Author: wistfuldreamer
Summary: Haley and Peyton bond again after years of separation. This is loosely based on the events in early season five so there are references to situations at that time.
Author's Note: This is a one-shot of a scene I would have liked to see earlier in the season. It didn't come out exactly the way I expected, but I'm still pretty content with it. I just think these characters have so much friendship potential that gets neglected on the show. They should have had the opportunity to talk about coming home and let it bond them together again instead of what we did get. But there's always fanfiction to fill in the holes. This is my attempt, I hope you see and feel their bond through the words.
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She lets the crisp air of early fall suck through her nostrils into her lungs, it tugs so deep inside that she begins to feel it burn in a blue flame before she releases it back into the atmosphere. Tufts of quickly evaporating white clouds puff a space from her thin lips. Reflected in city lights far below her perch on an old, scarred wooden picnic table, rotting in spots, but still sturdy.
Her willowy frame shivers in the breeze and she pulls her worn leather jacket tighter around her arms. It had never been this cold in L.A. The city name rolls across her brain cells into her eyes, turning them to sea glass. Like the ocean water warm on her toes, but drifting away into the tide. She looks down at the warped wood beneath her thin fingertips.
"Peyton?" A questioning voice breaks through the silence of her mind.
She stares out into the winking lights in the fading velvet background. Never letting the expanding irises of her eyes drift away from the speckled stars, "Feels like a lifetime ago doesn't it?" Her own voice cuts through the fog, slitting along the tips of her ears. But blood doesn't spill from the wounds, only warm ocean water and chilled breezes.
Haley slides onto the bench beside her, the plank sagging beneath their combined weight. Her liquid brown eyes inquisitive and burning through the twilight enveloping the two small forms compressed together but apart. "Yeah?" The word trips over her lips, the comfort zone between them hangs awkwardly, the years spinning the thin string that used to hold them together, apart.
The softness of Haley's voice cuts Peyton to the quick. Reminding her of the difference between this coast and the last, "Forget it." Her hands chop through the air swiftly before she tucks them back under the folds of her arms. "Leftover paint fumes." Curls sway against her shoulder, soft and long across the bony surface.
Nothing is the same anymore. Her eyes refuse to meet Haley's.
She watches the familiar defenses crawl up Peyton's face; she isn't the soft girl that left Tree Hill four years ago. "I mean…" the synapses in her brain snap and spark while a million thoughts and memories flitter across her eyes. "I know, you know?" She cringes at her lack of eloquence, she is supposed to be the brilliant mind of their little clique, awkwardly thrown back together during a twist of fate she had never seen coming.
She had been the struggling wife and mother trying to provide for her family while her husband sat blankly on the couch drinking away all their memories. She isn't used to feeling inadequate anymore. Their eyes connect and she sees the ashes of dreams that have long since died. Dust from the same source lies dormant along the lining of her heart.
Tension lines the muscles of Peyton's body, rigid in the still air. A forced laugh bubbles past her lips into the atmosphere, a reluctant groan to end the garbled sound. "Everything seemed so complicated last time we were here," they both let their eyes flicker around the dark, vacant roof, once filled with lights and props for the makeshift golf course a dorky seven year old Haley and a slightly older Lucas had set up. Now gone, replaced by gravel. The table under them the only remaining symbol of that era of their lives.
Haley's hand sweeps out, bangled bracelets clink together down her thin arms, together in tight neat succession, "And five years later…" the sky opens up in front of their eyes, a crack of early fall lightening splitting across the sky, but never making a sound. The flash of light the only proof of existence.
The vision halts further conversation, everything left unsaid crackles between them, but familiar hands find each other in a quiet cupping of comfort.
"How did everything get so messed up, Haley?" Peyton's voice straggles through the darkness, enhanced after that split second of light. But she lets a new vulnerability control her speech, the guard lowering again. With the memories of the first girl who ever really tried to understand her world. Maybe the only one who could save her from her own personal hellfire.
