Campanula Rapunculus, for jedisapphire
Title: Campanula Rapunculus
Recipient: jedisapphire
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4035
Warnings: Mentions of body horror
Summary: Sam’s haircut goes supernaturally wrong.
Author’s note: Crack turned angst.
Prompt: Sam has to get a haircut for some reason, and something goes supernaturally wrong (cursed scissors, the barber is secretly a monster, anything else that comes to mind).
Dean has a new game: guess how Sam will get his overly-long hair out of his face. There are three options. Either Sam will brush it away with his fingers, or he’ll blow it out of his eyes in a frustrated huff, or he’ll toss his head back like a proud stallion until it’s out of his way.
Dean decides to go with The Stallion… but Sam just uses his fingers. If Dean’s new means of occupying his time isn’t an indicator of how slow work is then who knows what is. You see, for some odd reason, everything is radio silent. Any normal hunter wouldn’t complain. Not Dean. Dean is damn suspicious. There should at least be a haunting somewhere nearby.
There’s nothing. Dean is bored out of his skull, so he chews gum and guess what Sam will do about his hair next.
“If you give me a few minutes with some scissors, I could sort that problem out for you,” Dean offers.
Sam doesn’t look up from his laptop. “Shut up,” he says.
Dean has no idea what’s got Sam so busy. It can’t be a job; Dean would know about it. Maybe it’s a girl. Nothing could grab a guy’s attention as strongly as a girl, right?
“Watcha doin’?” Dean asks, already slinking out of his chair. Sam shifts uncomfortably in his chair when he notices Dean coming over.
“Nothing, Dean,” he sighs. “Would you quit it? Go out for a beer or something.”
“Maybe I wanna hang with my little brother,” Dean says. Sam’s trying to angle the laptop away from Dean, but Dean makes a quick step around, then he’s right behind Sam’s chair.
Sam is definitely not looking at girls. Dean’s mouth drops open; the gum falls out. Sam shuts the laptop and leaps out of his chair, feeling around the back of his hair.
“What the hell was that?” Sam yelps. “Is that gum?!”
Dean forces Sam to turn around. He grimaces. There’s a sticky wad of gum tangled in Sam’s hair.
“Uh…” is all he manages.
“Dammit, Dean!” Sam huffs. He shoves Dean away and disappears into the war room. Dean watches him try and fail to get a look at the back of his head in the mirror. He sighs and makes his way over.
“Sorry, Sammy,” he says. And he means it, he does, he knows how much Sam loves his hair. He doesn’t know why Sam loves his hair so much, but whatever.
“This isn’t gonna wash out,” Sam moans. He drops into one of the chairs around the table. “I know you want me to cut my hair but I really didn’t think you’d do something this low, Dean.”
Dean blinks. “You think I did this on purpose?”
Sam glares at him. “Why else would you spit gum in my hair? Since when do you chew gum anyway?”
“You really think I’d do something like that to you?” Dean asks. He folds his arms across his chest and waits for an answer.
Sam raises an eyebrow. “You put Nair in my shampoo.”
“Yeah, when we were kids.”
“And just last week you swapped the sugar for salt right before I had my coffee.”
Dean pursed his lips. He couldn’t really deny that one. “Okay,” he admitted, “But I did not spit gum into your hair on purpose. My mouth just kinda dropped open and it fell out. Maybe if you weren’t looking at weird serial killer websites for fun, I wouldn’t have been so shocked.”
Sam turns a little red. “Don’t blame this on me.”
“It’s a fetish, Sam,” Dean insists. “You need help.”
Sam scowls. “I need help? You have more porn on your computer than any sane person has a right to, Dean.”
Dean frowns. “How do you know what’s on my computer?”
“Some advice; use your volume control.”
“Only if you quit stalking serial killers.”
Sam sighs loudly and drops his head into his hands. “Okay. Let’s stop arguing and try to get the gum out of my hair instead.”
Dean finds himself grinning. “Are you saying I can cut it?”
Sam sighs again, soft and defeated. “Yes, Dean. You can cut my damn hair.”
…
These are the events that lead Dean deep into the Men of Letters’ bunker, searching around old store rooms for a pair of scissors. Sam won’t let Dean use the medical scissors and the pair in the kitchen had gone AWOL about a month ago. Dean kind of hopes to come across a barber shop, he wouldn’t be surprised.
It must be a stroke of luck, he thinks, that the fist box he picks up contains a pair of scissors. They even look like hair dresser’s scissors. They’re silver, intricately designed, the handles are smooth marble.
Dean doesn’t give much thought to the scissors’ appearance at the time, he certainly will later.
Strangely, Sam is actually happy with his haircut. He inspects it in the mirror, tucking strands behind his ears.
“This actually looks good,” he says.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Dean grumbles. He leaves the scissors lying by the sink and forgets about them almost instantly. That is, until he hears Sam shouting for him the next morning.
…
He dashes out of his room before his alarm goes off, hurrying through the halls with his gun in hand. He’s ready to destroy whatever’s got Sam so freaked out. Monster, inevitable breakdown, whatever it is, is going to be sorry.
Dean stops short in the bathroom doorway. He stares at Sam, Sam stares back.
“What the hell is happening?” Sam says, just as Dean says, “What the hell?!”
