Work Text:
“
It may seem to you that I'm acting confused
When you're close to me
If I tend to look dazed, I've read it someplace
I've got cause to be
There's a name for it
There's a phrase that fits
But whatever the reason, you do it for me
Oh-oh, what's love got to do, got to do with it?
“
2021 EDITION OF
THE GREAT BRITISH-COLUMBIA BAKE OFF
WEEK THREE - BREAD
EXTERIOR: BAKE OFF TENT
The familiar pan down with dappled sunlight through the tree-tops reveals the brand new tent on the grounds of the Gardner Estate. Everything seems bigger, more spaced out, with rather more hand sanitiser units than we’ve come to expect from our favourite baking competition.
MEL
(Talking indistinctly through her N95 mask)
SUE
(Also indistinct through her mask, but apparently understanding everything Mel said)
MEL
(Continues indistinctly, laughing like she just made the best joke)
SUE
(Rolls her eyes while Mel continues)
MEL
(Through mask)
Thwib weeb, on our wandemic affecteth Gweap Bwithish-Cowumbia Wake Off….
CUT. TENT INTERIOR
SUE
(In voiceover)
It’s bread week and tensions are high…
CLEO
(Taking a tray from the oven with a single tea towel)
Well (bleep) me, that’s hot
DEMETRI
(Staring blankly at a Pizza stone)
This is so not the pan I meant, I mean seriously. Where’s Pizza Peckers when you need an emergency delivery?
NAOMI
(Peering into a bowl of dead sour-dough starter)
We don’t really bake bread at the Department of Fisheries. Pre-pandemic, we were very good at E. Coli free fried Perch cook-outs though.
DESMOND
(Accidentally chopping off his ice-cream shaped bread sculpture)
Oh… I guess it’s more of a 91’er now…
( o˘◡˘o) ┌iii┐
AUTUMN
Nicole & Waverly’s house, rural Canada, 231 miles from Vancouver City
THURSDAY
“Jesus, put down the knife Desmond!”
Wynonna's distinctive, derisive tone trailed into the kitchen, following Waverly around like the smell of soon-to-be-burned meringues. She knew she shouldn’t have tried to refine her new vegan-fudge-nugget-meringues right before her sister's arrival, because she knew Wynonna wouldn’t wait for her to finish before teeing up the on-demand Bake Off episode without her. Proven right, Waverly now found herself alone in the kitchen, waiting for the critical moment to open the oven, while her sister and baby niece sat with her girlfriend in the living room, enjoying the opening scenes of Canada’s greatest amateur baking competition.
Waverly slammed the too damp tea towel she was wringing onto the surface of the bench top in indignation. “Nicole! Can you please pause it until this is done?” Waverly pleaded blindly into the void, hoping her voice would carry and drown out the sound of the bakers explaining their signature bake ideas.
“No can do, babygirl!” Wynonna cut off her best friend before she could reply. “I schlepped my ass and my baby four hours through the snow after staying off social media all day just to watch this with you, and we are leaving for baby-bed-time in exactly an hour. We’ve got a schedule to keep, otherwise both mumma and bubba will be grumpy mother-flubbers come morning.”
“That’s bullshit!” Waverly called into the next room, not needing to see her girlfriend to know she was physically shrinking back into the couch, trying not to get in between the sisters. “It won’t snow here for WEEKS”
“Fucking LANGUAGE, Waverly! I have a one-year-old in here!”
Waverly facepalmed herself, which turned into more of a self-slap of frustration. Sensing she’d already lost this battle the moment her sister had walked in the door, she turned back to the oven and her now over-baked meringue peaks.
“Oh, mother-FUDGER!” Waverly grabbed the baking trays out of the oven like desperately needed cash from an ATM. She fumbled the withdrawal, scattering the meringues across the benchtop, but the rattle and crash of the ruined desserts had an upside. It drew the loving arms and soft voice of her girlfriend immediately to her side. A gentle “ Waves… ” drifted like bottled ASMR into her ear, and Waverly felt every hair on her scalp light up, followed by a deep and abiding calm, despite the disastrous baking failure.
“I know you wanted to get this done today baby.” Nicole whispered, sending Waverly’s goosebumps into overdrive. “But, take a break, come sit with us. We can try these again later. Together.”
Waverly fought without much conviction, to free an arm to point towards a mixing bowl filled with pure white whipped peaks of uncooked vegan meringue. “But this batch needs to go in the oven.”
“It’ll keep. You missed Desmond nearly cutting off his own head with a bread knife”
“Again?” Waverly wasn’t surprised. The man had worn a lab coat instead of the provided Bake Off brown aprons for the first three weeks and hadn’t shown much awareness that he even knew what show he was on. All of his fingers were covered in distinctive blue plasters, but Waverly kind of liked him anyway.
“Besides, Alice misses you.” Nicole kept using her magic-ass whisper-voice. Soft, warm and uplifting, it never failed to convince Waverly that damn near anything was possible. Throw in her adorable niece into the equation and suddenly Waverly had no idea what meringues had to do with anything.
