One Tree Hill 1. Chapter 1

Not So Bad

She wakes up in an unfamiliar bed with a pounding headache. She isn't really sure how she got here, that would freak any normal person out but this is Rachel Gatina we're talking about here. This isn't really new to her and in fact it's kind of how she starts every Saturday morning but when she rolls over and sees Chris Keller asleep next to her she starts to wonder exactly what she did last night. The clock on his nightstand reads 5:47AM and she decides it's to early to sneak out so instead she rolls over and goes back to sleep.

"_What the fuck are you doing, Keller?" she asks when she sees him stapling a piece of paper to the bulletin board in front of the school._

" _Putting up info about my show Friday night on the bar on 5__th__ street." Chris replied as Rachel looked over the poster and laughed._

"_You're only the opening act."_

"_Yeah? So?"_

"_Well I hate to break it to you but Amy is having a big party that night so I doubt anyone will show up to your little show."_

_Chris rolled his eyes before speaking again, "Whatever, Red. You know you want a piece of the Keller."_

"_Yeah, that's exactly it." She responded before she walked off to join the rest of the cheerleaders. _

_Friday rolls around and Keller actually thinks putting it in the schools announcements might make people conceder going to his gig instead of the party of the year. She thinks his hope might be cute if it wasn't so pathetic._

"_So I'm thinking about wearing that black v neck with the ripped jeans to Amy's tonight, the one I bought last week at Forever 21." She whispered to Brooke as the teacher went on about how to factor equations. _

"_Didn't anyone tell you, her rents totally hosed the party they decided not to go to wherever they where going and she had to cancel." _

"_What the hell am I supposed to do now?" she asked, "I can probably get us into a party at Duke tonight, wanna go?"_

"_Nah, Peyton's taking me to some sort of art thing. Sorry." The bell rings and Rachel sighs, she can't just sit at home on a Friday night._

_She gets dressed up anyway, figuring someone has to know of a party or something happening around town but everyone suddenly decided to be lame, even Bevin ditched her to hang out with her cat. It's 10:40 when she finally caves in and drives to the bar where Chris is playing. He only had two songs left in his set when she walked in but he actually sounded pretty good. She ordered herself a couple beers and is leaning against the wall holding it out to him when he finally jumps off the stage._

"_Well, well, well, look who suddenly had a change of heart." Chris smiled as he took the bottle from her hand. _

"_The party got canceled, you're my only choice so don't be to flattered." She replied as she took a pull from her own._

"_I'll take what I can get." He shrugged, "You look hot tonight."_

"_I always look hot." She replied as she drained the last of the liquid from her bottle, "Buy me a drink, super star."_

"_Sure thing, red." The next band started to play shortly after they'd gotten a 3__rd__ beer and Chris had to yell over the music when he ordered it._

"_Wanna go outside, I can't hear you in here?" Rachel put her hand to her ear with a confused expression on her face and instead of repeating it he grabbed her hand and pulled her out the door._

"_I said I couldn't hear you." He said once the door shut behind them._

"_All I said was that you sounded OK, you know, if you're into that kind of thing."_

"_Is that a compliment?" he asked._

"_Well it's as close to one as you're ever gonna get." She replied. _

"_I'll take it." He said back with a laugh and she shook her head and smiled._

"_You have a really pretty smile." He said, almost sounding surprised himself. "I never noticed before."_

"_How much did you drink before I got here?"_

"_I mean it, red. You always look hot but I never noticed how gorgeous you are." She realized then that he still had a grip on her hand and she pulled it away._

"_Thanks Keller now lets go back there and get super wasted." He just nods and follows her back into the bar._

_By the time they walk out again they're both stumbling and falling all over each other. The bartender had called a cab for them so they sat on the curb and waited for it to come. Her head fell onto his shoulder and she laughed when he said something about how bad the other band had been. _

"_Hey Rach?" He says after it got quiet again. "Wanna sleep over?" She nods and he plants a kiss on the top of her head._

"_You missed." She said as she looked up from his shoulder, her eyes meeting his._

"_What do you mean?"_

"_I mean you missed." She said again before she reached up to pull him down, his lips meeting hers._

_They're still kissing when the taxi pulls up to the curb and honks and they pull apart long enough to stand up and get in the back of the car. Once the door is shut his lips are on hers again._

_Chris pays the driver and they both hop out of the car, Rachel skipping off in front of him. She pulls her shirt off right there on his front porch and sure it's late and the odds of anyone seeing her are slim but damn._

"_Can't you wait until we get inside." He says as he tries to focus on unlocking the door._

"_Seems a lot more fun this way." She responds. _

_He finally gets the door open and manages to pull her inside, shaking his head before he reattached their lips, "Chris Keller doesn't share." He adds as they head up the stairs._

When she wakes up she feels his hand running up and down her back and she wonders if he's half asleep and doesn't remember who is in the bed next to him but then he leans over, kisses her shoulder, and whispers "Morning beautiful." And yeah, maybe waking up next to Chris Keller isn't such a bad thing after all.


