Chapter Text
SEPTEMBER 1986
Eddie Munson is not a hero. He’s the first one to admit that, and so even he is surprised when, two weeks into attending Hawkins U, he rescues a cheerleader.
It’s honestly weird enough for him to be 20-years-old and a freshman. College isn’t really something he’s particularly excited about, but he’s doing it for Wayne, who scrimped and saved and tried so damn hard to give Eddie a chance that no Munson has ever had before.
He’d promised himself he wouldn’t be showing up to any parties full of freshly-graduated eighteen-year-olds, but his roommate Steve – also 20-years-old, a “non-traditional student” like himself, had begged him to go. He and Steve are definitely different. Steve is rich — he drives a BMW — and he played sports in high school. But he’s also kind of a dork, and he spent the last two years working at an after school program trying to figure out what to do with his life. Eddie did too — only he was playing bar gigs and working as a mechanic.
Steve is at Hawkins U to get an education degree. Eddie is there for creative writing. The school put them in the upperclassmen housing — small mercies — and they live in something resembling a two bedroom apartment. Their beds are even full size.
When Steve begged him to go to some off-campus house party, Eddie grumbled and complained but went anyway. What else was he gonna do in the apartment by himself on a Friday night?
The party was everything he thought it would be. Loud, crowded, full of frat boys and bad booze. Steve had immediately gotten dragged into a game of beer pong — Eddie blames his miraculous hair for his ease at fitting in with this crowd — and Eddie sulks in a corner with a cup of terrible beer.
The joint in his pocket is calling his name but he doesn’t particularly want to share, so he heads for what looks like a back door. And that’s when the trouble starts.
He’s about to light up when a tall guy around his age stumbles out of the door, holding up a tiny little blonde cheerleader. He knows there was some sort of pep rally thing tonight — football starts tomorrow — so he’s not surprised she’s still in uniform. He also recognizes her immediately. She was in his orientation group during move-in.
The lights are on, but no one is home in her big green eyes.
“Where are we going?” she asks, slurred speech matching her shuffling walk.
The guy chuckles. He seems a little buzzed himself but definitely not wasted. “My place, freshie.”
Eddie grew up in a trailer park. He knows how to keep his head down and mind his own business. But, he just can’t this time.
“Hey, dude, I think she should go home. To her own place,” Eddie interrupts, stepping easily in front of them. He keeps his body language loose – he’s not looking for a fight, but if he has to, he will.
The guy rolls his eyes. “She’s good.”
Her eyes get wide and she beams at him. “Eddie! Hi!”
He’s very surprised she remembers him. Sure, she had laughed at the jokes he made under his breath during one of the stupid group games, but he hadn’t seen her since.
“Hey, Chrissy right?”
She nods, messy ponytail bobbing.
“You remember me?”
She sounds in awe of that information. He snorts and nods.
“Yeah, sure do. You wanna go home?”
The guy holds her a little tighter. “I said she’s good, man.”
Eddie bends down a bit to look Chrissy straight in her glassy eyes. “Sweetheart, you good? You want to go back to this guy’s place?”
Even if she says yes, he’s not going to let her. He can smell vodka on her and she’s too loose, too clumsy.
She shakes her head. “I want to stay with you.”
Well ain’t that something , he thinks, but of course she’s drunk, so he’s not going to get too excited by that.
“You heard the lady,” Eddie tells the guy. “She’s staying.”
The guy yanks Chrissy toward him and heads for the side gate. “C’mon.”
Eddie takes a deep breath and looks at the sky. Great. Here he goes.
“Nope,” Eddie says, jogging to cut him off again. “Not happening. She’s drunk, and she doesn’t want to go with you.”
He holds out a hand to Chrissy, tries to make his eyes as gentle as he can even though he wants to pummel this jackass.
“C’mon. I’ll getcha home.”
“Oh so you’re gonna take her,” the guy scoffs. He lets go of Chrissy to shove Eddie, and Eddie sighs deeply.
