[A/N:
Short stories have always been my strong suit, while longer pieces have always been a challenge for me. I have a bad habit of bouncing rapidly between subjects and ZCOM is proving to be a serious exercise in focus, but even I need a break at times.
This short story, 'Don't You Know the Devil Wears a Suit and Tie?' is the first in 'Bits and Pieces'. A series of sorta connected ideas and random fragments of inspiration.
If like what you see, and you find you want more if it, or if you want to make a suggestion for another story (one-shot or series) don't be afraid to comment.
It's fun to write but its terribly demoralizing to be the only one to do it by yourself.
-Untraveled
I DO NOT own any rights to the songs referenced in this short story, nor do I own any rights to Zootopia itself.
Songs:
"The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie" By Colter Wall
"Save My Soul" By Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
Inspired By: the song "The Devil Wears a Suit and Tie" By Colter Wall
"Why, didn't you know? The Devil wears a suit and tie."
The haggard old hare dressed in a ratty patchwork three piece guffawed.
His sloppy grin looked as about as well put together as his clothing, gaping holes and a couple rotting teeth rolling about his skull seemed about the only thing left in his head.
Judy Hopps, newly minted ZPD officer and first rabbit on the force, struggled to keep her professional smile from wavering and her eyes from rolling.
She still did, but she made sure to feint a slow blink while her amethyst eyes explored the inside of her eyelids.
When she opened her eyes again, still with her best professional grin plastered on her muzzle like a mask, her gaze trailed down to the beat up soap board six-string in the hare's lap.
The crazy old hare noticed where she was looking, and his rotting grin widened, and his ragged ears perked.
"Hey darlin'. You want to hear a song?"
Judy's eyes shot up from the ancient instrument to the hare's crazed bloodshot gaze.
"wha-? No thank sir, that won't-" she waved her paws out in panic, her carrot pen and notepad flapping.
"- be a problem?" A strange light glittered in the hare's mad eyes. "Alright, you convinced me!"
"Wait! Wait! No, sir, you don't-!"
"Heeere we go!"
"Wha-? Huh? Uuuugh…" Judy groaned as the old hare's back straightened and his paws slid over the battered instrument.
The first note that trembled from the worn old guitar pulled at something deep in the disgruntled rabbit doe's chest, shutting down her vexed irritation.
Suddenly the crazy old hare's grating backwater twang became a smooth, smokey warble that sent chills up her spine.
"Well Reverend, Reverend please come quick!"
" 'Cause I got somethin' to admit."
"I met a met a mammal out in the sticks of good ol' Miss,"
"He drove a series 10 Cadillac and wore a cigar on his lip!"
The old hare's finger's danced across the strings and his ears drooped across his face and swayed as he bobbed his head and pounded his palm against the worn wood to the hypnotic rhythm.
Judy stared in awe as the batty old hare sitting in front of the cardboard box he called home transformed from a homeless beggar to a powerful musician on his own stage.
She felt her heart drop as the notes dove and chest shook as the string's soared. She was mesmerized, enthralled, the notes from the old guitar touching something deep inside her, a sort of longing.
"Don't you know the devil wears a suit and tie!"
"Saw him driving down the 61' in early July,"
"Red as an open wound and sharp as a knife."
"I heard him howling as he passed me by."
The hare's eyes lit up as he pulled the strings and coaxed every sound possible from the poor old six-string in his lap.
"And he said,"
"I know you, I know you young man,"
"I know you by the state of your hands."
"You're a six-string picker,"
"Just as I am."
"Let me learn you something."
"I know a few turns to make all the girls dance!"
Judy found herself believing the words the hare sang, as absurd as that was.
The old hare looked up and his bloodshot eyes bored into the rabbit officer's with a deathly serious intensity. Another chill rippled down her spine, though this time, for a whole different reason.
"Oh,"
"Foolish, foolish was I!"
"Damn my foolish eyes."
" 'Cause that mammal's lessons"
"Had a price, oh sweet price."
