Chapter Text
Nicole gets off her last shift for the week at an ungodly hour in the morning. By the time she leaves, she’s felling somewhat guilty about the amount of time she’d spent staring at the radio half-wishing for someone to call in an incident so she could do something, but even the quiet nights filled with paperwork were still tiring. By the time she makes it home, the sun’s just about coming up. Nicole stops just inside her doorway to run her hands through Calamity Jane’s fur before the cat slinks back off to the bedroom. Nicole follows, kicking off her boots and fighting her way out of her pants, tossing them over her desk chair as she passes. She’s tired, too tired to do much more than pull her shirt over her head before falling into bed.
Nicole’s all too ready to kick off her December by sleeping for the next twelve hours, but she’s barely had the time to roll over and shove Calamity Jane off the bed before her phone goes off. Nicole groans, pulling her pillow over her head and pressing her face into it. The phone keeps ringing. Nicole’s of half a mind to just leave it, especially when the ringing finally stops, but it starts up again a minute later and Nicole huffs, tossing her pillow aside and getting up.
She crosses the room in quick strides, pulling her phone from the pocket of her discarded pants, and is about ready to answer with a curt, “What?” when she catches a glimpse of Waverly’s name flashing across the screen. Nicole can’t fight the small smile that tugs at the corners of her lips, and answers the phone with a soft, “Hey, Wavs.”
“Oh, good,” Waverly says. “I need your help with something.”
“What’s wrong?” Nicole asks, alarm rising immediately.
“Nothing!” Waverly says quickly, as if she can tell that Nicole’s reaching for her abandoned holster, ready to rush to her aid. “I just, I can’t… I need you here.”
“Waverly-”
“I’ll see you in a bit?”
Nicole casts a glance over her shoulder at her warm bed, shoulders drooping slightly, but she can’t resist Waverly, and the slight note of discomfort that she can hear over the phone.
“Yeah. Yeah, okay. I’ll head over right now.”
“Thanks!” Waverly says brightly. “Love you, babe!”
Nicole grins at that. Her bed might be calling to her, but seeing Waverly is enough incentive to power through the next few hours, even though she’ll probably end up crashing on a couch at the homestead. Nicole pulls on a flannel and some jeans, pocketing her phone and then, after a moment, picks up her gun and carries it downstairs with her - you can never be too sure with the Earps, even though everything looks peaceful on Nicole’s drive out, and Nicole can’t see anything that might be out of place as she turns into the homestead.
The front door flies open as Nicole pulls her car to a stop in front of the house. She watches, amused, as Wynonna emerges with a bottle in one hand and a box of donuts in the other.
“I think I’ve run out of ways to tell you that it’s a bit early to be hitting the bar,” Nicole calls as she steps out of her car.
Wynonna squints in Nicole’s direction, making out the cop’s silhouette as she stands against the rising sun, then, unsurprisingly, flips Nicole off.
“I’m not heading to the bar,” Wynonna says. “Dolls needs my help… or my gun, I don’t know.”
Nicole shoots a quick look down, pulling her phone out of her pocket enough to make out her screen - no missed calls or texts from the Black Badge agent. Not a serious enough issue to warrant calling everyone in this early in the morning, then, even though he’s going to have his hands full with Wynonna.
“I don’t know how I feel about you driving intoxicated,” Nicole says, more out of duty than anything else - Wynonna doesn’t quite look like she’s been awake long enough to have maybe more than a sip.
“Shut off your cop senses or whatever for two seconds, I’m fine,” Wynonna says, jumping onto one of the beams Doc’s left outside from the work he’s helping them do on the barn and walking quickly across it. “See? Balance in check and everything. Leave me alone, Haught.”
“Fine. Where’s Waverly?”
Wynonna gestures back at the house using the bottle in her hand, and Nicole gives her a quick nod before brushing past into the homestead. Waverly’s nowhere to be seen as Nicole tugs off her boots and hangs up her coat, but Nicole can hear a floorboard or two shifting upstairs.
Nicole heads up, almost expecting Waverly to be in her room. She almost walks right across the hall and into her bedroom before she sees Waverly, sitting at the end of the hall and staring up at the attic door.
“Waves?”
Waverly blinks once, then shakes her head and looks across the hall, her eyes taking a moment to focus on Nicole. There’s an odd look on her face, one that Nicole’s sure she’s seen before, but she doesn’t have enough time to try and place it before it’s gone, Waverly’s face lighting up in a smile.
