Chapter Text
Chrissy Cunningham woke slowly in hell to the sound of an angry, distorted, defiant guitar chord. Once, then twice, and again. Chugging determinedly into her forehead, burrowing between her eyes straight into her skull.
And the only thing she could think of was Cliff Burton. The name wandered lazily around her brain as she felt her arms and legs and ribs and fingers return to her. Cliff Burton, the genius, amazing, absolute beast of a bassist for Metallica. Metallica, the metal band she’d never listened to before Friday night in a van on the way out of Hawkins to a trailer park her parents wouldn’t have approved of. The van she sat in the front seat of, right next to him.
“Never? You’ve never listened to Metallica before?”
She’d shaken her head, smiling through the fingers she’d buried her face in. But he hadn’t said it meanly. He never once had said something meanly to her, only teased to make her smile, make her laugh. To stare into and through her and save her after talking to her for all of twenty minutes. He had done more in twenty minutes than every other person in her world.
Made her smile. Made her laugh. Made her feel safe. Made her want to tell him she didn’t know metal bands, but she liked Pat Benatar. That sometimes alone in her room, she’d layered on the black eye liner with her hair down and belted out Shadows of the Night loud enough to shake the window panes. When her parents weren’t home. He had looked at her like she could’ve told him that and he’d have smiled, gazed at her with that wide, adoring, interested look. Like she was something worth gazing at and listening to. He had seen her.
And it had meant everything. Eddie Munson had meant everything to her that afternoon, that day when she’d sent out a scream for help and only he’d heard. And he’d made her laugh.
“Well then, I take it upon myself to introduce you to my favorite: Master of Puppets. This is for you, Chrissy.”
The words echoed loudly between her ears as the guitar riff raged forward, always in motion, perpetually hauling her along.
Eddie. Eddie, the monster who wanted her suffering, the snaps, her scream, Eddie desperately trying to call her back, Kate Bush and the anger of the monster, bats, bats, bats circling through the air, squealing and screeching and voracious hunger. Blood on her tongue. The strange knowledge of the house she was in and the vines around her body.
Bum. Bum. Bum! The chords rang through her broken bones. Her brain filled in the bass line and the drums from when she was in the van. It had scared her a little at first, the volume and the weight of the music. But then Eddie had grinned at her from the driver’s seat, drumming his ringed fingers on the wheel and shouting the lyrics. Inviting her into this thing that was special to him. Unafraid. Alive. Wonderfully, addictingly, irresistibly alive.
Eddie.
The bats squealed into the air. Hundreds of them. She could feel them, felt every little beat of their wings and heard every screech as they flew. Right toward Metallica. Oh no. No, no, no. NO! Her chest hurt as it heaved to breathe.
She looked down and realized she couldn’t see. Not with her eyes. Everything was black. And she remembered a horrible, agonizing squelch from the ceiling of the trailer, from the monster’s claws hovering over her forehead trying to steal her suffering.
But she could feel where she was. There were lingering echoes of a bright red place, stairs and a stormy forever sky. But not anymore. She was somewhere else. The music had pulled her to wake up here.
The monster was in front of her, slightly to the left, hovering in the middle of the room. An attic, a window to the outside at the far end. Pillars to the ceiling covered in vines. The positions lined up, but drained, catatonic Fred and Patrick weren’t on theirs. The music hadn’t woken them. It must not have meant enough. Not meant everything.
Vines around her limbs, vines around her feet, vines holding the monster up in the air. The very faint sound of The Police far away, in a gym with a redheaded girl and it. The Kate Bush girl. The girl who’d gotten away.
Maybe she could get away again.
Chrissy couldn’t pay attention right now, not to the girl, not when she had Kate Bush to save her. Eddie didn’t have anything to save him and the curly-haired kid with him from the bats that were already pounding against his trailer. He’d stopped playing, but Chrissy could still hear the song, an anthem from the happiest, freest memory she had since a middle school talent show. Grinning into the dark as she felt all sorts of things she wasn’t supposed to feel about angry music and the local freak. Feelings that were hers and real and fuck what her mother wanted!
Eddie Munson had saved her and god-fucking-dammit, not the monster, the vines, or the fucking bats were going to kill him, too. She swore it on the chugging, unstoppable chorus.
In a way that at once made no but also perfect sense, she leaned down, sunk her teeth into her cheerleading sweater, and hauled on her left shoulder. It realigned with a sharp, crackling crunch that reminded her of biting into a rice krispy. When she’d gotten to eat those. The limb filled, like it had inflated back to life, flesh from paper. Free from its limp uselessness, she brought up her completely fucked fingers and jerked her right arm back into place, too. The vines around her retreated when she wanted them to, listened and even recoiled at her pain. A jolting writhe shockwaved through the monster’s house as she reached up, grasped her jaw between her thumb and forefinger, and shoved. Her ears rang with the pain.
The monster was usually in charge of the vines but it was busy with the redhead and, with a slow trickle and also immediate smack upside the brain, Chrissy knew all that it had come to know in the last few days. Everything flowed right in. Everything since her death. Sending bats after a group who invaded. The power of Kate Bush. How music could save those who he wanted. How he was afraid of a girl named Eleven. That his body was there in front of her, hovering, but his brain that caused the visions was elsewhere. That he needed four.
That upon taking her and gnawing on her suffering, he’d decided her useless, uninteresting. Weak. Her trauma wasn’t as good as crippling guilt and physical violence. The boys had tasted better. She was just the easy opener.
Well… Fuck. Him.
Chrissy pulled her legs out of the vines, falling to the floor with a thump. She ignored her already broken legs and how they hurt. Weak, he thought her. She had lived in pain, gnawing, clawing, burning pain every single day since her mother decided she was too fat. She’d like to see him stand holding Brenda up with two hands and nothing in his belly but bile and thirty-six hours worth of starvation pangs.
Absently and again without the slightest hint of weirdness, she brought a fist to each of her femurs and slotted them back to where they belonged with a thwack.
She stood, ponytail swinging behind her and turned to face where she could feel he hung. A vine stayed connected to the back of her neck and she knew not to remove it. It was what let her feel everything. It was how she knew. And, as she took in a deep inhale, a deep, filling, ‘use your diaphragms, ladies!’ inhale, it was how she knew this was going to work.
The girl he feared screamed things to explode. Chrissy liked the idea of being a girl he feared.
Focusing on the bats, the bats now swirling around Eddie outside his trailer—he...did he have a trash can lid with nails as a shield?—her brain echoed with the pretty part of the song. The guitar solo that he had looked over at her for, almost missing a turn and making them skid toward the ditch because he wanted to know what she thought of it. She had grinned at him, because she loved it. Right after, the drums and bass came back in, taking the delicate high notes and making them swell in her rib cage.
It had been a strange, wonderful feeling: the beat and the music and the precariously-contained electricity right alongside the butterflies that came from an Eddie Munson grin. And she wanted it fucking back!
Master! Master! Where’s the dreams that I’ve been after?
Chrissy squared off in front of the monster and spread her fingers before her. It was what he’d done, so she found no reason to do it differently. She was stealing the ability from him after all, sucking it through the vine at the back of her neck while he was busy ignoring her. She filled up her lungs all the way down to her stomach, her pelvis, her goddamn thighs and knees because ‘they need to hear you in the back, ladies!’ and she fucking screamed.
This is for you, Eddie, she thought to the chorus of madly shrieking guitar.
She channeled cheer and choir and Ariel from Footloose standing in front of a train just to feel alive and four years of the rage of smiling blankly as the world told her how to feel and allowing it. She screamed through the now shattered window, through the vines, through the cold, breeze-less air. Shrieked into the bats swirling around Eddie, sent a special quarter of her lungs into the one that had its tail around his neck.
It didn’t make sense and it didn’t matter as she shoved her scream into them like blowing up hundreds of tiny balloons, shoving and pushing and exhaling until the plastic stretched. Just. A little. Too. Far. She felt terror right before she felt the searing pain as the one around Eddie’s neck burst.
Chrissy Cunningham didn’t give a shit about pain. Not anymore. Pain meant she was winning the war against food and her stomach and her forever-screaming mother. Fuck pain.
The two bats gorging themselves on Eddie’s torso were next, popping like the blood balloons she imagined them to be.
Pop. Pop, pop, pop!
Her lungs emptied and half the bats had splattered all over Eddie, the ground, and his beautiful leather jacket she wanted to bury her nose into. Below the bats, she could hear him panting. “H-Holy shit.”
He was alive.
“Eddie! Eddie, are you okay?! What was that?” The curly-haired kid limped toward him. She could hear it out of the corner of her eye. A squad swooped toward him as the others continued to circle, jostling for which would get the next chunk out of Eddie. Light-headed, Chrissy ignored the familiar feeling and sucked in a second deep breath.
Just call my name, ‘cause I’ll hear your scream.
She didn’t remember most of the words, only the few lines that had stuck out, burrowed into her brain and taken up residence next to the bright, glimmering sunlight that was Eddie Munson grinning lazily at her after throwing himself into a pile of leaves just to make her laugh. It was easier this time, to focus on the bats that were left now that she knew how. Cold, molasses-thick, black blood rained down on Eddie and the kid in big globs.