Since the end of their Great British-Columbia Bake Off Adventure, little Alice Holliday-Earp had become the light of all of their lives. Both Waverly and Nicole delighted in chances to baby-sit, even if their most recent chance had devolved into farce. Discovering a tiny bit too late that Alice had mastered the art of the ‘bum-shuffle’, they only just managed to stop a large crystal pineapple from falling off their side table onto the child’s head before the tiny whirlwind shuffled off to grab at the next thing her tiny hands could reach. The weekend of panicked baby-proofing that followed had done very little to alleviate their anxiety.
Waverly cast her eyes to the table, now replete with foam corners and Museum-grade earthquake putty under every ornament. Noticing the direction of her girlfriend’s gaze, Nicole tried to iron out the worry-wrinkle on her forehead with her lips. “It’s ok baby. We fixed it, We fixed all the things. Alice is safe here with us.”
Waverly smiled, loving her girlfriend for all her care and concern. “I know, it’s not that…” She turned in her girlfriend’s arms and smirked at her. “...not completely anyway.”
“What then? The card?” Nicole nodded toward the table. “You know the pineapple thing is just a dumb joke between me and Wynonna.”
Upon arrival, Wynonna had thrust a card at Nicole with a sloppily written ‘sorry I lost the pineapple present I promised you’ message scrawled in what appeared to be lipstick. But that was definitely not what Waverly was looking at. No, it was the thing between the card and the pineapple.
It was the package.
A plain white box, nondescript, a simple but large courier label slapped haphazardly over a company logo Waverly was sure she recognised but couldn’t quite place. Nicole had snatched it from the delivery driver earlier that morning, refusing to let Waverly touch or even look at it. She insisted it was nothing exciting and seemed to enjoy the curiosity Waverly expressed in it. Nicole’s insistence had grown commensurate with Waverly’s curiosity.
Waverly pointed sharply at the box. “It’s been here all day Nicole! If a package arrives you open it straight away, that’s like, postal law or something!”
Nicole laughed. “But baby, watching you stew about it is just so deeply satisfying, because whatever you think it is, it definitely isn’t.”
“Well, I think it’s a She-Ra costume…”
Nicole’s grin was almost lascivious. “Oh, you would love that wouldn’t you…”
“Yes!” Waverly hissed, hoping Wynonna hadn’t heard her not-so-secret fantasy through the wall. “You absolutely know I would, and that’s why I think you’re trying to put me off the scent. I think you have bought one, and…”
“It’s not a She-Ra costume.”
“Why not Nicole! It’s what we both want!” Waverly almost stamped her foot.
“Oh, do we now?” Nicole laughed, pulling Waverly closer, nuzzling into her ear. “I can wear it though…”
Waverly squeaked. Actually squeaked. It was definitely a She-Ra costume. She knew it in her bones. Would it be season one She-ra, with the short-shorts under the skirt and billowing cape? Or may be final season She-ra with the full-length leggings whose only possible purpose was to show off strong, capable thigh muscles. Nicole could pull either look off. And then Waverly could pull the look off Nicole.
“Will the two of you stop actively fondling each other in our earshot?” Wynonna called through the wall. “Some of us are trying to determine how many bases these ash-holes are getting to with each other off camera and I can’t see all the signs by myself. Come on Nicole!”
Waverly rolled her eyes and made to move, but Nicole caught her hand and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Later. After the show.” It was so light and gentle, Waverly wasn’t even sure she’d heard it. She had definitely felt it though. Her girlfriends breath firing every fine hair on her earlobe to attention.
The pair then trailed their fingers together, parting only at the last possible moment as they joined Wynonna and Alice in the living room.
“Gross.” Sitting on the two-seater couch while Alice played happily on the mat in front, Wynonna mimed gagging at the pair as they entered the living room. Waverly rolled her eyes but let go of Nicole’s hand, deciding to sit on the floor next to her niece so Nicole could take a seat next to Wynonna.
“Jealous?” Waverly asked.
“Of you two? Never. But of them… I might just be, yeah.” Wynonna pursed her lips and nodded as if she grudgingly approved of the contestants she was pointing at on screen.
Waverly narrowed her eyes. Cleo was her sister’s favourite but Waverly found her to be a little too knowing, a little too good in front of the camera. She always managed to bend over at exactly the right moment to show off her ass. It had led to a new Bake Off watch party game - ‘underwear or hardly-there’ - where Nicole and Wynonna debated how likely any of the contestants were likely to be going commando that week.
“Definitely no underwear, and Naomi knows it.” Wynonna proclaimed.
“Can we not objectify the people on the show this week?” Waverly complained. She knew it was ‘just a bit of fun’ but it made Waverly uncomfortable thinking that plenty of people around the country, around the world, had probably had similar living room conversations about her and Nicole.
“Too late baby girl.” Wynonna threw her hands in the air as if there was nothing she could do. “Cleo doesn’t wear ‘em. Can’t change facts.”
Waverly scrunched up her nose. “Well… that’s a health violation, and… just a bit…”
“Skanky?” Wynonna asked. “Judgemental much, Waves? But most definitely true, although I don’t think Naomi minds that much.” She shrugged her shoulders.
