Title: The Best Bad Birthday Ever

Author: Hana (thedreamygirl)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count (whole story): 4,211
Chapter: 1 of 2
Pairing: Nathan/Haley
Spoilers: Totally AU

Summary: Haley has had a long run of bad birthday celebrations, and it appears her nineteenth birthday won't be any different as it coincides with her first day at college. That is, until she finds a half-naked man in her bedroom.

Author's Note: Written for The And Many More… Challenge at dareyoutowrite. For those of you following my story Always Love I am working on the next chapter and I'm hoping to have it out by the end of this week. Many thanks to Christina who beta'd this for me on such short notice.

Chapter One

Haley had a bad feeling about this.

She had been feeling off-balance since this morning, but had managed to convince herself that it was just nerves, which was understandable considering it was her first day at college. The start of a new life away from home. She wouldn't be seeing her friends everyday, or her parents. Okay, so, her parents weren't usually at home everyday anyway, but most days they were.

Everybody got nervous on their first day at college. Even Taylor, no matter what she had said. So Haley had derived some comfort from the fact that the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach was just a normal case of nerves, rather than the warning signal she had received the morning of all those birthdays that went wrong.

Like her seventh birthday when her balloon had popped, stinging her face, causing all her friends to laugh at her. Or her twelfth birthday where she had specifically requested a country theme due to her then-obsession with the cartoon Toy Story. That had resulted in her falling off her horse. That might not even be the right wording, Haley mused, since she hadn't even sat on the thing. She'd misplaced her foot when trying to get on the horse and ended up putting it in the air, landing flat on her ass, with sand in her eyes.

Or how about her eighteenth birthday just last year? Her so-called best friend Peyton had decided it would be funny to push her in the vicinity of the pool. As she had fallen in, Haley's foot had somehow managed to make contact with the only cracked tile in the whole pool, resulting in a little blood and a whole lot of commotion as her parents carted her off to the hospital for an injection.

Oh, yeah. Birthdays were a real tradition in Haley's life. But not for the reasons you would think.

As Haley shut the door behind her and stepped further into what was to be her room for the next year, at least, the smell of men's cologne got even stronger.

She had a really bad feeling about this.

Haley glanced over at the twin beds and saw some luggage already in the room, placed next to the bed against the wall. Which meant she got the one next to the window. Great.

Her roommate hadn't unpacked so she didn't have anything to gauge their personality from, aside from their preference for normal, plain black luggage. Well, that and their penchant for having male guests stay over, she noted, as she breathed in the scent coming from the connecting bathroom.

Haley sighed and put one of her bags onto the bed so she could start unpacking. At least her roommate didn't have any girly pink luggage. And maybe she could talk to her about the male guests at all times of the day thing. Or at least talk her into switching beds.

In the act of unzipping her bag, Haley heard the door to the bathroom open and out of the corner of her eye she spotted bare feet padding down towards the beds. They then stopped abruptly in front of her. With a wry smile on her face she turned to face the gentleman caller, intending to appear cool and casual about the situation. But when she laid eyes on what lay above his feet, she froze.

She hadn't expected him to be quite so…wet.

Not having seen any clothes out, she had just assumed that he would have changed in the bathroom as well, rather than enter the bedroom in only his towel…and what a short towel it was.

The dark haired stranger was only a few steps away from her, but he was so much taller than her that she had to tilt her head up slightly to make contact with those bright blue eyes. That was the only place she was looking at, of course.

Well, trying to. Rather than staring at that tanned, moist chest. Desperately trying.

Finally, he broke out into a smirk. "Hi."

The sinking feeling she had had in her stomach all morning was suddenly drowned out by the fluttering in her heart.

Good, God. She felt all…girly.

"H-hi…y-you must be my roommates' boyfriend." Well, that certainly came out
smoothly.

To her surprise, he looked amused and the corners of his lips turned upwards.

"That's funny," he said, the same smile on his face.

"What?"

"I was about to say you must be my roommates' girlfriend."

Haley's face fell as the warning signal in her stomach churned louder. Uh oh.

"This is your dorm?" he asked.

Haley nodded. "And yours too?"

He held his hands up, and despite her brain being in overdrive she couldn't help but notice how the movement pulled against his towel. "Well, that's what I thought. It's the right room number."

"Huh…well…when I said I didn't have a preference for single-sex accommodation I didn't realise, the mixing of dorms would be quite so…mixed," Haley muttered.

He chuckled heartily, and the movement of his chest drew Haley's attention to his toned chest. Oh Lordy, he had great abs. Just looking at them made her feel light-headed. He had to work out. No man could be endowed with a body like that.

And, just like that, her own choice of vocabulary sent Haley's mind reeling.

At the thought of the word 'endowed', her eyes darted lower down, to his
towel and images of what lay beneath it rushed to her mind.

Wait a minute. Was she actually thinking of what he looked like naked?

