Chapter Text
If you fall, I will catch you (I will be waiting)
Chrissy can’t remember a morning ever feeling like this. She can’t remember there ever being a moment with Jason anywhere close to this, where it feels like her cheeks might actually fall off her face from smiling so much. And all she’s doing is sitting here perched on the countertop listening to Eddie and Steve argue about who left the cap off the toothpaste tube last night.
“I know for a fact it was not me, Stevie. I swear on the band, baby —”
“I simply cannot believe anything that comes out of the mouth of a man who squeezes from the middle of the toothpaste tube. Like a psychopath, Eds.”
“Maybe it was Wayne?!”
“Seriously, dude? You’re gonna throw your uncle under the bus?”
“Trailer ghost?”
“If you don’t shut up, that’s exactly what you’ll be, Munson.”
It was so odd, Chrissy thinks, and strangely endearing watching Eddie and Steve like this, going through the motions of their morning routine together. Made her think she might not have ever seen anybody actually in love until these two idiots in front her. Because they were always doing stuff for each other it seemed. Eddie doing up the buttons of Steve’s shirt for him, pressing a kiss to his chest each time until he reaches his freckle-spattered throat for one final nip. Steve slipping Eddie’s rings over each long finger, dragging his lips across Eddie’s scarred knuckles.
It makes her heart feel like it’s going to beat out of her chest any second now.
Chrissy keeps waiting for it — for the other shoe to drop, for the alarm clock in her childhood bedroom to go off and prove that this was just some dream, some impossible, beautiful dream. But it’s not. It’s not because it’s not just them taking care of each other. It’s them taking care of her. Wanting to. Because those are Steve’s fingers that she feels skittering over her scalp right now, brushing through her tangled mess of strawberry blonde falling, damp, over her shoulders. Eddie’s hands wrapping her up in a big, fluffy towel and holding her to his chest. She’s still warm from the shower, and from the impossible heat that boys’ bodies seemed to produce — they’d hardly let go of her once since Eddie’d dragged her into the trailer’s tiny bathroom (quite willingly, thank you) in the first place — and the fact that her brain still feels all swimmy and mushy in her head from coming so hard she saw stars…Well, none of it was all that conducive to moving.
Until Steve makes the offhand comment as he fastens the buckle on Eddie’s watch, glancing at the face, “ — uh, you guys better get moving if you don’t want to be late…”
“Late for what?” Eddie asks, handing Chrissy the shirt she’d borrowed from Steve last night.
“Um — for school?” Steve says, like Eddie has just asked him the dumbest question, like if water was wet.
“Oh my god,” Chrissy says, staring down at the shirt in her hands with a horrifying realization. “ — I don’t have any clothes here.”
“You had clothes on when you got here yesterday. I remember that,” Eddie says, ever-so helpful as he pulls his own t-shirt over his head.
“Uh, do you remember ripping them off of her last night, Eds? Because I kind of do,” Steve says, and if Chrissy wasn’t so suddenly irritated at the reminder, she’d find the pink splashed on his cheeks almost ridiculously adorable.
Eddie glances between her and Steve in confusion. “So, just borrow some of ours?”
Chrissy sighs, sounding pained. Boys. “Yeah, that’ll go over well. Why don’t I just wear a giant sign on my forehead that says I got fucked last night?”
Not so much the fact that she’s got to go back and face everyone — she’s not embarrassed of Eddie or Steve, and considering the impressive displays of violence on both Eddie and Steve’s parts yesterday, she’s not that scared either. Not of anything, you know, physical. But wearing the clothes of the boys who beat up your ex-boyfriend from head to toe the very next day was sort of asking for trouble. And that’s the last thing Chrissy wants for any of them — more trouble.
Not when she’s so close to happy she can taste it, sweeter than any food she’s ever denied herself.
“I mean — you didn’t —” Eddie hums, thoughtful. “Not technically,” he adds with one of those devilish winks that drive her crazy in the best and worst ways.
Steve laughs, but he must sense Chrissy’s still anxious (he seems to be awfully good at that, Chrissy thinks. Noticing things. Noticing her), so he presses a comforting kiss to her forehead. “It’s okay. We can call Max. We usually drive her to school anyway.”
Once they make it back to the bedroom, Eddie rummages through the bag slung on the back of his chair until he finds what he’s apparently looking for — that same walkie talkie she’d seen Dustin carrying around yesterday. And just like yesterday Chrissy watches, slightly confused, as Eddie presses the switch and says, “Hey, Red? You copy?”
Chrissy can’t quite hear what Max says, but she must’ve copied, because Eddie says, with another one of those earth-shattering winks in Chrissy’s direction that definitely make her feel like she’s standing there completely naked (and not, like, in a bad way but that's besides the point), “ — yeah, we’re gonna need some assistance over here.”
Well, okay. That was something. Something that meant at least she’d be able to put on some pants.
Baby steps.
