Chapter 9: Road Trips

(Bella's POV)

I had been on the road for three weeks now. And it was proving to be really difficult. Not that I wasn't enjoying it… I actually liked my 'hunting lessons' as the boys called them…

I really liked them at first, when it was just Dean and me… but then Sam started to notice that we weren't getting much done… so he had started supervising, which, yeah, they were still fun, I loved being around the guys. But, I really liked just being around Dean.

The food was bad, sleep was a rarity, and the motel rooms were crappy. But at the same time, I hadn't felt this content in a long time. It was like I actually belonged somewhere, and I was doing something that meant something, with people who I trusted.

Sleep was rare, like I said. So I tried to get as much as possible. I had been curled up in the back seat of the Impala for hours and kept drifting in and out of slumber. That is until I had a wake up call.

The car had stopped and Dean was kneeling next to me, his mouth on my neck.

"Five more minutes…" I grumbled. He laughed a little.

"Bella, we are at a motel… you can sleep inside." He told me. I groaned and opened my eyes. It was dark now. I got up and we went inside another dingy room. But it had beds, and a shower. So I was game.

I crashed down on the mattress farthest away from the door.

"Bella…" Sam said.

"What!" I almost yelled. I could feel them rolling there eyes and laughing at me. I wanted to hit them.

"You want the first shower?" He asked. Ok, so he was trying to be nice.

"Fine." I said. But I wasn't in the mood to be nice back. I grabbed my stuff and went into the bathroom for a good thirty minutes, and came out of the shower feeling like a new person.

Sam was on his laptop, and Dean was chewing on some kind of fast food and watching an old horror movie on TV. There was another bag of food sitting next to him.

"Mine?" I asked. He nodded, not moving his eyes. I just rolled mine and grabbed the food and sat next to him.

I started to eat and then noticed he was watching 'It' that damn clown movie that had given me nightmares ever since I could remember.

I quickly turned my back to the TV.

"What?" Dean asked laughing at my sudden movement.

"This movie freaking scarred my childhood forever." I told him, taking another French fry out of the bag.

"See Dean, I told you that being afraid of clowns is normal!" Sam exclaimed. I laughed a little at that one.

"Bella… nothing is going to get you." Dean joked with me. I just rolled my eyes and kept my back to the TV. I could tell he was trying not to tell me that things like that didn't happen, because we all knew they did.

I finished my dinner and climbed under the covers, trying to drown out the sound of the movie, but it didn't happen.

Truthfully I didn't know why I was still scared of it. I wasn't afraid of much anymore. Hell, I had helped fight off a pack of werewolves just a few days before. Performed an exorcism a week ago… but yet a fictional movie about murdering clowns, I couldn't handle.

Dean turned the TV off eventually and climbed under the covers with me.

"Not asleep?" He asked when he saw my eyes were still open.

"Nope, because my bitch of a friend decided to watch a movie that for some reason I can't get over being scared of." I said sarcastically.

"I'm a bitch and I'm just a friend? Now that kind of hurts Bella." He said, trying to be serious. It didn't work.

"You are a very cute bitch and an extremely… giving… friend." I said, trying to find the right words.

Three weeks into this whole thing and Dean and I hadn't really established our relationship. We were more then just friends… that was obvious… but we never really officially became a couple.

And I don't think either of us wanted to establish that. It scared the hell out of me. I had never been good with relationships. And I don't even think Dean had ever had one…

"I can accept that for now I guess. Except the bitch part… that one you are going to pay for…" He replied. I laughed.

"Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it Winchester?" I asked. Then he gave me that look. The look that made it impossible for me to say anything else. It froze me… and if I was standing, it had the power to make me want to fall over.

"You'll just have to wait and see." He said, in the voice that went with the look.

He reached over and turned out the lamp by our bed, then wrapped his arms around me and pulled me tightly to him.

"This isn't much of a punishment buddy." I whispered.

"Oh just wait Bella… you are in for it." He kissed my head.

That night, I didn't have nightmares about clowns.

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(Dean's POV)

I didn't sleep much last night. A lot of the time I was thinking about how I was going to 'punish' Bella for our whole joking thing earlier, and a lot of time I was just looking at her, and wondering what we were.

Nothing was ever said, we hadn't really called the whole boyfriend girlfriend card. Which was fine by me, I never liked those labels anyways. But at the same time, and for the first time ever, I wanted some sort of label.

She was Bella and I was Dean, and that just seemed to be it.

The truth was, I was almost scared of us establishing something, and I think she was to. Commitment wasn't ever something I was good at, and I don't think she had good experiences with it either.

I knew things with Bella were different. I could feel it. Which sounded so weird and not right at all, but it was true.

That's what I was learning. That no matter how odd things sounded, or how uncomfortable they made me, that didn't stop them from being true.

I don't know how the hell I got through twenty something years of hunting with out realizing that, but it wasn't a bad thing to know.

I looked down at Bella. There were a million things I wanted to do at that moment. Unfortunately, she was asleep and Sam was just three feet away. So there was no way that those things were going to happen.

It was also weird how perfect I found her when she was far from perfect. I mean she was beautiful in one of the oddest ways. Right now for example, she was asleep, her hair still a little damp from taking a shower, no make-up, and wearing an oversized college sweatshirt. But she was still just as gorgeous as she would be when she was actually dressed and everything, if not more.

But she had funny habits. Like not eating the edges of her food, and how she would never show any feeling of weakness, and sometimes when she was thinking really hard, she would start to bite her nails…. And sometimes she kicked in her sleep… but for some reason all that seemed strangely ok with me.

And like I said, as strange as these things were, that didn't mean they weren't true. And that almost scared the hell out of me.

The truth that didn't scare me was that I was glad she was lying next to me, and I was glad she was on the road with us. And I would do anything I had to, to make sure that nothing happened to her.