What the hell was happening to her? She was the good girl. The one who didn't go out every night or get drunk or have sex – that was Taylor's territory. Undressing some guy she'd never met before with her eyes was more Taylor's style too. So what was Haley thinking trying to follow in her footsteps?

She'd always known she was a late bloomer, but she didn't think that all her absent sexual energy would hit her with a wallop at one time. But, come to think of it, when else could it hit her? She was nineteen today. Wasn't that the age that women stopped growing? Her sexual energy had to arrive today, or it never would. Taylor would tell her to be grateful that it had arrived at all.

She wasn't.

So this was going to be her nightmare for this birthday. She'd get so overcome by this rush of new hormones that she'd drool at someone whose name she didn't know. And, since that was always the way her luck went, he'd catch her at it too. Of course he'd catch her, she realised. She hadn't done anything but stare at his towel for five minutes.

And he knew she wasn't staring at his towel.

Any second now she was going to start hyperventilating. And if she opened her mouth for air she'd start babbling, which would no doubt lead to her telling him what she had just been doing.

That had to be avoided at all costs.

Haley clenched her mouth shut, before sitting down on the edge of the bed and lying down.

Even with her eyes closed she heard the smile in his voice. "Are you okay?"

He was smirking at her. She knew it. She really wanted to wipe the smirk off his face. Of course, there was more than one way to do that.

Haley put her hand on her forehead, hoping to stop the rush of hormonal activity stirring up her body and replied snappily, "What does it look like?"

He didn't say anything. Instead, Mr. Sexy moved to sit down next to her.

And not just sort of next to her. He sat down right next to her. She should have asked him to move up and give her the space he should have realised she needed, only she was too busy enjoying the feeling of his bare forearm against hers.

That was wet too.

She was preparing something to say, when he spoke again. "I'm sorry, I guess this isn't really how you planned your first day at college."

No, shit, Haley thought.

"But, in my opinion," he added, "it's turned out good for me."

Haley opened her eyes to look at him before asking her next question. "How do you figure that?"

He grinned at her, and the word rogue sprang to her mind. This cross between a grin and a smirk could definitely be described as roguish. Damn those romance novels she read this summer. They were probably contributors to this hormonal overload.

He cleared his throat before saying, "There's a hot girl in my bedroom."

Haley flushed, but felt that odd fluttering sensation again when he said she was hot. Mr. Sexy himself thought she was hot. And now she was starting to feel hot. Haley breathed deeply before pretending to ignore his second comment, and replying to what he had said at first. "Well…it's unsettling anyway to have to deal with your first day at college. Everything's weird until you get into the right balance. Until then it's all…imbalanced."

Mr. Sexy looked thoughtful. Haley hadn't known you could do that donned only in a towel, but clearly it was possible. "Isn't it unbalanced?"

Not quite the reaction she had expected. "Excuse me?"

"You said imbalanced…but I think unbalanced is the correct word."

Haley sat up straight and opened her mouth to disagree, but with a start realised he was right. It was unbalanced. She had got it wrong. And she was tutor girl! That was her one thing and now she didn't even have that anymore. Not even an hour in college and she was already losing her intellect.

What was going on with her? She was turning into a sexual creature and losing her mind in the process!

"I know that, I just said it accidentally," Haley started babbling. "Everybody makes mistakes. I mean, I knew it was unbalanced, I was just thinking about hormonal imbalance and then it slipped out and –"

"Did you just say 'hormonal'?"

This time, Haley felt her blush creep all the way down her neck and arms, and it was as if her eyes bugged out of her sockets as reality sunk in. What a pretty picture that made. She bet he didn't think she was hot anymore.

"Why did you –" he started off, amused, but then cut himself off and appeared more solemn. "Oh."

Haley was still embarrassed, but curious about his sudden lack of interest. "What?"

"No, it's okay," he shrugged.

"What?" Haley pressed, hating that she didn't understand what he was thinking. She had always hated being left out of things.

He just shrugged his shoulders meaningfully.

Haley settled her hands on her hips and glared at him. "Can you please stop doing that and tell me what you are trying to say?" He was lucky he was sexy or he wouldn't have gotten the 'please'.

That was the last thing she had time to think before he said, "You know. I get it." He dropped his voice to a whisper, "It's that time of the month for you."

Haley wanted to scream. Instead she only stared at him.

Wondering why she was still staring at him like that, he asked, "Uh…do you want me to do something?"

Yes. Lots of things.

Haley paused a moment, trying to think, but she couldn't because there was a mostly naked, dripping wet man sitting next to her. "Can you put a shirt on?" she asked.

Nathan blinked, then realisation dawned. "Ah. Because you can't have sex."

The urge to scream grew tenfold. But, instead of managing a witty retort along the lines of, "As if I'd have sex with you, anyway," (she would), Haley flipped over to lie on her stomach and buried her face in the pillow.