Meet Me in Bubble Land

I've been dreaming dreams of childhood,

And the games we used to play,

When my heart knew only sunshine

Now I know my constant dreaming,

Always takes me back to yesterday;

If your heart is yearning,

Join me in returning, come, and I will show you the way

xXx

Peyton and Nathan don’t do anything conventionally. They started dating after he asked her to dance at the year-end dance in freshman year (he had gone with a gorgeous redhead who was stoned out of her mind and passed out in the back of her car at the moment, her date was a random member of the football team she didn’t know well who was making a drunken pass on some girl near the spiked punch). It was (naturally) a slow song and Peyton could feel her skin tingle at the soft touch of his fingers around her waist. She had looked up at him and smiled and his face lit up under the soft ambience of the tissue paper tinted lights overhead.

The two had spoken before casually, nothing more than small talk and a brief joke now and then.

He didn’t cop a feel like he might have done with another girl, she didn’t count the seconds til the song was over like she would have with another guy. The song ended and the two slowly stopped swaying. He had smiled again, tucked away a stray curl, and lowly breathed in her ear that she looked beautiful.

She had gone back to her date, he had gone to check on his. And for the next two weeks, he would feel her eyes on him as he practiced basketball and she could just catch him looking away with a tiny smile on his face any time Whitey let the guys take a break. Brooke would say they were having nonstop eye sex.

One day, Peyton had forgotten her cheerleading shorts on the bleachers. When she ran back for them, Nathan was holding it expectantly. She had walked up to him to take it from him and as he leaned forward to hand it to her, he had impulsively kissed her.

“By the way,” He would say as he was already a few feet away from her, smiling at the slightly bemused look on her face, “It’d make me way more enthusiastic if you didn’t wear these. While playing, I mean.”

“Playing basketball, of course.” She would raise an eyebrow in amusement.

“That. And anything else you’d be up for playing with me.” He answered teasingly. Eye sex, eye sex, eye sex…

“Playing is kind of a broad term. After all, do people our age actually still play?” Identical smirks on both their faces.

“Yeah? Well what you suggest we do then, Sawyer?”

Each other. Hooking her fingers around his shirt before he could do anything else, she would press her lips against his and say that this was two weeks in the making.

xXx

Peyton’s legs were dangling over the edge of Nathan’s beach house bed when he wandered in that evening.

“I could get used to this.” Nathan smirked.

“Hey, don’t think I was waiting for you or anything.” Peyton answered, her voice muffled by the pen in her mouth. “I’m working on more promotional stuff for Mia’s album.”

“In my bed.”

“It’s comfortable.” She shrugged playfully.

He raised his eyebrows, “Well isn’t that big shot L.A. company taking care of all that anyways?”

“Please. Mia is an individual. Like I’d let them try to play off her sound like it’s cookie-cutter crap. I’m making sure it’s innovative.”

Nathan shook his head and fell into the bed beside her, extracting the pen from her mouth. “Peyton.”

“What?” She was still flipping through the papers laid across the foot of the bed.

“I’m horny.”

This made her look up. “Were you this sex-crazed with Haley?”

“Maybe I just like sex with you better.” His hands had found her waist, his lips settling against her neck.

“Just like old times.” Peyton chuckled as she let herself be pushed back on the bed, obliging his kisses.

The two had existed in an oddly utopian state of contentment in the last few days, brought on by isolating themselves from everyone else. This didn’t seem to be hard to do since Haley was avoiding Nathan anyways and had already worked out a system so the two of them could have equal time with Jamie without having to be in the same room with each other for any amount of time.

Peyton hadn’t told Nathan this, but avoiding Lucas had been more difficult. In the few moments the two had found themselves in the same place, he had opened his mouth and started to make his way over to her. She managed to duck away each time and was stoutly refusing to think about why he wanted to talk to her and what he would say. It didn’t matter. He didn’t matter.

This wasn’t exactly healthy. Somewhere in the haze of bleary cheerfulness, they had to know that they were only happy because they had holed themselves up in denial of reality and of the real world. In their minds, they just didn’t care. They were tired of the anguish and desperately needed a reprieve.

Brooke was getting worried about Peyton’s constant absences since the beach house was the only place Nathan and Peyton felt secure in meeting up and neither had told any one about their recent activities.

“Where do you keep disappearing? You’re not at your office, or Tric. Mia’s barely spoken to you so you’re not holed up working…”

“Don’t worry about it, Brooke.”

