How I Met Your Mother

Author's note: Hi! So, I know I didn't plan on writing anything else for this verse, but this was another plot bunny that hit me, so I decided to take a stab at it. From the first story, you already know that Brianna (my OC) and Sam were dating and that Sam never dated Jessica. Well, this is the ultimate prequel that started it all, about how they both first met and how they managed to become friends. I'm telling this from Sam's POV since, in the actual chapter series of stories that I'm writing for the Supernatural fandom I do switch POV's from Brianna to Sam later in the series. This is practice. Enjoy!

~Sam~

I had four whole months of the summer holidays to deal with my residual anger towards my father. Dean had tried calling me at first, but I refused to answer. I loved my brother and all, but I knew that he'd try to get me to come home, possibly drop college, and go back to hunting with the family. "The family business" as he sometimes jokingly referred it to. The name was accurate, and I'll admit that I sometimes enjoyed it when I researched the lore, but like with most children born into a "family business" I wanted to do something else. Like major in law.

Besides, Stanford was supposed to be one of the best schools in the country and I didn't want to turn them down just because my brother had separation anxiety. I'd call him… later, maybe before school started?

When school loomed and I moved into my shared dorm room a week before classes started, I took my cell out to stare at it in contemplative silence. I mean, it was my brother, I should at least call him, right?

Finally, I sighed and set the bulky cell phone on my side table next to my bed. In the end, I figured that it was probably a good idea to not have to deal with my brother being bitchy.

So, to pass the time, I decided to get a bit of a head start on all of my classes. My major was Political Science with a focus in Justice and American Government and Politics. Not exactly Pre-law, but as close as I could get. Half of the classes I took that semester were the common core requirements and I figured that I'd be able to get them out of the way quickly; especially during the summer.

I took out the paper that my advisor gave me denoting all of my classes and began to read through it. I was taking eighteen hours, so my schedule was pretty full and the first half of my Monday was going to be taken up by core classes. First class: Rhetoric and Comp 1; Second class: College Algebra; Third class United States History 1; and so on.

I grinned, set the page down on the side table, and went to retrieve my books. I wanted to be ready.

Monday came fast after my roommate arrived on the Sunday before classes started. He was a pre-med student named Brady and we hit it off pretty fast; especially when he realized that I was aiming for Law School. We compared schedules, realized we had the same Algebra class, and talked about our interests ranging from music to the types of sports we liked. Surprisingly enough, I did like sports and I enjoyed basketball even if I never actually played the sport.

My first class was going to be depressingly easy. I'd read through the first four chapters of the Rhet and Comp book already and had also taught myself how to write in high school with the help of interested English teachers and/or librarians. The teacher was interesting, though, and the syllabus he gave out showed the course schedule and promise that, though this class might be easy, it would be interesting.

Brady and I met for math and headed for one of the vacant tables in the front of the class where a girl with dirty blond hair sat sifting through her math textbook. A concentrated frown was on her face and I guessed from the way her brows furrowed that she was trying to read a bit of the first chapter.

Brady and I exchanged a look. It was a momentary challenge. Who was going to sit where next to the pretty girl? And she was pretty, I mean, she didn't look over the top hot or sexy or anything, but I kind of appreciated that. Apparently so did Brady.

We shrugged and decided to sit in either side of her. She glanced at Brady first then glanced at me. Brady grinned and I pretended to be completely focused while pulling out my math book. I wouldn't have been anyway, because at that moment I caught sight of her eyes. They were teal, and bright, and totally out of place where the rest of her body was concerned. They were exotic. They were mesmerizing. I was staring, mouth open and everything.

She gave me a scrutinizing stair for a moment before shaking her head and going back to her textbook. I heard her mutter something about "boys", but had been too mortified by just how incompetent I probably looked to her. When class finally started, I focused on the teacher and tried to forget about the fact that I probably looked like a gaping idiot.

The mortification didn't stop there. Apparently she was in the same history class as I was and the teacher was sift and to the point about what was required of them in her class. The lecture began immediately and I took out my spiral notebook, ready to take notes. She was a table across from me doing the same thing.

