Archive of Our Own

I know I'm just dreaming, and the sun will betray me

So please, honey, stay, and tell me that I'll be okay

Oh, tell me good things last forever. You know lying makes it better

-  Flipturn , Darling

Eddie knows she isn't going to show.

It's not the same way he knows that hubris is excessive arrogance and electrons are the smallest subatomic particles and Pythagoras' theorem is a²+b²=c² - that's just stuff he’s drummed into his brain through concerted, laboured effort now that he’s really trying to pass all of his classes. No, he knows that she won't show up without even having to think about it - instinctively, like how birds know which way is north. He's been dealing for long enough to have come across every single type of buyer, including the boring, straight-laced ones who convince themselves they want a bit of excitement in their life but ultimately chicken out at the last minute.

So he allows himself to take his time as he makes his way through the woods behind the school field. Dragging his feet through the leaves that form a carpet to the forest floor all year round, he listens to the birds singing and the leaves rustling on their branches and tries to enjoy the fresh air in his lungs so that this won’t feel like so much of a wasted journey. Because although Monica (one of the cheer girls Eddie’s been selling to since his first try at senior year) confirmed this morning that Chrissy knew to meet him at the picnic table after school, she's not going to be there. Eddie knows.

He knows it right up until the moment the clearing emerges from among the trees and a slender figure clothed in white reveals itself. 

Huh . 

She jumps when he says hi. She’s got this coltish nervousness about her as she spins to look up at him with eyes bright and terrified, like she might just run away at any minute. Eddie wonders how close she got to just not showing up like he had expected.

As she takes a seat at the worn picnic table he tries to reassure her that there’s really nothing to be frightened of, despite his reputation and outward appearance. He’s taken off his jackets in the hope that it'll make him seem smaller, less imposing, and mentally vowed to tone down the theatricality that he knows can be off-putting and intimidating.

Still, after an explanation of how the deal will work and some attempts at humour to try to settle her obvious nerves he somehow finds himself rolling around in the leaves on the forest floor. And instead of making her even more nervous as Eddie had worried, him dramatically throwing himself to the ground draws bright laughter from her lips, ringing out through the air around him. He finds he enjoys the sound.

When the deal is done, her money counted and stashed in his pocket (he’s given her 25% off the already heavily reduced price partly because he’s enjoyed this strange and unexpected encounter and partly just because it would go against every single one of his morals to let such a pretty girl pay full price for weed), he gathers his things and stands to leave. "A pleasure doing business with you, princess," he tells her, bowing his head with a sweeping hand gesture in an exaggerated display of courtesy because she’d looked adorably embarassed earlier when he’d called her the Queen of Hawkins High and he kind of wants to see if he can make it happen again.

It doesn't really get a reaction out of her though, and when he looks up he sees she's looking nervous again, absently sawing her hand against the edge of the picnic table.

He's about to ask if she's alright when she speaks up.

"Would you want to smoke with me?"

The words come out rushed and garbled and he has to ask himself if he's misheard her somehow. Or if there's at least something in her tone to indicate that she was trying for a joke that hasn't quite landed because surely there's no way that Chrissy Cunningham has just asked him to smoke weed with her.

But she must have because she carries on. "Just this first time. I- I don't really know what I'm doing."

She gazes up at him, all wide-eyed and vulnerable-looking, and he realises that while she is scared or nervous or uneasy, it's not because of him. No, when she looks at him it's quite the opposite - like maybe she thinks he could be the one to save her from it all. It inspires this immediate protectiveness in him and she could probably make him do anything she wanted, all it would take is her looking up at him like that.

“Sure,” he says with a half-shrug, sitting back down opposite and watching her as her eyes track his movement. “Anything you want." 

He shows her how to roll up with deft, practised movements. He tries his best to narrate each step carefully for her but by the time he’s smoothing down the spit-dampened paper he’s managed to lose himself in a tangent about the first time he rolled a joint and how terrible it was. Holding the finished joint delicately between his lips, he searches for his lighter in jacket pockets. He's still trying to speak, the story only halfway through and spinning out of the side of his mouth that isn’t trying to cling on to the joint.

It’s only once his fingers brush against cool metal that he looks up to find a look of increasing bewilderment on Chrissy’s face as she struggles to understand his words.

He laughs, the noise of it distorted by the way his mouth is still occupied, and lights up quickly so he can remove the joint from his mouth and say, “Sorry, it was just nonsense anyway - not worth hearing.”

He can see that she's going to protest, but he's not particularly interested in her carefully performed politeness. Before she can say something sweet and kind in disagreement he holds the joint out to her, shuffles his fingers down slightly further so that she can take it from him. "There ya go."

She holds it gingerly, as if it might lash out at her if she's not painfully aware of it at all times, between delicate, slender fingers that he’s sure would be soft and free of calluses.

"It's not that scary, I promise," he tells her with a smirk. "It's just like a cigarette really, so-" he mimes placing an imaginary cigarette in his own mouth, indicating for her to do the same.

She sets it between lightly glossed lips, looking to him for approval as she does. 

"Try to like, draw the breath into your mouth instead of your lungs, and not too quickly - the first couple of times it'll burn like a bi-, …a lot," he instructs, correcting himself quickly.

She sucks in a tentative breath and then almost immediately explodes into a fit of coughing.

He plucks the joint from her hand to allow her to focus on trying to suck in a breath that she doesn’t have to immediately expel it again. "Yeah, sorry, it's kind of an unavoidable part of the process." He tips his head so that he can try to catch her eye as she sits, hunched forward over the table, and see if she's alright.

When she's able to breathe normally again she tells him, “That’s awful!” with a disgusted expression.

"It does get better, I swear," he promises, finger tracing a cross over his heart. 

She looks sceptical, but ultimately takes the joint back off him when he offers it to her. She does better this time, coughs a little as she exhales but only a handful of times instead of a continuous stream. The third time she manages to keep the smoke in and exhales it steadily, lips pushed forward to form an imperfect circle.

"Look, you're a natural!" he congratulates her with a grin and she returns a shy, closed-lipped smile. 

After, they walk back through the woods together in an amicable silence.

He stops just at the edge of the trees, before they make it out into the open of the football field. "I'll wait a bit," he explains, "just in case there's people about."

“Right, yeah. Okay.” She nods, head tipped down to focus on the way she’s winding the ends of her jumper sleeves around her fingers so that he can’t tell if she’s saying it to him or it’s meant for himself. Then she catches his eyes for a moment and says with intense sincerity, “Thank you.”

"I mean, it's more for my protection. I'll have my Freak card revoked if I'm seen consorting with the head cheerleader," he jokes, hoping that it’s enough to make it clear that he doesn’t feel she owes him anything for wanting secrecy, wanting to protect her reputation. He’s had more than enough people end their deals with a nervous you won’t tell anyone, will you? Especially the girls. Especially the popular girls, whose positions he knows rest on a knife edge, always just one wrong move from losing it all.

"No, I meant, like, for everything. For sitting with me and, you know, chatting."

Of all the ways she has surprised him today, he thinks the biggest might be the revelation that Chrissy Cunningham - Jason Carver’s girlfriend, the queen bee, head cheerleader, it-girl of Hawkins High - is possibly actually as lovely a person as she outwardly appears to be. He smiles down at her, feeling that same protectiveness come over him again, hoping that whatever it is that has pushed her to him passes quickly. "Yeah, sure. I mean, anytime sweetheart."

He’s rewarded with one last rosy blush on her cheeks before she turns to set out across the school field. 

It is so cliché and stereotypical and fucking normal to have a crush on the head cheerleader, but halfway across the field Chrissy turns back and gives him a sweet smile and a tiny, adorably dorky wave and maybe Eddie will actually have his Freak card taken off him.

Still, Eddie hadn’t supposed he was likely to ever speak to her again so spring break had come and gone without anything of note happening and with only passing thought paid to the cheerleader who had so thoroughly taken him by surprise.

He definitely hadn’t expected to end up back at the picnic table with her on the very first Monday of the new term. But he’d been putting his books away before lunch (books that actually have notes in them because he'd meant it when he said he would be graduating this year) and before he could slide them away, a folded piece of paper had come fluttering out, making its way lazily down to the floor. When he'd unfolded it he'd been met with neat handwriting, letters even and joined up precisely.

Can we meet at the picnic table after school?

She'd signed it mean and scary which had made him smile to himself in the middle of the corridor. 

She doesn’t look at all mean or scary as she sits at the table opposite him - still looks like some kind of angel even with the half-rolled joint in her hands.

“I forgot what to do with it,” she’d told him, producing the bag of weed that he’d sold her from her backpack and setting it down on the table along with a pack of rolling papers.

She listens attentively to his instructions and carefully mirrors his actions, approaching the task with an intense dedication and focus that makes him think that if he provided her with paper and a pen she’d be taking notes the same way he’s watched her do in the classes they share.

Once she's done he inspects it with an overly pompous air as if he’s appraising fine gold jewellery or some centuries-old masterpiece, something that causes the corners of her lips to curl upward in a small, polite smile. "It's definitely not the worst first try I've seen,” he ultimately concludes.

"Don't be too positive, it might go to my head," she comments drily.

