Just a little one shot drabble that I came up with after being challenged by another author to write something Gears related involving Baird, A truck and a pregnant woman. So many possibilities came to mind (Most of them highly worthy of being M-rated) but I picked the most tamest of them all. I didn't want this to become a mindless smut fic as much as I was attempted. I mean, come on. It's Baird. Everyone wants to do Baird. Probably even Baird himself.

Didn't like some bits too much and I've never really written Baird much so it was really hard but hopefully, he's somewhat in character.

Now to continue on with the sixth chapter of Crimson Cross.

Steel Rain

"Alone she sleeps in the shirt of man
With my three wishes clutched in her hand.
The first that she be spared the pain
That comes from a dark and laughing rain."
-Gaeta's Lament

The heavily booted foot of Damon Baird pressed down on the gas pedal of his COG standard issue truck. The mechanic smiled at the healthy growl that escaped the engine, a sure sign that he had repaired the engine properly. One of the pilots, Airhead, had sighted the abandoned but still serviceable jeep and dropped him off to fix it. "Waste Not, Want Not" was one of the rules of the COG and Damon Baird was not the type to waste any kind of machinery. A flick of his gloved fingertips had the battered windscreen wipers slapping away a torrent of water and spray from his horizon. The skies above had just open up completely and drenched what was left of Sera completely. The corporal had felt the wheels skid across a large puddle and pushed some weight onto his brake pedal, enough to dry the rotors off without reducing his built up speed. One benefit to driving the Jacinto roads was the fact that they were – for the most part – largely abandoned.

Or at least he thought they were.

They should have been.

Walking along on a broken footpath was a woman, the only human in the immediate area apart from the mechanic. The blonde blinked, figuring that he was imagining things again. But nope, the woman was still walking along the sidewalk, seemingly without a care in the world. Baird gave a snort from inside the jeep and shifted the gears up one. Some people just asked for a bullet to the face. The female on the pavement was one of them.

It was not until Baird got a little closer did he notice the bulging belly on the female – a sure sign that she was expecting. It was only then did he suddenly realise who the pregnant, unaccompanied female was. Yes indeed, Baird recognised that walk, the eyes and the pout. He let out a laugh at the irony of it all. That tricky whore Fate did have a sense of humour after all. He was sorely tempted just to drive on past the woman, maybe throw her a rude gesture while he was at it. She would have expected nothing less from him and Damon Baird wasn't one to disappoint.

His shoulder angel disagreed.

Come on man. Have a heart.

Baird didn't have a heart. He had a space for rent.

Why?

It's raining and she looks like a drowned rat. It's sad really. Besides, wouldn't it be worth it just to see the look on her face?

His booted foot moved to the brake pedal involuntary and the jeep screeched to a halt, coupled with a spray of water. He wasn't sure why he did it. It was so unlike him that he thought he must be the victim of some strange mental disease which made one do stupid things which they would normally avoid under any circumstance. Baird mentally told himself that he wanted to torment the woman a little before the Locust got her. And if they just happened to be going in the same direction, why not give her a lift?

Why not indeed.

The female looked startled, as if she had not heard the approaching COG jeep. Sea green eyes rolled back in Baird's head and he wondered how on earth she could have not heard the roar of the military jeep. Off in her own little world he suspected. Baird reached over in the driver's seat and swung the passenger door open, finally getting a proper look of his old school friend on the sidewalk for the first time in nearly a full decade.

The years had been quite good to Sarah Murphy despite the Locust war. At thirty five, she very stunning with mousey brown curls that were currently plastered to her wet face. She was soaked to the skin; the wet, standard issued civilian clothing clinging to the bulge on her belly that was all the more noticeable in the rain.

He plastered on one of his infamous devil-may-care smiles, the kind that more often had hormonal civilian preteens squealing in delight. "Hey Murphy. Want a lift?"

The look on the woman's face was completely and totally priceless. Baird would remember it fondly for many years to come. "Baird! That you!"

"The one and only," the mechanic responded.

Sarah's open mouth snapped shut. "Fuck, what are you doing here?"

Baird pulled a disgruntled face. "Offering you a lift bitch. Now get in. I don't hold doors open for a hobby you know. And don't you dare drop in my jeep. I couldn't handle a birthing."

