Chapter Text
The sunset is fake and so is she.
“You can’t just leave,” she whimpers. (Nice lip quiver).
“I have to, Doll,” says the buck, brushing a tear from her cheek (real, impressive). “Chief needs me, see?”
“I need you!” her fists bunch in her dress, pulling what little production value she can from the standard issue Farmer’s Daughter look. Her eyes are wide, sparkling.
“If I don’t go, there won’t be any you to come back to." (Christ, who wrote this?), “Remember sweetheart, the law –“
“–The law comes before everything else." For a second her mask drops. Her mouth twists, a behind-the-eyes flicker. But then she sniffs and smiles all watery and sweet, and kisses him softer this time, just like she was asked.
Her love interest (no. It's the other way around, no matter how she’s playing it) detaches himself, sets his white wide-brim on his head and climbs up onto the waiting cart.
“Before everyone else, Doll,” he smiles, going for tragic and coming up goofy. “Even me.”
She watches as he’s pulled away towards the bonfire sky.
“CUT!”
Bells ring shrilly. Around the rabbits the between-take chatter grounds to life like a high-mileage engine. The lights switch on and their horizon shrinks, paper-thin and color-drained.
Nick's assignment slumps a little; an unconscious tug at the collar of her dress, a polite nod to the guy she was just weeping over, then she turns and goes.
Nick pushes off the back wall where he’s been watching and strolls over to tap the director (Mansfield, married but shaky, three kids holding back a divorce. Likes pool, cheap bars and letting his paws wander) on the shoulder.
Mansfield scowls at him (through him, at the version of him they swap stories about over the water cooler) but Nick smirks it off.
“You here for her?” the capybara snaps.
“You know me so well.”
Mansfield's scowl deepens at the accusation of familiarity. He jabs a thumb towards the back of the set.
“She’ll be in her dressing room. Good luck, pal.”
(Read: No chance, fox.)
Nick passes her co-star as he crosses the set, the male rabbit with white fur and black zebra stripes. Guy’s built his career off that fur, going by the heart eyes the camera crew are giving him (Joey, second assistant director, is definitely batting for the other team. Nick makes a note.)
Jack Savage hasn’t taken his stupid cowboy hat off. Wouldn’t surprise Nick if he'd brought it in from home. Nothing about him has changed, walking off set. Not his eyes or his hat or his too-polite to-be-charming smile. Less of an actor than a posable action-figure.
Nick arrives at her dressing room door, smooths out the suit and raises his paw to–
“Come in.”
His paw stills a millimetre from the door. Okay. He turns the handle instead and steps into a draughty room, its broom-cupboard walls plastered with plus-size posters for classic Noir thrillers, all monochrome bloodstains and sultry stares through cigarette smoke.
Oh, shit. The Poster. How does she have The Poster? Why does she even have it, that was so long ago, no-one remembers it nowadays–
“Nicholas Wilde?” prompts the gray rabbit sitting at the dressing table. Nick snaps himself back to reality.
“My reputation precedes me.”
“Yes,” Judy Hopps treats him to an analytical over-the-shoulder stare straight out of the movies pasted to her walls, “it has.”
She’s young, for one already kicking up such a stink upstairs. Nick wonders how long she’s spent gossiping over the water-cooler.
“You were expecting me?”
“Heard you coming,” Hopps taps her ear absently, turning away from him to adjust her next-take makeup in the mirror, “I noticed you watching the last few takes.”
“Tsk tsk,” his ears flicker, “don’t you need to be concentrating on your job?”
“Hardly. That scene wasn’t exactly the acting Olympics.”
“I skimmed the script,” Nick frowns, leaning against the wall, facing firmly away from The Poster, “Wasn’t that the emotional climax for your character?”
“Isn’t that the sad truth,” she turns away from the mirror and fixes him with a smirk of her own, but her chin is jutting, defiant, her paw tight around a fur brush. Nervous? “Why, you got any pro tips?”
Button pushing. She‘s got his ears going again. Does she know about him? She can’t, she’s barely been here two months.
“Try not to look like you’ve got a skunk’s butt under your nose every time Savage mentions the law?” Nick suggests, and watches said nose wriggle.
“You’re the studio fixer,” she diverts.
“Guilty.” Another wriggle.
“You here to play Cupid?”
He smiles, letting some teeth show.
“’Fraid so, Doll.”
She scowls.
“You’re going to want to refrain from calling me that.”
“Whatever you say, Fluff. Anyway, you already know the pitch. Studio wants you to hitch up with short bright and boring out there. Love at first sight, Hollywood’s next power couple, yada yada yada.”
“And what if I keep saying no?”
Nick’s smile disappears. That settles it, she can’t know about him, because then she’d know the answer already.
“… I wouldn’t recommend it.”
She chews her lip.
“What if we made a deal?”
That brings the smirk back.
“A deal? What makes you think you have that kind of power?”
“I have power over whether you get your job done.”
Nick pauses, re-assesses this bunny so uncomfortable in her country dress. Beneath the soft makeup her eyes are surprisingly sharp. Bright without tears.
