Fic: She's Broken (SPN/OTH)
Title: She's Broken
Fandom: Supernatural/One Tree Hill
Pairing/Character: Dean/Brooke; Dean/Jo, Sam/Brooke, (mentions); Lucas/Brooke, Lucas/Peyton, Ellen, Lucas, Peyton, Haley, Karen, Dan, Mouth
Spoilers/Warnings: If you've seen One Tree Hill, all the episodes, then you may remember some of the references (and some quotes) used in this piece that have been featured or said in the show. AU for Supernatural season two; the boys stay with Ellen and Jo for a longer time, with a special OTHiller with them. :) I haven't seen season two of Supernatural on tv, only on youtube, so beware if Ellen or Jo seem a little OOC. ;/
Disclaimer: Not mine. ;/
Word Count: 7,779
Rating: PG
Summary: Brooke is remembering her life from the past.
Notes: Blame Jordan (PURPLE_ANGEL725) for the Brooke/Dean/Jo OT3. :p Although, my OT3 would be Dean/Brooke/Sam. :p Anyway, I tried a different style, and I hope you like this. :p For Jordan, because she's so rockin'.
(Cross-posted at a forum and here @ bluesunsets.)
"I hate clowns."
Jo whips around from behind the counter, her hair copying the direction she's turned and colliding with her pale face. She smiles playfully at Sam. "Well, I wouldn't have figured. Since you're still shaking and all."
Sam rolls his eyes and quips, "Dean hates planes."
"Oh really?" Jo says as she turns to Dean with a mischievous glint in her eye, and a smile known for breaking hearts. She picks up a glass and a white cloth, cleaning and causing the object to shine when the light from the windows hits it.
Dean simply smirks, "Don't get any ideas, sweetheart."
Jo says sweetly, "Wouldn't dream of it."
"Any fears, blondie?" Dean asks
She places the shot glass down and picks up another. While she's rubbing the glass clean, Jo snaps back, "No, smug ass."
Dean shrugs, a smirk lighting up his features. He shrugs and taps a rhythm onto the wooden bar in front of him. "Sure, everyone fears something."
She shrugs, and with how she says it and what, it gives a feel as if Jo doesn't trust them, "Well, I don't. Even if I did, why would I tell you lot?"
He shrugs, and Dean easily says, "A reason for me to sleep well at night. Fairytales are always a sleep jerker."
Jo nods, "Huh." She turns her head in the direction of the brunette, sitting beside two empty stools. "What do you fear?"
"Nothing," Brooke says as she stirs the ice in her drink around with the straw. The clinking of the ice is what is distracting Brooke from the world, as they decrease in size and will soon vanish into the liquid in her glass.
Jo stops her cleaning and places her hand on her hip, unconvinced Brooke has nothing to say, "Is that so?"
Brooke nods, looking up and locking eyes with the blonde, "Yeah. How can you fear something when it's already happened to you?"
"What was it?" Jo asks, her voice almost small and soft. It's uncharacteristic of her, so far as Brooke's observed, to be the quiet type.
Brooke sips her drink, and quietly says, "A broken heart."
---
It's been a couple of hours, and already Jo's playing Twenty Questions. "What is it that you miss most from home?"
Dean shrugs, and says with a hollow look in his eyes, "Nothing. Nothing is there to be missed."
She nods, and it's not like she understands him. Jo continues to press, anyway, "No girlfriend? Fiancée? Wife?" Sometimes she's oblivious to when people wish to avoid certain subjects, and maybe this is an act, to make Dean spill his guts because everyone knows how she looks at the older Winchester.
He chuckles, and looks Jo in the eye, "No."
Jo turns her attention to Sam, almost reluctantly, and the smile that's on her face seems sickeningly satisfied before she asks, "How about you, Sam?"
Sam smiles sadly, looking at Jo with a layer of sparkling wet tears in his eyes, "Just memories."
"Oh. Sorry." Jo says, although there is no quiet tone to her voice, but an automatic response to when it is hinted that someone's lost someone so close to them. Jo turns to Brooke, resting her palms on the edge of the bar, "What about you, Brooke? What do you miss?"
Brooke answers, though her tone is quiet and almost distant, "Everything."
--
"I was never really good at it, you know. I've mastered it like I am with hunting." Jo's laughing, and she's behind the counter, leaning forward on her elbows with her palms being the rest for her head.
Dean's lips quirk up, "Mastering demon hunting isn't anything like pouring a glass of scotch while throwing the bottle in the air."
Jo leans back, almost straightening and rocking on her heels as her eyes challenge Dean, "How about you try?"
He laughs, and easily brushes it off. "No thanks. I'll leave that to the girls at Coyote Ugly."
Jo gasps with a too much fake exaggeration with her hands fluttering to her chest, and her smile being mischievous. "So, finally, there's something normal about Dean Winchester."
Dean smirks with a shrug. "I guess there is." Jo doesn't say anything, and neither does Dean. The silence between them isn't total silence; only their voices are not bouncing from the walls, but the sighs, the playing of pool, and the smell of alcohol stay.
Jo laughs, "I used to be very intimidated about holding a gun. Pretty stupid now, huh?"
"You're okay. Just need some pointers," Dean says as he takes a drink from his beer bottle. Jo watches a little too intently.
"Right, and you need to find some new ways to get into my pants." She laughs, and looks towards Brooke who is sitting at a table towards the old karaoke machine. She leans forward again, and whispers, "So, how did you get stuck with that one? You and your brother don't seem to be the type to pick up pretty hitchhikers."
Dean twists around, looking at Brooke who is examining her table intently, lost in her own little world. "I guess we aren't. I guess the look of determination in her eyes convinced us to give her a chance."
Jo nods towards Brooke, as if they haven't been talking about her anyway, "What was she doing, anyway?"
Dean turns to face her again, he shrugs, and answers quietly, "Running away."
---
Jo slithers next to her, her back leaning against the bar, and her voice taking on an innocence of trying to get to know her. "So, Brooke. Do you have any talents?"
Brooke looks towards Jo from her seat on a stool. She's been looking at the patterns on the wood for a while, now, wondering if the cause of them are from people with broken hearts or homes. "No. Unless screaming out lame cheers in a tight outfit, getting drunk, and sleeping around counts as a talent."
Jo nods, piecing everything together. "You quite the party girl?"
"Was," Brooke answers immediately, looking straight ahead and not at Jo, who seems to be judging her with her dark eyes.
Jo asks, her voice still loud and disinterested, "What changed?"
Brooke exhales, but it's more like a hollow chuckle, and whispers, "Everything."
---
"You got a boyfriend, Jo?" Dean asks from his position near the pool table. Jo's on the opposite side, and Ellen's at the bar. Sam chuckles, and Jo just smiles.
Ellen laughs, her hands are crossed over her chest before she moves to go behind the bar, "Don't think she could handle one." She gets a glass and pours some liquor into it, drowning the contents in one swallow.
Jo gasps, turning to face her mother after she's finished her shot, "Mom!"
"I doubt that." Dean smirks, and Ellen's laughter is loud as she pours another shot of liquor.
Jo blushes, a red tainting her porcelain skin, "So, Brooke, you got a boyfriend?"
"I did." Brooke says as she takes her turn and shoots a couple of the balls into the nets. She remembers she was quite good at this game, being conniving and manipulative, and sending people to Seattle while playing this.
Jo takes her shot, and asks, "What happened?"
Brooke stands straight, watching as Dean sets up his target, "He broke my heart."
"Oh." It's as simple as that, as they're thrown into silence.
---
Ellen approaches Brooke near the karaoke machine. Brooke's been looking at the dusty, small box for a while now, and as Ellen speaks, Brooke jumps a little in surprise, but doesn't turn around to face the older woman, "Where are you going to go when the boys get into more serious matters?"
Brooke shrugs carelessly as she leans over to brush some of the dust from the glass away, "I don't know."
Ellen copies her shrug, and leans against the wall, "You could always stay -"
She makes eye contact, and a genuine smile brightens up Brooke's face, "Thanks, but I don't want to be a burden. I want as much distance from Tree Hill as possible."
Ellen's voice is soft, a tone Brooke's never heard her speak in before, "What are you running away from?"
She turns to face the machine again, and shrugs with a quiet answer, "Life."
---
"I'll verse you." Jo sits opposite Dean at a table close to the bar. Her smile is bright, flashy even, and it just proves she's remembered to brush her teeth.
His reaction to her sudden bouncy plop isn't a jump, but a deadpanned answer in a boring tone Brooke's not accustomed to hearing being passed from Dean's lips to everyone's ears, "Wow, kinky."
Rolling her eyes, Jo rephrases her order as she speaks slowly, as if she's speaking to a small child, "I'll verse you in poker."
Dean shakes his head as Jo's hand goes to her jeans pocket, and she places the deck of old, worn out cards that almost look as ancient as the Egyptian pyramids onto the table with a slam, "You know you're gonna lose, sweetheart."
"Oh, I doubt that." Jo smiles as she shuffles, her eyes never leaving Dean's face. It's a challenge Dean can't - nor won't - run from.
Dean, however, breaks the eye contact from Jo who watches him as he turns to look at Sam who's staring out the dusty window. "You wanna play, Sammy?"
"No thanks," Sam says as he looks to Dean, and with a reassuring smile he returns to focus on the objects outside the window. It's most likely dirt, the Impala, and the wind carrying leaves and litter to another destination to taint.
Jo turns to Brooke at the bar, oblivious to the brunette's intense staring into her shot glass with a lost look glazing over her eyes, "Brooke, fancy a game?"
Brooke whispers, in a tone that suggests she's telling herself, "I gave up playing games a long time ago." Jo shrugs, and starts playing poker with Dean.
---
Ellen sits next to Brooke at the bar, and places her hands on top of the old wood, running her hands on the edge of it with a manner that seems to have grown accustomed to the feel of the dented wood, "You got a phone on you, hon.?"