Surprise quickly writes itself into his features. It hadn’t occurred to him that Chrissy might ever be sarcastic, or that she might have a sense of humour waiting to show itself, and so the harsh laughter he barks out is as much in surprise as it is in amusement. 

Smiling through an apology, he tells her “I reckon it's smokable at least so - mission accomplished," with a shrug.

Nodding, she takes the joint from him when he passes it back to her and turns it over in her hands. "We could smoke it now," she suggests shyly. "Just to be sure."

His eyes narrow a little on her. 

He thinks he might need to be careful.

The third time they meet is not even a week later. That Friday he opens his locker to a note in that same pretty script and tries to ignore the warmth that it sparks in his chest.

This time her excuse is that she’s run through her supply already. It’s quite clearly a lie for a whole host of reasons ranging from the way she trips nervously over the words to the fact that she would’ve had to be smoking about four a day to have finished what she’d brought with her on Monday, but he goes along with it anyway, pretends to believe her.

She waits patiently as he rolls 3 joints for her (because apparently she's still not great at doing it herself even though she'd have him believe that she's rolled almost half an ounce worth in the past 5 days) and exchanges them for two crisp dollar bills once he's done.

He'd been slightly wary from the moment that he'd read her note, a suspicion that had only worsened with her obvious lie, so this time there's absolutely no surprise on his part when she asks, “Can we smoke one now?”

He describes ideas for his latest DnD campaign as they smoke, lazily passing the joint back and forth. It’s not the kind of thing he’d expect her to enjoy but the past couple of times he's found that any time he tries to ask her a question about herself or involve her in the conversation, she responds as briefly and vaguely as possible before finding some way to turn the conversation back to him. So he supposes that if all she wants is for him to talk at her for the duration of their encounters then he may as well take advantage of the captive audience - the only people who might be interested in hearing him explain all the careful planning that goes into each and every session are the other Hellfire kids, who he can’t tell because it would ruin the surprise.

And naturally Chrissy is incredibly sweet and polite, so despite her indifference to the topic she does ask him the occasional relevant question to demonstrate that she is, in fact, listening to his nonsense.

That’s what he’s expecting when she opens her mouth to speak after he’s finished detailing the elaborate backstory of a minor character the party should encounter soon. Instead she asks "You don't mind this do you?", handing the joint back to him. "Smoking with me, I mean. You don't find it a chore?" 

It is entirely impossible that he's been subtle enough in his affection for her that Chrissy could possibly believe the few times they've shared a joint have been anything other than a delight, but he confirms it for her anyway, with a soft smile. "Not at all, sweetheart."

She nods and draws in a careful, steady breath. "Would you wanna, like, do this every week maybe?"

He should’ve said no, but of course he didn't. So before long Thursday is his favourite day of the week, because an hour after the final bell he parks his van two streets over from the high school and waits for Chrissy to appear, tiny cheer skirt and all, and clamber into the passenger seat of his van, ready for him to take her somewhere quiet and secluded and provide her with a joint and some terrible conversation.

Every week he gets there early and every week he sits there in the minutes before she rounds the corner and thinks that this will be the week that she finally comes to her senses and asks herself what the fuck she’s doing. Every week he convinces himself that this will be the week she doesn't show up.

That is until an unexpectedly rainy mid-May afternoon when he ends up getting too caught up in the plans for the next week’s hellfire session that he’s scribbling down in a notebook, sitting in a booth by himself at the diner. By the time he looks at his watch he realises that practice is already over. Hastily grabbing his things and shoving his half-eaten burger and fries back into the paper bag they came in, he rushes out to his van. Despite treating the speed limits as mere guidelines as he races across town, when he pulls onto the street he sees Chrissy is already stood waiting. She's clearly soaked through to the bone, the backpack held above his head doing nothing at all to protect her from the downpour.

“Shit, I’m so sorry,” he says as she swings the door open.

“You had to choose today to be late?”

He's trying to get the heating (which, much like everything else in his piece of shit van, has a mind of its own) to come on, so he has to look up from where he's messing with dials and buttons to see that she's smiling despite the accusatory tone. He smiles too as he returns to his quest, banging the dashboard a couple of times in hopes that that will show it who's boss. “Thought you might fancy a swim,” he offers with a shrug.

He thinks she’s mostly laughing at him when he makes terrible jokes like that but since she revealed that her absolute dickhead of a boyfriend has told her she’s not allowed to properly smile, the complete evisceration of his dignity feels like a small price to pay for the chance to see her toothy grin.

Once the heater finally splutters to life with a worrying sound, he drives them out to the forest. There’s a spot at the start of a largely overgrown hiking trail that no one ever really comes to and it's one of a few places he likes to bring her to get away from the rest of the world.

Once he's parked up they clamber into the back, where they sit across from each other, backs against the sides of the van, with the doors open to the smell of the rain and pine trees. Their legs are side by side, hers bare beneath her skirt, and if he were to tip his to the side ever so slightly they’d be touching.

“And she just goes on and on about Dan - like, all the time.” Chrissy, clothes more water than fabric and hair plastered to her skin and completely devoid of its usual lustre, is filling him in on the latest cheer team gossip. He’s not even vaguely interested in it but always asks because it’s something that never fails to get her talking. She’s nowhere near as bad as she used to be and their exchanges are now closer to conversations than lengthy monologues from him but she still sometimes needs some encouragement to come out of her shell.

“And Dan used to date Casey?” Eddie asks through a mouthful of burger. He tries his best to at least loosely follow along with what Chrissy tells him; it seems only fair given that she goes to the effort of feigning interest in the things he enjoys. 

Across from him, Chrissy smiles. “Exactly!” she exclaims, clearly excited. “Like they’re together now, that’s fine, but there’s no need to bring it up in front of her all the time, you know?”

Eddie nods. He’s trying to juggle finishing his half-eaten food, rolling up (always his job because Chrissy insists she’s rubbish at it, although she’s not gonna get better if she didn't practise) and paying enough attention to what Chrissy’s saying to interject at appropriate moments. The success he’s having is pretty limited, considering the way he’s just nearly ended up with a mouthful of weed and a joint lined with fries. He manages to stop himself, stuffing the handful of fries into his mouth instead, and resolves to stay focussed on just two tasks (weed and Chrissy seem like the correct choices, even though his food's slowly going cold).

When he notices the way Chrissy keeps glancing at his fries he waits for a break in her chatter and tells her to take one if she wants.

She swallows and looks away hastily. “No, it’s fine.”

He almost rolls his eyes at her manners, the way she seems to approach every situation the way an etiquette coach would instruct you to. “Go on, I won’t finish them anyway.” It’s a lie but he figures he doesn’t have to feel too bad about it considering the frequency with which she lies to him (has been known to respond to his enquiries of how she’s doing with good even when she looks like she’s seconds from falling apart and regularly insists that she actually finds his jokes funny). 

“No I’m- it’s just a lot of calories…and fat and… salt,” she trails off weakly.

There’s something too heavy to the words and the way she’s staring down at her lap, picking nervously at her nails as if she’s embarrassed to have even been caught looking at his fries. It’s very much against his policy to pry - it’s his job to provide people with the shit they need, not to question them about their issues - so he should really just drop it all, especially when it seems so clearly uncomfortable for her.

For some reason he can't quite account for, he doesn’t.

“As if a handful of fries is going to make a difference. You're tiny, Chrissy,” he says, trying to infuse his words with an artificial lightness and a joking edge in the hopes that it will seem less like he’s overstepping. “It’s a wonder you’re not freezing all the time and half way to passing out every time you stand up!”

Her head snaps up to look at him so quickly that he’s certain she’s going to be angry, tell him that he doesn’t know what he’s fucking talking about, to keep his nose out of shit that doesn’t involve him. But instead she looks sort of scared when her eyes lock with his, and it makes it so obvious that he’s stumbled upon a secret she didn’t want him to find.

Then, realising her mistake, she looks back down to her lap just as quickly.

He feels his heart sink in his chest a little. “I know what it’s like to be hungry,” he tells her, voice low and gentle.

Wayne is a good man - took him in after his dad went to jail without a single complaint, worked extra shifts to make ends meet - but Eddie had been a kid, growing fast and always in need of new clothes and new shoes and new books for school. Money wasn’t always in abundant supply. Dealing had started out as a way to help out, to try to pay Wayne back for the times that he’d gone to work on an empty stomach so that there would be food in for Eddie to have in the morning before school.

That had been because there hadn't been any other option; the idea that Chrissy, who he knows lives in one of the big houses on Blackthorn Avenue in the posh part of town, is voluntarily starving herself is incomprehensible and kinda heartbreaking.

"If you wanna eat, please eat," he tells her, pushing the fries closer toward her, and hoping that he might just be able to turn her compulsive politeness against her.

He puts the final finishing touches on the joint while she eats, taking the occasional fry for himself. He tries to appear utterly invested in the task at hand so it’ll feel less like he’s just sitting watching her eat, even though he is keeping an eye on her in the corner of his vision. 

He's only gotten a couple of puffs in by the time she's finished the last of the food and he offers her the joint with a smile and an arm extended across the van.

For a while they just smoke, silent save for the sound of the rain beating against the metal of the roof. 

When they've finished, before they climb back into the front so he can drive her back home, he decides to do the unthinkable and pry even further into something that's none of his business.

