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When the white-star explosion of their reunion trickles coldly down the stormpipe, Waverly stares up at the popcorn ceilings of her little bedroom, a little dazed and rather chilly. Nicole's sprawled out next to her. Naked, she thinks, remembering an expanse of skin. Older, she realizes, Nicole's breathing rough, strain passing through each pass in and out.
Waverly doesn't glance over.
Snow batters at the windows, casting dark flecks over every bit of her body, dancing jovially across her abdomen, strong and pronounced from a season of twirling across the Homestead, tending to it, keeping it— and keeping them all— safe. When Nicole had traced a finger down her bare chest, she'd seen it in the dim, snow-scattered light; a tender spot where Waverly had scratched herself on a bit of wood while lugging it back into the barn. Where eighteen months ago, Nicole had set some time aside in their crazy, crazy lives to haul the truck to the big city to buy some special ointment that never shipped over to Purgatory, she insisted it did just the job, no scar or anything left after a rock climbing incident, called Waverly over to the car and just couldn't wait to get it on her and they ended up fucking in the truck just there, and there was sawdust in Nicole's hair by the end of it. And just a little tender spot, left there on Waverly's torso, still healing, eighteen months later (or just a few days).
When they'd both spotted it a little ago, Waverly pressed up against the wall, Nicole had tried her best. She'd really tried. Her hand tensed just for a second until it continued on its trail, her slow remembering of that body that had once given itself to her. Waverly almost hadn't noticed, but she knew her Nicole a little too well. Always listened for those little murmurs she loved to breathe into the gaps in Waverly's skin, feeling for it, deciphering it. All she knew now was that it was the two of them, her nails on Nicole's bare, strong back, an anachronism of a body pressed against a woman full of sorrow, physically consumnating for the immeasurable gap that had festered between them.
A few tears had rolled down Nicole's face when Waverly came for the first time that night. Just happy, baby, Nicole had whispered into the space between her thighs, a sloppy sort of smile making its way onto her visage, Waverly's wetness on her face indistinguishable from her tears. At that, Waverly felt distinctly like she was choking on something in her windpipe, falling from the ecstasy of Nicole's mouth on her into a sort of grief that didn't make any sense at all.
Nic, I need— I need you to fuck me again.
So again they had done it, again and again until Waverly could finally breathe. And now it was the dead of night, Waverly wholly emptied out and an unfamiliar woman next to her. What had gone on in the Garden? She didn't want to wake up. What had she done?
"Waves?"
Nicole is nudging at Waverly's collarbone, eyes still closed. "If you weren't dripping tears into my hair right now, I'd think you were having a good time with yourself," she says sleepily, completely inappropriate like she always is, but Waverly hadn't even realized she was crying.
It strikes Waverly to be miffed, like she would be on any other night when Nicole interrupts her late-night spiraling. "And why are you up anyways?"
"Because you're sad," Nicole murmurs absently, like she's far away, and Waverly thinks she might as well be, with that strange chasm that seems to accompany every note of Nicole's deep lilting voice, "And I'm cold, I want a hug."
Waverly would usually smile. She'd concede, draw Nicole in and call her a silly goose, pinch her nose and they might giggle and fuck some more.
So she does it, just like practiced, opens her arms and turns to the side. Nothing but benign emptiness greets her, despite the breathing body pressed up against her chest.
—-
Eventually, Waverly wakes up from wherever it is she had been in the dead of night, a Nicole-like thing floating next to her. It's much like stepping off the throne back in the Garden, she imagines, leaving a different world with completely different rationalizations and responsibilities.
The morning lands her back into reality, the shards of the night strung back together on a line. The Homestead gets snow all seasons of the year, so regardless of what season Waverly had stepped into the Garden during eighteen months ago, their surroundings still remained that frozen-over Canadian wilderness. She steps out of bed, quietly untangling herself from Nicole's embrace. Her toned arms had lost a bit of their resolve, and Waverly easily folded them back into Nicole's chest. It was rare that Nicole was still sleeping when Waverly drew herself out of bed— she'd always been the more punctual of the two, so whenever she'd stay over, Waverly would always wake to the sound of her and Wynonna beefing it out over some delicious grits she'd cooked up in the ungodly hours of morning.
Oh, Wynonna. Where was she?
