#god I hurt my own feelings with this one | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

steddiejudas · 9 months

Text

Tell me you love me (even if you’re lying)

Eddie doesn’t want to remember a time before Chrissy Cunningham. He knows that time exists, has nightmares about the crippling loneliness, but in his opinion, his life started on the day of the middle school talent show. The day a small framed blonde girl with pom poms the size of her head watched in awe as he bounced around the stage with a buzzcut and Wayne’s beat up old guitar. Afterwards, Chrissy told Eddie how much she loved the show and how badly she wished she could perform like that. Eddie in turn told her how incredible her routine was with a mock of how her tiny hands managed to shake around the giant pom poms. She laughed, he smiled, and they had been best friends ever since.

They don’t always do everything together, now that they’re in high school. Chrissy is a cheerleader, so naturally she spends a lot of time with the rest of the cheer squad while Eddie is busy herding his little lost sheep. It’s no secret they’re friends, though. Chrissy co founded Hellfire and one is rarely seen walking into school for the day without the other. Eddie even sits in the bleachers during cheer practice so he can drive her home most days.

When Chrissy starts dating Jason, things get more complicated. She does her best to keep the jocks off Hellfire’s back, but with the rise of satanic panic it’s getting harder and harder to make him sit down and shut up when Eddie rants atop lunch tables. And if Eddie acts up a little more than usual as a form of disapproval for her choice of partner, well that’s between him and his gods. Which is not to say he’s passive aggressive about it. He’s voiced his opinions on Jason very clearly, many times, but Chrissy’s in a tough spot and he knows that. See, one too many longing glances towards a certain lanky soccer player with unruly shoulder length waves and a penchant for long ramblings had landed her in the hot waters of some scandalous, but not untrue rumors and it was only a matter of time before they got back to her parents. Her extremely religious parents. Eddie had offered to be her beard, naturally, but Chrissy wasn’t sure what would be worse in her parents eyes: their daughter being attracted to women, or attracted to the person they had referred to as “that no good Munson kid” for as long as they’d known each other.

They’re forced apart by Jason, in some ways. They see each other less in the halls, Chrissy stops coming to Hellfire meets, Eddie can’t even set foot in the gym during practice without jeering and insults flying his way. He never blames Chrissy, though. She still finds ways to spend time with him. They still drive to school together, they sneak off to their table in the woods after practice before Jason has had a chance to clean up and whisk her away. Any moment the two of them can spare is given to each other.

About two months into Chrissy and Jason’s relationship they steal away to their spot, but Chrissy seems off. She’s sullen and quiet, no trace of the girl who killed an entire adventuring party in three rounds of combat with a smile on her face to be found. Her silence speaks volumes, so Eddie fills the space between them by telling her about his day. He had a test in math that he’s almost certain he failed. All of second period he spent planning a one shot he’s sure Chrissy will love. Oh and he skipped English again, pretty sure he’s going to fail the semester.

That works to get her attention for a moment. She looks worried, says “again?” and her eyes drop back down to the carving of their initials in a little heart on the table. Eddie watches her as he rolls a joint. She traces the carving with the tip of her finger with that look on her face that means she’s deep in thought. Eddie lights the joint and passes it to Chrissy straight away. He can see some of the tension in her shoulders unwind from just one hit. A moment later and he knows she’s ready to talk.

“So, you’re awfully quiet today, Chris. What’s going on?”

She sighs and barely looks up at him. “I don’t know, Eds. Do you ever feel like you’re losing your mind?”

“Come on, you know I do. Are you okay? You know you can talk to me.”

“I know. I just-“ She sighs again and takes another hit before passing the joint back to Eddie. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”

“Do what?”

“This! All this lying, pretending to be someone I’m not. I’m just so tired and no matter how hard I try, I'm still not the person everyone thinks I am.”

“Chris,” Eddie hops up and over the table to sit next to Chrissy, wrapping her up in an embrace. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“He told me he loves me,” she says. It’s not joyous. They don’t celebrate. Her voice sounds deflated with a sense of doom. Eddie doesn’t speak, just lets her ride out her emotions. “He told me he loves me and I obviously don’t love him. I have to be a completely different person just to be around him.”

“Jesus H. Christ after two months? How good of an actor are you?”

