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“Can’t sleep?”
“Never can, with him here,” Nicole whispers as her eyes drag over the sleeping body of her wife and son, curled against her.
Wynonna nods as the bottle of whiskey finds its way to her lips. “I remember being the same way with Alice. When we were on that pool table, and I was holding her, thinking, oh shit, what have I done? But she—she was so beautiful, I—"
It takes Nicole a moment to realize Wynonna is drowning her sobs in whiskey.
“I remember thinking, I made this, I—everything was so fucked up at the time and I, I’d managed to create something so perfect.”
As Wyatt gurgles a bit in his sleep, tiny hands grabbing at Waverly’s shirt, Nicole can’t help but feel the same way. She’d been terrified at first, looking over her shoulder at every opportunity when those two pink lines had shown up on Waverly’s test even though the revenants were gone. Anything was a threat from the whisper in the changing leaves to the boards of the Homestead that creaked with the wind.
But Alice is okay—she’s older now, a teenager, headstrong like her mother and twice as fierce, with her father’s unruly temper and painstaking blue eyes.
She’s got his love, too.
“He’s safe,” Wynonna whispers, and the warmth of her hand soothes Nicole’s back. “We got Alice back because she was safe and Waves, Waves has always taken the path of most resistance if it means protecting the ones she loves. You know she never would’ve agreed to this if she wasn’t sure that she could keep him safe.”
Nicole has no choice but to agree. He will face no supernatural threats, no demons or revenants or snakes, but she can’t help but wish to shield him from the outside world and the horrors it contains, if only for a bit longer.
Waverly curls him into her chest as she sleeps.
“It’s hard to bring them into the world, but it’s even harder to let them live in it,” Wynonna says through another swing of whiskey. Nicole isn’t sure when the last time it was Wynonna leading the conversation instead of herself, but she doesn’t mind. Not when it feels that if she opened her mouth she wouldn’t be able to close it around all the words, all the fears that would pour out.
Inherently, she knows that Wynonna understands this.
Her hand reaches out of its own accord to her son’s and his fingers, so small they can’t make it all the way around her one, enclose around it and bring it to his mouth.
Hot tears prick at the back of her eyes as it happens. Waverly created this, this perfection, that currently suckles on the tip of her finger while he sleeps. “You’re an amazing mom,” Wynonna whispers. Her hand rubs against Nicole’s back again. “The little guy isn’t ever going to be short of love, not from Waverly or me or Doc, and especially not from you. And if he was still here, I know Dolls would—he’d...”
She drowns the rest of her sentence into the bottle of whiskey.
She doesn’t need to finish. Nicole knows.
“Anyway.” Wynonna swallows hard, whether from the alcohol or pain of loss, or maybe both, and nods her head. “You need to get some sleep, Haught. I’m sure he’ll be waking you up bright and early, as usual.”
Nicole nods as Wynonna stands from the bed and makes her way to the door before turning one last time. “I mean it, you know, that you’re an amazing mom. You’re...I’m glad you get to see your son grow up.”
She swears she can see Alice slip into the forefront of Wynonna’s thoughts.
Nicole nods her goodnight to Wynonna as she heads out and gently detangles Wyatt from his mother. He mewls every so slightly at the sudden loss of warmth but almost immediately latches onto Nicole’s sleepshirt and presses his head against her chest, sinking back into sleep.
She should be putting him to bed, she knows. She should’ve an hour ago before Wynonna walked in on her, unmoving, watching her wife and son sleep tangled together. Instead she sways her hips, gently, slowly, and hums as her hand rubs slow circles into his back.
She can’t bear to put him down. Not yet.
Unbeknownst to her, Waverly smiles in her sleep.