EDIT: A quick update to say this one is now also available on Ao3, in glorious high-definition.
BEHOLD! My first-ever (public) attempt at fic – and smut, no less! (#allin) – inspired by, and written for, the incomparable @majicmarker.
It's Hellcheer. It's demisexual. It's soft as hell. It's stream-of-consciousness ADHD vibes (not my usual style but I feel like it works for Eddie's POV, which this is).
Anyway, I'm terrified of posting this (see also: the crippling fear of being known) but I'm biting – nay, tearing – through the proverbial bullet because this was fulfilling to write and perhaps it will fulfil others??
TITLE: baby, i'm yours now (dreaming a connection)
PAIRING: Eddie x Chrissy (F/M), Stranger Things s4
RATING: Explicit
WORD COUNT: ~4,000
CHAPTER COUNT: 1/1
WARNINGS: Heterosexual sex, mild drug references, swearing, overusing italics for emphasis, run-on sentences as a stylistic choice
Ok. So. It really, really wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
After nearly 20 years on Earth, Eddie was well and truly used to getting carried away; his out-of-control imagination would grab a concept in its greedy little hands and bolt – catapulting between ideas, fantasies and ever-more-complicated scenarios before he’d even had the chance to really think.
It was an uncontrollable kind of thing, the way his brain just seemed to latch and run with it.
And, well, sometimes it worked out; there were song lyrics (Corroded Coffin’s finest, if he said so himself), D&D campaigns (more than a few inspired narrative twists) – even poems (shut up).
And sometimes, like now, it really, really didn’t.
Because his brain’s latest obsession was one Christine Elizabeth Cunningham. Oh yes. Queen of Hawkins High, almost certainly Prom Queen, captain of the cheerleading squad, Chrissy Cunningham. A very nice, very pretty, very most definitely off-limits, unavailable, do NOT under any circumstances even think about it, you fucking idiot, type of girl.
The picture of loveliness and wholesomeness and everything bright and good in the world, but with big sad eyes and a laundry list of trauma oh, about 50 feet long.
Unlike her certified dropkick Conformity Ken boyfriend, Chrissy was sweet as a peach, and just as easily bruised – she’d been so nervous when they’d met up at the picnic table, and it had made him want to wrap her in cotton wool and tell her everything was going to be alright. Made him want to slay all her demons and keep her safe forever.
You know – real righteous Paladin, white knight shit. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Because she already had a guy for that (the aforementioned dropkick, Jason Carver – god, even his name was like something out of Tiger Beat).
It was Jason’s job to take care of her; to hold her tight and stroke her silky is-it-reddish-blonde-or-blondish-red hair and oh, probably make her cups of hot chocolate with the tiny marshmallows she probably loved because she was probably just that cute.
Except she hadn’t gone to the King of All Tools when everything got bad, had she? She’d come to him – in secret, might he add – and she’d gotten into his van and come back to the trailer and stood inside and then chickened out of taking any drugs and just sat there and cried and poured her little sugarplum heart out to him.
And, well, he couldn’t help how he felt about that, could he? Eddie wasn’t made of stone – in fact, he’d been reminded far too many times that his heart might as well have been made of those same tiny hot chocolate marshmallows, for all the soft, squishy, tender, sweet feelings that seemed to pour out of it whenever someone in his vicinity was upset.
He’d wrapped her up in a threadbare blanket and awkwardly rubbed her shoulder and she’d smiled and said, “Yes, please, Eddie,” when he’d asked if she needed a hug. And he’d held her in his arms and she’d rested her no-it’s-definitely-reddish-blonde head on his chest, right above his black widow tattoo and more importantly, the marshmallow heart – and his foolish, ridiculous, idiot brain had decided Chrissy Cunningham would be all it would think about every minute of every hour since.
He’d dropped her off at the big, beautiful house in Loch Nora (that she lived there and he lived in the seen-better-days double-wide in Forest Hills Trailer Park was such a cliché it was like a fucking Billy Joel song come to life).
