Chrissy’s Favorite Of The Freshman Is Max, Followed Very Closely By Jane And Will.

here’s your “wow, what the hell, jason” for today:  there are multiple guys on the hawkins cheer squad, and like all cheer guys they play a really big part in building the strength of the squad - which we see in the pep rally when they’re assisting with lifts. jason, during his rousing “we’ll win for the dead people” speech, only draws attention to the girls on the squad. 

From one Chrissy mun to another; I want to give you a little reminder that your portrayal is one of a kind! You put so much into the writing and into making her your own version and it shows! (Plus you have great muse taste). I'm rooting for you endlessly and wish you a happy hump day! May the rest of your week go swimmingly!

^^^ me when you

in all seriousness, what a lovely thing to see today!!! it warms my heart so much to know chrissy has such sweet rep in this little community and your positivity in particular is a gift. 🧡 tysm victoria!!! keep on keeping on yourself, and cheers to spectacular muse taste ;)

much love from me to you 🧡💚🤍 team chrissy always

chrissy had paced the boundary of the football field for twenty solid minutes before feeling any modicum less like crawling out of her skin and leaving it behind on the turf. it would take more than twenty minutes or a half hour or hour or the rest of the semester to make any sort of harmony with the disastrous state of affairs back at school, but that was ticking time chrissy did not have. 

                            we’re so sorry, chrissy. you must miss him so much. 

a surge of petulance rattled so fiercely in her gut that chrissy kicked at a clump of damp soil and grass hard enough to send it flying, nearly sending her sneaker with it. 

                            it must be so difficult. i always envied you two.

yes, shedding her skin sounded perfect. she would leave behind the deflated organ like a trash liner, right there at the edge of the football field. someone would find it and scream in terror that “chrissy cunningham’s dead again!” and run away or even faint dramatically on the spot. but there would be no body, only the ghoulish sausage casing polite company called flesh. chrissy could walk away from the smiles that wobbled and wavered, the lips that gloss never stuck to, the cracked and dehydrated nail beds she had to mask religiously with stinging nail polish. off she’d go, nothing but muscles and tendons and trailing blood like bread crumbs, a devil straight from a nightmare. her mother would open the door in horror and chrissy would demand an answer. what about now, mom? will i fit in the dress now?

                            just the perfect hawkins couple.

❝ your boyfriend was adamant that you wouldn’t have gone to someone like young mr. munson for help if you were afraid. ❞  

hhmph. jason was more wrong than he knew.

❝ it’s what he wanted people to think. ❞ a hard blink; her lashes felt light without mascara.   ❝ ....and where is jason now? ❞  there had been a strange lack of visits from him - or information about him, which was arguably preferable to a visit. chrissy didn’t want to watch while jason pointedly looked away from her bruised eyes and joints and wrist and knee braces. she could see it now, his bald discomfort with her appearance, not so doll-like anymore. not head cheerleader material, looking like that, her mother had already spewed to an attending nurse when she thought her daughter couldn’t hear.  

chief powell swallowed and glanced away. avoiding. chrissy froze.

❝ ch - chief powell? ❞  

❝ i’m sorry, ms. cunningham. ❞  his posture had noticeably shifted as if a load were suddenly dropped upon his shoulders.  ❝ we found your boyfriend beside a fault line. it’s likely that jason was killed during the earthquake. ❞  

❝ .....oh.... ❞

then he isn’t my boyfriend anymore, is he?

                            it seemed like jason really loved you.

                            don’t you think it’s weird hanging with the freak after your boyfriend died?

                            you’re friends with the hellfire weirdos? what the shit, chrissy, since when?

that was it. she couldn’t hold in the storm a moment longer. 

with an unusually savage cry, chrissy unloaded every iota of frustration on an unlucky blocking sled the football team had left out along the touchline. she felt the drag of an angry yelp as it flew out of her throat. again and again and again. the pull of muscle was refreshing and nauseating in turns. a kick for every stupid comment she’d heard since resuming classes. a pitiful grunt for every time she let the cheer squad, her friends, every oblivious classmate at hawkins high believe a lie about her. another, harder grit of her teeth for every time she didn’t do a thing to make anyone assume otherwise, too petrified to admit to herself just how miserable she truly was. 

now, chrissy cunninham was paying for her stepford bullshit and plastic smiles along chewing gum-stuccoed hallways. a perfect picture never meant to last. everything she was told to work for, gone.

four oil painted smiles flashed across her mind’s eye, each one more painfully frozen than the last. on the left, the girl in pink’s eyes started to bleed.