“That’s blackmail, Fluff,” he tuts. She winces like he hit her. Law, noir, guilt, crime. Not the usual triggers for a rabbit.
“It’s not. Just… motivated persuasion.”
Nick laughs.
“Now you sound like my boss.”
“Can’t you talk to them?” she asks, “You’re the studio fixer, you have… methods,” she forces the word out like she’s passing a brick, “you can get me in with them. I need… More.”
“More what?”
“More than my second bit part as a farmer’s daughter in as many months?” she sighs, head flopping back, ears draped over her dressing table. Nick has a fleeting desire to reach out and—
“I’m a fixer, Darling. Not a miracle worker.”
She glares at him down that sugar pink nose.
“Just because you’ve found your calling as the Studio’s pimp doesn’t mean the rest of us–”
His claws bite into his paw pads.
“Watch it, cottontail.”
She notices. She’s an actress, an annoyingly good one at that, but that kind of concealment takes time and punishment she hasn’t had yet. She smells of prey.
“I just- I'm sick of playing the exact part I left home to escape from.”
“Exactly,” Nick insists, “rabbits are farmers. It’s realistic.”
“Movies aren’t meant to be realistic! They’re dreams we can share with other people, they’re what the world could be if we remade it the way we wanted –“
“For chrissakes, you’re a performer. Just give the people what they want.”
“They can only choose what they want from what the studio gives them!”
He stares at her again, this rabbit who isn’t dumb in the usual ‘ooh a turnip! Let’s all drop our pants and get frisky!’ kind of way, but the ‘I can’t shut my stupid (sharp, articulate, exact) mouth when I need to’ kind of way that is so much more dangerous.
Nick bends down to her level, eye to eye. She doesn’t flinch, though she wants to.
“What makes you think you’re so much better than the rest of us?”
Her eyes narrow and she leans so close her nose almost touches his and Christ this is not what’s supposed to happen, you’re an actress, rabbit, why can’t you stick to the script?
“We’re all better,” she holds his gaze. He swears he can feel her breath on his lips, “We’re all so much bigger than the boxes they trap us in.”
Nick retreats, exhales as casually as possible, nervous snout-scratch to cover it up.
“You sure you’re not still reading from a script?”
She rolls her eyes.
“The point is I can do more. And –“
“Fine,” he cuts her off before she starts making any more sense, “if I give you a boost with Big and the others, will you let Jack Savage take you out on a date?”
Her teeth worry the inside of her cheek as she deliberates. The fur around her muzzle is lighter gray than the rest of her, and Nick finds himself trying to trace the line between the two shades, where the thunderclouds meet their silver lining. She sighs.
“I can’t believe I got away from my mother just to have a fox set me up instead,” she taps her cheek, “One date. I’ll see how it goes from there.”
“Very gracious of you, Doll. I’m sure Big will be honoured.”
She huffs good-naturedly.
“Thank you. For talking to him.”
“Haven’t done it yet.”
“Yeah, well it’s a long shot anyway, so… It’s the thought that counts, right?”
“Your big break was a sappy rabbit sitcom, huh?”
“Shut up.”
“You didn’t say no.”
She smiles easily, teeth showing. It’s funny how she can make something foxes know as ‘go away get away I’m hurting I’ll hurt you’ so… Sweet? Cloying, Nick decides.
“Good afternoon, Mister Wilde.”
“Good afternoon, Miss Hopps.”
She looks him over again, that method-actor stare they use to pull you apart like clockwork and see what makes you tick. But this time it isn’t cold or analytical. Judy Hopps is warm and appraising and there’s a trace of a smirk in her eyes even though her mouth hasn’t moved.
Nick leaves quick; avoid looking at The Poster on your way out, keep your ears up and your hackles down.
He passes Jack Savage again on the way out, still chatting to the crew, propping himself up against those brushstroke clouds. And that would be it, Nick realised. This was Hopps’ horizon now, too. Dead end.
In his head, he sees the happy couple posing for photos on the red carpets of a dozen other projects like this one; just cheap enough and wide-appeal enough and corny enough to write off ol’ Jack’s woodenness as an artistic choice.
The Judy Hopps on Jack Savage’s arm is a mannequin, incapable of arguing or articulating or looking at you with the hint of a smirk in her eyes.
Nick shakes it off. Manny the capybara treats him to a parting glare as he leaves. At least now there might be one mammal on this set who doesn’t believe the water-cooler talk, though that isn’t necessarily a good thing.
It doesn’t matter. He got the job done, finally. Of course, has no intention of speaking to Big about Hopps, but that’s just life. Kid's expecting to be ignored anyway, and who was Nick to prove her wrong?
Besides, the further away he can keep her the better.
He’s gone before she gets back to set.
***
A week later he’s told to keep a closer eye on Judy Hopps.
“You know how it is with the younger ones,” Head of Security Koslov pats Nick on the back so hard his teeth rattle, “best to break her in a little. And no-one knows the system like you, Nicky.”
Nick smiles his You bastard! smile, and not for the first time (or the last, he’s sure) resists the suicidal urge to punch the polar bear’s teeth in.
It’s just a part, he tells himself, we’re all just playing parts. Just don’t break character.
This will go really, really well.