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 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.

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