Archive of Our Own ^beta

Nick doesn't... love being a police officer. As a kid, he had always feared cops (in his mind, anything that could threaten his mother was as good as deadly), and as an adult, he had learned to trust that instinct. Even when he wasn't doing anything wrong, even when he was a child, his species alone had tagged him as a threat. Nick never wants to instill that same fear in anyone, innocent or otherwise. But while Nick does not love being a police officer, God help him, he does love Judy, and he knows that he'd follow her to the ends of the Earth.

... Even to team building karaoke nights.

"I'm so excited!" Judy squeals for the third time in as many minutes. "Do you think Bogo'll sing? I'm told he never has, but he's such a stickler for participation. You'd think he'd follow his own rulebook..."

Nick doesn't look up from his slouched position in the passenger seat, his hat over his eyes. "As long as the booze is free and flowing, I don't care."

It's true; Nick isn't keen on performing for a crowd, never mind his coworkers, but he knows as well as anyone that three drinks deep everything starts to look like fun. Unfortunately, Judy scoffs, which is never a good sign.

"Oh please, this is a function for law enforcement, do you really think the alcohol is going to be comped?"

Nick sits bolt upright, his hat tumbling into his lap. "The alcohol isn't comped?!"

Judy looks away from the road long enough to shoot him an unsympathetic smile. Nick groans and sinks even deeper into her Honda Pawdyssey's sticky pleather seats. "What is the point of karaoke if I can't even get stinking drunk!"

"Sucks to suck," she generously comforts him. "Ooh, ooh, this is my song!" She turns up the knob on her radio, bouncing in place. Nick recognizes the first few crooning notes of Secret Love Song by Little Minx and Jason Debullo. Judy hums along, drumming on the steering wheel as if she, and by association Nick, hasn't heard this song a thousand and one times already. She puts the cheesy ballad on any chance she gets, as dedicated to it as she is to everything she loves. Nick wants to find it obnoxious, but he finds himself frustratingly endeared by it. Judy Hopps, loyal 'til the end, even to her favorite pop song.

Nick would find it a lot easier to be annoyed by the behavior if the song weren't admittedly kinda catchy. He watches his partner passionately lip synch as best she can while driving and hums along to the harmony, nodding his head to the beat. He knows it by heart whether he wants to or not, so what's the harm? If Judy were going to be embarrassed of him, she would have been by now.

When they pull into the parking lot, it's still fairly empty, Judy's punctuality failing to rub off on the rest of the force, but Nick takes it as an opportunity to pre-game as best he can with Judy's judgmental stare over his shoulder. He doesn't get far before the rest of the ZPD begins to file in, but he doesn't mind, content as long as he has Judy at his side smiling ear to perky ear.

A half hour in, the two shots Nick managed to throw back are working their magic, and he's... actually seriously enjoying himself. As ill suited as he is to the police force, he's come to like almost all of his coworkers. They're a more lively bunch than he'd expected for sure, and rather than being judged for his tipsiness, he finds the majority of his fellow officers slowly joining in. Even Judy eventually caves and snags a margarita, something Nick encourages heavily.

Halfway through her drink, the booze is having its intended effect. Judy looks relaxed, leaning back in her chair and laughing or clapping along to the music. Nick hopes her low tolerance distracts her from his staring. Even if it doesn't, she must be used to it by now. He doesn't bother tearing his eyes away.

When Captain Hogbottom and Truffler begin to snarl out Bring Me To Life, though, Judy sits up so quickly you'd think she'd been electrocuted.

"Nick. We have to sing Secret Love Song."

Nick's long island iced tea goes down the wrong pipe. He coughs and thumps his chest, shaking his head. "Absolutely not," he rasps. "I don't sing."

"Oh come on, it'd be fun!" Judy insists, tugging on his arm. Nick hides behind the rim of his glass, forcing his posture to stay relaxed, or at least relaxed-looking.

"Not happening, Carrots."

Judy crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow. "What happened to the fox who belted it out at the top of his lungs for me?"

Nick huffed. "That was hardly a stage-"

"You sang it in a hospital, Nick, you could not have picked a more packed venue."

"You had just gotten stitches!"

Oh, great, here come the eyes.

"Please?" Judy pouts.

