Burn it after midnight.

Chapter 25: I'm A Jester And I'm Yours.

EPILOGUE 

It started with Steve just continuing to cut his own hair, and Theo's. Eddie's reluctantly. He hadn't put much thought into it, he'd been cutting his own hair for years and he enjoyed the fact that Theo kept letting him try out new things with her hair, her hair getting a little shorter and funkier each time until she ended up with a cropped pixie cut just before her eighteenth birthday which she adored.

El was next, then Will, who he was more than happy to help get rid of that horrendous bowl cut that he still seemed to have at the age of nineteen. He found himself looking in the windows of the two hair salons in town when he would walk past and then not so subtly the paper to see if there were any kind of beauty schools in the area that might take him on.

Well actually that had been Theo's doing, she'd seen an advert in The Hawkin's Post and circled it in a big red felt tip, leaving it open on the island in the kitchen where she knew he would see it.

Then followed the night classes, sure it meant he didn't see Eddie as much as he'd like during the week, because he was gone by the time he got home from work and didn't return home until 11:30pm most nights. But they still had their weekends together.

He was so unsure of himself at first, he was the only guy in the class and all of the other women were a few years younger than him, but after a few weeks he got to know some of them and after a few months he found he had a new group of friends that he never would have expected to have. Secretly he thought that they loved the idea of having a gay guy working with them, although Steve wasn't gay they knew that he was in a relationship with another man after he had tested the waters a little. Two of them had actually met Eddie when he had picked him up once or twice. They had been in love with him from the start and were constantly asking how he was, which Eddie found hilarious that he had a little hairdresser fanclub. Steve was just happy to have some new friends and slowly he discovered a new career that he loved.

A year after this began, he qualified as a hairdresser and got a job working in the newest salon to open up in Hawkins, it was aimed at the younger generation as the other two were definitely old lady salons. He absolutely adored it and steadily built up a strong client base.

Eddie could not have been more proud of Steve, he'd had the career that he'd loved for four years and what he thought he would do for the rest of his life ripped away from him and for a while he thought he wasn't ever going to be himself again. Which had worried Eddie immensely, however slowly, but surely Steve had gotten back to being himself again and he'd never seen him so happy, he positively glowed when he walked into the room.

Eddie had meant what he'd said to Steve about taking his last name, whilst Steve had kind of forgotten about it, Eddie hadn't. He'd slowly been going through the paperwork and process of changing his last name over the last two months. He hadn't told Steve, keeping it a surprise for him. It had been a long fucking process, because he didn't have a copy of his birth certificate, or a passport so proving who he was had been an absolute nightmare until Theo had appeared with a worn looking envelope in her hands after he'd asked her if there were any kind of documents mixed in with the stuff she'd taken from their Mom's house after she'd died. Turns out, his mother had kept his birth certificate, so that had made the process much easier from there on out.

He was going to tell him today, over dinner. Nothing fancy, although he had decided to make carbonara again for him because he knew that it was Steve's absolute favourite out of the things that he cooked.

Theo was joining them this time, he hadn't told her specifically why he'd needed his birth certificate and she hadn't thought to ask, so it was just as much as a surprise for her too when Eddie slid the envelope across the table to Steve who stared at him with a confused expression.