Sam has a thick beard that was definitely not there yesterday. Even stranger, his hair that had been cut to his jawline is now resting a little past his shoulders.
“Dean, where the hell did you get these scissors?” Sam demands. He points at the accused object. The scissors are still by the sink where Dean left them.
Dean shrugs, still ogling Sam’s beard. “Down in one of the store rooms.”
“Did it by any chance come in a wooden box with symbols carved on the side?”
Dean bites his lip. “I, uh, don’t remember.”
Sam’s forehead crinkles. If Dean could see Sam’s mouth under that beard, he’s sure it would be pressed into a thin, angry line.
“How can you not remember if you took something out of a cursed box!?” Sam growls. Dean can’t really take Sam seriously. His little brother chose to wear plaid that morning and he looks like a huffy lumberjack. There are way too many insults and jokes floating around in Dean’s head but he manages to keep a lid on.
“Have you tried shaving?” he suggests.
Sam looks like he’s about to rip something in half. “Three times. I’ve shaved three times in the past hour. It just comes back longer!”
“Oh.” Dean nods thoughtfully and steps over to the sink. He’s about to pick the scissors up but Sam grabs his wrist.
“Dean, we don’t know what’ll happen if you touch them.”
Dean shrugs Sam off. “You haven’t touched them, right?”
Sam shakes his head.
“So, I think the curse only works if your hair is cut by them,” Dean points out. “I’ll take the scissors, put them back in the box. This’ll be over and we’ll laugh about it tomorrow.”
Sam frowns at him, unamused.
“Okay. Maybe we’ll laugh about it in a month’s time,” Dean amends.
The problem is finding the box. The bunker has so many store rooms that Dean has no idea which one he found the scissors in. He looks in every single room and finds no sign of the box. Well, there are plenty of boxes, just not the one he’s looking for. It’s almost as if the box has vanished… Dean tries not to think too into it.
He makes it back up to the library by lunchtime to find Sam on his laptop. He’s typing away and clicking madly, no doubt looking for an answer to their problem on Google. It’s been less than four hours and Sam’s hair is already longer. His beard is bushy now, it’s length is creeping towards his collar. And his hair is tied at the top of his head in a ponytail that reaches his shoulders. He’s transforming from a lumberjack to Khal Drogo.
“Uh… Sammy, I think - “
“Yeah, Dean. I noticed,” Sam bites back. “Did you find the box?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
“No,” Dean admits. “I didn’t find the box.”
It’s a little hard to read Sam’s expression under all that hair but Dean is guessing by the whites of his eyes that he’s beginning to panic.
“How can you not find the box?” Sam says. He’s on his feet, pacing, his pony tail swings behind him. “We don’t know how bad this curse will get!”
Dean ponders for a moment. “The hair-growth thing hasn’t been happening… you know, anywhere else?”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Just my head and face. Don’t be so gross, dude.”
Dean shrugs. “I was just checking,” he defends. “Even if your hair just keeps growing, it can’t be that bad, right?”
Sam doesn’t say a word, just crosses his arms over his chest.
“I’ll go see if I can find that box again,” Dean quickly changes the subject. Sam steps forward.
“I’m coming with,” he insists. “Two pairs of eyes are better than one.”
So, the two of them search. They search the two lower levels of the bunker, they rifle through each closet, they find nothing.
“The Men of Letters would have documented this,” Sam points out. “I checked the library but it’s not recorded in there.”
“What about the archive?” Dean asks.
Sam shakes his head. “I didn’t get around to it.”
“Then we know where to look next.”
The archive, the same room that hid the dungeon, had been sorted and re-organized not long after Sam and Dean had moved in. Sam especially had been eager to arrange the documents in a way he could understand.
“Look through everything under ‘cursed objects’,” Sam says. He hauls out a large box and heaves it onto the floor. Dean looks up and grimaces. Sam’s hair is about six inches longer than it was moments earlier. Sam seems to realize and hastily re-ties his hair.
They spend the next three hours reading through every word. By which time, Dean is flicking lazily through the last of the documents and Sam is beginning to resemble Gandalf.
“I think I’ve got something,” Sam speaks up. His hair is still tied up but his beard is now slung over one shoulder like a scarf. Dean tries not to stare and quickly plucks the file Sam is offering to him. ‘Grimm’ is printed across the front.
Dean looks back up to Sam. “Like brothers Grimm?” he asks.
“Seems so,” Sam says.
Dean flips it open and eats up every word. There are photos and records: a needle that forces anyone pricked into eternal sleep, apples that choke you to death, glass slippers that make your toes fall off… it’s all grim stuff. The article that gets Dean’s attention is the one about hair scissors that make your hair grow, among other things.
“You read it?” Sam asks. “I think you’ll agree we need to work faster on this.”
Dean re-reads the effects of the scissors’ curse: ever-growing hair, inability to leave home, eventual blindness.
“What’s with the blindness?” he asks.
“In the original fairy-tale, the witch Gothel threw the prince out of the tower and blinded him,” Sam explains. “It seems like the cursed objects make you live the fairy-tale in real life.”
“But we just need to find the box,” Dean points out. “And we know it’s somewhere in the bunker.”
