Chapter Text
I want you to stay
'Til I'm in the grave
'Til I rot away, dead and buried
'Til I'm in the casket you carry
If you go, I'm goin' too
'Cause it was always you
(Alright)
And if I'm turnin' blue, please don't save me
Nothin' left to lose without my baby
Birds of a feather
We should stick together, I know
I said I'd never
Think I wasn't better alone
Can't change the weather
Might not be forever
Brids of a feather - Billie Eilish
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She met Nick at the expensive bar in Winchester part of the Las Vegas Strip.
It wasn't her usual kind of place, and it clearly wasn't his kind of place even more.
"If you want to cheat on your wife it would be easier if you took off your wedding band." It was the first thing she told him, after watching his hilariously pitiful attempt at flirting with an extremely hot tall ginger woman, that Mav wouldn't mind hitting on herself, but she didn't look gay at all, so she wouldn't risk trying.
"I didn't want to sleep with her, but I promised my mother I would at least try." He said seriously, while looking at his whiskey's glass.
It was so unexpected she started laughing, and that made him realize what he said. "It's not what it sounds like." He added and looked at her finally for the first time.
While it annoyed her that he had to look down to look at her, on the other hand it stoked her ego, when she could immediately tell he found her hot.
"I won't judge." She lied. "But personally, I'm not interested in married men."
"I'm not married." He said that as if he wanted to start crying. "Not anymore." He added quietly, she almost didn't hear that over the bar noises, so she leaned in a little closer. "She's dead. My wife is dead." He closed his eyes. "It's only been eight months, I couldn't bring myself to take it off yet."
Fuck, the guy didn't look like he could be much older than her.
Way to go Maverick, accuse tragically young and hot widow of being a cheater.
Her first instinct was to say "I'm sorry." But she hated when people were telling her that after her Dad died. Then she hated that phrase even more when people were telling that after her Mother's suicide. She finally started to despise that phrase when people were telling her that after her Grandmother's heart attack. She was suddenly nineteen and totally alone in the whole wild world. Them being sorry didn't change a fucking thing.
It was probably rude, but somehow she couldn't bring herself to say "I'm sorry about your wife.".
"Maybe it's an orphan in me, but I actually find this more adorable than disturbing that you're so close with your mother that she would send you on "the go have sex with strangers" quest." She said shamelessly.
He actually laughed at her stupid joke. "My mother is a devout Catholic. She definitely didn't have that in mind, since it was more of a "You shouldn't raise that little boy on your own, at last try to meet a nice lady to ask on one date, honey." quest." Then he added more seriously. "And we're not that close actually. If we were she would know it's way too early for me to try, since my only other experience before Carole was making out and giving a hand job to a guy from our high school."
Mav knew as soon as she heard that, she would probably end up sleeping with this guy.
It felt like she owned that poor fellow bisexual something to help him get back in the game.
Not to mention he was so fucking hot.
-
Mav didn't plan to run from the hotel room before Nick woke up, but both of them ended up drinking so much more than she planned, and she overslept somehow.
So she just took her things as fast and as quietly as possible.
She barely managed to make it on time to Nellis.
She figured out it was probably for the better, the guy was a photographer with a little kid and he just lost his wife.
They definitely wouldn't work in the long run, no matter how much they ended up getting along that night.
Then a few weeks later she realized she was pregnant.
-
Nick's photography studio was in the Arts District, just like he said, somewhere between her third and fourth shot of vodka.
It still took her over an hour to find it, since he didn't mention the extract address.
It was called Goose's Studio.
Bit corny but it fit the guy that owned it.
"I'm pregnant." She told him as soon, as she entered. "And I fucking believed you when you told me "don't worry, I'm clean and I'm pretty sure I have lazy swimmers, since it took us three years to make Bradley." after the condom broke."
The coffee mug ended up crashing on the floor.
And she noticed he wasn't alone.
Awkward.
Thankfully he only had some random clients for company not his kid son or worse his Catholic Mother™.
-
"Don't take this the wrong way, but you didn't sleep with anyone else after?" He asked a few minutes after his clients felt.
The woman clearly didn't want to leave, after realizing she was in the middle of a real life telenovela episode, thankfully the guy had way more tact and he dragged her out pretty quickly.
"If this is your subtle way of asking if you're the father, then yes, I'm 100% sure baby is yours. I don't actually go to bed with strangers from bars that often. Bedside you there was only a cute platinum blonde with a date that could technically work, but since she didn't have a dick, I will be very impressed if she will turn out to be the father. Damn, I might even start my own cult or something then."
-
"We have to get married." He said after she confessed that after a few days of going back and forth, she decided that she wanted to keep the baby in the end, and that she didn't really expect anything from him, but it wouldn't be fair to keep the baby without letting father know.
She was a little bit surprised, by her own final decision.
Unlike most of her fellow women in the military, she didn't have that strong opinion on having children.
It's not like she didn't want kids, but she also didn't go out of her way to try and have them.
She liked children, and children liked her.
Flying just always took priority over everything else.
She always kind of figured out that if she met the right someone she might have one late baby, just before menopause.
But if it didn't happen she would also be okay with that.
Only after that condom broke in that hotel room, and she ended up pregnant way ahead of her imaged schedule, she realized she actually wanted to keep the baby, even if it didn't make any sense from a logical point of view.
She knew when she made that decision that keeping the baby would probably end up with her getting an involuntary discharge due to being a single mother.
"We don't have to." She said, because she made that decision, she won't force him to marry her. He is a civilian photographer, she won't–
"We have to, I know that it's been over a decade since the federal court ruling declared a throwing woman for pregnancy unconstitutional, and they would allow you to remain in service while pregnant and after giving birth regardless, but I also know how this looks in reality. If we don't get married, even if you provide perfect Family Care Plans, most likely your career will end up being more or less dead."
She blinked.
"That's a lot of information for a civilian photographer to know." She said seriously, and they both knew she already knew he wasn't a clueless civilian he pretty much pretended to be that night.
Fuck, that's just her luck.
'Please be some ex-Army guy, or maybe ex-Coast Guard guy.' She thought desperately. 'Please just don't be from FUCKING Navy.'
She would be happy with him being from Marine Corps even.
He looked away. "I deliberately didn't mention something that night. Mainly because I don't like talking about what happened to my leg, and also because you said you were in the Air Force, but I haven't always been a photographer." He signed heavily. "I used to be a RIO in the Navy."
Well, that's just great.
Of all the fucking random guys in Las Vegas, she ended knocked up by a guy who used to fly for the Navy, just like her dead Father.
She was Freud's wet dream.
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