                          freak, freak, chrissy, you’re a freak! 

her shoe flew in one more perfect arc, a final blazing strike for good measure.  ❝ UGH!! ❞  

“looks like it’s absolutely necessary.”       /      @tempesttragedy​‘s veronica sawyer

sounds of exertion pivoted from growls to a terrified squeak. that whole performance had been witnessed. oh god, oh god.  chrissy waited, all tension and electricity, for the derision or the utter shock and horror, but none came. instead, all she saw upon turning was an almost.....blasé pair of eyes.

                  ❝ o-h......um. yeah. ❞  dainty wrist shaking with adrenaline, chrissy tried to dab at her forehead with any elegance she had left. halfway through the motion she gave up, a regretful grin taking the worry’s place.  ❝ kind of. it got built up....over a while.  ❞

Émotion (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1966)

 💭 nancy chris headcanons

𝓗𝓮𝓪𝓭𝓬𝓪𝓷𝓸𝓷𝓼 — send 💭 + a topic to receive a headcanon about said topic.

nance and chris used to know each other before high school pulled them apart. not well, per se, but enough to be friendly. there was no great social catacylsm, really, just......being young pulling them every which way. chrissy knew barb from a distance, jonathan from a greater distance, and steve by virtue of....well, steve being steve. nancy had a sweet face and calm demeanor and the bubbly if still somehow quiet chrissy would have liked her quite a bit. and then everything got strange for a few years. life got more full and more complicated in equal measures. reputations got trickier and even though chrissy’s own wasn’t much of a prized trophy, high school drowned out faces more quickly than she would have liked. they could have been better friends if they had the time. at least ‘86 came along to rally everyone around the power of death. or resurrection. or both. they’d progressed nearly to strangers by ‘86 but spun quickly towards dear friendship after so much tragedy. 

chrissy wants to have nancy over to her house so badly. so badly. chrissy pines for a normal family home where friends that she made because other people like her for her and she likes them and feels safe around them can come and feel safe, too. but no, her last sleepover in fifth grade was over before sleep. laura had gotten frustrated about the amount of noise three little girls generated and the snacks they seemed to require. it was abruptly cancelled mid game of twister and mothers were called before they were within two hours of “lights out”.

the cunningham house is a trap and it needs to spring on no one else. all it takes is a few weeks for chrissy to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that nancy would sniff out just what kind of house chrissy’s was. it’s not the shame of a friend knowing, it’s the shame of a friend having to feel how chrissy does, every day. she apologizes to nancy over and over and over for this. it might have been a small thing to anyone else, but with all that nancy does for chrissy, the gap feels huge. their happy medium likely ends up being long conversations in the cunningham’s driveway. or possibly nancy sneaking into chrissy’s room via climbing the trellis if nancy wants to. there’s mostly yellow and ruffles and pillows everywhere, but there are nice bookshelves and they can hide under a very large comforter and giggle if they feel so inclined. 

chrissy promises to tell nancy absolutely everything if nancy will tell her what happened every year before, starting with discovering upside down. there might be a hundred things they can piece together with the shards of honesty. it’s a lot of work, but chrissy is tired of pretending.

chrissy brings mrs. wheeler a little potted plant whenever she comes over and nancy always gets a nice pen or a purse sized notebook. the two girls are also well documented hair accessory fiends and probably trade clips back and forth and experiment with clip formations. 

their after school summer is full of mystery books and movies. i almost can’t see the two of them not forming some kind of mini book club and filling pages with theoretical notes. there are absolutely lists of worthwhile authors and too-predictable ones. 

why am i getting the feeling they scrapbook? 

the end of summer goodbye to nancy is one of the hardest to make, and likely the goodbye with the most tears. even an extended school year wasn’t enough time to make up for all that they’d missed. 

chrissy writes to nancy while they’re both at college with aggressive dedication. future plans spiral out of control, but chrissy is beginning to feel a fraction of nancy’s drive and it propels her to want more out of life, so chrissy asks for more. and it finally feels good instead of greedy. 

