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Bogo has a nick in his ear.
Nick had noticed it immediately the first time he’d seen the towering buffalo, both of them standing under the dim lamp light in Tujunga. That’d been the first time he’d seen the renown cop in person, and that nick was the first thing he’d noticed. He recognized that kind of scar– he’d been in enough scuffles to know a bite mark when he saw one. And he knew that Bogo knew that he knew. When he’d graduated from the academy and met with his boss for the first time after he’d been assigned a cubicle, the burly mammal had made a point to imply that he’d thoroughly reviewed Nick’s history.
So Nick never expects an explanation. He’s pretty sure that there’s a mutual understanding between the two of them, something very similar to his “don’t let them see that they get to you” mantra, in that he and Bogo are manly-men who won’t be revealing any vulnerabilities to each other, because that’s not what manly-men do–
“Got it in a gang fight.”
Bogo’s caught him staring at the scar, something his eyes instinctively wander to. Nick has the wherewithal to blush just a little, but mostly he’s just thrown completely out of his thoughts. Bogo? In a fight? No way. He let’s the chief in on his disbelief. “You? In a fight? No way.”
“Yes way, Wilde,” and his tone is biting, but his rare smile is not. Even if it is a little more smug than usual. “I was once young and emotionally unbalanced.”
“A gang,” Nick echoes, crossing his arms. After a minute, he mock-frowns and shakes his head. “Nope. Can’t see it. You’ll have to come up with something else to impress me.”
An even rarer chuckle leaves the guy’s snout. “Not trying to impress. Just being honest. Hustled a few I shouldn’t have, fought quite a few unnecessary fights.” He looks at Nick pointedly. “Don’t ever let an aggressive wolf near your ears, Wilde.”
His ears twitch at the thought of having a chunk of himself bitten off, and Nick answers with an aggrandized laugh. “Oh boy, do I know that. You’re a little too late to the party, boss-man.”
Bogo slaps Nick on the back as he leaves the room, sending the poor canine flying. Still, when he catches himself before face-planting, he has no scars, no scrapes, no nothing. He doesn’t even bruise.
———
Judy’s got three faint lines running down her cheek.
When he’d seen them for the first time, she’d blushed all over (which was pretty cute, not that he’d tell her, cause that meant receiving another earful of her usual, “you-can’t-say-that-only-other-bunnies-can” speech, and he respected that and he respected her but man that was an hour long lecture if ever he’d heard one) and then hastily patted her cheek to comb the fur down over the marks. Her eyes wouldn’t meet his, and she’d stuttered through the next half-hour of conversation, so Nick had decided not to bring it up again. Not for a while, at least.
But a while passes, and he finds himself laying across Judy’s bedspread on a lazy Sunday morning. He is reflecting on his relationship with Judy, meditating on that moment when she got that other scar on her leg, when the question pops from his mouth unbidden. “When’d you get those?”
She’s tapping away at her laptop, probably finishing off some e-mail to whatever higher up. She isn’t paying attention to him, that’s for sure.
“Hmm?” She replies rather distractedly, unlocking her phone.
“The scars on your cheeks.”
Immediately she’s on high-alert, ears pricked and back straight. Turning slowly, her body faces him before her eyes slide slowly to meet his casual gaze. “Why are you asking?”
“Just curious.” He says lightly, shrugging his shoulders. “Big secret? You in a gang, too?”
“What?” She exclaims, scandalized.
Nick waves a paw. “Nevermind.”
Judy narrows her eyes at him for a second before leaving her seat to sit beside him. She finds an edge of the bed that Nick hasn’t taken up with his obscenely long, stretched out body, but it’s really only a square inch. Wedging her way in, she begins to smooth at the fur on her cheek.
It’s a nervous tick he’s noticed from her– when she feels anxious, she starts fiddling with her cheek. That was how he’d seen the marks in the first place. He’d been going off on her for compromising her safety after some fight he couldn’t even remember now. She’d been sitting on the curb, trauma blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and he’d been yelling and yelling and waving his arms (completely uncool, he knows, but he was panicking because it was Judy), and then she’d just started combing through the fur on her cheek, and she wouldn’t stop until he’d asked, “What are you doing?” and “What’s that?”