“I am worrying, Peyton. Because Lucas was a really, really huge ass and ever since I’ve barely seen you.”

“I’m fine, I promise.”

“That’s the thing- you seem happier than you have in a while. I just wish you’d let me in.”

“Nate, when are we gonna tell people about this?” Peyton asked quietly as she pulled her shirt back on.

“Well I don’t know how close you are with your friends, but I wasn’t planning on outlining this to anyone anytime soon.” Nathan smirked, gliding his hand up her thigh.

The look she gave him wiped the smirk right off.

“I don’t know, Peyt. I don’t want to just… blurt it out. And hell we don’t even know what we are right now. So what, we just gather everyone together and say ‘hey everyone, Peyton and I are fucking. A lot.’?”

“I get that. I do. But I hate keeping things from Brooke, and it feels like we’re hiding. And people only hide when they’re doing something wrong. When they’re ashamed.”

“No, people hide ‘cause it’s fun.” Peyton smacked his arm that time. “Ow! Sorry, sorry. Come on, you can’t honestly think I’m ashamed of you.”

“Maybe not of me. Of us. We’ve been having sex like rabbits and have been since the day you got your annulment papers. That would look pretty bad…”

“Do I ever care about how I look?”

Her eyebrows raised, “I’m going to assume that’s a rhetorical question, Nathan-but-my-reputation’s-on-the-line-Scott.”

“Hey. I’m different now. And I say screw ‘em if they have a problem with this because I haven’t felt this good in months.”

“Me too.” She wanted to ask if this was just a big distraction, if it really meant nothing…but that would make her vulnerable and she just couldn’t open herself up again.

“I’m really glad I’m with you. There’s no one else I can think of that I’d rather be with.” Nathan murmured as he slipped his hand over hers. “But I just don’t want to do that to-“

“Haley.”

“-Lucas.”

Peyton looked startled. “You actually think Lucas would care-?”

Nate looked hurt for just a moment. “Peyton, do you care if Lucas cares?”

Locking away the part of her that fluttered every time Lucas was mentioned, Peyton hooked her arm around his neck and kissed him deeply. “Screw ‘em.”

xXx

“Are you avoiding me?”

Peyton froze. In all honesty she had been slinking away with a handful of albums with the intention of slipping past Brooke unseen.

“I’m sorry.” Peyton shrugged guiltily.

“What have you been doing?” The brunette pleaded. “Come on sweetie, you can tell me. It’s me.” Sliding around to take her wrists, Brooke continued, “Have you been bar hopping? You’re out a lot of nights now. I mean, God knows I’ve done the whole random hook up thing…but it doesn’t really help in the long run and I know you know that.”

“That hasn’t been what I’ve been doing.” Peyton laughed.

“Well, there is a boy toy in the picture, isn’t there?” The words triggered a small smirk from Peyton that she tried very hard to hide. The boy toy auction night back in high school had resulted in a bit of line-blurring between Nathan and herself and that had been the last night she had kissed him before their new…thing…now.

“Why would you assume that?”

Brooke raised her eyebrow, “When you do happen to be around, you spend half your time whispering lowly behind closed doors so either you’re plotting to kill me, talking to yourself, or you’re having a whole clandestine guy thing.” Smirking, she crossed her arms. “Now, I’m far too pretty to be whacked so unless you want to tell me you’re hearing voices in your head…?”

“I hate that I’m keeping things from you.” Peyton relented, shoulders slumping.

“Oh none of that, you know I’ll support whatever you’re doing. Just spill the juice already P Sawyer.”

Shaking her head helplessly, Peyton bit her lip. “I can’t. Not yet.”

Narrowing her eyes quickly, Brooke blurted, “It’s not Chase, is it?”

“No!” Peyton laughed.

“Good. Then I pledge my support. Unless it’s a heroin addicted hobo.”

“It’s not.”

“Fine, I’ll just have to snoop around.”

She snorted, “Yeah, because you haven’t already.”

“You’ve known me too long.” Brooke grinned cheekily.

xXx

Craving a drink, Peyton popped into Tric on her way back from picking up music at her and Brooke’s place. It wasn’t until she was already leaning against the bar and sipping a screw driver that she noticed Lucas sitting two stools down from her, sunglasses covering his eyes and his entire body slouched towards the upturned shot glasses in front of him.