Folding her sandy hair through a wooden comb on the nightstand, Waverly wonders when Wynonna and Doc would find their way to the Homestead. It'd been quite a night. The throne, to the fight, to Nicole's lips and fingers and mouth. They'll come soon. They always do.
She busies herself with pancakes, something Nicole could wake up to and remember she was here, she was back. After all, Waverly's sure Nicole had missed her cooking (she had been voted Best Cook in Purgatory four times in a row).
Cooking offers certainty, even if all the ingredients are in different places and utensils are haphazardly strewn over the counters. Even if none of the stuff in the fridge is vegan anymore and there's even some meat leftovers sitting wrapped up in the center of the fridge. It's fine. The pancakes can be just for Nicole and she'd go out and get something to eat later in the day, she just wanted Nicole to be— she wanted them, desperately, to resemble something of that silly joy that had become the cornerstone of their life over the past few years.
Nicole stumbles into the kitchen after a bit. Her gait is a little off, one foot dragging almost imperceptibly and she's moving slow as if even the air carries her labour. She pulls a chair, Waverly watching her from the counter, and as she drags her hair over her shoulder, dripping some water into her green knit sweater Waverly realizes that Nicole's gone for a shower. Morning shower, and it's no big deal, but— Nicole always used to drag Waverly in for a shower right after breakfast when she stayed over, smirking a little and saying no, baby, it's because the Homestead has a very limited water supply and I don't want you to get the cold one after me, certainly not because Nicole'd go for seconds as soon as Waverly stripped herself of her cotton pajamas, pressing her warm body against Waverly's back, a hand trailing down her stomach into her aching center, just waiting to be filled— and Nicole's just drying her hair, sitting at the kitchen table like nothing's wrong. It's fine; Nicole has a new thing after eighteen months. But it's only been just a few hours, some evil thing, some little bit of Jolene murmurs, wondering just how she can ever be the same again.
Instead of saying all that, Waverly smiles her Classic Earp Smile at her girlfriend. "Pancakes?"
—-
It's quiet between them for a bit, but Waverly just figures Nicole's tired; yesterday had been a crazy one among the battering sea of dull, unmoving days. She's tried to start something, stuttering out a syllable every few minutes without reception, and she has no idea what to do with her feet, socks rubbing against the cold boards of the kitchen. Nicole's chewing slowly and turning the pages of one of her momma's books that were stacked up and dusty last time she saw them.
Finally: "Oh, Nicole, your hair is so long," Waverly goes, all earnest, eyes flitting up to her girlfriend, who's bent over her book.
Nicole meets her eyes, and Waverly can see they've gone all glassy, big and brown as they always are. Dull like they've never been before. She reaches over to a hairtie strewn over the table and puts her still-drying hair up into a ponytail, dropping back into whatever she's reading in her lap.
Nicole's intention is clear. I was going to say it was pretty, Waverly almost says, but doesn't, her throat going dry. All the warmth shared between them, even the way Nicole had cuddled up to her just that past night, seems to have dribbled away between the floorboards of the Homestead and the cold passage of time. All those years separating her and Nicole, drawing further its gaping maw until it seemed to consume the two of them. How much time can pass where Nicole is in existence and Waverly's not?
It isn't fair, she thinks. It's really isn't.
Waverly stands up and leaves the table.
—--
Everyone's back. And there's so much love, even though it's so dark and everything's fucked up with the Clantons and the Sherriff, but there's love everywhere and—
Waverly wants no part of it. She drifts through the days and watches Rachel and Nicole from the outside as they parse through a jagged routine they had built over a year and a half of uncertainty and loneliness. Each morning, Rachel would leave to fetch supplies, now scarce in this new strange Purgatory. When she'd come back, Nicole would methodically, slowly organize, spending hours on the arrangements of just a few measly bags. At night, Nicole laid against Waverly, unmoving, unloving, a corpse against hers. Holding Nicole against her, ever since that first night, was a lost cause— she'd just lie limp. She learned from Rachel that while Nicole slept in Waverly's bedroom, she'd fix the whole place up one specific fashion as soon as she got out of bed. Leaving everything just like the day Waverly disappeared, rewinding that day, constantly. And the worst thing Rachel had conspiratorially whispered into Waverly's ear: Nicole would sit out on that goddamn rocking chair, every single day, watching, just waiting for Waverly. For months, in those long weeks after she lost her position as Sherriff, lost Nedley, lost everything.
