A/N: There are always extra chapters of deleted scenes and other POVs on tumblr. Check my profile for the link!

Episode Guide: This happens between 3x04 and 3x05, but you can think of it as the first of several chapters that will cover one case, like an episode.

Chapter 24: Best Friends

I hadn't been East and I hadn't been South and when Dean told me I could pick any state I liked, I suffered a serious crisis of indecision. Everywhere I'd ever been, I'd gone there with a purpose in mind. I'd never just driven before, checking the local newspapers for cases as I went. What if I picked the wrong place? What if I chose somewhere and there were no cases to be found? What if I picked a state and Dean hated my choice so bad he never let me pick again.

"Come on Ellie, we're nearly out of town," said Dean. "I need to know where I'm going."

"I don't know!" I said. "Um…" Florida? What about Florida? No… New York! But the boys had just been to New York… Texas?

Sam laughed at me. "You broke her, Dean. She wasn't expecting to get to make decisions and now she's freaking out."

Fine. I would let Sam choose for me. I mentally labelled Florida as number one and Texas as number two. "Okay, Sam, I'm thinking of two states. Pick state number one or state number two."

"One," Sam said.

"Florida!" I called out. "Let's go to Florida!"

I could hear Dean's chuckle before he turned the music up. Sam turned around in his seat to look at me. "Just curious, what was the other option?"

"Texas," I said. "Would that have been better?"

But he didn't care either way. He was just happy that I was happy. And I definitely was. We were going onto the open road, with no plan and no case ready when we got there. We might not even make it to Florida. There could be a case in one of the four or five states we passed through, but that was okay. The whole point was to be surprised, to see what happened and to run with it.

After driving all day (and stopping at a diner with fabulous cherry pie!), we ended up stopping in Charleston, West Virginia. The motel was the same as always, seedy and cheap with awful décor. The guy on the desk found it pretty amusing to see a girl checking in with two men and made implications about me that nearly earned him a punch in the face.

We dropped off our bags and headed across the road, where there was a bar. It was pretty ideal for our purposes: there was food, pool, beer and attractive people who weren't picky about one night stands. There was every chance all three of us could get lucky.

I was sitting with Sam, waiting for Dean to come back with more beer. We had full stomachs and the beer was cheap, so none of us saw any reason to hold back.

Sam nudged me and directed my attention towards the bar. Dean was pulling the moves on a cute little brunette girl. She was just his type, from what I'd seen. Outgoing, flirty and up for a good time, but without any expectations. Dean's type was basically girls exactly like him.

"Oh, she's gorgeous," I said. "Excellent choice. I just wish he'd bring the beer back first!"

With a winning smile for the girl so she'd remember him later, Dean finally returned, pushing two beers across the table for Sam and I. We had to sit next to each other, on account of Rule Five and the danger of women thinking I was Dean's girlfriend.

"Is this a typical night for you two?" I asked Sam. "You sit around and watch your brother hit on everything with boobs?"

"He's watching and learning, right Sammy?"

Sam just smirked into his beer, suggesting that he didn't need to learn anything from his brother and did fine on his own, thankyou very much.

"That was a tough case," Sam said, after taking a swig. "Dean's earned whatever kind of break he wants."

Suddenly, Dean grinned. His beer still in his hand, he gestured towards me. "Good thing you don't have a crush on me anymore, huh, Ellie?"

I stared at him in a moment of sheer panic. "What?"

Sam nearly spat out his beer. "What?"

Dean was still grinning, watching my face carefully. "How old were you, twelve? Thirteen? Remember that?" He chuckled. "Adorable."

I decided to play it cool. Clearly, he was just trying to embarrass me and the best way to get him to stop was act totally nonchalant. "I don't know, Dean. I went through a lot of crushes. I can't remember them all." The first part was true, I did go through a lot. But I definitely remembered them all. Especially Dean, because he was the first one.

"Oh you remember," he chuckled. He turned to Sam. "She remembers."

It had never occurred to me, as a teenager or an adult, that Dean had been even remotely aware that I was nuts about him. He generally ignored me completely and I was only fifteen when he stopped coming to visit. My strong urge to be casual was conflicting with my curiosity. How did he know? When did he find out? Or was he just guessing. "This is…" I was going to say "ridiculous" but screw it. I was a kid. Kids have crushes on older boys. I didn't have any reason to be ashamed of that. "You knew? The whole time you knew?"

He shrugged and took another sip of his beer. "My Dad told me."

That had been absolutely the last thing in the world I expected. John Winchester, that gruff ex-marine who thought my Dad was overindulgent for playing with me, had actually sat down with Dean and had a discussion about my schoolgirl crush. "He what? Oh my God!" I was pretty sure John Winchester didn't know my name! I was just Bobby's kid. So if he knew, it couldn't have been because he observed it. He had to hear it from someone else. My father. "Oh God, this is mortifying," I said, burying my head in my hands.

Sam was possibly more astonished than I was. "I'm sorry. Dad actually told you that Ellie had a crush on you?"

