A/N: Hello all. Once again, because (unless I can’t do math, which is sooo possible), it’s only been 3 weeks, I haven’t much to say and there’s no real need for a refresher. It’s amazing, when I update on time or EARLY ( so it's one day early, but still), I have no need to make excuses. Crazy…

Weeks

Week One

“Tell me I’m not a slut,” Brooke demanded, pulling James’ sheets up over her head.

James tried not to laugh, “You’re not a slut.”

“And me continuing to have sex with you…this special friends thing we have going on does not make me Bianca, right?”

“W-What?” He spluttered. He hadn’t seen that one coming.

“Just say it,” Brooke sighed.

“You are nothing like Bianca,” he replied, shaking his head in amazement. It had only been a week or so, but this new relationship of theirs really seemed to have thrown Merrin for a loop. She was never this honest or open or…vulnerable without a fight.

She uncovered her head, revealing worried blue eyes and a half mangled bottom lip. “I don’t believe you.”

He refrained from leaning over and kissing her slightly swollen lips. “Trust me. I just saw Bianca, and you are complete opposites.”

Brooke sat up. “You saw Bianca?”

James waved this fact away as inconsequential. “Yeah, but that was like two weeks ago.”

“You saw her two weeks ago? And when you say ‘saw’ you mean…”

James looked away, “Yeah.”

Brooke hung her head, feeling ill. “Oh God, am I like your rebound chick?”

“What? No!”

“Am I doing Bianca’s sloppy seconds?” Brooke pressed her lips together in disgust. “I hope I’m not diseased.” Her head shot up, “Is there anyone else you’ve seen lately that I should know about?”

“No,” he snapped. He knew that tone. She was accusing him of being a man whore. “It’s not like that. I only went over there because I was trying to prevent this,” he explained, motioning between them, “from happening.”

Brooke scoffed, “Riiiight.”

He sighed, “I know it was stupid, but I thought I just needed a…release. But clearly it didn’t do the trick.”

She smiled despite herself, “Clearly.”

James threw an arm around her, pulling her close, despite her groans, “So no, you are not my rebound.”

If anything, he thought, he would be hers.

Wait. Was he the rebound guy?

He knew Brooke hadn’t forgiven him for messing up the first time around, and that she resented how easily he’d gotten back in. He was well aware that if she’d had her way they probably wouldn’t be speaking. He liked that she needed him, he wasn’t going to lie. But he also knew she hated that she needed him, that he knew so much, that he’d seen so much that she’d tried to hide.

No, he couldn’t be the rebound guy. The rebound guy knows nothing about what’s been going on, he’s fresh meat, a chance to get away from everything. And though he hadn’t been there from the beginning, James was thoroughly entrenched. Maybe she didn’t recall her bad memories when she looked at him, but she couldn’t pretend that none of it had ever happened either.

But it wasn’t going to go the other way. Brooke didn’t like him. She grudgingly accepted his position in her world, but he wasn’t Sy.

Week Two

“James,” his mother called from the den. “A word before you go.”

He motioned for Brooke to go ahead to the car and ducked into the next room, “Yeah, Mom?”

“Have a seat.”

He obliged, confused. “What’s up?”

“Sweetheart,” she began in that mysterious tone of hers. “You know I’m fond of Brooke and I love having her over, but I’m afraid I don’t think it’s really appropriate for her to spend the night anymore.”

James felt heat rushing up his neck. There was no way she knew about what they did, what they’d been doing. He’d been insanely careful about covering his tracks, neurotic even. “You’ve never had any problem with it before…”

She leveled him with a measuring look, “That was before you developed feelings for her.”

He choked, “What?”

His mother smiled, and then laughed, “I’m your mother, dear. I carried you for nine months and raised you. Do you really think I can’t tell when you like a girl?”

“We don’t—I mean I don’t like her. Not like that,” he sputtered.

“Of course, dear,” she replied, entirely unconvinced.

He mastered himself, outwardly at least, rolled his eyes and headed for the door, “Sure, mom. Whatever you say. I’ll see you later.”

