Chapter Text
1st January, 1990.
Snow gently falls across the small town of Hawkins. Chrissy watches it from her window, her hands hugging her fresh mug of hot coffee. Her first one of the year. That’s about as exciting as it gets for her this New Years’ Day.
She brings the mug to her lips and takes a sip of the coffee. It’s a little too bitter, and Chrissy figures that’s some sort of metaphor for her life. Alone in a cramped apartment on New Years’ Day, allowing herself to relax for a couple hours before heading out to work at the café a couple streets over. Probably serving loved up couples who went into the New Year with a kiss and the comfort of each other’s arms.
Shaking her head, Chrissy turns away from the window and takes another sip of the slightly-too-bitter coffee. Pessimism will do her no favours. And besides, she didn’t go into the New Year completely alone.
A hand delicately falls onto her small bump, and she caresses it softly. This was the one thing she had to look forward to this year. She didn’t need anybody else. All Chrissy needed was a roof over her head, her collection of books and rom-coms on VHS, her Fleetwood Mac and ABBA vinyls, and her baby.
At least, that’s what she tried to convince herself.
When asked about the baby – and being a pregnant woman in her early twenties in a small town like Hawkins, Lord knows she is asked – Chrissy usually comes up with some sort of story.
“Sperm donor,” she would say with a forced sense of enthusiasm. “I always wanted to have a baby. I didn’t feel like waiting around for a guy to commit to me.”
“One night stand,” she told a prying stranger at the café at one point, just to see them squirm over asking whether or not there was a man in the picture.
“I’m actually just bloated,” she’d joked to another customer who asked how far along she was, relishing in the way they ducked their head in embarrassment before saying, “Sorry. Just kidding. I’m due in June.” and moving along to the next customer.
Her pregnancy was her business – she knew people were just curious, a little intrusive, but she already hated having all eyes on her. She hated being treated like porcelain, as if she wasn’t a real person behind her bump. She could see people looking for a ring on her finger when they noticed her protruding stomach, as if it was such a scandal that Chrissy Cunningham could possibly have gotten knocked up without a man to take care of her.
Anyway, joking about it was easier than facing the truth, really. If she made light of the situation, she didn’t feel so pathetic.
Only her closest friends – Robin, Steve and Nancy, the only three friends (hell, the only family) she had in Hawkins at this point – really knew. Knew that she had been with Jason Carver on and off since she was a teenager; knew that he had been the one to get her knocked up and then suddenly decided it wasn’t for him, that he had his whole life ahead of him, that all of a sudden he found himself in a situation with a girl who had just recently graduated from school and he didn’t want to allow Chrissy to build up hope that they could be a happy family when he had feelings for someone else.
Chrissy lets out a deep sigh and sits down on her couch, pressing the warm mug to her lips and allowing the heat to ground her.
Closing her eyes for a moment, she allows herself to sink back into memories long past. Memories of a boy with wild hair and the most charming, dimpled smile she’d ever seen. Memories of a boy that was made for so much more than what Hawkins had to offer him. A boy who she encouraged to follow his dreams, and a boy who broke her heart by actually following them.
It had been four years, and Chrissy’s heart still ached at the melancholy memory of Eddie Munson. Local dive-bar act turned semi-rockstar. Her ex-boyfriend who she dated for a mere few months after graduation until an agent approached him and his band members at The Hideout to tell him he had potential. He had promised her forever; she couldn’t make him stay in Hawkins just to appease her. And she had spent so long following in Jason’s shadow as the big man on campus that following Eddie around like a lost puppy while he hopped from nearby towns to bigger cities, having the happiest time of his life performing on stage like he was tailor-made for it, all while she watched helplessly from the sidelines… she couldn’t do that to herself. She couldn’t do that to Eddie, even. Forcing him to come home to boring, quiet little Chrissy Cunningham, who much preferred settling in with a movie or a book than listen to head-pounding music amongst a crowd of hundreds. Eddie deserved to live the life of his dreams after everything he had gone through in his nineteen years of Hawkins, and who was Chrissy to stop him?
