Who: Paul Keller [NPC] and Glibt What: Fixing things, even if they're only little things. When: Wednesday, early evening. Where: Paul's (and Harvey's) apartment. Warnings: Possible language, references to abuse.
He couldn't remember what he came in the bathroom for, just that he had been pacing around the apartment, feeling almost drunk due to lack of sleep and an inability to each anything more than one he shoveled down after a couple of joints. He was looking for something, maybe, his focus on the medicine cabinet but no real idea of what he'd been going in there for. He just knew that his sides ached and his chest hadn't stopped feeling like there was something heavy sitting on it since he left Harvey at the airport. He ran his hands over his face, fingers carding roughly through his hair they came down to grip the edge of the sink. Paul heaved a sigh and slumped forward, wanting so badly to let his knees buckle and let himself fall to the floor.
A lot had changed since Paul and Harvey met, but that year and a half worth of changes was never more apparent than when Paul was alone in their apartment, leaning over the bathroom sink and staring into his reflection. His attention was always drawn to his hair, whether it swept over his forehead or he managed to slick it back away from his face. This was as long as it had been since he was about sixteen; he shaved it off in some stupid bout of protest after his parents kicked him out - like they would care. After that it was just easier, and cleaner, to keep it short. Naturally, Harvey hated it so when Paul moved in with him, he stopped shaving his head. Now that he was gone, though, Paul felt like a hopeless sixteen year old kid again with no one to turn to anymore.
Regardless of what he was looking for in the medicine cabinet, Paul found himself rummaging under the sink for an old black canvas bag. A moment later he'd dumped the electric razor in the sink and was plugging it in, glancing at himself once more in the mirror before - in an act of childish defiance - he dragged it straight down the middle of his head and back to the nape of his neck. Dyed blonde hair fell onto his shoulders, on the counter and into the sink. Another strip, more hair. And more yet as he continued to buzz away a year and a half of trying to be right. When the razor clicked off, Paul brushed his hands over his head, over buzzed hair, and stripped off his shirt to toss in the laundry basket. When he looked back in the mirror again he saw himself with all those changes leached from him - skin too pale and eyes a little sunken, on the verge of being too thin and looking desperate. Only difference was that he didn't have a busted lip, two broken ribs and shiner like he did the day he met Harvey.
Paul gathered the hair from the sink and tossed it in the waste basket, shoving the razor under the sink and walking back in the bedroom where he thought about grabbing a new t-shirt, realized that the burst of impulsiveness had drained him of what little energy he had left, and curled onto his side on the bed instead. It didn't make him feel any better - not that he thought it would - but at least now when he looked in the mirror he could pretend like he wasn't looking at a life he'd made with someone who, quite possibly, wasn't coming back for him. He knew Harvey's track record and knew that the odds were pretty heavily stacked against him; this helped ease the transition a little.