Then he spent the next two hours chain-smoking and scarfing down handfuls of cereal and gas station candy while his imagination made her the centre of Corroded Coffin’s next hypothetical concept album, right down to the cover art (she’d be in one of those long chiffon nightdresses, floating about an abandoned castle as he dispatched her ghoulish nightmares back to Hell with a truly vicious riff).
And then she’d somehow got his number from Dustin Henderson and called him up on the phone, just to say hi, just to make sure he wasn’t too freaked out by her the other night. And they’d made plans to hang out again – had gone for a walk in his neighbourhood where no-one of consequence would see them together, and his stupid blabber mouth had told her some of his secrets, like why he didn’t have a mom or dad (abandoned him and in prison, respectively) and why he was repeating senior year yet again (at this point it’s just habit, he’d joked, ha ha ha, and she’d given him this half-grin like she couldn’t tell if he was trying to make her laugh or not – but he was, he always was, he’d never stopped trying after hearing her delightful little giggle for the first time).
Then it was very much sharing their hopes and dreams – all very teenage American heartland, John Cougar Mellencamp bullshit, he thought with shame (excitement) and disgust (delight).
But it had kept going like that; the calling up, the meeting up. “I can’t talk to anyone the way I talk to you,” she'd confessed once, so matter-of-factly it broke his heart a bit. She brought him a little cross-stitched Corroded Coffin bandana for his birthday in May, and he’d made her a mixtape for hers a few weeks later in June.
“This is so sweet, Eddie,” she’d said. “I’ll listen to it every night.” And his brain had melted out his ears imagining her in her frilly pyjama set, under the covers with her headphones on and thinking of him.
They didn’t talk in school. Prom came and went, with Chrissy and Jason predictably crowned Queen and King and Eddie spending the evening getting excruciatingly high and trying not to think about them going up to the suite Captain Haircut had probably booked at Hawkins’ only nice hotel to celebrate, just the two of us, like the walking cliché he was.
Before he knew it, graduation was upon them. He’d already resigned himself to never seeing Chrissy Cunningham again, once she moved away to IU with Darling Jase. They should start a new war and bring back the draft, Eddie thought uncharitably, and then felt immediately guilty because Uncle Wayne had been in Vietnam.
Except, as it turned out, Eddie didn’t need the United States Armed Forces to get involved because Chrissy voluntarily broke up with Jason four days into summer break, telling him she’d be going to Illinois instead for her legacy place at her dad’s alma mater.
A little after that, she’d come to the trailer unannounced and out of breath, chipmunk cheeks flushed and an unreadable expression (strangely like hope?) in her lovely, lovely eyes that were bluish-grey-or-were-they-greyish-blue.
Which brings him to the present moment, in which he is entirely unsure what exactly the fuck is happening – but what else is new?
“I’ve realised something,” Chrissy tells him at the door.
“What?” he asks dumbly, and then she grabs the collar of his lucky Black Sabbath T-shirt and pulls him into what is, to date, the best and most Earth-shattering kiss he’s ever had, until she plants the second one on him.
“I’m in love with you, Eddie,” she says between that first and second kiss (and on the third, she slips her tongue in his mouth).
And while his brain seems to have fallen into an LSD-like trance amid the insane sensory overload he is currently experiencing, Eddie’s hands have a mind of their own; they make a valiant attempt at overloading his senses even more, skimming Chrissy’s waist, then sliding around to cup her ass through her little corduroy skirt.
And then he realises he didn’t say anything when she told him she loved him (she is in love with him!!) and he has to break away – panting, hopefully not too embarrassingly, and rest his forehead against hers.
“Do you love me too, Eddie?” she says softly, gazing up at him through her delicate little eyelashes, with her shining definitely-bluish-grey eyes. “It’s alright if you don’t. I just needed you to know I love you.”