"I must've placed it somewhere. I haven't been able to find it in days." Brooke says, and she watches Ellen's eyes as she looks at the table and where her hands are. The older woman looks up and smiles.
Her hand goes to her pocket, and she places a silver cell phone on the wood in front of Brooke. She nods towards the object as she explains, "Well, it's been ringing."
Brooke looks at Ellen quickly, a fraction of uneasiness thickly coating her voice, "Did you answer?"
Ellen shakes head, "No. Privacy business and all."
"Thanks," Brooke nods as she looks at the silver phone. She touches her phone hesitantly as it rings, and she opens it, with the familiar name of her ex-best friend displayed on it. She could talk to her, Brooke's no longer afraid of touching her phone when it makes a sound, but she doesn't want to hear the voice and see the face of her ex-BFF plastered in her mind.
Jo appears behind the bar, in front of Brooke and nods towards the phone, "Who is it?"
"No one important." Brooke says as she closes the phone and places it in her jeans pocket.
---
Sam pulls a chair towards Brooke's table in the saloon, the wood of the chair legs scraping against the wood floor makes a horrible sound, but he doesn't seem to care. "What's wrong, Brooke?"
Brooke keeps crying, and Sam's arm rests on her shoulders, pulling her towards him so her head rests on his own shoulder. He rubs circles on her back, and she pants out, "Karen's pregnant."
Sam's heard of Karen, he's heard of everyone who is anyone in Tree Hill, and he immediately knows Brooke's been on the phone since her cell is out on the table, closed, "Is she okay?"
"Yeah," Brooke nods against him, putting her hand on his arm.
Sam looks down to see the top of her head, and he places a quick kiss on her brown hair before whispering, "Why are you crying?"
"Because I'm scared," Brooke sniffles, and more tears run down her cheeks and onto his shirt.
Sam strokes her hair, pulling her closer that she's almost sitting on his lap, and whispers again, "Scared of what?"
Brooke says, roughly through fresh tears and a compressed throat from crying, "Leaving something so innocent to be corrupted by evil."
---
"You ever gonna go back?" Jo's wiping down the counter, something Brooke's been witnessing a lot since she arrived with the Winchesters. Jo doesn't look up at her, doesn't even perk up one of her eyebrows. Huh, it must only be for Dean when she actually bothers to look someone in the eye. She doesn't care, and she's not making any effort to cover that fact up.
Brooke, in turn, lifts her own perfectly plucked eyebrow in one quick practised motion, her tone voicing her confusion, "Back to where?"
Jo shrugs, and waves her rag in the air that states it should be obvious, for someone like Brooke who should know where she really belongs, and Brooke doesn't belong here, Brooke knows Jo's not going to let her settle in and become comfortable with Ellen. Stubborn blonde. "Tree Hill or something."
Brooke shakes her head, ignoring the fact that Jo actually has the ability and the amount of brain cells it takes to listen and remember something, and she knows Jo doesn't see it, the pain that comes along once Brooke thinks of Tree Hill, all Jo sees is the splintered, stained wood beneath her very own fingertips, "No."
This time, Jo looks up, feigning - is she pretending? - concern, "How come?"
Brooke shrugs, and traces a pattern in the wood with her manicured nail, and with her voice low and almost unable to be heard, she says, "You can't face your demons once you've turned your back on them."
---
Dean sighs and closes the newspaper, and with a tone that seems too fake to be bored, he looks at Jo with a smirk and says, "No jobs."
"How unfortunate," Jo says sarcastically with a bright smile, and she leans her elbows on the bar as the rag is left on the side, discarded from their memories from the last two minutes. She rests her head between her hands, and looks around, humming some infamous tune that only causes Dean to keep his smirk in place.
He shrugs, acting as normal as he can muster, "I guess we'll just have to stay a little longer."
Jo's smile doesn't disappear, and her voice picks up a higher note as she takes the rag from the side and starts wiping down the counter, her eyes making their way back to Dean's, "That's the best thing I've heard in days."
---
Jo pulls a bar stool from behind her and sits on it as the counter creates a barrier between her and Dean. She rests her head on the palm of one hand as the other waits expectantly open in Dean's direction. He sighs and gives her the pen, and she drags the book towards her, scanning and mumbling to herself as Dean leans over the counter, although in a safe proximity so he doesn't invade Jo's personal bubble.
Brooke watches from her seat, a few stools down from the pair, and as Jo's blonde locks cover over her face, and with the absent brush of pushing rebellious strands of hair behind her ears, Brooke's view changes so quickly she doesn't even blink. She sees brown tresses instead of gold, a bracelet made out of beads adorning her pale wrist instead of a watch, and a tutoring centre with books giving off a smell she isn't used to instead of a dark bar smelling of alcohol and leather, and she whispers to herself, "Tutor girl."
Jo looks up with a delicate eyebrow raised, looking disturbed from her rambling and, more than likely, flirtation with Dean. "Excuse me?"
Brooke shakes her head, and looks down towards the wooden bench, embarrassed from her loud reminiscing. She quickly says, "Nothing," and misses the strange look Dean passes over towards her, and the silent question that sparkles in his eyes as he raises his eyebrows to Jo, who simply shrugs and keeps on talking as if Brooke never said anything at all.
---
Hot breath tickles her ear as the familiar deep voice asks, "What are you writing?" She jumps at the sound of his voice, surprising her regardless of the tickling giveaway. From her peripheral vision, she sees him take a seat next to her, looking at her rather intently. She always thought he looked at Jo like that, never at her with such intensity. It makes her shiver, and she clears her throat as she realises he's waiting.
"A letter." Brooke looks at him, and Dean's smirk is only small, his eyes trained on the letter on the counter.
"To whom?" Dean stops looking at her letter, and is now concentrating on her face. She's turned back to the letter now, she doesn't want him to see right through her, through her eyes to her inner emotions she doesn't even like, fluttering inside of her. It's a part of her she likes to hide from, to keep hidden.
Brooke answers quietly, "My demons."
---
The door slams shut, and Sam's concerned yell doesn't do anything to bring her back inside, away from the downpour, "Where is she going?"
"It's pouring outside." Jo says from behind the counter, a glass in one hand and a cloth in another. She's cleaning again, and Ash is asleep on one of the tables.
Sam's still facing the closed door, the rain is falling down fast and hard from outside the windows, "She's gonna get a cold."
Sam stands up, but Dean places a hand on his shoulder, "Apparently pneumonia isn't Brooke's kryptonite. I'll be back." He stands up from his stool, Jo giving him a weird look with a powerful vibe of jealousy behind her eyes, and he's out the door before she can say anything to distract him. Dean spots Brooke trudging through the mud, the rain cascading viciously upon them both. He shouts over the rain, "What are you doing?"
Brooke turns around, and Dean's advancing on her, shielding his eyes with his arm, which appears to be a pathetic attempt as the water still collides with his eyes and slides off his face. He's already soaked, from leather jacket to shoes. She yells back, "What!?"
She's stopped, and Dean manages to walk the distance between them, and he says in a normal voice that is heard over the rain, with concern etched in his tone, "What are you doing?" He lets his arm fall to his side, and squints as he looks down at Brooke.
Brooke shrugs carelessly in the rain, blinking the rain out of her eyes, "Moving on."
He looks around, turning a full circle before he asks, "In the rain?"
She shows him the cardboard soaked box in her grip, "No."
Dean's eyes reflect confusion, and he looks to the box when he asks, "What's inside it?"
"Copies of letters," Brooke says with a small shrug.
Dean looks at Brooke, her eyes looking towards the muddy ground, and he bows his head to be able to catch her brown orbs, "Copies?"
Brooke shrugs, embarrassed, and makes eye contact with him as she quietly, yet audibly, says, "Always keep the originals."
"Why?" he shrugs, and the water runs off of his shoulders that are clothed with leather.
Brooke looks to the side, then into his red eyes that are being effected by the rain. Her eyes are a sheet of sparkling tears that's being held prisoner, almost ready to walk the plank and drown in the sea, "So if I ever get lost, I can always find my way back."
---
"Where do you see yourself in ten years?" Jo asks, as she sits opposite Dean at a table. She smiles at him as she leans over the desk, her arms crossed on the surface.
"Hopefully with a car that has a CD player," Sam chuckles as he pointedly looks at Dean to his side.
Dean smirks and points with his thumb to his left, motioning at Sam, "To be away from this moron."
Brooke says, as if she's a telephone computer operator, as it sounds rehearsed and used at least once before, and it has, somewhere painful in her past, "I'll probably be married to someone like Marvin McFadden."
"Marvin who?" Dean looks to his right at Brooke, and his voice is filled with patience and a soft push to know a piece of her they haven't already uncovered from the cobwebs.
With a whisper, Brooke looks to the side, a distant look in her brown eyes, "Senator McFadden." She looks at Dean, her voice a little louder and confident, "Everyone knows him as Mouth."
---
Jo taps a couple of times on the countertop with her long fingers, "So . . ."
"So . . ." Dean looks at Jo, although she's only taller because he's sitting at a stool and she's leaning down from the other side of the bar. He doesn't have to look at Sam directly for him to know when he's not welcome.
"Uh . . . I have to be . . . there," Sam stutters and looks over to a direction away from the two, he gets up quickly and walks over to the wall, running a hand through his long hair.
Brooke doesn't move. She's looking at something straight ahead, perhaps past the walls of the saloon and to somewhere past the trees, possible hills, and any other obstacle that is blocking what she really wishes to see. Her eyes seem red, and her skin is a little more pale than usual.
Jo notices, which kind of shocks Brooke for when she asks with real concern, "Brooke, are you okay?"
She turns to Jo and nods, "Yeah."
Jo nods back, and leans on the table closer to Brooke. Facing Brooke directly, brown eyes meeting brown red ones, Jo simply asks, "Penny for your thoughts?"
