Chapter Text
Wyonna and Willa are making mac n’ cheese.
“The way Daddy used to do it,” Wynonna says, with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a fistful of Kraft singles in the other.
Willa is smiling, a real smile that transforms her face, brightens her eyes and makes her look a good five years younger. She’s standing at the stove, stirring the pasta, the steam curling up around the wooden spoon in her hand. There’s music playing on the old radio propped onto the counter, Momma’s old radio that Waverly fixed up herself. When Willa sings along Wynonna’s face goes soft with something complicated; longing and fear and tentative joy, so fragile and delicate it hurts to witness.
Waverly slips out the door; she doesn’t think they even notice she’s left.
++
She’s got earmuffs on, a winter jacket and fleece lined jeans, but there’s nothing like winters in Purgatory, the cold cutting through her layers within minutes.
Luckily, Nicole arrives home just as Waverly’s almost given up, almost lost her nerve on the wooden steps to Nicole’s house. She hears the crunch of tires on the snow and the road salt before she turns and sees the cruiser, rolling to a slow stop in the driveway, the sudden silence of the engine cutting off.
Nicole emerges, her hair braided back and her hat low over her eyes. The sheriff’s department jacket is bulky, and her shoes clunk deep into the snow as she makes her way up to the stairs. Snow is falling thick and heavy, catching in the dip of her Stetson and the line of her shoulders. “Waverly Earp,” she greets, and when she takes her hat off Waverly can see the pink-tips of her ears.
“Deputy Haught,” Waverly says, and when they kiss they’re smiling.
++
“Bold move,” Nicole says, while Waverly pours milk into a saucepan. Her holster clunks heavy on the kitchen table; water drips off her coat, hung on the back of the front door above their shoes, piled on the floor in a homey jumble. “Kissing on the front porch in front of everybody.”
Waverly pauses, then continues, listening for the gas click-click-flare of the burner lighting. “I can be brave,” she says, and Nicole’s hand curls around her hip, turning her.
“Waverly Earp,” Nicole says again, smiling soft and easy, snow melting off the tip of her braid, falling thick and heavy outside. “I’ve never met anybody braver.” She kisses Waverly’s hair, the dip of her temple, her nose brushing against Waverly’s cheek, the warm huff of her breath--black coffee and vanilla donuts.
Waverly thinks about Willa and Wynonna, cooking together with Momma’s radio in the house Daddy built. “I’m a coward,” she says quietly, watching the milk bubble up and simmer. “I always have been.”
Nicole turns the stove off, curling her fingers around Waverly’s wrist. Her nails, painted clear, glint under the lights, and when she tugs lightly Waverly lets herself be led.
“Do you remember,” Nicole asks, “when you and Champ had a fight, and you came over here?”
“Yes,” Waverly says, with a slight groan. “I made a terrible fool of myself.”
Nicole tweaks her nose, then turns, falling backwards onto the couch and taking Waverly with her.
Waverly squeaks, flailing for balance, and then falls, landing chest to chest with Nicole on her back. “That was… smooth.” Waverly pushes the hair out of her eyes, and when it falls back Nicole’s fingers take over, tucking it behind an ear.
“I try.” Nicole’s still wearing her uniform shirt, and Waverly plays with one of the plastic buttons at her throat, watching Nicole’s eyes go dark with promise. Suddenly nervous, Waverly sits up, sliding off Nicole’s hips to perch at the edge of the couch, knees pulled up to her chest and her teeth worrying at her lip. Nicole nudges her with a socked foot. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” Waverly says, too quickly to be true.
“Waverly Earp,” Nicole hums, and that’s three times now, a full naming. Power comes in threes, Waverly thinks, the third sister just returned to them like she was up there in the mountains, just waiting for Wynonna to turn 27, nevermind the sister who stayed in Purgatory to visit her empty grave. “You know you can tell me anything, right?”
Nicole Haught, Waverly thinks, tried to help Wynonna from a hospital bed, touched her wrist when she was mourning Shorty, kisses her so softly it aches. There are very fine scars at her wrist and across her lefthand knuckles where a monster dragged her from the squad car she still drives every day, her blood stained in the footwell. Waverly’s never felt anything like she does for Nicole, an intensity she’s only ever felt for Wynonna with none of the baggage or the distance. It’s---it’s amazing, it’s incredible, it’s everything she thought it could be when she thought about love as a child and at the same time it’s nothing she ever could have predicted.
Waverly thinks: if I lose her now, before all our firsts, before forever, it will break me.
“I know,” she says, dropping her eyes. “It’s just hard, having Willa back.”
Something flickers across Nicole’s face, almost suspicion, almost hurt. Then she sighs, tucking an arm under her head and her other hand smoothing down Waverly’s spine, slipping under her shirt to lightly drag her nails across Waverly’s skin. “You can always come here,” she offers.
All the things chasing down her and Wynonna in this shitty little town where everyone Waverly has ever loved has died, and none of them from old age in their sleep. If she loved Nicole the right way, the childhood way, the storybook way… she would tell Nicole to leave and forget she ever knew the name Earp.
“I know,” she says instead, laying her cheek on Nicole’s chest to hear her heartbeat, steady and even and strong. The sun is settling, slanting pale orange through the blinds in prison bar rectangles across the floor. At the window, Nicole’s cat lounges lazily, tail flicking.
“I feel safe when I’m with you,” Waverly says quietly, and swallows the rest (you’re not safe with me) down into her belly with all the other half-truths and secrets.