Archive of Our Own ^beta

from "Samson," Regina Spektor

…I cut his hair myself, one night
pair of dull scissors in the yellow light
And he told me that I'd done all right…

Oh we couldn't bring the columns down
We couldn't destroy a single one
And the history books forgot about us,
and the Bible didn't mention us—
not even once.

You are my sweetest downfall—
I loved you first.

. . . . .

Dean always knew the worst shit would be perpetrated by humans. A ghoul might dig up and eat your mother, and Dean was happy to kill them for it, but in the end they were still (mostly) doing it to eat. A human might dig up and eat your mother, too, but they'd be doing it out of sheer human fucked-upness.

Some days, Dean was glad the only other human he saw on a regular basis was his brother.

It was hunters, this time. Not as bad as the time Roy and Walt had left that shit motel covered in their blood, at least. But these two were angry, and they were stupid, and they were armed, and that was a dangerous combination every time.

If Dean was honest with himself, it also described nine out of ten of the hunters you'd have the bad luck to meet any given day.

He didn't recognize these particular idiots—two everyday, shitkicker types, schlubby in denim and ratty ball caps and probably boasting more than one Confederate flag in their truck if Dean was reading them right—but one of them was half-smart, and both of them were mean, and that didn't bode well. Dean was trying to pick his handcuffs; they'd worked him over pretty well and moved on to Sam, and Dean might be fine having the shit kicked out of him now and then, but hell if he was going to let Sam get spit on over the Apocalypse by one more bastard who hadn't been there and didn't understand.

The half-smart one had gone digging around the debris in the derelict building they'd been caught in, and apparently not found whatever he was looking for. He was shrugging and pulling a nasty hunting-knife out of his belt and telling his buddy it would do—and when his shirt pulled briefly out of his jeans, Dean felt vindicated when he saw the prison-tat swastika revealed on his skin.

Yeah, Dean wouldn't mind ganking these idiots, soon as he got free.

While the half-smart one was circling, talking shit that Dean wasn't doing him the honor of paying attention to, the not-even-half-smart one was landing punches on Sam's stoic jaw, his stomach, his orbital bone. Dean worked the ill-suited shard of metal he'd found into the lock more urgently; Swastika was starting to sound a little deranged, and Dean didn't like the way he was waving that knife.

"And here everybody told us what badasses you two were," broke through Dean's concentration. "All this power, blowing up demons with your mind," Swastika was saying, tapping the flat of his knife over Sam's temple.

"And you think it's a good idea to piss off someone who can blow things up with his mind?" Sam asked, levelly. His mouth was bloody, and his eye was already swelling badly, but he was projecting that air of unkillability that was sometimes enough to bluff enemies down all on its own.

"Got to be more to it," Swastika said, surprisingly perceptively. "Some key to your oomph. What is it, Winchester? Got some witch in your pocket feeding you amulets?"

Dean was grateful at least these guys hadn't heard about the demon blood. That really didn't need to get around. He zoned out when it seemed clear the guy was going to talk rather than actually do anything for a while, trying to visualize the lock bars and lock spring.

But then Swastika started quoting the Bible and Dean groaned out loud. Only crazy people quoted the Bible at a time like this.

"Maybe that's it. What do you say, Samson? 'If I be shaven, then my strength will go from me and I shall become weak, and be like any other man?'"

And though Sam hadn't so much as flinched when Dumbass was using him as a punching bag, Dean saw a shadow of real fear cross his face, now.

Dean gave up on finesse; he tried brutality, digging at the keyhole like a dog digs under a fence.

Swastika's knife dipped at Sam's scalp, lifting a hefty lock of hair onto the point. He gripped it with the other hand hard enough to yank Sam's head aside, and Dean was pretty sure he was seeing Sam's 'I'm going to throw up' face.

The hunter sawed at the chunk of hair in a way Dean was sure was painful. He'd tried cutting his hair with a knife once, in high school, just to feel like a badass, and he'd given up after two locks—it hurt like a bitch, all tearing roots and a hundred tiny points of agony when the blade pulled and parted and snapped the strands, rather than snipping them. He'd found a cute girl with sewing scissors to fix it, after, and then made out with her furiously on her grandmother's sofa. It had dulled the insult substantially.

The hunk of hair that hit the floor wasn't all that big, but it was ragged, and it left an ugly pit in Dean's gut.