"My sweet soul, everlasting,"
"A very own eternal light."
One Hour Later
Judy's head still spun, and her heart was going a mile a minute, even after an hour after leaving the suddenly sorrowful old hare. When his song had finished he had refused to speak another word, instead he turned around and crawled into his box and clutching his guitar like it was the only thing left in his dark, lonely world.
What was that song? She wondered. What did it mean?
Judy fought down a headache from the questions as she weaved through Happytown's decrepit streets, her eyes on her notepad and the lone piece of useful information she managed to get out of the hare.
A single name, a bar called Whiskey Crossroads.
The bunny called a Zuber and hightailed it to the closed landmark she could find, a ramshackle tin shed masquerading as a bus stop in the middle of an empty road.
The Whiskey Crossroads wasn't on Zoogle Maps, and the driver had never heard of the bar.
Whiskey Crossroads turned out to be a grimy hole in the wall on the outskirts of Zootopia in a small brick building that bordered the marshlands. The bar was the sole building for miles next to a lonely road that trailed off into the mists that clung to the wetlands like a shroud.
Tense pricks of angsty anticipation needled the skin underneath Judy's moist fur making her itchy.
The rabbit officer shook herself of her own silliness and radioed in her location to dispatch on the hand mic sling over her shoulder.
Her only response was static.
"What the huckleberry?" she mused crossly. She keyed the mic again, but she still got nothing.
"Fluttery parsnips, these radios will be the death of me." She grumbled and gave up, opting instead to pop her iCarrot from her belt.
"I guess I'll just text Clawhauser my location…" She clicked the power button and the screen came to life-
-where it flashed 1% battery and promptly died.
"Gaaaah! Dang it!" Judy's fist shook as she tightened her grip on her phone and seriously contemplated chucking the entire thing in the marsh.
"Everythin' alright here sweetheart?"
A smooth, husky whisper from behind had Judy whirling around and nearly planting her face into the crisp black suit jacket of the mammal standing there.
"Oh, cheese and crackers!" The bunny launched herself back on her toes and bent her head as she stammered out an apology. "I-I'm terribly sorry sir. I didn't see you there."
A chest rumbling chuckle rose from the stranger in front of her.
"It's no problem sweetheart, though I do try to keep my reputation cute females coming onto me down to a minimum. However I realize it's inevitable I'm afraid."
Judy frowned. She could practically taste the unfiltered smug self-conceit in the stranger's voice, as oddly tantalizing as that voice was. She decided she didn't like it, or the mammal it was attached to.
That and he called her cute.
She rose her gaze from her feet to the stranger with her chest puffed out and her best cop voice springing from her tongue.
"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to refrain from… calling… me…"
Red as an open wound and sharp as a knife.
Sharp was one word to describe the nearly blood red fox grinning toothily down at her.
His flawless white shirt melded with his white chest fur. His jet black suit stood darker than the darkest night. The creature before her looked more like a smug demon wrapped in void than a red fox in suit leaning up against his parked Cadillac.
"Wait, where did that car come from?" Judy thought. She took several unconscious steps back. "How come I never heard him park it right behind me?!"
The mystery fox-wrapped-in-void levered himself from the door of his white paneled 1935 series 10 Cadillac. The grinning vulpine approached the rabbit officer, his stride easy and his bushy red tail swaying confidently behind him.
She fully expected the fox to stop in front of her and cause a scene. Her paw unclasped the Fox-Away on her belt, her fingers hovering over the little pink can as she waited for the vulpine to strike.
Only she blinked in confusion and turned around at the squeak of the front door opening, the fox leaning against the frame with his paw propping the door for her.
"After you Officer Hopps."
Judy's little pink nose twitched as she craned her head up to stare into the green hellfire that roared in the fox's glowing emerald eyes.
She forced her own lavender eyes closed and marched through the door with the chuckling vulpine's voice echoing hauntingly behind her.
It wasn't until she was submerged in darkness and she felt the fox vanish into the shadowy bar interior when the bunny realized the fox somehow knew her name.
