Chapter Text
Today was the worst day of Nicole Haught’s life.
Also, she was pretty sure she was dying.
Granted, neither of those facts were all that unusual. Since moving to Purgatory a year ago, she had survived a disproportionate number of “worst days of her life,” and more near-death experiences than she could count with her shoes on. For some reason, the job posting for small-town sheriff’s deputy hadn’t mentioned all the harrowing danger and emotional trauma that made up the bulk of the job.
To be fair, even if it had, Nicole probably still would have signed on. Something about Purgatory just felt right to her. This town was where she belonged. The second she set foot on the dusty soil, she could feel herself sending roots into the ground, burrowing deep into the bedrock. This was home now. For good. But that didn’t stop life in her new home from feeling like a long string of small insanities occasionally interrupted by one massive insanity, while everyone else in town carefully looked the other way.
But Nicole didn’t look away.
Nicole was open-minded, almost to a fault— enough to have suspected from the start that there was something just plain off about Purgatory. There were things here that were unnatural. Supernatural, even. That much was obvious to her, even if everyone else pretended not to see it.
And she was pretty sure they were all just pretending.
She had eventually gotten some answers, although not in the way she had wanted. In the days after Sheriff Nedley’s death (God rest his soul), all of which were real “worst of her life” contenders, she had cleaned the personal belongings out of his office and boxed them up for his grieving daughter. The process had uncovered a hidden closet in the corner, stuffed to bursting with unexplainable case files, hair-raising autopsy reports, and random-seeming objects that presumably couldn’t be trusted. Her suspicions were finally confirmed. The monsters were real. And she couldn’t even talk with Nedley about it, because he was gone. She had crumpled onto the floor of his office, sometime after midnight, holding a garden gnome, of all things, crying mingled tears of heartbroken loss and surprise relief. Relief that she wasn’t crazy. That she had been right. That it was all real. Then, first thing in the morning, she had stood back up, marched straight over to the Black Badge Office, kicked their door in, and demanded to be brought in on all their goddamned secrets, and if they wanted her killed for treason, then they might as well just do it right then right there and get it over with, because life in Purgatory was dangerous enough without being blindfolded on top of it. Dolls had clearly been stunned into silence, but Jeremy had grinned at her like they’d all just won the lottery, and six months later, here they were. Witches and demons and revenants, oh my.
And yet, evil forces raining hellfire on her town was only half her problem.
The other half was Waverly Gibson.
Nicole considered herself an expert in self-reflection. She could examine her emotions rationally, realize where they were coming from, compartmentalize them, and make rational decisions in spite of them. It was part of what made her a good cop. But there was no way to compartmentalize the way she felt about Waverly. It was like trying to “compartmentalize” the ocean into a series of buckets.
From the moment she had arrived in Purgatory, freshly separated from Shae and feeling lonely and unmoored, one girl had caught her eye. That wasn’t surprising. After all, Waverly was beautiful and sweet and had a smile like summer sunshine. What was surprising was how quickly ‘caught her eye’ turned into ‘owned her entire goddamn heart.’
If anyone, God forbid, had noticed her pointless, undying love of Waverly Gibson and actually asked her why she was obsessed with this woman she barely knew, the cliche but unavoidable answer was, “Everything.” After all, Waverly was an angel descended from heaven to bring joy and light and intelligence and beauty to the undeserving town of Purgatory. Obviously. Any Purgatorian would agree with that. But somehow that didn’t seem like enough to justify the pathetic, all-encompassing crush Nicole clearly had for her. After all, she had met (and even dated) plenty of great women, Shae included, but whereas her current feelings about her legal spouse were somewhere between “tepid” and “mixed,” her feelings for Waverly bordered on cataclysmic. And in Purgatory, “cataclysmic” really meant something.
And it was stupid. It was crazy. It was reckless. Nicole and Waverly barely even knew each other. They were, at best, friendly acquaintances. Never more than that. Plus, Waverly dated men. Waverly had only ever dated men. And more to the point, Waverly was engaged, for God’s sake, to a perfectly nice, perfectly handsome, perfectly male millionaire. A fact of which Nicole reminded herself on at least a daily basis, to no effect.