Dumbass shuffled over to pick it up, crowing something suitably dumbass-y about a trophy, and stuffed it in his pocket. Dean inexplicably wanted to cut his throat, and take Sam's hair back from him.

"Feel the power draining out?" Swastika asked, wrenching Sam's head the other way to work on another fistful. "Or is it something else makes you able to pop demons from a safe distance? You can tell us, Samson—promise we'll use our powers for good," he mocked, and Sam's eyes were most likely just watering from the stinging in his scalp, but it made Dean wish he could blow something up with his mind, anyway.

"Hey, idiot," Dean growled, trying to distract him. It didn't work; Swastika looked up but didn't stop sawing away.

"You got something to say about it, boy?"

Dean found he felt insulted for the state of the knife, too; a knife was never a good choice for hair, but this one looked dulled and uncared for, at that. Maybe he'd swipe the knife off this one's body after he took Sam's hair back from the other one. At least he'd give it a less abusive home.

"You're not gonna' like it," Dean said, shrugging as best he could from this position. He thought he felt something give in the lock, finally, one of the lock bars out of the way.

Swastika dropped another handful of hair to the ground, and this time reached for a grip close to Sam's neck, shoving until Sam's chin was in his chest. He was cutting that one closer to the skin, and Dean felt sweat break out on his back. If he missed…

"Try me," Swastika said, in a parody of good humor. "You never know."

"See," Dean said, stalling for time, "Sammy gets his powers from being a good guy. Petting dogs. Helping old Jewish ladies carry their groceries. Eating at places owned by Black people."

There was a ripping sound, and Swastika dropped another lock. Dean thought there was a little blood on that one.

"Bet you think you're real funny," Swastika said flatly, and turned his attention back to Sam.

"I'm not bad," Dean agreed casually. The second lock bar was easier—just twist back around the other direction, don't drop the improvised pick, and…

"How are you doing it?" Swastika pressed, and now the sharper side of his knife was right against Sam's temple again, threatening to take skin as easily as hair. Sam's eyes were wide, the kind of wide that eyes only got when the point was to keep anything that might look like a tear from accidentally crowding out and being discovered.

"It's not—it's not something you can just replicate," Sam said, through gritted teeth. "It's—genetic," he lied, but it was close enough to the truth.

"Right," Dumbass chimed in, laughing. "Right, like people are just borned able to turn demons into puddles."

"'Borned' ain't even a word," Dean muttered, but loud enough to bait him. He had the second lock bar pried open, and was finally easing the ratchet teeth out as quietly as he could.

"Ain't talkin' to you, pretty boy," Dumbass retorted, in what he clearly thought was a clever way. Maybe for him it was.

"Maybe you should," Dean suggested. "If it's genetic, maybe I got it, too, you think of that?"

That seemed to get Swastika's attention. He looked between Sam and Dean, unsettled.

"Nobody's said anything about you being able to do it," he said, skeptically, but at least he wasn't sawing anymore.

Dean had the cuff open over his left wrist, nudging it wide enough he'd be able to jerk loose but not so wide it would fall and clatter against the back of the chair.

"I just like it more up close and personal," Dean bluffed. "Nothin' better than cutting one open."

Swastika looked between the brothers one more time, then nodded his accomplice over toward Dean, presumably to try his hand at interrogation. Dean silently celebrated. He shifted his weight towards his feet and got his right hand wrapped around one of the slats of the chairback, coiled and ready as a spring.

When Dumbass was precisely three feet away, Dean lifted off the chair and swung it, hard, shattering the legs across the other man's face. He crumpled, bled, and moaned, and didn't do much else.

Dean hoped Swastika would let go of Sam and come at Dean with his knife, so he could smash him with the chair seat, but he showed irritating restraint, and slid behind Sam, holding the knife across his throat.

Shit.

Dean spread his arms wide, disarmingly, even though the chair was still hanging from one hand. "Hey, let's not do anything stupid," Dean said, as calmly as he could. "You just let him go, and I'll let you go—how's that sound?" Dean could be magnanimous. Or he could pretend, anyway. He risked a step closer.

"Put down the chair," Swastika said, not buying it, tucking the blade of the knife harder under Sam's chin.

Shit, shit, shit. Dean stopped, and slowly, deliberately set the remains of the chair on the floor, well away from the spot where Dumbass was curled in a ball, holding his face.

"There—let's not do anything stupid," Dean repeated, like he were trying to calm a wild animal. "You just put down the knife, all right? Or hell, don't—just walk away. Nobody has to get hurt here."

