[A/N] For everyone who missed the original version of Broken Bonds, here is Nick's day. He got sent home while Judy chose to work parking duty in the rain.
The cold, autumn drizzle that naturally fell on the downtown area, did not affect the fox as he strolled through the central plaza. It rolled off his fur, like a greased tuskball passed to a giraffe. His dark blue uniform collected some of the drops, making the material even darker, but the wetness did not bother the somber mammal.
He kicked at the rain-soaked grass, as he strolled through the nearly empty park. The only other mammals that could be seen outside in the wet this early in the morning, were either rushing towards some important business, or carrying large and dreary umbrellas. The fox seemed to revel in the gloomy muck that surrounded him and didn't even bother to find shelter from the slow and steady rain.
There was a lot on the fox's mind, as he walked directly past the bus stop that would have taken him to the neighborhood he usually called home. Instead, he turned down a side street that headed in the direction of Savanna Central. It was more than an hour's walk back to the apartment that he shared with Judy, but the time would help him come to terms with his most recent mistake.
Yes, he had already admitted that it had been a mistake. He knew they should have been more discreet around the office, but his rabbit was far too cute and adorable and so very demanding. She was also unusually tactile and he found it difficult to deny her those affections. If he was honest, he even enjoyed the touch of her paws. But, now they would both pay for his mistakes.
It had been the right choice to give the chief a way out of their dilemma. If they had forced the big buffalo to decide their fate, he would have only grown angrier and Judy could have been stuck with the worst assignment in the city. She would have been miserable in Tundratown, with little sunlight and no greenery for miles. He was not going to allow that to happen to her. She deserved much better. Bogo was sure to treat the rabbit better since he had stepped up and accepted the transfer himself.
He didn't even want to think about what would happen to a single rabbit in the Nocturnal District. It brought a shiver that filled his whole body and caused his tail to splatter water in all directions.
The T.U.S.K. team office was only a few blocks away from Precinct 1, so he could still see Judy during the day. They could ride the same bus to work and even share their lunches together. The only difference would be that they would no longer be partners. They could not watch each other's backs or solve cases together, but how was that different from other couples, who had different jobs?
Nick was willing to let her go at work so that he could still come home to her at night. She was a very smart bunny and while his presence would be missed, he was certain that she would still be able to get by on her own. There were several good cops in Precinct 1, that she could partner up with and watch her back. The lone tear that rolled down his cheek, was lost in a fresh downpour that had begun over the last few minutes.
He planned to spend the rest of his life with the excitable little bunny and this was only one bump in that long road. The fox was not going to let this little hiccup derail everything they had worked for. When Judy got home, they would sit down together and talk about how to go forward from here.
His stomach growled and he realized that he was nearing their apartment. He had walked the entire distance while his mind had been working over the problem. There was the bus stop where he would have disembarked and across the street, was Brown's Market. The smell of all the fresh food caused his tummy to growl again.
Brown's was a quaint, family run store that served smaller mammals and was a favorite place for Judy to shop. It sat a few short blocks from their home and was nestled between an old video store and a barbershop. Inside, the store reminded Nick of every convenience store he had ever been in, except they had an aisle for fresh produce, instead of automotive supplies.
Nick shook out his fur, before stepping through the door. A tiny bell hanging from the dirty, glass door tinkled when he pushed the door open. He picked up a large pawbasket and headed straight for the produce aisle, where he was greeted warmly by a tall badger, "Hey, Nick. This is a surprise seeing you here in the middle of the day."
"Oh, hello, Ralph," Nick replied, looking over a bin filled with carrots. "I got the rest of the day off."
The badger looked around and behind the fox, "So where is that pretty bunny friend of yours?"
"I was planning on making the two of us some lunch today," the fox declared, putting a tasty carrot into his basket.
"Well, you picked the best time to come by," Ralph explained. "I just got a shipment of fresh produce from the burrows this morning."
"That's great," Nick clapped the badger on the back. "Judy will be so glad to hear that, once I tell her where the main ingredients for her lunch came from."
"I am sure she will," the badger smiled warmly, before he returned to stacking a bin full of plump oranges.
Walking through the rest of the small store, Nick placed several more items into his basket. Before heading to the register, he spotted a small, glass vase filled with bright violets. The flowers reminded the fox of his mate's eyes and he immediately grabbed them off the shelf. On the tag that hung from the vase, were the words "Humble Honesty" written in silver glitter.
Near the flower department, he also spotted several, small, fuzzy, rabbit dolls. Near the back of the bunch, he found one with purple buttons for eyes and light grey fur. When he lifted the doll from the shelf, he was surprised at how soft and warm it felt in his paw.
With his basket filled with what would soon become lunch, plus the gifts for Judy, the fox stepped up to the checkout counter. Ralph's wife greeted him warmly and began to ring up the food, "Did you find everything alright, Nick?"