“Excuse me?” Waverly was confused. They’d been watching this year's Bake Off for three weeks now. The early bakers to leave had all been good in their own way, with a single bake going too wrong. Ginny and Freddy had already left the tent, despite Naomi Hycha clearly being out of her depth from day one. She’d just been able to hide in the pack, not made much of a fuss or impact, but Wynonna seemed obsessed. “What’s Naomi got to do with Cleo’s skankery?”
“History is repeating itself this season…” Wynonna gestured towards the TV as if the simple sentence would make everything clearer.
“How so?” Waverly asked warily, not quite following her sister’s train of thought but knowing with deep universal truth that she did not in any way agree.
“Cleo!” Wynonna repeated, her frustration evident. She quickly cast her eyes to her daughter happily flinging about her board book on the carpet. Satisfied she wasn’t looking at the adults in the room, Wynonna raised her hands in a crude scissoring motion, which only made Waverly’s frown deepen.
“And Naomi.” Nicole interpreted. “Wynonna thinks Cleo and Naomi are doing it.”
“What?” Waverly was incredulous. She hadn’t picked up any ‘vibes’ from either of the new Bake Off contestants. “Isn’t Naomi… uh, older ?” Waverly tried to put it delicately.
“Does that matter?” Wynonna asked, seemingly surprised that was the thing Waverly focussed on.
“Babygirl, we’ve had this conversation before. Despite our complete and utterly justified abhorrence of the Bake Off celebrity power-couple we will only refer to as ‘BlowHardy’…” Wynonna switched her hand gestures to something even more crude and grossly heterosexual. “...age gaps aren’t all that bad. Doc’s older than me. Nicole’s older than you..”
“Nicole’s not a generation older than me Wynonna!” Waverly huffed, annoyed that she was being pointed out as possibly, maybe, slightly ageist.
“No, but I think Doc might actually be five generations removed from me.” Wynonna shrugged. “What does it matter?”
“It doesn’t I guess…” Waverly conceded. “So long as they’re both older?”
“Are you calling me old. ” Wynonna’s eyebrows raised to the ceiling.
“Uh-oh.” Alice’s little voice broke the tension like craquelin on a choux bun. First uttered a few weeks before, Alice’s first word was so perfectly suited to being an Earp she repeated it multiple times a day, often with perfect timing.
Wynonna flopped herself on the floor next to her daughter. “Yeah, your Mamma ain’t old. I’ve… just been around the block a few times is all.”
Nicole and Waverly snorted in unison.
Wynonna raised her finger and pointed firmly in their direction as if it had the power to magically turn nonsense into facts. “Hey, It may have been a New York city sized block but that’s beside the point!”
Alice giggled, her face split into a drooly grin. She shuffled away from her mother and hauled herself to her feet by grabbing onto Nicole’s pants. “Titty!”
Nicole frowned, picking the child up for a cuddle. “Did she say...?”
“Oh, you utter Lesbian. She means Aunty.” Wynonna rolled her eyes. “She’s got quite the vocab now thanks to you two. A regular old Waverly but minus a few consonants… vowels…”
“Awwww…” Waverly cooed. “She’s my clever girl…” She noticed the small ripple of emotion that flowed across Nicole’s lips. Waverly knew it was a title Nicole cherished. Her status as godmother was almost redundant. Nicole and Alice were as family as she and Wynonna were.
“Titty!” Alice repeated, snuggling down onto Nicole’s chest, a warm gooey dribble forming as her eyes began to droop a little.
Overriding contentment filled Waverly’s heart. Particularly when she noticed Wynonna lean her back against the couch, her head slowly flopping sideways to lean against her best friend's knee. While the signature judgements progressed, she relaxed, listening to the pair opine on each flavour combination and every biting comment from the judges.
Wynonna and Nicole. Two pineapples in a basket - one short of coconut cream, the other short of rum - yet somehow so good together and so good for each other that they made a full Pina Colada anyway. Waverly found it impossible to be mad at either of them for the time they spent together or for the weird in-jokes she was never a part of. Ritualistic crystal pineapple gift-giving? Waverly was down with that. Perfectly fine and reasonable behaviour from the pair of them. But being teased by her girlfriend about an unopened gift-box and being made to wait all day to find out what was inside? There Waverly drew a line.
The Package. What is in the damned Package?
If it wasn’t a She-ra costume (and at this point if it wasn’t, Waverly knew she was going to be unreasonably pissed off) then what in the fudgenuggets could it be? The tiny bit of the logo Waverly had been able to spot had looked familiar. Lots of things had an apple in their logo… right? It was gnawing away at her. A silly unsolved domestic mystery that felt as important as a true-crime podcast investigation. She could see it, taunting her in the reflection of the Pineapple display cabinet. Taunting her. Mocking her. Waverly narrowed her eyes and willed it to fall off the table as if she were a Jedi Master of package snooping.
“If I were a lesbian…” Wynonna’s voice suddenly snapped Waverly’s attention back to the here and now.
