Wait A Minute Wait A Minute Wait A MinuTE WAIT A——

𝙒𝙃𝘼𝙏 𝙄𝙎 𝙔𝙊𝙐𝙍 𝘾𝙃𝘼𝙍𝘼𝘾𝙏𝙀𝙍 𝘼𝙍𝘾?

𝓇𝑜𝓂𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒 / 𝒻𝓇𝒾𝑒𝓃𝒹𝓈𝒽𝒾𝓅 𝒶𝓇𝒸. you started this story a little hard, or awkward, or stubborn. that's okay. it's harder than it should be to admit, but what you really want is love. that's what your story is all about - not just the act of loving, but the allowance of it. the confession that you do not want to fight or bleed or save the world, but to simply feel the way two hands fit so easily together. you will have two chairs and a table and you will shut your blinds, and you will say the word love without faltering. this is a happy ending, and you do not need to feel guilty. it hurts our hands to fight - never to hold.

𝙩𝙖𝙜𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙮: @manaborn​  ♡ 𝙩𝙖𝙜𝙜𝙞𝙣𝙜:  whoever is curious!

I heard one thing, now I'm hearing another

i’m the opposite of the grinch. i’m the binch. my heart is two sizes too BIG

chrissy + dustin content <3

𝔻𝔼𝔸ℝ 𝔹𝔸𝕐𝕆ℝ 𝕆ℂ𝔸𝕄ℙ𝕆,                        (athousandmilesandcounting​)

send   a   🎤    &   i’ll   shuffle   my   music   &   use   the   lyrics   to   write   a   starter.

@greenscrunchy​

“Finding I’m more lost and found when she’s not around When she’s not around I feel it coming down.”

there’s a story in everything. doodles in class note margins, pins on jackets. converse so customized barely any of the original color remained. the exact order of songs on a cassette. chrissy had never been to a concert, but she’d always wondered if meanings of tracks, or entire albums, shifted when pulled apart then shuffled to stack up a satisfying performance. would listening along be confusing or electric? maybe at college she could finally find out.

songs sung by themselves, though, made her listen twice as hard. even over the whistling of wind past her ears as she slowed down her swing’s rhythm to catch the notes more clearly. 

                    ❝  pretty. it sounds like you miss somebody? someone....good for you?  ❞  

the freak and the cheerleader.

the reporter and the news.

tigers and sheep.

chrissy does well with opposites. 

“—oh God, it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

𝑤𝑢𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙈𝙎. 𝙎𝙐𝙈𝙈𝙀𝙍𝙎                         (blueminke​)

@greenscrunchy​​     /     chrissy   &   kacey   !

SHE’S THE LAST ONE IN THE CLASSROOM, which isn’t too far out of the norm, carefully placing her belongings into her purse - pencils, pens, wallet, car keys… she swings the bag’s strap over her shoulder as she’s preparing to head out for the day. It’s then that the door to the science classroom peeks open, causing her head to reel to the entryway. OH, CHRISSY… Painted lips curl into a pleasant smile as she stands up from her desk chair to approach the young woman. She knows that it’s been more than difficult for the poor girl to readjust to her life in Hawkins after everything that’s happened, but in the very least, she’s happy to be supportive. “Are you okay, honey?”

chrissy still heard the bats. no matter that she was in the right-side-up now, demobat screeches hid beneath the otherwise inoffensive chirping of nearby birds. the stratified sound grated against nerves in her spinal cord more frigidly than avian silhouettes on a powerline after watching the birds for the first time. hitchcock, for all his mangled and twisty brilliance, could never have fabricated a fear that clung close as breath itself.

rich sunlight washed into ms. summers’ classroom with all the syrupy golden ease of late afternoon, bouncing cheerfully against zeus’s terrarium. the corn snake lounged on a rock feature close to the glass wall, tongue tasting the air now and again. but suddenly the snake’s head turned toward chrissy still at her desk. creature and human locked eyes for a moment, transfixed, until the snake opened his mouth and hissed that time was up. 

the words seemed to come from miles away. chrissy still jumped and surrendered to a moment of spiky adrenaline which forcibly brought her wandering mind back to attention. it wasn’t zeus at all but ms. summers closing out class discussion. chrissy blinked wildly and organized her assignment folders, stuffed her backpack, and walked out like a zombie in a fog.

that was yesterday. 

today the smell of smoke follows her everywhere like it’s trapped in her nostrils. she waves at her friends with a weaker arm than last month even though graduation creeps ever closer. her grades are getting better by centimeters. except life, existence still doesn’t feel grounded when she keeps the truth of the upside down held so close. and it is the truth. but how real is the truth when almost no one knows?