“—oh God, it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

𝑤𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠

𝔼ℂℍ𝕆'𝕊 𝕄𝕀𝕏𝕋𝔸ℙ𝔼  X  𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝒸𝒽𝓇𝒾𝓈𝓈𝓎   ( @galaxycrxss​ )

i never thought i'd lose my place, i never thought it'd slip away ( guarded - flor )  /  hear me when i say i’m leaving winter for the spring ( don’t want to go - nigel good )  /  echoes inside - dugo  /  i’ve been through hell and back ( learn to let go - kesha )  /  1984 - the northern lights  

on lucky days, the most isolated and quiet location in hawkins high wasn’t actually in the school, but out. along the far wall of the library, past shamefully dusty card catalogues, lurked a fire exit door that existed as an open secret to smokers and escapists alike. once through the forbidden passageway, down the wrought iron steps to the ground below, the narrowest point between hawkins high and middle schools stretched like a long and lonely wind tunnel. ideal for ferrying worries or wisps of smoke far, far away if the need arose.

although, the “fire exit” status was rather a legal misnomer considering that the alarm was turned on once a year solely for when the fire department barreled through to inspect. once the inspectors left, the alarm was switched off and the smokers among the staff and students could puff in peace yet again. 

but unlike the rest of the usual suspects chrissy was no smoker. what she needed today was a little silence and air. across campus the sleepy post-lunch lull reigned supreme for a little while and she’d slumped on the bottom step of the fire escape, praying for just five minutes of solitude. ten if any higher power felt merciful, but five was enough. a couple minutes separated from the rare but explosive cheer squad drama. three hours on and chrissy’s ears still rang from the vitriolic fury slung like bombs ricocheting through the changing room, spraying shocked girls with more verbal shrapnel than shower water. 

cheating of some kind; that’s what all the shouting was about. at least, that was the general consensus disseminating throughout the student body by mid-morning. later, once the steam of anger and after-practice adrenaline had worn off, the story cleared up further: samantha rosen’s boyfriend coulter and abbie smitter had drunkely screwed after a seniors-only party last saturday night and managed to keep it to themselves......until coulter gleefully spilled his guts to the wrong person. all the cheer seniors were picking up battle stations, rapidly expecting the rest of the squad to match their energy and claim a side. 

barely half a day of it and chrissy was exhausted. staring down at her pale green manicure (she’d have to go in again on saturday for a touch up) and picking at her cuticles so as not to sully the polish further, chrissy couldn’t help but wonder the point. of all of it. why cheat? why gossip? what could it mean if samantha was one of the most gorgeous girls on the squad and she still had a wandering boyfriend? 

absolutely none of those were productive roads to go down, yet down chrissy went until the next period’s bell abruptly screamed behind her as if sensing the dangerous spiral. so the absent cheerleader obediently sighed herself to her feet. she’d lately been alternating use of her free period between laps around the exercise field and hiding between the library stacks. today’s circumstances presented the perfect excuse to burrow into her statistics homework, allowing what drama prowled the halls to pass her swiftly by.

god, that was all she wanted right now. for no one to ask anything of her except numbers that she could put in their correct places and problems she could make sense of. all she had to do was slip to her locker then slip back to the library unaccosted. easier said than done, but if she could just get through the stacks first, then maybe....

the imaginary mental map of hawkins high conjured in her head left enough vigilance to shut the fire escape door silently but not much more. with her gaze on her feet chrissy completely missed telltale shadows that looked nothing like bookshelves and managed to shoulder check an entire person. with interest. 

                   ❝ sorry, sorry, i totally wasn’t watching wh — ❞ 

her voice already softened in a whisper to suit the environment, it dropped out completely once the cheerleader looked up. really looked up. to a lot of denim, long curly hair, and a dangerous looking earring. a trademark to anyone who knew their wary way around the school. chill out, just apologize, it’ll be fine. no one’s looking.  ❝ — where i was going. hi, billy. ❞  she made a slow, telling glance toward the exit she’d just left behind.  ❝ are you on your way out? it’s nice out there right now. not too cold. ❞

                                    a note for @firelightfables​’ billy hargrove

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                           ( hellmartyr​ )

you deserve better than this … better than me … — @greenscrunchy / angsty prompts

𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐘 𝐃𝐎𝐔𝐁𝐓𝐒 𝐒𝐏𝐑𝐔𝐍𝐆 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐒 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐔𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐒.

      at first eddie thought her sadness was a detail in a dream. a specter of the subconscious, summoned by whatever bullshit mayhem his beer-battered brain was slathering across his cortex. bad trip without the high, when senses got so convinced that reality was just a suggestion right up until your eyes split open and the lucid imagery turned a slippery mess.

