Things had been going well between Nate and Sarah, (as far as he knew anyway.) They were taking things slow; both were adults with a lot on their plates, so casual was thus far the best way to go about things. There were dates when the time could be managed or worked into schedules, and it was easy to get along with someone who was as impassioned about art as he was.

Nate was actually hoping to surprise Sarah with a visit to work, intending to up the sweetness factor of their arrangement, what with Valentine's Day looming.

The young teacher was actually on his way out, going so far as to turn the door handle and open his front door...

Things had not been going well for Megan. Not since--... well, not for a long-ass time. Of course lamenting all of her troubles wasn't exactly enough of a reason for her to have carted her lazy fanny all the way from her apartment, over to Nate's. Nope. She had a special reason for showing her ugly mug again at his doorstep, and it wasn't involved at all with his liquor cabinet.

...One she wasn't too @#$%in' happy about, too.

The last time she'd seen him had been... well, nice, and... uh.. stuff. A casual fling over the holidays, when she'd found herself not liking that whole "lonely" things too much, and he'd been readily available. (The only one available, too, considering all of the other men she knew were either taken, or had vanished into thin air.)

Somewhere along the way, though, something had gone wrong. At first she hadn't paid much attention to it... She was a busy girl after all, and couldn't be expected to notice every little thing that changed about herself, right? Totally. It was 100% not her fault, and no one could possibly blame her for this. Yep.... totally.

So... why was she pacing back and forth outside Nate's front door, muttering quietly to herself as she attempted to come up the courage to knock, and at least a half decent explanation?

The doorknob jiggled and turned, and the door slid open. Oh hey... speak of the devil.

Blinking, she cleared her throat and opened her mouth to greet him, "....I'm pregnant, Nate."

.... Then she shut her trap and glared at a point somewhere past his right shoulder.

Classy, Rova... Classy.

As Nate opened the door, he almost bumped right into Megan. It was very unexpected; they had not crossed paths since... well, a while anyway. She was not really one to come along socializing without a reason or a--

>> "....I'm pregnant, Nate."

...

...well, he clearly had some things to work out before he decided to surprise his almost-girlfriend and try getting more serious with her. Things like a ****ing baby.

After the color quickly flushed from Nate's face, he opened the door wide and took a deep breath. "You should probably come in."

***

The holidays were not really the same after being with someone for a year. Most of Nate's life was spent ignoring important dates because they never held any actual importance to him. Now, every major romantic holiday carried a tint of memories that tore a bit at old wounds.

The staff Christmas Party was fine enough, but when the event wound down, he watched as other teachers and their happy significant others bid farewell. He was doing fine with his single life, but there were always going to be nice when it was just hard not to feel lonely.

Leaving the event, Nate exited through the front door onto the grounds when he spotted a familiar face before he could make it to the gate. Despite his loneliness, he mustered up a grin. "Oh Megan. Here I thought a place like this would be too tidy and wholesome for you."

Nodding absently, Megan slipped in past him. She bee-lined for the living-room, but didn't sit. Instead, she continued pacing. She didn't know how Nate was going to react to this, and his first words didn't exactly give her a heads up. Would he be angry?... Upset?... Happy? @#$%... she didn't know anything about this crap. Babies were outside of her comprehension.

She didn't even like kids!

Ceasing her pacing for a moment to chew mercilessly at a fingernail, she hazarded a glance over at Nate and swore under her breath. Where was her mom when she needed her? "I... don't know what to do."

***

Normally she wouldn't have been the type to hang around a school full of rosy cheeks kids for the holidays. Considering, though, that she was dealing with a not-quite-dead roommate, and all of the mental chaos left behind from her most recent exploits... she was more than willing to spend a little time around some normal people.

"Oh Megan. Here I thought a place like this would be too tidy and wholesome for you."

Coming to a stop, she turned her chin and spotted the owner of that familiar voice. A smirk settled on her lips, and she let her hands rest on her hips as she turned to face him. "Tidy? Wholesome? Maybe you don't know this place as well as you think you do."

It was a bit surprising running into him all of the sudden like this, but she had to remind herself that he was a teacher of some sort. Maybe he worked here? She shrugged the question off, as it wasn't all that important, and returned to the situation at hand.

Eying the building behind him, she motioned to it with her chin gently. "Leaving so soon? I'll be nobody in there is even tipsy enough yet to wear a lampshade for a hat."

>> "Tidy? Wholesome? Maybe you don't know this place as well as you think you do."

