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 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.

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