Work Text:
July 2033
The strangest things happen on quiet Wednesday evenings.
The kids were upstairs in one of their rooms - putting together a new LEGO model, as of the time last Alex checked - while he and Henry sat in the second-floor living room enjoying a moment to themselves. When they'd first moved into the brownstone Alex had thought having pre-designed areas for a sitting room on the ground floor as well as a living room on the second floor was some nineteenth-century nonsense, but over time he had come to appreciate the separation between a space for entertaining guests and a space for their family that they could make as cozy as they liked. They'd built a new life in an old house, and it included a separation between work and play. It was nice.
"Love?" From the seat behind him, Henry pulls Alex out of his thoughts and back to the present. "Where’d you go?”
They were sitting on the sofa together, Henry posed like a normal human being while Alex had his legs across the length of the cushions, back propped up on Henry’s shoulder. Henry had a book in his hands, while Alex was skimming through articles on his phone about the most recent hot-topic bill floating through Congress.
“Sorry,” Alex says, tipping his head back to get an upside-down view of Henry, who smiles and presses a kiss to his forehead. “Did you say something?”
Henry bookmarks his page and sets the book down. “I was just saying that we need to take the twins backpack shopping sometime soon,” he says. Charlie and Arthur were starting kindergarten in a matter of weeks and Alex and Henry were planning to let them pick their own backpacks as a right of passage, just as their sister had done three years prior.
“Yeah, of course,” Alex says, voice lighting up. Watching five-year-olds get excited over colorful, cheesy little backpacks brought him a special kind of joy, especially when the five-year-olds were his kids. “We don’t have anything planned next Saturday, do we?”
“No, I don’t think so. That sounds great,” Henry answers.
From how Alex is sitting sideways on the sofa, most of the stairs leading up to the third floor are in plain view. As soon as Henry finishes speaking, Alex swears he sees a pair of little feet hop up a step and back onto the landing, out of sight.
The kids were up to something.
Alex pretends not to notice. “We should remember to get the good crayons this year too, whatever they started selling at the corner store last year was waxy and sad.” They’d been gathering school supplies in preparation for the upcoming year for a while now. It would be the first year all three kids would be in real school. It was a bittersweet end to one phase of their lives, but they were more than a little excited for the next one.
The feet on the stairs reappear, going down three steps this time without retreating. It’s Emma, Alex can now tell. She’s standing crooked, nervously rubbing her heel against the top of her other foot. Whatever is happening, she’s afraid to tell them.
Henry carries on, oblivious to the pending intrusion. “I agree. And I don’t know what third graders are doing with graph paper, but Emma needs graph paper this year.” The aforementioned child takes a few more steps down the stairs, peering through the white posts with wide eyes. “We ought to start a list.”
“We should,” Alex agrees, trying to hide the smile in his voice. His husband is making lists, his daughter is being suspicious and cute. There was a time in his life when he never thought he would have this.
Henry laughs under his breath. “Alex, do you see the child lurking on the stairs?” he says quietly.
Alex smiles. “When the hell did we become real functioning adults?”
A gasp comes from the stairs. “That’s a bad word!” Emma says, before immediately slapping a hand over her mouth. She just couldn’t resist the temptation of catching her dad’s slip. “Oh no.”
“I do indeed see the child lurking on the stairs,” Alex says, looking back to watch Henry smile and shake his head. He turns his attention to Emma, who has now finally made her way to the lowest step and is hanging off the post. “That was a bad word, I’m sorry. Hey Em, what’s up?”
Emma nods and rolls her shoulders back in a frightening duplication of Henry when he has to say something he doesn’t want to. “I was picked to tell you to come upstairs,” she says, voice low. “And please don’t be mad.”
As soon as the words are out of her mouth Emma has flown back up the stairs and into the recesses of the house, leaving Alex and Henry in fear of whatever the hell just happened. They take the stairs slowly, not sure if they should expect a spilled drink, a dead body, or anything in between.
On the landing, they stop in their tracks to admire the scene before them. Spread across the floor, all the way from one end of the hall to the other, is a trail of freshly cut red hair.
- 20 Minutes Earlier -
At five years old, Charlotte was used to the attention that her hair brought her, but that doesn’t mean she liked it. While Arthur and Emma had curly brown hair - Emma’s just a few shades lighter than Arthur’s - Charlie’s head was covered in bright copper-red waves. At preschool teachers complimented her all the time, and the other kids liked to play with her hair more than anyone else’s.
One day, she’d overheard her aunt Nora talking about how funny it was that Emma and Arthur had turned out with such similar hair while Charlie was the odd one out. Charlie and Arthur were the twins, she’d said, so it made the most sense for them to look alike instead. And since Alex had such dark hair, her red hair “came out of nowhere.”
Charlie didn’t get it - Henry was the only blond, and nobody was pointing any fingers at him for being different or offering him as the explanation for her own light hair. At least her grandma Ellen's hair used to have hints of red in it, according to the photographs. That made her feel a little better.
As she washed her hands, Charlie stared at her hair in the bathroom mirror. It was getting long, she thought. Really really long. She should ask for a haircut soon. Unless...
