queenofhawkinshigh | in that pink dress, they're gonna crucify me

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in that pink dress, they're gonna crucify me

She shouldn't be here. Going into Eddie Munson's trailer to buy drugs is just about the last thing a girl like her should be doing, and Chrissy knows it. That isn't, though, what has her trembling and looking over her shoulder, teeth pressing to her lower lip as they step inside. For anyone to see her now would be the least of her problems, and that's saying something. She can only imagine how they'd react — Jason, her parents, everyone at school. The golden girl, not so golden anymore, all of the effort she's put into not letting anyone see that she's never been that — not golden, just gilded, a perfect surface covering anything but — for naught.

It's worth it, completely, if it clears her head for even just a little while, if it lets her catch her breath. Besides, while he's little more than a stranger, she got the foolish sense, earlier in the woods, that he wasn't looking at that thin gold varnish, but at her, the first person who's actually seen her and not just either what she wants them to see or all her shortcomings in a long time. Just the thought of it makes her feel even crazier than she already does, and she wouldn't have the first idea how to say so without sounding unbelievably stupid, but it makes it easier to follow him inside, arms wrapped around herself and fingers toying absently with the sleeves of her sweater as she looks around.

"Sorry for the mess. Maid took the week off," Eddie says, wry, and Chrissy would smile, offer a reassurance or joke in turn, if her nerves weren't so shot. She wants what she came here for. Anything else can wait.

"You, um... You live here alone?" she asks instead. She doesn't know anything about him, she realizes, except what everyone knows. He's been a senior for years, he sells drugs, he's supposedly a freak. He plays guitar, she knows that now, too. And he's warm, something that makes her feel a little guilty for being so rushed as he searches for the drugs she came here for.

"With my uncle," he answers, moving further into the trailer. "But, uh, he works nights at the plant, bringing home the big bucks."

Heart racing, she turns toward him. "How long does it take?" she asks abruptly. She's never done anything stronger than an ibuprofen or an antibiotic before. This is entirely uncharted territory, and it's terrifying, if not as much so as living with what's in her head. "The Special K. How long to kick in?"

"Oh, uh, well, it depends if you snort it or not," Eddie tells her, with an ease that makes her wonder just how much experience he has here. "If you do, then, uh, yeah. It'll kick in pretty quick."

She nods along. Quick is what she wants. When Eddie looks in yet another little container and says "Oh, shit," though, she feels a fresh burst of nerves. "You're sure you have it?"

"No, no, no, I got it," he assures her quickly. "Uh, somewhere." Without another word, he holds up a hand and runs into the back, where she can only assume his room is, leaving her standing in what amounts for the trailer's living room. It's not such a bad place, really. Run down and lived in, sure, but comfortable —

Or it would be, if the clock weren't beginning to chime.

Gasping, Chrissy turns toward the window, looking out at the still, dark night. There's nothing there, nowhere the ticking sound could be coming from except her own mind. She pulls the curtains shut quickly, turning in the direction of the hallway again. "Eddie?" she calls, trying not to sound so frantic, mostly failing. "Did you find it? Eddie?"

There's no answer. She definitely shouldn't be walking back to Eddie's bedroom, but she's desperate and she needs this now.

She calls his name again, but when she turns into the room, hand against the door frame, he isn't there. Her mother is, sitting at her sewing machine, altering her cheer uniform. "Mom?"

"Just loosening this up for you, sweetheart," her mother says, as sweetly cruel as ever. "You're going to look absolutely beautiful."

Her voice changes, deepens, distorts. Chrissy doesn't have a chance to react before her mother turns, and her face is — wrong, somehow, smile pulled too tight, eyes gone white. With a sharp breath, she pulls the door shut, anything to put distance between them, and she's not at Eddie's, she's at home. How could she be at home?

"Chrissy!" comes her mother's voice from behind her, still with that strange, distorted echo, the door giving way. Instinctively, Chrissy yanks it shut again, fighting as best she can, unable to help letting out a shriek. "Chrissy, open the door! Let go! Let go!" She doesn't want to let go, but she can't hold on, and she's taking off down the hall as soon as the door flies open, not wanting to see what's behind it. Bolting down the stairs, she pauses for just a moment, taking stock of her surroundings. There's a light in the den. Maybe her father will help her. Maybe he needs help.

"Dad!" she calls, taking off again, running to him. "Dad! Dad?"

He turns toward her. His eyes and mouth are sewn up. She screams again, this time loud and long and shrill, until the lights start flickering, and she knows she's caught. There are footsteps on the stairs that definitely don't belong to her mother, a deep voice, one that's become familiar by now, saying her name. She runs anyway, because it's all she can do, away from her struggling father, into the dining room, where she takes in the sight of food on the table — rotted, covered with flies and spiders — before she keeps going, trying to get to the front door, her best possible means of escape.

Throwing the double doors open, she finds, instead of a way out, wooden boards, keeping her trapped in here. "No!" she says, pounding against the planks, throwing her body against them. "Help, help! Somebody help me!"

No one comes. No one hears her. No one's ever heard her.

"Chrissy," the deep voice says again, rounding the corner now. There's nowhere left for her to go, nothing for her to do but cry as the horrible creature encroaches on her, shrinking back like it will make any kind of difference. "Don't cry, Chrissy," he says, lifting one hand, a long, wet, spindly finger brushing a tear off her cheek. "It's time for your suffering to end."

He says it almost like it's a good thing, like he means to be compassionate, like he hasn't been haunting her for days and chasing her through her own home. And she did want that, didn't she? Not to hurt anymore, the way she's hurt for so long. She just didn't want it like this, the thought just barely crossing her mind before he extends his hand, holding it up over her face, snapping her head back.

Everything hurts, her mind and body both, and then everything goes dark. Somewhere, Chrissy crumples, a cheerleading uniform-clad heap on the ground.

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Eddie's still not sure what he thinks of this place. He figures that's fair, being that this is also apparently an alternate world and the last time he ended up in one of those it had pretty much killed him. Darrow hasn't killed him yet, but Eddie's not totally convinced it isn't trying.

There are people from Hawkins here. Loads of them. Not all the ones he wants to see, but he thinks as long as he steers clear of the Chief, he might make it through the rest of them okay, even if they don't remember him. Or they do, but not really how he wants them to. It sucks. As far as Hopper is concerned, he's a fuck up and a drug dealer. As far as Harrington and Robin are concerned, he's a freak. He would be used to it, except the few days before he got here had kind of shaken shit up.

Now that he has time to sit and actually think, too, there's a lot of guilt. He can feel it clawing at his throat, like a pressure on his chest, and for a second, when the body crumples to the ground in front of him, Eddie kind of thinks he's just lost his mind. For real this time.

But she's real. Lying there in the grass in the park, she's real, and Eddie drops to his knees to grab her shoulders.

"Chrissy?"

With a sudden, gasping inhalation, Chrissy wakes up. Her body lurches with it, torso lifting off the ground, and the remnants of a scream tear out of her throat, a sound she didn't know she could still make. He's still close, too close, and she wants to pull away, to get herself free —

Only it's not him at all. Eddie Munson is kneeling over her, hands at her shoulders, and even as part of her doesn't trust any of her own senses right now, she doesn't think she's ever been so glad to see anyone in her life. "Eddie?" she asks, her voice small and weak. She can't even bring herself to be embarrassed by how she sounds, at least not yet, or by the fact that there are tears in her eyes again, a hitch in her breath that comes out as a tiny sob.

Rather than pulling away, now, instead, her instinct is to move closer, hands clutching at his shirt like a lifeline, like he's the only thing keeping her from whatever awful fate she just narrowly escaped. If this isn't real either, then at least it's better by far than the rest of what she's been seeing. At least, for a few moments, until one or both of them comes to their senses or everything distorts again, she can feel something resembling safe.

The few days before Darrow had been terrifying, Eddie had seen and done things he never would have thought possible, but even with all that shit under his belt, he knows he's never been as frightened as those moments watching Chrissy die. Afraid for himself, yeah, but afraid for her, too.

The last time he had seen her, she'd been broken, twisted, like a discarded doll, and Eddie feels something inside him tremble and threaten to crack.

"Holy shit, are you real?" he asks, his hands moving from her shoulders to her upper arms, to the sides of her neck, touching her in ways he never would have dared back in Hawkins. Jason Carver and half the basketball team would kick his ass for laying his hands on the Queen of Hawkins High, but Eddie isn't thinking that. Eddie just needs to be sure she isn't dead.

Even if she weren't completely out of her head right now with panic and disorientation, Chrissy wouldn't know how to answer that question. She doesn't feel real, and that's not an altogether new sensation, one of so many things that's often rattled around her head that she's never tried to explain to anyone. Under these circumstances, it's just stronger than ever. With the things she's been seeing and hearing, it's impossible to trust what's right in front of her. The awful, sick sensation that there shouldn't be anything at all now only adds to it.

He touches her like she's real, though, and some small part of her takes that as permission. Before she can rationalize herself out of it, she leans in closer still, pressing her face to his shoulder. For once, she can't get hung up on how she must seem right now, even more of her image shattered. She just wants, desperately, to have a moment's respite.

"Are you?" she asks, muffled and terrified, but a little hopeful, too. "I thought —"

Yeah, the jocks and conformists of Hawkins High would have a heyday with this, but screw 'em, honestly. The only thing Eddie cares about right now is making sure Chrissy is okay, so he hooks his arms around her when she leans in, holding her close, aware of his thundering heart.

He can't just lie to her. He can't keep all that awful shit from her, even if it would be better for him. Running away when she was dying is pretty much the worst thing he's ever done. Ever. He can't run away from the truth, too.

"Yeah," he says. "I know. I think we're real. As real as we can be in this weird place we are now, but... shit, Chrissy. I ran. I'm sorry, I should've stayed, but I just... I freaked."

