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Rhonda’s eyebrows raise in disbelief, “You can’t tell me you’re not a little curious, I’ve seen the way you look at my box dyes.” Her hands are on her hips, eyes flickering between Dean and the bottle of hair bleach on the counter.
Dean feels cornered, despite being closest to the bathroom door and able to walk out at will. He thinks about how Rhonda’s hair has become a canvas, how he feels envious of her ability to change her appearance on a whim. He’s a little curious about how it would feel to be able to control some tiny aspect of his life – autonomy, he remembers from last week’s vocabulary words.
He wonders if he’s autonomous – if he has any sense of self at all outside of being John’s son and John’s trusted soldier and Sammy’s big brother. What color would you dye your hair, if given the chance? Do you even have a favorite color? He thinks about it for a moment before picking blue at random. Blue is nice enough – calm, cool, and the opposite of the fire red of his nightmares. Blue like sturdy denim, like the sky, like the chipping paint in Bobby’s living room. See, I’m autonomous. I’d dye my hair blue.
He’s staring off into the distance until Rhonda’s hands take hold of his jaw and direct his attention to her face instead.
“Where’d you go, space cadet?” She jokes.
“Nothing, nowhere. Let’s do it.” It’s a sudden declaration, blurted out into the tile and laminate of the tiny bathroom they’re both standing in. Dean flinches, surprised at his own voice.
Rhonda squints at him, and suddenly he can’t handle being scrutinized.
He kisses her, hoping it’ll serve as a distraction.
-.-.-.
As it turns out, having Rhonda’s hands in his hair is an experience. She focuses on bleaching the ends, but occasionally, she’ll run her short nails across his scalp, scratching gently and sending bolts of pleasure down his spine. He feels tingly, like his body is thrumming with energy – he wonders if this is how and why cats purr.
He finds that he can’t keep his eyes open.
“Falling asleep on me, baby boy?” Rhonda teases, hands suddenly absent from Dean’s hair.
Dean has to bite his tongue to keep from whining at the loss.
“We’re all done, just hold tight for half an hour while it develops. C’mon, you can help me make dinner.” She disposes of her plastic gloves and rinses out the yogurt container she’d repurposed as a mixing bowl.
After a dinner of mac and cheese, Dean washes the bleach out and looks over Rhonda’s rainbow of KoolAid packets. He picks berry blue, passing it to Rhonda and letting her mix it with conditioner and spike it through his towel-dried hair.
He feels impossibly light, like he’s sucked the helium out of a balloon.
He feels autonomous.
-.-.-.-
John calls him at 7pm; expects him hunt-ready by 8. Dean leaves Rhonda’s apartment at 7:05, arrives at Bobby’s house at 7:15, and spends 15 minutes in the shower scrubbing his hair with the charcoal shampoo he’d been saving for this exact circumstance. The blue comes out little by little, leaving only the bleached blonde tips behind. He towels dry, throws a baseball cap on for good measure, and packs his belongings in a hurry. He’s stepping off of Bobby’s porch at 7:45, right as he hears the low rumble of the Impala crunching along the gravel driveway of the salvage yard.
“Shifter in Omaha. You’re driving; I haven’t slept in a couple days.” John says in place of a greeting.
“Yes sir.” Some twisted part of Dean is thankful for the promise of a quiet, uneventful journey. After weeks of easygoing conversation and comfortable silence, he’s not necessarily looking forward to John talking at him.
Again, he feels guilty. Hunting saves people and he’s been avoiding it so he can do what? Get some education certificate, fuck around, and pretend to live a normal life?
Guilt curls around his spine. He’s been irresponsible. He has one job and he can’t even reliably carry through with it without getting called away by the siren call of a couple days off. John has run himself ragged picking up the slack – like always, like he always has to do because Dean has proven himself unreliable and unworthy of John’s trust.
He pulls over to vomit once he’s sure John is asleep.
-/.-.-.-
“The hell happened to your hair?”
Eventually, the hat had to come off. Dean is just glad that John hasn’t started drinking yet – a small miracle given how badly the case is going.
“Answer me. What possessed you to want to look like some boy-band reject. Like some kinda-”
“I’ll dye it back.” He cuts his father off mid-sentence, unwilling to hear the rest.
“Are you taking an attitude with me, boy?” John is scowling, but there’s a sick light in his eyes like he’s excited for the challenge.