"Tell that to Earl," Swastika snapped, nodding toward his felled partner.

"Nobody else has to get hurt," Dean corrected, "or hurt worse. I don't want to play chicken, here, but you know I could stomp Earl's head in before you finished your Chicago smile there."

"Your brother would still be dead," Swastika said confidently. Almost.

"Like I said. 'S'an impasse. So you take Earl and walk away, I take Sam and walk away," Dean said, firmly. Almost. When he still hesitated, Dean clenched his fists in frustration. "Look, we can't make it so you can—can magically zap demons with your brain, you're just going to have to take 'em out like the rest of us, with exorcisms and holy water. Believe me, if that was a power we could just pass around, don't you think we'd be telling everybody on the planet how to do it?"

He didn't mention the bit about how they wouldn't, what with the unintentional consequences.

"Man, we're just hunters like you," he said, instead. "Let him go. He's not hurting anybody that ain't a monster."

"You two still started the damn apocalypse," Swastika spat, tightening his grip on his knife.

"And it's gonna' take all of us to stop it," Dean growled, barely suppressing the urge to lunge and strangle the man, consequences be damned.

Apparently it showed on his face or in his posture, because Swastika finally backed up, withdrawing the knife. It had left an angry red stripe on Sam's neck, but there was no blood.

Dean still wanted to kill him, but getting Sam out alive had to be the higher priority. It was always his highest priority.

"Sammy, can you stand up?" he asked, edging closer while Swastika circled over to Earl, knife held out like a talisman.

Sam tried, but it was awkward with the chair back still pinned between his arms and his body. As soon as Dean was close enough, he gripped Sam by the elbow and hefted him to his feet.

"Where's our gear?" Dean asked the other hunters. Swastika was dragging Earl up off of the ground.

"Out back in the dumpster."

Dean's temper flared again, but his gun was in a dumpster, apparently, so he supposed acting on it had probably better wait. He bent to pick Sam's cuffs (it was a lot easier when he could see them), and as soon as he was loose, he slung an arm around Sam's back so they could stumble for the back door together.

When they reached the dumpster, Dean didn't even rock-paper-scissors for it, just clambered in. He felt like hell, but he was pretty sure Sam had broken ribs, from the way he was bending just a little to the side, sheltering his middle under an elbow, and Dean didn't want him puncturing a lung.

When he'd dug their bags free and heaved himself back out, Dean immediately checked and loaded his gun and started back for the door. Maybe if he'd been fast enough…

"Dean, don't—" Sam pleaded, stopping him with a grip on his shoulder. "Let's just—let's get the hell out of here."

"They don't just get to beat the shit out of us and walk away," Dean argued, loading Sam's gun, too. "Everybody thinks we're their damn whipping boys, right now. And did you see that tattoo? One of them's totally a nazi. I hate nazis," Dean added, muttering.

"I just… want to get out of here," Sam said, not looking quite at him.

He sounded… defeated.

All at once, all of the fire went out of Dean, leaving something empty and cold in its place. His eyes drifted up to Sam's hair, the ragged mess of it, the cuts on his skin along the edges.

God, Sam had been butchered.

Sam's face reddened slightly and his jaw jutted like it did when he was about to have a bitchfit. There was warning written on his posture like a cornered dog, and Dean quickly looked away, nodding, appeasing.

"Right," he said, swallowing. "Right. Okay. Let's get back to the motel."

It was a slow and painful walk back to the Impala (they'd chased the shifter for a couple blocks before they'd been ambushed), and the silence got heavy quickly. They often didn't talk for a while right after a hunt finished, but that felt different, comfortable; it was just time to process. This felt stifling.

Dean drove them fast and a little recklessly back toward the motel, but stopped at a drug store on the way. He had a reliable map of liquor laws by state in his brain, and was pretty sure he could get everything he needed there.

When he got back to the car, Sam was huddled down on the seat, slouching away from the light in the parking lot. Dean sighed silently and dropped the bag on the back seat. They made no more stops, after that.

Sam darted for the door of the motel and was inside before Dean had even managed to get the car shut off. Dean followed more slowly, and apologized to his baby for driving her when he'd been dumpster diving; he promised he'd wipe down the leather in the morning.

Dean closed the door behind them, bolted it, and set down the drug store bag on the little table by the window. Across the room, Sam was at the mirror, staring frozen at his reflection.

