SPN | Quiet In My Town
Title: QUIET IN MY TOWN
Author: cocoplumb
Rating: PG-13
Genre: SPN. hurt/comfort. AU.
Word Count: 4500+
Summary: It wasn’t Dean Winchester’s destiny to end up owning a tiny barbers shop on the outskirts of a tiny town in Minnesota.
Warnings/Notes: Another story by me involving haircutting. I have a serious problem, I know. The boys aren’t biologically related, Dean used to be a hunter, now he’s a barber with complete amnesia and a bad shoulder. Sam is a -sometimes- abused foster kid and Dean’s new customer who keeps on coming back for some reason. ALSO- completely un-beta'd. I'll fix it tomorrow, I promise.
It wasn’t Dean Winchester’s destiny to end up owning a tiny barbers shop on the outskirts of a tiny town in Minnesota. Life, or more appropriately, his father had big plans for him. Plans involving guns and knifes and a life of killing monsters. His father hadn’t told him this, he was dead when Dean had worked it all out and he found the journal containing endless amounts of horror.
The only thing Dean remembers is waking up in Minnesota Memorial, fifteen years old, with a bunch of doctors staring down at him, asking how he felt, if there was any pain before one of them shone a blinding light in his eyes and he threw up.
Some old guy pushed his way through the medical professionals and demanded they all leave the room because he needed his rest. For a brief moment Dean had thought this man was his father, his grey hair and tired wrinkles certainly suggested he was plenty old enough. His commanding presence and tone of worry made Dean feel safe. Then the man introduced himself.
“Hey, kid, it’s good to see you kicking. For a second there we thought you were a gonner. I’m Mike, Mike Aderson, I’m the one that found you in that damned car wreck.”
Since then, Dean had discovered some pretty freaky stuff, but never regained the memories of his old life or of his father who had died in the car wreck. When he found John Winchester’s journal in the twists of metal of his once beautiful car, he was glad of it. Who wanted to remember a mother’s murder at the hands of a demon and a father who made it his life’s duty to train you to kill the evil son of a bitch in her memory?
Mike was Dean’s only constant from that moment in the hospital. He took Dean home, cared for him until he returned to health and then proceeded to teach him everything he knew until the day he died. Dean had been broken when he came home from a night out to find the old guy in his armchair, stone cold and stiff. Heart attack, they said.
Every bone in Dean’s body told him to run, to get away, to just…drive. He didn’t, he stayed, stayed in Mike’s home, kept the barbers shop open, he carried on the Anderson family business because there was no one else that could. Mike’s wife died twenty years ago and they never had kids. Dean had let one father down by abandoning his former life, he wasn’t about to disappointed his second chance.
Now three years on from Mike’s death, the business was starting to crumble. All of Mike’s regulars were old gits, not one of them under the age of sixty if Dean were to guess, and the young kids of today just didn’t have the use for an old fashioned barbers, even though Dean was just twenty five himself.
Which was why he was so shocked when a teenage kid, about sixteen, walked into the shop followed by who Dean assumed was his father. The young man was tall, damn tall, towering over his dad by at least five inches. His hair was long and unruly, hanging over his eyes, the curls offsetting the overly angular shape of his jaw. Kid needed to eat something. The man on the other hand had clearly had more than his share of the pies, he had chubby fingers, a portly stomach and a shine to his round bald head.
“Hey, what can I do you for?” Dean folded up his newspaper and tucked it under the desk, wiping away a smudge of dust on the wood discreetly. Mike would turn over in his grave if he knew Dean wasn’t keeping the place as spotless as he had.
The man nodded unkindly to his son’s long mop. “Sort it out, I want my moneys worth.” The turned to address the kid, “I’ll be back in half an hour, don’t even think about going anywhere.” With no other explanation, the man left.
“Uuuh…” Dean scratched his head, he was never as good as Mike at understanding people.
“Sorry, he’s having a bad day I guess,” the kid muttered from under all that hair.
Dean waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. You wanna take a seat?” He came from behind the desk and over to the chair furthest from the door. He swung it around to the young man so could sit down. He tied a cape over his clothes and noticed the kid squirm under the fabric. “Money’s worth, eh? Gonna be comfortable with a crew cut?” Dean pointed to own hair and smirked, a joke always got the squirmers settled, though they were usually little kids and very rare in a place like Mike’s.
Dean had a feeling his attempt at humour had backfired because the kid had turned three shades paler and looked at if he was about to have a stroke.
Dean suppressed a snort. “Dude, relax. I’m joking. Forget moneys worth, what do you want?” He wasn’t about to make the boy a skinhead because his father was a jerk.
With a sigh of relief, the kid stopped fidgeting. “I don’t know, I like my hair like it is.” He shrugged and Dean felt a pang of heartache he was about to cut the kids hair he seemed so attached to. Mike had an answer for everything though, and he had talked about similar situations such as the predicament Dean was currently in. The parent wanted a smart haircut for their kid but the kid didn’t see any problem with how it looked exactly as it was. Mike’s answer was as simple as they came, meet in the middle.
Dean cleared his throat and picked up the usual tools- comb, scissors and the spray bottle. He wet the kids’ hair and combed it away from his face. “So, I never introduced myself, I’m Dean.” Dean was never a big talker, not like Mike, the guy could talk to anyone about anything. Dean usually just liked to work in silence, but the kid looked like he needed a bit of human interaction so Dean made the exception.
“I thought you were Mike,” the kid motioned to the sign outside the shop.
“Nah, Mike was my dad,” it was just easier to tell a small white lie than to give the full explanation of his life. “I took over the shop when he passed.”
“Oh, sorry.” There was a beat of awkward silence and Dean got the suspicion he’d said something wrong until the kid spoke again, “I’m Sam.”