“If you were a lesbian, I’d sue.” Nicole’s reply made Waverly laugh, waking Alice, who squirmed a little before settling back into Nicole’s chest. She smiled at her niece while simultaneously rolling her eyes at the child’s mother.
“No, I’m serious Haught. If I were a lesbian, I would be the most single lesbian on the planet.”
“There are plenty of lesbians who would dispute that.” Nicole scoffed quietly.
Wynonna folded her arms. “Well, they can come and fight me then.”
“Fight you for the title of most single lesbian on the planet? Sounds hot.”
Waverly turned a little to raise her eyebrows at her girlfriend, gently mocking her growing discomfort under the glare.
“It would be.” Wynonna carried on, oblivious. “I’d call it Gladiate-whores. It’s exactly like Gladiators except no himbos. Only the cast of ‘Glow’...”
“Of course.” Waverly rolled her eyes, wondering how many stereotypes Wynonna could shoehorn into her concept. “And they all have stage names like ‘Gold-Star’ and ‘U-Haul’?”
“Exactly.” Wynonna visibly relaxed with unearned vindication.
“Thigh-Master.” Nicole interjected, voice neutral. “My Gladiate-whore name would be Thigh-master.”
Wynonna wrinkled her nose. “What’s that got to do with…”
“Ok, let’s move on!” Waverly felt her cheeks tinge as she watched her girlfriend mouth the word ‘angles’ to her sister. “How does the show work?”
Wynonna narrowed her eyes, looking between them like she was trying to decide if they had ruined the concept for her, or proved her point. Seemingly deciding on the latter, she climbed to her knees. Using the coffee table as a pulpit, she waved her hands in the air like she was casting a rainbow through the sky. “It’s simple. All the single lesbians tackle the gauntlet. When they inevitably fail, falling humiliated and ashamed into the foam pit, they pass through the floor into an intimately lit bar. Everyone pairs up until there’s only one lesbian left and they’re the winner of ‘Most Single Lesbian in the World.’”
Wynonna’s tone was deadly serious, like she was describing an actual thing that actually happened. Waverly found herself inconceivably drawn into the narrative and wondered why such a show didn’t already exist.
“What do you win?” Waverly asked.
“A World Wrestling Federation style belt with approximately ten gold plated cat emblems surrounding a toaster oven.” Wynonna replied like it was obvious. “I don’t mean a cheap WWF knock-off thing either. A proper leather title belt where the metal badge weighs half as much as the wearer. Speaking of leather…” Wynonna pointed towards the hall table, towards the package sitting there like Pandora’s mailbag. “...has it arrived, Haught sauce?”
Wynonna’s tone was innocent, almost bored and yet the way Nicole reacted focussed Waverly’s attention like nothing else that evening. Her eyes widened so suddenly the whites dominated the iris’ and her cheeks flamed red at the mere mention of the ‘L’ word. If it was possible to notice such a thing, Waverly might almost be convinced Nicole had started to sweat.
“Speaking of… leather?” Waverly prompted, desperate for Wynonna to continue, all while her eyes focused unrelentingly on her girlfriend.
“Yeah, Haught-sauce ordered a…”
“Okay, and that’s all we have to say about my incredibly secret surprise purchase, Wynonna.” Nicole’s reaction jostled Alice awake again, but this time initiated the beginnings of a ‘how fucking dare you disturb Cthulhu from the almost-nap of destiny’ grizzle.
Wynonna scrunched her face up in confusion, reaching for Alice now she’d grown fussy. “What? It’s only a….”
“ Wynonna! Nicole hissed while passing the child. “Waverly is dying to know what it is, has given me unrelenting shit about it all day, is convinced she knows what’s inside even though she’s more wrong than she’s ever been about anything, and I’m really looking forward to showing her exactly how wrong later this evening!”
“Wow, okay haught-head, maybe the two of you can get your Ann Summers on after the Star Baker announcement.”
“That’s it! The logo under the label! It’s Ann Summers!” Waverly crowed. She knew it had to be something sexy. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a She-Ra costume but she knew without a shadow of a doubt that her girlfriend had bought something they were both going to enjoy in a very, extremely, almost excessively gay way. She only had to wait for a little privacy.
“Oh, it very definitely is not, baby girl.” Wynonna scoffed, slapping Nicole on the shoulder.
“Uh oh…” Alice yawned, and snivelled at the same time.
Chuckling at her daughter's timely interjection, Wynonna leaned into Nicole conspiratorially. “Good luck with this Haught. She’s gonna make you pay for the disappointment.”
“Who says she’s gonna be disappointed?” Nicole pursed her lips, raising an eyebrow in contemplation. “Pretty sure I win, however this goes down.”
“Ew. Why do you have to be so gross, so in front of me.”
…and the baker, going home tonight… is…
“Oh fuck, we missed Star Baker!” All three women turned towards the television, the package suddenly forgotten.
…Desmond. I’m so sorry my darling, but it’s probably for your own safety.