“No sir, sorry sir.”
John sends him out to the nearest liquor store – three blocks away and five dollars short.
The cashier calls him Justin Timberlake.
-.-.-..-.-.
The shifter takes the form of John, honing in on Dean like a hellhound. It corners him into an alley, boxing him against the rough brick wall.
“Rebelling against daddy by dying your hair? What are you, some teenage girl? Gonna start talking to bad boys and dressing like a whore?” It grabs at his head, sliding its fingers through his hair, cupping his jaw, running its thumb over his cheekbone. The gesture feels overwhelming and unfamiliar.
“You could kill me, you know. Drive that silver knife of yours through my ribs. But you can’t, can you? Daddy’s little girl can’t bear to kill me while I’m wearing daddy’s skin. I’m proud of you, princess.”
Dean closes his eyes, shaking. It isn’t John, it isn’t John. John would never say something like that, especially after last night’s conversation. Dean had never even come close to making John proud, despite his constant efforts.
He stabs into the shifter’s neck.
The shifter gurgles, melting into a wet pile of skin.
John finds Dean an hour later, sitting against the wall, head in his slime-covered hands.
“You haven’t cleaned it up yet? Did the hair dye give you brain damage or are you just lazy?”
-.-.-.-
The trip back to Sioux Falls is uncomfortably quiet. John drives the whole way, refusing to even look at Dean.
“Next time we’re taking your brother with us. It’s been too long, you’re both getting rusty.” He says, pulling into Singer Salvage. It’s the only thing he’s said all trip.
“Yes sir.” Dean nods. Sammy would be pissed, but if dad wanted him to come along, there wasn’t any point in arguing. Hopefully John would have the courtesy to spring it on them over a weekend so that Sam wouldn’t be missing any classwork.
Again, he’s hit with a wave of guilt. Stop pretending to be a normal boy, you have a responsibility to your family.
He drives out to the corner store and buys light brown hair dye close enough to his natural shade that nobody would be able to tell the difference. It’s seven dollars that could have gone toward food, but it’s his decision to dye it back. Autonomy.
He doesn’t call Rhonda for a week, and that’s his choice too.
-.-.-.-
“C’mon lawboy. Once you get into your boring law school, you won’t be able to do this. Live a little! Even Dean’s done it.” Rhonda shakes the bottle of red dye at Sam.
“As long as it’s out before graduation. Dad would have a heart attack.” Sam shrugs. It wouldn’t even be that bad if dad did find out; just another reason to get mad and yell at him. Not like he hadn’t been the family disappointment since birth anyway.
Rhonda gives him one of her too-big black shirts kept specifically for hair dye purposes. Sam swims in it, but it feels warmer and safer than his usual layers of flannel and denim and canvas. He sits on the bathtub ledge and looks up at Rhonda as she mixes the dye in her yogurt container.
“It’s gonna look so good, Sammy, you have no idea. Plus with the flippy ends and your cute little bangs,” she pauses to pinch his cheek, “you’ll have all the guys and gals wrapped around your finger.”
-.-.-.-
To say Dean freaks out is an understatement. For a moment, Sam sees John reflected in Dean’s shorter frame, shining nuclear-bright.
“Do you have any idea how hard dad is going to come down on you for this? Hell, he’ll probably come down on me too! It was bad enough when he saw that Rhonda had bleached mine, but red? Bright red? Sam, he’s going to kill us.” Dean shakes him by the shoulders, voice more desperate by the second.
He’s nervous. There’s an invisible timer in his head; when it reaches a certain number, John will show up again and call them away. Dean’s job is to guess what number it’s counting toward and get them both ready for the impending hunt. His job is to read John’s mind from hundreds of miles away and to shape himself into whatever weapon John needs at a moment’s notice.
The pressure builds until he’s jittery with paranoia.
“I’m not coming on a hunt until I’ve graduated! School is too important right now; exams are coming up, and I can’t afford to take a break.” Sam argues, shoving back against Dean’s hold.
“Sammy, please. If dad wants us on a hunt, we have to go on the hunt. Tapping out isn’t an option. We have a responsibility to kill monsters and keep what’s left of our family together.” Dean pulls Sam into a tight hug, “Once dad kills the thing that killed mom, we’ll be good, we’ll be a normal family and you can go to law school and live a normal life. We just have to trust dad’s lead for now. Please.”