“Don’t do this.”
Chrissy is watching him curiously. Just as the guy straightens up to shove him again, Chrissy darts forward and takes his hand.
“Let’s go, Eddie,” she slurs in a cute little whisper. She starts tugging him away, a slight stumble to her step, and the guy seems to know he’s lost this battle. He curses, calls Chrissy something unflattering, and disappears back into the house.
“Alright, sweetheart, where do you live?” he asks her. Her hand is wrapped tightly around his and she’s frowning at it.
“Why do your fingers feel like that?”
Well, that’s not a question he expected to be asked tonight, or maybe ever, by Chrissy.
“I play guitar,” he explains. “It gives you calluses. Did you come here with anyone?”
She shakes her head. “My roommates didn’t want to come. I only came because of the cheer squad.”
She leans in and whispers loudly to him, like she’s divulging a big secret.
“I’ve never drank before.”
He laughs and uses his free hand to tilt her chin up. “How’s it going for you?”
She shakes her head slightly. “Not so good. I’m so sleepy.”
He smiles softly as she yawns. “I can see that. I’ll get you home safe, okay? No funny business. Where do you live?”
She frowns again, her lips pouting in thought. It is, frankly, criminally adorable.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know where you live?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t remember. We just moved in. I can’t — I don’t —“
Her eyes are filling with tears which is much less adorable, because it makes his stomach turn, and he quickly pats her shoulder in a way he hopes is comforting.
“Hey, hey, that’s okay.”
“Where am I gonna sleep?” she cries. “Oh no, oh no…”
“Shh, it’s okay, you can come with me okay? I’ll sleep on the couch and you can have my bed tonight. I’m sure you’ll remember where you live in the morning.”
She gives him a shaky smile and squeezes his hand. “Oh, Eddie, that’s so nice.”
“It’s no big deal. C’mon, let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
That makes her giggle through her tears and he grins. She holds his hand the whole walk to his apartment, and he doesn’t have the heart to let go even though he probably should.
When they get there he shows her to the bathroom to wash up — she has glitter and mascara on her cheeks — and races to his room to make sure it’s presentable. He hasn’t lived there long enough to make too big a mess, at least. He tracks down a clean t-shirt and a pair of his plaid pajama bottoms which he offers her when she comes out, her hair pulled from its ponytail and her eyes free of makeup.
She beams at him and reaches for the bottom of her cheer top, lifting it over her head so quickly, right in front of him, that he barely has time to yelp and throw his hands over his eyes.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Chrissy mumbles, a bit sniffly. He can’t see her through his fingers.
“It’s okay.”
“I know I’m gross.”
“Huh?” he splutters. “What? No. You’re like, insanely gorgeous, but you’re…ya know, drunk. You ever wanna do that again sober, I’m all in.”
He still can’t see her but he hears her skirt unzipping and the light rustle of clothes as she pulls on his pants.
“Really?” she asks in apparent disbelief. God her voice.
“Uh, yeah, Chrissy, really.”
“I’m dressed,” she tells him softly. He moves his hands and the sight in front of him is honestly maybe even better than the quick glimpse he’d gotten before.
She’s swimming in his Black Sabbath shirt and black and white pajama pants. The pants are so long he can’t see her feet. She looks so — comfy, he could just squish her.
She darts forward and hugs him around the middle, burying her face in his chest. “Thanks for taking care of me. I’m such a mess.”
He tentatively wraps his arms around her, giving her a little squeeze.
“No you’re not. You’re fine, Chrissy.”
It takes a lot of mental effort to extract himself from her, but he keeps repeating the mantra of she’s drunk, so he gets her a big glass of water and sets her up in his bed. She snuggles down in the sheets and smiles at him so warmly he could die.
“Sweet dreams, Eddie.”
He leaves her with the door shut and collapses on the couch in his clothes. It’s so short his legs hang over one end. It takes a while for him to fall asleep, but when he does he definitely does have sweet dreams.
