Chapter Twenty-Two
It was not an expensive place, but it was more upmarket than Karen would have allowed herself to patronise. Not that she was in the habit of dining out: between study and a couple of jobs, there wasn't time for that, and she would rather stay at home and curl up with a good equation anyway. But there was something about the way Dean had looked at her, as he insisted that it was the least he could do after nearly killing her – he looked like a cross between a Beagle who'd been caught chewing shoes and a Labrador who's just heard the w-word said aloud. So she'd agreed.
"Oh, God," she sighed slumping in her chair after they were seated, "I'm looking forward to having somebody else do the cooking."
Dean's face became concerned. "Rough day at the lab?" he asked. "The monster got hit by lightning and you've lost control of it? You tore a hole in the fabric of the space-time continuum? The super virus escaped and your colleagues have all turned into zombies? Your army of robots who are supposed to be taking over the world are all stuck doing the Macarena?"
Karen laughed. "Nothing that drastic, I'm afraid," she replied, "But one of the servers crashed overnight in the middle of the run, and I lost the test data set I was analysing. Now, I have to wait for the stoners running the IT to pull it up again from the back-up, and start again."
"That's exactly the face that Sam makes when I crash the laptop," declared Dean.
"What are you doing with it?" she asked.
"Oh. Er," his face pinked. "Promise me you won't laugh."
"I promise."
"No, really, promise me you won't laugh."
"I won't!"
"Okay. I uh," he hesitated, "I build bridges."
Karen cocked an eyebrow at him. "Bridges?"
Dean's smile was sheepish. "Yeah. There's this game, in fact, there's several of 'em, and you have to build a bridge across a gap, and you have girders, and cables, and uprights, and sometimes there's rivers, and sometimes you have to let a boat go underneath, but you have to get a truck or a train across without it collapsing, and... you're laughing!"
"No I'm not."
"Yes you are."
"I'm not!"
"Yeah you are. It's not my fault, okay? I'm addicted to it. Don't judge me, I have a disease."
"You're addicted to a bridge building game?"
With a smug expression, he took out his phone. "Let me show you. I bet you can't play the first two levels without getting hooked..."
By the time they'd finished their main course, Dean was grinning in naked triumph.
"Damn!" pouted Karen, "It collapsed again!"
"Let me see." He scooted his chair around to be next to her. "Make your triangles bigger," he instructed, "Bigger triangles give you more compressive structural strength."
"But that'll cost more, what if I go over budget?"
"What's more important, keeping some shiny-assed bean counter who's probably on the take happy about how much he can skim, or keeping your passengers safe? Make bigger triangles already! And start your bracing further down. Here, and here."
"You're really good at this," she remarked, "Did you do engineering?"
Dean's face fell. "Oh, no, I, uh, I didn't go to college. I'm Mr GED. My brother is Mr Stanford." He looked at her ruefully. "Usually, I leave talking to intelligent women to him, so I don't make a complete fool of myself."
Karen gave him a long look. "Dean, 'not college educated' and 'stupid' are not the same thing. And believe me, 'college educated' and 'plain dumb' can coexist in the same person, sometimes with spectacular consequences..."
"He makes me feel so dumb, sometimes," Dean sighed. "I mean, he's so smart, it's scary. That sort of intelligence all crammed into the one person... it can make you smart people kind of intimidating."
"You asked some really intelligent questions this morning," she reminded him, "You might not know anything about multi-dimensional statistical analysis, but you got hold of the broad concept pretty damned quickly. Not a lot of people do that."
"Well, what you're doin', it's gonna be a big thing, isn't it?" he noted. "I mean, the media keep telling us that soon, we'll have this personalised medicine, where we can all have our DNA sequenced, and that's a lot of information, and somebody's gotta work out how to turn all that into something useful, like, yeah, here's my DNA sequence, but can you use it to work out if I'll get dementia when I'm seventy, and can I do anything to stop it, or lessen it, now?"
"You're a big picture thinker," she declared, "You pull info together to find the big picture."
"Oh, er," he flushed, "Not really, I'm just a mechanic."
"Who thinks like an engineer," she told him. She paused, and gave him a hard look. "Who's trying not to be an asshole. What happened?"
"What?" Dean looked genuinely nonplussed. "What happened, when?"
"You were an asshole," she said, "What you said to me was the act of a common or garden asshole, but now, you're trying not to be. Why?"
"Huh?" Dean's mouth opened and closed a couple of times. "I, er, I..." he slumped. "Look, let's just say... several days ago, I had what I can only describe as a, uh, a life-changing event..."
She cocked an eyebrow at him.
