Chapter Text
He gets a photo from Fru Fru in the five minutes Judy is standing in line ordering their coffee. It’s an out of focus photo of a sleeping arctic shrew, a tiny fluff of black hair curling over the infant’s head. Nick smirks. This photo makes eighty-seven the new mother has sent them since the birth of her two-weeks-old daughter.
Judy plops down opposite of him. She slides his drink in front of him and has that faraway look she sometimes wanders into when she’s over thinking something.
Nick holds back on his suggestion for placing bets on how long it’s going to be before Fru Fru stops sending them group texts with progress on her newborn daughter. He just gives Judy a thanks and then takes a sip of his drink and makes a face. It’s not sweet enough, and usually when it’s Judy asking for their drinks, she makes sure to pester the barista behind the register to please add extra syrup, really, he hates it without enough sugar. He’s guessing she forgot in her momentary haze of thought.
“Okay, Carrots. You usually snap out of it by now,” Nick says through the straw clamped between his front teeth. His terrible, sugarless drink is halfway gone while hers is full.
Judy startles and looks at him as if she just noticed she wasn’t alone. She stares at him for a moment, her smaller paw absently toying with the soaked label starting to peel from her drink’s plastic cup. Nick raises a brow just slightly in question.
“They recognized me at the counter,” she says finally.
Nick doesn’t say anything right away. He looks around the café and doesn’t see anything out of the ordinary. It’s a new place they don’t visit regularly, but Judy is still riding that wave of fame and it’s not unusual that people stop them to babble and ask for a quick photo. Despite her dedication to her work— or maybe, because of it— Judy is always polite and accommodating for the citizens.
“I told you, signing some headshots and keeping them on you would make this whole ordeal less tedious. Sometimes chatterboxes just need a glossy sheet of paper with your adorable mug on it, sappy message scrawled in cute purple ink an’ all.” Nick sets aside the drink, moving his tongue over his teeth to get rid of the bitter coffee flavor. “Fame wears out quickly in a city as big as this, Carrots. Tough it out for a week more and you’ll be a nobody again in no time.”
Judy narrows her eyes at him after rolling her eyes. She’s used to the dry humor he dishes out. “It’s not that. Well, I mean, the fame isn’t a big deal. I love talking to people and making a connection, letting people see me as a person. I’d like to serve as an inspiration to others.”
Nick sits up a little straighter, his mind working to click pieces together. The thing about finally having a friend is that sometimes he has to do this emotional stuff. He doesn’t mind it because it’s for Judy but sometimes he wishes he could be a better shoulder to lean on. His mouth doesn’t work right when Judy gets that lost look and she’s quiet. It’s always easier to joke.
“Then what’s the matter? Was the guy a jerk?” Nick casually leans out of their booth and sweeps the area for a shifty looking character that could trip Judy into forgetting to ask for extra sugar in his drink. Yeah, he’s bitter— like his drink, damn it. “Point him out and we can finally do a little good cop, bad cop situation. You’ll be bad cop, obviously.”
She won’t ever humor his stupid suggestions because she is flawlessly good at her job but it still brings a quick smirk to his face to think of the tiny rabbit as some snarling bully with a badge. It’s too out of character for it to be serious.
“He was nice.” Judy averts her eyes from his and one of his ears quirks up in surprise.
Uh-oh.
Nick smirks. “Was he… handsome?”
Judy sinks into her seat, her light weight not even making a squeak against the red vinyl of the booth. Nick is nice so he doesn’t point out the adorable smatter of pink blush beneath her cheek fur.
“I don’t know,” Judy huffs impatiently.
Nick grins at her. “Hopps.” He leans closer to her over their table and lowers his voice as if they are two conspirators in a deep under cover mission. Judy looks mortified as she focuses intently on the condensation droplets of her untouched beverage. “Did this mysterious admirer ask you out on a date?”
Judy’s eyes widen into large, helpless, purple saucers and Nick’s grin nearly breaks his face in two.
“Oh. My. God.”
“Shut up!” Judy hisses to him when she scrambles up from her slouch. “Don’t—”
But Nick pops his head over their booth in a search for possible candidates on who could have the courage to ask his fierce and devoted partner on a date. Judy is struck still for a second on why on earth they are friends and then she dives over the table and yanks on his black tie, barely moving him down an inch.
“Get down, Wilde,” Judy warns. “Get down before I choke you with your tie.”
He holds back on making the sort of joke she hates and concedes with raised paws. “Alrighty, Carrots. You win.”
