mousemind

Oh man, this is such a good topic, and one I feel other people probably have more developed opinions about - @mouse-mind and @malpal331 immediately come to mind - but in a word, yes, Jared loves musicals! 

Bless you for sending me this. Honestly. Did you know Jared’s hair is, like, the #1 topic I always desperately want an excuse to talk about??? I even once started writing an entire fic based on the concept of “Jared’s hair throughout his life,” which I abandoned for being maybe too pathetic, even for me (a snippet of it is below!).

First of all, I think Jared’s hair - like his clothing - is super important to him, mostly because it’s important to him to look approachable, professional, put-together, neat. I feel like Jared spent a lot of his life living in squalid and neglectful circumstances, and though he can tolerate it if he has to, he hopes to never feel the way he did then again.

Donald runs his hands over his hair. Fuzzy, like a newborn chick, he thinks, trying to find a silver lining. Trying to forget the feeling of Aunt Darla, digging her fingers roughly into his cheek to hold him steady as she shore his hair off nearly to the skin. 

It’ll grow back, he thinks. It’ll grow back. But growing back takes time, and he hates the thought that if his mother could see him now, she’d hardly recognize him. His hair so short. His skin so sallow. Even skinnier, he notices, as he notches his belt tighter, and still feels his waistband sliding lazy down his hips.

–

“Sorry, Donald,” Eddie mutters, in the chaos of the schoolyard, the next day. “Mom says you can’t come over. She says you gave my little sister lice.”

Donald runs his hand over his shorn scalp again, as if to say: but look what I did! It’s all better! As if the fact of his hideous haircut is an offer of some sort of proof. 

“I really am sorry,” Eddie says, again, like it’s a secret, and if it means they have a secret, well, then Donald hardly minds. 

I don’t think he’s ever worn his hair dramatically differently, though it was longer in high school and college - like a shroud to hide behind - falling down into his eyes. He experimented with dying it blue and violet, too, in early college, at the suggestion of a friend.

Jared would find it too indulgent to spend a lot of money on hair products. I think he uses this shampoo - tingly, clean, fresh, smelling of mint - and cheap pomade. He’s protective of his hair and the first time Richard really digs his fingers into it and messes it up is a big deal to both of them. I feel like Richard enjoys - and feels somehow vindicated by - moments when Jared lets his guard down, and would get a kick out of seeing him look less put-together, but also likes his hair the way it usually is. Jared has almost no body hair at all, and is comfortable with that.