Sweat, Treachery and Scorn (WAYHAUGHT)

🔪 He Can't Hurt You Anymore🔪

Mentions of sexual assault in this chapter. Read at your own risk. But please don't if you believe that it will trigger you. Nothing is detailed, but the subject is mentioned. 

Waverly felt like she was covered in eggshells. She could feel them digging into her back, snapping and nipping at the skin, ripping muscles, tendons and bone. She could feel the cuts, hot and slick with blood. But she also feel the sliding of her skin against Nicole's, her grip firm but gentle, her skin rough with calluses but so warm. Warmer than tears flavoured with salt, hotter than magma spewing from volcanoes and more blazing than fury in her veins. Boiling like the potatoes she had cooked during her childhood for her family every Christmas, the same potatoes her Daddy had refused to eat, the potatoes Wynonna and Willa had shuffled around their plates, thinking they could fool a younger, more naïve version of herself into thinking that even her food wasn't being ignored. But she was ignored, nonetheless. More and more with every potato, every glass of water she had brought to her father late at night in a bid to encourage him to sober. 

But Nicole was different. Nicole was willing to beat up the demons who had emerged from her past,  with plain faces that she didn't know. People who hadn't spoken a single word to her, quickly turned to her enemies simply because they had wronged Waverly. Maybe they were right to wrong her. But Nicole was brave and a shield made of the thickest hide, warm and solid and real. She was real, she was here, and she was enough. Enough for Waverly to walk forward into a new light, abandoning the small room with its dim lightbulb in favour of a stage with a thousand spotlights, a single audience member sitting in a plush, red chair. 

Their cell was cold, the sheets recently changed. The cotton was itchy and smelled of laundry detergent, but the scratchiness of the sheets was softened by a caress down her arm, a supportive smile on Nicole's face as they seated themselves on Waverly's bed. The other woman waited patiently, a lingering drag of a finger over the pulse on her wrist the only proof that she wasn't alone, that she was with a friend. A soldier, dressed in silver and ready to decapitate dragons should their venomous tongues and greedy eyes set themselves upon Waverly. It made her heart flutter, made her eager to breach the surface of an ocean to breath. To taste sweet, fresh air, to feel the breeze of the seaside and lick ice cream off her wrists and to feel her swimsuit stick to her skin with dampness, to taste the salt of the sea and ice cream and freedom on Nicole Haught's lips. 

She supposed she knew why Wynonna left now, all those years ago. There was such a wide world out there, and Waverly had yet to experience it, despite leaving the Ghost River Triangle. She had seen the world through a pair of tinted glasses, laid before her but thick with a fog that she placed there because she had yet to move on. But for the first time she was willing to see, actually see, perhaps for the first time in her life. She felt like she was capable of getting on a bus and never stopping, as long as Nicole was by her side. Only Nicole. 

"His name is Champ Hardy," she said instead of voicing everything she had just been thinking of. Nicole seemed to frown in confusion at the name, but Waverly couldn't bring herself to joke about it, especially not when he had caused her so much pain. She couldn't humour the angst away, not when even his name caused bile to rise in her throat. "We dated for three years. When he was younger, I kicked him in the nuts because he kept pulling on other girls' hair. But over time, our relationship became romantic. People didn't think I was so weird for being an Earp once we started dating, because Champ was popular and handsome and wanted. He was everything I wasn't. He was....normal." 

Nicole doesn't say anything. She assumes she doesn't know how to, or doesn't think it's her place. Maybe she's unsure of what to say, because she has no idea how this story will end, or what could've happened that is so horrendous that she doesn't even want revenge, because she doesn't want his eyes on her, even if they're lazy and outraged and confused. She used to love his eyes, even if they were blinded by ignorance and smugness. But they had been hers once, her boyfriend's eyes, but now they were just associated with death and blankness. Horror and shame. Maybe she's glad the redhead doesn't say anything, or maybe she's just praying for this story to end. For it to be forgotten, lost in time and words on her diary written in elegantly scrawled ink, the pages stained with blood and tears. Forgotten. She wished it was. 

"Anyway," she whispered, swallowing down the lump in her throat. "He was the quarterback in high school on the football team, and I was the head cheerleader. It happened by accident, really. It was just supposed to be one date, just so that he could go home happy and maybe I could get out of the house for a few hours. But then we were suddenly a couple, and everyone was gushing over us and he was just so thrilled about it. He said I was the apple of his eye, even when he began cheating on me behind my back. Maybe I simply allowed it because I couldn't give him what he needed or wanted, being to young at the time, or maybe it was because he was the only one that ever stayed." 

Still, the taller woman doesn't speak. But her touch speaks volumes. It whispers and chants about fear and the promise to never leave, to never scar her skin or her mind. Nicole promises safety in the very swirl of her blood, deep down in her soul, she is freedom. She is the stage with a thousand spotlights, she is the sea and she is ice cream. She was everything, and Waverly falls against her, breathing in the scent of vanilla―no, vanilla dipped doughnuts―as she mumbles her next words, her fingers, toes and even her heart shaking. 

"When I was seventeen," she whispered against a pale, smooth neck, feeling arms gently wrap around her, arms that trembled even more violently than her own. Arms that were so strong, belonging to the most brave woman she had ever met, a woman who was holding her as if she could break. But Nicole would put her back together again. She always would. "He wanted to have sex, but I wasn't ready. It didn't feel right, but he didn't care. He was drunk and he wouldn't listen to a single thing I said, no matter how much I protested." 

She remembers it again. Tattooed arms caging her against the door, the handles digging into her back as lips selfishly ravaged her own, reeking of spicy booze and the metallic taste of blood and teeth rotting bile, a sign he'd thrown up not too long ago. His eyes weren't even his own; they were misty with a fog, unfocused and selfish. Like the touch of his hands as he begged, and she gave up, giving up a part of herself that she wished she could've kept close to her heart. A part of herself that she wished she could've given to someone special. 

"I just told him yes eventually because there was no other option," she murmured, watching as Nicole's throat bobbed up and down as she swallowed deeply, a broken noise escaping her lips. Waverly held her tighter, pressing her lips to her shoulder. "I didn't want to, it wasn't enjoyable, but I knew he'd never let me leave. I figured it would be less painful if I went along with it. But it hurt even more, because maybe if I'd said no, he'd have stopped. But I didn't, because I loved him. I wanted to make him happy, even if it broke my heart. But it didn't, really. It just numbed me. Perhaps that's a sign I never loved him at all, or even myself." 

Nicole flinched. "I'm so sorry, baby. I wish I could take all of your pain away and replace it with only happy memories. No one deserves that, especially not you, Waverly Earp. I'm so sorry, angel. Whatever you need, I'll give it to you. I promise. Just tell me, please. How do I help you?" 

Waverly finally met her eyes, which were raw and broken, similar to her own. Her face was cracked in half, like a broken gnome's cadaver. "Just stay," she whispered, kissing Nicole's cheeks, one after the other. "Just be here. Hold me. Stay." 

She did.