Obviously she was going crazy, right? There was no way he’d developed feelings for Merrin. The lack of any sort of feeling that wasn’t grounded in lust was what made the relationship work.

“So what’d she want?” Brooke asked as he hopped in the truck.

“No more sleepovers,” he pronounced dully, starting the engine.

She frowned, then grinned, “That just means we have to be sneakier. Ooh, now it’s even more taboo.” She looked at him and her teeth grazed her bottom lip. “I think I like it.”

He turned his head away and focused on the road. He knew that look. He shifted in his seat. That was one of his favorite looks. “We do not have time for that right now.”

She put a hand on his thigh, and he nearly jumped at the heat that flooded through him from the contact. “Are you sure?”

He took a deep breath, and shifted to make her hand fall off of him. He knew better than to touch her at the moment. “Yes, I’m sure. But if you don’t stop we might have to make time and we already did that once this week.”

Brooke recoiled, flopping back into her own seat, visibly disgruntled. “Fine.”

They rode in silence, Brooke pouting. He glanced at her at a red light. She was awfully cute when she was pouting, he noted, smiling.

“So why no more sleepovers?”

“What? Oh um, my mom, she thinks…that I like you or something.”

She burst out laughing in response, “As if. I mean…we’re good at what we do together, but that’s as far as it goes.”

“I know,” he replied, relieved. He had been watching her carefully to gauge her reaction. After all, it was way too easy for someone to slip up and start developing feelings in this sort of thing.

Week Three

James lifted a lever and slid the driver’s seat back so he and Brooke would have more room. She pressed herself against him in gratitude and he wrapped his arms around her, her tawny knees next to his elbows.

She smiled against his lips.

Hooking up in his car was…a challenge to say the least, but with the cancellation of his father’s week-long business trip coming hard on the heels of the “no sleepovers” proclamation, they didn’t have much choice. Merrin’s house was off-limits. She’d gone cold when he’d mentioned it and completely lost her sexual appetite for the whole day. Needless to say, he didn’t bring it up again.

She managed to get his shirt up to his shoulders without ungluing his lips from hers. Not that he’d have let her if she’d tried.

He was beginning to consider it when he hard a tap at the window.

Brooke didn’t even tense up.

The second raps were more insistent, and Brooke turned.

James could barely make out a tall figure through the curtain of Brooke’s curls.

She flipped her hair over her shoulder and stabbed the button to roll down the window.

It was Ty. James grimaced and involuntarily sank into his seat a little, like he was trying to escape.

Brooke shot Ty a look that would’ve made James wince. “What do you want?”

Ty smiled, and leaned against the side of the hood as if he had nothing better to do.

Brooke rolled off of James and into the passenger seat, mumbling vitriolic epithets, but made no move to open the passenger seat and hop out. Was she waiting for Ty to come open it for her?

James adjusted his shirt and looked back at Ty, who was looking at James.

“Me?” James said aloud.

Brooke rolled her eyes, and Ty opened the driver’s door for him.

“You might actually listen,” Brooke said, by way of explanation.

Right, James thought. Good point.

He followed Ty who leisurely headed down the street.

“So, uh,” James began. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

Ty had his hands clasped behind his back, not tightly, but casually as if he were out for a stroll. “I heard ya’ll were being stupid, and I wanted to see if the rumors were true.”

By rumors, he meant Jaelyn. James was sure of that much.

He knew Brooke thought of Ty as a big brother figure, and prepared himself for the oncoming threats to his safety and promises of forthcoming bodily harm.

“I think you’re a good kid. A nice dude,” Ty began. “I mean, she probably put you up to this shit.”

James opened his mouth to deny it, but paused. He never would have come up with their situation on his own. He was a bit too conventional.

“Look, just watch yourself, aiight? This type of thing never goes down the way you think it will. Someone always gets hurt.”