She’s holding his wrists as he cups her face, and she closes her eyes for a moment as if dreading what he has to say next.
Eddie can’t help himself; he bends and kisses both cheeks, in the place where tears might fall if she were crying.
“I think,” he says, kissing one, “I might love you more” – he kisses the other – “than anything in the world,” he concludes, brushing his lips softly against hers.
With his eyes closed, he can feel her break into a smile a mile wide and an ocean deep, and she kisses him back like a sunbeam.
And though his brain is barely coping with finally, finally having Chrissy Cunningham’s mouth on his mouth, he's becoming rapidly aware that they are still standing in the doorway of the trailer.
“Would you like to- to come inside?” he asks as she softly sucks his lower lip. Chrissy nods, and he pulls her in and shuts the door. “Um, I have, I have water and coffee, I think, and maybe juice, I don’t know if Wayne went to the market yet, but if you’re thirsty I can-“
Chrissy cuts him off. “I’m not thirsty, Eddie,” she says with an unfamiliar, deeper note in her voice, staring at his lips and running her hands under the back of his T-shirt.
His throat goes dry, his skin erupting in furious tingles wherever her fingers trace – oh Jesus she’s touching his front now, smoothing her palms up to his chest, and what the fuck is he supposed to do with that?
“If you want, could I- could I see your room?” she asks him, the same – yes, he will say it, sexy – voice as before, but a little shy, and it is, once again, a melting-brain situation.
He nods and kisses her again again again, arms winding around her waist in a soft hug before taking her hand and leading her down the narrow corridor to his – oh no, fucking filthy – bedroom, kicking the door behind them.
It is, predictably, a mess of discarded clothing, screwed up paper, magazines, loose cigarettes, several cups in various states of emptiness, and he only has one pillow, and that blanket has seen better days, and Chrissy is running her hands over his back, she’s tugging him around to face her, she’s rocking up on her tip toes and there’s her tongue again.
He shuffles awkwardly back onto the unmade bed, sitting down when his legs hit the mattress, and he must be dying, must be dead, because Chrissy is climbing onto his lap and lifting off her top to reveal, in full, the lacy white bra he had tried to pretend he couldn’t detect through the cotton.
She cups his face and pecks his lips and grabs his wrists and moves his hands from the bed back to her waist. “You can touch me, Eddie,” she says, and it’s the single most erotic thing he’s ever heard in two decades of life.
He brushes her bare skin and she shivers – god, he hopes his hands aren’t too cold – and moves up to slip her bra straps down her shoulders, and now there is very little keeping her breasts from being fully exposed. He pulls down one cup and he can’t help it, he really can’t – he bends to take her dusky pink nipple into his mouth, licking it experimentally before giving it a gentle suck. And his instincts are apparently spot on, because Chrissy’s hands fly to the back of his head, and he does it again, and then he does it to the other one, and his hands are tracing the soft skin of her thighs and her back, and her hips start to shift and rock as she breathes out his name.
Can she feel that he’s hard? Because he is. Achingly so, he realises, his erection pushing uncomfortably against the zipper of his jeans. He needs to relieve the tension, needs to grab her ass and lift her up and get his dick out and then put her back down again, right on top, slip inside her and let her rock herself back and forth until she comes, and he comes, and they live happily ever after.
He doesn’t do that – instead, he fumbles down between them to try and get his fly undone, except his hands are too big and shaking and he can’t seem to twist the button the right way and this is a fucking nightmare. But Chrissy just giggles, the sound clear like a bell ringing, and slips her own fingers under his. She undoes the button easily, pulling down his zipper and sliding her hand over his hard cock oh my god.
He must moan or something because she keeps smiling and does it again, pulling down the band of his boxers to get her palm around him. She’s stroking him up and down, grinning against his mouth, and he should do something, right? Should be touching her back, should be doing something other than falling apart in ecstasy.
