Greenscrunchy - 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐊 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐔𝐒

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍  𝙏𝘼𝙏𝙐𝙈  𝙍𝙄𝙇𝙀𝙔                          (deadbride​)

“so um. i saw you going to the woods after school, @greenscrunchy”   it’s out of the blue, smack dab in the middle of the first break they’ve gotten. the big game is tonight, so if there’s any time to cram in as much practice as possible, this is it.   “what’s up with that?”   there’s no judgement, but tatum does have to ask … what the hell. with the amount of people that have gone missing from their quiet town in the past three years, taking a shortcut through the forest seems like an awful idea.

she’s been practicing. starting from before the first bell rang when she slipped the hurried note into the slats of a forbidden locker until almost running from the woods like a bat out of hell. her thoughts wrote the script over and over throughout the rest of the afternoon so that when she opens her mouth the story comes out smooth. at least, she hopes it’s smooth enough that tatum, with with her watchful gaze sharper than a scalpel, will buy it.

chrissy hates lying, but it comes naturally. it’s how she can survive until summer. 

                    ❝ meditating. i’ve been trying it out before these last few games. ❞  her expression weaves together a concerted effort to keep her smile from wobbling or seeming fixed, but the many years’ previous practice for that too is a hail mary that's yet to fail her.  ❝ it’s supposed to help with focus and relaxation. ❞  chrissy shakes both pompoms she’s clenched in one hand with a grin.  ❝ doing the opposite of cheering before a game actually helps! and i need to stay focused for the girls, so.... ❞  all the narrowness of her shoulders might end up disguising none of the helplessness tucked into her shrug.   ❝ for the championship. are you excited?  ❞

teiknu​:

Goofy movie au with chrissy and eddie

𝔻𝔼𝔸ℝ 𝔸𝕊ℍ𝕋𝕆ℕ 𝔽𝕆𝕎𝕃𝔼ℝ                                     (blueminke​)

@greenscrunchy​  asked:   “ i’ve been having weird dreams. i wondered if maybe the right album would help. “   /   chrissy to ashton   !

HE WASN’T THE BIGGEST FAN of the black and blue uniform that he was required to wear at the record store. It’s no secret that he’d rather be in his leather jacket - and if you ask him, that’s still a perfect fit for selling music. However, he desperately needs to keep this job, so… uniform it is. There’s a little chime at the door as she enters, which is what first grabs his attention - and then he sees just who is stopping by, which truly is the catalyst that has him approaching her. While the two weren’t very close, OF COURSE he knew the face of Chrissy Cunningham. Hell, he’d recognize most of the Hawkins faces, but hers… has him grinning as he slides his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “It usually works for me - and that’s not a sales pitch, it’s just the truth.” Words are interrupted by a light laugh. “You want somethin’ relaxing or that kind of music that just makes you let it all out?”

chrissy had been trying a different approach to small talk lately, at the behest of ms. kelly: even when admitting the entirety of how she felt seemed dangerous, hiding just a little bit of honesty here and there would lighten the load of keeping up appearances. ms. kelly promised others wouldn’t show her their backs so quickly if chrissy just gave it a go. so this was her giving it a go. with the guy at the record store. and it....worked? 

                         ❝ yeah? ❞  if consolation were a lipstick shade, she’d be wearing it. her smile stretched beyond the measurements of conversational to something appreciative. thankful. status as the perennially bright face of school spirit aside, the square footage of the high school appeared paltry in comparison to the places chrissy wanted to be cheerful just because. if she’s lucky, maybe the pleasant feeling she’d grasped would follow her outside into the clean air. because of music. she could talk about music. there’s more than enough material here and if his nameplate is to be believed, “ashton” actually has some salient thoughts on the topic.  ❝ i like options, ❞  the array of which is probably in the hundreds; it’s exciting. if this works, she’s going to sail into the land of nod quicker than a blink. at least, quicker than she had been.  ❝ maybe one record to dance to, and then one with lots of instruments?  ❞

𝔻𝔼𝔸ℝ      𝔼𝔻𝔻𝕀𝔼      𝕄𝕌ℕ𝕊𝕆ℕ,                              (hellmartyr​)

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐀𝐓 𝐀 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐔𝐏𝐒𝐈𝐃𝐄 𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐍. no sun, no moon — only venomous strands of electrified lifeblood. hours didn’t shift as they should, and the creatures reflected the restlessness of their cruel dimension. loathsome howls haunted the winds in immeasurable rotations. with no natural period of respite, eddie divided his routine into two cycles: get shit done and an intermittent spate of z’s.