"Look, I won't go into boring details," he continued hurriedly, "But it was, uh, it was a real eye opener, confronting, and it made me stop and think about the kind of person I was." He paused. "That person was an asshole. And yeah, I was angry, and, and, I was, like, why the hell has this happened to me, but," he looked up her earnestly, "When things like that happen, they happen for a reason, right? There's gotta be a reason, and, look, this might sound nuts, but I think, I think, uh, somehow, it was important for me to learn not to be an asshole." He paused. "And not to drink so much. Or maybe that's just Sam."
Karen laughed out loud.
"And I probably can't make it up to you for being such a dick, but, well, I thought it might be nice to try," he finished.
"You're doing quite well, actually," she noted, "For a recovering asshole."
"I am? Awesome!" Dean's beaming smile went suddenly to pink-faced sheepishness. "Uh, look, while I'm tryin' to be honest here, I should probably 'fess up something else..."
"Yes?" she prompted.
"Well," Dean swallowed, "At first, yeah, I wanted to apologise, make it up to you, and then, well, you're a really interesting person, I don't understand three quarters of what you're sayin', but what you're doing is gonna be real important, and you're smart, and you're, uh, you know your eyes really are an amazing blue, and, please don't hit me..."
"What?" Karen was watching him shrewdly.
"It's, uh, you're kindofaturn-on," Dean's voice almost squeaked.
She stared at him.
"Hey, haven't you heard?" he went on desperately. "Intelligent is the new skinny, all the cool kids are saying so!"
"They're not, you know," she informed him.
"Oh. Okay, uh, how about just one really uncool kid?" He looked as though he was wishing the floor would open up and swallow him.
Karen gave him a long, cool, calculating look. "I have one more question for you, Dean."
His expression was hunted. "Uh, yeah?"
She leaned in. "Your place, or mine?"
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
In the Impala parked out of sight in the shadows, Sam watched as Dean and a smiling Karen strolled casually back to her weatherbeaten car, his big brother surreptitiously signalling that the first part of his mission was accomplished.
"Great," Sam muttered to himself, starting the engine as the other vehicle pulled out of the lot, "That's the easy part." In the back seat, Jimi whined in concern. "So, let's go save the Living Sex God from himself."
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
It was a small, poky apartment, sparsely appointed but neat, clearly the home of somebody who didn't spend a lot of time there, going home to eat or change socks from time to time, but Dean has gone home with women to worse. Anyway, he wasn't usually looking at the décor on these occasions; to begin with he was only interested in getting as far as the bedroom.
He looked around quickly, gathering intel, trying to identify anything that might be a witch's altar. At the same time, he noted that the smallness of the place would mean that he might have to provide a bit more distraction, and maybe noise, so that Sam could poke around unnoticed.
Inwardly, Dean marshalled his mental energy: if he was to get back to his devastatingly handsome and awesomely hot self, his friskiness would have to be completely convincing, and his timing would have to be perfect – he had to begin the prelude to a beautiful natural act, and give Sam just enough time to break in and find the altar and destroy it ...
Smiling shyly as he followed Karen, the Living Sex God prepared himself for the most important bedroom performance of his life.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
Sam swore to himself as he surveyed the scene: the apartment was up a flight of stairs, so getting in through a window was a long shot, it would probably have to be the front door. He could see some of the layout, and noted how small the place was. He would have to be careful, and quiet.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
"Oh, my God, Karen, this bed is huge!" Dean's amazement was only partially feigned.
"I like my space in bed. But you'll find that out for yourself," Karen smiled, messing with an iPod dock on a night stand.
"It takes up nearly the whole room! How did you get it in here?"
"I have a friend who's in Physics – I got her to mess with the fabric of space-time for me."
"That's a joke, right? Or have you eggheads really found a way to..." he fell silent as music started. "Oh, er, hey, I recognise that..."
"You'll be amazed at how much music can... enhance proceedings," Karen gave him the sort of smile he hadn't hitherto seen on her face.
To his surprise, it went straight to Little Dean.
"I'm, uh, I'm not much good with classical stuff, but I'm sure I've hea- faff!" He peeled the blouse off his face. "Oh, er, wow, is that Victoria's Secret?"
"I may dress like Mr Spock for the lab, but underneath, I'm all Deanna Troi." She slunk towards him, shedding her pants as she went, to reach up and start unbuttoning his shirt. "And I'm betting that if you want to, you can be a great Captain Kirk..."
Several decks lower, the engine room anticipated the Captain's orders and began to run the reactor hotter than initial settings suggested would be required...
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
The run of ridiculously good luck he'd been having seemed to be holding: he could evade the security, if he disabled one of the cameras, and the lock on the entrance door was a model he was familiar with, and there was enough shadow to give him cover to let himself in. Mapping out his approach, Sam stood under the apartment, looking up and confirming that there was no way to a window...
