Author's Note: based on the following prompt from the oqpromptsandfanfics tumblr: Regina goes to Las Vegas for her cousin's bachelorette party and ends up marrying a total stranger in a drunken stupor. The logical thing would be to get a quickie divorce and pretend that this never happened. But last night Regina, in her intoxicated state, called her mother to share the good news. Now Cora, who always ragged on Regina for being unmarried and childless, not only knows about this but has told Regina's whole family from her stuck up cousin to her aging grandmother. The stranger, Robin, comes up with a plan - stay married for the next 6 months and then get a divorce after telling everyone that it just didn't work out. Regina would save face in her family by not getting a quickie divorce, but they would still be free of their mistake. Note: this story is scheduled to be updated on the 7th of every month, so as not to cut into the writing time for Breaking In. I appreciate your patience!

Her head is pounding. Throbbing. Pulsing. The pillow she's resting on is soft, the sheets are soft, but it does nothing to make her feel any less like death on toast. Oh, God, toast. Ugh. Even the idea of food, of anything, has her stomach rolling violently. She swallows, her tongue like thick cotton, and for a moment she contemplates actually getting out of this bed and heading for the bathroom, or at least opening her eyes, but it all just sounds too painful.

What the hell did they do last night?

She has memories, hazy memories, of a club on the Vegas strip, and Kathryn in her bachelorette tiara and sash, and free drinks, so many free drinks. And blue eyes, and prickly stubble against her neck, warm hands on her hips. Regina is fairly certain she behaved in a way that was less than virtuous last night, but, well, there'd just been so many shots…

God, she has to pee. Really, really has to pee. She might have to actually leave this bed.

There's a sigh next to her, deep and heavy, and her eyes snap open (then slam back shut because the light, little as it is, is excruciating).

Oh, God.

She shifts, just a little, a tentative twitch of muscles, and is vividly aware all of a sudden that all she feels against her skin is cotton. Just sheets, nothing more.

She is naked.

She is naked, and there is someone else in this bed, and she's gone from being fairly certain she was less than virtuous to absolutely positive she did something slutty.

"Oh, God…"

That one's out loud, she realizes, when the man she hasn't had the guts to roll over and face lets out a little grunt, and a "Shhh…."

Oh, good, she's not the only one with a miserable hangover then.

If she doesn't get up soon, she will wet this bed, and as mortifying as that would be if she was alone, it would be immeasurably more so with an audience. So she moves. Gingerly. Pushes herself up on arms that ache (her head, oh God, her head, the pain goes sharper, stabs and stabs into her temples, the back of her eye, Jesus, God, she's going to die), draws her legs over the edge of the bed slowly, blows out a breath at the swell of nausea she feels just from sitting.

She cracks her eyes open again and through blurred vision, she realizes this is not her room. This must be his room. Great.

She has to swivel her head to find the door to the bathroom (either that, or she's about to pee in a closet), and it is agony.

Regina manages to stand (and her bladder goes full-tilt then, the kind of painful, bloated pressure that has her unsure whether she should quicken her steps or slow them), and make her way to the bathroom, more grateful than she ever thought she'd be to discover it has a separate area for the toilet. A separate little room, with a door, which means she can flip on the bathroom light (oh, God, torture, light of any kind is torture), shut the door behind her, then duck into that little toilet alcove and leave the lights off in there, crack the door and pee in near blessed darkness.

She is dying.

Alcohol poisoning is a definite possibility. Everything hurts. Even peeing hurts, and she seems to do that for days. She didn't know the human bladder could hold this much, and her head is pounding, pounding, her stomach hot and unsteady. She drops her elbows to her knees, and drops her head into shaky hands, fisting her fingers gently in her hair as her bladder empties.

When she finishes, she lifts her head, palms scrubbing across her face as she does and she feels something against her cheek. Cool and metallic. She blinks and frowns, looks at her hand. Swallows.

No.

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

NO.

There, right there, on her left ring finger, glinting in the dim light of the room, is a gold band. A wedding band.

For a moment everything goes a bit blurry - more so than it already was - and she can feel heat and panic prickle and crawl along her skin. She didn't. She couldn't have. Who did she - oh, God.

The punch of adrenaline has her stomach lurching again, and this time she can't do anything to stop it.

It's a small, miniscule, itty bitty token of fortune that she manages to grasp for the trash can in time to avoid emptying the contents of a night of drinking and bad decisions directly onto the floor.

.::.

He can hear her.

