What If I Said That Because My Computer Is Being Fixed By IT I Will Make A 3-5 Song Playlist For Our

steve's car window was mercifully cool where chrissy's forehead pressed against it. faint radio sounds and the benign chill were suitable distractions from the aura of pure discomfort steve was radiating as he drove. chrissy herself was radiating plenty back. unpleasant as the environment was becoming she still felt free to curl into a lumpy ball, unjudged.

the former king of hawkins high really did wear his heart on his sleeve; every time he let it gleam a little from the corner of his eye, the cheerleader wished again that they didn't have to be here. or, more accurately, that what brought them to exactly this place wasn't almost dying (perishing then resurrecting from the actual dead, to be specific).

but considering the unavoidable turn chrissy cunningham's life was about to take, maybe death was the only thing that could have brought her to this brink.

the metal strip of car door her skin rested on grew warm. too warm. her thoughts raced just as fast as the molecules she imagined beginning to vibrate within the metal. no matter that "scary" paled in comparison to surviving the upside down and clambering out to a town in complete ruins, real life still frightened her. laura cunningham still scared her. and that was precisely why, when they arrived to their destination, steve harrington was keeping his ass right where it was. he'd hate it, but chrissy refused to allow any more collateral damage in her wake. eddie munson's death was one too many already.

mindlessly, teeth began nibbling on the loose layer of skin on her lips, still so dry after the week in the hospital. don't forget chapstick.

then steve managed at last to say the thing he'd been working at for long minutes and a stop sign or two. she'd have given him a smile if she could. the answer was still no, though. gentlemanly respect and acts of service aside, steve couldn't actually help her face her mom: the entire reason he was driving her home. this was her hurdle to leap and hers alone.

❝ i know what you're doing, steve. ❞ how come her voice could give away so much? wasn't she better at masking by now? even to her own ears she sounded exhausted and pathetic and there was no way steve would miss it. ❝ i have to do this myself. it's really not about carrying worldly possessions down the stairs, even though i wish it was. ❞  

long before they pulled out of his driveway, chrissy had made and memorized a list of the items she'd want to keep and kept it short. seven books. the stuffed sheep and pink bear on her bed. any clothes she'd bought with her own money that fit in her biggest duffle bag. her diaries and her bible with the pretty crocheted case. makeup. any jewelry from her dad. one purse. every part of her thanked her past self for putting her backpack and wallet in her locker before the drive to forest hills, so that wouldn't be a problem.

❝ as stupid as it sounds, i need her to....be like she would. without someone like you watching. i have to remember why i'm leaving or else i might have second thoughts. you know what i mean? ❞  

@greenscrunchy brought back-up this time...

There was an urge to drum his fingers on the steering wheel of the BMW as he drove that he masked by keeping the beat of the music that he'd turned down, but not off, to hide the silence without making it impossible to talk. They weren't speaking much, so it didn't really seem to matter how loud the music was, but it wasn't for lack of a topic. Chrissy was in the passenger seat, and if he had to guess, she was far more anxious than he was, but that really wasn't helping how he was feeling about the whole thing. He'd agreed to this, but he didn't have to like all of the steps.

There was a beat where his lips parted, a breath drawn to speak before he aborted the attempt, murmuring some of the song lyrics seemingly absently as he paused at a stop sign to wait for a truck to go and then continued. It didn't require as much concentration as all that, but the things he wanted to say did - he gave her a sidelong glance, trying to gauge how she was doing. "Soooo, I've been thinking about it, and I get that this is a thing and you wanna do this yourself and I respect that," he said, adding the last part quickly so it absolutely was not in question before he glanced her way again. "But that doesn't mean you have to carry all your stuff on your own. I could help with that, just keep quiet and carry everything for you."

If he sounded a little hopeful, he could hardly be blamed. They'd all proven time and again that their biggest strengths came from being together, so it made sense that it would apply here and now, as well.

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙈𝙄𝙉𝘿𝙔 𝙃𝘼𝙂𝘼𝙉                          (cheerleadcr​)

@greenscrunchy​​​ liked this post!

