all the recent pictures of joseph quinn have me thinking about eddie cutting his hair and steve having FEELINGS about the cute little curls.
Steve is jiggling his keys in the sticky front door when it opens from the inside where Nancy is standing. The move unknowingly yanks him forward, sending him stumbling inside.
Why is Nancy in the apartment mid-afternoon on a Friday?
"Nance!" he chokes and promptly frowns, "What happened?"
"Umm," she hums and closes her mouth in a half smile, half grimace.
He shucks his bag off and dumps it at his feet, completely panicked, mind racing as he insists, "What happened!"
"Well…"
And that's when he catches the scissors in her left hand, light bouncing off them from the bright lighting in the building's hallway.
"What did you do!" he screeches.
"Eddie might have called me yesterday telling me he had officially decided he wanted me to cut his hair," the words tumble out of her mouth, almost entirely as a single word that she punctuates with a toothy grin and worried brows.
Steve charges inside, eyes darting around the apartment as his heart pounds.
Robin is sitting on the lounge reading a magazine and barely looking up as she gives a nonchalant, "Hey, Dingus."
He places his hands on his hips, "Hey! Hey? Rob, how could you have let this happen!"
Robin flaps a page of the magazine and stands, "Wow, sounds totally normal for you to be controlling your boyfriend's body, Steve."
She tosses the magazine (a fucking men's hair magazine) on the coffee table and walks to him, giving a condescending pat on the shoulder as she smirks.
"But his hair!" he argues, as if his hair hysteria makes total sense.
"He looks good," Nancy chimes and Robin nods in agreement.
"Hey, Steve."
He spins around to find Eddie standing in the kitchen, hair short and impossibly curled up. He taps his fingers on the counter where off-cuts sit in a fluffy pile that could easily be mistaken for their cat.
"H-Hey," Steve splutters, giving a wiggly-fingered wave.
He stares as Eddie runs his fingers through his new haircut.
"Your mousse made it curlier than we were expecting," Nancy explains, sounding almost apologetic. But she doesn't have to be, like, at all.
Eddie raises his hands above his head, balling them into fists in frustration, "He doesn't like it!"
He looks between the girls, eyes wide as saucers and beginning to glisten.
Oh shit - Steve is still staring. Gawking. All slack-jawed even.
"No, no, no! Eds, I-I do!" he promptly rushes to Eddie and cups his reddening cheeks, "It's just… different s'all."
Robin gives a hearty scoff and Steve ignores her, refusing to listen to whatever quip she mutters to a giggling Nancy. He doesn't care that the pair find him and Eddie to be sickly lovebirds who never left the honeymoon stage of their relationship. He looks Eddie over, trying to read his mind to get a sense of anything else that might have influenced his decision.
"You sure nothing else is worrying you?" he continues, chewing at his bottom lip, for once wishing he had El's powers, "Remember when you were going to tell Wayne we wanted to move out and instead of telling him you dyed your hair blue? Or at least, tried to," he chuckles, "And Henderson and Claudia had to come over with their toxic concoction of cleaning supplies to get the stains off every surface in the kitchen?"
Eddie buries his face in the crook of his neck, snickering, "Nothing else. Promise, Stevie. I just wanted a change."
Steve soothes his hands over his back, his fingers gathering up loose strands of hair. He reaches up to his neck, massaging there too and feeling the hair at the nape of Eddie's now-exposed neck, the fresh ends slipping easily through his fingers.
Eddie detaches himself, keeping him at arm's length as he adds, "I was starting to feel like a bit of a has-been, anyway."
"Well, I don't like that part of it at all," Steve frowns, petting the curls at the front that were once Eddie's brow-hitting bangs.
He grimaces as that nagging part of his brain he has never been able to shirk (some combination of his mother's vanity and a built-in bitchiness) zeroes in on Eddie's possibly receding hairline. Steve shakes his head, willing away such a shallow thought as he cups his hands over Eddie's exposed ears, shifting to worrying about the upcoming winter and how his ears will most certainly get cold.
But Nancy did a good job. Great, in fact. She even applied the mousse properly so it isn't making Eddie's hair all tacky and clumped together. It is cut evenly too. Although Steve might need to use the electric razor to clean up around Eddie's sideburns a little.
Eddie looks impossibly cute like this, perhaps more than he ever did when he tied his hair up (the very first time sending Steve into cardiac arrest). His cheeks look rounder, more cherubic. And when those dimples inevitably come out, it will be an unholy combination...
God help Steve.
"Should we get going?" Robin wonders aloud.
It makes Steve jump - he had forgotten they weren't alone. Eddie barks a laugh and manhandles him into turning around to face the girls. Nancy points to herself, her other hand defiantly propped on her hip.
"I need to get paid."
Eddie hushes up demands of payment as quickly as possible, grumbling away as he gives Nancy some cash he had apparently retrieved from the bank and hidden in their sock drawer two weeks ago. He had promised to buy her a dress at a swanky boutique she had been eyeing, even though Nancy complained that he wasn't going with her to buy it. Even years later, the pair were inseparable shopping partners, a duo that could easily give Steve and Robin a run for their (in this case literal) money.
Steve can't help it, as soon as Eddie shuts the front door, he pounces, knocking them both into the coat stand as he peppers kisses onto the back of his neck.
"So you do like it?" Eddie laughs, stumbling around to steady them while Steve wraps his arms around his middle.
"Absolutely!"
Eddie manages to turn around despite the tight hold on him, smiling in that lethal way that showcases his dimples.
And yeah, Steve is most definitely a goner.
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