Title: The Odds of Human Nature

Pairing (subject to change): Charlie/OFC (please give her a chance--I hope I've been around the block long enough not to write a Mary Sue, but I could be wrong)

A/N: This is my first Numb3rs fic. Though I enjoy the show immensely, I've only been able to catch about three or four episodes. While I've done my best to keep the characters in character, please forgive any mistakes or if things get too OOC. Also, most math and sciences are beyond me, so if I screw up, I apologize.

Greeting card disclaimer: Except for the characters and concepts that are mine, the rest belongs to some very lucky people who I wish all the best and hope that they and the show have many more seasons to come.


Chapter One: How to Capture a Genius's Attention

Two women sat at one of the picnic tables placed beneath the trees on the CalSci campus, both enjoying a couple of iced mocha lattes and the beautiful late spring day. One woman was Cameron Burgess, professor of Astronomy at CalSci. The other woman, younger by about five years, was Alison Strauss, associate professor of marine biology at UCLA. From the friendly banter and mindless chitchat, they didn't seem to have a care in the world, but beneath their sunglasses both pairs of eyes were intensely focused on the young man in front of them. The object of their scrutiny was walking across the lawn, precariously balancing an armful of papers and trying to write on a notebook at the same time.

"I'm impressed," Alison said, toasting him with her nearly empty cup before taking a drink from the long green straw. "I'm lucky I can walk and breathe at the same time, and he looks like he's carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders."

"Yeah, well, he's got the brains to spare for little things like breathing," Cameron said with a sidelong glance at her friend. She had caught the interested note in Alison's voice and knew her comment had been more than just a casual observation.

"You know him?" Alison asked innocently, confirming the good doctor's suspicion, who couldn't resist a smug smile at being able to read her friend so easily.

"I do. That's Dr. Charles Eppes, mathematician and resident genius. Well, one of them," she said, fluttering her eyelids modestly, and Alison laughed.

"More geniuses? You CalSci folk sure know how to make a simple girl like me feel all inferior."

"If it's any consolation," Cameron said, shifting on the bench to make sure she didn't lose track of Charlie, "he makes me feel like a three year old on a merry-go-round. I sat in on a lecture of his last year, and listening to him talk and trying to follow all those figures made my head spin. I'm an astronomer, I should be used to that sort of thing, but Dr. Eppes lives in a world far beyond ours."

The biologist shuddered. "I hate to think how I'd feel trying to follow him."

"I think the two of you would be pretty evenly matched," Cameron chuckled. "He'd talk about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, you'd talk about hydrothermal vent animals, and neither of you would have a clue what the other was saying."

"Ah, yes, a conversation where both parties are clueless. My favorite," she said dryly, her eyes still on the professor as he paused to dump his papers on one of the stone benches so he could sit down and write more easily in his notebook. "He's kind of cute, for a genius."

"It never ceases to amaze me how surprised people are to see that we're not just a bunch of pasty-faced, pocket-protector-wearing, bug-eyed freaks," the astronomer said, shooting her friend a dirty look.

"Well, I know it surprises me," Alison said blandly, and Cameron stuck her tongue out at her. She laughed. "Are you sure he's the reason you felt like a three year old?"

"You're just jealous of our superior intelligence," she said airily.

"Yes, but I don't envy you your wit," Alison shot back, and Cameron grinned.

"Admit it," she said, nodding towards the mathematician, "the only reason you're interested in him is because of the hair."

"I'd kill for the hair," the biologist said with a wistful sigh, gazing at the messy dark curls. "But the rest of him isn't entirely unappealing."

"Listen to you gush!" Cameron teased. "He 'isn't entirely unappealing.' My goodness, you've just gone and fallen head over heels, haven't you?"

"What do you want me to say? That I'd give anything to run over there, knock him to the ground, and have my way with him right on the campus. . . wait a minute."

"Oh no," the older woman groaned at the calculating expression on her friend's face. "Whatever it is you're thinking, stop it right now."

"Too late," she said with an impish grin, flipping through the spiral-bound notebook in front of her. Finding the pages she was searching for, Alison tore them out and clipped them together with the bright orange plastic paperclip she'd had stuck to the notebook's cover. She quickly wrote something in the right hand corner, then placed the clipped pages on top of her pile of books. Rising to her feet, she shouldered her bookbag and kissed her friend on the cheek. "Cam, thanks for the calculations. I'll talk to you later."

"Ali, whatever it is you've got planned, don't."

