Chapter Text
Fights with Champ, like all else with him, are familiar and worn. It’d be comforting, maybe, if it didn’t make Waverly feel stuck, frozen in amber in Purgatory and playing out the same old story her parents did. He’s got no ambition, not beyond another first place belt buckle to hang on the wall, no GED, no resume to his name. Sometimes she feels like she never leaves Shorty’s, that Shorty’s--for all it is truly her home and her family--is the true Limbo in Purgatory. At least Daddy held down a job, even if he performed it from the bottom of the bottle.
Behind the library, there’s a hole cut into the chainlink. The high schoolers use the parking lot to smoke and drink and talk big dreams about leaving and never looking back. Waverly remembers that, sitting on the hood of a pick up truck, the fog rolling in lit up by the headlights and room temperature beer on her tongue.
It’s empty at present--three in the morning on a Tuesday is a stretch, even for the delinquents of Purgatory--and Waverly walks the edges of the lot, fuming at Champ’s latest stupidity and kicking at the smoked out cigarette butts littering the asphalt.
Untold number of laps and thirty two minutes later, and she’s not feeling anymore ready to return to Chance’s apartment or her room at the Homestead. She could pick the lock on the library doors--it’s old, and she’d learned how to pick it when she was ten, the first--and only--time Gus and Curtis let Wynonna stay the weekend. They’d climbed out the window of Waverly’s room, bundled up and tip-toeing, and crawled down the tree, sneaking through the darkened streets like it meant something, like anyone would care to look for them except the McCready’s.
Library’s quiet, Wynonna had told her. It’s an old building, concrete and insulated, and it holds enough heat from the day that it isn’t freezing as bad as a Purgatory winter night. Library’s quiet, Wynonna had told her, showing her how to jimmy the back door. Library’s a good safe place.
Waverly’s older now, old enough to look between the lines and realize what Wynonna had meant. Too little too late, she figures, and Wynonna’s back now anyway.
She’s got Champ’s truck, and it smells like him, beer and old whiskey, loose hay in the footwell and his rodeo boots in the back. She taps her fingers on the wheel, her breath fogging out until she turns the engine over and cranks on the heat. Slowly, so slowly she can hear the tires crunch over the gravel and the forming frost, she pulls out of the lot onto the road.
++
There’s a little neighborhood, on the edge of the city proper just before it starts to fade into the tiny suburbs on the edge of the forest, the distant salt flats just visible through the dip in the hills. The houses aren’t as nice as the ones high up, where the mayor and the councilmen and the judges live, but they’re not as shabby as the homestead: the paint fresher, the construction more modern.
Nicole’s house is blue, with fading white trim. The porch creaks when she climbs the sagging steps, and she shifts her weight on the scratchy brown welcome mat, frowning at the doorbell. “This is stupid,” she mutters, and she means to turn around and just go home, drink herself to sleep just like everybody else who’s ever lived at the Earp Homestead, except just then the porch light comes on, and she can hear the deadbolt turn.
Nicole’s in sweats, one pocket hanging inside out, her hair gathered into a hasty ponytail with escaped wisps hanging against her neck. She squints, shivering at the night air on the bare skin of her arms, bared by her t-shirt, thin and worn, too faded to make out the logo. “Waverly?” she asks, and her voice is sleep-rough, lines and creases on her face from her pillow. “Is everything okay?”
“Uh,” Waverly says, suddenly mortified. “Yes?”
Nicole rubs at her eyes with the back of one hand, then blinks.
“I should--” Waverly starts, and Nicole speaks at the same time.
“Come in.”
They pause, awkward, and Nicole looks at her, barefoot and mussed. Waverly realizes she’s never seen Nicole out of uniform before, and she can feel her cheeks pink.
“Waverly,” Nicole says, head tilted and eyes shadowed by the dim porch light. The house, behind her, is dark and warm. “C’mon.”
“Okay,” Waverly says quietly, and follows her inside.
Nicole shuts the door behind her, flicking on the entryway light, and they both wince at the brightness. “A drink?” Nicole offers.
“Yeah.”
Waverly follows, feeling awkward and overly dressed, Nicole barefoot in her pajamas and Waverly still in her work clothes, her bartending flats.
“Something strong?” Nicole asks, leading her into the kitchen and flipping on the lights. “Or something warm?”
“Both, if you’re offering.”
“Get the hot water going? It takes a second to warm up.”
“Okay.” Waverly goes to the sink, cranking the hot water to maximum. The pipes creak, and Waverly shifts on her feet, feeling awkward. She can hear Nicole moving around the kitchen, coming close enough their shoulders brush to reach up into the cabinet. “It’s late,” Waverly says quietly, still looking at the running water, the steam just starting to wisp up in delicate curls. “You didn’t have to let me in.”
“Pretty girl shows up on my porch, lookin’ rough the way you do?” Nicole smiles, tired but genuine. “You know how to fix this up?” She clunks a bottle of bourbon onto the counter, barely cracked open, and then two coffee mugs, with a more apologetic look. “No tumblers.”
