Work Text:
driving away from the wreck of the day
(and it's finally quiet in my head)
you're not alone
together we stand
i'll be by your side
you know I'll take your hand
- ' keep holding on' by avril lavigne
may,
2028.
“So,” Wynonna slurs. “Your kid and mine, huh?”
The scene is familiar. The two of them, sitting on the floor and passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth. Both of them more than a little drunk. This time, however, they’re in Nicole’s office with the blinds closed and the door shut and locked, leaning with their backs against the couch.
Nicole lifts the bottle to her lips and takes a long pull. She doesn’t even feel the burn of the cheap liquor at this point.
“They get on like… like a house on fire,” she says, her head bobbing like some sort of nod.
“That sounds… what kind of shitty metaphor is that?”
Nicole turns her head to stare at Wynonna with as serious a look she can manage when there’s so. much. whiskey. Enough whiskey that she says, “It’s Haught-shit.” And she snorts a laugh at her own pun before reaching again for the bottle.
Wynonna bumps her shoulder into Nicole’s, shaking her head. “You’re a piece of work, you hot mess. Now give me the whiskey.” She makes gimme gimme hands, swigging back one mouthful and then another once Nicole hands it over.
Silence settles on them like a blanket. It’s suffocating, oppressive, and too damn heavy. They sit like that for a while, pensive and languishing under too much weight on their shoulders and on their souls.
“Today was hard,” Nicole whispers, peeling back the quiet just enough to breathe a little easier.
“Really fucking hard,” Wynonna agrees. She takes another sip of alcohol and passes it back to Nicole, who readily accepts it.
They might have to break into David’s desk for the bourbon he keeps stashed in one of his drawers. Then again, they’ve been at it for—
She squints at the clock.
— three hours. It’s a quarter until midnight and neither of them are okay to go home. Not until they’ve scrubbed their minds clean of the what they saw today.
They weren’t supposed to be working. Waverly, Wynonna, and Nicole. They were supposed to try the new taco food truck that had al pastor and lengua but also jackfruit. And then they had planned to go back to the homestead and set up some targets for a friendly shooting competition, followed by an evening at Shorty’s while Jeremy and Doc looked after the kids overnight. It was supposed to be a lot of things.
(There’s a ring in her pocket that feels wrong today. It wasn’t supposed to be wrong. It was supposed to be perfect .)
They were just ordering their tacos when David called her, and if David called on her day off, she knew it was important. She stepped out of the line, hitting the green phone icon to accept the call. “David,” she answered curtly.
“Sheriff, there’s a 10-30 Alpha at the McClain residence. Stuckley reporting a hostage situation.”
Nicole’s blood ran cold and it must have shown on her face because Waverly looked at her with concern. She shook her head and forced a smile before she asked, “Who’s on scene?”
“Price, Stuckley, and Stewart. Fire and EMS are en route.”
“Stag?”
“Still on patrol.”
“Tell him to come get me. I’m at the new taco truck on Second near Victoria.”
“10-4, Sheriff.”
He ended the call, no doubt relaying the message to Officer Stag, while she returned to the line to tell Waverly and Wynonna that she had to go to work.
Waverly reached for her with both hands and laced their fingers together. “Everything okay?”
“Work emergency. Officer Stag is going to pick me up here. But you two should totally stay and eat and do everything we planned. I’ll meet you when I can, okay?”
“No, we can do it another day. It isn’t the same without you.”
Nicole shook her head. “Waves, you should enjoy your day off.” She gave Waverly’s hands a gentle squeeze. From the corner of her eye, she could see the red and blue light bar of Stag’s cruiser approaching. “I’ve gotta run, baby. I love you, and I’ll see you tonight.” She kissed her girlfriend quick and chaste before pulling away.
Waverly’s worry was palpable, and it made Wynonna’s teeth itch. So she caught Nicole by the collar of her plaid button-down and told her, “I’m coming with you, Haught. No arguing.”
Nicole argued.
“Wynonna, no. Stay with Waverly. Eat tacos. Drink alcohol. Earp it up.”
“Nicole, let Wynonna go with you. Please?”
Officer Stag sounded the siren for a quick second to let the sheriff know he was waiting. It drew the attention of the other patrons eating and waiting for tacos, but they recognized Nicole and the Earps and didn’t think much of it.
“Please?” Waverly asked again.
Nicole relented. “Fine. No time to argue. Let’s go. Waves, please stay safe.”