Because in spite of everything— the fact that she had never believed in soulmates, the fact that Waverly had never shown any romantic interest in her, the fact that she was still legally married— Nicole’s heart remained blindly convinced that they were meant to be together. To the point where sometimes her heart whispered lies to her brain and she would, just for moments, forget that they weren’t together. And if that wasn’t the craziest and scariest thing to ever happen in Purgatory, Nicole would eat her Stetson.
But there was trouble in paradise, she heard, regarding Waverly and Perry. Not that she ever listened for such things. After all, whenever the townspeople talked about the couple, they always said how lucky Waverly was to have caught a guy like Perry, which was just lunacy when it was so obviously the other way around. So clearly the town’s opinions couldn’t be trusted. But she had also seen such things herself. While Perry was devoted to Waverly (as anyone would be), Waverly was maybe, kind of, arguably, just a little bit more lukewarm in return. Kisses aimed at her lips often ended up on her cheek, and declarations of love were met with smiles instead of answering words. Not that Nicole ever watched for such things.
But, whether or not there was trouble in Eden, and regardless of Nicole’s heart’s shrieking opinion on the matter, the day of the wedding approached undeterred. Which was fine. It was fine. It was okay that Waverly would be moving away. It was good, that she would be safe and happy. And Nicole’s sudden, inexplicable, incapacitating illness that had struck in the days before the wedding, as decorations went up around town and residents gossiped about the upcoming nuptials, was definitely, totally, unquestionably unrelated.
For the first time in her career at Purgatory P.D., she called in sick, leaving Lonnie in charge of her citizens (God help them all), and curled in bed, nauseous and cold and aching in what was definitely not heartbreak.
Because why would it be? If Waverly owned her heart, it wasn’t because of anything that had ever happened between the two of them. Nicole had never offered it to her and Waverly had never accepted it. They were on friendly terms, chatting over lunch deliveries and after-work trips to Shorty’s, but that was no excuse. That didn’t explain how she could taste Waverly in her dreams— sweet like sugar, but sharp and rich like whiskey. And it didn’t explain why sometimes after a long day, she looked forward to going home, climbing into bed, and pulling Waverly close— only to remember that Waverly had never been, and would never be in her bed.
It was a strange thing to forget.
It was a painful thing to remember.
And now, on the morning of the wedding day, the new and definitive Worst Day Of Her Life(TM), Nicole lay on her deathbed. The nausea was all-encompassing, she was shivering from head to foot, her skin was so hypersensitive that even her blankets hurt, and every muscle in her body just radiated pain and suffering. And every time her eyes caught sight of the dress in her closet— the dress she would wear to Waverly’s wedding, the dress that was not white— the whole room seemed to spin until she thought about crawling under her bed just to see if it would hold still down there.
It was pathetic.
She had no idea what time it was when she heard her phone ring, the sound so distant and foreign that it might have been echoing from another dimension. In her disorientation, she momentarily wondered if she could be so sick that the ambulance was actually calling her. After some fumbling, she picked up the phone with shaking hands and looked at the number on the screen. She had never seen it before, she was sure, and yet her instincts screamed at her to answer it.
“This is Nicole Haught,” she spoke, in a voice that thankfully sounded stronger than it felt.
“Hey.”
One word.
One word, and every one of her symptoms magically evaporated, like a curse being lifted. She sat up straight, her mind scrambling for an explanation. She checked the time. The wedding wasn’t for hours, but surely they would be preparing for it. Surely Waverly would be talking with caterers and florists and in-laws. Surely she would be fixing her hair and packing for her honeymoon and proofreading her vows. Surely she wouldn’t have time to call acquaintances and say ‘Hey.’
“Waverly,” she breathed into the phone, in a far softer, far more revealing voice than she had intended. One hand rubbed her bleary eyes, then hastily tried to brush her hair into some semblance of order, as though Waverly could see her and judge her appearance through the phone. “Is everything alright?”
“Yeah. I mean, no. I mean… God, this is hard.” Waverly sounded flustered and embarrassed, and Nicole instinctively stood, abandoning her deathbed without a second thought.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her brow furrowing, her mind whirling, trying to imagine what could have possibly prompted this improbable call. “Not that it’s not nice to hear from you, but I would have thought you’d be kind of b-”
“The wedding’s off,” Waverly burst out in a rush, the words pouring through the speaker like water from a firehose. Water spraying all over an endless, hopeless desert that hadn’t even dared to dream of rain.