"Wish me luck," the biologist said, completely disregarding her friend's warning tone, and headed towards the unsuspecting mathematician who'd just regathered all of his belongings and was once more making his trek across campus. She had to rush a little to make sure their paths intersected, but fate was on her side as Charlie was still too deep in his thoughts to notice the young woman plotting a collision course with him.

He was made painfully aware of it, however, when he suddenly found all of his belongings had taken flight and gravity reached up to pull him down onto the ground, bringing another body with him.

"Ugh," Charlie grunted as they landed, papers fluttering around them like confetti.

"I'm so sorry!" the extra body exclaimed. "I was in a hurry and I should have been paying more attention to where--"

"It's all right," Charlie interrupted, not fully registering any of the girl's excuses. He was more concerned about the disruption of the equation he'd been working on. Quickly squirming out from under her, he began gathering up his papers and notebooks.

"It isn't all right! This is all my fault. I could have hurt someone--I could have hurt you! You aren't hurt, are you?" she asked, helping him to recapture his work.

"I'm fine. It was my fault, too," he said, trying to place his papers into some semblance of order, but he began to think that would be impossible with this woman chattering at him and the wind constantly threatening to blow the loose pages away. "I get distracted and then I forget there are other people around me. I'm usually better at avoiding them, though."

"Like I said," Alison smiled broadly at him, "all my fault."

"Don't worry about it." Charlie quickly gathered up the rest of his notes and looked up at her without really seeing her. "Sorry about the confusion."

"The confusion is all yours," she said, somewhat enigmatically Charlie thought, but then his eyes settled on the notebook and the page he'd been working on and he was lost again.

Alison watched as he headed back towards the mathematics department, smiling triumphantly to herself as she shoved the rest of her things into her bookbag and walked towards the parking lot. Halfway there, her cell phone started playing "E-Pro" and she pulled it out of her pocket.

"Yes, my esteemed Dr. Burgess?"

"I should have wished you luck. I don't think it would have made a bit of a difference."

Alison's grin deepened. "I'll have you know my plan worked perfectly."

"He didn't even notice you're alive! I'll bet you a hundred bucks he wouldn't be able to say whether the person who knocked him over was male or female!"

"Cam, I've been around you enough to know that once you're inside your head, it's pointless to try and pry you out. I've just given him the opportunity to get to know me on his own time."

She could practically hear her friend's eyes rolling over the phone.

"I'll take your word for it, but I want you to know, it's my personal belief that you're delusional."

"And you're entitled to that belief. Good thing you didn't go into psychology."

"That's because you're the only headcase I can stand being around."

"Not to mention, your bedside manner is atrocious. Would a true psychologist refer to a patient as a 'headcase'?"

"Shut up and go home," Cameron said, and Alison grinned as she opened her car door.

"Oh, yeah, the world of medicine lost a prime candidate in you. See you this weekend?"

"Wouldn't miss it. Can't wait to hear about your 'progress' with the professor."

"Good bye, Cam," she laughed, not the least put out by the tolerant amusement in her friend's voice as Cameron said good bye.


Charlie walked into the classroom and immediately chose to forgo the notebook in lieu of the whiteboard. He dumped the pile of papers on the table, not noticing that in their disheveled state, half the pages slid onto the floor. He was already knee-deep into green marker and flowing numbers by the time the last page landed.

Amita, who'd been sitting at a desk in the corner working on her thesis, smiled at her advisor's absent-minded state. Most of the time, she looked fondly upon his distraction, though there were days when she wished she could grab him by the shoulders and wake him up enough to see that there were entire worlds he was missing. Or, at the very least, that he would remember one staff meeting on his own.

Today, however, was one of the fond days, so she didn't hesitate to gather up the fallen pages and arrange the entire mess into a neater stack. Mixed in with the loose papers were pieces of napkin--Charlie had supposedly been picking up lunch at the cafeteria--and pages of various colors with writing on the back announcing dates for bands or frat parties or club meetings, the holes in the top telling her they'd been ripped off of a bulletin board. She wondered if Charlie had managed to at least get something to eat before inspiration had struck, and whether or not the department would be getting an invoice from the bookstore later for the cost of the notebook.

Looking at a few of the pages, Amita tried to put them in order, but conceded after a few minutes that the mess was beyond her. Charlie, as the only one who'd understand his myriad of notes, would just have to sort through the pages himself. With one more glance at her professor, who had paused in his frantic writing to look over what he'd written, she smiled and returned to her desk.

