I've mentioned Eddie's short hair in honeydew (you love me, well) enough times for it to warrant an flashback, and here it is. It was meant to have a home in chapter 3 before it got absolutely out of hand :)

lyrics are from Mad Men by Westward the Tide

In my heart I'm an honest man

But it's honestly hard to admit I am

All the mad men are in high demand

Gotta new nine-five with a new floor plan

- Westward the Tide

August 16, 1986 - Hawkins, Indiana

That year, for his birthday, all the kids pitched in to give Steve his own General Electric walkie-talkie — the same one they all had, and they immediately set it to the right channel, all talking over each other as they showed Steve how to use it.

Steve made a habit of bringing it with him everywhere he went, ignoring the strange looks he got from Keith and his other non-Robin co-workers as he set the device beside Family Video's computer. It was worth it, knowing that no matter what this town decided to throw at them next, he'd be there for this ragtag group of people he'd grown to care so deeply for the second they needed him.

Normally, the walkie was quiet, and when it wasn't, what poured from the speaker was was just normal freshmen-in-high-school life — where they would be hanging out that night, what homework was due tomorrow, who had that one comic book and were they hiding it from Dustin on purpose because he wouldn't stop talking about it. At Steve's big age of twenty (as of last week), most of what he heard over the walkie-talkie was of no concern to him, but he needed to hear it anyway because it reaffirmed over and over again that there was nothing out there threatening to wrench the privilege of adolescence away from those kids like it had to him.

That day, when Steve clocked into his shift at Family Video, he set the walkie-talkie down in its usual spot by the computer and started to sort through the monstrous pile of returned tapes last night's closing staff (also Robin and Steve, and Robin conveniently wouldn't be in to help until later) had left in the back storage room.

Once their day at work began, the minutes crawled by with nothing but silence from the radio, not that this was surprising to Steve. It was a Saturday morning, one of the summer's last, and Steve knew the teenagers would be taking advantage of the time to sleep in before school began again.

It stayed quiet for several hours but eventually, once Robin had clocked in for her closing shift and was helping Steve sort through all the returns, the walkie crackled to life.

"This is Dustin - we have a code red," Dustin's voice, panicked and squeaky, poured from the walkie-talkie, "I repeat: Code. Red."

Steve's eyes snapped over to Robin's, immediately recognizing the panic he felt mirrored on her face.

They both scrambled for the device. Robin reached it a half-second before Steve, immediately holding down the talk button.

"Dustin, what's wrong?"

"Oh thank God - Robin, Eddie is cutting his hair."

The fear in Robin's eyes vanished, replaced just as quickly by relieved irritation.

As she let out a long groan, Steve wrenched the walkie out of her hand.

"What the hell, man? Last time you called code red, Max was floating eight feet in the air. Never again!"

"Steve!" Dustin yelled, "Did you hear that? Eddie is gonna cut his hair!"

"So what?" Steve fired back, "Let the man cut his hair."

"How does nobody else care about this! I didn't even hear about it from Eddie!" he continued, "I had to hear from Gareth! Goddamn Gareth!"

"Just because you're resistant to change, doesn't mean we all are, shitbird," another voice – Max's – crackled through the radio.

Dustin's retort was masked by the ringing of the bell above the door. Steve looked over to see Eddie Munson himself entering the store.

"Look who it is," Robin said with a wry smile, "Maybe you can get Dustin to shut up."

"What's going on?" Eddie asked, his unruly bangs almost completely concealing his eyebrows as they furrowed in confusion.

"The little shit is having a conniption because he found out through the grapevine that you're cutting your hair."

"Damn," Eddie replied, "Kinda hoping that would fly under the radar."

"Since when?" Robin snorted.

"Oh, you know me so well, Buckley," he said with a cheeky grin, "Normally I'm never one to shy away from infamy, but being infamous for killing a cheerleader – allegedly – amongst other people, is not exactly what I had in mind, so I'm re-evaluating. Figured the hair is the most recognizable thing about me, so I'm heading over to Marion to buy myself, oh, y'know, another two or three hundred yards before someone realizes who they're walking towards."

"Fair enough," Steve shrugged. Then, as his mind wrapped around Eddie's words, his eyebrows furrowed, "Wait – Marion is two towns over. Why are you going two towns over?"