I don’t know. You’re a freak.
Like it was the highest compliment in the world. What else would he have liked about her? He sounded very good at the guitar, but he hadn’t gotten through the rest of the song, only the first portion. She wanted to hear him play the pretty part. Sat across from her as she beamed up at him, a private little concert because she’d begged him to play for her, his curly, gorgeous hair falling over his face as he leaned down to see the strings. Did he even need to see the strings? Maybe he knew the song well enough he could play without looking. He could just turn his equally gorgeous brown eyes on her.
There was one final bat that was only half dead. It was squeaking in pain, trying to get back airborne. The kid was on his knees beside Eddie, “Are you sure you’re okay? Here, let me wrap that up. Did you hear the screaming?”
“Yeah, Dustin. I heard it. Holy…holy shit. Holy shit. That...”
“You’re going to be okay, Eddie. Steve’s been bit worse than this and been okay. Come on, up and at them.”
“Jesus, Henderson! A little warning before you go squishing my wounds.”
“Baby. Oh fuck, one’s still alive.” The bat died with a spear to the chest. But Eddie was okay. The kid was taking care of him. She and the power of Metallica had saved him.
Reaching down, Chrissy took her battered, pick-up-sticks pile of fingers and wrenched them back into what they should have been. The monster was still distracted with the redhead and three people now chained/vined to the walls down the attic stairs. Their weapons dropped. They’d nearly made it all the way up there and she could feel that they were stuck, in pain, but in no danger of actually dying. Not yet. The monster was toying with them. Worried about something else.
He wasn’t worried about her yet. Maybe because he thought she was weak. Maybe because there really was that much other shit going on. Which didn’t matter. The monster had tried to hurt Eddie. He had killed her, pulled her through that crack in Eddie’s ceiling and strung her up to be munched on later. He’d stolen her suffering. And still she wasn’t good enough. Interesting enough. Perfect enough. She was vestigial, the pretty, empty, useless bit that could be gotten rid of at any time.
“Fuck that shit.”
Chrissy sent out her right hand and the vines responded. They curled down the stairs and slithered into the hall. One wrapped around the axe on the ground, retrieving it for her like she’d commanded. It thunked quietly up the stairs, the head catching each step. The people in the hall gave strangled sounds of fear and anger.
Then she heard another sound. Faint. Muffled. Like it was coming from the other side of a thick wall. “MAX! No, no, no, MAX! The-The walkman...Shit. Shit!”
She didn’t know the boy’s voice, but she knew that Max was the redhead currently fighting for her mind and to not be strung up on the fourth pillar. No wonder the monster was ignoring her. What was losing his bats compared to fulfilling his end of the world plan? Her death had already made the gate he needed and her corpse he’d saved for later wasn’t of interest to him.
The people in her life and death had underestimated her for the last goddamn time.
It wasn’t Kate Bush—she didn’t know the words—but Chrissy knew that music was how Max had escaped before. It was what had woken her now. He was afraid of music, of what it could make them feel. Of how inherently human it was. There was one song she knew every single word to, could acceptably match pitch to, that was branded into her soul that no one cared to see—except Eddie Munson.
The vine brought Chrissy the axe and as she stepped up to the monster, she inhaled once more. It wasn’t going to sound great, but she just needed to get the words to Max, wherever he was keeping her. Belting out the opening lyrics, she knew exactly where to swing to bring the blade into his viney fucking heart.
“We’re running with the shadows of the night. So baby take my hand, you’ll be all right. Surrender all your dreams to me tonight, they’ll come true in the end!”
The world tilted, the house shuddered, and her own chest felt the blade. Fuck pain. Chrissy raised the axe again. No one ever gave cheerleaders credit for how strong they were, how strong she was. She lifted Brenda and held her there for over thirty seconds. She hurled herself through the air in back springs and full twist layouts. She could hold a handstand for almost four minutes.
She wanted his head, but she had to get him down to her level first. She swung again. A few of the vines keeping him aloft snapped.
“You said, ‘oh girl, it’s a cold world when you keep it all to yourself’. I said, ‘you can’t hide on the inside, all the pain you’ve ever felt.’”
It took the first chorus to get him to the floor, but she could hear the boy on the other side getting hopeful. “Max! Max, I’m right here. I’m right here. Come back to me. I know you like Pat Benatar. Come on, MAX. FIGHT!”
Her chest writhed with pain just like the vines around her did and she felt the beginnings of the monster’s attention. Still unable to see, she walked slowly to his side, stepping over the tentacles stuck to his back as she kept singing. One of them ran straight to the back of her neck. It worked out, because her favorite line was coming up. Bracing herself, she knew what was coming, and she lined up the axe anyway.
“You can cry, tough baby, it’s alright; You can let me down easy but NOT TONIGHT!”
The blade sliced through her trachea. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as the last day of cheer camp, she told herself. The axe bit into the wood floor on one side. The black, bile-blood was flowing out around her shoes. She could feel the chill. And she could feel his gaze turn back to her. He was torn, between Max and the girl he feared who fought and his body.
“That’s it, Max. You can do it. I’m right here. Come back.”
Chrissy… Chrissy, you wanted to stop your suffering!
Yeah, but she hadn’t wanted to give it to him. She’d wanted to pack it away and move on from it. Leave it. It wasn’t his to take, to make decisions about, to end like that. It was hers. Fucking hers!
“Surrender all your dreams to me tonight, they’ll come true in the end!”
Almost throwing her off balance, her next hit had his head held on by just a sliver. If he’d been upright, it would’ve been resting against his shoulder.
NO! Chrissy!
“And now the hands of time are standing still,” she loved this part, the rasp in Pat’s voice, the rawness that made her gasp with feeling whenever she heard it. She put some of her own into it as agony raced through her skin, like she’d just melted. As she burned, she didn’t stop. She just found her next volume. Coach, who’d been trying to get her to dig deep and let loose since middle school, would’ve been proud. Chrissy shook the rafters, blew out the window on the other end of the room, made the vines recoil, filled herself up with that loose, heavy, liberating feeling Eddie had given her in his van when her body vibrated with the music and the way he smiled at her.
“MIDNIGHT ANGEL, WON’T YOU SAY YOU WILL?!”
Twisting, she chopped the axe down on her tentacle. She knew, knew that if she killed him while she was still connected, she’d go with him. For good. No saving for later. And she’d just got back. The mouth connected to her neck splatted to the ground with a slither.
Dropping the song, she screamed into the abyss in front of her. She couldn’t see. Couldn’t feel. Couldn’t hear his voice. She only had muscle memory and rage to help her hit her target. Chrissy had plenty of both.
She felt the snag of plant-like flesh on the edge of the blade. It held for a second, pressed back. She could feel vines from all sides lash out to try and stop her. She didn’t care. They were too late. Her strike hit home, hit the dull wood of the rotting floor through the other side. For good measure, she swung the blade right into his face. It bit deep and when she took two stuttering steps back, the head came with her, completely separated from the body.
“Max! Oh my god, Max. I’m right here. You’re okay.”
It was probably weird to be pleased about a successful decapitation, but Chrissy felt fucking triumphant.
Also devastatingly hungry.
Still unable to see, she shuffled a few more steps back and let her knees give out. Axe and head still grasped in one hand, she spread out on the floor and stared into the nothingness of the ceiling. She couldn’t feel it this time, didn’t have a way to see or hear or tell, but she knew that Eddie was coming. He’d get her. He’d save her again and then they’d have more than twenty minutes with each other.
At least, she was pretty sure he’d been interested in getting to know her better. He was the only one who had in years.
So, she waited. Unable to see. Not sure where she was or how to get out, she waited and thought about Oreo cookies and Eddie Munson’s eyes.
There was shuffling from the hall below, the people who had been trapped successfully escaping. They started speaking at the same time there was a loud bang from below and then feet thundering up the stairs. “Steve! Steve, Nancy, Robin! Are you okay? What happened?”
Curly-haired kid. Dustin. She wondered if he was in Hellfire Club and that’s why he seemed so fond of Eddie.
“Dustin. Buddy, calm down. We’re okay. Didn’t even get up there. Get behind me. It might not be over. Come on.”
“But...But all the bats are dead. They were eating Eddie and then they all exploded.”
“Yeah, I think we heard when that happened.”
A girl’s voice broke in, “Steve! Come on, did you not hear her singing up there. There’s no way that was Vecna. Someone was up there and trying to help get Max back. Singing her back.”
“Okay, yeah, but what stole my axe then?” It was her axe, thanks very much. She heard more thundering, heavy feet on stairs coming toward her. “W-Wait, Eddie! Fuck, Eddie! This is not how we approach danger in the deadly alternate dimension! Shit.”
“It wasn’t Vecna.” She recognized his voice and she didn’t think that the little time they’d spent together would imprint it so heavily on her mind. But it appeared it had. That was Eddie. “It was Chrissy. I heard her.”
And he was about to again. She called out. “E-Eddie? Eddie, are you okay?”
“Chrissy!”
“Son of a bitch. Isn’t messing with your thoughts his whole thing?! Eddie!”
The thundering of feet skidded to a stop and she tilted her head toward the sound. It occurred to her finally that she probably looked... terrifying. Hopefully not too corpse-like. Her mother’s voice tried to invade, but it plinked impotently against her newly erected wall of ‘fuck how my hair looks, my axe and I slay monsters’.