Two hours later, Charlie emerged from his sea of numbers with a satisfied expression and a growling stomach. He glanced down towards the protesting organ with a frown. Had he eaten lunch? He knew he'd left for lunch, but had he actually eaten anything? Another rumble answered for him and he sighed. Guess not.

Turning towards the table where he'd dropped his papers earlier, he saw that someone had straightened them --Amita most likely, he thought with a smile. She'd also left a plastic-wrapped sandwich and a Coke that was nowhere near cold, but he didn't really notice. He quickly finished off the sandwich--chicken salad, must have been one of the last they had--and began going through the pages, trying to place them back in their original order.

He was halfway through when he came upon a group bound together by a bright orange plastic paperclip, their edges in shreds from being torn out of a notebook.

"This isn't mine," Charlie said aloud as he began looking through the pages.

"What's not yours?"

The mathematician turned and offered Larry a perfunctory greeting with a wave of his hand before looking back at the pages. "These," he answered, rattling them slightly. "I don't know what these are."

Larry sat down next to him and glanced over at the papers in question. "Maybe a student's homework?"

"Possibly, but it isn't anything I'm working on in any of my classes."

"The handwriting looks feminine--a project of Amita's?"

"No," Charlie shook his head. "Not her handwriting, and it's far too basic for anything she'd be working on."

"It could be just something someone left on the table that got mixed up with your things."

"Couldn't be. It was actually stuck between--the girl!" Charlie's eyes brightened with understanding, while Larry's face grew confused.

"The girl? You met a girl?"

Charlie's expression took on an edge of uncertainty. "At least, I think she was a girl."

"You met a transvestite?" Larry asked, sounding even more confused than before.

"No," he answered, grinning at the physicist. "Someone ran into me--literally--on the way to the classroom and our things must have gotten mixed up. I didn't get a good look at the person, but if he or she is the owner of these pages, then she must have been a girl."

"I can't believe this," Larry said with an exaggerated sigh, running his hand through his hair. "You run into a girl and you're too preoccupied to notice! Why not me? I'd have noticed! Why don't I ever get that kind of luck?"

"The luck, and the bruises to go with it," Charlie said, suddenly aware of an aching in his tailbone. "Besides, she probably wasn't even your type."

"How do you know? She could have been Miss America and you wouldn't have batted an eye. She might have been the girl of my dreams."

"Or nightmares, if she has a habit of knocking people over."

"Right now, I'd take her, nightmare or not."

"What's with the sudden fixation on the opposite sex?" Charlie asked, forcing himself to look away from the pages in his hands and focus on his friend.

"My fixation? Have you looked outside lately? Flowers blooming, trees budding, birds singing, couples making out on the lawn. It's spring, the time when men's fancy turns to. . ." Larry hesitated, trying to remember the correct word, then shook his head, waving the problem away. ". . . something or other, and it's almost over! Don't you ever wish you were out of this stuffy classroom and walking hand in hand down the beach with your sweetheart?"

"I don't know," Charlie answered, bemused. "I never really thought of it."

"That's exactly your problem! You don't think about it! If you did, you'd realize your body is filled with raging hormones just waiting to be placated and all you do is focus on--on--on this!" he finished, gesturing towards the whiteboard.

"Let me guess--you've been talking to your parents again, and they spent the entire conversation gushing over your sister and her kids."

"Yes," Larry moaned, burying his head in his arms. "I can shed light on the mysteries of the universe, but all they care about is grandchildren."

"They're proud of you, Larry. It's just hard for them to keep pictures of the electromagnetic spectrum in their wallets to show to their friends."

"I know," he said in a muffled voice. "I just wish I could give them something they consider tangible to make them happy."

"Like a squalling baby and a handful of dirty diapers?"

"It would be their Nobel Prize."

Charlie chuckled, patting his friend on the back. "They'll be fine, and so will you. If falling in love is really what you want, then I promise you'll find her, one day. And if it will make you feel any better, between the two of us, the odds are in your favor. You're the one always having to explain human nature to me. At least you'll know how to relate to her, whoever she is. I'll probably be so wrapped up in my head, I won't even see her."

Larry immediately perked up and the mathematician didn't know whether to laugh or feel offended.

"You know, you're right," Larry said, lifting his head and grinning at Charlie. "The day you manage to get a date before I do is the day I quit physics to join your brother at the FBI."

"You'd never make it," Charlie quipped as he turned back to the pages in his hand. "You'd have to pass the physical first."

"And this is why you will never have a girlfriend," Larry said, pushing away from the table and standing up. "Want me to come get you before I leave?"

