Chapter Nineteen

Telling Gary that they couldn't risk being seen in his company in case the culprit recognised them together and became suspicious, the Winchesters returned to the bar.

"It happened here," Dean said, looking around, "Some asshole who was here, more than once, a regular, has de-hotted hot guys."

"Doesn't narrow it down a lot," Sam observed, "This place has been busy. Specially at this time of the year. I know that when I'd sat the last exam and handed in the last assignment, all I wanted to do was drink until I couldn't tell an irregular verb from a direct object or a derivative from a distribution."

Dean looked at his brother. "I never shoulda let you go off to college," he said, "It did weird things to your brain. Although that brain was pretty weird to start with. It did weirder things to your brain. Which is a bit like saying 'made that Guido even more orange by dropping him in a vat of carrot juice', but you get what I mean."

"The point I'm making," Sam rolled his eyes, "Is that there's probably been a lot of custom here lately." He looked around. "They've got cameras; we might try the security footage, look at it on the nights that hot guys were, uh, de-hotted, as you put it, but that'll take a while."

"Great," groaned Dean, "Just what I need, hours spent in front of video footage, lookin' for someone who was here on all those nights. Can't you do your computer fu, get it to do the work?"

"Not yet," Sam smiled, "Facial recognition technology is a whole field of image analysis and takes some number crunching."

"Well, who's to say you aint the one who'll crack it?" suggested Dean. "I mean, the way your luck has been runnin' this week, finding cash, guessing passwords, winning stuff, gettin' free meals from grateful small yappy dog owners, it's like you've got the opposite of Winchester luck. You might just do it."

"No, seriously, it's a highly specialised field," Sam told him, "Even if it could work, which it doesn't yet, and even if I had the know-how, which I don't, there's not nearly enough memory to do it on the laptop. If we decide to do that, we gotta do it the old fashioned way."

"With the ol' Mark I eyeball," Dean sighed.

"Yep. Look on the bright side, bro, the whole pattern recognition thing, you do have a talent."

Dean didn't seem to think that was necessarily a good thing. "Great. I might actually start to look forward to my walks with Jimi. Hell, I might want to go out more than once in a twenty-four hour period." He looked around again. "I suggest we get a drink and think about it, see if we can't come up with something better. Or at least, less needle in a haystack. Screw that, less virgin at a hookers' convention. So go get beer, bitch."

"At once, Your Majesty," griped Sam, sliding out of his seat and heading for the bar.

The same bartender was behind it. Once again she was absorbed in her notebook, but when he approached she looked up and smiled. "Hi Sam!"

"Hey Karen," he smiled back, and nodded at her jottings, "So, how goes the Next Big Thing in bioinformatics? Decided how you'll spend your first million yet?"

She laughed. "After the, uh, 'robust discussion' I had with my supervisor yesterday, the closest I may get is offering to be a test subject for a drug trial."

He made a rueful face. "That good, huh?"

She chuckled. "It happens to everybody – you get to the stage where you can start having your own ideas and arguing with your supervisor. We were discussing the definition of 'mean', in the case of a multi-dimensional data set, where one distribution may not be normal." She gave him an unrepentant smile. "If I broke his brain, Prof will never forgive me."

"Maybe it's a good sign," Sam suggested, "Maybe having your own ideas means that you're getting ready to, uh, fly the nest, academically speaking."

"I hope so," she sighed, making some more notes. "If I can argue the case, it'll be a major part of my thesis."

"Well, it's important," Sam shrugged, "Deciding on what definition of 'mean' you're going to use is fundamental to any working on a particular data set..."

He stopped suddenly, hearing what he'd just said, and drew in a sharp breath.

Definition of mean. On a particular data set...

"Sam?" she looked worried. "Are you okay?"

"What? Oh, yeah," he grimaced, and rolled his left shoulder. "It's an old injury. Sometimes I just get this stabbing pain, out of nowhere, and it usually startles the hell out of me." He made himself smile. "But I usually find that Dr Bud's analgesic solution helps."

