#chrissy is just a high crier ok

[ebongawk]

"Baby, baby, baby," Eddie practically shouted as he kicked his way into the apartment. Chrissy jumped from her curled up position on the couch, the book in her hands nearly launched across the room.

"Oh, my God," she laughed breathlessly, laying a hand over her heart. "Eddie, Jesus."

"Sorry," he said, not sounding particularly apologetic at all. "But you will never guess what I found at the store!"

He was holding up a paper grocery sack like it was a trophy, having dropped three other sacks when he barged in, and Chrissy's eyes darted between it and him incredulously.

"Groceries."

"Har, har." The grin still stretched over his cheeks made his sarcastic laughter almost genuine. "No. Well. Yes, but." With a flourish, he tore the paper bag away, revealing another plastic bag beneath. Chrissy blinked at it.

"Chicken nuggets?"

"Dinosaur chicken nuggets!" he shouted, evidently very pleased with his discovery. "The most epically childish thing in existence! One hit of these is guaranteed nostalgia!"

Pursing her lips around a grin, Chrissy shrugged. "I've never had them before."

Eddie looked at her for a long moment. The expression he wore when he wanted to wrap her up in a blanket and coddle her, which slipped into his eyes every time she admitted something sordid about her own childhood.

Instead, he just grinned, his eyes twinkling.

"Oh, sweetheart. You're in for a treat."

...

Two hours later, the oven was just finished baking their costumed chicken.

Eddie and Chrissy were also just finished baking.

She was sitting on the couch again, relaxed and riding the buzz of their shared joint as Eddie set a plate piled high with nuggets on the coffee table. Adorned on either side by ranch dressing, buffalo sauce, and barbecue sauce, he traipsed across the living room to load Predator into the VCR and plop down beside her.

"Dig in, sweetness," Eddie said, easy smile and red-rimmed eyes half-focused as he fast-forwarded through the movie previews. Chrissy leaned forward, plucking the nugget off the top as Eddie grabbed a couple and dipped them into various sauces.

Chrissy stared at the little nugget in her hand.

It was clearly a stegosaurus. The ridges on its back like fish scales and the curve of its spine made it easy to identify. It was ridiculous, how some tiny fried piece of chicken could take on the form of another animal, wasn't it? Even if that animal had been extinct for millions and millions of years. And the stegosaurus would never know that humans created a little snack to emulate its visage. They would never know that humans existed at all.

"Chrissy?" Eddie asked, his mouth half-full of her little stegosaurus's friends. "Baby, what's wrong?"

Her eyes suddenly blurred, and Chrissy let out a hitched breath.

"Oh. Shit. Sweetness." She could feel Eddie's hands on her shoulders, trying to turn her body toward him as she held that tiny little chicken nugget in her palm. Staring at his grainy little body even if she couldn't see him. "Baby, are you okay? Are you having trouble with this kind of food right now? I could make–– Well. Uh. I don't know if I can make anything, but––"

"He's just––" She broke off with another sob, thrusting her hands toward where she assumed Eddie's face was to show him the stegosaurus. "He's just so cute, Eddie! Look at him!"

She couldn't see Eddie through her tears, but she felt his hands squeeze her shoulders once, then twice, as she ran her fingertip over the tiny breadcrumb ridges of the stegosaurus's spine.

"Chrissy––"

"He doesn't even know that he's edible!" she cried. "He's just trying to live his little dinosaur life and be adorable!"

Eddie laughed, bodily pulling her into his arms until she was tucked up against his chest.

"Oh, baby girl," he cooed, rocking her back and forth. "He is pretty cute, isn't he?"

"Yes," she pouted. "He's just–– He's just a baby, Eddie! I can't eat him!"

"He's an herbivore, y'know? He was gonna get eaten in the Jurassic period too. You're just playing your part in the circle of life."

"I'm not a t-rex!" Chrissy retorted, unable to keep from crying harder. "And h-he doesn't deserve that! He's too cute!"

Eddie's laughter rumbled against her, bubbling up from his chest and tucked into her hair. Affronted, Chrissy looked up at him.

"Are you laughing at me?"

"No, princess, no," he said quickly, his nose scrunched up in humor. "No, it's just–– Baby, he's just a nugget. He's not even a real stegosaurus."

"I don't care," she huffed around her own laugh, looking down at the little nugget in her hand. The tears had begun to dry on her cheeks, and she nuzzled into Eddie's chest as she continued holding the stegosaurus close.

"You're literally too adorable for words, Cunningham." She felt the tell-tale sign of lips pressed against her crown as Eddie slowly stroked his fingers up and down her spine. After a moment, he let out a long sigh. "Should I put our reptilian friends away and order a pizza instead?"

"Yes," Chrissy replied, still pouting a little. "We can't eat them, Eddie, they're just babies."

A finger came up beneath her chin, gently tilting her head back until she had to look up at him. Those chocolate eyes she loved so much danced with mirth, lips twisted like he wanted desperately to conceal his smile. Which he was doing a poor job of.

"We'll see how you feel about it when you're sober," he acquiesced. "For now, how does pepperoni and hamburger sound?"

Chrissy grinned, leaning up to kiss him in lieu of an answer.

#hellcheer #eddissy #eddie x chrissy #eddie munson #hellcheer drabble #chrissy x eddie #chrissy cunningham #cw weed #cw marijuana #tw weed #tw marijuana #stranger things #chrissy is just a high crier ok #also the dinosaur chicken nugget wasn't actually invented until 1993 #by the museum of natural history to celebrate the release of jurassic park #but since i didn't explicitly state the time period i guess it doesn't matter #tw eating issues #tw disordered eating #but just a little bit