Thank you for letting me indulge yet another one of my "fifty different ways they could have met that didn't involve anyone dying" daydreams. Mwah!
“Just do it,” Eddie says to his reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror. “Today. Today’s the fucking day, yeah? Just do it.”
How can he do it, though, with a zit on his nose? Eddie doesn’t spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about his face or anything, but like… that dude’s a whopper. Red with a white center, and he should probably squeeze it, but if he does that, it might bleed, and he can’t decide if it’s better or worse to ask Chrissy Cunningham out with a zit or the bloody scab of where a zit used to be.
Probably he should just pop it at home and wait until tomorrow. That’s the solid course of action. Besides, he has Hellfire after school, and if he asks her out today, he’ll be distracted, and the sheepies deserve his full and undivided attention.
Plus—plus!—he and Chrissy have been partnered up for a month on this stupid English project, and it’s due on Friday and today’s Wednesday, so if he asks her out and she says no, that’ll throw off the whole vibe of their presentation. Which, if he says so himself, is a pretty badass show. Funny what happens when you actually make an effort in school, even if it’s just to impress the pretty blonde who initially didn’t seem thrilled to be partnered with you but now laughs every time you make a dumb joke.
It’s a lot easier for Eddie to concentrate on a task when he knows Chrissy’s gonna smile and say something like, “Eddie, that’s so good!” or “I never would have thought of that!” when he’s done.
“Friday,” he says to his reflection just as the door to the bathroom opens and some bespectacled freshman stumbles in, sees Eddie, and beats a hasty retreat.
Yeah, that feels about right.
It’s his free period, and he was originally gonna meet Chrissy in the library to work on their poster, but she put a note in his locker this morning saying it was a lovely day and could they please work in the quad instead?
She’s got the girliest handwriting, and he definitely sniffed the paper to see if it smelled like her perfume.
(One time, she left her scrunchie on the table, and Eddie stole it while she was in the bathroom. It’s uh… seen some things. He’s a dick. But, whatever. She has eighty of them.)
When he arrives, Chrissy’s already sitting at one of the four painted-green picnic tables that decorate the quad. Her hair’s in a ponytail, which he pulls to announce his arrival because he’s five and she’s cute, and he wants to shove her down a slide on the playground to tell her he likes her, or whatever.
Jesus Christ, life would be easier if she hadn’t dumped Jason Carver two weeks ago, thus opening herself up as an actual option rather than a fantasy. And, sure, Eddie gets that he’s not even remotely close to her league, but whatever. Even a first date would be more than he deserves.
Chrissy twists at the tug on her hair, and her mouth’s painted with his favorite shade of peachy-pink, lips twisting into a smile. “Hi, Eddie.”
“Hey, sunshine. I finished those drawings.”
“Oh, let me see!”
Their presentation is on A Tale of Two Cities, which Eddie actually read (because he really is determined to fucking graduate this time), and also sort of dug because there was a lot of war and intrigue. It’s not Asimov, but he can see the appeal. For the presentation, he and Chrissy are doing a poster depicting the major plot points, and when she found out he wasn’t the world’s worst artist, she asked him to draw and…
Yeah, he’s been making an effort. Not just because he wants to get in her pants, either, but because he likes her as, you know. A person. She’s kind of weird, and he likes how her brain works.
Sitting across from her, he tugs out some loose printer paper from the ream Wayne stole from the plant a year ago. Management would be furious, Eddie’s sure.
Fuck management. Every time he rips the edging off a fresh piece of paper, it makes him smile.
“Oh, wow, Eddie,” Chrissy says when she sees the final piece, which is Carton approaching the platform with the guillotine. “This is amazing.”
“Ah, thanks,” he says. “It’s no big deal.”
“No, it’s perfect. And I lettered the quote.” That had been Chrissy’s job—picking out the appropriate sentences and hand-lettering them on paper she soaked in tea to make it look old. “Once we have them pasted on, we’re done.”
“So… cool, yeah. Done.”
Chrissy carefully places his final drawings in her folder and shrugs. “We don’t have to meet tomorrow, I guess.”