There's a part of Chrissy, even as she leans against him, holds on like he's the only thing between her and the fate she was sure had become inescapable, that still expects this to change. For his voice to deepen, his fingers to become long and gnarled, for her to be trapped again, tricked by this one small moment of peace. He still sounds like himself, though, and holds onto her like she isn't making an absolute fool of herself; she can feel the beat of his heart, her own fluttering rapidly, breaths shallow and fearful.

"I tried to," she replies, struggling to make sense of what he's said and what's just happened. Did he see it, too? She didn't see him, but nothing that she was seeing should have even been possible. Maybe he was there, and she just missed him somehow. Maybe he got dragged into it because of her and her screwed up brain. "To run, I tried, but... I couldn't get away."

"Shit," he says again, then sits back on his heels so he can properly look at her again. They're still just out here in the open, sitting in the park, and he realizes suddenly that the unburdening of his guilty conscience should probably wait. He needs to tell her the whole truth, but he has the chance to do the right thing now. Again. For Chrissy this time, though, where he failed so badly the first time.

"Okay, come on," he urges, getting to his feet, then offering his hands to her. "Let's, uh... we should go somewhere other than sit in the park here and I can sort of explain some really fucked up shit."

Sort of. There's a lot of disbelief she's going to have to suspend.

Chrissy blinks up at him when he stands, acutely aware for a moment of what a mess she must be, sniffling and teary-eyed, her ponytail tousled. For once, though, she can't let herself dwell on it. With the sleeves of her sweater pulled down over the heels of her hands, she takes a quick pass at attempting to dry her cheeks, then places her hands in his, unsteadily getting to her feet in turn. He's still himself, or he seems to be, still solid and warm and real, and she lingers there for a beat too long, fingers curled around his, before she makes herself let go. Stupid, being so clingy. She must have looked stupid enough trying to buy drugs from him without knowing anything about them. This could only make it worse.

"Thanks," she says, shifting her weight for a moment, uncertain. Her body aches, limbs sore and stiff — not like fresh injuries, but the ghost of old ones, like the time she broke her foot as a kid, then started walking again after her cast came off. Healed, but with the memory of having not been. It's hot out, too much so to be wearing her cardigan, but a shiver runs through her all the same. Now that her face isn't buried in Eddie's shoulder, she can get a better look at where they are, a park she doesn't recognize at all. "Do you know somewhere we can go?"

"My... place?" he suggests, more a question than anything, because the last time they went to his place hadn't gone so well for her. He realizes, maybe a second too late, that she doesn't know what any of this is about and he blinks, feeling really goddamn stupid.

"It's a different place," he assures her quickly. "Not the trailer. We're... kind of in a different world. Reality? I don't really know, it's pretty hard to make sense of it and... it's just not the trailer, okay? I wouldn't bring you back there."

To the place where she died. Even being there while trying to save Hawkins had been like a punch to the gut.

"Okay," Chrissy agrees, confused but not enough to argue. She would rather not be dealing with this out in the open, and anything would be better than what she just left behind, her home turned into a prison, into a grave. Come to think of it, she's still not actually sure how she got there, having been in his trailer just moments before. The memory makes her a little uneasy, but she takes a deep breath. There are no sounds out of place, and Eddie still seems like himself. That's enough for now. "Your place it is."

Without meeting way out in the woods, without the cover of darkness like when he brought her back to his trailer before, anyone could see them together. She can't bring herself to care when there's so much else to worry about instead. A different world, a different reality — it doesn't make sense, although in all fairness, nothing has made much sense lately.

"Are you sure you're real?" she asks abruptly, even while prepared to follow along with him. "This isn't all just... I don't know. In my head?"

Edited 2022-07-04 06:45 (UTC)

"If it was all in your head, wouldn't you imagine Jason instead of me?" Eddie asks in return, without a trace of malice. It's a genuine question, even given what he's learned of Chrissy, and he's not accusing her of anything. Jason is her boyfriend and even with Eddie's cynical eye, it's always seemed like they were in love, though he's never understood it. Jason Carver is a complete dick.

Realizing it's not really a fair question doesn't unask it, though, so Eddie does the next best thing and pinches his own cheek. Hard.

"Ow," he says. "I feel pretty real to me. You wanna give it a go?" He leans in, offering Chrissy his cheek, hoping to make see a hint of that smile she'd given him in the woods not too long ago.

As soon as the words have left her mouth, even before he asks her about them, Chrissy knows she's said too much. Of course if she were going to imagine anyone, it should be Jason. She loves him, or she's supposed to. He loves her, or the person he thinks she is, someone she's never actually felt like. She wouldn't know how to explain it if she tried, and she isn't sure she wants to try, despite the part of her that's instinctively a little defensive. Already Eddie has seen more than he should have. It would be too much, too honest — not just with him, but with herself, too.

Just like he did earlier, though, when she met him out in the woods, he offers a distraction when she needs it most. She smiles, tremulous and thin but still there, as she reaches over to give his cheek a slight pinch. "You feel pretty real to me, too," she agrees. Given everything, she's not sure that's really saying very much — everything else she's been seeing has felt real, too, impossible to differentiate from reality. For that matter, she isn't convinced now that it wasn't real. "God, you must think I'm crazy."

At that, Eddie finally laughs, a dry, hollow sound. There's nothing humorous to be found in everything that happened, but he remembers saying those very words to Henderson and his pals, knowing the horror of what had happened to Chrissy was too fucking awful to be real.

"No," he says. "I don't. Or if you're crazy, then I am, too, and that's not as bad. For me, anyway, it might be kinda worse for you."

But at least here, he's only Eddie the Freak to a few people, and Harrington doesn't seem as bad as Eddie remembers him being. Even the Chief seems too distracted by being a dad and a proper cop to give Eddie much thought. It's all kind of a relief. Here, if nothing else, no one thinks he hurt Chrissy.

He's quiet as they walk, staying close to her, not going too fast. She's been through a lot of shit and he wants to give her time. After a minute or so, he says, "I saw the thing that was following you. In your head or... it wasn't really in your head. Or it wasn't just in your head. It was a real thing. A real monster."

Of all the innumerable things he could have said, that is, quite possibly, the very last that Chrissy would have expected to hear. It brings her up short, nearly stopping in her tracks, white sneakers tripping over the concrete in her surprise. If she didn't want so badly to be somewhere private, not so aware of people's eyes on her, if she weren't all the more thrown by how unfamiliar their surroundings are, she might very well ask for an explanation before going any further. As it is, she tries to split her attention as best she can, watching where she's going and watching him, trying and failing not to think about what she just saw.

What he saw, too, apparently. Confused as she might have been before, she's all the more so now, and it shows. "You saw it?" she asks, her voice whisper-soft, likely audible only because he's close beside her. In a way, it should be a relief. It means it was real, but that she wasn't just going insane.

She never told him about it, though. She didn't say anything more than that she felt like she was losing her mind, and that she wanted to clear her head for a little while, even if that meant turning to drugs to push it all away. The only person she said anything about it to was Ms. Kelley, and even then, she went light on the details, already certain there wasn't anything the guidance counselor could do to help her. Brow furrowing, she watches him carefully, though she has no reason to suspect he would be anything less than sincere about this. "How... how do you know about that?"

It feels like he keeps saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and usually Eddie wouldn't give a shit. This feels different, though, he feels like he has to try harder, and Eddie is quiet again, rubbing his thumbnail against his lower lip as he tries to figure out where to start.

"Time is sort of different here," he says to start. "It's like... a lot of time has passed since we were in my trailer. Almost a week. It was happening to other people, too. That kid Fred, the one with the scar. McKinney, on the basketball team. This girl Max, too, the one whose brother died at the mall."

Eddie chews his lower lip and exhales slowly. "We went to where it lived. To try and kill it."

She'd been so sure it was just her. Maybe less so at the end, when what was happening felt so real, but all the same, Chrissy never imagined that the same thing would be happening to anyone else, or that there would be any way to stop it. Trying to take all of this in is dizzying, but she does her best, still intermittently glancing over at Eddie as she considers what he's just told her. It's been a week since the night she went back to his trailer, although she was there just minutes ago. Other people were haunted just like she was. He somehow found out enough about it to be able to try to kill that thing — what she saw at the end, she assumes, its real face, not hiding in the guise of someone close to her.

There's only one conclusion she can reach, and it's not very surprising.

"So I did," she says, words slow and careful, her gaze staying fixed on him now, even as she walks. She bites her lip in turn, swallows hard against the lump she can feel in her throat. Her voice wavers when she continues, but she tries her best to ignore it. "Die. Didn't I? What I was seeing, and feeling, that... was it."

Eddie can't look at her when he nods. He blinks a couple of times, his eyes stinging, but he nods, because he wants to be honest with her. She deserves that much, even if he couldn't do anything to help her.

"I tried to wake you up," he says. "You were in this... this trance. It's what he did. Vecna. When you started levitating and then... shit, Chrissy, I ran away. I just freaked out and I ran."

At this point, Eddie knows he really couldn't have done anything, but if he could change that moment, he would. He would be less of a coward and he would just stay with her, even if he couldn't save her life. She shouldn't have been alone.

Earlier, out in the woods — mere hours ago for her, apparently much longer than that for him — she'd been surprised by how friendly Eddie was, how kind. Now, as if the flip side of a coin, Chrissy is caught off-guard by how rattled he seems, more apparently upset by what happened than she would have expected. He barely knows her, after all. The last time they spoke to each other was back in middle school, and they reentered each other's lives with her at her very worst. She wouldn't have thought it would make that much difference.

Then again, if someone died in the front hallway of her house after going into a trance and apparently starting to levitate, she would probably be pretty freaked out, too, and probably would have run away.

