Nicole watches Waverly from across the kitchen counter and does her best to make it somewhat less obvious that she's staring.
It's hard. But she manages. She thinks.
She stands in the kitchen, her hands busy with the tea kettle and the stove and the burner and trying to keep her eyes focused on the counter and the tiny front entryway and the something like five feet of solid space between them. Nicole wonders if Waverly can feel it too, the tension, so thick in the air that it seems like she could reach out and pluck a handful of it right out, feel it heavy and loaded in her hands.
Nicole tries to tell herself that It's just space, it's just distance, it's just… there… and maybe it isn't anything, maybe it's all in her head.
Of course, that's what she used to think about the shit going on in Purgatory.
Waverly's leaning against the doorframe, peeking out around the curtains on the tiny side panel windows, watching the Witch at work. "We didn't have storms like this," Nicole says, breaking the silence, trying to slice off even the thinnest sliver of that tension. "Where I grew up, the worst we ever got was a few inches, maybe a foot."
Waverly nods but she doesn't speak and Nicole leans against the counter, eyes still tracking those few feet between them. It's the farthest they've been apart (when they're awake) since she got here and she knows that shouldn't bother her - they can't be rightthere or touching or kissing all the time - but it does, it bothers and that bothers her more.
It's too soon for that, she reasons. It's too soon after meeting, even if meeting came after a while (read: weeks) of those same trying not to be obvious stares, from across the street or across Shorty's, always on the busy nights, when the crowd was so thick and the bar so thronged that even a tall ginger cop could (kinda) blend in. It's too soon after the first kiss, even if that kiss was followed by a second and a third and a fourth (with some roaming hands) and a fifth and a sixth and then they weren't really distinct and separate and they all ran together and Nicole sort of lost count.
Even if she doesn't know the exact number other than it's somewhere between 'not enough' and 'not even close to enough'.
But they've been working this at Waverly's pace and she's got issues and concerns - like coming out and figuring out and oh, not dying - and so Nicole knows that it's all too soon and it's all too fast and too sudden and too quick and yes, she should care and she should be thinking about it - about her - but she shouldn't be feeling this… this… ache… not this soon and not over this distance cause, come on, it's five feet, it's the width of a room, it's natural, it's normal.
Except they're trapped inside a magically warded old house, riding out the kinda storm that's killed, safely hidden away - for the moment - from a hoard of revenant killers and a supposedly dead sister and a gun that sends demons to Hell.
For the first time in her life, Nicole's in a relationship where being gay is the least different thing about it and she knows that whatever they are - and whatever they're going to be - there's nothing about that's even remotely normal. And she's fine with that, as long as whatever it is they become, they do it together.
She's just not so sure on that last part at the moment.
Waverly's not trying to push Nicole away.
Or maybe, really, it's better to say that she's not actively trying to push her away. Silence, Waverly knows, is pretty close to trying. Pulling away - literally dodging Nicole's touch at one point - and ghosting around the homestead and not saying a word for like close to an hour (really, it's two) is trying.
But she's not…
Fuck it.
She is. She doesn't want to but she still is and she doesn't know how to stop and no amount of not that well hidden stares or attempts at polite conversation on Nicole's part will change that.
Waverly's got no idea what will.
She uses two fingers to tug the new blue curtains aside, the ones Wynonna hung just last week on either side of the door. She was trying - as only Wynonna could - to add a little more home to the stead, hoping that some fabric from the Sears downtown, a bright blue bundle of cloth and geometric patterns and sparkles (yes, sparkles, she'd said, they were shiny and pretty and they matched the ones in the living room, you know, sort of, and they were on sale and they're nice so shut the fuck up about the damn sparkles) might turn the place into something less burned out old husk and more… safe haven.
For, you know, Willa.
"She spent years in that cult," Wynonna said. She mumbled the words out around a nail trapped between her lips as she tap-tap-tapped another nail into the wall, top and bottom, cause she'd mis-measured (as in, she didn't) and the curtains were too long and the fabric overflowed at the bottom, spilling out into the room and so she had to bunch it and nail it to the wall, holding it in place. "I want Willa to feel at home," she said, stepping back to check her work while Waverly stood back and watched. "Not like she's traded one bunch of crazies and their whack-shack prison for another."
Waverly understood, it all made sense, it was the… sisterly thing to do. But she'd seen the look on Willa's face when she'd come in that first night, with Gus staring at her like she'd seen a ghost - which was possible, Waverly figured - and she'd seen the way her sist… Willa's… eyes had darted from one spot and one face to the next and Waverly knew that look. That look wasn't home and it wasn't comfort and it wasn't safe anything, much less haven.