Max is perfectly nice — well, not nice, exactly, but it was like Steve had said last night, about how their whole group (Steve had called it the party, but neither he nor Eddie had explained much about that yet). The whole overprotectiveness thing. She gets it. Chrissy’s used to being gawked at, but she’s starting to feel a little bit like an animal stuck behind glass. Like the ones Chrissy saw at the Indianapolis Zoo that summer when she was ten and the whole family had gone for her birthday, and her father had smiled so much more that day than she could ever remember. Her mother had even let her eat ice cream and candy and hadn’t said boo about it. At least for that one perfect day.
This day isn’t perfect by any means, but it’s the first time in a long time that Chrissy’s woken up feeling something that feels like hope and maybe even something else unnamed that might be far too early to be thinking about . So, she can handle a little gawking. She gets it.
“Thanks, Max. Really,” Chrissy says, once she’s finally dressed in a pair of the younger girl’s jeans and one of Steve’s sweaters she’d found hanging in Eddie’s closet (she thinks it's Steve’s mostly because Eddie doesn’t exactly strike her as the type to wear clothes the same color as sunshine and daisies).
It’s, she thinks, glancing at the mirror and actually feeling pleased at what she sees, probably the most comfortable outfit she’s ever worn to school. She hadn’t even realized how much that stupid cheer uniform had started to feel more like a straightjacket until Steve and Eddie had stripped it off of her that first night.
“It’s fine.” Max just shrugs from where she’s been sitting, cross-legged, on Eddie’s desk chair.
Well, Chrissy thinks, offering her friendliest smile, they’d warm up to her eventually. Soon, she hopes.
She’s just about to suggest they go tell the boys they’re ready, but the other girl beats her to it with a question that Chrissy will admit was just about the last thing she expected Max Mayfield, of all people, to ask her.
“So — what’s it like, you know, dating two people?”
Oh.
Chrissy blushes almost instantly, of course, thinking perhaps this was the moment that Max might go from nice to not so nice, but the girl genuinely looks sincere. Like she wants to know — or needs to know. “Well, I guess — I don’t really know yet. I mean, I’ve only been doing it for, like, less than a week.” She bites her lip, embarrassed yet again, before adding softly, “but I know they make me feel happier and — and safer than I ever have. So, I think for now it just feels lucky, I guess.”
The wrinkle between Max’s brows furrows deeper somehow. “But aren’t you worried about what people will say? About — about you?”
Yes, no. Probably? It feels like the answer changes every five seconds these days, because she’s not an idiot. Chrissy’s a lot of things, but she’s not that naive. Of course people will talk, but let them. Maybe she doesn’t need to make it easier, case in point, the borrowed outfit. But Chrissy already knows whatever they say, whatever shit happens, it couldn’t possibly ever be enough to make her give it up. Give them up. “They’ll talk anyway, right?”
Max seems to consider this for a moment. “That’s true, I guess. Still kind of weird though.”
Chrissy just laughs because wasn’t that the understatement of the century. It feels like maybe Max wants to say more, ask her more questions, but unfortunately Chrissy is still kind of figuring out the answers herself. Maybe if she gets to hang around, she could be there to help Max figure it out too. Eventually. That — that might be okay.
It’s been a long time since she’s had friends she actually liked. Cared about.
When she looks up, Chrissy is shocked to see what might be an actual smile, albeit a small one (perhaps a not-scowl might be a better word for it, but still Chrissy appreciates it all the same) on Max’s face when she gets off the bed, heading for the hallway.
She pauses right before she opens Eddie’s door, turning around to face Chrissy with an unreadable expression. The tone of what she says next is very much understood, however.
“If you hurt my brothers, Chrissy Cunningham — I’ll hurt your face.”
The fact that Chrissy can tell she absolutely means it is far more endearing than it is terrifying. “I don’t plan on it, but I would say that’s — that’s very fair.”
Max nods like they’ve just settled some agreement and they’re just about to shake hands and go their separate ways. “Good.”
Chrissy just grins and nods back, following her out to the living room.
Baby steps.
...
This was not the first time since his miraculous rise from the dead that Jim Hopper allows himself the stray thought that, compared to this, had that Russian gulag really been all that bad? He’d already known what kind of day it was going to be when he’d rolled up to the station and found Mrs. Cunningham with her hands on her hips and murder in her eyes.
“It’s that devil boy, Chief — I know he’s got her!”
“Mrs. Cunningham, need I remind you, yet again, that Mr. Munson has been cleared of all charges…”
“You have to do something. You have to, or I’ll get someone else to —”
After five minutes with this woman, Hopper thinks as he pulls into the driveway behind the Munson kid’s decrepit van, he’s ready to bolt himself. After 18 years? Well, Hopper wasn’t going to suggest the obvious in front of the woman or anything.
But the last thing this town needed was another excuse to grab their torches and pitchforks, so he knew he needed to at least check it out.
Honestly, he’s distressingly unfazed when he knocks on Munson’s door to find Eddie and Steve Harrington blocking the entrance with all the subtlety of a couple of rabid guard dogs ready to pounce. “Why is it always you two?”