"Uh…I have my doubts any barber in Hawkins would give me the time of day, just like every other person in this town. Why not spare myself the aggravation? Plus there's more to life than just Hawkins, King Steve."

Normally, the old nickname would earn the other man an eye-roll, but Steve was too distracted by the angry, sick feeling that had settled in his stomach, the same feeling he always had when he was reminded of Eddie's current predicament.

Eddie had always been larger than life, sometimes embarrassingly so, sometimes to his own detriment. But it was him. He was being himself in a way Steve had never really experienced before. Steve had spent so many years shaping his thoughts and words and actions to fit how he wanted society to see him - something palatable and consumable, something desirable. It had been exhausting, never mind how he'd been someone he now looked back at and hated, but meeting Eddie and seeing him be so unabashedly real was intoxicating, to say the least. Now, watching Eddie modulate himself, watching him make himself smaller and less noticeable to better suit the horrible people in this stupid town, made Steve want to scream, because Eddie wasn't the problem. Eddie never had been the problem, but everything about who he was made him a target and when the cops had found Chrissy's body and the town had learned what happened, Steve had seen just a glimmer of glee in the eyes of Hawkins's residents, as if they were saying finally, an excuse to chase the freak out of our perfect town. Even now that Eddie's name had been cleared and multiple statements proclaiming his innocence had been issued, the looks, the threats, the harassment hadn't stopped, and it made Steve's blood boil.

Steve was about to comment on this, but Robin beat him to it, immediately jumping into a clearly well-rehearsed rant about injustice and ignorance in small-town America. Eddie did his best to wave her off, an air about him suggesting it wasn't the first time he'd heard this particular tirade, but despite mostly addressing the empty air, Robin continued.

"Y'know, there are other things that would get all…that…to stop," Steve said, raising his voice only slightly to be heard above Robin's. Eddie gave him a strange look, "What?"

"Something about that tone of yours, Harrington. You gonna murder some pitchfork-wielding townsfolk for me?"

"Maybe not me," he said with a shrug, "But round up the right group of ladies from our party and you might have yourself a solution."

"I think you could be right," Eddie replied with a hint of a smile, "Much less carnage this way, though. Hair is hair. It'll grow back - besides, I kept realizing I was chewing on it, which was not gonna fly in the adult world so it was either kick the habit or lose the hair and, let's face it, I'm not coping well enough these days to be undoing any unconscious behaviors."

"Fair enough." Steve repeated his earlier sentiment.

"When are you gonna do it?" Robin asked.

"Today," Eddie replied, "I was actually looking for the dramatic little twerp - see if he wanted to come with me."

"Why don't you ask him," Robin tossed the walkie-talkie in Eddie's direction. He caught it and immediately held down the clunky talk button.

"Hey, Henderson. You still there?"

Dustin's response was immediate and loud.

"EDDIE?! Is that you? Yes - this is Dustin - I'm here."

"I was gonna ask if you wanted to come with me to the barber, but now I'm thinking it'll be too distressing for you. Maybe Red will be more up for it."

The second Eddie released the talk button, Max's voice came through, "I'm game."

"Great, be there in ten."

"WAIT!" Dustin shouted, "I want to go."

"I would also like to come," a new voice — El's, even and steady — adds on, "So does Will."

It doesn't take long for Mike and Lucas to chime in from their own walkies, and soon they're all bickering in one-off, stilted exchanges about who should get picked up first.

"Jesus Christ," Eddie muttered, gingerly holding the walkie-talkie at arm's-length.

"Yeah, well, welcome to my world," Steve told him, "You'd better get a move on — picking them all one-by-one costs you thirty-five minutes."

"Jesus," Eddie repeats. He tossed Steve the device, "Wish me luck."

And then Eddie was gone, back out the way he came and walking across the parking lot towards his van.

The next few hours went by like Saturdays usually did - customers came in waves (Robin made one hive-mind joke before Steve nixed the comment completely) and while the store was quiet they traded off side-work.

"Hey, Steve," Robin called from the desk during Steve's stint in the back rewinding tapes, "I think Eddie's back - yeah, nope, he's definitely back and he brought all the children with him, the asshole."

Not more than a minute later, he heard the bell above the door jingle, around that was immediately followed by a familiar stream of overlapping chatter that almost always accompanied the six high-schoolers whenever they were all together.

