ok i’m late but if you want, number 12 for the soft sentences
I got multiple asks for this one, too! hope you enjoy!
12. "Promise me you'll tell me if you're hurting - even just a little."
Something was wrong with Chrissy.
Which was, of course, not necessarily something Eddie wanted to realize two weeks before they were set to tie the knot. Sure, she was still going through all the motions - finalizing everything with the florist, making sure the cake would be delivered to the bar on time, the final fitting for her dress. All that normal wedding stuff Eddie didn't realize would be such a big deal, especially for how small their ceremony was gonna be, but apparently was a big deal to Chrissy.
So, y'know, he made it a big deal for himself, too.
'Cause the ceremony itself was on the patio behind Hellfire - the gaming bar owned by all four of Eddie's former freshman rascals who claimed the name was a mere coincidence - with Grant having gotten ordained specifically to wed Eddie in holy matrimony, so they didn't have, like, a whole ton of shit to work out with the venue and all that. Henderson had assured Eddie, over and over, that everything was set. The game room in the back was gonna be cleared out to make way for the catering set up, Jonathan Byers was lined up as their photographer, and Dustin's girlfriend, Suzy, along with Mike's girlfriend, El, and Max Mayfield were on decorating duty. Nancy also insisted she'd be able to help out with that, but being in Chrissy's bridal party, Eddie had no fucking idea how she'd have the time.
Knowing Nancy, though, she'd make time. By, like, punching a hole in the space-time continuum and pulling entire hours for herself out or something.
In his mind, everything was coming up aces. Had been, in fact, since the moment he pulled out that ring and she cried when she said yes.
So why, then, was Chrissy being so weird?
About a week ago, he noticed during dinner that she was pushing the food around her plate without eating much. Pulling him back into conversation when it trailed off like he wasn't gonna notice she hardly touched her food if she just talked enough. Eddie kept his mouth shut, hoping it was a one-off - Chrissy had made strides in her food issues since finally crawling out from beneath her mother's insane thumb - but then, a couple nights later, she did it again.
"You okay, sweetness?" he asked that time, interrupting whatever nonsensical story she'd been telling about girls from high school that neither of them cared about. He didn't specifically address the food thing, but. "You seem, y'know, a little agitated or something. Everything alright?"
"Oh, I'm fine," she said, setting him ablaze with one of her sunshine smiles, but Eddie could see the way her lips twitched. The way it didn't quite touch her eyes as much as it should have. The way she intentionally stabbed a sliver of carrot and brought it to her mouth.
He was praying to some god he didn't believe in that she wasn't getting cold feet. Wasn't realizing at the finish line that maybe this race they'd been participating in together was a useless waste of time. Or maybe she decided she actually was upset that she wasn't getting the opulent wedding Eddie thought she deserved that would make it appear they lived in an entirely different tax bracket. Not that they couldn't afford it - actually, their savings accounts harbored more zeroes than Eddie knew what to do with since he started publishing books that had, beyond reason, become overnight bestsellers. But, after the lavender haze of happiness that came post-proposal finally wore off, Eddie asked her directly if she wanted that crazy big party for their nuptials.
"Why on earth would I want that?" she'd asked him, her voice pitched like it was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever broached with her. Which. He once asked her if she'd want to fuck him in an airport bathroom four minutes before their flight was set to board, so it wasn't like Eddie always had the best ideas.
(He maintains they could've done it, though.)
So, y'know, he thought she was set on their wedding plan. The bar. Their closest friends plus Wayne in attendance, most of them having to travel to Chicago for the event. Catering from their favorite Vietnamese place, then cake from a local bakery Chrissy got pastries from nearly every weekend.
Fuck. Maybe the wedding itself wasn't the problem. Maybe it was him?
No. No. That was a ridiculous notion. As much as he didn't understand it sometimes, Chrissy wanted him above all else. She'd reassured him that, back when they were barely scraping by. Relying on his meager mechanic wage and her tips as a server as his dreams of being a rockstar fell to pieces in his hands. Chrissy took a gap year between her sophomore and junior years of college to work full time as Eddie's insomnia reared up. A huge, demonic beast standing on two legs, stalking him from the corner of their dark bedroom as Chrissy slept soundly beside him. Grinning, its face all teeth, all mouth, all menace, no eyes.
It was during this time that Eddie wrote his first horror novel. The one that would go on to become a commercial success.