Rachel was probably waiting for Waverly to burst into tears when she told her that, rocking back on her heels expectantly, aching for drama as any teenager would. They had been out on the porch, Waverly perched up on the railing, remembering how she had maybe just proposed to Nicole before the end of everything, right there. Rachel had knocked a few times on the glass screen door, padding over in her slippers to lean against the paneling of the Homestead. She spread her arms wide, telling her, I'm an open book, girl, and I know Nicole isn't saying much. And she meant, just ask me what had gone on with her, without you.
But Waverly didn't want to hear it all from Rachel, and she was going to play that waiting game even if it took everything out of her, and maybe Nicole too. So Rachel told her just the little things. Things that clued her into the monumentous grief that Nicole must have been feeling: having everything, and then having nothing all at once.
(In such a world, would Waverly, ever so hopeful, even have been able to keep on going?)
When the bustle that is Wynonna, Doc, Jeremy, and even Rachel, slowly trickles out of the Homestead for a night manning the patrol or God knows what for some sort of stakeout, Waverly decides something has to change— no longer would she float through the days focused on some greater mission to save the Ghost River Triangle again, when her Nicole was so thoroughly broken that she wouldn't even look her in the eyes.
She finds Nicole out on the rocking chair, hands unmoving on her knees and knuckles white from the strain. Nicole'd always been a bit of a fidgeter just like Waverly, the difference being that her only jittery part were her fingers, the rest of Nicole sweetly moving through life as it was in Purgatory: unrushed, like a sunrise taking its time.
Waverly mumbles, as not to startle her, "Nicole?"
She startles anyways, forcing the corners of her lips up to look at Waverly.
"Can we talk? Like actually talk," Waverly's rubbing her hands together against the chilly breeze, "about us, because we haven't really been good lately, and I miss you lots, so can we?"
She has to cut herself off from rambling, even though she knew Nicole finds-- or at least used to find it adorable.
If Nicole wasn't keen on telling Waverly anything, it would be alright too, she reasons. She'd made a couple guesses, anyways, always a planner, coming up with the worst outcomes first. I'm not the same as how she remembers me, and maybe the Garden had, in fact, changed her and Nicole saw something like how she saw Jolene, but this time, there was no demon-sister inhabiting her body. Oh, it was truly just Waverly-- a changed, unlovable kind of Waverly. I always knew she was an angel, Nicole had said. But a demon too? Maybe it was too much.
Nicole finally, finally meets her eyes, staring for a good few seconds. She moves her mouth with words she doesn't quite understand, but finally stumbles out, "I just can't wrap my head around you being real, Waves," and Waverly almost takes that as a sign to rush into her arms, but she continues, "and not in a good way, you know? I don't— my brain, it doesn't— you're not here. I did everything, everything I did was to make you come back. But you aren't here with me."
Waverly takes a step back, her eyes burning. "Is it like Jolene? What you feel when you see me?"
She doesn't even need to answer. Nicole pauses a second too long. "Baby, I know it's you—"
"Then act like I'm real, Nicole, I can't take it anymore," she says, beginning to really cry like some desperate bitch would to Champ as he climbed out of his truck, feeling like she always has: invisible. "At least pretend, would you?"
"You, you know you don't want that, Waverly, I don't want to lie," Nicole starts.
Waverly stares at her girlfriend in the rocking chair. Did she always have those crow's feet on the corner of her left eye? "Don't act like you have any fucking idea what I want, Nicole," she retorted. Even though she agrees. Even though a lie from Nicole, that she's lying about loving her, would hurt a million times worse than all the times Champ fucked another girl in the same bed in which they slept together. "It was a few hours for me, and everything is different. I get that you hurt so much when I was gone, when you were alone, but—"
Nicole's face is scrunched up, like she isn't sure whether to let guilt or sadness paint her features. "But what, Waves? I thought as soon as you came back, I'd be normal again. That was my bet, what I was putting all my money on. It kept me going."
Waverly knows what Nicole's not saying: when she came back, nothing changed, really. An empty fuck. An empty bed.
Maybe it's true, but suddenly, she's so, so angry. "And why am I to blame for that? I'm— I'm trying my best," she sobs, "I just got back here and all I want is for you to treat me like you did before."
Waverly crouches down from where she's standing on the porch, and sits on the steps facing the sunset, crying freely. She almost thinks Nicole will just stay in the rocking chair, silently spectating, but then she hears the creaking of the wood as Nicole sits down next to her.