"I sure did, Dana. Thank you." Nick replied to her. "I am planning to have a wonderful lunch with a friend."
"Oh, my. She must be a special friend," the badger beamed as she scanned the flowers. "These sure are lovely."
"Yes, a little birdy told me that you do have the best arrangements in town."
"Flattering will not get you anywhere, Mr. Wilde," she replied flatly. "Besides, my daughter made these today."
"Well, then I must tell Sasha thank you for the lovely bouquet."
"I am sure she will be glad to hear that," Dana replied warmly as she bagged the fox's groceries. "She has been such a grumpy tail ever since it started raining this morning."
Waving, Nick once again walked through the dust-stained glass door to the sound of a tiny tinkling bell, "Thanks for everything, Mrs. Brown."
Nick held the grocery bag tightly to his chest, while he walked through the slow and steady drizzle, back to the apartment. After being carried for only a few blocks, the bag was soaked through and began to fall apart. When he climbed the steps to his floor, he was having to juggle the various vegetables that kept falling through the wet, paper bag.
After opening the door, he quickly dumped the goods on the dinner table, before looking around the apartment. There was no sign that Judy had been home yet. The lights were off and her keys were not on the counter by the door. He turned on the lights, then sent his rabbit a text, before proceeding to make lunch.
The first thing he did was to wash an old metal pot that had been left over from their last meal, fill it with water and set it on the stove to boil. He then rinsed a head of romaine lettuce under the faucet, before chopping it into bite-sized squares. Reaching into the overhead cabinet, he pulled out a small salad bowl and placed the chopped leaves into it.
Next, he rinsed the other vegetables before removing their tops and other unwanted bits. By this point, the water in the pot was furiously boiling, so he gently lowered a single egg into the hot water, careful to not burn his fingers. A second egg was set aside for later, while he grabbed the tasty carrot.
While the egg was merrily boiling away, Nick sliced the orange root vegetable into long, square strips. He then chopped the carrot strips into cubes, before tossing them on top of the romaine leaves. The turnip was the next root to be chopped into bits that were small enough to easily fit inside a rabbit's mouth. A small, white onion, also followed its companions into the dark, wooden salad bowl.
Once the egg had finished boiling, the fox drained the water from the pan and placed the hard boiled egg inside the fridge to cool. He then took a flat pan and placed it on the burner to warm. A capful of oil was gently poured into the pan as it quickly grew hot.
While waiting for the pan, Nick chopped a small bundle of raw broccoli into tiny florets and then crumbled a paw full of cauliflower into the salad. Next, he held a small cheese shredder over the bowl and quickly rubbed a stiff block of parmesan along its length, twice. He made sure to spread the cheese evenly over the other toppings.
When the oil in the pan began to sputter and pop, Nick broke the second egg on its rim and poured the contents into the center of the hot oil. While the egg fried in the pan, the fox turned to the cabinets, searching until he found a few jars of his favorite spices. Once the egg white was fully opaque, he flipped it over, making sure to not break the yolk as it hit the bottom of the scalding hot pan.
Turning off the stove, he let the egg finish cooking from the heat of the pan alone while he pulled out two slices of bread. The fox liberally slathered the slices with a pre-mixed sandwich spread that he liked. He then placed a few of the uncut leaves of lettuce on the bread along with tomato and onion slices. A thick slice of yellow cheese soon joined the growing stack, along with some long and thin dilled cucumber slices.
Nick quickly pulled the hot pan from the stove and gently slid the fried egg on top of his sandwich. He then placed the second slice of bread on top of the egg and gave the entire stack a gentle pat with his paw. The completed egg sandwich found its way to a simple, plastic dinner plate, and next to a pawful of baked potato chips, covered in an orange, imitation cheesy coating.
With his sandwich finished, he pulled the boiled egg from the fridge and carefully tapped it with a spoon to crack the shell. After peeling the hard shell from the semi-squishy white sphere, the tod diced it into small cubes similar in size to the carrots before them. He sprinkled the chopped egg onto the salad and finished the dish off with a pinch of pre-seasoned croutons that he and Judy had acquired from a fast food restaurant, called Whitney's.
Lunch was served on the Wilde Hopps, dinner table, with a lovely bouquet of violets in the center. The salad sat on the side of the table nearest to the door, so a certain rabbit could spot the dish when she first arrived home. Nick's sandwich waited nearer to the kitchen, so that he could quickly rush to the fridge if his mate required anything. The plush rabbit leaned against the pretty vase, with the doll's purple, button eyes looking towards the door.
After sending another text to his rabbit, Nick cleaned off the counters and finished washing the dishes in the sink. He then threw away a box of fried crickets that had been sitting in the back of the fridge for more than a week and carried the rest of the trash down to the dumpster behind the building. With the apartment tidied up, he sat down on the couch and waited for Judy to return home.
