Chapter 1: monday left me broken
Chapter Text
Her mother dies on a Monday.
Nicole's mother used to say, "Where there's a will, there's a way." She used to say it all the time when Nicole was a little girl. She would smile, tuck a lock of bright red hair behind Nicole's ear and lift her chin. "Ain't it beautiful, Nicky?"
Where there's a will, there's a way. Nicole didn't understand what she meant. She remembers watching her mother, tall and thin and graceful, come home and drop her purse on the counter and slice up apples for her snack after school. She sees her sitting on the side lines at soccer games in early grade school and cheering with a big, bright smile. (Nicole has her mother's smile.)
When Nicole is in third grade, she watches her mother begin to lose weight and doesn't understand. She watches her mother's cheeks grow sallow, the soft curves of her face and jaw melting to harsh, sharp angles. She watches her mother's hair thin and fall out, and she doesn't understand. Where there's a will, there's a way.
Nicole's mother is at home waiting for her after school on a Monday. Her mother never beats her home, even on days she walks from practice. But she's lying on the couch in sweatpants--Nicole never sees her mother in sweatpants--and a thin cotton t-shirt. Nicole can see the bones of her collar jutting out through her skin, which seems paper-thin and fragile.
"Mommy?" Nicole asks, walking fully into the den from the kitchen, confused. "What are you doing here?" Nicole is tall for her age, awkwardly skinny at nine years old. She prefers to hang out with the boys at recess, and the girls make fun of her scrapes and bruises. One of Nicole's pigtail braids has loosened, and there are hairs flying every which way, crimped and still so, so red.
Nicole's father walks into the room from behind her and sits on the couch beside her mother. She hears the garage door slam shut on the other side of the kitchen, and Tyler's little shoes falling haphazardly in the mudroom. "Tyler, Nicole," her father calls. "Come sit down."
Nicole's father is a serious man who only softens for his wife. He is patient with Nicole and Tyler, warm but stilted. It's Nicole's mother who is truly gifted with her children. One would seldom find a more adored parent than Nicole's mother.
Terror runs through Nicole's limbs. She doesn't understand, not really. Mom is very sick, they say, voices gentle but eyes afraid. We're going to try to get through this, but it won't be easy.
Tyler looks at Nicole, at their parents. He's six now, shorter than Nicole still, and she feels a sudden sense of protectiveness take over her. "Where there's a will, there's a way. Right, Mommy?" he says.
Nicole's mother smiles a tired, melancholy smile. Nicole thinks she looks like an angel.
"That's right, baby," Nicole's mother says. Nicole notices her voice is sleepy. Her entire being seems to be exhausted,
On a Monday, Nicole learns that there isn't always A Way.
Nicole is numb. Her funeral-wear is too short on her--you're always growin', her mother used to say with a shake of her head. Tyler is wailing, her father's face is blank. Nicole feels unbearably cold, and unbearably alone on Monday.
Waverly has always been curious. She's the smallest, in size and in age, of her sisters. Wynonna and Willa are six and eight years older than her, and they never let her play. Momma says wait, angel, it'll be your turn to play with the big girls someday. But Waverly doesn't like waiting.
Waverly sees Willa fiddling in Daddy's drawer one Monday, early in the morning (before she's supposed to be awake). She's spying, which she's also not supposed to do, but she couldn't sleep and she can't reach the sink to get herself water, so what else is she supposed to do? When Willa runs back into the house, Waverly sneaks into the barn and opens Daddy's drawer--which she's also not supposed to do.
Willa catches her. "Hey, what are you doin'?" Waverly jumps, elbowing the drawer, and turns to see Willa in the doorway. She's standing with her hands on her hips, and her eyes are narrowed. She always regards Waverly with disdain, nearly disgust (Wynonna usually simply looks on with disinterest).
Waverly panics. She knows the rules. "Uh--nothing! I--"
"Save it," Willa says, interrupting. She shakes her head. "I already saw you, Waverly."
Waverly feels her chin start to tremble. Her eyes are hot and her voice is hoarse as she starts to beg. "Willa, please don't tell Daddy."
Willa smiles, but it feels false. Wicked. She glances up at the ceiling, and Waverly tries to follow her eyes (her train of thought). "Walk across that beam."
"Beam?" Waverly sees it, the lone beam that stretches across the center of a gaping hole through the second floor loft of the barn.
Willa crosses her arms over her chest. Her face is smooth, wiped clean of emotion--or interest of any kind. She looks so much like Daddy like this, cold and calculating. "You heard me." She points to the beam, first with a finger and then with her eyes, before looking back at Waverly. "Walk across that beam, or I'll tell Daddy you were going through his drawer."
The morning sun is higher now, rays dancing into the barn through cracks in the wooden exterior. The sunbeams illuminate dancing dust particles, as if to highlight the distance and danger.
Early on a Monday morning, Waverly climbs to the second floor loft. She takes a deep breath, looks determinedly ahead of her, and takes a step.
Waverly ignores all sounds and refuses to look down. Early on a Monday morning, she turns around on the other side, triumphant, only to find Daddy standing in Willa's place.
"What the hell you doin', girl?!" He's shouting, face puffy and red. His eyes are glassy, the way they get at night when he has that foul-smelling bottle in his hand. Waverly gulps and looks for Willa, and is surprised to find that she's alone with Daddy.
Waverly says nothing, climbs down from the loft. She's proud this Monday, for being brave, for not falling, for rising to Willa's challenge for the very first time. But Daddy's belt breaks the skin on her back, and she goes to school walking funny. She learns not to break the rules again.
The Monday after Nicole graduates from the academy, her father tells her he sold the family home. Tyler is about to be in his junior year of college before heading into the Air Force, and is spending the summer on base. "No one's comin' back," her father tells her pointedly. "So no reason to hold on to the shithole."
With no home to return to, leaving a broken family that's never quite been the same behind, Nicole boards a bus on Monday to a small, desperate town. Her new boss had recruited her with little shame and a lot of promises--most of which are probably empty, but Nicole reasons that she and this place can have that in common.
She tosses a tiny duffle with all of her worldly possessions into the luggage space beneath the bus and sits next to the window.
It's early evening on Monday when the bus finally departs, and she watches the beautiful landscape of fly-over states and cold grassy plains pass by. She falls asleep with her forehead pressed to the glass, thinking about her mother.
Nicole often wonders what her mother would say, if she were here. Monday's are Nicole's loneliest days, she thinks. She wakes from her nap groggy and carsick, a nasty crick in her neck when she sits up and stretches.
The sun has gone down over the horizon mostly, but there's enough light that Nicole can make out the town sign.
On Monday, Nicole welcomes a new future as she watches the Welcome to Purgatory sign pass by.
Wynonna leaves for good on a Monday. Waverly begs her to stay.
She comes home from work one day, a warm sunny Monday in Spring. Wynonna's only duffle, a beat up old gym bag of Daddy's, sits full and zipped next to the front door.
Waverly panics, tossing her keys on the table and sprinting up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Wynonna is sitting on Waverly's bed, a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the floor by her feet. Waverly glares.
"So you're just going to leave me here, then?" she accuses. She hasn't entered the room fully, instead leaning on the doorframe and crossing her arms over her chest. Her Shorty's shirt is too big, the gaping sleeves falling several inches past her elbows. Waverly tangles her fingers into the fabric, rubbing at the jersey cotton nervously.
Wynonna shrugs and grunts. Her voice doesn't have the sing-song quality it gets when she's been drinking. Waverly wonders if the bottle of whiskey is for show, or for when Waverly begs Wynonna to stay--liquid strength to leave anyway.
"Everybody hates me here, Waves," Wynonna says, finally meeting Waverly's gaze. Her blue eyes are so clear, so bright, and she looks so tired. "If I'm going to be hated, I don't need to be here to see it."
"And what about me?" Waverly accuses. She softens her voice; Wynonna doesn't like to be pushed.
Wynonna narrows her eyes. "I need to only think about me." She shrugs, looking away, and Waverly watches her rake her teeth against her bottom lip. Her eyes narrow, as though she's forcing something, forcing herself to do something, and she says "I honestly forgot about you" with a shadow passing over her face.
Wynonna chews on her lip when she's anxious and nervous, a habit Waverly uses to tell when she's lying. On this Monday, Wynonna bites her lip hard enough to make it bleed, and she wipes away a drop of blood with her thumb after she slides on a jacket.
Waverly thought she'd get used to being forgotten. But Wynonna never forgets her now, not after Willa. And though it feels like a lie, wrong and sour when it hits her ear, it stings all the same.
On a Monday, Wynonna walks out of Waverly's room with a kiss pressed to her forehead. She walks down the stairs without so much as a word, throws her bag over her shoulder, and leaves.
It's not the first Monday Waverly is alone, but it feels the loneliest.
Waverly doesn't wallow in missing Wynonna, not for long anyway. She buries herself in her family tree, wrapping the curse around her life like a blanket. She builds walls, keeps secrets and reads alone in her room after dark. She memorizes languages long dead and studies obscure mythologies. Anything to try to understand. No fact is forgotten, no stone or page unturned.
Someone will protect what's left of this family, this town. Even if it's just little Waverly, the forgotten Earp sister.
Chapter 2: tuesday i was through with hopin'
Summary:
Tuesday is a day of understanding.
Notes:
Thank you guys so much for all of the love! Here's the next chapter, and as usual, feedback is welcome and appreciated!!
Chapter Text
The first time Nicole kisses a girl is on a Tuesday.
It doesn't feel that meaningful, not really, not until after. Nicole is fourteen, home early from softball practice. It's a scorcher outside, the sun out and heavily beating. She could see the heat waves bouncing off the asphalt of the school parking lot on her way to the fields.
Nicole hit her first growth spurt early. She's at five-foot-six right now, taller than many of the boys in her class still. She'd hoped high school would help to even her out. So far, no such luck. Over winter break, Nicole had spent days stuck in bed, growing pains in her shins burning and forcing tears from her eyes.
She still has her mother's build, tall and thin and lean. She puts on muscle easily, recruiting for varsity softball as a freshman (the only one on the team, thank you very much). Still, Nicole is nothing if she's not her father's child, and she spends hours on the weekends running laps around the beat up old track behind the high school to build up speed, or practicing her swing at the batting cages in the big city nearby.