When she lets out a particularly embarassing whimper, something seems to break in Nicole, and she sounds softer the next time she speaks. "It's not your fault," she admits, and then: "I'm really sorry, Waves. For how I've treated you, how I twisted you in my head in all the time you were gone."
It isn't enough to make it right, but it's at least something. "I'm sorry for not being the same as you remember me," Waverly says miserably, her face burning even as she says it. She's never been much of a wallower, really, and she's fishing for pity, she knows it.
Nicole doesn't reply to that, and maybe she knows Waverly's intention, or— maybe she agrees. Waverly's about to spiral again, when Nicole mumbles, "Memories, they distort themselves, right?"
Waverly nods, sniffling. She remembers telling Nicole all about reconsolidation and memory science on a particularly cold post-coital night, all her knowledge from an online psychology course she had registered for.
"So it's better to have the real thing," Nicole lets out a breath, nudging Waverly's fluttering hand with her fingertip.
Maybe she's overeager, grasping at the tiniest bit of affection, but Waverly lets Nicole envelope her, pressing her fingers into her palm. When she realizes Waverly's okay with it, she takes her into her lap, lifting her like nothing. They should talk more. They really, really should. And they're out on the front steps of the Homestead, night darkening on the property, and who knows when the stakeout will be done and everyone will come back with more horrid stories of the Clanton's going-ons. But for now it's just Nicole and her, Nicole's rough hands on the thin fabric of her nightshirt, and she's apologized but it's not enough, it's not just fine.
Waverly lets her in, because when has she not?
And Nicole, feeling the resolution on the horizon and quick to the uptake, indulges herself. She presses her thumbs into Waverly's waist hard, sharp and bruising that'll leave an imprint. They crawl up her sides, tracing along her ribs, and up to where her bra should be, where it isn't, where it's lying upon her dresser, taken it off right before coming outside to talk.
Waverly imagines what Nicole would say: a little bit of snark, a lot of anticipation. Words don't come to mind, but a semblance of it makes its way onto her girlfriend's face, a dimple on her right cheek showing a bit.
She breathes out, going loose in Nicole's arms. Just a bit of familiarity and she's fallen prey. "Don't be mean," Waverly manages, and it's partly for how she was earlier, and partly for how she's lifting her up and through the doorway and even with all the moving parts and changing times she knows exactly what Nicole's eyes are like when she's going to be rough. They're glazed over a bit, piercing brown pupils fixed on her neck. She lays Waverly's body on the couch more gently than she should, pretending, really trying to act like she's not going to be like that. Doesn't she know that she can tell, always?
Nicole buries her face in Waverly's collarbone. "Let me fuck you, so I can prove how real you are," she eventually says, low and expectant.
And oh, she's so goddamn selfish. She shouldn't let her. But Nicole's a good lover, she's always been, and her strong arms, backlit by the dim lamp of the living room, are impossible to resist. Waverly makes a noise that isn't entirely approval, but pulls her down anyways. Nicole latches her mouth to her neck, humming into her skin. She's long past caring if Wynonna and the others see the marks; angry and dark but always the result of her sweet girlfriend's ministrations and they know it.
Teeth scrape and bite against her neck and all notions of 'sweet' dissipate. Is she angry at Waverly? For not being what she wanted, what she needed? She's so, so warm, each bite flickering down to her core.
"Tell me— Nic, tell me it's not my fault," Waverly gasps as Nicole's hands travel under the silk once again, tapping at the bruises she had left outside.
Nicole presses a kiss to her lips, mercifully chaste. "Sit up a little so I can take off your shirt," and Waverly does, trying to make her expression unreadable. Her sweatpants suddenly feel uncomfortable and oh, she's wet, feeling the urge to take them off too. To lay herself bare to Nicole, even if she won't reciprocate, won't even treat her sweet— like she doesn't deserve it.
Nicole reaches to slip off Waverly's sweatpants, but probably just because she was shifting around too much. She folds them up and sets them down behind Waverly's head to cushion it, giving her a small smile before she captures Waverly's nipple between her fingers, pinching hard with no pretense. "Look, look at us."
She stares down at Nicole's long fingers on her tits, the other hand beginning to massage and grip against her sensitive spots on her neck. They've done this before, but never with Nicole's eyes so dark, without her promise and signals and plans beforehand. "At what, baby?"