Chrissy figured she would stay behind and try to make a life for herself while she saved up enough money and built up the courage to finally cut off contact with her mom. Pick up some local classes, focus on herself for once and her growing independence without a boy in her life.
She laughs weakly to herself. Well, that didn’t exactly last very long.
Chrissy hadn’t spoken to her mom in nearly the same amount of time she had gone without speaking to Eddie. After a blazing row one night over Chrissy finally standing her ground and telling her mom something along the lines of “I would rather be out on the street than spend one more minute under your thumb,” she found herself standing in the pouring rain with a suitcase and a backpack and nowhere to go.
She could have called Eddie. Hell, maybe she should have called Eddie. He would have come back for her – even if he was still reeling from her breaking his heart, Eddie was kind, and Eddie was selfless. He wouldn’t have allowed her to remain stranded like that. But for some reason… she couldn’t find it in herself to call him. Eddie didn’t deserve a call like that. He didn’t deserve to come back to Hawkins just to pick up the girl who had broken up with him a week prior. In fact, he actually, probably, wanted nothing to do with her, the more she pondered on it. Probably had already moved on from her. Probably was drowning in the amount of girls that would have been throwing themselves at him and the rest of the band after a gig in a big city.
So… she found herself back in the arms of the guy she swore to herself she would never, ever go back to, no matter how bad things got.
“Aw, Chris,” Jason had said in that condescending tone that she despised so much, pulling her in with his strong arms that felt more like a vice grip than anything resembling a comforting embrace, “I knew you’d see sense and dump that freak in the end. I don’t blame you for a second.”
Chrissy’s brow had furrowed at that, but she needed a place to stay, and Jason was welcoming her with a ball and chain– with open arms, so she simply buried her head in his chest and tried to squeeze out any genuine comfort he had to offer.
They had managed to move out into a place of their own a little over a month later, with Jason taking up a job at his dad’s company while teaching basketball to kids at a community centre every other evening during the week. Chrissy asked him about the scholarship he had claimed he had lined up for him for an entire year before graduation, and he always brushed it off, saying he was taking a year out; saying he pushed it back the second they got back together so he could take care of her. It felt… oddly guilt-trippy. Chrissy wondered if he ever had a basketball scholarship lined up at all or whether it was all just talk to make himself seem important.
All in all, things weren’t… too bad. Having already lost Chrissy before, Jason was a little nicer this time around; treated her a little less like a fragile porcelain doll and more like a person. Maybe Chrissy had low standards set for herself, but she did what she had to in order to survive, and it was better than being under the scrutiny of her mother’s ever-watchful eye. Jason worked most of the time anyway, and Chrissy had gotten herself a job at the local library at the time while taking some night classes for writing, so…
Okay, yeah, maybe it was no way to live. Maybe it wasn’t at all how she had pictured her future after graduation. And maybe she missed Eddie so much some nights that when Jason kissed her or held her close during the night it made her feel physically sick that it was Jason touching her and not Eddie. But it wasn’t every night, and she could grin and bear it at the end of the day, like she used to. Sometimes she liked it when Jason held her hand. She could tolerate and sometimes even nearly enjoy the fifteen minutes of what had become routine intimacy before they bid each other goodnight.
In September of 1989, Chrissy woke up and rushed to bury her head in the toilet. This had been a common occurrence for her during her high school years, for reasons she had never quite disclosed to anybody – but this was different. She assumed she had some sort of stomach flu, and her periods had never quite been regular, anyway, so she tried not to worry about it so much.
“You look like shit.” Robin had told her casually one morning. She had come over to see a bed-bound Chrissy who hadn’t left the apartment in days; who was clutching onto a wide bowl in the efforts to catch anything that would sneak its way back up her throat. “Seriously. You’ve been ill for, like, a week. You don’t think you should see a doctor?”
Chrissy scoffed and waved Robin off with her hand. “I’m fine. It’s just, y’know. The flu. It’s going about.”