But anyways, Judy is doing the same thing now until Nick grabs her wrist. “Look,” he starts, looking at her seriously, meaningfully. “You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“No!” She cries, then blushes at how loud her voice is. “No,” she repeats more quietly, taking his paw into both of hers and patting it. “I want you to know.”
He furrows his eyebrows. “You don’t have to, Hopps.”
“I care about you,” she murmurs, his paw still in his hands. “I just didn’t want you to feel hurt or afraid…” Judy trails off, lost in her thoughts for a few seconds before she looks resolutely into his eyes. “But I care about you. You’re important to me, and I’m not telling you this to hurt you.”
Well, that’s a build-up, if ever he’s heard one.
She starts stuttering again. “Remember the press conference for the missing mammal case? Remember how I, uh, you… you… I…”
“I remember.”
“Right.” Judy takes a deep breath. “I’ve never thought you would attack me, Nick. Not even then. But when- when I was 9, there was this other fox, and he- ah, he attacked me.”
Nick inhales sharply.
“No! No, no, it wasn’t bad, and he’s fine now. Counseling. But, um, that moment when you lunged at me, I got caught in… a bad memory.” Her voice becomes small. “It’s not an excuse, I know. It’s not any better that I just piled some other fox’s face onto yours, you guys don’t even look alike, I just–”
“You’re fine, Hopps.” Nick soothes, slipping his paw out of her slowly-tightening grip to lay across her shoulders. “I get it.” And he really does, because, well, muzzles.
“It’s not ok,” Judy says sadly. “And I’m really sorry.” Her shoulders sag a little and ears droop a lot.
“You know what’ll make you feel better?”
“Nick, I’m fine.”
“… Carrots.”
“… Fine. What?”
“Pizza.”
“… I do love Pizza…”
“It’s on me.”
Her spirits brighten. “Really?” He nods, quirking a smile, and now she’s beaming. “Well, c’mon! What are you waiting for?”
Nick follows her out the door, and she’s squeezing through the jamb in her excitement, making the whole getting-out-of-her-room thing a lot more complicated then it needs to be. And just as he steps out, Judy slams the door.
He squawks, pulling his tail to himself just as the door closes on the last few hairs. Nick tugs away, cringing when he feels fur being pulled off of him.
Judy gasps, rushing to his tail and patting it down, which is a weird feeling for Nick. “I’m so sorry, Nick! Are you ok? Should we go to the clinic? Or– or bandaids? Do those work for this kinda thing?”
It stings, but it’ll heal just fine. There won’t be a mark left on him.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nick replies, smiling down at her.
———
Even Clawhauser has got something to show for his past life.
Nick sees it one morning when he puts down the box of doughnuts. The receptionist is drumming his fingers across the counter, focused so intensely on whatever is on the screen (judging by the flashing lights that color the cheetah’s face, it’s a EweTube video of another Gazelle concert) that he doesn’t even see Nick. Or the doughnuts, which is the real sign that Ben’s in another world completely.
The cheetah’s other pointer finger is poised on the mouse, completely still. And… the finger is a little bent. It’s shorter than the other fingers, definitely shorter than his steadily drumming fingers.
“Ben.”
“Oooh, thanks Nick, much appreciate.” His eyes don’t leave the screen for a second.
“Ben.”
Finally, Ben’s eyes leave his screen. “Ooh, chocolate! My favorite. Second is strawberry. Ooh, I see you’ve brought those, too! Nick, you’re just the best, aren’t you?”
Nick smiles wolfishly, then turns the conversation around to satisfy his curiosity. “What happened to your fingers?”
