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Purgatory was silent at this time of the night, and the only light came from the police office where officer Haught was busy rewriting a report, removing all traces of ‘weird’ from it, as sheriff Nedley had advised her. She liked that job way too much to lose it over too much honesty and a poor choice of words stressing the possible existence of supernatural fiends here in the small town. Even though it was just a thorough account of the past days’ events, as thorough and honest as she usually wrote them, the sheer amount of ‘crazy’ meant she had a lot of editing to do to make it acceptable. It also helped her with processing the events, and there was a lot to process.
After all she had almost been poisoned at a party that day, had had to knock Champ down and arrest him for his disorderly conduct (she wouldn’t deny feeling pleased with herself for kicking his butt after his homophobic rant), had finally been told the ‘truth’ about all the messy, unclear, unresolved, and supernatural events happening in Purgatory, and there was the whole getting shot by Waverly’s eldest sister.
That last event alone kept coming back to her. So much had happened in so little time. She had been so excited at the idea of finally being in on the action and shooting bad guys (especially with that shotgun!) that she had jumped out of her party dress to get back in uniform before rushing to find the Earp sisters as asked by Dolls. She found them, that’s for sure, but she hadn’t counted on barging in to end up with a gun pointed at her by Willa, of all people.
If Nicole was entirely honest, she had disliked Willa from the moment she met her. The simple fact that she scared Waverly had been a big red flag, and since Wynonna was oblivious to most of the things happening around her, she hadn’t noticed any of it, too focused on the ‘joy’ of finding her sister again. Nicole had been worried and it only increased with every little incident, from the scalding remarks about her bandages (that were perfectly fine, she did have first aid training to become a police officer) to the barely veiled by the by threat of telling Wynonna she and Waverly were an item and using it to show a ‘lack of trust’ from Waverly. That had been a very low blow, and it confirmed Nicole’s opinion that Willa was bad news .
But the gun to her face was another level of red flag. It was the ‘call the cops and run’ red flag only Nicole was the cops. And Waverly was right there looking panicked. So she tried to focus and understand what was going on, to find a way out of this mess. But then, to throw some oil on the already firey situation, Willa had just yelled at Wynonna that she’d shoot ‘Waverly’s girlfriend’ if Wynonna didn’t hand her Peacemaker. What the hell was it with the Earps and that gun, seriously? After that sentence, Nicole had been glad Wynonna was looking at her sister and not at her, because she was at a loss for words. Waverly’s weak answer ‘kind of’ in a wavery voice had made the officer forget for a second the situation and she shot the young Earp a betrayed look, trying to convey her inner thought of ‘Kind of? Are you kidding me?’.
The deputy had been convinced Wynonna would never surrender her gun to her crazy sister and she was rather relieved when Waverly’s whispered ‘I love her’ was enough for Wynonna to hand out the gun almost immediately. And for a moment, she forgot the gun pointed at her, the insanity of the whole situation, and Waverly’s ‘kind of’ comment, too focused on the honest love admission from her girlfriend. She barely had the time to let her breath out that she’d been shot down by Willa.
It wasn’t her first time getting shot but it had still been very unpleasant. She had fallen, out of breath and light-headed. She had had trouble focusing, while Waverly and Wynonna had come at her side. She had heard Wynonna ‘growl’ at her for something about blood and she had felt tears falling from Waverly. It had been a tough fight with her sore muscles to get on her back when Wynonna had torn her jacket (her official one mind you, that was going to need replacing), which had revealed the bullet lodged in her vest. Nicole had been very thankful for standard procedures that day.
Waverly’s relieved comment and kisses had been most welcome and she would almost have forgotten the whole situation again, if not for Wynonna’s comment about finally picking a smart one. They had left to find Willa after that and she had gone to see a doctor who ordered some rest for her broken ribs, and after a nurse had bandaged her she had come back to the office the day after to do some paperwork. She had not really wanted to spend some time home alone right then and if she was entirely honest with herself she had also hoped to find Waverly there.
Nicole dropped the stack of papers from her report on her desk and stretched out, repressing a yawn. Paperwork was boring, Waverly was not there and she was tired as hell but she did not feel like going home at all. She was pacing the room when she heard something fall loudly in the building. She picked up her gun from the desk and started going slowly from room to room, wary of possible invaders. Whoever picked this time to burglarize the department was stupid, her office light had to be visible from the street.
Some footsteps were coming from her right so she pointed her gun in that direction and started moving there sneakily. In the same movement of turning around the corner where the footsteps came from, she yelled ‘’Hands in the air, this is the police!” and was almost instantly knocked out of breath and on the ground, her gun thrown far away on the ground.
