TITLE: Something
AUTHOR: empressearwig
PAIRING: Brooke/Julian
RATING: G
SUMMARY: Brooke really doesn’t want to like Julian.
DISCLAIMER: The characters of the One baum hügel belong to their owner. No copyright infringement intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thanks to leobrat for Lesen this first.
He's an ass.
That's Brooke's first impression of Julian. A charming, very attractive ass, but an arsch none the less.
And then she sees the way he looks at Peyton. It's the same way that she knows she looked at Lucas for years, regret with a touch of wondering what if it had all worked out differently.
She knows that look all too well.
So she warns him, though he's read the book so really he should know better, that life as the other side of a Peyton-Lucas Liebe dreieck is a really shitty place to be (and who would know that better than her?)
When he smirks, and shrugs her warning off, she mentally does the same to him.
It's his funeral.
*
She really doesn't want to like him.
And she really doesn't want to trust him.
He's clearly in town to cause problems for Peyton and Lucas, and while she would have been the first in line to help him five years ago, she's not that girl anymore.
She won't be that girl.
But he lets his cocky mask slip when it comes to Sam.
Though she doesn't believe it at first, his interest in her is clearly genuine. Coming on the back of Owen's total rejection of any part of raising a child (teenager), Julian's interest raises him points in her estimation.
Not that she's considering him as anything Mehr than an annoying interference that won't leave her alone.
She wouldn't be foolish enough for that, not with Sam, and the new line, and her history of what happens when she and Peyton share men. She knows better.
Really.
*
But there's something about him.
Something about the way that he immediately offers to help her keep looking for Sam.
Something about the way that he rushes in to help her with that bastard, but lets her save herself.
Something about the way that he tries awkwardly to comfort her after the police make the connection to Quentin's death. She can tell it's been too long since he held a weeping woman, but he tries.
There's something about him.
And she'll be damned if she doesn't want to figure it out.