At those impossible words, that rain in the desert, Nicole’s heart bloomed. Her whole body awakened with emotion. There was relief. Huge, sweeping, knee-weakening gusts of relief. And beyond that there was joy. Pure, simple, all-encompassing, guilt-wracking joy. But underneath it all, there also lay a thin, hazy layer of concern, and she grabbed onto that with both hands.
“Are you okay?” she repeated. She automatically reached out and pulled one of her uniforms out of the closet, for reasons she hadn’t yet begun to fathom.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just… ugh, I can’t believe I’m doing this! What am I thinking? This is crazy, right?” Waverly sounded lost and distressed, and Nicole’s layer of concern settled where it belonged, on top of the rioting joy, tamping it into submission.
“Where are you?” Nicole shrugged the navy shirt on over her tank top, one sleeve at a time.
“What?”
“Where are you?” She began doing up the buttons.
“The park, but you don’t have to come out here. I’m not injured. I’m just…”
“I’m on my way.” She hung up, finished dressing in a matter of seconds, and jogged all the way to her car. In spite of the fact that she had spent the past few days lying semi-catatonic on her bed, barely eating or sleeping, she felt like she could have run a dozen marathons, then swam straight across an ocean, then taken on all 77 revenants single-handedly… and still made it to Waverly’s side in time to comfort her.
As it was, it was only like a three-minute drive.
Nicole hopped out of the car and walked directly through two gardens and a soccer field, never once questioning that she was heading in the right direction. Her heart, after all, was a compass pointing unerringly towards one single thing, whether she wanted it to or not.
And then there she was.
Waverly Gibson, in a regular yellow (not white) sundress, was sitting on a bench, hands fidgeting restlessly. Her eyes were red and her face was splotchy and she was alone, and Nicole had never seen anything so beautiful in her entire life. She glanced up as Nicole approached, and Nicole thought she saw some of the tension around her eyes relax.
“Hey,” Nicole greeted, continuing to scan her face for more clues. The classic Waverly smile was missing, and her eyes were shiny with tears. She looked lost.
“Hey Sheriff.” Waverly’s voice was noticeably higher and shakier than usual. She wiped at her eyes self-consciously and sniffled. “You really didn’t have to come all the way out here.”
Nicole shrugged, gripping her belt with both hands and approaching with a slow, even step.
“Standard operating procedure,” she claimed, absurdly, and Waverly managed a watery giggle. Nicole’s heart swelled at the sound. She eased down next to her on the bench, close but not quite touching. “Are you okay?”
Third time was the charm, and Waverly’s face crumpled. She hid her face briefly in her hands, but emerged seconds later, shaking her head at herself. Nicole had to put every drop of her self-control into not reaching out, and her heart pounded in sympathetic distress.
“I don’t know.” Waverly’s voice was thick with tears. “I mean, I really thought I was ready. Ready to marry him. Ready to leave. Ready to… start my life, finally, for real. But then I woke up this morning, and…” She shook her head again, tears shining in her eyes, hands twisting in the skirt of her dress. “Everything just felt… wrong.”
Nicole’s heart beat harder, like it was yelling at her in Morse code. She wanted to tell it not to bother. She knew exactly what it meant. And it didn’t matter. Her feelings didn’t matter. Certainly not today.
She kept her eyes focused on Waverly’s.
“Did you talk to Perry about it?” she asked gently. His name felt weird in her mouth. She usually avoided saying it.
“Yeah. Well, sort of. He was really sweet about it. He always is. God, I can’t believe I made him cancel the wedding! I mean, everyone gets cold feet on their wedding day, and then they’re fine, whatever. But I made him call it off—” Nicole could hear her spiraling and, breaking the second-most-important of her carefully constructed How to Act Around Waverly rules, she rested a hand on her shoulder, while the other fished a packet of tissues from her pocket. Waverly’s voice trailed off as she gratefully accepted the package and blew her nose, and Nicole took advantage of the pause.
“Hey, listen to me: You didn’t make him do anything. The whole point of a wedding is that you're both agreeing to take this huge, life-changing step together, and either one of you has the right to cancel or postpone it if it doesn’t feel right.” Waverly peeked up at her, wavering hope in her sweet brown eyes, and so she plowed ahead. “If anything, it would have been way worse, for you and for him, to marry him if you weren’t sure you wanted to. Trust me, marriage isn’t something you should rush into.” Memories of neon lights and outdated pop music flashed in her head. Rocky mountains and tequila shots and fun and excitement… followed by yawning months of awkward small talk and cooling passions.
