I Need Everyone To Know That This Is How Chrissy Reacts To Hearing Live Metal For The First Time.

okay i think i’ve waited a healthy amount of time — here’s the inaugural starter call! any and all verses are open as options. lengths will range from several inches to a mile. may or may not also include bonus musical tracks.   no cap / no expiration.

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙎𝙏𝙀𝙑𝙀 𝙃𝘼𝙍𝙍𝙄𝙉𝙂𝙏𝙊𝙉                      (starsinshadows​)

@greenscrunchy​ gets a starter cause I said so…

     The early December weather in Indiana should have made the idea of an outdoor party unacceptable, but with a bonfire going and enough alcohol, most of the teenagers present had only bothered with sweatshirts and body heat to supplement despite the snow on the ground outside of the fire’s heat. Steve had given up his coat to the “flavor of the week” – a pretty girl named Becky that he would actually probably date for a month or so, possibly through Christmas if she continued to not ask questions and stayed content to just be casual and have fun. She was currently laughing with some of her friends on the other side of the fire, beers in hand, and probably gossiping about their boyfriends or some poor kid that wasn’t popular and didn’t deserve the bullshit.      He leaned back on the lawn chair someone had brought out, looking sprawled and comfortable as he sipped at his beer like the King he was supposed to be, and he put on the smiles, shot back insults and sharp jokes as was required of him whenever the attention landed on him. Becky had come over fifteen minutes before to sit across his lap and make out, probably to show off to someone, but she’d gone back to her friends for the time being. He was her ride, so she’d make her way back to him before the end of the night, and she’d make sure she had a story to tell them all in the morning, he was sure.      He didn’t care. At least, that was what he told himself, and it was mostly true even if not in the way that he wanted it to be. He didn’t care about any of this, and it showed in brief, quiet moments when he stared at the fire and the exhaustion that he tried to keep hidden eased out at the edges of his being and the strange little streaks of gray that were appearing in his hair caught the firelight. Few people dared mention it, not willing to have Tommy H, Carol or half a dozen other people turn on them, but the kids had also noticed and Nancy had asked if he was sleeping at all. Only Robin knew and she’d passed on this particular gathering – not that he could blame her. He was ‘holding court’, so to speak, but he wasn’t interested in any of it and hadn’t been for awhile. Part of him wished he could just wander off into the woods and leave the circus behind, but that was the whole point of the charade to begin with; he had to hide the fact that he didn’t belong here anymore.

was chrissy cunningham a party person or not? 

staring hard into the dancing flames of the titular bonfire, chrissy clutched the neck of a wine cooler in both hands and asked the question for quite possibly the twentieth time since her upper school career had begun. and for the twentieth-or-other time, she still wasn’t sure. 

maybe it was a hawkins problem. were their parties lackluster thanks to the somewhat backwoods, down-home, small town (et cetera, et cetera) feel to hawkins? it wasn’t actually that small, all things considered, it just wasn’t a city. maybe that was the source of the issue and only cities had good parties. or was it just that she was inexperienced? chrissy scoffed at nothing and watched as the feathery plume of her frozen breath flew off to join the embers in the air. no, she’d been to enough “my parents are gone this weekend!” get-togethers and basketball game afterparties to use that excuse.

even more depressing was the thought that maybe parties were just like this everywhere and hawkins wasn’t an exception but the rule.

                       ❝ like what? ❞  a female voice seemed to slice through chrissy’s inner monologue. she glanced up sharply, but sighed once she put it all together: the interruption was just becky, having absconded from her dramatic perch on her throne - aka steve - exclaiming something to tammy and sue at chrissy’s elbow. a little spooky, but overall harmless. 

out of curiousity chrissy tipped her body backward so as to look past the girls. sure enough, there lounged king steve with his beer and his hair reigning over all of his subjects with a fuzzy smirk and the occasional cheers and nod for good measure. it could have been the inconstant light of the fire casting shadows where none usually sunk, but she could have sworn steve looked aloof in a way that didn’t quite match with his usually too cool for this school attitude. 

an absentminded tap of a nail against glass reminded the strawberry blonde of the drink she was still gripping. chrissy snorted lightly at nothing again, hoping neither becky or sue heard her. always the possibility of the wine cooler making everything just a little more maudlin to factor in, too. chrissy definitely considered herself a part-time lightweight, but a cooler and half should hardly be enough to make her buzzed unless her tolerance changed in the past month. 

except that she leaned back one more time, a little less steadily, and now steve looked hollow. haggard firelight washed across him courtesy of the still healthy blaze, but not even that seemed to break apart his dull mien. okay, something was up. without question.

one foot at a time chrissy did her best to scoot past the nearby knot of girls and amble in steve’s direction without being pulled back toward the fire. which is where she would like to be but for the fact that heaviness spread over steve’s brow was more interesting than discussing the macy’s christmas sale. becky did whine her name but only once, and chrissy assured her of a return at some point. by then she was halfway to steve’s lawn chair. only a few more steps and she’d come up beside the saggy excuse for a seat. mercifully some heat still reached into the fringes where steve was hiding.

without so much as a pause, chrissy plopped to her haunches and curled herself over her knees facing the fire but with squinted eyes pointed toward steve. this way she wouldn’t be planting her rump in a pile of snow and making the evening even less pleasant for herself.

                      ❝ what’s up? ❞  asked through her jacket sleeve, the popped p emerged a little less sharp but nothing could hide the sound of a grin that verged on loopy.  ❝ not enough beer or too much? you look kinda like the kingdom’s seen better days. ❞  

 — To the Young Who Want to Die, Gwendolyn Brooks  

[ text ID: Graves grow no green that you can use. / Remember, green’s your color. / You are Spring. ]

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. ❞

chrissy will eventually warm up a little to the aggressive sounds of metal although she never really becomes a fan fan. however, the moment eddie/cc plays her metallica’s “one”, she immediately latches on and never lets go. that is her metallica song.

𝕃𝕀𝕊𝔸 𝔾𝔸ℝ𝕃𝔸ℕ𝔻'𝕊 𝕄𝕀𝕏𝕋𝔸ℙ𝔼  X  𝒻𝓇𝑜𝓂 𝒸𝒽𝓇𝒾𝓈𝓈𝓎   ( @nonangelic​ )

as long as nobody’s listening, this fate of our is worsening ( 24 - flor )  /  heaven can you help us where we can’t go ( covered by roses - within temptation )  /  angels fall like rain and love is all of heaven away ( the ghost in you - the psychedelic furs )  /  ghost duet - louie zong

( ᵔ◡ᵔ )

reblog this to give the person you reblogged this from a gold star because they’ve been stellar today and they deserve it ⭐️

𝘿𝙀𝘼𝙍 𝙈𝙄𝙉𝘿𝙔 𝙃𝘼𝙂𝘼𝙉                          (cheerleadcr​)

@greenscrunchy​​​ liked this post!

❛ The team here is genuinely so much better than it was in Milford. I mean, like, seriously we never had boys cheering with us there! Plus, it’s way bigger here too. I thought going from one small town to another meant things wouldn’t be too different but, guess I was wrong. ❜

                         ❝ that’s really cool of you to say. ❞  and high compliments from another girl who looked like she lived and breathed the sport as much as chrissy did.  ❝ our guys are awesome! we can do so many more formations and routines with them here. but i’m proud of our whole team. ❞  the strawberry blonde couldn’t help but stand up a little straighter with preening glee.  ❝ they work super hard, and it shows. have you been able to meet most of them yet? you’ve probably met our coach already, right? i know it’s a lot so soon. ❞