The Freak And The Cheerleader.

hours into the unclear future, chrissy might catch herself realizing that infinite reasons could exist for pink cheeks and dreamy silences in a packed kitchen hot from crowded bodies guzzling light beer and gossip like air, but in the moment she was only capable of joyously giggling,  ❝ steve, you’re so pink! ❞  a small poke to his cheek came after, followed in quick succession by an exultant gasp and a poke to a nearby eddie’s cheek.  ❝ you both are! ❞

such a sight was inexplicably tickling with a plastic cup of punch or two in her system (never more than that, however  —  playing it safe has become more comforting than boring) that lent a glowing edge to even the harshest of lighting and noises. like all of them were sucked into the kind of classic 80’s film chrissy used to romanticize within an inch of its life. with her shoulder sunk into eddie’s side and halfway beaming at steve, an argument could be made. brat pack, eat your heart out. they didn’t have safe places like she did, to be drawn back to every night like twin homing beacons. they weren’t laughing like she could these days. 

a slow, loose dawning still managed to roll over the former cheerleader, cooling a little of her own halfway inebriation.  ❝ it’s been a while, right? since we had fun like this? ‘cuz it feels good. ❞  

a freak, a jock, & an ex-jock walk into a party....     ///      @firelightfables​ + @starsinshadows​

it wasn't your fault. you know that, right?             /             @vihilum​ (nancy)

the breath chrissy drew in was long and labored.

hawkins’ last three roller coaster years had proved wildly informative. power hungry corporations were allegedly endangering kids left and right, often enough to kill a few.  (chrissy still recalled the last time she saw barbara holland in the cafeteria. if memory served, chrissy had been a little jealous of the smile on barb’s face.)  there had been monsters at work from the beginning, biding their time below hawkins like spiders twitching, waiting patiently for a fly to clumsily flutter its way into their web.

but what chrissy cunningham had known for longer than the godforsaken upside down existed? it was her fault. it was always her fault. for eating the extra mouthful of protein, for not smiling hard enough, for not kicking high enough, for not willing herself weightless in the air to fly higher, born just unpretty enough to have to make up for that lack everywhere else. 

amazing, how one voice could sound like a thousand. and the few outliers that didn’t sound like the one rang so falsely at first.

                       ❝ are we so sure? ❞  i was weak enough to start the disaster. the gates. 

she pivoted to look at nancy. hard. it felt monstrous all of a sudden to bore her gaze into the fellow senior’s face. it felt.....like turning the splitting stare of her own mother onto someone innocent of any wrongdoing. all nancy wheeler, good, reasonable, strong, determined nancy wheeler who flouted every high school expectation to stick up her chin and say what i want matters more than what you think of me, had done was ask an absolving question. 

from experience, a queen bee’s glare could wither anyone from underclassmen to upperclassmen just as much as her smile could turn eyes to stars. that power came in handy now and again, unearned as it was. but in this moment....

she couldn’t do this. chrissy couldn’t do this to nancy. not even because she wanted honesty without cotton candy fluff and nonsense. to survive all this and to let her fears and worry mold her around constant suspicion? what a waste of time all but lost the night spring break began. she’d already spent enough of her life ruined and pretending.

                      ❝ i’m sorry i’m pushing you. there’s still.... ❞  the smile she tried to push forth flickered true for a moment, then plummeted to bittersweet. no vaseline teeth here. (deep down, something hinted that nancy's the type to say forced optimism is pointless. the impression unwound a hidden knot in the cheerleader’s chest.)  ❝ a lot to wrap my head around. have you ever been told something your whole life then all of a sudden the opposite is true? ❞  the words floated a few moments before chrissy huffed a chuckle at her toes, flicking her left pointer nail against the seam in her pants.  ❝ like maybe there’s no such thing as a parallel universe. and suddenly there is, right here under our feet. ❞

as i watch (and rewatch and rewatch) s4 ep4, it's impossible not to reflect on how each of vecna's victims may hazily or not so hazily represent different stages of giving up on life as a young person. across the board, all four teens presented flickering signs of internal turmoil that could have been clocked under a more watchful eye. but it's still those small differences, those small choices, that make a world of difference when it comes to approaching a struggling friend.

chrissy didn't truly want to die, just to escape. she easily could have been pulled out of her state of desperation if someone had truly stepped in a little earlier. the one helpful person she managed to confide in, ms. kelley, despite ms. kelley's valuable efforts, didn't have the time or the bandwidth for her she might have liked. the next person didn't know chrissy well enough to properly step in and intervene, even though he tried and came the closest anyone had so far. but before that, none of her peers had invested in her in an actionable way despite her tries to find her way through the cracks of her own self-made image and call for help. everyone assumed everything was fine, until it wasn't. because it was chrissy.

fred was the bottler, who channeled and ignored his way through guilt and grief to build himself a normal life out of ruins. and it worked! it worked until a trigger appeared. enough of a trigger to bring him back down. it started small, but grew more debilitating over a short period and sent him down a dark, consuming spiral that he all of a sudden couldn't escape from. he'd unintentionally isolated himself, and no matter who might have wanted to step in for him in his time of need, they were too far away. fred didn't truly want to die either. but once his trigger became too close and suffocating, he lost his way.

patrick was the wilter, who incrementally became less and less of himself among his family and friends. the way his father treated him ground down his self esteem and warped the voice inside his head until it became nothing but his father's unkind words. unfortunately, the descent was so gradual that all his friends adapted until suddenly it was long past too late to pull patrick from the depths of his sunken self worth and tell him he deserved better.

then there's max. the avoidant. the stoic. she plugged along, trying to pull herself up and out by her own bootstraps. but the biggest difference here was the open investment her friends maintained in her life. they were willing to bend over backwards to remain by her side until she reached out a hand for help. they tried and tried and tried until it was almost too late, but by then, they'd done enough. max saw just how much she was watched over. she saw her friends' concern for what it was: love, not nagging complaints that she "wasn't who she used to be". they cared more for her well being than to where the old max had disappeared. they paid attention to what mattered to her and offered it when she was finally ready. at every turn after the graveyard, she worked to accept more help and they did the work to understand what kind of communication max needed so that she could continue trusting they had her best interest at heart.

td;lr - love your friends loudly. you never know who might need what.