❛ The team here is genuinely so much better than it was in Milford. I mean, like, seriously we never had boys cheering with us there! Plus, it’s way bigger here too. I thought going from one small town to another meant things wouldn’t be too different but, guess I was wrong. ❜

                         ❝ that’s really cool of you to say. ❞  and high compliments from another girl who looked like she lived and breathed the sport as much as chrissy did.  ❝ our guys are awesome! we can do so many more formations and routines with them here. but i’m proud of our whole team. ❞  the strawberry blonde couldn’t help but stand up a little straighter with preening glee.  ❝ they work super hard, and it shows. have you been able to meet most of them yet? you’ve probably met our coach already, right? i know it’s a lot so soon. ❞

if she were completely honest, chrissy hadn’t expected colorado in the summer to rain quite so much.

a riotous violet and crimson sky wrung down torrents of raindrops that lost their speed halfway down the hatch, landing on pavements and roofs with tepid, pathetic splats once they met resistance. trapped june heatwaves sizzled beneath clouds of steam that rose all the way up to the motel’s second floor window. it must have been an hour ago that eddie’s van had skidded into the parking lot before the storm rolled over them with a vengeance, effectively trapping them below liquid curtains of pelting rain.

since then chrissy had opted to change out of her sodden clothes and into much drier ones. one end of her duffel became soaked during the mad dash for the reservation office, but not enough to be disastrous. she was, however, still wringing out her hair when she joined eddie in looking out their window. 

the room’s two armchairs had been hauled together to make a kind of enclosed bench that could almost pass for cozy if it weren’t for the startling palette of threat-coloured weather on the other side of the wall. chrissy gingerly lowered herself into the empty seat across from eddie, collecting all her limbs tightly together to save room, though the edges of her flip flops still knocked against his feet and her arms skated against his jeans whenever she made a slight movement. but it wasn’t uncomfortable. it was just.....still. 

a peal of thunder rolled almost lazily through the passing clouds, followed by scattered electric pitchforks visible for long moments. “god’s bowling,” her dad used to theater whisper with a grin. in between noise and light the harshest downpours seemed to have moved along, changing to a thoroughly soaking but altogether gentler rhythm.

already thick humidity grew heavier with a deeply pocketed dread chrissy hadn’t dared examine since the close of last spring. there was nothing wrong with the motel - or the company. the culprit responsible for all the goosebumps pocking chrissy’s skin was nowhere to be found in the room. no, it was the carbon copy of hell outside, in the color of the clouds, the lightning. in the distant crash of thunder that sounded like the shout of an angry supernatural entity.

chrissy shut her eyes, but neither the dark omens of sound around her nor the weather could be erased. they dwelt in her own private darkness, too, subsumed in forced surrender. when her lids flew open again, the comfort of reality was almost nil.

                     ❝ it looks like the upside down. ❞  this was supposed to be a grand vacation: chrissy and eddie’s cross country adventure to rival the best buddy movie of all time, and in one burst it felt like running again. away from monsters they’d never been taught to fight because no one believed a place like the upside down could exist. but the two of them ran. and ran and ran and ran to get anywhere close to free. 

the air kicked on, disturbing the fine hairs on the back of chrissy’s neck. if reality became anymore flimsy, she might've thought it was vecna breathing down her neck again, running his claws across her cheeks and telling her don’t cry, don’t cry. 

it was only a week, but it was the longest year of my life.           /          @hellmartyr​ 

don’t cry, chrissy. 

a pale hand snaked forward to root around in the dim room for one of eddie’s hands, gripping stiffly when she found one. were she with anyone else it might be crossing a line, but she and eddie were well past that. they’d had to be in order have a crapshot at coming out of the void alive. some days, it felt like part of their very souls had been seared off and scraped away down there, with no hope to regain what was lost. no one else seemed to understand that but the person everyone thought had killed her.

                    ❝ yeah, it felt way longer. ❞  like a lifetime, if she was frank.  ❝ i still have the nightmares. sometimes. i don’t know why i thought they would go away after a while, but they haven’t. i still see the bats. i see him, ❞  she heard herself rattle aloud.  ❝ for a long time, i think i’m okay and then....and then i can’t stop thinking about it. like i’m afraid real life won’t be real and i’ll be gone again. ❞  the hand wrapped around eddie’s began to tremble but she kept holding.  ❝ ....do you still have the nightmares? ❞  does he still scare you, too?

I’m fed up with you and the way that you do

I used to love you, now I change my mind

and I’m fed up with you feeding me a line

💭 + what she wants the most in life

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

oh man, this was diiiiificult for chrissy to nail down until midway through high school. laura cunningham had a laundry list of short term and semi long term goals that she wanted chrissy to meet, and as the good daughter chrissy adopted them as her own goals. they weren’t what she wanted, though. 

she first starts thinking about long term to life during junior year. it’s when everyone is clamoring their way through college apps and visiting campuses and collecting patches from universities they like and bragging over where they think they’ll get in. for everyone else, college is a vehicle to thinking about what they’re going to do for the rest of their lives. chrissy knows her vehicle to college will be cheer, but goodness knows she’d rather not do that for the rest of her life. no way she could! teaching cheer, though, that could be something. actually.......