"You look fine," Dean said, a little stiffly, but couldn't quite look straight at Sam—not with the fragility in his posture. He pulled out two beers and twisted the tops off on his way over to the mirror. "Have a drink, Sammy, you'll feel better. It's just hair."

So why had Dean felt a little like they'd been cutting pieces off of him when they'd done it?

Sam ignored the bottle, so Dean set it on the counter beside him and slugged down some of his own. "Gonna' shower off this trash stink, be out in a minute," he said, and, though he was a little ashamed for it, he was grateful to be getting away from the awful silence.

Dean slouched in the hot water and scrubbed off the smell and the dried blood and as much of the day as he could. He frankly just wanted to stay there all night, but as soon as he scrubbed at his hair, he thought of Sam's, and the guilt speared him. He finished up, perfunctory and efficient, and headed back out in a towel.

Sam wasn't still standing in shock in front of the mirror, at least. He'd shifted over to one of the beds and was pretending to watch something on TV, but since he was also pretending to be doing something with his laptop, neither illusion really held. His hair looked slightly tamed, like maybe he'd tried to brush some of the damage out, but it hadn't made much of a difference. Sam's face was carefully blank, at least as much as it could manage to be around the bruising and swelling.

"Should go have one, too, Sammy," Dean suggested as mildly as he could. "Get the blood off you."

Sam nodded vaguely and closed the laptop, climbing off the bed. He hadn't looked directly at Dean since they'd left the other hunters, and however still his face, Dean knew Sam was hurting. It hurt Dean to see it. He gave Sam a light pat on the shoulder, and felt inadequate.

As soon as Sam had closed the bathroom door, Dean sat on the bed in his place and opened back up the laptop to run a search. He waited to click on the links until the water started, in case there was sound on the videos. He managed to get in a couple brief tutorials before the water shut back off and he had to stop and clear the history.

Dean managed to find some sleep pants to put on so he could pretend he hadn't sat around forgetting to get dressed the whole time Sam was washing. Sam would hardly have noticed, though. He emerged and started rooting through his own bag, never lifting his head, and his movements were slow and labored, heavy with pain. He looked tired all the way down to his soul. Not that that was really a new feeling, lately.

Dean dug in his bag again for drugs, and brought Sam his beer. Sam took both from him wordlessly. In the shower, his eye had finished swelling shut, the skin around it moving through yellow into green.

Bracing himself with a deep breath, Dean went back into the drug store bag to pull out the rest of its contents. He set the remains of the six-pack out on the table and fiddled with his other purchase a little nervously. He almost just wanted to stuff it in his duffle and forget about it, but then Sam let out a heavy sigh behind him, and Dean steeled himself to go grab his comb from the bathroom.

When Dean came back out, he found Sam had managed to wrestle on sleep pants and a t-shirt, and was shrugging into another layer even though the room wasn't cold, which set off a couple alarm bells. He ran the towel over his head to rub out some of the water, and Dean approached slowly, sitting on the edge of Sam's bed.

Sam finally looked at him, then, and a little of that stiff-jawed defiance crept back in, like he was just daring Dean to say something characteristically brotherly (e.g. dickish). With only a little bit of effort, Dean managed to take the high road.

"Sit down, Sammy," he said, as non-threateningly as he could. He dropped the comb on the mattress beside him, and under Sam's wary eye, started in on the needlessly complicated packaging.

"Seriously," Dean joked, to defuse the tension, "you shouldn't need scissors to open up a box of damn scissors, am I right?"

These were nice scissors, though—scissors actually meant to cut hair, not the junker scissors they kept in the trunk for cutting wicks and fuses that Dean or their Dad would have used when they were kids. They wouldn't magically make Dean know what he was doing, but they were more scalpel than hacksaw, and that had to count for something.

Sam was rigid again, staring down at him. Dean wasn't quite sure if his brother was about to bolt or about to crack into pieces.

"Sit down, Sammy," he gentled again, guiding Sam by the elbow until he gave in and sat on the bed, although Dean noticed he did so at the maximum possible distance from Dean and his torture tools.

That was all right. Dean climbed up awkwardly on the bed once the scissors were free of their hell-cage-inspired packaging and crawled until he was behind Sam. He reached back for the remote and dropped it beside Sam, in a rare and magnanimous invitation to pick the channel, then set to work.

Sam picked up the remote, but didn't do anything with it. Dean wondered if this was some kind of deer in headlights thing, and Sam was too scared to move.