He moves his hands from where they’ve been glued to her hips and traces up her inner thigh, brushes the front of her panties (also lace, it feels like – a matching set???). Then he feels a damp spot and almost passes out. That means she’s wet – what they are doing is making her wet. She rocks forward against his fingers again, making this little needy humming sound.
“Please, Eddie, I want it,” she murmurs into his mouth as she kisses him and strokes him and presses their bodies even tighter together, and he thinks he’s getting the hint.
He rubs her through the lace, dragging the damp fabric over the spot underneath, and her eyelashes flutter. Uh huh, she says, almost involuntary, almost a nod. So he keeps doing it, trying to focus and not look down at her pretty little fingers with their pink nail polish wrapped around his dick.
But after a few minutes of bliss, his own hand begins to cramp and he slips his fingers under the elastic, says against her mouth, “Can I take these off?”
Chrissy quickly clambers off his lap and stands in front of him, bringing his fingers to the sides of her underwear, helping him drag them down her smooth thighs and skinny legs – and he can’t help himself again because it’s all basically eye level, so he rests his head against her stomach and kisses her there and he wants to kiss her lower, wants to lick his way between her thighs and make her shake and say his name again.
“Can I- can I? With my mouth…” he says haltingly, brain thoroughly useless at this point. But it’s not like he has much experience to go off, anyway – has no idea what he’s supposed to say.
Chrissy blushes scarlet from her forehead to the tips of her breasts and nods. “Ok, ok, uh... lie down,” he tells her, and he’s never been more thankful for being barefoot, because now would be the worst time to have to unlace his Docs or his Reeboks, and instead all he has to do is pull off his T-shirt and his jeans and his boxers and then he’s naked and he looks up and Chrissy is shimmying out of her skirt and unhooking her bra and then she’s naked too.
Not only is she naked, but she is lying back against his one disgusting pillow and looking up at him, nervous, excited, but overall fucking joyful – and it occurs to him that this is the absolute pinnacle of his existence so far.
So he eases her legs apart and begins kissing her thighs, where his fingers had traced before, and she shivers again and gulps as he gets closer and closer to where she’s so hot and wet. God, he wants to make her come so badly.
He tries to remember what he’s read, what he’s seen, what he’s heard. He spreads her with his thumbs, licks up the centre, brushes what must be her clit because she lets out a shocked little sound when he does it, so he does it again and she squeaks.
He tries to form some kind of rhythm, and she starts panting, gasping, “Eddie, don’t tease me.”
Shit, fuck, was he? Is that what he was doing? And what is he supposed to do next?? Well, there's really only one option; he closes his lips over her clit and sucks, trying to keep flicking the same spot the same way as before, and Chrissy lets out a sound that is halfway between a scream and a moan. She buries her fingers in his hair again, holding him in place while she grinds up against his mouth. It’s so hot he can’t stop pressing his dick into the mattress.
He keeps it up, and soon she starts shaking again and chanting Eddie, Eddie, Eddie and then his face feels very wet because she’s coming, Jesus Christ. She’s got his name in her mouth and his mouth on her pussy, and he’s making Chrissy Cunningham come, and this is – without doubt – the best of all possible worlds.
He’s about five seconds from coming himself, if he’s honest. She tugs on his hair slightly and he pulls away, mouth and chin shiny, looking up at her.
Chrissy is red-faced, her hair a tangled halo, muscles lax, every part of her screaming afterglow.
She’s fucking radiant.
“Eddie, that was… I’ve never done that before,” she turns away all shy, and he shimmies up and settles himself between her legs, so they are chest to chest.
“Neither have I,” he says, tilting her chin up to kiss her, and she looks surprised for a second before winding her arms around his shoulders and whispering, “Do you want to…?”
Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. Except… “Condom?” God, could he be any more blunt? Stupid, so dumb.
