@cheerlcd ♱ said [ TRUTH OR DARE ] receiver admits something to sender that they’ve never told anyone else.
criminal minds inspired action prompts : accepting!
plume of smoke exhaled from chapped mouth clouds otherwise sticky summer air. despite a now-absconded jock’s vile words hitting too close, he grins. chrissy fuckin’ cunningham is kind of awesome. who knew ? or perhaps eddie’s standards are too low — perhaps anyone defending eddie from verbal assault in even the meekest of manners would be deemed METAL AS SHIT ; there are solemn few in town who would ever dare to be seen as shielding the freak from vitriol deserved.
eddie can count on one hand those he can call friend / too many of them are too young to understand ; sweet kidlets who know only their silver-tongued dungeon master, awe-inspiring & heroic in his valiant effort to keep the attention of bullies off of them and on himself. it’s a role eddie is happy to play. it’s a good thing to be. but a friend his own age - someone with whom to lay his own guard down - is a thing sorely missed. there had been ronnie, once. his secrets had been safe in her drumstick-callused hands ; they’d been more akin to TWINS than friends. but the world had come calling, and ronnie had left eddie in her rear-view mirror as easily as she had hawkins.
chrissy is nothing like ronnie — too blonde, too perky, too saccharine. the feeling she stirs in eddie’s ribcage is the same, though : the ill-advised illusion of SAFETY. the comfort that comes with the presence of a friend whose eyes hold no judgment regardless of truths that may push the rest of the world to scorn. perhaps it’s that stupid sentimentality that spurs eddie on to speak.
“your allyship against my tormentors is sweet, milady, but unnecessary. the sweaty sportsball players of the world will always look down upon us freaks.” eddie pauses, gaze conveniently downcast to the cigarette he is now stomping out beneath his boot. he’s only ever done this once, wouldn’t know how to look her in the eyes. “besides, they’re not wrong. when they call me queer, that is. so it's kind of a shit insult.”
the words leave smirking mouth sounding all-too confident for how flighty eddie feels. he is no longer nineteen and drenched in bravado, but thirteen years old, hair buzzed & eyes steely as he shouts the only thing he can think of to get wayne to stop giving a fuck and let him look after himself. he feels as FLIGHTY now as he had then, waiting for one wrong word in reaction to clasp in his desperate hands as an excuse to run away.
eddie isn’t afraid of shit, these days. not his good-for-nothing dad, not the normals who taunt and jeer from their plastic cafeteria table thrones. how stupidly funny, then, that right now chrissy cunningham is the most terrifying fuckin’ thing in the world, standing there with eddie’s well-kept secret torn bloody from his chest and placed into her unwilling hands. she could tell everyone. she could spit on him, could decide that everyone had been right after all - that he’s just as gutter-destined as rumor claims. SHIT, this was a bad idea. damn warm fuzzy friendship feelings, making eddie do dumb shit like be honest.