Brooke smiles a little, and in a tone they've heard once or twice before, Brooke says in a rehearsed but very proud way with a smile plastered on her pretty face, "Lucas was my gangrene-infected, amputated limb."
---
Sam places a large hand on her shoulder, taking a seat next to her at the bar, "You okay Brooke?" The warmth radiating onto her shoulder is comforting, even if it isn't consciously the purpose of the action.
She sniffles, and answers, "Yeah." Her elbows are on the bar, and her head is almost between them. She's bent, hunched over, and it's like as if she's in pain.
"What are you doing?" He speaks quietly, as if he's speaking to a scared child. He might as well be, she's scared, hurt and as fragile as glass.
"Drifting," Brooke says as she places her head in her hands and cries.
---
Jo laughs, and randomly throws out, "Ever fought over a girl?" Brooke winces, but no one notices.
Dean looks to Sam, and chuckles, "Nah. I'm a chick magnet." In his defence, Sam laughs loudly at Dean's statement. Jo just smiles, it seems to be getting wider and wider, brighter and brighter, and it's staining the world in Brooke's eyes. Brooke, in turn, stretches her back as she sits up straight at the bar.
She turns to look at Brooke, and says in an amused manner, as if she knows the answer to what she's about to ask, "Brooke, ever fought over a boy?" Jo's eyebrow is raised up, something Brooke has grown sick to seeing, and it's like as if she's waiting for a child to spill his guts to his parents about killing his sister's pet rabbit.
Brooke shrugs, and answers, "Tree Hill High wasn't Tree Hill High if it didn't have that."
"Who did you compete with?" Jo asks almost too quickly, the nosy thinks-she's-a-demon-hunter has this look on her face that shouts confidence, like as if she knows what Brooke knows and she's going to torture it out of her just for the satisfaction. It's not like Jo would know, anyway. She's no Dan Scott or John Winchester. To her, those two men know everything. About the people of his town, and about the demons in the world. Either way, demons and people were exactly alike in Brooke's eyes; evil, selfish, killers.
"Peyton," she says, and Brooke can't help but wince at the name as it's tainted her lips, mind and heart more than once.
Jo nods, her smile hasn't disappeared, and she waves her hand in thought as she steers the attention away from Brooke and to herself, "Don't guys have a saying? Bros over hoes?"
"If you're twelve." Dean chuckles, glancing at Sam with an expected raise of his eyebrow, and Sam just shakes his head.
Jo taps her chin with her pale finger and almost mutters to herself, "I wonder if there is one for girls . . ."
"Hoes over bros," Brooke whispers, and Jo changes the subject seconds later.
---
She hears footsteps and the wind whistling in her ears. She wraps her arms around herself and stares at the nothingness ahead of her. Sam's voice is loud from beside her, "Would you hate me?"
Brooke turns around, her arms still wrapped around her like how a cocoon encases a newborn butterfly. Brooke looks up at the tall Winchester, obviously startled by the question, "What? Why would I hate you?"
Sam lowers his head, and huskily says, "Would you hate me if I kissed you?"
---
Ellen's talking, and all Brooke hears is nothing. She isn't purposefully tuning the older woman out, it is just that the patterns in the wood are intriguing and have a history, no matter how boring it may be. Ellen's wiping glasses, and after constant persistence in asking if she needed any help, Brooke finally relented and sat down, listening to Ellen talk about Jo as a little girl, and the types of people who come by her saloon to get drunk and lose themselves from their lives for a few hours. ". . . pretty girl."
"What?" Brooke raises her head quickly and looks at Ellen, who's in mid-wipe and looking back at her. The vibe she gets is something motherly, something foreign and long forgotten in Brooke's mind. Her own mother has never looked at her with such warmth before.
Ellen shrugs, "Nothing." She continues on with her wiping of many shot glasses, and placing them rim down onto the small lower level of the counter in the bartender’s area. She says nonchalantly and doesn't make eye contact with Brooke but with the glasses, "I was just saying you're not the kind of person I'd see stuck with the Winchesters, that's all."
---
"Ever had any of those embarrassing nicknames when you were growing up?" Jo asks with a chuckle, her hands are busy with cleaning some glasses again. Supposedly Ash had a late night last night with a bottle of Vodka, and Jo is stuck cleaning up his drunken mess. Brooke wishes she hadn't gone to bed, to have missed the chance of her old partying ways.
Dean looks to Sam with a smirk that has started to warm Brooke's broken heart, and with a chuckle he says, "Besides buck-face?"
Sam immediately quips with eagerness, "Loser?"
"Jailbait?" Dean says, and Sam opens his mouth in shock. Someone has a couple of dirty secrets hidden in the closet.
Jo laughs, causing everyone's attention onto her again. She's all bubbly and blonde, a total facade to the usually witty Jo Brooke is used to, "Guess not."
Brooke says, "Yeah." She nods as she smiles at the lost memory, a few fading butterflies consume her stomach as she remembers the nickname she's only been blessed with on the second chance she gave Lucas, "Pretty Girl."
---
Ellen breathes a sigh of relief, finally the boys and Brooke are back from whatever adventure they've been planning. She's sick and tired of seeing customers walking into the bar, with no face of familiarity she's become used to over the last few days, "Finally, you are all back. Are you okay?"
Dean shrugs it off as he closes the door behind Sam and Brooke, "No sweat."
"Good." Ellen smiles, and she's pouring some liquor into a shot glass. The trio take a seat at the bar, and Ellen says in a tone that suggests she's just remembered, "Oh, Brooke. Someone came by for you."
Brooke looks up surprised. She doesn't know anybody in the area except for the four - or five, if you included Ash - people in the saloon. "Someone did?"
Ellen nods, confirming in a way that what she's about to say will mention something where hearts are broken and the obsession of basketball is where ravens fly, dominate and rule. "Yes. Two blondes; a girl and a boy. They asked if you were here -"
"You didn't say - ?" Brooke interrupts, anxiety rushing in her stomach.
"No." Ellen shakes her head, and Brooke exhales in relief, "I said I'd keep an eye out for you, though."
"Thank you."
---
Brooke jumps at his nearness and almost screams, "Dean!"
"Davis, you've been brooding for days . . ." Dean shakes his head and sits down next to her at the bar. Jo's behind the counter, probably listening in, but Brooke doesn't notice and Dean just keeps smiling at her, not Jo.
In a whisper, Brooke sees short, blonde hair and the number twenty-three on a white basketball shirt flash before her eyes, "Broody."
Dean raises one of his eyebrows and says, "What?"
She shakes her head, embarrassed, "Never mind."
---
"Brooke, you were almost killed today!" Dean lectures as they walk back into the saloon, he turns around as Sam and Brooke enter through the door. He closes the wooden entrance with a slam, some dust falling from the roof and onto them.
Sam looks at her with concern, and recalls the moments before when they faced the supernatural being, "You froze up."
Dean huffs and says loudly, "You've got to open up, okay? I'm not into the whole mushy girly stuff like Sammy, here, is, but Brooke, we're here for you."
It's silent for about a couple of seconds before Sam quietly says to Brooke, "You okay, Brooke?"
The first tear cascades down her pale cheek and she whimpers, "I just want to go home." The other tears come falling down when she's in the arms of Sam, and under the worried gaze of Dean.
---
Jo wipes down the counter, asking the occupants of the stools in front of her a question that seems to belong to a genre she's used before, "Ever had something that you could identify yourself with? Like an object or something?"
Dean shrugs, and simply says, "My car."
Sam rolls his eyes, and when Jo looks at him, he shrugs, "I'm not sure."
Dean shakes his head disapprovingly, "Dude, you so had a teddy bear when you were fifteen."
Jo laughs, with a roll of her brown eyes accompanying the sound, and she turns to face the quiet brunette, "Brooke?"
"A red door," she smiles proudly, and laughs as she makes eye contact with Jo, a first for a couple of days. Jo's eyes are sparkling with mirth, and Brooke can't help but keep the smile on her face.
Dean smirks, looking at the two women, "That's new." No one knows which he's referring to, the two women getting along, or the answer Brooke gave to Jo's question.
Ellen smiles and nods her head with affection, and quietly whispers while looking at her daughter interact with Brooke through a smile, "That it is."
---
Dean finds her sitting outside the saloon, small droplets of water falling from the sky. He sits down next to her, and looks at her profile as he watches her sniffle and wipe hastily away the tears that get away from her eyes, "Why are you crying?"
Brooke sniffles and wipes her eyes again, "Because."
"Why?" Dean asks as he places his hand on her back and rubs slow circles to soothe her.
She looks at him, her mascara running down her face, and she states, "I'm a mess."
"No you're not," he says, and he knows exactly what she's referring to. It's not her appearance, it's just her. What makes her Brooke Davis. He whispers quietly as he wipes a stray tear from her cheek, his fingers lingering, "You're perfect."
Brooke pauses, looking at Dean intently before she shakes her head and protests, "No! I don't belong here!"
He nods, cupping her cheek with his hand and smirking that smirk she's grown to really look forward to seeing every day, "Yeah you do."
Brooke shakes her head a little even though his hand is stopping her violent movements, and she quietly says, "No, I don't."
"You belong here," Dean says quietly, and she smiles a little, "You belong here with me."
---
He speaks abruptly, and when he does, it catches her off guard. "Where do you want to be?"
Brooke looks at Dean, they're sitting on stools at the bar again, and she turns to face him, confusion etched on her features, "Pardon?"
"When we have to hit the road. When Sam and I track this demon. Where are you going to be?" Dean says, his eyes trained on hers. She's never thought of where she'd end up, where she'd go. She's not a planner, she enjoys living in the moment.
She looks down, and shrugs. "I don't know."
---
Dean shouts over the rain with mirth in his voice, "What is it with you and the rain?"
Brooke shrugs from her position cross legged in the mud, an absent smile on her face, "Memories."
