Something Stupid

Dean watched her throw her head back and fake a laugh at something that the guy next to her said. The brown-black hair was thrown over her shoulder by a careless hand, and her brown eyes crinkled in that way they always did when she smiled-be it real or fake. He narrowed his eyes and he practically felt his brother roll his eyes next to him.

"You know-"

"Shut it, Sammy." He growled, downing the rest of the whiskey on his cup and motioning the bartender for another.

"I'm just saying," Dean threw Sam a glare, but he kept going, "you can't glare at her every time she gets a guy to buy her a drink."

"Yeah, well, she doesn't have to be so obvious about it."

Sam snorted, "Do you even hear yourself? That is exactly what you do, with even less subtlety. And she doesn't complain or say anything when you actually end up going home with those women. Chances are, she's just getting him to buy her a drink."

Dean gave him a glare, but quickly turned to look uninterested into his cup when Liz sat next to him, setting down a fruity looking drink, and a plate of fried mozzarella sticks.

"Check it out! I totally just got a guy to buy me cheese sticks!" She stage whispered to them, giving them a large, satisfied smile.

Sam smiled right back at her, and shook his head. "I'm impressed."

She gave a small vow still sitting down, and, doing her best Elvis impression, said, "Thank you, thank you very much."

They sat in silence for a bit, munching on the food without Dean's participation. Liz tilted her head towards the sulking man next to her and raised an eyebrow in question towards Sam, but he only rolled his eyes in response.

"So…any women tickle your fancy, Deanie?" She purposely used the nickname. He hated it, but it was usually enough to get him to at least face her.

"A few, Lizard." He responded with a sour smirk when he said his nickname for her, and another motion for the bartender to bring him another drink. "I see you got a man."

Liz gave him a weird look. "No…I got cheese sticks."

Sam pursed his lips at the brewing confrontation and mumbled something about going to get fresh air.

"That ain't what it looked like from here, honey." Dean snorted, knocking down another glass of whiskey and motioning for a refill.

"Oh. Pray tell, what did it look like from here, Winchester?" Liz folded her arms, and raised an eyebrow.

"I'm just saying, you can't go 'round teasing guys in plain daylight and expect people to not look at you a certain typ'a way ." He said, almost nonchalantly, but with a bite behind the words.

Liz looked his straight in the eyes for what seemed like centuries, and Dean would have cowered if he didn't know her any better.

She wasn't the most beautiful woman Dean had ever met. He had a type, after all, and Liz wasn't it. She was tall, with the kind of killer curves that made any kind of jeans look painted on, and button up shirts almost impossible to wear in the right size. She had a nice olive skin tone that went well with the dark hair and eyes. Her hands were rough like every hunter's, and she had way too many scars, both visible and not, to say that she had led a sheltered life.

So she was rough in the kind of way that made Dean stay away from women. He was a man, sure, and he didn't discriminate much on women. Women were women, after all, and Dean was a man that could appreciate a good rack. But he also had a type, and while Liz could have been beautiful, there was a certain roughness around her edges that Dean didn't like to gravitate towards. His usual women were oblivious, smooth, and too innocent to the world of hunters and monster and constant hotel rooms. And Liz wasn't that.

But her eyes were kind, though, and her smiles wide and infectious, and boy did Dean like those. She was scarred, she could curse like a sailor when baited enough, and she only had her duffle bag, and her backpack to her name (her motorcycle had been stolen, after all). She was usually mild-mannered too, the kind that believed in killing people with kindness, and what-not, and while Dean might roll his eyes when she played the good cop in every situation, she was effective, and he'd give her that.

So she wasn't beautiful in the conventional way, and she was rough, and scarred, and not Dean's type of girl.

Most of the time.

Except there were instances where Liz was beautiful, and God, did Dean appreciate those instances when Liz was that; more beautiful than Dean could say. Dean found Liz beautiful when she was angry. It didn't happen often, but when it did, it was almost always at him because he was Dean Winchester, and she was Liz No-Last-Name (literally her response every time the subject of her family came up) and he was callous where she was kind, and he was stubborn where she was forgiving.

Angry Liz did not come out here, though, and Dean felt a little confused when her eyes softened, and they were suddenly sad. Dean could've cursed, because while he loved Angry beautiful Liz, Sad Liz was heartbreaking and breathtaking all at the same time, and not something Dean strived to bring out too often.

"You can be so unkind, sometimes. You'll be nice to me for a couple of hours, and then you'll find a way of making me feel like utter shit, Dean Winchester." She told him with a small sad smile, getting up and setting down a few bills on the table before she walked away towards the entrance.