“...Chrissy.” His voice sounded both scared and reverent, like Indiana Jones tracking down the lost ark. Her eyes blinked out of habit. Smiling faintly, she tried to sit up and quickly found hands helping her. “Holy shit, Chrissy.”
Leaning toward his voice, she wanted to keep smiling but then she smelled blood, the metallic tang of iron filling her nose. Oh no. No, no, no. “Eddie. Are you okay? The bats. I was slow. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I was trying to follow the music and I-I took too long waking up. Are you hurt? I-Is it bad?”
Her hand chased the warmth she could feel radiating from him, looking for leather and cotton of the Hellfire shirt she knew he was wearing. Her fingers found a bandage that felt damp. No, no, no.
“Me?!” His voice was incredulous and her thoughts immediately went to how she’d said something stupid, made him laugh at her. But Eddie wasn’t mean. “I’m fine. Gonna need a hell of a nap and some iron supplements and enough water that I’m pissing every ten minutes, but the worst thing I’ve got is need of a new shirt. You-You died in front of my eyes and now you’re covered in monster goo and holding...holy shit, is that Vecna’s head?”
“Yes. If Vecna is the monster. Then yes.”
Suddenly his hands were holding her face and she gasped. The gasp wasn’t from surprise. She felt warm—warm—skin against her forehead and the sensation of Eddie’s breath on her face ran all the way down to her toes. “You are a goddamn masterpiece, Chrissy Cunningham.”
Her face split with a smile and she hoped he could see how real it was, how bright he made her feel. It would be easier if she could see, but she felt his fingertips tremble against her skin and she took that as a positive sign. “Speaking of, will you play me the rest of the song?”
“Huh?”
“Metallica. The rest of the song. You didn’t get the chance to play the pretty part that I like. Will you play it for me? Please?”
“Babe, I will play you the whole damn album!” He snatched her to his chest, knees pressing into her hip and curly hair brushing her lips. Her chest and stomach liked the way he called her babe.
She could hear that the others had joined them, were shuffling and swearing under their breath at something disturbing they saw. Probably her. Eddie didn’t seem to mind, so she didn’t take it personally. She didn’t find herself uncomfortable with them being there, whoever they were, as she spoke her next request. It felt right that she was asking in front of others, so he knew she was serious, knew she wasn’t ashamed or being mean.
“And...And once we’re safe and not wherever this place is and I break up with my boyfriend, Eddie Munson, would you want to go out with me?”
“Dude…!” That was Dustin. Despite the circumstances, he seemed gleeful. Her brain imagined him hopping in place, shaking the arm of the person next to him.
She was shifted back, like Eddie had moved to put her at arms’ length to better see her. At least, she hoped it was to better see her and not simply pushing her away. It was hard without being able to see eyes and faces. He hummed. Hummed out a long breath against his lips she felt in her pitter-pattering chest. When he spoke, it was the most serious she’d ever heard him, “Chrissy Cunningham, as soon as we get the whole everyone thinks I murdered you figured out, I am going to dinner and a movie you so fucking hard it’ll make your ponytail curl.”
“Promise?” She felt as gleeful as Dustin had just sounded. Which was ridiculous given the circumstances, but she was just so...hopeful. In a way she’d forgotten how to be at about age thirteen when nothing about her was ever good enough and everyone had seemed to like her more the less she felt anything.
“You, a real, actual, interesting girl—who has a hell of a set of pipes, might I add; like holy shit, Pat has nothing on you and we need to discuss this talent of yours later—just asked me to play you Master of Puppets. Cross my heart, pinky promise.”
She held up her hand not clutching her axe and extended the finger in question. His was warm and calloused when it wrapped around hers. Pulled away from her, she thought she could feel sticky leather along with a heartbeat against their joined hands.
“Okay, not that this isn’t heartwarming and awesome, but let’s focus on booking it out of the Upside Down.” ‘Steve’ seemed tense and she supposed she didn’t blame him. They were in hell at the moment. It was likely shock, but her perspective was a little screwy at the moment.
“Oh,” Eddie noted, a gobsmacked hint to his tone. It sounded cute and she imagined it looked cute, too. “Good point. Chrissy, can you walk?”
“I think so. I just...I can’t see. And I want to keep my axe.” A horrible thought came to her as he helped her up. “Wait, I do have eyes still, right? They aren’t...” the squelch returned from a memory and she shivered, “...squish?”
Hands ran through her hair. “Yeah. You still have eyes. ...Chrissy, did you…?” Eddie sounded pained and she didn’t like it. With that free hand, she blindly reached forward and grasped at him. She got his chest and slid until she found his arm then hand. Squeezed him with no intention of letting go. Her fingers fit perfectly between his and they saw no reason to venture away from home. “Did you feel it? When...”
When he took you. Killed you.
“Yeah.”
Eddie kept their fingers interlocked, even as he swept an arm around her shoulders and tugged her in, tucked her head beneath his chin. It felt...nice. So, so nice and she closed her useless eyes as she sighed.
He inhaled to say something, she heard it against her ear, but one of the girls spoke before he could. “Robin, are your molotovs okay?”
“Yeah, Nance. All accounted for.”
“We should burn him. Just to make sure.”
There was a pause that Chrissy couldn’t decipher at first, unable to see what they were looking at. Until she realized. “Oh, you probably want his head. Here. Sorry.” Taking a step away from Eddie, she braced her sneaker on the monster’s face to hold it steady and then gave one, two tugs on her axe. It took a grunt of exertion and a sharp, fleshy creak to wrench it free.
But then, she tried to smile. “All yours.”
“E-Eddie, man.” That was Dustin. “I’m so sorry, but...I think you’re the second most metal thing I’ve ever seen.”
“That’s fair, buddy.”
“Alright, cool. We’ve got a plan. Light what’s left of the fucker up and then get the hell out of the Dodge. Let’s go, people!”
“Ugh, be quiet, dingus.”
A hand, she assumed it was Eddie’s by the callouses and confirmed it when she was pulled into his leather jacket, took hers and herded her back toward the stairs. She heard the click of a lighter and the whoosh of flame, then could smell the liquor go up with a flush of heat along her front. She preferred the column of warmth along her back.
She fought the urge to grin like a maniac into the darkness.
As the fire continued, Eddie turned her around by the shoulders. “Okay, so keeping the axe. Let’s see what we can rig up for you.” There wasn’t a second where he made her feel stupid for it, no attempt to take it, no ‘here sweetie, let me handle it for you’. And she liked that so much about him. “Steve, care to hand over however you were carrying the axe?”
“Nah man. It’s got my bullets, too.”
Eddie skittering around her, always close but ever in motion, Chrissy frowned, “How many weapons did you bring?”
“All of them,” one of the girls and Dustin replied in unison. The kid continued, “Wanted to be prepared.”
“Oh,” she noted airily before continuing. Like she had any kind of background to constitute an opinion on various bits of homemade weaponry. She spoke up anyway. “Makes sense. I liked your shields.”
“They worked, right!” She liked Dustin. He was contagious. Like Eddie. Bright and light and alive. “Oh here, I’ve got an extra belt. Maybe you can kind of wrap it and slip the axe through. No. I mean wrap—no, Eddie, like, shit—”
She stood still as something was settled over her shoulders and she heard Eddie muttering under his breath. Smirking, she tried to hide the quirk of her smile at their bickering. After a few moments, during which the air became heavy and rank with burnt...skin/bark, he took her axe and she felt its weight settle on her shoulders and back. On the edges of her brain, Chrissy could feel that she was going to be far less okay and accepting of everything at some point. That the sheer fucking weird was going to hit her and refuse to be ignored.
But not until they were out of the sheer fucking weird. She’d been shutting down her emotions and only letting them out with two fingers down her throat for a while now. The least the skill could do was be useful in a healthy way this once.
“Alright, how’s that? Head’s on your left side.”
She reached back, clasping her fingers around the wood and pulling it out halfway, and nodded, “This is good.”
“Outstanding, Chrissy is armed, Vecna is cremated, job done,” Steve announced with a clap of his hands. “Let’s haul ass out of here.”
Eddie took both her hands and guided her forward, pointing out vines she couldn’t feel anymore and counting stairs. She was strangely okay with being led as she left the monster’s house. Left his dark, angry red storm world. His attic. His murder house and her prison. She pulled her right hand from Eddie’s grasp as they descended the porch stairs. Without a word, she jerked her fist and middle finger into the air.
Eddie’s laugh was clear and pure and made her insides ring like a bell. Chrissy made it a personal little goal to make it happen as much as she could.
There were two bikes and six of them. Eddie and Dustin had jumped on the closest ones after the bat attack receded and rode like mad. This was explained because Steve demanded to know why they couldn’t have nabbed a third. Eyes wide, she clutched desperately to Eddie’s shoulders after Dustin got her settled on the back of the seat and they started off. Slowly, because two of the others were jogging. But it was better than nothing.
They’d been going for a while, Nancy promising her that they were almost there, when she felt Eddie exhale. Like a bad exhale. A pre-tears exhale. She didn’t like that. Frowning, she asked, “What is it?”