"Of Lucas?" Dean says, and bends down so his breath is the only feel of warmth on her neck. It's a tentative subject, and it's like as if it has slipped through his perfectly shaped lips.
What shocks him the most, Brooke supposes, is the smile on her face as she turns to look at him, chin almost touching forehead, and as she blinks away the droplets of rain, she taps his nose and says, "Why, aren't you a smart cookie?"
---
He chuckles as she's twirling in the light rain, his hands are in his jean pockets, and his head is bowed down slightly. "You're going to get a disease."
Brooke laughs and stops twirling to face him, "At least it isn't a STD."
Dean chuckles, "That's a bonus." He smiles and looks around. A sun shower. He hasn't seen the sun in a while, and as he looks at Brooke, it's the only sight of the bright light, a hint at what Brooke Davis was like before she hitchhiked her way into their car and into his life. He hasn't seen this kind of glow off of her in the days they've been in each other's presence, "Why are you out here again?"
Brooke smiles and looks up to the baby blue sky, "Washing away the memories."
Dean shrugs shyly, and Brooke laughs in return as she walks slowly to his motionless figure. "Need some company?"
Brooke shakes her head, "No." She takes him by the hand, and he looks at their entwined fingers. When he looks back up at her, she's smiling again, the water droplets are slowly moving down her face, and she quietly says, "I just need you," and with that, she leads him away from the saloon.
---
She appears behind Dean at the bar, where he's alone with only a bottle of beer, and she says to the back of his head, "You."
"What?" He turns around, leaving the bottle in his grip on the bar, to see Brooke standing up straight, confidence shining through her eyes and her brown orbs focused on his intently.
Brooke doesn't look away, nor does she move, but she blinks a couple of times before she says, "You asked me where I wanted to be," and now he remembers their conversation from a few days ago, she inhales and he looks back at her face, "and it's with you."
Dean's momentarily speechless, and he whispers hoarsely, "It's not safe."
She steps forward, a tiny area of space left between his sitting figure and her standing one, and she shakes her head with a tentative whisper accompanying it, "Nothing is ever safe."
His eyes are bright, a shiny unshed sheet of water covers his eyes, and he whispers, "If you get hurt -"
Brooke cups his cheek, stroking it absently with her thumb as she keeps gazing into his eyes, her voice as soft as a cool breeze, "I've already been hurt. There's nothing to lose."
"But you," Dean says automatically, his voice soft, too. His hand has reached towards her cheek, cupping it and stroking it with each of his fingers, as if to feel that she's real, that she's not some porcelain doll he can accidentally smash by dropping.
Brooke shakes her head, and smiles as her voice cracks through the soft volume of reassurance, "No, you're not going to lose me."
---
"Scared you?" Dean says as he sneaks up behind Brooke, who is gazing at the pool table absently. She jumps and turns around, the stick in her grip still in place.
Brooke laughs, lightly tapping his shoulder with the pool cue, "Like an ass in Tree Hill."
Dean smirks in a way that sends butterflies fluttering right through her body, with the way his eyes shine with recognition of who she's referring to. It's warming and comforting for her to know he actually does listen, "Thinking of Dan?"
"He wishes," she laughs as Dean grabs a pool cue and they set up the billiard rack for a new game.
---
She squeals as his hands quickly enclose around her waist, and his face is at her neck. "Hey!" She's sitting at a stool, blushing at Ellen who smiles and shakes her head behind the bar before she turns her back on the two.
Dean nips at the delicate skin on her neck, and rests his head on her shoulder, whispering, "Hey."
"Stop," Brooke smiles, and for the first time since she's been in his presence, she's seemed louder and brighter, almost back to normal.
Dean looks to the side of Brooke's face, his hot breath tickling her ear, "What?"
"The nuzzling." Brooke says, though her voice still contains mirth. To add some sort of depth, she adds, "Jo is looking."
"So?" Dean says as he looks around and spots Jo talking to Ash in the corner of the saloon.
She shrugs, and he allows her shoulders to guide his head up and down, causing the side of his face to brush against the side of her hair, "I feel bad."
"Why?"
Brooke pouts, and Dean smirks against her skin, "She had you first."
He laughs, and moves one his hands onto her lap, tangling their hands together until they fit perfectly. "No she didn't."
"You were making eyes at her," Brooke huffs, and she knows he can tell she's rolling her eyes. She can feel his smirk on her neck.
"Was not."
"Was too."
Dean huffs, and poorly defends himself by kissing her neck, "Since when do you care?"
"Since I've grown a conscious."
Dean laughs and kisses her cheek, "So that is what that is."
"What is?" Brooke smiles as she challenges Dean, looking to the side to see his hair.
"Don't worry." Dean says with a chuckle, and he pauses before his other hand is tangling itself in her hair, "Sam's been talking about you a lot lately."
"He has?" She says with a surprised tone.
Dean nods, and she giggles as she feels him leaving a trail of kisses down her neck. "Yeah. Did you two have a thing?"
Brooke shrugs, and admits, "Kind of." Dean stops kissing her neck, and looks at her with a look of some sort of fear she's never seen reflect in his eyes before, "He kissed me."
"Oh," he says simply, his eyes are blank but she knows he's upset by this.
Brooke shrugs, "I liked it."
"Oh," he seems to be moving away from her a little, and she starts giggling at him. He raises his eyebrow at her, and she copies his smirk she's mastered over a couple of days.
Brooke places her palm under his chin, and guides his face towards hers, "But I love yours."
Dean smirks, and he quickly quips, "Well, doesn't that make me all tingly inside."
"It better."
Dean looks around the saloon until his eyes fall on something, "So . . . let's give Jo and Sammy something to be jealous about."
"Excuse me?" Brooke says as she raises her eyebrow and lets Dean grip her hand firmly and pull her from her stool. Jo's taken place behind the counter, busying herself with wiping down the wood and rearranging the glasses, but Brooke is the only one who witnesses her sneaky glances at Dean.
Dean pulls her into a spare space, and pulls her closer to him. He wraps his arms around her waist, and she repeats the action around his neck. He starts swaying her, slowly dancing to an imaginary beat. She laughs as she kisses his cheek with affection.
"This is your big show off?" She asks before she places her head on his shoulder.
Dean smirks, "I'm just getting started," he takes one of his hands off her waist, raising her head by placing his hand under her chin, and guides her face towards his. It feels like time has stopped before he kisses her.
---
"On the road again?" Ellen leans on the bar, her hands crossed over her chest and a faint smile is brightening up her face.
Dean says, "In all its glory."
"Thank you for everything." Sam smiles, shaking Ellen's hand and moving towards the door, standing next to Dean. Brooke's outside, packing or sitting in the Impala.
Ellen offers a warming smile, it seems like it hasn't been worn in months, "No problem. Where are you boys heading to, anyway?"
Dean smirks, "Off to fight some demons."
"Any I know of?"
Dean's tone isn't cocky or loud, it's quiet and anxious as he says, "No, none of us know of them."
---
Brooke sighs from the backseat of the Impala, "Where are we going?"
"Somewhere," Dean answers vaguely, looking at the mirror that's implanted on the center of the roof at the front, and he watches Brooke in amusement as she sighs and rests her head on the window, watching as life outside of the Impala rushes by.
"Where?" Brooke sighs and looks up at the mirror, her eyes meeting Dean's, and Sam just smiles as he, too, looks out the window.
Dean smirks, still maintaining eye contact with his back seat passenger through the mirror, "It's a surprise."
Brooke pouts and breaks the contact, leaning her head on the cool window. She mutters with a tone of unappreciation, "I hate surprises."
He chuckles, and takes the next turn, "You better get used to it."
---
Brooke wakes up in the back seat of the Impala, and they're parked in front of a cafe that seems familiar. She sits up quickly, and looks out the window, her nose pressed to the glass as her two hands frame her face, "Tree Hill. What am I doing back here?"
Sam looks behind him, as he's sitting in the passenger seat, and Brooke's looking up at the two brothers, her eyes are as wide was soccer balls and they've switching quickly between looking at Dean and Sam. He shrugs simply, "Putting the past behind you."
Brooke shakes her head, and falls back into the seat, and starts to sink down into the corner of the car, "I don't want to be here."
Nodding, Dean turns around so he's looking at a cowering Brooke, "Yeah, you do."
"No, I don't," Brooke says as she sits up with a shake of her head. She looks to Dean, her eyes begging him to take her away, to be her knight in shining armour who rescues her from the big, bad evil dragon.
Dean says quietly, and reaches for her hand, "Everyone wants to be home."
Brooke shakes her head, a tear leaving a wet trail down her cheek, "No. I'm already home."
Dean nods, "Yeah, in Tree Hill."
She shakes her head with a hollow, quiet chuckle, "No, I'm already home." Dean throws a strange look in her direction, and Brooke sighs as she musters an innocent yet warm smile, "With you."
---
"We've got to stop meeting like this, Miss Davis," he says as he walks out into the pouring rain to find her standing in front of him, allowing the rain to soak through her clothes and give him permission to see her figure. He smirks as she turns around, and he asks, "What are you doing out here?"
Brooke smiles, and walks towards him on the deserted dark road with her hands by her sides, "Waiting for you."
Dean looks around with a shrug of his shoulders, "How'd you know I'd find you?"
Brooke smiles, and looks down towards her feet, "You always know where to find me." She looks up at him, and he's looking at her intently. She smiles, and he reciprocates the small action that's causing butterflies to swarm in her stomach.
Dean taps his head a couple of times, opening his mouth and closing it before he is able to form a coherent sentence. "It's because you're up here."
Brooke shakes her head, taking the last couple of steps so she's almost forehead to nose, "No. It's because you're here." She taps his chest, right above where his heart is, and she thinks she can feel it thumping as she places her hands on his cheeks, his hands wrap around her waist, and she kisses with the rain soaking through them, cooling them to the core, yet she isn't cold, but very, very warm with a tinge of safety.
