Disclaimer: Not mine...
A/N: Another chapter! :) I seriously love you all! You are definitely my most loyal readers and reviewers out of all my stories. I'm trying to update my stories an equal amount, but you guys get the edge if I'm ever lacking in time. And I love to read any rambling. Seriously tell me everything that you think about this fic. I love the longest ones. And even tell me what you'd like to see in the future. Also, I reference an actual OTH scene from 9x10 in this chapter that had Dan, Chris, and Julian in it. Anyway, please review (even if you're new to the story).
Chapter 4: You Can't Break a Broken Heart
Mia opened her eyes to find Chris angled above her, holding her camera. He smiled down at her with his typical deviant flare, snapping a picture with the full flash.
"Geezus!" Mia cried out, pulling her blanket over her head to cover herself. "What the hell are you doing?"
"I just wanted to prove to Chase that you sleep like a dead person. We had a bet going," Chris explained, snapping another one.
Mia grumbled, throwing her pillow at him. "Well, I'm not sleeping anymore."
"No," Chris agreed. "Now I'm taking these for my personal collection."
Mia gritted her teeth. "Do not lump me in with your bevy of groupies that were willing to pose for you once upon a time."
Mia hopped off her bed to the floor, walking determinedly to the back of the bus to avoid him. She went into the unbelievably small bus bathroom to do her morning routine.
Chris followed her to the back, standing just outside the door.
"You think Chris Keller has groupies?" he yelled through the door, leaning his back against it. "I do. I'm just touched that you know so much already. Maybe I need to add you to my most adoring fan list for the future."
Mia opened the door suddenly, causing Chris to stumble backward.
"Careful," he muttered under his breath when he regained his balance. "If I go down, there'll be no show tomorrow."
Mia fixed him with her knowing smile. "Are you suggesting that Mia Catalano can't hold her own as the main event of a show?"
Chris' eyes widened in excitement. "Did Mia Catalano just refer to herself in the third person?"
Mia crossed her arms across her chest, realizing her mistake.
"I'm so proud," he spoke softly, sniffling.
Chris pulled her in for an inescapable hug. Mia stood there wordlessly at first until Chris' hands began travelling lower and lower down her backside.
She stepped away from him, slapping his hand roughly.
"It's still morning, Chris," Mia complained. "At least give me an hour to wake up before you start trying to feel me up again."
"You heard the girl," a strong, feminine voice with a British accent ordered. "I want a five-foot distance at all times."
Chris turned to the built-in couch to find Miranda Stone, the gorgeous and tan-skinned music manager.
"Weren't you deported back across the pond?" Chris asked, narrowing his eyes unkindly.
Miranda smiled contemptuously back at him. "And then I married a US citizen, so Sire Records took me back graciously to babysit the two of you."
"What a prestigious position for someone of your qualifications," Chris quipped, sitting down on the couch next to her. "I still don't know why we need someone from the label here anyway. I'm conducting myself rather honorably." He put his arm around her shoulder.
"It's company policy. That way there can be no lawsuits." She eyed Chris pointedly. "Plus, we need to make sure that all of your shows run smoothly."
"I'd make sure of that," Chris argued.
"Well, unlike me, you're hardly qualified and you're a spoiled American brat that hits on everything in sight." Miranda pulled his arm off her shoulders, throwing it back at him.
Chris' jaw dropped. "Rude. Great. Now you're forcing me to rethink everything I've concluded about foreign chicks."
Miranda stood up, smiling less-than-cordially still. "I'll be at the front of the bus with the rest of the band." She turned to Mia. "Scream if you need anything. You know, breakfast or my handgun."
Mia smiled widely. "I'll definitely take you up on the first one." She glanced at Chris. "And I'll keep you posted on the second thing."
Chris grimaced unhappily. "Chris Keller can really feel the love."
Miranda rolled her eyes at him, walking to the front of the bus.
Mia grabbed her guitar and sat down next to Chris on the couch, preparing to practice a song.
"Am I going to get a sneak preview of Mia Catalano's infamous talents?" His eyes glossed over her body.
She ignored him, striking her first chord on the guitar. "Won't be so easy, this time to hurt me," she sang out loudly. "You can try, and this time, oh baby, there are no tears left here to dry. If you think you can wound me like before. If you think you can do that anymore. Won't get too far, no."
"You can't break a broken heart," Mia continued her acoustic version of her song. "So try your best now, baby. Try your best to break me. You can't break a broken heart. No damage you can do now. I'm immune to you now. You can't break what broke apart. There's nothing you can do to me no more. You can't break a broken heart."
Chris Keller raised his hand like a student in school, interrupting her. She paused, sighing, turning to him expectantly.
"What?" she demanded.
"Your lyrics," Chris explained. "They're just so depressing."
"No, they're not," Mia argued, setting her guitar to the side of her.
"You can't break what broke apart?" Chris repeated her words.
"So maybe some of my songs have darker themes," Mia allowed. "But—"
"—But nothing. They're beautiful and tragic. And everyone knows that that's what makes a genius in a musician."
Mia frowned, surprised by his offhand compliment.
"What's your point then?" she asked him.
"Does Chris Keller always need to have a point?"
Mia cocked her head to the side, knowing that he very well knew the answer to that question.
"Fine," he began. "Your words reminded me a lot of something that Dan Scott said to me before Mission: Save Nathan Scott's Ass from Psycho Foreigners could commence!" He smiled, knowing Miranda had heard him.