“Are you new in town, Sam?” Dean was good with faces, he’d remember seeing Sam around town in the ten years he’d lived in Minnesota, even with most of his features obscured by a mass of hair.
“Yeah, I guess.” Sam gnawed on his bottom lip as Dean worked, taking off a decent about of hair in the back to comply with the fathers’ orders, but making sure the front and sides stay reasonably long to keep the kid happy.
Masses of hair fell to the floor, it shocked even Dean and he tried to conceal as much as he could under his feet so Sam wouldn’t leap out of the chair in horror. He wouldn’t miss the length in the back too much, no kid looked at the back of his head. His neck would feel the chill when winter came, but it will have grown by then.
“You in school?”
Sam nodded a fraction. “Hate it.”
Dean laughed. “Most kids do, unless you’re a geek.”
Sam’s neck flushed and Dean felt the heat under his fingers. “I like school, I just hate all the other kids,” he mumbled.
“Understandable, I think I probably hated school too.” Dean cut Sam’s bangs just enough to resemble a human again rather than a sad long haired puppy.
“You think you probably hated it?” Sam frowned in confusion, looking up at Dean in the mirror.
“Yeah, I don’t remember,” Dean shrugged. He’s never told anyone this before. He had no idea why he was telling it now. “I took a knock to the head about ten years ago, earned myself a crap assed case of amnesia.”
“That doesn’t happen in real life,” Sam said, sceptical.
“Trust me, it happens,” he snapped at the kid. Dean didn’t mean to sound as bitter he did. Sam looked a mixture of guilty and afraid. Dean sighed. “Sorry, I don’t talk about this to anyone but doctors usually. They keep telling me it’ll all come back eventually, but I’ve kind of given up hoping.” He shrugged and went back to cutting with precise hands.
It was a full five minutes before Sam gathered the courage to speak again. “You don’t remember anything?”
“Nope, not a whistle,” Dean gave him an apologetic smile.
The room went silent again after that, only the sounds of combing and snipping could be heard until Dean picked up the clippers to tidy the hairs on the back of Sam’s neck. He sat perfectly still as Dean brushed the hairs off him and untied the cape. He didn’t bother showing Sam the back of the cut, just asked if he liked it.
“It’s great, thanks.”
Dean went more on tone than the actual words Sam said, it’ll do until it grows back, Dean added in his own head for the kid.
Stray hair and cape free, Sam jumped from the chair with his long limbs tangling together, causing him to trip. Dean caught him with frighteningly sharp reflexes. “You alright, Sam?”
“Um…yeah, yeah, sorry.” Sam shook himself off and let his hair fall back in his eyes, like he was accustomed to. He ran his hand up the back, surprised but not too upset with the new style.
“Just be careful,” Dean said. Christ, he sounded like Mike. “Don’t make a habit of tripping over those damn flippers, how tall are you, man?”
“Six one?” Sam guessed with a bashful expression when Dean looked impressed.
“You’re gonna be pushing six three by the time you’re in college, Sasquatch or what?” Dean joked, slugging the kid on the arm and he got a surprising huff of laughter in return.
Not a minute later, Sam’s father pulled up outside and entered the shop with his wallet in hand. Sam’s laughter faded and he shrank under the scrutiny as his dad looked up at him, studying the haircut. Both he and Dean held their breath.
“It’ll do, how much?”
Dean told him what he owed for Sam’s haircut, he wasn’t shocked when he didn’t receive a tip.
“Thanks, Dean,” Sam said to him before he left in the shadow of his father, closing the door carefully behind him.
“See you around!” Dean yelled through the glass and Sam smiled a fraction before his back was turned to Dean and he folded himself in his fathers’ small car.
A pinch of shallow pain ran up Dean’s shoulder from when he’d grabbed Sam, reminding him he needed to take better care of his old injuries. Deciding to call it a day before it got any worse, Dean snapped the bolt shut on the door and flipped the open sign to show he had closed for the evening.
He quickly cleaned up the piles of Sam’s hair, shut the lights off in the store and grabbed his car keys. He went out the back so he could dump some trash into the dumpster in the ally, double checked the front door to the shop and then got in his car to drive home. On his way through the streets of town, Dean found himself thinking of Sam, hoping he hadn’t butchered the kids’ hair too much that he’d come back some time.
SPN
Sam did come back, three months later, his hair had grown and then some, and he was without the chaperone of his father.
Dean was finishing up his last scheduled appointment of the day, one of Mike’s old clients that always complained Dean was never as good but would do until he could find another barber to do it properly. It had been three years, Dean was fairly sure the old git had no plans to go anywhere else.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Dean asked over his shoulder as Sam walked in, seemingly more relaxed than the last time Dean remembered.
“Good, I’m good. Um…are you busy?” Sam asked in the same timid voice.
“No, I’m free after Phil here.” He cleaned up Phil, untied his cloak and asked Sam to hand the man his walking stick.
“Thank you, son,” Phil said, taking his aid so he could stand from the chair. The old man paid, throwing in some rusty change to the tips jar, Dean shook his hand and smiled gratefully when Sam opened the door for him.
“Just let me clean up and I’m all yours. Wanna take a seat while you wait?” Dean grabbed the broom and Sam sat in the clean chair, the same as he had last time.
Dean hummed as he swept and rotated his shoulder, wondering if he still had some old painkillers at home. “So, what you been up to, Sam? Didn’t expect to see you back here.”
“Yeah…not much. School work.” He shrugged and turned in the chair, swivelling it nervously. “The only hair place I could find in town was a huge poodle salon I could never afford, besides this place.”
“Convenience stop then?” Dean joked.