                      ❝ i think you’d make a great cheerleader. ❞  chrissy sensed the oncoming blink before it ever surfaced and plunged forward, oddly insistent on her point getting across. she’d envisioned this whole mischievously alluring setup for too long not to lay it out for him. continuously warming air fluttered in puffs at her back, almost like taps that encouraged her to keep going.  ❝ it’s like this: your voice carries without you even trying. you’re really tall and could put cheerleaders on your shoulders. you’re a musician so your rhythm is perfect. and you’re always..... ❞  finally, finally, she could present her own cheeky reference to the first  meeting here at their table, the pièce de résistance. with some pride in the perk of her chin, chrissy cunningham flopped her arms from side to side as wildly as possible without colliding against him or herself or the tabletop below, threatening splinters aplenty if she so much as considered bumping it.  ❝ .....doing that naturally. like you’re always excited! we wouldn’t even have to give you pom-poms. ❞

        ❝  well, it’s not good, but it’s a reason.   ❞             /           @hellmartyr​

                      ❝ they are too good reasons! think about it. you’d be such a hit at pep rallies. ❞   of course she’s kidding. him worming his way onto that court for a rally was more likely than her ever acing french. and she’d tried.

far above, afternoon sunlight grew shy behind passing clouds. chrissy drew herself in tighter, finished with her joking but still wearing a happy grin. summer really was coming despite stubborn chills from an unfinished and bitter spring. she was so grateful. for a safe place like this, namely.  ❝ plus......you’re naturally encouraging. did you know that? that’s probably the most important part about being on the squad. ❞

Some steps need to be taken alone. It’s the only way to really figure out where you need to go and who you need to be.

Mandy Hale (via mentalquotes)

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙈𝙐𝙍𝙍𝘼𝙔 𝘽𝘼𝙐𝙈𝘼𝙉                           ( congregaticn ​)

@greenscrunchy​​ asked: ❝ i don’t even know how to describe it. i’ve never seen anything like it. ❞    ( murray! )

    - from stranger things s4 starters ( x ). 

    “ Of course, you haven’t seen anything like it. It’s–” He had to stop himself from saying something too aggressive like he normally would. The poor girl looked shaken up as it was. And she was a kid. And the last thing he wanted to deal with was a crying teenager. “It doesn’t want to be seen. More importantly, it’s not even supposed to be here. Crazy how that works, huh?” Still, he leaned forward with his hands folded together, obviously intent on listening to everything the blonde had to say. “Give me as much of a description as you can, yeah? Can’t really help if I got nothing to go off of except ‘ never seen anything like it. ’”

he’s helping. he’s helping. talking to her like she’s made of porcelain and would shatter at a moment’s notice if he said the wrong thing, which chrissy previously thought she’d learned to tolerate but apparently had not after, well....coming back from the dead. new chrissy had vastly different preferences, now. but murray is helping, she repeated, and swallowed down all thoughts of clinical insanity and tried to begin someplace concrete.

                    ❝ imagine the biggest spider you’ve ever seen. ❞  nope, still insane. all the indecision between giving a full confession and sounding less like she had a thousand screws rattling loose inside her head made for too much internal competition, too big for her skull. chrissy shook her head almost violently trying to wipe the distraction away.  ❝ a huge spider, but with a head that could almost be human? except it was just wrong enough not to be human. and it didn’t have eight legs. i think it was five....or six. ❞  just the foggiest recollection made her shiver with dread again and curl into herself.  ❝ i thought i might see vecna again...but not this. ❞

thank you, cinnamoroll (that's a childhood dream right there) 🧡💛 and i'm so charmed to see the rest of the Strangers included in this. as it should be!

order up for @greenscrunchy!

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙅𝘼𝙉𝙀                   ( familybyerstm​ )

❪ 🌺 ❫  ───  ❛  you don’t have to deal with this on your own.  ❜   @greenscrunchy​

             Jane looked up at the other person in front of her as a small smile appeared on her lips “Thank you.” left her lips in a soft voice “We will form a team together.” she added.

such an open willingness to stay strong for others on jane’s youthful face hit like breath knocked from unprepared lungs. while the crack lasted only a moment, chrissy’s smile faltered under the blow. it almost made her sick, between the gasp of reality and the hope and dread mixing uncomfortably in her gut. all jane still had to fight while another universe boiled below the feet of heedless hawkins loomed large behind the glitter still optimistically clinging to chrissy’s lids. 

and chrissy’s only offering was empty hands to hold and a renewed sense of resolve. 

                     ❝ that sounds great. ❞  she cast about in silence for the span of a tenuous inhale, piping up again more gently than before.  ❝ i don’t have powers or....anything much, although i definitely know how to be part of a team. it’s not just you and me either. ❞  warmth poured through the cheerleader’s limbs again in the form of sweet reminders.  ❝ you have your friends, too. you have all of us. not even the worst monsters can do much while we’re all here, right? ❞

(in tears) next year i will have so much fun!