Flickers of the life Haley had dreamed of and the life she now lives run across her corneas. Pricking at the corners of her melting eyes, but never falling. "Growing up," they both know she means growing apart.
L.A. had left Peyton missing and she didn't know she was until now. With the brunettes fingers circled around her own, the chill of Tree Hill nights, the worn leather jacket Ellie had given her draped around her shoulders, and the distant image of the boy with twinkling blue eyes who still could still make the heart in her chest accelerate. Why she had left it all behind for crushing reality and gentle arms she would never understand.
The silence between them widens, but swallows them in welcoming arms this time.
Haley remembers coming home. The fear, the acceleration, the dread, the hope. Her heart had been missing too until Nathan had opened the door back to her. A door that had been shut again between them over the years, Jamie the only prop that kept it cracked an inch.
Her eyes settle over the ghostly shadow of the cut of the blonde's cheekbone. But Peyton didn't have that. They both know why she came home. But they can't say things like that anymore; it's a sacred trust that was broken.
Peyton echoes the sentiment, "Coming home sucks," lightness is forced back into her tone, but her hands don't fall away from Haley's. It's an anchor she needs but can't explain the source of.
Haley lets her free hand ruffle her hair, a half-hearted laugh escapes her lips in a familiar sound of nerves, "Yeah, it totally does."
A breath, a pause swipes between them thick like cotton. Stifling any uninvited noise towards them. Misunderstandings and miscommunications from the past boil into the dead air. The connection between that past and this present crystallize almost before their eyes. Situations never change, only roles reverse. But all the while their hands stay the only link to this minute and the quickly slipping minutes of before.
"Oh god," Peyton laughs, tension cracking at the sides and through the awkward moment. She throws back her head, curls straggle down onto the tabletop. "I was such a bitch back then." The desire to make amends still rips into her insides every second the topic of that part of their past is raised. Last time she apologized for it they were in her car, the breeze brushing their hair in ragged patterns with Dashboard playing on the radio.
"You weren't that bad." A slow, impish grin spills across Haley's lips as their long ago conversation in Peyton's car rolls over her memory. Repeating the words now feels like a new kind of forgiveness, a touching on who they used to be. Who they could still be, if they both just kept holding on. Without letting life interject or misunderstandings staying kept. Peyton shoots her a look that she can feel through the darkness and laughs with genuine freedom for the first time in months, "Okay, yeah you were."
Peyton lets her shoulder bump into Haley's and she feels young again. She hasn't tasted freedom before or since she came home. Not even earlier when they painted the old café in purples and pinks, with Lucas looking at her with those eyes that could still see into her soul and Brooke chattering in her usual ramble about decorating walls and bodies. Like they were in the before, it was only when she had seen the strained language between Nathan and Haley that she knew they were living in the after part of happy.
"I really am sorry about that, Haley." She is. She wishes she knew then what she knows now. How hard it is to come home for someone that has a guard up that can't be broken through. How hard it is to be alone with feelings no one is willing to understand. She only wishes she had the strength Haley had then, to tell the truth about why and how she came, instead of hiding between unseen clouds.
Their hands squeeze together and Peyton knows that Haley understands. They don't need words to fill in the spaces; they've always been in tune enough to never ask the questions that aren't necessary.
"It's okay," Haley looks up into the sky; shapeless figures glide across the moonlight. She doesn't know what the futures holds, if she'll walk straight into her husband's arms again or fall apart before his embrace can catch her. If dreams from her past will rise again or stay in the ashes of her life.
She glances over at Peyton and her eyes connect to hers through shadows. All she knows is she's glad Peyton knows how it feels to come home again.
Peyton feels a new kind of comfort in the words. The thousand of things she could say about the past and the now, roles reversed and changed between them, don't matter. She feels Haley's understanding. They both broke, they both walked away, they both came back, they're both here to stay this time.
Their hands curl closer into the other's warmth, familiar and comforting. They don't feel alone anymore. Haley gazes back up and the moon peaks through, winking at her before falling back into twilight.