Quiet for a moment, she tries to take this information in. It's really only just confirmation of what she already knew, but it's strange and unsettling to be here, alive and breathing, and yet aware of her own death. "I didn't even know I was still there," she finally tells him, her lower lip quivering with the effort it takes not to just fall apart all over again. "At your place, I mean. What I saw..." It was a nightmare, one that makes her tremble even now, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure there's nothing out of place.

"You were still there. The other stuff was all in your head," Eddie says. "But that doesn't make it not real. Everything he made you saw, that was real, he lived in this messed up version of Hawkins and he made people see all this horrible shit and after he was done torturing them..."

He trails off again, his face screwed up against the emotion. Eddie hadn't known Fred beyond him being the kid who'd caused that accident, and he sure as hell hadn't liked Patrick McKinney, but that doesn't mean he thought any of them deserved to die. What this creep did to Hawkins, a place Eddie has only ever wanted to escape, turns his stomach.

"It was bad," he says finally as his building comes into view. It gives him something to do, getting his keys out of his jacket pocket. "It was really bad. I shouldn't've run.

The building they're approaching doesn't look like anywhere she would have expected Eddie Munson to live, though Chrissy knows better than to say so. No matter how she would have meant it, there's no way it wouldn't sound horribly judgmental. He doesn't deserve that, least of all when he's going out of his way to help her. Mostly she's just relieved to apparently be close to their destination, increasingly uneasy the longer they're out in the open. Once, she would have worried about being seen with him like this. Now, it's hard to care about that when there are much bigger things to be afraid of.

She knows how that sentence ends, after all. After he was done torturing them, he killed them. Killed her. She doesn't know what happened in Eddie's trailer, what it looked like to him, unaware of everything after that monster's hand lifted over her face, but he says it was bad, and she believes him.

"I was already gone," she murmurs, shaking her head, a realization and a rebuttal and a confession all in one. "If what you're saying is true... it wouldn't have mattered where I was. Who was there." Just acknowledging that futility makes her feel dizzy and sort of ill, but she thinks some part of her already knew it anyway. She was dead long before she sought Eddie out at school or went home with him that night. Despite her best efforts, her voice breaks when she adds, "I just wanted to make it go away for a little while."

Whether that's true or not, Eddie doesn't want to argue about it. Running wasn't the right choice, he can't take that back and it isn't Chrissy's job to make him feel better about it. All he can do now is just make things better from here on.

If he can.

"Vecna?" he asks as he unlocks the front door of the building. The place isn't great, but it's a hell of a lot better than the trailer, not only because she died there. At least the apartment is relatively clean and he's been at least trying to take care of it, which he's pretty grateful for now. He never figured he'd have Chrissy Cunningham in his place once, never mind twice.

"It wouldn't've helped," he says, wishing he could tell her otherwise. "Music worked. To ground people, pull them back. But the drugs... yeah, it wouldn't have done much. I wish I'd known what you were seeing. All that shit..."

Even now, feeling inexplicably safer with Eddie than she thinks she would anywhere else, having gotten the distinct sense earlier that he actually saw her and not just the image on the surface, Chrissy can't help nervously wondering just how much he knows about what she saw. There's relief in not having completely lost her mind after all, and more so in not having to explain what was happening to her. The actual contents, though, of those hallucinations or whatever they were, are horrifyingly personal, nothing she's ever told anyone. Ms. Kelley knows a little of it, but that was still an act of desperation, involving saying as little as she could get away with.

She's all sorts of messed up inside, and in a strange way, she badly wants Eddie to know that just as much as she wants him not to.

"I told you I felt like I was losing my mind," she points out, her voice still wavering, the slight hint of a smile she dredges up equally unsteady. By her count, it was just a few hours ago that they sat at the picnic table in the woods and he made her laugh for the first time in days. It feels like another lifetime, though, and in a way, it kind of was. "I wouldn't have known what else to say." She means to leave it at that. She can't quite shake the thought, though, idly picking at a cuticle as her smile fades again, and figures the best thing she can do is ask. "How much did you find out?"

"About the shit you were seeing?" he asks, then shakes his head as he presses the button to call the elevator. "Not much, really. You remember Steve Harrington? And Nancy Wheeler? They knew all about this shit, they said it had something to with, uh... trauma. But it's personal, I guess, so it's stuff no one else really knows."

He wonders sometimes what Venca would have made him see. Eddie doesn't think he's had much in the way of real trauma, not until he watched Chrissy die in front of him.

"But if I knew about the creepy floating vine guy with no nose?" he asks. "Well, okay, definitely would've thought you were crazy for real and definitely would've been wrong."

Edited 2022-07-07 22:20 (UTC)

So he knows she's a mess, just not in what ways. It's relieving, really. The last thing she would have needed is for all her secrets to be laid bare after her death, as strange and unsettling as it is to be able even to consider that at all. Chrissy is still contemplating what to say about it for now when he follows it up with that last statement. It's such a ridiculous description of something so horrifying, and her nerves are still so shot, that she can't help the half-hysterical little laugh that bubbles out of her, one hand instinctively lifting to her mouth, though it does nothing to quiet the sound.

"Sorry," she says, glancing over at Eddie as the elevator doors open and she steps inside. "Describing it like that is just..." He's not wrong. While it doesn't lessen the terror that still clings to her, it makes it a little easier to bear for just a moment.

"You called it... Vecna, right?"

It isn't quite the laugh he'd prefer to get out of her, but it's something, and Eddie smiles a little and shakes his head at the apology. Once they're inside the elevator, he jabs at the button for the fourth floor, then leans back against the wall, his hands in the pockets of his vest.

"Yeah," he says. "It's a DnD thing. Dungeons and Dragons? The Hellfire Club?"

All the shit that made everyone in Hawkins think he was some sort of satantic cult leading freak. The shit that made everyone decide he was capable of hurting Chrissy in such a horrific way.

"He's like... a god, basically," he explain. "In the lore. We needed something to call this guy and we just sort of latched onto it, I guess."

Chrissy knows of Dungeons and Dragons, of course, and the club Eddie runs at school. That's just about the beginning and end of her actual knowledge, though. All of the rumors — that it's a cult, that it's devil worship — haven't escaped her either, but she's never put much stock in them. Intimidating as she may have thought Eddie was before he met her out in the woods, it just seems sort of ridiculous to her, the idea that high school students playing a game would actually be summoning demons or whatever else people are saying.

Even now, with his tying it to what's been happening to her, she's more curious than wary. Maybe she's just been too frightened of too much else to have the energy to worry about a game now. Maybe, as horrified and shaken as she still is, there's a little bit of relief, too, in simply being done.

"This is going to sound really stupid," she admits, her expression turning sheepish as she ducks her head, nose wrinkling. "I didn't know there was actual lore."

"It isn't stupid," Eddie answers, maybe a bit too quick. If he's honest, he wouldn't have expected Chrissy Cunningham to know anything about it, too focused on cheerleading, which is kind of cool, given the crazy flips they do, or her boyfriend or getting into college. He wouldn't have expected her to even realize he ran the club at school or, if she did realize that much, to know it had anything to do with the game.

"Even people who play all the time don't know everything," he says. "There's way too much content. It's a fantasy game, though, with bad guys and monster, so I guess... it was easy. Naming the monster."

He thinks maybe they needed to name it. With a name, it became real, rather than some otherworldly entity. With a name, it became something they could fight, even if Vecna was nearly impossible to defeat in the game.

"This is so weird," Chrissy admits, pressing her lips together after she's blurted the words out. "Not... not this, but..." Really, this is weird, too, and all the more so for how much it doesn't feel like it is. Something about being around Eddie makes her feel comfortable, or at least as much so as she can at a time like this. It was the same earlier, too, out in the woods. Shaken and jumpy as she was, he made her laugh, put her at ease for a few moments. She wouldn't have expected that to be the case. She never would have thought that she would be going home with Eddie Munson for the second time, but she doesn't want to give him the wrong idea, to make it seem like she's bothered by that particular fact of their circumstances.

It's everything else that she finds strange enough to comment on. The elevator doors opening, she steps out into the hall, shifting her weight as she waits to see which way they're going. "It was this thing that I thought was happening just to me," she explains, a little awkward. "And now you know more about it than I do, even... gave it a name. I feel like I missed so much."

She did miss so much, she reminds herself. She died. There's still something unbelievably surreal about considering that while standing here, alive and comparably well, at least physically.

"No, it's weird," Eddie says as he jingles his keys in his hand, a little nervous despite himself. Bringing her to the trailer was one thing, he'd had a purpose then, selling her drugs, but his apartment here is something else entirely. He's just bringing her here. Because it's quiet, because it's safe, because even though she technically has somewhere else to go, Eddie hasn't even thought to bring her to the weird ass train station where she can pick up her stuff.

"It's seriously weird," he says before letting them both into the apartment. It isn't much, but at least it's clean.

"It sucks that you missed it." He winces a little, then shakes his head. "Not that it was fun. It was pretty shitty, honestly, and terrifying, but that... you know. That you died."

Blinking, Chrissy nods, arms wrapped around herself again as she follows him into the apartment. It gives her the weirdest sense of déjà vu — not half an hour ago, she was stepping into his trailer, uneasy in a whole different way — but it's hard to be too thrown by that with those words echoing in the air. She already knew she was dead; she would have even if she hadn't asked for confirmation earlier. Hearing him say it outright, though, you died, still hits hard, rattles her in a way she wouldn't quite have expected.

Until today, she wouldn't have thought that what happened to her would make any kind of difference to him, either. They didn't know each other at all. They still don't, really, though it doesn't feel like that. But it also probably changes things, for someone to have a person drop dead right in front of them, in their home. He said it was bad, and she's inclined to believe him.

"Yeah," she agrees, her voice weak and a little uncertain. Glancing around, because she feels like she needs to say something, she adds, "It's nice. Your place."