They arrived on scene and both Wynonna and Nicole were happy to accept the spare bulletproof vests and extra ammunition. “It’s a hostage situation,” Nicole explained as Deputy Sheriff Price approached to update them.
“Perimeter is secure. Five hostages inside. Lottie and Barry McClain and their three grandchildren, Mark, Alyssa, and Ben.”
“Do we know who the perp is?” Wynonna asked.
Price gave Wynonna a once-over. Sometimes she forgot that both Earps were law enforcement in some capacity.
“Their son, Franklin. He’s the father of the kids. Lost custody while he was in Drumheller for assault causing bodily harm. Lonnie and Stewart are inside, trying to talk him down.”
“ Lonnie ?” Nicole pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “Tac will take over an hour to get here. Stag, give me your radio and spare flex cuffs.” The deputy had complied without question, watching as the sheriff hooked the radio onto her jeans and attached the two-way radio speaker to her vest.
Wynonna’s eyes had widened and she hissed, “Nicole, what are you doing?”
But she wasn’t talking to Nicole, her friend and her sister’s girlfriend. She was talking to Sheriff Haught, and the response she received was terse.
“This is my job, Wynonna. My responsibility. I took that hostage negotiation seminar in the city with Tac for a reason,” she had said before giving orders to Price and the other officers that had since arrived. More than half of her department was on site.
There was a brief moment that Wynonna saw a flicker of Nicole, her best friend. It was when she fished that ring out of her pocket and pressed it into Wynonna’s palm. “Keep that safe for me, okay?”
She had nodded and closed her fingers around it, holding tight. “Try not to die, otherwise Waverly will find a way to resurrect you and then kill us both.”
Nicole disappeared into the house. Lonnie reappeared soon after. He had a Remington 1100 and a snubnose .38 revolver , he told them. Hostages were bound, gagged, and sitting on the bed in the master bedroom upstairs. Minor injuries. Stewart was covering the sheriff. Sheriff said to switch channels.
Price switched her radio to a different channel and they could hear Nicole talking with the subject. “She switched to VOX,” she murmured.
It didn’t really change anything. Though it was nice to know that Haught was still alive and kicking.
Still, they had to wait. Wynonna hated to wait, but this wasn’t her wheelhouse. No demons or supernatural beasts to put down. Just plain old, awful human beings. She ignored her phone vibrating in her pocket, no doubt blowing up with texts from Waverly. She didn’t have any good news to report. Yeah, your girlfriend just walked into an armed hostage situation ? That would go over real well. So she ignored it and focused on listening as Price took charge outside. Because there wasn’t much they could do. They didn’t have the tactical capabilities to enter through the bedroom window. Nor was there a sightline for a sniper.
So they waited.
They waited.
And waited.
Every fifteen or twenty minutes, Nicole would say something like, “We’re all good in here.” One time she phrased it as a question. Another she used the subject’s name. She heard the sheriff’s tone change with every subsequent check-in; the sort of change in tone that made her draw Peacemaker and prepare herself to be the first one inside if something went south.
Something went south.
Five shotgun blasts.
Three sharp pops. Pop. Pop. Pop.
They didn’t need the radio to hear the gunshots.
Wynonna raced forward before anybody could stop her. She charged up the carpeted stairs followed the metallic and acrid smell of blood and gunsmoke in the air. “Nicole!” she called out, good practices be damned.
(She’s a demon-hunting badass agent, not a goody two-shoes cop.)
“In here,” she heard, and it wasn’t Nicole’s voice. “We’re in here.” It was a male’s voice, and it wavered in a way that made Wynonna’s stomach drop.
“No, no, no,” she began to mumble to herself with each step she took down the hallway and towards the master bedroom.
She wasn’t prepared for what she saw.
She isn’t sure anybody could prepare for something like that.
Because Holden Stewart was staring at the service weapon in his trembling hands.
Because Nicole stood with tears in her eyes and red on her face.
The wall behind the headboard weeped crimson. It trickled down into the eggshell white carpet from the patchwork quilt draped over the king-sized bed. The blanket might have been yellow at one point, except now it was a muddled reddish-brown, soaked through with blood and darker in some spots than others. Darker where five bodies lay mangled by buckshot that had stripped them of faces. Of flesh and bone and life .
Two adults. And three children whose broken and battered frames couldn’t have been any bigger than Alice now.