“Too good, apparently,” she mumbles. “He tried to have sex with me, Eddie.”

“What?” Eddie shouts, springing to his feet. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

“No, Eddie, stop. I said he tried. Look, as big of an ass as he is, he is technically a gentleman. I told him I wanted to wait until marriage and he respects that.” Eddie seethes and paces around the table. “It’s just… what if he thinks that means I want to marry him?”

Eddie stops dead in his tracks when he sees the look on Chrissy’s face. It’s like he can see a full life lived in the creases between her brows. A life full of lies and disappointment. “Chris,” he starts gently, “if this is too much for you, there’s no reason you have to stay with him. Haven’t you proven your point?”

“No, Eds. Even now I hear the rest of the squad whispering about me. They think because I haven’t sealed the deal that none of it means anything. And I mean, they’re right. Even if I pretend it’s about ‘purity’ or whatever bullshit, I can’t even tell him I love him.”

Eddie settles back next to her on the bench. “What about me?”

“What about you?” she asks.

“Do you love me?”

“Of course I do, what kind of question is that?”

“Just- listen, hear me out. So he’s a douche and telling him you love him feels like drowning-“

“How did you know?”

“I know you, Chrissy. I’ve known you for years and I actually love you. Just like you actually love me. So just pretend when he says he loves you, that he’s me, or at least pretend it’s me you’re saying it back to, not Jason fucking Carver.”

“I don’t know, Eddie. You two couldn’t be more different. How am I supposed to imagine Jason is you?”

Eddie hums his agreement. Silence washes over them again as he holds her trembling frame. He offers her his ringed hand, knowing she takes comfort in twisting the costume jewelry around his fingers. In turn he plays with the green scrunchie she wears on her wrist when her hair isn’t up in her signature high pony. He takes it off her wrist without a word, grabs his bandana from his back pocket, and rips a piece of it off.

“What are you doing?” Chrissy asks, eyes wide. Eddie doesn’t say anything as he takes the strip of black fabric and ties it around the scrunchie in a little bow and puts it back on Chrissy's wrist.

“There. Now you’ve always got a little piece of me to say ‘i love you’ to.”

Chrissy looks at her wrist and laughs. The sound is like sunlight, a golden melody that brightens her eyes and fills Eddie’s chest with warmth. It’s so wholeheartedly Chrissy that Eddie can’t help but smile.

“I love you, Eddie Munson,” she says, catching her breath.

“I love you too, Chrissy Cunningham.” Eddie places a kiss to the top of her head and hugs her a little tighter.

A year later, when Chrissy dies, she’s still wearing the scrunchie with Eddie’s little bow. Eddie watches, unable to move as she’s suspended in midair and mutilated before his eyes. As much as he hates leaving her there, he doesn’t know what else to do but run. But first, he delicately removes the scrunchie from her hair and puts it on his wrist. He whispers “I love you” over and over, like a prayer as his van peels out of the driveway.

Eddie spends the next week on the run, his only contact being a 15 year old, the man Chrissy had spent years trying to convince him to just speak a single sentence to, and the girl Chrissy couldn’t manage to speak to herself. He isn’t sure if this is reality anymore. The world before Chrissy is a vague template for his nightmares. He never thought he’d have to see the after. It seems fitting that it’s the literal end of the world. And yet, somehow he survives. He not only survives, but now he has Robin, Steve, Nancy, and the kids that come with them. Eddie has a life he never thought possible without Chrissy.

When Corroded Coffin finally performs again, Chrissy’s scrunchie finds its way onto the fretboard of his guitar. The guitar Chrissy gifted him before their first ever show, his pride and joy, a little piece of her he’ll never give up. He dedicates every show to her, and whenever he looks at the little green scrunchie, he can hear her words clear as a melody.

“I love you, Eddie Munson.”

#eddie munson #chrissy cunningham #stranger things #platonic eddie and chrissy #they should have been besties #the friendship they deserved #steddie #buckingham #i was thinking about this all day and wrote it in one sitting okay pls be nice #no beta we die like chrissy #oh god i hurt my own feelings #hellcheer #platonic hellcheer #did anyone else always lose scrunchies to their dads guitars or was that just a weird thing from my childhood??

37 notes · View notes