"Amen to that," Karen grinned as he paid for the drinks, then headed back to his brother.

"I've got a lead," Sam told Dean, "I think our bartender Karen might be a suspect."

"Yeah?" Dean peered at his beer. "Why? And more importantly, is this safe to drink?"

"Beer's safe," Sam replied, "But it was the way she was talking about her research – remember how said she was doing statistics? Well, she said something else, about how the definition of 'mean' will be central to her work..." he paused, and blinked. "Oh, shit."

"What? What?"

Sam dropped his face into his hands. "Oh, God," he moaned, "It makes sense."

"What does?" demanded Dean. "Beer? Beer makes sense? Of course it does, Sammy, beer always makes sense..."

"No," Sam looked up, "Well, yeah, maybe not before breakfast, and maybe not for breakfast, certainly not on cereal if there isn't any milk left, yeah, I'm looking at you, but otherwise..." he waved a hand in the direction of the bar. "Remember what Gary said earlier? When I was trying to find out how the average statistics and properties of the all-American Average Joe are calculated? How he thought that 'mean' was when you were nasty to people? She called you 'mean', when you played him at pool, after you were rude to her."

"That was part of the drunken asshole act," Dean reminded him.

"Maybe, but she didn't know that," Sam noted, "And I've seen women get brushed off by assholes before, but she thought it was funny. Said I probably could do better – but that you probably couldn't, because you were so mean. I don't think she meant that you were nasty; she meant because you were so average. You're so accurately, mathematically average."

"But I was already, uh, averaged then," Dean pointed out, "If that was revenge because she thought I was nasty, she was too late."

"That was our second trip to that bar," Sam said, "Our first visit, you went home with Miss Leggy Brunette." He fixed his brother with a level stare. "What did you say to the bartender, Dean?"

"What? Me? Nothing!" Dean yelped.

"Really?" Sam cocked an eyebrow. "A woman behind the bar, and you didn't say anything?"

"Well obviously, I had to order drinks, yeah."

"And?"

"What do you mean, 'and'?"

"What else did you say?"

"I told you, nothing!" Dean was adamant.

Sam didn't sound convinced. "So, the Living Sex God ordered drinks from a female bartender, and then didn't say anything?"

"Nope."

"Not even a half-strength Killer Smile, on general principles?"

Dean gave his baby brother the sort of look that a kindergarten teacher might wear when trying to explain to one of her more challenging charges that just because you've made a lollipop out of Play-Doh that doesn't make it edible. "Look, I was concentrating on the brunette with the rack and the legs, I wasn't gonna make eyes at a woman who wasn't, you know..."

"Adequately hot?"

"Exactly."

Sam sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look, Dean, this could be really important, so try to remember exactly what you said."

"Okay." Dean looked thoughtful. "I ordered drinks..."

Sam waved a hand encouragingly.

"And I might've said, uh, hi, or something..."

Sam's eyebrows raised meaningfully.

"And, uh, she might've said hi, or something..."

Sam's scowled at his brother.

"And I, uh, I might've had to give her the brush-off," Dean finished lamely. "I mean, it's not like it's completely unexpected that unhot women would want to hook up with me..."

Sam continued to scowl at his brother.

"Because the Living Sex God is a hot guy, and therefore attractive to all women," Dean reasoned. "It aint unexpected that even unhot women will be interested. And while mostly they don't, occasionally one will ask..."

Sam's face threatened to turn into an actual Bitchface™.

"Okay," Dean held up his hands in a gesture of surrender, "Okay, maybe, maybe I was concentrating on the brunette with the rack and the legs, and maybe I didn't really pay attention to the bartender, and maybe, yeah, maybe I could've been slightly more tactful..."

"Maybe you could've been marginally polite," Sam pointed out.

"I was!" Dean protested. "I was totally polite! I said 'No, thank you', and everything!"

"You said 'No thank you'?" Sam didn't sound convinced.

"Yeah!" Dean insisted.

"Those were your exact words, then? 'No, thank you'?"

"What the fuck are you, a lawyer?"

