[A/N: Inspired by Rich Moore's tweets that Nick and Judy were separated for 3 months after their press conference fight! D: ]

[For those of you wondering about the college au, I will be continuing it in a separate story, and keep this one just for random drabbles. Check out my profile for it!]

Time had never been a tangible thing for Nick. Seconds easily intertwined with minutes, minutes ebbed away into days, weeks, years. Time was something he had plenty of, something he needn't worry about. After all, he made his own rules, his life stopped and started when he wanted it too. If he wanted to go trick some shrew into buying a skunk rug, he'd do that today. If he felt like scamming some bright-eyed meter maid into buying him a jumbo pop today, then he'd make it happen. He had 'till the end of the world to decide what to do, what to feel. The 20 years he'd spent alone on the streets had felt like nothing more than a hazy interlude, something that had floated by without any real awareness.

But then she just had to come along, she with her bright ideas and determined passion and Nick found that suddenly time didn't revolve around himself anymore.

He hated her.

They'd been apart for one hour, and the thought was pumping through him, making his blood run hot and his vision blurry. He could still hear her calling out for him, even though he had already left the ZPD far behind. Her voice echoed through his mind, clouding his thoughts further, mingling with the sound of laughter, the clink of a muzzle snapping shut, falling against the pavement…

"Hey, watch it!" someone yelled at him, and Nick snapped out of his angry fuming just to flip off the giraffe who'd almost hit him with his car.

He couldn't believe her, the way she was so blind…so frustratingly, innocently blind. He knew she didn't mean harm by it, but that didn't make the bite of her words hurt any less. In fact, if anything, it made it worse. It was one thing to have strangers, people he could care less about distrust him, judge him, hate him, even. But Judy…

He thought she'd believed in him, but she was just like everything else, everyone else. She would come and go, nothing permanent, and in 20 more years it wouldn't matter that he hated her so much.

He could never hate her.

A week of being apart, and he was wallowing in cynicism. He saw her on the TV, trying to break up riots at a Gazelle peace rally. Ridiculous, he thought bitterly, not changing the channel.Stupid, dumb, ignorant rabbit.

Staying angry was tiring, hating someone was draining, and trying to force someone out of your life when they'd fit there so well…

It was damn near impossible.

He kept trying.

He wanted to hate her.

"Don't tell me you're still crying over that bunny!" Finnick had laughed, tossing another handful of change into the growing pile between them.

It was a month since he'd seen her, and Nick kept his poker face, gripping his cards slightly tighter. "I never have, and never will, cry over anyone, let alone some bunny."

It was Poker night, also known as two foxes sitting in the back of Finnick's old van swapping whatever spare cash they had between them. It gave the two of them an excuse to blow off some steam, take it easy.

"Yeah right! "The smaller fox snorted. "You miss her. Man, she hustled you so good, you're whipped now!"

"I told you, she's - was - just some stupid bunny," Nick insisted, but his heart wasn't in it.

"I know a whipped sucker when I see one," Finnick just said dismissively. "And you Nick, are one sad son of a bitch."

The small fox wasn't wrong. Nick knew he should hate her. He wanted to, desperately.

He needed to.

He was driving himself crazy. He just needed to forget her, then he could get back to his normal life. The past 20 years would swallow up the past 1 month, 2 weeks, and 48 hours, dragging it back into mundane unawareness. It should have been simple, but -

He missed her.

52 days of being apart. Late nights, watching the moon and having stupidly stupid thoughts about wondering whether or not she was looking at it too because then it'd be the same moon and it would be some form of togetherness. Dull mornings, sitting in the sun and drinking some cheap coffee and wondering if she missed him and he just really needed to know if she was ok.

61 days passed and he saw her name in the paper, saw she had resigned. It was just her name, not even a photograph, but the 9 letters had made his heart skip nonetheless. The clipping was folded up and tucked away in his pocket, beside the carrot pen, because they were both something tangible.

2 months and 3 weeks, and worried for her. She was almost 10 years younger than him, too young, too much of an optimist for her own good. Now, her dreams had been crushed. If he ever saw her again, would she even be the same bunny he remembered?

The thought was quickly followed by a worse, more sickening one: Did she even want to see him? It was one thing for him to act all bitter and sullen, but the thought of her feeling the same way, of her hating him, never wanting to see him again; it made him miserable. As much as he hated to admit it, all this time he'd been hoping deep down that she'd come back, but the harsh reality was that it might never happen - he might never see her again.

But she came back.

Throughout the interlude of 20 years, Nick had become an expert card player, and it was a simple rule of thumb in card games: you never showed your hand. There was no room for faltering your poker face or vulnerability, doing so meant you lost. But this bunny, this dumb, overly-optimistic, bright-eyed bunny, had left him emotionally raw, and trying to shove her out had made him lose something he never knew he needed this desperately.

He'd heard her voice, calling out for him, and at first he thought he was really starting to lose it, but then he saw her, her big violet eyes peeking out over the bridge to look down at him, and she ran to him, ran to him just like in some cheesy movie, rambling on about wolves and night howlers and flowers.

3 months, and a part of him was still bitter, a nasty part that shown through with a sarcastic, "Isn't that interesting?" The part that tested her by walking away from her, the part that was stupidly happy when she followed him, pleading with him.

But the carrot pen, her pen (or was it his now?), turned over in his hand, and she was right there,and she was real, and everything was perfect. He had to turn his back to her as she whimpered and apologized (and God, who knew that the sound of someone else crying could hurt so bad?). He couldn't let her see the smile on his face. Because she was back, and in that moment, Nick didn't need to hear her apology. He knew she was sorry, she was too much of a dumb, emotional bunny to not be, and he wasn't enough of a sly, crafty fox to not be too.

And somehow that was everything.

"Officer Wilde," she mused, taking another sip of her carrot smoothie. "I think it has a nice ring to it."

He was still dressed in his police blues, running off the high the graduation ceremony had left him with. "It does, doesn't it?" He said idly, already having finished his blueberry smoothie. He sat across from her at the small parlor table, feet occasionally brushing against hers.

"Nick, I'm serious," she said, reaching across the table to hold his paw. He froze at the contact, looked at her nervously, but she continued, never phased. "I'm really proud of you. I know you're going to make a great cop."

And that was why he could never hate her: she was the one person who gave him that hope, that little stubborn hope that'd stuck through those 3 months, hoping she'd come back, the hope that'd driven him through his time training at the police academy, the hope that told him he could be more than just a sly fox.

"Well, I couldn't have done it without you," Nick admitted, not letting her paw go. "You're a great motivator, Carrots."

She apparently took pride in this, as her ears straightened and her smile grew. The lights of passing cars and busy city nightlife reflected through the window and across her face, and Nick decided then and there he'd show her his hand, allow himself to be vulnerable one last time. "You know…I really care about you, Jude."

Her face softened, and she looked him right in the eye with that cute, determined way of hers. "I care about you too, Nick. So, so, so much! And I'm so happy we're friends and that we're going to be partners! I honestly couldn't think of anything better!"

He couldn't either. And after he walked her home, he gave her a lingering hug goodbye, loving the way she fit there. And for the first time in his life, he wished that he could stay in this moment, this day, for a little longer, that time would stop, just for the two of them.