Against all odds || Stranger Things 4 | Hellcheer

Chapter 24

It's been almost an hour and Eddie is still lighthearted from what feels like the sweetest love declaration someone ever gave to him. He can't even seem to be bothered by the pop music coming out of the radio, loud enough that Chrissy can hear it from the other side of the house.

He's glad nobody is here to witness that. One can't be both the anti conformist freak and the romantic, right? He's the first surprised to be like that - so smitten. She's like...the best music ever. Giving him chills and making his chest feel warm all at once.

He shakes his head, laughs at his own infatuated nonsense and resumes his search for food, hoping he was right when he assured Nancy there must be some around the house. He eventually gets his hands on a SpaghettiOs can and figures this will do. As he rummages through more drawers to find a pan, he hears the sound of the shower.

Just like last night, knowing Chrissy is naked in the next room puts some dirty thoughts in his mind. Most of them are completely out of reach in his current state, unless he wants to make a fool of himself and give Chrissy a terrible first impression on his performances. But he could join her in the shower and pick up their makeout session where they left it this morning.

Roaming her skin with his hands would probably be enough to get him off at this point. The idea of it is already turning him on and his feet take him to the bathroom door before he knows. He stares at it, listening to the water clattering, picturing it running down Chrissy's body.

He knows once he opens the door, there'll still be the bath's curtain to block the view, but maybe he'll be able to see shapes through it, like a teaser. Should he announce himself then? Or simply open the curtain and climb in? He puts his hand flat on the door, allows his imagination to go as far as the taste Chrissy's wet skin will have. His jeans are getting tight, his pulse races. He slides his hand down to the doorknob, curls his fingers around it and slowly turns it.

The door stays closed. He tries another time with more force but it still won't open. She locked herself in. Eddie feels like someone threw a bucket of icy water over his head. He goes back to the kitchen wondering what disappoints him the most: the fact that Chrissy didn't trust him enough to leave the door unlocked, or that he did exactly what she was afraid he might do. What she didn't want him to do...

He keeps himself busy with heating up the food while the sound of shower gets replaced by the hair dryer, trying to compose himself. If Chrissy wants things to go slow, he must respect that. Because that's what good boyfriends do, right? And he swore to himself he'd be the best.

Eddie manages to not burn the food, even though it takes another fifteen minutes for Chrissy to come out of the bathroom, but he nearly drops the pan when he turns toward her. She dyed her hair! It's now almost as dark as his!

"What do you think," she asks in a voice that sounds both shy and pleased.

"That's hot," he lets out without thinking.

Because it is. She looks less like the nice little girl she pretends to be, more like the badass young woman he knows is hiding somewhere underneath. Her face turns pink, but she's beaming. He realizes what he just said.

"I mean, uh...You look beautiful."

Her smile grows wider, her cheeks pinker.

"I figured, if we're going to wander outside while the police is still searching for me, I should go undercover."

"And smart on top of it," he winks.

She giggles. He wants to kiss her, but he knows damn right that he won't be able to stop at kissing if he starts now. So he jokes about bleaching his own hair to become a blond, like James Hetfield. She doesn't get the reference, but she still laughs.

As he pours some SpaghettiOs in a plate for her, Eddie arranges them into a heart and gives it proudly to Chrissy. She gushes, flushed pink and kisses him on the cheek when he sits next to her at the table. He wonders if at some point his face will stop burning up when she does that, because it for sure will get him a whole lot of teasing if it happens at school.

He's on his third mouthful when he notices Chrissy staring at her plate without picking her fork. He remembers the mac and cheese at his trailer, the untouched cheeseburger earlier.

"I'm sorry, this isn't the kind of meal you must be used to."

"It's not that," she mumbles, looking anywhere but at him. "I have a...complicated relationship with food."

Eddie frowns. "Like, uh, a diet?"

"It's...complicated."

He doesn't understand but the look on her face prevents him from insisting. He wishes he could go back to ten minutes ago, when she was laughing and showing off her new hair. He looks at her plate where the SpaghettiOs heart is slowly drifting apart then grabs it to put the food back in the pan before doing the same with his own plate. She looks at him, confused. He smiles and holds out the wooden spoon he used to stir and left in the pan.

"Nobody will know how much you had if we both eat from the same plate."

Her lips purse, her chin trembles. Madonna's "Crazy for you" starts playing on the radio. He makes a show of whining about it just to get a tiny chuckle from her and they eat, elbow against elbow, Eddie holding the pan, Chrissy leaning over his arm. He keeps up his loud ramble in hope it will distract her for whatever complexity stops her from eating. She giggles a lot. He loses count after the seventh spoon.

*

Chrissy catches the wince Eddie makes when he sits on the couch after they finish dinner. She wishes she could make his pain disappear for good. Somehow he always knows how to make her feel better. She feels so useless.

"Show me," she says quietly.

He lifts confused eyes on her.

"Your sides. Show me how it looks."

She has to insist, but he eventually lifts his t-shirt to reveal his chest. She gasps, hand rising to her mouth. The bruise is a smudge of dark blue, greenish yellow and brown, spreading on a third of Eddie's right side.

"It always looks worse before it gets better," he says with an unbothered smile.

She knows better.

"Are you sure you don't have a broken rib or something?"

"Just a bruise. Trust me, I know what broken ribs feel like."

Her guts twist painfully. She wants to hug him, she wants to make everything go away. She sits next to him, reaches out to brush her fingertips on the edge of the bruise. Eddie flinches. She apologizes.

"It just tickles," he assures.

He pulls his shirt down, but she stops him and without a word, makes him take it off. Maybe it's her new hair that gets her so bold. She doesn't have magic spells to get rid of all these bruises, but she can kiss them better. She pushes aside the voice in her head saying it's bad, kneels on the couch and leans toward the red marks on Eddie's neck.