Hey guys, I just thought I woud try this new one-shot. The idea just wouldn't go away so let me know what you think.

And I don't own One Tree Hill or its characters.

Dreams be Dreams

She didn't want to see his eyes when she slept. Or feel his hands on her in her dreams. She didn't want it to be the memory of his touch that caused her sleepless nights, or his face to be what haunted her subconscious.

But it didn't matter what her mind wanted, because her heart wanted something else. It wanted someone she didn't want to admit to. Not anymore.

The thoughts threatened to consume her, the embers of the past refusing to die. She had given him so much, but got nothing in return. Nothing but a feeling of longing that she wanted desperately to squash.

Their split had been mutual, both caught up in a world that they didn't quite fit into; a relationship that only existed in order to fit the mold.

They were different people back then, lesser versions of themselves. But, somehow with each other they had been their most honest selves. Too bad they had been too stubborn to change back then, to change for each other.

But stubbornness had been defeated by an overwhelming desire to change for someone else. He had become a better person, a better man, and she had watched as love began to change the very core of who he was. A love that changed him. A love that was not her.

She could admit too, that she had chosen her own path, chosen to be the better half for someone far more deserving than him. For someone she had been proud to love, but not lucky enough to have it last.

They had both experienced life-altering love with someone else, and had both been bitten in return.

The reformed jock had fallen, and once again the man she secretly lusted after began to reemerge. She loved him this way, faulted and jaded, more human than his perfect alter-ego. She supposed that this was true because she was not perfect; she had never been the paradigm of virtue. And she was okay with that.

She too had seen the transformation between her past and present self. She had opened up to love and had been clobbered in return. But she guessed that was just the way life was. Some people just weren't meant to float on the clouds and live in a perfect world. Like she said before she had never been perfect.

And so with time they began to reconnect. A quiet word, a shared pain, it was all they could give each other. The spark of the past trying to flicker attempting to ignite a new flame. But they couldn't go back down that road. They didn't want to. At least that's what she told herself.

But her dreams betrayed her.

They welcomed the forbidden tryst, the lines of friendship and loyalty beginning to blur in the alternate world. The world in which she could admit that she still craved his touch and longed for his caresses. The world in which everything else faded away.

But that was dreams, and the reality was far more confusing. They had become the king and queen of baggage, carrying around more than their fair share. For most this would be too heavy of a burden, but for the pair the load lightened when they were together, at least hers did.

As she locked eyes on the figure taking shape on her sketchpad, she couldn't help but curse the heavens for making her feel those feelings again, for letting that overwhelming need for him creep back into her veins. As she perfected his chiseled features and chilling eyes, she couldn't help but fall just a bit.

But falling would not work this time, they would never work this time. Nothing had changed, had it?

He was still the same arrogant boy that had broken her heart. She was still the same stubborn girl that wouldn't let him in. But something had shifted, and they had both grown up a little, and maybe even become different versions of those same people.

But even those versions couldn't make it work. So now she would just have to lie in bed and wait to feel his touch on her skin, his eyes looking into her soul, for her subconscious to give into her desires.

Because that was the only way that she could still want him. Because in the real world nothing good could come out of Peyton Sawyer lusting after Nathan Scott.

Nothing good at all.