More indignation over the current priorities of One Tree Hill. I wanted to write something different, too, because while I love one shots, I think they all end up the same for me. Brooke angsts; Lucas angsts; they'll never stop loving each other, blah, blah, blah. This is short, and supposed to be pretty light and not so deep, but I think I like it. I hope you do, too.

Lucas has always been a far better reader than he's been a writer. Writing obviously yielded far more prestigious results, results like cosmopolitan fiancées and half unbuttoned oxfords. Reading is simple, and warm, and comforting, but that was his past. Except for when he has nothing to write.

Lindsay doesn't understand. She knows the best writers have to read, but she doesn't get how important it is to him, how it calms him, how it inspires him. So, she slides up his chest and kisses his chest, effectively distracting him from pretentious writers that make him sound smarter when he quotes them.

"Linds…"

"I'm leaving tomorrow." She sticks out her bottom lip, holding her position for a second before giggling and sticking her tongue down his throat. He smiles against her curved lips, and pushes a hand under her hair, warming his fingers against each strand. She pushes her own hand down his thigh, stroking her thumb against the inside of his leg. But it is her face he is thinking about. Her pout and messy hair and confidence that she can get him to do anything she wants him to. Suddenly, he's inspired in a completely different way than Hemingway could achieve.

His leg jumps under her touch, evoking another giggle that gives him shivers. Her hair darkens a tone when he closes his eyes while her skin pales. She shifts deliberately, causing him to release her lips and clench his jaw shut. She laughs, and her voice is coarser, higher with each breath, but thickened with each second. His eyes are still closed and she's whispering in his ear.

"You ready?"

"When you are," he chuckles, rubbing soft circles up the back of her thigh, feeling contours that he'd forgotten a long time ago. Not too long, though.

She nearly growls, and that's new, as she creeps her fingers under his wifebeater, dawdling at each groove in his skin.

"You think we're ever gonna get sick of this? When we're old and wrinkled?"

He just grunts, because it's a stupid question and neither does he want to answer it nor does he want to picture their life together. Not because he doesn't love her, but because it closes all the doors he's held open for so long.

She passes over his lack of response and arches her back when he reaches her ass. Her hair skims over his eyes, and they clench, encouraging her hand into his sweat pants, pushing them down to his ankles before he can kick them off. He extends his fingers across the small of her back, establishing his grip before flipping them over.

He listens for another laugh or comment about how disastrously manly he is, but that was another life and another bed. He buries his face into her hair, breathing for the hint of peaches, but finding soap instead.

"Lucas…"

"Shh," he tells her, changing the color of the walls to a deep pink and kissing each lid of her dark green eyes, finding the crevice of her neck that always used to drive her crazy, except this time he gets nothing but the giggle he was searching for earlier.

"Lucas, that tickles."

He changes his course, sliding his palm up her bare thigh, lightly sun kissed from the years she spends in the sun. He never told her he liked them better when they looked like porcelain and felt smooth and cool under his fingertips. He dips his head down to her shoulder, expecting a laugh and shove, because he isn't kissing her and she wants him so badly. He skims his hand over her stomach, under her shirt and feels goose bumps of self-consciousness that he wasn't ready for.

He tugs the hem up over her head, throwing it on the floor and pushing up onto his elbows so he can see her. The woman beneath him doesn't say anything. The girl in his head is laughing again. An invisible hand on the cross on his chest pulls him back down, and he's kissing her again, finally.

She shudders when he finally gets to where he wants to, but his head sees her mouth fall open, her neck relax as her head falls back and the tiniest burst of air is released from her parted lips. He kisses them shut and grips her hips as he pushes into her. His jaw tightens, his eyes squeezing.

"Fuck, Brooke…"

"What?" Lindsay's voice comes up to his ears, and he pauses. His eyes open to see his fiancée beneath him, her eyes heavily lidded as a wave of actual confusion passes across her face.

"Nothing." He could've said something better than that, but she doesn't say anything of it, fully closing her eyes as he pushes her over the edge.

Later, when she rolls over, tucking her arm under her pillow while he pushes back up and picks up his book again. He thinks she's asleep when he hears her voice again.

"So much for worrying about Peyton."