“In my skirt,” Chrissy says into his neck, and Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up. She really wanted this, planned for it, even – as if the love bite she’s currently sucking over his thundering pulse wasn’t evidence enough of that.
He blindly reaches down, fumbles for the pocket amongst the corduroy, and grabs the shiny metallic square.
“Uh, I’ll just be a second,” he says awkwardly, kissing her nose as he sits back on his knees. Jesus, his dick really is front and centre like this. He’s definitely blushing, and his hands shake slightly as he focuses on ripping the package open and rolling the Latex down. If Chrissy notices how nervous he is, she doesn’t show it – she just looks at his hard-on and licks her lips and then bites them and looks up at him again through her eyelashes, and god it’s so sexy this whole thing will probably only last a minute.
He leans forward, lining them up, watching Chrissy’s face to stop himself squeezing his eyes shut as he slides inside her for the first time. She’s biting her lip again, and breathing heavily, and he forgot to ask her if she’s ever done this part before – but of course she has, right? It’s him that’s the clueless virgin.
She’s cupping his face as he’s buried within her. “Kiss me, Eddie,” she says, so soft and sweet his heart might break again, and so he does. “You can move,” she whispers, and then – marvellously! – adds, “You feel good.”
“Yeah?” he says back, keenly aware of how little he’s spoken while they’ve been doing this – uncharacteristically so. Usually he can’t just fucking shut up, but apparently sex is the exception that proves the rule. Does she wish he was talking more? Should he work on that?
“It’s so good, Eddie,” Chrissy smiles. “You’re so good.”
And oh, that’s doing it for him. What an egomaniac he’s turned out to be.
“You’re so good, you’re so beautiful Chrissy, I feel like I’m going to die,” he stammers, and she huffs out a giggle and says, “Not yet,” as she rubs their noses together.
He starts to move, experimentally, trying to keep it slow, trying not to hitch her knees up and just pound her into the bed. It’s so overwhelming, he’s right on the edge already, desperately trying to hang on and make it good for her. He leans back and wedges his hand between them, thumbing her clit in time with his thrusts, and she’s moaning softly again, her head back and eyes shut.
It’s too much – he can’t stop watching his cock disappear inside her, watching her perfect, perfect tits jiggle and bounce with every movement, her lovely face, still blushing pink with a sheen of sweat from the orgasm he gave her, a second ago, when she was riding his face and coming, so wet and hot all over him, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie…
Oh no. “Shit, fuck, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m going to come” – the words fall out as he speeds up and just fucking disintegrates, just shatters apart, buries his face in her neck as he moans like it’s being ripped out of him.
Moments pass. Consciousness returns. He’s dimly aware he’s panting, his probably extremely annoying heavy breaths hitting her soft skin. But she’s stroking his hair, running her fingernails over his scalp, and he must be in heaven; he’s ascended to the fucking astral realm, because he can’t remember ever being so content.
He lifts his face and nuzzles her nose with his nose again. “That was… uh, that was great,” he says lamely, adding a sheepish, “Fast – but great.”
Chrissy giggles, and he can feel the vibrations through her body into his.
“I’ve had faster,” she winks, adding, “But, um, that was the most fun I’ve ever had, doing that, so…”
“Well, that is the goal,” Eddie grins, pressing another soft kiss to her cheek and reaching a hand up to tuck a tendril of golden hair behind her ear.
“What now?” he asks.
“Oh,” replies Chrissy with a fond smile. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
That moment when you tried your best to build yourself up and then that one little thing breaks you down to shreds and puts you in a hole twice as deep as before. And then you're laying there clueless of how to heal yourself or what you should even do to get out of the crippling depression you're in. You're having too many mixed emotions at once. Feels like your head is going to explode cuz it's getting filled with dark clouds. Oh boy do I wish all this could go away. Just like rainbows appear after a storm and all these dark clouds fly away...