“No! No I didn’t mean…and you’re joking,” Sam concluded with a sigh and a humourless laugh.
“I do that sometimes, smack me around the head if it gets irritating,” Dean told him, sensing a change of subject would be a good idea. He swept up the last of the grey hairs and tipped them in the trashcan. Sam stopped swivelling when Dean walked up behind him and ruffled his hair, it was even longer than it had been before Dean had cut it the first time. “You want the same as last time?”
“Could you leave it longer? Like, a lot longer?” Sam asked sheepishly.
“Will your dad be happy about that?” Dean grabbed the spray bottle and started wetting Sam’s hair and combing it as he had the last time.
“My dad?” Sam looked at him through the mirror, confused. “Oh, you mean the guy? No, he was a foster parent. Sent me back after a week.” He made a face, but didn’t appear too upset about it, he seemed relieved more than anything.
“You’re a foster kid?” Dean would have never guessed. Mike would have picked up on it the second Sam walked in the shop. “How are the new folks working out?”
“Okay, better than Garry I guess. He was a class-A jerk.”
Dean stifled a laugh. “I got that impression. I guess you’ve got free reign over your own head again, that’s gotta be a bonus.”
“Yeah, Frank and Maria don’t care about that stuff, but it’s starting to annoy me so…” Sam blew out a huff to move the wet hair from his eyes and Dean combed it back for him.
“No kidding, any longer and you really would look like a Sasquatch. Seriously, have you grown since last time?” Dean picked up the scissors and took care to keep it as long as Sam wanted, holding up a section of hair and showing where he planned to cut before Sam nodded and he closed the scissors. He felt a whole lot less guilty this time around, glad to give Sam the choice instead of one being forced on him. It was only hair, it grew back, and Sam as a whole appeared to have uncanny growth cells, but that wasn’t the point.
“Six two and half,” Sam told him proudly. “And still counting.”
Dean’s chuckle rattled his shoulder and he winced. His fingers twitched and he cut a piece of Sam’s hair shorter than he intended. “Fuck,” he muttered, checking the hair and not his shoulder.
Sam cared about the opposite, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Old injury’s been acting up all week.” His expression told Sam how sorry he was. “Gonna have to even that up,” he grumbled, ignoring the increasing swell in his shoulder. He cut the other side of Sam’s nape to match with a guilty snip of his scissors.
Sam remained quiet and subdued through the rest of the haircut. Dean’s pace became much slower and much more meticulous. There was a small space relief when he was able to sit on his stool to cut Sam’s bangs, the weight off his feet easing the weight on the rest of his aching body just a tiny bit.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Sam asked, breaking the silence.
Dean gave him a pained grin. “There’s a hot shower and out of date prescription pills with my name written all over them waiting for me at home. I’ll be fine, kid.” He brushed Sam’s bangs from his eyes and patted him on the leg. “Alright, you’re done.”
There was much less hair on the floor than there had been last time but it would still be a painful effort to clean up. Which was why he almost hugged the kid when Sam picked up the broom and said, “Let me,” and he cleaned up the floor with efficiency.
Sam put the broom back and paid at the desk with a tip this time. Dean refused to take it, still feeling guilty about his earlier screw up. “No way, go buy some candy next door or something.”
“I can stand here all day, pretty sure you can’t,” Sam told him, concluding for the both of them who would win the argument eventually.
“Fucking smart assed kid,” Dean muttered under his breath without heat and set the tips jar back on the counter so Sam could dump his change into it.
“Can I come back?” Sam asked hopefully, apparently pleased with his haircut.
“Sure, whenever you want.” Dean hadn’t meant it to sound as open as he had, but didn’t take the offer back.
“Should I make an appointment?”
“Nah, turn up whenever you feel like it, hopefully before you look like a yeti again, though.”
Sam chuckled. “Hope your arm feels better, Dean. And you should probably get a new prescription, old ones can be really bad for you.”
SPN
Sam didn’t wait another three months before he came back to Dean’s barbershop. Six weeks since his last haircut, he was sitting in the chair again while Dean snipped and combed and cut. He started opening up more, talking about himself when Dean asked. Over the course of the next few months Dean had learned Sam had been just six months old when he was give up for adoption by his parents with no explanation. He had been to nine foster homes since he turned seven and couldn’t remember how many before then.
The time Dean asked how his current home was working out, Sam’s demeanour dropped and his shoulders slumped. He told Dean they were thinking about adopting a baby, which meant it was only so long before they sent him back to the ‘pound’. The appointment after that, Sam was living with another set of foster parents. He seemed fine with it though, as fine as a sixteen-year-old kid could be when he was being taken in and tossed out like airport luggage.
Despite his own problems, Sam was always kind to ask about Dean’s shoulder. It hadn’t acted up like that day Sam had to sweep up for him, and he had taken the kids advice of keeping it under control with a new prescription of meds when he had to.
Though they never talked about Dean’s amnesia again, their other conversation topics grew, from sports to music to school. Sam enjoyed talking about the latter the most.
“So, a lawyer, huh? Damn, you are smart,” Dean commented with a smile.
“Yeah, I wish I could afford to go to college.”
“What about a scholarship? They hand those out like candy to kids with sob stories like yours.”
Sam clearly didn’t like to use his sad life story in foster care as a means to get what he wanted, but Dean prodded him enough that he agreed to look into it when he got home.
SPN
Things got into a steady rhythm between the two of them and Sam’s appointments. They talked about anything that came to mind, listened to sports on the radio when the signal was good, and Sam hung around sometimes to help Dean clean up when his shoulder ached after a long da y. The kid even offered to work for Dean, but Dean just couldn’t afford it so Sam got a job at the local newspapers instead. Sam didn’t really like it, found it boring for his oversized brain. Dean eventually convinced him if he was as smart as he thought he was, he’d know any job was worth putting up with as long as you got paid.