“Nicole,” Wynonna had said as softly and gently as she could. “Nicole.”
Her eyes were unfocused but staring just the same. Not at the victims or the death written on the walls in bloody ink. She stared at the body of a man broken in a different way. The shotgun and revolver beside him. His eyes open and empty. Three entry wounds to his torso.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Dead.
They bagged her clothes as evidence. Stewart’s, too, along with his service weapon. The deputy sheriff debriefed them separately, took each of their statements. ASIRT would do their own investigation of Stewart, and pending the conclusion of it, he was suspended from the field indefinitely.
And Nicole… Wynonna had watched as she sat beside Price, hair still wet from a rinse in the decontamination showers and dressed in the spare uniform she kept in her office. She watched as Nicole waited for an ASIRT investigator to arrive. Watched as he went through the transcript of the call with both of them.
She watched as Nicole rubbed at her face with her hands as if she could wipe away this wreck of a day.
They weren’t supposed to be working today.
Wynonna texted Waverly first. Told her that she and Nicole were safe but they were going to have a late night and might just crash at the apartment above Shorty’s. Said Nicole passed her love along and to try to relax and enjoy a night by herself.
Because by the time Nicole finished talking with Price and ASIRT, it was already seven o’clock in the evening.
She called Dolls. He got most of the story and a hint of the shit that they saw. She asked him to bring them food and alcohol, and then if he would look in on Waverly on his way home. Make sure she was okay. He promised he’d be there within the hour and the call ended.
The door to the sheriff’s office opened and Nicole shuffled inside.
“Hey, Haughtstuff,” Wynonna said lightly, holding out the ring Nicole pressed into her hand before running off to be a brave idiot. She did her best to smile, to try to convey some kind of comfort to her best friend. She wasn’t sure any balm could help right now.
She’d seen the aftermath. She couldn’t imagine seeing the horror as it was committed.
Nicole didn’t say anything and barely looked at Wynonna when she took the ring back and shoved it into her pocket. Her exhaustion ran bone-deep. It penetrated her heart and mind and left her reeling after the day’s events. It clawed at her until she slumped into one of the chairs in front of her desk and buried her head in her hands.
Her body shook and she gasped for air. Dry sobs wracked her soul and her lungs felt like they were spasming, unable to draw enough life back inside her. Wynonna was at her side in an instant, arms wrapped around her in a tight embrace.
“Six lives,” she cried without tears. “Six people died today, Wy. They died right in front of me. I can still… I can still taste the blood in the air. I can still hear their screams. The sound of a child’s body being rent to pieces by steel and anger. I can still see them. They were so scared.”
There wasn’t anything that Wynonna could say to make it better. All she could do — all she can do — is whisper, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Nicole.
Dolls arrived at a quarter to eight with a two six of whiskey and takeaway from the diner. “You’re a lifesaver,” she mumbled as she met him just outside the office door, taking the food and alcohol.
“How is she?” he asked, eyes flicking to the redhead steadfastly staring at her computer screen.
Wynonna shrugged. “About as good as I was after I put down Jack. Different kind of hurt, though.” She sighs and glances back over her shoulder. “I don’t know how to help her, Dolls,” she admitted. “I don’t know if I can.”
He smiled sadly and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “She’s family. You just need to love her. Be there for her. You’re pretty good at that, Earp.”
She leaned into his touch and allowed her eyes to close. Just a moment of respite. A moment to breathe.
“I should, you know, get back in there.”
“You’re a good person, Wynonna. Remember that.”
She carried the bag of takeaway and the bottle of whiskey back into the office, depositing both onto one of the wooden chairs. “Dolls brought us food. I could murder a stack of pancakes.”
Nicole turned away from her work at that and Wynonna winced. “Shit. Foot in mouth. Definitely not the appropriate word to use tonight.” She tried to recover while pulling the boxes from the bag. The containers were labeled ‘ pancakes’ and ‘burger, fries’ and she considered marrying Dolls for a split second before she remembered that Doc and Alice had already taken hold of her heart. “You can yell at me any time now.”
“Why do Earps always think I should yell at them?” Nicole mumbled. She stood from her desk and walked to the office door to turn the lock and close the blinds. “It’s fine, anyways.” Her jaw clenched and she sighed again. “It isn’t fine. I’m not fine,” she confided. “But I will be one day.”