Feeling a familiar twist of anxiety in her stomach, the blonde hastily looked away and drank faster. Shaking her head with a forced smile at Owen at the offer of a refill, she snatched her purse and tried to make a quick exit.

“Peyton.”

Hearing him say her name still debilitated her. She stopped in her tracks and felt anguish and hope combating each other for dominance in her hollow chest.

Don’t look back, don’t go back, don’t turn around, don’t talk to him, don’t smile, don’t acknowledge him, don’t, don’t, don’t…

Lucas’s voice sounded strained and she could picture his eyes crinkling at the sides softly even though her back was to him and his eyes were obscured.

His voice sounded like freezing water sliding down her throat after a two mile run.

His voice was like rain falling against parched land.

His voice was soft fingers across the back of her neck, nose buried in her hair with just a faint whispering of It’s you, Peyton.

She shut her eyes, swallowed unsteadily and walked away.

Ignoring the hundreds of questions that instantly started whispering insecurely inside her head, she all but ran for her car.

Peyton was breathless by the time she lurched back into the Scott beach house.

Throwing her purse at the first chair she saw, Peyton’s eyes darted around the house until her ears picked up faint noise. Walking purposefully towards the noise, one hand loosed her hair from the pins holding it in place. Kicking off her shoes, she opened the door to the bathroom and unbuttoned her blouse.

She slid open the shower door, sending the person inside it jerking backwards.

“Holy crap, Peyt, you scared the shit out of me!” Nathan said, trying to avoid swallowing the water pouring down from the faucet. Peyton slipped out of her skirt without answering. He glanced at her, frowning. “What-“

Undoing her bra, she walked into the water without so much as a hello and pulled him close.

“I know you’re hot for me but this is getting almost ridiculous,” Nathan joked as he leaned back from the kiss. Smoothing back her hair, his eyes glanced over every inch of her bare body and his hands followed his eyes.

“You want me, right?”

Her voice was shaking and though in another time Nathan would not have noticed, he did this time. “…Are you okay?”

“What are we, please. What are we?”

“I told you, I don’t know.” The frantic note in her voice worried him.

“But you want to be with me?”

“Of course.”

“You want me.”

“Yeah, I want you.”

“Okay.” Shutting her eyes again, her hand trailed from his chest downwards, wrapping itself smoothly around him.

“Are you okay, Peyt?” He asked again.

“Just tell me you want me. Tell me this is right.” She kissed his jaw as she stroked him.

“You’re not okay…”

Turning around, Peyton’s hands entwined in his and led them to her breasts as she grinded against him. “Please?”

Her motions invoked a guttural moan from him and his head lolled back. He didn’t need her hand to urge him anymore as he kneaded her chest; his other hand slipping down her waist to press her grinding movements even closer to him. “Oh God…” She brushed her lips over his Adam’s apple and he could do nothing but comply, “Peyt, of course I want you. And you know I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t right.”

He tried to turn her around but she shook his arm off. “No. Let’s do it like this.” She led his fingers down into her and tried not to think.

He bucked into her roughly when she asked him to go harder and she tried not to cry or think or look as she felt him in her. And when her senses exploded around her, it was Luke’s face swimming in her mind’s eye and it was Lucas Scott she was tightening against, Lucas Scott who gasped out her name.

xXx

“You didn’t say my name. Not once. Not even before.” Nathan said quietly as she toweled off with her back to him.

“What?” She scoffed distractedly.

“Say my name. Say it.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“Why didn’t you look at me?” He asked, a little more forcefully now. “Why didn’t you want to look at me?”

And her mind was replaying Peyton Peyton Peyton.

“Peyton.”

The deeper voice, oh-so-familiar with old inflections of amused sarcasm or impatient anger, with arrogance or apology; the deeper voice without anguished ill-timed confessions or a softness that could break her heart with two syllables, broke through the mental block she constructed and she froze just as she had earlier. It was said with the same pained yearning.

She met his eyes, a picture of torture.

“This has something to do with Lucas, doesn’t it?”

She had to shut out that expression. Shutting her eyes, she whispered, “You say my name just like he does. You treat me differently, you touch me differently, you make me feel differently; you make different noises when I make you come, you prefer different actions… but you both say my name in just the same way.”

His silence was heavy with pain.

“I saw him today. He called out my name.” Her eyes were still closed.