I focused on the class and resolved to not think about her again. I mean, it wasn't like I actually knew her. Hell, I didn't even know her name! So I resolved to go on with class and pretend that girls didn't exist much to Brady's amusement.

A month later, I experienced my first string of tests. I managed to pass all of them with either low or high A's. My math professor had been extremely pleased with my test grade and spoke to me after class about testing out of the course. I thanked her politely, but told her I wanted to stay. It kept my schedule filled out and, in any case, the add/drop period had been over for a while.

My history test was going to be that Wednesday and our teacher planned on going through the review that class period, threatening that she wouldn't end the class early. Apparently she expected everyone to study in class as well as outside.

The girl I embarrassed myself in front of on the first day of school, whose name I still didn't know, walked up to my table with a red flush across her cheeks. I blinked and forced myself not to look like an idiot again despite how cute she looked with the blush. Obviously she was embarrassed about something.

"Um hi, you're Sam Winchester, right?" she asked, "We sit next to each other in Algebra."

"Yeah, I know," I replied wondering why she felt the need to clarify.

She shifted and glanced to the side, jaw set. I realized that she was incredibly ridged and whatever she wanted to say made her uncomfortable. Finally, she reached into her bag, flicked out what I realized to be the math test I managed to ace, and almost (but not quite) slammed it down on the table. Confused, I glanced at the grade. I winced a moment later.

She got a forty-one. Ouch!

"Wow," I said then picked up the paper, "May I?"

She nodded and indicated the empty seat next to mine. I patted the bare table in front of the desired seat to let her know I didn't mind if she sat there. While she situated herself and took out her history notes I glanced through her work and found out why she failed.

I never imagined that it was actually possible to be dreadfully bad at math. I had always thought people like Dean were just lazy. Now I knew that I might actually owe my brother an apology. The girl with dirty-blond hair and the alluring teal eyes worked through each problem in an attempt to successfully make it through the test. She tried. She left not problem blank. It was just that over half of the answers (and work) were wrong. She managed formulas, I noticed. Formulas seemed to be her strong point. Normal sequence problems were littered with minor errors and she seemed to keep flipping the graphs this way and that. The whole final page devoted to Word problems showcased the worse of her mistakes. Problem solving seemed to be difficult for her.

I glanced at her. She wasn't stupid. I heard her participate in both the Math and History lectures. She seemed to make connections concerning theory and I had a feeling that, if I wanted her to explain the types and uses of the problems she was tested over, she'd give me a very good answer. And don't get me started on her knowledge of history. She and the teacher practically had a one way conversation going every class period with only two or three people joining in if they dared. She wasn't a moron, she just really couldn't figure out math.

"Well, um, so my last class ends at four and there's this coffee shop off campus that's pretty calm. You wanna meet me for tutoring?" I asked.

She didn't have to tell me she wanted me to tutor her. The grade on her test told me everything.

"My last one ends at three thirty so sure," she replied tersely.

Her posture, her demeanor, the way she seemed annoyed at having to ask for help; she reminded me of Dean. A sudden pang of homesickness thudded through my entire body; starting from my chest and spreading outward. I missed my brother and hadn't called him yet to see how he was doing. And with that thought, that homesickness turned into guilt; just because dad and I argued didn't mean that I had to ignore Dean.

So, I gave her the name of the coffee shop along with the address just as the professor walked into the room.

Despite myself, I found that I actually was anticipating the upcoming afternoon.

When I entered my usual hang out I saw her hunched over a huge textbook and pouring over notes. It took me a moment to realize that she was studying World History I. At that moment it struck me that I didn't know what her major was and resolved to ask either before or after I tutored her. I still didn't know her name, being the moron I was. I needed to ask her.

She looked up when I approached the table and sent a blink in my direction. I smiled.

"Hey, you ready?" I asked.

She nodded and closed her history book; stuffing the huge thing back into her bag and tugging out her math textbook in the process. We sat and stared at each other for a few minutes before I finally decided to break the silence.

"So, I didn't catch your name," I began mildly.

She rolled her eyes with though the corners of her lips twitched upward as if she was about to smile.

"Brianna Davis," she said.

Brianna. The name rolled over in my head and I decided that it fit. For some weird reason, she looked like a Brianna. It was a weird thought, but a thought nonetheless.