“Ah, thank fuck for that. Dude was gonna get himself killed before finals.” Wynonna relaxed, seemingly forgetting about her sister’s unnatural interest in packaged leather and whatever the hell her best friend had planned for its unveiling. She reached for the toddler go-bag she’d brought with her and nodded her head towards her jacket on the couch. She didn’t have to say anything. Nicole just responded by carefully folding it and tucking it into the main compartment.
“You’re leaving already?” Waverly furrowed her eyebrows. She had hoped to get a cuddle or two more from her niece.
“Fucking hell, yes.” Wynonna scrunched up her nose over her daughter's head. “Little Miss ‘uh-oh’ here definitely needs a proper nap. Besides, I’ve always hated the post-decision interviews, and I need to leave before my inner shit-ticket imagines what the fuck is about to go down in this lounge…”
“Odds are, it’s gonna be me…” Nicole smirked at the disgusted look on Wynonna’s face. Waverly felt her cheeks tinge, but not too much. She knew with absolute certainty that Nicole was one hundred percent wrong about that.
“Fucking ew , baby girl. I knew I wouldn’t make it out of here without losing the purity of my mind’s eye.”
Wynonna was rudely interrupted by her daughter.
“Uh oh… UCK!”
“Alice Pamela Holliday Earp!” Wynonna’s shock was somehow even funnier than the concepts of ‘Wynonna’s mind’ and ‘purity’ in the same sentence.
Waverly practically snorted. “Now, now, Miss Alice. You know you have to do as your mother says, not do as your mother does.”
“I’m going to tell Doc you taught her to say that.” Wynonna glared at her sister. Waverly smirked in disbelief.
“There is no way in Hell that he’s going to believe that.”
“I know.” Wynonna bristled. “But we all have our hills to die on. Mine is an abject unwillingness to admit parental failure, and yours is, apparently, unquenched curiosity about unopened mail. Good luck dealing with your disappointment baby-girl. Earp Prime is outta here.”
Wynonna leaned Alice in to kiss her aunt’s goodbye and headed for the door.
With a wry grin, Nicole saw them out. “Same time next week?”
“Hell yes, but at the Homestead, okay? I can’t be dealing with this level of PDA again. It’s way too distracting. I want to see Bitch-it-Brigitte get thrown out. It has to happen next week.”
“Uh oh… BITH!”
“Jesus. It’s spreading.” Wynonna muttered under her breath. “I’m not responsible for this.”
“Sure you’re not.” Waverly gave Alice a final kiss on the head. “Be sure to drive carefully on those country roads…”
“Wha…?” Distracted looking for her keys, Wynonna didn’t notice her sister gently encouraging Alice to speak.
“...CUNTY!”
Nicole lost it. Tears streamed down her eyes while Alice’s face lit up with delight.
“CUNTY! CUNTY! CUNTY!”
“Oh my god, you absolute country roads. You’re gonna pay for this. Cool gay aunts, my ass!” Wynonna turned on her heel. Alice giggled all the way to the car, but not quite as loudly as her aunts did from the doorway. They could hear a muffled chorus of “ATH!”, “BITH!” and “CUNTY!” as Wynonna strapped the toddler into her car seat.
“Good luck with Doc!” Nicole shouted after her friend, waving at Wynonna like nothing more than a pleasant dinner party had just taken place.
“FUCK YOU, LESBIANS!” Wynonna yelled, flipping the bird towards them just as an elderly lady walked past with her dog. “HAVE FUN WITH YOUR LEATHER DILDOS!”
A muffled “DIDOS!” came from the car. The old woman shuffled past a teeny bit faster.
Within seconds, Wynonna was gone, leaving the pair in the doorway with tears streaming down their faces.
“So…” Waverly began.
“It’s not leather dildos.” Nicole deadpanned despite the tears.
“But…Ann Summers…” Waverly replied, watching as the elderly woman disappeared down the road.
“Doesn’t sell leather dildos, Waverly. It’s not 1874.”
“Leather… harness?” Waverly asked, curiosity evident.
“Oh my god, Waverly…” Nicole shook her head, utterly failing to hide her sly grin. “Do you want me to put it on for you?”
Waverly felt a relief course through her coupled with more than a touch of anticipation. Intellectually she now knew there couldn’t possibly be anything sexy in the package, but the not knowing was eating away at her. Curiosity must be satisfied. She had to know and she had to know now .
She grabbed her girlfriend's arm, pulled her inside and slammed the front door.
“Nicole, I do not care what is in that package, whether you can wear it, eat it, or frickin’ set sail in it, I just need to know what it is!”
“So that’s a yes then?” Nicole teased, picking the package up so carefully that Waverly got absolutely no clues from the sound of it. “You want me to open this right now?”
“Nicole, so help me…”
“Alright, alright…” Nicole’s tone teased her even more. It was pitched just short of the sexy, soft voice she used when whispering all sorts of deliciously sexy things in her ear. Waverly found herself shivering all over. Her sister and her niece were completely forgotten. All that existed was her girlfriend and a package with a sorta-kinda Ann Summers logo on it.
“Where are you going?” She asked, finally noticing Nicole backing towards their bedroom.
“Me?” Nicole’s voice dripped innocence. “I’m going to open this in our room…”
Waverly moved forward to join her.
