Song Remains the Same

Chapter 74: Keeping Up Appearances

"I've been hurt and I've been scarred, but at least I know I'm alive."
- Lifehouse

Outside of Bobby's house in bright midday, Sam held a hand out from where he was seated on a junked car, stopping his sister with a very pointed, grave look on his face. "I'm serious—only like a centimeter."

Alex huffed and stood back, scissors hovering in a hand beside her. "You've already told me ten thousand times, Rapunzel," she said at his continued reminders. "I got it—now are you gonna let me do this or not?" She gave her brother a very impatient look and Sam relented grudgingly. "Such a baby," Alex muttered, leaning in to start. "Gonna start charging you for this if you keep being a diva about it." The scissors whispered snip snip as she carefully trimmed the back of his hair with little point-cuts like they'd all learned so long ago.

Because they were on the road so much of their childhood, Dad used to cut their hair—it was clippers for the boys and two artlessly lopped-off inches from Alex's hair when it started to get hay-like on the ends. When Sam started complaining about the haircuts (he wanted to have a bowl cut like all the boys at school), Dad threw his hands up and said if they were so unhappy with the haircuts he provided, they could figure it out on their own. So, they had. One afternoon at the library and a hunt for books on DIY hair cutting later and they could all now cut hair decently. Funny enough, Dean's was the hardest to cut. The twins kept their hair more long and nondescript but Dean preferred shorter on the sides and longer on top. As such, he had learned to cut his own hair with clippers after the twins botched his hair one too many times back in the late eighties.

Sam started anxiously bouncing his knee up and down mid-snip and Alex knocked him in the side of the head with her hand. "Hold still unless you wanna lose an ear."

His knee ceased to move. He had always, always hated haircuts but every couple of months it would get uneven and start to look shaggy. Today, Alex had haircut duty while Dean worked on fixing the busted window to Bobby's study.

Twenty-four hours ago they'd been stuck in an alternate dimension. It was good to be home, to say the least, and it hadn't been for nothing either. It had gotten Cas access to those heavenly weapons he needed and it had also resulted in the deaths of two of Raphael's most important soldiers. The same as every time she thought of angels and Heaven, her mind inevitably drifted to Cas—thoughts of him were warm arms cocooning her, gentle husky whispers in her ear, tender kisses on skin and lips...

"Hey—you paying attention?" Sam's voice snapped her out of her daydreams. Because she was standing in front of him to cut his hair, her twin brother had caught sight of that la-la-land look on her face. Alex made herself focus.

"Yup. Definitely." She returned to her work.

The alternate universe hadn't just gotten Cas his weapons and two less enemies. It had gotten Alex a jump drive full of hilarious Wincest and Destiel pictures for pranking... so that wasn't so bad, right? Well... Dean and Sam were still a little pissed about Cas using them as bait but Alex thought no one could be as upset about it as Cas had been. He apologized again and again about it after lovemaking and Alex forgave and gently explained to him why it wasn't okay, even though she was pretty sure he'd known it wasn't okay all along. He gave another vague, depressed speech about how he had to do things he hated to save the things worth saving. That was when Alex made a quick decision and ruled out any more war talk that night.

Cas had stayed the whole night with her then left early in the morning very reluctantly. Already, she missed him.

"I wish I could stay here with you. I wish so many things."