-
Fandom: Supernatural/One Tree Hill
Pairing/Character: Dean/Brooke; Dean/Jo, Sam/Brooke, (mentions); Lucas/Brooke, Lucas/Peyton, Ellen, Lucas, Peyton, Haley, Karen, Dan, Mouth
Spoilers/Warnings: If you've seen One Tree Hill, all the episodes, then you may remember some of the references (and some quotes) used in this piece that have been featured or said in the show. AU for Supernatural season two; the boys stay with Ellen and Jo for a longer time, with a special OTHiller with them. :) I haven't seen season two of Supernatural on tv, only on youtube, so beware if Ellen or Jo seem a little OOC. ;/
Disclaimer: Not mine. ;/
Word Count: 7,779
Rating: PG
Summary: Brooke is remembering her life from the past.
Notes: Blame Jordan (PURPLE_ANGEL725) for the Brooke/Dean/Jo OT3. :p Although, my OT3 would be Dean/Brooke/Sam. :p Anyway, I tried a different style, and I hope you like this. :p For Jordan, because she's so rockin'.
(Cross-posted at a forum and here @ bluesunsets.)
"I hate clowns."
Jo whips around from behind the counter, her hair copying the direction she's turned and colliding with her pale face. She smiles playfully at Sam. "Well, I wouldn't have figured. Since you're still shaking and all."
Sam rolls his eyes and quips, "Dean hates planes."
"Oh really?" Jo says as she turns to Dean with a mischievous glint in her eye, and a smile known for breaking hearts. She picks up a glass and a white cloth, cleaning and causing the object to shine when the light from the windows hits it.
Dean simply smirks, "Don't get any ideas, sweetheart."
Jo says sweetly, "Wouldn't dream of it."
"Any fears, blondie?" Dean asks
She places the shot glass down and picks up another. While she's rubbing the glass clean, Jo snaps back, "No, smug ass."
Dean shrugs, a smirk lighting up his features. He shrugs and taps a rhythm onto the wooden bar in front of him. "Sure, everyone fears something."
She shrugs, and with how she says it and what, it gives a feel as if Jo doesn't trust them, "Well, I don't. Even if I did, why would I tell you lot?"
He shrugs, and Dean easily says, "A reason for me to sleep well at night. Fairytales are always a sleep jerker."
Jo nods, "Huh." She turns her head in the direction of the brunette, sitting beside two empty stools. "What do you fear?"
"Nothing," Brooke says as she stirs the ice in her drink around with the straw. The clinking of the ice is what is distracting Brooke from the world, as they decrease in size and will soon vanish into the liquid in her glass.
Jo stops her cleaning and places her hand on her hip, unconvinced Brooke has nothing to say, "Is that so?"
Brooke nods, looking up and locking eyes with the blonde, "Yeah. How can you fear something when it's already happened to you?"
"What was it?" Jo asks, her voice almost small and soft. It's uncharacteristic of her, so far as Brooke's observed, to be the quiet type.
Brooke sips her drink, and quietly says, "A broken heart."
---
It's been a couple of hours, and already Jo's playing Twenty Questions. "What is it that you miss most from home?"
Dean shrugs, and says with a hollow look in his eyes, "Nothing. Nothing is there to be missed."
She nods, and it's not like she understands him. Jo continues to press, anyway, "No girlfriend? Fiancée? Wife?" Sometimes she's oblivious to when people wish to avoid certain subjects, and maybe this is an act, to make Dean spill his guts because everyone knows how she looks at the older Winchester.
He chuckles, and looks Jo in the eye, "No."
Jo turns her attention to Sam, almost reluctantly, and the smile that's on her face seems sickeningly satisfied before she asks, "How about you, Sam?"
Sam smiles sadly, looking at Jo with a layer of sparkling wet tears in his eyes, "Just memories."
"Oh. Sorry." Jo says, although there is no quiet tone to her voice, but an automatic response to when it is hinted that someone's lost someone so close to them. Jo turns to Brooke, resting her palms on the edge of the bar, "What about you, Brooke? What do you miss?"
Brooke answers, though her tone is quiet and almost distant, "Everything."
--
"I was never really good at it, you know. I've mastered it like I am with hunting." Jo's laughing, and she's behind the counter, leaning forward on her elbows with her palms being the rest for her head.
Dean's lips quirk up, "Mastering demon hunting isn't anything like pouring a glass of scotch while throwing the bottle in the air."
Jo leans back, almost straightening and rocking on her heels as her eyes challenge Dean, "How about you try?"
He laughs, and easily brushes it off. "No thanks. I'll leave that to the girls at Coyote Ugly."
Jo gasps with a too much fake exaggeration with her hands fluttering to her chest, and her smile being mischievous. "So, finally, there's something normal about Dean Winchester."
Dean smirks with a shrug. "I guess there is." Jo doesn't say anything, and neither does Dean. The silence between them isn't total silence; only their voices are not bouncing from the walls, but the sighs, the playing of pool, and the smell of alcohol stay.
Jo laughs, "I used to be very intimidated about holding a gun. Pretty stupid now, huh?"
"You're okay. Just need some pointers," Dean says as he takes a drink from his beer bottle. Jo watches a little too intently.
"Right, and you need to find some new ways to get into my pants." She laughs, and looks towards Brooke who is sitting at a table towards the old karaoke machine. She leans forward again, and whispers, "So, how did you get stuck with that one? You and your brother don't seem to be the type to pick up pretty hitchhikers."
Dean twists around, looking at Brooke who is examining her table intently, lost in her own little world. "I guess we aren't. I guess the look of determination in her eyes convinced us to give her a chance."
Jo nods towards Brooke, as if they haven't been talking about her anyway, "What was she doing, anyway?"
Dean turns to face her again, he shrugs, and answers quietly, "Running away."
---
Jo slithers next to her, her back leaning against the bar, and her voice taking on an innocence of trying to get to know her. "So, Brooke. Do you have any talents?"
Brooke looks towards Jo from her seat on a stool. She's been looking at the patterns on the wood for a while, now, wondering if the cause of them are from people with broken hearts or homes. "No. Unless screaming out lame cheers in a tight outfit, getting drunk, and sleeping around counts as a talent."
Jo nods, piecing everything together. "You quite the party girl?"
"Was," Brooke answers immediately, looking straight ahead and not at Jo, who seems to be judging her with her dark eyes.
Jo asks, her voice still loud and disinterested, "What changed?"
Brooke exhales, but it's more like a hollow chuckle, and whispers, "Everything."
---
"You got a boyfriend, Jo?" Dean asks from his position near the pool table. Jo's on the opposite side, and Ellen's at the bar. Sam chuckles, and Jo just smiles.
Ellen laughs, her hands are crossed over her chest before she moves to go behind the bar, "Don't think she could handle one." She gets a glass and pours some liquor into it, drowning the contents in one swallow.
Jo gasps, turning to face her mother after she's finished her shot, "Mom!"
"I doubt that." Dean smirks, and Ellen's laughter is loud as she pours another shot of liquor.
Jo blushes, a red tainting her porcelain skin, "So, Brooke, you got a boyfriend?"
"I did." Brooke says as she takes her turn and shoots a couple of the balls into the nets. She remembers she was quite good at this game, being conniving and manipulative, and sending people to Seattle while playing this.
Jo takes her shot, and asks, "What happened?"
Brooke stands straight, watching as Dean sets up his target, "He broke my heart."
"Oh." It's as simple as that, as they're thrown into silence.
---
Ellen approaches Brooke near the karaoke machine. Brooke's been looking at the dusty, small box for a while now, and as Ellen speaks, Brooke jumps a little in surprise, but doesn't turn around to face the older woman, "Where are you going to go when the boys get into more serious matters?"
Brooke shrugs carelessly as she leans over to brush some of the dust from the glass away, "I don't know."
Ellen copies her shrug, and leans against the wall, "You could always stay -"
She makes eye contact, and a genuine smile brightens up Brooke's face, "Thanks, but I don't want to be a burden. I want as much distance from Tree Hill as possible."
Ellen's voice is soft, a tone Brooke's never heard her speak in before, "What are you running away from?"
She turns to face the machine again, and shrugs with a quiet answer, "Life."
---
"I'll verse you." Jo sits opposite Dean at a table close to the bar. Her smile is bright, flashy even, and it just proves she's remembered to brush her teeth.
His reaction to her sudden bouncy plop isn't a jump, but a deadpanned answer in a boring tone Brooke's not accustomed to hearing being passed from Dean's lips to everyone's ears, "Wow, kinky."
Rolling her eyes, Jo rephrases her order as she speaks slowly, as if she's speaking to a small child, "I'll verse you in poker."
Dean shakes his head as Jo's hand goes to her jeans pocket, and she places the deck of old, worn out cards that almost look as ancient as the Egyptian pyramids onto the table with a slam, "You know you're gonna lose, sweetheart."
"Oh, I doubt that." Jo smiles as she shuffles, her eyes never leaving Dean's face. It's a challenge Dean can't - nor won't - run from.
Dean, however, breaks the eye contact from Jo who watches him as he turns to look at Sam who's staring out the dusty window. "You wanna play, Sammy?"
"No thanks," Sam says as he looks to Dean, and with a reassuring smile he returns to focus on the objects outside the window. It's most likely dirt, the Impala, and the wind carrying leaves and litter to another destination to taint.
Jo turns to Brooke at the bar, oblivious to the brunette's intense staring into her shot glass with a lost look glazing over her eyes, "Brooke, fancy a game?"
Brooke whispers, in a tone that suggests she's telling herself, "I gave up playing games a long time ago." Jo shrugs, and starts playing poker with Dean.
---
Ellen sits next to Brooke at the bar, and places her hands on top of the old wood, running her hands on the edge of it with a manner that seems to have grown accustomed to the feel of the dented wood, "You got a phone on you, hon.?"