That look was fear and terror and panic and a dash of certain doom. It was the same look - the last look - she'd ever seen in her sister's eyes, the night of the Seven. And that was nothing that curtains and sparkles and home sweet busted home was going to cure.
But still. It was nice that Wynonna… tried.
For, you know, Willa.
Waverly watches Nicole in the kitchen, fussing with the kettle and the tea, hunting through a cabinet or two for snacks and it seems like this whole trying thing is going around and at least someone is trying for her.
It should make her feel better, it really should.
She turns back to the outside, peering through the glass like she expects anything to be different. She's looked from the bedroom and she's looked from the living room and she's looked from the kitchen and it's like the house is spinning on an axis, swiveling beneath her so she always gets the same view. White. White. A bit more… white.
There's nothing else for her to see, nothing but white everywhere she looks. There are moments, small ones, when it's peaceful and plain and almost… soothing. And then Waverly feels it, the tremors of it through the glass, every gust a reminder - a stark punch to the gut - of the power of the Witch, of how little there is separating them from her, nothing but the old homestead walls. They're strong and they're steady and they were built to last, but Waverly can hear and she can feel the weary in every creak and every groan.
She's not concerned that they won't hold, that they can't endure, not really. This isn't their first Witch. But Waverly knows now, more than she ever did, that everything (and everyone) has a breaking point, that spot on the road when it doesn't matter how far you've gone or how long you've been riding. It doesn't matter if it's the first round, the second or the two hundred and second.
It's the last.
That terrifies her, the thought that they might already be there, at the last. It's too soon and it's too quick and she's not ready for it to be done but she can't convince herself it's not. Waverly watches the world outside - her yard and her woods and Nicole's truck and that fence that fell and everything else she can't see anymore - all of it wiped away by the Witch and she can't help noticing how quick it all goes, how fast it all just… disappears… leaving nothing behind but a blank space.
But that should be good, right? That's possibility, that's an unwritten page, an open door. That's something she should be grateful for. Something new and something different and a chance.
That's what she was hoping for, that was why she told Nicole. For a chance. For a chance at something… hers.
Nicole's still there and Nicole's not gone (or dead) (or thought to be dead) (or believed to be dead and at the bottom of a well and what the fuck is her life?) and Waverly knows she should be grateful and excited and she should…
Try.
But it's been a long time. And she really isn't sure she remembers how.
It isn't five feet.
That distance between them. Nicole's done the math, which is funny to say cause this is anything but science, and she knows it isn't five feet.
It's miles.
There are miles and miles between them, a chasm turning into a canyon, and Waverly is slipping further and further down and further and further away and Nicole doesn't know how to reach her. There's no rope to toss her, no way to hold her - to hold on and hold there - and it's driving Nicole mad.
She watched a demon serial killer kidnap a woman right in front of her while leaving her for dead and this is still easily the most helpless Nicole has ever felt.
The kettle hums along on the stove and she forces herself to deal with that, to give the whistling little pot her undivided attention, to stare at it instead of her. Nicole knows she doesn't have to watch it - assuming that thing about the watched pot applies to kettles too (and girlfriends) - but it's something to do. Something that isn't staring at Waverly until she blushes or smiles (or runs from the room and locks herself away, and Nicole hates thinking that that is the most likely choice), something that isn't pinning Waverly against the front door and kissing her until she can't breathe or stand or both.
Something that isn't saying to hell with 'too soon' and with the kettle and the miles. Something that isn't crossing that chasm and taking Waverly by the hand and dragging her back to the bedroom and then driving that… whatever… that's dancing around in her head - revenants or not so dead sisters or not so gone ones or the witch or the Witch - away with curling toes and clenching hands and throaty moans and whispers of 'I love you' that are loud enough for her to say but not so that Waverly can hear.
You know, not over the moans and all.
That's what Nicole does - she does. It's her nature, it's her way. It was her way when she was nine and stole her brother's rifle and taught herself to shoot. It was her way when she quit basketball her senior year so she could take the Krav Maga class at the local Y instead. It was her way when she walked into Shorty's and ordered a cappuccino with every intention of asking Waverly Earp out on a date, her douche canoe boyfriend be damned.
Except…
She didn't. Nicole does, but that day she didn't. She waited. She bided her time and held her peace and let Waverly come to her. That's what she's done virtually every moment since that moment, what she's done with Waverly… for Waverly. Nicole has let her dictate the pace, steer the ship, run the show.