Dean remembered childhood haircuts. Their dad had taken them to a barber a few times, to "get them cleaned up," when a school year was starting. At least, if he was thinking about things like school starting, and had also made enough money out of hustling at the bar, or picking up work at a garage somewhere. More often than not, though, their grooming came down to adding the beard extension to his electric razor and taking anything behind the ears down a level so they didn't look like bums or hippies. It happened when it started to get in their way or get in their eyes, or when their dad got in one of his Marine moods. There wasn't a lot of rhyme or reason.

Sam had been trouble even then. They'd had to give in and use a bowl on him a couple of times, because he never wanted his hair as short as they did, and was willing to put up a fight over it. Dad had clipped it in his sleep with the utility scissors, once, when Sam was seven or eight, and when Sam had noticed it the next morning, he'd burst into angry tears and not spoken to either of them for three days. For the next full year, he'd fought them like a wildcat any time he saw scissors or the trimmer. And he started sleeping with a knife under his pillow.

After that, Dad wasn't ready to try the same trick again. He'd razz Sam about looking like a girl, try to shame him into giving in, even try to bribe him, but Sam just dug in his heels and got shaggy.

Dean had razzed right along, but he'd always felt a swell of warmth and fondness any time Sam tightened his grip on something dangerous rather than give in. It occurred to Dean in that moment that the remote might be in Sam's hand to be used as a weapon, rather than as a channel-changer, so he proceeded with caution.

Dean combed out Sam's hair carefully, paying attention to where the jagged cuts were worst and how he could even it out. Some was so short it would just have to be combed under, or Dean would be running the risk of getting stabbed over giving Sam a crew cut. They had bigger fish to fry without dying over something quite that stupid.

His tried to tell himself he was confident he could make this better rather than worse, but his hands were shaking a little. He combed back through all of Sam's hair again, watching the strands pull free, and took a few deep breaths to settle.

Dean closed his eyes and replayed what he could remember of the youtube videos in his mind. Start from the shortest point (or, well, the point you were willing to level to, anyway), then move out carefully, evening to that spot. Shallow sections at a time. Top to bottom. Don't rush.

The people in the videos had mostly held the hair straight up from the head, but he felt too much like a douche doing that, so he held it out parallel to the floor, instead. He figured it split the difference. In the reflection from the TV, Sam still looked wide-eyed, but something about him was softening by degrees while Dean worked.

"Gonna' be okay," Dean said, mindlessly, when he'd finished the top layer where it was worst. He combed through Sam's hair with his fingers to get a feel for whether it was even or not, passable or not. "Gonna' be just fine."

A couple more minute snips and he called it good enough.

Dean shifted his focus down to the hair at Sam's neck, where he'd taken the deepest cut. He scratched through the hair there with his fingernails, to see how much could be covered just by mussing, but it didn't do much. He did it again anyway, not sure why.

"This… this part's going to have to be kinda' short," Dean hazarded apologetically. Sam nodded almost imperceptibly, tacit permission, and Dean picked back up the comb and scissors.

In the end, Dean spent almost an hour on Sam's hair. The show on the TV had changed over twice, ignored, and Sam's hair had dried completely, which Dean thought was supposed to be bad for some reason, but it made it a little easier to see the final product, so he didn't worry about it too much.

Sam still hadn't said anything, but his posture was looser and his breathing had settled. He might have reached up to rub at his eyes once or twice, but that made sense; it was getting late and it had been a long day.

"You're okay," Dean promised. "'S'okay." And when he didn't think he could really do any better, he tossed aside the torture tools and ran his fingers through Sam's hair a couple more times.

He still wasn't sure why he thought that would be useful.

"Should—" Sam's voice was a little thick from disuse and he stopped to clear his throat. "Should have let you kill them," he said. It was a weak joke, but it was such a relief from the silence that Dean laughed anyway, and squeezed Sam's shoulder. He couldn't bridge the gap all the way to a hug—not without Sam bawling outright or spared from certain death—but this was close.

Then he remembered just how close Sam had been to getting his throat slit by an asshole with a swastika tattoo. After a moment of painful deliberation, he shifted down to sit beside Sam and slung an arm around his shoulders.

"We'll kill 'em next time we see 'em," he promised, and Sam leaned into him so slightly Dean almost didn't notice. Almost.

Sam sighed quietly. "…After we save the world."

"After we save the world," Dean agreed.

And if Dean felt a little weird not letting go of Sam, Sam wasn't moving either. So maybe that was okay.