Robin can hear her, over the thudding sound of his own heart in his ears, he can hear the woman he'd clearly spent the night with retching and coughing and dear God it must be like The Exorcist in there…

And he knows the polite thing to do, the chivalrous thing, would be to get up and make sure she's alright, but he'd rather more to drink last night than might have been wise, and right now the idea of moving sounds impossible. So he tells himself she'd probably prefer her privacy while she bolts her guts up in his loo, and stays put, his eyelids glued tightly shut, his cheek against the pillow, breathing shallowly both for fear of what a deep breath might do to him and because he can smell how badly he needs a toothbrush with every exhale.

Last night had been… Well, it had been wild, to say the least. There are empty patches, particularly late in the evening. Or early in the morning, as it were. Blanks he cannot account for, but he remembers her. Remembers meeting her anyway.

Regina. He remembers her name, at least. Remembers that it was Regina, because he'd said something about royalty, about it being fitting for her to be named as a queen. In his defense, he hadn't been sober at the time either. It wasn't their first stop, that club. No, it had been perhaps their second or third? He's not entirely certain - he's spent much of this trip doing some form of partying or another. The whole excursion was meant to reclaim his good nature, since John and Will and August have told him again and again that his years of single parenthood since Marian's death have made him a terrible, sadsack, stick-in-the-mud. They'd dragged him here, had had him leave Roland back home with the babysitter he so adores so they could all "let loose" in Sin City for a few days.

He's gotten a bit looser than he planned, it seems.

But the boys will be proud of him, he thinks with a touch of bitter resentment. They would - they will - a night spent blotto with a beautiful woman (a night he recalls involving soft breasts and a wet mouth, dark eyes and gasping moans) would be just what they think he needs.

Whoopee for him.

The toilet flushes. Christ, that's loud. It shouldn't be that loud.

He needs aspirin.

Aspirin, and water, and to never have to move again.

Another flush (dear God, please, stop with the noise…).

He squeezes his eyes shut harder then, as if that will somehow keep out the sound.

Minutes pass. Or maybe seconds, or maybe years, he's not sure. She doesn't emerge, and Robin somehow manages to slip back into something resembling a doze, hovering in that space just between sleep and waking.

.::.

At least her new husband is attractive.

That's what Regina things, bitterly as she finally emerges from the bathroom, wrapped in a fluffy white hotel robe, all evidence of her excessive vomiting washed away (everything except the smell that still lingers, but what can she do about that?). She's borrowed some of his mouth wash (but half of everything that's his is hers now, right? Oh God, oh God...), and wiped away some of her smeared makeup. Not enough to leave her face bare, not enough to make her look like less of a hot mess, but enough to get rid of the heroin chic look she'd been sporting.

He's still asleep, the asshole, but at least he's attractive.

At least if she had to have the incredibly idiotic misfortune of going home with a stranger, of please-say-it's-not-true marrying a stranger, he's not someone she's horrified to have woken up beside.

She remembers him now. Now that she can see him. Mr. Blue Eyes, name she cannot quite recall. But she remembers the way he'd smiled at her, those dimples, the lilt of his accent. His friends had been drunk and annoying, but he'd been a few drinks behind them, and while their two groups had set up a semi-permanent mingle (they'd occupied neighboring couches in the club, she recalls), Mr. Blue Eyes had pulled her into an actual conversation. A flirtatious one, but one nonetheless.

There had been dancing, and a drink that glowed in the dark. And more dancing, with his hands on her hips, on her back, on her ass. He'd smelled good. The whole place smelled like booze and sweat and dancing, but up close, he'd smelled like pine. They'd had to yell to hear each other, had missed half of the conversation, but he'd been… nice. Nice, and sexy, and a decent dancer, and she remembers that she'd rather enjoyed his wandering hands, remembers…

She gulps at a vivid memory of him behind her, her body molded to his as they danced, curves pressing and sliding and him hard against her rear, remembers her hand falling over his against her belly and guiding it down, down, down…

Oh God, she definitely did something slutty last night.

At least you married him, a dark, sarcastic part of her mutters, and Regina actually snorts a laugh into her palm, tears pricking her eyes for a moment because this is just a mess.

A horrible, horrible mess.

Vegas weddings are easily annulled, right? This can all be undone with a little bit of embarrassing paperwork, and nobody will ever have to know. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right? And those traitorous bitches who let her run off into the night with this handsome stranger and get married will keep their mouths shut, or so help them, she will rain down terror upon them and their families the likes of which they cannot even imagine.