“Did it work?” Nathan’s voice was hard and cold. She winced without looking up. “That’s why you came back here, isn’t it? Why you wanted me to screw you? You wanted to forget again.” His words seemed to cut through the air like knives. “Judging by the way you’re acting, it failed. I gotta tell you, it feels great to be used as a time-filler. A way to distract you.”

“Isn’t that what you’re with me for?” Peyton swallowed. It surprised her how much the thought of him saying yes to the question stung her.

“You know what? Fuck you. What am I, some faceless body for all you care? I wouldn’t be having sex with just any one at this stage in my life. I wouldn’t be able to do this with anyone but you. I’m with you because you’re you. And you’re with me because I was there, willing, and convenient?”

“I didn’t even turn around. He called for me and I didn’t even turn around.”

She bowed her head forward and instinctively Nathan took a step closer. She leaned against his chest and her hands once again rubbed circles over his pecs absently. Opening her eyes to stare at his chest as her fingers ran into metal, she said with surprise, “You’re wearing your nipple ring again.”

“Yeah, you like it, if I can remember correctly.” The soft unspoken implication of I’m wearing it because I remember you’ve always loved it and you’re what matters now penetrated her perfectly. Somehow, touching the silver piercing seemed terribly significant to her and ridiculous as it seems, she felt warmth spread across her.

Looking into his dark brown eyes, so very different from oceanic blue ones she had loved so very much, Peyton smiled without thinking, “I think I may just fall in love with you, Nate.”

“What?” The suddenness of her words blindsided him.

“It…it makes it easier to pretend like we’re just friends with benefits, like I only care about the physical. Like you’re some way to distract me while I lick my wounds. But like I said before, we’ve never ever just been about that and what I have for you now, what I feel for you now… I can’t explain it. I like to pretend sometimes because it makes me feel better, because let’s face it, this whole thing is morally sticky. But I only have to pretend because I know in my gut that this is so, so significant. We are so, so significant. And it scares me and worries me and guilts me and completely comforts me all at the same time.”

“You’ve never used the term ‘love’ to me before.”

“It’s way, way too soon, I know. I’m just stupid and vulnerable right now and God you looked so hurt and it hurt to have you think I didn’t care… and, well, my point is, I would never have been able to do this with anyone else either. It could only have been you. And I’m really glad for that.”

“We are insanely dysfunctional.”

“I know.”

“And I have to tell you…there’s only ever been one girl I’ve ever said I love you to, hell, there’s only ever been one girl I’ve loved.”

“I know that, Nathan. I said I might FALL in love with you, not that I already am.” She said, flustered.

“Shut up and let me speak, Sawyer. I was going to say that despite all that, it feels really good that you trust me enough to be vulnerable. It really would have sucked if this didn’t mean as much to you as it did to me.” He couldn’t quite look at her as he spoke. “And you’re the only other girl who’s used the love term on me aside from Haley without sending me into a blind panic. I think I…would really like for you to be able to love me.” Clearing his throat awkwardly, he tried to articulate himself, “Love me for me, I mean. Not the person you want me to be, but the person I am. No one’s ever done that before. Made me feel like I was actually good enough as I am. And the fact that you could… I don’t know. I’m no knight in shining armour. I don’t think I can ‘save you’.”

“But can’t you see?” She wrapped fingers between his, “With you, I don’t think I need to be saved. You make me okay.”

“Doesn’t every girl want the traditional prince charming to whisk them off their feet?”

“Nathan, you’ve known me for how long and you still think I’m like ‘every girl’?” She grinned. “And please. All the interesting girls go for the dark horse.”

“I’m hardly bad ass now.”

“Oh? If I were to offer you a sexual fantasy favour, you would request…”

“Rape fantasy in a church confessional.”

“You’re bad ass enough for me.” Peyton smirked, kissing him lingeringly.

“It’s probably bad that I like hearing that.”

“Mm, what? That I think you can be a bad, bad boy?”

“Call me a bad ass mother fucker and I may just come in your hands.” He quirked his eyebrow up, his hand cupping her ass.

Smiling widely, Peyton kissed his ear and said lowly, “You’re a bad ass mother fucker.”

xXx

“So do you think we can we just stay here, together and alone forever?” Peyton sighed. “It’s so, so much easier when no one else exists…”

“I can’t be Lucas for you, Peyton.”

“If this means you won’t change your mind half a million times about what woman you want to be with, I’ll be okay with that.” She said wryly. “Nathan, if I wanted Lucas I wouldn’t be with you. You may both be Scotts but despite being a blonde, I’m not stupid enough to hope you can be the same person.”