Nicole knows she's different, has known it for a while. The boys in her class bore her, and they're all too small for her anyway. She hears girls on the tennis team changing in the locker room before practice talking about boys, and they always sound so giddy, excited and nervous and giggly. Nicole's never felt that way about a boy.
There's a girl on Nicole's team, a junior who plays left field named Danni. After Nicole's first game as starting second baseman, Danni swats Nicole on the butt with her mitt. "Hey, freshman," she calls, chomping loudly on bubblegum. "Want a ride home?" Before waiting for a response, Danni leads Nicole to a beat-up old Subaru in the parking lot, takes her gym bag, and tosses it in the trunk. When she sits in the driver's seat and Nicole still hasn't moved, Danni eyes her through the window of the car. "Well, you comin' or what?"
Danni drives Nicole home from practices and games now, since Nicole's dad has to work. Sometimes, they stop at the local Dairy Queen and get ice cream, laughing about their teammates or their coach's ridiculous combover.
Danni has short blonde hair that she keeps pulled back in a French braid at practice. She teaches Nicole how to braid her own hair, red and long and wild and too slippery for ponytails to do any good. She taught her little cousin, who Nicole learns is her age, how to braid her own hair. Sometimes, when Danni isn't thinking, she'll accidentally call her "Coley," and smile sheepishly before correcting herself.
Danni isn't an only child. She's the youngest of four children, three older brothers who've joined the marines as soon as they turned eighteen. Her mother pampered her, adores her, and Nicole envies that relationship more than she expected to. Danni's mother has a sister who lives nearby; Coley's mom. The girls, close in age, were raised like sisters. Danni says Nicole reminds her of Coley, skinny with big brown eyes.
Nicole thinks Danni has pretty brown eyes. And she has all of these freckles that spatter across her face and shoulders. Nicole wonders what it would be like to connect them, like dots or stars, and see what shapes she can make. When Danni nudges Nicole with her elbow, laughing about a secret inside joke, Nicole's whole body feels like it's floating, and her belly turns and turns.
On Tuesday, after Coach dismisses them unless y'all wanna stroke out from the heat, Danni drives Nicole home and invites herself in for some lemonade.
They're in Nicole's kitchen, standing side by side at the breakfast bar, drinking sour lemonade and eating stale pretzels. Danni reaches behind Nicole and undoes her braid, running her fingers through her hair softly and carefully.
"Sorry," Nicole says sheepishly, leaning away slightly. "It's kinda sweaty."
Danni smiles softly, ever the mystery, and shakes her head, leaning further and pulling Nicole's head back towards her. "I don't mind."
Nicole turns her body to face Danni and leans in quickly, pressing her lips awkwardly against Danni's. It's too hard, all lips and teeth and pretzel crumbs, and Danni pulls away just as quickly.
"Woah, woah woah," Danni says, leaning away. She takes a few steps back, looking at Nicole with wild, confused eyes. Nicole's stomach drops from her body through the floor, and her limbs feel cold with terror. "Listen, dude. I like you, sure. But I don't like you like that. Okay?"
Nicole nods, eyes filling with tears, and watches as Danni backs out of her kitchen, walking to the front door. She's still talking, something about how they'll see each other at practice but maybe that's it as she walks out the front door. Tuesday is the last time Nicole sees Danni outside of practice.
When she turns away from the spot Danni was standing, she sees her father and brother looking at her from the mud room. She freezes.
Nicole can't bring herself to say anything. She'd woken up this morning thinking today was unlike any other Tuesday, but now she feels as though her whole world is about to change.
Her father is staring at her, his face unreadable, until he finally turns to walk up the back stairs to his office. He says nothing, and Nicole is petrified. Her heart is hammering in her throat, tongue dry and heavy.
She forgets about Tyler until he walks up to her.
"Nicky?" he says, tapping her arm. At twelve, he hasn't quite gotten the height so typical of their family, but their father says he's nearing that age. His head reaches Nicole's shoulder, and she sees the top of his head, strands of his shaggy strawberry blonde hair blurring as she looks on. She feels the hot tears on her cheeks and reaches up to wipe them away.
"Uh," she says, feeling nauseous. "How much did you guys see, Ty?"
Tyler smiles softly, eyes wide and gentle. They're close, not as close as they were right after their mother died, but Tyler has always been intuitive like she was. He opens his arms and says nothing, choosing to offer acceptance without saying anything at all.
The humiliation catches up to her, finally, and she feels the weight of the day settle fully on her shoulders. Her body bends and sags with exhaustion, fear, and just the slightest bit of self-pity.
On Tuesday, Nicole collapses into her baby brother, sobbing and feeling younger and more fragile than she has in a long time.
The first Tuesday after Daddy and Willa are gone, Waverly wakes up early again. There are two men in the kitchen talking to Gus and Uncle Curtis--she can hear their voices bouncing through the hallways.
She's still a little bit lost waking up in a strange room. She doesn't recognize the sheets just yet, or the smell of the detergent. This bed is bigger than the one she has at home, and she always jolts when she rolls over to stretch, thinking she'll tumble out onto the floor.
Waverly slips out of bed, curious, and pads across the hardwood floor of this stranger-room. She drags her trusty blanket on the floor behind her, shivering in her fleece nightgown against the chilly morning air.
Walking up to the top of the stairs, she watches as Wynonna is led out of the house with a duffle, bookended by two men. One is wearing a suit, and she sees the tail of his coat ripple in the wind as he leaves. He's balding, hunched as he walks. The second man is thin, and he has a young face from what Waverly can see of it. He's wearing jeans and button up with a vest. His curly dark hair bounces in the wind, and he's the one to turn back and shut the door. He sees Waverly at the top of the stairs clutching her blanket, offering a small, sad smile and shutting the door.
"Where are they taking Wynonna?" Waverly asks, walking into the kitchen. Uncle Curtis and Gus are seated at the kitchen table, both looking very sad and very determined.
Gus and Curtis look at each other. He takes a deep breath, wiping his face with his hand before looking at Waverly. "Well, sweetie," he says, his voice gentle. "Wynonna needs to go away for a while. She's not feeling too good after your Daddy and Willa went away."
Waverly thinks about that. She wants to say they didn't go away, the bad people took them, but Wynonna told her not to tell anyone about that. She wants to say that Daddy didn't go away, Daddy died, but she doesn't really feel like he's gone yet, and thinking about Daddy makes her head and her heart hurt. Instead, she says, "when will Wynonna be home?"
Gus stands from her seat and walks over to Waverly, kneeling down in front of her. She places a heavy hand on Waverly's shoulder and squeezes twice. "We're not sure, Sweet Pea," she says. "But we think it could be a while."
Waverly nods like she understands, and sits down at the table for breakfast.
On the second Tuesday, Waverly is with Uncle Curtis at Shorty's.
She's still not going back to school yet. The counselor sent her home on her first day back with a note, and she'd seen the words emotional well-being before Gus had ripped it out of her hands.
Uncle Curtis is a good piano player, and it makes Waverly smile. He plays "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and watches her dance, or "Row Row Row Your Boat" or "Yankee Doodle." He'd play "Pop Goes the Weasel," pulling Waverly to him and tickling her belly after the pop.
On the second Tuesday, Waverly runs away from Uncle Curtis, squealing and giggling, hiding behind the bar. Uncle Curtis wipes a tear from his eye and turns away from the keys, watching her with his elbows resting on his knees.
"Uncle Curtis?" Waverly calls, smile softening.
"What's up, darlin'?" he replies, leaning up to get a better look at her. Waverly folds her hands in front of her, playing with a loose string on the hem of her hand-me-down t-shirt.
Waverly looks at Uncle Curtis, and her smile falls. He narrows his eyes, concerned, and beckons her over with a wave of his hand. As she walking, she opens her mouth, determined, and says, "when's Wynonna comin' home?"
Uncle Curtis releases a heavy sigh as he pulls Waverly into his lap. She wraps an arm around his big shoulder and leans back to look at his face. Uncle Curtis looks disappointed, like Waverly's said the wrong thing, and she feels guilt settle into the pit of her stomach. "Well, darlin'," Uncle Curtis finally says, offering Waverly a bittersweet smile. "When Wynonna's all better, she'll come home."
Waverly tries to smile, but her cheeks and lips and eyes feel sad, so she doesn't. Instead, she cocks her head to the side, hair falling across her arm and tickling her skin. "When will that be, Uncle Curtis?"
"Hopefully soon, honeybee. Now," Uncle Curtis rises, placing Waverly on the ground and a hand on her head. "We best head home for supper, or Gus'll be mighty mad with us."
He grabs her hand, and Waverly walks with Uncle Curtis back to the truck to go home.
On the third Tuesday, Gus is giving Waverly a bath. She holds a washcloth over her eyes as Gus scoops water up with a cup and pours it over her hair. The water is warm on her skin, and her hair feels soft when she runs her fingers through it.
Mama never used to cover Waverly's eyes in the bath. She'd just dump water over her head until the suds disappeared and Waverly was sputtering and coughing, eyes red from errant shampoo bubbles.
When she's done, Gus scoops Waverly out of the tub and pulls the drain stopper free, wrapping Waverly in a big fluffy towel and cradling her. She rubs over Waverly's arms when she starts, inevitably, to shiver, and rocks Waverly's body soothingly against her own.
"Gus?" Waverly asks, voice muffled by the terrycloth.
"Hm?" Gus always seems her most relaxed when she's holding Waverly like this. Waverly wonders what things would've been like if Gus had been her momma.
"When is Wynonna coming home?" Waverly feels Gus' body stiffen. Her hands stop rubbing, and she stops rocking. Waverly leans back in Gus' arms, trying to find her face.
Gus looks at the floor. Her eyes are glassy, unfocused, as though she's not looking at the floor at all. Waverly can feel Gus' heart pounding heavily against her shoulder, and when Gus takes a deep breath, it's shaky.
"Well, Sweet Pea," Gus says, voice hoarse and cracking. Her eyes narrow and she sucks her lips into her mouth, biting. Waverly's seen this look before, when Gus looks at the crossword puzzle in the newspaper over breakfast. "Wynonna is--" Gus starts again. But she stops, seems to think further. She looks at Waverly, finally, and reaches a hand to cup her little cheek.