Sam shrugs. “I don’t know if it’s that simple. I think maybe once the scissors were out of the box they really didn’t want to go back in.”
Dean frowns. “You mean, the scissors made the box vanish?”
“Something like that,” Sam guesses. “It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s happened today.”
…
Dean isn’t sure what’s weirder; the fact that Sam’s hair is still growing or the fact that he can’t step out the bunker’s front door.
Dean is standing right outside, yanking on Sam’s arm with all of his might, but Sam won’t budge.
“That’s part two of the curse,” Sam pants once they’ve given up. “You know what’s next.”
Sam’s hair brushes the back of his knees and his beard is down to his waist. At this point, Dean’s beyond finding it funny. The bunker’s heavy door falls shut behind him with a heavy groan and he finds his way back to the record room where he grabs the right file and hurries back to the library.
Sam is standing by the table, staring downwards with dismay.
“What’s wrong?” Dean asks.
“My hair’s starting to knot itself to things,” Sam sighs, gesturing to the table leg. “I can’t untangle it.”
Dean tries. He tugs and twists and saws at it with his knife. The hair is impenetrable.
“I guess the curse takes this housebound thing seriously,” Sam jokes, but his voice falls flat.
“I’m getting the scissors,” Dean says.
Sam blinks at him. “You can’t be serious.”
Dean is serious. Dean is already marching back to the bathroom where he left the damn things that morning. It’s a risk. A stupid one. It’s the only one he’s got.
The scissors slice through Sam’s hair like a hot knife through butter. The knotted tufts remain stuck the table. Dean goes ahead and shears away the rest until Sam’s hair sits jaggedly at the base of his neck. Sam cuts the beard away himself until it’s choppy and short.
“No doubt there’ll be consequences for that,” Dean says, placing the scissors down on the table. Sam shifts a little awkwardly.
“I think there already are,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“Things are starting to go blurry,” Sam admits. He waves a hand in front of his face and shrugs. “It kind of makes sense.”
“How does this make sense?” Dean dares to ask.
Sam explains, “In the original fairy-tale, the witch Gothel cut Rapunzel’s hair off and used it to lure the prince into the tower. When he got to the top, the witch pushed him out and he landed in a forest of thorns and was blinded. The scissors must work in a way that’s guaranteed that whoever has been affected will cut their hair off with the same pair. Maybe the blindness doesn’t kick in until the hair’s been cut.”
“I guess it kind of makes sense…” Dean says slowly. “Are your eyes any worse?”
“Not yet. Still just kind of blurry.”
“We’ve got time.”
…
Sam’s hair doesn’t grow back, but his eyesight doesn’t improve. Dean carefully reads and re-reads exactly what kind of box the Men of Letters had locked the scissors away in. Since Sam can’t make out words on a page anymore, he occupies himself with bundling up the extraordinary length of hair that’s lying on the floor and shoving it into a plastic bag.
“Men of Letters weren’t so big on instructions, huh?” Dean breaks the silence.
Sam looks up, but not in Dean’s direction. “They documented things, they didn’t get themselves too involved.”
Dean shrugs. “They could at least leave a helpful note or something. It just says the scissors were locked in a box of the appropriate wood, carved with the appropriate symbols. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means we could try putting it in a curse box,” Sam suggests.
“Tried it,” Dean sighs.
Sam frowns, sitting up straighter. “When?”
“I grabbed one out of the trunk,” Dean says. “It’s right there on the table in front of you and you didn’t notice. Figured it doesn’t work.”
“Oh,” is all Sam says. He blinks a few times, squinting around the room. His gaze drops back to the floor and his shoulders droop. “It’s getting worse.”
“We’ll fix it,” Dean promises.
“Dean,” Sam says, softly. “If we can’t, it’s okay.”
“Being blind is not okay,” Dean snaps.
“Could have been a lot worse,” Sam points out. “We’ve come across some mean curses. If blindness is the endgame of this curse, then I think we’re lucky.”
Dean shakes his head and keeps looking for an answer.
…
An answer comes by the time Sam can see nothing but faint shapes. He makes his slow way around the bunker, hands fumbling along walls and table edges. Dean watches him, hovering as Sam finds his way to a seat.
His eyes are turning milky white, the skin around them is scratched and bleeding from where the curse has damaged his eyes with thorns that aren’t even there.
Sam bends his head, feeling across the table for the papers Dean has left lying around. Sam’s hair flops forward. If Dean had to come up with anything positive, it would be that Sam’s hair had not attempted to re-grow. Although, the hair is now uneven and cropped, jagged at the back. Dean doesn’t dare try to cut it straight.
“So… you found an answer?” Sam says, by the tone of his voice it seems like it isn’t the first time he’s spoken.
“Uh, yeah. I think so,” Dean answers. He takes the seat opposite. “I’ve been researching and it seems like even if we lock it back up in a box, it won’t lift the curse.”
“I’d already figured,” Sam sighs.
“But there is a ritual. We can destroy the scissors and hopefully the curse will go with it.”
“Hopefully,” Sam repeats. “How does this ritual work?”
…
“Dean, it’s freezing,” Sam moans. Dean gently pulls him forward, making sure Sam doesn’t trip. He leaves him in the doorway of the bunker, the curse still keeping him locked inside.