“I hear chicks dig scars, too. Even emotional ones.” Wynonna hummed for a moment, pulling a face as she looked between the whiskey and their food. “Eat first. Alcohol second.”
And Nicole wasn’t going to argue with that. So they scarfed down their meals in silence, tossing the empty boxes into the bin beside the desk once their bellies were sated. They settled onto the floor in front of the couch, backs pressed against its frame and their legs stretched out with their boots kicked off. Wynonna unscrewed the cap to the bottle of whiskey and tossed it across the room.
They wouldn’t need it.
She took a swig and handed it to Nicole who did just the same.
They weren’t supposed to work today. But that’s how they got here. Drunk in Nicole’s office. Trying to drown their guilt and sorrow with alcohol.
“Today was super fucking hard,” Nicole slurs. “Super fucking hard.” She lifts the bottle for another glug, only for Wynonna to intercept the bottle.
“I think… that maybe you should lie down,” she suggests. She isn’t as far gone as Nicole, but she can feel herself approaching the limits of that Earp constitution. She needs to be the responsible one tonight. The protector and the caretaker — it’s the role Nicole almost always plays for her.
She climbs to her feet and sets the nigh empty bottle on the desk. “C’mon, Haughtstuff,” she says, hauling Nicole off the ground and onto the couch. She tugs the blanket hanging over the back of the sofa and drapes it over the very drunk cop. “How about a Haught burrito?” Wynonna tucks the sides of the blanket into the cushions.
“I like burritos.” Nicole grins and stares up at Wynonna with her warm, brown eyes that bear the haze of alcohol. “No! I like tacos. Tacos are tasty.”
Wynonna laughs. It isn’t the joyous kind of laugh or the kind that bubbles up from happiness and delight when your heart grows so full. It’s a bark of a laugh, rough and sharp and ugly. It’s a thing that hurts, that tears at your insides as it scratches its way out of your throat.
It isn’t what she saw today that shreds at Wynonna’s being. That image will haunt her, surely, but it isn’t what makes her chest ache. It isn’t that which makes her want to grab the bottle of whiskey and chug what’s left of it.
It’s the image of Nicole about to break, with guilt splattered across her face in red and shock in her eyes. It’s Nicole falling apart in her arms, fighting for oxygen as she chokes on the pain and suffering that she tries to carry like Atlas under the world.
It hurts .
She doesn’t walk to the desk. Doesn’t reach for the bottle. She turns off the light instead and sits on the floor again with her back to the couch.
“You know, Wynonna,” Nicole mumbles and her eyes are already fluttering closed. “You’re the peas to my carrots."
“What about Waverly?” Wynonna asks because the ring is still in Nicole's pocket and she can't help but think about how this day was supposed to go.
Nicole’s cheeks puff out as she exhales loudly. “Waverly is my everything. I love her so much, Wynonna. Sooo much. I'm gonna marry her some day. She’s the… the air to my lungs. The blood to my heart. My heart , Wynonna. But you—” She looses an arm from beneath the blanket and gestures toward the general vicinity where she thinks Wynonna is sitting. Her hand smacks the side of Wynonna’s head and is swiftly captured in a strong grip. She gives the hand a squeeze and holds on tight. “You, Wynonna Earp, are the peanut butter to my jelly.” Nicole’s words taper off at the end slurred and getting softer and softer, and Wynonna can hear her noisily wetting her lips.
Wynonna’s eyes finally drift shut and she knows they’ll both be dead asleep soon but she mumbles her smile anyways. "You're the jelly to my doughnut, Haught." She doesn't hear it. Not consciously anyways, and Wynonna supposes that's okay.
The whiskey is heavy in her belly, and it isn’t enough to wash away the memories of the day. So she clutches Nicole’s hand just as tightly, not yet wanting to let go. There isn’t a sarcastic retort on the tip of her tongue. This isn’t the moment, she knows, because she knows people and she definitely knows Nicole Haught. Because somewhere along the way, Nicole has become one of her staunchest allies. More than Dolls and more than even Doc. Because she became more than just the flat-foot rookie, her sister’s girlfriend, or the extra firepower. Became more than just a colleague.
Somewhere along the way, Nicole became her best friend.
She became family.
Wynonna Earp knows this:
You protect your family. And if you can't protect them, you stand and fight along with them. But most importantly, you love them. Everyday and unconditionally.
Shit. When the hell did she become such a sap?
Ugh.
(Still. She’s not letting go any time soon.)