***
“Dude,” Steve hisses. “Dude!”
He shakes Eddie awake, who blinks into the light in confusion. His neck and back are killing him.
“Huh?”
“Why did a cheerleader just come out of your room in your pajamas?”
Eddie blinks some more, rapidly, trying to orient himself to the world of the waking. His belt had dug into his stomach overnight and he rubs the tender spot with a wince.
“She was drunk. Some guy was trying to take her home.”
Steve grins. “That guy was you huh?”
Eddie makes a noise of disgust. “I don’t go after drunk girls, Harrington. I may be trailer trash but I’m not a creep. She couldn’t remember where she lives so I lent her my bed.”
Steve just keeps grinning. “And your jammies.”
“Don’t call them that,” Eddie says, pointing his finger at Steve. “You’re already way too close to being a dad.”
“I am not.”
“That Dustin kid has called you every day.”
Steve opens his mouth but stops as Chrissy emerges from Eddie’s bathroom. She’s back in her cheer clothes, hair still down. She smiles nervously at him.
“Um, good morning.”
“Hey Chrissy,” Eddie greets. “This is my roommate Steve. Steve, Chrissy.”
He’s dreading this. Steve will give her his best former-jock grin and Chrissy will flutter her doe eyes and next thing Eddie knows he’ll be seeing her coming out of Steve’s room on Saturday mornings. He just knows it. Two pretty little popular kids, meant to be together.
Only Chrissy barely looks at Steve, just glances over with a polite greeting before turning back to Eddie.
“Thank you so much for last night. You’re my hero.”
Steve’s eyebrows shoot up and he practically chokes.
“Anytime,” Eddie replies when his brain starts functioning again. “Do you remember where you live?”
She laughs self-consciously, staring at the floor. “I think so, yeah. I’m in Brenner Hall.”
Eddie stands, slapping his thighs. “I’ll walk you there, I know where it is.”
“Oh that’s okay, I don’t want to put you out—“
He thinks of how they’d look together in the cold light of day — his long hair, rumpled shirt and ripped jeans, her perfect face and cheer uniform.. He’d been “the freak” in high school. Girls like Chrissy would have run the other way if he’d even spoken to them. He was lucky she’d held his hand, even drunk.
“You’re not,” Steve jumps in. “Eddie was going on a bagel run anyway, weren’t you?”
Eddie nods quickly. “Yep. Sure was.”
“It’s a tradition,” Steve supplies. “Boys Bagel Breakfast.”
Eddie wants to smack him. Boys Bagel Breakfast?
Chrissy giggles though, and it’s his new favorite song, for sure.
“If you’re sure..”
Eddie grabs his keys off of the coffee table and heads for his room to grab a jacket. He looks at Chrissy in her little tank and skirt and hands the leather one — his warmest — to her. He slides the denim one over his shoulders.
“You’re gonna freeze out there.”
She colors prettily and puts his jacket on. It covers her hands and lands somewhere near the top of her thighs. It’s somehow even cuter than his pajamas were, which should not be physically possible. He opens the door and holds it for her as she steps into the hall. He does his best to ignore Steve’s enthusiastic thumbs up.
“Thanks again,” she tells him when they hit the street. “I’m so embarrassed.”
“Seriously, it’s no big deal.”
She shoots him a look. “Eddie, I basically walked into an after school special. Something really bad could have happened.”
“Yeah but you don’t need to be embarrassed by that. That’s not on you.”
She goes quiet, staring at her feet as they walk. The morning is crisp and cold, the beginnings of fall in the air.
“Hey, what’s your last name?” Eddie asks suddenly. “Normally I learn a girl’s last name before I let her wear my pajamas.”
Chrissy laughs, that bright noise that he’s already addicted to after just one night in her presence.
“And here I thought I was special!”
“I did let you use the special pajamas,” he insists. “Steve even calls them jammies .”
That earns him another laugh, which makes him want to fist pump. He manages to resist the urge.