It was a slow and cold Thursday afternoon when things changed.
Dean knew the second he saw the distinct tall skinny figure running towards his shop that it was Sam, and something wasn’t right. It was pouring rain, Sam had his coat pulled up around his neck and his head hung low. He knocked on the shop door quick and panicked. Dean yanked it open for him and let him in. The sputter of how, what, where’s died on the tip of his tongue when he saw the state of Sam’s face. A mixture of blood and rainwater ran down from his nose, a nasty graze stung the right side of his cheek and his left eye socket swelled before Dean’s very eyes.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” Sam told him, his voice breaking off into a sob.
Dean took him by the shoulders and looked fiercely into his eyes. “Who did this to you?” He was going to break their legs.
“I-I can’t…” Sam shook his head and more tears ran down his soaked face. “Please, Dean.”
“Okay, okay…” What would Mike do? “Sit down, take your coat off. I’m gonna go get the first aid kit, I’m sure Mike kept one around here somewhere.” He helped Sam out of his sodden jacket, guided him backwards to sit on his usual chair and then went to rummage through the back closet for the red box.
He pulled his stool in front of Sam when he’d found the supplies. The young man was no longer crying but was still soaked to the bone and had made a poor effort to clean his damp cheeks. Dean passed him a couple of towels and wrapped a larger one that had been sitting on the radiator around his shoulders.
While Sam sat trying to warm up, Dean worked on cleaning him up and wiping the blood from his top lip. It had stopped bleeding but still looked pretty grim. Dean prodded the bridge of Sam’s nose and concluded it was broken. Luckily it wasn’t displaced so Dean wouldn’t have to force any more pain on him by correcting it.
Dean checked the rest of the bruises, concluding they would be sore as hell but were merely superficial and made Sam promise he wasn’t hurt anywhere else.
Dean did what he could, but most of the damage was already done. The best he could do for Sam now was to hand him a couple of painkillers along with an ice pack and then to go beat the living shit out of whoever had done this to him.
Sam swallowed the pills gratefully and pressed the ice to his eye socket. He wouldn’t budge on the subject of who had turned his face into their personal punching bag. The only thing he said was, “I don’t wanna go back there,” but didn’t elaborate any further.
Dean’s blood boiled when he realised who had probably done this to Sam. He wasn’t any closer to knowing which abusive assholes’ home Sam currently lived in, so he suppressed the need to kill something and focused on what Sam needed.
“I just want to go home,” Sam said, sounding so young and fresh hot tears spilled over his bruised lids.
Dean put his hand to Sam’s grazed cheek, “You’re coming home with me, no ifs or buts.” He knew Sam, knew he’d protest to Dean’s good will until he was blue in the face (which he wasn’t all that far off). Dean decided an order without option would do him good for once. Sam could take Mike’s room, Dean had barely touched it since his passing, and the kid probably wouldn’t mind the dead guy sheets.
He straightened out Sam’s dripping hair and gave him a sad smile. “It’s gonna be alright, Sammy.”
He would make it alright as best he could.
SPN
Two years later…
Dean put down his newspaper and let his pen fall onto the desk when he heard the familiar sounds of Converse sneakers on his shop floor. He looked up to see a fifty-watt smile and a messy mop of hair. “What the hell are you doing here? Spring break’s not for another month,” he barked at the kid.
Sam glared at him. “Nice to see you, Sam. Oh, you dropped everything to come all the way here on your weekend off, did you? Wow, you’re awesome.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Such a smartass.” He stood and whacked Sam up the side of the head before cracking a smile. “It’s great to see you, kid.”
“Good to see you too.” Sam pulled him in for an unexpected hug, Dean felt like he was being swallowed by a hairy giant in plaid.
“What, they don’t have barbers in California?” he ruffled Sam’s hair and smirked.
“Shut up, Jess likes it like this.” Sam swept his hair back in its place and reached to mess Dean’s gelled crop at payback, but he was too slow and just ended up almost tripping over his big feet.
Dean snorted at him before his expression turned serious. “Who’s Jess?
Sam flushed bright red and tired to hide his grin. “My girlfriend.”
Dean whistled, “I let you leave for Stanford and in the three months you’re gone you manage to bag yourself a girlfriend? Sammy, you dawg!”
It was Sam’s turn to smack Dean up the side of his head.
Dean laughed before going quiet again. “Seriously, what are you doing here, you haven’t been kicked out of college have you?” Dean could never imagine it, Sam was the perfect student, he actually love learning, he wouldn’t let anything jeopardise his scholarship he’d worked so hard for. Dean had to ask anyway.
“No, like I said, I had a weekend off, Jess is working, so thought I’d come down and we could hang out.”
“I don’t need a pity visit.”
Sam opened his mouth to blabber his rushed explanations and apologies. Dean just snorted and Sam shook his head in relief. “You’re such an asshole. One day I swear I’m gonna understand your lame guy humour. Are we going to get a beer or what?”
“You’re still underage the last time I checked.”
“Keep up, I’m in college, I got a fake ID now.”
“Haha, that’s my boy,” Dean grinned at him. Sam was a good kid, the best, Dean was damn lucky he walked into his life when he did, he saved his shop and the miserable pointless spiral his life was twisting down. He came home with him when he was hurt and needed someone to trust more than anything in the word and he fought like hell when the CPS rodents tried to tear them apart. Two years on, Sam was studying to be a lawyer to help others in situations he was pushed and pulled into as a kid, and Dean couldn’t be prouder. Dean was lucky indeed.
“You still need a haircut.”