"We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but is someone else telling you what you should and shouldn’t eat?” he asks in a light, tentative voice. “Has Jason said anything?”

He’s not purposefully trying to find an excuse to vilify Jason (especially since he reckons they almost fell out last week because he’d pressed Chrissy too hard on whether she actually wanted to be dating him) but he figures someone who'd tell a pretty girl not to smile was probably the kind of person who'd have no issue telling her she should stop eating. 

She looks at her hands, runs her fingers over painted nails. "A little, I guess, but, I mean…" She takes a deep shaky breath. "It's more my mom really." 

"Your mom?"

She nods, gaze still down in her lap. "Yeah she just- she's worried about me putting on weight. I’ve got to be light for cheer and if I want to be prom queen and-” she stops herself before she can finish the sentence and swallows uncomfortably.

He places a hand on her ankle in a way that he hopes is reassuring. "So you're not allowed to eat fries?" 

Chrissy shakes her head. "No, or many carbs in general really…or sweet foods, or anything after 9 o'clock or…or breakfast if I haven't done any exercise the day before." 

"Jesus," he mutters to himself under his breath, the word coming out without him thinking about it.

“She's just trying to help," Chrissy says weakly.

It's unclear whether this is something she genuinely believes or just something she’s telling him to try to make what she’s saying seem slightly less terrible. If it's the latter it's not working.

"That's not trying to help." He's trying to keep his tone gentle and supportive, but still infuse it with the level of firmness required to get his point across. "That’s- I mean, you've got to see how that's fucked up, right?" 

She stays quiet and he dips his head to try to drag her gaze away from where her hands fidget in her lap. He'd feel a lot better if she'd look at him, even if just for a moment.

"None of that should matter - prom queen, cheerleading, any of that. All she should care about is that you're happy - happy and healthy and safe.”

Chrissy's not happy, he could've told you that from the moment she appeared before him in the words, and her attitude to food is so far from healthy, and she's admitted that on their first meeting she'd been too nervous to ask for something stronger than weed, but was quite happy to have her first experience taking drugs be something that could've really fucked her up, so she's clearly past the point of caring about her own safety. Hell, if they're talking about safety, she's climbed into the local drug dealer's van and let him drive her out to the middle of nowhere every week for the past couple of months.

He wonders if her mom knows any of this. If she did, would she care at all about how clear a cry for help this all is or would she only hear the part about the drugs and do something stupid like ground Chrissy for a month.

Across the van from him, Chrissy sniffles. Her voice cracks a little when she says, “Yeah, I guess,” and Eddie realises he's made her cry. 

“Shit, sorry.” He begins to move toward her, although what he's planning on doing when he gets there he doesn't know - hug her? wipe her tears away with rough, callused fingers? Neither of those seem like things she'd particularly want so it's probably for the best that she waves her hand and indicates for him to sit back down.

“No it's fine, I'm fine," she assures him. "Just- can we talk about something else now?” 

He smiles. “Course, I can continue telling you about Xanathar's thieves' guild, you seemed pretty riveted by that last week.”

She lets out a wet laugh. “Yeah, yeah I’d like that.”

"I don't really want to go," she tells him. 

They’re sitting side by side on the picnic table, feet resting on the benches. They wouldn’t usually stay around school to smoke but it’s lunchtime and there’s not really enough time to go somewhere and come back. (The random meetings are something that is happening increasingly often - these days he’d say that, in addition to their regular Thursday commitment, there’s usually at least one day a week that he’s summoned by a note in his locker to meet her in the woods at lunch or after school.) 

"So don’t go then," he offers with a shrug because it feels like the obvious answer in this situation.

She just sighs like he's fundamentally misunderstood what she was saying and 

she indicates for him to pass the joint back again. When he does she draws in a deep breath. He watches as the smoke curls in the air, spilling past glossy lips.

Enough time passes that he thinks she isn’t going to elaborate any further. They talk about a lot these days, and he probably knows more about Chrissy than some of the people he’s been friends with since he started high school, but he can tell by the way her lips are pressed together that the reason she doesn't want to skip the prom is a little uncomfortable.

Eventually though she tells him, in a small, exasperated voice, "I don't want people to think I'm not going because of Debbie."

Ah, Debbie - the girl that Jason's taking to prom. The Hawkins High gossip mill is a little iffy on when they got together but, to his credit, Jason had left it a respectable fortnight after he and Chrissy split before he waltzed into the school with his arm around Debbie’s waist and tongue down her throat. Eddie tries not to think about the shit people would probably say about Chrissy if she was openly making out in the corridors even now, a month after the breakup.

"And it’s so stupid because if I go, everyone's going to be watching me and waiting for the first sign that I’m bitter and heartbroken - especially when she inevitably wins prom queen - but if I don’t go they’re just going to assume I’m bitter and heartbroken anyway,” she explains, voice laced with frustration.

He hums out a sympathetic sound. This is the kind of thing he feels entirely unqualified to help on. His advice would be to stop caring if people think you’re bitter and heartbroken, but he knows it’s not quite as easy for her as it is for him and it wouldn’t really be a productive thing to say. The best he can do is try to sympathise and provide space to vent if that’s what she needs, then let her go to someone else for actual answers. "People fucking suck,” he acknowledges.

She clicks her tongue then takes a long drag from the joint again. As she hands it back to him she asks, "Are you going?" 

He huffs out an involuntary chuckle. "Not in a million years, sweetheart."

“Oh, right,” She says, seeming disappointed. "Was going to ask if you wanted to go together."

Eddie is briefly worried that he’s gone insane and she must see the look of complete and utter confusion on his face because she immediately rushes to clarify. “As friends, obviously. Like, it would just be nice to have someone there - for emotional support.”

He smokes slowly, turned to face straight ahead at the trees and trying not to feel like too much of an idiot for briefly thinking she might actually be asking him to go to the prom with her. "You wouldn't mind being seen with me?" he asks.

“No. Of course not," she insists immediately, a hint of confusion in her tone as if she’s surprised that he’d ask it.

He shrugs and hands the joint back. "It's just all this is always so hush hush," he comments nonchalantly, gesturing vaguely to the space between them. He still picks her up from practice round the corner from school and takes her out to the middle of nowhere and drops her off two streets over from her house. She may say hi to him on the corridor now, and smile if they catch eyes across the cafeteria, but she certainly wouldn't do anything that might indicate that they're actually friends who hang out on a pretty regular basis - like come and sit with him at lunch or have an extended conversation in front of others or pick him for a group project (which, ok, fair, there might be other reasons for that last one). "I just assumed you wanted to keep it a secret."

She looks at him as if bewildered, a crease formed between her eyebrows in confusion. "You know this is illegal, right?" she asks rhetorically, lifting the joint in her hand. 

Eddie immediately bursts into raucous laughter, struggling to breathe through fits of it because of course, what a Chrissy thing to say.

His amusement only seems to make her more obstinate though, and she carries on. "We could get arrested."

He manages to suck in a breath and fight off the laughter for long enough to ask, "You think Hopper’s going to arrest you for weed ?" You could hardly get the chief of police to take an interest in the actual crimes going on in Hawkins, never mind a couple of teenagers getting high, keeping to themselves and harming absolutely no one.

"It isn’t funny!” she insists. “I mean, you could get jail time for selling - serious jail time."

Even though it just makes him want to laugh more, he manages to pull himself together, rearranges his face into a solemn expression. "Yes, sorry, you're right. Deadly important that no one finds out about this," he agrees, tone grave. 

"Exactly," she says primly, as if she's won the argument as opposed to him choosing to humour her.

Eddie does his best to hide an amused smile.

She turns away from him, becomes particularly invested in picking a piece of fluff off her jeans. "Plus, I don't know, it feels nice that it’s just ours," she reasons, voice hushed. "Like it's something sacred - they'd just…ruin it if they found out.”

Sacred . Chrissy just called the time they spend together sacred.

She sighs dramatically and then looks back up at him again. “As you said: people suck."

He agrees with a nod. “And you think we could rock up to the prom together without people ruining it?"

She lets out a dejected noise. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

"Anyway, I'm a terrible dancer, so honestly it’s probably for the best," he offers, hoping to lighten the tone a bit. 

It works, because her face instantly lights up as she hops from the table and insists that all he needs is a good teacher. After only a couple of seconds to put the joint out she’s dragging him to his feet and placing his hand on her waist and hers on his shoulder and telling him where to move his feet. She spends the next ten minutes shouting things like “Your left foot! No, your other left! ” and “I said take a small step!”

At the end, when she releases him, she shakes her head and tells him “No, you're right; I would be embarrassed to be seen with you.”

The affectionate look in her eyes says otherwise. 

It turns out '86 really is his year because with just a little hard work, determination and some straight up grovelling to Miss O'Donnell he's finally able to boast a report card that, while it won't exactly get him into Harvard, is not adorned with a single F. And that means that what it will get him is a lousy high school diploma. They say third time's the charm, right?

He's delighted, ecstatic, over the goddamn moon that he's finally getting out of this hell-hole of a school.