Shit. Eddie leans forward, fingers digging into the edge of the table. “Uh. Oh. I guess not?”
“Maybe just Friday, before we present?”
“Totally.”
“Cool. We'll kick butt, and then hang out Friday night.”
Eddie's brain stutters to a halt. "We're hanging out Friday night?"
Seven-year-old Evie Munson had been very emphatic about the fact that she did not want her mother to buy her boxed Valentines at the pharmacy to give out at school this year, no sir, no way, no how; Evie wanted to make her own special and personalized works-of-art for each and every one of her twenty-five classmates (and teacher too).
Though bemused by their daughter's zeal, Chrissy and Eddie were both very well acquainted with Evie's stubborn streak, and knew that once she set her mind to something, she'd see it through come hell or highwater.
Chrissy set Evie up to execute her vision on a Saturday afternoon, kitchen table laden (at Evie's very pointed request) with craft scissors, glue, tape, card stock, glitter, pom-poms, pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, a stack of old magazines, a bin full of stamps, an ice cream bucket overflowing with every colour of marker you can imagine, and a bag of elbow macaroni. She left Evie to it, setting about the house on her usual run of weekend chores, calling back answers to questions about the spelling Evie's friend's names, or to supply words that rhymed with goat, and hoop, and pancake.
Chrissy wandered back into the kitchen when she heard Eddie come home from work, and found him still in his coveralls, surveying the craft maelstrom that had spread from the table to the counters and floors, while Evie explained each card to him at about a mile a minute—"I drew David a koala because he loves koalas, and Janie always brings boiled eggs for a snack so I wrote an egg joke, and Marnie likes the New Kids on the Block so I tried to draw Donnie..."—until she paused and took a breath; Eddie looked like his head was spinning, but he was grinning.
"Wow, look at all that, baby girl! That sure is something—" he leaned over, punctuating the next word by planting a big kiss on the top of Evie's curly, blonde head "—amazing. Great job, kiddo."
Good question! I think Eddie would always try to shock people by saying it was the day Chrissy tried to buy drugs from him lmao. In reality, during that first spring break week when they got together, they had so many weird Upside Down-related outings that the first one would be hard to pin down, and they probably couldn't talk about most of it with anyone not in the Party. (Hmm, 50 First Dates in the Upside Down plot bunny?!) The first time they intentionally went somewhere without their friends was in April 1986, when Eddie decided that bowling was about as athletic as he could get, and he figured Chrissy might enjoy it, so they went midnight bowling. With the black light, glowing murals, pizza and beer, metal and hard rock music blasting, and those insane tricolor clown bowling shoes, it was totally Eddie's aesthetic...and Chrissy adored it. She beat him, of course, but he cheered like a madman every time she got a strike or a spare.
25. Do they have any hobbies they share?
This probably would've stumped me until recently, when I binge-read the amazing no need to look so afraid by @cricketsatnight, in which Chrissy is a prolific margin doodler in all her school notebooks. Now I think she and Eddie share art as a hobby. She loves helping him create band flyers and posters, and he digs putting together her graduation, birthday, and wedding shower (!!) invitations. Sometimes they just go on picnics and bring art supplies for sketching and coloring, because it helps them crank down the stress a bit.
tagged by @khaleesa a year ago (sorry for the lateness >_<). tagged by @clarasimone recently. turned out it was a similar tag game, one without the reveal and the other, with. thank you both! i’m choosing the without-revelation path.
Post 10 gifs from your favorite movies without revealing their titles and tag 10 people.
@iowehermylife @lodessa @slytherinhowl @sanziene @maxevvans @thickskinandelasticheart @bloodsired @toas-tea @studyspacedragons @swietek93 -- at your discretion! also open for anyone who wants to :)
Are we allowed to post links to our fics (revealing ourselves) at any time tomorrow, or do we need to wait till after a certain time?
Hi @khaleesa! Thanks for the ask.
Authors will be revealed at midnight EST, in just over one hour, and as soon as that happens, you’re allowed to post your fics and/or links to them on your blog! We encourage all our authors to do so, and make sure to tag #reylo fanfiction anthology and #rffa writers when you do!
