Season one, after everything goes down with Brooke.
She hadn't expected to see him there, but she wasn't altogether surprised when she did. She knew he'd been practicing every hour of the day, trying to get back what the accident had stolen from him.
He looked around as she tiptoed in, his expression questioning, tinged with hope – or something like it, at least.
Peyton smiled awkwardly, and gestured towards her forgotten backpack on the bleachers.
"I'm just gonna…."
He nodded in understanding, turning his attention back to the hoop, but seemingly unsure if he should simply continue his practice.
"Ignore me," she said, picking up on his hesitation, and Lucas couldn't help but smile wryly.
If that were at all possible, he'd probably have done it a long time ago.-
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Peyton slung her bag over her shoulder, and turned to watch the basketball hit the rim cruelly, bouncing to the ground with a great thud of defeat. She winced for him.
"You know what's a good hobby, Lucas?" she called, her voice echoing across the gym.
He turned to look at her, a questioning eyebrow raised.
"Stamp collecting," she returned loftily, walking towards him. "Or bird watching. I hear the Carolina wildlife's really something."
Lucas couldn't help but crack a smile as the blonde arrived opposite him. "Thanks," he replied dryly. "I'll bear that in mind."
They smiled at each other for a few brief seconds, the silence enveloping them.
"I really suck that bad, huh?" he asked eventually.
"Well," Peyton tilted her head in consideration. "Right now you kinda do. But you'll get it back," she said quietly, confidently, looking him in the eye.
He sighed heavily. "I don't know."
"You will," she repeated, without a hint of doubt. "But…"
I'm worried about you, she wanted to say. I don't want you to be hurt again, I believe in you, but please be careful"
She settled for the vaguest, most benign entreaty she could think of.
"Just…don't push it, ok?"
Lucas had heard similar advice many times from people whose opinion he valued greatly, and had wilfully disregarded it just as many times. To her he simply replied, "Ok," and meant it.
"Ok," she repeated with a nod, apparently satisfied.
With that, Peyton was gone, striding out of the gym quickly, her messy ponytail bouncing behind her. Lucas didn't know when their next conversation would be.
Ever since everything had imploded in such spectacular fashion, their paths hadn't crossed often. Neither of them were stupid. They knew public interaction wasn't on the cards, and private interaction… well, that was what had gotten them into this mess in the first place.
Lucas gazed at the basketball hoop in front of him, giving it one last shot before he did as she had asked, and headed home.
To his infinite surprise, the ball went in.
Technically, it wasn't a great shot. It was clumsy, uninspiring, and probably owed more to luck than skill. All this he knew. But still…it went in.
He smiled as he retrieved the ball, grabbed his hoodie and headed towards the exit. Enough – for now.
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"Lucas."
The single word made him stop in his tracks, looking up to see her in front of him once again.
Peyton herself halted a safe distance away from him. "I'm sorry, I just…" her voice faded away, and she looked down at her feet.
Lucas observed her with a small frown, wishing desperately that he could see her eyes. They were all he needed to be able to see right down into her soul. As it was, he just waited.
"Luke," she began again, seemingly caught by the sudden impetus to get her words out. "It wasn't dirty, was it? You and me…? I mean… I know it was wrong," she clarified, the blush rising in her cheeks, "because she was your girlfriend and my best friend…but I'm not talking about her. I'm talking about us, you know? Just us, together." Peyton took a breath. "It wasn't dirty, was it?" she repeated, feeling all too much like the pathetic girl she'd never wanted to be.
Lucas looked at the girl before him. The truth was, he'd been looking at her for so long now, he felt as though he could see everything about her, even that which she tried to hide. Blonde hair and green eyes and torturously long legs. Talent and creativity and insecurity. Curiosity and independence and sweetness. Intelligence and humor and empathy. Pain and fear and hope. So much more as yet undiscovered.
And she was asking him if their relationship, which began in a cheap motel room and ran its course in dusty, shadowed corners, was dirty.
"No," was his only reply, solemn and certain. "No, it wasn't."
Peyton just nodded, her eyes inexplicably flooding with tears. She blinked quickly, refusing to let them fall.
The silence settled between them, impenetrable.
"So…everybody knows. You know that, right?" she asked eventually, with some chagrin.
"Yeah," Lucas answered, his tone a blend of frustration and resignation. "Sometimes this town is just too goddamned small. I've been trying to figure out which is worse – Haley chastising me or the guys on the team congratulating me."
Peyton smiled weakly in understanding. "Seems like everybody's got an opinion one way or the other, that's for sure," she added, surprised by what a relief it was to finally talk about this with the one person who could understand. "And I feel like I'm coming off looking either really evil or just psychotic, you know?"