"Yeah, it's okay," he agrees, a little uncertain.

Eddie realizes he doesn't really know what to do here. He needs to explain this place to her, even though it's as crazy as the whole Upside Down thing, just in different ways. What he should do is sit her down, tell her the deal, and then take her to the train station.

Instead of doing any of that, Eddie asks, "Do you want some water? And maybe to... lie down?"

Christ, it's like he's never talked to a girl before, which isn't true. Eddie does really well with a certain subset of women, usually ones that wear tight jeans and have teased hair and are maybe a little bit older than he is. But now he feels like kind of an idiot just trying to explain Darrow.

"Um, yeah," Chrissy says again, summoning up a faint little half-smile, trying at least for a moment not to look as awkward as she feels. It's not his fault, after all. None of this is, and he's not the reason for any unease she feels. If anything, he does the opposite. He shouldn't have to deal with any of this, though. These problems were hers from the start, and at least before, she was going to him for a specific reason, a customer wanting to make a purchase. Now, she's just lost and afraid and deeply shaken, coming to him because she doesn't know where else to go or what to do.

As much as she already feels like an imposition, though, something to drink does sound like an alright place to start, as does getting off her feet. She feels unsteady, a little woozy, and she's not sure if it's because of whatever happened to her body in Eddie's trailer, whatever brought her here, or simply that she can't remember the last time she ate anything she kept down. "Some water would be good. And to sit?"

Even with his having basically offered, she still waits to get an okay before she heads to the couch. Once there, she takes a seat at the far side of it, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs, toes of her sneakers hanging off the edge of the cushion, like she's trying to make herself as small as possible. A part of her has wanted for a long time just to disappear, and maybe she should be relieved now that she apparently did. She just wouldn't have wanted it like this.

She's so small, he thinks, fingers going to his lower lip for a second to push it between his teeth where he chews nervously on his way to the kitchen. What he'd love to do is make her laugh again, take her mind off all the awful shit that's happened, but honestly, Eddie's still kind of shaken himself. He hasn't even fully healed yet, the wounds still fresh.

He's probably dead, too. Back in the Upside Down. Maybe telling her that might help.

Running the water so it gets cold, Eddie goes to grab a glass and stops when he sees an envelope inside the cupboard.

"What the hell?" he asks, taking it down. Chrissy's name is scrawled on the front and he recognizes it from when he'd gotten his own. Still chewing his lip, Eddie fills up the glass, then returns to the living room with the water and with the envelope.

"Um," he says. "I think this is yours."

Lifting her head from where she's let it rest against her knees, Chrissy looks up at him, brow furrowing when she realizes he's holding a large envelope out to her along with the glass of water. Her confusion only grows when she reaches out for both and finds her name handwritten on the envelope in question. In the face of everything, she hasn't been able to dwell as much as she probably should have on the fact that she doesn't know where she is or how she got here. She's just followed along with Eddie, not entirely sure why she feels so safe with him, only that she does.

That's still true, but it's more than a little confusing why there would be anything waiting for her in his apartment. No one should have known she would be here. It doesn't make sense. None of this does.

"What is this?" she asks, frowning at the envelope as she sets it against her legs. "I don't understand. Did someone leave this here? For me?"

Edited 2022-07-14 18:16 (UTC)

"Yeah, so, uh... this place is kinda like an alternate dimension," Eddie explains as he sits down on the couch as well, not too close, giving Chrissy some space because this next bit is kind of wild, even for someone like Eddie, who has a pretty extensive imagination.

"We're in this city that's completely self-contained," he tells her. "We can't get out and a bunch of people here are like us, just sort of transported here somehow." He laughs, the sound forced. "Steve Harrington is here."

And he doesn't remember any of the shit they went through together, which sucks, but Eddie just shoves that bit aside.

"The envelope thing is weird, but it's got an ID card and keys for an apartment. Probably a lot like this one. There's some money, it sort of looks like play money, but it's real."

Quiet for a moment, Chrissy turns her head enough to look in his direction, legs still bent up, the envelope propped against them. She's not sure why it's so unnerving, just a simple envelope bearing her name. Maybe it's just because her nerves are still so frayed, monsters still lurking every time she closes her eyes. Maybe it's because she's spent the past week feeling hunted, and she still doesn't trust what's in front of her now. Eddie, yes — she doesn't know why, but she trusts him — but that doesn't mean this is real, or that it won't give way to another nightmare at a moment's notice.

What he says should sound like one. Instead, finally, she lets out a breath that's nearly a laugh, helpless and confused. "I don't think I have any idea what you just said," she admits. "An alternate dimension? But how... I should be..."

She should be dead. She would have known it even if he hadn't confirmed as much for her.

Edited 2022-07-15 05:53 (UTC)

"I don't know," he says. "I don't know how any of it works. The same thing happened to me. One second I was in the Upside Down, that's what they call this other version of Hawkins where Vecna lived. I was fighting off these bats things, just covered in goo and blood and-"

He pauses here, leaning back and lifting up his shirt. The worst wound is still bandaged, but there are others, clear bite marks, pink and healing.

"Anyway," he says and drops his shirt. "The next second I was here. With some bats. The hospital had an envelope just like yours with my name on it."

For about half a second, Chrissy feels her cheeks begin to heat, confused as to why he would be lifting up his shirt. The reason becomes clear quickly enough, though, when she sees the healing and bandaged wounds marking his chest. "Oh my god," she breathes, her eyes going wide with something like horror. She still can't understand most of what he's telling her — another version of Hawkins, bat things — but those marks speak for themselves. "Are you —"

She winces as she lifts her head to look up at him again. It's a stupid question. Nothing about any of what happened is remotely okay. She changes her approach instead, her worries about the creepy envelope temporarily forgotten. "Is it bad?"

He seemed alright when they were coming back here, at least, but she wasn't exactly paying attention to how he was walking at the time. Distracted as she's been, she hopes she didn't miss anything significant.

"Nah, it's okay. Nothing a little advanced healing spell can't fix," Eddie says, knowing she won't understand the reference. They just sort of spill out at times. "Dungeons and Dragons thing, I can't really cast healing spells."

He hasn't talked about it much, how scary it had been, how sure he had been of his own inevitable death. Back in the Upside Down, he doesn't know what happened, how it ended. Steve and Robin don't know, neither does El, and he's keeping his distance from Chief Hopper. Not that he's done anything wrong in Darrow, he just knows the man doesn't like him much.

But he can't talk about it now. Not with Chrissy. Not with what she's gone through.

"It's not so bad," he tells her. "You'll have a place of your own. Money." And she's alive.

While she may not understand the reference, minimal as her knowledge of the game is, Chrissy does at least manage the faintest hint of a smile when he tells her he can't really do healing spells. It's like earlier, sort of, out in the woods — a distraction, however momentarily, from the frightening, overwhelming things in her head. She's grateful for it, really. She just wouldn't know how to say so without sounding completely stupid.

"I would have been pretty surprised if you could," she replies, as close as she can get to teasing right now. The words come out softer, more sincere, but she guesses it's better than nothing.

There's only so long she can put this off, though. Looking down at the envelope again, she worries at her lower lip with her teeth, fingertips nervously skimming over where her name is written. "So someone left me money," she says, "and a place to stay, but... they knew I would be here to find this?" It doesn't make sense, she thinks again. No one saw them together out in the woods; no one saw her get into Eddie's van and go back to his trailer.

She died, though. Not just now, but for him, a week ago, in his home, and as pieces start to come together in her head, she feels her stomach lurch uncomfortably. "Oh, god," she murmurs, half to herself, before turning to Eddie, wide-eyed again. "Everyone knows, don't they? That I was buying drugs."

Edited 2022-07-18 00:53 (UTC)

"No one believes it," Eddie offers, not knowing how much comfort that will offer, if any. "They all think I lured you back to my trailer for some satanic ritual. It justified their little game of Hunt the Freak."

He says it with a bitter smile, because being a freak had never bothered Eddie before. Knowing people blame him for Chrissy's death sucks, but it isn't like he did anything to try and help her. Maybe Eddie didn't kill her, but he didn't save her either. But being weird, being different, that's all the evidence they needed that he would do something as awful as that.

"But this place, it's sort of magic," he says, not wanting to dwell on what Hawkins thinks he did. "I still can't cast spells, but yeah, that's the only way I can explain the envelope and the bank account and the ID card."

"Wait, what?" Chrissy asks, brow furrowing in confusion. She knows what people think of Eddie, of course, and of the game he plays; it's always sort of seemed to her like he's leaned into that on purpose, though she admittedly has little to draw on in that regard. Still, even when she expected him to be, as he put it, mean and scary, she never thought he was dangerous. No matter how desperate she might have been for something to put her mind at ease, she wouldn't have gone to meet him alone in the woods if she suspected he would be threatening to her in any way. They haven't spent a lot of time together since then, just that conversation, the drive back to his trailer, and now this, but she knows without question that he wouldn't hurt her.

That anyone could think he was responsible for what happened to her when she'd been dealing with something so awful is baffling to say the least, and unsettling beyond that.

"That's — that's crazy," she says. As much as she hates the idea of everyone knowing what she was doing when she died, at least it would have been the truth, and at least she wouldn't have been there for the fallout. When she somehow, improbably, feels safer around Eddie than she has in a long while, this alternative seems even worse. "They wouldn't believe that I was looking to buy drugs, but they'd believe that?"

Eddie smiles a little, because it's sweet that she thinks it's crazy, it just goes to show she's kind, probably kinder than a lot of people like him ever thought. People like Chrissy, like Jason, even like Steve, they're usually too popular to be kind.

Some of them grow out of it, apparently, like Steve. Some of them were just always kind, like Chrissy. It's just that people were too scared of her to really notice.

"Don't think the demon tattoos really helped my case," he says with a crooked smile. "Don't worry about it, though, all that's pretty much done with. I feel kinda shitty for my uncle, though."