"Well, I guess you know my name," she gave me a look that invoked a smile to break across my face whether I wanted it or not, "and I looked at your test and you have a lot of weaknesses; especially in word problems."

She nodded, "I know. I managed to meet the minimum requirement in math in high school, so my grades remained high enough to attract Stanford."

I had wondered about that. This was good news, though, because it meant that I could work off of her baseline of understanding. We just had to ascertain that first.

"Why don't we backtrack for a moment? What do you remember from Elementary and Intermediate Algebra?" I asked.

She looked taken aback for a moment, but launched into an explanation. I was right. The woman could take in information like a sponge. Whether she understood it or not was another thing entirely. My mind raced through different ideas and scenarios of how to tutor her and the more she talked the more resolved I was to take her back to the basics. This especially when I realized she had memorized the lessons from our professor's notes and the chapters from the book. She even remembered the problems she had trouble with and could copy them down exactly.

In the end, until I could think of something else, I decided to just go over what she did wrong on the tests. As we did comparisons between mine and hers we both came to several conclusions. Numeric details were confusing for her. Sometimes her brain switched signs and numbers while she was doing the problem. She was easily distracted, easily overwhelmed, and easily confused; especially where word problems were concerned. She had a photographic memory, but she wasn't a mathematical genius. This meant that when a problem challenged her to think outside of the box she couldn't. The issues piled up to the point where I decided basics were a virtue. All of what she needed help on was her lack of understanding how the basics fit in to the larger puzzle piece. Admittedly, most teachers never taught in a way that showed the application and, if they did, they probably didn't dumb it down enough for her to make the connection.

I really hoped her major didn't involve her needing a lot of math. In the end, I asked her.

Brianna replied, "I'm a history major and I intend to go into archeological field work. My minor is in Linguistics."

The minor more than the major told me more about the way she thought than any sort of psychoanalysis ever could. I could work with this.

Once we finished going over the test we scheduled a new session for Wednesday afternoon and I left to go study for my two exams tomorrow and to also start planning what I would do to help Brianna out.

I called Dean after I got ready for bed. His phone only ringed once before he answered it.

"Sammy? You okay? Something wrong?" he asked immediately after his line opened.

I rolled my eyes. Overprotective was a gross understatement where Dean was concerned.

"I'm fine, bro, I just wanted to talk. See how you and dad are doing, you know?" I replied.

I anticipated his answer before it came.

"Dude," man he sounded pissed, "its been five friggin' months since I last saw you let alone heard from you! Didn't think to call earlier? You know, to keep me from freaking out?"

"Sorry Dean, I needed time to cool off and calling you was… I tried. Thought about it, even, but I couldn't bring myself to until today," I explained while knowing my excuse sounded lame.

I heard him snort on the other end of the line.

"Okay, what changed?"

I thought back to earlier today and remembered how Brianna reminded me of Dean with her reluctance to ask questions and her devastatingly bad math skills. They might not have been exactly the same as Dean's, but the reminder that, yes, I had a brother just made the fact that I pretty much abandoned my family all the more real.

"Something reminded me that I'm not mad at you, just dad," I replied.

"Oh."

And we were silent for a few moments. Dad was a sore topic for both of us. Our opinions of the old man were vastly different from each other's and it was sometimes best to just keep them to ourselves.

"You know I'm proud of you, right Sammy?" he asked.

I scowled. I didn't like it when he called me "Sammy", but didn't really want to correct him tonight. What he said was touching, something I had wanted to hear from dad and had been badly disappointed when I didn't.

"Yeah, I know. Thanks Dean," I replied with a small smile even though he couldn't see it.

"So, find any hot chicks?" he asked.

I snorted and was about to reply with a negative when a pair of teal eyes flashed across my memory. It gave me a pause. Well, it wasn't like she was hot, or anything, but…

I decided to force those thoughts into a screeching halt and banish them to the farthest corners of my mind. I was just tutoring Brianna and I needed to focus on my major. Dating would have to wait.

"Don't have much time for that," I muttered.

"Seriously? Not one girl? Man some things never change, do they?" he complained.

I rolled my eyes, "Shut up, jerk."

"Bitch."