Except… he's not. Except he finds himself actually kind of dreading graduation and when the day rolls around he can't quite find it in him to mirror the excitement of everyone around him. Even with the way Wayne's pride is so obvious from his smile, wide enough it can probably be seen from space or at least can definitely be seen from the stage as he sits among the parents in the bleachers in the only suit he owns. (When Eddie had told him he didn’t need to take a day off work to come, knowing how few vacation days his uncle got, he’d dismissed him quickly and firmly and told him he wouldn't miss it for the world.)

Because when he walks across the stage it's not his uncle he finds in the crowd. Instead, his eyes fall on Chrissy, who's beaming up at him, who's told him she only really needs the drugs to get through to the end of school.

He shakes the principal's hand and receives his certificate without any of the dramatics repeatedly promised to the kids in Hellfire because all he can think to himself is how it doesn’t get any more end of school than this.

In the evening, when her dad knocks on Steve Harrington’s door a little before midnight so that she’ll be home in time for curfew, Eddie’s eyes trail after Chrissy (in a way that Robin will later point out as being utterly pathetic) as she follows Steve out of the garden and back into the house. He can't help but think that this seems a more significant and saddening ending than the one marked by the big ceremony morning; he’s met with her every week for months now and he’s not sure he can imagine his life without her now, doesn't really want to.

Then again, he thinks, some things are more special precisely because of the fact that they could never last - like fireworks and sunsets. 

He's woken up by the sound of a knock to the door - two, in fact, short and sharp.

He yawns and stretches his limbs, blinking lazily to try to acclimatise to the bright light streaming through the window. By the position of the sun in the sky, he'd put the time somewhere between nine and midday, but it’s almost a week after graduation so his body clock has already adjusted to his vacation schedule, allowing him to stay up half the night playing guitar and watching shitty horror b-movies and making this feel like a ridiculously early time to have to be conscious.

The knocking comes again, a little more insistent than last time. Wayne must’ve left his keys at home last night, or lost them at work somewhere. 

He rolls out of bed with a groan. Amongst the mess strewn around his room he manages to locate some clean(ish) clothes so that he doesn't end up giving the old couple who live across from them an eyeful. He stumbles slightly as he tries to hastily pull the pyjama bottoms over each leg whilst simultaneously walking across his bedroom.

As he’s opening the door to his room there’s a third set of knocks. 

“Okay, okay. Jesus, I’m coming,” he mutters to himself, dragging the old metallica t-shirt up and over his head.

The rant that he’s half-prepared about remembering your fucking keys dies on his lips the second he opens the door to find that it’s not Wayne stood on the doorstep.

Chrissy smiles up at him and her hair, up in its signature ponytail, swishes gently with the enthusiasm with which she says “Hi!” She’s wearing a light sundress, pale pink with tiny cherries printed in neat rows. It’s tied loosely round her waist with thin, delicate strings that emphasises the way the light fabric skims over the curves of her figure.

Eddie returns her greeting and makes a concerted effort to keep his gaze firmly within the confines of her face.

"I couldn't exactly leave a note in your locker so I didn't know how to get in touch, but it is Thursday," she explains chirpily.

In what world their weekly meetups were ever meant to be a thing that carried on into the summer he has no idea but that is what her words seem to imply. He briefly considers the possibility that this is a weird dream and Chrissy's not actually standing at his door all but inviting herself into his home. 

After a couple of moments of him staring blankly at her, her expression drops a little, eyes darting away from his. “Sorry, gosh this was so stupid," she says with a shake of her head. Abruptly, she takes a step away from the door and begins to turn back toward where he can see a car parked next to his van. "I’ll just go I didn’t mean-”

Finally, his brain begins to whirr into action and he's able to splutter out, “No, no, stay, please." He shuffles back out of the way of the door so that he can invite her in, first taking a cursory glance around the trailer for anything that he might not want her to see. Satisfied that, beyond a lot of mess, there's nothing too offensive about, he turns back to her. "Sorry, it’s just early. Come on in.”

He's brought her round before, but she's usually only stayed in the van or hovered in the doorway whilst he rummaged for something he needed, and she looks around inquisitively as she walks in, eyes flirting around the space and taking it in. He can only imagine what she's thinking, how all this must compare to her big, suburban house that's probably spacious and clean and pristinely decorated.

As his eyes follow her gaze around the trailer he finds himself aware of things that wouldn’t usually bother him: the couple of mugs Wayne’s left out on the coffee table and the bag of shopping not yet put away into the cupboards and the cushion that’s fallen onto the floor beside the armchair now seem torturously embarrassing. Nervously, he moves over to the kitchen counter and shuffles the papers and envelopes spread across the space there into a neat pile.

"Take a seat if you want?" he offers hesitantly. 

She sits across the counter from him on a stool that creaks as she settles. Opposite her, he leans against the countertop stifles a yawn behind his hand. 

"Sorry, I didn't realise I'd be waking you," she says with a genuinely sheepish expression.

The red glaring lines of the microwave clock tells him that it's nearly 11 in the morning and he scratches the back of his head, embarrassed. She’s probably been awake for hours by now. "Yeah, just… late night last night," he explains, trying to make it sound like it's a one-off occurrence that he's still asleep this late as opposed to the norm for him. 

It dawns on him that she’s not just here for a flying visit and he’s stood here in his pyjamas, hair a complete bird’s nest. "Hey, would you mind if I grabbed a shower real quick? I'll be like 2 minutes.”

He shows her how to stick the TV on, and explains that there should be some magazines and maybe a couple of books under the coffee table then races back to his room to grab a towel and clean (very definitely clean) clothes. He’s sure he has what must be the world’s fastest shower and brushes his teeth in a rush, spending the whole time worrying about what she might be doing in the next room.

When he returns to the kitchen he’s met with the smell of coffee. She must’ve cleaned the old grounds out of the machine because on the counter he sees a fresh pot, half full and slowly filling up drip by drip. At the sink, she’s washing a collection of mugs and when he looks over at the coffee table the ones that he’d noticed earlier have gone.

"Sorry, hope you don't mind," she apologises when she notices that he’s come back in.

He waves his hand dismissively. "Be my guest."

He begins emptying the paper bag of shopping, stowing things away according to his and Wayne’s usual system - as in, without much of one at all. As he does, he roots round in each cupboard to get an idea of how much they have in, and when they might next need to make a run to the store. At the back of a messy cupboard he finds a half-finished box of pop-tarts that need finishing by the end of the week and asks Chrissy if she likes them.

She narrows her eyes on the box. “I don’t think I’ve ever had one,” she tells him with a shrug.

His reaction to the revelation is perhaps a bit extreme, but in his defence he doesn’t think he’s ever met anyone who’s never eaten a pop-tart before. She laughs at him as he splutters incoherently about the downright barbarity of the situation and puts his head in his hands as if receiving the worst news of his life.

He insists that she has to try one, whether she wants to or not. “Just a taste,” he bargains when he sees her looking sceptical. “I’ll finish it off if you don’t want the rest.”

She sets two mugs down on the counter and fills both with the freshly brewed coffee, and then takes her seat at the counter again. Resting her head on her hand, she watches him whilst he goes through the motions of heating the pop-tart for her.

It's strange how natural it feels to have her in this space, to transplant their easy friendship from the back of his van or the picnic table in the woods to his kitchen, despite all the stress he'd felt when she'd first come in.

When the toaster pops up he serves the two pockets of pastry up on a plate, sliding it across the counter to her. She eyes them suspiciously and he leans watches, coffee in hand, excited anticipation.

She picks one up cautiously and takes a delicate bite from a corner. As she chews, her face scrunches up, nose wrinkling. "You eat this for breakfast?" she asks, tone a little disgusted.

He nods.

"It's just pure sugar!"

"Yeah that's the point," he insists with a roll of his eyes, holding his hand out to take it from her as he’d promised.

She pulls it back toward her and holds it close to her chest. "No, I want to finish it."

He smirks, and is about to say I told you so when she speaks again.

"This doesn't mean it isn't an abomination."

He laughs at the severity of her judgement and reopens the box so that he can throw one in the toaster for himself.

Once they’re finished and he feels like he’s actually woken up slightly, he offers to go get his little metal lunchbox from his room. 

"Isn't it a bit early?" she asks. 

He resists the urge to remind her that she's the one who turned up at his trailer at 11 in the morning; if she doesn't think this is an acceptable time to smoke she could've come to him later. Instead he just shrugs and says "Ok, what should we do then?"

"What do you want to do?" she asks.

He shakes his head. "Nope. That's not allowed; you have to choose," he tells her. When she takes a little too long to think he prompts, "Come on, Chris. Anything you want."

As she’s leaving (late in the afternoon, after they’ve watched a film she picked out from his limited collection and then smoked, sat on his bedroom floor and listening to pop music on the radio, Chrissy laughing at his inability to stop his distaste showing in his facial expressions) she spins around on the doorstep so that she can ask him if Corroded Coffin will be playing at the Hideout on Tuesday.

“Every week - 9:30,” he tells her, leaning against the doorframe.

She nods, a sweet smile on her lips. “See you around, Eddie.”

"Okay, next round's on me," Eddie says, bringing his hands down on the edge of the table to get the attention of Gareth and Nate who've been in the midst of a heated debate about whether Master of Puppets is Metallica's best album to date (they both agree yes but for different reasons so they're still managing to have an argument over it, the same argument they've been having every week for about three months now ) . "Same again?" he asks, sweeping his gaze around the various almost-empty glasses that litter the table.