The End.
Author: cocoplumb
Rating: PG-13
Genre: SPN. hurt/comfort. AU.
Word Count: 4500+
Summary: It wasn’t Dean Winchester’s destiny to end up owning a tiny barbers shop on the outskirts of a tiny town in Minnesota.
Warnings/Notes: Another story by me involving haircutting. I have a serious problem, I know. The boys aren’t biologically related, Dean used to be a hunter, now he’s a barber with complete amnesia and a bad shoulder. Sam is a -sometimes- abused foster kid and Dean’s new customer who keeps on coming back for some reason. ALSO- completely un-beta'd. I'll fix it tomorrow, I promise.
It wasn’t Dean Winchester’s destiny to end up owning a tiny barbers shop on the outskirts of a tiny town in Minnesota. Life, or more appropriately, his father had big plans for him. Plans involving guns and knifes and a life of killing monsters. His father hadn’t told him this, he was dead when Dean had worked it all out and he found the journal containing endless amounts of horror.
The only thing Dean remembers is waking up in Minnesota Memorial, fifteen years old, with a bunch of doctors staring down at him, asking how he felt, if there was any pain before one of them shone a blinding light in his eyes and he threw up.
Some old guy pushed his way through the medical professionals and demanded they all leave the room because he needed his rest. For a brief moment Dean had thought this man was his father, his grey hair and tired wrinkles certainly suggested he was plenty old enough. His commanding presence and tone of worry made Dean feel safe. Then the man introduced himself.
“Hey, kid, it’s good to see you kicking. For a second there we thought you were a gonner. I’m Mike, Mike Aderson, I’m the one that found you in that damned car wreck.”
Since then, Dean had discovered some pretty freaky stuff, but never regained the memories of his old life or of his father who had died in the car wreck. When he found John Winchester’s journal in the twists of metal of his once beautiful car, he was glad of it. Who wanted to remember a mother’s murder at the hands of a demon and a father who made it his life’s duty to train you to kill the evil son of a bitch in her memory?
Mike was Dean’s only constant from that moment in the hospital. He took Dean home, cared for him until he returned to health and then proceeded to teach him everything he knew until the day he died. Dean had been broken when he came home from a night out to find the old guy in his armchair, stone cold and stiff. Heart attack, they said.
Every bone in Dean’s body told him to run, to get away, to just…drive. He didn’t, he stayed, stayed in Mike’s home, kept the barbers shop open, he carried on the Anderson family business because there was no one else that could. Mike’s wife died twenty years ago and they never had kids. Dean had let one father down by abandoning his former life, he wasn’t about to disappointed his second chance.
Now three years on from Mike’s death, the business was starting to crumble. All of Mike’s regulars were old gits, not one of them under the age of sixty if Dean were to guess, and the young kids of today just didn’t have the use for an old fashioned barbers, even though Dean was just twenty five himself.
Which was why he was so shocked when a teenage kid, about sixteen, walked into the shop followed by who Dean assumed was his father. The young man was tall, damn tall, towering over his dad by at least five inches. His hair was long and unruly, hanging over his eyes, the curls offsetting the overly angular shape of his jaw. Kid needed to eat something. The man on the other hand had clearly had more than his share of the pies, he had chubby fingers, a portly stomach and a shine to his round bald head.
“Hey, what can I do you for?” Dean folded up his newspaper and tucked it under the desk, wiping away a smudge of dust on the wood discreetly. Mike would turn over in his grave if he knew Dean wasn’t keeping the place as spotless as he had.
The man nodded unkindly to his son’s long mop. “Sort it out, I want my moneys worth.” The turned to address the kid, “I’ll be back in half an hour, don’t even think about going anywhere.” With no other explanation, the man left.
“Uuuh…” Dean scratched his head, he was never as good as Mike at understanding people.
“Sorry, he’s having a bad day I guess,” the kid muttered from under all that hair.
Dean waved him off. “Don’t worry about it. You wanna take a seat?” He came from behind the desk and over to the chair furthest from the door. He swung it around to the young man so could sit down. He tied a cape over his clothes and noticed the kid squirm under the fabric. “Money’s worth, eh? Gonna be comfortable with a crew cut?” Dean pointed to own hair and smirked, a joke always got the squirmers settled, though they were usually little kids and very rare in a place like Mike’s.
Dean had a feeling his attempt at humour had backfired because the kid had turned three shades paler and looked at if he was about to have a stroke.
Dean suppressed a snort. “Dude, relax. I’m joking. Forget moneys worth, what do you want?” He wasn’t about to make the boy a skinhead because his father was a jerk.
With a sigh of relief, the kid stopped fidgeting. “I don’t know, I like my hair like it is.” He shrugged and Dean felt a pang of heartache he was about to cut the kids hair he seemed so attached to. Mike had an answer for everything though, and he had talked about similar situations such as the predicament Dean was currently in. The parent wanted a smart haircut for their kid but the kid didn’t see any problem with how it looked exactly as it was. Mike’s answer was as simple as they came, meet in the middle.
Dean cleared his throat and picked up the usual tools- comb, scissors and the spray bottle. He wet the kids’ hair and combed it away from his face. “So, I never introduced myself, I’m Dean.” Dean was never a big talker, not like Mike, the guy could talk to anyone about anything. Dean usually just liked to work in silence, but the kid looked like he needed a bit of human interaction so Dean made the exception.
“I thought you were Mike,” the kid motioned to the sign outside the shop.
“Nah, Mike was my dad,” it was just easier to tell a small white lie than to give the full explanation of his life. “I took over the shop when he passed.”
“Oh, sorry.” There was a beat of awkward silence and Dean got the suspicion he’d said something wrong until the kid spoke again, “I’m Sam.”