He held James gaze as he said it, and James got the distinct impression that he wasn’t threatening him about Merrin. That was the way these thing usually went. Big brother figure tells the guy not to hurt the girl, but that wasn’t the case here. Ty was…worried about him, not Merrin.

On James’s way back to the car he shook his head. Did everyone know something he didn’t? First his mother and now Ty all but predicting his falling for her in the near future. And with some horrible end result. Ty made it sound like he half expected her to eat him or something.

Brooke’s blonde mop popped up in the window when James approached, and as soon as he was within her reach she pulled him in through the window. “Now, back to business,” she said, and kissed him.

James held her off, “Don’t you want to know what he said?”

Her arms encircled his neck as she blew air out of the side of her mouth, “I know what he said.” She paused to don a macho face, jaw jutted out and frowning. “Watch yourself,” she said in as low a timbre as she could manage. “She’ll chew you up and spit you out if you’re not careful.”

James laughed despite himself and Brooke joined in.

“But seriously,” he said. “That doesn’t bother you?”

Brooke sighed, and released her hold on him, as if in acceptance of the fact that the mood had passed. “Look, I have no intention of breaking your heart or whatever. I’d be really happy if no hearts got involved.” She shrugged, “But you never know. I mean, I’m not psychic, and I can’t predict the future. But I don’t really see the point in worrying about what might happen later,” she smiled slowly, “when right now is going so well.”

She had a point there, he acknowledged, smiling back and leaning in for a kiss.

Week Four

Brooke sat up in Fanon’s bed, leaning against the corner where the frame met the wall. His parents were, of course, out of town. Otherwise they wouldn’t have risked sleeping in. James was off scraping breakfast together. It wasn’t going to be much, eggs, waffles and bacon, maybe some orange juice. Brooke didn’t care. He was the one that insisted on it being the most important meal of the day.

She stretched her arms above her head and arched her back. She needed a good stretch. They’d been doing a lot of exercise lately. Brooke grinned at that the thought. And spending a lot of time in bed too. But that was more out of convenience than anything else.

James came in wearing nothing but a pair of blue and green plaid boxers. He carried a single plate piled relatively high and managed two sloshing glasses of orange juice in one hand. One plate was easier to manage than two, and he’d quickly learned that Brooke liked picking food off of his plate even when he brought her her own. “It just tastes better when it’s on someone else’s plate,” she’d said.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said.

James dragged his desk chair over and settled everything. “Uh-huh.”

“Maybe we should establish some rules.”

“Rules?” He paused in cutting his waffles.

Brooke took this opportunity to snatch a syrup-laden piece of waffle. “Yeah, nothing major. Just things to make sure this runs as smoothly as possible.”

He went back to his breakfast. Though Brooke wasn’t the most organized person he’d met—he’d seen her bedroom and seen the way she “packed”, though James wouldn’t call cramming piles of things into a bag packing—she was mentally organized. She liked structure and plans and well, rules. “So what did you have in mind?”

“To start with, no talking about it.” She paused to grab a piece of bacon. “I know that should be a given, but you can’t tell anyone.”

“But you already told Jae.”

“That shouldn’t count. She’s like my other half.”

“And Ty.”

Brooke made a face, “Fine. If you must, you can tell two people. There. Even?”

“Mm-hmm.” He tried not to smile. He had no intention of telling anyone. He knew, despite the fact that she’d just given him permission, she’d go berserk if he did. “What else?”

“No PDA or… public action.”

“So no more hooking up in my car?”

Brooke choked on the last bit of her bacon.

James calmly handed her a glass of orange juice.

“I didn’t say that,” she snapped a little breathlessly. “I just meant like nothing at school. Like that incident in the janitor’s closet.”

A faint pink bloomed in James’s face, which he resolutely kept on his plate. “Alright.”

Brooke smiled rather sultrily at the memory. It was a good one.

“Anything else?” James asked.

She frowned a bit annoyed with the interruption, “I don’t know, it’s supposed to be a cooperative effort. Anything you’d like to add?”

“Not at the moment.”