"Dang it." She blinked and spun her head around in a futile effort to speed up her eyes adjusting to the dark. "Well, he couldn't have gotten far. He's still in here…" The clatter of silverware against china and the rumble of whispered conversations hissed from the shadows leaned across the bars scattered tables and booths. Her heartbeat picked up again as an ugly shade of anxiety settled in her gut. "…somewhere."
The first thing that hit her, besides the dark, was the smell. The air here was heavy with cigarette smoke and liquid regret. The atmosphere was difficult for Judy to describe, she was never much one for bar-hopping.
Nostalgia was a tangible, physical thing here. She felt it as her paws crossed over the rickety floorboards. Sorrow was a tickling burn in the back of her tongue, it flowed through the swirling smoke like perfume. It was a cauldron of volatile emotions bathed in the calming stream of lost souls and good company.
Well, good company besides that dang fox…
She never got the chance to brood over the strange fox in the sharp suit with the old Cadillac, not when the first crooning notes from the gazelle on the grimy stage at the back of the bar drew the rabbit from her worries.
"I walk the streets of New Orleans,"
With a boy of my dreams."
"I've seen a dozen brass bands play and swing,"
While little children laugh, dance & sing."
"I've seen old men - drunk - singin' the blues,"
"With top hats and canes and spectator shoes."
"I consider myself lucky to have fallen in love,"
"With a boy, the city, and the river of mud."
"Let me know,"
"Let me know,"
"Where I can go to save my soul."
A tiger in a wrinkled blue suit rocked to the beat as he pulled the swinging rhythm from the battered and scratched piano just off between the stage and the bar. The gazelle's form hugging cocktail dress glittered a red nearly identical to the fur of a certain red fox.
The same red fox leaning against the counter with a shot of whiskey and an intense look of concentration trained on the gazelle singing into the microphone. It was a look the singer returned. Both entranced with each other.
"Or, perhaps, she is entranced with him…?" Judy wondered.
"Come to join me Sweetheart?"
The fox's husky purr jolted the suddenly timid little bunny from her thoughts. Somehow, while her thoughts revolved around the mysterious vulpine her body had taken her to him, drawn to him, despite her own dislike for the irritating fox.
Her ears drooped in embarrassment at herself.
"What's wrong Sweetheart?" The fox leaned over towards her and rumbled, his unlit cigar twirling between his fingers as mirth stroked the flames in his glowing emerald eyes. "Fox got your tongue?"
A spark of anger flared in the doe's chest, mostly anger at making a fool of herself over this stranger.
Why was she so hung up over this worthless fox? She has a job to do!
Her pride however wouldn't allow her just to walk away without setting this smug twit in his place.
"You don't got any part of me, Fox." She snapped.
This only seemed to amuse the vulpine further. A chest rumbling purr of laughter shook deep in the bunny's core.
The fox leaned a hairsbreadth from her nose, his breath a furnace against her cheek, the heat sending jitters skittering down her arms and ending in the tip of her twitching tail.
"I seem to have gotten your attention Sweetheart." He purred in her drooping ears like a forbidden lover. That thought sent her heart sinking into the pit of her twisting stomach in disgust. "I think that's as much of you as I would want."
A husky chuckle rippled from his throat as he added. "For now…"
Judy actually swore her heart thudded to a stand still she was so… Angry? Revolted? Excited? Confused? She didn't even know. What she did know was that one second he was there- then he wasn't.
The rabbit doe fought to get her madly twitching nose to still as she scanned the dimly lit bar and noticed the softly singing gazelle in the glittering red evening dress had ended her song.
The gazelle stepped off the stage and sat at a high table with the tiger pianist and began to speak with the red fox in the sharp black suit, who had somehow managed to reappear halfway across the room in a blink of an eye.
The singer seemed to have been listening to the vulpine intently, both her had the tiger hanging off whatever words slipped form his silky smooth tongue.
Gathering her courage- and the tattered remnants of her scattered wits- and stomped over to the table to confront the fox.