Dean sat on the barstool for a few stupefied seconds, before he scrambled, cursing, to reach his wallet and leave enough money to cover his tab before he went after her.

He almost crashed into her when he opened the door, but he wasn't allowed to say much because she turned and spoke. "Can I get a ride back to the motel, please?" She asked him and he nodded.

They found Sam leaning against the Impala, playing on his phone, but quickly stuffing it into his jean's pocket when he saw them approach.

"We're going back to the motel." Dean almost growled, yanking the door open to the driver's side, while Liz gave Sam a small smile and got into the back.

They sat in silence for the ten-minute ride to the run-down place they would call home for the night, no radio on. Sam alternated between looking out the window, gazing at Liz fiddle with her fingers in the back seat, and Dean clenching the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.

Dean parked directly in front of their room, and slammed the Impala's door angrily on his way out. Sam didn't miss the way that Liz flinched at the sound, but he didn't think much of it. She was a hunter, sure, but she was also a flincher, and slamming doors seemed to get her the worst. Sam had a running theory and tally on when and why she would flinch, but she didn't ever speak about her past, so it was all speculation on his part.

Once inside the motel room, Dean threw the keys to the Impala and the room on the kitchenette table, and turned to Sam who was barely closing the door behind him. Sam extended his arm out for the customary rock-paper-scissors battle of who would have to share the bed with Liz, when she stopped them.

"I think I'm going to go see if I can get a room for myself tonight. We're all tired, and I don't think any of you really want to share their bed with a serial blanket-stealer." Was all she said before she was out the door with her duffle bag in hand.

"What did you do, Dean?" Sam turned to him, hand in hips and an expectant look on his face.

"I didn't-" but Dean cut himself off with a frustrated growl, and few curse words as he went after her.

"Liz, wait!" Dean yelled at her retreating back, and Liz stopped on her tracks but didn't turn around.

"What do you want now, Dean? I'm tired." And she sounded tired, and like she was in tears, and guilt ate up at Dean.

Dean was at a loss of proper words, so he went the practical, yet perhaps wrong, way. "Do you even have the money right now? I haven't seen you hustle in a while."

She turned around to face him and sighed. "I have some money," she said, but didn't continue walking towards the motel's front desk.

"Look. I'm-" Dean began, but she cut him off.

"I know you are," she gave him a small smile and Dean's heart skipped a beat. "I should still get a room for myself, though. There's a Sharknado marathon on TV tonight that I wanted to watch, and I don't wanna bother you guys, so…" She trailed off with a shrug, but, again, didn't move from the spot.

She did that a lot; mentioning how she would bother the brothers. Liz was quiet most of the time, didn't cause any trouble, if Dean had to say anything about it at all, but he knew why she said it (or at least knew some of it). She'd walked in on him telling Sam that they needed to find a way of ditching her the first time she traveled with them. She'd sort of frozen when Dean made eye contact with her and he let his sentence die out, but hadn't said anything else about the subject after Dean cleared his throat and greeted her as if nothing had happened. And if she cried and told him she had no one else in the world to turn to if they ditched her ("so please don't leave me," she'd sobbed) when they'd gotten drunk months later after a hunt and Sam had gone off to bed for the day, he chose to never mention it.

So Dean smile crookedly, licked his lips good naturedly and stepped closer, "Which one are they on now? Third? Fourth?"

Liz's smile turned giddy, and her eyes did the crinkly thing that Dean sort of liked. "Third. I'm crossing my fingers for at least another one, though."

"Is the third one the one where Fin rides the sharks, or the one where they're in space?"

"Space. Although why that riding shark scene from the second one was not nominated as the coolest scene in cinematic history ever is beyond me."

"Well, I don't know about that," Dean said with cock of his head and a chuckle before beginning to walk towards their motel room, still talking. "You ever seen Die Hard?"

"Have I ever-is that even a question?!" She sputtered, jogging a bit to catch up to him. "It's Bruce Willis, a.k.a. my boyfriend, being the badass to end all badasses."

"Whoa." Dean stopped, grabbing both her her shoulders. "Willis? Really?!"

"Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!" She laughed. "It's the only movies I remember ever watching growing up. I had a foster dad once that would use the phrase interchangeably for everything, and my foster mom would always hit him behind the head for it."

