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[christmas eve]
On the morning of December twenty-fourth, Eddie panics.
He'd asked Chrissy if she'd want to hang out, do something for Christmas, and he'd tried to make it sound as casual as possible, because he knows there's no way she could ever like him. Not the way he likes her, which he knows for certain now after their kiss, even though it had been framed as friends rescuing each other. That should be enough, he knows, to just be her friend, and it is. It's enough.
It still makes hanging out with her difficult at times. He'll get over it, but for right now, every time he sees her, he thinks of the kiss up at Kagura and how warm her mouth had felt against his. The scent of her shampoo or perfume or maybe even just soap, he doesn't know what it had been, only that he'd felt like he could drown in it. He thinks of the light touch of her hand on his arm and he knows he can't think all this stuff if they're going to keep being friends.
So they're friends. They're just friends, but Eddie is still panicked, realizing he's invited her to come over to his place on Christmas Eve, only it looks like a twenty-year-old single guy lives here and he can't let her see his place like this. She hadn't judged the trailer, but honestly, she'd had a lot going on at the time and he could blame that on Wayne. This mess is his fault, though, and so Eddie throws himself into cleaning for perhaps the first time in his life.
When that's done, he goes to get groceries. Maybe it's a mistake on Christmas Eve, the stores are crazy busy, but he needs to have something at his place. He doesn't really know how to cook, so he gets the most expensive frozen pizzas, figuring they're probably the best quality, and he gets snacks, and he gets soft drinks and iced tea and on a whim, he grabs a string of white Christmas lights that are marked down to forty percent off, due to it being so late in the season.
Back home, the groceries get put away and Eddie doesn't have a tree, so he strings the lights up over the window behind the couch, then plugs them in to make sure they work. When he turns off the rest of the lights, they make the apartment glow and, for the first time, it actually feels like Christmas.
On the coffee table sits the one thing he's had ready all this time. A neatly wrapped box with a bow on top, Chrissy's name scrawled in his writing on the tag. Inside is her gold chain, the one she had given him, but the pendant has changed. Around his neck, he still wears the gold 86 alongside his pick. In the box is a similar pendant now, but this one is a 23.
This next year is her year. He can feel it.
He'd asked Chrissy if she'd want to hang out, do something for Christmas, and he'd tried to make it sound as casual as possible, because he knows there's no way she could ever like him. Not the way he likes her, which he knows for certain now after their kiss, even though it had been framed as friends rescuing each other. That should be enough, he knows, to just be her friend, and it is. It's enough.
It still makes hanging out with her difficult at times. He'll get over it, but for right now, every time he sees her, he thinks of the kiss up at Kagura and how warm her mouth had felt against his. The scent of her shampoo or perfume or maybe even just soap, he doesn't know what it had been, only that he'd felt like he could drown in it. He thinks of the light touch of her hand on his arm and he knows he can't think all this stuff if they're going to keep being friends.
So they're friends. They're just friends, but Eddie is still panicked, realizing he's invited her to come over to his place on Christmas Eve, only it looks like a twenty-year-old single guy lives here and he can't let her see his place like this. She hadn't judged the trailer, but honestly, she'd had a lot going on at the time and he could blame that on Wayne. This mess is his fault, though, and so Eddie throws himself into cleaning for perhaps the first time in his life.
When that's done, he goes to get groceries. Maybe it's a mistake on Christmas Eve, the stores are crazy busy, but he needs to have something at his place. He doesn't really know how to cook, so he gets the most expensive frozen pizzas, figuring they're probably the best quality, and he gets snacks, and he gets soft drinks and iced tea and on a whim, he grabs a string of white Christmas lights that are marked down to forty percent off, due to it being so late in the season.
Back home, the groceries get put away and Eddie doesn't have a tree, so he strings the lights up over the window behind the couch, then plugs them in to make sure they work. When he turns off the rest of the lights, they make the apartment glow and, for the first time, it actually feels like Christmas.
On the coffee table sits the one thing he's had ready all this time. A neatly wrapped box with a bow on top, Chrissy's name scrawled in his writing on the tag. Inside is her gold chain, the one she had given him, but the pendant has changed. Around his neck, he still wears the gold 86 alongside his pick. In the box is a similar pendant now, but this one is a 23.
This next year is her year. He can feel it.
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"How many pieces do you want?" he asks, hunting for a pizza cutter in his drawers. Eddie has never bought one, but he figures that's the sort of thing that should come with these places before they even move in. With a little crow of triumph, he finds one in the back of a drawer and pulls it out, with still more clattering.
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As she listens to utensils clattering in the kitchen, the first thing he said sticks in her head, the after all and how much an echo it is of her own thoughts. "You know, I kept thinking this was going to be a terrible idea," she tells him, a little sheepish. "That you'd know, and it would just make things awkward, and... Well, I'm glad I was wrong."