Megan found a way to force a chuckle out of Nate. It was true that the Mansion played host to plenty of teenagers, surely making it a hotbed of hormones and awkward failed attempts at unhooking underthings, but that was not a side of his student body he needed to think about. (Come to think of it, that could be the last time he ever decided to use the phrase "student body" ever.) "Please, let me pretend all my students are saints."

>> "Leaving so soon? I'll be nobody in there is even tipsy enough yet to wear a lampshade for a hat."

He simply shook his head, his smirk shrinking but not vanishing. "Nah, it was surprisingly pretty tame. Just a bit too festive," he joked. "I figured I'd just head back home and brood in solitude. You know, really celebrate the holiday." Megan of all people would probably appreciate self-deprecating humor. "What are you doing out here?"

Her smirk shifted into a grin, and she giggled at him. She could play nice and let him pretend, then. "I stay here." She stated, then added, "...Sometimes."

It was a little odd mention that, considering how she'd first come to the school. She found herself absently wondering if that girl scout was still mad at her for jacking her outfit, but shrugged at her own question. "It got kind of stuffy up in my room, so I thought a little stroll would be nice." It had helped, too.. but now she was cold, shivery, and unwilling to return to a dark, empty room.

Tucking her hands into the pockets of her dress, she rolled her shoulders and glanced around. There wasn't much outside, in the dark, to entertain her.

"You know, I'm kind of considered a student... Do I fit into that saintly definition of yours?" She smiled at him, perhaps a little too widely, and hummed to herself.

Maybe she'd found something to entertain herself with, after all?

Nate had no idea that Megan was staying at the Mansion, to be honest. His knowledge of the resident base consisted of students who actually had classes with him; he had little reason to waste memory space remembering every person who set foot in the revolving door of a Mansion.

He understood Megan's desire to escape the room; she was nothing if not a free spirit, so the confines of the Mansion would be friendly, but at times, of course, confining. Though she was probably underestimating how could it was outside those kind walls, based on her shivering.

"I refuse to think of you as a student. To many... unprofessional memories," he teased, approaching her. Indeed, the two had a brief and complicated past, but at least talking to her was shooing away his loneliness for the moment.

Nate slid his leather jacket off his shoulders, slipping out of the sleeves and before a complaint could be made, he placed the garment on Megan's shoulders. "There. Though I actually expect this one back," he jokingly warned, assuming she had not yet forgotten his stolen pants.

He shoved his hands into his pockets; as a lanky Southerner himself, he was not exactly designed for the cold weather, but he could withstand it for the moment in the name of chivalry. "So no holiday plans of your own? Here I thought you'd be out making mischief."

"I refuse to think of you as a student. To many... unprofessional memories,"

Grinning, she waggled her eyebrows at him without comment. At least, not until he slipped his coat around her. With a huff, though she wasn't about to complain about suddenly being warm, she muttered at him. "You're too nice, Nate. Stoppit." It weirded her out when he was all sweet like that! She liked him better when he wasn't talking.

... or wearing clothes.

"That depends entirely on what your definition of "mischief" is, and whether or not you are volunteering to join in the making thereof." She winked, and stuck her tongue out at him.

"Besides, Holidays are for people with families or pets. I can't very well dress my spiders in little costumes, so I just stay away from the merrymaking." Also, severe depression tended to have a terrible effect on holiday cheer, but he didn't need to know that if she wasn't even willing to admit it to herself. Especially not while on vacation, which she felt totally justified her lack of doing anything for three days straight.

... Not that skulking about in her room was exactly a vacation, or anything.

Megan's dismissal of the holidays sounded like what he might expect from the delinquent, but it was laced with something familiar enough to him. She was giving him the dismissive answer of someone who was too alone to want to think about the holidays. As weird as it was to think about, he could understand her. (If that was not just shudder worthy.)

She did ask him about an implied offer for mischief, and the thought crossed his mind, especially with the implications she was clearly making regarding what type of mischief she was thinking. He was hesitant though; should he really be using her to momentarily fill his gap of loneliness? Or was it fine because she would probably be using him to fill the hole she had.

Phrasing!

His mind already shuffling to the gutter it usually went in conversation with Megan, he shrugged. "Well I did have a night of brooding and whiskey lined up," he jokingly objected, "but I'm not opposed to trading one bad decision for another."

A wind gusted past him, reminding Nate that they were still standing out in the cold and he gave up his one source of warmth. Plus, his car was close by... "What do you say? Feel like taking a trip off campus for the night?"

"Well I did have a night of brooding and whiskey lined up, but I'm not opposed to trading one bad decision for another."

Win! Grinning, she celebrated her mental victory by basking in the warmth of his coat. He sure did look cold, but man was it ever nice and toasty!

"What do you say? Feel like taking a trip off campus for the night?"