Week Five

Brooke slid her notebook from her backpack when there were thirty minutes remaining in her shift at WINCC. Jamal was the only kid in the gym and his mother was never late, so she figured she’d have the room to herself in roughly 20 minutes. And Jamal was unlikely to notice what she was doing. Hoover Elementary didn’t have a basketball team, but he practiced his drills and his shots faithfully as if tryout were right around the corner.

She felt a little calmer than she had in a while. And she hoped that since most of her restless energy was gone, she’d be able to see something. What exactly, she wasn’t sure, but that was part of the mystery of the process. The book functioned like a photo journal. Brooke had no time to write about her feelings, nor would she risk anyone every finding them. So she drew them, tapping into that well of emotions she clamped down just beneath the surface.

Those moments, when her pencil was moving furiously across the page and the whole world dimmed to just a white space in front of her, when she let go, were precious. She often looked at them as a chore, but that was because she distrusted almost all things that felt good.

She had just let the pencil go when she heard someone come up behind her. She slammed the book closed automatically without pausing to take a peak at what she’d drawn, and whipped around.

James smiled, “Hey.”

The combination of the surprise and his incongruous appearance made her nervous, which for Brooke meant hostile.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to pick you up, like I usually do,” he said, slowly, confused.

“But I usually meet you outside,” Brooke said, resisting the urge to snap at him. “Why did you come in?”

He looked at her warily. “Yes, but I got here early, and I figured I’d stop in.”

Brooke didn’t smile.

“Am I not allowed?”

Brooke scoffed to buy time for some sort of plausible explanation. She was saved however, when James jerked and looked down.

Jamal had a fistful of his shirt. He didn’t relinquish his hold, but looked up at Brooke, “Who this, Miss Brooke?”

Brooke raised an eyebrow, and Jamal immediately dropped James’ shirt and took a miniscule step back. “I mean, excuse me. Who this, Miss Brooke?”

James bit back a smile at how well she had him trained.

“This is my friend, James,” Brooke replied, her voice suspiciously even.

“Oh yeah?” Jamal said. He crossed his little arms over his chest and leaned back a bit, like he was trying to see all of James at once. “You look real familiar. You was at the Talent Show, right?”

James smiled, and nodded. He didn’t trust himself not to laugh. He’d never been sized up by a child before.

“So where you go?” Jamal demanded, both hands on the basketball he was holding.

“Oh, maybe next time,” Brooke cut in before James could answer. She waved her walkie-talkie like a magic wand, “Jamal, your mom is signing you out as we speak. Go get your stuff okay?”

He complied, but looked James up and down once more before he left.

James watched him walk out, dribbling the ball between his legs at every step.

“No dribbling in the halls!” Brooke called from behind him.”

Jamal grumbled, but did as he was told.

“Cute kid,” James grinned.

Brooke nodded, and let out some of the air she’d been holding in, inordinately pleased that James wasn’t going to ask about her intervention.

He took in the empty room, “So, does that mean you’re all set to go? Should I meet you at the car?”

Brooke slid the book back into her bag with one smooth motion that she skillfully blocked from Fanon’s view. “No, I’m all done. I can walk with you,” she replied, herding him towards the door.

“You don’t need to check in with anyone before you leave?”

“I’ll text Jae on the way out.”

To his credit, James stopped asking questions.

Brooke knew it seemed a little overzealous, but she just wanted to make sure he didn’t run into anyone chatty, well no, she hoped he didn’t run into anyone at all. It wasn’t inconceivable at this point, as most kids and staff had left already.

She should’ve figured though, that James’ silence on the way to the car was a tactical maneuver.

She didn’t, however.

“So I take it I’m not allowed inside the sanctity that is WINNC,” he said, as he started the car.

“It’s not like that,” Brooke replied, casually over her shoulder, before turning back to the window.

He waited for clarification, and sighed when he realized it wasn’t coming.

