Kudos to the Denizens who figured out who the culprit was – the question now is, can Dean be a nice enough guy to get under her guard?
Chapter Twenty
Dean sat behind the wheel of his Baby, the grim look of determination on his face reminiscent of a knight surveying the field before donning his helm and riding into battle.
"You should let me do it," pouted Sam.
"No." It was a flat statement of How It's Going To Be.
"Seriously, Dean, I already have a kind of connection with her, I've talked to her about her research..."
"No way," Dean growled, the Big Brother That Never Sleeps rearing its head, "There is no way, no way, I will let you get that close to a witch, baby bro."
"Aren't you always telling me I need to get laid?" complained Sam.
"With hot chicks," Dean stipulated.
"Look, I'm just throwing this out there, call me nuts if you will," Sam began sourly, "But what if, and this is just theoretical you understand, what if there was actually something attractive about a woman who was not, as you put it, 'hot'?"
"That's ridiculous!" Dean snorted. "A woman who aint hot obviously aint attractive."
"What I mean," Sam treated his brother to a Bitchface #8™ (You Are Now Officially Talking Complete Shit, Dean), "Is, what if a woman was not exactly stunningly physically gorgeous to look at, but otherwise had something about her that made her attractive?"
Dean gave his brother an incredulous look. "Like what?"
"Like lots of things!" Sam yapped back, "She could have gorgeous eyes, she could have an amazing smile, she could be really interesting to talk to, she could have an interest in common with you, or she might do something really interesting..."
"Great," Dean sounded defeated, "My little brother, on the prowl for a woman who gives great mind."
"This from the man who claims to be an expert in appreciation of the female form, in all its shapes, sizes and colours," scoffed Sam.
"I am," Dean insisted, "So long as they're hot. And frisky. The frisky thing is important – frisky has to come first; hot is no good without frisky."
"News flash," Sam announced, "Frisky is a state of mind. You might need frisky to go with hot, but there are plenty of women who may not be adequately hot according to you, but are plenty frisky. Hell, I think Karen has a certain amount of frisk."
"You are not getting frisky with a damned witch!" Dean snapped.
"All right! All right!" Sam held up his hands in surrender. "All I'm saying is, she's got a certain amount of frisk. She gave me her number – she's not afraid to approach a guy she finds attractive. She knows what she wants. And can't that be kind of attractive in a woman?"
"Sure," Dean agreed, "Provided she's hot."
"I give up."
"Good. Because you aint goin' in there, pretendin' you want to get frisky with a witch. She's already whammied me – there's nothin' that she can do now that can make it worse."
Sam sighed; only Dean would ever think that, out of all the awful things a witch could do to a man, making him an averaged-out version of himself was the absolute worst fate imaginable. "Right. So, how are you going to get her attention, and hold it for long enough to pretend that you'd like to get frisky?"
Dean's expression was steely. "I will go in there – and ask her about her work."
"Ask her about..." Sam's eyebrows shot up. "Dean, you don't know anything about statistics!"
"I'd say I've gotten up about as close and personal to the concept of 'average' as it's possible to get," growled Dean.
"Look, what are you going to say? You don't know any of the terminology, and if you get to the point where she tries to explain error calculation, the first time she says 'deviation', something puerile will come out of your mouth because you won't be able to help yourself!" Sam protested.
"This won't be the first time I've had to pretend to take an interest in what a chick is studying," Dean told his brother loftily, "It don't matter if you don't know anything about it, you just ask her to explain it to you."
Sam gave him a worried look. "Dean, this woman is post-grad! If you ask her to talk about her research, you have no idea what you're letting yourself in for. These people can talk for an hour without repeating themselves, and the longer they talk, the more obscure it gets."
"Well, then, it can't be any worse than listenin' to you ramble about whatever topic of the day has taken control of your brain," Dean grinned infuriatingly.
Sam rolled his eyes and shot his big brother a Bitchface #14™ (There Are Times When Your Behaviour Is So Reckless I Wonder If You Took Lessons As A Small Child). "Fine. Just... we're right here, me and Jimi, so, call for back-up if you need to."