Gus smiles sadly. "Bad stuff happened to you and Wynonna, Sweat Pea. And people think," she pauses, looks to the ceiling. Waverly can see wetness shimmering in her eyes, and she feels herself frown. She hates seeing Gus sad. "People think Wynonna needs help. So I don't think we'll get to see her again until those people are satisfied."
Waverly nods, tucking her chin back into the soft towel, and waddles out of the bathroom to go get dressed. In her fleece pajama pants and Wynonna's old t-shirt, Waverly feels tiny, and so, so alone.
On the fourth Tuesday, Waverly knows not to ask if Wynonna's coming home.
On Tuesday, someone steals her hat, and Nicole is reaching her limit.
Nicole loves that hat. The day she graduated from college, Tyler handed her a shopping bag with a beautiful ivory Stetson wrapped in tissue paper inside. He spent the last of his tip money from the bar on it, Nicole knows, and she feels all the more grateful for it.
And now someone's stolen it.
Now, Nicole gets it: she's the rookie, the new recruit, and there's this weird pledging process that you just have to go through. She gets it. She put up with someone leaving a whoopie cushion inside her desk chair so it would sound every time she sat, or someone slashing all of the tires on her brand new cruiser, or replacing all of the sugar by the coffee maker with salt.
But this is the last straw.
She feels anger coil low in her belly, and her cheeks flame. Nicole tries to hold her tongue, really tries, but she's tired and cranky from working the night shift, and she really loves that hat, okay?
"Alright!" she yells in the bullpen, her hands drawing into fists at her sides. Her nails bite into her skin and sting, and she squeezes her fingers tighter still. "Which one of you assholes stole my damn hat?" She spins in a circle, eyeing every one of Nedley's deputies. She's younger than everyone, and of course a woman, but she played sports in college, so she's pretty sure she could take any one of them if she tried.
"Was it you, Dirk?" she asks, pointing at a short, stubby man with splotchy scruff on his jaw. "Or you, Marcus?" she yells, turning and glaring at a hefty bald man with a crooked nose. They look on amused as she shakes her head, glaring at the two of them, and they do little to hide their smirks and laughter.
"Haught!" she hears, booming and angry from Nedley's office. "Get in here!"
Nicole drops her chin to her chest, holding in a sigh. She very nearly stomps her way to Nedley's office, but thinks of her last sliver of pride. Instead, she walks with her head high out of the bullpen, turning and glaring once more at Dirk and Marcus for good measure.
Nedley is sitting at his desk sipping from a Purgatory P.D. coffee mug when she walks in. He points at the door and waves his hand twice while he swallows, grunting out "close the door" and sitting up in his chair.
She closes the door softly and has the good sense to look chastened as she sits, ankles together and hands folded on the other side of Nedley's desk.
"Young lady," Nedley says, chastising. "I don't know how they do things where you're from, but here in Purgatory, officers of the law are expected to handle their emotions."
Nicole gulps and manages to subdue the eyeroll she so desperately wants to give him. "Yes, sir. Sorry, sir," she says, robotic and automatic.
Nedley regards her carefully. His gaze is piercing, as though he's trying to see underneath her skin, and it feels invasive in all the ways Nicole doesn't like.
Nicole shifts, anxious. She hopes Nedley sees what he's looking for. She hopes he doesn't. She hopes she doesn't get fired.
Whatever it is, he seems satisfied enough to grunt "desk duty, two weeks" and dismiss her. She thanks him, cheeks and ears and eyes burning as she rushes out of his office.
Nicole walks to her locker, both to get some air and grab her lunch. She spends a few indulgent moments stewing in a mixture of self-pity and righteous anger before walking back to her chair--
--and sees her Stetson waiting for her on her desk.
Nicole glares, at the hat and then at the other officers, and sits down in her desk chair with a huff.
Tuesday after work, Nicole buys a bell from the hardware store to attach to the handle of the drawer she keeps her hat in.
Waverly wakes up early on Tuesday morning. Her head is pounding, as it always is after a terrible night's sleep, and she rolls out of bed with no hope of falling back asleep.
Waverly's always prided herself on being able to take some shit. She'd been around the eighth circle of Hell and back with Wynonna since Daddy and Willa's deaths, moving around so young, and being excluded in the years before by her sisters.
She was head cheerleader, for God's sake.
But last night, last night she'd had enough. One of Champ's idiot friends trying to get her attention by shoving his hand up her shorts is the straw that breaks her back.
She feels so out of control in Purgatory these days, with the expectations of the town resting on her shoulders and the Earp curse swirling in the back of her mind. Waverly wishes desperately for someone to see her beneath all of it.
She thought she'd have that with Wynonna someday, maybe. A sister who would trust her, want her, even actually believe in her. But Wynonna slammed the lid on that box of dreams the minute she walked out of Purgatory and left Waverly behind.
Waverly rubs her eyes, walking from her bedroom to the bathroom, feeling empty hopelessness in her chest and the tickle of her too-short pajama pants as they rub against the tops of her feet. She looks in the mirror, at the knotted mess that's become of her hair, and after brushing her teeth, exasperatedly throws it into a tight bun on top of her head.
Looking out her window, Waverly sees some rounds from Uncle Curtis' old sawn off shotgun littering the back porch.
Waverly spends the sunrise-hours of Tuesday morning teaching herself how to shoot.
She remembers asking to learn as a child, and Gus shooing her off with a wave of her hand. She remembers going to Uncle Curtis instead, batting her eyes and smiling sweetly. He'd laugh and kiss her on the forehead, telling her that kickback could toss you into the next town, bumble bee, and we can't have that, can we?
Waverly lines empty beer cans and bottles from the recycling bin in the kitchen--which Uncle Curtis is finally starting to use--along the wooden fence at the edge of the property. She pulls the sawn off shotgun from the gun safe--Gus' birthday was a predictable combination, Uncle Curtis--and walks twenty paces from her targets. She lines up her shot, takes a single breath, and fires.
And falls backwards painfully from the kickback.
Waverly stands up, cradling her shoulder, and shakes her head. She picks up the gun and re-aligns her shot, determined.
This time, she's ready for the kickback, but not the burnt smell of gun powder, and when she pulls away from the gun she gets a whiff and gags.
Two painful hours go by, and the sun is high in the sky when Uncle Curtis comes outside to watch her.
"You doin' okay, darlin'?" Uncle Curtis asks, barely hiding a smile.
Waverly turns, shielding her eyes from the sun. There's dried grass and dirt littered all over her pants and sweater from being tossed to the ground a few more times. She rests the gun on the ground against her leg, kicking a pellet casing away with her toe. "Uncle Curtis, now will you teach me?"
Uncle Curtis smiles and checks behind him, presumably for Gus. Waverly shrugs, picking the shotgun up off the ground and squaring up for another shot. Two of the cans that she'd grabbed and one of the bottles lay in ruins near the fence, but the rest remain untouched.
Uncle Curtis spends Tuesday morning teaching Waverly how to properly shoot his shotgun, and when Gus hears Waverly shout "eat shit!" at the bottles as they fall, she doesn't mention it over lunch.
Chapter 3: wednesday my empty arms were open
Summary:
Wednesdays are for defying odds.
Chapter Text
Nicole doesn't like high school and she doesn't like small towns.
Danni tells someone about the kiss, who tells another someone, who tells another someone, and soon everyone knows about Nicole and her, well, Thing.
Her father ignores the Thing, dismisses it as a phase but glares at people who gawk at Nicole on the street. Tyler starts getting into trouble for fighting, coming home from middle school with black eyes and bruises and self-righteous anger, ignoring Nicole's pleas for him to knock it off, Ty, it's not worth it with shrugs and of course it is, we're family.
On Wednesday in the fall of sophomore year, Nicole comes into school and sees Dyke! spray painted on her locker. Bright red against the cold navy metal, it's impossible to miss and makes Nicole stop in her tracks.
She wants to cry. She wants to scream who did this and what the hell and throw her backpack and make an utter scene. She wants to rewind time and wake up just a few minutes earlier and catch the jerk who did this. She wants to scrub it off until she scrubs right through the wall into the next hallway.
Nicole does none of these things.
Nicole walks, head high and shoulders back, and opens her locker. She feels the hot gazes of her peers on her back and the tips of her ears burn, and still, she says nothing.
She doesn't cry, or scream, or toss her backpack and make a scene. She deposits her things, hangs her coat, takes out her books for trigonometry and US history and French and the package of Tic Tacs she keeps in the front pocket, and walks straight to the girl's bathroom around the corner.
On Wednesday, Nicole doesn't let those assholes win, but she gets sick in the bathroom and allows herself a few minutes to cry, walking in late to trigonometry class.
Waverly learns what townsfolk in Purgatory think of her and her family when she's still in elementary school. Wynonna comes home from her first stint in the psychiatric facility and tells Waverly to keep your mouth shut and your head down before she's taken away again.
Waverly doesn't tell anyone about the revenants. She studies hard, makes friends and joins dance and gymnastics and the soccer team. She learns to smile her prettiest, sweetest smile and ignore harsh whispers.
When Waverly gets to high school, people start to notice her more, and differently. She's grown some in height, still shorter than most of her classmates but more proportionate. Waverly grows her hair out and switches out her cotton training bras and lucks out with unblemished skin, and people start to pay attention.
Stephanie Jones sits next to Waverly in English class and turns to her one day. "Hey, you're Waverly, right?" she asks, looking at Waverly down the bridge of her nose.
Waverly knows Stephanie Jones, has known her for years--Purgatory is a small town. She knows that Stephanie is full of it, and manages to stifle an eyeroll at the sour look on Stephanie's face. "Um, yeah, that's me."
Stephanie's eyebrows rise and fall. "You should consider trying out for cheerleading this year."
Waverly looks at her sideways. "Uh, okay. Why are you telling me this?"
Stephanie tosses her long blonde hair, textured with princess curls, over her shoulder theatrically. "My sister is captain, so I'm, like, a shoe in for captain." Waverly wants to snort, but keeps her mouth shut and head down. "And I want my cheerleading squad to look its best." She looks Waverly up and down once and shrugs, as though she's almost satisfied. "You look okay."