Something about the way he says that, the way he smiles at her, makes Chrissy feel indescribably sad, like a weight has settled on her chest. Or maybe that's everything, though. She's safe now, maybe — she can't actually bring herself to ask about it, too afraid this will all vanish in the blink of an eye — but she's spent a week feeling like she was losing her mind, scared of every shadow, jumping at every sound. Now that she has a moment just to breathe, it feels like it's all catching up to her at once. Thinking about Eddie, the one person who made her feel even halfway okay for a few minutes, being blamed for her death, and the wounds she saw on his chest, only adds to it.

Before she can realize it or hold it back, she feels her eyes start to sting with tears, and abruptly looks away, gaze fixed on her knees instead.

"I'm sorry," she says, her voice wobbling and deeply earnest. "God, I never should have dragged you into all of this." At the time, it felt like a last resort, the only thing left for her to try. She didn't know, though, how nice he would be, or that things were so much worse even than she realized. She definitely didn't know that anyone would get hurt.

"Hey," he says, leaning a little closer, although he doesn't touch her. "No. None of this is your fault. Hawkins... they already thought I was weird, you know that. You didn't do that. You didn't do anything wrong."

Eddie Munson has been Eddie the Freak for a long time. A lot longer than just the past week and a half. He'd been a freak in middle school, with his buzzcut and his angry music, and he'd been a freak as a kid, too, with his criminal dad, then his dead parents.

"If they need to blame me..." He shrugs. "It doesn't matter now. Not here. Now we can both be the freaks we were always meant to be." He's hoping to get another smile out of her and he tries one of his own, smile and tentative.

He says freak like he did out in the woods earlier, like it's a compliment or a point of pride. She should balk at the thought, but instead, Chrissy does smile. It's faint and tremulous, its effect probably dulled somewhat by the fact that she sniffles at the same time and uses the cuff of one of her hoodie sleeves to dry the few tears that have spilled down her cheeks, but at least it's there.

Really, she doesn't understand any of this. He barely knows her, and yet not for the first time, he's going out of his way to try to make her feel better — this time, over something that does very much feel like her fault, even if she couldn't have known how everything would end. Stranger still, he's succeeding, at least as much as it would be possible for anyone to right now. She's not sure if he's right about her having always been meant to be a freak, but she's not sure he's wrong, either. If she's honest with herself, as somewhere deep, deep down, she has to be, so much of her life has been dictated by other people's expectations that she doesn't know who she would be — who she is — without that pressure overhead.

"You make that sound like a good thing," she says, not a disagreement, just an observation. Whether or not it is, or she is, is something she's going to have to figure out later, much too daunting when there's so much else to take in. "But I guess... the way things have been didn't work out so well for me anyway."

"Being a freak?" he asks. "Yeah, I mean, you get to be who you want. Who you are. People say it makes you a freak, but they only mean you don't fit into the little box they've imagined for you."

He smiles again and says, "Y'know, the, uh, the royal you."

Eddie doesn't remember a time when he wasn't looked at sideways from most of the people in Hawkins. He's lived in that trailer with his Uncle Wayne for most of his life, before that it was a different trailer with his dad until his dad was arrested. People thought they knew his parents, they thought they knew his uncle, and they thought they knew him. Wayne never fought against it and honestly, Eddie is glad.

He likes who he is. Most of the time anyway. He has his flaws, everyone does, but he's glad he's never pretended to be anyone besides exactly who he is.

For as far back as she can remember — her whole life, really — Chrissy has bent over backwards trying to fit into that box, just like she's tried to fit into her clothes, making herself smaller and smaller until she's not sure how much of her is left, or if she's even a person at all. A lot of the time, she feels like she might be nothing more than an idea, and one that never lives up to expectations if examined too closely. If anyone saw what's behind the reputation and the fake smile, she has no doubt that they wouldn't like what they see. At best, they'd brand her ungrateful. She has everything, after all. What right does she even have to be so dissatisfied?

She felt earlier, though, like she feels again now, that Eddie does see her. He unquestionably knows more than anyone should, given what he said on their way here about what she was seeing and trauma, even if he doesn't know the details. And maybe all of this is just pity, his feeling bad for a poor, sad, dead girl, but still, it's something, terrifying and comforting in equal measure.

"I'd ask what makes you so sure I'm a freak too," she says, blotting at her eyes with her sleeve again, "but the whole... Vecna thing is probably a pretty clear giveaway, huh?"

Edited 2022-07-27 02:12 (UTC)

"I mean... levitating vine monster stalking you kind of makes you a freak, yeah," he agrees, smiling at her. "And I mean that as the sincerest compliment. You're in great company. Some of the coolest people in history are freaks. Cleopatra, big time freak, all the snake shit? Tom Waits, so weird, so cool. Ozzy Osbourne, absolute menace, but also very cool."

Gently, Eddie nudges his shoulder against Chrissy's.

"And who cares what anyone back in Hawkins thinks anyway?" he asks. "You're here now and they're not."

"Yeah, I... only know who one of those people is," Chrissy admits, visibly a little embarrassed by that fact, though she manages to return his smile. She can't really claim to be good at any subjects in school, but history tends to be one that she doesn't do too badly in. Besides, she's seen the movie. The latter two people, though, she doesn't have a clue about, convinced all over again that he must think she's shallow and sheltered, just another vapid, popular cheerleader.

He doesn't sound like he does. He's never once treated her like that. Despite the irony in worrying about what he thinks of her when he's telling her not to worry about what people think of her, though, old habits die hard, and the instinct is one too deeply ingrained in her to shake that easily.

"I'm pretty sure that crying on your couch is the least I've ever cared what anyone would think, though," she points out. Even as the words leave her mouth, she knows they aren't true. For a few moments after she woke up, she didn't care, either, too scared to do anything but desperately cling to him. It isn't something she wants to remind him of. "So that's something."

"That's something," Eddie agrees, watching her with a small, crooked smile for a moment. At this point in his own arrival, he had been unconscious in a hospital bed, more than happy to just sleep away the next twelve hours and hope it had all been a really bad, really fucked up dream. Maybe if he hadn't lost so much blood at the time and had been fighting evil bats intent on killing him, he would have cried, too.

He's definitely cried since.

"Do you want something to eat? Or... you can just... I mean, I guess you probably don't want to go to your place yet," he says. "You can stay here and chill for awhile. Maybe take a nap?"

Shit, that sounds so stupid out loud.

Just the thought of trying to eat makes Chrissy feel a little queasy, though she doesn't want to draw any attention to that fact. Going to her own place — wherever that might be, the envelope still unopened in her lap — doesn't seem any better. She's no safer here than she would be on her own, something she's all too aware of, having been in his trailer when everything went so horrifically wrong, but she feels a little more at ease. That has to count for something. Right now, she doesn't have the wherewithal to pretend she's any more okay than she actually is.

"I don't think I could sleep right now," she admits, sniffling again, a little sheepish. She's barely slept in a week, but she can handle the exhaustion far better than she could handle whatever would be waiting when she closes her eyes. "But... as long as it's not too much trouble... I don't really want to be alone yet, either."

He's the one who offered, but all the same, she doesn't want to be an imposition. They barely know each other, after all, even if it no longer feels like that's the case.

Eddie manages another grin, finding the idea of her presence here as too much trouble to be pretty funny. They might not know each other well, barely at all, but Eddie had been pleasantly surprised by how much he'd liked Chrissy even after that first interaction. He's always been aware of her, it'd been kind of hard not to be aware of all the popular kids, but beyond thinking she was pretty, since that first time they'd met, Eddie had never considered that she might be someone he could be friends with.

Now here they are.

"Here, I'm gonna... I-" He gestures, then stands up, rather than explaining what he's about to do. He goes down the hall and opens the linen closet, which itself is wild, because he never expected to find himself in a place with a linen closet. But he gets a blanket, one of the nice clean ones that had been here from day one, and comes back to the living room to offer it to Chrissy.

"We can just watch TV or something," he says.

Chrissy doesn't know what to expect when Eddie starts speaking only to quickly trail off and then leave the room. She doubts anything is wrong — he seems alright enough with the idea of her staying for a while — but she watches him with a vaguely confused expression, trying to ignore the way her chest goes a little tight, slight tension curling up her spine and through her shoulders. He couldn't have saved her, back in his trailer, maybe an hour ago at most. Whatever happened to her was going to happen regardless. It feels suddenly familiar, though, him going off to look for something while she waits in the living room, and she can almost hear the echo of that stupid clock again, too easily imagine that this is all in her head after all.

When he reemerges just a moment later with a blanket, though, she relaxes again, smiling in relief and surprise both. She knows why she assumed he would be mean and scary, but it seems unbelievably ridiculous of her now. Really, if anything, he's just sweet.

Suspecting he might object to that description, though, she doesn't say so, just reaches out to take the blanket from him. "Thanks," she says as she does, lowering her legs at last so she can toe off her sneakers and tuck her feet up beside her instead. Unfolding the blanket, she spreads it across her lap, careful to leave enough on the side for him to share if he wants. "That... sounds really nice, actually."

"Okay," Eddie says and he finds he kind of wants a beer, but really only because he's nervous and wishes he had something to do with his hands. Instead, he sits beside her again, careful to give her space without making it seem like he's trying to keep his distance.

He isn't even sure why it matters.

"TV's weird here," he tells her as he grabs the remote off the coffee table and turns it on. "It looks way better and the shows are different. No more laugh tracks most of the time."

What a stupid thing to say. He doesn't know why Chrissy would care about laugh tracks or the quality of the TV shows.

"Oh, wow," Chrissy says, her eyes widening a little as the TV turns on. Even with what he's just said, she isn't expecting the picture to be so crisp, the colors so vivid. Of course, unusual as it is, it's the least strange thing about this entire situation, but it's sort of nice to be able, for a moment, to focus on something as utterly basic as what TVs look like and what shows play. "That really is way better."