                       ❝ trying. ❞  pathetic. chrissy can do so much better than whispering from the crack in the door.  ❝ today was okay. i’m going to my friend’s house later to help with cleaning up the last of the rubble on their street. ❞  one shoulder has ticked up as she tries to pour her discomfort somewhere else.  ❝  i just....i wondered if i could ask you something? about the earthquake. and....why i got lost. because there’s parts of what happened that scare me. ❞  please, her brain begs as chrissy finally dares to look her kind, pink-cheeked teacher straight in the eye. please don’t think i’m crazy.

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙊𝙋𝙃𝙀𝙇𝙄𝘼 𝙋𝙀𝙍𝙍𝙔                               ( sainterror ​)

@greenscrunchy​ : “i always feel sad for the girl that i was.”

pleated skirt smooths out between fingers before her elbows move to rest on the sticky mall table. ophelia considers the weight of chrissy’s words, how they feel like an anvil pressing on her chest. she swirls the red straw around in her cup and brings the bottom half to her mouth, licking the strawberry smoothie off the end, “i used to.” the admission is bitter on her tongue, phe’s brown eyes flicker up.

stray glitter speckles across her skin like freckles, over her lashes and dusted in her hair; it was her armor that reflects back in the yellow lighting of the food court. “and then i just stopped.” 

re: swallowed it down. re: boxed it up. re: poured gasoline over the top and watched it burn. 

grief was not foreign to ophelia perry — it grew around her bones like ivy strangling an old house. which made mourning parts of herself easy. which made killing parts of herself easier. 

she sighs and scrunches up her nose, the watered down smoothie was beginning to look unappetizing the further she stirs the straw, “i thought to myself, phe, if that girl was any good, she’d be sitting here — not me … gotta gut the parts of you that don’t fit anymore,” pull at the sinew of it, tug the meat away, “that’s the only way we can survive all of this.” for emphasis she rolls her eyes around them.

chrissy has learned to like iced tea. she has. it’s got a...taste. something to latch her wandering thoughts to as she sucks what entertainment she can through the straw. phe has red, the same color as chrissy, but the shade appears more vivid plunged into the last dregs of a milkshake. 

a little more alive.

it’s jarring, perpendicular to the topical mood. one that’s less visible than a spider’s web but more present and more sour than venom. it’s the lemon in chrissy’s tea turning sour and warped with every pull of liquid.

                  ❝ you think that’s part of growing up? just.....having to leave everything we thought we were behind? realizing we’re someone else? ❞  

it doesn’t seem correct to have this conversation as a pair of seventeen-or-so year olds in early june. not in starcourt mall surrounded by neon and swinging plastine shopping bags and shrieks of every single kid under seventeen in hawkins  concentrated in the same place, apparently. 

all of a sudden chrissy feels too old for all of this.

how did they get here? to this mental doldrum of withering under the harsh sun of reality catching up to them, the great fibs of youth fading away to husks that befit the parched heart of autumn better than the apex of summer? their very presence, immersed as they are in gridlocked angst, feels obverse to the setting. chrissy did not come to the mall to feel like a square peg smacking at a round hole and yet that’s what happened. maybe phe has a point. maybe, lurking under all the attempts at making sense of lives half lived, this is all there is. 

a last smack of semi-sweetness hiding in her tea yanks at a bit of hope still left. maybe resignation isn’t the totality of their lot. that sure would be nice. 

                    ❝ i’ve got an idea - for when you’re done. something we can do. ❞

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙀𝘿𝘿𝙄𝙀 𝙈𝙐𝙉𝙎𝙊𝙉                           ( hellmartyr​ )

you deserve better than this … better than me … — @greenscrunchy / angsty prompts

𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐘 𝐃𝐎𝐔𝐁𝐓𝐒 𝐒𝐏𝐑𝐔𝐍𝐆 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐊𝐒 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐔𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐈𝐋𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐒.

      at first eddie thought her sadness was a detail in a dream. a specter of the subconscious, summoned by whatever bullshit mayhem his beer-battered brain was slathering across his cortex. bad trip without the high, when senses got so convinced that reality was just a suggestion right up until your eyes split open and the lucid imagery turned a slippery mess.