“Huh?”
“You just breathed funny. What’s wrong?”
He tensed and she couldn’t tell why. He didn’t make any more noises. His curls brushed across her nose and cheeks as he turned to look over his shoulder, but that didn’t tell her much except that she needed to schedule ‘burying my face in Eddie’s hair for at least an hour’ onto her color-coded calendar. Beside them, panting as he’d been volun-told about jogging, Dustin giggled. An honest to god giggle that pulled at the edges of her mouth.
Didn’t tell her what it meant, though.
“Come on. Tell me. Are you hurt?”
“No, no. It’s not that. It’s...” He sighed heavily and she felt his hair look from side to side. “It’s...I’m so sorry, Chrissy. I was there and I could’ve helped. My whole room is music for fuck’s sake. I should’ve… I could’ve helped but I...You went up and I just ran. Like a coward. I didn’t even wait until you were off the ceiling. I just booked it out of there and away from you. Ran. I...left you and I’m so sorry.”
“Wait, what?” Her brain was working slower than her ears. Did he think… Did he think that he had done anything but save her? “No, stop. Stop. Eddie, stop the bike!”
He put his boots down and they skittered to a halt on the gravel road. Nearly falling, she disentangled herself from the back wheel and caught herself on Dustin. “Thanks. Okay, so first of all—”
“Really, I don’t want to keep interrupting, but we—”
“I was dead for multiple days, Steve. You can give me thirty seconds!” she snapped, raising a finger in his direction. Her tone was the kind that would get her side-eyed and lectured about being a nice, quiet girl that others could like. Whatever.
Steve’s reply was immediate and chagrined. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Dingus,” Robin snorted.
That over, Chrissy turned back to where she could feel that Eddie stood. “First of all, Eddie Munson, you had no idea that music did anything. He didn’t even know, not really. Not until Max blasted him with Kate Bush. You didn’t know. There was nothing you could’ve done. And second,” her face broke a little. Liquid escaped down her cheeks. “Second, you didn’t leave me. I wasn’t there. I was basically dead. Spun up like spider food. Whatever you saw as I died, I was gone. He took me. You aren’t a coward. You didn’t leave. When I needed you, you didn’t leave.”
She heard a watery breath that didn’t come from her, even if she felt one threatening. “Wh-Where are you? I need to touch you for this.” Her hands fluttering, stuttering, he grabbed them both and laid them on his shoulders. She moved them up the rest of the way until they rested on either side of his face, his jawline nestled in her palms like a sacred chalice. “Gosh, you’re tall.”
She could feel the snort of amusement and his cheeks pulling beneath her skin. It was so beautiful, felt beautiful, because that big, genuine grin was his face’s natural state.
“Eddie, baby,” it felt right; she wasn’t asking her lips any questions, “you saved me. No, no, please, don’t look away. I need you to believe me, please. You saved me for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes in the woods when you made me laugh, tried to make me smile, wanted to make me feel safe. I know you did. And Eddie, I’d been hallucinating for days. Days when everyone in my life saw me, looked right through me. None of them noticed. No one noticed, except you. Two seconds and you saw me. Saw that I was scared and not okay and smiling through my teeth. You looked at me like you cared,”
“I did care. I do.”
“Like I was interesting.”
“You are interesting. Seriously, we’re going to talk about your singing voice.”
“Like I mattered.”
“You do! You matter, Chrissy!”
“You were the only one who thought so, Eddie. The only person thinking that where I could hear. And I did. For the first time in years, I did and you saved me. You drove me to your house because I was scared. You played me your favorite song because you wanted to share it with me. If you hadn’t played it for me in the van and been so happy about letting me into your world, wanting me there, I wouldn’t have woken back up when you played it here.”
“It’s-It’s not a...”
She refused to let him doubt himself for another syllable. “It was everything. To me, it was everything.”
This time, she couldn’t tell who the sob was from and it didn’t really matter. He leaned forward and snatched her up in a hug before she realized her was moving. A dull thunk, shift on her back, and his muttered, “Fucking ow!” told her he’d just banged heads with her axe. Smiling, she wrapped around him. “You saved me. You got it, Munson?”
His voice was muffled by tears and her hair as they stood there longer than thirty seconds. “Yeah... yeah, sweetheart, I got it.”
Running her hands up his arms, over his collar, and along his neck back up to his face, she smiled. She was probably going to miss, but she didn’t care. She needed to do this. Gently, she pulled his face down to hers, all the way down because he really was tall. Thumbs brushing up to his temples and eyebrows, she leaned in.
She pressed a kiss to his forehead, off-center, basically his eyebrow. Murmured, “Thank you, Eddie.”
Hands tightened on her shoulders as he turned his head to the left, chasing the skin of her palm and pressing a kiss there. He let out a deep sigh. Then he nodded.
To the side, someone else hiccuped a sob. Eddie’s head immediately turned, still resting in her grip. Robin whispered, “Sorry, sorry. It’s...It’s just beautiful, you guys.”
–
At the others’ laughter and Steve’s urging, they returned to the bike and started pedaling. Chin resting on his shoulder, Chrissy clung onto his shoulders again, but this time with arms wound up and under. Closer. They were riding up to the trailer park, he told her. The going got a little rough and she couldn’t see why, held on tighter.
“Holy shit, Chrissy,” Robin provided. “That was a shit ton of bats. Like an abhorrent amount of bats. I’ve always hated them, you know. So much rabies!”
“Robin!”
The girl had been talking the whole time as they slowed to a stop outside the trailer, Eddie and Dustin helped her off, then guided her up the stairs, inside, Steve and Nancy got into a fight with Eddie about some kind of ladder, Dustin mediated, Nancy scoffed, walked away somewhere, and returned with another ladder.
Steve was annoyed but at least a little fond when he quieted his friend. “Come on, Rob. One more climb and we’re back home.”
Chrissy tilted her head upward, assuming she was looking in the right place. She wondered what it looked like, wherever they were climbing. Dustin had noted with awe as he climbed, “This is still the weirdest shit.” She also wondered, with a tightening stomach, if she got to go.
“Okay,” Eddie said from her front, one hand still in hers, “so we’re going to toss your axe through first so you don’t clock your head. Then I’ll get you to the rope and you climb. It’s...super fucky about halfway through. Just try to lean back as you fall. It won’t be too bad, promise.”
“...Eddie, can you do something for me?” Once he squeezed her fingers, she didn’t wait for another answer. “If...If I don’t make it through, promise you’ll eat a package of Oreos for me. Please.”
“Wait, wait, wait. What do you mean if you don’t make it through?”
“I don’t know. I turn to ash, catch on fire, disappear in a burst of light. Just...if it won’t let me leave. I love Oreos and haven’t had one in about five years. Promise you’ll eat them for me.”
She hated not being able to see his face, to help her read what was going on in his eyes. All she had right now was his hands on her shoulders, a tremble. His voice did, too. Even though she knew he meant it.
“Of course.” He brought her close. “I promise. Normal or double stuff.”
“Double stuff.” If she had the chance, what was the point in taking the half measure? She hugged him back. “Definitely double stuff.”
“You got it.” He stilled, tall, warm, leather against her, and cleared his throat. “Chrissy...”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Steve clapped a few times, making her jerk her head toward him.
Eddie released whatever he’d been planning to say with a whoosh of breath she felt move her hair. She reached out for him and twisted her fingers into his shirt. He’d shown her two of the tattoos underneath. She wished she’d been able to see all of them. “Okay, axe goes first.” He waited until she pulled it and its belt off herself before taking it. Muscles tensing, she felt him toss it upward. The clatter of it hitting the floor came sooner than expected.
“We’re clear,” Steve called. “Send in the cheerleader.”
Chrissy smiled at little at his teasing. It was quashed a moment later though, when she felt Eddie’s hands on her waist, ready to boost her up. Her hand in his shirt tightened and she moved her head, trying to figure out where his face would be. Fingers squeezing reassuringly, curls brushed across the skin of her face and his lips were on her hair. “See you in the real world, babe.”
Then she was surging through the air and Dustin was calling instructions to her, where to grab, go ahead and pull, almost to the swap. Eddie was right. It was super fucky. She felt it in her hair before the switched gravity snatched her stomach and tugged. Shouting, she only just got herself turned in midair so she landed on her back.
“What the hell?”
“Oh yeah, I bet that’s crazy if you can’t see. Back here, I’ve got you. Eddie will come through.” Robin had started again. Chrissy didn’t listen. Instead, she turned and wrapped her arms around the girl she’d only just met. Eyes squeezed shut as she cried. “Oh, uh, okay. That’s cool.”
“I’m back. It let me through!”
“Ooof.” Eddie came back through with the clatter of his wallet chain and various bullet belts and the soft squeak of leather. Her head turned toward his voice, eyes opening because eighteen years of sight had taught them to. They opened and Chrissy blinked against the dim glow back lighting Eddie Munson, the most gorgeous person she’d ever seen.
He rolled to his feet, all chaotic energy and twitching extremities as he looked around, zeroed in on her. Eyes alive. She stared back and grinned. “H-Holy shit, Chrissy can you see?”