The kettle whistles and Nicole shuts it off, sliding it from the burner over to the two clean mugs she found in the back of a cabinet that was too high for Waverly to reach. She stares at them there on the counter, one kettle and two mugs, and it occurs to her that she hates tea, almost as much as she hates waiting, almost as much as she hates feeling powerless and yet…
She's drinking it (or going to) and she's doing it (and has been) and she's feeling it (and sees no end in sight) and Nicole knows it doesn't matter how 'too soon' it is or how hard it might be, she'd drink a thousand cups and she'd wait a hundred years (which might be possible in Purgatory) if that's what it took, so she pours the tea and turns to offer one to Waverly - an olive branch in a chipped in three spots Purgatory High School coffee mug - but Waverly's not there.
Or, really, she is. She's not there as in by the door, she's there as in right there, the distance gone and the miles erased and there's a look on her face that Nicole can't read, but she stops even trying when Waverly goes up on her tiptoes, capturing her girlfriend's lips with her own and Nicole nearly drops the mugs barely managing to set them - blindly - back down next to the stove before bringing her hands around to find her girlfriend's hips and pull her closer.
Nicole breaks the kiss first - cursing herself for it - but she needs to ask. "Wave -" is all she gets out before Waverly cuts her off with another, more gentle and shorter kiss, one she's the first to break as she drops back to her feet and presses her head against Nicole's chest.
"When I was six," she says, "we had a dog. A beagle named Bailey."
Nicole's lost even before Waverly really starts but she doesn't let it show, she doesn't flinch or ask her what she's talking about. She just rolls with it.
She lives in Purgatory now. Rolling with it is something of a necessity.
"She loved daddy and she loved me and she hated Wynonna," Waverly says. Her arms wrap around Nicole as she scoots closer pressing Nicole back against the stove, back as far as she can go, even as Waverly's feet keep shuffling forward, like she can't get close enough. "She mostly tolerated Willa."
Nicole knows the feeling.
"A Witch came through that year, a bad one, worse than this." Nicole runs her hands along Waverly's back and she hardly even realizes she's doing it until she feels Waverly shiver beneath her touch. "Bailey got out, somehow, and she…"
Nicole understands the trail off. "I'm sorry," she says, the words whispering out into Waverly's hair as she plants a small kiss atop her girlfriend's head.
"I wasn't old enough to remember my mother so Bailey was the first... she was the first one I lost." She says 'I lost' but Nicole hears 'who left' and then Waverly ducks her head and Nicole can feel the faint damp of tears on her shirt. "Three months later the Seven came and then daddy and Willa…"
Waverly steps back - steps, not pulls - and yeah, there's space between them again but Nicole knows it's just that, not distance. Waverly looks up at her and it's all right there, right in her eyes.
"This was supposed to… well.." Waverly takes another step back until she's pressed against the other counter, her hands at her sides, fingers drumming against her thighs. "This was easy," she says, "telling you, I mean. But it was supposed to be hard and it was supposed to be scary and you were supposed to look at me like I'd lost my damn mind."
Nicole doesn't say anything. She's almost afraid to, worried that she'll somehow say the wrong thing and put the cork back in the bottle.
"When Bailey got out," Waverly says, her eyes dropping to the floor, "The back door got open, just a little, just enough and she must have nosed it open the rest of the way. She just went out like we taught her, to… do her business, you know?"
Nicole nods though she's never had a dog. Three cats, two turtles, and one snake when she was nine. It lasted a week.
Waverly looks over her shoulder, watching the Witch bluster and froth outside the window. "It was like this one," she says. "Blowing and swirling and white from top to bottom and Bailey must have gotten… lost. Turned around to come back in and she couldn't see the way and all the smells were…"
She blinks back a few more tears, trying to focus on her point - cause she does have one - and getting to it before she loses Nicole completely.
"Somewhere out there, she lost her way," Waverly says. "And she just kept going and every step she thought she was taking back to us… and once we realized she was gone and where she went…"
"You couldn't leave her out there, could you?" Nicole asks and Waverly's eyes dart up, catching hers. "You dated Champ," she says. "Clearly you have a thing for animals."
Waverly snorts and then coughs and then nods quickly, grateful for the small - but meaningful - break in the moment. "I bundled up," she says. "Tee shirt and a sweater and a second sweater and the heaviest woolen socks I had and my thickest snow boots."
"How far? Nicole asks. She moves over a little, pushing the mugs and the kettle back so she can hop up on the counter. "How far did you get?"
"Three steps," Waverly says, very specific about the number, very precise.
It's easy to be so exacting because she remembers every one. The first one out the door and onto the front step and she could already feel it, the cold biting against her. And then the second - off the step and into the drifts - and the slow progression of the cold as it leeched its way through the layers and onto her skin, coating and covering and molding to her like a cast.
"I remember," she says, "on that third step, I sank. It didn't look that high or that deep, it was so smooth and perfect, like a perfectly frosted sheet cake you could just slide across."