“No, it’s not.” Robin responded with a furrowed brow. “No one we hang out with is sick.”
Chrissy blinked, ignoring the way her chest tightened. “Well, maybe I caught it from someone at work.”
“Yeah, but to throw up every morning like clockwork for a week straight, Chris?” Robin crossed her arms over her chest and raised her brows at her. “Maybe you should… y’know…”
Chrissy stared at her friend for a moment, and let out a heavy sigh. She chewed her bottom lip. She knew exactly what Robin was referring to, even if she was in some sort of denial.
“I can buy a test for you, if you want?” Robin tilted her head, offering a soothing hand to the small of her back as she rubbed in gentle circles.
Having a baby was always on Chrissy’s to-do list – at some point. But… she barely felt like she had control of her own life, and to bring a baby into the mix… Jason’s baby… could she really offer them a fulfilling and nurturing life?
Either way, she wasn’t helping herself by living in ignorance. Robin was right. Like she usually always was, surprisingly enough.
“...Okay,” Chrissy said with a small nod. “Thank you.”
“No prob– oh, shit!” Robin scrambled to hold back Chrissy’s strawberry blonde locks as she found herself with her head back in the bowl, throwing up her cereal from that morning.
Chrissy’s entire body was shaking a few hours later as she clasped a positive pregnancy test in her hands. She didn’t know how to feel; she didn’t know what to say. Robin sat beside her on the edge of the bathtub in Chrissy and Jason’s apartment, a clumsy but comforting arm saddling her shoulders.
“Don’t forget that you have a choice in all this,” Robin had told her, brushing back her hair and nuzzling her face close to Chrissy’s, “Jason doesn’t even need to know.”
Chrissy’s stomach churned, for reasons other than morning sickness.
“I– I know. I…” she began, teasing her bottom lip with her teeth, “I always… I always wanted a baby. At some point, y’know? Just… it feels so soon.”
“That’s what I mean when you say you have a choice,” Chrissy felt Robin’s hand squeeze her shoulder, and a somewhat shaky sigh escaped her lips. “Seriously. Steve can drive you to the hospital. He won’t say a thing, trust me. Nobody has to know.”
Chrissy deliberated it for a few minutes, and she was so grateful to have an open-minded friend like Robin Buckley by her side as she made quite possibly the most terrifying decision of her life.
She knew abortion was a viable option. One of her friends during her senior year of school had gotten one – Chrissy had sat in the hospital waiting room with her, holding her hand – and it had really been the best decision for her at the time. But the more Chrissy thought about it… she was somewhat comfortable. Jason was making good money by basically working two jobs, and Chrissy’s wage from the local library helped to pay for extra. Their apartment wasn’t the biggest, but they had a spare room they had been using for storage, which they could easily clear out for a crib. Jason always talked fondly of the kids he coached at the community centre, and they had briefly discussed having children of their own one day in passing, so it was never off the table for them.
And the thought of her own little baby in her arms, lying on her chest, offering her the opportunity to break the chain of toxicity her mother had so, so deeply ingrained into her– the opportunity to bring new life in the world and to encourage them that they could do anything, be anything they wanted to be, that she could be the figure in someone’s life that she craved growing up… it made her stomach flutter. It made her heart sing.
“I need to talk to Jason.” She said ultimately, clutching the pregnancy test in her hand.
“So you’re–?” Robin looked at her with raised brows, and the comforting weight of her arm on Chrissy’s shoulder never left for a second.
Chrissy met Robin’s eyes, and nodded– slowly at first, but then more fiercely, with determination.
“I’ll be the mother I never got to have.” Chrissy finalised. “It’s… it’s happened sooner than I thought, but… this is my chance… you know? To– to have a life, a family. To prove that I’m more than my mother said I could be. And– and I don’t have to put my life on hold. Right?”
“Right!” Robin nodded in agreement, brow furrowed, and her enthusiasm made Chrissy stifle a laugh. “You’ll be the best god damn mother Indiana has ever seen. Put all those narcissists who hide behind the guise of being a doting mother to shame!”