Sam leans his head on Dean’s shoulder, feeling the fight drain from his bones. How long, Dean? It’s been eighteen years; how much longer do we have to endure this? “I’m leaving for college, Dean. I’m tapping out regardless of what dad kills.”
“I know,” Dean takes a deep breath, “If you need dad’s signature, let me know. Bobby and I can forge it for you.”
Sam nods. “Thank you.”
“Anything for you, you know that.”
-.-.-.-
Dean and Rhonda are back on speaking terms again, which means they’re back on fucking terms again.
Bobby helps Dean make a casserole as an apology.
Rhonda drags both her boys into her tiny living room so they can eat it together, curled around the TV and each other like a pile of kittens. She plays with Sam’s hair, twirling it around her fingers and mussing it up, much to Sam’s fond annoyance.
Later, after Dean sends Sammy home in the Camero – assuring him he’d get a ride home in the morning from Rhonda – he offers a private apology and licks the forgiveness from behind Rhonda’s teeth.
-.-.-.-
The imaginary timer still ticks in Dean’s head until one day, the alarm goes off.
They’re at Bobby’s – not Rhonda’s, by some divine miracle – when Dean hears the telltale growl of the Impala.
He grabs Sam and runs to the bathroom, “C’mon, we gotta, we gotta –” The scissors are in the medicine cabinet, to the left of the Dixie cups and to the right of the spare toothbrushes Bobby keeps around for them. His hands are shaking as he shoves Sam onto the closed toilet lid and begins snipping the red out of his hair. It isn’t his usual work by a long-shot – it’s choppy and uneven at best – but it’s quick; before Sam can process anything, Dean is pulling his back up and rushing him to the front door, grabbing both of their pre-packed bags.
John is already angry, “You weren’t ready. You’re rusty and it’s going to get you killed; I knew letting you stay here was a bad idea. Bobby’s too damn soft on you. We’re back on the road from now on.”
“No!” Dean yells, before Sam can open his mouth. “I-I mean, just a couple more weeks so Sammy can graduate, please. I’ll come with you, just please let him finish school.”
“You’re more of a liability than a help. Still, I have to keep you sharp, I guess. I’ll get you when I need you, so I expect you to be ready next time. No second chances, you hear me? And I want you to practice shooting with your other hand. Y’aint coming on another hunt with me until you can hit your mark with your left hand just as good as with your right. I’ll take your brother instead.”
It’s a bad deal, but one that Dean has to take for Sam. Anything for you. He figures he’s fucked up Sam’s life enough that the least he can do is ensure that the kid graduates.
Sam looks at Dean from the backseat, unshed tears of gratitude shimmering in his eyes. He blinks them away, and Dean wonders if it was just a trick of the light. There’s no reason for Sam to be so thankful yet – Dean still has to uphold his end of the bargain. There’s still a chance he might mess up and ruin it all.
He tries to communicate this silently to Sam, asking for preemptive forgiveness. Sam shakes his head.
John ignores both of them until they switch seats so Dean can drive through the night.
“You don’t have to do this,” Sam whispers, sliding all the way to the edge of his seat so he can whisper directly into Dean’s ear. It’s barely louder than a breath; quiet enough that it won’t wake John.
“Yes I do. I told you I’d do anything, and I mean anything. You’re going to graduate, and I’ll be right there cheering you on with Bobby. We can even bring Rhonda.” Dean breathes back. “I’m going to be the proudest brother in the whole stadium. I promise you.”
Sam goes quiet; Dean thinks he’s fallen asleep until there’s a fluffy head of hair on his shoulder. He takes one hand off the wheel to ruffle it. “Take a break from research and sleep while he’s asleep. I won’t tell.”
He waits until Sammy’s asleep to get introspective. He thinks about Sam’s hair, then his own – thinks about hunting and choices and John’s demands. He considers the choice John gave him earlier – You could train and be ready or else I’ll take Sammy instead – and what a rarity it was for John to offer up a choice at all.
Am I autonomous?
Sam already made his decision about hunting and college ages ago. Sammy is a paragon of autonomy, Dean notes, throwing in a vocabulary word from this week for good measure. Dean made his decision about his own high school graduation because of dad – not autonomous – but deciding to hunt so that Sammy didn’t have to was entirely his decision -autonomous.
He’d be ready next time. For Sam’s sake as well as his own.