"I mean, think about it," Peyton continued with gusto, even as Lucas chuckled at her melodrama. "Girl goes after her best friend's boyfriend, who also happens to be the estranged brother of her ex…?" she arched an eyebrow sardonically. "She's gotta have problems."
Lucas shook his head with a mirthless laugh. "God, Peyton, I'm sorry," he said, casting a hand across his jaw line ruefully. "I never wanted this for us. I never wanted us to be just another Tree Hill scandal, something to gossip about. I just wanted us to be… I don't know. Together, I guess."
He looked into her eyes, seeing the fear creep in. "I'm sorry," he amended quickly, knowing he had veered just a little too close for comfort to territory best avoided. She didn't want declarations from him, or pleas. Lucas knew that ending things between them had broken her a little, to the point where the only thing holding her together was the pretence that it was all for the best.
"So how's it going with Brooke, anyway?" he asked, changing the subject deliberately and trying to inject some brightness into his tone. "Any progress?"
Peyton simply shook her head. "Nope," she replied, utterly dejected. "I hurt her so much, Lucas. I don't know if it'll ever be the same again."
"It will," he countered assuredly, his heart aching for her. "You guys have been best friends for as long as I can remember, Brooke's going to come around."
"She won't even let me talk to her, you know?" Peyton replied. "And I feel like maybe if I could just explain…" she trailed off despondently.
Lucas did nothing to prod her or break her reverie.
"She has every right to be mad, but… Brooke doesn't understand what it was," Peyton began again, with new clarity. "She makes it sound so sordid, you know? Disgusting. And I just want to make her see that it wasn't some dirty little affair. I didn't do it for the thrill of it or cause I wanted to hurt her…"
This time, Lucas could do nothing but interrupt. "Hey," he said firmly, "I know that. And I was there, too, ok? So that means you only get to have half the guilt – less maybe. I don't want you putting this all on yourself."
"Alright," she nodded sombrely. "It just makes me sick to know that my best friend is at home thinking I wreaked our entire friendship for the sake of a good lay."
Peyton looked up at him, her cheeks reddening as she seemed to suddenly register who exactly it was she was speaking to. "I mean, not that you and I even actually…" she amended, her words hanging heavily.
Lucas smiled feebly. "Yeah," he replied, wanting to put her at ease but not really knowing what to say.
And so they stood and looked at each other, both thinking about the sex they hadn't had. The whole thing, they would have agreed, was more than a little awkward.
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They walked alongside each other across the gym, and stopped short when they got to the exit. The doorway was such that only one person could pass through at a time.
Someone had to leave first.
Peyton figured it was probably going to have to be her.
"Peyt," Lucas exclaimed urgently, the feather light touch of his fingertips to her arm halting her in her tracks.
"Look, I know this is really bad timing right now. I know we probably need to just stay the hell away from each other. But…" he hesitated, endearingly sincere and vulnerable, "maybe someday all this crap will have just gone away. You know, a year down the line, two years, ten years…"
Peyton allowed herself a smile. "Yeah," she said softly, "maybe someday."
It sounded an awful lot like a promise.
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She was already in her car, heading out of the parking lot as Lucas walked into it, fresh from the changing rooms.
The whole place was deserted. Presumably no normal teenager wanted to lurk about the school after hours having furtive, and ultimately pointless conversations with a guy they once spent a few weeks making out with.
"Hey!" she called out to him, pulling up beside him in the Comet.
He looked down at her, expectant.
"Don't wait for me, ok?"
Lucas's face gave nothing away for a moment, he simply stared at her with that steely blue gaze of his. Then, his mouth contorted into some expression resembling acceptance, and he nodded resolutely. "Okay."
"I'm serious," she added, for good measure. "I mean…" she swallowed, the phrase sticking in her throat, "you could date someone if you wanted. You should date someone."
Lucas nodded again, fully comprehending where she was coming from with all of this. He didn't have to like it, but he understood it.
"Maybe you should date someone too," he suggested evenly. "You know, in the spirit of moving on and all. Just… make sure he's not too much of a tool. A step up the evolutionary ladder from Nathan, that's all I ask"
Peyton smiled warmly, thanking him silently for making it easy on her. "Alright, I'll see what I can do."
"But Peyt," Lucas said seriously, just as her foot was pressing down on the accelerator, "you should know that no matter who I'm dating, you can call me up in a year, or two or ten, and this," he gestured between them, "won't be over for me."
She bit her bottom lip, and nodded slowly, as if realising something important for the first time. "Yeah," she replied in agreement. "Me neither."
I literally found this on some paper underneath my nightstand yesterday! I wrote it in France over the summer and completely forgot about it! Hope you like :).