“We need fire, Sammy,” Dean explains, “And I’m not lighting one up in the library.”
Sam nods and tugs his thin jacket tighter around himself. “Talk me through what’s going on, okay?”
“Right,” Dean agrees. “I’m building a fire on our front step.”
Sam rolls his grey eyes. “This story is riveting so far, Dean.”
“Shut up.”
Dean tosses some more wood on the fire and sets out the rest of the ingredients.
“It’s a crescent moon,” he tells Sam. “We’re lucky or we would have been waiting a while to do this.”
“What’s happening now?” Sam asks.
“Nothing yet,” Dean says. He picks up a bowl of pointed white flowers and empties half of them into the flames. “I just put in the Rampion.”
“Campanula Rapunculus,” Sam says. “It’s supposed to be the plant Rapunzel’s mother stole from the witch’s garden. It’s where Rapunzel gets her name.”
“Nerd,” Dean scoffs. Sam smiles softly against the firelight. Dean re-reads the ritual. “Sampunzel, Sampunzel, let down your hair.”
“I’m a nerd?” Sam snorts. He holds out the plastic bag filled with more than a meter of hair. “You need to burn all of this?”
“Yep,” Dean takes the bag. “We’ll be here a while.”
He slices a section off and tosses it into the fire. The two of them wait as it sizzles and dries up, sparking into nothing. Then, Dean tosses more on.
“It smells like,” Sam begins to say but he doesn’t finish the sentence. Dean nods. They both know the smell of burning hair too well.
It takes longer than Dean would like. They need to melt the scissors in the fire at exactly midnight but they still have a third of the hair and the rest of the flowers to burn. It’s two minutes to midnight.
“Hurry up,” Sam hisses when Dean tells him the time.
“I’m trying,” Dean insists. “All of the hair has to be burned away but there’s so goddamn much of it!”
“Stop talking like it’s my fault,” Sam huffs. “You’re the one who used cursed scissors in the first place.”
Dean’s about to snap back but he holds his tongue and tries to pick up the pace.
“One minute,” he reads his watch and tosses the last of the hair on. He waits a moment for it to peel away into the flames.
The seconds are counting down when he adds the last of the of the Rampion. He grabs the scissors from where they rest by his feet. They’re ice cold on his skin and feel ten times heavier than they did the last time he held them.
“They know what’s going to happen, huh?” Dean says. Sam looks in his direction, brow furrowed in puzzlement. Dean drops the scissors onto the fire. The hands on his watch meet at twelve.
“Did you do it?” Sam asks.
“I think so,” Dean answers hesitantly. “I put them on at exactly midnight.”
“So it should have worked,” Sam says hopefully. He tries to take a step forward but his feet don’t move past the doorway.
Dean stands up and takes Sam’s arm, pulling. Sam won’t budge. He can’t move. His shoulders drop and he sinks down to the ground.
“It didn’t work,” he says. Dean glances back to the fire. The scissors shine at the centre of the flames, the carvings on the blades begin to melt and drip away. He turns back to Sam, one hand clasped on his shoulder.
Sam looks up. He doesn’t say anything.
Dean stares at him, grabs Sam’s face and turns it towards the light. Sam yelps and tries to bat him away but Dean holds him still.
The scratches around Sam’s eyes are fading away. Sam squints against the fire’s glow, his grey irises darken. Suddenly, his eyes go wide with realisation and he scrambles forward, out of the doorway.
“I’m out of the bunker. Am I out of the bunker?” he gasps.
“You’re out of the bunker!” Dean exclaims, pulling Sam up to his feet. “Can you see?”
Sam squints again. “I think,” he says, smiling ever so slightly. “It’s blurry but not completely dark. Dean, you did it!”
Dean shrugs. “It’s the least I can do for cursing you into a Grimm fairy-tale, Sampunzel.”
Sam sighs. “Are you seriously gonna still call me that? You already hacked my hair off, dude.”
Dean pats his shoulder. “Next time you need your girly bangs trimmed, go to a barber.”
Sam purses his lips and cross his arms. “You’re the one who suggested cutting my hair after you spat gum in it.”
“Right. Yeah,” Dean coughed, scratching the back of his neck. He quickly changed the subject. “You hungry? I’ll make us something.”
Sam stretches and steps further outside, past the still-burning fire. “I dunno. I feel like going out.”
“The only place open at this time is Mcdonalds, Sammy.”
“Don’t care.”
“Dude. You were only stuck inside for like two days,” Dean points out.
Sam shrugs. “I thought it’d be forever.”
“I guess we’re going out, Sampunzel.”
Sam shoves him as they walk. He stumbles a little, off balance, and Dean holds him straight.
“Still a little blind,” Sam explains. Dean keeps his hand on Sam’s shoulder.
“I’m driving,” Dean says.
“Like my eyesight problems would change that,” Sam laughs. “You’re taking me out to that Thai place tomorrow, by the way.”
“Whatever, Sammy. I think I owe you dinner for the next month.”
“Year,” Sam decides. “And I’m taking one of the bunker’s motorbikes out some time.”
“But they’re classics, Sam.”
“You blinded me, Dean!”
“Fine. One ride.”
Sam scoffs. “Yeah. Sure.”