“It’s Cunningham.”
“Chrissy Cunningham,” he says slowly, like he’s testing the words in his mouth. “You sound like a soap opera character. Got an evil twin I need to be worried about?”
Another laugh, a full-bellied damn-near cackle.
“No!”
“Have you died and come back? Oh, oh, face transplant?”
When she keeps laughing, he pinches her side.
“ You have amnesia!”
“If I’m a soap opera character, what are you, Eddie Munson ?”
His heart flutters when she says his full name. “Chrissy Cunningham, did you snoop in my bedroom and learn my last name?”
She nods sheepishly, biting back a big smile.
A cop car drives by and he shouts after it. “Officer, arrest her!”
She gasps in that disbelieving, completely endearing way of hers. “Eddie!”
They’ve reached Brenner Hall, just a couple of blocks away. She’s looking at him curiously, and it kind of makes him want to hide behind his hair.
“You’re not what I thought you’d be like.”
He smirks. “Mean and scary, huh?”
He knows what kind of vibe he has. He’d carefully curated it, actually, years of being the kid with the dad in jail and the mom who ran off. It didn’t help that he loved nerdy stuff unapologetically, that he played metal as loud as he could at a middle school talent show. If he couldn’t beat them, he could scare them, and that’s what he did.
She nods sheepishly, looking embarrassed to have thought it. He smiles, comfortingly he hopes, and for some godforsaken reason, taps the tip of her nose with his finger.
“Ya know, I actually thought you’d be kinda mean and scary too.”
She makes her eyes big, that wondrous tone back in her voice. “Me?”
He laughs warmly — cause god, does this girl make him feel warm. His hands itch to tug on her red-gold hair.
“ Terrifying.”
She toes at the ground and then throws her arms around his neck.
“Thanks again, Eddie.”
He fights against his desire to sniff her hair. “Cunningham, you’ve gotta stop thanking me.”
“Sorry, sorry,” she says, pulling out of his arms. “Are you coming to the game today?”
“It’s not really my uh, thing,” he says with a slight grimace. “But I hope you have a good time.”
He waves his arms around, loosely imitating cheerleading. She laughs and snatches his hands. He really hopes she can’t feel his pulse pounding in his wrists.
“What are you up to tonight?”
He shrugs. “Probably going to practice some new songs and hang out with Steve or something.”
“Well I am not going to any after parties,” she says seriously. “So, maybe you and Steve would wanna come over to our place after the game? My roommates are really nice.”
He wants to tell Chrissy he’d hang out at her place even if her roommates were serial killers. Instead, he plays it very cool by immediately blurting out, “yeah absolutely” as quickly as humanly possible.
His cheeks burn a little but he’s vindicated by the light pink on her face..
“Go get some greasy food and coffee,” he tells her, nodding toward the dining hall. “It’ll help.”
“See you tonight,” she says, and calls after him as he turns on his heel to walk away. “Enjoy Boys Bagel Breakfast!”
God, he’s gonna kill Steve.
***
When Chrissy meets him and Steve in the lobby of Brenner hall later that night, she’s in light jeans and a white tank top with his leather jacket on. Steve nudges him so hard in the ribs it nearly knocks the wind out of him. She takes them to the third floor and ushers them into her little dorm-apartment, where someone is playing Fleetwood Mac on a record player in the corner. It looks a lot like theirs, only there’s four bedrooms and two bathrooms with a much smaller kitchenette.
A girl with a square face, short hair, and some of the biggest eyes Eddie has ever seen greets them from the sink. “Hey! I’m Nancy.”
Steve lights up in a way Eddie just knows means trouble. Another girl with short red hair in a big pink sweater waves from the couch. “Barb.”
“And I’m Robin,” the last roommate says, her bangs chaotic on her forehead. She’s in a green military looking jacket, with a lot of gold accents. “I’m in the band. That’s why I’m dressed like a Napoleonic war general.”
