Oh, Tom. by TheeFellowTraveler

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It’s six on the dot on a Wednesday morning, the huff and puff of a TV production is already up and running, and Tom Welling just opened the door to the hair & makeup trailer.

"Good morning," he says as a greeting and swings his left arm around my back, his right currently occupied with four coffees which are still steaming as he pulls me in for a quick embrace. "God, that thunderstorm last night really was something. Did you get any sleep?" he asks, already onto his next task: taking off his baseball cap and putting the coffees down onto a foldable desk.

Before I have time to reply, or to even come up with a question of my own, he is tossing the cap onto a coat stand and running his fingers through his grown-out hair.

I watch him with marvel; first and foremost because, hello, it's Tom Welling: the same one whose poster I had on my wall when I was a teenager and he was on my TV screen playing a certain reporter and superhero, and the same one whose hair I dreamt about ever since.

"Good morning to you too, Mr. Welling," I shoot back as I pretend to fiddle around with my scissors and combs, "Also, the thunderstorm; I slept like a baby, what about you?"

Tom gives me a quick grin. "That’s the spirit," he says, taking off his red and black flannel, revealing those biceps of steel packed under a tight, white shirt. "Same here, slept right through the worst of it. And hey, please call me Tom; I don’t do the whole ‘’Mr. Welling’’ thing, it just sounds stuffy. Anyway, are you ready for me?"

I nod, both to his statement and his question, and try to gather my wits as quickly as I can, despite the fact that I’m about to comb and cut his hair. Eagerly, Tom jumps into the styling chair and I cape him up right after.

Good God, his hair. It’s got some salt and pepper to it, no longer that glossy, pure black it was back in the day, but that only makes it even more beautiful. It’s been a while since he was at the barber’s: his hair grew into a nearly helmet-like style, his sides carefully slicked back around the ears to prevent it from covering them, the top parted to the left, bangs swooping heavily from the right corner of his forehead and just below his left eyebrow in a perfect arc. I quickly ran a comb through it to assess the length at the crown and temples, and his hair lifted effortlessly; it was light and fluffy, and the more I worked with it, the more a desire to gently grab a handful of it and enjoy its softness grew within me.

"Okay, so I was given a quick brief about the hairstyle we’ll be doing," I said, combing his hair into its previous state, "but I’d like to go over it with you once again, just to be sure, because from what I was told..."

Tom chuckled. "We’ll be getting rid of a lot of it today, yeah."

"Here’s the gist of it: we’re shooting a pilot for my new show and, fingers crossed, should it get picked up, it will be a long, long time before my hair has the chance to grow this long again," he said, then took a sip of his coffee. I’ll even cross my toes to that, I thought, as he continued.
"The story is that I’m playing an ex-military dude who gets hired by a government organization for a secret mission, and with him being so freshly out of his service, he’s still a stickler of the rules, so…"

Tom raises his eyebrow, looking at me in the mirror, and I finish the thought. "So, it’s bye bye to the goatee and pretty boy hair." My answer elicits a quick laugh out of him, then a confirming nod.

He runs his hands through his hair, shaking the helmet out of shape with a small, mischievous grin on his face. "You’ve got your job cut for you, man. This mess needs to go."

"How short, though?" I ask, running my comb through his hair and gripping the bangs between my fingers. Lighter than a feather, it flopped right away and toppled over his forehead again. "The call sheet only said ‘short, neat haircut’ and I wanna make sure that we’re on the same page here, because I’d like to do a…"

We finished the sentence at the same time, in the following fashion.

"A crewcut" was my ending, but his was more eager, and also, more drastic:
"A buzzcut!"

Tom and I locked eyes in the mirror. "A buzzcut? No, I don’t think so, mister," I told him over a laugh, "If I buzz it all off and the director has a different vision in mind, that will set back production by at least two months in the best case, unless they stick a wig on you."

He sighed. "No, I get that, I do…" he ran his hand through his hair and I watched the fluorescent light shine off of it as it slid between his fingers, "It’s just that I never had one, as none of my previous projects really called for it, so I was excited for this to be the chance for it. But I know that you’re right, so let’s just get that haircut started."

I nodded, putting the number three attachment on the clippers. "And hey, maybe we can talk the director into it when the show gets picked up for a full-season order," I offered, "And then I’ll gladly give you all the buzzcuts you want; your bone structure is perfect for it."

He chuckled once again, reaching his hand out from beneath the cape and patting my forearm with it. I combed his hair into place one last time, reviving that perfect, voluminous sidepart one last time before I turned the clippers on and dug them in right at the temple. Tom closed his eyes and took a deep breath as the first mound of hair fell victim to the clippers; it thumped on his shoulder and slid down into his lap, ready to become a pile between his open legs.

I continued driving my clippers from his right temple all the way to his crown, making a guideline for the rest of my debulking; his hair rained down his shoulders and onto the floor, even more so when I began driving my clippers from the bottom of his sideburn up to the temple. As the debulking moved on to the back of his head, where the hair above the occipital bone was long enough to grab a handful of it, I was already imagining how good it will be to go through here with shorter and shorter attachments: Tom will leave my chair with a mid-fade, meaning no-guard haircut up until the middle of his head, which would be faded into the longer parts around the top.

Tom’s chuckle pulled me out from my trance. I looked over to the mirror, only to find him smirking at his own reflection. "I’m liking what I’m seeing, Mr. Barber," he said. "And know that I’ll take you up on your word for those buzzcuts sooner or later."

I made a sweep just beneath his crown with one hand, then caught the cut hair with the other; tossing it into his lap, I said, "I’ll be counting on it." This called for a laugh and a wink from Tom, who closed his eyes again and left me off to do my work.

