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A Little off the Top

by Callisto

“Hey, have you seen that shirt of mine, Dean? The one with the—”

He turns to look across the room and ask his question more directly, but the sentence dies in his throat. Because Castiel is there. Again. As in right there.

“Cas...” Sam trails off, nodding uncertainly. Shower damp and holding a motel-thin towel closed with one hand while rummaging in a drawer with the other is not making him feel at his most self-confident with the angel. Who is busy regarding Sam up close and personal in a way that makes his skin itch. He tries staring him down, but Sam’s always had a hard time doing that with Castiel. So he looks down at the socks he’s holding instead, grateful his bangs are long and can hide his eyes from whatever Castiel is trying to see.

Castiel just brings out the awkward in him. It can’t be helped. He comes from that time when Sam was hell bent on... well, when Sam was pretty much hell bent. He has never forgotten or forgiven, either himself or the angel, for the fact that Sam was busy waving bottles at the sky, and drowning in booze, empty graveyards, and a woman who really wasn’t while Castiel was busy wrenching Dean out of hell.

And then there’s the undeniable truth that Castiel reminds him of Ruby. He’s realized over time it’s the magnetic, unnerving sense of other beneath a human skin. When Castiel stands this close he can feel the confinement of the angel within, just as he once felt it of her. But whereas Ruby filled his senses with the pulse of the earth and what lay beneath, Castiel fills them with the hiss of lightning in summer, in all its promise and threat. The hair on Sam’s arms and neck lifts as it always did when she stood this close, and whatever this echo of familiarity is, it makes his heart pick up speed, too.

Which is why it positively trip hammers when Castiel proceeds to reach out and lift a lock of hair away from Sam’s face.

“I am wondering why you choose to wear your hair like this.”

Sam’s frozen and still nonplussed. But he can’t bat Castiel’s hand away and make a casual crack about personal bubbles the way Dean would. All he can do is stand there and blink at him.

“Um...like what?”

But Castiel doesn’t say anything, just keeps studying him.

“Like a fucking yeti!” Dean chimes in from across the room, where he’s sorting out his duffle.

Castiel’s brow furrows slightly. “No, yetis have a lot more hair than Sam does.”

Dean snorts and Sam takes a second to look up and glare.

“Do you perhaps wish to pass as female?” Castiel continues, still holding a few strands of Sam’s hair between his fingers. He swivels between Sam and Dean, as if he’s genuinely curious and one of them has the answer. “Is there a new strategy to entice and entrap Lucifer I’m not aware of?”

“No! Jesus. Just...no, okay?”

“Heh. You tell him, Samantha.”

Of course Dean is leaving his duffle and walking over for this. Sam just wishes Castiel would let go of his hair and step the fuck back... He twists the socks in his hands.

“Or is it that you feel you should hide, Sam?”

Castiel’s voice is suddenly low, almost gentle, and Sam swallows hard. Shit, he hates how tongue tied he gets around him.

“Or that the world should not see you, maybe?”

Enough. Sam raises his chin at the exact same time Castiel lets go, and for a moment their gazes lock. Then Castiel nods, almost imperceptibly, and steps back.

Dean is there, looking from one to the other. He clears his throat. “Wow. Awkward. And a treat as always, guys.”

Sam spares him a glance before he turns away. “I’m...uh...I’ll go get dressed,” he says quietly, and feels Dean’s eyes follow him the whole way to the bathroom.

When he reemerges, dressed and shaved, everything seems okay. His heart is back to normal, and Castiel is way over on the sofa. Dean is there too, feet up on the coffee table and waving a beer bottle at the TV as he explains... Sam squints.

“'Married With Children’, Dean? You’re seriously explaining Al Bundy to an angel of the lord?”

“What? Cas loves this. Don’t you, Cas?”

Privately Sam thinks Castiel would act intrigued if Dean told him to watch paint dry. And as for Dean, his brother is nowhere near the redneck he likes to think he is, although he takes particular delight in becoming blue collar to the core for Castiel. As Sam heads toward the coffee pot in the kitchenette, Dean’s Americana 101 has moved on to Hooters. He pauses and looks over at them. Dean is all crude gestures and arm-waving, while Castiel is looking from Dean to Al Bundy and nodding seriously at both.