Still, Eddie couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. Chrissy was slowly retreating into herself. Falling back on old habits Eddie swore she'd left behind when they blasted out of the hellhole they both unfortunately had to call their shared birthplace. Not just with food, but she started picking at her nail beds again, too. Eddie stopped her when he noticed, carefully wrapping his hands around hers and pretending he just wanted to be close to her.
Well. Pretending, perhaps not so much. He always wanted to be close to her. The willing werewolf tethered to her eternal full moon. Didn't matter they were ten years into this relationship. Eddie always fucking wanted.
Maybe that was the problem? Maybe she was realizing, yeah, a decade, whatever, but now she was signing the legal documentation stating she'd have to deal with that forever. Not that they couldn't divorce - or, really, that she couldn't divorce him, because he wasn't about to ever file that paperwork, but---
Shit. They weren't even married yet and he was planning for the day she actually wisened up and left him? Jesus, maybe her nerves were fucking justified.
Before he could spiral further, he pushed himself away from his computer, took his stupid glasses off, and grabbed a jacket before heading out the door.
October was fucking gorgeous in Chicago. It was part of the reason Chrissy wanted to wait for the autumn to get married. The leaves, shining in golden hues of yellow and orange, were still mostly attached to the trees. Making the city look straight out of a fairy tale as he marched down the sidewalk. Breathing in the fresh air that carried a hint of crispness. Like the weather itself was waiting for his outdoor wedding before it finally fell cold.
The grocery store wasn't busy at two o'clock on a random Wednesday. Eddie grabbed a basket, loading it up with stuff for a salad, a fresh loaf of bread, some other herbs and veggies. He even grabbed a block of parmesan and the expensive, fresh noodles from the deli.
Chrissy wasn't home by the time he got back, so he started prepping. Carefully chopping, mincing, dicing, lest he add yet another scar to his mounting list of dumb scars on his hands. Which would suck, because whenever he cut himself in the kitchen, he couldn't, like, touch his fiancée in her nether regions until it healed. That was basically the seventh layer of hell for him.
As his tomato-and-pesto sauce simmered on the stove and chicken was dredged in flour, the front door opened. Eddie immediately turned his music down. The familiar sounds of Chrissy hanging her keys and purse on their designated hooks in the entryway followed, then the soft sigh as she finally slipped out of her heels.
"Hey, sweetness," he called, listening to the way she paused for a moment before pattering into the kitchen. Turning the corner, wide eyes landed on the mess he'd made of their countertop, then brightened as they looked up at him.
"You have flour on your cheek."
"Ah, shit, I meant to wipe that off with the chicken before I breaded it."
"Oh, silly you," she giggled, walking up to him and gently thumbing at the powder on his jaw. Making his whole body come alive, like he'd gone dormant the moment she left that morning. "Not getting salmonella on your face. What were you thinking?"
"Clearly, I wasn't."
"Smells amazing in here."
"It's that pesto pasta you like so much," Eddie shrugged, glancing up and watching the way she stilled. "Thought, y'know, it sounded good."
And maybe you could use the pick me up.
"It, um, it really does," she said after a moment, and Eddie watched the way her throat bobbed with a heavy swallow. "I'm going to get changed and freshen up."
Eddie eyed her for a long moment. She looked at him, then down at the counter, before finally seeming to settle on the uncooked package of noodles.
"Yeah, alright," he finally acquiesced, watching the way the next smile looked bland compared to the first. Clocking it with the extra sense he'd developed that was entirely attuned to her. "Don't be long, yeah? I've been all on my lonesome all day and I'm terrible company."
Pinching his side as she slipped past, Chrissy giggled. It, at least, sounded real, and the smile she cast him over her shoulder as she escaped had lost some of that emptiness.
"So dramatic, Munson."
"What are you gonna do when you're a Munson, too?" he called as she fled down the hallway. Their bedroom door creaked a little as she opened it, Chrissy whispering something to the cat that had commandeered their bed.
"My being a Munson doesn't change that you, too, are Munson," she called, probably from the interior of her closet as she searched for comfy clothes. Shit, was she already naked? Eddie hoped she was already naked.
"Yeah, but we can't both call each other 'Munson'." He dredged the last butterflied chicken breast, carefully setting it alongside its siblings on the little wire rack, before turning to check the temperature of the oil he'd started heating up on the stove. "Can't exactly call you 'Cunningham' anymore after that, can I?"