“Are you new in town, Sam?” Dean was good with faces, he’d remember seeing Sam around town in the ten years he’d lived in Minnesota, even with most of his features obscured by a mass of hair.
“Yeah, I guess.” Sam gnawed on his bottom lip as Dean worked, taking off a decent about of hair in the back to comply with the fathers’ orders, but making sure the front and sides stay reasonably long to keep the kid happy.
Masses of hair fell to the floor, it shocked even Dean and he tried to conceal as much as he could under his feet so Sam wouldn’t leap out of the chair in horror. He wouldn’t miss the length in the back too much, no kid looked at the back of his head. His neck would feel the chill when winter came, but it will have grown by then.
“You in school?”
Sam nodded a fraction. “Hate it.”
Dean laughed. “Most kids do, unless you’re a geek.”
Sam’s neck flushed and Dean felt the heat under his fingers. “I like school, I just hate all the other kids,” he mumbled.
“Understandable, I think I probably hated school too.” Dean cut Sam’s bangs just enough to resemble a human again rather than a sad long haired puppy.
“You think you probably hated it?” Sam frowned in confusion, looking up at Dean in the mirror.
“Yeah, I don’t remember,” Dean shrugged. He’s never told anyone this before. He had no idea why he was telling it now. “I took a knock to the head about ten years ago, earned myself a crap assed case of amnesia.”
“That doesn’t happen in real life,” Sam said, sceptical.
“Trust me, it happens,” he snapped at the kid. Dean didn’t mean to sound as bitter he did. Sam looked a mixture of guilty and afraid. Dean sighed. “Sorry, I don’t talk about this to anyone but doctors usually. They keep telling me it’ll all come back eventually, but I’ve kind of given up hoping.” He shrugged and went back to cutting with precise hands.
It was a full five minutes before Sam gathered the courage to speak again. “You don’t remember anything?”
“Nope, not a whistle,” Dean gave him an apologetic smile.
The room went silent again after that, only the sounds of combing and snipping could be heard until Dean picked up the clippers to tidy the hairs on the back of Sam’s neck. He sat perfectly still as Dean brushed the hairs off him and untied the cape. He didn’t bother showing Sam the back of the cut, just asked if he liked it.
“It’s great, thanks.”
Dean went more on tone than the actual words Sam said, it’ll do until it grows back, Dean added in his own head for the kid.
Stray hair and cape free, Sam jumped from the chair with his long limbs tangling together, causing him to trip. Dean caught him with frighteningly sharp reflexes. “You alright, Sam?”
“Um…yeah, yeah, sorry.” Sam shook himself off and let his hair fall back in his eyes, like he was accustomed to. He ran his hand up the back, surprised but not too upset with the new style.
“Just be careful,” Dean said. Christ, he sounded like Mike. “Don’t make a habit of tripping over those damn flippers, how tall are you, man?”
“Six one?” Sam guessed with a bashful expression when Dean looked impressed.
“You’re gonna be pushing six three by the time you’re in college, Sasquatch or what?” Dean joked, slugging the kid on the arm and he got a surprising huff of laughter in return.
Not a minute later, Sam’s father pulled up outside and entered the shop with his wallet in hand. Sam’s laughter faded and he shrank under the scrutiny as his dad looked up at him, studying the haircut. Both he and Dean held their breath.
“It’ll do, how much?”
Dean told him what he owed for Sam’s haircut, he wasn’t shocked when he didn’t receive a tip.
“Thanks, Dean,” Sam said to him before he left in the shadow of his father, closing the door carefully behind him.
“See you around!” Dean yelled through the glass and Sam smiled a fraction before his back was turned to Dean and he folded himself in his fathers’ small car.
A pinch of shallow pain ran up Dean’s shoulder from when he’d grabbed Sam, reminding him he needed to take better care of his old injuries. Deciding to call it a day before it got any worse, Dean snapped the bolt shut on the door and flipped the open sign to show he had closed for the evening.
He quickly cleaned up the piles of Sam’s hair, shut the lights off in the store and grabbed his car keys. He went out the back so he could dump some trash into the dumpster in the ally, double checked the front door to the shop and then got in his car to drive home. On his way through the streets of town, Dean found himself thinking of Sam, hoping he hadn’t butchered the kids’ hair too much that he’d come back some time.
SPN
Sam did come back, three months later, his hair had grown and then some, and he was without the chaperone of his father.
Dean was finishing up his last scheduled appointment of the day, one of Mike’s old clients that always complained Dean was never as good but would do until he could find another barber to do it properly. It had been three years, Dean was fairly sure the old git had no plans to go anywhere else.
“Hey, how’s it going?” Dean asked over his shoulder as Sam walked in, seemingly more relaxed than the last time Dean remembered.
“Good, I’m good. Um…are you busy?” Sam asked in the same timid voice.
“No, I’m free after Phil here.” He cleaned up Phil, untied his cloak and asked Sam to hand the man his walking stick.
“Thank you, son,” Phil said, taking his aid so he could stand from the chair. The old man paid, throwing in some rusty change to the tips jar, Dean shook his hand and smiled gratefully when Sam opened the door for him.
“Just let me clean up and I’m all yours. Wanna take a seat while you wait?” Dean grabbed the broom and Sam sat in the clean chair, the same as he had last time.
Dean hummed as he swept and rotated his shoulder, wondering if he still had some old painkillers at home. “So, what you been up to, Sam? Didn’t expect to see you back here.”
“Yeah…not much. School work.” He shrugged and turned in the chair, swivelling it nervously. “The only hair place I could find in town was a huge poodle salon I could never afford, besides this place.”
“Convenience stop then?” Dean joked.
