several feral raccoons in a trenchcoat

Dennis knew that his mom and dad - both for their own entirely separate reasons - were secretly relieved that he'd never grown facial hair.

When he'd been little, he'd waited for the day he'd grow facial hair with something between dread and anticipation. Dread, because he wasn't sure he wanted his face to change. Mama said he was beautiful. She stroked his face and kissed his cheeks and held him, and nobody else really did that. If that's what being pretty meant, he wanted to be and stay pretty. He also thought about how she might react to him getting little prickly spikes all over his face, and something cold and slimy-feeling started to squirm in his stomach. He thought about how she'd reacted to him taking the scissors to his hair that one time, and he tried to immediately squash the possibility of him growing stubble.

But the flip side of the coin was a little thrill of excitement. Because mama might be angry, but she might also…stop. But he didn't necessarily want her to stop, he didn't want to give up cooking with her in the kitchen or going shopping with her, or having cuddles with her. He wasn't even sure he wanted to stop wearing all the clothes she got him. Some of them were pretty. And that was good.

But it would be nice to not be forced into some of the very frilly dresses. It would be nice not to be expected to cook and clean and maintain their home for his father and brothers, who were never expected to lift a finger in Dennis and his mama's domain. It would be nice to be able to go outside with them and roll around in the grass, and get dirty and ride the tractor and work with the cows and not have everyone treat him like a strange, pathetic creature and -

And maybe she would stop altogether. He wasn't sure whether the feeling in his stomach was dread or desperation.

***

In the end, Dennis had waited and waited for nothing. Nobody had bothered to explain it to him. He had just watched as all the other boys at church his age started showing up with patchy growth and scabbed-over nicks, and his own face remained stubbornly, spitefully smooth.

It was probably for the best, he told himself. He wasn't sure how his father would have coped with teaching him how to shave. Despite all the tight-lipped looks and whispered arguments he had with mama about Dennis' hair, his clothes, the little nicknames she had for him, the way that she'd made him into her very own dolly, he never actually put a stop to any of it.

He already had four big, strong sons, and Dennis had been the uninvited late-comer. So if his wife needed to console herself by making their youngest her very own little girl? He'd turn a blind eye for the sake of the peace of the household. As Dennis had got older, the way his father looked at him betrayed more and more discomfort. He knew he was looking at his son, but he was also looking at long golden curls, a pretty face, and often, frilly dresses and bows. Dennis knew he would ultimately have felt that he was teaching his daughter how to shave, and it would have been beyond uncomfortable for both of them.

Dennis never really understood why that broke his heart just a little.

His mama was actually the first one to introduce him to a razor, and the irony never stung any less.

“It's not proper for a young lady to have all that dirty hair showing under her arms. You have so many pretty dresses, but you're of an age now where you need to start taking care to clean yourself so you can still wear them.”

Dennis had figured out very quickly that when his mama said ‘clean’ she really meant ‘clean-shaven'. He had never figured out why he'd cried when she'd first taught him how to do that, barging into the bathroom and lifting his arms from the bath water and wrinkling her nose at what she found.

(Jack and Robby had once incredibly gently tried to help Dennis verbalise exactly what had caused him so much distress.

“I know it's a word with a lot of weight attached to it. And whatever you feel about it is okay. But do you think it might be helpful if we thought about this in terms of abuse?”

“No.”

“Okay, that's alright, Dennis. We don't have to label it as anything right now. We're just trying out words and seeing what helps you frame this in a way that makes sense.”

“How about we say it was crossing some boundaries that you didn't want to be crossed? Does that feel like a better fit?”

“...yeah. I, um - yeah. We could say that.”)

***

Dennis liked to watch Jack and Robby shave. It was like watching a comforting ritual he'd never been a part of, like sitting on the stairs and listening to the clink and laughter of parents having dinner with their friends.

Robby mostly used an electric shaver to keep his beautiful beard to the same length, and to keep the edges neat and stop the hair from encroaching where he didn't want it.