Pulling away from Robin, she hurtled the three feet to him, crashing into his chest with a leap. He caught her as she laughed, threw her hands up in the air and laughed. Shock in his tone, he laughed right along with her. They spun, his arms low and strong around her hips, and she felt like Ariel up in the glittering, shimmery decorations of the makeshift prom.
In between breaths, she leaned down and pressed kiss after kiss to the top of his head. She was back. She was back, back, back. Back and alive. The weedy, slightly musty scent of Eddie’s trailer had never smelled sweeter. Nor did fresh air as Nancy and Robin slipped out to find transportation.
It was at that moment that the sheer fucking weird and its crushing weight crashed down. For a few seconds, she couldn’t even tell if she was laughing or crying into Eddie’s hair. But he noticed. “No, no, no, it’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe and I’ve got you and you’re okay.”
He slowed the spinning, turning it into a soft sway as she fell apart above him. “I know. I know, I’m sorry. It’s just...” She looked up and this time saw the other world, the gaping hole her death had opened. Her newly fixed bones shivered as she heard the snaps from that night.
“It’s a lot. I know.”
Sniffling, she whispered, “Eddie. I’m so, so sorry you had to see it. I’m so sorry.”
“Sweetheart,” he murmured back, resting his temple against her shoulder and rubbing a hand on her back, “I’m sorry you had to feel it.”
They stood there, quiet and leaky but together, until Robin burst through the door. “We’ve got a car. Let’s go check on Max, Lucas, and Erica.”
Eddie set her on her feet with a hurried, “One sec. I’ll be right back.” He disappeared down the hall, to the door he’d gone through that night before her vision, to the door the bats had broken through and almost gotten him. She felt the irrational and overwhelming urge to go after him, keep her eyes on him at all times now that she could see again.
She fought it, instead looking down at herself and nearly throwing up. “Oh my god.”
“Yeah,” Dustin commiserated as he dug on the couch and snatched up a flannel shirt and...a pair of boxers, “monster slaying is messy. They never tell you that in the DnD guides.”
She swapped her cheer jacket and top for the flannel. At this point, she really didn’t care if a freshman saw two seconds of her sports bra. The boxers went up under her cheer skirt easily and she shoved all the bloody, monster ones in a bag. Clean clothes pulled on, she hefted her belt and her axe. Dustin looked at it but didn’t say she shouldn’t take it. Instead, she thought she saw a little smile on his face. “You’re kind of a badass, you know that?”
Hiccuping a laugh, because how ridiculous was that thought, she shrugged, “It’s a pretty new development.”
Eddie thundered down the hallway and they made their way out to the car. It was a bit cramped, but she didn’t mind sitting on Eddie’s lap with her axe resting against her hip where it was propped on the floor. As the others filled her in on how the town and Jason Carver had decided Eddie was her murderer, she leaned her head closer and closer to his. At least partly to help shield him from anyone looking in the window.
“I’ll fix it,” she said aloud as they pulled up to the creepy murder house across town. The creepy murder house she’d been held in in another dimension by a monster. Chrissy tightened her grip on both her axe and Eddie as Nancy slowed the car to a stop. The world was their own but still eerie as they walked up the porch stairs they’d just rushed down an hour earlier.
Without knowing how she’d gotten there, Chrissy and her axe were in the lead as they approached the attic. Eddie right behind her. Coward? What the fuck was he talking about? And then, the redhead was right in front of her. Eyes bleeding a tiny bit at the inner corners, but still in her skull and joints bending normally and every bit of her alive.
The others around them all spoke at once, Eddie to a girl maybe twelve. Dustin to the boy she’d heard calling to Max earlier. Nancy, Steve, and Robin to everyone trying to figure out what to do next, who needed what, and where to go. Chrissy didn’t hear any of it, because she and Max just stared at one another. Until she sent the younger girl a tremulous smile. They’d made it. They’d both made it out and back. He hadn’t gotten to keep their suffering.
“Pat?”
She quirked a large grin. “Hi Kate.”
They met in a hug with an audible smack but neither of them cared. A little pain meant they were both alive. Alive here instead of taken. “Thank you,” the redhead whispered, voice desperate and wet. “Thank you. He was going to get me. He...he had his fingers out and I was floating. I tried to run to you. I ran as fast as I could. He...He almost got me, but you stopped him.”
“He can’t have it,” Chrissy murmured back. “It’s ours and no one gets to have it unless we want them to. We lived through it. We live with it and we get to pick how we fix it, when we leave it behind. He stole it, but he didn’t get to keep it.”
“Because he was no match for Pat Benatar.”
“Or my axe, the chauvinistic dick.”
Max snorted and Chrissy squeezed her tight. They had lived. They had made it. And their suffering was theirs to figure out.
Just then, a figure stirred in the far corner and she noticed the bruises and swelling on Lucas’ face. “I-Is that Jason?”
“He’s gone crazy,” Lucas explained, pointing to the gun on the floor. “He thinks Eddie murdered you and we’re all part of a satanic cult. He tried to shoot me. He shot at me!”
“And somebody in a letterman jacket tried to break my arm,” Erica added, voice brash and angry but with a waver underneath. “I kicked him in the balls.”
She blinked. “Son of a bitch.” He stirred once more and she released Max, “Come on, go. Everyone in the car. We don’t need to be here when he wakes up.”
Stepping forward, she grabbed the gun Lucas had shown them. Chrissy let out a sigh and flipped the circular thing open. The remaining five bullets tinkled on the floor. He had no idea. No idea what she’d gone through or who she was or who she’d become. Not if avenging her made assaulting kids okay, trying to shoot innocent people, setting a town after Eddie because it was convenient.
Jason was in love with her vestigial self. He thought he hurt, but he wouldn’t even notice the difference once she was gone. He lamented the change, not the actual loss of her. He’d find someone else to smile when he told her to. It couldn’t be her anymore. With a grunt, she whipped the empty gun up and through the window.
Eddie took her hand as they made their way down the stairs, out of the house. Axe on her back, Chrissy sent a middle finger to this one too. The car was extra crowded, all of them piled on top of one another in pairs in the backseat, Erica and Dustin growling at one another in the middle.
“Okay, but where are we going? Your mom is great, Nance, but I’m not sure how she’d going to feel about aiding and abetting.”
“Your house?”
“That’ll work.”
Steve put on his blinker and slowed at the abandoned stoplight. Hardly anyone was out. Fingers clenched in his shirt, Chrissy looked up at Eddie. He’d been fiddling with her hair ever since they got in the car and it was very nearly putting her to sleep. She’d saved him from bats and the monster. She could save him from Jason Carver.
“Steve, pull over.” Chrissy looked to Nancy. “I’ll tell the story like we talked about. I’ll fix it.”
“You sure?” the other girl asked, a solemn depth of understanding in her eyes.
“Yeah.”
“Do you want one of us to go with you?”
“No, no. We need to keep you all out of it.” Shifting, she looked up at Eddie, “I don’t think I’ll be able to see you for a few days. But, when it’s safe, can I come find you?”
He grinned at her and she rang for him, her stomach all butterflies and lightning bugs and summertime sparklers. “I’ll make sure to practice my guitar. I’ve got a show next time I see you. I can’t mess up your favorite part after you went and saved me.”
“There was no way I was letting him take your smile out of the world, Eddie Munson.” Surging up, she pressed a kiss to his cheek that left him pink and Dustin giggling. Erica rolled her eyes. “I’ll find you.”
She rolled out of the car before she could change her mind, stay with them, him and feel safe. Instead, letting out a shaking breath, she shoved her feelings down into her stomach and placed her axe across her back. Eddie stared at her out of the back window of the car until Steve turned. She smiled after him.
Pulling her shirt more tightly around her, she started to the center of town. As she did, something solid and rectangular tapped against her ribs. She peered into the pocket. A cassette. Metallica’s Master of Puppets. The promise of more deafening, overwhelming freedom at Eddie’s side. Light, bright, and unstoppable, she walked into the police station. Blood, gore, goo, axe, and all.
Chrissy stepped up to the desk and the woman behind it with her graying hair and purple, beaded eyeglasses cord. “Hi, I’m Chrissy Cunningham and I’m not dead.”
“Oh, um...l-let me call someone.”
“Do you have anything to eat? I’m sorry, but I’m so hungry. I’ve been in the woods.”
Dressed in the too-small Sunday best she was supposed to be buried in, Chrissy stood next to Chief Powell before a small army of reporters and what she guessed was half the town. He looked at her oddly, but she imagined that was going to be the norm here from now on.
I don’t know Eddie smiled at her, arms crossed over his chest and a few leaves still in his hair. You’re a freak.
She was good with it. Better to be an alive freak than a dead puppet. She slayed monsters and saved people.
Giving the officer a bland, lying smile, she stood and waited for him to step up to the microphone. Her parents were with her, but neither had moved to actually get closer to her. They stood where they were supposed to, squeezed one another’s shoulders and dabbed their eyes when they were supposed to.
Her mother had already gotten rid of most of her clothes and belongings and by the time she’d been released from police custody and then an overnight in the hospital, she returned to a mostly empty pink room. If anyone asked, the woman would say that having her dead daughter’s things in the house had just been too painful. Chrissy didn’t know if that was true, but the way her mom still tutted when she ate, frowned only at her visible bruises and offered concealer, mentioned how romantic Jason’s desire for justice had been… all of that made the idea that her mom actually cared hard to swallow.