surviving the upside down sends her into a state of mental disarray for weeks afterward as she tries to come to terms with what it means to be peeled from the edge and come away alive. but once the fog lifts, a lot more clarifies in its wake. first, she wants to live. actually live and be happy. she doesn’t want to be miserable. figuring out how to do that is step one. step two is how to earn a living while getting better and becoming happy at the same time. something that helps people. she keeps thinking back to cheer coaching, but more and more layers of that are peeled away and she finds herself thinking about teaching. social studies or history or even math. she’s always been good at math and wonders if there isn’t a way to get a job helping kids learn the most challenging yet the most logical of subjects. problem solving. helping people. helping kids.

chrissy realizes the core of everything while knee deep in college, taking a somewhat ill-advised “elective” psychology course: she wants to stay close to the most difficult ages in youth and keep an eye out for who needs a little extra attention or an offer of help. there’s no time to wonder who could have stopped her from becoming weak enough to fall prey to vecna, but regardless if vecna still lives or not, she’ll be watching. and she’ll be happy. that’s her promise to herself, her greatest desire: to get out of hawkins and find what makes her happy out there. she can’t help others if she can’t see beyond her own discontent. and she’s going to help someone if it’s the last thing she does, starting with herself. 

i’m the opposite of the grinch. i’m the binch. my heart is two sizes too BIG

𝙏𝘼𝙂 𝙋𝙀𝙊𝙋𝙇𝙀 𝙔𝙊𝙐 𝙒𝘼𝙉𝙏 𝙏𝙊 𝙂𝙀𝙏 𝙏𝙊 𝙆𝙉𝙊𝙒 𝘽𝙀𝙏𝙏𝙀𝙍! repost don’t reblog.

𝐅𝐀𝐕 𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐑(𝐒): grey, blue, black

𝐅𝐀𝐕 𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐕𝐎𝐑(𝐒):  strawberry raspberry and peach, although i do love a really solid warm spice. in general i’m more of a savory person so i love deep, warm and spicy flavors

𝐅𝐀𝐕 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐑𝐄(𝐒): historical fiction, science fiction, psychological horror, biographical, mystery and intrigue, and any franken-combo of all of those together

𝐅𝐀𝐕 𝐌𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐂: game and film soundtracks, lofi, electronic, electroswing, metal, rock, alternative, etc. td;lr i listen to a whole spectrum of genres, although these are the heavy hitters 

𝐅𝐀𝐕 𝐌𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐄(𝐒): all the star wars films, pacific rim, the cabin in the woods, pride and prejudice

𝐅𝐀𝐕 𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒: all star wars things ever (that’s a series of things, right?), redwall, chronicles of narnia, stranger things, game of thrones, and lord of the rings

𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆: discovery of kou wo oikakete interrupted my listen of CONFIG.SYS

𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐒: the last tv series i finished was stranger things. before that was the mandalorian, the book of boba fett, kenobi, and the clone wars. although technically i’m never finished with stranger things and i’m never finished with star wars. a few months ago i finished the jurassic park novels and loved them.

𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐌𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐄: ??? uhh......i think it might have been jurassic world: dominion! i rarely watch movies these days so i’m an embarrassment in this area 

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆: churchill by andrew roberts / churchill by martin gilbert, d-day by stephen e. ambrose, a house at the bottom of a lake by josh malerman, the bloody chamber by angela carter, the bear and the nightingale by katherine arden, suspicious minds by gwenda bond, lucas on the line by suyi davies okungbowa, a game of thrones / a storm of swords by grrm (rereads heheh), mistress of the art of death by ariana franklin, attack of the clones by r. a. salvatore, the silmarillion by tolkien & and a buuuunch of textbooks for verse and novel research purposes dklfjghdfjg SHHHHHHHHHHHHH

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆: over the garden wall, tales of the jedi, and game of thrones. i am also watching my to-be-watched list go steadily up :/

𝐂𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐍: drafts across blogs, my novels, and staying sane!

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲: sweet @sailento​  and @alwaysrevvedup​! thank you aila and graves!

𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐠: @shadowedvales  /  @inimikal  /  @lenorest  /  @vihilum​  /  @sainterror​  /  @finalhorrors  /  @congregaticn  /  @dvarapala  /  @allattonce  /  @familybyerstm  /  @schmakin​  /  @blueminke​  /  @strcngergirls​  -  no pressure to fill all this out, but i absolutely love getting to know my dash better :3​

*slams adoption papers  onto the table* you're staying.

Émotion (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1966)