(Untitled)

[jdick]

It was weird that the day he turned thirty-six was also the day he'd been on the island for exactly ten months, so Joe decided that he'd do something to commemorate it before holding some office hours. Nothing big, just something he'd been thinking about doing for a couple weeks already and so he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, a razor in

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[the_cop]

Ray was lurking around the Compound and his eyes widened when he saw who was coming down the hall. At first he thought maybe Joe had another clone, but no, that was Joe.

"Hey, Bruce Willis is back on the island," Ray teased with a crooked smile.

[jdick]

"No, shit, Bruce Willis?" Joe asked with a snort, raising his hand to his head and patting it. "Better than being called Mr. Fucking Clean." Logan was gonna pay for that. Somehow Joe would find a way.

[the_cop]

"C'mon, say a line. Yippie-kai-yay motherfucker?" Ray said, eyeing Joe's head. Very egg-shaped.

[jdick]

Joe snorted and dryly said, "Yippie-kai-yay, motherfucker." But he looked pretty amused by the whole thing and dropped his hand a second later. "I needed to come off. I spent too fucking long with that thing."

[strandedseaman]

Horatio stood in the doorway, running a hand through his own recently shorn locks. "Well," he said after a moment. "What spurred your reformation, then?"

[jdick]

"Ten months here and my birthday," Joe answered easily, looking up he heard Horatio's voice, his eyebrows rising slightly at the sight of him. "And what the fuck spurred yours?" He'd never seen Horatio with short hair before. It was sort of strange. As strange as it was to see him bald, he imagined.

[strandedseaman]

"Ray," answered Horatio, coming to seat across from Joe at the desk. "I'm not quite sure how to explain it, but it needed to be done." He smiled. "Happy birthday."

[jdick]

'Ray' was a good enough reason for Joe. After all, 'Billy' had been the reason he'd done a lot of things, so he smiled slightly and nodded, because he understood that. "Thanks, man. I didn't even realize until a couple days ago."

[dr_snark_phd]

Things weren't making a lot more sense, but at least so far they didn't seem like they much needed to.

He and Bob had holed up in what he had been informed was the 'crash room'. He knew they couldn't stay there and he didn't much want to; it was cramped and he desperately wanted his own space while he figured out what the hell to do next, about where they were, about what he could do with himself, about Bob, about Jill, about everything.

But just now that wasn't happening, so he paced around the halls of the compound and tried to fight off the splitting headache that had been threatening since the first day.

The headache got several times worse when he rounded a corner and came face to face with a dead man. A dead man with no hair. He gaped. David didn't gape very much.

"...Danny?"

[jdick]

"Whoa," Joe said when he nearly ran into some guy, then raised his hands and steadied himself -- and hopefully the guy he'd run into -- before he got a good look at him. It was Chris's boyfriend. The curler. Except somehow he was a hell of a lot older than the last time Joe had seen him around the Hamlet. Maybe a couple of weeks had passed, but not ten years.

Then the name the other man had said registered and he dropped his hands, shaking his head. "No, not Danny. But I bet he looks a lot like me, eh? He probably has hair, maybe a bit thinner?" They were always thinner. "Older, maybe?"

[dr_snark_phd]

Great. For a second he'd been thinking that maybe he'd been right after all; maybe he was dead, in which case finally he could start getting a handle on things.

After all, it wasn't the first time he'd seen Danny like this.

But no. Apparently not. He stepped back and raked both hands through his hair, closing his eyes momentarily. "Yeah," he said dryly. "Hair, and also not so alive. So now I have to decide how to feel all over again." He looked back at the guy, and on second glance, he did look a little different, and not just because of the hair.

But God, so much like him.

[jdick]

"Me and him have that much in common," Joe said with a shrug, because he didn't mind admitting that he was dead so much as he minded admitting it was suicide. "There's another guy here who looks like me. A lot more hair, though. His name isn't Danny either." Might as well warn the guy.

"And, just so you don't have a fucking heart attack, there's a guy who looks like you, too."

[billtallent]

"You're fucking crazy, you know that?" Billy was leaning against the door jamb, staring at Joe, smiling just a bit. It was fucking crazy, and jarring, but no more jarring than that mohawk had been at first, Billy supposed.

Billy walked into the room and sat down across from Joe, kicking his feet up on the desk. "You look hot though."

[jdick]

Joe's mouth twitched up into a grin at the sight of Billy and he lifted his hand to his head, looking amused. "Yeah, you like it? I only kept the mohawk so long 'cause you were such a fucking fan, but it's... hot as shit."

He paused and then, "I've been here for ten months today."

[billtallent]

"Yeah," Billy said, giving him a slight smile, "I know." He also knew it was Joe's birthday but he didn't bring that up yet. "Seems longer than that, don't it?"

[jdick]

"Seems like a fucking lifetime some of these days," Joe said with a nod, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up on the desk. "I didn't even think about it when it was six months or eight months, but ten seems like... I dunno." Like a milestone, somehow.