It should feel more uncomfortable than it does, sitting here on Eddie's couch. There's some awkwardness, sure, but Chrissy figures that's really just her and the fact that she has no idea what to do or say now. They haven't exactly spent a lot of time together before. They might never have spoken again at all if she hadn't thought she was having some kind of nervous breakdown, and there's something kind of sad about that.

"What's your favorite thing to watch?" she asks suddenly, curious. It seems like a good enough place to start, something to talk about that has nothing to do with what happened to her.

As he leans back on the couch, Eddie kicks his feet up, sneakers on the coffee table, and if not for the bites he's still healing from and the fact that he just spent half an hour trying to explain to Chrissy Cunningham that she died in his trailer at the hands of some monster that lived in an alternate version of Hawkins, this might all seem pretty normal.

"Oh, there's this show, it's the stupidest thing," he begins to tell her. "All these different psychologists and dating experts match total strangers and they get married. Just like that. The show kind of follows them and sees how they manage."

It's stupid, just like he's said, but it's distracting and entertaining and he's needed that lately.

"Wait, so they just get married to people they don't know?" Chrissy asks with a laugh, bright and pleased. It isn't at all the sort of thing she would have imagined that Eddie would spend time watching, though it also isn't as if she's given it much thought before now. Still, as strange as the show sounds, it's even stranger that it would be something that appeals to him, in a way she finds sort of delightful. "Do any of them actually work out?"

She pauses for a moment, but doesn't wait for a response before she speaks again. "I really like old movies," she tells him. He hasn't asked, but it only seems fair to follow his answer with her own. "You know, like... Audrey Hepburn, Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe. That sort of thing."

"A couple," Eddie says, even though he doesn't understand how that's possible. At nineteen, getting married to anyone seems insane. His parents hadn't been happy before his father was arrested, they'd seemed less happy after he got out, and then they'd died.

Seems like kind of a shit future as far as Eddie is concerned. He's not sure why anyone would want that.

"Yeah?" he asks, looking over at Chrissy with a smile. He jabs a few buttons on the remote, still trying to figure out how it works, then switches to the channel that seems to show old black and white movies more often than not. "Like this?"

"Yeah," Chrissy says, smiling a little shyly when he changes the channel, just the last in a very long list of things about this that have been surprising. Even now, she half-expects him to dismiss it as stupid. Jason probably would have, though she also doesn't know what that has to do with anything. It's not the same, after all. Jason has never taken her in while she's been terrified and traumatized from having just died. She would never have asked him to. "Like this."

She doesn't recognize offhand whatever is on now, but based on what he's told her, it might not be anything she could be familiar with anyway. The vibe is comforting enough regardless. Being here is, too, at least as much as anything could be right now. "Thanks," she says again, fingers idly clasping at the blanket over her legs. "I know I keep saying that, but... it's really nice of you. Letting me hang out here for a while, and all."

Eddie shrugs a little, as if it's no big deal, because he doesn't really think it is. He had been willing to help Chrissy back in Hawkins and it's a different kind of help now, but he's not less willing to give it.

"I had to spend my first night here in the hospital," he tells her. "It was kind of... I don't know, it was better than having to come back here and be alone, so if you wanna stay... I mean, you can. For as long as you need. You can take the bed even, I'll sleep out here."

A quick personal inventory tells him he'd changed the sheets yesterday, so he doesn't need to worry about anything there, at the very least.

He's done so much for her already, been through so much because of her. Whatever he's said about it, Chrissy still feels more than a little guilty for what she inadvertently dragged him into. While there's a lot she may not understand yet about all of that, she does know that he wouldn't have been accused of killing her or attacked by evil bats if she hadn't gone to him for help that, it turns out, no one could have given her. The last thing she should do is ask for anything more from him now, when he's currently going out of his way for her yet again.

At his offer, though, she visibly relaxes, like letting out a held breath, tension she hadn't even realized she was still carrying beginning to ease. "Really?" she asks, her voice embarrassingly small. It shouldn't even need to be a question when he sounds certain enough, but all of this is still so surreal, and she isn't about to take his kindness for granted. "I... yeah. If you're sure."

The rest of what he's said catches up to her, and she gives a quick little shake of her head. "I'll be fine on the couch, you don't have to give up your room for me," she adds. "Honestly, I don't know if I'll be able to sleep anyway. I just... think it might help to know someone's nearby."

"You think you won't sleep, but I bet once your head is on a pillow, bam," he says. "Fast asleep."

He doesn't know everything she went through, but he'd seen it happen to Max, he had seen the way it took a toll on her, how exhausted she'd been. The haunted look in her eyes. Sometimes people don't even realize how tired they are until they finally have a chance to rest.

"And I'll be right here," he adds, even though he's not really much of a hero. "I've faced those evil bats, remember? I'll have the scars to prove it."

If asked, Chrissy wouldn't have the first idea how to explain why she feels so safe with him. She only knows that she does. Considering how difficult it's been to find anything like that of late, she can't bring herself to disregard that. Maybe it's stupid, finding herself so clingy just because someone happened to be nice to her, but he is the one who invited her to stay, saving her the trouble of having to ask if she could. From most guys, such an offer would probably just be unnerving. Somehow, though, from Eddie, it isn't.

Terrified as she's been, as she still is, she can't even bring herself to care that much about how her spending the night would look. Her dying in his trailer looked a whole lot worse, at least.

"Never knew you were such a badass," she says, though she sounds more serious than she'd like, still soft and unsure of herself. "I'll, uh, try not to make it look like you killed me, again."

"Oh, yeah, real badass," he says, his voice dry, because he knows he isn't. Robin, Nancy, they're both insanely badass, willing to throw themselves into danger for the people they care about, even willing to risk themselves for him, someone they'd barely known.

That's what good people do, he thinks. Brave people. Eddie doesn't think he's a bad guy, he tries to be kind to most people, but he knows he isn't really brave.

"We can just watch the movie for now," he tells her, leaning back into the couch, sinking into the cushions. "Just... not think about stuff for awhile."

Chrissy wishes it were as easy as he makes it sound, just not thinking about things. Even now, feeling perhaps the most relaxed she's felt in days, there's fear at the fringes of everything, a sense of dread that she can't shake. Talk of him being a badass aside, Eddie couldn't save her before, and if that thing is still in her head, he won't be able to now, either. If she goes to sleep, she might not wake back up again. For a while, she kind of thought that was what she wanted — just to drift off and let that be the end of it. Now that it's actually happened, though, she knows she was wrong, that she isn't ready for that. The prospect of it is terrifying, of finding some sense of safety only to have it ripped away again even more so.

It is nice, though, just to sit here for a while, not to feel the kind of pressure she usually would to pretend to be okay. Of course she worries what he'll think of her, but he's been nothing but kind to her at every turn, and that means more than she'd know how to say.

"God, people would lose their minds if they could see this now," she says, huffing out a quiet laugh. "The two of us sitting on your couch, watching some old movie, me still in my cheer uniform. Might even be harder to believe than me just trying to buy some drugs."

Edited 2022-08-09 23:37 (UTC)

"People would lose their fucking minds," he agrees, speaking slowly, kind of amused by the whole thing. There's no denying it, he's well aware of how people think of him, the things they say both to his face and behind his back, and he's stopped caring a long time ago.

For Eddie, it would be kind of hilarious, watching people lose their shit over this. For Chrissy, it wouldn't be quite as funny, he figures. But she has a lot more to lose over being friends with him than he does being friends with her.

Or she used to, anyway.

"Shit, are you uncomfortable?" he asks. "I, uh, I have shirts. I don't think my pants will fit you, though." The shirt won't either, but maybe it'll be more comfortable because it'll be too big.

"Oh, no, I'm fine," Chrissy says quickly, shaking her head. She hadn't meant to imply that at all, and it's not like it's not like her cheerleading uniform is uncomfortable, exactly. Her skirt always feels like it's too tight, and she kind of wishes she had a pair of pajama pants or something, but she doesn't mind wearing it. He's done so much for her already. She can't keep asking for more, especially something as intimate as borrowing his clothing.

She didn't ask, though, he offered, and from what she's gathered so far, everything she's wearing now plus what's in that envelope is the sum total of her belongings. Letting him lend her a shirt to sleep in when she owns nothing else wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Even if she's not currently uncomfortable, it would be more comfortable than this.

"Actually... maybe a shirt?" she asks, apologetic and hopeful in equal measure. Worn out as she's been, though, and as stressful as the last week has been, she can't contain the laugh that follows. "That would really make people lose their minds."

"Hawkins and all its citizens would run me out of town for ruining you," Eddie agrees, not overly bothered by it. At this point, it's hard to be bothered by the judgment of a town he no longer lives in that already decided he was a murderer. What he cares about right now is just making sure Chrissy is okay and comfortable.

It's easy to look out for someone else.

"I'll find the biggest one I have, it'll be like a dress on you," he says, then gets off the couch again and heads into his bedroom. "You can change in here," he calls. "Or the bathroom is just down the hall."

It doesn't take him long rummaging in his dresser to find a band tee he'd found in a second hand store. It's a bit too big even for him.

"Thanks," Chrissy says again, lingering where she is for a moment before she gets to her feet, neatly setting the blanket and the envelope bearing her name aside. All of this should probably feel more awkward than it does, really. He's right, after all. Back in Hawkins, he would have faced hell for this, and she would have, too, despite how innocent it really is. She needs help, and he's providing it, again. Maybe it's unusual for that help to be a shirt to sleep in and a place to stay for the night, but it's not as if she could have known that she would die and wake up in an entirely different world. It didn't exactly give her a chance to pack a bag.