Her mom’s pain was like Jason’s. The loss of an extra organ they never worried about in the first place. Annoyed at being inconvenienced more than anything. They’d go right back to knowing how to function without her once the cameras were off.
Chrissy used Master of Puppets in her boombox to drown out her mother’s stares and remind her stomach that she could feel. No stomach acid required. Her ‘fuck my hair, my axe and I slay monsters’ wall was also very helpful.
“Thank you all for coming. As previously mentioned, this is a press conference concerning a break in the Cunningham, Benson, and McKinney cases. Miss Chrissy Cunningham has bravely and kindly agreed to answer your questions, but I’d like to stress that if I or she feel this is too overwhelming, we’ll be done. Just like that.’
“Before we get to Miss Cunningham’s statement, I would like to officially announce that Eddie Munson has been cleared of all charges.” He was forced to pause at the outcry of shouts. “Yes, I know this is a surprise to many in the community, but again, Eddie Munson is innocent. Both the evidence and Miss Cunningham corroborate that he was not involved in her disappearance or Fred and Patrick’s deaths. He was present at Mr. McKinney’s death, but he had not sought out the victim and by witness accounts, he did not so much as touch the victim. Again, Mr. Munson is not involved and he is free to come and go as he pleases.’
“The Hawkins Police Department would like him to check in at the station only for the sake of ensuring he is safe. We are aware of the public outcry and that he was in danger from his fellow citizens these last few days. We also completely understand why he did not feel comfortable coming forward given the threats to his person. Again, Eddie Munson did nothing wrong.”
She stood, looking out into the crowd as he answered a few more questions. Jason was pressed and dressed and uncomfortable being forced to stand on the sidelines. Chrissy hadn’t spoken to him yet, though she knew where the bruises on his face had come from. He was her last obstacle.
She and Eddie were safe. She and Eddie were no longer in the Upside Down. She just needed to break up with her boyfriend.
Just as she stepped up the microphone, she spotted Nancy and Steve on the other side of the crowd. She sent them a smile. A real one. One that came up from her chest without the use of two fingers down her throat. Although, she was working on that. Those were problems for later, though, as the questions started. And she lied. About almost everything.
“Yes, Fred, Patrick, and I were all on yearbook and the newspaper together. As a senior project, our final big story, we wanted to do an investigative piece on the Hawkins Lab. We went there together. We found...something. Some kind of toxic liquid. We left right after. But not before we’d all been exposed. Fred and Patrick got it worse than I did.”
Nancy had been right. As soon as Chrissy said Hawkins Lab, the questions had changed and the chief had been far more willing to believe her when she worked to explain her dead body.
“No, it was painless. We had no idea anything had even happened except glowing purple goo. We started hallucinating, for almost a week but I, at least, was too scared to tell anyone except each other. I didn’t want to get in trouble.”
“Yes, the night I went missing, I was with Eddie. We have Geography together. He didn’t hurt me or hit me or anything else. The only thing Eddie Munson did to me was try and help me get a better grade.” She smiled there, tried to make them associate her smile with Eddie’s name. “I had my worst hallucination while I was there. I very nearly attacked him. I ran out, onto the road, into the woods. He left because he was trying to find me, to make sure I wasn’t hurt. Eddie tried to save me.”
“I’ll take that one,” the chief stepped back to the podium as the inevitable question about her corpse came up. “As some of you may remember from a few years ago, we had a similar incident with Will Byers. A body was discovered and a death was assumed. At that time, there were forces at work from the lab trying to cover any liability. In this instance, we believe that the corpse found was planted in an effort to distract police forces from looking for a living Chrissy, exposed to their unsafe substance. With Miss Cunningham’s clothes and similar facial features and stature and Mr. Munson available to be framed, we were focused on solving a crime that hadn’t actually been committed.’
“I take personal responsibility for this. We were promised that any shady dealings from the lab were behind us and that deal has been broken. I have already spoken with figures in the federal government about getting a team to the lab to do a comprehensive clean up within the month. We don’t need any more children stumbling across substances that will cause them to hallucinate so badly they are lost in the woods for days on end and crack bones with muscle spasms.”
“No, of course Hellfire isn’t a satanic cult. It’s a high school sponsored group. I wrote their blurb for the yearbook last year. They play a game about fighting dragons and demons, not becoming them. They roll dice to defeat three inch tall figurines.” She hoped he and Dustin and the others in the club would forgive her for making it sound so...silly. But better silly than satanic.
More questions came, most asking the same thing with different words as if that would change her answer. It wasn’t until near the end when she heard one that made her genuinely smile. “Is there anything you’d like to say to Eddie Munson if he’s watching right now?”
“Yes. I want to tell him thank you. Thank you for looking out for me. He went above and beyond the call of a study partner. And I’m excited to see him again. He’s my friend and I’ve missed him.”
A snort of surprise and disbelief and ‘we’ll discuss this later’ came out of her mother but the pretty part of Master of Puppets drowned her out. Humming the guitar solo under her breath, she breathed through the rest of the press conference. She and the chief stepped away from the microphone together, walking down the side. He was nice. Somehow, through everything, when her parents had come to get her he’d...known. Known something was weird at home. Even if he couldn’t do anything, it was still just nice to be seen. Also, he’d let her keep her axe on her back as she was questioned.
He stayed near, shooing away reporters and concerned citizens and being where her dad should’ve, when she approached Jason. Skin on the sallow side and his bruises from Lucas purpling, he smiled widely at her. All white sparkle and sharp teeth. Jason smiled like a hospital. Chrissy had no desire to be a nurse. She’d always thought she wasn’t good with blood.
“Chrissy, honey, I’m—I’m so happy to see you. So glad you’re okay.” He made to hug her but she took a step back. Smile still on his face, he asked dangerously, “Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t lie,” she lied. Under other circumstances, she’d feel bad about gaslighting Jason, but it was for his own good. He didn’t need alternate dimensions on his brain. “Eddie didn’t hurt me or Patrick.”
“But—But I saw,” he muttered lowly, “Patrick float. In the air.”
“No, you didn’t. Jason, you thought your girlfriend had just died and then you saw your best friend’s body do something horrible. That is impossibly hard and I’m so sorry. Sorry we didn’t tell you what was going on. Sorry.” She reached out a hand and placed it on his shoulder. “And I’m going to make it harder. I’m sorry, Jason, but we can’t be together anymore.”
“What?!” His voice rose and he jerked toward her. Powell took a step closer. “I did everything for you! I tried to avenge you! I got this town to find a murderer while he just wanted to sit on his ass!”
“You didn’t want to find my murderer. You wanted to find the only guy at school who stood up to your bullying.” She kept her voice down. “You tried to avenge me by attacking a freshman and threatening a middle schooler. You tried to shoot Lucas. You fired a gun at him! That’s not okay, Jason. I’m sorry, but we’re done.”
She patted his shoulder once more. She didn’t...she didn’t think Jason was an actual psychopath. Hopefully he’d get things figured out. “You’ve had a really shitty week, Jason. I really am sorry about making it harder. Maybe...find someone to talk to. Miss...Miss Kelly is really nice.”
She didn’t wait to see what, if anything, else Jason had to say. She kept walking. Toward where Steve and Nancy stood. Once out of earshot of her ex-boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—Powell commented, “We’re going to keep an eye on him. I know he means well, thinks he’s doing the right thing, but...I don’t want vigilante mobs in this town anymore than you do.”
They came to an intersection in the sidewalk. The police station to one side, Steve and Nancy to the other. Taking in a deep breath, she actually smiled at him, “Thank you. For...Just for everything. For believing me about Eddie.”
“Hopper always had a soft spot for the kid. Jim was never wrong about that kind of thing.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “You going to be alright? You have somewhere to go?” The unspoken question was somewhere besides home.
“Yeah, going to be with some friends. Just hang out,” she nodded toward Steve and Nancy. Both gave subdued little waves.
“Good. I’m no shrink, but I’ve been around long enough to know that helps more than people realize. Hey, Chrissy, you need anything, you give us a call. Alright?”
“Yeah. Promise.”
“Alright.” He turned to go back into the building and called behind, “I’ll let you know as soon as your axe is released from evidence.”
“Thank you!” She turned and had to cross almost six feet to get close enough to her parents to speak. It didn’t take long. She said she was going out with friends, namely the very upstanding, very trustworthy Nancy Wheeler. Her father said okay, be safe, have fun. An awkward joke about no trespassing that she smiled at but didn’t feel. Her mother said her hair needed to be brushed if she was going to insist on wearing it down.
Master of Puppets cut her off before she finished and Chrissy turned away. She didn’t say she’d be gone until tomorrow, but it was implied and heard. Cracking her neck, she jogged the distance between her and the pair. Steve cracked a smile at her and Nancy wrapped their arms together as they walked.
–
“So, where are we going?” she asked as she piled into Steve’s car.
“Your date,” Nancy replied, smile clear in her voice. Both laughed at her when her face went pink. It felt...normal and bright and real. Real like she’d forgotten how to be. Blushing because a boy gave her stomach butterflies, not because he was on the basketball team and she was supposed to like him. Genuine teasing without an implied threat. Hope because she was alive and her own and she actually fucking felt it.