Eddie strained his ears, but Chrissy didn't respond again. A minute later, the bathroom door closed. The toilet flushed, and the water ran, Chrissy mechanically sticking to her evening routine of scrubbing her face of makeup and settling in for the night.
Tonight, it seemed to take significantly longer than normal. Long enough that Eddie finished cooking the chicken entirely, cutting it into strips and just beginning to plate their meals when Chrissy finally emerged.
He handed her a plate, giving her a broad grin, and she looked at him, then at it, then at him again before seeming to find the strength to return it. He'd already set a few slices of toasted bread and butter on the table, so Eddie grabbed his own plate and followed her into their little dining nook before asking her about her day.
This was her favorite meal. Or, one of them, anyway. After Chrissy slowly began to heal from the insane amount of trauma she carried, courtesy of her mother, Eddie took to making dinner more often than not. Especially since she had a way harder time eating fast food. Eddie started his shifts at the mechanic shop at, like, six in the morning so he could get home in time to make Chrissy dinner as often as possible. She'd get a little brighter, a little bouncier, with each one, before admitting to him once,
"I think everything you make is my favorite thing I've ever eaten."
If Cupid hadn't already blown his heart clean from his chest with all the arrows he'd fired, that would've cinched it. Alas.
So, yeah, Eddie had it on pretty good goddamn authority that she enjoyed his chicken-tomato-pesto concoction.
And she wasn't. Fucking. Eating it.
She was doing that thing again. Talking, telling endless stories about her workday, as she carefully moved food around on her plate. Taking a bite here and there, then interjecting every thought and idea that popped into her head.
Look, Eddie loved listening to Chrissy talk, but---
"Alright, I'm gonna ask again," he finally said, pushing his own half-eaten plate back and looking directly at her. "What's going on?"
"W-What do you mean?"
"That," he said, gesturing to her plate. She'd carved it up, moved it around, but the amount of food on it had hardly changed. "You--- Chrissy, you aren't eating."
"I--- Of course I'm eating, Eddie, I'm eating right now---"
"No," he said, forcing his voice to remain soft. The last thing she needed was him attacking her for whatever was going through that pretty, complicated head of hers. Pushing up from his seat, he came around and knelt beside her. Letting a hand rest of her knee as he looked up at her. "Chrissy, baby, c'mon. This is the third meal this week you've pretended to eat. I asked you what was up, and you said you were fine, but I'm not buying it. Clearly something's all tangled up in the web of that brain of yours."
She was looking down at her plate, not at him. After a long, terrible moment, her gaze finally drifted to him, eyes all at once filling with tears.
"You--- You noticed?"
That hurt a little bit. Rolling his lips, Eddie bit back some retort about having a PhD in Chrissy Cunningham Studies. Instead, he asked, "Did you really think I wouldn't?"
Lifting her hands to her cheeks, she pressed her fingertips against the flesh beneath her eyes like she could quell the spillage still brewing in her ducts. It was a move he'd seen in the past, trying to preserve her makeup to keep herself intact.
It was totally useless. All the move did was push the tears out.
"I'm sorry," she began, but Eddie squeezed her knee.
"Hey, no apologies. I just wanna untangle the web. That's all."
For a long moment, they sat in silence. Chrissy's lips trembling as she waded through the bog water in her brain to find the plug and flush it all out. So Eddie could hose down the dirt and muck left behind, if she'd let him.
"They're not going to be there," she finally admitted. Eddie tilted his head, squeezing her knee again to prompt more explanation. "They--- My family. My--- My parents. They're not going to watch me get married to the person I love most in the world. They aren't going to be there to see my happiness."
That... didn't make sense. At all. To him, anyway. Chrissy hadn't spoken to her mother in the better part of a decade, and her father tried to 'sneak' phone calls here and there, but they never lasted long and became sparser as the years went on. A man terrified of being discovered by his wife for the sin of speaking to his harlot daughter. Or whatever bullshit Laura would spew.
"Uh, yeah, we--- I mean, they--- Uh. You knew they wouldn't be?"
Squeezing her eyes shut, Chrissy shook her head.
"I know," she lamented, her breath hitching with a sob. "Like, yeah, I know they aren't going to be there. I knew they--- I knew they wouldn't say yes when I sent that invitation, but I sent it anyway, just on the off chance---"
"Whoa, wait. You sent them an invite?" He kinda wanted to ask why she would allow that actual hag into their life, but he bit his tongue. Hard.
