*stompstompstomp* Another plot bunny dies! Where this one came from, I don't want to think about too hard... it helps if you know who Yul Brynner was. Pharoah in 'The Ten Commandments', the King of Siam in 'The King And I', go google him if you don't know. I dunno, what are they teaching youngsters in school these days?
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, I just poke 'em to see what happens.
TITLE: Yul Be Sorry
SUMMARY: Sam has had it up to HERE with Dean's pranks - why is his big bro fixated on vandalising his hair? - so he decided not to get mad, but to get even instead. Revenge is a dish best served cold, as the Klingons say. A one-shot.
RATING: T. Erring on the side of caution.
BLAME: The fanfics I write are ENTIRELY the fault of the individuals who keep encouraging me, and herding plot bunnies in my direction. *shakes fist* curse you plot bunnies!
YUL BE SORRY
bortaS bIr jablu'DI' reH QaQqu' nay'
- old Klingon proverb: 'Revenge is a dish best served cold'
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
Part of the problem was that Dean had a poker face that would make Lady Gaga hand in her meat-dress.
Post-prank, there wouldn't be so much as a twitch of one eyebrow hair to suggest that anything had happened. Which is why Sam had long ago – decades ago – developed the habit of never, never, ever leaving their crappy motel accommodation in the morning without at least a cursory glance in a mirror to ensure that he hadn't been the first casualty in yet another prank war.
Why it invariably had to involve Sam's hair, he'd never work out. He figured that the question would be enough to keep a laboratory full of psychologists going for years: Why Is Dean So Fixated On Pranks That Involve Vandalising Sam's Hair? A dissertation in twenty-three volumes, submitted for the degree of PhD… it was like a cat fascinated by a feathery kitty toy, something about Sam's hair just triggered something in Dean's brain, and sooner or later, the claws came out of their own accord…
They'd been in a groove for a number of months; find Hunt, kill fugly, celebrate with burgers and beer and fornication (well, Dean went out and got laid while Sam and his hair and his eyebrows sighed in relief), then move on to the next Hunt. Dean was, basically, contented. Happy, even. And a happy Dean was a playful Dean. Dean's idea of 'playful' translated to 'prank'.
Dean had long since moved on from the Nair-in-the-shampoo incident. They had been but callow youths back then, and his pranking had become more… well, 'sophisticated' wasn't the word, maybe 'creative'. 'Annoying', certainly. The latest run of covert tonsorial interference had included the hot pink streaks added in the middle of the night (light fingers that could lift a wallet or a key without being noticed could also wield a toothbrush in the middle of the night without being noticed), the purple sideburns, the missing sideburn (Dean had derived equal amusement from the expression on Sam's face as he realised that he'd have to lose the other one, too, or walk around lop-sided), the Grandma Rinse that had turned his hair Magic Silver Rose, the nefarious Glitter Incident In Tennessee, the unfortunate Case Of The Albino Eyebrows, and most recently the Amazing Spontaneously Reappearing Bangs On One Side Of Sam's Face.
"Jerk," muttered Sam under his breath, grabbing up the scissors and cutting his hair on the other side so he at least had a fringe that went all the way across.
"Hey, you can't look like a proper emo if your hair's all the same length!" laughed Dean, clearly enjoying himself hugely.
"How would you like it if I messed with your hair in your sleep?" Sam growled at him. "How would you feel if I snuck up on you while you were asleep, and, and, and shaved your head?"
"Sammy, you are not sneaky enough to get the drop on me, so it'll never happen, but if it did, I am so hot, it wouldn't make any difference," Dean told him airily.
Not sneaky enough. No, Sam had to agree, he was not sneaky enough to creep up on Dean and shave his head while his big brother slept. Not sneaky enough. Physically, not sneaky enough.
Intellectually, though, that might be something different.
So Sam said nothing. And did nothing. Nothing that Dean noticed, anyway – he never hung over Sam's shoulder when Sam was poring over a dusty old book in Bobby's library, or poking into the intricacies of an apparently harmless or useless incantation, or looking up comparative taxonomy of obscure herbs. If Bobby had any suspicions, he kept them to himself.
The fact that he couldn't find a spell that would leave someone with a mysteriously shaved head overnight was only a minor setback – Sam enjoyed an intellectual challenge. Actually devising a spell to render his big brother's head bald would just add to the fun.
He took his time, collated his information, double-checked his sources, re-did his translations, gathered his materiel, was extra-conservative with his extrapolations, and exercised patience. The Klingons were right: revenge is a dish best served cold.
Dean might have an impenetrable poker face, but Sam had a poker mind.
Until, on the same day he woke up to discover that his eyebrows were no longer the same lengths, Dean furnished him with the final item he needed.
"Just tell people that your eyebrows are emo, bro," his big brother had smirked, "And they've been cutting themselves to get your attention."
"I hate you," grumbled Sam, reaching for the newspaper, "One of us was definitely adopted."