“Henderson’s,” Steve elaborated. “His mom has always been super nice. After the first news that Eddie was in the clear, her little Dusty started clearing the way for his ‘favorite DM’ to have a nice, warm, comfy place to stay. Food included. The gate in the trailer was a little too big to hide from Eddie’s uncle and they both needed a place to crash. I guess Dustin’s mom and Wayne dated for a bit way back in high school. Dustin’s horrified. It’s amazing.”
Snickering, she wondered how far away Dustin lived. She wanted to be there, like, yesterday.
Nancy added, “Eleven and my brother got into town this morning. We’re going to go around and close all the gates with her, make sure nothing else can get out. You don’t need to come, we’ve got this, but we wanted to ask. You want to come?”
“Today?”
“Yeah.”
“Nah, I have a date.”
They both looked back at her with smiles. Steve’s morphed into a Dustin-like grin, “Speaking of, so movies. What is your opinion on—”
“Steve, shut up!” Nancy thwacked his arm hard and he made a face at her. “Don’t give away the surprise!”
“I wasn’t going to. I was going to casually bring up some options he considered. Jeez, Nance!”
“Robin’s right, you are a dingus.”
Chrissy couldn’t quite keep up or get involved in the bickered conversation. But she didn’t mind. History couldn’t be forced. She was just...hopeful because they seemed genuinely okay to make some with her. Then, thankfully, they pulled up to a house and Steve put the car in park. Feeling how she imagined Eddie always did, pent up energy in all her fingers and toes and just twitching out of her wherever it could manage, she followed them inside.
A single step in, she heard a guitar across the house. Woken up again, she grabbed onto the guitar riff and ran. Steve spluttered but she found the stairs just fine. Only tripping over two, she jerked to a stop in the basement, hand wrapped around the banister. In all his chaotic, easy, sunshine and tattoos glory, Eddie grinned back at her from where he was bent over his guitar.
Like somehow she was the sunshine.
“Eddie!”
He barely got the guitar out of the way before she invaded absolutely all of his personal space, tackling him against the back of the couch. They laughed as he wrapped both arms around her. Squeezing her back and forth. Looking languid and electric when she ran her fingers through his hair, pulled gently at a few curls. Soft, round, bottomless brown eyes sparkling up at her.
Chrissy almost just leaned in and kissed him. Almost, as in she was leaning forward and tightening the hold she had on his hair, almost when Dustin greeted. “Hi, Chrissy.”
“H-Hey Dustin.”
Eddie flashed a dark, menacing look in his direction. Dustin just grinned, “Yeah, yeah, I’m going. We’ll all be back later. Have a nice date.”
“Get lost, Dustybuns!” Dustin flipped him off without looking. Chrissy rolled her eyes at them both and called more kindly as he clomped up the stairs, “Thanks, Dustin!”
“Okay,” Eddie clapped his hands behind her back, rubbing them together and making his rings clink against one another. As she looked down at him, she thought he looked...nervous. It was cute. “Okay. So, if you’ll remember the terms, we are first, safe, second, again in the real world, and third, you do not have a boyfriend. As such—”
“I do.”
“What?”
“Have a boyfriend.”
“Oh, w-well, in...” His face fell much farther than she’d anticipated and she immediately felt bad for her teasing. She didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable and not enough. Never not enough. Eddie was everything.
She nudged his nose with hers and grinned, smiled, let all the sunshine he made her feel escape from behind her crooked teeth so close to his lips she swore she could taste them. “I’m sitting on him. He’s super comfy.”
Eyes going comically wide, he just stared at her for a long moment. Awe and wonder and something smoldering that made his hands fist into her hips. Then, without further warning, he threw them both to the side to flop onto the cushions. She shrieked in surprise and delight. A pure, high, loud, unapologetic sound she was never taking back. Just like the giggles that came after.
“You’re killing me here, Cunningham.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad. I promise. I just...you’re so cute.”
“You take that back immediately. I am mean and scary, thanks very much.” Turning from her, he crossed his arms and pouted at the ceiling.
“No,” she murmured, nuzzling into the hollow between his throat and jaw, “you’re cute and funny and wonderful and gorgeous.”
Even though she couldn’t see him, hidden in her cloud of his hair, she felt him smile at that. Could almost feel the heat that gathered in his cheeks and the hitch in his chest. His heart thudded against her collar bone and she committed it to memory.
“Absolutely fucking killing me,” he whispered before wrapping an arm around her and jolting them both upright. “Okay, now that we have all three prerequisites figured out, we can begin. Or, wait,” he frowned as he took her in. With a conscious effort, she refused to believe the immediate thoughts that he thought something was wrong with her, that she needed to be something else, that she was too— “Are you comfortable in that?”
He nodded to her tightly buttoned blouse and skirt. It was a dark purple she’d never really liked. She preferred pastels, pinks, blues, and mint green. Not to mention it was about a size and a half too small. Aspirational, her mother had said. The pretty part played quietly between her ears.
“Oh, umm, not really.”
“Well,” he announced, tugging her upright beside him. Her fingers smiled at returning home between his. “The most important rule of ponytail-curling dates is comfort!”
“Naturally.” The grin he sent over his shoulder was luminous.
“So, I, uh, don’t have a whole lot here. We can probably go raid Henderson’s closet if you need. I know I’m kinda tall, but...”
“No, this is good. Thanks for sharing,” she smiled at him, rifling through the overflowing box he indicated. Shifting every time he tried to look over her shoulder, she hid her selection from him before shuffling over to the bathroom. Peeling out of her intended funeral outfit was like shedding a heavy, cracked second skin. She reveled in the first deep breath.
Leaving the discarded outfit forgotten on the floor, shoved into a corner, she smiled at herself in the mirror and pulled her hair up. There had to be a ponytail for ponytail curling. Chrissy wondered when Eddie would realize she was kind of a complete dork. She doubted the green Hawkins High Physical Education shorts had been worn since whenever Eddie last had gym. They were loose but comfy and nearly disappeared under the black Dio band shirt. Something about a diver scrawled across the front.
When she stepped out, she raised her hands with a grin, “Comfort achieved!”
“Y-Yep...” For the first time, Eddie Munson was both still and speechless. Eyes wide. Mouth a little open. Every inch of him screaming at her that she was as breathtaking as the guitar solo. Standing there in what was essentially pajamas—not even cute pajamas—Chrissy Cunningham had never felt more beautiful. Smiling, she crossed the two steps to press against his front and went all the way up on her tiptoes. It wasn’t quite enough. Without being asked, he bent down and she pressed a lingering kiss to his nose. He let out a low moan against his pursed lips. “You wreck me, Cunningham.”
Untethered and weightless, like a balloon bobbing against the ceiling, she snatched his hand and spun them back towards the couch. “What’s the next part of the date? I’m comfortable. You’re—”
“About to implode, thanks for asking.” Shaking his head a little, a very Eddie little twitch that made his hair whirl, he cleared the fog within. “Cool. Cool. Okay, yes, date and things and impressing Chrissy Cunningham by being more than super comfy. Yep.”
He spun her again for no reason, making her squeal, before gesturing for her to sit on the couch. “Alright now, close your eyes. I need the element of surprise. Because this is sort of the poor man’s, previously a wanted criminal’s, I had to beg help from Robin and Nancy for this to work out, but I was not waiting another full day to take you on a date…umm, date.”
As requested, Chrissy pulled her hands up to eyes. “No peeking!” he admonished. She heard him moving quickly around the space, things clattering and the tv flipping on. The crinkle of some kind of wrapper. One, then a second can of something carbonated opening. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move!” His footsteps thundering up the stairs then right back down twenty seconds later. “Ow, ow, ow, shit! No! No looking yet.”
Giggling behind her hands, her impatience grew. Not only for whatever smelled amazing in front of her, but just to see him again.
Then, finally, he cleared his throat awkwardly a few times. “Okay, you can look.”
She did. Spreading her fingers to see through them, she looked. She looked and she...she imploded.
On the coffee table, hastily cleared of DnD books, guitar picks, and music magazines, sat two Cokes, two bowls of warm, homemade mac ‘n cheese, and a full, untouched package of double stuff Oreos. A Family Video case for Footloose was in front of the tv. What she immediately recognized as the opening pair of shoes from the movie on the screen. Footloose was her favorite movie.
Eddie stood to the side, arms out like a game show girl, his fingers fluttering. “Tada!”
For a long moment, she stared at him. Could only stare. Just gaze upon this boy who was sun and snark, cafeteria speeches and quiet whispers that she was okay, jokes in the face of death and a bright pink blush when she kissed his cheek in front of everyone. Big and bold and shy and sweet and absolutely fucking perfect and... looking at her with a falling face as she short-circuited.
“Y-You don’t like it…?” He cleared his throat again, hands falling to his sides. “Dustin suggested Eggos for some reason, thinks they’re the pinnacle of romance, but I thought he was crazy. I guess—”
“It’s perfect.”