“Hey, Nicole,” Waverly says, holding out her arms as Nicole approaches. Nicole laughs, wrapping her hands around Waverly’s wrists and pulling gently. In a moment, Waverly’s off the floor and in Nicole’s arms. The smaller girl rises slightly on her toes to press a soft kiss against Nicole’s lips. “Thanks for coming over.”
“Mmm, what was so important that I had to come over first thing in the morning?”
“Shit,” Waverly says, blinking again and immediately looking guilty. “Shit, you had a night shift, didn’t you, I’m so sorry, I wouldn’t have-”
“Hey,” Nicole says firmly, pressing a finger to the underside of Waverly’s chin and tilting her girlfriend’s head up so that she can look her in the eye before Waverly starts to spiral. “It’s fine. I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t want to.”
Waverly still looks a bit sheepish. “I can make you breakfast in a bit.”
“That sounds lovely. So?”
“So,” Waverly repeats, looking up at the attic entrance again. “Um, I’ve got to get the Christmas decorations out.”
“... the Christmas decorations.”
“Yes.”
“It’s December first.”
Waverly pouts. “It’s an acceptable time to start getting ready for Christmas, Nicole.”
“I’m sure.”
“They’re in the attic. The decorations. At least, I think they are. They were.”
Nicole properly looks up. “Babe, if you had me drive half an hour from town because you couldn’t get the attic door down, even though Wynonna’s probably tall enough and she was just here, we might need to have a talk.”
“I haven’t been up there since… before,” Waverly says. “When I was really, really little. Helping our mother put the decorations away. And then she left, and we never really did Christmas properly afterwards. And Willa… she found me up there hiding once when daddy left the ladder down and it didn’t end well, and I’m just…”
Waverly trails off, looking lost. Nicole knows the look. She sees it sometimes, when they’re in the barn and Waverly’s eyes flick up to the beams she’d been made to walk across, or the time they’d gone walking around the Earp land and Waverly had shown her the small graveyard of all of Waverly’s pets, and how Waverly had trailed off after a moment, eyes fixed on a little patch of dirt with what looked like a fresh marker for the spot where a Pikachu had been laid to rest.
“We don’t need to get anything out today if you don’t want to,” Nicole says gently, pressing a kiss to Waverly’s forehead.
Waverly leans into the touch for a moment before leaning back, shooting Nicole a wry smile. “Just didn’t want to do it alone, you know?”
Nicole knows.
The homestead’s attic looks like it hasn’t been walked through in years. Nicole’s almost scared to move and stir up the dust, but Waverly immediately leaves her side and makes a beeline across the tiny space to a small stack of boxes.
“I found some of our stuff downstairs,” Waverly calls over her shoulder. “But this looks like it’s the last of it.”
Waverly traces her hand over the concise letters spelling out Christmas on one of the boxes, then shakes herself out of her reverie and lifts the top box from the stack. “Help me carry these down?”
It takes a bit of maneuvering down the narrow stairs, and Nicole’s more tired than she’d like to admit from her night shift, but they get everything downstairs and Waverly immediately pulls the flaps open on the box nearest to her.
“Ornaments,” she says under her breath. Nicole flops down on the couch, catching her breath and wondering if Waverly will notice if she shuts her eyes for just a few seconds. “We need to get a tree… hey, Nicole, how do you feel about helping me get a tree?”
“Whatever you want, Waverly.”
“I can hear you talking into a pillow, you know.”
Nicole rolls over, watching Waverly open the next box, her girlfriend’s face lighting up. She pulls the end of a string of outdoor lights out, looking up to shoot Nicole an excited look.
“The porch?” she asks, tugging carefully on the cord in her hands.
Nicole thinks about it for a moment, the homestead porch lit up outlined by strings of lights. It’ll look pretty, with all the snow Purgatory’s supposed to get this time of year.
“The porch,” Nicole agrees.
Waverly carefully winds up the strand of lights she’s managed to extract, laying it gently on the top of the box before she gets to her feet. Nicole looks up as Waverly approaches, pushing herself into a sitting position on the couch as Waverly reaches up and runs a hand through Nicole’s hair.
“Breakfast first, though?” Waverly asks.
“God, yes,” Nicole breathes, and Waverly laughs as Nicole tugs her onto the couch to cuddle with her for a moment before they get up, the promise of food and a morning of planning decorations on the horizon. Nicole lets Waverly tug her into the kitchen, and thinks, as she passes the boxes and looks down at the lights and ornaments, that whatever Waverly wants, she’s ready to do... even if that means balancing on a ladder for two hours in the cold so Waverly can have her lights.