…
End
Recipient: jedisapphire
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4035
Warnings: Mentions of body horror
Summary: Sam’s haircut goes supernaturally wrong.
Author’s note: Crack turned angst.
Prompt: Sam has to get a haircut for some reason, and something goes supernaturally wrong (cursed scissors, the barber is secretly a monster, anything else that comes to mind).
Dean has a new game: guess how Sam will get his overly-long hair out of his face. There are three options. Either Sam will brush it away with his fingers, or he’ll blow it out of his eyes in a frustrated huff, or he’ll toss his head back like a proud stallion until it’s out of his way.
Dean decides to go with The Stallion… but Sam just uses his fingers. If Dean’s new means of occupying his time isn’t an indicator of how slow work is then who knows what is. You see, for some odd reason, everything is radio silent. Any normal hunter wouldn’t complain. Not Dean. Dean is damn suspicious. There should at least be a haunting somewhere nearby.
There’s nothing. Dean is bored out of his skull, so he chews gum and guess what Sam will do about his hair next.
“If you give me a few minutes with some scissors, I could sort that problem out for you,” Dean offers.
Sam doesn’t look up from his laptop. “Shut up,” he says.
Dean has no idea what’s got Sam so busy. It can’t be a job; Dean would know about it. Maybe it’s a girl. Nothing could grab a guy’s attention as strongly as a girl, right?
“Watcha doin’?” Dean asks, already slinking out of his chair. Sam shifts uncomfortably in his chair when he notices Dean coming over.
“Nothing, Dean,” he sighs. “Would you quit it? Go out for a beer or something.”
“Maybe I wanna hang with my little brother,” Dean says. Sam’s trying to angle the laptop away from Dean, but Dean makes a quick step around, then he’s right behind Sam’s chair.
Sam is definitely not looking at girls. Dean’s mouth drops open; the gum falls out. Sam shuts the laptop and leaps out of his chair, feeling around the back of his hair.
“What the hell was that?” Sam yelps. “Is that gum?!”
Dean forces Sam to turn around. He grimaces. There’s a sticky wad of gum tangled in Sam’s hair.
“Uh…” is all he manages.
“Dammit, Dean!” Sam huffs. He shoves Dean away and disappears into the war room. Dean watches him try and fail to get a look at the back of his head in the mirror. He sighs and makes his way over.
“Sorry, Sammy,” he says. And he means it, he does, he knows how much Sam loves his hair. He doesn’t know why Sam loves his hair so much, but whatever.
“This isn’t gonna wash out,” Sam moans. He drops into one of the chairs around the table. “I know you want me to cut my hair but I really didn’t think you’d do something this low, Dean.”
Dean blinks. “You think I did this on purpose?”
Sam glares at him. “Why else would you spit gum in my hair? Since when do you chew gum anyway?”
“You really think I’d do something like that to you?” Dean asks. He folds his arms across his chest and waits for an answer.
Sam raises an eyebrow. “You put Nair in my shampoo.”
“Yeah, when we were kids.”
“And just last week you swapped the sugar for salt right before I had my coffee.”
Dean pursed his lips. He couldn’t really deny that one. “Okay,” he admitted, “But I did not spit gum into your hair on purpose. My mouth just kinda dropped open and it fell out. Maybe if you weren’t looking at weird serial killer websites for fun, I wouldn’t have been so shocked.”
Sam turns a little red. “Don’t blame this on me.”
“It’s a fetish, Sam,” Dean insists. “You need help.”
Sam scowls. “I need help? You have more porn on your computer than any sane person has a right to, Dean.”
Dean frowns. “How do you know what’s on my computer?”
“Some advice; use your volume control.”
“Only if you quit stalking serial killers.”
Sam sighs loudly and drops his head into his hands. “Okay. Let’s stop arguing and try to get the gum out of my hair instead.”
Dean finds himself grinning. “Are you saying I can cut it?”
Sam sighs again, soft and defeated. “Yes, Dean. You can cut my damn hair.”
…
These are the events that lead Dean deep into the Men of Letters’ bunker, searching around old store rooms for a pair of scissors. Sam won’t let Dean use the medical scissors and the pair in the kitchen had gone AWOL about a month ago. Dean kind of hopes to come across a barber shop, he wouldn’t be surprised.
It must be a stroke of luck, he thinks, that the fist box he picks up contains a pair of scissors. They even look like hair dresser’s scissors. They’re silver, intricately designed, the handles are smooth marble.
Dean doesn’t give much thought to the scissors’ appearance at the time, he certainly will later.
Strangely, Sam is actually happy with his haircut. He inspects it in the mirror, tucking strands behind his ears.
“This actually looks good,” he says.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Dean grumbles. He leaves the scissors lying by the sink and forgets about them almost instantly. That is, until he hears Sam shouting for him the next morning.
…
He dashes out of his room before his alarm goes off, hurrying through the halls with his gun in hand. He’s ready to destroy whatever’s got Sam so freaked out. Monster, inevitable breakdown, whatever it is, is going to be sorry.
Dean stops short in the bathroom doorway. He stares at Sam, Sam stares back.
“What the hell is happening?” Sam says, just as Dean says, “What the hell?!”