Bring Me To Life is fading out, and the audience is applauding, and Nick really isn't ready to reveal to the entire police force how whipped he is for this girl. He responds to her weapons-grade puppy eyes with the same half lidded smile she'd granted him in the car to ensure she knows what it means: tough.

Nick should have known better than to challenge Judy Hopps.

In an instant, her pout disappears, replaced by a determination fueled by cold hard spite. "Fine," she says, standing, and Nick's arm is very cold all of a sudden. "I'll do it myself."

Nick watches slack jawed as his partner marches up to the stage. By herself. To sing a romantic duet.

"They won't even have it!" he calls after her. She tosses her head, her way of saying we'll see about that. She and Nick hardly have to talk at all these days.

Nick watches her flick through the song selection and preemptively plasters on his smuggest smile. If they have it, he'll eat his uniform.

A video pops up on the projector.

Nick pales.

And suddenly, she's singing.

Nick has heard Judy sing before; never with any intent to truly perform, but she hums to herself often and will sing along to the needle drops in movies if she knows so much as an eighth of the words. But this? This is a different ballpark entirely.

Judy's voice is pretty. She's a little stiff at first, glancing at the projector even though he knows she knows the words, but when her fellow officers cheer at her tentative first verse, she catches Nick's eye, and just like that, she's in her element.

She holds his eyes for a line or two, gesturing to him and singing, "'Cause I'm yours..." Nick almost can't properly shrink into himself for how hard Francine and Delgato are jostling him. He knows this is his punishment for being a killjoy, but he still plans to give her hell for it later. The rumor mill is going to have a field day.

Judy thankfully doesn't focus on him long, turning to the audience as she croons about her secret relationship, patting her chest as if truly heartbroken. Before Nick can settle back into his lovesick staring, Judy is back on him, gesturing for him to join her on stage. His heart beats double time, and he barely feels his coworkers nudging from either side.

Hell no, he mouths. Judy briefly sticks her tongue out at him (real mature) before seamlessly returning to her singing. God, her voice is beautiful. Nick pictures her in a church choir and wonders if she ever sang for her family when she was younger. When she isn't busy trying to publicly humiliate him (hell, even when she is) Judy sings lightly, perfectly on key on every note, high or low. She even adds a little vibrato as she grows more confident, making the fur on Nick's neck stand on end.

She doesn't need me, Nick tries to convince himself. Alright, so he feels a pinch guilty watching her close her eyes during the chorus, overtaken by her favorite song, but Nick is stubborn, goddamnit, and it'll take a hell of a lot more than a boo-boo lip to drag him out of his seat.

As the chorus draws to a close, Judy glances nervously at the projector, realizing that Nick really is leaving her out to dry, and she really is going to have to sing both parts.

Oh, fuck it.

"When-"

"When you're with him, do you call his name?"

Judy gasps when Nick's voice takes over, and she lights up.

It's shit like this that keeps him on his toes; a year and a half ago, Nick wouldn't have been caught dead singing a schmaltzy pop song in front of a horde of cops, but the smile on Judy's face makes the audience's whoops and hollers fade away. He hauls himself out of his seat and slinks up to the stage, over-singing all of Jason Debullo's obnoxiously auto-tuned notes as if to convince the audience that he's doing this ironically. Judy clearly knows better, biting her lip and bouncing on her heels to keep from outright cheering. "Would you leave if I was ready to settle down?" he sings, climbing the steps to the stage. "Or would you play it safe... and stay?

"Girl you know this, we got a love that is hopeless," he sighs, dropping a wrist against his forehead in a facsimile swoon. He knows he's flat (he isn't exactly a singer by trade), but Judy looks downright starstruck, the bar's tacky colored lights dancing in her eyes.

When she leaps into the chorus Nick falls down to the harmony with ease, used to their routine. He could almost forget that his boss is ten feet away nursing a whiskey and raising his eyebrows. When he does remember, though, Nick takes the time to face him and do a sexy shoulder shimmy, if only to watch him snort into his drink. Judy giggles through one of her notes at the display, her voice breaking, and Nick can't help but swell at having made her laugh.

Fuck, he hates this, he hates the way his juvenile little crush makes him preen like a jackass, but he just can't help it. He leans into her space, gesturing like a rap star during the bridge, and Judy picks up his energy immediately, brushing her ears back and- woah, moving her hips in a way that would embarrass her mother and is humiliating her partner.