Nick sinks back into his seat and crosses his arms over his chest. They study each other in silence, Judy tense and waiting for him to pop back up to search for something that doesn’t even matter, and Nick calm and collected, fueling the bunny’s irritation. In that moment, she is reminded of how he sparked envy in her with his confidence that day they met.
She crosses her arms to mimic him and looks to the side. “It’s not funny.”
Nick eases up on his smirk. He shrugs. “No, ‘course not, Judy.” And it isn’t funny, not really, not if it’s going to make Judy anxious and stressed.
“He said— he didn’t even— Look, it doesn’t—” Judy grabs at her face with a paw and sighs in frustration.
Nick gives her a friendly smile and the tension in her shoulders eases a bit. He doesn’t like to think of it as manipulation, because that makes his stomach roll with disgust, but he knows she appreciates his smiles because she always gets that little sparkle in her eyes and he can’t believe someone looks at him like that.
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Nick admits.
“It came out of nowhere,” Judy blurts out while staring at the badge on his chest. She flickers her eyes back up to his. “I wasn’t expecting it. I was just trying to remember all of the syrups you like in your drink and then he turned around and we talked a little and then he asked… he asked me.”
Nick nods. “Hey, well, don’t be surprised.”
Judy frowns at him. “I don’t follow.”
Nick ducks his head in disbelief. “You’re joking. You have to be.” At Judy’s blank stare he sits back and chuckles, not unkindly. “Hopps, I guarantee you people have been giving you goo-goo eyes the second you walked into this town. When they stop you for an autograph, you really don’t notice the love struck glaze in their eyes at being in the presence of their hero?”
“I couldn’t have exposed and stopped Bellwether without you. Hero is such a powerful term, but if that’s what I am, then so are you.” Judy nods to herself and Nick nearly forgets how to speak with how confident she is.
“… Well, I can promise you they’re not blushing because of me when they stop us.” That’s the nicest way he can say that the prejudice he’s always experienced in this gigantic metropolis is still brewing, although it hasn’t been bothering him so much with Judy happy and bouncing at his side.
“I never noticed.” Judy kicks one of her feet under the table in a nervous habit. “Heh. I still feel like a dumb bunny sometimes.”
Nick feels a tug of sympathy for the country bunny, who would have been surrounded by her gaggle of family members throughout her life before Zootopia. Exposure to dating and flirting, even the explanation of how that messy stuff worked, would be minimal at best. He’s been there in the break room as her worry-wart parents give her a call and inquire about her as if she’s still their baby girl. It’s cute, but a little overbearing. She says they used to be worse and Nick had chuckled.
He rolls his eyes dramatically and waves a paw in the air, hoping to end this conversation before it gets borderline depressing. They start work soon and she needs to be focused.
“It’s okay, Carrots. Not knowing when people are flirting with you isn’t the end of the world.” He rests one of his elbows on the table seriously and swipes his paw from the left to the right in a definitive manner. “Just know it’s going to happen, and you don’t owe anyone a ‘yes’ if you don’t want to.”
For a minute, Judy’s tiny face flutters with confusion and distrust, and Nick worries he’s never going to get this whole ‘friend’ thing down, but then she looks hopeful and determined and she smiles back at him and he knows she’s going to be alright.
“Thanks, Nick,” Judy says softly.
“No problem, Hopps,” Nick leans back and stretches. “Now, the drinks here are terrible and we don’t have enough time to go to another café. You owe me later.”
Judy rolls her eyes and then shifts out of the seat. “Nicholas P. Wilde, I could almost swear you are also on our payroll and would have money to buy your own drinks every now and then.”
Nick slides out of the booth and pats down his uniform. He looks over his shoulder as his digits poke around in his pants pockets. He looks worried and Judy starts to tense up again.
“Oh, gosh. I seem to have misplaced my wallet, ma’am.” Nick flashes her a hopeless smile, meek and totally, totally fake.
“Har har, jerk,” Judy says as she bites her lip to keep from smiling like an idiot. “Okay, you big mooch. We’ll get some drinks that are 99% sugar after work.”
“If the remaining 1% is syrup, sounds like a solid plan.” Nick flicks his sunglasses open and props them onto his muzzle. “I call shotgun.”
They’re late to work for the first time since their partnership, and Nick hides a grin while Judy has to hastily explain how it’s her fault they didn’t arrive two minutes earlier. He makes fun of her for it at lunch.