There were scissors in a shopping bag in her parent's office - they’d been gathering school supplies for a month now and had let Charlie pick her own pair of safety scissors. Perfectly lime green and purple.
Perfect for doing something about all this hair.
Stepping into the hallway, Charlie looked both ways for bystanders before running to the stairs. She crept up the steps slowly, making sure to climb over the squeakiest boards. Technically they are allowed to be on the fourth floor without their parent’s permission, but they aren’t allowed to go in the office, and Charlie isn’t a very good liar. She can’t afford to get caught.
At the end of the hall, the office door isn’t even closed. It’s like her parents were inviting trouble, honestly.
Charlie finds the scissors easily, in a bag on the edge of the little table in the corner between Alex and Henry’s desks, where the new school supplies steadily accumulate every summer. She borrows the grown-up scissors from the pencil holder on Henry’s desk and uses them to open her own pair. His scissors may be sharper and are probably better for haircuts, but this is personal. She needs to use her scissors.
She makes sure everything is back where she found it before returning downstairs, carefully pointing the scissors towards the ground as she walks, just as she was told.
Back in her room, Charlie shuts the door and turns to the mirror.
Right now her hair was down to her mid-back, almost to her waist if she stretched out the waves. Her hair was easily the most noticeable thing about her. That had to change. Maybe she could take it to her shoulders - that’s how June cut hers, and it was very pretty.
Charlie grabs a lock of hair, aims the scissors, pinches her eyes shut, and makes the first cut.
Within minutes, it is done. She steps to the mirror to admire her handiwork. It’s short, and it’s choppy - really, really, choppy, and some pieces are much shorter or still longer than she intended.
Her smile fades to a frown. Seeing what she’s done, reality rushes back with a similar feeling as walking down the stairs and thinking there’s another step when there isn’t. Oh no.
She looks down at her hair - littering the ground, dusted on her clothes - and remembers that this, what she just destroyed, is something people love about her. Her parents love her hair. They’re going to be so mad. This was a mistake.
With a defeated whine, Charlie throws her scissors under her bed, listening as they skitter across the hardwood and hit the wall with a thump. She can’t put her hair back on as much as she tries. She needs to fix this, and fast, before anyone finds out. She needs help.
Her frantic strategizing is interrupted by the sound of light bickering from down the hall in Emma’s room, where she had left her siblings to their games only minutes ago. Arthur and Emma were always useful. Maybe their magic extended to poor hair choices. Maybe they could make her mistakes go away.
Charlie runs from her end of the hallway down to her sister’s room, cut hair falling off her shoulders as she goes. She skids to a stop in the doorway. “I did something bad and need help.”
They look up from their LEGO set, which in Charlie’s absence has begun to resemble a space shuttle.
“Oh no,” Emma says. She stands up and starts to run her fingers through Charlie’s hair, but Charlie pulls away, crossing her arms. “This is bad.”
“Wow,” Arthur says nonjudgmentally. He doesn’t try to touch her, just peers from a short distance. “Why’d you do it?”
Charlie shrugs. “I dunno,” she lies. Eventually she’ll tell them that she hates her hair and feels left out, but not yet. “I didn’t mean to.”
“How do you cut your hair on accident?” Arthur presses.
“I don’t know!”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t-”
“Wait,” Emma holds out a hand between them. “Wait wait wait.” She turns to Charlie. “Maybe we can make it a little better. Where are the scissors?”
With a huff, Charlie plops down on the floor in front of the mirror and once again surveys the damage. There was still enough length to do something with, it was just so messy. Her hair was never messy before.
“I threw them under my bed,” Charlie admits. To the young siblings, the undersides of their beds were terrifying voids from which nothing ever returned without adult intervention. She’ll miss the pretty scissors, but eternal damnation felt appropriate for their crimes. “They’re gone forever. Em, don’t you have scissors?”
“No,” Emma says. “I just got big scissors but they’re upstairs.”
Arthur sits down next to Charlie and looks in the mirror, leaving Emma to pace and think. “If we can’t fix it, we have to tell our dads.” He looks at Charlie, who pouts back. “Sorry Charlie.”
“I don’t want to tell them.” Charlie touches the ends of her hair. One section in front is cut nearly diagonally. Maybe she would have done a better job if she’d kept her eyes open. “They’ll be sad.”
Emma sits on Charlie’s other side. “They’re going to find out eventually. It’s better if you tell them.”
“Yeah,” Charlie sighs. “I just don’t want them to be sad.”
“I know.”
She turns to Emma. “Can you tell them? Please?” Charlie asks.
That’s what big sisters do, isn’t it? They try to take any weight they can hold off the shoulders of the little ones.
“Yeah, okay,” Emma says. With one last glance in the mirror, she stands and heads for the door. “Stay here.”
- Now -
Alex and Henry remain frozen for a moment, trying to figure out how to proceed.
It’s not just small pieces of red hair on the floor, oh no - little Charlie, the living definition of go big or go home, had in fact gone all-in, cutting some pieces at least six or so inches long. It was a little bit funny, but at the same time, they were afraid to see what was left to work with.
Alex exhales, stifling a laugh into his hand.