Nick closes his eyes to avoid gawking, choking out the line about love making like a preteen. Judy doesn't appear to notice, completely immersed in her performance, and she touches him for the first time since she bounded up to the mic, drawing a finger down his chest.

It's a joke, he knows it's a joke, but the feeling of her claw on his collarbone as she croons, "someday," nearly knocks Nick over all the same. He recovers just in time to realize that he was supposed to be singing along, and that this is his entrance, shit, shit, shit-

"Why can't I hold you in the street? Why can't I kiss you on the dance floor?" he murmurs. Some absent part of his brain recognizes that he forgot to ham up the most ridiculous run in the song, but the majority of him is too focused on Judy's face, those wide, expressive eyes staring into his, focused, and... something else, something he can't quite put his claw on.

"I wish that we could be like that, why can't we be like that?" She whispers. Then, in an instant, her eyes widen and the expression disappears. She turns to face the audience and belts out her next words: "'Cause I'm yours, I'm yours!"

Thank heavens it's a long note, it gives Nick just enough time to swallow his spit and come back to reality, shake off the sudden intimacy of the moment and remember that Bogo is here, fucking hell, is Bogo still here? Nick is going to get shit on eight ways to Sunday when he next clocks in, but Judy's cute little grin while she hums in the car tonight will be worth it.

Nick tries to finish strong, bringing the stupid dance moves back into play to distract from the fact that he can't get anywhere near the high notes. Judy even throws in a little twirl, glowing like the morning sun. "Why can't I say that I'm in love? I wanna shout it from the rooftops!" they wail in unison. The force is going nuts, the bastards, wolf-whistling and stomping like Judy just proposed. You'd be forgiven for assuming she had from the way Nick's tail is fluffed up, but he flips them off for the courtesy anyhow. "I wish that it could be like that, why can't we be like that? 'Cause I'm yours!"

When the chorus crests and Nick is standing sweat soaked with his arms wide open like an idiot, he almost forgets that the song isn't over.

"Why can't we be like that?" Judy warbles out. Nick turns to her and finds that she's already looking at him. "Wish we could be like... that..."

Nick is still staring at her when the bar erupts into uproarious applause. Judy laughs sheepishly and takes a bow, waiting for Nick to unfreeze. It takes him a moment to catch up, but once he does, Nick regains his sense of shame in an instant. He rolls his eyes at his coworkers' waggling eyebrows and waves them off, returning to his seat. Judy doesn't let him get far without planting a kiss on his cheek, as if his reputation needs another blow.

"I told you it would be fun," she snarks. Nick tries to bite back with a witty retort, or scoff at least, but all that comes out of his mouth is a weak puff of air. Judy smiles anyway and guides him back to their seats.

The rest of the night was probably eventful. Later, Judy will claim that Clawhauser convinced Bogo to sing Gazelle's new hit single with him. But Nick doesn't really remember it. Everything between Judy's lips meeting his fur and his belt buckle clicking into place is a blur.

Just as he'd expected, Judy is humming. Well, more like mumble-singing.

"Why can't you hold me in the street..." She half-sings, pulling her seatbelt across her chest. "Why can't I kiss you on the dance floor..."

"I could do that for you," Nick murmurs.

Judy looks at him.

Oh. He must be drunk. About fifteen shots drunker than possible. Or, more likely, just as dumb as Judy's always claimed.

"I mean... what's stopping us, right?" he continues weakly. Judy is still staring at him, her expression blank. Nick faces the windshield. "Or," he clears his throat, "or them. The singers," he redirects. Oh well. He'll claim exhaustion in the morning.

"Nothing," Judy murmurs.

Nick turns to face her again. He can't help it. He's like a sunflower; it's second nature to follow her, to drink up every drop of light she gives him.

And she's smiling. Nick could live a long and happy life looking at nothing beyond her upturned lips.

"Not that it matters..." she sighs, crawling- is she crawling over the console? Holy shit, she is. "We've never let a few roadblocks hold us back, have we, Wilde?" she asks calmly, settling into his lap.

Nick swallows. "No ma'am."

Instead of cringing, Judy laughs, and finally, finally kisses him. Nick melts into it. Sunlight, sunlight, sunlight.

He loves karaoke.