He shakes his head and smiles. Talk about ties that bind. Dean is very much the one who keeps this strange little triangle of theirs afloat, the one who makes Sam and Castiel work on any level at all.

Two days later, Castiel is off God-hunting and it’s just the two of them again. Sam emerges from his shower in sweats and a cloud of steam, to find Dean waiting for him in the room with a pair of scissors.

“Cas is right,” says Dean, “you need a haircut, dude.”

“Dean...” Sam slowly pulls off the towel he’s been using to dry his hair. He feels uneasy. “I don’t want... It’s fine, man.” He shakes the damp hair out of his eyes so that he can see Dean better and convince him.

“See? You do that all the time now, and it’s friggin’ annoying. What if I need to look at you and see your eyes, you freak? Huh? You ever think about that? Lots of times I need to tell you stuff when we can’t speak. I always have to see your eyes, Sammy.” Dean is already pushing his shoulder back in the direction of the bathroom. “So get your ass on the toilet seat, and I’ll go hunt out that comb we use and be right with you.”

“Dean...” Sam’s not even sure why he’s pushing this anymore. Everything Dean has said is true and filling up Sam’s chest in the stupidest way possible.

But Dean seems to get it. “Just go,” he says. Then he grins suddenly. “I’ll have you best of show in no time.”

Sam groans, entirely for effect, and pretends to drag his feet and hang his head when he turns and makes his way back to the bathroom.

It doesn’t take long, and Dean keeps up a steady patter about anything and everything as he combs and snips and combs and snips. Sam closes his eyes for some of it. True, he doesn’t want hair in his eyes, but he also doesn’t want to fill up and spill tears at all the memories this triggers for him. Right up until he left for Stanford, Dean was the one who cut his hair. He remembers Dean at about ten doing it for the first time, his tongue out in painful concentration as he snipped in total silence and the pair of them held their breath.

Sam had looked in the mirror afterwards and tried not to cry at how chewed and ragged his bangs were.

Dean got better and better at it as time went by. Before Sam’s first date, his junior prom and the school play he took the lead in, he remembers Dean dragging him to a chair and making ribbon jokes before he would cut and comb and make him feel worthy of each and every special occasion.

And it’s one of the things he remembers bringing him out of the cocoon of grief after Jess. Dean had stroked his hair, ignored his tears, and told him all about the Haitian priest he and Dad had hung out with for a time in New Orleans. By the end of the haircut, Sam was chuckling in a few of the right places and feeling lighter than he had in months. Dean had then taken him out for a very fancy dinner and continued his tales.

When Dean had gone to hell he couldn’t cut it. Just couldn’t pay money and listen to a stranger’s nonsense. And then when Dean got back he couldn’t ask and Dean never offered. And besides, Ruby liked it long, liked to hold it back from his head and pull hard to stop him coming before she did. At the time, it seemed to be what he deserved.

“There,” says Dean, and Sam opens his eyes back in the here and now. Dean’s gaze is flitting critically from left to right across his face. “Not bad. Not bad at all. I took a lot off the back too, so don’t be shocked and gasping when you see what’s on the floor.” He steps back with an exaggerated flourish. “Would sir care to see for himself?”

Sam swats at him with the towel as he stands. “Dick,” he says fondly.

The amount of hair on the floor is truly incredible, and he steps through it carefully to get to the mirror above the sink. He stares at himself and then at Dean, who’s looking over his shoulder at their reflections.

“You like? I haven’t done this in a while.”

Sam nods and smiles, not quite trusting himself to speak. That lightness is back. Finally. He looks at his brother in the mirror and keeps smiling.

“Looking good, Sam.”

“Thanks, Dean. I mean it, man. Thank you.” It comes out a little hoarse.

Which may be why the flat of Dean’s palm rubs across his shoulders.

“No sweat, bro. Just ask next time, okay? Don’t wait for Cas to put fucking ribbons in it while you’re asleep.”

Sam chuckles, and then tilts his head left and right a couple of times, getting used to the way all this lightness feels.

“And when you’ve finished admiring yourself, princess, sweep this shit up and we’ll go out. I’m in the mood for a steak and all the trimmings.”

Sam smiles one last time at his reflection and wonders what tales he’s going to get this time.

*******

The End

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