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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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."

in that pink dress, they're gonna crucify me

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