      sleep was a treat that rarely went uninterrupted. shrieks from the sky peeled open his eyes and sounds he didn’t recognize stalked the periphery of his tenuous sanctuaries. blood-curdling shadows were a ruthless reminder that nowhere in hell was safe from the devil. munson didn’t dare breathe as he waited for the strange chittering to pass, holding the warlock so tightly his joints cramped.

      eddie never let go of her, even when he did manage to spirit away some sleep. no matter how long the man was out or in what position he awoke, his guitar’s twisted sister never strayed from his hand.

      a rest fast wasn’t the only flagellation he inflicted upon himself. his eyes opened to a sharp pain in his gut. eddie curled into a ball, the warlock twanged as she was crushed into his abdomen.

      the two things a survivor needed most were just as likely to kill him. he didn’t want to remember the last time he ate, and felt sick just thinking about cracking open another ungodly can of something parading itself as edible. but the tight ache could no longer be ignored.

      keeping parallel to the thoroughfares, it was a steady crawl into hawkins proper. the rhythmic crunch of rotten leaves under his sneakers turned to grit as he picked his way over black, pulsating veins that overlapped the butchered segments of asphalt. from there it was a reluctant beeline to the canned goods. nothing in front or too far back, somewhere in the middle where the least amount of tainted air settled. his stomach objected as eddie slipped his not-so-fresh catch into his vest pocket.

      distant thunder and the soft rustle of his gear bumping against his steps set the rhythm of his march to the police station. vines covered the parking lot like pulsating cracks in the concrete. eddie hopscotched towards the back of the building to the spore-covered dumpster. his arms wobbled as he hoisted himself onto the lid. sneakers scrapped the molded brick as he clambered onto the roof.

      on one end there was an access door that led to the ground level. completely useless of course. vines cavorted in the stairwell, bulging into a grotesque neural network of rot as they smothered each other in vacuous greed. with no super powers to speak of, munson abandoned the route, turning his attention instead to the whirlybird. the damn thing looked more like a mushroom, it’s galvanized steel covered in a crust that glistened in the brackish light.

      eddie cracked his fingers and carefully tipped it aside to reveal a crumbling system beneath. he removed his guitar, lowering her first into the insulation before following her down with a jostle. despite the tight fit, eddie had enough room to army crawl through a decadent perfume of interdimensional asbestos and spores.

      the scattered remains of the demobat he killed during his previous visit were putrefied puddles. a ghastly stench interlocked with the moisture in the back of his throat. jesus christ, he could taste it; a pungent sweetness that tested the strength of his stomach. eddie pressed his mouth into his arm, stifling a cough as he dragged himself away as quickly as he dared.

      for the better part of an hour, eddie searched for a way down. it was a grueling process, one he’d been forced to back out of multiple times. the spoiled air was suffocating, forcing him to breath with his mouth open, which in turn made him vulnerable to swallowing something that turned his insides out. that shit was just the cherry on top too. during one attempt, he almost lost consciousness. which put a fear in the man so bad he stayed away for the equivalent of several days. even the allure of a shotgun failed to shake it.

      suddenly, a ray of gloomy light illuminated a small flotilla of dust motes several feet ahead. it took a moment for his eyes to register what they were seeing. never before had eddie made it this far. a feverish zing spread from his heart to the rest of his body as the young man rustled closer. a rutted cleft in the ceiling, not big enough for him to squeeze through without a little help.

      he maneuvered the teeth of his spearhead and sawed at the disintegrating plaster. as pieces loosened, eddie broke them off by hand and piled them on the side. by the time he was finished, sweat dripped from the strands of hair sticking out from his bandana. his head felt like it was about to tailspin, but an unwitting smile kept the young man steady as he looked down into the police station.

      now there’s a sight a munson never thought he’d be thrilled to see.

      first came the warlock, descending like a fallen angel from a cloud of insulation foam. then her guitarist. he didn’t descend so much as topple when his fingers slipped. sneakers squeaked as eddie landed awkwardly. he teetered on the edge of his balance, but caught himself before he went sideways straight into a cluster of tendrils.

      sour saliva coated the dry rush of his throat. eddie spared himself a moment of relief before he fished the can out of his pocket. with a scoff, he spotted the cursive c poking out from a film of sludge.