Somehow he knew she was approaching, his ears never flicked from the gazelle and his nose never gave any indication that he smelled her, yet somehow he still knew.
"…As always." His voice faded in above the clatter of the bar-dwellers as he spoke to the ecstatic singer.
"Maybe we can make another deal?" She asked breathlessly.
The fox grinned, his razor sharp teeth on full display.
"You remember the price?" He cautioned around his hungry smile. "A deal must be paid in with something of equal value."
He leaned in over the table as his tail flicked Judy's ears as she impatiently thumped her foot behind him.
"How much are you willing the give?" He purred.
The gazelle's brown eyes glittered in the bar's smokey din as she answered. "Anything…"
"Anything?" The fox's grin stretched. "Even your soul, if I asked it?"
Confusion and hesitation clouded the gazelle's excitement. She opened her mouth to answer but the fox's claw pressed against her lips halted her.
"Think on what you are trying to give up." He warned, even though his smile never faltered. "Take a few days. When you are ready to make a deal- a different deal is always, Always, on the table- then come back here, and we will talk."
The gazelle closed her mouth and nodded, her excitement doused by serious contemplation and her confusion calmed by the fox's gentle council.
Both her and the tiger glided away after a warm goodbye, leaving the fox alone with the rabbit cop, who had taken the liberty of commandeering one of the stools.
"Can't seem to leave me be, can you Sweetheart?" The fox husked.
The rabbit wanted to gag. Instead she clicked her carrot pen and leveled a glare over her notepad.
"Officer Judy Hopps, ZPD. Precinct 1." The rabbit introduced herself in her stern cop voice as her badge glittered proudly on her ballistic vest. She felt a warm sense of satisfaction that all those nights spent mock-interrogating her mirror was finally paying off. "I'd like to ask you some questions about suspicious happenings taking place in Happytown recently."
She flicked to a fresh page and struggled to look back into the fox's glowing emerald eyes shining with mirth back at her from the darkness.
"What's your name?" She asked.
"Whatever you want to call me Sweetheart." The fox cooed. Judy suppressed the urge to stick that cigar he was twirling around his fingers up his nostril. She ground her teeth and tried not to crush her pen in her shaking fist. Deep breaths Judes, deep breaths…
"Have you noticed any… unusual activity in the area recently?" She asked. "Perhaps mammals that seem out of place or are out at unusual times of the night?"
"Yes." Judy's ears perked in surprise.
"Really?" She exclaimed. "Who? Where? What did they look like? What were they doing?"
The grin that split the fox's lips unsettled whatever hope she had in getting a normal answer from the infuriating vulpine.
"Well, not five minutes ago I saw a cute darlin' wrapped in a tantalizingly tight blue body glove and dressed to impress in tactical gear boastin' a shiny new badge-" The fox leaned in and Judy leaned away, hiding her face behind her notepad. "-and a pink bottle of Fox-Away."
The fox savored the look of mortified regret that sank over the doe's poorly disguised distain.
"She was walkin' all by her lonesome down a five mile stretch of road. Definitely suspicious." The fox leaned back in his seat and nodded dramatically to himself. "Suspicious indeed. Wouldn't you agree Officer Hopps?"
"…"
The fox grinned and set his unlit cigar on his lip and took a drag, his chest expanded and when he exhaled a cloud of purple-white smoke swirled lazily from his nostrils. He sighed contently and set his cigar in his fingers and lay them on the table.
"What are you really here for Judith Laverne Hopps?" He asked around his toothy, predatorial grin.
Terror, for reasons she could easily name but completely fail to explain, gripped her heart as her full name spilled off the todd's silky smooth tongue like an irresistible temptation.
The bunny doe swallowed thickly and tried to keep her lips from trembling too much.
Before she could cobble together a coherent answer the fox once again beat her to it.
"Tell you what Sweetheart." The vulpine tugged the crisp lapel on his suit. "Let's make a deal."
"Had a price, oh sweet price."