"Just stay out of sight until I get back," Dean instructed. "This is just the initial skirmish. Can't look too eager, or she'll get suspicious." He held out his hand as if waiting for his squire to give him his sword. "So, give me the weapon."
Sam scowled as he handed over the item sitting in his lap. "I don't know why you made me go and buy this."
"Because you're the sort of emo who'd do that sort of thing," Dean opened the door, got out, and squared his shoulders. "Now, go park and wait, bitch."
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As business wound down for the night, Karen was watching the bar for any stragglers wanting a last drink and collecting glasses while her mind mulled over the latest iteration of the most recent equation she'd been working on. She'd been doing that for a number of years now – working the bar didn't require a lot of higher intellectual input, and she was practised at doing clean-up and ruminating whilst part of her brain stayed alert for the approach of somebody wanting to buy drinks or snacks.
However, there was no cluster of neurons designated to watch for A Bunch Of Flowers Suddenly Appearing At One End Of The Bar As If Out Of Nowhere, so when a bunch of flowers suddenly appeared at one end of the bar as if out of nowhere, and she finally did notice, she jumped a bit, startled.
Her startlement became puzzlement when a face, smiling sheepishly, slowly peeked out from behind the flowers. "Uh, hi there. Karen, isn't it?"
"Yeah," she peered at him cautiously, "Who are you?"
"Oh! Sorry. I'm Dean." The man lowered the flowers further, and his smile became rueful. "I'll do a proper introduction, if you like. Hello, my name is Dean, and I'm a rude asshole."
Karen frowned as she recognised him. "Yeah, you were in here a few days ago, with the tall guy. Sam."
"Oh, that's my brother – tall, shaggy, looks like a puppy who needs a good clipping, yeah?"
Karen's expression stayed carefully shuttered, and Dean visibly drooped. "Oh, come on," he wheedled, "The first step to dealing with the problem is to realise that I'm a rude asshole, right?" He proffered the flowers. "And there's something in there about making amends."
He waggled the bouquet at her, a small hopeful smile on his face. "These are for you," he went on, "By way of an apology. For being a rude asshole." He looked contrite. "Sam told me what I said the other night, when I was playing pool."
"Nothing I haven't heard before," she shrugged.
"Yeah, well, that don't justify what I said," Dean told her. "It was an asshole thing to do. And I'm sorry. I was drunk, yeah, but that aint an excuse. You shouldn't have to put up with that from a customer. Hell, you shouldn't have to put up with that from any man. It was just thoughtless, and rude." His expression became unexpectedly vulnerable. "I really am sorry. Please accept my apology." He proffered the flowers again. "Please?"
Relenting, Karen took them. Dean looked relieved.
"Well, Dean, I have to say, I'm surprised," she told him, watching him carefully, "I've been ignored and insulted before, but I very rarely get an apology."
Dean shrugged. "Well, some of us take longer than we should to find an Assholes Anonymous meeting group," he told her.
That made her smile.
"Although that might not be such a bad thing, I mean, if every man who's an asshole started goin' off to meetings all the time, half the country might grind to a halt, but then I guess all the assholes would be at meetings every night, so women wouldn't have to date 'em, only the nice guys would be left available, so maybe that would be a good thing for women, provided the nice guys are willing to do the casual hook-up thing, which, I should tell you, my brother does not, I really need to think the implications of this Assholes Anonymous thing through more..."
That made her laugh. "Apology accepted," she told him.
He gave her a beaming smile. "Awesome! I mean, uh, I'm really glad about that." He cocked his head, and stared at her.
Karen cocked one eyebrow at him. "What?"
"Huh? Oh, sorry," Dean yelped, "I was, uh, I was lookin' at... I didn't notice before that your eyes are really blue, wow..." he dropped his gaze. "Sorry. I'm still getting a handle on the whole stop bein' an asshole thing..."
She let out a chuckle. "It's okay. Looking at eyes is okay."