Sam unleased a full throttle Bitchface#8™ (You Are Now Officially Talking Complete Shit, Dean) on his brother, who wilted before it. "Dean, what – did – you – say?"

"Well," Dean smiled sheepishly, "She'd been scribblin' away on this pad, numbers and symbols and equations and stuff, so I said, uh, I said..."

"You said?"

"I said, uh... 'No thanks, Velma, I'm here to talk to Daphne'."

Sam gave his brother a mirthless smile. "So, she had the materials – she'd have the glasses you drank from – and you gave her the motivation."

"Huh, overreaction, much?" grumbled Dean.

"Actually, as cosmic comeuppance goes, it's kind of appropriate," Sam said. "You act like a arrogant, entitled individual who can get away with things that others can't because you scored the jackpot in the genetic lottery, and you get turned into Mr Average to experience a dose of your own medicine."

"It aint funny, Sam," growled Dean.

Sam gave him a grin. "If it wasn't for the health-threatening implications that go with it, it would be."

"No it wouldn't!"

"Yeah it would."

"Bitch," Dean griped, "So, we've ID-ed a potential perp, now we have to chase up your theory. We stake out, we tail her, we scope her place for an altar, then we come up with a plan..."

"We may be able to take a short-cut there," Sam interrupted, downing the last of his beer, "But we'll need Jimi."

"We can't bring him in here," Dean pointed out.

"We don't have to. Come on."

They returned to the car where Jimi was snoozing on the back seat, but thumped his tail when he saw them return. "Hey Jimi," Sam greeted the dog, "I need you take a look at something for me."

He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. It had a phone number on it.

Jimi sniffed at the paper. Then he growled, his eyes crackling with glowing red highlights as his upper Hellteeth canines extruded.

"The nose for evil shit knows its shit," Sam concluded. "I think we can say we've identified our witch."

Dean's grim smile was predatory. "Okay, so, we follow her home, we gank her, make it look like a burglary gone wrong, job done."

"Not so fast," Sam cautioned, "This kind of a curse takes some serious mojo, plus finesse. The basic approach – work with what you've got – is also the most sensible one. So, she's got firepower, plus technique, and worst of all, she's intelligent. That makes her one dangerous opponent. Besides, just ganking her might not be enough to break the curse." Sam shook his head. "No, we need a different approach for this job."

"Such as?" prompted Dean.

Sam took a deep breath, and squared his shoulders. "I'm gonna go back in there – and proposition her."

"What?" Dean's eyes bugged. "No! No way! Absolutely not!"

"Look, somehow, we gotta find a way to get under her guard!" Sam told his brother.

"Sam, I forbid you to throw yourself at a frigging witch!" Dean snapped. "What if this happens to you, huh? What if she de-hotifies you too? Worse, what if she says yes?"

"Well, we have to break the curse for you anyway," Sam reasoned, "So it'd break mine at the same time."

"No," Dean repeated. "No, no, and no. I am NOT letting you tangle with this bitch, Sam, she's a fucking witch! For all we know, she could do worse. So forget that idea right now."

"Well, then, what do you suggest?" asked Sam in exasperation, inwardly railing at Dean's Big Brother complex.

Dean's face assumed an heroically resolute expression. "Desperate situations call for desperate measures," he intoned dramatically, "If you're right, and I caused this for myself, then you aint strollin' into the dragon's lair to try to fix it. I'll tell you what's gonna happen, Sam." He lifted his chin – had he been in his own body, women would have swooned for a radius of half a mile. "The Living Sex God is gonna walk in there, and proposition an unhot woman."

Astonished gasp! Oh, the epic heroism! It's just overflowing with epicness! Bursting with epicity! Is there no end to what Dean is willing to do to protect his baby brother?! Can the Living Sex God be given a crash course in How To Talk To Women Like You're Not The Living Sex God?! Will Sam intervene to break the curse before he actually has to do the deed with – shudder – a woman who is not hot?! Are we about to run out of punctuation marks?! Feed Beau-Ponty the plot bunny reviews to make him dictate the next chapter, so we can find out!1!111!one!1!