"Why... Mister Holloway, do my ears deceive me or was that an offer to come home with you?" She pretended to consider her options, badly, while stepping close to loop her arm around one of his. "Are you sure the other faculty members won't mind? I mean, you may not think of me as a student, but I'm sure that at least some of them do..."

Peeking at him from the corners of her eyes, Megan attempted to wipe off the smart-ass look that crept onto her face. (which she failed to do) "...Maybe I should run up to my room and change. I have this little pleated skirt and a matching tie..."

It just would not be Megan if she did not take the opportunity to be a pain in his ass, but there was something endearing about that, (in a twisted, dirty way.) Nate rolled his eyes and grabbed her by the arm, not violently, but more to lead her with the strong hand of authority. (Great, now she was getting in his head with it too.) "I think they'll let it slide for a student in her twenties."

He set the gate to open up, granting them passage to the lot. "Now why don't we get going; if you keep being a brat, I might have to come up with an appropriate punishment." He tugged at her to follow along, but she already won; his mind was irreparably tainted with her imagery.

***

There was no silence quite like the Pregnant Pause. Nate was doing his best to gather some words as he sat there, his hand resting against his temple. "So I guess we should spend some time figuring out what you want to do?" Nate was not trying to dodge responsibility; whatever came, he was going to take it like a man. But in the end, the choice was hers first and foremost. "I mean, did you-- um, do you want a kid?" It was the most awkward talk he had yet experienced in his adult life.

She was about to waggle her eyebrows again, but he tugged her along before she could. Instead, she felt content with grinning like an idiot as he steered her toward his car...

***

"So I guess we should spend some time figuring out what you want to do? I mean, did you-- um, do you want a kid?"

Turning, she speared him with a deadpan stare. "Do I want a child?.. I AM a child! I'm the biggest #$%@ing child in this whole goddamn city!" Throwing her arms in the air, as if to prove her point, she resumed pacing a hole in his floor.

"I went to a doctor when I realized what was going on, to see what I could do, and he told me that i'm too far along..." Crap... she was starting to feel sick again... and moody. Her Freakin' hormones had been out of control for nearly a month!

"There's nothing I CAN do anymore!"

Megan was in a panic, and it was hard to blame her. In all honesty, Nate was panicking too, but he was doing better to internalize it. Probably because his internals did not have a freaking baby taking up all that space.

>> "There's nothing I CAN do anymore!"

Nate shook his head. "There are--okay, seriously, you need to stop that." He tugged her arm, pulling her away from her pacing to sit her next to him on the couch. "If this baby is... well, if he or she's gonna be happening, you still have choices."

He placed his hand on her back, rubbing in a circular motion in hopes of comforting her. "I mean, there's always adoption. I was an orphan, and I turned out... er, pretty much fine." Sure, she did not know all the little "former thief" details, and that was probably best.

It would be the irony of the universe that Nate would have a child and give it the same start he had.

Holy crap, he had a child growing in Megan's stomach.

She sat reluctantly, plopping down with a good bit of unneeded force, and dropped her face into waiting hands.

"If this baby is... well, if he or she's gonna be happening, you still have choices."

The grumble she sent at him was muted by her palms. Which as probably for the best seeing as it had been mostly made up of cuss words. At the prospect of giving the child away, though, she raised her head and glared at him. "No." Her parents hadn't raised her to abandon her flesh and blood like that... And, yes... while she had technically run away from home and left her family behind, this was different! This was a child, as much as she hated to admit it. It washer child.

"...I don't want to just dump this kid off on someone like that, who knows where he... she.. could end up. It's just...I dunno, I don't know how to be a parent and stuff." Fiddling with her ring, she huffed again and continued. "...I'm scared, okay? I'm not suited to be nurturing... it's not in my DNA."

Her face returned to her hands, and she groaned. "Can this just be another stupid dream? Someone kill me already, I wanna wake up."

Megan was in a true bind; she did not want to abandon her own child, but she did not see herself being ready to take care of a baby. Nate was at a loss for words; what words could comfort her? And that was without thinking about the situation he also found himself in now.

What could he say?

***

Nate pushed open the door to his apartment and led Megan in for the third time now. He was pretty sure he read somewhere that three times made a habit, and it was probably wise not to make a habit of inviting the dangerous girl over.

But it was Christmastime and he was weak. He kicked off his shoes to the corner and took his jacket from Megan to hang it up on the hooks beside the door. "So what exactly are you in the mood for? I'd say I would wine and dine you, but as I recall, wine's pretty useless to you these days." Admittedly it was almost weird to not have alcohol play a role in strange affairs with stranger women.