The right side and the back of his head were freed of the overgrowth: now it was time for the left side of his head. I moved over, picked up the bulky top with a comb and went right for the temple again, making a wide sweep right back towards beneath the crown and showering the man’s shoulder and lap in his hair once again. I felt Tom’s cheek rise in a smile as it lifted his sideburn; I couldn’t help but let out a smile of my own form as I continued the haircut.

Ten minutes later, with the clipperwork finished and my client satisfied, despite being bathed in enough of his own hair to make a sweater out of it, it was time for the scissors to do their job. I started at the crown, lifting his hair and snipping it nearly at the scalp; this length would be the shortest on top. The sound of his hair crunching beneath the blades of the scissors was the only thing filling the trailer; even the work and noise outside seemed to have stopped. It quickly became a routine: lift and cut, enjoy the crunch, then repeat.

Once I cut nearly all of the hair on top off, it was time for the bangs to go, too. His soft hair sat obediently between my fingers as I measured off one inch exactly, then closed my scissors around it; it fell towards the pile in his lap in the same way feathers do in cartoons, swiftly and with a bit of a dance to it. The streak of gray here and there was more prominent now when his hair was shorter, as it stood out starkly among the dark hair and its spikiness; it made him even hotter, frankly.

Once the last details of the haircut were done, I ran my hand up from his shaved nape to his sternly trimmed crown, stroking my fingers through what little length there was on top and pretending to style the bangs that could barely fit between my two fingers. Tom gave me a little gasp for a first reaction; wide-eyed and with a broad smile to match, he ran his hands over it time and time again before holding out his hand to take mine and shake it.

I was toying with his bangs once more, now paired with some volume powder to make them stay in place more obediently, when a knock sounded itself on the trailer door.

Right after the knock, the door opened gently, and a familiar face poured in through the crack: it was the producer’s assistant, a girl in her late twenties, with features barely recognizable between the basketball cap worn backwards, the large sunglasses and even larger headphones around her neck, as well as a large hoodie with the production company’s logo on it.

Her mouth dropped slightly when she saw the sea of hair all around Tom and his nearly-shorn head; she swore silently, then took off her glasses and cleared her throat.
"Everything ok, Tess?"

"I see that you’ve, uh… gone through with the haircut already," she said with slight panic in her voice. "Earlier than you were scheduled to."

"Yeah, I mean, I saw my guy here opening up the trailer for the day, asked if he’s ready to get to work and hopped in right away when he said yes. What’s up?"

"The, uh… the network called." She stepped into the trailer fully before she continued, rubbing the back of her neck as she spoke. "Mr. Welling, they called the whole thing off. The cast will be all paid and compensated as per contract, but…"

"We won’t even shoot a pilot," Tom said with a more silent, defeated tone. I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, to provide him with some comfort, but all I could do was stare at his hair; there was more of it on the floor than there was on his head, and for nothing: if we’d learned this information fifteen minutes ago, he’d still have a full head of hair.

"No, sir," the assistant continued. "They say it would be a plagiarism lawsuit waiting to happen because somebody apparently greenlit the script before checking it properly, and… oh God, your hair. You already… I’m…"

"Thank you for letting me know, Tess," he said softly. I dared a peek at his reflection in the mirror; his cheeks were pinkish, but his blue eyes bore no anger; there was something similar to relief in them. "Listen, why don’t you go have something to eat and drink? I’ll gather the cast and crew a bit later, to properly thank everyone anyway."

"I’m really, really sorry about your hair… Ugh, it’s so short. Can’t you, like… glue some of it back on, at least in the front?"

I believe that the question was directed only at me, but Tom and I replied at the same time, with the same answer: "No."

Tess apologized again, excused herself and closed the door behind her quickly as she left.

"Well, s**t," I said, and only now, when we were alone again, did I muster the courage to look at him fully: he was waiting for my glance with raised eyebrows and a barely contained laugh, pinching his nose with puffed up cheeks.

"I butchered you for nothing!" I said and Tom burst into a laugh. I put my hand at the back of his head, rubbing it. "I could’ve given you such a nice, freaking civilian haircut and instead you’ll walk out of here like G.I. Joe. Oh, God, Tom, I..."

He was wiping away a tear and still laughing. "It’s not funny!" I said, to which he replied with a chuckle, trying to catch breath. "Oh, man, I haven’t had a laugh like that in a while," he said.

"At least one of us finds it funny," I groaned, putting my hand on his shoulder. "You had such nice hair, and now…"
"Ah, it’s just hair," he put his hand over mine, "It’ll be back before you know it. Besides, you gave me a great haircut, really. And listen, since the show is already canned…"

I met his gaze in the mirror; he let go of my hand and reached for the clippers. "What do you say we finish the transformation properly?"

As he wiggled the clippers mid-air, I was convinced that he was, perhaps, slightly insane; he gave me an encouraging wink, and the word ‘slightly’ had vanished from my previous conclusion. I took the clippers from his hand, still holding mine on his shoulder.

"A buzzcut and a clean shave, is it?"

He gave me a confirming nod, then leaned back in the barber’s chair. "I’ll be waiting for you to do your magic whenever you’re ready."

Oh, Tom. "Alright, boss," I replied, "In that case, sit back and relax."

I was chuckling as I slipped on the number three guard and turned the clippers on, caressing his cheek before I drove the clippers into his hairline.


THE END



(author's note: i wrote this in one sitting, no editing whatsoever, so apologies are in order if there are any grammar errors. hope you liked it!)

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