      ❝ so, we meet again. ❞ munson remarked dryly as he cleaned the top off on his sleeve. he angled his spear and carefully punctured the can, rotating slowly to preserve the precious contents. anticipation coated his dry mouth in a harsh brine as he precociously caught the serrated edge of the lid with his thumb. eddie hissed, jerking his thumb back as a bead of blood formed on the tip. quickly, he stuck the wound in his mouth. immediate revulsion at the taste of the grime on his skin, but stifling a gag-reflex was preferable to letting bloodscent loose in the air.

      frustration surged up from the depths of all he’d been through. pain that refused to dissipate from the infection spreading on his abdomen, the hopeless determination to keep going without a chance of actually seeing his uncle again. eddie never thought it possible to miss hawkins like this, but seeing his hometown mutilated by the evil of a child-murdering madman …

      eddie crumbled.

      folding towards his knees, eddie’s shoulders quivered in tandem with the tears turning the oil on his cheeks sticky. there was no desire to give up, but the will to keep going was leaking onto his tongue. an end, he just wanted an end. to go back in time to a moment full of copper, adrenaline bleeding out as vision turned a dark red.

      just die. don’t open your eyes. there’s no point. there’s no fucking point.

      a dangerous sob was stopped by the digit still enclosed between his teeth. eddie sank closer to the ground, surrendering to the blue devils that would pin him there till the young man finally wasted away.

                              hello?

      anguish turned deathly still as his attention snapped like a viper towards the door. the burning of a final heartbreak extinguished into something silent, something cold. eddie rose, the ominous glitter in his eyes glowing brighter as the voice of chrissy cunningham begged for the help she never got.

      a shuddering sigh, ❝ that’s sick, man. even for you. ❞

      the young man swallowed the lump in his throat as he set aside the can and placed his warlock on one of the desks. his sights strayed from the door. no, his fixation steeled into a tranquil fury as the redeemer readied his spear. there was no feeling in his legs as he approached the entrance, futile pounding reverberating from the other side.

      seemed like the universe was finally showing a bit of pity. a worthy way out; all he had to do was unlock the door and kill whatever shit-eating beast was making a mockery of a girl who deserved more than her fair share of peace.

      he fished out the homebrew lock kit he’d fashioned from his jeans and picked the door. his eagerness steeled, munson kept his actions deliberate as to not alert whatever the hell was waiting for him. he had one chance to get the drop so that no matter what it did to him, eddie munson wasn’t leaving this hellhole alone.

      click. eddie’s heart rate spiked as the lock gave. in one swift motion, he raised up his spear and threw open the door to see —

                  ❝ CHRIST — Y — CHRISSY ? ❞

                           ❝ please let someone be here, plea  —  ❞  and as if loftily answering a prayer, the door flew open from the inside. 

but who waited beyond the knob wasn’t any kind of anticipated, if unimaginable, underworld monstrosity. nor was it a badge-toting figurehead of hawkins safety and security. it was a ghoul with the face of a terrified and bloody eddie munson, clutching a makeshift spear in one hand and the doorknob in the other. truly, he looked so shocked that for a moment chrissy almost believed he was real. 

the once-cheerleader automatically let out a strangled bleat in fright, but all the air was stolen from the sound halfway through. her shock stumbled down a cliff of surprise rolling all the way down into a pit of.....sadness. this vision of eddie looked so like the world they were in —  grungy, dusty, slathered in rot. so thoroughly mangled that there was no chance he could be alive. he could be nothing other than the manifestation of this place’s manic feeding frenzy on souls and bodies alike. ....which implied he’d entered their now shared purgatory while still alive only to fall and be consumed by the acidic hatred that had conjured this place however long ago. 

oh. 

here stood her confirmation that this barren slice of the universe was not a second chance at whatever passed as living here in this poor excuse for “hawkins", inverted. genuine existence was only mimicked. she was dead. and so was he. like a gunshot, chrissy’s chest was riven by the sensation of missing him. could you miss someone you barely knew? someone who wasn’t there? 

yet — almost-eddie said her name. as if her appearance was the least likely sight in hell he could muster up. she didn’t blame this shade his stupefaction, at least not for too long. this mutated world of darkness trapping them could very well birth all manner of hallucinations, could be dangling false hope in front of her at any moment. manufactured, cruel fictions to match the cruel imitation of life chrissy had lived thus far and a crueler imprint of the town she’d called home.

what was left of her heart sank quickly to the ichor-slicked soles of her sneakers. he sounded so much like eddie, this ghost. or.....she thought. guilt assuaged slumping shoulders as she realized how little she really knew of this young man from whom humble hawkins seemed to expect the worst. and he’d been so kind to her up until the moment her memories stopped. [ did you find it? eddie? ] generous with his time and his humour [ you’re not what i thought you’d be like ], clever with his attempts at making her smile. [ how could i forget?! ] a mere few hours after meeting him (again) was enough time gone to know he’d not lay a harming finger on her if he drove her home. ready to help her despite his confusion. 

oh, living and breathing chrissy, so starved of understanding had she been that the moment eddie munson stared through her like glass, she felt secure for the first time in... no. that was a pointless enumeration. she’d be ashamed of herself if she went any further. 