Waverly looks down at her legs, long and thin from hours of dance, but muscular from tumbling in gymnastics. She glances up at Stephanie Jones' face and shrugs.
On Wednesday, Waverly shows up to cheerleading tryouts anyway.
The routine they're taught by the coach is simple, and Waverly watches smugly through the corner of her eye as Stephanie Jones struggles through it. Waverly learns the cheer easily, flawlessly, and the coach calls her up to the front of the gym to use her as an example of good ol' fashion skill.
Stephanie Jones makes the team by the skin of her teeth, and Waverly is welcomed by the upperclassmen with impressed pats on the back.
"You're gonna look so good in the new uniforms, Waverly," one of the sophomores, Lindsay, says, patting her on the butt after tryouts end.
Katie McEllyn, best friend and notorious right-hand-girl to head-cheerleader Claire Jones, whispers to Waverly as they walk out, "you're totally gonna be the head cheerleader your senior year."
Waverly shrugs, blushing and smiling all the way home.
Purgatory proves to be a lonely little town.
Nicole doesn't expect a welcoming committee, persay, but she forgot how difficult making friends can be. She hasn't had to since college, and she'd forgotten at her big-city school how much small towns loathe change.
Purgatory, Nicole learns, is as small as small towns come.
There aren't many people Nicole's age in town, fewer she thinks she can see herself associating with (they aren't particularly open-minded here, and Nicole won't go back to hiding, not again). There's one bar, and Nicole doesn't see the few girls that frequent it being all that interested in her.
Nicole's neighbor is a lovely older woman named Bev who offers Nicole lemonade the day she moves in and spends all of their time together talking about her seven grandchildren. Nicole likes her, but she doesn't see wine nights or shopping sprees or painting each other's toenails in their future friendship.
Nicole learns quickly that there aren't any friends to make down at the station. She's the only female officer, clearly the smartest, and the boys' club doesn't appear too keen on opening up to her. Nedley spends his time in the station locked in his office, door closed, and when the other officers aren't taking pranking her by stealing her things, they're tossing small office supplies at her.
After her shift ends on Wednesday, Nicole decides to make her own friends, so to speak. She heads straight from the station in her cruiser to the SPCA in the next town over. She walks the aisles of cat cages and sees orange tabbies and black cats mewling and playing with jingling toys. She stops in front of a light grey Scottish fold. The little paper on the door says she's around two years old, mellow and low-maintenance but doesn't get along well with other cats. She has bright green eyes that watch Nicole's every movement, and Nicole falls in love immediately.
The cat hates her.
It takes about a week for the adoption to go through, and Nicole spends that time buying anything and everything she can think of. The following Wednesday Nicole brings home her new cat.
She doesn't really know what she was expecting, but the hostility surprises her.
The cat poops in her work boots instead of the litterbox for the first three days she lives there. She shreds two of the decorative pillows on Nicole's couch and steals pairs of Nicole's fuzzy wool socks from the storage bin under her bed.
Nicole tries everything with this cat. She buys new food, she changes her perfume and air fresheners in her house. She buys every toy on display at the PetCo in the next town over and spends every night at home trying to bond with her crazy cat.
The cat falls in love with Bev, who stops buy to check her food and water once a day after lunchtime. "She's so sweet!" Bev gushes to Nicole one night.
Nicole smiles and nods, and when she tries to pet the cat, she scratches her arm.
Nicole names her Calamity Jane and pretends to have a friend in her.
Champ Hardy is the first person that stands up for Waverly.
Someone whispers freak as she walks by, Wynonna having blown through town again on a break from traipsing across Europe. She'd gotten drunk at Shorty's every night for a week, tossing crumpled bills at Waverly and her lunch on Claire Jones' feet once.
Waverly learned long ago to ignore people's whispers in school. She knows what they think of her family, knows that she could work her hardest for the rest of her life and they would still remember the tragedy all of those years ago as her legacy. She's shocked when Champ shoves the guy into a locker, barking not cool, dude before walking up behind her and wrapping his arm around her shoulder.
Champ walks Waverly out to the parking lot, puffing his chest and smiling down at her. "What was that for?" she asks, face warm. She steps away from his body and looks up at his face, rubbing her arm just to have something to do with her hands.
Champ winks and stands straighter, looking down at her with a boyish grin. "That wasn't cool," he says, shrugging. "Listen. I was wondering if, maybe, you'd want to go out with me?" He rubs the back of his neck, and if Waverly squints, she sees humility in the movement.
Waverly gets more attention now that she's a cheerleader, but boys stay clear of her when they remember her last name. Champ is the first boy who looks at her like she's worth something, and she's desperate to keep that feeling. She nods quickly, blushing.
Champ looks pleased, his smile smug in a way that irks her. But he rests his hand on her waist and rubs his thumb over the skin between her shirt and the waist of her jeans, and she shivers. "Great. How's tomorrow? I'll pick you up?"
Waverly nods and says yes, yeah in her high, excited voice, and then runs to her car before he has a chance to change his mind.
She's never really looked hard at Champ Hardy twice. She knows that he's cute, that much is obvious, with his long, soft hair and bright eyes. Girls on her cheerleading team have talked about him before over giggles and blushes in the locker room, and she's seen him working with Uncle Curtis before.
When she tells the other cheerleaders about their upcoming date, they squeal and clap and ask her a million questions that she doesn't know how to answer. It's the most attention she's gotten from them in a while, and she basks in feeling like she's finally figured it out: how to bury the Earp family name.
Champ takes her out to dinner on a Wednesday to Shorty's, ordering cheap beer by the pint even though she's no more than one hundred pounds sopping wet, and splitting a side of soggy french fries with her. He asks to split the bill with her, but she lets him kiss her on the porch when he takes her home. It's slobbery but not altogether unpleasant, and he sucks a bruise into the skin where her neck meets her shoulder and leaves her feeling warm and tingly when she goes inside.
The cheerleaders give her high-fives the next day at practice, laughing and joking about the hickey Champ left on her neck. Champ may not be the perfect guy, but he's handsome and he looks at her like she's the smartest, prettiest girl he knows. He visits her at work and he earns her teammates' approval, and Waverly decides that dating Champ Hardy will be fun.
Champ cheats on her for the first time a few months later on a Wednesday, and Waverly thinks it's oddly appropriate.
Chapter 4: thursday waiting for love
Summary:
Thursdays are for believing in yourself again.
Chapter Text
When Nicole reaches high school, she's officially a head taller than most of the girls in her class. She's strong from sports, agile and lean and learning quickly to control her limbs. She uses her downtime in the winter and summer wisely, choosing activities that force her to stay in shape.
Midwestern winters are harsh and cold, and the summers occupy the polar opposite. Sweltering heat and beating sun, suffocating humidity interspersed with occasional storms with thunder so loud, Nicole's teeth rattle. Nicole's daddy told her he'd never spoil her; when she got to high school, she learned she'd have to get a job if she wanted to participate in the social rituals the wealthier kids in town demanded.
It's Nicole's third summer lifeguarding at the local country club. Her shoulders are red and blistering from the unyielding sun, and the bridge of her nose has started to peel. She wears sunglasses because squinting against the light for so long gives her headaches, and she chews gum to keep herself from playing with her whistle.
Nicole skips the training in the beginning of the summer--she's been CPR-certified since she was eleven--and shows up a week into the summer with her old red one-piece.
There are a lot of people who recognize her, mostly kids who've gotten taller and thinner and lost teeth. Some parents smile and wave, most ignore her, and an old friend in the pool-side kitchen tosses her a cold water bottle as she walks by. She sees some new faces, mostly younger kids who've started high school and reached the minimum hiring age.
Nicole chokes on her water when she sees her.
She looks about Nicole's age, curvy and tan. She has freckles dotting her cheeks and shoulders and arms and a messy knot of thick, dark hair on top of her head. The lenses of her sunglasses are electric blue, and she twirls her whistle lanyard around her fingers while she blows bubbles with her gum. When she walks by, Nicole smells cinnamon.
The pool manager holds a meeting at the end of the first week, reeducating everyone on pool rules and policies and running through some ice breaker games. Nicole does her best to remember everything that new girl says.
Her name is Shay, eighteen years old from a nearby town. She was a competitive swimmer in high school, so lifeguarding seemed easy as a job right before college. Her "fun fact" is that she can do a backflip off the diving board into the pool.
After the meeting, Nicole swallows her nerves and summons her courage. She walks, shoulders back and chin high, right up to Shay. She sees for the first time that Shay has bright blue eyes.
"I'd love to see that backflip sometime," Nicole says instead of a greeting. Shay smirks, gives her an obvious once-over, and shrugs her shoulders. She reaches up and pulls the ponytail band out of her hair, letting it tumble down in thick waves over her shoulders.
"Just name a time and place, Ginger Spice," she says, walking away. Nicole's cheeks flame and she reaches up to touch her bright red hair, pulled back into a French braid.
Nicole spends the summer dancing circles around Shay. Butterflies beat in her chest and belly whenever they talk, and her skin burns where Shay touches her. It's as though Shay's entire being is as fiery hot as the cinnamon gum she chews all the time.
Shay is snarky, sarcastic and cynical in funny, slightly mean ways. She picks on Nicole's obvious sunburn and bright, bright hair, shielding her eyes when they chat just because it irks her.
Shay also looks at Nicole's long runner's legs too long to be friendly.
She smiles at Nicole, licks her lips when she watches Nicole. She stares at Nicole and makes excuses to touch Nicole. Nicole gets flustered quickly under the attention, and her friends at the pool make fun of her for being so uncool.
On the last day before Shay leaves for college, a Thursday, Shay drags Nicole towards the small lake on the golf course, Hole Seven. She pulls a flask of whiskey out of her sweater pocket and shares the burning liquid with Nicole.
Late on a Thursday night, under the stars and lightning bugs and heavy, late-summer humidity, Nicole loses her virginity. Shay is passionate and intense, warm and soft. Ever-burning.