Ben blinks in befuddlement. Then, understanding dawns on his face. “Oh, you mean this,” wiggling the spotted paw housing the slightly crooked finger, Clawhauser launches into his explanation nonchalantly. “Yeah, nasty story,” he grimaces, grabbing a doughnut to console himself. “When I came out in high school, a couple of goons stuffed me in a locker. Slammed the door on my fingers– this was the only one that never straightened up!”
Nick’s ears have flattened against his head, and Ben laughs. “You’re a sweetheart for caring. But don’t worry, I was a pretty confident kid.” His smile is genuine and comfortable. “What about you, Nick? Any fun stories?”
Nick can’t help but to fit in a bit of sarcastic, self-deprecating humor. “I was only a criminal for 20 years, Ben. How would I have any stories?”
His coworker laughs, pointing his finger at him as if to tell him you’re clever, fox, except his digit hits the corner of the doughnut box, pushing it off the counter. Nick catches it deftly, but not before banging his funny bone against the cool marble.
He groans, resting his forehead against the desk as he waits for the tingling to die down. Ben’s laughing– hard– before he manages to say between snorts, “You’ll be fine, Wilde, don’t worry. It won’t even bruise.”
———
Finnick is as banged up as his beloved van, and Nick knows the history behind every scar. After all, the fox basically raised him since he was 12. Several of them are from drug deals gone bad, the other half are from dumb fights he’s instigated, and the most recent one– well, Finnick has always been popular with the ladies, so Nick isn’t surprised to hear that the fennec got that fresh one on his cheek from two ladies he had to separate.
DelGato has a perpetually bent tail because of this one tussle he got into during a case. The tiger had grabbed his tail and just bent, and DelGato says there is only one variety of pain (of the procreating kind) worse than having your tail twisted.
Fangmeyer has two teeth missing in the back, knocked out from a bar fight he got into over a girl when he was in college. When he tells Nick this story, he relays the whole scene as if he’s a wizened man looking back on an idiot (Nick is pretty sure Fangmeyer is younger than him).
One of Trunkerby’s tusks is a little off-yellow halfway through. Apparently, she’d gotten caught in a tight spot going up a mountain once, and to get out, she’d had to hack off half her tusk. They’d molded a cast when she was in the ER. Nick’s eyes widen to a disproportionate size when she tells him this, and now he feels like he doesn’t really even know Trunkerby, even though they’ve been working together for a year and a half now. The elephant just laughs, giving the ruddy fox a noogie.
Nick isn’t a klutz, but everybody he knows has got them. Scars, that is. Yet somehow, Nick has lived his entire life without some distinctive mark. In fact, it is nothing short of a miracle that he has lived so long, had the kind of history he’s had, and come out of it physically unscathed (he can’t help but to wonder if it’s because all the scars are psychological).
Maybe his mom just took really good care of him. Or maybe Finnick. Maybe even Judy. Maybe he has superpowers, something to do with being so inexplicably elegant and sleek that he never trips up, or that he heals the way Wolverine does.
Or maybe, Nick tells himself as he launches his body in front of Judy as a bullet comes her way, Fate has been saving it all up for one big, huge, grand finale.
He sees the blood before he feels the bite, but he barely has time to react as he slams into Judy. He winces, not because of the stinging radiating from his shoulder– or is that his chest?– but because he knows Judy will be all bruised up by the end of this.
When Judy pulls herself up and frantically begins to fuss over Nick (she’s crying. He can tell because it keeps dripping onto his nose, which is kind of annoying), his vision isn’t even blurry yet. He’s fine.
He sits up– ooh, bad idea, now his vision is definitely blurring– and sees that the target is already being cornered by their teammates.
“That’s good,” Nick comments, shocked at the slur in his own words. He has enough self-awareness to check himself, and, sure enough, he is sitting in a sizable puddle of blood. He whistles.
“Shut up, you idiot,” Judy hisses, voice warbling as she tears part of her uniform apart to have something to staunch the flow. As she presses the cloth to the hole, she mutters, “This is going to scar so bad.”
The comment is so mundane for the situation, and Nick has a feeling that Judy’s trying to assure herself of something (he has no idea where the bullet wound is. Judging by how out-of-sorts Judy is, seems like it must be somewhere bad bad bad).