And there it was. The one thing Dean and Sam had been trying to get out of her. They knew almost nothing about her except that her motorcycle had been stolen and she had asked for a ride to the next town over when they'd both met hunting the same nest of vampires. And then she'd stuck around for the next town, even when Dean had tried to find a way of ditching her, and then the next and the next, until she was a constant. But she never said anything about herself. She was Liz-not Elizabeth, or Lisa-and she didn't have a last name. She was a hunter because she was a hunter, and she rode a motorcycle because she didn't know how to drive a car. She only had a duffle bag and a backpack to her name because that was life, only had two pairs of jeans, a jacket and a couple of shirts and flannels, and a pair of old leather boots because hunters were poor, and never seemed to mind that she never got a bed to herself because she was a beggar, and not a chooser. She had kind eyes, loved apple pie almost as much as Dean, and could quote just about every crappy movie ever made. But that's all they knew of her because her answers were always so vague and trivial that she gave nothing away.

And now Dean could say he knew she was a foster kid, and little things made sense.

She shared everything, but was fiercely protective of little things (like a worn leather journal she carried around, and a stuffed giraffe that had seen better days, but that she kept stashed at the bottom of her duffel). She never talked about a family, never mentioned anything about holidays or birthdays (and hell if he knew when her birthday was), and never mentioned a hometown. Dean and Sam, well, they at least had Bobby that they could fall back on. She didn't seem to have anybody ("so please don't leave me," she'd sobbed), and Dean had always just assumed that that was why she was a hunter. He had thought she had a sob story, something along the lines of her family dying at the hands of some pagan god, or a demon, or vampires, but had never thought about her actually not having a constant family to begin with. And when he'd asked her how she got into the hunting life, she'd shrugged nonchalantly, looked at the ground, and merely told him that she just wanted to do good.

Frustrating, she was, if someone were to ask Dean. He knew he had issues, knew he'd rather things ate him alive than actually talk about feelings, but Liz was on a completely different level.

And Dean was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he asked before she stopped giving information altogether.

"So you a foster kid?" He asked, leaning against the hood of the Impala, and gently taking the duffle bag from her shoulder and setting in on the hood.

She followed his movements quietly before she hugged her arms to herself, and said, "I was, yeah…it's not like in the movies, if that's what you're thinking."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Wasn't thinking much. I don't know much about it."

Liz shrugged again. "Foster parents-they're not evil. At least the ones I had. Most were kind, and tried very hard to make me feel welcomed. Some were just there to drive me to school, and give me a roof over my head, and put food on my plate. But ultimately, foster homes are temporary, and so the parents are too. But none of them were ever mean. They just never ended up adopting me, so I didn't ever get to make a family."

"How'd you end up there?" Dean asked with genuine interest.

Liz shrugged again, her arms tight around her still. "My mom was on drugs all the time. And I guess I must have a dad somewhere, but he was never around. Pulled the ol' 'honey, I'm getting diapers!' move on my mom when I was a baby. Never actually came back with them. It was the only bedtime story my mom would ever tell me." She shook her head. "Never forgot it."

Dean nodded because he himself had parental issues (Daddy issues some people would say and Dean would punch them if he could), and he understood all about broken homes, and parents that weren't parents.

"I was seven when the state finally pulled me away. But my grandma was too old and too poor to take care of me, and my aunt had just had a baby and was moving to another state at the time, so she…I guess, she couldn't take me, so I was hauled off to Mr. and Mrs. Hannings' home who took care of me for a whole year before I went to the Coles', and then to the Smith's, and then to the Finches' who almost adopted me but stopped the proceedings when a junior at the high school got pregnant and offered them her baby…a brand new, unbroken baby that could be all their own without the nightmares and the wetting the bed, so I was sent to the Jones'…and so on, and so forth."

Liz shrugged again, and made eye contact. They stared at each other for a long time until Liz adverted those dark eyes of hers with another shrug. "And that's my life story."

"That's a shitty life story." Was all Dean could think of saying, and was reward with a huff that could've been a laugh or a sob.

"It's kindda shitty." She agreed with another shrug.

"So stay. Sammy can sleep through just about everything, so I think we can get away with watching that movie marathon."

"You taking pity on me 'cause my life story's shitty, Winchester?" She asked with an amused little smile as she moved to open the door.

Dean straightened up, and grabbed a hold of her duffel bag. "I ain't taking pity of you, or anything. But if I were, I'd take pity on that awful taste in movies you got."

"Why, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking Nerf herder!" Liz gasped, and Sam raised his head from his prostrate form on his bed for the night.

"Empire Strikes Back!" He exclaimed, and Liz gave him a thumbs up as she closed the door behind Dean.

"Fucking pair of nerds."

This is an ongoing series of One-Shots.