It isn't love. It's barely even like. But Nicole wakes up at dawn with cotton-mouth and a splitting headache, her shorts zipper undone and grass in her hair. She's achy in all the best and worst places, and Shay is still there, rubbing sleep from her eyes, and Nicole feels like maybe, just maybe, there's a chance she can be happy as she is.
Waverly learns early that she's smart. She's not naturally gifted the way that Joey Sparks is--he's only six, but comes to her fifth-grade classroom for math lessons every day--but she's intelligent in ways her sisters never were. She's intuitive. well-read and even more well-spoken, and she learns that coupling her intelligence with a special smile will get her far in this po-dunk town.
Wynonna's gone again after reminding Waverly not to talk about the Earp curse. It isn't real, Waverly, god ghosts over Waverly's face. She smells sour whiskey and grimaces.
For the first time, Waverly doubts her sister. She spent so long idolizing Wynonna only to have her ripped away. Gus tells her to listen to that big, beautiful heart, Sweet Pea and Waverly joins girl scouts and the soccer team. But she grows bored trying to fit in to Purgatory's rigid social scene. She thinks that things haven't changed in this town since Wyatt Earp's days.
When Waverly is in third grade, she decides to lean into her brain, her intelligence. She teaches herself chess using an old guidebook from the library and YouTube videos. She saves up her allowance and purchases a Rosetta Stone membership, learning Latin and Middle English to fluency by the time she's in fifth grade. She reads Animal Farm over Christmas break that same year and vows never to eat meat again.
Waverly loves languages. She learned how to order sushi in Japanese when she was in eighth grade, or how to order pizza in Italian, or ask for the bathroom in Korean so she could ask one of the ladies at the nail salon a town over. Learning how to decode ancient spells and curses in dead languages should be easy. Right?
Wrong.
Waverly struggles and struggles, learns and translates and decodes and does it all over again. Hieroglyphics and Greek prove to be more difficult than languages that share the English alphabet. She stays up all night, hunched over notebooks and pouring over her Rosetta Stone downloads until her headphones make her ears purple.
Uncle Curtis watches her carefully. Gus smiles and claps adoringly at each one of Waverly's soccer games and irons on her new girl scout patches, humming and wiping the occasional tear from her eye. But Uncle Curtis will sit in the living room pretending to peruse the newspaper and watch Waverly translate old Latin texts from the public library to English and Greek. He notices that she babbles to herself in foreign languages when she's folding her clothes and putting them away in her bedroom.
Uncle Curtis notices Waverly and everything she does.
He's quietly attentive and never comments. He doesn't ask questions and he doesn't scold her for reading at the table at suppertime when Gus is out with her canasta group. He doesn't yell at her for her foul language--words she doesn't understand fully, but she learned from Wynnonna--when she rails in anguish that she can't afford to resubscribe to Rosetta Stone this month, and will have to wait.
On Thursday, Waverly comes home from soccer practice and sees a brown package on her bed. There's no label or writing on it, and it's thick and crinkles when she handles the paper. When Waverly pulls open the top flap, a wad of bills wrapped in a rubber band comes tumbling out and she gasps.
"I don't fully understand what you see in all those dead languages and complicated books, Miss Waverly Earp," Uncle Curtis says from the doorway of her bedroom. She hadn't heard him walk in, and she jumps when he starts talking, whirling around to look at him. "But as long as you don't get too smart to dance and sing with me in Shorty's, I'm game to help you learn whatcha need."
Waverly smiles so hard her cheeks hurt and her eyes crinkle. She drops the money and the envelope on her bed, running to throw her arms around Uncle Curtis. She's still small for her age, and her forehead is barely higher than his belly button. She squeezes around his middle as hard as she can. Gus always says the hardest hugs have the most love.
Next Thursday, Waverly meets Uncle Curtis at Shorty's. The bar is mostly empty, and Uncle Curtis plays the songs he and Waverly always sing together. He smiles with delight when Waverly starts to sing them in Latin, or the little bit of French that she learned with the new Rosetta Stone subscription she bought.
Nicole ran track in college with the club team. She found that sports helped to center her. Ty used to say she was too caught up in her head. Daddy said that no matter what went on up in that head of hers, watching her play sports was like art.
Nicole's always been a physical person, feeling more comfortable as a doer.
In Purgatory, Nicole develops a bit of a routine. She's up at sunrise every day for a run, jogging from her apartment to the town sign and back again. In the spring and summer it's actually a lovely trail. Purgatory's landscape is beautiful in that one-in-a-million kind of way, and Nicole often stops to admire it.
In the winter, running is a brutal kind of pain. The air is cold and sharp in her lungs, burning her throat and cheeks and eyes. Her nose runs and her lips go numb, and she often has to wrap her toes in warm washcloths when she gets home. In the winter, Nicole can't run with headphones in because she needs to have her earmuffs on. The sound of her heavy breathing rattling around in her head does little to distract her from her thoughts, and sometimes she comes home from winter runs agitated and just as jittery as when she left.
On a Thursday in January, Nicole is out for her usual morning run. The sun is barely peaking over the horizon, and the air is extra frigid. Most of Purgatory is still asleep in the frost, and little besides Nicole is moving, save for some trees and shrubbery rustling in the wind, and the occasional critter.
That's why Nicole is shocked to hear the crying.
She doesn't register it at first, thinks she might be imagining it. She's turned down one of the neighborhood roads near her apartment, shielding her eyes from the few sparse sunrays. When she hears the first wail, she pulls off her earmuffs and stops her running. She tries to hold her breath, calm her racing heart and silence the air around her.
She hears it again, the high-pitch wine and a little voice screaming. She can't make out words, but her legs propel her, her ears pricking to follow the sound. She makes a wrong turn here and there--and grows frustrated with herself for it--before coming to a little blue house.
There's a little girl standing outside, a thick grey beanie atop her head. Nicole can see the tear tracks on her cheeks shining in the early morning sunlight. Her face is flushed and her eyes are wild and desperate.
"Hi, sweetie," Nicole says, making her voice sound calm and soft. The little girl startles, taking a step back from Nicole. "My name's Nicole. I'm a police officer. Do you know what that means?"
The little girl nods.
"Can you tell me what's wrong? I can try to help." Nicole stops a few feet away from the child, hoping not to scare her off. She places her hands against her thighs and bends so that she's closer to eye-level with the little girl. Nicole forgets how small children can be, and she tries to make herself the same size so as not to frighten her.
"My kitten ran outside when I came to shovel the walkway. My brother broke his leg, so he can't do it, so I was gonna surprise mommy and daddy by doing it all by myself." She sniffles, wiping her cheek with a gloved hand. Her mittens are lavender. Nicole smiles sweetly.
"That was very nice of you. What's your kitten's name? Is he lost?"
The little girl nods, pouting her lower lip. Fresh tears well up in her eyes. "Her name is Nelly. And she's not lost." She pauses to wipe her nose with her sleeve. "She's up in that tree."
The little girl points a mitten-covered hand up at the tree. Nicole squints, scanning the branches. Sure enough, she spots a tiny, black and white and orange kitten stuck on one of the lower branches. It's too high to jump up, but climbing should be quick and easy, and jumping down doesn't look too dangerous.
Without a word, Nicole walks up to the trunk of the tree. There's a branch low enough and a divet in the bark that's large enough for Nicole to step in and propel herself upwards. Her running clothes are tight and thick, but much more forgiving than her winter coat. She has full use of her arms and core, and as she maneuvers carefully around to another branch, she's thankful for that.
The kitten mewls at Nicole when she picks it up. She wants to tuck the little thing into a pocket but worries about shaking her up. So she clutches it to her chest, wincing slightly when her claws pierce the fleece jacket and graze her skin sharply. Nicole jumps carefully, sitting on her bottom and scooting off the branch and onto the ground.
As soon as she lands, the little girl is running up to her and smiling. She hears a door slam and sees a man in a blue robe walking out of the house, clutching the fabric to his body to keep himself warm.
"MiKayla! What's going on here?" he shouts, walking briskly down the half-shoveled walkway.
"Hello, sir," Nicole greets in her best cop voice. "My name is Officer Nicole Haught. I was just out for a morning jog when I heard that little Nelly here was stuck in the tree."
"Thank you so, so much, Officer!" MiKayla shouts, wrapping and arm around Nicole's leg. She squeezes tight and then runs to her father, who waves a hand and thanks her, ushering his daughter back into the house.
Thursday, Nicole runs home without her headphones, but there's a soothing calm settled over her. She finally feels like a hero, and Purgatory is starting to feel a little bit like home.
Champ treats Waverly like a precious little girl.
It makes her crazy.
Waverly's never been fragile. She was head cheerleader, for goodness sake. That takes some serious strength of character. (High school girls are vicious, especially when you're the town pariah's kid sister.)
Working at Shorty's, Waverly is able to prove she's not just some kid.
Waverly rarely drinks. She saw what drinking did to her daddy. Unless it's a special occasion, Waverly avoids really drinking. Like when Wynonna makes an appearance, or on her birthday.
Champ, however, drinks. A lot. A lot.
Champ and his idiot friends made Shorty's their official spot before Waverly started working there. When she got hired, though, summer after senior year, they must've thought Waverly'd just become their personal waitress.
Waverly isn't anyone's personal anything.
What's worse, is Champ and his friends are always at Shorty's. It's not their watering hole, or some stupid boy ritual. They simply have little else to do.
Champ is a difficult person. Waverly knows that. But he buys her flowers and tells her she's pretty and smart and kisses her forehead sometimes. So she puts up with him and his mistakes. And his idiot friends.
One Thursday early in the spring, Waverly is working. She'd spent the early hours of the morning brushing up on some assignment for one of her online courses this semester--an eight-page paper on the cultural significance of Mesopotamian agriculture, thank you very much--before eating a quick lunch--a KIND bar--and rushing to work.
So, she's exhausted.
She's just carried a fifth round of eight pints over to Champ's table. He's sloshed, eyes glassy and mouth slack. His smile is dope and calm as he watches her move, blinking hard in what Waverly thinks is supposed to be a wink. One of his friends, Blake Kitz, calls her name, slurred and too-loud.
"Waverly!"
She sighs, turning back to face him and walking up to their table. She plasters the best smile she can muster on her lips and replies, too sweetly, "Yes, Blake?"