A little shy about it, she follows him a few seconds later, hanging back by the doorway, even as she reaches out for the shirt he's found. "I'm just gonna —"

With a tilt of her head, she gestures toward the bathroom, giving him a small but earnest smile as she does. "I want to get cleaned up a little, too."

"I'll be here," he says with a flourish of his arm. Then he smiles, a bit crooked, more sincere. "I'm not going anywhere."

When she closes the bathroom door, Eddie turns back to the bedroom, making sure everything is acceptable and he isn't about to be embarrassed if she does sleep in here. The sheets are clean enough, he'd changed them recently, and he hasn't left anything disgusting lying around, no socks, no tissues, no obvious bottle of lotion on his bedside table, so that's good. He grabs the small plate he'd been using as an ashtray, then takes one final look around the room.

Everything looks more or less acceptable. Eddie nods and heads to the kitchen to dump the roaches from the plate into the trash, then shoves the plate into the dishwasher.

Chrissy gives him a shy little smile before she heads into the bathroom, shirt in hand, closing the door behind her. Strange as she feels, like she's an outsider intruding in his space, somewhere she doesn't belong, she at least can recognize that that's just in her head, not the result of anything he's said or done. There's no reason for him to be going out of his way for her like this, but he's doing it anyway. It means a lot.

On her own, it's easier to feel a surge of panic again, to wonder what will be on the other side of the door when she opens it. She tries to ignore that fear as best she can, staring at her own reflection in the mirror for a few moments, as if willing herself to pull it together. All she's doing is changing her clothes — a simple task, even if it's one she tends to dread.

Carefully, almost methodically, she unzips her hoodie, setting it aside before tugging her top overhead. She hates the way she looks as much as ever, but at least that's easily drowned out when she pulls Eddie's t-shirt on over her bra. After glancing down at it, checking the length, she unfastens and steps out of her skirt, too. The shirt is just as long, really, and she still has her shorts on underneath it, preventing her from feeling too immodest.

She takes her scrunchie out next, slipping it around her wrist instead, shaking her head to loosen her hair. Then she wets the hood of her sweater a little in the sink, using the damp part to clean off her eyeliner and the tear tracks on her cheeks. It'll have to do. With her cheerleading clothes neatly folded in her arms, she steps out of the bathroom and walks back to the living room. "Okay," she says. "I think this is better."

Edited 2022-08-11 04:52 (UTC)

Eddie's kind of pacing, waiting for Chrissy to come back out, not because he's worried what she'll think of his bathroom -- probably less clean than the bedroom -- but because he's worried about her. While he believes entirely that she's safe here, in his apartment, at least, if not Darrow as a general whole, he also knows she might not think so.

And it matters more what she feels than what he thinks.

When she comes out of the bathroom, Eddie looks over and the first thing he thinks is that she looks really cute. Between his oversized t-shirt and her hair down around her shoulder, that crush he'd had on Chrissy back in middle school kind of roars to the forefront. Eddie's an idiot, like most nineteen-year-olds, but he's not so much an idiot that he actually say anything about how she looks. This really isn't the time.

"Good," he says, giving her another small, crooked grin. "You can dump your clothes wherever, just on the chair or the bed or..." He shrugs, then sweeps his arm ahead of himself, gesturing for her to go ahead.

She should be phenomenally uncomfortable, half-dressed in Eddie Munson's apartment. Until earlier today, by her count, they'd spoken only once before, a good six years ago or so, back in middle school when everything was just a little simpler. She was already popular, he was already a supposed freak, but even though she's been unhappy for about as long as she can remember, at least she wasn't yet throwing up every meal or being haunted by terrifying hallucinations, and he wasn't facing accusations of murdering her as part of some satanic ritual.

In all fairness, though, that sets the bar pretty low for what could be considered simpler. When things got bad, they got really, really bad.

Despite every reason she would have to be unsettled, though, Chrissy feels about as relaxed as she thinks it's possible to under the circumstances. He doesn't leer at her or look at her in disgust or some combination of the two, which is about what she would expect from anyone else. He seems just to be trying to put her at ease, and it's working, at least as much as anything could right now. "God, it's not like I'll even need these anymore," she says, half to herself, as she leaves the little pile of clothes on a chair before returning to the couch. "Hard to be a Hawkins High cheerleader when you're not even in Hawkins."

"Very good point," he agrees as he drops back down onto the couch, once again giving Chrissy room if she wants it, but not sitting so far that she'll think he's avoiding her. It's sort of weird, having her here, but in a good way, he thinks. In a way that makes him feel like he's doing the right thing, being the person she needs in this moment.

Eddie doesn't try to be anything for anyone, just himself, and it's a rare thing that's what someone needs outside of a campaign.

"So eighties clothes? They're vintage now," he says, looking over at Chrissy with a smile. "I went to secondhand shops to find most of what's in my closet now. It hurts a little." He puts his hand on his chest. "Right here."

"Wait, what?" Chrissy asks, angling slightly so she can look over at him, brow furrowed in confusion. It's not like any of this has made sense at all, but she can't understand how those clothes would be vintage. If not for the fact that he's currently wearing something different than he had on when she went back to his trailer, she would just have assumed they were clothes he already had, keeping in line with what she would have expected him to be wearing. Not that she ever paid all that much attention to his fashion choices, but he's long since had a reputation, and his image is part of that.

"How are they vintage now?" If he said something about it before, she doesn't remember now. In all fairness, it's been a very strange hour, or day, or week, really. Of course she's a little overwhelmed and not quite able to keep up with everything. "You're not just messing with me, right? Because you've also told me we're in a different universe, that's gonna make anything you say after sound plausible."

"Oh shit," Eddie says, realizing too late he hasn't told her about the time jump. Or if he has, he's forgotten, because it's honestly been a pretty insane day, and it doesn't seem like Chrissy remembers either.

"Yeah, so..." He winces a little, mouth pulled down. "We're kind of thirty-six years in the future. The year is 2022."

They've jumped beyond 2001: A Space Odyssey, no missions to Jupiter, no monoliths, no giant space babies. At least as far as Eddie knows, but Darrow is a weird place and honestly, if someone were to tell him tomorrow there is a giant space baby, he's not sure he'd be all that shocked.

Chrissy frowns, watching him as she tries to process this information. As insane as it sounds, she knows without hesitation that she believes him. Talking about his clothes being vintage now could possibly have been a joke, but this is clearly serious. It's just all but impossible to try to wrap her head around. Thirty-six years is a long time, her whole lifetime again twice over. Of course, it's also not even close to being the strangest thing about all of this, but in a strange way, it's easier to latch on to the elements that are bizarre but ultimately inconsequential. Better that, at least, than thinking about what happened to her.

"You don't look like you're in your 50s," she says, genuinely unsure if she means it to be a joke or not. "That's crazy. 2022? But how?"

Eddie spreads his arms and shrugs, the gesture expansive, over the top, though his expression is genuine. He has no idea how any of this is possible, how the Upside Down was possible, how Vecna was possible, or all the crazy shit Steve and Robin and Nancy told him. He doesn't know the how of any of it.

He knows they're here, they're alive, he knows he hasn't gone insane, and that's about it.

"I have no earthly idea," he admits. "But here, check this out."

He takes the remote and flips through the channels again, still adapting to this whole new TV thing where there's about a thousand channels and nothing to watch. Eventually he finds a new channel, though, and the date at the bottom of the screen is right there.

"That's crazy," Chrissy says again, softer and more intent this time, her eyes widening as she looks at the screen. There's no denying what's in front of her, though, and she wouldn't have expected Eddie to lie about it anyway, especially not under circumstances like this, when she's still so rattled. He might joke to help her relax, but he wouldn't mess with her in any serious way. Maybe that's strange in its own right, extending that kind of trust to someone she really only just started talking to today, but she believes it even so.

Still stunned and confused, she glances over toward the nearest window. Without getting up to look, there's only so much of a view, but however disoriented she was on their walk back here, she thinks she would have noticed if there were anything really strange about the way it looked. "Didn't think the future would look this... normal."

"I know," he says. "No hovercars."

He's joking a little, but at the same time, it does seem pretty much the same in most ways. Technology has advanced, but people still watch TV, there are still channels, just a lot more of them, and even though he doesn't fully understand how to use his cell phone, it's still a phone, just with a lot of additional features.

"There's this, though," he tells her, then leans over to the coffee table and pushes a few papers aside so he can retrieve the cell phone. It still feels strange in his hand. "This is a phone."

Chrissy looks at the object in his hand for a moment, a little flat rectangle, then back up at Eddie, then down again, frowning slightly as she shakes her head. "No way," she says. "That's a phone?" It doesn't look like anything, really, too small to be of any kind of use. As with a moment ago, she believes Eddie — the look on his face alone makes pretty clear that he's sincere about this — but it's still impossible to wrap her head around. All of this is, in much more significant ways, if she lets herself stop to think about it.

That's exactly why she doesn't. She has no interest in starting to cry again, in letting herself dwell on the fact that they shouldn't be having this conversation at all because she should be dead until she starts to fall apart. Instead, she crosses her arms over her chest, teasingly incredulous. "If that's a phone, show me."

"Okay, so I actually have no idea how it works," Eddie admits, but he moves a little closer to Chrissy and jabs at the screen until the phone lights up. He hasn't done anything to personalize it, which is apparently something he can do, it's still just the generic screen asking for his passcode and Eddie has to think about what it is before he jabs at the parts of the screen that are the numbers.

"Here," he says, swiping at the screen and then going to his contacts. There are only two, Steve and Robin, and he knows how to call them, but not how to do the other thing Steve's told him about. Texting. "So if I hit that phone picture there, it would call them."