"My sweet soul, everlasting,"
"A very own eternal light."
"A-a deal?" She breathed in a tiny, shaking voice. The fox's grin melted into a kinder, gentler smile.
"That's right. A deal." He nodded and swirled his shot of untouched whiskey, though his glowing green eyes never left her own amethyst gaze.
"Tell me what you want- Not what you want from me- but what you desire from your investigation."
"The truth." Her answer came before her mind could formulate a different approach. The fox's grin widened in amusement once again.
"You want to know about the strange rash of impossible fortune that struck the residents of Happytown, am I right?" The fox's paw swept boldly across the bar. "You want to know why, in the past month, no less than 40 mammals from Happytown, the slum of Zootopia somehow managed to win the lottery, how creatures of feeble constitution and terminal illness suddenly rise from their beds and walk among the living! You want to know why, in the past month, rising stars of unparalleled talent and blinding beauty, once so rare in the most domesticated of places, appear like common pennies in a place only known for its crime and its dreary hopelessness."
He rose in his seat and declared proudly, like a preacher before the congregation.
"You want to know how, even the smallest and weakest of mammal, managed, in the past month, to do the impossible! A bobcat lifting a truck! A mouse winning a barfight against an elephant!"
Suddenly his voice grew quiet and turned into a rumbling growl. "A rabbit earning the respect of her peers and superiors…"
Judy stared at the fox, completely spell-bound by his irresistible husky voice. He is right, right on all accounts, but how is he right? How does he know?
What's the price for my dream?
The fox settled back into his seat and set his shot of whiskey down and pressed his unlit cigar to his lips. He exhaled, the purple-white smoke poured from his nostrils and caressed the doe's madly twitching tiny pink nose.
Smells like violets…
"You want your dream." He said simply, seemingly reading her mind. "You, Judy Hopps, aren't happy. Isn't that right Sweetheart?"
"…Yes…" She murmured as her eyes filled with tears. "I-I want to be ha-ha-happy."
"No Deal."
Total despair, the likes of which Judy had never known, stabbed her heart as the fox breath those two words.
Tears darkened her cheeks and spilled onto the empty pages of her notepad.
"W-why?" She gurgled.
"You can't buy happiness. There's no price I could hope to place on it." The fox gently replied. "It's priceless."
Judy blubbered and sobbed at that bar table. She cried for all those night dreaming of her life as an officer, but these past few months she had only known loneliness and disappointment. Its become too much… its all too much.
Why can't I be happy?
"Yes," The fox asked. "Why not?"
Judy's sniffed and sucked in a shuddering breath as she looked through the tears at the fox's tender expression, and the paw he had reached across the table to take her own paw in a gentle grip.
The warmth that rolled from his paw to hers was intoxicating.
"H-how?" Judy squeaked.
The fox smirked kindly. "Let's make another deal."
"W-what's-"
"The price?" The fox finished her question with a small laugh. "A song, I think."
Judy sniffed and hummed in confusion.
"A-a song?" The fox nodded eagerly. "F-from me? You w-want me to sing?"
"Yes." He flicked his head towards the empty stage behind him. "I want you to sing one song, right there on that stage."
Judy's reddened eyes widened in panic and disbelief.
"N-n-… I-I can't… I mean, I can't sing! N-not here!"
The fox chuckled, his deep rumbling purr calmed the bunny doe's nerves in a way not even she had ever felt before.
"Trust me." He whispered and gently squeezed her paw.
Judy didn't trust herself to speak around her heart lodged in the throat, but the tiny nod was all the vulpine needed.
She was whisked by a pair of strong arms and the swirling scent of violets to the tiny stage lit by a lone spotlight. Judy felt her knees shake as stage fright took hold of her chest and sending her heart pounding painfully against her ribs. She clung to the microphone stand like a lifeline, she didn't trust her legs to keep her upright.
Why did I get myself into?
"Are you ready Sweetheart?"
