Untitled Steve/chrissy fic please 👀
I'm not writing in a linear fashion on this one quite yet because I keep wavering along the spectrum from season 2 after the Nancy debacle on Halloween up through a little before the start of season 4 for the timeline. And this is one of my newer brainbabies so I have a very generalized outline for it that I'm working out as I go and constantly changing the specifics of.
But the basic plot: Steve and Chrissy know each other fairly well through both athletics and both being from rich families in a small town. They've always been on friendly terms but never super close. Even during his 'reign' as King Steve, he would have looked out for all the girls at his parties as best he could. He would have kept the rougher ones on the basketball team from harassing any of the girls too much, made sure everyone and the girls in particular had safe rides home or a safe place to sleep at his house, etc. He'd have especially disliked Jason for how relentlessly he went after Chrissy and generally being a manipulative self righteous sanctimonious little prick who is also a hypocrite b/c he chases after girls to get laid on the sly while pretending 'purity'. What Steve doesn't know (at first) is that Jason's parents are pushing him at Chrissy, and Chrissy's mother encourages it and pushes her to accept Jason's advances because she has a very detailed plan for Chrissy's life... picture-perfect stereotypical teen movie Americana stuff. Cheerleader captain high school sweethearts with an up and coming basketball star tagged as the next captain, eventual marriage and babies, no college for Chrissy and no career outside of 'wife and mother' for her, etc.
Regardless of the canon point I go with, Chrissy and Steve will become closer as friends first. Steve will start to heal from the Nancy heartbreak, and Chrissy will begin opening up more. She'll tell Steve about her home life, how she used to love cheerleading but doesn't like it anymore because she's never been allowed to even try any other activities and she isn't allowed to quit the squad, about her ED, about her dreams and goals and the like, how she feels trapped in her life. He'll help her make better friends, and help her start to heal from the abuses of her mother which the willful blindness of her father enables. Chrissy's mother isn't thrilled by the friendship because Steve encourages Chrissy to explore her own interests, pursue her own dreams, stand up for herself, etc while Jason basically is a young male Laura Cunningham and aids/abets in keeping Chrissy pushed down emotionally and in terms of self-esteem, confidence, etc and thus under Laura's control. She's even less thrilled by the increasing closeness, strengthening bond, and sparkage between Chrissy and Steve. But she tolerates it on the surface because the Harringtons are richer, more respected in the community, and more influential than the Carvers while also trying to find ways to sabotage it all on the sly and force Chrissy to accept Jason, despite how much better Steve is than Jason and how much better he treats Chrissy, and does things like humiliate Chrissy in front of Steve with hopes of Steve dropping her because she really likes having control over Chrissy and knows Steve constantly undermines that control intentionally or not (and yeah it's mostly intentional b/c Laura's as big an asshole as Papa Harrington is and Chrissy deserves better).
While she won't end up getting Vecnad, Chrissy will have brushes with the Upside Down and will be taught to fight physically (maybe Nancy will even befriend her and teach her to shoot a gun), which will help her with gaining confidence in herself and learning to stand up to her mother in other ways.