“Uh, uh, uh…” Nicole pressed a finger to her chest. “You are going to wait right there for me, love.”
Waverly scrunched up her face. She wanted to watch the opening. She loved unboxing videos. That was almost all of the fun! “But…”
“No buts. Well, maybe my butt.” Nicole whispered. “If you want me to open it, you have to let me go put it on for you…”
Holy shit. Whatever it was, it was going to be sexy because Jesus coconuts, Nicole could make anything sexy. Waverly didn’t reply. Mostly because she couldn’t. All she could do was watch her incredibly sexy girlfriend back away from her with a sinfully lascivious look on her face. Waverly was fairly certain she didn’t breath for the next five minutes, despite whiling away the time fussing with her merengue mix.
At ten minutes, she felt the effect of Nicole’s ‘Haught-brand-sex-magic’ begin to wane.
She’d heard the package rip open, and then what sounded like a box opening. Dammit! She knew there was a box. But after that, a disarming silence had slowly lowered the air of sexy tension in the room.
“Baby..?” She called out, hoping for another hit of that intoxicating voice. Instead, she was only met with silence. She moved a little towards the door.
“No!” Nicole shouted. “Don’t come in here!”
“Nicole? Are you okay?” Now Waverly was worried. The honeyed tone was gone. This voice was all anxiety and uncertainty. Definity not what she had been expecting. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing?” Nicole’s almost questioning voice trailed from the dark of the room.
“Well that was convincing.” Waverly called. “Why can’t I come in?”
“Baby it’s fine, it’s just… this is not what I ordered.” Waverly heard the sound of the box drop to the floor. “I… I put it on, but… it’s… it’s…”
“Sexy?” Waverly hopefully called out.
“Uh, I think it’s supposed to be?” Nicole sounded baffled. “But it’s… really not my thing.”
“Well, now you have to show me.” Waverly’s curiosity was now through the roof.
Another pregnant silence fell. The kind of silence that was loud with the private thoughts of Nicole’s brain chunking through multiple computations like it operated solely on manually fed punch cards.
“You… You love me… right?” Nicole’s voice was so quiet, so worried. Waverly felt her heart override her curiosity.
“Of course baby, you know I do.” Waverly called to her, wanting with every fibre of her being to just march into the room to comfort her girlfriend, but Nicole had asked her not to. So she stayed, and waited. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, love. You can take it off. It’s okay.” Her reply was met with more silence. Waverly waited.
Finally, a shuffle of feet brought a shadow to the door frame. Nicole’s voice, when it finally came, was soft, confused, resigned to her fate.
“I didn’t order this. I swear…”
Nicole walked out of the room in half steps, her shoulders hunched as if they had the power to unfurl wings to wrap and shield her body from predatory eyes.
Waverly choked on nothing. Her girlfriend - tall, strong, confident - was wearing a sheer lace kitchen apron.
And nothing else.
It looked like the 1950’s had called Hugh Hefner and he had said ‘this is too much, even for me’. It left nothing to the imagination, exposing every curve behind the material. The built-in bra somehow fit Nicole perfectly. Tied around her waist, it hugged her perfectly. Everything about it was perfect, perfect, perfect, almost like it was made to order.
Yet Nicole insisted she hadn’t ordered it, and Waverly understood why she wouldn’t have chosen it. It definitely wasn’t her , but Waverly couldn’t look away. She was utterly turned on by the sight of her. Largely because all it would take to make it look like X-rated-She-ra would be a gold belt and headpiece. Waverly was here for it.
“Don’t look at me like that.” Nicole whined.
“I… like, what?” Waverly knew she had been caught with her mouth hanging open and her eyes dancing all over her girlfriends body.
“Like you think this is sexy! This is not sexy, Waverly!” Nicole’s hands planted on her hips, failing miserably to ‘model’ the piece to her audience.
“But baby… you are sexy. You are sexy in anything… ”
“NO ONE is sexy in a lace kitchen apron Waverly! It’s impractical! If I opened an oven I'd get tandooried nipples!"
Waverly snorted inelegantly. "Hmmm, sounds tasty..."
“Oh my god, I’m taking it off.” Nicole spun quickly, heading back to the safety of their darkened room, flashing her naked ass as she went.
“No, don’t!” Waverly successfully grabbed her girlfriend, turning her around and wrapping her in her arms. The lace tickled her chin a little. She liked it. A lot.
“Waverly, please. This cannot be doing it for you!?”
“ You do it for me, Nicole…” Waverly let her fingers play along the edges of the apron. She pulled the tie at the back even tighter when she noticed Nicole roll her eyes above her head. She leaned up and her girlfriend responded, unable to resist Waverly’s lips when they were this close to her own. “...and I can see a whoooole lot of you in this.”
“And so can I. Do you ever lock your door before getting your kink on?”
The scream Nicole let out was deafening.
“WY. NONA!”
Waverly felt like she jumped fifty feet in the air, nearly falling over her own feet as Nicole let go of her and made a beeline for the blanket they kept draped across the back of the couch.