"I---" She broke off, scooting roughly back from the table so she could bring her knees up onto the chair. Unintentionally forcing his hand from her leg as she rested her forehead against her knees. "I don't even know why, Eddie, I just--- God, I thought maybe enough time had passed, and maybe they'd want to see how--- How much better I am, but then I know I'm only better because she's not part of my life, but---"
Eddie instead wrapped a loose hand around her ankle, trying desperately to understand. As soon as he realized his dad was a piece of shit, Eddie was done with him. The couple of times he came around after finally getting out of prison, it was to ask Wayne for money, then to ask Eddie for money once he saw his name in a bookstore, and Eddie told him to go fuck himself. Hadn't heard from him since.
"I just want them to... God, it sounds so stupid."
"Not stupid." Maybe a teeny bit stupid, but he wasn't going to tell her that.
She fell further into herself. Shoulders shaking as she struggled to keep herself together. Eddie stood up, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her off the chair entirely. She went willingly, letting him carry her to the couch with her arms around his neck as tears slowly stained his t-shirt.
"I just want them to acknowledge me. To be proud of me." She sobbed, loud, and burrowed further into his chest. "To--- To love me, Eddie. I just want them to love me entirely, the way a parent is supposed to love their child."
Well. Alright. Maybe not stupid.
"But they're not coming. Because I'm their biggest disappointment. And--- God, h-how am I supposed to reconcile that? Why do I even want them to look at me so badly?"
"Because they're your parents," Eddie responded. "And they should love you. And that's the shittiest part, because you have so much goddamn love in your life now. You just... want them to be part of that, too. And it's not your fault they aren't."
They sat in that for a while. Letting it ruminate as, slowly, Chrissy's tears subsided. Eddie held her tight, letting her take the lead. Letting her decide when she felt whole enough to stand on her own again.
"It feels so much smaller than it used to, that pain," Chrissy spoke after some minutes of silence had passed. Nothing but the soft music from the kitchen Eddie forgot to turn off as their companion. "Like--- Like a piercing, almost. Not quite healed, but small enough to ignore. And then, sometimes, it's like it just... stretches. Going from a pinprick to a canyon. I have no choice but to fall in."
Eddie didn't say anything. What the fuck could he say?
"And then, this small part of me is relieved they're not coming, too. Because then she can't ruin it, the way she tries to ruin everything of mine she touches. And then I felt bad for being relieved! It's like I'm at war with myself. Like I don't even know how to feel."
"That why you weren't eating? To full of, uh, everything else?"
Chrissy sniffled, shrugging a little.
"You know you can talk to me about this shit, right?" he finally asked. The question that had been burning in the back of his mind since she first released the dam. "Like, fuck, baby, I don't always know what to say, but I make a hell of a sound board at the very least."
"It just... It seemed to silly," she admitted. "Like I was breaking my own heart."
"Hey. None of that, alright? What did, uh, your therapist say that one time? 'Don't diminish your feelings to create room for how you perceive someone else's'? I want all that silliness, Chrissy." He sighed, adjusting his hold on her to press a kiss to her hair. "You gotta promise me you'll tell me if you're hurting - even just a little. Okay?"
Burying her face in the crook of his neck, she huffed a little.
"Even when I hurt myself?"
"Well, yeah, I mean. How else am I gonna make fun of you for that if I don't know it happened?"
She giggled, and Eddie searched out her temple for another kiss.
"You're not supposed to make fun of me. You're supposed to support me no matter what."
"I can support you while laughing, as hard as is it to believe, yknow. I'm multitalented. Still gonna kiss your scraped knees at the end of the night, I promise."
Huffing, Chrissy tilted her face back. Puckering her lips in await of a kiss Eddie was more than delighted to deliver. She sighed into it, her eyelashes fluttering as they fell in to one another.
"You're so mean. I can't believe I agreed to marry you."
"Yeah? Me, either, sometimes. You're not special."
"Eddie."
"But, hey, who'd cook you dinner like a proper stay-at-home husband if you didn't have me?"
"I like you for more than your food!" she argued, pouting. Then, after a moment, her eyes widened. "Oh, my gosh. Do you think dinner is still warm?"
"I dunno. But we can warm it back up. Why? You hungry?"
"Yeah," she grinned. Bright and real, filling her eyes with warmth. "I think I am."
send me a soft sentence starter!