We continued our banter until Brady came back from his study group in the library. When I finally said "goodbye" to Dean with the promise to call the next day, I met the calculating stare of my roommate.

"What?" I asked.

He shrugged, "Nothin' dude. Just wondering how your date with Brianna went."

I knew my face turned red but I ignored it in order to reply, "It wasn't a date. I'm helping her with math. She needs it. Seriously needs it."

He smirked, "Yeah, I know, I saw her grade."

"Anyway, I don't have much time to date anyone right now," I said.

He shrugged, "Your loss man. She's cute."

I rolled my eyes and turned over in my bed, ready to sleep.

Brianna and I met for the next month and a half. It took a while, but I managed to get her past what she needed to learn from the first test and constantly reviewed what we went over in class after. Sometimes, I had to go back to Elementary or Intermediate Algebra to help break things down for her, but she managed to get it in the end. When the second test came and went and we all got our results, her grade improved tremendously. As in, she actually passed the test with a seventy-nine.

I took her out to Red Lobster. She liked seafood and since she passed her first math test I felt that it was prudent to celebrate. It was a surprise to her. I had made it sound like we were just going to some every-day fast food joint, so when we drove into the Red Lobster parking lot she was shocked.

And I found the way her lips slightly parted and her eyes contracted to be incredibly endearing. As her lips parted into a full-blown grin my own face broke into a smile.

She turned to look at me and I was momentarily captured by her teal eyes. What was it about her eyes that I liked so much?

"What's this?" she asked.

I laughed, "Me letting you know just how good of a job you did."

Her brows furrowed and she asked, "Are you sure?"

I nodded, "Remember the coffee shop? I'm going to start working there next week."

That seemed to reassure her, assuming that her hang up was about the money, and she slipped out of the car and waited for me to follow.

It didn't take us long to get seated and I noticed that she was still grinning like a pleased Cheshire cat while glancing over the menu.

"What?" I finally asked.

She met my intrigued gaze with a mischievous glint and replied, "Seafood."

I laughed.

"How was your psychology test?" she asked after a few more seconds of perusing the menu.

I had a feeling that she already knew what she wanted and was just glancing at the thing to make sure she didn't want anything else.

"A little difficult. The entire test was handwritten with three essay questions about various psychological cases. Apparently this teacher likes to 'challenge' us," I explained.

She rolled her eyes, "I wish I had her as a philosophy professor. Our test was a boring multiple choice one with fifty questions."

"What about World History? I didn't get a chance to ask how that went on Monday," I inquired.

Her face lit up and I braced myself for what I knew would be a rapid stream of overenthusiastic information. She didn't disappoint.

"Our teacher gives us research projects instead of tests and I did mine on Early Greek culture. My professor liked the paper so much that she's going to publish it in this year's history journal! I mean, all I really wrote about was the formation of the city-states and their ties to their patron gods and goddesses, but I didn't think it was actually that good!" she was practically bouncing.

I chuckled and remembered the times I'd catch her working on the project before we began our tutoring session every Monday and Wednesday. She let me read through the first part of her essay and I had been surprised that someone who was fresh out of high school could write such a sophisticated and well-researched paper. I had asked her about what her English professors thought about her writing and she told me that she tested out of the core classes and planned on starting her linguistic courses next semester.

"Did you tell your mentor yet?" I asked, referring to her advising professor, Laurel Moruni.

She nodded, "She said, 'Glad to know all that scholarship money's paying off'!"

We both dissolved into fits of laughter. Professor Laurel Moruni was Brianna's financial benefactor and also was the new Professor of Ancient European Studies for Stanford's History Masters program. She joined the faculty this semester, the same time Brianna entered Stanford.

We continued from there, asking each other about how we were doing on our midterms and how prepared we felt for our final tests we had to take the next day. I explained about how my Introduction to Comparative Politics class ended up turning into a written essay about Communism vs Capitalism. Brianna made a snide comment about Karl Marx being "a sick-minded bastard" to which I laughed and allowed the conversation to ease into a political discussion.