“I know. You’re right. And I thought I was, but… there’s this feeling… like it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Like there was some giant mistake, and… something’s missing.” Waverly shook her head, looking frustrated with herself. “And that’s crazy, because Perry is so great. He loves me, and supports me, and he wants to show me the world, and I’ve never even left this stupid, awful town…”
Tears began leaking from her eyes again, and Nicole squeezed her shoulder, ignoring the way her heart cringed at her words.
“And all of that is great, but none of it means that you are obligated to marry him. Nothing means that. It will always be your decision. And you’re not crazy for wanting to wait, to make sure it’s what you really want, or to… weigh your other options.” Nicole tried to stop her blush through sheer force of will, but she wasn’t totally sure it worked. If Waverly noticed her reddening ears and guilty eyes, she at least granted her the mercy of not saying anything. “It’s smart, in fact. Really smart. Which makes sense, because you are literally the smartest person I’ve ever met.”
Waverly finally cracked a smile at that, the tears slowing as she wiped at her eyes. She gave Nicole a look of gratitude and affection that made warmth pool in her empty stomach, and Nicole tried to pretend that she wasn’t about to burst with love for this woman.
Then, incredibly, amazingly, unbelievably, Waverly leaned her body ever-so-slightly into Nicole’s side, setting off proximity alarms in every one of her nerve endings. Nicole’s brain actually whited out for a split-second before descending back to Earth. When her senses returned, she found her arm around Waverly’s shoulders.
“Thanks.” Waverly gave a weak laugh and rested her head against Nicole’s shoulder, and Nicole briefly wondered if she really had died from broken-heartedness and ended up in heaven. “I don’t even know why I called you first. I just found your card and…” Nicole’s mind momentarily reeled at that revelation. Waverly still had her card? She had given it to her when they first met, all those months ago, in her one and only (obviously unsuccessful) attempt to ask her out. She had assumed Waverly had immediately thrown it straight in the trash. “…I mean, I’m going to have to call everyone now, I guess.” Waverly wiped her eyes again, sniffling. “Perry said he could do it. Of course. But it should be me. God, this is all my fault.”
Nicole gently squeezed her shoulders in the closest thing to a hug they had ever shared, and Waverly leaned into it, pressing closer to her. The feeling it evoked was transcendent. Like she was finally fulfilling her true purpose. Like her whole body had been built for this, cell by cell. Nicole doubted her heart would ever recover.
“It’s not your fault, Waverly. It isn't anyone’s fault. Neither of you did anything wrong. It's not like you were trying to trick him. Just the opposite, in fact. You were honest with him. That was the brave thing to do. The mature thing.” Nicole tried to give the words as much weight as possible, hoping they would sink in. “You know, the right thing.”
Waverly sighed against her shoulder, but it sounded just a little less sad than before.
“Maybe.” She shifted her head a little against Nicole, settling it more securely. “But it still sucks balls.”
Nicole nearly choked on an unexpected laugh, and after a second, Waverly joined in, both of them letting the laughter break the tension of the moment. It faded after only a few seconds, and they were both quiet afterwards.
“I really like him,” Waverly breathed. Her voice was soft, but Nicole was 1000% sure she had just used the word ‘like’ instead of ‘love,’ and god she was going to need more rules.
“Just… listen to your heart. When you’re really ready, you’ll know. It won’t be scary anymore, because you won’t be able to imagine your life with anyone else. The wedding will just be… inevitable. Fate, taking its course. The world setting itself right. Your present catching up to your future. Like you finally get to go home.”
After all, if she were ever lucky enough to marry Waverly, you can bet she wouldn’t be hemming and hawing about it, wondering if it was a mistake. No, they’d have to stop her from running down that damn aisle.
Waverly looked up at her, a little too thoughtfully for Nicole’s comfort, like her features were written in an ancient language that could be deciphered if she just tried hard enough. Nicole hoped Waverly couldn’t see her thoughts there, the images of them in white with linked hands and locked lips.
“You really think so?” Waverly whispered.