“Don’t worry about it.” This is something Waverly could do in her sleep, mixing drinks. She’d even took a course on how to do the fancy ones, all online, but no one in Purgatory does much more than drink whatever’s on tap or shoot whiskey. Warm water, the bourbon, Nicole digs deep in her fridge and manages to find a packet of to-go honey from the diner downtown and half a lemon. “Cinnamon sticks?”
Nicole rubs at the back of her neck, looking sheepish. “Cooking’s not my forte.”
“We’ll make do.” Nicole hands her a spoon and Waverly stirs, the metal clinking against the ceramic. “Do you want to know? Why I’m here, I mean?”
“Sure,” Nicole replies, easy as anything, “but either way, no complaints.”
Waverly pinks again, turning to the sink to hide it. “Champ was… “ she sighs. “Being himself, I guess.”
Nicole comes up to her, their hips bumping, and slides the mugs closer. “Hot toddy?”
“With a kick,” Waverly says, adding another slug of whiskey to each mug. “Cheers.”
“To complaining about men,” Nicole agrees, clinking her mug against Waverly’s. “I’ve got practice.”
Waverly smiles against the curve of the mug, then sips, feeling the warm burn of it down her throat and into her belly.
Nicole pulls a slight face. “The Earp kick, huh?”
“We haven’t got much,” Waverly agrees, knocking back her entire mug with a few long practiced swallows, “but we can drink.”
Nicole is quiet, watching Waverly make herself another drink. “Seems like a sisterly thing, gossiping about boyfriends.”
Waverly frowns at the floor. “Wynonna doesn’t like Champ.”
Nicole snorts, then mutters something under her breath. When Waverly looks at her questioningly, she shrugs. “Besides you, I’m not sure who does like Champ.”
Waverly sets her mug down on the counter with a clink. “How did you know?”
“Oh, I can clock a dudebro from a hundred paces.”
Waverly turns, arms crossed over her chest. “No, not that. How did you know… about girls?”
Nicole blinks at her. Then she smiles, wan and a little tired. “C’mon. I’ll make up the couch for you.”
Waverly trails her, flicking the kitchen lights off as they go down the hall, pausing only to retrieve a few sheets from the closet. “You didn’t answer my question,” Waverly says quietly, when they’re back in the living room. It’s dark, lit only by the streetlamp outside and the moon, dimly glowing through the window.
The sheet snaps when Nicole shakes it out, fluttering down onto the beat up cushions. When she smoothes it down her hand leaves imprints. The clock on the coffee table glows red--it’s almost four in the morning. “What do you want to hear?”
Waverly frowns. “The truth,” she says, remembering all the things she’s been told about the night Daddy died, remembering Wynonna on a mental health hold in the hospital and Willa’s lonely grave. “Always the truth.”
Nicole half-smiles at her, the other half lost in shadow. She pats the sofa, draped over with a sheet, a pillow at one end of the couch and a folded up blanket at the other. “Sit with me?” she asks, and when Waverly complies she sits cross-legged on the floor, her red hair almost glowing in the dim light.
“I don’t know what you need,” she says, quiet and calm. “Because I always knew.”
Waverly leans back on the couch, frowning at the ceiling. “Always? You never…” she trails off. “I’m sorry, I think that’s offensive.”
Nicole is silent for a moment; Waverly watches the red numbers roll over to the next hour, now more early in the morning than late at night. “I always knew,” she says finally, resolutely. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t try to lie to myself.”
It’s there, on the tip of Waverly’s tongue, a truth she’s never told to anyone, not even herself. Her breath catches, her face twisting.
Nicole touches her knee, the warm gentle pressure of her palm. “There’s no race,” she says, and Waverly can hear the crickets singing outside. “There’s no finish line. There’s just you, and how you feel.”
Waverly breathes, in through her nose and out through her mouth. “Thank you,” she says finally, “for letting me stay the night.”
Nicole’s hand slips off her knee; Waverly is surprised to feel colder without the contact. She shivers, and Nicole stands, unfolding the blanket while Waverly stretches out. The blanket flutters down onto her, and Waverly tucks it under her chin. It’s soft, worn in the best ways. The pillow smells like vanilla dip donuts. “Goodnight Waverly,” Nicole says, and disappears into the darkness of the hallway.
Waverly listens to her quiet footsteps, the squeak of the door and the creak of the mattress. She thinks about Champ, the way his boots leave dirt on the floor; she wonders if Nicole’s would do the same.
++
She wakes up with her shoes still on, her make up smudged. Two missed calls from Champ on her phone, a text from Wynonna she doesn’t open. She rubs at her eyes blearily, stumbling into the kitchen. There’s a note stuck to the coffee maker, made fresh and the milk left out for her on the counter.
come over anytime
Waverly folds the note in half, and then one more time. Drinks the coffee standing, looking at the magnets on Nicole’s fridge. She tucks the note into her bra, over her heart, and locks the door behind her.