She's not sure how, but she will.

Okay.

Time to get this handled.

Time to undo this mistake.

Starting right now.

.::.

The bed jostles, and Robin lets out an undignified oof!, waking fully as she plops herself down right next to his hip and gropes for his hand.

"What the bloody, sodding hell-"

"Shut up," she hisses, her fingers gripping his left hand tightly, twisting it and God, what did he ever do to her to deserve this kind of treatment? "And wake up."

"I'm awake," he grumbles, rolling onto his back and swallowing against the press of nausea before blinking his eyes open.

She's stunning.

He remembers her as beautiful, but she is… Even like this, even looking pale and grouchy with faded mascara and kissed-bare lips, she is stunning. He's suddenly wishing he could remember every technicolor detail of the night before. Especially considering the look on her face - the one that says last night will never be happening again and probably shouldn't have in the first place.

"Do you remember what we did last night?" she questions, accusatory but also a bit desperate, a bit lost.

"Not as much as I'd like."

It's out of his mouth before he can help it, and he winces even before she slaps at his arms, her face pulling into a scowl. Even wincing makes his tender head throb harder. He should really look into that aspirin...

"You're so much less attractive with your mouth open," she grumbles, crossing her arms tightly over herself and looking a bit disgusted, but with him or herself, he can't tell. The robe makes her look small, loose against her shoulders, and she tugs at the collar with one hand, closing where it gaps, hiding herself.

Shit.

He's an absolute arse.

He sits then (and oh, there's the brief urge to heave again), and sighs, reaching out to touch the soft terry at her elbow. "I'm sorry," he tells her sincerely. "That was crass. I'm just a bit thrown, is all. And you are incredibly beautiful."

"I look like hell."

"If you look like hell, love, I will dance with the devils."

She softens then, just a little, the corner of her mouth twitching into something that is almost a smile before she pushes it down and away. Her brow knits, something like a wince, then smoothes again. It has him wondering if she's battling the same sort of vise-to-the-skull feeling that he is.

And then she flattens him.

"We're married."

Robin blinks. Frowns. "What?"

She holds up her left hand, then looks pointedly at his, and when Robin looks down his jaw drops. There's a gold band there that hadn't been the night before, a cheap thing, but there nonetheless. Robin's mouth goes drier, words sticking in his throat as he flounders, jaw working, trying to form words that won't come.

"Yeah," she agrees. "That's pretty much what I said."

"I…" His voice squeaks, breathy and tight, so he clears his throat and tries again. "That I don't remember."

"That makes two of us," she tells him, her voice clipped and tense. "And as cute as you are - with your mouth shut - I think we can both agree this needs to be annulled as soon as humanly possible, and then never spoken of again?"

Robin nods, still trying to wrap his head around it - married? He had married her? In the middle of the night in Vegas, he'd married her? He is trying, desperately trying to put together the missing pieces of the night, how they went from piss drunk and naked to married, because he's fairly certain the first two wouldn't leave them in any shape to pursue the third.

"Great. So, I will look into the particulars, but in the meantime, I think we should exchange personal info - name, phone number, and address at least, so that-"

"You don't remember my name?" he asks her curiously, watching the blush flame across her cheeks as she looks away, clears her throat. For some reason, he finds he's just a tad hurt by that. But then he thinks what it must be like to wake up next to someone you can't even call by name and discovering that you are, in fact, married to them, and decides there are more important things than a bruised ego.

"You remember mine?" she challenges, looking back to him, brows lifted.

"Yes, Regina, I do."

Her expression sours, her shoulders slumping as she mutters, "Don't be so smug."

She's reaching for her phone, parked nearby on the nightstand, as he smirks and tells her, "Mine's Robin."

"Fine. Robin, why don't we-" She has her phone in hand now, has lit up the screen, and suddenly she's gone pale. She sucks in a shuddering breath, her mouth open in a shocked O. "No," she exhales. "Oh, no, no, Regina, you didn't…"

Robin frowns and leans closer, trying to get a good look at her phone. "What is it?"

The look she gives him is one of abject horror, panic, and she turns the phone to face him. She hasn't even unlocked it yet, but the screen is chock full with notifications - well wishes, and congratulations, some in ALL CAPS and with many question marks - and at the bottom one from a Cora Mills that reads Will you be bringing this new husband of yours to Kathryn's wedding?

Her hollow voice shakes as she blurts, "I told my mother."