Sam has a thick beard that was definitely not there yesterday. Even stranger, his hair that had been cut to his jawline is now resting a little past his shoulders.
“Dean, where the hell did you get these scissors?” Sam demands. He points at the accused object. The scissors are still by the sink where Dean left them.
Dean shrugs, still ogling Sam’s beard. “Down in one of the store rooms.”
“Did it by any chance come in a wooden box with symbols carved on the side?”
Dean bites his lip. “I, uh, don’t remember.”
Sam’s forehead crinkles. If Dean could see Sam’s mouth under that beard, he’s sure it would be pressed into a thin, angry line.
“How can you not remember if you took something out of a cursed box!?” Sam growls. Dean can’t really take Sam seriously. His little brother chose to wear plaid that morning and he looks like a huffy lumberjack. There are way too many insults and jokes floating around in Dean’s head but he manages to keep a lid on.
“Have you tried shaving?” he suggests.
Sam looks like he’s about to rip something in half. “Three times. I’ve shaved three times in the past hour. It just comes back longer!”
“Oh.” Dean nods thoughtfully and steps over to the sink. He’s about to pick the scissors up but Sam grabs his wrist.
“Dean, we don’t know what’ll happen if you touch them.”
Dean shrugs Sam off. “You haven’t touched them, right?”
Sam shakes his head.
“So, I think the curse only works if your hair is cut by them,” Dean points out. “I’ll take the scissors, put them back in the box. This’ll be over and we’ll laugh about it tomorrow.”
Sam frowns at him, unamused.
“Okay. Maybe we’ll laugh about it in a month’s time,” Dean amends.
The problem is finding the box. The bunker has so many store rooms that Dean has no idea which one he found the scissors in. He looks in every single room and finds no sign of the box. Well, there are plenty of boxes, just not the one he’s looking for. It’s almost as if the box has vanished… Dean tries not to think too into it.
He makes it back up to the library by lunchtime to find Sam on his laptop. He’s typing away and clicking madly, no doubt looking for an answer to their problem on Google. It’s been less than four hours and Sam’s hair is already longer. His beard is bushy now, it’s length is creeping towards his collar. And his hair is tied at the top of his head in a ponytail that reaches his shoulders. He’s transforming from a lumberjack to Khal Drogo.
“Uh… Sammy, I think - “
“Yeah, Dean. I noticed,” Sam bites back. “Did you find the box?”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?”
“No,” Dean admits. “I didn’t find the box.”
It’s a little hard to read Sam’s expression under all that hair but Dean is guessing by the whites of his eyes that he’s beginning to panic.
“How can you not find the box?” Sam says. He’s on his feet, pacing, his pony tail swings behind him. “We don’t know how bad this curse will get!”
Dean ponders for a moment. “The hair-growth thing hasn’t been happening… you know, anywhere else?”
Sam rolls his eyes. “Just my head and face. Don’t be so gross, dude.”
Dean shrugs. “I was just checking,” he defends. “Even if your hair just keeps growing, it can’t be that bad, right?”
Sam doesn’t say a word, just crosses his arms over his chest.
“I’ll go see if I can find that box again,” Dean quickly changes the subject. Sam steps forward.
“I’m coming with,” he insists. “Two pairs of eyes are better than one.”
So, the two of them search. They search the two lower levels of the bunker, they rifle through each closet, they find nothing.
“The Men of Letters would have documented this,” Sam points out. “I checked the library but it’s not recorded in there.”
“What about the archive?” Dean asks.
Sam shakes his head. “I didn’t get around to it.”
“Then we know where to look next.”
The archive, the same room that hid the dungeon, had been sorted and re-organized not long after Sam and Dean had moved in. Sam especially had been eager to arrange the documents in a way he could understand.
“Look through everything under ‘cursed objects’,” Sam says. He hauls out a large box and heaves it onto the floor. Dean looks up and grimaces. Sam’s hair is about six inches longer than it was moments earlier. Sam seems to realize and hastily re-ties his hair.
They spend the next three hours reading through every word. By which time, Dean is flicking lazily through the last of the documents and Sam is beginning to resemble Gandalf.
“I think I’ve got something,” Sam speaks up. His hair is still tied up but his beard is now slung over one shoulder like a scarf. Dean tries not to stare and quickly plucks the file Sam is offering to him. ‘Grimm’ is printed across the front.
Dean looks back up to Sam. “Like brothers Grimm?” he asks.
“Seems so,” Sam says.
Dean flips it open and eats up every word. There are photos and records: a needle that forces anyone pricked into eternal sleep, apples that choke you to death, glass slippers that make your toes fall off… it’s all grim stuff. The article that gets Dean’s attention is the one about hair scissors that make your hair grow, among other things.
“You read it?” Sam asks. “I think you’ll agree we need to work faster on this.”
Dean re-reads the effects of the scissors’ curse: ever-growing hair, inability to leave home, eventual blindness.
“What’s with the blindness?” he asks.
“In the original fairy-tale, the witch Gothel threw the prince out of the tower and blinded him,” Sam explains. “It seems like the cursed objects make you live the fairy-tale in real life.”
“But we just need to find the box,” Dean points out. “And we know it’s somewhere in the bunker.”