"How 'bout you give us a kiss, right here?" He draws the i in right out too long before pointing to his cheek. "Fer bein' such good customers to ya?"
Waverly scowls openly. "Go to hell, Blake," she says, patience running thin. He reaches out and places a heavy, clumsy hand too low on her back and tries to pull her closer. Champ, for all he's worth, is laughing dumbly and looks like he's struggling to stay awake.
"Blake," she says, voice low and threatening. "You have three seconds to get your hand off of me."
He smiles and pulls her harder.
Waverly grabs his beer and dumps it over his head.
Startled, Blake tumbles out of his chair and onto the floor, mumbling bitch. Shorty hears the commotion and comes running, and since it's happy hour, Nedley is hot on his heels.
"What's goin' on here, boys?" Shorty says, eyes narrow. He positions himself in front of Waverly, who clutches a hand over the sliver of skin between her Shorty's shirt and her high-waisted jeans. She leans around Shorty so she can see Blake struggle to stand, rubbing hard at his face.
Blake doesn't have time to respond before Nedley is wrapping a rough hand around his arm and dragging him to the door. "No means no, son," he says, his voice no-nonsense.
Shorty turns to Waverly. "You go on and get out of here. You deserve the rest of the night off."
Waverly furrows her brow. "But what about--"
Shorty puts a hand up, interrupting her. "Save it, young lady. You don't get harassed in my bar and then forced to work a late shift. I'll close up and send Champ and his posse on their way."
Waverly smiles, wrapping her arms around Shorty's middle.
She gets home before the sun has fully set. Uncle Curtis is sitting on the couch with a newspaper and doesn't look up when she walks in.
She pauses to explain, but Uncle Curtis stops her. "Shorty called. You okay?" he asks.
She nods, rubbing her arm.
Uncle Curtis nods once. "Good. Now go on up and finish that school work." Waverly turns to leave. "Oh, and Waverly?"
She stops, turning back to Uncle Curtis. "Yeah?"
Uncle Curtis folds the newspaper in his lap and looks at her properly. He smiles softly as he says, "I'm proud of you for holdin' your own back there. Good job, darlin'."
Waverly smiles all the way up to her room, and doesn't stop for the rest of the night.
Chapter 5: thank the stars it's friday
Summary:
Fridays are for rediscovering love in the world.
Chapter Text
Nicole used to love Fridays.
Back in college, Fridays were her days off from practice. Fridays were the days she could take the bus home from college to surprise Tyler. Fridays she could let loose, relax, let her hair down (literally).
Purgatory, in all of it's shining glory, has managed to even ruin Fridays.
Nicole is the rookie, the newbie, the bottom of the food chain. Which means she gets stuck with all of the shifts that nobody wants, the paperwork that the boys "forget" to do, the ugly chores that disgust even Nedley.
Which means she gets stuck with the dreaded Friday-night shift.
No more letting her hair down, no more relaxing with some light laundry loads and a cold beer on her couch.
Purgatory has more than its fair share of town drunks. Friday nights are characterized by back-and-forth trips in her cruiser between the station's drunk tank and Shorty's bar.
Someone aught to teach Shorty what it means to preemptively stop serving people alcohol.
Nicole used to love Fridays. By her third Friday shift, Nicole's learned to hate them.
A few months into living in Purgatory, Nicole has another Friday night shift--because, well, of course. The Google-image-result rodeo stereotype she picks up on this night reaffirms her hatred of Fridays and Friday-night shifts.
He can't focus his eyes on her face and he squints with the effort, stumbling over his feet before he finally vomits on his own boots. He reaches up with a pudgy, flannel-covered arm and wipes his mouth and chin. Nicole doesn't even try to hide her grimace.
Shorty is watching them on the sidewalk outside his bar from the doorway. "Officer," he calls, arms crossed over his chest. "There's another one in here for ya, whenever you're ready."
Nicole nods and rolls her eyes, dragging this town moron to her cruiser in handcuffs before turning and heading back inside Shorty's bar.
She's never been inside Shorty's, not really much of a drinker and low in patience for the kinds of men that clearly frequent the establishment. The place is crowded and loud. The bodies have heated the room so that it's steamy and uncomfortable under the yellow lights, and her boots stick to the wood floor in places where spilt beer hasn't been cleaned yet. There's music playing from a jukebox in the corner--who even has jukeboxes anymore?--and the pounding of empty pints hitting the wood bar.
Nicole looks over the crowd for Shorty. He's behind the bar again, and when he sees her he points to a table in the corner. There's a very drunk boy stumbling over a chair--which has been flipped thanks to Nicole's new friend in the cruiser--as he chases after someone. Nicole reaches for her handcuffs, thankful she had the forethought to grab a spare from the station on her way over.
When Nicole sees who this drunken moron is chasing after, she misses one of the stairs and nearly falls on her face.
Flushed with self-righteous anger and angrily tossing her long hair over her shoulder, she crosses her arms over her chest and frowns. Nicole scans her face--beautiful, beautiful face--and her mouth goes dry. The shirt says Shorty's, so Nicole surmises she's a waitress at the bar, and--hopefully--not, well, with one of those guys. Speaking of that shirt--it's tied in the back, and Nicole sees a strip of skin above the waist of her jean shorts.
Wow those are tight shorts.
She's thin, and small, and her features are soft and sweet. Her eyes are bright in the harsh lighting, and her hair is shining and flowing. Yet, she doesn't look fragile. She stands her ground, glaring heavily at the swaying lump in front of her. He reaches out, presumably to rest a hand on her shoulder, and she slaps his hand away hard.
"Don't touch me right now, Champ. Just--" she stops, face pained, and presses a hand to her forehead. Her fingernails are painted a deep navy blue, and the ring on her middle finger shines in the dim lighting of the bar. One of the fans picks up speed, and Nicole watches the ends of her sleeves wiggle with the moving air. "Just get the hell out of here." The waitress points in Nicole's general direction and turns towards her.
Nicole feels a soft smile stretch across her face, and she picks up her hand to wave.
A pair of handcuffs nearly falls from her fingers, and that's when she remembers she's here for a reason.
She jumps into action, running over and grabbing the guy by the arm. He's wearing short sleeves, so she makes contact with his clammy, tattoo-covered skin and works quickly to snap the handcuffs around his wrists. When she looks up, the waitress has retreated behind the bar, and she looks positively miserable.
The cowboy she's half-dragging out of the bar hiccups and turns away from the exit to face the bar again. "Wave, please, babe," he slurs, flashing a languid, lazy smile. He must think he looks endearing. Nicole manages to hide her disgust just enough, she hopes.
The waitress doesn't respond, and the guy, Champ, tries again. "Waverly. Babe." Still nothing, and Nicole hisses shut up as she drags him out to the car.
She runs a DMV search on the name Waverly when she gets back to the station.
Waverly Earp is the first result. "Waverly," she reads aloud. She likes the way it tastes, and she says it again, reading the whole name. "Waverly Earp."
Nicole sees Waverly Earp for the first time on a Friday, and spends every Friday thereafter responding to Shorty's calls with a smile. Nicole relearns how to like Fridays, thanks to Miss Waverly Earp.
Waverly finally has all of her things moved out of the apartment above Shorty's on a Friday. Moving is annoying and tedious, and Waverly insisted on being the one to transport all of her research. Wynonna yells at her that it's taking too long and threatens to throw it all away.
Dumping Champ in Shorty's definitely helps expedite the process.
She feels happy to finally be done with him. It's relief in a way she didn't expect to no longer be tied to him and his shit. No more dumb jokes about boners, no more free drinks at Shorty's until he can barely stand, and no more entertaining his stupid friends until three in the morning. Waverly feels free in ways she hasn't felt since she was a little girl with Gus and Uncle Curtis.
There's a definite added bonus in the way Wynonna is taking her seriously, suddenly.
Waverly expected some pushback about the curse from the girl whose life was torn apart because of it. Waverly was so young when Daddy and Willa were taken, and she took to life with Gus and Uncle Curtis well because life in the homestead was already pretty shitty. But Wynonna was tossed around, institutionalized and fostered and poked and prodded and arrested. She was punished a thousand times over for Daddy and Willa.
She should've known Wynonna'd be pissed about the research taking up residence in their home.
A guy named Dolls, big and burly and screaming former military in all of his movements, becomes a more constant presence in their lives when Waverly introduces her research. He looks at Wynonna with a combination of irritation and affection and believes every word out of Waverly's mouth.
She's being taken seriously. She's a happily-single Virgo with hair for days and she finally feels like she's finding her place here.
The Friday Waverly moves her last box of books out of the apartment, she takes the day off of work to relax and celebrate.
She's upstairs in her room unpacking a box of clothes when Wynonna comes stumbling in. She wraps a hand around Waverly's wrist and pulls her down the stairs to the fire pit out behind the house.
There are chairs and blankets set out, and a fire already going strong. There's a white paper bag next to one of the chairs with the local deli's logo stamped across it, a half-empty bottle of whiskey and two mugs on the other side of it.
"Welcome home, babygirl," Wynonna says. She lets go of Waverly's wrist and stuffs her hands into the front pockets of her jeans. She won't look Waverly in the face and she shifts her weight from one foot to the other. If Waverly didn't know any better, she'd say Wynonna almost looks bashful.
But she knows better, so she doesn't say it.
Waverly leads the way off the porch and sits in one of the chairs, wrapping the blanket around her body. She picks up the bag and pulls out the sandwich with LTOMP written on it--lettuce, tomato, onion, mayonaise, and pickles, Waverly's favorite sandwich as a kid--and unwraps it. Wynonna plops down into her own chair and pours them each a hefty mug-full of whiskey.
They eat and watch the Friday-evening sun set over the mountains on the horizon and stay out late into the night drinking whiskey and watching the fire slowly die.
Fridays, Waverly decides, are a day for new beginnings with old happinesses.
Chapter 6: i'm burnin' like a fire gone wild on saturday
Summary:
Saturdays are good days, days for growing a pair.
Chapter Text
Nicole finally grows a pair on Saturday. She likes Saturdays, everyone bizarrely cheerful on the weekend and stress melting away into fleeting moments of blissful relaxation, and even--dare she say it--fun.