“No! No I didn’t mean…and you’re joking,” Sam concluded with a sigh and a humourless laugh.
“I do that sometimes, smack me around the head if it gets irritating,” Dean told him, sensing a change of subject would be a good idea. He swept up the last of the grey hairs and tipped them in the trashcan. Sam stopped swivelling when Dean walked up behind him and ruffled his hair, it was even longer than it had been before Dean had cut it the first time. “You want the same as last time?”
“Could you leave it longer? Like, a lot longer?” Sam asked sheepishly.
“Will your dad be happy about that?” Dean grabbed the spray bottle and started wetting Sam’s hair and combing it as he had the last time.
“My dad?” Sam looked at him through the mirror, confused. “Oh, you mean the guy? No, he was a foster parent. Sent me back after a week.” He made a face, but didn’t appear too upset about it, he seemed relieved more than anything.
“You’re a foster kid?” Dean would have never guessed. Mike would have picked up on it the second Sam walked in the shop. “How are the new folks working out?”
“Okay, better than Garry I guess. He was a class-A jerk.”
Dean stifled a laugh. “I got that impression. I guess you’ve got free reign over your own head again, that’s gotta be a bonus.”
“Yeah, Frank and Maria don’t care about that stuff, but it’s starting to annoy me so…” Sam blew out a huff to move the wet hair from his eyes and Dean combed it back for him.
“No kidding, any longer and you really would look like a Sasquatch. Seriously, have you grown since last time?” Dean picked up the scissors and took care to keep it as long as Sam wanted, holding up a section of hair and showing where he planned to cut before Sam nodded and he closed the scissors. He felt a whole lot less guilty this time around, glad to give Sam the choice instead of one being forced on him. It was only hair, it grew back, and Sam as a whole appeared to have uncanny growth cells, but that wasn’t the point.
“Six two and half,” Sam told him proudly. “And still counting.”
Dean’s chuckle rattled his shoulder and he winced. His fingers twitched and he cut a piece of Sam’s hair shorter than he intended. “Fuck,” he muttered, checking the hair and not his shoulder.
Sam cared about the opposite, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Old injury’s been acting up all week.” His expression told Sam how sorry he was. “Gonna have to even that up,” he grumbled, ignoring the increasing swell in his shoulder. He cut the other side of Sam’s nape to match with a guilty snip of his scissors.
Sam remained quiet and subdued through the rest of the haircut. Dean’s pace became much slower and much more meticulous. There was a small space relief when he was able to sit on his stool to cut Sam’s bangs, the weight off his feet easing the weight on the rest of his aching body just a tiny bit.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Sam asked, breaking the silence.
Dean gave him a pained grin. “There’s a hot shower and out of date prescription pills with my name written all over them waiting for me at home. I’ll be fine, kid.” He brushed Sam’s bangs from his eyes and patted him on the leg. “Alright, you’re done.”
There was much less hair on the floor than there had been last time but it would still be a painful effort to clean up. Which was why he almost hugged the kid when Sam picked up the broom and said, “Let me,” and he cleaned up the floor with efficiency.
Sam put the broom back and paid at the desk with a tip this time. Dean refused to take it, still feeling guilty about his earlier screw up. “No way, go buy some candy next door or something.”
“I can stand here all day, pretty sure you can’t,” Sam told him, concluding for the both of them who would win the argument eventually.
“Fucking smart assed kid,” Dean muttered under his breath without heat and set the tips jar back on the counter so Sam could dump his change into it.
“Can I come back?” Sam asked hopefully, apparently pleased with his haircut.
“Sure, whenever you want.” Dean hadn’t meant it to sound as open as he had, but didn’t take the offer back.
“Should I make an appointment?”
“Nah, turn up whenever you feel like it, hopefully before you look like a yeti again, though.”
Sam chuckled. “Hope your arm feels better, Dean. And you should probably get a new prescription, old ones can be really bad for you.”
SPN
Sam didn’t wait another three months before he came back to Dean’s barbershop. Six weeks since his last haircut, he was sitting in the chair again while Dean snipped and combed and cut. He started opening up more, talking about himself when Dean asked. Over the course of the next few months Dean had learned Sam had been just six months old when he was give up for adoption by his parents with no explanation. He had been to nine foster homes since he turned seven and couldn’t remember how many before then.
The time Dean asked how his current home was working out, Sam’s demeanour dropped and his shoulders slumped. He told Dean they were thinking about adopting a baby, which meant it was only so long before they sent him back to the ‘pound’. The appointment after that, Sam was living with another set of foster parents. He seemed fine with it though, as fine as a sixteen-year-old kid could be when he was being taken in and tossed out like airport luggage.
Despite his own problems, Sam was always kind to ask about Dean’s shoulder. It hadn’t acted up like that day Sam had to sweep up for him, and he had taken the kids advice of keeping it under control with a new prescription of meds when he had to.
Though they never talked about Dean’s amnesia again, their other conversation topics grew, from sports to music to school. Sam enjoyed talking about the latter the most.
“So, a lawyer, huh? Damn, you are smart,” Dean commented with a smile.
“Yeah, I wish I could afford to go to college.”
“What about a scholarship? They hand those out like candy to kids with sob stories like yours.”
Sam clearly didn’t like to use his sad life story in foster care as a means to get what he wanted, but Dean prodded him enough that he agreed to look into it when he got home.
SPN
Things got into a steady rhythm between the two of them and Sam’s appointments. They talked about anything that came to mind, listened to sports on the radio when the signal was good, and Sam hung around sometimes to help Dean clean up when his shoulder ached after a long da y. The kid even offered to work for Dean, but Dean just couldn’t afford it so Sam got a job at the local newspapers instead. Sam didn’t really like it, found it boring for his oversized brain. Dean eventually convinced him if he was as smart as he thought he was, he’d know any job was worth putting up with as long as you got paid.