“You know, if you’re falling for me does this mean I’ll actually have to buy you stuff and take you on dates now?”

“Shut up, idiot.”

Nathan grinned and kissed her cheek, leaving the washroom so she could get dressed.

Late that night when he would slip into bed beside her, she would ask him if it was odd having a woman aside from Haley sleep next to him. He would be honest, because his nature was blunt, and he would say that he didn’t feel like he was a twenty something adult when he was with her. Sometimes it would confuse him because the two of them together felt so natural, it was like they had been transported back in to their teen years; but at the same time who they were and what their lives were like now were so different that you couldn’t even compare their relationship now and what their relationship had once been. Everything weighed down less on him when he was with her, everything was less serious and angst filled. There didn’t seem to be any expectations and the rules and boundaries that had been built up in the last few years quite simply didn’t exist because they never had existed with them.

She wasn’t the same bitchy cheerleader he had slept with in high school and he sure as hell wasn’t that cheerleader’s boyfriend but their adult selves weren’t so neatly severed from their past selves as they were when they were apart. It was as though a part of their youth came back to them, and a bit of the aged sadness that so much heartache had brought them faded away.

“It does feel strange. Sometimes, it feels like I’m cheating on her. Sometimes, I think I’m sixteen again. But more and more it’s feeling like I’m twenty three and with an amazing woman who I’ve grown up with. It only feels strange when I really try and think about it all. When I don’t, when I just let it be… it feels so natural it almost confuses me that it doesn’t feel wrong.”

Who they were then and who they are now was blended together almost seamlessly. She still liked to run her hands over his chest as she had in high school, he still had a fondness for her neck. But the way he said her name now was so different; he would linger on certain syllables in a way that was never as impatient or sharp as he once did. The way she smiled at him was genuine now and of her free violation, not coaxed out of her by his charm. He was sincere now, where once he had used his looks and charm to manipulate. She wasn’t on the defensive all the time now, and actually let him see who she really was.

The changes were small enough to be deemed unimportant, but they noticed the subtleties. It saddened him slightly when he would watch her sleep all curled protectively into a ball when she had once lounged stretched across the entire bed. It would make her raise her eyebrows when he would automatically apologize for saying an offhand comment that could be taken as offensive. His fingers would feel bones that protruded more prominently now than they used to; hers would dance over the pads of his fingers that were smooth and callous-free in a way that pained her to feel when she would know instantly that it was caused by years without basketball. He would watch her straighten her hair every morning, she would notice how he never bothered to spike his anymore. He rarely drank now while she drank several times more than she ever used to.

He did stretches first in the morning, languid and cautious. When he caught her looking, he would instantly switch to something more strenuous. And she always noticed how he always ran faster in the first and last five minutes of his run because he didn’t want her to know how much his stamina had gone down.

She barely ate, not that she used to eat very much anyways but now he would notice and care about that fact. Somewhere down the line he had learned how to cook, God knows he was far too lazy to before, and he would look at her pointedly until she put something in her mouth.

They could be fiercer in bed now; years of growing accustomed to tenderness had made them crave the rough, the animalistic. But sometimes he would hold her gently afterwards in a way he had never done before; she would nestle against him seeking a security she never used to make known that she wanted.

Slowly, Nathan sought to get to know the little details of this different Peyton Sawyer and she absorbed in the minute alterations he had made.

“You know, I told you once that I thought I would always have feelings for you. I wasn’t wrong.” He told her matter-of-factly the next morning. She had her back to him as she put her shirt on, he had his eyes trained towards the ceiling as he lifted weights.

Peyton smiled and finished dressing. They didn’t look at each other and she didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to.

xXx

Meet me tonight in Bubble Land

So far away from Trouble Land,

Hearts break like bubbles in the air,

But there we'll never know a care;

Let all our troubles fade like bubbles,

Meet me in Bubble Land.

AN: For the record, I love your reviews. A lot. I adore it when you guys on tangents, and I'm ecstatic that you all seem as excited and pumped for Pathan as I am :). This story is going to stick around for a while, don't worry. I really do hope the story won't disappoint, and will remain true to the characters. Also, this was a rather happy chapter because I felt we needed that- but as I'm sure you've noticed, this is a fairly dark, angst-filled fic. And that'll come back quite soon XD.