A/N: Written for Schermionie's "5, 10, 20, 50, 70, 100 fandoms" challenge on the HPFC. Thanks to my good friend buffyfan1992 for the idea!
Floyd the barber saw everything.
He wasn't an all-knowing God or any egotistical shit like that. It was just the way his shop was placed. As he cut hair, he'd see the hustle and bustle of life outside. Floyd knew when people had fights, and those happened often. He thought of this as a first row seat to the parts of life he never really participated in.
He learned the amusing way that students, lovers, and criminals were the loudest. (The Sons of Anarchy got an honorable mention of being the flashiest of people to pass by his office. But that was probably a given because they somehow liked having their name known while still subconsciously craving some sort of anonymity.)
Students liked hearing the sounds of their own voices. They liked talking so much and loudly that random passers by would either glare at them until their ego deflated long enough to walk away. Sometimes, it got violent. Floyd remembers once having to break up a fight between a young, brunette man boastfully talking to a young woman wearing a long skirt and combat boots and an older, bearded man. Floyd somehow (miraculously, no doubt) missed what started this fistfight. Probably arrogance on the young man's part. In this day and age, who could know for sure what could trigger someone's short fused temper.
"Are you outta your goddamn mind?" Floyd asked the young man, who seemed just a little too proud to wear his black eye.
"Probably," said the young man with a shit-eating grin. Floyd rolled his eyes and sent him off with an ice pack and assurance to the young woman that yes the young man she was with was definitely A-OK. The older man scowled as the two younger people walked off into the distance as if nothing happened. He'd leave too, just because this barbershop place was boring if you weren't getting your hair cut or trimmed or styled.
Floyd predicted they'd start dating the next time he saw them walk past his shop. (He was right. They walked by about three weeks later, soppily gazing into each other's eyes and with their hands tightly intertwined.)
Lovers made the same amount of noise rowdy students made. They'd scream and yell and rant and fucking rave about the things that only mattered to them. People should learn to keep to themselves, but that was probably asking too much of people who found it okay to fight in the middle of the street. His favorite fights were the ones where the husband would try to storm off in an effort to have the last word, but the wife, too proud and too offended to lose, would try to keep the fight going until she won the seeming unwinnable battle of "wits".
Floyd'd sometimes stop his cuts for a brief moment to try and guess what the lovers were fighting about this time. Usually, custody problems ("Why can't you take care of the kid once in a while, Lia? I've got too much shit on my hands and you're not helping ease it, you worthless bitch,"too many men yelled in an exasperated tone, although he couldn't imagine any girl named Lia being a terrible wife. He once dated the prettiest girl named Lia some ten years ago.) and money problems ("There's too much month at the end of our money, I swear!" some couples cried.) were popular choices. Other times, there were fights about jobs ("You're a useless bag of shit, Henry! Get off your lazy ass and help me out," screamed many a frazzled woman looking for relief, except not all bad husbands were Henry. One of Floyd's regulars was a middle aged man named Henry Jenkins, with a loving wife Marianne and three children: Jay, Max and Lily.)
Floyd hated criminals with all of his heart, cause the ones who made the most noise were also the dumbest. He'd never cut slack for those who willingly decided to break the law. Instead of dwelling on their unwanted, unneeded fucking presences, he'd call the police to haul their asses away from his store. Floyd didn't need stupid asses like the criminals of Charming scaring away customers.
Floyd the barber saw everything, and he really didn't mind much.