Everyone nods and Chrissy, who's been sat next to him at the edge of the booth, stands so that he can get out. 

At the bar, he raises a hand to get Madison's attention from where she's at the other end talking to one of the regulars. She acknowledges him with a nod and finishes her conversation before she heads over. 

He's glad she's working tonight. It's Chrissy's first time coming to the Hideout and while he knows that it's nothing scary and the hostile-looking regulars are actually sweet as candy once you get to know them, he also knows that it can all seem a little intimidating at first glance, and it was probably nice for Chrissy to not be the only woman in the space.

She'd spent the whole show sitting at the bar, and he'd been pleased to see her talking and laughing with Madison between songs. Every now and again Madison had shooed away some guy who had hung around Chrissy a little too long.

After they'd finished their set and after Chrissy had told them they'd played incredibly and hugged each of them one by one (which he could see the other lads found just as bizarre as he did), he'd commented on it. Chrissy's face had lit up. She'd said that Madison seemed really nice, and then proceeded to tell him a lot of things he already knew - like how Madison was a family friend of Ken, who owned the bar, and how she'd been working here since long before she was old enough to drink what she was serving, and how she's now 22 and studies music production two days a week at a college in Muncie. 

He orders three pints and a couple of diet cokes (because Chrissy is terrified that she's going to get carded, no matter how many times him and the guys have told her she's more likely to undergo spontaneous human combustion than get asked for ID here, and he's designated driver tonight).

As Madison starts pulling the first pint she says, "Your girl seems sweet."

Eddie follows her gaze to where Chrissy sits and lets out a laugh. "Not my girl."

"No?" She's raised her eyebrows as if the answer genuinely surprised her.

He shakes his head. "You really think Little Miss America's Sweetheart over there is ever gonna give someone like me a second look?"

Madison hums pensively. "She's looked at you far more than twice tonight,” she reasons and Eddie’s reminded that her wit is something he likes a lot more when it’s not turned on him.

"Oh, give it a rest Mads."

Predictably, his plea only causes her to double down, a smirk set firmly on her lips. “Seriously, she turned down a drink from just about every guy in here just so she could go on making heart eyes at you,” she tells him. “I was having to beat them back with a broomstick."

He rolls his eyes. "It ever occur to you that she was turning down drinks cause the youngest guy in here is still twice as old as her? And she was looking at me because she was watching the performance - that’s kind of the point," he says, sarcastic and condescending because if she's going to purposefully try to rile him up then two can play at that game.

He can see that she's not really listening though, just pulling the final pint and waiting for him to finish so that she can deliver her own retort. "And the heart eyes?"

"Now that part is clearly just you editorialising." 

She pulls a faux-shocked expression. "Editorialising? My, my, that is a big word!"

"Yeah, didn't you hear? You're looking at Edward Munson, high school graduate!" He pulls a ridiculous pose, half comic book superhero, half local politician who overestimates his own importance. 

She shakes her head in disbelief as she places his final drink down on the counter. "High school diploma and a cute girlfriend? It's all coming up Eddie isn't it?"

He smirks, and he's about to remind her that Chrissy isn't his girlfriend when someone shouts across the bar, "Eddie, quit flirting and bring us our drinks, will you?"

"Fuck off Gareth," he calls back, flipping his middle finger up over his shoulder, but ultimately he does ask Madison how much he owes her and pulls three crumpled fives out of his pocket to slide across the bar. 

As he arrives back at the table, three pint glasses arranged precariously between his hands, he catches the tail end of a conversation between Jeff and Chrissy, leaning in close over the sticky tabletop.

"Nah, not anymore - used to though," Jeff answers some unheard question of hers.

Chrissy follows it up with another question. "How long for?"

Eddie interrupts, puts the three drinks down on the table and makes a show of handing the first one to Gareth. "Awfully sorry for the delay, my lord" he says with an affected English accent, sarcasm dripping from the words. Then switching back to his usual voice, "Maybe buy your own fucking drink next time?" which earns him a middle finger as Gareth takes the first sip.

He slides the other two beers over to Nate and Jeff and is about to go back and get the two cokes from the bar when Jeff asks, "How long were you and Madison a thing again? A year?"

The question takes him by surprise and he finds himself stumbling over his words a little as he answers. "Erm… yeah I guess. Maybe 14 months?" It had definitely spanned his second attempt at senior year so it must have been at least a year. "Why?" 

With a nod across the table Jeff tells him, "Chrissy was asking."

When Eddie turns to look at her she immediately flicks her eyes away from his. He thinks he sees her blush, although with the dingy lighting of the bar it is possible that he's just imagined it.

"It was kind of on-and-off though; don't think we were ever together for more than like 3 months," he tells her, trying to justify his inability to put an exact time frame on his longest and most meaningful relationship (not that Chrissy knows that last part, he supposes). Then something about the way he's stood at the end of the table with everyone else watching him makes him feel like he has to continue to explain himself. "We're too similar really - same interests and sense of humour, same taste in music which was nice but…same big personalities." They'd clashed a lot, ended up in arguments over stupid things, and were both far too confrontational to handle the disagreements in a productive way. 

He likes to think he's grown since then, and every time he has a conversation with Madison there is a small part of him that wonders if maybe they could get it right this time.

He shakes his head in the hopes it might clear it. "I'll go get the other drinks," he offers before he can ramble on any more about his failed relationship within earshot of the girl in question.

When he returns, Chrissy stands up to let him back into the booth and he apologises again for the musical chairs of the whole ordeal as he slides back into his spot.

Once she's retaken her seat and settled, she's close enough that her leg presses lightly against his and he quickly shuffles closer to Nate to give her a little more personal space. 

He does his best to steer the conversation towards topics she might enjoy and he can tell that the rest of the guys are really trying their hardest to make sure she's included too but ultimately the overlap of interests between the Hawkins High head cheerleader and a wannabe metal band is just a little slim and he often catches Chrissy's gaze wandering around the bar as the rest of them talk.

It's Madison who seems to consistently end up as the object of Chrissy's attention. Whether serving drinks at the bar or doing the rounds collecting glasses or joking teasingly with customers, Chrissy's eyes track her movements around the bar.

While the other three are engaged in animated debate, he leans in to her so he can whisper discreetly. "You can go chat with Mads if you want, she'd probably appreciate the company," he says, mirroring her gaze over to where Madison is drying glasses and returning them to a shelf on the wall. 

She quickly shakes her head and pulls her attention back to the table.

"Or I can take you home," he offers. "I know we can be kinda boring."

"No it's fine, I want to stay," she tells him.

He nods. "Well, let me know if you change your mind."

She doesn’t miss a single Corroded Coffin show that summer and, without him ever really understanding how it has happened, he sees Chrissy near enough every other day. At the start there are reasons and excuses - some church function her mom’s hosting that she’s trying to get out of; the mangy, feral cat who hangs around because Wayne won’t stop feeding him scraps that she finds cute and wants to see again; the weed she wants to smoke, even though she turns up long before they start and stays long after they finish - and then after couple of weeks it’s just a thing. She quickly learns that he’s busy with band practice on Saturday mornings and every now and again on a midweek evening he’ll meet up with some ex-Hellfire guys who stuck around Hawkins (they sometimes invite the fresh blood too and play a mini-campaign that is invariably disastrous with 10+ playing), otherwise she asks if she can come around seemingly whenever she’s free and he sees no reason to say no, save the time that he already had plans for Jeff’s birthday, or the time she asked him to go see Aliens at the movies the weekend that him and the band were headed up to Chicago for a metal festival. 

He suspects that it’s some form of overdue teenage rebellion - date what daddy hates or whatever (except they aren't dating and he doesn't think her parents know that she is at his trailer for at least as many days as she's not), something she will be able to laugh about with her friends when she's married to a financial analyst in white picket fence suburbia. “And I spent the summer after high school smoking weed with this complete loser. No, really, it's the truth.” 

Whatever it is, it won't last; she’s off to college in the fall, and anyway, people don't tend to want to stick around for Eddie. That's not exactly going to change now, especially not with a girl like Chrissy who could have anything she wanted if she only knew how to ask for it. 

“You can play it as a power chord instead to make it easier," he offers, and then makes to move toward where she sits on the bed, his acoustic in her lap, so that he can show her how to rearrange her fingers to achieve it. "If you-”

She cuts him off with a firm tone. “No, I want to do the proper one.”

He smiles to himself as he settles back into his desk chair. Back before spring break, before he'd ever really spoken to her, he would’ve told you that Chrissy Cunningham, all-around good girl, probably had no flaws (beyond her obvious terrible taste in men) so it has been satisfying to learn that she is without a doubt the most stubborn person he’s ever met. Once she’s got her mind set on something there’s very little that can be done to change it, no matter how ridiculous it is.

And this is very much a ridiculous hill to die on. "That's not really how it works,” he attempts to explain. “They're just, like, variations on the chord. It's not really like there's only one 'proper' way to do it.”

Chrissy's not listening though, instead still focused on stretching her fingers around the neck of the guitar, eyebrow creased adorably in concentration.