Chrissy beamed at her, and then threw her arms around Robin’s shoulders, pulling her close in a tight embrace. Robin hugged her back tightly, then quickly let go and scrambled back.
“The baby!” She exclaimed, and Chrissy laughed, pushing her friend playfully and rolling her eyes.
“Probably not even the size of a pea right now.” Chrissy said, and then she softened, placing a hand to her stomach.
She had told Jason when he got home that night. Stewed it over in her head a hundred times as to how she was going to tell him; worried about how he might react. But he was… he was lovely about it. He seemed genuinely excited. Even the hug he gave her after telling him felt genuine – warm, comforting. He had kissed her gently that night without any intent behind it.
That excitement had lasted all of two months until Jason came clean about the fact that he didn’t feel ready for this. He didn’t want to fool Chrissy into thinking he was ready to be a father when he had his scholarship lined up for him. He didn’t want to lie to her and act like everything was okay when a freshly-turned-18-straight-outta-high-school girl was making him feel things that he hadn’t felt for Chrissy for a long time. All just one day before they were planning to formally announce the pregnancy and their following engagement (a religious family like the Carvers would never allow a baby out of wedlock, so it went without saying that a marriage would follow swiftly.)
She hadn’t known how to react. Deep down, she knew she should have been heartbroken that her boyfriend who she was meant to be having a baby with had found someone else. But, all in all, she primarily just found herself panicking. Panicking about being alone. Raising the baby alone. Finding a place suitable enough. Having enough money to support her and her child. Of course, it hurt that Jason had clearly been fooling around behind her back (she wondered if he truly was coaching kids at the community centre most nights) but the fact he was telling her he couldn’t support her and her baby – that he basically had more important things to do with his life than to deal with the stress a child would bring, after acting so excited and ready for it the night that she had told him… that broke her heart more than the cheating ever could have.
Chrissy had packed all of her belongings that night, and found herself stranded once again, in the middle of a cold November night.
She briefly wondered if, after all this time, Eddie would pick up if she called.
Thankfully, Steve had come to her rescue that night. She had called Robin, and Robin – still without a license at the age of twenty-two, although Chrissy had no room to judge – had called Steve, and he showed up outside the apartment block that Chrissy had called home until a couple of hours ago. He allowed her to cry into his shoulder about how Jason was a dick, how all men were dicks; allowed her to wail and shout and cry because what the hell was she supposed to do now?
“Come on, Chrissy…” he attempted to sooth her, wrapping his arms around her as she sobbed into his chest, “You’re not alone. You’ve got us.”
“Oh, great,” Chrissy had said in between sniffling and shaky breaths, pulling away and scrubbing at her face with her hands, “my baby is going to be co-parented by Steve Harrington.”
Steve furrowed his brow at that. “I like to think I’m a great babysitter. Dustin turned out fine, right?”
Chrissy flopped back into him, and he responded with an ‘oof!’ before petting her hair gently.
“I’m sorry.” She murmured into his chest, assumedly getting mascara across his white shirt which she no doubt would get a telling off about later once she had calmed down. “I just – I thought things were finally– finally working out for me. I was stupid to get my hopes up.”
“You’re not stupid, Chris.” Steve told her gently, pulling away to look her in the face, and wincing slightly at the makeup that streamed down her face that had definitely left a stain on his t-shirt. “Carver’s a dick. Your baby deserves better than someone who doesn’t even want them, and so do you.”
She huffed, moving away to let herself into the passenger side of Steve’s car and harshly rubbing tears from her cheek with the back of her hand. “Thanks for the reminder.” She climbed into the car, clipping on her seatbelt and nuzzled into the corner, sobbing gently to herself.
“...Dunno why I even try.” Steve muttered under his breath before climbing into the passenger side and turning on the ignition.