"I must've placed it somewhere. I haven't been able to find it in days." Brooke says, and she watches Ellen's eyes as she looks at the table and where her hands are. The older woman looks up and smiles.
Her hand goes to her pocket, and she places a silver cell phone on the wood in front of Brooke. She nods towards the object as she explains, "Well, it's been ringing."
Brooke looks at Ellen quickly, a fraction of uneasiness thickly coating her voice, "Did you answer?"
Ellen shakes head, "No. Privacy business and all."
"Thanks," Brooke nods as she looks at the silver phone. She touches her phone hesitantly as it rings, and she opens it, with the familiar name of her ex-best friend displayed on it. She could talk to her, Brooke's no longer afraid of touching her phone when it makes a sound, but she doesn't want to hear the voice and see the face of her ex-BFF plastered in her mind.
Jo appears behind the bar, in front of Brooke and nods towards the phone, "Who is it?"
"No one important." Brooke says as she closes the phone and places it in her jeans pocket.
---
Sam pulls a chair towards Brooke's table in the saloon, the wood of the chair legs scraping against the wood floor makes a horrible sound, but he doesn't seem to care. "What's wrong, Brooke?"
Brooke keeps crying, and Sam's arm rests on her shoulders, pulling her towards him so her head rests on his own shoulder. He rubs circles on her back, and she pants out, "Karen's pregnant."
Sam's heard of Karen, he's heard of everyone who is anyone in Tree Hill, and he immediately knows Brooke's been on the phone since her cell is out on the table, closed, "Is she okay?"
"Yeah," Brooke nods against him, putting her hand on his arm.
Sam looks down to see the top of her head, and he places a quick kiss on her brown hair before whispering, "Why are you crying?"
"Because I'm scared," Brooke sniffles, and more tears run down her cheeks and onto his shirt.
Sam strokes her hair, pulling her closer that she's almost sitting on his lap, and whispers again, "Scared of what?"
Brooke says, roughly through fresh tears and a compressed throat from crying, "Leaving something so innocent to be corrupted by evil."
---
"You ever gonna go back?" Jo's wiping down the counter, something Brooke's been witnessing a lot since she arrived with the Winchesters. Jo doesn't look up at her, doesn't even perk up one of her eyebrows. Huh, it must only be for Dean when she actually bothers to look someone in the eye. She doesn't care, and she's not making any effort to cover that fact up.
Brooke, in turn, lifts her own perfectly plucked eyebrow in one quick practised motion, her tone voicing her confusion, "Back to where?"
Jo shrugs, and waves her rag in the air that states it should be obvious, for someone like Brooke who should know where she really belongs, and Brooke doesn't belong here, Brooke knows Jo's not going to let her settle in and become comfortable with Ellen. Stubborn blonde. "Tree Hill or something."
Brooke shakes her head, ignoring the fact that Jo actually has the ability and the amount of brain cells it takes to listen and remember something, and she knows Jo doesn't see it, the pain that comes along once Brooke thinks of Tree Hill, all Jo sees is the splintered, stained wood beneath her very own fingertips, "No."
This time, Jo looks up, feigning - is she pretending? - concern, "How come?"
Brooke shrugs, and traces a pattern in the wood with her manicured nail, and with her voice low and almost unable to be heard, she says, "You can't face your demons once you've turned your back on them."
---
Dean sighs and closes the newspaper, and with a tone that seems too fake to be bored, he looks at Jo with a smirk and says, "No jobs."
"How unfortunate," Jo says sarcastically with a bright smile, and she leans her elbows on the bar as the rag is left on the side, discarded from their memories from the last two minutes. She rests her head between her hands, and looks around, humming some infamous tune that only causes Dean to keep his smirk in place.
He shrugs, acting as normal as he can muster, "I guess we'll just have to stay a little longer."
Jo's smile doesn't disappear, and her voice picks up a higher note as she takes the rag from the side and starts wiping down the counter, her eyes making their way back to Dean's, "That's the best thing I've heard in days."
---
Jo pulls a bar stool from behind her and sits on it as the counter creates a barrier between her and Dean. She rests her head on the palm of one hand as the other waits expectantly open in Dean's direction. He sighs and gives her the pen, and she drags the book towards her, scanning and mumbling to herself as Dean leans over the counter, although in a safe proximity so he doesn't invade Jo's personal bubble.
Brooke watches from her seat, a few stools down from the pair, and as Jo's blonde locks cover over her face, and with the absent brush of pushing rebellious strands of hair behind her ears, Brooke's view changes so quickly she doesn't even blink. She sees brown tresses instead of gold, a bracelet made out of beads adorning her pale wrist instead of a watch, and a tutoring centre with books giving off a smell she isn't used to instead of a dark bar smelling of alcohol and leather, and she whispers to herself, "Tutor girl."
Jo looks up with a delicate eyebrow raised, looking disturbed from her rambling and, more than likely, flirtation with Dean. "Excuse me?"
Brooke shakes her head, and looks down towards the wooden bench, embarrassed from her loud reminiscing. She quickly says, "Nothing," and misses the strange look Dean passes over towards her, and the silent question that sparkles in his eyes as he raises his eyebrows to Jo, who simply shrugs and keeps on talking as if Brooke never said anything at all.
---
Hot breath tickles her ear as the familiar deep voice asks, "What are you writing?" She jumps at the sound of his voice, surprising her regardless of the tickling giveaway. From her peripheral vision, she sees him take a seat next to her, looking at her rather intently. She always thought he looked at Jo like that, never at her with such intensity. It makes her shiver, and she clears her throat as she realises he's waiting.
"A letter." Brooke looks at him, and Dean's smirk is only small, his eyes trained on the letter on the counter.
"To whom?" Dean stops looking at her letter, and is now concentrating on her face. She's turned back to the letter now, she doesn't want him to see right through her, through her eyes to her inner emotions she doesn't even like, fluttering inside of her. It's a part of her she likes to hide from, to keep hidden.
Brooke answers quietly, "My demons."
---
The door slams shut, and Sam's concerned yell doesn't do anything to bring her back inside, away from the downpour, "Where is she going?"
"It's pouring outside." Jo says from behind the counter, a glass in one hand and a cloth in another. She's cleaning again, and Ash is asleep on one of the tables.
Sam's still facing the closed door, the rain is falling down fast and hard from outside the windows, "She's gonna get a cold."
Sam stands up, but Dean places a hand on his shoulder, "Apparently pneumonia isn't Brooke's kryptonite. I'll be back." He stands up from his stool, Jo giving him a weird look with a powerful vibe of jealousy behind her eyes, and he's out the door before she can say anything to distract him. Dean spots Brooke trudging through the mud, the rain cascading viciously upon them both. He shouts over the rain, "What are you doing?"
Brooke turns around, and Dean's advancing on her, shielding his eyes with his arm, which appears to be a pathetic attempt as the water still collides with his eyes and slides off his face. He's already soaked, from leather jacket to shoes. She yells back, "What!?"
She's stopped, and Dean manages to walk the distance between them, and he says in a normal voice that is heard over the rain, with concern etched in his tone, "What are you doing?" He lets his arm fall to his side, and squints as he looks down at Brooke.
Brooke shrugs carelessly in the rain, blinking the rain out of her eyes, "Moving on."
He looks around, turning a full circle before he asks, "In the rain?"
She shows him the cardboard soaked box in her grip, "No."
Dean's eyes reflect confusion, and he looks to the box when he asks, "What's inside it?"
"Copies of letters," Brooke says with a small shrug.
Dean looks at Brooke, her eyes looking towards the muddy ground, and he bows his head to be able to catch her brown orbs, "Copies?"
Brooke shrugs, embarrassed, and makes eye contact with him as she quietly, yet audibly, says, "Always keep the originals."
"Why?" he shrugs, and the water runs off of his shoulders that are clothed with leather.
Brooke looks to the side, then into his red eyes that are being effected by the rain. Her eyes are a sheet of sparkling tears that's being held prisoner, almost ready to walk the plank and drown in the sea, "So if I ever get lost, I can always find my way back."
---
"Where do you see yourself in ten years?" Jo asks, as she sits opposite Dean at a table. She smiles at him as she leans over the desk, her arms crossed on the surface.
"Hopefully with a car that has a CD player," Sam chuckles as he pointedly looks at Dean to his side.
Dean smirks and points with his thumb to his left, motioning at Sam, "To be away from this moron."
Brooke says, as if she's a telephone computer operator, as it sounds rehearsed and used at least once before, and it has, somewhere painful in her past, "I'll probably be married to someone like Marvin McFadden."
"Marvin who?" Dean looks to his right at Brooke, and his voice is filled with patience and a soft push to know a piece of her they haven't already uncovered from the cobwebs.
With a whisper, Brooke looks to the side, a distant look in her brown eyes, "Senator McFadden." She looks at Dean, her voice a little louder and confident, "Everyone knows him as Mouth."
---
Jo taps a couple of times on the countertop with her long fingers, "So . . ."
"So . . ." Dean looks at Jo, although she's only taller because he's sitting at a stool and she's leaning down from the other side of the bar. He doesn't have to look at Sam directly for him to know when he's not welcome.
"Uh . . . I have to be . . . there," Sam stutters and looks over to a direction away from the two, he gets up quickly and walks over to the wall, running a hand through his long hair.
Brooke doesn't move. She's looking at something straight ahead, perhaps past the walls of the saloon and to somewhere past the trees, possible hills, and any other obstacle that is blocking what she really wishes to see. Her eyes seem red, and her skin is a little more pale than usual.
Jo notices, which kind of shocks Brooke for when she asks with real concern, "Brooke, are you okay?"
She turns to Jo and nods, "Yeah."
Jo nods back, and leans on the table closer to Brooke. Facing Brooke directly, brown eyes meeting brown red ones, Jo simply asks, "Penny for your thoughts?"
