#while Tina and Bad are friends - I wouldn't say they're as close as Bad and Pierre? if that makes sense

[mangofanarts]

Thinking about how in purgatory....They split Bad off from his closer relationships with people by having them in different teams (Max, Bagi and Etoiles in Green gay ninjas, Foolish and Baghera in Bolas). How Bad's only close friend that was in the same team as him was Aypierre and then he ends up with Aypierre as his cellmate too < 3

[glitterslag]

Give us some jealous Eddie headcanons

Thanks for the ask my dear 💜 once again I've written a whole ass essay>>>

Eddie's a jealous person, but he keeps a lot of that bottled up inside.

Before he and Chris were official, obviously he'd be jealous having to see her with Jason. Especially because Jason likes to flaunt their relationship all over the school. I'm talking canoodling up against the lockers, the whole nine yards. Towards the end, Jason knows his boyfriend status is in real jeopardy, so he's much more physical with her in public, too. Like a dog trying to mark its territory (gross!). But of course, Eddie can't say anything about that. All he can do is suffer in silence and try not to look.

I think it's a bit of a double whammy for him because he knows he could treat her better, he knows they're better for each other than her and Jason every could be. That's why it's so maddening. But at the same time, he's crippled by self-doubt and insecurity, so he can't help but compare himself to Jason.

He's never looked up to the popular crowd in the same way other kids at school do, so it's not that. He wouldn't be caught dead playing basketball, or exhibiting "pep" (the horror!). But Eddie knows he's a burnout. He knows his grades are down and that he's heading nowhere fast, even if he does manage to graduate this time. He's never thought of himself as very good looking, either, not in the cookie cutter, prince charming way that Jason is. So all of that combined means he doesn't think he'd be worthy of someone like chrissy. It just wouldn't make sense.

Chrissy pretty much loses all her friends at the end of the school year, what with her being grounded, breaking up with jason and isolating herself from everyone by refusing to come to social events (even after she's un-grounded). During the summer before college, Eddie is practically the only person Chrissy sees outside her family, and maybe Tina occasionally (I think out of all the cheer girls, she'd be most concerned for Chris, and force her way into her world whether Chris wants it or not). Anyway. Because of that, Eddie isn't exactly competing for her attention at this point, so jealousy probably wouldn't be something that played a huge factor in their relationship that summer. I think if anything, though, Eddie can be prone to obsessing a little over Chris's past with Jason, wondering how he's comparing. Whether he took her out on better dates. He probably was able to spend more money on her ((as if chrissy cares about that, but from Eddie's perspective it's a big deal and he's feeling inadequate😥)). I feel like something Eddie has always dreamed about being able to do is to hand his girl a wad of cash and be like "here baby, go get your nails did." But he pretty much thinks he'll never be able to do things like that for Chrissy.

I don't think he'd dare say any of it out loud, though. He's honestly just enjoying things while they last. He knows Chris is off to college in the fall, and he has no expectations that things will carry on beyond that. He has a finite amount of time with her and he just wants to make the most of it, so he tries to push bad thoughts out of his mind.

The pair of them get really close really quick, though. I mean, they already were close, but now that schools over and Jason's out of the way and they don't have to impose boundaries on their friendship anymore, it's different. They see each other most days while Chrissy's parents are at work. They talk on the phone or the walkie talkies for hours every night. That's not to mention the making out and... other things they've recently started doing, too. Chrissy even sleeps over at his house if she can get away with it. It's not often, but if her parents are ever working late, or if she can manage to feed them a lie, then yeah. She's packing her overnight bag.

So by the time Chrissy does leave for college, it's not so easy to just let her go gracefully, like Eddie had planned. He's upset, but he doesn't make her promise him anything except that she'll call. Keep him updated about how her life's going. And at first, she does. But that drops off after a little while, which I talk about in this fic.

He'd even talked about driving up to see her (it's not far, totally doable to go there and back in a weekend) and she'd seemed keen for it. But when nothing more gets said about it after she leaves, and what with her going silent on him and all, he doesn't wanna suggest it again.

By the time Christmas rolls around he's pretty sure she doesn't want him after all. He's sure there are other boys who've caught her attention, ones far better than him. Smart, nerdy boys destined for law or finance. Hot, sporty, scholarship boys on her track team. Squeaky clean fraternity boys he knows her mom and dad would just eat up. He probably tortures himself thinking about it, inventing brand new ways he's never thought of before in which these figments of his imagination could be better than him.

In reality, poor Chrissy's spending more nights alone, crying in her dorm bed, than she is socialising. College has been hard. She's not the star cheerleader anymore. Not that she'd really wanted to be, going in, but she finds she wants to cling to that identity for comfort. Only she can't anymore. Little fish, big pond, all that stuff. Classes are tough. She's lonely. You'd think that would only make her hang on to Eddie all the more, but it does the opposite. She's embarrassed. She's supposed to be having the time of her life, and she really, really doesn't wanna have to tell him that's not true. It's not like he would judge her or anything, but she's putting a lot of pressure on herself to thrive, because she's expecting everything to be the same as in high-school. Expecting it to be as easy to make friends, to "succeed" (whatever that means). So she tells him half-truths. And then she stops talking to him at all.

Eddie's pretty intuitive, though, and his jealousy is trumped by his concern for Chrissy. He loves her, only he hasn't told her yet (and like hell does he plan to). She comes home for a while and she caves and tells him a few things, and he understands her a little more than he did before. They both resolve to make more of an effort during her second term. They make a go of a relationship. Chrissy promises she'll make a go of college. Stop sitting out on the sidelines and be brave and just throw herself into it. Eddie promises he'll drive up when he can, swizzle weekends off work where possible.

After that, there's probably always an undercurrent of jealousy still, probably on Eddie's part (she's away all the time mixing with these college guys, and it's not that he doesn't trust her, it's more that he's aware his girlfriend is beautiful and he knows they'll be looking at her and he can't stand the thought). Something he's learning about himself is that he can lean a bit possessive at times. I guess it only comes out when he's in a relationship. He feels like he only just got her - the best girl in the world, the ones he's been dreaming about for over a year - and now she might get taken away from him by college and all of these new possibilities. Of course he's freaking out.

I think all of that starts to die down once they've been together properly a little while. Once he realises she isn't going anywhere.

Eddie doesn't know if he'll ever understand why it's him she's chosen, when as far as he's concerned she could've had her pick of any guy in the Tri-state area. But if there's one thing he does know about Chrissy Cunningham, it's that she sucks at lying. With him, anyway. So he thinks he's gonna have to start accepting that she does want him. That this is happening. He's gonna have to make sense of it somehow.