It was a slow and cold Thursday afternoon when things changed.
Dean knew the second he saw the distinct tall skinny figure running towards his shop that it was Sam, and something wasn’t right. It was pouring rain, Sam had his coat pulled up around his neck and his head hung low. He knocked on the shop door quick and panicked. Dean yanked it open for him and let him in. The sputter of how, what, where’s died on the tip of his tongue when he saw the state of Sam’s face. A mixture of blood and rainwater ran down from his nose, a nasty graze stung the right side of his cheek and his left eye socket swelled before Dean’s very eyes.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” Sam told him, his voice breaking off into a sob.
Dean took him by the shoulders and looked fiercely into his eyes. “Who did this to you?” He was going to break their legs.
“I-I can’t…” Sam shook his head and more tears ran down his soaked face. “Please, Dean.”
“Okay, okay…” What would Mike do? “Sit down, take your coat off. I’m gonna go get the first aid kit, I’m sure Mike kept one around here somewhere.” He helped Sam out of his sodden jacket, guided him backwards to sit on his usual chair and then went to rummage through the back closet for the red box.
He pulled his stool in front of Sam when he’d found the supplies. The young man was no longer crying but was still soaked to the bone and had made a poor effort to clean his damp cheeks. Dean passed him a couple of towels and wrapped a larger one that had been sitting on the radiator around his shoulders.
While Sam sat trying to warm up, Dean worked on cleaning him up and wiping the blood from his top lip. It had stopped bleeding but still looked pretty grim. Dean prodded the bridge of Sam’s nose and concluded it was broken. Luckily it wasn’t displaced so Dean wouldn’t have to force any more pain on him by correcting it.
Dean checked the rest of the bruises, concluding they would be sore as hell but were merely superficial and made Sam promise he wasn’t hurt anywhere else.
Dean did what he could, but most of the damage was already done. The best he could do for Sam now was to hand him a couple of painkillers along with an ice pack and then to go beat the living shit out of whoever had done this to him.
Sam swallowed the pills gratefully and pressed the ice to his eye socket. He wouldn’t budge on the subject of who had turned his face into their personal punching bag. The only thing he said was, “I don’t wanna go back there,” but didn’t elaborate any further.
Dean’s blood boiled when he realised who had probably done this to Sam. He wasn’t any closer to knowing which abusive assholes’ home Sam currently lived in, so he suppressed the need to kill something and focused on what Sam needed.
“I just want to go home,” Sam said, sounding so young and fresh hot tears spilled over his bruised lids.
Dean put his hand to Sam’s grazed cheek, “You’re coming home with me, no ifs or buts.” He knew Sam, knew he’d protest to Dean’s good will until he was blue in the face (which he wasn’t all that far off). Dean decided an order without option would do him good for once. Sam could take Mike’s room, Dean had barely touched it since his passing, and the kid probably wouldn’t mind the dead guy sheets.
He straightened out Sam’s dripping hair and gave him a sad smile. “It’s gonna be alright, Sammy.”
He would make it alright as best he could.
SPN
Two years later…
Dean put down his newspaper and let his pen fall onto the desk when he heard the familiar sounds of Converse sneakers on his shop floor. He looked up to see a fifty-watt smile and a messy mop of hair. “What the hell are you doing here? Spring break’s not for another month,” he barked at the kid.
Sam glared at him. “Nice to see you, Sam. Oh, you dropped everything to come all the way here on your weekend off, did you? Wow, you’re awesome.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Such a smartass.” He stood and whacked Sam up the side of the head before cracking a smile. “It’s great to see you, kid.”
“Good to see you too.” Sam pulled him in for an unexpected hug, Dean felt like he was being swallowed by a hairy giant in plaid.
“What, they don’t have barbers in California?” he ruffled Sam’s hair and smirked.
“Shut up, Jess likes it like this.” Sam swept his hair back in its place and reached to mess Dean’s gelled crop at payback, but he was too slow and just ended up almost tripping over his big feet.
Dean snorted at him before his expression turned serious. “Who’s Jess?
Sam flushed bright red and tired to hide his grin. “My girlfriend.”
Dean whistled, “I let you leave for Stanford and in the three months you’re gone you manage to bag yourself a girlfriend? Sammy, you dawg!”
It was Sam’s turn to smack Dean up the side of his head.
Dean laughed before going quiet again. “Seriously, what are you doing here, you haven’t been kicked out of college have you?” Dean could never imagine it, Sam was the perfect student, he actually love learning, he wouldn’t let anything jeopardise his scholarship he’d worked so hard for. Dean had to ask anyway.
“No, like I said, I had a weekend off, Jess is working, so thought I’d come down and we could hang out.”
“I don’t need a pity visit.”
Sam opened his mouth to blabber his rushed explanations and apologies. Dean just snorted and Sam shook his head in relief. “You’re such an asshole. One day I swear I’m gonna understand your lame guy humour. Are we going to get a beer or what?”
“You’re still underage the last time I checked.”
“Keep up, I’m in college, I got a fake ID now.”
“Haha, that’s my boy,” Dean grinned at him. Sam was a good kid, the best, Dean was damn lucky he walked into his life when he did, he saved his shop and the miserable pointless spiral his life was twisting down. He came home with him when he was hurt and needed someone to trust more than anything in the word and he fought like hell when the CPS rodents tried to tear them apart. Two years on, Sam was studying to be a lawyer to help others in situations he was pushed and pulled into as a kid, and Dean couldn’t be prouder. Dean was lucky indeed.
“You still need a haircut.”
The End.