The woman did not need telling twice. She clambered into the military vehicle then proceeded to slam the door shut that made the frame rattle in protest. The jeep smelt like old engine fluid and sweat but it didn't bother the female much. Baird, meanwhile, had taken off again before she been able to put on her seatbelt. He had never bothered to ask where she lived for he already knew. The Jacinto Civilian block was where most of the city's residents lived. It was deeper into the city and was often one of the most heavily guarded districts in Jacinto. The mechanic cast Sarah a glance and scowled. "Oh geez, you got the seat all fucking wet," complained Baird.

Sarah smirked, seemingly unfazed by his comment. He wasn't the least bit surprised. Baird had tossed worse at her in their adolescent years. "You're still such a miserable old bastard. How the hell have you been anyway?"

"Alive. Anything else is a bonus," Baird responded, one hand resting casually on the steering wheel while the other gripped the gearstick. "What about you? Performing your civic duty and getting knocked up by a Gear?" Baird asked, the sarcasm dripping off his words.

The brunette patted her stomach. "This is my fourth."

Baird let out a whistle and threw his companion a practiced, appreciative glance. He was man enough to admit that she still looked damn good even after having three sprogs with a fourth on the way. But then again, she always had looked good and the damn woman knew it too. She had flaunted it enough when they were younger. "You're probably more used than this car," he remarked, turning sea green eyes back onto the hazardous road. He had slowed down slightly and had made an effort to take the corners a little more carefully.

"Hey, it was either this or join the army. Pregnancy is much easier."

"Lazy bitch," he fired back, but amicably. "So who's the daddy?"

The woman fell silent. How very like Sarah. She had never been one to have an answer to tough questions. Baird, however, had all the answers. "What? Were you so drunk you couldn't remember his name? Or there was so many you couldn't remember who it was?" Baird asked as a particular large spray of water hit the windscreen.

The female gave him a haughty snort and crossed her arms over her chest in a very childish manner. "I wasn't a slut."

"Come on, you weren't called a bike in high school because you were a reliable mode of transportation," retorted Baird and he looked at her rounded belly. "Your mommy's a liar by the way kid. You've got a great life ahead of you."

Sarah rolled her eyes; the plain, muddy brown ones that he had grown up seeing every day. "Oh stop that."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

Baird's eyes gleamed in mirth and he found it difficult to concentrate on the road ahead. Provoking Sarah had proven to be just too much fun to pass up. He knew he was being an ass but Baird found it difficult to stop. He never had much willpower when it came to resisting the urge to make sarcastic comments. "It's too much fun."

"If you're going to be a jerk about this then pull over and I'll walk." Baird heard the challenge in her tone and rose to meet it head on. He did not even have to look at her to know that the female was pissed with him.

"Four miles in the pouring rain and pregnant to boot? Don't be fucking stupid," he snapped, keeping his eyes trained upon the road ahead of him.

"I'd manage."

The mechanic scowled deeply and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. What an ungrateful woman. A large part of him wanted dearly to stop, kick the door open and boot her pregnant hide right out of the jeep and into the deep puddle on the cracked footpath just to teach her a lesson.

But he didn't and just opted to be as difficult as possible for the remainder of the journey. "Well tough titties Murphy, I'm already late as it is and I don't intend to pull over for you again."

Sarah let out an irritated huff and leaned back in the worn leather chair. "Dickhead."

"Slut," Baird answered back without a note of hesitation. It wasn't quite an argument. Baird would not dignify her by calling it a fight, just a little fuss than anything else. He remembered much, much worse. The one that stood out amongst them all was when Baird had taken a total of forty two thick industrial nails and hammered them into the tires of Sarah's boyfriend's rather expensive car. He had been seventeen, fierce and infuriated with her for more reasons than he cared to admit. She had been furious with him and barely even looked in his general direction for weeks, despite the fact that they sat next to each other in most classes.

It had taken a wild party and a betrayal before Sarah came around to his way of thinking.

She put another fifty seven nails into the new tyres of her ex-boyfriend. Like any self-respecting best mate, Baird had helped. He had been so proud, even as he sat next to her in the Jacinto Police Department charged with unlawful property damage. He had very nearly died of laughter that night and kept on smiling until his very livid father had shown up to bail them out of jail.

