Chapter Text
Nicole perched on the edge of the homestead couch, her toes on the worn wood floors with the heels of her boots up against the baseboard. She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and ran a long finger through Alice’s hair. Alice lay sound asleep curled up in Wynonna’s arms on the couch next to Nicole. Both women stared down at the smallest Earp.
“She really is the perfect combination of you and Doc,” Nicole said softly, her eyes tracing over Alice’s jaw, defined for a toddler, and the two thin lines between her eyebrows, furrowed even in sleep.
“Hmmff, poor kid,” Wynonna snorted, but Nicole didn’t miss the corner of her lips tug upwards into a smug smile.
Nicole leaned back and pulled the Purgatory Sheriff Department baseball cap from her head, fidgeting with it briefly before hanging it on her knee. She scooched back a few inches on the couch and purposefully kept her eyes on Alice instead of Wynonna as she began, “You know, when I first realized I was into girls or gay or whatever, this is what I was most worried about.” She gestured vaguely at Alice and went back to fiddling with her cap.
“Well gosh, Haught, I thought you knew you were gay before Alice was born, but don’t worry, I’m sure she’s fine with it.”
Nicole gave a weak laugh but continued, “Seriously though, I mean look at her, Wy. Yesterday she had jelly smeared all over her face from a jelly donut and when I wiped her mouth off with a napkin, she said, ‘Why thank you, darlin’ and winked at me. She’s three! It's like the best parts of you both ended up in this little girl.”
Wynonna accepted the compliment without sarcasm this time and replied, “I sure hope you’re right.” Alice stirred slightly as Wynonna adjusted under her weight. She was growing rapidly and wasn’t quite as easily held as she once was, a thought that Wynonna pushed away for the moment. “What does my daughter’s charm have to do with you being gay, though?”
“Well, I mean, when Alice talks with her mouth full of chips because she’s so eager to get her joke out, that is all you. And when Doc shows her all those old Western movies, that are far too inappropriate for her by the way, they laugh in the exact same way. I wouldn’t be surprised if she woke up with a mustache tomorrow. That’s pretty cool, you know? Having a little person that has parts of you and the person you love. Oh shut up, we all know you love him.” She swatted at Wynonna’s arm as she opened her mouth to argue Nicole’s last comment, careful not to wake Alice as she did so. “Anyway, I uh, it would be cool to be able to have that, I guess.”
As she spoke, Nicole glanced subconsciously out the window towards the barn, where Waverly and Jeremy had been painstakingly hanging decorations for the third birthday party the homestead would be hosting later that afternoon. It would be Alice’s first official birthday at the homestead, and Waverly was convinced that it would completely ruin the party if any of the fairy lights were hung two inches too far to the right. Nicole had been banished back to the main house fifteen minutes prior after yet another one of the balloons she was tasked with inflating had popped. Waverly had ushered her out the door with scolds of, “Not so aggressive with the mouth, Nicole!” Nicole had mumbled, “Not what you usually say, Waves, jeez” but had obliged and happily joined Wynonna and her niece in the living room.
Wynonna’s eyes followed Nicole’s gaze to the barn and suddenly it clicked what Nicole was talking about. “Jesus! You’ve only been married a few months and you’re already trying to knock up my baby sister? Haught-to-trot, much??”
“No! I mean, not right away anyway,… we’ve talked about it of course, but…” Nicole trailed off and returned to lightly stroking Alice’s dark waves as she considered her next words. “Growing up, my parents really weren’t that interested in me. They were fine, I guess, just not that into being parents. I would always tell myself that when I grew up and had kids, I would be different. I told myself I would be at basketball games and school recitals and all of that stuff that they never cared about going to. So when it became clear to me that I wouldn’t be marrying a guy, the whole family thing was the only part that really threw me. I didn’t even know if gay people could have kids, you know?”
“Well consider yourself lucky, because judging by the sounds that used to come through these thin walls, there would be like fifteen redheads running around here if you had a uh miniature sheriff on patrol, if you catch my drift.” Wynonna winked dramatically.
“Yeah, I catch your drift, thanks. And it’s not lucky, Wynonna, it isn’t fair! You didn’t even want to or try to have Alice, but here she is. Waverly and I might never get that even if we try for years, and even if we do, they definitely won’t be inheriting my hair.” Nicole shoved the hat back onto her head at the mention of her hair, as if she were trying to cover it up. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that Alice isn’t wanted. I know she’s the most loved little girl in the world, but you know what I mean.”
“Well what you are lucky about is that she’s on my lap right now, or you’d be wishing for that widow bite again. But seriously, you’re worried about your kid not being like you? Do you honestly think any kid you raised wouldn’t have a giant stick up their ass?”
Nicole shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong, I love every single thing about Waverly and if our child was a little replica of her, I would be over the moon. Plus, maybe it would be for the best anyway. Spare the kid a lifetime of ginger jokes. Probably from you.” Nicole gave Wynonna a pointed look but then dropped her eyes again. “And spare them all my other shit, too.”
“Look, Nicole. I skipped every science class I’ve ever been enrolled in since I was about eleven, so I don’t exactly know anything about biology. But I know about this family. Is Waverly an Earp?”
“Wy, you know I think Waves is the Earpiest Earp of them all.”
“Right, but she doesn’t have one drop of fucked up Earp blood in her. Is Waverly anything less than my sister, one hundred percent?”
“No, of course she is.”
“Then how can you admit all that and not think that whole ‘blood is thicker than water thing’ is a load of demon shit? And they say you went to college.”
