Title: Dean's Haircut
Author: Piratelf
Rating: K
Disclaimer: I do not own the Gilmore Girls or Dean Forester. If I did, Dean would have that short haircut all the time.
Author's Notes: Actually when we first see the haircut, it's been seven weeks since he made love to Rory Gilmore for the second time. I think he kept getting them, hoping that she would come back and have some really good explanation for taking off and not telling him goodbye. Also, I always thought that little conversation Dean has with Luke in the arcade in "Scene in a Mall" gave a little glimpse of what life was like with Lindsay, and it didn't sound too great. To see the haircuts, go to the URL on my Author's Page.
Summary: After Dean got married, he stopped getting his hair cut, then he started again. Why?
The day after Dean made love to Rory Gilmore for the second time, he got a haircut.
He'd been meaning to get one for months. Every Friday he'd take twelve bucks out of his check and stick it in his wallet, intending to do it. But then, dinner time would come around and it was 'Mom' Lister in the kitchen laughing with Lindsay, and 'Dad' Lister somewhere else in the apartment, fixing something that Dean could easily have fixed himself. Then they'd eat and talk about how much was wrong with the apartment and how they needed to move to a town house, and how Lindsay needed a car of her own, and the dry cleaners, and Lindsay's new manicure, or pedicure or dress, and Dean would just nod at appropriate moments and keep shoving food in his mouth to stop him from shouting at them that the incongruity of complaining about not having a big enough house or a second car in the same breath as the description of something as useless and expensive as dry cleaning or Lindsay's newest bout of pampering was insane, and did NO ONE notice that he was working TWO jobs here?!
Then dinner would be over and it would be Lindsay and her mom giggling together in the kitchen again, and Lindsay's dad in Dean's favorite chair, watching golf or bowling or something equally inane and boring on Dean's TV, which he would also complain about. And that twelve dollars in his pocket kept telling Dean that if he didn't get out of there soon, he was certain that tonight would be the night that he would point out to 'Dad' that if he was so bothered by the reception, and picture, and sound, that he had a perfectly good TV at his OWN house that he could be watching instead.
And every night, he opened the door and wondered if anyone would notice. And every night, no one did. It was like he was paying rent to be a guest in the Lister home. Marriage wasn't supposed to be this way. But he had to be at work early in the morning, and he was too tired to figure out how to fix it. So he let the twelve dollars lead him to the arcade, where he would change it into quarters and kill things with extreme prejudice. Until about ten til nine when he would decide if he wanted to slip back in and say goodbye to his in-laws, or wait until nine thirty and say he missed their departure because he was just taking out the garbage, or he'd left something in the car.
So his hair grew longer. But he didn't dare take out another twelve dollars that week, because Lindsay was spending everything in sight, and he was scared he would miss a payment on something and ruin his credit. And there was an unconscious reason as well. Any time he was miserable, as Lane Kim once unwittingly observed, he tended to let his hair grow. It was something to hide behind, a shield between him and the world. All he had to do was drop his head a little and it was as if he had a little space to breathe. He didn't feel on display anymore, as if his hair could cover the target on his back, or the heart on his sleeve.
But, two days after he first made love to Rory Gilmore, he was sitting at dinner, and nothing they said mattered anymore. He had decided. The marriage was unfixable. And he didn't have to tough it out because he no longer thought that if he couldn't make this work, he'd be alone forever. And he didn't hate himself for not loving these three nice people who were invading his home and driving him crazy. He didn't feel despair wondering how he was gonna put up with them for the next fifty years. All he had to do, was find the gentlest way possible to tell Lindsay. Then it would all be over. So, after dinner, he slipped out, as usual, and went down to Ted's and got his hair cut. 'Cause, for the first time since his wedding, he didn't feel the need to kill anything.