Despite the prickly talk, the two companions drifted into a comfortable silence as Baird navigated what remained of Jacinto. Twice he had been forced to take a different route due to landslides and destroyed rubble. It was taking longer than he expected to get to the residential district. Not that it was a terribly bad thing. The mechanic dared to admit to himself that he enjoyed Sarah's company and suddenly remembered why she had been his other half for the best part of twenty years.

"How's your mother?" Sarah asked eventually as the jeep ploughed through yet another lake-like puddle. Baird felt the jeep struggle to gain traction upon the wet ground but he managed to keep control of the vehicle.

"Still a nutty old bat." He gave a grin at the thought of his hard assed mother, the woman that had patched up him wounds when he was a child then thrown him back to the wolves of the playground.

Sarah let out a laugh in the passenger's seat; a merry little twinkle that made her sound years younger. Baird had not heard her laugh like that in many years. "Some things just never change do they?"

"Most things do," Baird replied and glanced at her expanded belly again. "You never told me who the father was." The mechanic was never on first name basis with tact.

"The same one that fathered all the rest," she responded, as if the answered the question entirely.

"Yeah, but who was he? I want to go and offer him my deepest condolences."

The woman in the passenger's seat gave him a little scowl, her brow furrowed. Baird slowed the jeep down to a very slow crawl so he could get a better look of his childhood friend and companion. Her eyes did not meet his and simply watched the rain pour down with a sort of bitterness that poisoned her pretty face.

"He was a gear. That was all I really knew about him. They didn't even tell me his name."

"You really have no idea?" Baird asked with complete and utter disbelief. When she did not respond, Baird looked out the window with a clenched jaw. The neurons had fired together inside his brain and suddenly, everything made sense and could be summed up with just two simple words.

The Farm.

Baird was livid.

The jeep came to a complete halt.

"Shit Murphy, you should have fucking got a hold of me. Fuck, I would've done it if it could have spared you from something like that" A hand ran through dirty blonde hair, clenching the gelled spikes.

Sarah threw Baird a very hard stare indeed through narrowed eyes. Her eyes were not a particularly interesting shade but they were a nice shape and had always looked better annoyed in Baird's professional opinion. "Hello. E-Day. Any of that ringing a bell?"

Baird turned his attention back to the pregnant female and felt a wave of anger towards her. "I'm on the front lines," he snapped, his tone cutting.

"I didn't know if you were even alive. And because we had that fight – "

"Squabble," injected the blonde.

"Yes, 'squabble' as you call it. It wasn't even a real fight anyway. Just you throwing your toys about as usual."

Baird's grin faded. "Fuck you."

Sarah grinned, flashing her perfectly straight teeth at him that she had acquired through years of expensive orthodontic procedures. "You were as well. You were pissed because I got into Jacinto Princeton and you didn't."

Baird snorted in recollection. "I'm heaps smarter than you. It should have been me that got in."

"It was hardly my fault now was it?"

"Then you didn't tell me about it. Talk about salt in the fucking wounds."

"I didn't know how. I knew you really wanted to go and would have been so mad with me."

"It should have been easy. 'Hey, guess what Baird, I got into Princeton and you didn't. Sucks to be you' But you just fucked with my head instead."

The pregnant female gave a snort. "Then you stormed out of my place house when I finally told you."

"Right after you told me to, and I quote, 'piss off Baird'"

"You were being a child about it all."

"With fucking good reason too," replied the blonde, his tone neither friendly nor casual.

Sarah glared at him and suddenly, Baird found himself seething all over again. The atmosphere in the jeep went from amicable to fractious in three seconds flat. He knew it was completely childish but he felt furry towards his once best friend all over again. She just had to bring up all the crap about their friendship just when they were having a good time. Could she not have let it die? While a storm raged outside, another more furious one raged inside the army jeep. The blonde stared at Sarah and suddenly, he wondered why on earth he had stopped for her in the first place.

Then all of a sudden, the female's hardened features cracked into a look of deep anguish that looked so strange on her. "I'm sorry Baird. I don't know why the fuck I'm fighting with you. I should be thankful that you're alive." She reached a hand up and rubbed her suddenly glassy eyes.