Sam shrugs. “I don’t know if it’s that simple. I think maybe once the scissors were out of the box they really didn’t want to go back in.”
Dean frowns. “You mean, the scissors made the box vanish?”
“Something like that,” Sam guesses. “It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s happened today.”
…
Dean isn’t sure what’s weirder; the fact that Sam’s hair is still growing or the fact that he can’t step out the bunker’s front door.
Dean is standing right outside, yanking on Sam’s arm with all of his might, but Sam won’t budge.
“That’s part two of the curse,” Sam pants once they’ve given up. “You know what’s next.”
Sam’s hair brushes the back of his knees and his beard is down to his waist. At this point, Dean’s beyond finding it funny. The bunker’s heavy door falls shut behind him with a heavy groan and he finds his way back to the record room where he grabs the right file and hurries back to the library.
Sam is standing by the table, staring downwards with dismay.
“What’s wrong?” Dean asks.
“My hair’s starting to knot itself to things,” Sam sighs, gesturing to the table leg. “I can’t untangle it.”
Dean tries. He tugs and twists and saws at it with his knife. The hair is impenetrable.
“I guess the curse takes this housebound thing seriously,” Sam jokes, but his voice falls flat.
“I’m getting the scissors,” Dean says.
Sam blinks at him. “You can’t be serious.”
Dean is serious. Dean is already marching back to the bathroom where he left the damn things that morning. It’s a risk. A stupid one. It’s the only one he’s got.
The scissors slice through Sam’s hair like a hot knife through butter. The knotted tufts remain stuck the table. Dean goes ahead and shears away the rest until Sam’s hair sits jaggedly at the base of his neck. Sam cuts the beard away himself until it’s choppy and short.
“No doubt there’ll be consequences for that,” Dean says, placing the scissors down on the table. Sam shifts a little awkwardly.
“I think there already are,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“Things are starting to go blurry,” Sam admits. He waves a hand in front of his face and shrugs. “It kind of makes sense.”
“How does this make sense?” Dean dares to ask.
Sam explains, “In the original fairy-tale, the witch Gothel cut Rapunzel’s hair off and used it to lure the prince into the tower. When he got to the top, the witch pushed him out and he landed in a forest of thorns and was blinded. The scissors must work in a way that’s guaranteed that whoever has been affected will cut their hair off with the same pair. Maybe the blindness doesn’t kick in until the hair’s been cut.”
“I guess it kind of makes sense…” Dean says slowly. “Are your eyes any worse?”
“Not yet. Still just kind of blurry.”
“We’ve got time.”
…
Sam’s hair doesn’t grow back, but his eyesight doesn’t improve. Dean carefully reads and re-reads exactly what kind of box the Men of Letters had locked the scissors away in. Since Sam can’t make out words on a page anymore, he occupies himself with bundling up the extraordinary length of hair that’s lying on the floor and shoving it into a plastic bag.
“Men of Letters weren’t so big on instructions, huh?” Dean breaks the silence.
Sam looks up, but not in Dean’s direction. “They documented things, they didn’t get themselves too involved.”
Dean shrugs. “They could at least leave a helpful note or something. It just says the scissors were locked in a box of the appropriate wood, carved with the appropriate symbols. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means we could try putting it in a curse box,” Sam suggests.
“Tried it,” Dean sighs.
Sam frowns, sitting up straighter. “When?”
“I grabbed one out of the trunk,” Dean says. “It’s right there on the table in front of you and you didn’t notice. Figured it doesn’t work.”
“Oh,” is all Sam says. He blinks a few times, squinting around the room. His gaze drops back to the floor and his shoulders droop. “It’s getting worse.”
“We’ll fix it,” Dean promises.
“Dean,” Sam says, softly. “If we can’t, it’s okay.”
“Being blind is not okay,” Dean snaps.
“Could have been a lot worse,” Sam points out. “We’ve come across some mean curses. If blindness is the endgame of this curse, then I think we’re lucky.”
Dean shakes his head and keeps looking for an answer.
…
An answer comes by the time Sam can see nothing but faint shapes. He makes his slow way around the bunker, hands fumbling along walls and table edges. Dean watches him, hovering as Sam finds his way to a seat.
His eyes are turning milky white, the skin around them is scratched and bleeding from where the curse has damaged his eyes with thorns that aren’t even there.
Sam bends his head, feeling across the table for the papers Dean has left lying around. Sam’s hair flops forward. If Dean had to come up with anything positive, it would be that Sam’s hair had not attempted to re-grow. Although, the hair is now uneven and cropped, jagged at the back. Dean doesn’t dare try to cut it straight.
“So… you found an answer?” Sam says, by the tone of his voice it seems like it isn’t the first time he’s spoken.
“Uh, yeah. I think so,” Dean answers. He takes the seat opposite. “I’ve been researching and it seems like even if we lock it back up in a box, it won’t lift the curse.”
“I’d already figured,” Sam sighs.
“But there is a ritual. We can destroy the scissors and hopefully the curse will go with it.”
“Hopefully,” Sam repeats. “How does this ritual work?”
…
“Dean, it’s freezing,” Sam moans. Dean gently pulls him forward, making sure Sam doesn’t trip. He leaves him in the doorway of the bunker, the curse still keeping him locked inside.