"Yeah, I never told you because I didn't want to upset you, but Mom and Dad stole you from gypsies," Dean told him, still smirking, "Then when you wouldn't shut up and they tried to take you back, the gypsies didn't want you…"
"I can't go out like this!" stormed Sam, "So go get me breakfast, jerk."
"Nuh-uh," answered Dean, tapping the paper, "There's Yul Brynner movies on TV. See? It's the anniversary of his death." He held up the paper and pointed out the article. "This guy was totally cool. Cool Yul. There's 'The Magnificent Seven' followed by 'The Ten Commandments', and we don't have our next job lined up yet, so," he grinned, "You go get us breakfast, Samantha. Maybe you can get yourself an eyebrow pencil while you're out." He flipped the TV on. "I bet that girl at the drugstore would help you pick out a nice eyeshadow to go with it."
Sam stared at the paper – there it was, the final requirement, a picture of a bald man that had been touched by the target of the spell…
"Fine," he grumbled, casually picking up the paper as his brother settled in for some suitably manly viewing, covering his elation, "After this, I'm going to Bobby's until my eyebrows grow back."
"Get me pie, bitch," grinned Dean.
Sam didn't allow himself to drop his scowl until he was halfway to the Impala. Dean never noticed that he'd taken the paper with him, and didn't bring it back.
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He carefully kept a diluted version of Bitchface #1™ (Dean, I Don't Believe You Just Did/Said/Ate/Punched/Shot/Had Sex With That!) on his face all day, until they reached Bobby's.
"What the hell happened to you?" the old Hunter asked Sam when they arrived.
"It was terrifying, Bobby," Dean told him seriously, "There was this possessed beauty therapist, and Sam went in to have his nails done and his bikini line tidied up, and she just went beserk on his eyebrows…"
"He happened to me," griped Sam, jerking a thumb in Dean's direction. "I'm hoping that if we hang around here for a few days, he might find some way to amuse himself that doesn't involve vandalising me."
"I nearly lost him, Bobby," continued Dean, fishing in the refrigerator for a beer, "She came at him with this electrolysis machine, and was threatening to exfoliate him to death…"
"Dean…"
"…The place was clearly a torture chamber, if I hadn't arrived in the nick of time my baby brother would've been double-cleansed and extracted and tweezered to a horrible end…"
"Dean…"
"…And would've been a beautifully moisturised and hair-free corpse…"
"Idjits," muttered Bobby, shaking his head, as Dean retired to the living room, to watch TV, and Sam retired to the library, ostensibly to do some reading. Bobby watched him go, wondering, but said nothing.
Sam took a small bundle of items with him, including the photo of Yul Brynner that his brother had found. Once he'd established that he wouldn't be disturbed, he located the book he was looking for, set out his items, and began to recite from his notes.
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Sam woke up before Dean did the next morning, partly because he'd gone to bed earlier, and partly because he wanted a quick glimpse of the results of the previous evening's handiwork. His plan was to dress quickly and scoot downstairs, where he wouldn't be close enough to give the game away before Dean discovered his new Cool Yul look, but would still be able to hear the outraged yelling…
So it was something of a let-down when he glanced over to Dean's bed, and saw the scruffy dark blonde hair still very much in place on the snoring head occupying the pillow.
With a small humph, he rolled over, contemplated the ceiling, and started trying to troubleshoot his spell. He was sure he'd gotten it right, the wording, the herbal ingredients, the picture… maybe there was something not exactly right in the translation, he decided. Maybe the combination of items was not in the correct sequence. There were a number of things he could try. Yes, he was disappointed, but this was a minor setback. Revenge is a dish best served cold…
"Mornin', cockeye," drifted across from Dean's bed. His big brother grinned at him, sat up, yawned and stretched. "Ah, another day, and the Living Sex God awakens, to dazzle the world anew with his total awesomeness."
"I'll just go get my sunglasses," muttered Sam, getting out of bed, dressing and heading downstairs. Yeah, the sequence of ingredients, that had to be the problem.
He was in the kitchen, pouring coffee for himself and Bobby, when the ear-splitting scream shattered the quiet of the morning. Without a word, Sam and Bobby raced upstairs.
Dean stood outside the bathroom, his face white, his expression shell-shocked, his mouth hanging open in disbelieving horror.
"Dean!" Sam grabbed his brother, automatically starting to check for injuries, "Dean, what's wrong? What happened?"
"Dean, son?" asked Bobby, eyeing the older Winchester anxiously, "Dean? What's the matter?"
Dean stared at them, dazed, with confused and stricken eyes. His mouth opened and shut a few times, but no words came out.
"Dean?" Bobby tried again, when it became apparent that Dean was not physically hurt, "Dean? Can you tell us, what's the matter?"
Dean drew in a gasping breath, but couldn't speak.
"What's wrong, bro?" coaxed Sam. "Whatever it is, we can't deal with it unless you can tell us what's wrong."
Once more, Dean's voice failed him. Instead, he slowly, reluctantly, looked downwards. Bobby and Sam's eyes followed the track of Dean's horrified stare.
It was only once they were all looking at Dean's groin that he managed to whisper one horrifed word:
"Bald."