“He's the hairiest fucker I've ever known. I didn't even know hair could grow in some of the places he sprouts it.”

“I don't know if I'd be talking like that if my hands looked like Hobbit feet, but we all make choices.”

Jack mostly shaved whenever he remembered. He didn't like to have an actual beard, but he seemed perfectly content to go around anywhere between clean-shaven and something verging on what Robby called a 10 o'clock shadow.

Dennis didn't like to make himself known when he watched them at the bathroom sink. They knew he was there, of course, but they seemed to know that what would bring him the most peace was for them to carry on with their routine as if he wasn't hovering at the edge of the doorway and staring like he was trying to memorise the steps. Something about watching the routine settled that wriggling thing in his stomach, made him feel like he was part of something that had been denied him, even though he wasn't participating and nothing had been denied, that made no sense.

Jack's the one who first shakes up the routine. He's looking in the mirror and lathering up his face on one of his 10 o'clock shadow shave days, and his gaze catches on Dennis’ reflection as he lingers in the doorway. He'd usually let his eyes wander smoothly over Dennis as though he didn't exist, and the difference today made his pulse tick upwards in his ears.

“You always gotta start with a sharp blade,” Jack sounds like he's missing, gaze returning to his own reflection in the mirror as something constricts in Dennis' throat. “You start dragging a blunt one down your face and you're pretty much guaranteed a shitty job and some razor burn.”

Dennis actually kind of knew this because of his - his armpits. But nobody had taught him that, his mama only really concerned that he be hairless. It had taken Dennis years to figure out why his skin was so red and irritated.

But hearing it in Jack's voice, so plain and easy, only made that feeling in his throat more intense.

“I like to kinda mark out a clean edge here before I start,” Jack makes tiny, precise lines with the razor, on his cheekbone just about level with the middle of his ear. “It's a matter of taste, obviously, but that's where I like my starting point to be.”

The water in the sink sloshes with a peaceful little tinkling sound as Jack swirls the razor in it. “Make sure to rinse your razor between passes - and make sure the sink is clean before you fill it. Don't wanna mess around with getting bacteria in there. And you want your water to be hot.”

Dennis isn't sure why his vision blurs slightly as he watches Jack pass the razor over his stubble, hearing the rasp as it passes over his skin and rids him of unwanted hair.

“When you get to the neck, you always wanna pass the razor down.” Jack's hand, strong and capable and covered with a fine layer of its own dark hair, dwarfs the razor, but he holds it as surely and delicately as he does a scalpel. He smooths it down his neck, and Dennis swallows.

“These razors,” Jack speaks softly as he moves it to his upper lip, holding brief eye contact with Dennis in the mirror, and it reminds him so much of when Jack's talking him through a new procedure that he nods, helpless and fragile and about to shatter for some inexplicable reason, “they have one blade on the back, so it makes it easier to get in the little nooks by the nose and mouth.”

He watches as Jack finishes up, as the lather disappears in the silence of the room, broken only by Dennis' slightly unsteady breathing and the swish of the razor in the water.

When he's done, and he pats his face dry, he turns and looks at Dennis himself, not through the flipped reflection of him in the mirror.

“You want to try?” His voice is so gentle, and he's holding the razor out to Dennis, whose hands and lips are trembling, and there's a part of him that wants so desperately to take it, to have Jack stand behind him and carefully guide his hand as he moves the blade over his own face, but -

“No - no, there's -”

No point, ultimately. His face is as smooth as it was when he mama used to call him Dee, when his brothers used to sling the name back at him like a sharp rock. It's something he wants, but it's something he wants to need to do. It would feel like a grotesque performance now, like he was making a mockery of what Jack was doing for him.

“Thank you,” he warbles out, and Jack's face practically folds in on itself in fondness and something else, something that looks like it hurts, as he smiles and reaches out to cup Dennis' face in his hands.

His thumbs wipe away the wetness that gathers beneath Dennis' eyes, and he brings their foreheads together, bumps them gently.