His train of thought was momentarily derailed when his ears caught...
Music?
His eyes bugged as he recognised the piece.
Sam slid along the wall silently. Thanking his run of good luck – it was Ravel's Boléro, which suggested that he had just on fifteen and a half minutes to rescue his big brother – he made a start on the entrance door lock.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
It wasn't that Dean didn't like women. Dean liked women, Dean really liked women, as in liked liked women. It was just that he hadn't been expecting to like like this particular woman: she was a witch, she was an unhot witch at that, and worse than being unhot to look at, she had cursed him as well as other guys to unhotness, she had turned the Living Sex God into Mr Average Joe, and Dean Winchester the Hunter would never forget and never forgive and would not rest until he had ganked her.
However, it seemed that Little Dean never got that particular memo.
"Wow," he breathed, not quite believing what he was seeing and thinking as she slid onto the bed beside him, "You're really, I mean, you are frisky..."
"You have no idea," she practically purred.
"No, what I mean," Dean continued, "What I mean is, you are really, really frisky. Seriously, I wasn't expecting you to be so, uh, wow..."
"You aint seen nothing yet," Karen smiled again, "I hope you're not shy. You're not shy are you?"
"What? No! No, shyness aint something I've ever been accused of..."
"Good. Because I like to leave the light on."
The volume of the music went up a notch.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
The second noticeable volume change kicked in as Sam let himself quietly into the apartment. He recognised it immediately as a student's place: it was cheaply furnished, and clearly not a place that somebody lived in all day. Deciding not to use his flashlight to start with, he began a systematic search.
He was scanning the second bookshelf when he winced at the noise coming from the bedroom – Dean would understand that he would need a bit of noise to cover his search, and he wouldn't put it past his brother to exaggerate the vocal aspects of his performance just to annoy his little brother, but everything hinged on Dean being able to convince Karen that he was enjoying her intimate company.
He hoped his big brother wouldn't get too carried away, because if the acting was too melodramatic he'd be caught out in a blatant charade immediately.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
Dean had always prided himself – because false modesty sucked – on being able to give a great performance, in a role he had to play to work a case. And he'd had to act some pretty tough parts.
Strangely enough, this one wasn't turning out to be nearly as difficult as he'd anticipated.
"Oh... oh... OH!"
"Sorry, Dean, am I distracting you?"
"Uh, yeah, I'm uh, sorryyyyy-EEEEE! Ohhh, do that again..."
"You mean... this?"
"YeaaaaAAAAAAAH! Ohhh, playing dirty, huh?"
"I like dirty."
"Good, because so do I..."
"Oh yeah? OOOOOOhhhhh yeah, yeah, you do, ohhhhhhhhh. you do..."
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
Sam winced again as he finished rifling the cupboard – the noise level from the bedroom told him that he had to hurry if he was to save his brother from sex with a witch. He turned his attention to the table, which was cluttered with the detritus of full-time study.
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
Nope, not nearly as difficult as he'd anticipated. In fact, it was coming to him effortlessly...
"Ohhhh AAAAAAAH..."
"Oh no you don't, mister, keep to the tempooowhoooaaaa."
"I will...aaaaah... if you will..."
"Oh... God... ohhh, you're good at this..."
"Oh, fuck, Karen, so are youOOOOOOu, ohhhh..."
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
The next volume increase in the music didn't do anything to mask the noise as Sam rifled the table's contents with increasing desperation. If he didn't find whatever Karen was using as an altar and destroy it ASAP, then Dean would have to... follow through with her. His big brother would never forgive him...
Also, the noises would haunt him forever.
Under a pile of dog-eared journal article, he found an early model laptop. That was strange; students would live in a broom closet with a milk crate for a desk and a deflated air mattress for a bed, but their hardware would always be as up to date as possible, to facilitate their work. If somebody was hanging onto an old, heavy, slow, obsolete machine, it was for a reason.
Taking out his flashlight to examine it more closely, his breath caught when he got a better look at battered casing.
Picked out in careful detail in gold was a motif of two grinning serpents, intricately entwined into a complicated S-shaped configuration. It might have looked like celtic knotwork, but it wasn't – it was Norse. Sam bared his teeth as he recognised it immediately.
It was a symbol of Loki.
They were dealing with a Lokean.
Some chocolate-covered internets to the Denizens who figured out that it was Karen, you clever people you, and some special double-dipped ones for PinkRangerV, who spotted what she was.
What is little Beau-Ponty up to? Can Sam bring himself to destroy a laptop? Will he be in time? Will Dean stay in time? Feed the plot bunny reviews, and let's find out!
Oh, and I mean it about those bridge-building programs: BridgeBuilder, PolyBridge, they are all ADDICTIVE. You have been warned.