It's well into Nicole's first winter in Purgatory, and she's already celebrated her six-month anniversary with the town heaven and hell both forgot. Calamity Jane has stopped scratching her arms when she goes to refill her wet-food bowl, and she figured out how to yank the Whoopie Cushion from out of her chair earlier this week.
Nicole is in high spirits.
It's a bright, sunny Saturday in Purgatory. A fresh snowfall--why snow is still falling so heavily this late into February, Nicole has no idea--shimmers on the ground. As Nicole drives into town, she sees a few "OPEN" signs on shop doors and a sprinkle of townsfolk walking around, running errands and going out for brunches, town drunks hovering and waiting for the bar to open. She knows Waverly Earp opens Shorty's on Saturday mornings.
Nicole parks in front of the pharmacy. She doesn't want to seem too obvious.
She walks around, pretending to patrol the area, passing by the door to Shorty's twice before finally walking in.
"Ah!" she hears from behind the bar. She stops in the doorway to watch Waverly Earp fight with a broken beer tap, fiddling with her hat in her hands. "Geez. Perfect."
"I didn't know Shorty's had wet t-shirt contests," Nicole calls from the doorway with a cheeky grin. Waverly startles, rubbing at her chest with a bar rag. Nicole watches her hand pat against her shirt and her heart flutters. She shakes her head. "You okay?"
Waverly shrugs. She tosses the first rag and picks up a second one. She presses it to her chest and rubs against her belly. "Yeah, just a bit jumpy. I had a--" she waves her arm, vaguely gesturing, "a crazy night. So."
Nicole stops behind the bar. Waverly still has beer all over her neck and chest, and Nicole struggles valiantly not to watch a droplet disappear into her cleavage. "Sorry I wasn't here to see it," she says, and she means it.
Waverly is looking down at herself, still rubbing with the towel, and Nicole gets flustered. "I've, uh, I've been meaning to introduce myself," Nicole says, tapping the bar with the heel of her palm. "I'm Nicole." Nicole offers her hand to Waverly, polite and formal, and internally winces. She used to be smooth, she thinks mournfully. "Nicole Haught."
When Waverly takes her hand, her fingers are sticky and damp, but underneath her skin is soft and warm. "Hi," she says, flashing a sweet smile.
"And you are Waverly Earp," Nicole says. Waverly nods, shoulders drawing up modestly. "Quite a popular girl around here."
"Oh, you know. It's all in the smile and wave." Waverly wiggles her fingers with a grin, and Nicole's heart flutters.
"Yeah," Nicole says, because it's all she can think of. She's never been this close to Waverly, and she can't get the feeling of her coconut-butter skin out of her mind. Waverly folds the towel and watches her carefully, and Nicole struggles to think of something to say. "Can I get a cappuccino to go?
Waverly looks around sheepishly. "Oh, I'm really sorry, but we're not actually open yet." She waves an open palm around the room.
Nicole glances around, flushing. "Oh right. My bad," she says. "It's just, when I see something I like, I don't want to wait." It's a pretty good line, and a smug feeling settles in her chest as Waverly sputters breathily, flustered.
Then, Waverly Earp takes off her shirt.
Well, really, she gets stuck taking off her shirt, and Nicole has to help her take off her shirt. Nicole makes a concerted effort to look only at Waverly's face, but as she's pulling the sticky, damp cloth out of Waverly's hair, she gets a glimpse of smooth skin over planes of muscle, and her tongue gets dry and heavy.
"I'm in a relationship," Waverly says, rushed and anxious. "With a boy. Man."
Nicole grins. "A boy-man," she replies, because she likes flirting with Waverly and watching her fumble in response. "Yep, I've been there. It's the worst." Nicole shrugs, pulling her card out of her pocket--it feels crumpled and folded, and she winces inwardly at that--and places it firmly on the counter. "Okay. Another time then." Before she can say anything else--before she can ruin this air of cool she seems to be able to fake--she turns around, placing her Stetson on her head, and walks towards the exit.
And because she can't help herself, she tosses a wry smile over her shoulder. "I mean it."
Walking out of Shorty's into the winter sun, now high in the sky, Nicole feels giddy, and probably much less rejected than she should feel. She takes a deep breath of cold fresh air and smiles.
It's a beautiful Saturday to grow a pair.
Gus sells Shorty's on a Saturday.
Lately, Waverly's felt like her life has been lifted out of her hands. She supposes she should be used to that feeling--she was tossed around so much as a child, her life turning portable and fleeting before she was able to fully read and write--but she's not. Wynonna, with all of her unpredictability and instability, breezed back into Waverly's life confirming truths Waverly always knew, and throwing the reigns back into her hands in the form of trusting Waverly's exhaustive research.
She seizes the day, as it were, kicking Champ out of her life without any semblance of doubt. Uncle Curtis entrusts her with his well-kept secret, showing her even after his death that he always has believed in her, and always would.
But then Shorty dies, another victim falling to the horrible Earp curse--Waverly knows better than to believe his heart gave out that suddenly--and Waverly sees a new harshness in Wynonna's eyes as she tells the story. Gus is wise and human enough to not question the official lie, offering instead to help the best way she knows how: by taking care of business.
Waverly is grateful for Gus until she learns what taking care of business means.
"You're selling the place?" Waverly asks, confronting Gus with boldness and outrage she's never shown before.
To her surprise, Gus smiles softly. "Sweet Pea, the place needed to go to someone who could really care for it." Gus responds, shrugging. A strange man walks into the bar, and Gus walks away without another word.
Later in Waverly's shift, she sees Gus signing some papers, and she knows. "So you just did it. You just sold the place." Her voice is icy and cold with accusation, and she feels guilt settle dense and heavy in her belly beneath her anger.
Gus looks up. "Decisions had to be made," she says, voice firm. She looks away from Waverly's face, around the bar, and back down at her papers, before tapping on the wood in exasperation. "I know you don't believe me," she murmurs, "but you were not born to be a goddamn small-town waitress."
Waverly sputters, confused. "Yeah--but--I believe you." She flounders, grasping for sameness. Her life is so out of control and she was relying on Shorty's to be her safe space, and now she's not even sure if she'll be able to call it Shorty's anymore. "I have, like, three shirts that say Shorty's."
Gus was always able to understand Waverly, even before Mama left and she still had that heavy w-for-r speech impediment. Daddy ignored her, Mama grew frustrated that she couldn't understand, and Willa used to tease her to Wynonna after she thought Waverly had gone to bed. But never Gus. Gus always understood.
"Honey," Gus says, "it's in the agreement. Shorty's will never get torn down." It isn't about the shirts, Gus doesn't say. "You can work here in as many shirts as you want for as long as you want."
Waverly's eyes burn with tears she refuses to shed. "That's not the point," she says, voice nearly a whisper. She feels her throat crack and blinks fast, looking down at the sticky wooden bar. Her shoulders curl inward, and Waverly feels as small and helpless as she did when Wynonna went away that first time.
"But," Gus says quickly, eyes twinkling. "When you decide you're ready--" Gus pauses. Her gaze is strong and meaningful as she reaches into her pocket, pulling out a small square of paper and unfolding it. "--to unstick those wings of yours." She says nothing more, handing a check to Waverly with a bitten smile.
Waverly takes the check. Her brow furrows as she reads the memo line, the scribble of a small fortune written out in her hand. "Don't cash it for a week or so," Gus mutters in her dry, dry voice.
Waverly is stunned. "'S this?" She runs the tip of her finger over the crinkled edge of the check, amazed at how something so life-changing can be so weightless.
"It's freedom, honey!" Gus exclaims, flicking the paper. She smiles at Waverly, her free, loving, maternal smile, and Waverly's chest feels tight and warm. Her eyes well as she listens, scanning Gus' face in disbelief. "You've been doing what others want you to do for so long." Gus shakes her head. "Now you can do whatever it is you want."
It's getting harder not to cry. Waverly is holding what would've been a comfortable retirement for Gus in her hands. And Gus gave it to her without a second thought. It's the kind of beautiful and bright love that Waverly isn't used to, didn't see in the Earp homestead. The kind of love Wynonna never knew. In the thick of it, Waverly feels like she's flown too close to the sun, spiraling out of control in a freefall, and she doesn't know what to do next.
"Which is what?" Waverly asks. And Gus, in all her quiet strength, comes to her rescue. The wind beneath her stuck wings.
"Live your life," Gus says. As though it's the easiest thing in the world. "Remember, some of the best things in life are the surprises it throws us. About what we want." Gus stops, allowing a pregnant pause, and Waverly's heart races. "Who we want." Gus presses her lips together and meets Waverly's eyes.
And again, Waverly is stunned. Her eyebrows reach up to her hairline, and she bites hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from yelling. How did you know? Gus winks once, soft acceptance resting on Waverly's shoulders without so much as a word, and a weight lifts off of Waverly's chest and she's soaring back towards the sun as Gus plants a soft kiss on her cheek.
Gus hands Waverly back the reigns to her life on a Saturday. It's a day for bravery, and dammit if Waverly Earp isn't the bravest girl in Purgatory.
Waverly leaves the bar an hour before the end of her shift, changing out of her Shorty's shirt and running to the station. On Saturday, Waverly takes her life by the balls.
Things between Nicole and Waverly are stilted and awkard. Nicole thinks it's because they fought. Her dismissive yeah, sure, Waverly, whatever you want rings in her ears and turns her belly like a tornado. It only gets worse when Waverly comes running, breathless and anxious and without explanation, through the bullpen and into Nedley's office.
Here we go again, Nicole thinks, exasperated. She's had it up to here with the Earp girls, between Wynonna's unfulfilled promise of knowledge and Waverly's timid unease with her. "Hey," she calls, hoping to pull Waverly out of Nedley's office--because, hello, what are you doing in Nedley's office?--and she places her abandoned paperwork on the table. "Wave."
Waverly doesn't hear Nicole. Or, well, she does, but she doesn't have time to listen without losing her nerve. Don't stop now, Gus had said.
And she won't.
She shuts the blinds, creating a private, safe cube in Nedley's office. She sheds her coat and takes a deep breath, meant to steady her, but she stumbles into Nicole and it comes out as a breathy "'scuse me." Nicole is babbling, confused, and Waverly takes a moment to gently shut the door to the office, closing out the world and tossing her nerves out with it.