      awareness emerged from a cloudy pool, prodding floaty nerves with tingling pins and needles. chrissy was a silent echo ringing in his ears, her words too old to be strung together were now indiscernible water drops dispersed into the corners like shades.

      dark eyes fluttered open to an even darker room. a backlighting of blue cut through the gap between the curtains and the window. the back of his hand, stationed beside his nose, soaked up the cobalt. eddie’s fingers retracted from the temptation to reach over and prove to himself that his friend was still asleep. that the lonely lie had not been real, just a figment of a morbid imagination. but the sour knot in his gut warned that the moment his warmth met hers, she’d betray them both with a wince.

      ❝ whose voice told you that? ❞ he asked the deep blue, ❝ vecna’s? ❞ venom coated the name. two thousand miles was not enough to stall a fresh the anger felt each time eddie recalled his unseen enemy. the lich survived, the chorus of heartbeats buried in his honeycomb scars reminded him that the promise of retribution at the climax of a hero’s tale was a fantasy, not a guarantee.

      crisp sheets rustled as the young man twisted around and peered at the soft outline balled up on the other side of the barrier. eddie hovered, searching for an explanation too private to see.

      ❝ yours? ❞ gingerly he sat up to project his plea over the fort, ❝ chris? ❞

      the headboard creaked against his weight as eddie propped himself against the frame. his perspective switched between the popcorn ceiling and the vortexed donald duck on his nightshirt.

      ❝ y’know, for a really long time, the only friends i had were in books. i, uh, i think middle school was the first time i hung out with someone and not because we were sent to the principal’s office together. so, can you level with me? because this isn’t exactly my field of expertise, ❞ the back of his skull clocked the wall as eddie fixated plaster clusters above, finding cohesive shapes were there was none, ❝ and fuck if i know what can be better than the best. ❞

a turned back was small defense from the wave of honesty soaking the darkened bedroom. chrissy had balled herself around a swelling hurricane of inferiority masked by a now faded silhouette of tweety bird, its cheery yellow emblazoned across her nightshirt faded into black shadow. her formerly upward mood had faded with an equal ferocity earlier that afternoon. being hopeful, even happy, something like truly happy, around eddie had become nearly as easy as breathing. natural. but it was as easy and natural to watch her bright little world closing in around her after listening to a crazed and caustic telephone message from none other than laura cunningham.

if nothing else, laura was consistent. there wasn’t a word in the message chrissy hadn’t been pierced by a thousand time before. she knew the cadence of her mother’s derision almost better than the sound of her own private thoughts. but it wasn’t a mother’s ire that bounced around her mind at the speed of a rogue basketball, or even a mother’s doubt.

                        ❝  mine. i say so. ❞

after all his kindness that he’d brought to her doorstep, this is what she had to offer. doubt.

                        ❝ i’m not just saying that, eddie. you –  ❞  god, what was the point? what was the point of her, being such a bottomless pit on whom generosity was wasted because she couldn’t even grasp it long enough for a chance at absolution? honestly, she must not deserve a drop if she was as watertight as a sieve. 

                        ❝ you came all this way and i’m a mess. ❞  the vise of her jaw clapped shut as how she truly sounded dawned upon her. belated good sense whispered the danger of what eddie might think she meant, right after the words marched out of her mouth.  ❝ scratch that. having you here…. it’s more than anyone’s done before? i guess i feel awful for wanting you to stay but i really don’t want you to leave. ❞

all the sequestered pain she’d been carrying like buried shards of glass since eddie arrived flayed her insides on the way out, dragging stringy regrets and shriveled, acid-burnt hopes along with them. a piteous river of entrails with so many shameful secrets on display, knotted beyond any hope of detangling and none of her tossing and turning in the middle of the night would sort her out. 

in the midst of her disquiet, chrissy eased to her other side where the pillow wall waited. her stupidest idea possibly ever. just over the top she could see eddie’s head, but that was all. it was a protection and a taunt all at once. a joke she'd cracked at her own expense. her left hand lifted almost without her permission to skate the top of the farcical wall and tug it down, just a little, to pull eddie’s presence a tiny bit closer. maybe this way he could hear what she was really trying to say in between all her bouts of lunacy. 

                        ❝ do you know what left handed people are called?  ❞