This is her current mission, learning how to play, and has been since three days ago. He'd been practising guitar, hunched over the glossy wood with callused fingers trying to find their way around a complicated riff from the new Megadeath album. Chrissy had been over on the bed, book held above her head. The cut-off denim shorts she’d been wearing had shown off tanned, toned legs that seemed to stretch on forever and Eddie had to avoid giving them any more than a cursory glance for fear that he might never be able to tear his eyes away.

He'd just about got all the notes down in the correct order (although the rhythms weren't quite perfect yet and he was nowhere near up to speed) when she'd closed her book with a sigh and set it down beside her.

As she’d let her head fall to the side on the pillow he'd become instantly hyper-aware of her gaze on him and as difficult as it had been to get his fingers to move where he wanted them before, it had seemed infinitely more impossible with an audience. So when Chrissy had asked if she was distracting him, he’d answered truthfully, stopping what he was doing to look up and catch her eye as he did. “A little, sweetheart.”

She’d apologised with a sheepish smile and offered an explanation of, "It just looks really cool."

"Careful there," he'd warned, "I'll develop an ego."

"You already have an ego," She'd told him with a roll of her eyes as she sat up, then swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “Will you teach me?”

She’d picked up the basics quickly, learned E, A and D and in no time was cycling through the classic three-chord songs that every beginner cuts their teeth on. 

The problem has come now that they’ve tried to add some slightly more complicated chords to her repertoire (she wants to be able to play Uptown Girl by Billy Joel because of course she does) and the ease with which she picked up the basics is not translating to instant success. It’s led to a great deal of frustration for her and entertainment for him.

“Like this?” she asks excitedly once she’s finally got her fingers to the positions he’s shown her, looking up at him with hopeful eyes.

“Well yeah… but-”

“But what?!”

He gestures to the way her hand is curled too far around the neck, her wrist sticking out unnaturally in front of it instead of below it as it should be. “I mean you’d get a cramp after like one minute of playing like that.”

“This is exactly what you were doing!" she protests indignantly.

He shakes his head and slides to the floor before her. “No, you want it more like this.” On his final word he gently pushes her wrist back until it's in what should be a more comfortable position. As he does, her fingers slip from their perfect formation.

She lets out a small, frustrated sound “It’s impossible!”

“It’s really not,” he laughs.

She pulls his hand toward her and presses their palms against each other, lining them up at the wrists. Her hand is warm and smooth beneath his and her fingertips barely reach up to the final joints of his own fingers.

“See,” she says brusquely, as if this explains anything. “Impossible for me. Easy for you and your stupidly long fingers."

A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. There’s an innuendo hidden in there somewhere - something something that’s not all stupidly long fingers are useful for. It’s the kind of thing he definitely would’ve said, just to see the way it made her blush, back when his harmless flirting was just that, back when Chrissy had a boyfriend and didn’t spend her time lounging on his bed in barely-there shorts. 

Back when she didn’t press her hand to his and look at him with a gaze at once both soft and intense, that leaves him having to fight against the urge to do something stupid like letting his eyes flick down to her lips or reaching out with the hand that isn’t held against hers to push the strand of hair that has fallen forward back behind her ear. 

As lovely as it all is, being friends instead of just smoking buddies is excruciating because she’s just so tactile , and for some reason Eddie’s brain is unable to respond to any of this in a normal, respectful way. Instead, he has this unique ability to use even the most innocent of moments (gentle brushes of her skin against his, sweet and harmless hugs as greetings) as grounds for terrible fantasies, like holding her close to his body, or running his fingertips over all of the ridges of her face, or taking her delicate hands in his and kissing each one of her knuckles in turn (okay, okay, there are other things he imagines too but he doesn’t let himself think of any of that too long for fear it might actually kill him; and anyway, it is mainly all that gross, mushy stuff, he swears).

He wonders absently if she is quite as aware of how close their faces are, of the way he’d only have to push himself up on his knees a little to kiss her.

He has to choose to believe that these are the kinds of things she just doesn’t notice, that the tension that feels so palpable to him is nonexistent as far as she’s concerned. The only other option is that she knows exactly what she’s doing, that she casually lays her legs across his lap, or sits him on the floor between her legs so that she can braid his hair, or lets their faces hang this close for what is starting to feel like somewhere close to a century, just to torture him for his painfully obvious crush on her. The only other option is that, for her, this is all some cruel game at his expense.

"That girl from yesterday…" Wayne says in an overly casual tone, breaking the companionable silence they'd been sitting in - Wayne eating a meal in front of the TV before he goes to work and Eddie absently watching while sketching ideas for new DnD monsters in an old notebook.

"Chrissy," he supplies.

She'd come round in the afternoon and they'd spent most of the day sitting on the porch complaining about the heat like a couple of elderly folks, but the heatwave that has suddenly swept across the country makes it difficult to focus on anything else.

"Right, Chrissy," Wayne repeats with a nod. "She's 'round here a lot."

“Yeah she’s… having a rough time at home.” At least he assumes that’s part of the reason why Chrissy comes round so often. She might not have explicitly said it but she has told him more than enough about her mother for Eddie to be able to put two and two together.

"Sorry, is that okay?" Eddie checks. He's lived here about a decade now but he still feels like it's Wayne's space really, is occasionally excruciatingly aware of how much of a burden he alone must be, never mind anyone else he might invite into the space.

Wayne had had a night off yesterday and while Eddie knows that he probably went out to play poker with his friends as he often does when he has a night to himself, he can't help but worry that he might have left in the early evening because he hadn't wanted to share the space with Eddie and Chrissy, who had moved into the living room by then to escape the bugs that had come out in full force the second the sun has begun to disappear behind the horizon. 

Wayne just waves him off with a dismissive gesture. "Course it's fine. You know me, always collecting waifs and strays," he tells Eddie with an affectionate look.

Eddie mirrors his smile and then turns back to the TV.

For a few moments they go back to how they tend to operate when spending time together, quietly coexisting in the same space without too much need for unnecessary conversation, until Wayne's voice raises over the noise of the television. 

“Pretty,” he comments. It's once again far too casual in that way that makes it obvious that it’s not really casual at all.

“Jesus, Wayne! You're old enough to be her father!” Eddie exclaims, rearranging his features into an exaggerated expression of disgust. "I know this is your place but I'm gonna have to kick you out if you start trying it on with my friends."

Across from him, Wayne looks unimpressed. "Oh har har, very funny, kid," he intones with a roll of his eyes. “You know that's not what I meant."

The pointed look he gives Eddie as he says it makes it clear that he’s not going to be able to worm his way out of this one.

After a whole summer of her constantly hovering around and no comment at all from Wayne, the sudden interest in Chrissy would be slightly surprising. But Eddie knows exactly what’s caused it.

Last night, while they’d been watching some cheesy high school movie Chrissy has picked out and roasting alive (because the trailer seems uniquely designed to trap all of the heat of the sun beating down on it and never let it go, which was pretty useful in the winter but left it hotter than hell in the height of summer), Eddie had gotten up to retrieve a beer that he’d put in the freezer to cool.

“You want one?” he’d asked. “They’re cold”

She’d nodded. “Please, feel like I’m dying in here.” She’d been fanning herself with some leaflet about our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ that had been slid under the door a few days earlier and her cheeks were flushed a cherry red from the heat. 

He’d grabbed a second beer and wandered back, handing one to her. She’d wrapped her hands around it and let out a small sigh. “God, that’s nice.”

Instead of sitting back down at the opposite end of the sofa where he’d been before, he’d placed himself down beside her. With one leg folded under himself and the other dangling off the edge of the sofa so that he was facing her, he’d lifted the cold can to press against the side of her neck. 

She had made this tiny sound, something that started as a gasp but ended somewhere closer to a whimper, and he’d immediately felt like all of the air had been drawn out of the room.

He’d swallowed, throat suddenly dry, and asked, “Good?” in a voice that sounded much thicker than he would’ve liked. 

“Yeah,” she’d answered.

He’d sat like that for a moment and watched her, eyes fluttered closed and breathing heavy, rise and fall of her chest exaggerated. The way her lips had been parted ever so slightly had made him want to reach out and run his thumb across her lower lip. Perhaps he would’ve given in to the desire if Wayne hadn’t come home. 

At the sound of the door opening Eddie had jumped back comically fast, sat as far away from her as possible in that guilty we weren’t doing anything position that had probably been far more suspicious than if his uncle had actually seen him innocently holding a beer to her neck (except it hadn't really been innocent had it, because the first thing his brain had done was try to determine whether she’d make that same pretty sound if he were to instead run his tongue over that sensitive skin of her neck and he’d had to push it from his mind immediately before it left him in a particularly embarrassing spot).

Wayne had eyed them warily but ultimately retreated to his room without any more than a gruff greeting. 

So really Eddie should've known that this conversation was coming - he wasn't ever going to get away with it that lightly.

"She's just a friend, Wayne," he insists, trying his best to sound as earnest and genuine as possible.

It's clear that his uncle doesn't believe him but he lets it pass, says in the stern voice that he reserves for the rare moments of actual traditional parenting he gives Eddie, "Alright, well if that changes just promise me you'll be careful. Don't want to hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet round here any time soon."

Eddie rolls his eyes in an attempt to draw attention away from the way he's blushing a little. "Yeah, you don't need to worry about that; I promise."