“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, this isn’t happening…” Nicole whispered as she struggled to wrap the blanket around her like a roman toga.
“I knew you two were kinky as fuck, but this…” Wynonna pointed Nicole up and down. “... is a new one, even for me, and I’ve seen Doc on laundry day after a crate of Pierrot clown costumes ‘fell off the back of a truck’ on the back roads of Purgatory…”
Waverly and Nicole froze, their minds trying to catch-up with Wynonna’s sentence.
Wynonna avoided looking up into wide, disbelieving eyes.
“Shall we pretend I said nothing just now?”
“Shall we pretend you saw nothing just now?” Nicole sounded harried and obviously embarrassed. Waverly looked back and forth between the pair, caught between the violent dampening of her libido and the thrill of learning something she could absolutely tease her older sister about for decades to come.
After a pause, Wynonna held out her elbow for Nicole to bump. The deal was apparently sealed whether Waverly intended to agree to the bargain or not.
“Fine. But you still have to tell me why you’re wearing a doily that doesn’t even cover your bare ass. What happened to the leather apron?” Wynonna asked as if that was a perfectly reasonable sentence to say.
“I don’t know!” Nicole responded, totally exasperated. The tracking said it would be delivered today or tomorrow. I have no idea what, how or why this got here!”
“You ordered a leather what now?” Waverly made a noise pitched somewhere between a squeak and a choke.
“...what was that noise?”
“I do not have a leather kink!” Waverly hissed unconvincingly. “Why are you back here!”
Wynonna shrugged, ignoring her sister’s pertinent question. “Can we hurry this up? Alice is waiting in the truck and she has only just stopped singing her rendition of ‘Handel's Motherfucker’, and that’s on the two of you. So talk. Fast.”
Waverly huffed her frustration and moved to the window. She could see Alice fast asleep in her car seat. A picture of sweetness and innocence.
“You know what I ordered, Wynonna. It was supposed to be a leather workshop apron to wear in the garage. For like, welding and stuff, but Waverly was so convinced it was sexy underwear I kind of wanted to… I don’t know! I thought I’d put it on without anything on underneath to see what she would do.”
“Uh, Nudeflash, Nicole. She would do you, obviously.” Wynonna snorted.
“I know! I was really looking forward to it.”
It was as if Waverly wasn’t even in the room listening to her sister and girlfriend predict how sexy a leather workshop apron would be to her.
“None of this explains how she got lace instead of leather!” Waverly interjected, desperate to turn attention back to the problem at hand. Namely, how in the fuck did a ridiculous piece of lingere get delivered to their house.
Nicole pulled the rug round herself a little tighter, then shuffled to their room, quickly returning with the box. She rested it on the back of the couch and the trio peered over it like it was a bomb in an 80’s action show.
“See! It’s the Ann Summers logo… kind of?” Waverly felt partially vindicated.
Wynonna grabbed the box and began peeling the shipping label back. Next to the line drawing of the apple was a vaguely pear shaped image, followed by another apple. Wynonna’s brow furrowed “It’s a pisstake of the Ann Summers Logo. Is that an aubergine?”
“Bit plagiaristic.” Nicole offered. “I wonder how they got away with that?”
“An aubergine? People know what that means, right? Who would be so crass?” Waverly wondered, but not for long. As she leaned back, she saw the moment the penny dropped, spinning on the countertop for all three of them at the same moment.
“BLOWHARDY!”
“What the ever-living fuck are Bunny Loblaw and Champ ‘douche canoe’ Hardy doing sending Nicole kitchen lingere !” Waverly was offended, disturbed, disgusted and somehow also grateful . The idea of it was ludicrous, yet it had definitely been a turn on…Surely they couldn’t be trying to build a business out of such a bizarre concept? Could they?
Wynonna kept peeling back more of the shipping label, reading as she went. “...‘makers of sexy kitchenware, combining taste and tastefulness…’ Huh, debatable.” She had to tip the box almost upside down to get proper purchase, trying not to tear the surface as she pulled. “‘Piriformis’... Oh my god, they did not call their business Piriformis. Surely they had that sense checked through a marketing department…”
Waverly furrowed her brow, mirroring the expression of her girlfriend. “Because piriform is latin for pear shaped?”
“PIRIFORMIS! Come on!” Wynonna was shaking the box at them as if it could make them magically understand. “Piriformis is a syndrome that is literally a pain in your butt. They called their business ‘PAIN IN THE BUTT’”
“Oh my god… could they be that stupid?” Nicole asked, taking the box from a doubled-over Wynonna. Something moved inside it, something small, missed in the chaos of the evening. She reached inside and found a business card with a hand written note on the back.
“What are you doing?” Waverly asked her sister, who was now cackling over her phone.
“They have a website! You can get made-to-order products online!”
“Really?” Waverly asked with what she hoped was a neutral, vaguely curious tone. “What else do they sell?”
“I don’t know yet, baby girl but they have an Instagram… AND TWITTER! At Piriformis lingerie… For the Mature woman! That’s their byline… ‘FOR THE MATURE WOMAN!’”