“I’m not sure this is funny,” Henry says, kneeling to examine the evidence. “Our daughter has made our house into a crime scene.” An outburst of spirited bickering like only siblings can manage echoes from down the hall. Despite himself, he chuckles. “And it sounds like she has accomplices.”
Henry and Alex follow their children’s murmurs right to Emma’s bedroom. The kids look up when their parents enter and Arthur scoots aside, giving them a full view of Charlie, sitting on the lilac rug in front of the mirror with even more hair scattered around her.
“Oh, Charlie.” Alex sits on his knees, gently reaching out holding Charlie’s face in his hands. The haircut is bad - most of the hair falls just below her chin, but bits and pieces are still past her shoulders, and a few are closer to her ears. But, most importantly, she doesn’t seem to have hurt herself throughout the course of her impromptu trim.
“I’m sorry,” Charlie murmurs, chin tucked to her chest. Her pretty brown eyes are wide, tears brimming at the edges and threatening to fall across her already wet cheeks. “I thought it would be good to make people look at my hair less, but then it was bad and I thought you'd be mad. Please don’t be mad.”
Henry kneels next to them. “We’re not mad, love. But please don’t do something like this again. If you want a haircut, just ask us.”
Charlie sniffs, then turns out of Alex’s reach to look in the mirror again. She shakes her head. “I won’t do it again, I promise. I don’t like it.”
"Okay," Henry says. "Thank you."
"What do you think about going to get your hair fixed tomorrow?" Alex asks.
Charlie nods. “Okay.”
Alex wants to ask more about why she cut her hair, but that conversation doesn’t require bystanders.
Henry seems to be on the same page. He turns to Arthur and Emma, who have been shockingly quiet as they watch the drama unfold. “Can you two go play in another room, please?”
“But-” Arthur starts.
“No,” Emma says, grabbing his hand and pulling him into the hall. “Bye!”
And then there were three.
“What do you mean you thought it would be better if people looked at your hair less?” Alex asks. Henry sits down on the floor properly, positioning himself so the three of them are in a triangle on the rug.
Charlie, for once, takes her time to respond, staring at the floor as she speaks. “People look at my hair at school, and the store, and I don’t like it. I’m the only one with red hair,” she sniffs again. “So I wanted less of it.”
Alex sighs. She feels different. And there’s nothing that they can say to really reassure her - her hair is a part of her, and it will be forever. He supposes he should tell the truth. “Charlie, baby, look at me,” he says. She does, eyes still wet. “Your hair is beautiful. And you’re right, there aren’t a lot of people with red hair. But that doesn’t make you different in a bad way, it makes you special.”
She nods, considering. It’s not clear if she believes them. “Are you sure you’re not mad?”
“We’re sure,” Alex says.
“We promise.” Henry shuffles forward, holding out his arms. “Can I have a hug?” Charlie nods, and climbs right into his arms.
Eventually, she settles in Henry’s lap. Her tears have stopped but she still looks deeply upset, and she can’t seem to stop touching the jagged remains of her hair. It makes Alex’s heart clench.
Henry bends slightly to kiss the top of Charlie’s head. “Did you know that when I was just a little younger than you, your aunt Bea cut my hair?”
“Really?” Charlie’s head snaps up. Alex laughs - he knew Henry and his siblings had gotten into trouble when they were little, but this was a new one.
“Oh yes,” Henry says, lost in a memory. “I didn’t like it at the time, but looking back now, I think it’s funny.”
Alex smirks, scooting closer to put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “And I’m sure if we ask nicely, your Gran can send us some pictures.”
“Really?” Charlie exclaims, sitting up with a start. “I want to see!” Henry is going to be embarrassed once the pictures come in but their daughter has stopped actively mourning the ginger ruins on her head, so this is a win.
“Yes,” Henry rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “There were several pictures. We can ask for some tomorrow.”
“We need all the pictures,” Alex says. He stands, holding at a hand for Charlie to join him. “Why don’t we see if we can fix your hair up a little bit before the hairdresser tomorrow?”
Charlie looks down at her remaining hair - or, well, she tries too. It’s too short now for her to see much of anything without a mirror. “Yeah, we should,” she declares. “It’s all… messy.”
They laugh. “It is a little messy,” Henry says, preparing to usher Charlie upstairs. “But it will be alright.”
That evening Henry trims Charlie’s hair into something manageable. She was remarkably calm throughout the whole affair, only finally having a proper cry about the situation once it was all over.
They call their hairdresser ahead of time to give her some warning, but within half an hour of having Charlie in the chair she’s shaped the child-style cut into a short but cute chin-length bob. With a dramatic part and a bow or headband, the shortest pieces are well-hidden. Despite the path it took to get there, Charlie is elated by the end result. Her hair is short and less noticeable, and from the start, that was all she really wanted.
But the shoe has to drop somewhere. By the weekend, Alex and Henry have gathered all the scissors in the house - even the pair thrown under Charlie’s bed - and put them in the back of a drawer in the office, locking it tight and hiding the key, never to be seen again. If the kids have to borrow scissors at school for a few weeks, then, well. So be it.