face, touching his nose. In her fancy handwriting, the paper stated exactly what Judy offered if he could win the bet. The last bit of the sentence made his ears embarrassingly perk up.
—anything Nicholas P. Wilde wanted.
He couldn’t resist teasing her a little, even as his heart was hammering in his chest. He schooled his face in that comfortable smug grin and pointed below the sentence she’d written. “You forgot to sign it.”
Judy’s smirk dropped, and she turned around to scribble her signature. Then, she presented the page less dramatically this time. He took it, making a show of carefully reading it like it was a detailed contract, despite the page having only one sentence on it.
“Oh… I think you missed something else, Carrots.”
“You are really laying this on thick.”
He gave her a smirk as he turned the paper around and shook it in front of her face. “You forgot to state what you wanted if I lost.”
Without meaning to, he placed his head on the arm still resting on his chair, lowering himself so that he was meeting her eye level.
“Do you want me to do anything for you too?”
Judy’s eyes widened, and she blinked. She stared at him, nose slightly twitching. He suddenly felt a pang of guilt; were his teeth showing too much? He did make a point to avoid doing anything that seemed… too predatory to her. They may have known each other for maybe a year and a couple months, but the total spending time together in person was probably a few weeks. He didn’t know what exactly it was that crossed her boundaries, but he never wanted to cross it. Call it care or force of habit, he never wanted to be that fox.
He almost was about to lean back to make her more comfortable before a ping notification on her computer grabbed her attention. She gasped, moving to grab her notebook and get off her chair, forcing Nick to wheel out of her way.
Her progress meeting with Bogo was next—the chief for some reason thought it was a better idea to meet with Hopps and Wilde separately for the Yaksons’ Incident PR resolution; a very cynical but probably right reason Nick could think of for that was because Bogo had been thinking the fox would just leech ideas off of Judy. Nick avoided getting himself offended over his own speculation; he was and still was a business-savvy mammal. A PR stunt was just a professionally-disguised, publicly-acceptable con—that would be his forte, but the thought of scribbling more than a few words on a post-it made his throat dry up.
He was no Judy Hopps; he wasn’t going to sit down and write a full blown detailed plan. In his own twisted logic, that just showed he would be caring too much, and it was an open door to vulnerability, and that meant it would be his genuine efforts that were open to criticism.
And what did it even matter if he and Judy had to present their ideas separately? It wouldn’t have mattered if they were working together on it in the end anyway.
Nevermind that. At least Nick got his meeting over and done with.
“There’s no way he’s going to read all that, Carrots,” he called after her because he couldn’t resist getting into another verbal back-and-forth with her.
The bunny didn’t turn around as she walked off, but she still replied, holding up her notebook as she said, “That’s why I emailed him a copy!”
The fox shook his head, smiling to himself before he wheeled back to his cubicle. He placed the piece of paper with Judy’s written agreement for the bet on his desk and read it again.
Then, he forced his eyes on the computer screen and opened up a report he’d been working on from one of Judy’s previous cases that she still needed help filling out paperwork for. It was boring work, sure, but it beat having to sit alone with his thoughts that were definitely not floating back to the sight of Judy’s fluffy tail as she walked off to her meeting.