“Yeah. I do.”
...I do...
Their eyes locked, and Nicole felt like her whole body was on fire. She wondered if it felt the same for Waverly. She doubted it, but something about the intensity of the moment blew life back into the spark of hope in her chest.
“What if… I don’t know what my heart is saying?” Waverly asked, sounding serious.
Don’t say it, Nicole, I swear to God— “Oh, just listen. You’ll hear it. I mean, your heart has got to be pretty loud, after all, because from what I can tell, it’s really big.”
Waverly laughed again and gently shoved her elbow into Nicole’s side, but her smile was finally reaching her eyes.
“That is really cheesy,” she chided.
“I’ve been told I’m like a walking bumper sticker,” Nicole admitted, although she couldn’t for the life of her remember who had said it, and the thought gave her a strange pang. Regardless, Waverly grinned wider, making her whole face light up.
“Whoever told you that was a jerk,” she said. “But, you know, there are probably worse things you could be.”
Nicole abruptly noticed that her hand had drifted from Waverly’s shoulder to her upper arm and that her thumb was now stroking the spot absentmindedly. She wondered when that had happened. She considered withdrawing her arm and punching herself in the face, since that was likely the only thing that would wake her from this dream… but realistically, she had no intention of removing her arm unless she thought Waverly wanted her to.
On the contrary, Waverly kept leaning further and further into her side, her head finding purchase higher and higher on her shoulder, until her hair was barely brushing against Nicole’s neck, tickling her. The feeling of Waverly next to her, the warmth, the rise and fall of her breathing, was life-changing. It was like something inside her had finally snapped into place. Like for the first time in her life, the world was spinning in the right direction. Following Rule Number Two was going to be so much harder after today.
“I should call everyone,” Waverly murmured after several long, glorious minutes. Nicole’s brain processed those words, circling around them from every angle before reluctantly admitting that they sounded just enough like a dismissal to break the spell. Biting back a sigh of regret, she made to stand, but before she could move more than an inch or two, Waverly’s hand caught a handful of her shirt, halting her. She froze for the length of a few heartbeats, neither of them saying anything. Then, slowly, Nicole eased herself back into her original position, and they both pretended she had never tried to get up. Nicole returned to stroking her arm, and Waverly kept hold of her shirt, and Nicole was pretty sure her heart was going to spill right out of her chest and fall into Waverly’s lap. It would be a fitting way to die. Poetic, even.
“I can call around, if you want. Let everyone know,” Nicole offered. It would be a little weird, sure, but getting to say the words ‘Waverly and Perry aren’t getting married’ some two hundred times would probably put a spring in her step for days, if not weeks.
“Why you?” Waverly asked, an obvious and utterly reasonable question.
“Because…” Nicole tried to think of any real answer besides that she would viscerally enjoy it. “I’m the sheriff?” she finished lamely, more a question than an answer. “It’s… community outreach.”
Waverly managed another breath of a laugh, then sighed.
“No, I’ve got to do it.”
Nicole would have sworn that Waverly pressed her head into her shoulder as she said it, like she was trying to brace herself or draw strength from her. Nicole imagined bravery and strength and love flowing from herself into Waverly through each point of contact, fortifying her for the task ahead.
“Want me to stay with you? For moral support?” Nicole offered, not mentioning the side benefit of threatening to arrest anyone who dared make Waverly feel bad about her decision.
Waverly shook her head.
“Thanks, but I think this is something I have to do myself.”
Nicole nodded and was silent for a few beats, but still, neither of them moved. Nicole continued her silent transfer of power, and Waverly continued leaning into her like she could feel it, too.
Nicole wished she could freeze time and live in this one moment for the rest of her life. After all, this was as close as she could ever hope to get to the woman she loved. They could never really be together. Her brain knew that, even if her heart refused to believe it. But at least now, they had shared this one small intimacy. One moment of comfort, one moment of respite, for both of them.
But it couldn't last forever. She waited as long as she could, until the ache in her heart, the desire to pull Waverly into her lap and kiss her was too much. And then she finally broke the silence.
“Call Bunny Loblaw first,” she recommended from out of nowhere. She could feel Waverly’s forehead crinkle in confusion.
“Why? She’s the worst.”