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"After the mistletoe," he continues as he sits down beside her, setting the plates on the coffee table. "I thought, well shit, she's seen right through me and pretty much has it all figured out and she's just too sweet to tell me I've got it totally wrong."
He picks up a slice of pizza and takes a bite, then looks over at Chrissy. As he wipes a bit of sauce from his lip, he says, "I would've been okay with that. Just so you know. I wasn't hanging around hoping you'd change your mind, I was just glad you were my friend. If that was all we ever were, it still would've been great, Chrissy."
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Although it's been true for a long time now, probably since she got here, she isn't sure she's ever said that outright, either. It feels strange, a little childish, but she means it all the same. He is her best friend — probably the best she's ever had, at that. "You still would've been. I've been happy just to have that. It's not like I ever expected anything else."
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Eddie doesn't know a lot about relationships, he's far from an expert, his experience is limited when it comes to anything meaningful and yet he feels certain all of the sudden that being best friends first will give them an advantage. They're not just here for sex, this isn't born out of lust -- not entirely, anyway, Eddie has definitely thought about Chrissy during some personal time -- they're both here because they like being with each other.
"Yeah," he says, looking pleased, a bit wondering. "You're my best friend, too. I kinda think... maybe that's the best place to start."
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She tries her best to ignore that stupid little voice in the back of her head, focusing instead on the warm, flustered feeling that has yet to fade. That, too, is ridiculous, but in a totally different way, and not at all unwelcome.
"So does that mean you're my best friend and my boyfriend now?" she asks with a teasing smile. Really, her own insecurities and anxiety aside, he's probably right. She's never gone out with someone she's so close to before. It feels vastly different than saying yes when some jock asks her out for the sake of status. Different, and infinitely preferable.
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He doesn't want to keep saying he hopes so, because obviously he does. At this point, it has to be obvious that he likes her just as much as she likes him. So he's going to be decisive. He's going to say, yeah, he likes her, he's her best friend and he's her boyfriend.
"That's pretty cool," he says, then takes another big bite of pizza. "I don't think I've ever been someone's best friend and their boyfriend." He's only had one proper girlfriend and it hadn't lasted all that long, despite how much he had liked her. Not many parents wanted their daughter dating someone like Eddie Munson.
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She supposes that's one more thing she has her mother to thank for, a mindset that was instilled in her before she even realized it was happening. But this, this is all hers. It isn't why she likes Eddie or why she wants to be with him, but she can't deny that there is a slight, guilty appeal in knowing that her parents would hate this.
"It is pretty cool," she agrees, nodding, her own following bite of pizza a smaller one. "I haven't, either." She makes a face, her own words catching up to her a moment belatedly. "Been someone's best friend and their girlfriend, that is. Though I guess I could say I've never been someone's best friend and their boyfriend, either."
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"I've only had one girlfriend before," he admits. "Kelly Wright. I don't know if you really knew her, she was a year younger than me. She was in trouble a lot, so maybe you do. She was the girl who was suspended your freshman year for punching a guy in the cafeteria."
No one had ever asked Kelly if the guy deserved it, which he had.
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Thinking about that now, she feels an odd sort of relief at the fact that she doesn't have to deal with any of that anymore, that they won't have to deal with anything of the sort here. She would have, if this had happened in Hawkins instead; he's worth it. Still, if there's one thing she doesn't miss, it's the constant scrutiny she faced and the feeling that she would never live up to what anyone wanted her to be.
"I've had... a few boyfriends?" she admits in turn, unsure how much or how little attention he might have paid to any of that. "Jason, obviously. I actually went out with Steve for a little while when I was a freshman. A couple others in between. But nothing that ever really... meant anything." She was always just doing what she thought she should be doing, telling herself that she felt the way she should feel. This, from the start, has been utterly different. She leans over a little, and when she kisses him this time, it's soft and chaste, her lips pressing to the corner of his mouth. "And I happen to like you a lot, Eddie Munson."
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And Kelly had never been able to stay quiet about stuff like that. She might have seemed scary, but she stuck up for people, and she'd been well liked for it, even if it was a quiet sort of respect. Like Chrissy, Eddie still isn't sure why she'd liked him so much. It's something they have in common, two very cool girls who are much too good for him, although he already knows he was never this head over heels for Kelly.
"Steve told me you guys went out," Eddie says, grinning and slipping his arm around Chrissy. His pizza is mostly forgotten at this point, much too focused on the girl sitting beside him. "This was, um... a few months back. I got all weird and defensive, like why are you telling me, I don't have any claim on her, we're just friends and he was definitely not fooled."
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And yet, that day in the woods, Eddie looked right at her and saw her, called her a freak like it was the best thing he could say about a person, didn't judge her for being a paranoid wreck or any of the rest of it. It was probably inevitable even then that she would come to feel about him the way she does.
Having those feelings apparently reciprocated is still the most surprising part, Eddie's comment drawing a quiet laugh from her. "Months? Really?" she asks, tipping her head up to look at him from where she's tucked against his side. "And all that time, I had no idea, just thinking there was no way you could like me, too."