Sarah never cried. Ever. Not even when she broke her arm while trying to ride his bike when they were ten. Baird's anger unwillingly deflated and the pathetic look on her face left the blonde wanting to go and jump off something tall. "It's because you're a female. It's in your genes to be a bitch." He countered with an insult because he had absolutely no idea how to respond in any other way. Baird had never been good with kind words. Humour? That the mechanic could do. Clever and witty retorts? Those he was more than happy to provide, his speciality in fact. But a comforting gesture or word was – quite frankly – beyond him. He usually did more damage than good.

"Sexist pig." Sarah shifted her gaze out onto the storm. "Can we go?"

The mechanic kicked the jeep back into motion and soon enough, they were traversing down one of the last highways in the city. "I can't believe we fought about something so pointless and stupid," Sarah remarked, keeping her eyes trained on the road. "How were we supposed to know that E-Day was just around the corner?"

Sarah let out a heavy sigh. "We took every day for granted."

"Yeah. Fucking Locust. Could have sent us a memo or something: 'Dear Humans. We intend to wipe you off the face of Sera come E-Day. Sorry for the inconvenience. Yours sincerely, Locust Horde." Baird remarked.

Sarah smiled but her face still remained saddened.

"I'm serious Baird."

"Hey, we were young and stupid." Baird paused and cracked a smile. "Well, you were at least."

She nodded. "Gods I was. I had been so mad with you that I was going to phone you and ask for the spare key back."

Baird frowned. She really had been furious with him. He thought of the steel house key dangling with his COG tags, hidden safely under his armour. It had been the spare key to the Murphy's mansion-like house a few doors down from his own, given to him by Sarah after arguments with his father had lead the blonde to crash his car overnight. She had not wanted him sleeping in the back seat of his car and insisted that he let himself in if things got too heated at home. Baird had been grateful, even if he had said so at the time.

"You know, I've still got it," he admitted.

Sarah's brown eyes widened. "Really?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

Baird gave a shrug. He did not even know why he had kept either. At some point during the Human-Locust War when things had been at their worst, the blonde had clutched his tags tightly and had thumbed the grooves in the key. Having it on his person had given Baird courage and he could not begin to fathom why. "Good luck charm I suppose. You can have them back if you want." He paused for a moment then gave her a wolfish grin. "But you'd have to take my armour off first."

Sarah wrinkled her little nose at him. "No thanks. I'll pass."

"You don't know what you're missing. Most of the female population under the age of seventeen would feed their mothers to a Brumak for the chance."

"And you have the nerve to call me a slut. You're probably worse."

"I don't like the word slut. I prefer the word Hero."

"Double standards strikes again."

"You're just jealous."

"Of a cradle snatcher like you? Not likely."

The pair slipped into a comfortable laughter that dispelled the thundercloud inside the jeep and soon enough, they approached the guarded residential zone of Jacinto City. It was even wetter in the deeper parts of the city, if that was even possible. Water pooled like miniature lakes. The raindrops hit the ground so hard that they actually bounced. To top it all off, it was very cold. Overhead, two King Ravens flew on by in a hurry towards the outskirts of the city. The sighting of a Raven was nothing new, some days the sky would be buzzing right down to the particles and atoms in the air. Thankfully, it seemed as if it would be a quiet day.

Baird halted the jeep outside the blockade to the residential zone and turned to his childhood friend. "Right then, piss off Murphy. I've shit to get done."

"You're so fucking rude sometimes," Sarah remarked with a grin, opening the truck door and looking out into the pouring rain.

The blonde raised an eyebrow. "Talk about ungrateful. You owe me by the way."

"I have three kids and a fourth on the way. How could I possibly pay you?"

Baird gave a careless shrug. "Hey, a bit of whatever would be nice."

"Not on your life Baird."

The mechanic gave a chuckle. How just like Sarah to turn down him, the most fuckable Gear in the COG army; judging by his civilian fangirls. "It was worth a shot." He looked to the granite grey, square buildings that looked an awful look like stacked bricks rather than houses. "Still, maybe I'll come visit you sometime. Get you to discharge the old Gnasher if you know what I mean."

Sarah Murphy gave a snort before she jumped out of the jeep and straight into a puddle on the passenger's side. "Yeah, and maybe I will"

"Tease," Baird fired back, knowing that she had absolutely no intention of following her promise to him through. She never did.

Then again, neither did he.

And they liked it that way.