Steve dropped Chrissy off at Robin’s house that night. She sobbed into his chest once again when he helped her to get her things out of the car, and apologised for being rude to him, which he shrugged off and offered her a warm embrace in return.
Robin still lived at home with her mom and dad, and the house was cramped. There was no spare room for her, but Chrissy appreciated even just being allowed to stay for a couple of nights while she tried desperately to think of a plan of action.
They ended up sharing Robin’s bedroom for the week Chrissy stayed with her, which ended up in quite a few late night chat sessions – Chrissy adored Robin, and appreciated everything that Robin did for her greatly, but Robin had this compulsive need to fill every silence with mindless talking even when Chrissy was trying to sleep, and when she was already hormonal and reeling over Jason, she knew she had to have her own space or she might actually go insane.
Needing more hours to support herself in the endeavour of living alone for the first time in her life, Chrissy applied for a full-time job at a nearby café. There, she was able to score a place with somewhat affordable rent through her boss knowing a friend of a friend was renting out the cramped apartment that she now called home. She dropped her writing class, because she needed to work those hours in order to pay the bills. It made her heart ache, but she figured once she has her baby, and she’s on maternity leave, maybe it could be something she could pick back up again.
Her life was simply put on pause. It didn’t have to stop completely. At least, that’s what she tried to convince herself.
Christmas came and went that year – Chrissy couldn’t have cared less, really. She had dinner with Steve and Nancy at their apartment, where they had graciously invited her over alongside the rest of the Wheeler and Harrington family. She stuck out like a sore thumb, but she stuck primarily by Steve, who didn’t really seem to be enjoying spending time with his own parents too much, and it helped her to feel a little bit better.
Steve, Nancy, Robin and a few of their other friends had decided to go out for New Years’ Eve for a couple of drinks. Chrissy stayed at home that night – not exactly wanting to be around bars full of drunk people whilst pregnant – and listened to the cheer and whooping of a small crowd gathered outside of her apartment’s building as friends, and family, and lovers saw the New Year in together.
She tried to ignore the deep ache of emptiness in her chest as she sat alone in her apartment, watching ‘When Harry Met Sally’ for the fifth time on VHS that Christmas season.
. . .
Chrissy pulled her strawberry blonde waves into a high ponytail, tied with a pink scrunchie. She stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, and dipped her finger into the pan of light brown eyeshadow before applying it to her lid. She swiftly coated her lashes with mascara and her lips with a dot of rose-coloured lipstick. Anything to make her look – and feel – a little bit more alive.
She threw on a thick, long cardigan over the top of her outfit: a light pink, long sleeved shirt paired with a black skirt and thin stockings. She tried not to think too hard about the fact that the stockings were a little harder to pull over her bump this morning than they had been a few days earlier. It’s a normal part of the pregnancy, she repeated to herself like a mantra over and over in her head.
The snow from earlier that morning had melted into a thick sludge with the midday sun, so Chrissy pulled on her rain boots, grabbed her purse and headed out of the door.
The café moved at a slow but steady pace that day. Customers came in to nurse their sore heads from partying the night before, requesting sandwiches and strong coffees. All in all, Chrissy was rather grateful she had agreed to the New Years’ Day shift. It stopped her from dwelling so much on the loneliness that had crept up on her across the whole of winter, and they were closing earlier than usual to offer the staff a chance to spend time with their families on the first day of the year. (Chrissy laughed cynically after her boss told her that.)
The customers were fairly pleasant with her that day, offering gratuitous tips as some sort of sympathy as they watched a young pregnant woman work hard to offer the best customer service to them. And if Chrissy used that to her advantage and talked about how she was alone for most of the Christmas season and how hard she was working to support her future baby (which wasn’t a lie!) in order to stir up even more sympathy and potentially even better tips… well, she just considered that a belated Christmas gift. She deserved that much, surely, after everything she had gone through – she shouldn’t feel guilty for manipulating the emotions of customers in the hopes of a bit of extra pocket money, right?
“I see what you’re doing.”