“Because she’ll immediately call everyone she knows to blab about it, so like ninety percent of the town will have already heard by the time you get ahold of them. It’ll be old news by tomorrow.”
Waverly finally pulled away in one slow, graceful motion, and the loss didn’t hurt as much as Nicole had expected. It helped that Waverly was beaming at her like the sun itself.
“You’re a genius, Ni- Sheriff Haught,” she said, eyes twinkling. She seemed to catch herself on Nicole’s first name, and Nicole’s heart ached for her to finish it, to hear the sound of it on her lips. Not just Officer Haught or Sheriff, but Nicole, just once. Instead, she could only smile dumbly back. There was a beat of silence. Waverly gave her a long, thoughtful look, the smile never leaving her face. “I, uh… I’m really glad I called you. Thanks for coming out here. It was really sweet.” Nicole opened her mouth to say something, but Waverly cut her off. “And don’t say it’s ‘standard operating procedure,’ because it’s not.”
Nicole shut her mouth and considered her next words carefully.
“I’m just glad I could help,” she said finally (and not dishonestly). “You know, you can always call me if you need someone. For anything. Even just an outside opinion.” She would have tipped her hat, but it was still hanging on a hook by her front door. Instead, she rose to her feet, eyes smiling. “As long as you don’t mind talking with a bumper sticker.”
Waverly blinked up at her, her eyes dry now, a familiar smile on her face.
“I think… maybe bumper stickers get a bad rap,” she said, a twinkle in her eye.
Nicole couldn’t keep her grin from widening, but she hoped it at least looked less dopey and lovestruck than it felt.
“Good luck on your phone calls, Waverly.” She nodded, a tip of her invisible hat. “And feel free to dial mine if you need a break. I’ll be around.”
“Maybe I will.” Waverly smiled after her, following her with her eyes as she stepped backwards, retreating towards her car until the ground was so uneven that she was forced to turn and look where she was going. Even then, she would have sworn that she could feel Waverly’s gaze burning itself into her back. When she got home that night, when she took her shirt off, she would glance in the mirror just once to make sure there wasn’t a pair of shining brown eyes permanently tattooed there now.
She drove to the police station in a daze and whistled as she walked through the doors, an irrepressible swing in her step. Lonnie visibly startled when he saw her, spilling coffee onto a mess of papers strewn across his desk. He swore and glanced up, clearly expecting a rebuke, but Nicole couldn’t have stopped smiling if her own life had depended on it.
“Hey, Sheriff. I, uh… thought you were really sick,” he said awkwardly. She had called him this morning to tell him she was still staying home, but she had probably been barely intelligible at the time. In fact, now that she thought about it, she was pretty sure she told him she was dead. If so, he was taking it pretty well.
“Nah, I’m fine now. Starving, though. I’m going to order a pizza. Maybe several pizzas. And you can go home early if you want. I’ve got this covered.” She scooped the ruined papers off his desk and dropped them onto her own.
“Um… okay?” Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he began packing up his belongings, still shooting her confused glances every few seconds. Nicole ignored him, fishing her phone from its pocket, making sure the ringer was on, and giving it a highly visible place of honor on her desk. Just in case. “Um… are you sure you’re okay?”
“Never better. It’s a day of celebration, after all.” She got out her favorite pen and began copying the coffee-stained forms onto clean ones without a hint of complaint.
“Right… the wedding. Um… weren’t you gonna go to that?” He was still looking at her like she might be some kind of evil doppelgänger. Which, to his credit, would not be a completely unrealistic possibility in Purgatory. She would have to remember that for his next performance review.
“Oh, yeah, but I have a funny feeling it might get rained out.”
Lonnie furrowed his brow.
“Um… we’re in the middle of a drought…?” he pointed out, still eying her warily. “And it’s supposed to be sunny all day…?”
She looked up from the papers and beamed at him, which seemed to unnerve him even worse.
“You’re right, Lonnie. It really is a beautiful day. You should go enjoy it.”
He nodded slowly, picking up his backpack.
“Sure. Cool. Whatever you say, sheriff.” Never taking his eyes off Nicole, he backed cautiously out of the room, just as she began humming to herself.
She went back to her work, constantly keeping one eye on her phone, just in case of a call. Just in case she was needed. Just in case she was wanted.
She had never felt more alive.
Today was the best day of Nicole Haught’s life.