Chapter Text
“I just don’t get it.”
“I’m an eagle. What’s not to get?” Dean answers, staring at the blot on an otherwise decent set of features. The mirror is making it easy – it was smashed recently and has a large y-shape crack running down the middle and sauntering to the left, splitting his face into unequal thirds with his nose taking up the lower right quadrant. Picasso couldn’t have done it better.
“You’re a handsome man! Eagle or not. It’s not a reason to cut up your face.”
There’s every reason, not the least of which because the photo above the bill is what’s drawing tickets and income. A regular spot on the radio is good for a singer’s exposure, but not much else when you don’t have a sponsor. He’s lucky the radio gig came with a mattress and a roof over his head. Sleeping on Lou’s sofa has given him a stiff neck to go with his flattened nose.
“They don’t actually cut up the face!" A beat. "I don’t think they do, anyway...”
Dean spares a sideways glance in the uppermost fragment of the mirror, catching the reflection of the kid stretched out on the end of said mattress with his head hanging over the edge, face half-hidden by a comic book – Dean’s comic book. He briefly wonders what Betty would say if she knew he had an 18-year-old former cheerleader sprawled across his bed – or that he’d bought him a strawberry malted in the coffee shop earlier. Probably nothing good.
He looks back at his face, zeroing in on the area in question, framed in broken glass. He wonders if it would have been half the problem it seems to be now without the boxing; or without a career where his face was a selling point instead of his hands. He had made a better croupier than a boxer. Some days, he feels like a better singer than a croupier.
Of course there’s no use wondering whether it would have been a problem in the past. It is a problem now. If he’s going to actually bring in some real money he can send home and not just whatever he can pool from loose change in dusty corners and back room card games.
“I’m an eagle and we’re gonna fix it,” Dean says. There. Decision made. He privately heaves a sigh of relief. The big question now is ‘how’ and which ‘we’ he can convince to help him pay a doctor to fix it. Lou, his manager, can probably chip in but not for the whole thing, which means relying on the capriciousness of whoever else he can bring in. This is going to take some work.
“I still say it’s a bad idea.”
Which is a fine statement for someone whose own living is founded on making funny faces. Dean stashes his impatience behind a cool mask, grabs a comb from the table and starts straightening his hair.
“You just don’t want competition,” he says, keeping his eyes away from his nose.
“What’s that?”
“A good-looking kid like you doesn’t want someone else thinning the herd. Perfectly understandable – I get it.” He also gets that he needs about an inch off the bridge of his nose to be presentable. “Just wait ‘till they fix my ugly mug, kid – you’re going to be in so much trouble.”
After an unprecedented two minutes of silence, his gaze wavers to his companion’s reflection.
It’s a good thing that Jerry’s already lying down, he thinks. By the look on the kid’s face, even upside-down, a stiff breeze could knock him flat.