“Shit Wynonna! I told you it had to be Nicole there, and not some burglar! Who the hell steals stuff from the cops?”
The young police officer felt dizzy and her vision was far from perfect at that moment but she could just make out Waverly’s face looking at her with concern. She could hear Wynonna behind cursing loudly.
“Are you ok?”
“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. Just out of breath…”
Grabbing Waverly’s extended hand, Nicole stood up slowly, wincing as her ribs reminded her she was supposed to take it easy and rest for a while. Her wince did not go unnoticed by either Earp sister, and while Wynonna was looking guiltily at her and excusing herself, Waverly stared pointedly at her.
“Did you see a doctor after getting shot though?”
“Yes, Waves, I did, and he said I’m okay, I just need some rest.”
“And your idea of rest is staying at the office at an ungodly hour and trying to take on intruders on your own?”
Waverly looked very annoyed at her, and Nicole could swear she heard a whisper coming from Wynonna about something like “maybe not as smart as I thought”, but when she looked at her, she was just nursing a bottle of bourbon (where did she find all these bottles, seriously). Nicole was about to try to answer when she was cut off by the tiny angry Earp.
“Nevermind that, I’m driving you home and you’re going to get some rest. And I don’t care about paperwork you might have unfinished or anything, you took a bullet just a few days ago, you’re going to rest! Good night Wynonna!”
Obviously, Nicole did not protest against Waverly’s commandeering tone and Wynonna answered with just a smirk. The drive to her place was eerily silent and it was not until they were inside, and she let herself fall on the couch that the silence was broken by a small meow.
“Waverly, this is Calamity Jane. Though judging by her behaviour, I should have named her Catlamity. I think she’s hungry, I’ll put some food in her bowl.”
“No, just tell me where the food is, there’s no point in you moving more than necessary.”
“Top shelf on the right of the kitchen. Thanks.”
Nicole barely had time to let her thoughts wander that Waverly was back at her side on the couch. Nicole wanted to come back to the “kind of” comment but didn’t really know how to bring it up and she was starting to feel pretty exhausted. She yawned while Waverly leaned a little on her, apparently also tired. Maybe they could just sleep for now and see about serious talk the next day.
She let her eyes close and started drifting slowly to sleep. She heard Waverly wishing her good night in a sleep-laden voice and turning the lights off. Sometime later she felt the cat jump on the couch, and heard her purr for a little while before she fell completely asleep.
She almost jumped up with a yelp as Waverly leaned on her broken ribs in her sleep. The sound woke everybody in the house and earned a disapproving meow from Calamity Jane. Waverly turned the light back on and got up.
“What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
Nicole sat straight up in the couch, holding her side, mumbling about the broken ribs.
“Wait what? You have broken ribs and you let me sleep on your side? Seriously, Nicole, you should have said so!”
“I forgot about it, I was just too damn tired.”
Waverly huffed, looking slightly annoyed.
“How can you forget to mention something like that! You said the doctor said you were okay, broken ribs are not okay!”
“Well I wasn’t sure you’d care, you did say I was only “kind of” your girlfriend.” In her sleep-filled mind it was sarcastic but it came out all wrong and Waverly stood there, at a loss for words for a moment.
“I panicked! It was a stressful situation, what with Willa pointing her gun and dropping that bomb on Wynonna. I couldn’t deny her sentence, but we hadn’t.. haven’t... talked about it so I did not feel like I could just go and say yes without talking about it with you. It’s not like we’ve defined ourselves or anything and..” Waverly was blurting out words, panicking and Nicole felt bad about having let it out in such an insensitive way.
“Hey, hey there baby, I’m sorry, I didn’t say that to stress you out, it just hurt to hear it that way. There’s an easy way to solve this!” Nicole smiled softly at Waverly, putting one hand on her shoulder, trying to forget her ribs for a moment.
“Do you want us to be girlfriends, Wave?”
The picture of Nicole still wearing her uniform, standing in the middle of the living room looking at her with love and a lot of sleep in her eyes was too funny for the exhausted Earp and she just started giggling, to which Nicole decided the logical reaction was to look hurt.
“And this is what I get for asking seriously?”
“No, no, I mean yes, I’d love to be able to call you mine, but come on, you were just looking so funny.”
Nicole kept the hurt look for a moment.
“And you call me funny!”
She could not keep her straight face for long and smiled at Waverly before yawning hard, to which Waverly sighed and got closer to her.
“Come on, let’s get your unicorn butt out of these clothes and in bed, dear. You need to rest.”
Nicole was too tired to suggest anything else and just followed her girlfriend. This was a word that barely expressed the love she felt for the woman beside her but it was “kind of” okay.