	2. Chapter 2

It starts about a week after the first time they hook up, it's almost midnight and she hears a knock on her window. When she turns the light on she notices Chris freaking Keller standing on a tree branch, smiling like it's not crazy that he's at her house in the middle of the night. He asks if he can crash with her and somehow she ends up saying yes. She doesn't ask why, and he doesn't offer any explanation, just gets down to his boxers and crawls into bed next to her.

Surprisingly, he's still there when she wakes up their bodies pressed together. Her alarm goes off not even 5 minutes later and Chris is up within seconds pulling his clothes on.

"See you at school, Red." He called from the ground after he crawled back through her window, leaving her to wonder why he'd come in the first place, and why he couldn't just use the door like a normal person.

They don't talk about it at school; he greets her like he always does, sending her a wink as he walked off to class.

He knocks on her window three more times that week, and as they're climbing into bed she says, "I'll leave it unlocked from now on, so you don't have to keep waking me up." He nods and pulls her into him and she realizes she kind of misses him on the nights that he doesn't show up.

A couple weeks pass and he's spending nearly every night at her house, she's tried to suggest that he use the door but he just laughs and insists that, that wouldn't be any fun. Sometimes they talk, others he decides that he would rather just make-out, and then there are days that they just go to sleep.

"Why don't you just ride to school with me?" She says one day when he's getting dressed. "I mean, you're already here and I don't mind."

He says he can't, because he doesn't have any clothes and she shrugs, watching him climb down the tree and walk over to his truck. The next night when he opens the window he has a bag over his shoulder and she raises her brow at him.

"For school in the morning." He says simply, as if it was obvious.

So that's how they start this new little routine. She's still a little shocked the next morning when she wakes up to the sound of his voice coming from the bathroom, of course he sings in the shower. He comes out just as her alarm goes off, a towel around his waist.

"It's all yours, gorgeous."

She laughs, shoving him lightly as she walked into the bathroom.

People stare when she pulls into her parking space at the front of the school, both of them hopping out. When Peyton asks Chris says that his truck wouldn't start and he asked Rachel to give him a ride, she figures that will buy them about a week before people start asking again.

She knew someone would find out eventually, so she wasn't really shocked the day Brooke came barging into her room, mouth hanging open slightly at the sight of Rachel and Chris in bed together. There was no use in trying to deny it, there was evidence of him all over the place; his clothes spread with hers all over the room, his stuff in the shower. She doesn't ask any questions right then, but Rachel knows they're coming from the look on her face.

She had to know, she decided after about a month and a half. Her light was still on when he hopped onto the floor.

"Waiting up for me, huh?" he asked with a smirk.

"Why do you come here every night, don't you miss your house?"

"Rach…"

"I wasn't gonna ask." She said, "But it's been over a month, and you've been here almost every day, don't your parents wonder where you are?"

"They would if they weren't in California." He said after a minute, "I told them I was staying with a friend."

"Wait," she said after a minute, a confused expression on her face. "Start again please."

He explains that his parents moved to California about a month and a half ago. They sold the house, and packed their things. They agreed that Chris could stay behind with a friend if he wanted to finish up high school with his friends.

"So where do you stay when you're not here?" she asked, her thumb tracing patterns on his knee.

"The park." He answered with a shrug. "The rest of my stuff is in storage across town.

"Can it all fit in your truck?" she asked after a minute.

"It might take a couple loads, but I think so, why?"

"Cause you're gonna be busy tomorrow bringing it all here."

"Rachel, I can't ask you to let me stay here."

"Why not, you pretty much already live here."

They argue for a little bit longer, but she gets her way eventually and the next day she rides with him as he picks up all of his stuff.

They spend the rest of the weekend organizing it all, she makes him move the dresser from the guest room into hers so that he'd have room for all of his stuff and he argued for about 5 seconds that he should probably just sleep in the guest room.

It's a bit more of an adjustment than she originally thought, having him there 24/7, it's not a bad thing, she's just not used to having another person around. She's not sure where they stand anymore, around the house they act like a couple but when they get to school everything changes.

He's taken on cooking dinner at night because he thinks he needs to do something for her in exchange for letting him live there. He doesn't really, but he's a good cook so she doesn't argue. She asks him about their situation one day as they eat and somehow it turns into an argument. She tosses his pillows out into the hallway and tells him to enjoy sleeping on the couch before slamming the door in his face.

It feels weird, knowing that he's downstairs asleep and she has the bed all to her self. Somewhere in all of this mess, the other side of the bed had simply become his side, and it felt wrong when he wasn't there. As if he was reading her mind the door slowly creaked open, there eyes meeting as he crawled into the bed, kissing her shoulder, then her neck before landing on her lips.

"I'm sorry." He said against her lips. "I do want to be with you, I just don't want to mess this up"

"You won't."

"You promise?"

"I promise." She agreed, leaning in and brushing her lips over his again.

He smiled, nodding a bit. "I guess I'm yours then."

When they walk into school the next day hand and hand Brooke laughs, pulling the red head into a congratulations hug. "It's about time you two made it official, you're practically like married."

Both Rachel and Chris made a face at that, maybe some day, but for right now they where just happy to be where they where right now.


End file.