When we first started discussing politics I had been very surprised at how knowledgeable she was about different aspects of government and law. She could explain the US Constitution very well, even managing to illustrate the "controversial" parts of the document as not being controversial at all and only seeming like it because modern day people didn't have the same grammar understanding that our Founding Fathers did. We debated gun control; she was against it and I was for it, then moved on to calmer waters when she asked how Brady was doing in pre-med.

"He's doing fine. Just aced his biology exam again," I replied.

She laughed, "Didn't he have a Rhet and Comp paper due the same day?"

I grinned, "Yeah, apparently he studied for the biology test while writing the paper. I can't believe he managed it, but he did."

She held up a finger, "Ah, but we haven't received word of his paper's grade! He might not have aced that."

"True, but I read a little bit of it and thought it was pretty well-written," I explained.

"Ah, that could help," she conceded.

There was a pause and I knew what she wanted to ask next and patiently waited for her to voice the question. It didn't offend me, but I knew that she had trouble wanting to broach the topic with me despite me saying she could ask whatever she wanted.

"How's your brother?" she asked.

"He's fine. Picked up a job in New Orleans recently," I said while leaving out the particulars of the job itself.

"Ooh! That's good! Still doing odd jobs?" she asked.

"Yep! The man stays in one place for a few weeks to a month then he moves on," I said.

Conversations about Dean didn't last long and I as sure as hell hadn't told Dean about her, but I was glad to have at least someone to talk to about my family. Brianna was more than accommodating and listened whenever I bitched about my dad or voiced some worry about Dean. She never allowed what she thought about the situation to be betrayed by her normally open face and always saved opinions or words of wisdom until after I was done venting. Most of the time, she'd just reach for one of my hands and grab them for a few moments.

We left at around eight. Her final test was apparently an easy one, so she didn't worry too much about studying for it. Mine, wasn't going to be easy, but it was in the afternoon so I figured I could divide my study time equally between the two. When I dropped her off at her dorm, I finally forced myself to voice the question I'd been wanting to ask her for a while.

"Hey Bri, um, I was wondering if you'd like to study at the coffee shop at eight? You know, maybe try to make studying there or at the library a regular thing?" I nearly cursed myself for sounding so timid and unsure.

She looked taken aback for a moment before she grinned at me for the millionth time that night. Again I was mesmerized by her eyes; those gleaming teal orbs I was starting to want to always sparkle brightly at me.

"Yeah, sure! You have my number, right? I case things come up?" she asked.

Struck by my luck, I replied, "Yeah, um, you have mine?"

She nodded and then laughed, "Well, I'll see you tomorrow then. Bye Sam!"

With that she was gone.

Brady was actually waiting for me when I made it back to our dorm room. He looked amused about something and I didn't realize that it was me until he opened his mouth.

"So, how was the date?" he asked.

I glanced at him, surprised, "What?"

He set his physics book down and pierced me with a knowing look, "You know, Brianna and a somewhat expensive restaurant? Did she like it? Was she surprised? Anything promising happen?"

I gaped at him for a moment before shaking my head, "Brady, that wasn't a date. I was just treating a friend."

"A friend that you happen to like more than a friend," he pointed out.

I rolled my eyes. I didn't have time for dating and relationships. Surely he knew that? Brianna did, because we had a conversation about the subject when she complained to me about some random stranger going up to her and asking her out. Neither of us were into dating.

"Brady, I don't feel that way about her, we're just friends," I said.

"Yeah, friends who study together on set dates. You seeing her again?" he asked.

I moved around, getting ready for bed, "Yeah, to study, nothing else."

"When?"

"Tomorrow."

I didn't have to turn around from where I was looking for my toothbrush and toothpaste to know that he was grinning at me.

"Suit yourself, bro, just keep me updated. Anyway, you didn't answer my other questions. Did she have a good time?" he asked.

"Well yeah, she did. She was smiling and joking around, so I think she enjoyed herself. I think she was just happy to get free seafood," I replied.

"So you paid for her?" I ignored the way he phrased that question.

"Yeah, because she worked so hard to improve her math grade," I clarified.

"Okay I believe you."

I didn't think he did, but I let the matter drop and left our room to brush my teeth in the shared bathroom on our floor.

Before I went to bed, I texted Dean to let him know how my day went. He replied by telling me how proud he was of me and that made me smile. At least that made three people.

The End