The summer passes too quickly. One second it's at its height, all unbearable heat and days that last forever and endless possibilities, and the next autumn is in the air, nights drawing in too quickly and leaves beginning to turn on trees.

Before he knows it it's the last time he'll see her. She's still got a few days left in Hawkins but, as she keeps reminding him, she's got to pack and say her farewells to friends and family, so it's goodbye for now. And she insists that it really is just for now, that she'll come back and say hi when she's home for the holidays, but he can tell from the way she says it that even she knows it's not true.

Which is fine. It's not like he even expected her to stick with him for this long.

He's the one who's brought up college, because, as good as they are at collectively ignoring things, he can't pretend that it's not going to hurt to watch her go today. And while he's so immensely proud of her for leaving, for taking her life into her own hands and getting out of this shitty town, he needs her to know that this summer has been, without a doubt, the best of his life so far, probably better than any to come. 

When he asks if she'll miss him she tells him yes, she will, because without him she won't get discounts on weed. It makes him laugh, the sound full and bright, because that will never, ever be true, not when she's easily the prettiest girl in every room she walks into. 

"Aren't you going to ask if I'll miss you?" he prompts. 

She’s quiet for a long time and he turns to check she’s alright, since he's sensed something off about her ever since he first mentioned college.

She does say it though - “Will you miss me?” - flat and oddly emotionless as she tries to put a tray away on top of a cupboard that’s just ever so slightly too high for her. 

He watched her struggle for a second and then, when it becomes clear that she's not getting anywhere, he moves to help her. "Here," he murmurs as he stands behind her so that he can reach up and push the tray away himself with ease. It's only as the tray slides into place that he realises he's closer to her than he'd intended to be, body pressed against hers.

He thinks he hears her breath catch in a quiet gasp and he rushes to move back from her, as far away as the tiny kitchen will allow. When she turns around, he's all too aware of the embarrassed blush on his cheeks.

The rest happens too quickly for him to really process it but he looks her in the eyes and tells her that he’ll miss her and then her lips are on his and his brain short circuits.

After a few seconds - after he's regained the capacity to process information again - he realises that she’s kissing him. At least she's trying to; she’s a lot shorter than him and the angle isn't quite right so he leans down further and wraps an arm around her to lift her higher, bring her closer. As he moves his lips over hers, it becomes surprisingly easy to adjust into this previously unthinkable reality where this is a thing that can happen. 

She’s trying to say something, keeps stuttering out words every time they break apart for a second to breathe, but what it could be he has no idea of because he’s not able to focus on anything but the feel of her lips, soft and warm against his. 

When his neck starts to ache from the way he's craning down to her he lifts her, silently thanking God for all the times he's had to carry amps and electric guitars in and out of the Hideout that means he's able to do it without appearing to take too much effort.

Up on the counter she’s a more appropriate height, so that kissing will be more comfortable for the both of them, and her new position has the added benefit of bringing pretty much all of her body within his arm's reach. He runs a hand up from her calf to her waist, before resting them both on her hips, over the fabric of her skirt. As he does, she drags her legs further apart and pulls him in closer to nestle in the new space the movement creates, knees closing to gently trap him there once he's settled.

Her hands begin to roam, one at his chest, clutching at the fabric of his shirt, and the other snaking its way around the back of his neck, pushing up into his hair. Her fingernails scrape against his skull in a way that makes him groan into her. He would like her to rake them over every single inch of his skin.

It has to come to an end at some point though and after a length of time that feels entirely too short she presses her hand against his chest, too lightly to push him away but forceful enough to let him know that she wants him to stop. 

He plants one last kiss on the corner of her mouth and then pulls himself away from her, bringing his hands down to rest gently on the tops of her thighs.

She catches her breath a little dramatically, chest heaving, and if she was beautiful before she’s fucking ethereal now, with her fine hair mussed from his hands, and her lips redder and glossy with spit, and something wild and dangerous glinting in her eyes.

“Bed?” she asks.

It’s a terrible idea (all of this has been a terrible idea really but it’s only now that he’s managed to stop kissing her for more than 5 seconds that his brain is getting around to telling him) because she’s leaving in four days time and it’s going to be hard enough to get over her without knowing how soft her skin is and the sounds she makes and what she tastes like and oh God, he needs to stop thinking about that right now.

He removes his hands from her body with slow, deliberate movements, then steps a little further back from her, and finally tips his head down so that he's looking at the floor instead of her. Gripping the countertop so hard enough that his knuckles turn white, he hopes that the cool of the plastic will be able to reinstate his ability to think rationally, logically.

She starts pleading then, voice rough and heavy. "Please, it isn't- It doesn't have to mean anything. We can forget it in the morning,” she tells him, as if that isn’t the whole problem - the fact that she will be able to walk from this with her heart intact and he will be left behind to pick up the pieces of his own.

“I just- I need you.”

He closes his eyes for a second and reminds himself one final time that this is a bad idea, no matter how inviting it sounds, that heartbreak is absolutely inevitable. As he focuses on his breathing - in and out, in and out - he resolves to tell her no, Chrissy, I can't. That's until soft fingertips find their way under his chin and direct his gaze up to hers. She's got the same vulnerable expression on her face that she had used to get him to smoke with her on that very first conversation in the woods.

"Please, Eddie." 

Her skin is soft as silk or clouds or a lullaby sung to a sleepy child, and she tastes like heaven and hell all wrapped into one, and the sounds that he coaxes from her mouth are the greatest music he’ll ever hear, and yes, getting over her will be entirely impossible now. 

He doesn't know how they got here. Or he does - can go through every single motion in fine detail that brought them to this point - he just doesn't really understand it: her pulling on his clothes and climbing under his covers like that's a reasonable thing to expect from something casual, telling him “I didn't realise it could feel like that,” with a tone of reverent wonder as if he hadn’t been too nervous about making it good for her to actually focus on the things that might help him to achieve that, as if he hadn’t come in minutes, before he’d had a chance to get her off, like he was 15 years old again and inside a girl for the first time. (But then again he probably could've guessed that Chrissy would be the type to get all sappy and sentimental after sex; he'd been surprised no-strings attached was a concept she was aware of, nevermind something she might ask for.)

The words themselves, along with the small, tender voice in which she'd said them, had made him feel so many emotions at the same time: sorry that sex had ever been anything else; proud that she'll go to college knowing how a man should love her; so infernally angry at Jason fucking Carver for being so selfish that he would’ve jumped from the bed and hunted him down if it weren't for the way Chrissy had pulled his arm round herself and settled against him like she never wanted either of them to move again.

More than anything he’d just felt a little pathetic, because he’d wanted to say it’s never felt like that for me either but he knows they hadn’t really meant the same thing. For him, it was special because it was her , and for her it was only that Jason wouldn't know how to please a woman if it was written out for him in clear, concise instructions with illustrated diagrams.

He'd pushed all that to the side and casually brushed the comment off, steering the conversation away from things she wouldn’t want to hear. They've talked and talked - for hours maybe, he's not really sure but it's dark outside now and their voices have gradually gotten slower, lower, sleep-thickened.

"Do you think it's Thursday yet?"

It comes after a long lull in the conversation, when he'd half-assumed that she was already asleep, tricked by the sound of her even breathing.

"Hmm…probably." He's closed his eyes even though he’s actively fighting against sleep, not wishing to make the morning come quicker than it has to but unable to keep them open any longer.

She sighs softly. "Three more days.”

This implication of college is the closest they’ve come to talking about anything of consequence, having spent the night carefully skirting around the important things the same way they had in the early days. He finds it funny that they’ve circled back round, that what will probably be their last few conversations mirror their first so neatly.

After a few moments of quiet she speaks again. "I'm really glad I found you.” She whispers, rushing through the words the way she tends to do when she’s nervous. “I don't really know who I'd be if I hadn't."

He tightens his arm around her, tips his head forward so that his nose rests lightly against the back of her neck as she continues.

"And it's not even that I'm more myself now, it's more that there's actually a myself to be. Like before Chrissy Cunningham was just this Frankenstein's monster of other people's ideas and expectations and now I feel like… like an actual person, like I have my own desires and fears and… thank you."

His heart feels close to bursting, in a way that is at once joyous and agonising, and it seems impossible that he might be able to find an adequate response. In the end he says, "I think you did most of the work there, but if I helped at all I’m honoured.” Then against his better judgement he tells her, “I just want you to be happy."

"You make me happy,” she returns immediately, as if it’s the only natural response.

It makes him smile, broad and beaming, against her skin. "You make me happy too." He punctuates his words with a fleeting kiss to the side of her neck.

The soft sound she makes, something that doesn’t quite know whether it’s a sigh or a breathy moan, seems so loud against the quiet of the night. But maybe that’s just because it pushes every other thought out of Eddie’s mind until it feels like it’s the only thing bouncing around in his head. 

It’s late and they’re both tired and the inevitable heartbreak of the morning will be made twice as bad if he lets himself get lost in her again but he finds himself repeating the action, letting himself stay a little longer with his lips on her neck this time. Any final lingering reservations he may have had are chased out of his head as she makes that same soft sound and tilts her head to the side just so, exposing more pale skin to him. The instruction is crystal clear, almost more so than if she had explicitly said it, and he begins pressing slow kisses into every available inch of her neck and shoulder.