Chrissy blinks and turns to face Max, the 18 year old girl with hair the colour of fire – fitting, as her personality was just as fierce – who she had been working alongside at the café for the last month. Chrissy grins, and shrugs slightly.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Chrissy feigns ignorance, pressing her lips into a thin line and stifling a laugh.
“You’re taking all the good tips with your sob story!” Max whisper-shouted, though she couldn’t help but chuckle slightly. “Save some for the rest of us.”
“Well, no one is saying you can’t make up your own sob story.” Chrissy responds with another light shrug as she pours a mug of black coffee for a customer. She bumps Max with her hip as she walks past, and Max nudges her back, making Chrissy laugh.
Max made things a little easier, too. They’d only been friends a short while, but they had most of their shifts together and locked up together most nights, so they’d had a lot of time to form a bond within the month Chrissy had been there. They were practically left to run the store by themselves; being a small business in a small town like Hawkins granted them the luxury of sometimes-flexible hours as long as they made a decent profit for that day, so it led to a lot of teamwork between the two young women. Plus, Max was a freshman when Chrissy was a senior at Hawkins High, so they already had some sort of shared experience together. Chrissy tried to ignore the fact that Max had caught her with her fingers down her throat at a toilet cubicle once, and hoped that Max didn’t remember that encounter.
“You wanna head off first?” Max offered as the clock neared four in the afternoon, “Since, you know, you’ve just been working so hard to support yourself–”
“I have! It’s not a lie. I just… you know… it doesn’t hurt to share my ‘sob story’ as you put it if it means I’m left with a little bit of extra cash.” Chrissy tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, grinning. “But, uh – no, you go ahead.” She spares a nod towards the last customer in the store – a kind old man who was somewhat of a regular. “Safe to say we’ve probably served our last customer of the day, anyway. Get yourself home.”
“Cool.” Max nods, hanging her apron up and gently placing a hand to Chrissy’s arm with a small smile before grabbing her jacket and purse from the coat rack. “Don’t be a stranger, okay? If you want to do something later, just call.”
“Aw,” Chrissy smiles as she opens the cash register and swiftly counts the bills they had made that day. “I appreciate that. You aren’t meeting Lucas tonight?”
Max pulls a face, and her brow furrows. “No.” She states like it was obvious, and Chrissy raises her eyebrows and holds back a laugh. She could never keep up with those two.
“Alrighty,” Chrissy grins, before shutting the cash register, “Happy New Year, Max.”
“Happy New Year, Chris.” The younger girl responds fondly, zipping up her jacket before heading out the door.
Chrissy makes her way around the café, picking up a couple empty mugs and plates and moving them towards the sink. It was empty now, with the last customer offering her a polite smile and a wave and a five dollar tip as he left the café.
“Thank you, come again!” Chrissy replies chipperly before taking the five dollar bill and placing it into the purse strapped to her waste. She turns back to the table, collecting the empty cup the man had left in his wake.
She busies herself with washing up the dirty cups and plates in the sink behind the counter, singing along quietly to ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ by Cher that played through the radio as she scrubbed the coffee stains out of the mugs with a sponge.
The jingle of the bell above the door breaks the silence of the café alongside the dulcet tones of Cher, and she sighs gently to herself. She had hoped to get away as soon as she was finished doing the final clean of the day, but clearly the customer who had just walked in had other plans. Chrissy looks over her shoulder slightly.
“Just a second,” she says, placing the cups that she had washed on the drying rack and proceeding to pat down her damp hands on her apron. Grabbing her notebook and pen, she turns around. “What can I get for–”
“Chrissy?”
Chrissy feels her heart jump into her throat, and she meets the eyes of the customer that had just walked in. She freezes, gripping her pen in one hand and the notebook in the other, as those all too familiar dark brown – almost black – eyes stared her down, equally as shocked and surprised to see her as she was to look up and see that the customer who had just walked in was none other than the boy she been reminiscing about that same morning.
“Eddie.” Chrissy said breathlessly, more a statement of bewilderment than a question.
So much for closing up early.