"Not exactly," said Dean, still grinning gleefully at my shame. "But it ain't rocket science. We spend three days at Bobby's and Pipsqueak here's not being even a little bit irritating, just looking away when I talk to her and hiding in her room. And then suddenly, Dad's giving me The Talk: Volume Two. Stuff about treating women right and showing respect and this weird bit about younger girls and it being my responsibility not to take advantage of them and come on! I knew what he meant."

Oh God. Dad! My own father had betrayed me. "This is literally the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me," I said. I wondered if I could possibly slide under the table and make a break for the door. I was sure my father meant well, asking John to have a word with Dean, but all the same…

Sam was clearly enjoying my red face just as much as his brother was. He made a sad face at me, but the laughter was in his eyes. "I was your best friend, Ellie! This is such a betrayal. How could you not tell me you were in love with my brother?"

"This is not happening," I said.

"This is totally happening," Dean grinned. "You with your messy braid and your overalls, making me cookies and looking away when you gave them to me."

Did I really make him cookies? I looked back over ten years and yep… yep, I did that. "Shut up."

Sam's mouth suddenly opened wide, and his eyes even wider in gleeful, slightly tipsy excitement. He pointed accusingly at me. "Oh my God! You went through that sundress phase… You said that was for a boy at school! You lied to me!"

The sundress phase. That summer Sam and Dean came to stay and I got it into my head that boys like pretty girls and dresses made you prettier. I hadn't been able to do anything about my face, but I wore dresses exclusively in a radical departure from the norm that everybody noticed. I was such a silly kid!

"I want to die," I moaned.

"Come on, don't be embarrassed," Dean smiled. "You were cute."

It was just getting worse. I wanted to turn completely invisible. I wanted to disappear entirely so Dean couldn't get the satisfaction of seeing my horrified face and the blush rising so fast it must have been purple at that point. "You were sixteen!" I reminded him. He was sixteen and I was an annoying little sister type with a screechy voice that he couldn't stand. "There was no way you thought I was cute. You thought I was a brat."

"It was funny," he said, with a fond sort of smile.

Dean might well have become fond of me in adulthood, but he definitely was not when I was a kid. I pictured him laughing behind my naïve little sundress-wearing back. "Oh my God! You were laughing at me! I was a little girl, Dean! You were the only grown up boy I knew. It wasn't fair to laugh at me."

It wasn't fair! Little girls do silly things. Like he never did anything silly at thirteen!

"Never to your face," he said. "I think I deserve some credit for that."

He did. I could not argue with that. Secretly being amused by me was one thing, but at least it didn't really harm me that much at the time. To have actually mocked me to my face would have been cruel and hurt me badly. In that respect, he was kinder to me than boys my own age.

"How did I not know any of this?" asked Sam.

"Good thing you didn't." Dean's face lit up even brighter, and I realised he was in a mood to tease, and maybe, if I was lucky, he was moving on from me. "Remember Ellie's nickname?"

Sam's face suddenly turned completely ashen. His body stiffened and I saw that little tick of his clenched jaw. "No."

Pipsqueak. That's what Dean always called me. Because I was small and because of my voice. "It was Pipsqueak," I said.

"Only to your face, right Sammy?"

Only to my face? There was something else Dean called me? But how was that embarrassing to Sam? He was now the one with a blush in his cheeks. "Shut up, Dean."

But Sam had willingly participated in my humiliation and I wasn't going to help him if he hadn't helped me. "What?" I asked Dean. "What did you call me?"

Dean took another sip of beer. He looked like he was enjoying Christmas and his birthday all at once. His dreams of brutally humiliating his little brother were coming gloriously true. "Tell her Sam."

Sam sighed and turned to me as I started to drink from my own beer. "He used to call you Sammy's Little Girlfriend."

I stopped, the bottle resting against my lips. "What? Why?"

Sam was looking at Dean with his unique bitchface, a special look that he generally brought out only for his brother, and only when he was behaving particularly shamefully. "Because he's a dick, that's why."

"The way his little face perked up when Dad said we were going to Uncle Bobby's!"

No wonder Dean was looking so smug and gleeful. He had found a way to humiliate both of us at the same time. Poor Sam was obviously having his childhood embarrassment rehashed and as for me… My very first crush had found me amusing and thought of me as his little brother's girlfriend.

Sam hated having his childhood brought up at all. Dean must have known that, but maybe he didn't know why. Because many of Sam's deepest insecurities and fears he kept secret from his brother. But he told me.

"Because she was my only friend, Dean."

Dean did not take the hint that this was more than just embarrassing for Sam. It was hurtful. "Hey, I was rooting for you, man," he said.

I had always thought of my childhood friendship with Sam as a sweet, innocent thing. He wasn't a boy and I wasn't a girl. We were just two kids, gender irrelevant. I knew things other kids didn't, about my mother and monsters and what lurked in the dark. But Sam knew. And he had no friends, no structure, no one he could talk to about his father or his dreams or about the darkness that scared him. The one inside.

Sam was my best friend and I trusted him and now I was finding out that he didn't see me as a friend at all. "This is not happening," I said. I didn't want little Sam to be secretly blushing every time his brother mentioned little Ellie. I wanted us to be friends, just pure, innocent kids who needed each other.