                          ❝ eddie? ❞  even to her own ears she sounded devastated. wrecked. what misfortune had laced the atoms of his essence together into so ripped and chewed a shadow of sentience? nothing that could comfort her in the presence of his ghost, certainly.  ❝ what happened to you? you’re.... a mess.  ❞

chapped lips closed, then opened, then closed again, rendered suddenly unable to string any kind of sufficient thought into speech. all she could feel was sorry. everything she knew was sorry. sorry to see him in such a place, sorry to be haunting the haunted, sorry to have possibly done anything that could drag him into this tartarus pit, this realm of refuse. he’d paid dearly for every act of heroism, judging by the looks of things. a shining, blood-soaked knight in shredded ribbons, complete with a sword.

either all her tears had evaporated or weariness sapped every reaction in extreme from her system. a limp swallow clenched her throat shut long enough to pause all thought of caution and chrissy stepped forward. her bruised arms lifted, powered by winces of pain, to wrap gingerly around this not-quite-eddie’s torso. no breath to reconsider, just the driving force of mourning a life half lived and a thousand chances missed. in cheer, missing by inches brought injurious disaster. what brought them here was miles.

                         ❝ it’s alright if you’re not real, ❞  chrissy mumbled into ruined fabric, utterly depressed. anything above a whisper scraped murder across her vocal cords. her fingers dug into a bony back until spinal ridging uncomfortably collided with the juts of her knuckles. the skeletal pattern was grounding. so frustrating in its physicality. he still faintly smelled like leather and hawkins humidity. you didn’t deserve this. you didn’t deserve anything you were getting. i’m sorry i thought so badly of you. if i could go back i’d make up my own mind about you and never listen to anyone tell me what to believe again. how tantalizing a thought, to admit as much to the real eddie. but his ghost was no replacement. admission to a phantom was like begging a stone for help. like pounding on the door of an abandoned police station that might never have held any remote promise of safety. absolute miserable insanity. still, there was a small childish comfort in embracing a figure that could only be meant to fade from her gaze the moment she gripped it too fiercely in a bid to regain her balance.  ❝ i'm just glad to see you. ❞

so chrissy let go.  easier, when the battle was already lost. 

                        ❝ this place is.....is twisted. i don’t know why it made you look like this. it’s messing with my head, eddie. but i can’t be losing my mind anymore if i’m dead, can i? ❞

can chrissy season a skillet or must she undergo some training?

send me your character and I’ll tell you if I think they know how to season/care for cast iron cookware.

I don’t think she can. I’m so sorry Chrissy. Nothing about the Cunningh.am family screams cast iron enthusiasts. I feel like her mother would have some weird classist opinion on the use of cast iron. I feel like she grew up exclusively around soulless stainless steel cookware. Chrissy would probably enjoy cooking in cast iron later and learning about its care.

                      ❝ i think you’d make a great cheerleader. ❞  chrissy sensed the oncoming blink before it ever surfaced and plunged forward, oddly insistent on her point getting across. she’d envisioned this whole mischievously alluring setup for too long not to lay it out for him. continuously warming air fluttered in puffs at her back, almost like taps that encouraged her to keep going.  ❝ it’s like this: your voice carries without you even trying. you’re really tall and could put cheerleaders on your shoulders. you’re a musician so your rhythm is perfect. and you’re always..... ❞  finally, finally, she could present her own cheeky reference to the first  meeting here at their table, the pièce de résistance. with some pride in the perk of her chin, chrissy cunningham flopped her arms from side to side as wildly as possible without colliding against him or herself or the tabletop below, threatening splinters aplenty if she so much as considered bumping it.  ❝ .....doing that naturally. like you’re always excited! we wouldn’t even have to give you pom-poms. ❞

        ❝  well, it’s not good, but it’s a reason.   ❞             /           @hellmartyr​

                      ❝ they are too good reasons! think about it. you’d be such a hit at pep rallies. ❞   of course she’s kidding. him worming his way onto that court for a rally was more likely than her ever acing french. and she’d tried.

far above, afternoon sunlight grew shy behind passing clouds. chrissy drew herself in tighter, finished with her joking but still wearing a happy grin. summer really was coming despite stubborn chills from an unfinished and bitter spring. she was so grateful. for a safe place like this, namely.  ❝ plus......you’re naturally encouraging. did you know that? that’s probably the most important part about being on the squad. ❞

I’m fed up with you and the way that you do

I used to love you, now I change my mind

and I’m fed up with you feeding me a line

nothing new // taylor swift feat. phoebe bridgers

send  ❛ ♡ ❜  to suddenly hug my muse  ! 

could be angst  ,   romantic   ,  plationic  ,  etc.