Brooke smiles a little, and in a tone they've heard once or twice before, Brooke says in a rehearsed but very proud way with a smile plastered on her pretty face, "Lucas was my gangrene-infected, amputated limb."
---
Sam places a large hand on her shoulder, taking a seat next to her at the bar, "You okay Brooke?" The warmth radiating onto her shoulder is comforting, even if it isn't consciously the purpose of the action.
She sniffles, and answers, "Yeah." Her elbows are on the bar, and her head is almost between them. She's bent, hunched over, and it's like as if she's in pain.
"What are you doing?" He speaks quietly, as if he's speaking to a scared child. He might as well be, she's scared, hurt and as fragile as glass.
"Drifting," Brooke says as she places her head in her hands and cries.
---
Jo laughs, and randomly throws out, "Ever fought over a girl?" Brooke winces, but no one notices.
Dean looks to Sam, and chuckles, "Nah. I'm a chick magnet." In his defence, Sam laughs loudly at Dean's statement. Jo just smiles, it seems to be getting wider and wider, brighter and brighter, and it's staining the world in Brooke's eyes. Brooke, in turn, stretches her back as she sits up straight at the bar.
She turns to look at Brooke, and says in an amused manner, as if she knows the answer to what she's about to ask, "Brooke, ever fought over a boy?" Jo's eyebrow is raised up, something Brooke has grown sick to seeing, and it's like as if she's waiting for a child to spill his guts to his parents about killing his sister's pet rabbit.
Brooke shrugs, and answers, "Tree Hill High wasn't Tree Hill High if it didn't have that."
"Who did you compete with?" Jo asks almost too quickly, the nosy thinks-she's-a-demon-hunter has this look on her face that shouts confidence, like as if she knows what Brooke knows and she's going to torture it out of her just for the satisfaction. It's not like Jo would know, anyway. She's no Dan Scott or John Winchester. To her, those two men know everything. About the people of his town, and about the demons in the world. Either way, demons and people were exactly alike in Brooke's eyes; evil, selfish, killers.
"Peyton," she says, and Brooke can't help but wince at the name as it's tainted her lips, mind and heart more than once.
Jo nods, her smile hasn't disappeared, and she waves her hand in thought as she steers the attention away from Brooke and to herself, "Don't guys have a saying? Bros over hoes?"
"If you're twelve." Dean chuckles, glancing at Sam with an expected raise of his eyebrow, and Sam just shakes his head.
Jo taps her chin with her pale finger and almost mutters to herself, "I wonder if there is one for girls . . ."
"Hoes over bros," Brooke whispers, and Jo changes the subject seconds later.
---
She hears footsteps and the wind whistling in her ears. She wraps her arms around herself and stares at the nothingness ahead of her. Sam's voice is loud from beside her, "Would you hate me?"
Brooke turns around, her arms still wrapped around her like how a cocoon encases a newborn butterfly. Brooke looks up at the tall Winchester, obviously startled by the question, "What? Why would I hate you?"
Sam lowers his head, and huskily says, "Would you hate me if I kissed you?"
---
Ellen's talking, and all Brooke hears is nothing. She isn't purposefully tuning the older woman out, it is just that the patterns in the wood are intriguing and have a history, no matter how boring it may be. Ellen's wiping glasses, and after constant persistence in asking if she needed any help, Brooke finally relented and sat down, listening to Ellen talk about Jo as a little girl, and the types of people who come by her saloon to get drunk and lose themselves from their lives for a few hours. ". . . pretty girl."
"What?" Brooke raises her head quickly and looks at Ellen, who's in mid-wipe and looking back at her. The vibe she gets is something motherly, something foreign and long forgotten in Brooke's mind. Her own mother has never looked at her with such warmth before.
Ellen shrugs, "Nothing." She continues on with her wiping of many shot glasses, and placing them rim down onto the small lower level of the counter in the bartender’s area. She says nonchalantly and doesn't make eye contact with Brooke but with the glasses, "I was just saying you're not the kind of person I'd see stuck with the Winchesters, that's all."
---
"Ever had any of those embarrassing nicknames when you were growing up?" Jo asks with a chuckle, her hands are busy with cleaning some glasses again. Supposedly Ash had a late night last night with a bottle of Vodka, and Jo is stuck cleaning up his drunken mess. Brooke wishes she hadn't gone to bed, to have missed the chance of her old partying ways.
Dean looks to Sam with a smirk that has started to warm Brooke's broken heart, and with a chuckle he says, "Besides buck-face?"
Sam immediately quips with eagerness, "Loser?"
"Jailbait?" Dean says, and Sam opens his mouth in shock. Someone has a couple of dirty secrets hidden in the closet.
Jo laughs, causing everyone's attention onto her again. She's all bubbly and blonde, a total facade to the usually witty Jo Brooke is used to, "Guess not."
Brooke says, "Yeah." She nods as she smiles at the lost memory, a few fading butterflies consume her stomach as she remembers the nickname she's only been blessed with on the second chance she gave Lucas, "Pretty Girl."
---
Ellen breathes a sigh of relief, finally the boys and Brooke are back from whatever adventure they've been planning. She's sick and tired of seeing customers walking into the bar, with no face of familiarity she's become used to over the last few days, "Finally, you are all back. Are you okay?"
Dean shrugs it off as he closes the door behind Sam and Brooke, "No sweat."
"Good." Ellen smiles, and she's pouring some liquor into a shot glass. The trio take a seat at the bar, and Ellen says in a tone that suggests she's just remembered, "Oh, Brooke. Someone came by for you."
Brooke looks up surprised. She doesn't know anybody in the area except for the four - or five, if you included Ash - people in the saloon. "Someone did?"
Ellen nods, confirming in a way that what she's about to say will mention something where hearts are broken and the obsession of basketball is where ravens fly, dominate and rule. "Yes. Two blondes; a girl and a boy. They asked if you were here -"
"You didn't say - ?" Brooke interrupts, anxiety rushing in her stomach.
"No." Ellen shakes her head, and Brooke exhales in relief, "I said I'd keep an eye out for you, though."
"Thank you."
---
Brooke jumps at his nearness and almost screams, "Dean!"
"Davis, you've been brooding for days . . ." Dean shakes his head and sits down next to her at the bar. Jo's behind the counter, probably listening in, but Brooke doesn't notice and Dean just keeps smiling at her, not Jo.
In a whisper, Brooke sees short, blonde hair and the number twenty-three on a white basketball shirt flash before her eyes, "Broody."
Dean raises one of his eyebrows and says, "What?"
She shakes her head, embarrassed, "Never mind."
---
"Brooke, you were almost killed today!" Dean lectures as they walk back into the saloon, he turns around as Sam and Brooke enter through the door. He closes the wooden entrance with a slam, some dust falling from the roof and onto them.
Sam looks at her with concern, and recalls the moments before when they faced the supernatural being, "You froze up."
Dean huffs and says loudly, "You've got to open up, okay? I'm not into the whole mushy girly stuff like Sammy, here, is, but Brooke, we're here for you."
It's silent for about a couple of seconds before Sam quietly says to Brooke, "You okay, Brooke?"
The first tear cascades down her pale cheek and she whimpers, "I just want to go home." The other tears come falling down when she's in the arms of Sam, and under the worried gaze of Dean.
---
Jo wipes down the counter, asking the occupants of the stools in front of her a question that seems to belong to a genre she's used before, "Ever had something that you could identify yourself with? Like an object or something?"
Dean shrugs, and simply says, "My car."
Sam rolls his eyes, and when Jo looks at him, he shrugs, "I'm not sure."
Dean shakes his head disapprovingly, "Dude, you so had a teddy bear when you were fifteen."
Jo laughs, with a roll of her brown eyes accompanying the sound, and she turns to face the quiet brunette, "Brooke?"
"A red door," she smiles proudly, and laughs as she makes eye contact with Jo, a first for a couple of days. Jo's eyes are sparkling with mirth, and Brooke can't help but keep the smile on her face.
Dean smirks, looking at the two women, "That's new." No one knows which he's referring to, the two women getting along, or the answer Brooke gave to Jo's question.
Ellen smiles and nods her head with affection, and quietly whispers while looking at her daughter interact with Brooke through a smile, "That it is."
---
Dean finds her sitting outside the saloon, small droplets of water falling from the sky. He sits down next to her, and looks at her profile as he watches her sniffle and wipe hastily away the tears that get away from her eyes, "Why are you crying?"
Brooke sniffles and wipes her eyes again, "Because."
"Why?" Dean asks as he places his hand on her back and rubs slow circles to soothe her.
She looks at him, her mascara running down her face, and she states, "I'm a mess."
"No you're not," he says, and he knows exactly what she's referring to. It's not her appearance, it's just her. What makes her Brooke Davis. He whispers quietly as he wipes a stray tear from her cheek, his fingers lingering, "You're perfect."
Brooke pauses, looking at Dean intently before she shakes her head and protests, "No! I don't belong here!"
He nods, cupping her cheek with his hand and smirking that smirk she's grown to really look forward to seeing every day, "Yeah you do."
Brooke shakes her head a little even though his hand is stopping her violent movements, and she quietly says, "No, I don't."
"You belong here," Dean says quietly, and she smiles a little, "You belong here with me."
---
He speaks abruptly, and when he does, it catches her off guard. "Where do you want to be?"
Brooke looks at Dean, they're sitting on stools at the bar again, and she turns to face him, confusion etched on her features, "Pardon?"
"When we have to hit the road. When Sam and I track this demon. Where are you going to be?" Dean says, his eyes trained on hers. She's never thought of where she'd end up, where she'd go. She's not a planner, she enjoys living in the moment.
She looks down, and shrugs. "I don't know."
---
Dean shouts over the rain with mirth in his voice, "What is it with you and the rain?"
Brooke shrugs from her position cross legged in the mud, an absent smile on her face, "Memories."