“Everyone can wear lingerie, Wynonna.” Waverly admonished. “Sex doesn’t stop at sixty.”
“Says the woman who doesn’t ship ‘Cleomi’.” Wynonna snorted.
Waverly left Wynonna to her scrolling. Nicole had gone suspiciously quiet, squinting at the business card. “What does it say, Love?”
“I don’t know… The writing’s tiny and flowery. Old fashioned. Ah, Something, something… we hope you enjoy… like we have…”
Waverly shivered. She did not want to be thinking about the world’s greatest homophobe and world’s dick cheesiest boy-man enjoying very much of anything, let alone together.
“...we created this range with all of us in mind…”
“All of us?” Wynonna baulked. “That's it. I’m tweeting them.”
“...remembering our time on Bake Off… and the love many of us found there…” Nicole continued but her voice faded as she read. “We hope you enjoy this free sample… Waverly.” Nicole’s face blanched. “They… this was meant for you.”
“WHAT!?”
Waverly snatched the card from Nicole’s hand as Wynonna howled with laughter.
“It’s not funny Wynonna! There’s a winky face signed after their names!” She turned to glare at her sister but was met with the flash of Wynonna’s phone camera.
“DON’T YOU DARE!” Nicole lunged for Wynonna’s hand, dropping the rug wrapped around her so she could chase her around the living room.
“Relax Haught-hands!” Wynonna dodged, skipping away with ease to the front door, daring Nicole to follow. “I only papped Waverly. I’m not a monster. ”
Wyno Whiskey @WynoWhiskey * Just now
Thanks so much @PirifomisLingerie for making my year! @Earpshalott just received your free sample. She loves it!
[Alt text on image: Image depicts Great British Columbia Bake Off 2020 contestant Waverly Earp finding out fellow contestants Bunny and Champ rate her as a ‘Mature’ woman by sending her ridiculously inappropriate sexwear.]
Waverly knew she should’ve cared about the chaos around her. Maybe she should’ve made more of an effort to stop Wynonna getting outside to the driveway where she could tweet in the face of Nicole peering round the doorframe with fire and brimstone on her face.
Instead, all Waverly could see was the final line on the back of the card.
‘With love, the Hardy’s…’
The Hardy’s. Plural. Paired. Joined. Possibly Married. Waverly felt a wave of horror and jealousy punch-kick combo attack her chest. She was livid with herself, both for assuming that it was nothing more than a marketing ploy to promote their new venture and for simultaneously hoping it would all end in the messy, expensive divorce they both deserved.
Waverly scrunched up her eyes, overwhelmed by the events of the evening, her surprising feelings about celebrity power-couplings and the very LOUD memory of how the lace covering Nicole’s chest had lightly brushed against her skin and made her feel like the world could burn away and she would never had noticed.
“Why did you come back Wynonna!?” she snapped, marching to the front door with a sudden need for the social part of her evening to be done and her sister to be very much elsewhere.
“What? Oh, yeah. Alice found Nicole’s Pineapple in her carseat. Here you go, Haught buns.”
Waverly had to duck underneath the golf-ball-sized crystal ornament her sister hiffed through their front door towards her girlfriend. She didn’t miss the flash of pure delight over Nicoles’s face. It was a sight she’d seen every time Wynonna had shown up at their house since the day Alice was born. It never failed to make Waverly fall a little bit harder in love with Nicole, and always made her forgive any and all Wynonna’s trespasses of the day.
“Oooo! I don’t have this one!” Nicole caught the crystal in one hand and dashed over to the cabinet, completely forgetting her ass was hanging all the way out.
“Aaaaand I’m done here. Have a big bunch o’butch bangin’ Lesbian fun!” Wynonna got in the truck, waving off Nicole’s distracted “Waverly’s Bi…” that served as her goodbye.
Instantly, Wynonna was forgotten.
My God, I love you…
Waverly shut the door before snaking her arms around her girlfriend's waist, snuggling her face into her naked back. She waited contentedly while Nicole carefully rearranged the ornaments to accommodate the new acquisition, inhaling Nicole’s scent, happy to be finally alone.
“Are you ever gonna tell me what the deal is with the pineapples?” Waverly asked softly, not needing or expecting a reply.
After a time, Nicole replied simply, shrugging her shoulders ever so slightly. “It’s our love language. Like baking me meringues is one of yours."
"What's love got to do with Italian Meringues? Or Pineapples." Waverly frowned, but amusement infused every line on her face.
"Everything." Nicole locked the cabinet and turned to take Waverly in her arms. "Don't worry about it, love. It's just a little private joke that Wynonna has made Wynonna sized."
Waverly rose on tippy-toes to kiss Nicole through her broadening smile. “Okay, as long as you’re having fun.”
“With the Earps?” Nicole grinned “Always, baby. Always.”
“Speaking of fun…” Waverly let a lascivious grin curl up her face. “I notice this apron is… crotchless.”
Confused, Nicole tried to reply. “Well, yeah, most aprons argh…!” Nicole’s reply was lost in the couch cushions as Waverly tipped her backwards over the armrest.
“...let's see what this mature woman can do with a Piriformis original…”