He draws the hand that has been holding her to him up under her shirt to dance across her stomach, then higher still to run a thumb under one of her tits in a wide, sweeping arch.

Mouth still moving lazily against her neck, he allows his hand to rest there, beneath the swell of her breast, for a few long moments. He’s abandoned any hope of being sensible about this but perhaps she’ll put a stop to it, remind him how much of an awful idea this will probably be. 

But she does nothing to indicate that she doesn't want this to go any further and he brings his hand up to her chest, squeezing gently as he cups the soft flesh, trying so hard not to be too rough. He can't believe he allowed her bra to stay on so long earlier, that he paid her tits so little attention - to think, if she’d allowed him to drive her home like he’d offered, he’d never have known how perfectly they fit in his palm.

Impulsively, he drags his teeth lightly across the juncture between her neck and shoulder and lets out a low groan when she responds with a whimper, pushing her head back, neck in a pretty arch. He knows she won't want him to leave marks on her but he allows himself to briefly imagine that she might let him suck the delicate skin between his lips, nip gently at it and watch the pretty patterns begin to bloom - if not on her neck, where her parents might see, then maybe her chest or the soft insides of her thighs so that whichever lucky bastard she meets at college might know that someone else loved her first. 

Before long she's restless, thighs shifting over each other. "Eddie," she whines, the sound thin and needy.

He lets his hand venture back down her body, tracing over the curve of her ribcage and across the smooth skin of her stomach until he reaches the waistband of her underwear. Running a finger beneath the lace-trimmed edge, he whispers, "Is this okay?"

She nods. “Please.”

When he wakes it’s to the smell of strawberries and there are a few blissful moments in which his brain hasn't yet caught up and all he knows is that there is a strawberry-scented girl wrapped up in his arms, and then that the girl is Chrissy, before he finally, disappointingly, remembers that she's not here to stay. 

The right thing to do here is almost definitely to get up and out of her way so that when she wakes it might be slightly easier to pretend they hadn't spent the night together but he knows he's not going to be able to make himself do that when she's warm and solid against him and he feels like all he really wants to do is stay here like this forever. So he gives himself until she wakes to once again break his own heart further by pretending that there is no impending catastrophe, that this is just a normal morning. Letting his eyes flicker shut, he rests his forehead against her and focuses on the feeling of the skin above her hip as he drags his thumb back and forth across it.

In his contented, inattentive state he misses the sigh that might have alerted him to her waking. It's only when she shifts under his arm that he realises and rushes to remove it from around her.

"Sorry," he mutters over the sound of the bedsheets rustling.

She just mumbles out, "S'okay," and once she's turned herself over so that she's facing him she shuffles closer and pulls his arm back across her once again.

She looks like she's still half-asleep, eyes bleary and lids heavy as she gazes up at him with a blissful smile set on her lips.

"Morning." It's partly meant as a reminder for her that it is morning now, that by now they're supposed to be pretending none of this really happened.

And yet she kisses him. It's only brief, a momentary press of her soft lips to his, but it is undoubtedly a kiss, and after she's pulled away she drags herself even closer to him. Bodies pressed together, she tucks her head into the hollow of his neck and sighs contentedly, like she'd quite like to stay there as long as he'd let her. 

He rests a hand lightly on the back of her head, not entirely sure what it is she wants from him here. Chrissy’s always been an enigma to him; from the very first time he met her she's managed to take him by surprise and do the unexpected but the past 12 hours have left him utterly lost. 

And if he's honest, he thinks she's not being totally fair to him. Which is perhaps hypocritical for him to say when it was probably wrong for him to ask for more than he'd been promised and fuck her in the early hours of the morning, and to say half the sweet nothings he'd whispered while he'd done it (because while he had been careful to control himself the first time, the second time he'd been unable to shut his mouth: some things he'd said had been fairly acceptable like how she's insanely attractive; and some had been bad but forgivable like how into her he is; and some would provide him with the one way ticket to hell those religious groups seem so certain he already has, like when he'd told her that it was like she was made for him, which would be a pretty unacceptable thing to say to a girl prone to judging her own worth by her usefulness to others under any circumstances, but seemed particularly terrible when she'd specifically said she wanted things to be casual.)

So sure, there might be something to say about glass houses here but it feels uncharacteristically cruel for her to ask this of him because she knows she can get him to do whatever she wants, and then refuse to stick to her own rules and keep stringing him along this morning without a single care for how fucked up it is to be toying with him like this.

“I thought we were forgetting this in the morning,” he says quietly, keeping his voice even and free of too much emotion.

"Oh." 

For a moment the feeble sound is the only indication that she's actually heard him. Then all of a sudden she's a flurry of hurried movements, pushing herself back from him and scrambling to get out of the bed. "Yeah, sorry, I-" she begins to apologise as she does.

Why she's so distressed he doesn't really understand but he does know he can't let her leave like this, especially not if he wants to hold on to any hope of her ever coming back to see him again.

She's sat on the edge of the bed, just almost ready to stand up by the time he manages to sit up behind her and throw his arm around her waist.

"No, wait-" he says as he holds her steady.

"It's okay. I'll just-"

"No, don't be like that," he tells her, with an edge of irritation that he immediately regrets. He rests his head against her shoulder and takes an even breath, tries to put his own feelings aside so that he can try to fix whatever's gone wrong here. "Talk to me. Come on, tell me what I've done."

He can feel the way her body shifts as she draws in a shaky breath.

"Nothing, you haven't-" She sighs and shakes her head. "You're right; we should just forget it," she tells him, as if it's all his idea, as if she wasn't the one to sit on his kitchen counter last night and tell him that she needed him but it couldn't ever mean anything.

"Well, obviously I don't want to forget it, Chris" he says a little bitterly. It's perhaps not a sensible thing to say, walks too close to explicitly addressing the elephant in the room of Eddie's unfortunate infatuation with her that they've both worked so hard to ignore. But it feels unfair to watch her try to put this on him now when it was so decisively her idea.

The time before she speaks seems to stretch out forever, and he wonders if he has managed to ruin everything even further by saying that. But she does finally open her mouth and suck in a breath and ask, "No?"

She says it as if it's a genuine question, as if she honestly doesn't know if he'd want to remember this time he's spent with her, which is completely absurd because he's been so fucking obvious about it. But he supposes that if she wants to hear him say it out loud, and this is the last time that he'll see her before college, possibly ever, then he can allow himself to be a little candid, a little vulnerable, and tell her in a hushed voice, "God no, and even if I wanted to I'm not sure I could, given how it's everything I've spent the last few months dreaming of." 

Her reaction is slightly delayed; there is once again a long period of silence before she asks, "What?"

He has to pull his arm away and move back from her to sit against the wall when she begins to shift agitatedly, clearly trying to turn around. When she does, she looks at him with complete confusion.

He's trying to figure out what it is she's asking, because as it is he doesn't get what she could be confused about. For some reason they've woken up this morning and he can't piece together the motivations for any of her actions and he seems to be speaking in some code she can't decipher, even though they've spent so much time together this summer that by the end he sometimes felt like she knew him better than he knew himself.

"What are you-" she begins to ask, but cuts herself off before she can finish. With a frustrated sigh, she runs her fingers through her hair. Then she says, "So why have I spent half the summer making a complete fool of myself trying to get you to ask me on a date then?" and in an instant everything changes.  

They’re supposed to be at Josie’s now (because that’s what she’d said she wanted and God knows he’ll spend the rest of his life trying his best to give her anything and everything she asks for) but neither of them have made any move to untangle themselves from the bedsheets or get ready to leave. 

He's watching her trace the outline of each bat drawn into the skin below his elbow, his arm pulled towards her to allow her ease of access. She's done the same with the ink on his chest and his hip and his forearm, asking earnest questions about each one as she goes - how much they’d hurt seems to be what she’s most interested in, closely followed by why he'd got them.

"So you just spent hours getting poked by a needle for no reason?" she'd asked, genuinely confused when he'd had to admit that for most of them there wasn't really any great significance, he'd just kind of felt like it.

He'd laughed. "Well, they look cool as fuck; that's a reason."

She had considered the words carefully as she absently ran her fingers over his skin again. "Would you want me to get tattoos?" 

"I want you to do whatever you want to do."

She lowers her mouth to his arm, slowly gives each patch of ink a gentle kiss, her lips barely brushing against his skin.

The morning light streaming in through the window is somehow perfectly aligned behind her so that it catches in her hair and makes it look like she's glowing.

It seems impossible that anyone could ever be this beautiful, and yet here she is, right before him, right here in his bed.

When she lifts her head again she looks at him quizzically, halo still gleaming golden around her. "What?" she asks, a slight confrontational edge to the word.

He blinks, confused at what he's done. "Hmmm?"

“You keep looking at me weirdly,” she tells him.

He lifts his arm to smooth a thumb across her cheek and then over the line of her jaw. “I’m not quite sure this is real," he admits quietly. "I feel like I’ll blink and when my eyes open you’ll be gone.”

She laughs breezily as if it’s ridiculous (which it is, he supposes) and rolls over onto him, holding herself above his body. Her hair hangs down and brushes his face as she presses her mouth to his. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily - stuck with me forever now," she whispers against his lips.

“Is that a promise?”

She smiles. “Yeah, that’s a promise.”