"Please. Don insisted that I join him and dad for dinner tonight. Well, threatened, actually. He said that if I didn't show up, he'd handcuff me to a chair away from all writing utensils for twenty-four hours. You're welcome to join us if you want."

"Gee, handcuffs and meatloaf--sounds exciting, but I think I'll pass. Thanks for the invite, though."

Charlie tore his gaze away to meet his friend's eyes with a smile. "You know you're welcome any time. See you in a couple hours."


Don walked through the house, pausing to stick his head in the dining room where his brother was sitting at the table. As usual, Charlie was surrounded by several pieces of paper and scribbling away on a notebook. Smiling fondly at his brother but deciding not to disturb him, Don walked on into the kitchen where their father was standing in front of a pot at the stove.

"Hey dad," he said, grabbing a beer from the fridge.

"Hey Donny," Alan said, glancing over at his eldest son as Don took a seat at the kitchen table. "How're you doing?"

"Not bad. You?"

"Good, good. Nothing to complain about. Things going well at the office?"

"Yeah," he nodded, "it's been a pretty quiet week. Saw a serial killer get life in prison without parole and closed a case involving a man slipping poison into a couple of elementary schools' water filters. All I've got left to entertain myself is a desk full of paperwork, and I'm not complaining."

"Have I ever mentioned that your idea of a quiet week is enough to give most people nightmares, myself included?"

Don smiled, sipping at his beer. "I think it's been mentioned. So, he actually showed up?"

Alan glanced towards the dining room as he sat down across from his son. "Larry dropped him off about thirty minutes ago. He's been in there ever since, but at least he's here."

"Yeah, he's here," Don said and the two shared a mutual smile of familial relief. They knew it wasn't easy for Charlie to integrate himself into the world outside his mind, and they were proud of every time the youngest Eppes managed to merge his path with theirs, even if it was only for a few hours. "So, what's for dinner?"

"I thought I'd try something new."

"Something new?" Don echoed, a note of surprised amusement in his voice. "Dad, are you sure that's a good idea? Should I have some ipecac on hand?"

"Ha ha. You should go on one of those comedy shows with that sense of humor of yours."

"I would, but I signed a contract with the FBI never to moonlight as a comedian," he said, grinning around the top of his bottle as he took another drink.

"Consider your humor a threat to the public, do they?"

"We all know I got my sense of humor from you, dad."

"And look what you did with it," Alan said with a mournful sigh. "What a waste."

Don chuckled, finishing off his beer. "I'll try not to take offense at that. Now, seriously, what are you making?"

"Goulash."

"Goulash?"

"A friend gave me the recipe," Alan said with a too-casual shrug, and Don tried his hardest to bite back his grin.

"A friend."

Alan stared intently at his son, daring him to say another word. "Yes, a friend."

Deciding to let his father off the hook this time, Don just smiled at him. "Smells good. Anything I can do to help?"

"Nah, it's about finished. Just go see if you can get your brother to join us."

"I'm on it," Don said and headed back to the dining room where Charlie was still busy writing. Placing a hand on his brother's shoulder, Don peered at the pages on the table. "Hey, buddy, what're you working on?"

Charlie looked up, startled at his brother's touch, but then his face relaxed into a smile. "Donny, when did you get here?"

"A few minutes ago," his brother frowned, picking up one of the loose pages. "What's this? This isn't your handwriting. New project?"

"Something like that. Belongs to this girl I ran into."

Don looked at his younger brother with an expression of interest as he sat down across from him. "You met a girl?"

"No, I ran into her." Charlie frowned. "Or she ran into me. I'm not exactly sure. The actual event is kind of fuzzy. I was working on an equation at the time."

"Now, why doesn't that surprise me?" Don asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm, and ignored the resulting look his brother gave him. "So this girl, she's having you work on a project for her?"

"No. I doubt she even knows I have it. Our papers got mixed up in the collision."

"Then why are you working on it?" Don asked, puzzled, and Charlie offered him a sheepish smile.

"Numbers," he said, holding up one of the pages. "It's a theory of some sort. I just can't figure out what it is she's trying to do with it."

"Ask her."

Charlie shook his head. "I can't. I don't know who she is, or even where to find her."

"You could always call."

"How?"

Don picked up the first page to Charlie's left and held it up while pointing to the right hand corner. "Alison Strauss. Phone number 555-6152."

Charlie snatched the paper from his hand. "This was a phone number?"

"Yes, it's a phone number. What did you think it was?"