And Waverly goes after what she wants.
On a Saturday, Waverly grows a pair and leans into Nicole with a hand wrapped around the back of her neck. It's too hard at first, with Nicole mid-word and Waverly still awkward and rushed. It's all teeth pressed to lips until Nicole is able to respond, softening, catching Waverly's weight against her. Waverly whimpers, a tiny sound against Nicole's lips, and Nicole sighs into the feeling of finally.
The stumble back towards the couch, Nicole pulling Waverly's body against hers as they tumble and fall into the rough cushions. Waverly catches herself with a hand on the arm behind Nicole's head, and Nicole's hands wrap around her waist and belly, thumbs pressing against the dips between her muscles. Waverly pulls back, a flood of word-vomit on the tip of her tongue and Nicole is patient humor in her ears. "What happened to friends?
It's a blur of rehearsed words, Waverly admitting her fear and watching the dust particles dance in the sunlight against Nicole's eyelashes. She makes some sense--not a lot--until she looks away from that pretty french braid to the certificates and awards on Nedley's wall. "It's not so easy to be brazen," she says, voice softening. She looks down at her hand, high on Nicole's thigh. "When the thing that scares you half to death is sitting right in front of you."
It's pure and honest and so uniquely Waverly. Nicole can't help the sunshine in her eyes and racing heart and she sighs, "I scare you" like it's the simplest thing in the world.
Waverly flashes her starlight smile, twinkling and ethereal and stunning in every way, and Nicole knows that she's a goner.
The rest of Waverly's speech is awkward and a little unconventional--and when they look back months from now, they'll laugh about that horrible double entendre--but Waverly is here, soft beauty and quiet strength. The steel in her eyes wavers for a moment, and Nicole takes the opportunity to show Waverly what this means to her, what Waverly means to her.
Nicole presses Waverly against the couch with the full length of her body, gasping with joy into against her lips. She tastes and smells like happiness, and Nicole wouldn't mind if she drowned herself in everything Waverly is. It'd be a hell of a good way to die, with Waverly's fingers gentle against her neck and leg wrapped around her waist. Nicole pulls back and rubs a thumb over Waverly's lips, just to make sure that she's really there, before tilting Waverly's chin up with a crooked finger and kissing her again with renewed earnest. She feels Waverly smile against her lips, and she smiles back, the heal of Waverly's thumb rubbing against her dimple.
Dammit if Nicole doesn't love Saturdays.
Chapter 7: guess i won't be coming to church on sunday
Summary:
Sundays are for morning smiles and afternoon showers.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
It's Sunday.
Nicole knows that Waverly likes to sleep in on Sundays, and she struggles to untangle herself from Waverly's body and the sheets for her run at dawn.
Waverly's body becomes a furnace when she sleeps, all warm skin and radiating body heat. In the middle of the night, Nicole always kicks the sheets and blankets down around her ankles, and Waverly pulls them back up and wraps them tighter around herself. But she always leaves a small space of her skin free where she presses it up against Nicole. The side of her arm, a sliver of back or down her chest.
Waverly groans when Nicole rises early in the morning, letting the cold air replace her against Waverly's body. She wakes up just a fraction and glares with bleary, sleepy eyes through her tornado of hair. She mumbles no baby and come back to me and it takes all of Nicole's willpower and then some to force herself to the bathroom to brush her teeth.
Nicole leaves early on Sunday mornings on purpose. She dresses in moderate darkness--Waverly doesn't mind sound at night, but light wakes her up, cranky and grumbling--and tosses her hair in a tight ponytail and always returns a little bit sweaty to a still-sleeping, still gloriously naked Waverly.
Sundays are Waverly's favorite days. She gets to sleep until the sun is high in the sky, wrapped up in fluffy warmth with the scent of Nicole's shampoo on the pillow when she wakes. They spend almost every Saturday night together, alone or with Wynonna and the BBD team, but the first half of any proper Sunday they spend alone.
Nicole returns from her runs sweaty and with flushed cheeks and wind-swept hair. She pulls the blinds open a fraction to coax Waverly into the day, and Waverly opens her eyes to see the sunlight glowing off of her milky-white skin.
Today, it's just the same, and Waverly wakes to the sound of Nicole's running shoes hitting the floor and her sniffling, body warming up to the heat Waverly keeps on high in the homestead. It's a brutal winter this year--Waverly doesn't know how Nicole can run in this chill--and there's a distinct rosiness to Nicole's cheekbones. Waverly thinks it's adorable.
"Good morning, baby," Waverly groans, voice hoarse with sleep. Her morning breath tastes sour and rancid in her mouth and she grimaces, and Nicole chuckles under her breath when she sees it.
"Hi," Nicole whispers. She always keeps her voice quiet until Waverly's risen fully. She leans over the bed to plant a gentle but firm kiss to Waverly's lips, but Waverly turns her face.
"Blech," she says. "I have nasty morning breath, you don't want that anywhere near you."
Nicole smiles sweetly. "Of course I do," she says, chasing Waverly's sleep-puffy lips.
Waverly cooks while Nicole showers. She plugs her phone into the iHome she keeps in the kitchen and plays something soft and pretty while the eggs and tofu-bacon fry up on the stove, starting the coffee-maker and readying a glass of water and Tylenol for Wynonna's inevitable hangover.
Nicole comes downstairs with wet hair, in worn jeans and soft sweater, and Waverly runs her hands up her arms and tastes the mint toothpaste they both use when she leans in for a proper good-morning kiss. "You're beautiful," Nicole says with her fingers lacing into Waverly's tangled hair, just because she can.
Waverly beams, turning to check the food as Nicole pulls away to set the table. The winter sun pours in through the windows and lights Nicole's porcelain skin, and Waverly can't keep her smile down as she stares.
When the flame is off and the food is plated on the kitchen table--Nicole always sets four places, in case Doc or Dolls make an appearance, and she's hardly every wrong--Nicole wraps a hand around Waverly's wrist and pulls her in. They slow-dance together to whatever Waverly has playing that day, tinkling piano or gentle jazz, pressed together from chest to knees and swaying. The old wooden floorboards groan and creak below them and Waverly feels Nicole's palm heavy against her back and she feels safe.
Nicole never lets Waverly get too far away from her, and they sit at the table close enough that their feet or shoulders or fingers brush together while they eat, smiling over bites and sips of coffee and orange juice.
Wynonna stumbles down the stairs sometime after they've started eating, rubbing sleep and hangover from her face and grumbling about her headache and how she could murder a pound of waffles right now. She pops the pills Waverly leaves on the counter and gulps down the glass of water, pouring herself a cup of coffee and drinking that in two sips too.
She sits at the table with them and makes fun of their googley eyes and tells them that they're giving her indigestion and Waverly takes Nicole's hand in hers and gives it a reassuring squeeze. Nicole squeezes back and offers her a small smile because, yeah, Wynonna's a pain in the ass but Nicole knows she wouldn't joke like this if she didn't approve, maybe even like Nicole being with Waverly, and that's important.
It's easy on Sundays to forget that they aren't just some couple in some town, average in every way except how deeply they love each other, eating their perfectly normal breakfast in their perfectly normal house with their perfectly normal problems. But inevitably, an Earp emergency or a town criminal rears its ugly head and they scramble from the table to get ready to face the day. Nicole never misses how Wynonna glances at Waverly with worried, guilty eyes, before scowling at Nicole because she's been caught.
Nicole grins back because she gets the feeling, wanting so desperately to protect this person who's so good, and they do their best to swallow it because Waverly'd kill them if they tried to keep her hidden away somewhere.
Nicole watches Waverly dress frantically from the hall, head leaning against the wooden trim of the door jam. She drinks in the sight of Waverly's skin, memorizing every freckle and blemish and scar as they vanish beneath her clothes.
Waverly catches her staring and gives her a sly, knowing grin before leaning in and poking her on the nose with a giggle. She buttons her jeans and presses her kiss into the dip of Nicole's bashful dimple, inhaling through her nose to smell her floral shampoo.
They sprint down the stairs together clumsily and meet Wynonna by the front door, and on their way out, Nicole pulls Waverly's body to her and whispers stay safe into their kiss and then bites her tongue to keep anything else from escaping.
Waverly sits beside Wynonna in the driver's side of the jeep. They're covered in goop and a little bit battered, but they won this battle and Wynonna pulled Peacemaker's trigger with fire in her eyes and watched this new creature sputter in pain before it crumbled into dust on the ground.
They don't talk after missions much anymore. Waverly's gotten used to the danger, adjusted to the freedom of being included on the scary parts in the field and finally laid to rest the need to prove herself. She's proud that she's finally being trusted, but Nicole's beautiful, hopeful, worried face flashes in her mind as she runs away from whatever is chasing her this time and her heart is still fluttering in her chest.
"Good work, babygirl," Wynonna says, sliding out of the Jeep at the station. They walk in and Wynonna heads to debrief Dolls--and drag him to Shorty's for a drink--as Waverly searches for Nicole.
Nicole struggles to keep herself distracted while Waverly is off on her missions with Wynonna. She's proud, but she's painfully worried and she's always been more of a doer so she cleans the homestead and then comes to the station to reorganize the file cabinet so she can stop getting 'Missing Person' reports when Mrs. Griffin's dog runs off again.
Nicole smells Waverly before she sees her, and though whatever is caked to her hair smells like rotten eggs and makes Nicole's eyes water, she runs over and pulls Waverly against her body, grateful that she still can. "Everything go okay?" she asks, pulling away and seeking Waverly's eyes.
Waverly smiles, chipper and bright as always and peeps "yep!" as she leans in to peck Nicole on the lips. "But now I smell like the men's room at Shorty's, so I'm going straight home for a shower." Waverly's grin turns wicked. "Want to come? You can do my back."
Nicole blushes over her wide smile. "Far be it from me to turn down an offer like that," she jokes, following Waverly to her car.
They're under the showerhead long enough for the water to turn cold, but damn if it's not a Sunday afternoon well spent.
Notes:
thank you so much to everyone for sticking with me on this fic!! let me know in the comments what you think :)
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