Mia raised her head higher, fully intrigued. "I never really heard what happened with all of that. How did self-obsessed Chris Keller end up in the saving party of Nathan Scott anyway?"
Chris was instantly reminded of his conversation with Dan:
"You sure you've thought this through, Keller?" Dan asked, walking forward with a gun in his hand.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Chris demanded, turning to face him.
"You say you want to help Haley. You have a thing for her," Dan spoke harshly. "You have since high school," he pointed out.
"So?" Chris Keller asked sheepishly, looking avoidantly to the side.
"So from where I stand this is a lose-lose for you. If you don't bring Nathan back, you've failed her. If you do, you lose her anyway. Once Nathan comes home you're out of the picture."
Chris pulled himself back to the present. "I did it for Haley," he admitted squarely.
"What?" Mia asked, taken off guard.
"Well, Nathan Scott is hardly worth dying over. He's attractive, I guess, but—"
"What are you saying then?" Mia pulled her legs beneath her, willing Chris to get to the point.
Chris looked down at the ground. "Haley needs Nate. No matter how many times I tried to convince her otherwise, she came to that same lousy conclusion." Chris shook his head, dismayed. "And yet, when I met her all those years ago, can you imagine what I first thought?"
"That you had a lot in common?" Mia guessed, thinking over some of the stories that Haley had told her about Chris in the past. "That you two were possibly better suited than her and Nathan?"
"No," Chris spoke like it should've been obvious. "I thought that she was really, really hot. The whole music thing was just a perk."
Mia's lips quirked up. "Liar."
Chris smiled back at her. "Maybe, but why I fell for her isn't really the point of this story. It's everything that's happened since then."
Mia nodded, understanding. There never really was a why that perfectly explained the reason you fell for someone. It just happened, wonderfully and inexplicably. It'd only happened to Mia once, but the memories were still vivid.
"Haley needed Nathan," Chris went on. "But what was worse than that is that I also realized that Nate was far better for her in every way possible."
Chris leaned backward, wrinkling his forehead. "You know, the whole time that Haley and I were on tour, she was heartbroken over her split with Nate. I always knew that he'd be in her heart, but then she left and went back to him. The only problem was that Nathan wasn't too keen on taking her back just yet. He gave her the cold shoulder for a long time. It made me realize that the only thing I cared about was her happiness after all. I did all I could in my misguided way to get them back together."
Mia eyed him thoughtfully. "Who knew that Chris Keller was a big hopeless romantic at heart?"
Chris smiled half-heartedly. "There was this one time that Nathan was bitching me out—" Chris started.
"—Big surprise," Mia cut in.
"It was over something stupid that I guarantee was my fault. You know what he said to me after I'd screwed up for the thousandth time?"
Mia shook her head.
"He told me that 'Haley is the one that suffers the most.' That rang true even last year when Nate was kidnapped by those crazy ass pro-killers. Haley was a mess—a heartbroken, empty mess. She needed Nate back. I just needed her to be happy again, so I did what I could. I helped bring him back for her."
"And then you lost her again?" Mia guessed, surprising herself with the pity she actually felt for him.
He shook his head. "I lost what I never had," he clarified. "That's how it was always meant to be."
"You don't think that in other life or in another place that you'd have had a shot with her?"
Chris just kept shaking his head. "I don't believe in all that what-if crap. I believe in choices and feelings. Haley fell in love with Nathan and fought to get him back, figuratively and literally. I fell for Haley and I eventually learned that you don't mess with that kind of love. You do what you can to protect it."
"But why?" Mia demanded. "Why were you willing to do so much for her if in the end you had to lose her?"
Chris shrugged his shoulders meaningfully. "Because she's worth it...and because it was the right thing to do. Chris Keller can do that every once in a while."
Mia took a deep breath. "That's pretty deep coming from Chris Keller with all of his notoriety."
"I've told people I'm mysterious," he simply supplied. "No one seems to believe me."
"That because we're never really listening," Mia joked.
It was all she could do while she was still processing everything he'd just revealed to her. It explained a lot about him.
Sure, he was a cocky musician that fed off the approval of others, but weren't most musicians like that?
He had loved someone just like her. Stranger still, he had sacrificed in more ways than Mia could ever imagine. He was mysterious. Mia couldn't deny that her interest was piqued.
"So how do my lyrics remind you of all that?" she asked at last.
Chris smiled in spite of everything. "I thought it'd be obvious." He stood up suddenly, giving her one last glance. "It's in the title after all." He walked away from her toward the front of the bus.
Mia thought over that. Her title, You Can't Break a Broken Heart, held so much personal meaning for her. It was unfathomable that it could hold just as much meaning for someone like Chris Keller.
Mia smiled, accepting for the first time that there was someone just as broken in love as she was. She held onto hope that there was still a way to fix all of that. Maybe even with Chris Keller's misguided help.
A/N: This was all very heartbreaking to write. Sorry if it wasn't as funny as the other chapters. I think that Mia had to learn all of this about Chris though. I don't know about all of you, but I truly believed that Chris loved Haley. Don't get me wrong, I'm a Naley fan through and through. But there are moments when you can tell that it was more than just a game to him and more than just the music. Like in 3x09 when Nathan and Chris are talking. Chris just gave Nathan all of Haley's demos and music fully paid for with his most prized guitar. Nate says to him, "I guess this makes us even." and then Chris replies by saying, "Maybe so, but that's not why I did it." The implications are there. Thoughts? Please review. ;)