Dean's Guide to Picking Up the Ladies
Sam had spent enough hours cruising in the Impala from town to town to pick up on Dean's pattern when it came to the ladies. They'd come into town right after some tragic event took place that ironically involved tall vulnerable women. Dean would park the car and then preen for several minutes, running his hand through his hair to make it seem more wind ruffled then bed-head from a moth-balled stained pillow from the latest crap motel they stayed at, straightened out the clothing he had worn consecutively for the week worth of driving he had done and then, for good measure, sprayed it with odor eating air sanitizer.
He'd then get out and almost like he had radar, he'd figure out where the vixen-in-distress was and then go to visit her, only for questioning, he would claim. They'd get there and at the first sight of the woman, Dean's eyes would light up. He'd make some flirtatious comment and suddenly, the damsel was recoiling like it was a licentious old man and not an all-American Abercrombie model look-alike showing interest in her. The woman would then turn to look at Sam, and her forced smile would relax. She'd begin chatting and answering their questions, and Dean would slink away.
The funny thing in it all was his expression when he walked away. It was never annoyance that he was rejected again or regret that he said the wrong thing. He almost looked relieved.
It made Sam wonder if Dean was even trying to land a girl.
It was an act, a long perfected act that was there to put his brother at ease. Sam didn't need to know that he had changed, that he no longer cared about love or relationships. It wasn't like he had time for a relationship and the one-night stands had turned stale. He could only put up with so many awkward good-byes and the disappointment he felt in himself as he lay there, a girl whose name he didn't know curled around him, all the pleasure so momentary replaced with a memory of a time he was happy.
He knew why he went after the girls. He didn't need a therapist to tell him it was some Freudian psycho crap that he was looking for the love he never got from his mother. He knew his attempts at getting the girls were half-assed. But they made the relationship between he and his brother a bit smoother, a little closer to normal, if normal was driving across the country with guns loaded with rock salt and as many books of exorcism as there were cassettes of mullet rock.
Who needed the girls, anyway? Sam could have them all. It was all fine as long as he had Sam to keep him company.