“We have beer, whiskey, and soda,” Chrissy offers. “Can I get you something?”
They take two beers from Nancy and settle in the living room on the floor. Barb looks immediately mischievous.
“Let’s play Never Have I Ever.”
“Barb,” Nancy says with a warning glance.
“What? It’s a great icebreaker.”
“I’m in,” Robin says with a shrug as she plops down next to Steve. “I’ve never done like, anything , so this game doesn’t scare me.”
Chrissy sits cross-legged on the floor next to Eddie, holding a can of soda. She smiles at him, her knee against his thigh.
“Learn any good new songs?”
“I’m working on a couple. How was the game?”
“They won,” Chrissy says. “And I managed to not puke while flying despite the hangover, so it was good.”
Barb kicks the game off with an easy one – “Never have I ever driven a car”, and everyone except for Robin drinks. Steve goes next with a victorious smirk, “Never have I ever had a crush on a guy”, but Robin doesn’t drink yet again. Nancy gives Steve a smirk of her own – “Never have I ever been the captain of a sports team.”
That gets Steve and Chrissy, who owns up to being the head cheerleader at her high school just two towns over from Eddie’s. Their schools had played each other in sports – not that he would have noticed, given that he never went to any school-sponsored events. It makes him a little sad, though, that he could have seen Chrissy’s face years earlier if he’d just gone to one measly basketball game his senior year.
It’s Eddie’s turn next so he gets Chrissy with “Never have I ever done a backflip.” After her sip of Sprite she smiles at him and offers to show him sometime, since he’ll never see it at a football game. He catches Nancy and Barb share a long look.
She gets him back next with “Never have I ever played the guitar” – that also gets Robin for the first time, who can play a few instruments including the guitar.
The game goes around and around in circles and they all learn a lot about each other. Namely, Eddie learns that Nancy Wheeler is not to be messed with when she drinks to “Never have I ever owned a gun.”
She shrugged at his and Steve’s shocked stares. “I have two.”
At the end of the night, Chrissy gives him back his jacket and it smells like vanilla. It’s still warm from her body heat as he slips it on which makes his heart just ache. He’s so happy on the walk home that it literally hurts.
Steve watches him knowingly. “So, is Chrissy single?”
“Don’t know,” Eddie says shortly. He assumes she is, given the last twenty four hours, but he hasn’t explicitly asked her.
“I’m surprised you don’t know. You seem kinda into her.”
“We’re friends,” Eddie says as casually as he can. “I think.”
“Interesting. Think I should go for it?”
Eddie stops in his tracks. “What?”
Steve gives him a Cheshire cat grin. “Should I go for Chrissy, ya think?”
It occurs to Eddie that Steve is messing with him. He rolls his eyes and throws up a lazy middle finger.
“Stay away from her Harrington.”
“I knew I was right,” Steve cackles. “You’re gonna be doodling Mr. Chrissy Cunningham in your diary when we get home.”
Eddie grabs him into a headlock as they walk side by side, messing up Steve’s perfectly coiffed hair in the process. College is different than high school – no one seems to care about the distinctions that had defined people back then. He and Steve never would have been friends if they’d grown up in the same town. Chrissy probably never would have spared a well-meaning, funny nerd like Barb a glance. Nancy and Robin would never have crossed paths.
But instead, for the first time in his life, Eddie thinks he might be making a group of friends. Not just one or two here and there, not guys he plays in a band with – a bona fide friend group. They all have plans to go to Benny’s, a Hawkins diner that’s a favorite among college kids, for a late breakfast tomorrow.
It’s something he never really let himself admit he wanted, back when he’d watch teenagers pile into cars together on Friday afternoons jabbering about their plans for the weekend. Now he’s a part of those plans. It makes him nervous, and he’s kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, but for now, he’s going to do his best to enjoy it.
Maybe if he’s funny enough, big enough, cool enough, they’ll let him hang around.
Maybe these next four years won’t be as bad as he thought.