      awareness emerged from a cloudy pool, prodding floaty nerves with tingling pins and needles. chrissy was a silent echo ringing in his ears, her words too old to be strung together were now indiscernible water drops dispersed into the corners like shades.

      dark eyes fluttered open to an even darker room. a backlighting of blue cut through the gap between the curtains and the window. the back of his hand, stationed beside his nose, soaked up the cobalt. eddie’s fingers retracted from the temptation to reach over and prove to himself that his friend was still asleep. that the lonely lie had not been real, just a figment of a morbid imagination. but the sour knot in his gut warned that the moment his warmth met hers, she’d betray them both with a wince.

      ❝ whose voice told you that? ❞ he asked the deep blue, ❝ vecna’s? ❞ venom coated the name. two thousand miles was not enough to stall a fresh the anger felt each time eddie recalled his unseen enemy. the lich survived, the chorus of heartbeats buried in his honeycomb scars reminded him that the promise of retribution at the climax of a hero’s tale was a fantasy, not a guarantee.

      crisp sheets rustled as the young man twisted around and peered at the soft outline balled up on the other side of the barrier. eddie hovered, searching for an explanation too private to see.

      ❝ yours? ❞ gingerly he sat up to project his plea over the fort, ❝ chris? ❞

      the headboard creaked against his weight as eddie propped himself against the frame. his perspective switched between the popcorn ceiling and the vortexed donald duck on his nightshirt.

      ❝ y’know, for a really long time, the only friends i had were in books. i, uh, i think middle school was the first time i hung out with someone and not because we were sent to the principal’s office together. so, can you level with me? because this isn’t exactly my field of expertise, ❞ the back of his skull clocked the wall as eddie fixated plaster clusters above, finding cohesive shapes were there was none, ❝ and fuck if i know what can be better than the best. ❞

a turned back was small defense from the wave of honesty soaking the darkened bedroom. chrissy had balled herself around a swelling hurricane of inferiority masked by a now faded silhouette of tweety bird, its cheery yellow emblazoned across her nightshirt faded into black shadow. her formerly upward mood had faded with an equal ferocity earlier that afternoon. being hopeful, even happy, something like truly happy, around eddie had become nearly as easy as breathing. natural. but it was as easy and natural to watch her bright little world closing in around her after listening to a crazed and caustic telephone message from none other than laura cunningham.

if nothing else, laura was consistent. there wasn’t a word in the message chrissy hadn’t been pierced by a thousand time before. she knew the cadence of her mother’s derision almost better than the sound of her own private thoughts. but it wasn’t a mother’s ire that bounced around her mind at the speed of a rogue basketball, or even a mother’s doubt.

                        ❝  mine. i say so. ❞

after all his kindness that he’d brought to her doorstep, this is what she had to offer. doubt.

                        ❝ i’m not just saying that, eddie. you –  ❞  god, what was the point? what was the point of her, being such a bottomless pit on whom generosity was wasted because she couldn’t even grasp it long enough for a chance at absolution? honestly, she must not deserve a drop if she was as watertight as a sieve. 

                        ❝ you came all this way and i’m a mess. ❞  the vise of her jaw clapped shut as how she truly sounded dawned upon her. belated good sense whispered the danger of what eddie might think she meant, right after the words marched out of her mouth.  ❝ scratch that. having you here…. it’s more than anyone’s done before? i guess i feel awful for wanting you to stay but i really don’t want you to leave. ❞

all the sequestered pain she’d been carrying like buried shards of glass since eddie arrived flayed her insides on the way out, dragging stringy regrets and shriveled, acid-burnt hopes along with them. a piteous river of entrails with so many shameful secrets on display, knotted beyond any hope of detangling and none of her tossing and turning in the middle of the night would sort her out. 

in the midst of her disquiet, chrissy eased to her other side where the pillow wall waited. her stupidest idea possibly ever. just over the top she could see eddie’s head, but that was all. it was a protection and a taunt all at once. a joke she'd cracked at her own expense. her left hand lifted almost without her permission to skate the top of the farcical wall and tug it down, just a little, to pull eddie’s presence a tiny bit closer. maybe this way he could hear what she was really trying to say in between all her bouts of lunacy. 

                        ❝ do you know what left handed people are called?  ❞