Sam took a huge swig of his beer and slammed it down on the table much heavier than he should have. "Ellie, I did not have a thing for you. Dean, shut up."

Finishing his own beer, Dean stood up. He chuckled again. "Adorable."

Then he was gone, off to find the attractive brunette, and leave us to stew in our shame.

I picked at the label on my beer, something to do with my hands so that I wouldn't have to look at him. "Seriously, Sam. We were just friends, right?"

"Right," Sam agreed. "He's being an ass."

I believed him and at least I could feel better about that. But knowing Dean had laughed at me when I was thirteen and vulnerable still made me want to disappear. "I can't believe he used to laugh at me. I was so awkward and flustered all the time."

I heard Sam laugh and for a moment, I was so hurt by that, until he spoke. "Well, the tables have turned."

I realised that he hadn't laughed at me at all. He was planning revenge on Dean. I definitely wanted to be a part of that. I left the bottle alone and looked up at him. "What? How?"

He leant over and spoke low, though Dean was certainly too far away to hear him. "Just wear that mini skirt again. And drink a beer. Then we'll see who's awkward and flustered."

I thought back to the other night, when I'd come out of the bathroom in that new red skirt and a bit of makeup. It was my "hot flirty girl" interrogation look. They'd both stared at me when they'd seen it and I'd known in that moment that it had worked. It had been a confidence boost to think I had looked good enough to render them both speechless for a moment.

But what did he mean by "drink a beer?" I drank beer all the time. And how would looking hot be a punishment for Dean anyway? Wouldn't he enjoy it if I was sexy? He was pretty honest about his appreciation for the female form. So, how could my putting on tight clothes and drinking beer make him as uncomfortable as he'd made me?

Unless…

The tables have turned? Did Dean now have a crush on me?

"What!?" I squeaked. Then I lowered my voice back to Sam's level. "Are you suggesting that Dean…"

He shook his head. "This conversation never happened." Then he got up and headed over to the bar.

We didn't see Dean again all night and we didn't care. Sam brought back four more beers, correctly guessing that the little trip down memory lane had been as traumatising for me as it had for him. When he came back, we didn't talk about it again. We just drank our beers in silence.

Then he helped me hustle some pool. He pretended to teach me, lost convincingly when two guys agreed to play us for money and then bowed out when I put four hundred dollars down. He made a show of talking me out of it, but one of the guys told him it was my money and if I wanted to lose it taking on a pro that was my business.

We ran out the front door fifteen minutes later, four hundred richer and laughing with drunken adrenaline. It hadn't gotten physical, but the guy and his friend were pretty pissed that we'd hustled them. It was about to kick off when the bartender told us to get the hell out and stop scamming his customers.

Crossing the street back to the motel, our attempt to get back into our room quietly failed spectacularly when I tripped on the doorstep, falling flat on my face. Sam howled with laughter before stepping over me and coming inside. We were both drunk enough that if he'd tried to help me, I'd probably have dragged him down with me. I just crawled over to a bed, while he shut the door, laughing behind his hand.

"You're so drunk!" he laughed.

"You're drunk!" I said. It seemed like a genius comeback at the time.

I felt behind me with my hands so I could hold onto the bed to pull myself up. I got my butt up onto the mattress and then fell backward. That was funny to me, for some reason and I giggled.

Sam had shut the door and he now came across the room towards me. "Ellie!" he shouted, before realising there were people in other rooms and we were supposed to be quiet. "Ellie… Ellie… Ellie. I gotta tell you something."

I managed to sit up again and patted the space next to me. "Sit down. Make yourself at home. Tell me all the somethings."

"Ellie," he said again, sitting down. "Ellie… I'm glad you came with us. 'Cos you're nice and you're funny and you're my best friend."

Tears welling up in my eyes, I grabbed his hand. "No, Sam! You're my best friend."

I obviously had a message I was trying to convey, but while I remembered the conversation the next morning, I had no idea what had been going on in my head. I just remembered being pretty determined to make him understand.

"No," he said again. "You're my best friend."

I shook my head aggressively, poking him in the chest. "No! You're the best friend."

He opened his mouth to argue with me again, but then he held up a hand. Maybe he was a little more sober than me. He'd had more beers, but he was a lot bigger. "Wait, wait, Ellie…" he pointed to himself and then to me, then made an excitable gesture that involved waving both hands between us. "Best friends!"

Yes! I realised he was right. Sam was so smart. He knew about words. He and I were best friends. We were when we were kids, whatever mean things Dean might have said about us. We were best friends. We told each other everything. And then our dads had a fight. I still didn't know why, but I knew it wasn't my dad's fault. It was probably Sam's stupid dad being a stupid meanie. I never liked him because he made Sam sad and Sam was my best friend. But then we weren't even friends at all anymore, not even a little bit.

But then he came back. And he had Dean and they had their brother thing and that was good and I was happy they had each other. And I had my Dad. But sometimes you don't want your family. Sometimes you want your best friend.

And I had mine back again.

"Best friends!" I agreed.