He looked up again, grinning. "It is? Good! But, uh, not staring, I guess," he went on in a hurry, "It's a fine line between admiring and creeping, right?..." his eyes fell on the notepad behind the bar, and he looked puzzled. "Oh, hey, you're not sendin' coded messages to the Russians or something, are you? Tellin' em how much beer we drink so they can time an invasion to coincide with Happy Hour?"
She laughed, and shook her head. "No, that's part of my research. I'm post-grad."
Dean looked mystified. "You're researching how to make spiders crawl through ink then write Greek?"
She laughed again. "No, statistics. It does look kind of esoteric to normal people, I guess."
"Wow, I think that's the first time I've ever been called 'normal people'," commented Dean, craning his neck to look at the notepad. "How do you do research in statistics? I mean, isn't the definition of an average pretty much, uh, already worked out?"
"There's a bit more to it than that," she told him, "There's all sorts of ways you can work out an 'average', depending on what you're trying to get out of your analysis, what you want to do with that info once you have it."
"Yeah?" he leaned on the bar, and propped his chin on one hand. "So, say you've got a group of, of, I dunno, a team of football players, how many, uh, averages can you calculate if you want to work out, say, how they stack up against a different team?"...
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Sam looked up when his brother returned to their car, looking slightly shell shocked. "How did it go?"
"I think she broke my brain," Dean explained, absently patting Jimi's head. "And I've done enough nodding and smiling to keep a Steve Buscemi bobble head toy goin' for a month."
"I did warn you," Sam rolled his eyes, "If you ask her about her work, it'll open a floodgate, and you'd better have your life vest fastened."
"Yeah, well, I was washed away in a torrent of populations, calculations and deviations," sighed Dean, "But at least she smiled at me. And before you ask, I didn't say a damned thing while she explained multiple ways to define deviations."
"Good," grunted Sam, "How many did she run through, anyway?"
"I don't know!" snapped Dean, "I was too busy lookin' at her and trying to act as though I was fascinated by the colour of her eyes! Do you know how difficult that is when you're being beaten into submission by a string of equations that look like something that would scare a Spartan?"
"Well, I can prime you with some questions to ask, next time," Sam noted, "She really smiled at you?"
"Yeah. She really smiled at me. And she laughed. She even referred to me as 'normal people', at one point." Dean's face assumed an expression of wounded dignity. "Have a little faith, Sammy."
"I should, shouldn't I?" Sam agreed. "After all, it's not like you haven't played roles before as part of a Hunt. You can do FBI agent, firefighter, aircon repair tech, gym coach, teddy bear doctor, prison inmate, asylum inmate, underwear model, and who could possibly forget your stint as a relationships councellor/sex therapist..."
"I know those couples never will," Dean's eyebrows waggled in a completely Deanesque fashion.
"...So it's reasonable to assume that your acting skills can stretch to doing 'Ordinary Guy Who Is Not The Living Sex God Who's Realised That He Was A Jerk And Is Now Just Trying To Show That He's Interested In A Woman In A Civilised Way That Is Not At All Creepy Or Arrogant'," Sam finished.
"Of course they are, bitch," Dean snapped, "So, we have made first contact with the enemy. Next is the chance meeting, where I can ask her out for a coffee, or something."
"And how exactly are you going to engineer a 'chance' meeting?" asked Sam.
Dean grinned smugly. "Using the intel I have gathered in the last two days, and the most reliable weapon in my arsenal," he replied.
"Fine. Just don't take your pants off in public."
Shut up, bitch."
That 'kerthump kerthump' noise you can hear is Easter thundering towards us. Or maybe it's a plot bunny. Or, better than that, an Easter Bunny with a basket of good quality chokkies (none of that Cadbury muck, thank you very much). Oh, oh, wouldn't that be great, and Easter Plot Bunny - every time it dictated a chapter, chocolates would pop out of the CD drive! Le sigh. I can dream. Meanwhile we'll just have to encourage Beau-Ponty the old fashioned way by feeding him reviews. So, have at it.