“Mmph?” On her feet, pressed to his chest, hands pulling him down to her by the back of his neck, Chrissy stole whatever he’d been about to say. She crashed her lips to his, chasing warmth and laughter and the grin that set her on fire. Chrissy couldn’t remember ever smiling as she kissed someone before. But as he wrapped her up and pulled her in, snuck his tongue into her mouth, she felt her lips start to curl up.
When Eddie leaned back, chest heaving and eyes wide, the grin was already spread across her cheeks. Before he could say anything, she whispered again, “It’s perfect. You’re perfect. You’re the best fucking thing in the world, Eddie.”
Nose to nose with him, she felt the pink rise in his face. Summer sunshine heat on her skin. His eyes flickered down to her mouth and that heat sprinted right up her spine. She took another step into him. Closer. She needed closer. Just as she sunk her fingers into his shirt, Eddie kissed her. Quiet at first, a few tentative pecks that left her blindly following his lips whenever they retreated. But then, then he groaned low in his chest and sunk his fingers in her hair. Rings warm and scraping against her scalp.
Shit...
Her body sang, sang against him as she fumbled him back into the shelf of board games behind him. Or...maybe that was the whine coming from the back of her throat. One that sounded suspiciously like, “Eddie…!”
Embarrassed, face going hot, her eyes shot open and she covered her traitorous mouth with her hands. Biting her lip, she looked up at him and saw the smuggest grin on the face of the earth staring back. Delighted, Eddie laughed and it made her crack a smile. “You,” he said, pulling her in and rocking from side to side, punctuating each next word with a kiss to her temple, “Are. The most. Adorable. Thing. Babe.”
“Okay,” he finally declared, pulling his lips away from her hair, “okay. Dinner and movie, then further exploratory ponytail curling.”
Chrissy’s face went hot, all the way down to her chest, but she didn’t pull away as he spun her around and walked them back to the couch. He flopped down first, legs spread wide and taking up so much space, long limbs and all the space he wanted. Just watching for a second, he tugged her down with him. “So, in the lovely Basement de Henderson, we have for the main course, mac ‘n cheese. Courtesy of Mrs. Henderson. She’s awesome. Classic Coke for your drinking pleasure, and, should we be feeling particularly rebellious, Oreos for an appetizer.”
Grinning, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, she snatched an Oreo from the package.
“Rebellion it is. And I thought you could not get sexier, Chrissy Cunningham.”
He didn’t understand, but as she took her first bite of an Oreo in five years, keeping awkwardly intense eye contact the whole time, it was the most romantic thing he could’ve said. She swallowed down the chocolate and cream, licking the leftover crumbs from her finger tips, and...she couldn’t feel the cookie in there at all. She could taste it, but it hadn’t become a five pound weight pulling on the bottom of her stomach where her feelings lived.
It was from Eddie, a gift, an offering, an invitation. Nothing Eddie chose to give her was too heavy. And she would not give any of it away. Legs curled underneath her, she settled against his shoulder and grabbed a bowl. He did the same, bringing the remote back with him and throwing an arm over her shoulder.
He was about to hit play when the fear hit her. She...She could have all the best intentions in the world, make all the promises. That didn’t mean that she was better. Okay. Past it. She wanted to try, wanted to start, but…
“Hey, Eddie.”
Maybe she could finally ask for help.
“Yeah, babe?”
“If...If I get up to go to the bathroom after I eat this, can...can you please ask me if I’m okay o-or squeeze my hand or something? Don’t let me go alone. I...She always says I should be smaller and it-it’s hard and...” the wind petered out of her sails and she trailed off. She waited for him to say no, to tell her it wasn’t his thing to deal with, to realize she was more trouble than she was worth. The arm around her shoulders tightened, pulled her in and he kissed the top of her head. One of his rings grazed the shell of her ear. She shuddered.
“Of course. Whatever you need, sweetheart. Just say the word.” His voice was impossibly tender, whispering at her like she was a soft, precious thing. Precious, not fragile.
“Thank you.” The words were so small, too small for how much it meant. For how he somehow kept being everything. He nuzzled into her hair for a bit longer, content with waiting for her. Running a knuckle down his sternum, she realized it could go both ways. They’d saved each other. Protected each other. Wanted each other. If she could share a little of her suffering with Eddie, she could carry a little of his if he wanted her to have it. “What about you?”
Leaning her head back and looking at him, she saw him ready a joke on his tongue, hold up his humor and confidence like his garbage can lid shield. Something in her face made him swallow it. “I...My head gets dark sometimes. I think about my drunk, dead dad and my mom who ran and taking two years to graduate and how I’m absolutely nothing and no wonder everyone leaves. So I get extra loud, extra obnoxious, extra everything. Because if I take up enough space, maybe people will remember I’m there.”
“What can I do,” she whispered, chin resting over his heartbeat. Even with this, he was so brave. So much braver than her.
“Stay. Remind me I’m not alone, say those nice things about how awesome you think I am.” It was a little weak, but he gave her an Eddie grin, eyebrows reaching for his bangs.
Following his lead that he didn’t want to dwell on it longer, that he wasn’t like that now and he wanted to smile and laugh, she smirked, “You, Eddie Munson, are so wonderful, that you deserve a cookie.” She fed him an Oreo.
Swallowing it down, he said far too solemnly, silly, teasing Eddie on their first date again, “I do have one, small thing to ask of you. To make up for the complete lack of metal in this film, I humbly request that you sing along.” At her doe-eyed look, he smirked, “To whichever ones you want. However loud you want. If I have to listen to inferior music, I want to hear it from the superior voice.”
Holy shit, he was serious.
“Okay.”
And she did. She belted out Holding Out for a Hero dancing against his side with an Oreo in each hand. He laughed when she got up and spun in a dance for I’m Free, sang into a fake microphone of her Coke can for Somebody’s Eyes. She was silly and ridiculous and she loved that he made her feel brave enough to let it show. When she finished three quarters of her mac ‘n cheese and her stomach recognized the weight, her eyes darted to the bathroom door and pleadingly back to him. Eddie wrapped a long arm around her stomach and hugged her to his side. He kissed her neck through the entire line dancing scene until she was caught between gasping and giggling.
He flickered between blushing pink, fisting his fingers in the fabric at her hips, and lighting her on fire with his brown eyes when she kept perfect, unbroken eye contact all through Let’s Hear It for the Boy. The fact she shifted to sit on his thighs and rested her elbows on his shoulders as she did might’ve also had something to do with it.
His tapping knee helped her keep time as she viciously ignored her mother’s voice in her head. The sound plinked harmlessly against her new, overpowering ‘I can make Eddie Munson whimper with a look’ wall. It made her big and bold and willing to take up all the space around him she could.
As the credits rolled and neither of them moved to turn them off because neither of them was paying attention, Chrissy murmured against Eddie’s lips, “Do you want to know a secret?”
He propped himself up on his elbows above her, teasing, pondering look on his face that made her tickle at his sides. Below his bandages. His grin slipped to languid and happy, “Yours? All of them.”
“Sometimes, when my parents aren’t home, I put on a bunch of black eyeliner, pull on my black leggings, turn on Pat Benatar, and sing so loud my ears ring as I slide around my room in my socks.”
His eyes ignited, smoldered at her as he gazed awestruck down at her, easy grin on his face. Even as she blinked, once then twice, the wide, adoring, interested look held. Because he thought she was something worth gazing at, listening to. And this tiny little nugget of her life she’d chosen to share was a gift from the gods.
“You,” he whispered, breath going ragged, “are going to wreck me. Absolutely wreck me, Chrissy.”
“Is that okay?”
“God yes.” He leaned back down and devoured her until neither of them could breathe. Some nebulous amount of time later, the vhs waiting to be rewound in the background, he asked with teasing glee, “Can you put on the eyeliner now? Do you have any black leggings?”
“Later,” she groaned against his lips. “You have to play the pretty part for me first.”
“But, but, hear me out here, you could...shit.”
Smirking, feeling powerful and sexy and too big for her body, she sucked on his ear in the way she’d learned he liked. A lot. “Eddie Munson, you will be in no state to play me music once I put that eyeliner on.”
He shuddered from head to toe and she felt every bit of it. “But...” It came out more of a keen than word.
Wrapping her thighs around his waist, Chrissy flipped them over. She rubbed her thumbs along his cheekbones and rolled her hips against him. “Later.”
“Yeah, later. Later is good.”
Later, he played her the whole song, including the pretty part. Along with the rest of the album as promised. Orion was her second favorite. After, she asked Mrs. Henderson if she could please borrow her darkest eyeliner. The woman had a black pencil she never used. As soon as she stepped out of the bathroom with rock star eyes, Eddie was in no state to play her music. He was too busy twirling her around the basement until her laughter gave her the hiccups. Then laughing at how cute her hiccups were.
–
Chrissy Cunningham woke slowly the next morning on Dustin Henderson’s pullout couch to the sound of a muted, sliding, stilted guitar part and the sight of Eddie bent over his guitar, hair pulled back with her baby pink scrunchy, and his fingers learning Pat Benatar. For her. The moment burrowed determinedly between her eyes, straight into her skull where she vowed to keep it forever.
He looked over at her when she sighed happily. Lazily grinning, he whispered, “Go back to sleep, babe.”
Knowing they would be safe and together and so, so alive when she woke again, she burrowed into his pillow and did.