The homestead door was thrown open just then and Doc stepped into the room with arms full of bags from the grocery store. The door banging against the wall startled Alice awake. She let out a small whine but quieted when her eyes fell on her dad. Doc wiped his boots on the mat and dropped the bags on the floor to retrieve his daughter from Wynonna’s arms. Her hair was stuck to her forehead, sweaty from sleep. Wynonna stretched out her sore arms and reached for the whiskey bottle on the coffee table as soon as Alice was situated on Doc’s gun-free hip.
“Oh thank God, I haven’t felt a limb this stiff in like…. four hours,” she quipped as she continued to shake out her muscles. Doc carried Alice through to the kitchen to put away the paper cups and plates and various other party supplies he had been sent to the store to get an hour before. Wynonna had hastily shoved the party supplies Waverly bought three weeks ago under the sink when she needed an excuse to get Doc out of the house for a few hours.
Wynonna took a pull from the bottle, rolled her eyes at Nicole’s raised eyebrow, and pulled her leg underneath her on the couch so she was facing Nicole.
“Nicole,” she returned to their conversation, “Alice calls Jeremy her Uncle Jer, and they’re not exactly biologically related, if you hadn’t noticed. There’s a framed picture of a fire-breathing secret agent on her wall that she thinks will protect her from monsters under her bed. Nedley is practically your dad. This family isn’t exactly conventional if you weren’t aware, Sheriff. So who cares if your kid isn’t biologically related to you? In fact, if you guys actually did have a neat little nuclear family,” Wynonna made a gagging noise, “that would be weird. And boring.”
They could hear the centenarian gunslinger singing the PJ Masks theme song from the kitchen as Alice squealed in delight. Conventional certainly wasn’t the word to describe their little unit.
“Okay, Madame Zeroni, when did you get so wise?” Nicole asked. Wynonna noticed she was stroking the old scar on her right hand as she spoke, a remnant of another conversation the two had shared.
“Ha-ha, family curse jokes, very clever. But really, I feel it in my groin that if you do manage to impregnate my little sister, the resulting spawn will be the Haughtiest Haught of them all.”
Nicole smiled and Wynonna immediately jumped in to get rid of the dimples appearing on the couch next to her, “Woah there, I didn’t mean that as a compliment! First time your little teacher’s pet tries to tattle on my kid like the little narc she’s bound to be with you as her mom, you better watch it, cuz word on the street is Alice’s mom is a bit of a nutter.”
Nicole motioned for Wynonna to pass the bottle. After taking a healthy sip, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and asked, “What if the kid likes Waverly better than me, though? I read this article once about like, motherly bonding? And it said that babies can recognize their mother’s smell right after birth and that nursing was like super important to parental bonding and all this other stuff that I won’t be able to have. And then I’ll be at work all the time because being Sheriff isn’t exactly a part time job so I won’t be around as much...I mean, this article was about cats when I thought Calamity Jane was pregnant, but I’m sure it still applies…”
Wynonna cut her off by yanking the whiskey bottle back out of her hands. “Okay first of all, slow your roll cuz said you weren’t even ready to have kids yet. Second, Waverly won’t be giving birth to a cat, although crazier things have happened in Purgatory, I will admit. And third, Nicole, I didn’t have any of that stuff with Alice, remember? She was walking before she knew me. It certainly didn’t matter to her that I had carried her around for 9 long months. She clung to Gus the first few weeks she came home.”
“It was definitely not 9 months, Wynonna. You might have the shortest human pregnancy on record.”
“Shut up, my point is that I didn’t get that bonding stuff with her either. I don’t even know if I would have been able to give it to her even if she had been able to stay. Biology isn’t everything.”
“Yeah I guess. But you’ve got to admit it means something, or else Waverly wouldn’t have cared so much when Bobo put in her head that she wasn’t an Earp. And she wouldn’t have cared so much about finding more out about Julien. So clearly Waverly thinks it's a little important.”
Wynonna pushed her sleeves up her arms. “I think you just like to argue with me, Haught. Do I really have to explain this to you? Waverly only cared about those things because her whole identity was in crisis. Our biology was still all tied up in the curse then, and she barely had memories of either of her parents. Of course she had questions. Plus she was probably still coming to terms with being into chicks. Totally different situation. Dude, I promise it wouldn't be like that.” The door swung open again, this time bringing Waverly and Jeremy in from the barn. “Drinking whiskey at a three year old’s birthday party, really guys? Nicole, I think Wynonna’s rubbing off on you babe. If I didn’t know better, I would swear you two were the sisters!” Waverly said as she leaned over the back of the couch to place a kiss to Nicole’s cheek.
Wynonna raised her eyebrows and said “Told ya, so!”
“Told her what?”
Wynonna pulled herself into a standing position and shrugged, “Nuthin. Just that she’s dumb. I’m gonna go lick the frosting off of one of Alice’s birthday cupcakes. People should be here in like 15 minutes, so keep your clothes on. Come on, Jeremy, someone has to defile the vegan ones."
“Nonna, Robin spent ages frosting all those! Nonna!” Waverly called, but Wynonna had already disappeared into the kitchen.
Nicole plopped her PSD cap onto Waverly’s head as she stood up, and pulled Waverly up behind her. “Come on, I swore an oath to protect and serve, and it seems that some birthday goodies need some protecting in the kitchen.” Waverly laughed and placed a kiss to Nicole’s lips this time, and they followed Wynonna into the kitchen.