Nicole dips the fingers on her neck into Waverly's mouth, pressing up her tongue. Waverly jolts each time Nicole twists on her nipple, and she won't let Waverly swirl her tongue on her fingers like usual. Just pressing into her body, as if she was trying to turn them into one, finding the best spot for it. Her view is entirely engulfed by Nicole's body; her ginger hair blankets Waverly's vision, casting a reddish sort of light on her pale skin.
"Just watch how I touch you. I haven't been able to even think about it in so long, really," and Waverly doesn't have much of a gag reflex but Nicole's fingers are reaching back in her throat, springing tears to her eyes, and she only withdraws her fingers to wipe them from the corners of her face as they trace downward. Then she's tasting them in her mouth, and they're back where they started. She doesn't do anything but lie there, letting Nicole take what she wants, even though she's put-out and needy.
Nicole quickly grows tired of biting and nipping, she can tell, and begins to lower herself to where she can see Waverly's soaked panties. She'd never been embarassed before, but something about Nicole's hot stare, her hungry, angry sounds as she thoroughly ravages her, makes it impossible to not shrink away a bit.
It makes her more pathetic, too. "I put on the red ones, Nic, remember, the ones we got from the city, for our second anniversary," and she's shaking a bit, her chest heaving and sweaty despite the cold.
In response, she gets a low, vibrating hum and, "You put that lace on for me," slut, even though she wouldn't say it. "We weren't talking, before."
"Yeah, but I imagined you, maybe, you'd want something like this," Waverly feels out of breath, the words tumbling from her like she had when she'd confessed to Nicole hurriedly, all those years ago, "and I wanted to be ready, just in case you were."
A question lilts at the end of her remark, and she gazes up at Nicole again, offering a smile that strains the dried tear-tracks in the corners of her eyes. She really says it, then, calls Waverly her slut without a hint of teasing, and slips her thumbs into the lace, dragging them down her legs. She's wet, so wet, and it sticks to her underwear and she lets out an embarassing whimper.
She tries to imagine Nicole's hand cupping her face, letting her know it's okay, baby,
shushing her affectionately. But Nicole just gently sets down her panties so they don't get creased and kneels between her legs on the couch. "Are you cold?"
Maybe it's just practical, but Waverly can't help it, she nods quickly and Nicole finally, finally, leans down and embraces her, all warmth and sweet weight that allows her heartbeat to slow. When Nicole slips a finger into her cunt, just rubbing back and forth, she feels like everything might be better. Occasionally, she brushes Waverly's clit, and she'll let out a tiny moan, but she sticks to a slow rhythm as their bodies are pressed together.
Nicole leans back after a bit, but she doesn't look satisfied. Her hair is tousled from being buried in the couch, her collared shirt wrinkled and sticking to her body. She wordlessly draws herself down between her thighs, but not before quietly telling Waverly that she's sorry, for everything, and Waverly smiles a little sadly and holds Nicole's face like she'd like her to, and lets her put her mouth to better use.
——--
Waverly drifts between pleasure and pain, opening her eyes to feel the bed around her. She's tender, bruises and marks marring her body. The sheets, which are softer than anything because they'd gone together to Mrs. Cavanaugh at the edge of Purgatory to get her most comforting quilts, feel rough against her back. How long had it been? It was still night, and Wynonna and the others were still out.
She felt the stickiness between her thighs, and the red marks on her ass, which— oh, they'd blister if she didn't apply balm to them, she'd have to do that soon.
But surely, Nicole— she said she was sorry, didn't she? She'd be coming back in the door soon, probably couldn't juggle a bowl of soup and the ointment and the towels all at once, she's just taking a bit to prepare all the things she does after a particularly rough scene, like the one time Waverly got a splinter when they fucked on the stairs and she spent the rest of the day rubbing balms on it after she'd extracted it. So Waverly waits, sprawling herself back into the sheets, imagining any odd creak in the floorboard to contain a worried girlfriend. But time passes, a lot of it.
Time keeps passing, so goddamn slowly, even when she tries to close her eyes.
Eventually, she gets up, calling for Nicole, her voice rough from disuse. When she doesn't respond, she looks out her window, towards the porch.
Surely, she isn't, Waverly thinks, a lump in her throat. But she is, the rocking chair creaking back and forth.
She doesn't know how long she stands at the window, bare, shivering. After a while, Waverly puts on her sleep-clothes, climbing back into the bed and closing her eyes.