Brooke bit her lip. She didn’t mean to be pushy, but she couldn’t risk having word of…anything getting back to Sy. She could see why it wouldn’t matter to James. James didn’t seem to have any sort of liking for Sy, which was fine, but Brooke didn’t want to hurt him. It was just common courtesy. If Sy was doing something that Brooke needed to know about, he would tell her. Until then, it was best to stay under the radar. And this thing with Fanon… It wasn’t worth mentioning. After all, no real feelings were involved. She just didn’t want Sy hearing the grapevine version. Well, really, if Brooke had her way there would be no grapevine version at all, which was a definite possibility if Fanon could manage to keep his act together.

A/N: I know, so not terribly exciting, but I figured I’d telescope a bit more time, in order to save us from the ho-hum nature of Brooke and James’ relationship. Only the important stuff. But important stuff did occur which sets up later stuff. Keep reading, and you’ll see. Next week should be better. If everything goes according to plan. I got some ideas! Which is super awesome, but, the exciting part needs stuff that comes before it. And I don’t have ideas for that yet. So if I don’t get it up in 2 weeks, that’s probably why. But hopefully…

Reviews: I’m so happy no one hates me. Well, I don’t know, maybe the people who hate the story now just didn’t review. That kind of makes sense. But who cares about them. They didn’t review and therefore don’t exist. Okay, not really, but that’s the only way I can tell who’s reading. So thanks much!

Sousie: Hi. Your wish is my command. Not really, but I did update really quickly this time. See I do try.

Kittyluvr: Thanks. Yeah, the physical side is really the only side Brooke and James are willing to acknowledge at this point. I’m glad it wasn’t horrible. I don’t read the sexy romance novels so writing this stuff is…strange for me.

Unbirthday: Hah! Didn’t last chapter come out of nowhere? Not really, because I totally led up to it, but I’m glad it was surprising. It was for them too, you know. Yeah, I mean, it was like a month or two ago in story time that Brooke and Sy broke up. There’s no way Brooke would jump into another real relationship that fast. And as for James...well, he’s just a mess. But yes, I am definitely gonna finish this. Hopefully it won’t take forever. But these past few chapters have been a great sign, right?

Krazycutiechic: I’m glad you’re content and that it makes sense. And as for them getting together…I mean, it’s possible, I suppose. And though I know what’s going to happen, I don’t want to give anything away. It’s getting more difficult as we get closer to the end.

Notwithoutyou: I don’t think you say it every review? But Fanon has seriously grown on me. He’s hilarious. Getting Brooke to admit anything is like pulling teeth. But we’ll see.

Only4Miken: Yeah, I agree. Most people don’t have much self-control. Brooke’s was decent, I’d say. I mean, she held out longer than most people would have. And James, well James doesn’t have much as we’ve seen (Bianca). But we take pity on him. And as for how bad this mess will get…oh I assure you, it’ll be fun to watch/read about.

Bookwormstrangly: Lol. Thanks. I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Kylie1403: Love? Brooke and James? Um, no. Not so much. We’ve gotta get to like before we get to love.

Phoebs: Hi. Was last chapter funny? Cool. I mean, I thought it was funny, but humor is kind of a subjective thing. Lol. It was fun to write too. The first bit I’d actually written like 6 months ago, and it was just taking me forever to get to it. Because it had to make sense, you know. Tension is not fun to write, for me at least. It’s so subtle and thus it’s kind of hard to get it, but I’m glad it came across. Lust to love? Well we’ll see. I mean, we know they can’t stay where they are indefinitely.

DuchessYappingDog: Lol, well thanks again for the idea. I like the staircase analogy. Nice. And yes, thanks for not abandoning me. Exactly, sex won’t hurt, though as we’ve seen in this chapter, some people seem to think it will.

Slayin-Em: Bittersweet? Really? Okay, kind of, I guess. Hah, yeah, I guess it would be strange to leave after three years just because of a bit of sex. And I wasn’t really graphic, right? Lol, I love it when people know characters well enough to predict what’s going to happen.

That’s all. See you next time. Get excited, more interesting events to look forward to. I’m excited!