That frosting cracked and crumbled beneath her feet and she sank into the snow as it quickly wormed its way into her boots, surrounding her feet, those woolen socks turning into fuzzy frozen caskets.
"It took daddy four hours to warm me back up," Waverly says. "Four hours, most all the hot water we had and I sat so close to that fire I thought for certain I'd melt." She runs her hands along her arms, the prickling sensation of defrosting skin so real and so close. "And it never really stopped," she says. "The cold, I mean. The front door never shut quite right again, not tight enough, not sealed like it should."
Waverly walks back around the counter and over to the door. "Wynonna said it was the Witch," she says. She runs a finger along the seam, more insulated now, tight as a drum. "She said the Witch got her fingers in there and she wouldn't let go, that she was hanging on for dear life cause she wanted in, she wanted… needed… to spread. Like a cold or cancer. She wanted to fill every space."
Willa said that was the thing about doors. Once you opened them… there was just no telling what might come through.
Waverly leans up against the door - all the way over there - but her eyes fall on Nicole and the distance doesn't seem too great. Yet.
"The Witch was gone in a day that year," Waverly says. "We found Bailey the next afternoon, she'd made it all the way to the fence line before…"
Nicole slides down off the counter but doesn't move any further.
"You were supposed to be like her," Waverly says. "Like the Witch. Here today, loud and alive and filling up all the spaces and then… gone."
"That's how it works?" Nicole asks, taking two small steps, brushing up against the other counter.
Waverly nods. "Yeah," she says. "That's how it always has. Bailey, daddy, Willa…"
She leaves off there and Nicole feels the other name - the one she knows hurts more and lingers deeper than the others - right on the tip of her tongue.
"But you're not," Waverly says. "You're not going and at first I thought it was cause I waited, you know? I waited to tell you until you were trapped and there was nowhere to run." She pushes off the door and crosses the entryway, just a few scant inches of countertop between her and Nicole. "But you're not hiding and you're not locking yourself away and you're making tea and you hate tea."
It's right there. The words are right there.
But I love you.
"Tea's OK," Nicole says. "I don't… hate it."
"You do," Waverly says as she leans against the counter, her strength slipping. "It makes no sense, I know," she says with a shake of her head. "It shouldn't be this way," she says. "You staying… you trying… that shouldn't scare me more than you going. But it does. Because if you try and then I try and then…"
"And then it doesn't work," Nicole finishes. "If you try and I still go, just like…" She still doesn't say the name, but it's there, in the air between them cause it's her house and it's her that brought them together, sort of, that put them in a similar orbit.
It's like it's her show and they're just bit players and someone forgot to give them the script.
Nicole leans against her side of the counter, wanting nothing more than to reach out across that small divide and take Waverly's hands in her own. "If that happened… again… it would hurt. I get it," she says. "I understand, I really do."
And she really does. But that doesn't make knowing the woman she loves - cause she does - fears her, hurt any less.
"What do we do?" Waverly asks and this time… well… Nicole's got no answers. She could help with the whole coming out thing or the realizing you might like girls thing or even the fighting evil thing (though not so much the demon parts of it.) But this…
Nicole doesn't know. So she does what she does. She does.
She turns and walks back to the other counter, picking up the kettle - gone cold now - and pours it out into the sink before starting up a new one.
"What we do," she says, "is we make some tea. Cause you like tea and I like those little butter cookies I know your sister has stashed around here some place. So I'm going to make the tea and you're going to find those and then we're going to talk."
"Talk?"
Nicole nods. "Yes, talk. From opposite ends of the couch, with no… touching…or kissing... and so no distractions." Waverly frowns and it's not like it's Nicole's favorite part of the idea either. "And we're going to figure it out. You and me and tea."
Waverly walks back around the counter, right up to Nicole, leaning against her and yeah, that whole no touching and kissing and distracting thing might not be quite so easy, not if just this is enough to make Nicole's breath catch in her chest and her hands shake against the kettle.
"The cookies," Waverly says, reaching around her and sliding open a drawer next to the stove, the smallest of smiles playing across her lips. "Wynonna keeps them in here."
'Oh," Nicole says, nodding. And nodding. And nodding. "Right. The cookies."
Waverly steps back, giving Nicole a little space - and Nicole immediately realizes she hates space even more than she hates tea - and, in obvious violation of the no touching rule, she takes Nicole's hand.
"I want to, you know," she says, her eyes lingering on Nicole's hand in hers. "If it counts for anything, I want to try."
Rule or no rule, Nicole flips her hand around, lacing her fingers through Waverly's and she tugs her close, titling her head down and brushing her lips across Waverly's before resting their foreheads against each other.
"It counts," she whispers. "It counts."