I loved my neighbor when he was alive, he was a sweet older man who helped me many times with my bike when I was on a fish and the chain fell off and I used to bring cookies or Brownies over to him, he passed away about three years ago and his wife the following spring. What we didn't know was that they were hoarders and had roaches. Recently the house sold at auction and was cleaned out and remodeled...TELL ME WHY I FOUND A DAMN ROACH ABOVE MY HEAD WHOLE DOOMSCROLLING! i panicked but it's like 230 am where I'm at rn and I had to stay quiet not to freak my mom out. I killed it panicking the entire time and facing my lifelong crippling fear of cockroaches...im deep cleaning my room asap tmrw morning
Last night I accepted the fact that I will never be happy. Not because I am in a bad situation. On the contrary, I have everything I could want for. I have a great job, I live in the city I wanted to live in for a long time with the girl of my dreams.
Then why am I not happy? because I constantly fear losing everything because I feel I don’t deserve them. I fear at work they realize they are better off without me (even though they clearly consider me a valuable employee and every one of my evaluations is a raving review) and I fear my girlfriend wakes up one morning and realizes she can do much better than me.
I was for year convinced that when I would have everything I wanted I would be finally be happy but boy, did I underestimate how fucked up I am and how bad my self esteem and paranoia are. Maybe paranoia is the wrong term but it is what feels like fits my feeling the best. Every day I am scared I will lose it all and the better things go, the more scared I am.
The day I moved in with my girlfriend I had a panic attack and cried twice, all without her knowing about it because I never told her. And I will never tell her how I have panic attacks in bed to the point of tears about losing her. I do not want to burden here with that. She has enough on her plate with her own stuff for me to be piling on my shit on her shit. I rather do anything I can to lighten here load in stead of piling on.
I have to admit that a big part of what fuels those feelings is my own damn fault. Years ago when we just got together I took on a second girlfriend. A old crush appeared in my life and wanted to start a relation with me so for a year and a half I had 2 girlfriends. On one side a boost to my self esteem but mostly fuel for me to be in panic mode more then usual. I became more and more sloppy until she found out and dumped me. I confessed the whole thing to the other girl and ended that relationship for I realized that she was nothing more then an ego boost and I had no real feelings for her anymore, I had only feelings for her, she who dumped me.
To my surprise she confessed she missed me and was willing to give me a second chance.6 years later we are still together and are living together now. The whole thing is dropped by now because bringing it up pains her. I feel like it is no longer a hurdle in our relationship, I still feel like I did not deserve that second chance and she can and deserves better. But I selfishly continue being her boyfriend. Now I know that I am a good boyfriend now and she seems the be pretty happy with me as her bagage let’s her be and things are great between us.
Still there are other things that fuel that crippling fear. I am fucked up by a lot of stuff from my past so I am a weird and annoying person at times. I do and say little dumb stuff and often without thinking. Even though she never makes more that a face at those times and reassures me that I is OK, I still feel like there will be a time the limit has reached and she has enough of me. Even though I shower her with love (one of my annoying habits is me saying what I feel, so I tell her I love her every day and I tell her every time I think she looks pretty (allways, she looks pretty every damn second of he damn day) to the point I feel like it is too much and is probably very annoying.
And then there is the little issue of her unable to say that she loves me. I know she loves me, she shows me in a million different ways she loves me. But me hurting here makes her unable to say those words. So when I tell her I love her she answers with a sincere hug or a kiss. And still her not being able to says those words are a reason for me being so scared.
Would I change that about her? Fuck no! She is perfect the way she is. No, she is not a perfect human because nobody is, but she is the perfect girl and I do not want to change anything about her. I love her the way she is. She makes me laugh, she makes me feel good and happy in the moments my fears are not in play. She is an amazing, strong, awesome, drop dead gorgeous and very sexy girl and I love here with my whole being (not just my heart). So much that the guy that could not be single could not imagine getting another girlfriend if this one ever drops his stupid dumb ass!