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The way she had laughed, smiled at him, cracked jokes and seemed to relax, he'd been kind of smitten right off. At the time, he'd just told himself he was an idiot, she had a boyfriend, she'd never go for someone like him, but it hadn't mattered. Boyfriend or not, he'd wanted her to go for him.
If the whole thing hadn't gotten all fucked up and they were still in Hawkins, he wonders if they'd have gotten their shit together. He hopes so. He thinks so.
"You ever just meet someone and feel instantly at ease like... this one, this is one of my people?" he asks, reaching up to touch a strand of hair that's curling softly against her cheek. "That's how I felt."
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"I have, yeah," she says softly, her expression all fond, leaning the slightest bit into his hand when his finger brushes her cheek. Earlier, at the door, the same sort of gesture had mortified her. Now that she doesn't have to try to hide the way she feels, it's a whole different story. "It was like that for me, too. I mean... there I was, in the middle of the worst day of my life, and then suddenly, there's you. Making me smile when I didn't even think I could."
Even now, she's not sure she can really say how much that meant to her. It's something, though. "I don't think I really realized yet what I was feeling, but it was definitely there."
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Making her laugh, though, and putting her at ease. That was something he could do for her.
"I'm glad it worked," he says, laying his palm fully against her cheek. Her skin is so soft under the callouses of his fingers, he can't get over it. "Making you laugh, I mean. It was kind of the only thing I wanted to do. You seemed... sad."
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It's not like it started with what Eddie called Vecna, though. Normally, she doesn't talk about the rest of it at all, keeps it all to herself, but with him, it's easier to be a little more honest. "I... I think I'd been sad for a really long time. No one else ever saw it. Saw me."
They saw what she wanted them to see. She can't fault them for that. She also can't pretend it didn't mean the world to her to have someone see past that façade for the first time.
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Hawkins had been the same for him. Most people looked at Eddie, took him in in a glance, and made up their mind. The Freak. The Weirdo. He had learned into it because he felt like there really wasn't another option for him, not given his whole situation, and maybe Chrissy had, too. What she'd been leaning into was different, that's all, but at the end of it, they'd both been doing the same thing.
"You don't have to do that with me," he promises. "I like you exactly as you are. Way more of a freak than anyone back home ever realized." He grins then, reminding her it's a compliment, and ducks his head to brush his mouth against hers.
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There are still things she doesn't know how to talk about, things she's reluctant to do anything but keep to herself. Even so, who she is when she's with him is the most real she's ever been.
She huffs out a breathless laugh then, still a little incredulous. "And now I don't have to try to pretend like I'm not crazy into you, either."
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It still feels surreal, like they've done something impossible. Flipped off the entirety of Hawkins just in getting together and while that's not why Eddie likes Chrissy and is glad they're here now, it's kind of a cool side effect. No one would expect it and everyone would think it was totally insane.
Which doesn't matter at all. They could think whatever they wanted, it wouldn't change his mind.
"Crazy into me, huh?" he asks, grinning. "Does that mean like, a lot, or that you're crazy to be into me at all?"
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She eases back just enough that she can reach for her glass of iced tea and take a sip, though she's still looking at him as she does, indescribably fond and a touch amused. "And for a long time. Like... You remember a few months ago, that night we went and got drunk in the cemetery? I first wanted to tell you just to come over to my place, but then I was worried... either you'd think I was making a move and turn me down, or it wouldn't even occur to you to think of me like that at all. And I wasn't sure which would be worse."
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He makes an exploding sound and uses his fingers beside his temple to indicate what it would have been like.
"But I never would have turned you down," he says, grinning. "You might have had to give me CPR or pick me up off the floor, but once I regained consciousness, my first words would have been yes please." The idea that she likes him, that he gets to date her, it really is blowing his mind.
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It's deeply tempting to take full advantage of that, to lean over and make out with him a little more. They probably should keep eating before the pizza gets cold, though, so instead, she elbows him playfully in the side. "Definitely something I'll have to keep in mind."
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It's nice to not be alone on Christmas.
"Do you wanna stay?" he asks, then realizes how that sounds. "I mean, I'll take the couch, you can take the bed. Just so we're not... y'know, on our own on Christmas morning. I know we already did presents, but we could... I dunno, go see a movie or something."
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"No, that sounds really nice," she says, giving him a soft smile. "I'd like that. And you don't have to sleep on the couch, I mean, unless you want to." She's slept in his bed before, after all. It should be big enough for them both, she thinks, even if all they do is just sleep beside each other.
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"I just don't want you to feel like... well, you know," he says. He doesn't have to explain. Chrissy is a girl, she's probably dealt with plenty of guys who want something from her and it's not that he doesn't, he just wants her to feel like they can do whatever they want when they want. No specific plans and definitely no pressure.
"It'll be cool. Really cool. Having you here in the morning. Just more Christmas, right?"
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