Work Text:
It goes like this.
He gets the stupid crush in eighth grade. A busted rock concert, and nobody cheers – there’s some lukewarm applause, and shit he’ll take it, because he’s too amped up on not tripping over the sound system again. Nobody cheers but Chrissy Cunningham, because the future Queen of Hawkins High is just like that. She cheers, and one of the guys sitting next to her nudges her sharply with his elbow, but Eddie flashes her a grin that is less sharp teeth and more delight, more simple-minded joy. And he remembers, too, before the next act goes on, before Chrissy is drawn back into whatever mundane madness her peers around her participate in – Chrissy grins back.
He figures he’s forgotten her when she skips back into his life, dancing on the periphery. She’s cherry curls and frosted vanilla smiles and sugar sweet, laughing in a way that has his heart stuttering in his chest. He harbours no delusions of approaching her, because even then, the route was all mapped out between the two of them: gold and glory for her, and whatever he would be allowed to scrape together in the meantime. He watches her, and he notices her, and hasn’t forgotten a single second of that smile; once, when walking past her, he’d caught the tail end of it directed at someone nearby, and he’d nearly careened into the row of lockers to his left.
Dumb, he seethes whenever he catches himself staring at her. Dumb, and pathetic, and DUMB, Munson, you idiot, you shithead.
But he doesn’t stop looking.
In an alternate universe, he’s got her pom-poms held tight in his hands; the loose strands coil over his fingers as he raises them up, a grin sparking at the way Chrissy laughs. In answer, she lifts her own to flash the devil’s ears over her head; her tongue pokes out in the most delightful of imitations for his own brand of posing, and Eddie aches to kiss her (maybe this is the universe he does.)
In an alternate universe, he’s Eddie the Banished and she’s Chrissy the Golden, and when she cups his face in her tiny hands he feels like he could give her everything, and anything, and she’d still only want him.
And ’86 is his year, he’s calling it: knows that his grades are just shy of actually pulling through, knows that the band is starting to sound like an actual collection of music and not the testing of devices that skin cats. ’86 is his year, and Chrissy Cunningham wears a gold ’86 around her neck like a little promise, a little benediction – makes him think of taking it between his teeth as he peers up at her from on his knees, receiving supplication because he doesn’t believe in god but god help him, he does believe in Chrissy.
It's a long time to nurse a stupid crush, he knows. Longer still to let it wrap itself around him so thoroughly. But, he thinks, drawing idly on his chemistry homework, he’s seen that smile. He knows how it feels. And man, what he wouldn’t do to feel it again.