Judy squeaked and clutched the microphone stand tighter as her body shook in fright. She risked a turn of her head towards the husky, soothing purr and she nearly melted, for a whole different reason than the stage fright.
The fox in the sharp black suit was smiling gently at her from a wooden stool he had seemed to conjure from thin air. In his paws was a worn and well-loved six-string in his lap.
Judy swallowed and took a deep breath.
"I-I… I'm scared." Her eyes lowered to her feet as she stammered in shame.
"That's okay." Judy's ears perked in surprise and she turned wide- hopeful eyes back to the fox. "It's okay to be scared. Come over here Sweet heart." He beckoned her over. "Come over here and bring that microphone."
With shaking paws Judy plucked the microphone from the stand and wobbled over to the fox with a demure expression adorning her tear-stained cheeks.
A squeak pulled from her lips as a strong vulpine arm scooped her into his lap and set her against his chest behind his guitar.
"Is this better Sweetheart?" He whispered. His muzzle rested in the space between her ears. Judy felt the fox's powerful voice rumble deep in his chest against her back and the warmth from his body enveloped her like a snuggly blanket.
"Yes." Judy whispered back.
"Good." Judy could hear the smile on the fox's face.
"What song am I singing?"
The fox thought for a moment.
"I have one." He said around another smug smile. "You heard it just today in fact. It happens to be my favorite."
"What is it?" Judy asked.
"You'll know." The fox purred.
Then his fingers began to dance across the guitar and the stage melted away. All of Judy's worries, her fears, the sadness, the pain, it all faded as the fox strummed the guitar and played the bunny doe's heart and plucked her heartstrings just like the six-string in his lap.
The hypnotic music spellbound her. When the notes dove her heart sank, and when they flew she soared!
She didn't know how she knew, but when it seemed right Judy lifted the microphone to lips and began to sing.
"Don't you know the devil wears a suit and tie!"
"Saw him driving down the 61' in early July,"
"Red as an open wound and sharp as a knife."
"I heard him howling as he passed me by.-!"
"What's your name?"
The fox in the black suit stopped with one foot in his Cadillac and one glowing emerald eye on her.
"You can call me whatever you like Sweetheart." He said finally. "But, recently the Name… Nick Wilde seems to have struck my fancy."
"Nick Wilde…" Judy rolled the name around her tongue. "I-I like it." She admitted. "It suits you."
The fox's- no- Nick's purring laugh sent Judy's heart fluttering madly in her chest.
"I'm glad." Nick laughed as he climbed into his white Cadillac.
Judy stopped him from closing the door. He cocked his head curiously as the doe stared bashfully up at him.
"W-will I see you again Nick?"
"Want to make another deal so soon?" The fox grinned.
"No!" Judy blustered loudly then blushed madly at her outburst. "well… maybe, if its anything like tonight."
"I'd like that Sweetheart." Judy's face lit up into a dazzling smile that pushed back the dark night.
"Yes! Yes!" She cheered. "Oh, that's-that's great." She flashed another smile up at the fox and found Nick mirroring her unrestrained glee.
"You know what Sweetheart?" Nick asked in his smokey smooth voice. "I think there's enough time tonight for one more deal."
"What kind of deal?" Judy asked.
Any hint of bitterness or suspicion was void, just like the slot on her belt where the can of Fox-Away once sat.
"How about I give you a ride to your place?" Nick offered.
"The price?" Judy giggled. Nick smiled his gentle, enchanting smile.
"One song I think, and your company until we arrive."
"And what about you?" Judy asked coyly. "What part of you do I get?"
Nick laughed in delight.
"You get my undivided attention, unless you want another part of me Judy?"
"Your attention is enough." Judy sang as she bounced into the passenger seat of the old series 10 Cadillac.
"For now." She whispered bashfully and blushed as the fox winked in reply.
Judy recovered from the burning in her cheeks enough to look up in Nick's enthralling Emerald eyes as he look back into her own beautiful amethyst gaze.
"So Nick, do we have a deal?"
Nick smiled gently and laughed in delight.
Best deal he ever made.