"Of Lucas?" Dean says, and bends down so his breath is the only feel of warmth on her neck. It's a tentative subject, and it's like as if it has slipped through his perfectly shaped lips.
What shocks him the most, Brooke supposes, is the smile on her face as she turns to look at him, chin almost touching forehead, and as she blinks away the droplets of rain, she taps his nose and says, "Why, aren't you a smart cookie?"
---
He chuckles as she's twirling in the light rain, his hands are in his jean pockets, and his head is bowed down slightly. "You're going to get a disease."
Brooke laughs and stops twirling to face him, "At least it isn't a STD."
Dean chuckles, "That's a bonus." He smiles and looks around. A sun shower. He hasn't seen the sun in a while, and as he looks at Brooke, it's the only sight of the bright light, a hint at what Brooke Davis was like before she hitchhiked her way into their car and into his life. He hasn't seen this kind of glow off of her in the days they've been in each other's presence, "Why are you out here again?"
Brooke smiles and looks up to the baby blue sky, "Washing away the memories."
Dean shrugs shyly, and Brooke laughs in return as she walks slowly to his motionless figure. "Need some company?"
Brooke shakes her head, "No." She takes him by the hand, and he looks at their entwined fingers. When he looks back up at her, she's smiling again, the water droplets are slowly moving down her face, and she quietly says, "I just need you," and with that, she leads him away from the saloon.
---
She appears behind Dean at the bar, where he's alone with only a bottle of beer, and she says to the back of his head, "You."
"What?" He turns around, leaving the bottle in his grip on the bar, to see Brooke standing up straight, confidence shining through her eyes and her brown orbs focused on his intently.
Brooke doesn't look away, nor does she move, but she blinks a couple of times before she says, "You asked me where I wanted to be," and now he remembers their conversation from a few days ago, she inhales and he looks back at her face, "and it's with you."
Dean's momentarily speechless, and he whispers hoarsely, "It's not safe."
She steps forward, a tiny area of space left between his sitting figure and her standing one, and she shakes her head with a tentative whisper accompanying it, "Nothing is ever safe."
His eyes are bright, a shiny unshed sheet of water covers his eyes, and he whispers, "If you get hurt -"
Brooke cups his cheek, stroking it absently with her thumb as she keeps gazing into his eyes, her voice as soft as a cool breeze, "I've already been hurt. There's nothing to lose."
"But you," Dean says automatically, his voice soft, too. His hand has reached towards her cheek, cupping it and stroking it with each of his fingers, as if to feel that she's real, that she's not some porcelain doll he can accidentally smash by dropping.
Brooke shakes her head, and smiles as her voice cracks through the soft volume of reassurance, "No, you're not going to lose me."
---
"Scared you?" Dean says as he sneaks up behind Brooke, who is gazing at the pool table absently. She jumps and turns around, the stick in her grip still in place.
Brooke laughs, lightly tapping his shoulder with the pool cue, "Like an ass in Tree Hill."
Dean smirks in a way that sends butterflies fluttering right through her body, with the way his eyes shine with recognition of who she's referring to. It's warming and comforting for her to know he actually does listen, "Thinking of Dan?"
"He wishes," she laughs as Dean grabs a pool cue and they set up the billiard rack for a new game.
---
She squeals as his hands quickly enclose around her waist, and his face is at her neck. "Hey!" She's sitting at a stool, blushing at Ellen who smiles and shakes her head behind the bar before she turns her back on the two.
Dean nips at the delicate skin on her neck, and rests his head on her shoulder, whispering, "Hey."
"Stop," Brooke smiles, and for the first time since she's been in his presence, she's seemed louder and brighter, almost back to normal.
Dean looks to the side of Brooke's face, his hot breath tickling her ear, "What?"
"The nuzzling." Brooke says, though her voice still contains mirth. To add some sort of depth, she adds, "Jo is looking."
"So?" Dean says as he looks around and spots Jo talking to Ash in the corner of the saloon.
She shrugs, and he allows her shoulders to guide his head up and down, causing the side of his face to brush against the side of her hair, "I feel bad."
"Why?"
Brooke pouts, and Dean smirks against her skin, "She had you first."
He laughs, and moves one his hands onto her lap, tangling their hands together until they fit perfectly. "No she didn't."
"You were making eyes at her," Brooke huffs, and she knows he can tell she's rolling her eyes. She can feel his smirk on her neck.
"Was not."
"Was too."
Dean huffs, and poorly defends himself by kissing her neck, "Since when do you care?"
"Since I've grown a conscious."
Dean laughs and kisses her cheek, "So that is what that is."
"What is?" Brooke smiles as she challenges Dean, looking to the side to see his hair.
"Don't worry." Dean says with a chuckle, and he pauses before his other hand is tangling itself in her hair, "Sam's been talking about you a lot lately."
"He has?" She says with a surprised tone.
Dean nods, and she giggles as she feels him leaving a trail of kisses down her neck. "Yeah. Did you two have a thing?"
Brooke shrugs, and admits, "Kind of." Dean stops kissing her neck, and looks at her with a look of some sort of fear she's never seen reflect in his eyes before, "He kissed me."
"Oh," he says simply, his eyes are blank but she knows he's upset by this.
Brooke shrugs, "I liked it."
"Oh," he seems to be moving away from her a little, and she starts giggling at him. He raises his eyebrow at her, and she copies his smirk she's mastered over a couple of days.
Brooke places her palm under his chin, and guides his face towards hers, "But I love yours."
Dean smirks, and he quickly quips, "Well, doesn't that make me all tingly inside."
"It better."
Dean looks around the saloon until his eyes fall on something, "So . . . let's give Jo and Sammy something to be jealous about."
"Excuse me?" Brooke says as she raises her eyebrow and lets Dean grip her hand firmly and pull her from her stool. Jo's taken place behind the counter, busying herself with wiping down the wood and rearranging the glasses, but Brooke is the only one who witnesses her sneaky glances at Dean.
Dean pulls her into a spare space, and pulls her closer to him. He wraps his arms around her waist, and she repeats the action around his neck. He starts swaying her, slowly dancing to an imaginary beat. She laughs as she kisses his cheek with affection.
"This is your big show off?" She asks before she places her head on his shoulder.
Dean smirks, "I'm just getting started," he takes one of his hands off her waist, raising her head by placing his hand under her chin, and guides her face towards his. It feels like time has stopped before he kisses her.
---
"On the road again?" Ellen leans on the bar, her hands crossed over her chest and a faint smile is brightening up her face.
Dean says, "In all its glory."
"Thank you for everything." Sam smiles, shaking Ellen's hand and moving towards the door, standing next to Dean. Brooke's outside, packing or sitting in the Impala.
Ellen offers a warming smile, it seems like it hasn't been worn in months, "No problem. Where are you boys heading to, anyway?"
Dean smirks, "Off to fight some demons."
"Any I know of?"
Dean's tone isn't cocky or loud, it's quiet and anxious as he says, "No, none of us know of them."
---
Brooke sighs from the backseat of the Impala, "Where are we going?"
"Somewhere," Dean answers vaguely, looking at the mirror that's implanted on the center of the roof at the front, and he watches Brooke in amusement as she sighs and rests her head on the window, watching as life outside of the Impala rushes by.
"Where?" Brooke sighs and looks up at the mirror, her eyes meeting Dean's, and Sam just smiles as he, too, looks out the window.
Dean smirks, still maintaining eye contact with his back seat passenger through the mirror, "It's a surprise."
Brooke pouts and breaks the contact, leaning her head on the cool window. She mutters with a tone of unappreciation, "I hate surprises."
He chuckles, and takes the next turn, "You better get used to it."
---
Brooke wakes up in the back seat of the Impala, and they're parked in front of a cafe that seems familiar. She sits up quickly, and looks out the window, her nose pressed to the glass as her two hands frame her face, "Tree Hill. What am I doing back here?"
Sam looks behind him, as he's sitting in the passenger seat, and Brooke's looking up at the two brothers, her eyes are as wide was soccer balls and they've switching quickly between looking at Dean and Sam. He shrugs simply, "Putting the past behind you."
Brooke shakes her head, and falls back into the seat, and starts to sink down into the corner of the car, "I don't want to be here."
Nodding, Dean turns around so he's looking at a cowering Brooke, "Yeah, you do."
"No, I don't," Brooke says as she sits up with a shake of her head. She looks to Dean, her eyes begging him to take her away, to be her knight in shining armour who rescues her from the big, bad evil dragon.
Dean says quietly, and reaches for her hand, "Everyone wants to be home."
Brooke shakes her head, a tear leaving a wet trail down her cheek, "No. I'm already home."
Dean nods, "Yeah, in Tree Hill."
She shakes her head with a hollow, quiet chuckle, "No, I'm already home." Dean throws a strange look in her direction, and Brooke sighs as she musters an innocent yet warm smile, "With you."
---
"We've got to stop meeting like this, Miss Davis," he says as he walks out into the pouring rain to find her standing in front of him, allowing the rain to soak through her clothes and give him permission to see her figure. He smirks as she turns around, and he asks, "What are you doing out here?"
Brooke smiles, and walks towards him on the deserted dark road with her hands by her sides, "Waiting for you."
Dean looks around with a shrug of his shoulders, "How'd you know I'd find you?"
Brooke smiles, and looks down towards her feet, "You always know where to find me." She looks up at him, and he's looking at her intently. She smiles, and he reciprocates the small action that's causing butterflies to swarm in her stomach.
Dean taps his head a couple of times, opening his mouth and closing it before he is able to form a coherent sentence. "It's because you're up here."
Brooke shakes her head, taking the last couple of steps so she's almost forehead to nose, "No. It's because you're here." She taps his chest, right above where his heart is, and she thinks she can feel it thumping as she places her hands on his cheeks, his hands wrap around her waist, and she kisses with the rain soaking through them, cooling them to the core, yet she isn't cold, but very, very warm with a tinge of safety.
-