Much like the TV, the picture is clearer and brighter than Chrissy would have expected, if she had imagined that a phone would have a screen like that at all, which she wouldn't have. She can't see any reason for it, really, when it's easy enough just to dial a phone number. When she inches a little closer, though, to peer down at the screen, it's clear that it is somehow what he says it is, the word contacts and the image of a phone and the digits that fit the recognizable format of a phone number convincing her of it. She didn't really doubt him anyway, but still, there's hearing it and then there's seeing it.

"Why does it look like that?" she asks, though the question is more rhetorical than anything else. If Eddie has no idea how it works, then chances are, he won't have an answer for her. It helps, though, not to be the only one so confused, making her feel a little less stupid for being so behind. "I mean... that's way over the top, right?"

"I don't know, it's insane," he says, but he's laughing a little now, pressing at the screen again. "Check this out."

There are exactly two apps -- which is what he's been told they're called -- Eddie has played around with, neither of which require much typing. The first is the music app, which gives him more access than he could have imagined. The other is an app that takes photos and puts funny ears or alters someone's face.

He sits a bit closer still as he opens the app. It takes him a second to remember how to flip the camera so it's facing him and Chrissy, their faces suddenly appearing on the screen. Then he touches another part of the screen and like magic, both of them suddenly have pink cat ears.

"What?" Chrissy blurts out, a startled, delighted laugh escaping her as their image comes up on the screen, followed by the addition of cat ears. It's strange enough for a phone to somehow also be a camera, but an effect like that is something else entirely — something that at most she might expect from a novelty photobooth or that sort of thing, and even then, it wouldn't be all that likely. This is just downright bizarre.

It's cute, though, too, the animation following her as she unthinkingly lets her head rest against his shoulder. She doesn't have time to think it through, straightening and tearing her gaze away from the phone to look at him a moment later.

"How does it do that?"

He's glad to have made her laugh. The things she's gone through, all the shit she'd had to face, she deserves to laugh, to feel a little safe, even if it's with something as dumb at this thing on his phone.

When her head briefly rests on his shoulder, Eddie feels kind of strange, even if he can't explain why. It's nice and it's strange, even with as brief as it is.

"No idea," he says, then wiggles his fingers. "Magic?"

It's technology, something he doesn't fully understand, but he knows this one thing, at least, isn't actually magic.

Chrissy wants to roll her eyes at the prospect of magic, but it isn't as if she can deny what's in front of her. Everything that's happened today, in this last hour or two, ought to be impossible. Cat ears on a phone that's also a camera doesn't come close to being the weirdest thing about it. Perhaps because of that, it's just easy to latch onto, something simple and inconsequential rather than world-altering or pertaining to the fact that she's supposed to be dead.

With this, weird or not, she can just be here, feeling halfway normal, doing something fun with an unexpected friend. There's no Vecna, no mother to disappoint, no boyfriend's arm to hang on. Just someone who seems to see her for who she is and who's willing to let her stay for now so she won't have to be alone.

"I think you'd be the expert on magic," she points out, gently teasing. "Do they have... phone-cat-cameras in your game?"

"Hm, no, we never did, but that doesn't mean we couldn't. If someone can think it, it can happen," he says. Maybe his campaigns had never included cat ear photos because they hadn't existed yet for people in 1986. If they had been playing DnD in 2022, like now, maybe they could have.

Anything was possible, that was always part of what he liked so much about it.

"You'll have a phone like this in your envelope," he says. "It's like we're just set up. Money, ID, keys, a phone. I don't know who's behind it all."

"That's crazy," Chrissy says, quiet and awed, dimly aware that she's said the same thing or close to it already today. There's just really no other way to put it, though. Everything she's seen here, her presence at all, shouldn't be possible. How anyone would know she would be here, why they would leave her these belongings, how they wound up in the future where phones are cameras, it doesn't make any sense.

Really, the only piece of this that does is him. She doesn't have any idea how that happened, given that earlier she was nervous just about meeting up with him, but then, it's been a pretty messed up day. She'll take whatever normalcy, however unexpected, she can get.

"I'm glad you found me," she adds suddenly, giving him a sideways glance. "I mean... if someone else had been there, and tried to explain all this, I think it would've been a lot harder to take in."

"Me too," he says. For days now, after getting out of the hospital, Eddie has spent a lot of his time trying to figure out what else he could have done. Finally out of danger for the first time in a week and all he could do was think about how shitty it had been of him to just run. To leave her there.

Chrissy being here doesn't make that better, it doesn't mean he didn't still make the wrong choice, but it eases something in his chest. He failed her once, he doesn't want to do it again. And even if she tells him to piss off eventually, realizes he's a coward and wants nothing to do with him, at least she'll have this chance to be alive.

"I was pretty delirious when I got here," he admits. "Everything seemed possible."

"I mean, yeah, no wonder," Chrissy says, gesturing idly toward him with one hand. "You were being attacked by evil bats, or something." Just saying so, thinking about the bandaged spots and newly healed wounds she saw when he lifted his shirt, makes her feel sort of queasy with guilt, stomach turning, but she bites back the impulse to apologize again. She could too easily talk herself in circles, and having pulled herself together somewhat, would really rather avoid another bout of crying if she can help it.

"It just kinda helps, you know," she adds with a self-conscious shrug. "Hearing it from... a friend, not a stranger."

Eddie has to agree with that. Hearing it from Steve Harrington hadn’t made it easy, especially after realizing Steve didn’t remember any of what they had been through together, but for some reason, having it be Steve made it easier to accept.

“Yeah,” he says, then laughs without humour. “It’s pretty crazy. It’s this whole different world, all this stuff we missed between then and now and we’re just meant to accept it all and catch up and live here.”

The prospect is a pretty horrifically daunting one. As much as she hadn't wanted to die there at the end — earlier today — there have been a lot of times when Chrissy hasn't really felt like she wanted to live, too. Now she apparently has this whole life ahead of her, one almost forty years in the future, without any kind of roadmap. She may have hated being so strictly controlled, having no real say over what she did or didn't do, but she's never been without that. It's hard to know what to do, especially being so rattled by all of this.

"I think crazy might be an understatement," she says, giving him a smile that's weak but earnest. "Is it... I don't know. Does it seem like an okay place?"

"I think so," he says. "I don't get the technology, but as far as I can tell, no evil monsters are killing anyone to rip gates in our reality and uh... there's real magic here, but so far nothing terrifying."

So far. Eddie knows he can't make promises and he's only been here a few weeks, but he's feeling okay.

"It's kinda nice to have a place of my own," he admits. "It's weird. All this new shit, trying to figure it out. It's definitely weird, but it's not bad."

"Good," Chrissy says softly, reassured enough by that for the moment. As daunting as it may be, she's willing to take his word for it. Provided it doesn't end with her being haunted by unspeakably terrible visions and then dying, it's not like it can be worse than Hawkins. She was miserable there long before she started seeing things, anyway. This isn't how she ever expected she would wind up leaving, in no small part because she didn't really think she would, but she doesn't hate the idea. "I think I might like that, too. Having a place of my own."

She doesn't have the first idea what she'll do, but that's something she can worry about later. She's too exhausted for that right now, all too aware, finally having a chance to relax, that she's barely slept in days.

"Old movies on the TV whenever you want," he says, gesturing to where the black and white movie is still playing. With a flick of his wrist, he tosses the phone onto the couch where it will get lost within the cushions. Eddie will find it weeks from now when he finally needs it, but for now it's just a weird plastic rectangle.

"If you need anything else..." He trails off and shrugs. "Mi casa es su casa."

He doesn't know any other Spanish, but he knows that much. And he means it, too. Chrissy has been through enough, he hopes she can feel comfortable here.

"You've done so much already," Chrissy says, shaking her head, though she smiles faintly as she does. Just because she definitely couldn't ask for anything more than this doesn't make her any less appreciative for the offer, and for what he's done so far. Maybe in a quantifiable way, it isn't all that much, but for her, right now, it means more than she would know how to say.

The terror is still there, lingering in the back of her head. She feels closer to safe than she has in a long time, though, and that's something. "Thanks, Eddie."

Eddie smiles in return, a little awkward, maybe even embarrassed, because he knows he owes her so much more than what he's done today. Giving her a shirt to change into and a glass of water isn't much, especially considering what she's come from, the way he had run from her.

But that's Chrissy, he thinks. He might not know her well, but it seems to fit, that she'd think he's done so much more than he actually has.

"Yeah," he says. "It's not problem. It's cool. Let's just..." He gestures at the TV and settles into the couch a little, giving her another smile.

Chrissy just nods at that, giving him another tiny smile as she takes his cue and settles back into the couch. Again, it crosses her mind that this should feel so much more awkward than it does. Instead, despite the residual fear and the exhaustion and the fact that she still doesn't understand most of what's happened since she opened her eyes here, she feels more at ease than she has in a long, long time.

She could thank him again, but talking herself in circles about it seems like it would make this far more awkward, and she's much too tired for that. She doesn't even notice when her eyelids start to get heavy, the movie eventually fading into the background as she starts to drift off, her head inadvertently drooping onto his shoulder.

For awhile, Eddie just lets her sleep. She needs it, he knows she needs it, so he's not about to wake her up when she's told him already she hasn't been sleeping. The movie continues and he's only sort of half watching it himself, drowsing in and out, kind of exhausted from the whole day himself.

A commercial wakes him, one of those ones that's kind of louder than the show, and Eddie looks over, hoping it hasn't woken up Chrissy. She's still asleep on his shoulder and he smiles a little, then shifts as carefully as he can. No matter what she'd said, he's not about to leave her to sleep on the couch, so he gets his arms under her, hoping she doesn't slap him if she wakes up, then lifts her from the couch.

She's so small, she barely weighs anything, and Eddie carries her down the hall into his bedroom, then settles her on the bed and pulls the blankets up over her.

"You're okay now," he says softly, hoping he can make sure that's true.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

in that pink dress, they're gonna crucify me

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