An hour passed with no sign of the always energetic rabbit, and Nick finally ate his sandwich. The bread had dried out and the egg had gone cold, but his lunch was still edible. Since they had been baked and packaged at some date in the recent past, the chips lost none of the flavor or texture after sitting out in the open for a long period of time.
The fox typed another message to his bunny roommate wondering where she was and that lunch had gone cold. Where was she? It had been more than four hours since he had last seen her. What had Bogo said to her after he left the precinct? She couldn't have been fired, the Chief already said that he wouldn't do that. Why wasn't she responding to his texts?
Thirty more minutes passed with Nick blankly staring at the phone in his paws. He would flip back and forth between his text app and FurBook every half a minute. Each time he saw that there were no new messages, he would appear to shrink slightly with a heavy sigh.
His mind raced with worry. It was not like her to ignore his messages. Even at work, she would always reply as soon as she saw his texts. What if she could not see them? What if her phone was off or worse, what if it was missing?
When he left the precinct, Bogo looked like he was ready to lay down the law. Did he force her to transfer to another precinct despite his actions? Were all of his efforts to keep her out of trouble, in vain? Would she be forced to move to that giant icicle, to be close to her new assignment?
He would never forgive that buffalo if he carried out his threat to send her to the Nocturnal District. If she had been so squeamish around the Mystic Springs, he did not even want to imagine what would befall her in those lightless and twisting tunnels. Sure, she was used to living underground in the burrows, but not where some mammal waited around every corner to hurt, or rob you, or worse. Like he had said before, "It's no place for a little bunny," even if that rabbit was the toughest cop he knew.
Sighing, he looked down at the phone again. No new messages from Judy could be found, not even an email. He took a breath and dialed her number, but it rang several times before going to voicemail. Leaving a message, he explained his worry and begged her to call him back.
Pulling his paw behind his back, he was about to throw the phone across the room in frustration. Before the phone was hurled to an undeserving and fatal fate, the fox opened his dialer app and entered a new number. The phone did not even ring a second time before the other end picked up and a warm voice came through the speaker, "Nicky, what a pleasant surprise."
"Hello, mom," the worry lay thickly on his voice as he greeted his mother.
"Oh, Nicky. What's wrong?" His mother asked in concern
"It's nothing mom," he replied. "I just wanted to hear your lovely voice today."
"Don't lie to me son," she snapped across the empty miles that separated them. "You never just call me out of the blue to say hi, and the tone in your voice clearly says that something is wrong."
"Fine," Nick sighed, turning his muzzle away from the phone. "Bogo sent us home early today."
"Ok?" Vivian asked. "And by 'us' I am guessing that you mean you and Judy?"
"Yes mom, we got let off early."
"Alright. Are you going to at least tell me why he sent you home?"
"I guess. Let's just say that we were being overly friendly at work."
"Oh? Oh!", the vixen exclaimed in surprise. "Were you fired?"
"No, no, mom. Nothing like that," he explained waving a paw in the air but she could never have seen it. "We were just forced to take a few days off without pay. But when we do go back, we won't be allowed to work on the same team anymore."
"Aww, that is too bad, son," his mother declared with sincere sympathy. "Are you two still dating?"
"I don't know mom," he explained. "That is what has me worried. I have not seen or heard from Judy since I left the precinct."
"I see."
"When I got home I made us some lunch and then left her a message saying that the food was waiting for her, but she hasn't replied. I even called and left a voicemail."
"And still nothing from your bunny girl?" Vivian asked in concern.
At that moment, the fox's phone chimed to alert him that a new message had been received. "Hold on mom, I just got a text," he told her. When he flipped over to the messaging app the newest message only read, "M33t h0T Singles in y0uR ar3A" Grunting he quickly deleted the message and blocked the caller.
"Was that her?" The vixen asked.
"Nope," Nick uttered, shaking his head. "Just another random spam text. She hasn't sent me any replies today and I have a bad feeling about this mom."
"I know, dear," she said in a tone that she had used many years ago when trying to comfort the young tod.
"This feels like Trish all over again," his voice nearly caught in his throat as he tried to swallow a sob.
"No!" The motherly vixen cried. "Don't say things like that. Judy loves you very much, son. I only got to spend a few hours with her, but I got the impression that she would crawl through hell and back for you."
"I hope you are right, mom," Nick wiped at the tears that were forming under his eyes.
"Trust your mother and be patient, hun," she declared. "I am sure if you give her a little time and space to figure things out, she will come to realize that what I saw in her eyes is true."
"Ok, thanks, mom," the tod replied warmly, before pressing the button on his phone that ended the call. For several minutes, he sat staring at the phone, trying to understand the words that his mother had said.