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"Which braid are we doing today?" Eddie was already settled in behind her, the audible cracks and pops of his fingers making her own hands tingle. She hummed, leaning back into the mattress. This had become a routine, Eddie braiding her hair when she spent the night. He was gentle with it, any time he tugged too hard he apologized before she could even react.
He told her, once, that he used to feel the sharp pains she got when her mom did it. That he could feel the tension across his scalp for the next few hours until she eventually took it out. He thought it was from one too many slaps across the head as a kid.
Robin bit her lip, thinking. She'd been thinking. Thinking about how sick of her moms comments on her hair, how she always touched it. Jewelry coated fingers always carding through her amber locks like they were hers to manipulate and touch. Demanding Robin sit still so she could pin together elaborate braids.
She tipped her head so she was looking up at Eddie, now upside down from her perspective, "I want you to cut it off."
He blinked. Then blinked again, "What?"
"You've got scissors, right? You cut your own hair, so do mine." She sat up, turning around. Her hair floated around her face, long and frustrating. She never used to mind it, she loved her long hair as a kid, but more and more lately she resented it.
Eddie looked at her like he was picking apart a puzzle, then grinned, "Alright, crazy, let's cut it all off."
That's how she found herself, sitting on the closed lid of Eddie Munsons toilet, while he took a pair of craft scissors to her hair. It was years of growth, hair that she'd only cut enough to get rid of the dead ends since she was a little girl.
It was choppy, when he finished. Choppy, and bad, because he cut his hair while pulling it straight and when the curls bunched back up you couldn't tell that he'd cut it all at the same length. Her hair was barely what you could call wavy, leaving a thick, straight line all the way around.
But it was short. It was light, and it was her choice. Her hair, short enough that the only braids someone could manage would be tiny ones her mother didn't have the patience to do. Neither he nor Eddie were big fans of hugs, so she'd given him a beaming grin.
("It's weird," Eddie mused when they were both back in his bed, her reading through the updates for her character class that came with the new edition and him making notes for the new campaign behind her. His hand was in her newly cut hair, gently carding his black painted nails across her scalp.
"What is?"
"I can feel it, the lightness, y'know?" He took his hand away, and she peered up at him to see him gesture vaguely at his own hair, "But, like, I can also feel my hair. It's weird.")
The next day at school, part of her yearned for Nancy Wheeler and Barbara Holland to look her way. To come over just to compliment her new hair, to appreciate her freeing herself from her mothers thumb, even if it was just in a small way.
They didn't. But that's fine, because Eddie swooped in from behind her when she was staring, longingly, at Nancy making out with Steve Harrington, and started regaling her with all his ideas for the campaign he was working on.