Tossing the paper aside, Charlie started flipping through his notebook, pausing after four pages. "Well that makes a lot more sense now," he said, and began crossing out the parts of the equation where he'd tried to fit variations of the number 5556152.

Don started to laugh as he leaned across the table to grab his brother's pencil.

"Hey!" Charlie protested, staring angrily at the still laughing FBI agent.

"You really do need to get out more if you can't even recognize a phone number," Don said, putting the pencil on the seat of the chair next to him. "You can have the pencil back after dinner. Come on, it's time to eat."

"All right," Charlie said with a reluctant look at the pages on the table. He slowly stood up and another thought took over his mind that had nothing to do with mathematics. "Hey Donny?"

"Yeah?"

"Should I call her?" Charlie asked, a hand hesitating over the page that carried the owner's name and number. "Let her know I have her work?"

"Yeah, sure," Don shrugged. "Might be important."

"Then I guess I probably should," he said, his eyes uncertain.

Biting back a smile, Don walked over to the table and picked up the paper. "Charlie, have you ever called a girl before?"

"Sure. I call Amita all the time, students I need to speak to, and I've called several female colleagues when we were working on projects together."

"Then why are you so nervous?"

"I'm not nervous," Charlie answered a little too fast, and a slight flush colored his cheeks. He blamed the whole situation and the butterflies in his stomach entirely on Larry and his talk of spring. "All right, so maybe I am nervous. I mean, I don't even know who she is."

"And you won't, until you call. Charlie, all you're doing is offering to return her property to her, nothing more. It isn't like you're asking her on a date." Seeing that his brother was making no movement to take the number from him, he sighed.

"Here, hand me your phone," Don said, then looked at their resident genius, his eyes suspicious. "You do have it, don't you?"

"Yes," Charlie said, his gaze filled with wounded pride as he pulled his cell from his pocket. "I've been keeping it handy in case you needed me."

"And I refuse to feel guilty about asking because I've had to replace it half a dozen times already, so put the wounded puppy dog look away, and give it to me."

Grudgingly handing his brother the phone, Charlie watched as Don entered the number and pressed the 'send' button. Holding the phone up to his ear, Don waited for a second, then gave it back to his brother.

"Here, it's ringing."

"It's ringing?" Charlie exclaimed, holding the phone away from him as if expecting it to explode. "What do I do?"

Don rolled his eyes. "When she answers, you say 'hello'. You introduce yourself, and then you tell her why you're calling. Everything after that should be easy."

"O-okay. I. . . I think I can do that."

"Then you'd better hurry," Don said, nodding towards the phone where he could hear a voice repeatedly saying 'hello' on the other end. His brother quickly held the phone up to his ear.

"Hello? Hi, my name is Dr. Charles Eppes."

Sighing at the hopelessness of his brother's social skills, Don returned to the kitchen. Alan looked up from placing three bowls and spoons on the kitchen table.

"Where's your brother?"

"Making a phone call. He'll be right in. Want one?" he asked, holding up a fresh beer from the fridge.

"Yeah, thanks."

Don nodded, grabbing another bottle and a can of Coke before going over to the table. They only had to wait a minute before Charlie came stumbling into the kitchen, a dazed look on his face. He slid into his chair, the phone still in his hand.

"The call go well?" Don asked, and Charlie's eyes focused on him.

"She said it's a date."

"What's this?" Alan asked, jumping on the word. "You have a date?"

"We arranged a time and place where I could return her papers, and she said, 'It's a date'."

"Charlie, that's just an expression," Don sighed. "It isn't a 'date' date."

"Oh," Alan said, unable to keep the disappointment from his voice, much to both brothers' amusement. "Colleague of yours?"

"Something like that," Charlie said.

"What'd she sound like?" Don asked.

"She sounded. . . I don't know, nice? Grateful?"

"Young?" Alan asked.

"I suppose so."

"If she's cute, you should ask her out."

"Dad!"

"Well, you should," he shrugged, dishing out goulash into the three bowls. "If you're not going to ask Amita, you should at least ask someone. Now eat up. You're going to need your strength for this date of yours."

"It isn't a date, and it isn't until Friday."

"Eat up anyway," Alan said, placing the pot back on the stove. "You're too skinny. You'll scare her off if you go there looking like a skeleton."

Knowing it was pointless to further argue with his father, Charlie exchanged a grin with Don and began to eat, using his family and food to drown out all thoughts of the meeting on Friday.


(Completed April 25, 2005)