As Steve stepped out of the back office, he saw Robin wearing a thoroughly unimpressed expression as Dustin held a small plastic bag containing a wad of hair much too close to her face.

"What the hell is that?" he asked.

"Look," Dustin said with a grin, waving the bag in his direction, "Eddie let us all keep some of his hair as a souvenir."

"That is so...weird," Steve replied, but Dustin just shrugged.

"Where even is Eddie?" Robin asked, and Steve finally looked around, seeing Max, El, Lucas, and Mike all milling around the store, but, as Robin pointed out, no Eddie.

"Um..." Dustin turned and looked back out towards the parking lot, "I think he's still outside, talking to Will about something."

The phone rang again and Robin turned to look at Steve expectantly.

"What?" he asked.

"Gonna get that?"

"What? I just got the last one. It was literally two minutes ago."

"Yeah, well, you're the one leaving me to close this stupid place by myself."

"Guys," Dustin cut in as the phone continued to ring.

"I opened by myself!" Steve exclaimed, "I'm only leaving before you because I came in before you."

"Hey, don't blame me for Keith giving us different shifts!"

"Guys!" Dustin repeated, louder still.

"I'm not blaming you for -"

"Thank you for calling Family Video."

Both Robin and Steve swiveled to see that Dustin had grabbed the phone on its final ring. Steve lunged for it, flipping Robin the bird as he listened to a harried-sound parent ask if The Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe was available to rent.

"Uhh, yeah. Pretty sure we have that. Gimme a second, I can check for you."

Steve balanced the phone receiver on the edge of the counter and ducked back into the office, almost certain he'd seen that movie during his half-hearted organization of all the returns.

Indeed, a moment later he located the cartoon lodged between tapes for a very violent slasher and a rom-com Robin had rented last week to watch ironically with Steve (they'd both become so genuinely invested in the plot that they forgot to make any stupid jokes about it).

"Robin!" Steve called, "Can you tell that guy we have his movie?"

"Sure," Robin called back, "But only because I'll be the third person he talks to and I wanna see if he notices."

He heard her muffled voice as she ended the phone call, and then the doorbell sounded once again.

"Oh my God, Eddie, holy shit!" Robin exclaimed.

"Is that a good holy shit or a bad holy shit."

"Eddie," he heard Robin say emphatically, "It looks So. Good. Steve! Come look at how good Eddie's haircut looks!"

Steve felt weirdly nervous as he made his way out of the back room, which was as stupid as it is confusing because there's no reason for Steve to be nervous.

He wasn't totally sure what he'd been picturing when Eddie said he was getting his hair cut. Maybe he hadn't pictured anything in particular, but nothing could have prepared Steve for what he saw when he stepped out of the back and immediately found Eddie standing on the other side of the counter and - yeah, Robin was right on the nose when she said holy shit.

Eddie had always treated his hair more like a prop in all his dramatic endeavors than a part of his appearance - it had been impossibly wild and unkempt, longer than even Nancy's curls, the front-most tendrils often soggy from Eddie's tendency to chew on the ends, his bangs usually falling into his face like a sheepdog.

This was every bit the inverse of what Eddie's hair had been mere hours earlier. It's short - short like Jonathan's, too short to even tuck behind his ears like he used to do sometimes, but it's not straight like Jonathan's. No, it's sitting in neat chocolate brown waves - the same shade of chocolate brown as his eyes, Steve noticed, as if he was seeing them for the first time (or maybe he'd just never seen them unobstructed before).

They're nice.

Eddie's eyes - they're nice, maybe even pretty if that's a word Steve's allowed to use, and he's not too sure how to feel about that.

Steve ran nervous fingers through his hair, realizing somewhat absurdly that his was longer than Eddie's now.

"So what do you think?" Eddie asked, and Steve started, realizing he had been staring wordlessly for just a bit too long.

"It's curly," he said, somewhat stupidly.

"Uh…," Eddie gave him a strange look, "Yeah, man. It kinda was before, too."

"Yeah-no, I know…I just-" Steve shut his mouth.

"Don't worry, Harrington. I'm sure your hair's still number-one in the eyes of the Party."

It was an out - or maybe it's not, but Steve was reeling with thoughts he's having a hard time wrapping his mind around so, out or not, Steve decides to take it.

dedicated to JQ and his hatred for Eddie's long hair. this one's for you, sir, godspeed

livwritesstuff