“Worth it,” Nick croaks, grinning.
Later, when he retells the story, he’ll leave out the part where he faints.
———
In his dreams, there is a fly. It doesn’t buzz though, it beeps, and he tries to swat it away, but it always comes back, beeping at the same pace it always does.
One day, he swipes at it and it yelps, and suddenly his eyes shoot open. Judy is sitting at his side, rubbing her eye like it’s just been punched– oh.
In the background, the heart monitor beeps steadily– oh.
Without a second thought, Nick sits up, blanching and yipping at the pain that shoots out along his shoulder.
“Stop it, stupid!” Judy practically screeches, pushing him back down. Her paws stay on his shoulders, and her eyes are staring worriedly into his.
There is also something deeper in her gaze, and Nick avoids the funny feeling it gives him in his stomach by asking, “So what happened?”
“You took a bullet for me is what happened, you- you- stupid- idiot- dumb–” Tears are welling up in her eyes.
“Well,” Nick begins, pretending to be offended. “If I’d known I was signing my life off to someone so unappreciative–”
She manages a sob of laughter before bursting into tears and curling up into his chest, which kind of hurts because even though she’s small, all her weight is distributed across the wound. He hisses in pain, and Judy gasps, practically falling off the bed to get off him.
“Help me up,” Nick manages, wheezing a little. Judy glances at him skeptically through pink eyes but concedes, slowly easing him up before piling several pillows behind him. Nick scoots over a little and pats the empty space, welcoming Judy to sit by him. She obliges. And then she lays her head on his wound-less shoulder, pressing the crown of her head into the crook of his neck.
Well. That’s new. He swallows, trying not to read into it.
“Nick,” she starts, voice small. “I love you.”
Alright. He’ll try not to read into that, either.
“Love you too, fluff.”
“No, like… I love you.”
Alright, he gets it. He’s not an idiot. But still, all he can really do is gulp.
“I always have, but I thought it was impossible until you, uh, y’know–”
“Took a bullet for you.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a second of silence and inactivity before Judy becomes a flying ball of grey fur, launching herself gently (how is that even possible, he wonders) at him, paws on his shoulders again and she’s kissing him! And wow he’d take another bullet any day for this!
He’s a little dazed when she pulls away, feeling a bit like that first time he took a hit that Finnick had offered him.
“Is that ok?” She asks nervously. She’s sitting back on her heels, rubbing her cheek.
“Yes,” Nick replies enthusiastically. “We should try it again just to double-check how ok it is.”
Judy laughs, hand falling away from her face to pat at his. He winces, and she draws back, concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just a bullet wound.”
She smiles and rolls her eyes before reaching for something on the end table to his side. “Wanna see it?”
“Ooh, yes.”
Judy holds the hand-mirror up, tilting until he nods his head. It is a gnarled knot of scar-tissue. Gently, Judy tells him, “The doctor says fur probably won’t heal over it.”
“I don’t mind.” Nick shrugs, then hisses at the sensation that follows.
Judy’s brow creases. “How bad does it hurt?”
“Eh,” he teeters a paw back and forth, then grins at her suggestively. “Could be better, especially if you do that thing where you kiss me again–”
Judy rolls her eyes and laughs again, but she does lean forward, and Nick is very hasty to meet her half way. He sighs when they part, looking content, and his partner chuckles and then says, “Sorry.”
He furrows his eyebrows. “For what?”
“For being the reason your perfect looks are forever scarred. Literally.”
“You think I’m perfect-looking?” Nick jokes, raising his eyebrows at her. But his mischievous smile softens. “Don’t worry about it, fluff.”
He leans forward for another kiss– this’ll be the last one today, he swears (who is he kidding, he can’t get enough of this). He can feel Judy smiling into it.
“Was it worth it?” Judy asks, holding onto his paw, which is pressed against her cheek.
He runs his thumb over the spot with the three stripes. “Very.”