“We need fire, Sammy,” Dean explains, “And I’m not lighting one up in the library.”
Sam nods and tugs his thin jacket tighter around himself. “Talk me through what’s going on, okay?”
“Right,” Dean agrees. “I’m building a fire on our front step.”
Sam rolls his grey eyes. “This story is riveting so far, Dean.”
“Shut up.”
Dean tosses some more wood on the fire and sets out the rest of the ingredients.
“It’s a crescent moon,” he tells Sam. “We’re lucky or we would have been waiting a while to do this.”
“What’s happening now?” Sam asks.
“Nothing yet,” Dean says. He picks up a bowl of pointed white flowers and empties half of them into the flames. “I just put in the Rampion.”
“Campanula Rapunculus,” Sam says. “It’s supposed to be the plant Rapunzel’s mother stole from the witch’s garden. It’s where Rapunzel gets her name.”
“Nerd,” Dean scoffs. Sam smiles softly against the firelight. Dean re-reads the ritual. “Sampunzel, Sampunzel, let down your hair.”
“I’m a nerd?” Sam snorts. He holds out the plastic bag filled with more than a meter of hair. “You need to burn all of this?”
“Yep,” Dean takes the bag. “We’ll be here a while.”
He slices a section off and tosses it into the fire. The two of them wait as it sizzles and dries up, sparking into nothing. Then, Dean tosses more on.
“It smells like,” Sam begins to say but he doesn’t finish the sentence. Dean nods. They both know the smell of burning hair too well.
It takes longer than Dean would like. They need to melt the scissors in the fire at exactly midnight but they still have a third of the hair and the rest of the flowers to burn. It’s two minutes to midnight.
“Hurry up,” Sam hisses when Dean tells him the time.
“I’m trying,” Dean insists. “All of the hair has to be burned away but there’s so goddamn much of it!”
“Stop talking like it’s my fault,” Sam huffs. “You’re the one who used cursed scissors in the first place.”
Dean’s about to snap back but he holds his tongue and tries to pick up the pace.
“One minute,” he reads his watch and tosses the last of the hair on. He waits a moment for it to peel away into the flames.
The seconds are counting down when he adds the last of the of the Rampion. He grabs the scissors from where they rest by his feet. They’re ice cold on his skin and feel ten times heavier than they did the last time he held them.
“They know what’s going to happen, huh?” Dean says. Sam looks in his direction, brow furrowed in puzzlement. Dean drops the scissors onto the fire. The hands on his watch meet at twelve.
“Did you do it?” Sam asks.
“I think so,” Dean answers hesitantly. “I put them on at exactly midnight.”
“So it should have worked,” Sam says hopefully. He tries to take a step forward but his feet don’t move past the doorway.
Dean stands up and takes Sam’s arm, pulling. Sam won’t budge. He can’t move. His shoulders drop and he sinks down to the ground.
“It didn’t work,” he says. Dean glances back to the fire. The scissors shine at the centre of the flames, the carvings on the blades begin to melt and drip away. He turns back to Sam, one hand clasped on his shoulder.
Sam looks up. He doesn’t say anything.
Dean stares at him, grabs Sam’s face and turns it towards the light. Sam yelps and tries to bat him away but Dean holds him still.
The scratches around Sam’s eyes are fading away. Sam squints against the fire’s glow, his grey irises darken. Suddenly, his eyes go wide with realisation and he scrambles forward, out of the doorway.
“I’m out of the bunker. Am I out of the bunker?” he gasps.
“You’re out of the bunker!” Dean exclaims, pulling Sam up to his feet. “Can you see?”
Sam squints again. “I think,” he says, smiling ever so slightly. “It’s blurry but not completely dark. Dean, you did it!”
Dean shrugs. “It’s the least I can do for cursing you into a Grimm fairy-tale, Sampunzel.”
Sam sighs. “Are you seriously gonna still call me that? You already hacked my hair off, dude.”
Dean pats his shoulder. “Next time you need your girly bangs trimmed, go to a barber.”
Sam purses his lips and cross his arms. “You’re the one who suggested cutting my hair after you spat gum in it.”
“Right. Yeah,” Dean coughed, scratching the back of his neck. He quickly changed the subject. “You hungry? I’ll make us something.”
Sam stretches and steps further outside, past the still-burning fire. “I dunno. I feel like going out.”
“The only place open at this time is Mcdonalds, Sammy.”
“Don’t care.”
“Dude. You were only stuck inside for like two days,” Dean points out.
Sam shrugs. “I thought it’d be forever.”
“I guess we’re going out, Sampunzel.”
Sam shoves him as they walk. He stumbles a little, off balance, and Dean holds him straight.
“Still a little blind,” Sam explains. Dean keeps his hand on Sam’s shoulder.
“I’m driving,” Dean says.
“Like my eyesight problems would change that,” Sam laughs. “You’re taking me out to that Thai place tomorrow, by the way.”
“Whatever, Sammy. I think I owe you dinner for the next month.”
“Year,” Sam decides. “And I’m taking one of the bunker’s motorbikes out some time.”
“But they’re classics, Sam.”
“You blinded me, Dean!”
“Fine. One ride.”
Sam scoffs. “Yeah. Sure.”
…
End